by K. M. Peyton
Was it that easy, after all? Ruth could hear her heart thudding, as if it had grown into two. She gripped the top bar of the gate, looking at Fly. She saw him going round the Hunter Trials course at Brierley Hill, and herself sitting easily in the saddle, confident, easy . . . He had bold, wide nostrils, and was wide between the forelegs. But he wasn’t common.
‘Is – is he New Forest?’ she asked Mr. Marks.
‘He hasn’t any papers,’ Marks said. ‘But he came from the forest. I’ll bring him down your place, if you like – I know a man with a truck. Save you walking along the road. Where do you live?’
‘Wychwood. On the new estate.’
They started walking back to the farmyard. Ruth was in a daze. ‘I’ll have to get my money cashed. It’s in National Savings.’
‘Tomorrow do you?’
‘Oh, yes. But I won’t have the money by then. At least, not all of it. I can give you some.’
‘No hurry. I’m not worried. What house is it?’
‘South View.’
‘About six, then.’
‘Yes, thank you very much.’
Ruth found she was cycling home. Her head was filled with the image of Fly, standing there with his legs planted out so firmly, the wind in his tail. She thought, ‘Fly is a horrid name, if you think of fly like the thing that makes spots over the windows and sits on cream-cakes in the summer. But if you think of Fly as in flying, up in the sky, it is a lovely name. He will be that sort of Fly. Fly. Fly-by-Night.’ Ruth was pleased with Fly-by-Night. ‘He can be Fly, short for Fly-by-Night. In the Hunter Trials he can be down in the catalogue as Fly-by-Night.’ Ruth was cycling through the village and up the concrete road of Sunnyside Estate, her eyes seeing nothing.
‘I’ve bought a pony,’ she said to her father, who was having his supper.
He looked up. ‘Really bought it?’
‘Well, I’ve got to get the money out. But the man doesn’t seem to mind about waiting for it. He’s bringing the pony tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow!’ said Mrs. Hollis, spinning round from the sink. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Ruth, surely –’ Even her father looked rather annoyed. Her mother was speechless, gesticulating out of the kitchen window. ‘Where on earth –?’
Ruth, feeling rather cold, looked out of the kitchen window and remembered that the back-garden, or field, was full of bricks. There was wire-mesh between it and the adjoining two gardens, but nothing round the sides of the house and at the bottom, save a hedge full of holes. She looked at it forlornly, thinking of the lush spring bounty of Mr. Marks’s field. Fly would surely find life here a little different.
‘Oh, I’ll have it all right by tomorrow,’ she said.
Her assumption that a fence would grow out of the ground before the following evening made her parents exchange despairing glances. Fortunately at this moment Ted came in with his friend from work, Ron. Ron, like Ted, was seventeen, tall, skinny, and amiable, with a beloved motor bike.
‘We’re going to work on Ron’s camshaft tonight,’ Ted said happily.
‘I think,’ said Mr. Hollis, ‘that you’re going to build a fence.’
A vast cattle-truck, trailing small clots of dung, laboured up the slight incline to ‘South View’ and parked incongruously outside.
The driver leaned out of the cab and yelled towards the house, ‘Six cows for Hollis!’
Ruth ran blindly down the drive and into the road. ‘It’s my pony! The pony from Mr. Marks?’
‘That’s right, miss,’ said the driver, grinning. He let down the back ramp with a crash and shower of straw, and from the depths of the big lorry Fly’s dark eyes stared at Ruth, wild and shining.
‘I’ll get him, miss. He’s a bit scared like.’ The man went into the lorry and untied Fly’s halter. Fly charged for the daylight, his hoofs drumming the wooden floor, pulling the driver with him.
‘Hey, hey, steady on, my bold fellow!’
He crashed down the ramp, skidded on the concrete, and pulled up, quivering, nostrils wide, held sharply by the rope halter. A quiet one, Ruth remembered, was what she should have had. No animal that she had ever seen, she thought at that moment, looked less quiet than Fly.
4
PROBLEMS
THAT NIGHT, ALONE in the pock-marked field, Fly-by-Night galloped up and down the makeshift fences, whinnying for his companions. Ruth lay in bed with the pillow over her head so that she would not hear the pitiful noise. When he stopped whinnying she got out of bed to see if he was still there, and saw him standing with his ears pricked up, gazing into the distance, the moonlight washing his frosted back. She kept going to the window, longing to see him grazing, or dozing, but he did not settle. Ruth would have gone out to him, in the cold moonlight, but she knew that her presence made no difference to his behaviour, for she had spent the hours before bedtime trying to soothe him, and he had ignored her, brushing past her in his agitated circling, looking past her with anxious eyes. The neighbours had watched him, amazed, worried about their wire-mesh, and Ruth’s parents had shaken their heads and asked her what had possessed her to choose such a mettlesome beast.
‘Any trouble and he’ll have to go back,’ Mrs. Hollis said. ‘Thank goodness we haven’t paid the man yet.’
‘It’s all strange to him,’ Ruth cried out. ‘He’ll settle down! He misses the other ponies.’
Shaken with doubts of her own, nothing would now have induced her to admit that Fly was not a wise buy. More than anything her parents could say, the words of Peter McNair, who knew, kept repeating themselves in her head: ‘If you get a quiet one . . .’ But she did not want the grey, or the black, or the piebald. She was possessed by Fly, with his cocky walk and his questing eyes. ‘He will be all right,’ she said, ‘when he’s settled down.’
‘Tell the man to go and bring this animal’s pals,’ Ted said, reinforcing his fence hastily with whatever was handy (the dustbin, the clothes-line, two motor tyres, and a wardrobe door that was in the garage), ‘before he goes and fetches them himself.’
‘He’ll be all right in the morning.’
But in the morning Fly was still whinnying, and roaming round the field close by the fences, so that he wore a trodden path. Even to Ruth’s eyes the grass in their field did not look very palatable: it was sparse yet, and full of docks. The drinking-water was in an old cistern that Ted had mended with solder. She thought that some hay might occupy the restless pony, and took five shillings out of her money-box, and went on her bicycle to the nearest farm, where a surly old man took her money and dropped a bale on to her handle-bars.
‘We ain’t got too much ourselves just now.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Ruth said, full of gratitude for the favour.
She pushed the awkward load home and dropped a precious armload of the stuff on to the ground for Fly. He came up and snuffed it, ate a little, and trampled a lot of it into the mud. Ruth put the rest of the bale into the garage, but when her father came home and put the car in, the hay had to come out. Ruth put it on the porch, by the front door.
‘Ruth, for heaven’s sake!’ her mother said.
‘Where else, then?’ Ruth asked, in desperation. Her money-box had only another half-crown in it, and the hay was precious. She knew now that she would have to buy a hay-net, and a halter, too, and after that there would be a saddle and bridle, and a dandy-brush, and saddle-soap, and a hoof-pick. And more hay. Fly was still cantering along his track by the wire mesh, and scratching his hind quarters on the posts, which now leaned towards their neighbours’ gardens. The neighbours on one side told Mrs. Hollis that they didn’t like the whole business.
‘He’ll settle down,’ Ruth said. She was white, and had dark shadows under her eyes. She went down to the paper shop and signed on to deliver papers to Mud Lane and the road down to the creek, an unpopular route because the houses were far apart and a lot had nasty dogs. ‘Eleven shillings a week,’ the man said.
‘Oh, thank yo
u very much,’ Ruth said, once more deeply grateful. At least, on eleven shillings a week, Fly could not actually starve. She would wear her thickest trousers, and gum boots, for the dogs.
‘Look, really,’ Mrs. Hollis said, surveying the motor tyres and the dustbin and the wardrobe door from the front drive, ‘we can’t go on looking like this. We’ll have the estate people on to us. It looks like a slum. You’ll have to buy some stakes and wire and make a proper fence.’
The stakes cost half a crown each, and the wire was nearly three pounds a roll. Mr. Hollis bought them, grimly, and handed them over to Ted and Ron to install. Ted had to borrow a sledge-hammer from the builders. That night Ruth was summoned to a serious talk with her father.
‘All right, you’ve got the pony,’ he said. ‘But it depends on a lot of things, whether we keep it or not. You understand, Ruth, that it’s not because I don’t want you to have your pleasure. I want it as much as anybody. But it’s a hard fact of life that our budget is already stretched to its uttermost limits, and it’s only because Ted has started work and things are that much easier that we were able to buy this new house. And the mortgage repayments on this house are going to take all our spare cash for some years to come. In fact,’ he added, ‘I sometimes wish we’d gone for some old shack down Mud Lane myself – only your mother would never have stood for it. I don’t like this millstone round my neck. I wish – oh, but that’s beside the point. But you understand what I’m getting at, Ruth? It’s not easy, and if we find we have made a mistake, you will just have to take it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Ruth said miserably. ‘But I will keep him, with my paper round.’
‘You’re a good kid. But you’ve just got to know how things are.’
Ruth, quiet and tired, went down into the garden and Fly came up to her, for the first time. She guessed that the change in his life was as much a shock to his system as actually owning a pony was a shock to hers. He stood, and she stroked his neck, and he lipped at her fingers.
‘We shall get used to each other,’ Ruth said to him. ‘And you will be good. You must be good,’ she added fiercely. She wanted to join the Pony Club and jump round the course at Brierley Hill. She did not want just a rough pony; she wanted a pony that would be obedient to a touch, that would turn on his forehand at a brush of her heel and canter figure-of-eights on the right leg, like a show pony, and jump anything she asked of him, without running out or refusing. Like the ponies in the photographs and diagrams in the horse-books – always beautifully collected, the riders with their knees and elbows in the right places, smiling calmly. She did not know, then, how much she was asking. She only knew that she wanted it, and that she would try. She looked at Fly, at the way he stood, restless, ears pricked up, his rough coat shining over the contours of his muscly shoulders, and she thought, ‘I will do it. Even if he isn’t quiet. I will.’ It occurred to her that she could, indeed, start at that very moment, by leading him round the field, and getting him to stop and start when she wanted. Then she remembered that she had not got a halter. ‘Not even a halter,’ she thought, and all the things she wanted for Fly (expensive items, for all the horse-books agreed that cheap tack was to be deplored) floated in a vision before her eyes, looking like the interior of a saddler’s shop, and all her agony came back.
She told herself, ‘A halter is only a bit of rope and canvas,’ and that evening she made Fly a halter out of some canvas her mother found in her ragbag and a bit of old washing-line that was in the garage. The next day she led Fly round the field, and he was suspicious, but he went, curving his thick mane to the pressure on his nose, snorting delicately. Ruth was entranced.
‘He is as good as gold. He did everything I asked him,’ she told her mother.
‘I thought he just walked round the field. That’s what it looked like to me.’
‘Yes, that’s what I asked him to do.’
Mrs. Hollis gave Ruth a bewildered look, but did not pursue the subject.
Ruth fetched a pencil out of the kitchen drawer and a piece of her mother’s writing-paper, and sat down at the kitchen table. She headed her paper ‘Things Fly Must Have’.
Underneath she wrote:
Hay
Bridle
Saddle
Dandy-brush
Hoof-pick
Round these five items she put a bracket, and printed ‘At Once’ beside it. Then underneath she wrote ‘Things Fly Must Have When Possible’. This was a long list, in three columns, to get it all on the paper:
Headcollar
Rope for tying up
Body-brush
Shoes
Hay-net
Feed-bowl
Bucket
Stable
Curry comb
Saddle-soap
Neatsfoot oil
Pony-nuts
Its length depressed her slightly. The item ‘Stable’ she wrote without pressing very hard, so that it was nearly invisible. Its ghostliness seemed appropriate. When her father came in she asked him about the saddle and bridle.
‘You see, I can’t ride him unless I have a saddle and bridle,’ she pointed out.
‘Yes, I do see,’ her father said. His expression was guarded. ‘I think the best thing, Ruth, is if we decide on a sum – say, ten pounds – and you can buy whatever it is you want. The day-by-day things will have to come out of your pocket-money, or your paper round, but I will give you the lump sum to buy the saddle and bridle and suchlike. After all, you used your own money to buy the animal with. Ten pounds – oh, say twelve. What do you say to that?’
‘Oh, thank you!’ Ruth said. ‘Thank you very much! That will be wonderful.’
The next morning, in a state of nervous excitement, Ruth cycled eight miles to the nearest saddler’s shop.
‘I want a saddle and a snaffle bridle, for a pony about thirteen hands,’ she said to the man, who looked politely in her direction.
‘Certainly, madam,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you what we have.’
Ruth looked. The saddles were all golden new, pungent with the sour smell of stiff leather, utterly desirable. She stroked one happily.
‘Is this a thirteen-hand one?’
‘Sixteen inches,’ said the man. ‘It should fit a thirteen-hand pony. You can try it, and if it’s not suitable you can bring it back and try another.’
‘I like this one. I’ll try this first,’ Ruth said.
She chose stirrup irons to go with it, and leathers to put them on, and a white nylon girth. Then she chose an egg-butt snaffle bit, jointed in the middle, and a bridle with a noseband and a plain browband. The man laid all this shining impedimenta on the counter, and Ruth added a dandy-brush and a hoof-pick.
‘Is that all, madam?’
‘Yes, for now.’
The man totted some figures up on a bit of paper.
‘That will be thirty-nine pounds, twelve and eightpence, madam.’
Ruth, having pulled out the twelve pounds in an envelope that her father had given her, looked at him blankly.
‘Thirty-nine pounds . . .?’ Her voice faded into incredulity.
‘Thirty-nine pounds, twelve shillings and eightpence.’
Ruth opened her mouth, but no words came out. With a piercing shaft of mathematical clarity, she worked out that the sum the man was quoting her was only seven and fourpence less than she had paid for the pony itself. The man, meanwhile, was looking at her with a severe expression. Ruth looked blankly back at him.
‘You – you’re –’ She thought, for one sweet moment, that he was playing a joke on her, then she looked at his face again, and knew, quite certainly, that he was not.
‘I haven’t got thirty-nine pounds, twelve and eightpence,’ she said flatly. ‘I – I didn’t know –’ She looked desperately at the lovely, gleaming pieces all laid out for her on the counter. ‘I – I – how much is just the bridle?’
The man totted up the separate parts and said, ‘Four pounds, nineteen and sixpence.’
‘I’ll
take the bridle,’ Ruth said. She wanted him to hurry, before she burst into tears. His face was tight and sour. He took the lovely saddle away and put it carefully back on the saddle horse, and hung up the girth and the leathers, and put the irons back on the shelf. Then, slowly, he wrapped up the bridle in brown paper and gummed it with plenty of tape. Ruth gave him a five-pound note and he gave her sixpence back.
‘Thank you, madam.’
Ruth took her parcel and ran.
That same evening Elizabeth arrived, from the Council, to live with them. She was a thin, blonde child of six, who took an instant delight at finding a pony in the back garden, and came out to help Ruth while Mrs. Hollis was still talking to the Child Care officer who had brought her. Ruth had been trying to get the bridle on without any success at all. She was just realizing that to accomplish this small task was obviously going to take time and patience. Fly did not, as yet, take kindly to being tied up, so she was obliged to hold him by the halter and at the same time try to put the bridle on. It was plainly impossible. Fly snorted with horror and ran backwards every time she brought the reins up towards his ears, and then she needed both hands to hold him. She realized that, first, she must teach him to stand tied up; then, gradually get him used to the look of the bridle, and the feeling of having the reins passed over his head. Now, having attempted too much, she could see that he was frightened by the new tack.
She stood holding him, stroking his neck, and hung the bridle over the fence out of the way.
‘All right, silly. We’ll do it very slowly, and you’ll get used to it.’
At this point Elizabeth came up and said, ‘Can I have a ride?’
Ruth looked at her with interest.
‘Are you Elizabeth?’ They had learned about the imminent arrival of a child called Elizabeth the day before, when a woman from the Child Care Department had called.
‘Yes. Can I have a ride? What’s your name?’
‘Ruth.’
‘Can I have a ride?’
Elizabeth, Ruth decided, was so skinny she must weigh just about nothing at all. Acting on the moment’s impulse, she leaned down.