by K. M. Peyton
‘Aye, well, bring the bucket along and I’ll fill it for ’im,’ Albert said.
Ros walked back with Albert to his back-garden gate, carrying the bucket. She felt terribly relieved at the offer. Albert had worked on a farm most of his life, and knew about horses. Ros waited outside his back door while he filled the bucket.
‘Can you manage it?’ He sounded doubtful.
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
It was very heavy, but she managed to struggle back to Badger without spilling much. Her feet were a bit soggy, that’s all. Badger plunged his nose in and drank about three-quarters of the water.
Ros was pleased with her work, although still very anxious about Badger’s treatment from his owners. Not giving him any food was bound to quieten him down, but surely there were better ways of soothing a high-spirited pony? But she had no time to linger. She had to run all the way home so that her mother wouldn’t be cross.
She told her parents all about it.
‘Sounds like they’re a bit ignorant,’ said her mother. ‘There’s a lot of cruelty to animals comes about by ignorance.’
Their dog Erm, now very ancient, had come from the rescue home. Her real name was Ermintrude and when they first had her she was very stupid and thin, because she had been shut in a shed and left all day and all night, but after living in a family and being treated properly for a while she became very intelligent and loving. But she was too old now to go as far as Badger’s field, and Ros only took her for short walks down the lane.
‘What can I do about Badger?’ Ros asked her parents.
‘He’s not yours. Nothing,’ they said.
‘Not yet, anyway,’ said her father.
Her mother ruffled Ros’s hair affectionately. ‘They must want him, after all. He’ll be all right.’
And with that Ros had to be content.
CHAPTER THREE
THE EVENINGS CONTINUED in the same fashion, Ros going to see Badger and Fi coming to ride him.
Fi said to Ros, ‘Stary cat! What you always staring for?’
‘Who’s going to stop me, Bighead?’
Ros was no faintheart. She felt bitter towards Fi and her family for the brutish way they treated Badger. Badger was becoming more nervous and less friendly, and put his ears back now when once he had come forward with his little knucker of greeting.
‘But you love me, don’t you, Badger?’ Ros asked him anxiously, making up his diet with carrots and a bagful of porridge oats she had filched from the pantry. Once he saw who it was, Badger rubbed his head against her arm in his old friendly way.
He wasn’t as round and shining as he had been. His summer coat was scurfy and he was thin in the flanks. If it wasn’t for herself and Albert, filling his bucket every day, he would have died of thirst before now, Ros thought. Albert had had a go at Fi’s dad, but he had told Albert to keep his long nose out of business that didn’t concern him.
‘They are horrid people. I hate them!’ Ros told her mother.
Her mother was sorry that what had started as a great thrill and interest for Ros had turned sour for her. She knew that it was making Ros unhappy, seeing Badger badly treated, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. It wasn’t bad enough for the RSPCA.
‘After all, although he’s on a tether, strictly speaking they do go and see him every day, and move him. He’s not exactly neglected.’
‘But there’s hardly any grass, even when they do move him. They’ve ridden it all down.’
One evening, overhearing Fi’s conversation with her dad, Ros found out that they were taking Badger to a horse show the next weekend, to enter him for a jumping class. Ros pricked up her ears, and decided to go too.
Leo said he would come with her.
‘You could enter Andrew,’ Ros said, grinning.
Andrew was the boss frog. Ros didn’t see how Leo could tell them apart, but Leo swore he could. Andrew had a spot on his back; he was the only one Ros could tell was different, but Leo had names for lots of them. Ros suspected he just said the names to impress her.
Harry gave them a lift to the horse show, which was about ten miles away. It was in a huge field, where lines of horseboxes and trailers were pulled up, and rings roped off for jumping and showing and the gymkhana. Ros knew about horse shows, and where to look, but Leo was very ignorant. He even thought small ponies were just young horses, and would grow into big horses later on.
‘Stupid! Ponies are ponies and horses are horses, however old they are!’
‘Well, nobody ever told me! If no one had ever told you, you wouldn’t know a tadpole would grow into a frog. Would you?’
Ros scowled.
‘Would you?’ Leo persisted.
‘Not if no one had said, no. You wouldn’t think so.’
‘Well then. No one ever said to me about ponies.’
He trailed after her in his baggy shorts and baby Disney-decorated T-shirt, and Ros tried to be nice to him. She had lots of good friends at school but none of them were potty on horses, like her, and all had refused to come to the horse show. At least Leo, for all he was so pathetic, seemed to understand about Badger. He brought him carrots too, and once a whole box of muesli he stole out of the pantry.
Ros bought a programme. She saw Fi, dressed very smartly in a black jacket and boots, and wearing the number 137. Ros looked her up in the programme.
‘Cor!’ she said, finding it. ‘Do you know what Badger’s name is?’
‘What? What is it?’
‘Mountfitchet Meteor Light!’
Leo looked puzzled. ‘Is that a name?’
‘That’s what it says.’
‘It sounds like a firework.’
‘Fi’s is Fiona Smith.’
It was a hot day and people were sitting round the jumping ring on bales of straw. The jumps looked enormous, but little ponies seemed to be whizzing over them without any trouble. Ros could see Badger in the collecting-ring, prancing about in a very spirited manner. Fi was holding him hard with her vicelike hands, and Dad Smith was standing there in his shirt-sleeves grinning and geeing them up. There was a practice jump which Fi did several times, and Badger was getting more and more excited.
When he came into the ring, Fi had to wait a bit for some jumps to be put up again after the previous pony. While she was waiting, Ros heard a woman behind her say to her friend, ‘Good Lord, that’s dear old Meteor Light! I’d never have recognized him! Who on earth’s got him now?’
‘Oh, some very ignorant people bought him. Doesn’t he look poor? It was criminal not to make sure he went to a good home, after being such a brilliant winner for that family – all the rosettes they collected with him!’
‘They were asking a big price though.’
‘Yes, and these people paid it!’
‘But what have they done to him? He looks so poor.’
‘Probably the girl can’t manage him when he’s fit.’
At this point in the conversation, Fi got the hooter to start her round, and Badger leapt into action and bore down on the first jump. He was a brilliant jumper but Ros could see that Fi had very little control over him. He went much too fast, and after jumping the first three he went too fast round the corner at the end and Fi could not collect him up in time for the fourth. He went straight past it and raced towards the next. Fi had to haul him back and take him round in a circle.
The lady behind Ros said, in a stern voice, ‘What a horrid spectacle! That child’s no idea!’
Fi came up to the jump at such an angle that Badger could not see what to do and stopped dead. Fi shot over the jump on her own and landed in a heap.
Leo laughed. ‘Serves her right!’
‘Shut up, Leo!’ Ros felt as if she was sitting on pins. Poor Badger! He cantered round the ring and someone caught him and took him back to Fi. Fi got up looking murderous. She was legged back on. She gave Badger two tremendous whacks with her whip and Badger bucked. Fi managed to stay on. She turned him in another circle and prese
nted him at the jump again, and this time Badger jumped so big that Fi bounced right out of the saddle and landed on his neck, her hands clutching feverishly at his ears. Badger put his head down, bucked again, and Fi landed on the ground once more.
‘Oh, really! What a farce!’ said the woman behind Ros. ‘The poor animal’s doing his best, but that idiot girl can’t ride!’
This time Badger dashed out of the ring and Dad Smith caught him in the collecting-ring. Fi got up and ran out of the ring. Dad Smith obviously wanted her to go back in and ‘get her money’s worth’ but Fi burst into tears and refused. Her father, looking very red and angry, grabbed her by the arm and marched her away from the interested spectators, trailing Badger behind.
Ros got up to go.
‘What are you doing?’ Leo asked, following.
‘I’m going to see what they do.
Leo came with her. Ros felt as if she was burning inside. She pushed through the crowd. Mr Smith led Badger back to where a large horsebox was parked in line with the others. It was quiet here, and there was no one about, only a few ponies tied up picking at their haynets. Mr Smith was in a terrible temper. He took Badger’s saddle off and threw it on the ground, then he lifted his hand and cuffed Badger about the ears. Badger pulled back, but Mr Smith jerked viciously at his mouth and said, ‘You want to be taught a lesson, you brute!’ He pulled Fi’s whip out of her hand and struck Badger cruelly across the face.
Ros, having followed closely behind, could not contain her rage.
‘STOP IT!’ she roared. ‘You beastly man!’
She launched herself at Mr Smith and flailed at his massive back with her fists.
He turned round in amazement and fury.
‘I’ll report you!’ Ros screamed at him. ‘I’ll tell the judge! You are cruel and beastly!’
‘Bloomin’ heck! Shut yer mouth, gel!’
Mr Smith looked round hastily and then lifted his hand menacingly to Ros. ‘You clear off, you little interfering madam, before I clock you one round the chops!’
‘It’s that stary cat, Dad,’ Fi sniffed.
‘Oh, our little miss interfering snotty-nose, is it? Where’s yer mum and dad, gel? They ought to take care of you, instead of letting you loose in public! Where do you live, gel? Tell me that! What’s your name?’
He towered over Ros, suddenly very menacing. Ros was terrified. She burst into tears.
‘What’s your name?’
Ros sobbed it out.
‘Palfrey! That’s rich!’ Mr Smith laughed in a very unpleasant way. ‘Well, just take me to your mum and dad, Miss Palfrey, and I’ll have something to say to them.’
Ros shook with tears and fear. But at this moment a girl rode up to the next-door horsebox and dismounted. She didn’t take any notice of the fraught little group round Badger, but Mr Smith had to lower his voice.
‘You haven’t heard the last of this, my girl! Now run along, or I’ll fetch a policeman.’
‘It’s you that needs a policeman!’ Leo said, very bravely, and going very red in the face. But all the same, he was already retreating as he spoke. ‘Come along, Ros.’
They crept away along the line of horseboxes. Ros was sobbing with rage and hurt.
Leo said sadly, ‘Don’t cry, Ros. Badger’ll be all right. He won’t dare hit him again, with people there.’
‘Poor darling Badger, belonging to that horrible man! What can we do to help him?’
‘Well, we give him carrots.’ Leo decided to filch another box of muesli that very night. His mother kept a good stock. ‘We could steal him away.’
‘Where to?’
‘We could look for somewhere.’
‘Do you think we could?’
‘You can do anything if you try hard enough,’ Leo said, quoting a favourite saying of his father’s. He only repeated it; he didn’t think it was true.
It didn’t sound hopeful, even to Ros, thinking of the railway line and the arterial road, not to mention Safeway’s car park, all hemming Badger in. And besides, stealing was wicked. But not as wicked as Dad Smith.
The show was ruined for Ros, and she went home on the bus with Leo early. Her mother was surprised, and Ros told her what had happened, but she didn’t tell her about how she had shouted at Mr Smith. She pretended she had only watched.
When it was quite late she slipped out to see Badger. He was standing dejectedly on his tether, and shifted uneasily when he saw her, as if he didn’t trust anybody any more, even her. She hugged him and gave him her titbits. His water bucket was half-full. Probably Albert had filled it. The saddle marks were still on his back. No one had bothered to rub him down and make him comfortable. He had hardly anything to eat.
‘I do wish you were mine, Badger!’
Now that he had given Fi such a bad time in the show-ring, perhaps he would be sold. But he didn’t look half the pony he had looked a few months ago. Ros remembered the shining, bouncy animal she had first set eyes on, roaming round his chain and whinnying. Now he always stood in a head-down, dejected way. Who would want him now? He looked like a cheap pony now, and would quite likely go to another poor home. Or could anybody be as bad as Mr Smith?
No, she had reason to decide very soon afterwards. When she went indoors the telephone rang, and she answered it, hoping it was one of her school-friends. But it was Mr Smith. She recognized his coarse, angry voice straight away.
‘I want to speak to your father!’ he said.
Ros put the receiver back and cut him off. But it rang again shortly and her father came out and picked the receiver up.
Ros went upstairs to her bedroom and sat on her bed, shivering. The thought of Mr Smith and his cruel expression was unbearable.
As she knew would happen, her father came up to her bedroom after the phone call and said to her, ‘What’s all this then, about your attacking Mr Smith? Is it true?’
Ros explained, between her hiccuping tears.
Her father listened patiently, his face grave.
‘It was wrong of you, but I do understand. I think you ought to keep out of his way in future.’
‘But I must go and see Badger! He needs me!’
‘Look, Ros, you’ve got to accept that you can’t manage the world to suit yourself. You can’t interfere. Badger is not yours. He’s not well-treated, but he’s not actually knocked about. If he’s starving, as you say, he doesn’t look it. Poor, admitted, but not at death’s door. I am very much afraid, in spite of what you think, that the people whose job it is to investigate these things, the police or the RSPCA, would consider you were wasting their time if you told them about Badger. If you like, I will contact the RSPCA and tell them the situation. They might have a word with Mr Smith. But on the other hand, if they do, he might get fed up and send Badger to market, and who knows what might happen to him there?’
‘The meat man?’
Ros threw herself down on her bed and wept.
Her father tried to cheer her up, but to himself he had to admit that Ros had got herself into a pretty miserable situation.
CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER THE HORSE show Fi didn’t come to ride Badger any more. Sometimes the little brothers and sister came, and now Badger was so run down he didn’t buck them off. They trotted round and tried to make him go faster, but he hadn’t the spirit any more, because he hadn’t enough food. They drummed on his sides with their heels and he would lurch into a weary canter, and they would shout and hit him with a stick.
Ros had been sternly warned by her father to keep out of Mr Smith’s way. She was frightened of him, anyway.
But she lay on the top of the railway bank behind the fence and watched through the long grass. Badger was getting thinner and thinner with the treatment he received. Soon, Ros thought, the RSPCA would think he was worth bothering with. Her father had told them, and they had seen Mr Smith, they said, and the result was that Mr Smith filled the water bucket more often, and sometimes brought some hay, but only sometimes. It was bad hay, not worth
eating. Badger picked at it, and Mr Smith said it showed he didn’t need it.
Mr Smith guessed who had told the RSPCA.
Leo said to Ros, ‘He’ll skin you alive if he sees you.’
‘Don’t be silly!’
But she was frightened all the same.
When the weather started to get colder, she feared for Badger. Mr and Mrs Palfrey feared for Ros.
‘If only she didn’t have to pass the wretched pony every day, she would forget about it! It makes her so miserable!’
‘It’s a very sad situation. But we can’t do anything about it! We can’t afford to buy him, and Smith would be very unlikely to sell to us anyway – not the way he thinks about us!’
‘No. There’s no way we can buy him.’
‘I can’t think of anything we can do.’
One night in November, it started to snow. ‘Very early for snow!’ said Ros’s father, pulling the curtains across. They all sat round a coal fire, watching television.
When Ros went to bed, she lay watching the snowflakes drifting across her bedroom window, thinking of Badger. She was warm and comfortable and had her mother and father next door, but Badger was cold and hungry and alone, and had nothing to look forward to. There was the whole winter to go yet.
Ros sat up.
‘I will do something,’ she decided. She couldn’t go on feeling so miserable about Badger, and not doing anything. Not for the whole winter! It was too long. She wasn’t a worm, after all. At school she was known as bossy and resourceful, and yet when it came to Badger she was just useless. And Badger deserved more than that.
‘I’ll steal him away, and put him somewhere nice,’ she decided.
‘You can’t!’ Leo said the next day.
‘I can. I’ve only told you because I might want some help, not so that you can say stupid things like that. No one will know who’s done it, not if we do it in the middle of the night, and take care no one sees us.’
Leo considered.
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘It would have to be, I think.’