Pony Stories (3 Book Bind-Up) (Red Fox Summer Reading Collections)

by K. M. Peyton

  ‘Look,’ Ruth said, ‘how did you get him to jump that?’

  Peter looked surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He won’t jump it for me.’

  ‘Oh, they get to know what they can get away with, I suppose.’

  ‘You mean it’s me, all the things he won’t do?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know.’

  ‘Look, I won’t ask you ever again, but just this once, while you’re in the mood, would you just see if you can get him to jump that again, and go up the field in and out of the bales, as if it’s bending, and canter a circle and – oh, you know, the Pony Club sort of things? Will you?’

  ‘Well, if you like.’

  Peter got on again, and lengthened the stirrups. ‘One dressage display coming up.’

  Fly-by-Night went over the gap again, jumping big, his ears pricked up. To Ruth, never having seen him being ridden before, he looked magnificent, all shining bounce and jauntiness. He flexed his neck to Peter’s hands, carrying himself with the same boldness that she had once admired in Toadhill Flax. Peter seemed not to do anything, just sit there but Fly-by-Night went up the lines of bales, in and out, at a canter, without once poking his nose or even attempting to run out. At the top he turned and came back, first at an extended trot, then at a collected trot, then at a slow, collected canter. Opposite the gap once more, Peter cantered him in a circle on the correct leg, then changed direction and sent him off in a circle on the other leg. He then halted and got him to stand out, show-wise, all collected and square on his four legs. He reined back four paces, did a turn on the forehand, and jumped back over the gap to halt in front of Ruth.

  ‘There. I’d do a levade, too, but I haven’t got my cocked hat with me,’ he said.

  Biffy shouted from the sea-wall, ‘When you’ve finished assing about down there, we were on our way to look for a Comma, if you remember.’

  Peter got off again and handed Ruth the reins. ‘He’s nice,’ he said. ‘Reminds me of Toad, only smaller.’ He picked another piece of grass to suck and ambled away to join Biffy. Half-way up the sea-wall he turned and said, ‘Those jods are yours, remember. Biffy’ll be a witness.’

  ‘Come on,’ Biffy said. ‘Wasting blooming time with girls’ stuff.’

  The two of them disappeared over the sea-wall, and the strains of the radio faded away across the saltings. Fly-by-Night put his head down and started to graze, as if he had never seen grass before, and Ruth stood looking at him, in a daze. She felt as if something had come out of the sky and hit her. There was nobody in sight at all, just herself and Fly-by-Night on the edge of the stubble-field, and the distant hedges all shimmering in the heat.

  ‘Fly-by-Night,’ she said.

  Fly flicked an eye at her, pulling at the grass. Then, just like a pony in one of her books, he lifted his head and gave a little flutter of his nostrils, and rubbed his head against her arm in a friendly way. Ruth felt weepy all of a sudden, elated and weepy altogether, in a strange, dazed way.

  ‘It’s the heat,’ she said to herself, and mounted Fly-by-Night. He cleared the gap in one bound, and cantered away up the stubble-field.

  The next morning, when Ruth did her paper round, she found a brown paper parcel on the doorstep of ‘The Place’, addressed to herself. Inside were the jodhpurs, with the Moss Bros. label still new and unsoiled.

  11

  RIDING AT HILLINGDON

  ONE AFTERNOON AT the end of August when Ruth came in from her ride she found her mother in the kitchen drinking cups of tea with Mrs. Challoner.

  ‘Do you know where Peter is?’ Mrs. Hollis asked Ruth.

  ‘He’s down the creek somewhere, I think. Do you want him?’

  The two women looked at each other warily, and Mrs. Hollis said, ‘No hurry, I suppose.’

  Mrs. Challoner, looking relieved, said, ‘I’ll leave it to you to tell him, then?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  When Mrs. Challoner had gone Ruth said nervously to her mother, ‘Tell him what?’

  ‘That his father’s married a Neapolitan opera-singer.’

  Ruth looked at her mother to see if she was joking, but she did not look particularly amused.

  ‘Do you mean it? It doesn’t sound – er – well –’ Ruth was at a loss. Neapolitan opera-singers did not ride horses, nor stand in cold collecting-rings in sheepskin-lined jackets calling out the numbers.

  ‘They want Peter to go home.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘He’d have to go back soon, in any case,’ her mother said. ‘I only hope he’ll find a new mother an added attraction.’

  Amazingly, Peter did. ‘What’s she like?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘All Mrs. Challoner told me, dear, is that she’s rather fat and speaks no English at all, but smiles all the time.’

  Ruth listened to the conversation, wondering if it was real. It didn’t sound like the sort of thing that actually happened to ordinary people. Afterwards, when she was alone with Peter, she said to him, ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘It can’t be worse than it was before,’ he said.

  ‘Why, what was it like before?’

  ‘Well, at least someone smiling all the time will be nice to have around, won’t it?’

  He did not say any more, but his remark seemed very reasonable to Ruth.

  She had known that he was going back when his father came home, but had put off thinking about it. It was not that he had, in fact, helped a great deal practically in schooling Fly-by-Night since the day he had ridden him down by the creek, but his having shown Ruth what was possible had helped her immeasurably. Her confidence had increased, which Fly-by-Night had seemed to sense, and the better the pony did for her the more sure she became, so that she felt that their mutual progress was like a snowball, steadily building up. They still had plenty of bad patches to put it all in perspective, but these did not cast Ruth down with the same force as they had earlier in the year. She was more philosophic about it all.

  ‘You’ll get fat at this rate,’ Ron said approvingly. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  The Pony Club no longer held her in awe, expecting the worst. After two or three more times, Fly-by-Night stopped his whinnying and displays of astonishment, and settled down to doing what he was told (even if it was only because all the other ponies were doing the same thing). Ruth made some tentative friends, but none who lived within riding distance, so that her love-hate relationship with Pearl continued as far as riding out was concerned.

  ‘Why do you go out with that horrible girl?’ Peter asked her.

  ‘Because she calls for me. And she was honest about the jodhpurs.’ Ruth felt bound to defend poor Pearl.

  ‘She couldn’t have wriggled out of that,’ Peter said. ‘She made the offer in a loud enough voice, so that everyone would have to take notice.’

  ‘Take notice of me not being able to make Fly jump the gap.’

  ‘Yes, well, we fixed her, didn’t we?’ Peter said with great satisfaction. ‘Has she got the vet yet?’

  ‘No.’

  Milky Way was still a source of grief to Ruth. ‘I would give anything,’ she said, ‘to own Milky Way.’

  ‘She’s not worth anything, the way she is,’ Peter said.

  ‘That’s not the point. It’s her nature that I love.’

  Peter said, ‘There’s only one pony that I’ve ever liked. I mean liked as – as – oh, you know. More than just something to ride. A pony that was like somebody.’

  ‘Who was that? Woodlark?’

  ‘Woodlark? Ugh! No, it was Toad.’

  ‘Toadhill Flax? What happened to him?’

  ‘Dad sold him,’ Peter said. ‘He said I could have him for my own, then a week later someone offered a good price for him, and he sold him.’

  ‘Your father’s horrible!’

  Peter grinned. ‘But I’ve got a lovely mother – a big, fat, enormous, spaghetti-eating, smiling opera-singer.’

  Ruth was shocked.

  Peter went home
, and Ruth did not see him until she went back to school. Even then they did not have much opportunity to talk, but Ruth gathered that Peter thought his home vastly improved. ‘My father’s a new man,’ he said. ‘You won’t recognize him. He’s taking singing lessons. And we have spaghetti every day. Truly. All oozing with lovely, greasy gravy, and garlic in it.’ Ruth did not know whether he was making it up, or whether he meant it. It still just did not sound quite real to her. She went home and told her mother, and her mother was pleased.

  ‘Just what the place needed, I should imagine. Mrs. Challoner told me, when she first went there, that the house was just like an extension of the stables, all littered with gear and sale catalogues, and linseed on the cooker, stinking the place out. No fires, just a bit of old cheese in the pantry. No wonder Peter got fed up.’

  Ruth missed having him at home dreadfully. They all did. Ted, not yet fit enough to go back to work, was morose with boredom. The first coal of the winter was delivered, and Ruth heard, with a familiar feeling of dread, the mutterings of her father over the bill. She realized that he had got steadily quieter over the past year, more and more worried looking, and less given to making the jokes that had made them all laugh. She heard him say to her mother, ‘This winter will find us out. I really think we’ll have to move before the next one. But heavens know where to.’

  ‘A flat would do us, now the children are growing up,’ Mrs. Hollis said.

  Ruth could not bear to listen. She did not think anything so bad could happen: ‘That’s what you thought when Ted had his accident,’ she reminded herself. ‘And that happened.’

  Ted went to the doctor to get permission to go back to work, but the doctor would not hear of it. ‘Come the New Year, and we’ll consider it,’ the doctor said. Ted, who was still under treatment at the hospital for the injury to his back, was not surprised, but his frustration increased. Always an active person, the enforced idleness came hard, and the fact that his disability was adding substantially to the family’s financial difficulties gave him a guilt complex that made him gloomy and pessimistic.

  Ruth, having gained new confidence with Fly-by-Night, now found that her season of content was doomed.

  ‘It can’t happen!’ she said desperately to Ron. ‘I can’t give him up now, when everything is beginning to come right!’ She did not dare let her parents see how much it mattered, because she knew that they had enough to bother about as it was. There was only Ron, the universal comforter, whose presence invariably cheered Ted, and whom everyone was pleased to see.

  ‘Well, it hasn’t happened yet,’ Ron said steadily. ‘And if you do move to somewhere without a field, perhaps Peter could help you out? Your parents did a lot for him, after all. Mr. McNair might keep Flyby-Night for you.’

  ‘But without paying? I couldn’t afford to pay.’

  ‘What your mother did for Peter is worth years of a pony’s keep.’

  ‘But, if it’s a flat, that means a town, and we’ll be miles away from Hillingdon – how shall I be able to go over and ride him often enough?’ Even to Ron, Ruth could not explain that she would have to see Fly-by-Night often, almost every day, or life would have no point at all. In fact, she could not imagine herself without the pony. Life without Fly-by-Night was like a thick fog in her imagination. It was a nothing. Even sensible Ron would not understand how utterly committed she was.

  His idea was a straw, and Ruth clutched at it. One night her parents drafted out an advertisement to put in the paper, to sell the house, and the next day Ruth waylaid Peter at school, after lunch, and told him what was happening.

  ‘I’m sure we could keep Fly-by-Night for you,’ Peter said gravely. ‘I know my father wouldn’t mind.’ He pondered, and looked at Ruth’s tight, miserable face. ‘It’ll be difficult for you, getting over to ride him.’

  Ruth nodded. ‘About three hours’ bike-riding, to a couple of hours’ pony-riding.’ It was better than selling him, but the prospect was heart-chilling.

  Peter grimaced. ‘Rather you than me.’ He paused, then said, ‘Look, why don’t you come over on Saturday and see my father about it? Come over on Fly, then you can try him round our course.’

  Ruth’s heart leapt at the invitation. Simultaneously she thought of all the snags. ‘It’s a lot of road, to get to you. He’s not shod.’

  ‘Haven’t you had him shod yet? Why ever not?’

  ‘I can’t afford it,’ Ruth muttered.

  ‘Oh, but you must,’ Peter said. ‘Then you can come up whenever you like, and use our jumps. I bet you won’t move for ages yet, if your parents are only just writing out the advertisement.’

  Ruth was silent.

  Peter said, ‘If you ride him up on Saturday, you can leave him at our place, because the smith’s coming next Monday. Then he can be shod with ours, and you can take him back again afterwards. You won’t have to pay anything. How about that?’

  Ruth was silent again. The prospect was so inviting that her puritan streak made her feel she must refuse. Then she thought of Ron’s sense, and grinned, and said, ‘Yes, that would be marvellous.’

  The house advertisement was in the paper on the Friday and on Saturday morning, as Ruth left home on Fly-by-Night, a man and a woman had already arrived to view. Ruth rode away down the concrete road, trying to keep her mind on the marvellous day that lay before her, but her stupid wits kept wandering, and all she could think of were the grassy tracks down to the creek where the skylarks sang, and the red-gold stubble where Fly-by-Night had cantered through August and September. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she told herself. ‘What’s the good of thinking of that?’

  Now, early November, the fields were all ploughed again, and the elms baring, like ink drawings against the sky. The tarmac gleamed with rain. Fly-by-Night’s coat was thickening, the frosty roan working over the movement of his shoulders as his unshod hoofs padded along the verge. ‘When you come back,’ Ruth told him, ‘you will clatter. You’ll frighten the wits out of yourself.’

  But today he was good, and they reached the McNair drive without incident. Ruth felt Fly stiffen with excitement as he smelt the other horses. Peter was in the yard waiting for her.

  ‘We’ll put him in a box for now, and you can come indoors and meet my big fat momma. Then this afternoon we can ride.’

  ‘What, you too?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Ruth realized that the chocolate-éclair sessions must have had good effect after all. ‘Fly-by-Night’s never been in a loose-box before – at least, not that I know of,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll like it.’

  ‘Time he learnt,’ Peter said. ‘Do you want to look at the horses?’

  Ruth felt herself shiver with pure pleasure. A place like McNair’s, with Peter now her personal friend, was her idea of paradise. The boxes were all immaculate, full of clean straw and shining animals. Fly-by-Night, appeased with a large net of hay, stood looking about him with amazed, excited eyes – no less amazed and excited than Ruth’s. She followed Peter down the yard, looking in at each half-door, and Peter told her about each inmate. ‘Jason. He’s nice, but he’s been spoilt.’ Jason was a fourteen-and-a-half-hand chestnut with a lovely head and a bold eye. ‘And this is Prairie Fire. He’s won two point-to-points. My eldest brother is riding him in a National Hunt race next week.’ Prairie Fire was dark bay, a raking, powerful gelding with scars on his legs. ‘You can’t stop him once he’s going. But can he go! This grey is Seashell. She’s as mild as milk, lady’s hunter. And this is Rustum. Half-Arab, nice, very green . . . ugh, Woodlark. You pretty little devil! This is beastly Woodlark.’

  ‘Why is she so beastly?’

  ‘You can have a ride on her, if you like. You’ll find out. She’s got a nasty female mind.’

  ‘Better than a nasty male mind.’

  ‘Oh, no, give me a gelding any day.’

  Ruth followed Peter round to the house, in a warm, horsy dream. The house was warm, filled with delicious cooking smells. In the kitchen, Mr. McNair w
as sitting in front of a blazing fire, reading Horse and Hound and drinking coffee, and at the cooker stood the Neapolitan opera-singer. Ruth thought she was like a great sun. Well-being emanated from her like the warmth from the fire. She beamed at Ruth, and immediately produced steaming mugs of cocoa, and Ruth was fascinated by the vastness of her; yet she was so neat and quick and strong with it, and so happy. She sang while she cooked, and spoke in torrents of beautiful Italian, which nobody understood, but Mr. McNair and Peter nodded and smiled and said, ‘Si, si,’ and after a little while Ruth found herself doing the same. Ruth could see the change that had been wrought in Peter’s father, for he had an air of contentment about him like a domestic cat on the hearth-rug. Ruth would not have recognized the same man who had nagged Peter on the day of the Hunter Trials. After a delicious lunch, Ruth left the house almost regretfully to go riding with Peter. She had offered to wash up, but had been refused with a cascade of shocked surprise and an embrace.

  ‘Nice, isn’t she?’ Peter said, as they went back to the stables. ‘You can’t imagine the change she’s made in everything.’

  Ruth looked at Peter, remembered the night he had arrived in her own home, pale and silent, and thought how strangely things worked out: now it was her turn to be hurt by what was happening, and Peter’s turn to be made happy. They seemed to have no control over anything at all.

  Peter decided to ride his beastly Woodlark, because he said she needed it, so they saddled the two ponies and rode side by side across McNair’s fields to the woods beyond. There were no woods where Ruth lived, and as the ponies left the open fields and turned on to a peaty track that led away into an unfamiliar, cathedral-like gloom, Ruth was aware of a new dimension in her riding. Fly-by-Night’s hoofs rustled in brittle leaves; trailers of wild clematis tangled in her hair. It was silent and secret. When a pair of wood-pigeons clattered suddenly, heavily, out of the branches above their heads, she was as startled as Fly-by-Night, and shied with him in spirit. Peter turned and laughed, and Ruth saw Woodlark break into a trot and start twisting through the trees, Peter bending low to miss the branches, yet quite easy and still in the saddle. Fly-by-Night, anxious not to be left behind, followed eagerly, and Ruth felt herself whipped and whacked by the trees. She bent down like Peter, but bounced and slithered and bit her tongue. She had no control over Fly-by-Night at all.