A Pony for Jean

by Joanna Cannan

  Of course Rosemary did not come to tea till long after I was out of quarantine for German measles. She came on her fat pony, which her mother led always. He was quite a nice pony – a pure-bred dark bay Dartmoor with a dear dish face and a mealy nose. His name was Bundle. I asked if I might ride him in the orchard and Mrs Jones said yes and Rosemary said no, but Mrs Jones won. She was awfully fussy and insisted on running beside me, puffing and panting and lurching about in her fashionable shoes. At last I got Bundle into a canter and left her behind.

  I must say he was frightfully naughty, but what could you expect when he was never allowed to go faster than Mrs Jones? He bucked all round the orchard, but presently he calmed down and I tried him over the bar. He refused, of course, and I shot over his head, and Mrs Jones came running up, flapping like a hen and calling out, ‘Are you hurt, darling?’ I had got the giggles and my mouth was full of earth and grass so I couldn’t answer, and Mrs Jones thought I was speechless with agony, and shrieked to Mummy, ‘Fetch some water! Fetch some brandy! Telephone for Doctor Nash!’ Mummy kept quite calm and said, ‘What’s the matter, Jean?’ and I said, ‘Nothing. It was so awfully funny, that’s all.’ Mrs Jones said that it wasn’t funny and that you never knew what internal injuries you might get from a fall. She went on telling Mummy about children who had got internal injuries while I caught Bundle, which Rosemary hadn’t had the sense to do. They were so deep in their chat that I managed to get Bundle over the bush before they noticed, but Mrs Jones’s stories had unnerved Mummy and she said that that was enough jumping for this afternoon.

  I may as well tell you now that a few months later Rosemary was given a fairy bicycle and after that she wouldn’t ride Bundle because she preferred bicycling, so he was sold to a nice girl called Jill. Jill is very young but she is very sporting and she has got him to jump two-foot-six. Rosemary goes about on her horrid soulless little bicycle, and if you say anything to her about riding she says, ‘Bicycles don’t buck.’ I expect she will soon get run over.

  ‘HE REFUSED OF COURSE, AND I SHOT OVER HIS HEAD’

  At the end of May something exciting happened which I really must mention, though it hadn’t anything to do with Cavalier. Sally had puppies, four of them, all black with little white waistcoats like Shadow’s. Two were dog puppies and two were bitches, and I named them Rough and Tumble and Spick and Span. Of course those were only their kennel names. I did not give them proper names because we did not mean to keep them, but to sell them when they were old enough to good homes or as working dogs to keepers.

  I tried not to get too fond of the puppies, but they were sweet and I couldn’t help loving them. Of course their names turned out all wrong. Rough and Tumble were quiet, good little dogs, and Spick and Span were awful – as soon as they were old enough to chew they chewed their box up, and as soon as they could yap they yapped without ceasing. They bullied Rough and Tumble and they got out of their box and couldn’t get back, and they puddled in their water and dug up the bricks on the floor of the old harness room where they lived. One of the worst things they did was to pull down Cavalier’s halter from its peg and gnaw it to bits. Rough and Tumble helped with that, but I am sure they would never have thought of it if Spick or Span hadn’t suggested it. We decided that Spick and Span would have to be working dogs and the good homes could have Rough and Tumble.

  Cavalier was rather jealous of the puppies but he was very good and never stepped on them when they squirmed round his hoofs in the orchard. The orchard grass was lovely now and he had got quite fat; you couldn’t even see his ribs, much less the poverty marks on his hindquarters. His summer coat was a lovely dark bay; Daddy said it was like the mahogany sideboard we used to have in London; and when I groomed him and finished him off with a duster, he shone like a ripe horse chestnut. But he did not get all the grooming that he ought to have had, because I had more to do now. The puppies got naughtier every day and I had to look after them.

  One of the most sickening things in life is that summer passes so quickly. There are just as many days in June as there are in November, but you would never think so. June went like a flash of lightning and almost before I could turn round July was going too, and everybody began to talk about the summer holidays. My Cheltenham aunt wrote and suggested that Mummy and I should go to Bournemouth with her and she should pay for us. I begged Mummy to refuse and after a bit she did, though she said that Aunt Maud would be offended for ever. A day or two later, when we were at breakfast, the schedule of our Pony Club gymkhana came, and the date was just when we should have been at Bournemouth, walking along a promenade and missing it!

  Mummy and I forgot to eat and looked at the gymkhana schedule. Mummy said that I was too inexperienced to do much, but she thought I might go in for one or two of the competitions. There was a riding class and musical chairs and a costume race and an apple-and-bucket race and a bending race and a handy-hunter competition. Then of course there was jumping. In the first jumping class the maximum height of the jumps was two-foot-six, but you had to be ten years old or under. Mummy said she would have let me go in for that but I was nearly twelve, so I couldn’t. I said why couldn’t I go in for the under fourteen jumping, but Mummy said the jumps would be much too high and I should fall off and break my neck, or make a fool of myself somehow. And she said that I shouldn’t enter for anything if I argued.

  I was awfully disappointed about the jumping but I had to stop arguing. We decided that I should go in for all the competitions except the riding class – because I couldn’t ride well enough – and the handy-hunter competition – because I had no partner. The entrance fee was half-a-crown for each event and it all came to ten shillings.

  When Daddy came home and was asked to write a cheque, he said that it was a waste of money. My heart sank, but Mummy said that I had looked after the hens and washed up and not broken much, and that I deserved my wages. So Daddy wrote the cheque and it was lovely filling up the form and putting in Cavalier’s name and age and colour.

  The next day I put some sticks up in the orchard and began to practice bending. It was a Saturday and Daddy was at home, and the sticks turned out to be his bean sticks. Some of them had broken when I had pushed them into the ground, and he was cross and said look how that pony had cut up the orchard. I explained how awful the grass would have been without Cavalier to eat it and how good it is for pasture to be trampled on by hoofs, but he said he had known that before I was born and that it would be cheaper to have the orchard scythed than to keep Cavalier to eat it. I mentioned the price of stable manure – this is always a good argument when people are telling you what your pony costs them – and then Daddy laughed and went away saying I was a contentious woman. But he took his bean sticks with him.

  PRACTISING BENDING

  I went to look for something else that would do, and I found the clothes props, but, just as I was taking them, Mrs Beazley came out and said what on earth was I thinking of? I said I was thinking of bending, but she said that, bending or no bending, she must hang out her washing. I said that washing or no washing I must practise bending, and we were struggling over one of the clothes props when Mummy came out. I let go of the clothes prop and Mrs Beazley sat down hard and suddenly. Mummy was awfully cross and said that if she had known she wouldn’t have let me do anything in the gymkhana, and Mrs Beazley was awfully cross too, and she said that she might have been an invalid for life and that she would tell her husband and he would tell his solicitor.

  I left Mummy to pacify Mrs Beazley and I went back to Cavalier. I couldn’t bend now that I had nothing to bend round, and I began to feel rather gloomy about the gymkhana. I thought of practising the apple-and-bucket, but everybody was in such a bad mood that I didn’t dare get my hair wet, and there was only a week now to practise in, and we hadn’t practised anything but jumping, and that was the one thing we weren’t allowed to go in for. I put the bar higher than I had ever had it and I mounted Cavalier and we went over it. I couldn’t measure it because I had a
lready lost two of Mummy’s yard measures and, when she had bought the third one, she had forbidden me to touch it, but I felt sure that we had cleared three-foot-eight. It did seem hard that we couldn’t go in for the jumping.

  … WITH STICKS IN THE ORCHARD.

  The thought of the jumping haunted me. I thought about it in bed; and at Miss Pringle’s, when I was supposed to be doing fractions, I drew pictures of Cavalier clearing immense obstacles. I felt sure that we should do better at jumping than at the competitions that we had never practised. I did practise the apple-and-bucket, but I wasn’t very good at my part of it. I thought my mouth was too small, but I have noticed since that it is children with sticking-out teeth who generally win it.

  Well, I kept on thinking about the jumping and then one day when I happened to be looking at the schedule I saw that you could enter on the morning of the gymkhana if you paid a double entrance fee of five shillings. Daddy was always saying that I lacked determination, and suddenly it occurred to me that this would be a good chance to show that I was a determined character. I thought that if I could somehow get five shillings I would enter secretly on the morning of the gymkhana.

  I went about looking for five shillings. In London I had known a boy who once found a shilling on the pavement, and, as I went to Miss Pringle’s for the last time, I looked along the road and in the grass, and when Mummy came to meet me she said why did I walk with my head down? I looked in the attic cupboards, and in the space under the roof, and in the cellar, but of course I never found anything, and now it was only two days before the gymkhana.

  I must say that on that Monday, as the hours passed, I felt very despairing, but I kept on telling myself that it is always darkest before dawn, like it was when I found Sally. It really didn’t seem at all likely now that I should find five shillings, and I thought about all the money I had spent in my life on things I didn’t really want, like sweets, and plush dogs whose legs broke off, and musical instruments that I left in the garden to perish. On Monday evening I was hanging on the gate wishing that I’d had a saving nature, when I heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs, and Guy came riding down the road on Blackbird.

  He said, ‘Hullo.’

  I said, ‘Hullo,’ and he said, ‘How’s The Toastrack?’

  I said, ‘He’s all right,’ and Guy said, ‘I hear you’ve entered for the gymkhana.’

  I said, ‘Yes,’ and then suddenly an idea came to me. Before I had time to think that I had better not say it, I said, ‘Have you got five shillings?’

  Guy said, ‘Not on me.’

  I asked, ‘Have you got it at home?’ and he said, ‘Yes. I’ve just had a birthday. I’ve got seventeen-and-sixpence.’

  I said, ‘Well, can you lend me five shillings?’

  Guy looked very surprised. ‘What for?’ he said, suspiciously.

  I said, ‘Something.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I could,’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘On note of hand alone?’ I said. I didn’t know what, that meant, but I had seen it in a moneylender’s advertisement in the newspaper.

  ‘I don’t want a note of hand,’ said Guy, patting Blackbird, who was fidgeting. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘blood is thicker than water.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back,’ I said, ‘after my birthday on the 15th of September. My Cheltenham aunt always sends me ten shillings, so I can offer you a high rate of interest.’

  ‘I don’t want any beastly interest,’ said Guy. ‘I’m delighted to oblige you. I only wondered what you wanted it for. You’re not running away from home or anything?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said indignantly.

  ‘All right,’ said Guy. ‘As long as it’s nothing silly. When do you want it?’

  ‘To-morrow will do,’ I told him.

  ‘O.K.’ he said. ‘Blackbird wants some road work so I’ll bring it over. Is it secret?’

  ‘Very,’ I said. ‘Please don’t tell any grown-ups or Camilla.’

  Guy promised that he wouldn’t and then he rode away. At first I was awfully pleased at having got my five shillings and then I thought how awful it would be if my Cheltenham aunt forgot my birthday or sent me a work-basket instead of the usual ten shillings. The thought preyed on my mind and in my imagination I could see my aunt in her drawing-room, which is all glittery with brass ornaments from India and silver bowls presented by grateful regiments, saying to my uncle, ‘I think that as dear Charles is ruined I will send Jean something useful this year.’

  ‘I HEAR YOU HAVE ENTERED FOR THE GYMKHANA’

  And my uncle, who is a general, but not fierce as you’d expect, replied, ‘Just as you like, dear.’ I felt fearfully worried, but just as I was going to bed I remembered that boys generally forget things, and, though I had been so fearfully keen to enter for the jumping, I actually hoped now that Guy would forget his promise.

  All the next morning I waited about in case he came, and Mummy said why on earth didn’t I settle down to something? It was nearly lunch time and I had made up my mind that he had forgotten when I heard hoofs coming down the road. I was in the bathroom washing and I rushed downstairs and out into the road.

  Guy rode up and handed me a small sack of oats which he was carrying.

  ‘Some oats for The Toastrack,’ he said, and then he handed me the sack and with it two half-crowns, which clinked in my hand.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, forgetting how I had worried and only thinking of the jumping.

  ‘Please don’t mention it. I’m always glad to oblige a friend,’ said Guy politely, and he rode away.

  Unfortunately Mummy was in the garden. As I went in she said, ‘I thought you hated your cousins.’

  I said, ‘I don’t hate Guy.’

  ‘You did,’ said Mummy accusingly, and she said that it was very stupid the way I took objections to people and then had to change my mind. Grown-ups never do realise how difficult it is to know what people are really like. What happens is that you take an objection to a person because she has corkscrew curls, and you think that she must spend all her time looking in the mirror or sitting indoors sewing and keeping clean, and then, after a bit, you discover that the corkscrew curls are nothing to do with her, but are the fault of her mother or her nurse. Or you may dislike someone because he always wins things: you think he is superior and snobbish, and then you discover that he isn’t at all, but used to fall off as much as you do, or else you start winning things yourself and find out that it doesn’t make you a bit different and is mostly luck or practise or having a good pony. It is really very difficult to know who will end up as your friends.

  Well, I put the five shillings in the pocket of my jodhpurs, after having tied it up in a handkerchief so that it wouldn’t jingle or leap out when I ran. Then I went down to lunch. I thought a lot about the jumping, and I began to have the needle – that awful feeling you get before gymkhanas or exams. I had never had it before, and at first I couldn’t think what it was; I had pricklings all over me and felt empty even when I had eaten a huge plateful of Irish stew. After lunch I went out and jumped Cavalier. He did a clear round of my jumps, and I thought that was enough, as I didn’t want him to get stale, so then we went for a short ride up to the farm. I saw Fred and George and we had a talk about the gymkhana and they said that they were coming to see me win. I felt awful after that and had the needle worse than ever all the way home.

  ‘I GROOMED CAVALIER AND MADE HIM LOOK LOVELY’

  When I got home I groomed Cavalier and made him lovely and then I went up to the bathroom and cleaned all my tack. After tea I took the puppies into the orchard and forgot the gymkhana, but when I went to bed I couldn’t sleep for imagining how lovely it would be if we won something and I had a red rosette or a blue one or even a yellow one to tie on my bridle. Needless to say I also imagined how awful it would be if Cavalier got one of his obstinate fits and refused to do anything, or if I fell off and everybody laughed and said, ‘She can’t ride. What on earth did she enter for?’ I made up my mind t
hat whatever awful thing happened I wouldn’t cry like I did that day at the rally, no, not even if people called Cavalier a cab horse or if I fell on my head (like I did the day I rode Hesperus), and the St John Ambulance men rushed out of the little tent where they wait so ghoulishly, and carried me on a stretcher from the ring.

  I was still awake when Mummy let out the dogs, and still awake when Daddy came thumping up to bed. The last time I looked at Bluey, he said 12 o’clock, and I was awake for ages after then. But at last I went to sleep and, although I had set Bluey’s alarm for half-past six, I didn’t wake up until the breakfast bell rang.

  It was rather awful because I had such a lot to do that morning. I scrambled into my clothes, wondering whether Bluey had gone off and I hadn’t heard him or whether he had failed me as he had done several times since his fall. As a matter of fact he went off punctually at half-past eight that evening when it was all over, so I expect I had set him wrong.

  I had to rush that morning. The puppies had to be exercised and the chickens fed because we were going to be out all the afternoon. I had a tiresome bantam sitting – I hadn’t meant her to sit because it was so late in the summer – and I thought she would never finish her dinner. She went on drinking for ages in irritating little sips and I hadn’t yet got a real shine on Cavalier. At last she went back to her box and I shut her up, and Cavalier was looking lovely when the lunch bell rang.

  It was awful to think that it was lunch time – half-past twelve, and the gymkhana would start at two. I felt frightfully sick, but I could eat lots; it wasn’t the same feeling as when you are ill. Mummy asked if I was excited and I said ‘No,’ because excited is a nice feeling that you have before your birthday or Christmas, and this wasn’t a nice feeling at all.