Of course tea came in the middle of dressing-up, but fortunately I had only dressed Shadow, so I undressed him again. After tea, I dressed as an Arab in a blanket off my bed, and I got everybody out into the orchard and then went in to get the food. The bulls-eye tea had gone rather sticky but everything else was all right though rather hard. Mrs Beazley had gone, fortunately, so I was able to take a tray.
I carried everything out into the orchard and, as the people’s manners were not very good, I wedged the tray into the fork of a tree. It was a tin tray and it bent rather, but it stayed.
I had got the bantams in a coop. They were not dressed up as it is rather difficult to dress birds. I gave them some crumbs of fried bread and they were very pleased, but I am sorry to say that they did not like their bulls-eye tea. I had the egg, and the dogs and the puppies had fried bread, and so did Cavalier.
We were all eating and making polite conversation when we heard the sound of hoofs. Cavalier threw up his head and trotted towards the hedge. He looked lovely in his orange bathing wrap, but not very dignified, as he was still scrunching. Then I heard shrieks of laughter and I was horrified to see the cousins. They pulled up their horses and shouted to me.
Guy said, ‘What on earth’s happening here?’
My mouth was full of egg, but I managed to shout back, ‘It’s a fancy dress party for Cavalier.’
Guy said, ‘Can we join in?’ and I said, ‘All right,’ and they opened the gate and came in. I wasn’t pleased because I thought they might think my party silly, but they all sat down on the grass and ate the tiny bits of fried bread that were left, and drank the bulls-eye tea. And presently Camilla said, ‘You do have fun. We never think of things like this to do.’
I said, ‘I should have thought that with three of you you could think of lots of things,’ and Camilla said, ‘Oh well, boys are no good.’
I thought of Guy and the five shillings and of the Polite Boy, so I said, ‘They are worse at most things but better at a few.’
‘What things?’ asked Camilla.
I said, ‘At having money and knowing the way.’
‘Thank you for those few kind words,’ said Guy. He was feeling in his pockets and he brought out eightpence. ‘Let’s go down to the village,’ he said, ‘and get some more food.’
‘The shop will be shut now,’ said Martin, who always takes the gloomy view.
‘You can go round to the back,’ I said, ‘if you are friends with Mrs Gorsuch, and I am.’
Guy mounted Blackbird and Martin said that I could have Red Knight to save bridling Cavalier. I found Red Knight rather broad and bouncey after Cavalier. Guy held the ponies and I went round to the back with his eightpence as I am friends with Mrs Gorsuch. I bought some chocolate-coated wholemeal biscuits and some bars of chocolate.
Going back I asked Guy if he was getting on all right without his five shillings.
‘Of course I am,’ said Guy, ‘and I know now what you wanted it for. I don’t blame you.’ And he said that if it wasn’t convenient I needn’t pay him back till I was twenty-one or earning my own living or married to a millionaire. I may as well tell you now that when my birthday came my Cheltenham aunt did send me ten shillings and I paid him then.
When we got back we found that Camilla and Martin had dressed Hesperus up in rhubarb leaves. I don’t know what he was supposed to be. We sat down and went on eating. Camilla said, ‘Let’s have a party like this at home and Jean can bring Cavalier.’
‘It wouldn’t be so much fun at home,’ said Martin, ‘Mummy would buy us things to eat. We couldn’t cook things. Probably Watkins would bring it out on a silver tray.’
‘That’s the worst of being rich,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s any fun. But I’ll tell you what. Why not have a dogs’ gymkhana? I could bring six, if you can have it soon. And we could use your jumps, and have a schedule, and prizes of food and things.’
The cousins said, ‘Yes, let’s,’ and Camilla said, ‘Oh, Jean, you do think of lovely things.’
We decided to meet secretly next day with pencils and paper and make out the schedule, and then Guy said that they had better go. Just as they were taking the rhubarb leaves off Hesperus, Daddy came along the road.
He saw us in the orchard and came in. I suddenly remembered that Sally and the puppies were wearing his handkerchiefs, and Cavalier, who had gone off grazing, was still in his bathing wrap.
Daddy said, ‘Good heavens, what’s all this?’ and I explained that it was a party in honour of Cavalier. He looked at the people and said, ‘You seem to have borrowed a good deal from my wardrobe,’ and he laughed. He seemed in a very good temper, and afterwards I knew why.
The cousins went away and I undressed the people. The puppies were in a partyish mood, and I had a job to get them back to the harness room, but the bantams seemed glad to go. Birds are all right and useful about eggs, but they can’t join in your joys and sorrows as horses and dogs do.
When everyone was undressed I put the rhubarb leaves on the bonfire and took the clothes indoors. The handkerchiefs had got rather crumpled so I thought that I had better iron them. I had just put the iron on the range when Mummy called me.
I went into the drawing-room wondering if it was about the bathing wrap, but I saw at once that Mummy was looking pleased.
‘Oh, Jean,’ she said, ‘Daddy has such splendid news.’
‘What is it?’ I said.
Mummy said, ‘Guess.’
I guessed, ‘Somebody has given us another pony,’ and Mummy said, ‘No.’
I guessed a horse and a foal and a dog and a cow, but each time Mummy said ‘No.’
‘Well, I don’t know what it can be,’ I said, and then I suddenly had an idea and said, ‘There’s going to be another gymkhana!’
Mummy said ‘No’ again, and Daddy said, ‘Can’t you think of anything else we’d all like?’ but I couldn’t, so he said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you. We’re going to be well off again.’
‘Well off?’ I said.
‘Yes, you donkey, rich,’ said Mummy. ‘At least not really rich but nearly as well off as we used to be. Daddy’s had a marvellous job offered him.’
I couldn’t say anything. I felt perfectly awful. They were pleased – actually pleased – that we were going back to being as we were before we came to the country, and had Cavalier, and the dogs, and hens and things. I thought of London and the large proper house with no orchard, and the dull old walks in Kensington Gardens, and poor darling Shadow with the London dust on his paws. I thought of leaving the cottage and the apple trees and the long grass, and of having no hens or bantams but only the Serpentine ducks that didn’t belong to us at all. I knew that Mummy would buy me smart clothes that pricked and were tight, and that I should have to wear socks and a hat, and I knew that even if I was at school in term time she would get me a holiday governess, who would take me out for walks and improve my French accent and say, ‘Don’t swing your arms,’ and ‘Hold your head up,’ and ‘Don’t kick your ankles.’ The worst thing of all was that I knew I couldn’t have Cavalier in London. When I thought of that I felt too awful. I felt like bursting, and finally I did. I sat down on the floor and howled.
Mummy said, ‘Jean, darling!’
Daddy said, ‘What on earth’s the matter with the child?’
I managed to howl out that I didn’t want to be rich and go back to London and walk in Kensington Gardens and have beastly clothes. I said, ‘I want to stay here with the hens and the puppies.’ Somehow I couldn’t say anything about Cavalier.
Mummy said, ‘My dear idiot, stop that fiendish noise and listen. We’re not going back to London. We’re going to keep the cottage and get some more land with it and build on. You’d like to have the stable floor repaired, wouldn’t you, and you’d like a teak bucket instead of a tin one, wouldn’t you, and lots of apples and carrots for Cavalier? We may have a tiny flat in London to go to in the winter, but I can promise you that we’ll spend all your holidays here. You were going to sc
hool in September anyhow, and now you’ll be able to go to Castlethorpe instead of a cheaper school.’ Castlethorpe is the school where Mummy was, and until we got poor I had always been told that I was going there.
Daddy said, ‘I don’t suppose that now she knows her dear little cousin, she’ll want to go.’
Camilla is at Castlethorpe.
I thought about Camilla and I thought about the children I had known in London. Camilla was scornful, but at any rate she liked ponies; she didn’t play with dolls’ prams, or ride a fairy cycle, or shriek for Nannie, or have a night light, and she hadn’t got curls. I said, ‘Oh, well, Camilla isn’t so bad. She only wants sitting on.’
Daddy said, ‘You surprise me.’ He often says that to me. I don’t know why.
Then Mummy and I went to dish up the dinner. When I saw the iron I remembered that I had left it on the range. It was red hot now and glowed. But Mummy said that it didn’t matter. She said that the handkerchiefs could go to the laundry.
I sat up to dinner that night and we talked about the things we should buy. I said I should have a riding coat and rugs for Cavalier and the stable repaired and tiles round the manger like the cousins have in their stable, only blue instead of green. Daddy and Mummy were going to buy a car and some land and build on it. But they weren’t going to spoil the cottage with a horrible garage. The cottage next to us had been empty ever since we came, so they were going to buy that and use it for a married couple, who’d be nice and let me cook when I wanted to. There is a barn next to the cottage and they thought they would repair that and make it into a garage, and the loft would do as a workshop to make hen coops in.
When we had finished dinner and decided everything, we washed up, and then I went out into the orchard to say good-night to Cavalier. I did feel happy. It was lovely to think that though we were rich again, which Daddy and Mummy like, I needn’t ever go back to London, but could always stay in the country and have all the things I wanted for Cavalier. The fright that I had had in the drawing-room when they had told me that we were rich again, had made everything seem lovelier than ever, and I walked round the orchard just for the pleasure of feeling the grass flip against my bare legs – it was wet already with the dew. Cavalier came behind me, and we went and looked at the moon in the duck pond. We could hear the hens making sleepy twittering noises in the hen house and Mr Higgins’ lambs bleating up at the farm.
‘CAMILLA IS AT CASTLETHORPE’
It was funny to think that if we had never been poor we should never have had all this. Proverbs are irritating, especially when grown-ups use them to make you do things – like ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ to make you darn your stockings, and ‘procrastination is the thief of time’ to make you sit down at once and write to say thank you for your birthday presents; but I did say ‘it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good’ to Cavalier as we looked at the moon in the duck pond. If pepper hadn’t gone wrong, we should never have come to the country, and the cousins would never have had us to tea and suggested that the poor Toastrack, that they had bought out of kindness, ‘would do, for a bit anyhow, as a pony for Jean.’
I will finish this story with Cavalier and me looking at the moon in the duck pond because, as I have said before, it must not be too expensive. Ten shillings is what one’s aunt usually sends one, and one does not want to spend it all on one thing. Perhaps one day I will write another book and tell you what happened afterwards, or perhaps they will make me work so hard and do so many exams at Castlethorpe that I shall never want to write a word again.
About the Author
Joanna Cannan (1896–1961) wrote thirty-eight books – for children, detective fiction and novels. Brought up in Oxford where her father was a university dean, she was proud of her Scottish ancestry and spent holidays in the Highlands. Here she came to love a life more adventurous than usual for girls of the time, rambling and mountain climbing. During the first world war she was a nurse and met and married Harold Pullein-Thompson, a captain in the army. He was wounded in the war and she shared in supporting their family, of Denis – who became a playwright – and their daughters Josephine, Christine and Diana.
It was their life in the Oxfordshire countryside, in a rambling house with cats, dogs, bantams and ponies that provided the background to the three sisters’ well-loved pony books. But it was Joanna who created this kind of book with A PONY FOR JEAN, introducing a determined and resourceful girl with an unpromising pony.
About the Illustrator
Anne Bullen (1913–1963) was born in Hampshire, but grew up in Somerset amongst horses and ponies. In 1933 Anne married, and she moved to Dorset where she brought up six children with her husband, Jack. Her romantic and versatile illustrative style caught the eye of Joanna Cannan, who gave Anne her first commission to illustrate A PONY FOR JEAN. Other authors followed suit, and Anne illustrated over forty books as well as three of her own. Anne and her husband also ran a very successful stud farm (The Catherston Stud), and although Anne very sadly died aged 51, she was able to watch her son compete at the Rome Olympics, the first of three Bullens to ride in seven consecutive Olympic Games.
Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hot Key Books
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London, EC1V 0AT
A Pony for Jean first published by The Bodley Head in 1936
Text copyright © The Estate of Joanna Cannan 1936
Illustrations by kind permission of © the Estate of Anne Bullen 1936
The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reprodcued, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 978-1-4714-0451-1
www.hotkeybooks.com
Hot Key Books is part of the Bonnier Publishing Group
www.bonnierpublishing.com
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