Too Many Ponies

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  After that, ignoring what Cam had said, she gave Puzzle his head and let him gallop towards the gateway where Cam was waiting. Tyrone backed off in alarm as she pulled Puzzle to a shuddery halt.

  ‘Sorry,’ she panted. ‘I couldn’t resist.’

  ‘Well, remember cross-country isn’t all about galloping,’ Cam said. But she was smiling. ‘You’ve a good pony there. Has he done much?’

  Lucy glowed and patted Puzzle’s sweating neck. ‘He did more with his first owner,’ she said. ‘But we don’t have our own transport and Rosevale … Well, there isn’t much time for shows and things.’

  Cam nodded but Lucy saw that she wasn’t really paying attention – she was looking with narrowed eyes up the hill to where the others were jumping. Lucy followed her gaze.

  Folly flew over the downhill like a champion, Declan hardly moving in the saddle.

  Kitty cantered past the downhill, but took the final jump beautifully.

  ‘I’m going to try the downhill now,’ she yelled over. ‘I just wanted to see it close up!’

  ‘OK!’ Cam yelled back, making Tyrone twitch his long bay ears. ‘Sorry, Ty. You’re seeing a bit of life tonight, aren’t you? Now, where’s Aidan? Oh, there he is. Gosh, he won’t clear the downhill going like that. He shouldn’t try it. He’s not ready.’

  It was just like in the school the other night. Aidan approached the jump looking as if he really didn’t want to do it, his body braced and his hands pulling at the reins, first one way then the other, so that Firefly – who could have jumped it in his sleep – veered to the side, hesitated, then dropped a shoulder and ran out. Aidan sailed over his shoulder and landed in a heap.

  Spooked by the wide open space, Firefly galloped back up the hill, reins and stirrups flying, then stopped at the top, looked round him, neighed loudly at his friends and cantered over to Lucy and Cam. It was an easy matter for Lucy to jump off Puzzle and catch him.

  ‘Whoa,’ she said, patting his neck. She turned round to see Cam riding across to the jump and the heap of Aidan lying in the grass. Get up, Lucy thought. She wanted to go and see what was happening, but with a pony’s reins in each hand, she was pretty much stuck there. The best she could do was to let both ponies graze while she watched.

  Cam, Declan and Kitty had all ridden over to Aidan, and Declan had dismounted and was kneeling beside him.

  It hadn’t looked like a bad fall; Lucy had come off that way herself millions of times, and often with a harder landing than the soft turf of Cam’s cross-country course. Even so, Aidan didn’t seem to be moving. Lucy’s insides began to curdle. Aidan wasn’t much good on the team but he was all they had. You weren’t allowed to enter with three. If he’d broken his leg or something …

  And it wasn’t just about the money now – though of course she wanted to help Rosevale – it was the jumping itself, the thrill of hurtling cross-country with her own brave, clever pony. Was this the end of their chances?

  No, of course not. Aidan was getting up now, flicking mud off himself, looking round for Firefly, talking to his dad. He was fine. Cam pointed down the field to where Lucy was standing with the two ponies. Lucy waved, and Aidan walked down the field to her. He held out his hands for Firefly’s reins.

  ‘Thanks for catching him,’ he said briefly.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Aidan held Firefly’s reins, put his foot in the stirrup and sprang up. Landed in the saddle, he stroked Firefly’s chestnut neck. He didn’t seem in a rush to go anywhere.

  ‘Cam said only do the downhill if you felt ready,’ Lucy reminded him. ‘Maybe you just weren’t ready.’

  Aidan swung Firefly round and rode back to the others without replying.

  Well! There was no need to be so rude. Lucy was only trying to be helpful. She followed at a distance, not wanting to miss anything.

  ‘The important thing is to try again,’ Cam was saying as Lucy and Puzzle approached. ‘Don’t worry about the downhill – just go and do the first wee log again – you had no problem with that, did you?’

  Aidan shook his head, but made no move towards the jump.

  ‘I’ll give you a lead,’ Kitty said. ‘Firefly loves Midge – he’d follow him anywhere, never mind over a tiny wee log like that.’

  ‘No, I’ll give you a lead,’ Declan said.

  ‘And I’ll keep an eye on you,’ Cam said. ‘Just relax. Take it really steady.’

  Lucy didn’t say anything in case she got her head bitten off again.

  ‘You and Kitty stay here,’ Cam ordered. ‘Walk your ponies round on a loose rein. We’ll call it a night once we’ve got Aidan over this jump.’

  ‘They don’t want us interfering,’ Kitty complained, as she and Lucy obediently rode round the bottom of the big field. ‘Firefly’d follow Midge way better than Folly. Dad just likes being the boss.’ She wriggled her shoulders. ‘I don’t know why Aidan’s so feeble. I did it, and Midge is only twelve-two.’

  Aidan could have done it on Midge too, Lucy thought, but she didn’t say it. She played with Puzzle’s mane and looked up the field. Folly trotted up to the jump, only cantering the last few strides, and popped over it without any fuss. Behind her, Firefly trotted, swerved and ran out to the side. Aidan didn’t fall off this time, but he lost a stirrup and had to gather himself together.

  Kitty looked at Lucy in despair. ‘Firefly can do this,’ she wailed. ‘And Aidan never used to be so rubbish. He used to jump all the time in the school.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because it’s cross-country?’

  Kitty shrugged. ‘He’s such a cowardy custard. And he’s got so grumpy since he went to big school. Mum has to drag him out of bed every day.’

  Lucy hesitated. She had a pretty good idea why. Olly and Josh never missed the chance to get a dig at Aidan and he didn’t seem to have made friends like she had. Should she tell Kitty? But she remembered how cross Aidan had been when she mentioned it, and how he’d told her not to fight his battles for him. OK, then, she wouldn’t.

  But she hoped, for the sake of the team, for the sake of Rosevale, that he’d start winning the battle he was having with jumping.

  Cam’s clear voice drifted down to them.

  ‘OK. Stop making such a big thing of it. Relax. Breathe! It’s meant to be fun.’

  From where Lucy and Kitty were standing, having given up the pretence of walking their ponies round, it didn’t look much like fun. Again Folly popped over the log. Again Firefly ran out at the last minute.

  ‘Aidan! You have to approach it like you mean it! You’re making the pony think there’s something to be afraid of – some reason not to jump.’

  A third time, the same thing, and then Aidan’s voice, ‘I can’t do it! I told you I couldn’t do it.’

  And Declan, sounding like he was at the very edge of patience: ‘Of course you can do it. It’s only a wee log. You were doing much bigger than this in the school.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Aidan kicked his feet out of his stirrups and jumped off.

  ‘You can’t leave it like that! Do you want him to think he can refuse any time he feels like it?’

  ‘I don’t care, because I’m not doing it.’

  Lucy had never heard Aidan sound so fierce. She looked at Kitty whose round cheeks were bright red under their smattering of freckles.

  ‘I could kill him,’ Kitty said. ‘He’s disgracing our whole family. Our whole yard.’

  ‘Our whole team,’ agreed Lucy.

  Above them, Cam was walking over towards Aidan. She took hold of Firefly’s reins. It looked like she was talking to Aidan but, annoyingly, too quietly for Lucy to hear. Then she raised her voice and called Lucy over.

  Lucy looked at Kitty and shrugged, and rode over to the small group. Cam looked hassled, Declan furious and Aidan’s face was scarlet. Lucy didn’t know if he was angry or – as she would have been – mortified.

  ‘Lucy,’ Cam said. ‘We can’t let Firefly get away with running ou
t, and Aidan’s a bit … upset … after his fall. Would you pop him over it, please? Just once and then we’ll call it a night.’ She sounded as if she couldn’t wait to get rid of them.

  ‘OK.’ Lucy jumped off Puzzle and handed his reins to Cam. Tyrone backed away nervously, then decided Puzzle wasn’t a monster and they snuffed noses in a friendly way. Aidan handed Lucy Firefly’s reins without a word. She opened her mouth to say she was sorry; she was only obeying Cam. Aidan must understand that he couldn’t leave things like that, but Aidan’s eyes were so hard and dark and angry that she only said, ‘I’ll just shorten the stirrups.’

  Firefly felt funny after Puzzle. He was taller, his shoulders in front of the saddle were narrower and, right now, darkened with sweat. His long red ears flicked backwards and forwards, showing his uncertainty.

  Lucy spoke to him softly. She could sense the pony was confused and worked up, but gradually, as she walked him round on a loose rein, then gathered him together for a steady trot, she felt him relax. She pushed him into canter and he responded with a low, long stride, very different from Puzzle’s bouncy one. She turned him into the jump, felt him hesitate, but she was ready, steering him firmly and using her legs but, most importantly, she thought, willing them over, trying to remind him that jumping was fun.

  Firefly cleared the jump beautifully.

  ‘Good boy,’ Lucy said, patting him.

  As they cantered on up the slope, she thought she might as well go over the downhill too – after all that was the jump that had started the trouble in the first place. If Aidan saw that Firefly could do it, it might give him confidence.

  Lucy turned Firefly at the top of the hill and trotted down. She cantered the last few strides, felt Firefly gather himself, and then they were over and cantering back to the others.

  Lucy felt the grin split her face. That had been brilliant! Jumping Puzzle was wonderful because Puzzle was her own pony and a great jumper, but getting on a strange pony that was upset and had lost confidence, and getting the best out of him – that was even better.

  She had forgotten Aidan. It was only when he held his hands out for the reins that Lucy thought how annoying it must be to see someone else ride your own pony better than you.

  ‘Hope you didn’t mind me doing the downhill,’ she said, sliding her feet out of the stirrups. ‘But he felt so good and I knew he could do it. It’s just confidence.’

  They rode back to the yard in silence, a slight drizzle misting the ponies’ manes. And this time Lucy didn’t find it so easy to imagine them riding together at the Greenlands competition as a team.

  Chapter 8

  Quitting

  AIDAN stared at his cornflakes and his stomach churned. He ached all over from the fall last night.

  ‘The jumps were weeny,’ Kitty said for the hundredth time. ‘Firefly probably couldn’t even see them.’

  ‘Leave him alone, Kitty,’ his mum said, pouring milk into her tea. ‘Not everybody’s good at the same things.’

  ‘But you can jump!’ Kitty said. ‘You used to jump. You’re just out of practice.’ She banged her spoon in frustration. ‘You have to do it. There’s nobody else.’

  Aidan’s dad came in from the yard, told Alfie to go to his basket and came to the table. He gave Aidan’s mum a quick hug, then poured himself a cup of tea.

  ‘Is it just nerves, Aidan?’ he asked. ‘Do you want me to give you a few lessons?’

  That was the last thing he wanted. His dad was a terrible teacher. Because it came so easily to him, he had no idea how to teach anybody else. Aidan and Kitty had grown up riding ponies, but every so often Dad decided their style was terrible and would make them trot for hours without stirrups.

  ‘Dad,’ Kitty said. ‘What are we going to wear? We need to match. Can we get tops with “Rosevale” on them?’

  ‘No,’ said Dad.

  ‘We are still going to do it, aren’t we?’ Kitty’s voice was desperate.

  ‘Kitty, give it a rest.’

  Aidan bent over his bowl and pushed bits of cornflake around. Again he relived that horrific sense of tearing downhill out of control, Firefly ignoring him. The swerve. The ground slamming into him, knocking his breath out.

  And far worse than that, everybody watching while he got it wrong again and again. And Lucy, blasted Lucy, making it look easy. It’s just confidence. Like he didn’t know that. Like it was that simple.

  ‘Eat your breakfast, Aidan,’ Mum said.

  ‘I’m not hungry. I feel sick.’ That was becoming truer by the minute.

  ‘He’s sulking,’ Kitty said.

  ‘Kitty. Leave your brother alone.’ His dad’s voice was fierce.

  Aidan forced some cornflakes into his mouth, tried to swallow, then made a sudden dash to the downstairs loo and threw up.

  ‘Aidan!’ His mum stood at the door, her mouth a worried O. ‘You didn’t hit your head when you fell off, did you?’

  He shook his head, shivering and wretched. ‘I’m not doing it,’ he shouted. ‘I told you. I told them. I AM NOT DOING IT.’ He heard his voice rising to a scream through a throat swollen with tears and stinging with puke. He felt extremely strange. Not exactly sick any more, but as if he was going to explode.

  ‘Aidan! You don’t have to do it. Not if it’s upsetting you this much. Come on, it’s OK.’ She tried to hug him, but he cringed away. Dad and Kitty hovered round the door looking worried (Dad) and furious (Kitty).

  ‘Bed,’ Mum said. ‘You can’t go to school in this state. Kitty, you’re going to be late.’

  Aidan trailed back to his room, pulled off his uniform and got into bed, curling up with the hot-water bottle his mum brought him, and Bernard, the nicest of their three cats. He heard, as if in a dream, Alfie barking, Kitty whingeing and the foals kicking from the barn. At ten past eight, the time he normally got on the school bus, his whole body relaxed. When his mum came to check on him he squeezed his eyes shut and made his breathing slow. He heard her talking to his dad outside the door.

  ‘I should stay off work and look after him,’ his mum said, ‘but we can’t afford –’

  ‘No, it’s OK. I’m here. I’ll talk to him later. It’s just a reaction to all this jumping business. He takes things so seriously. Och, Seaneen, I wish he wasn’t so …’

  Aidan pulled the duvet over his head.

  At ten o’clock, with his mum safely at work and his dad out in the yard, he went down to the kitchen and made himself a huge pile of toast and a mug of tea. If he stocked up on food in secret, he might be able to convince them he was actually sick, and stay off school for ages. No Olly and Josh; no Ponyboy.

  Except he couldn’t stay away from Kitty and Lucy and his dad and the shaming memory of being so useless. And they knew he wasn’t sick, really.

  I wish he wasn’t so …

  I know! Aidan thought. I wish I wasn’t so … either!

  Through the window he saw the yard filled with sunshine. The horsebox was gone. He remembered that his dad was taking the skewbald cob to a new home. She was permanently lame, but she was going to be a companion for someone’s pony.

  Aidan went outside. The foals kicked their partition when they heard him, and from the paddock beside the drive Ned brayed long and loud. Ned had been ancient even in Doris Rose’s time. What if Dad decided his time had come now? He wandered down to the bottom field. Firefly was grazing by the gate. Aidan scratched him in the place he liked, halfway up his neck, and Firefly snorted horsey slobber all over Aidan and looked angelic. ‘You weren’t so good last night,’ Aidan told him, but he knew it wasn’t Firefly’s fault.

  He might as well clean out the foals. They were in a different corner of the barn now, without quite as much room, and everybody was praying there wouldn’t be too much rain before they got the roof fixed properly. Aidan’s dad had patched it up in the meantime, but the roof was more patch now than anything else.

  It was such a lovely day that he decided to let the foals out into the school for a play arou
nd. He led them out three at a time, and they danced round him and chewed their lead ropes. In the school they romped and kicked out their back legs and gawked with disbelief at the jumps.

  He had the barn mucked out, September groomed and the yard brushed when his dad drove in.

  ‘You’ve made a miraculous recovery,’ he said.

  Aidan shrugged. He and his dad lifted sacks of feed into the barn.

  ‘Aidan?’ his dad said without looking at him. ‘Did you mean it? About the team?’

  He bit his lip. He could say no, he hadn’t meant it, but he knew that would just land him back where he was last night.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I meant it. I’m not jumping.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ his dad said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  But Aidan knew he didn’t mean it.

  Chapter 9

  A Change of Team

  LUCY’s mind wouldn’t take in what Kitty was trying to tell her.

  ‘But … but he can’t quit! He can’t let us all down like that! Look, we’ll go and tell him, you and me. Tell him he has to do it.’

  She strode down the yard as if she was going to haul Aidan out from wherever he was skulking. He’d been off school yesterday, but today he’d been in class with her all day and hadn’t had the guts to tell her. Letting a nine-year-old do his dirty work. When she found him she’d …

  Kitty caught her up and grabbed her arm. ‘No,’ she said. Her eyelids were swollen and pink. Lucy had never seen Kitty cry, except when animals died. ‘D’you think I haven’t tried? But he just goes all weird. And now Mum says we’re not allowed to even mention it.’

  Lucy wanted to scream and stamp. ‘But it’s stupid.’

  ‘I suppose he can’t help not being as good as us.’ Kitty gave a loud sniff.

  ‘Lucy! Kitty!’

  It was Seaneen, Kitty’s mum. She wasn’t in the yard much, but now she flew out of the barn holding a dandy brush and giving them death looks. ‘You are not to talk about your brother like that,’ she said fiercely.