Stables S.O.S.

by Janet Rising

  We wasted no time setting off alarm bells with everyone else who was at the stables that day.

  “Are you absolutely certain, Bean, that’s what he said?” asked Nicky, leading her daughter Bethany around the yard on their ancient and tiny bay pony, Pippin. “I mean,” she added, giving everyone a knowing look, “you do sometimes get the wrong end of the stick, don’t you?”

  “We all went and talked with Robert-bleeping-Collins,” James told her, defending Bean. “He confirmed it. He told us that Mrs. C isn’t able to look after herself anymore and that she’ll be going into a home.”

  “And he’s selling the land to a developer,” interrupted Katy, “who’s going to build hundreds of houses on the field!”

  The field where Drummer and his friends graze, I thought. I looked over Nicky’s shoulder to the field and the outdoor arena where we all schooled the ponies and imagined buildings covering the grass.

  “It’s a prime site,” James said, echoing Robert Collins’s words. “Houses will sell like hot cakes around here.”

  “He didn’t seem very upset about his mom,” Bean said. Her eyes were still red where she’d been crying.

  “Aren’t we sitting tenants or something?” asked Katy. “He can’t just kick us all out, can he?”

  “Perhaps we should have a sit-in. You know, stop the development, make banners, petition the government, or something,” I suggested, imagining us all lined up on the drive facing up to big yellow bulldozers.

  “Great idea!” enthused Katy, her eyes flashing. “We can ride to city hall on the ponies. That will get the press behind us.”

  “Tiffany’s terrible in traffic,” mumbled Bean.

  “Slow down,” said James, holding up his hands. “Oh, good, here’s Sophie. She always knows what to do.”

  Sophie’s gigantic horse trailer rolled past us, a tricolor champion ribbon fluttering in the front, next to a red and a blue ribbon. It had been a good day, I thought. And we were about to spoil it, big time. We all followed in its wake, waiting impatiently for Sophie to park and turn off the engine. Dee-Dee jumped down from the cab.

  “You all look so gloomy,” she said. Her cream showing shirt was crumpled and the front of it hung outside her butter-colored showing jodhpurs. She’d replaced her boots with sneakers, her brown hair was scooped up in a hair clip, and she had a smudge on one cheek and what looked like chocolate around her mouth. “What’s up?”

  We all explained in a jumble of words and Dee and her mom listened in shock. When we’d finished, and Sophie had gotten to the bottom of all the jumbled explanations, she pressed her lips together and frowned.

  “Hmmmm,” she murmured. “Is this Robert Collins person still here?”

  “No,” I told her. “He drove off half an hour ago. The woman went with him. She was a surveyor or something.”

  “Hmmmm,” Sophie said again. “And Mrs. C is going into a home?”

  “That’s what he said,” gulped Bean. “Poor Mrs. C. She’ll hate it in a home. Who will look after the cats? Who’ll have Squish?”

  “Slow down, Bean,” Sophie told her. “I went to see Mrs. Collins at the hospital yesterday, and she didn’t say anything about going into a home.”

  We all looked at her, appalled.

  “You mean she doesn’t know?” asked Katy. “That’s terrible!”

  “Well, things could have changed,” Sophie told us, “but when I saw her she was talking about getting one of those stair lifts in her house—she said she was always a bit out of breath whenever she climbed the stairs. She never said anything about her son or building on the land.”

  “So her devoted son—not—has big plans he’s neglected to tell her,” James said grimly.

  We were all quiet. How horrible, I thought. Could relatives do things like that? Surely Mrs. C would have something to say about it. She wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet. But, of course, one never knew how people behaved with their family, and Robert Collins looked kinda hefty. I imagined him intimidating Mrs. C—she was pretty tiny—shouting and making her sign papers. I shuddered.

  “Let me make some more inquiries,” Sophie suggested. “If this were to happen, we would all have to be given a month’s notice to leave…”

  “A month!” I said, dismayed. Could we all really have to go in a month?

  “It’s in your contract,” Sophie said. I realized I hadn’t read mine properly when I’d come to Laurel Farm. All that small print—boring. Now it seemed very important indeed.

  “But, Mom, we can’t just all go!” wailed Dee, waving her arms about.

  “Well yes, actually, we can if we have to,” Sophie told her matter-of-factly.

  “Where?” Dee asked.

  “There are plenty of other stables around here,” said Sophie calmly.

  I stared into the distance. How awful to be the new girl again. I’d only just started to feel part of the gang here. And Drummer had made good friends—one very good friend—at last. The thought of moving physically hurt. I felt a pang in my stomach.

  “Can’t you tell Mrs. Collins?” asked James.

  “I could,” agreed Sophie, “but I wouldn’t like to just yet. She’s still frail, and she doesn’t need any extra stress. This Robert Collins will need to get planning permission and that takes a while, so I don’t think there is any need to panic—yet, anyway.” She pressed her thumb to her lips, thinking. Unlike her daughter, Sophie oozed sophistication in her immaculate breeches, shining, long leather boots, and crisp white shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a bun—she looked like she was about to go to the show, instead of coming back from it. I wondered whether Dolly had won the tricolored ribbon or Sophie’s horse, Lester. Now didn’t seem the time to ask.

  “Although he could want us out before he applies for planning so there’s nothing to stop him,” Sophie continued. “Leave it to me,” she told us. “I’ll find out more. Nothing is going to happen yet—we haven’t been given notice, so don’t worry too much before we know the facts. My friend Helena’s husband is in the planning department. I’ll give her a call later to ask some questions. Now, Dee, we have to get Lester and Dolly out of the trailer and settled in their stables. They’ve worked hard today. Come on!”

  I hardly felt reassured. Sophie always knew someone who knew someone who was helpful for this and that and if anyone could find out what was going on, she could, but she hadn’t given us any reason to suppose that we could actually do anything about the development. She had seemed almost resigned to moving. Perhaps it didn’t matter as much to her where her horse was stabled. It was our gang that was threatened. I couldn’t believe how, in an instant, our whole world had come tumbling down.

  As Dee led Dolly down the ramp, we all drifted away back toward the field and leaned miserably on the fence. I could see Drummer. He was still eating. It was his favorite thing to do. How much longer would he be able to munch the grass at Laurel Farm?

  “Mrs. Bradley will be terribly upset to have to find somewhere new for Henry,” I said, thinking of the elderly lady who kept her Dales pony at the farm.

  “And Cat, she doesn’t know yet,” said Katy.

  “It won’t make any difference to Cat, will it?” said James gloomily, “due to our failure to come up with a plan.”

  Sadly, that was true. Maybe that was why we hadn’t come up with a plan, because it would all have been pointless.

  I straightened up. I couldn’t hang around moping any longer. Only one person could make me feel better when I was feeling this low. The same person who was always there for me during whatever crisis I was going through. The one person who always understood and totally got how I was feeling, and even though he didn’t always seem to say the right thing at the time, it always turned out to be words of wisdom.

  “I’m going to talk to Drummer,” I announced.

&nbs
p; “Shall we come?” Katy asked.

  I shook my head. “No, no thanks. I think I’d rather it was just me and Drum. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Three heads shook slowly.

  Drummer knew something was wrong, of course. He always does.

  “What major catastrophe has occurred now?” he asked me as I wandered over.

  Oh, sorry, with all this going on I forgot to explain how I can hear what Drummer says. Actually, I can hear what all horses and ponies say, provided I have my tiny stone statue—the one I keep in my pocket—of a Celtic goddess, name of Epona, with me. I found her when Drum and I first came to Laurel Farm: the area has a history of ancient Roman occupation and Epona was worshipped in Ancient Rome, too. But now I have her, and she somehow provides a translation service so that I can understand equine. No one else knows about her (except for James, but he’s been sworn to secrecy in return for borrowing Epona now and again so he can talk to Moth), and everyone else thinks I’m some kind of pony whisperer, so that’s what I’m known as. It can be great—but it can also be awkward, too. You know how some people can take things the wrong way or get a bit touchy about stuff they don’t understand? Cat had been like that with me forever.

  The sun was still shining and warm, the birds were still singing, and all the trees and bushes were stretching out of their spring blossom and into their summer foliage, but the excitement I had felt earlier had gone. It had left with Robert Collins.

  “In your own time,” Drummer prompted me, as I struggled to find the words. So I told him all about the latest bombshell—to add to his other worries. But then, as James had said, being given notice to leave Laurel Farm wouldn’t make any difference to Cat’s problem, so the same applied to her pony Bambi and Drummer, too.

  “So have we all been told to go?” Drummer asked, getting to the heart of the matter and not bothering to ask pointless questions.

  “No, not yet,” I replied, twirling a lock of his black mane around my fingers. It was a comfort somehow.

  “And Sophie’s on the case?”

  “Yes. Sophie knows someone who might be able to advise us.”

  “If anyone can do something, Sophie can,” said Drummer. “She’s formidable.”

  My face cracked into a smile. Drum was right there. I wouldn’t have argued with Sophie. Formidable was exactly the right word for her. But even so…

  “But she says we have to go if we’re given notice,” I said, remembering her words. “She can’t stop the development.”

  “Then who can?” Drummer asked.

  Who can? I thought about it. Who can stop the development? “I don’t know,” I replied, staring ahead of me and seeing nothing. That was the big question—who could stop the development? If we were the ones to be affected by it, then surely we had to stop it. Drummer had put his hoof on it—as usual. Bulldozers loomed in my mind again and then disappeared. No one would care whether we had to find new homes for the ponies, not when people needed somewhere to live themselves.

  “I don’t know who can stop it,” I said, my mind whirling.

  “Well, it seems to me that’s what you need to find out,” said Drummer, dropping his head again to pull at the grass. “Because,” he continued, munching, “if you can get the building stopped, we can all stay and you can put your efforts into solving the most important problem, which you seem to have forgotten.”

  “But I don’t know who can stop it!” I repeated, confused by Drummer’s warped sense of priorities. “And I haven’t forgotten the other problem!”

  “Well then, you need to take matters into your own hands and get it stopped yourself, don’t you? And get a move on!”

  “So now we have to come up with two plans!” announced Katy as we all mounted up in the stables the next day.

  “We haven’t even come up with one yet,” Cat pointed out, tightening Bambi’s girth from the saddle. Bambi snaked her head to and fro and snapped her teeth in protest. Cat’s skewbald mare loved drama.

  “Don’t remind us!” Bean groaned, ignoring Tiffany’s side step past a perfectly innocent-looking broom.

  “Let’s go for a blast up the Sloping Field,” James suggested, urging his chestnut mare Moth into a brisk walk toward the bridle path. As usual, an Indian blanket replaced a conventional saddle blanket under Moth’s saddle and she lifted her white legs up high, her chin on her chest as James sat astride her in his ripped jeans, his stirrups too long. We all followed—all except Dee. She was hardly ever allowed to come riding with us in the summer due to Sophie’s conviction that Dolly would pick up bad manners from our out-of-control ponies. She had a point.

  I still couldn’t get used to riding with Cat. When I first came to Laurel Farm, Cat had been my archenemy, but since we’d all practiced and performed an activity ride at Christmas, things had been better between us—especially now I knew the big secret that had upset Cat so much and had made her behave so badly toward me. And now that I knew, I could totally understand why it had made her go a bit, well, “crazy” is the only way I can describe it really, whenever it had come up. Now that Cat knew of my determination to help her, she’d softened toward me. It sounds very simple when I say it all like that, but it’s really complicated.

  For a start, even though I realize why Cat was horrible to me, I can’t quite forgive her. I’m just relieved she isn’t calling me Mia or Tia anymore and being all snobby toward me. And there’s the little matter of her having gone out with James. I can’t quite get my head around that one. Not totally, even if James did have a perfectly good reason for asking her out. Drummer has never let me forget how annoyed I was about that.

  Drummer, as usual, hurried along to be next to Bambi. Bambi was the reason we needed to come up with a plan because in July, Bambi was due to move out of Laurel Farm and into a single stable and paddock waiting for her at Cat’s aunt’s place. Because Cat’s Aunt Pam is Bambi’s real owner (that had been the big secret—I had always thought she belonged to Cat), and Cat had Bambi on loan while Aunt Pam had a couple of kids. Now the kids were old enough to ride, Aunt Pam had announced her intention of repossessing her pony at the start of the summer vacation, leaving my until-recently-archenemy Bambi-less.

  So why have I vowed to think up a plan to save Cat’s pony? Why should I care about my until-recently-archenemy when she has previously done all she could to diss me? (She even tried to get Drummer stolen once.) Because my wonderful Drummer and Bambi are an item and so loved-up it’s touching (or nauseating, depending on your mood). Without a plan, they won’t have much longer to be a couple.

  True, I could empathize with Cat (I couldn’t imagine losing Drummer), but the real reason I was so anxious to come up with a plan to save Bambi was because of my pony. He loved Bambi. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t let him down. Everyone seemed to believe it was out of kindness to Cat that I was so anxious to help. After all, no one else could hear what Drummer, or any of the other ponies, said without Epona.

  “So let’s recap on ideas we have come up with for the Keep Bambi Campaign,” suggested Katy, giving her beloved Bluey’s blue-flecked neck a loving pat. Bluey arched his neck and looked pleased. He loves Katy as much as she loves him.

  “The ones we’ve already rejected?” I asked.

  “Yes. We may be able to convert them into a workable plan or combine a couple of them to get something that does work.”

  “Well, there’s the ‘Hide Bambi at the icehouse’ plan,” said Bean.

  “I don’t like that one,” I heard Bambi say. She’d had a bad experience at the icehouse once before.

  “She can’t stay there forever,” Cat pointed out.

  “And even if she did, she’d still be in solitary,” said James. “The idea is to keep her not only with Cat but with all the other ponies at Laurel Farm.”

  “If Laurel Farm still exists,” I pointed out gloomily
.

  “We’re addressing that issue later,” Katy declared firmly.

  “I still think we ought to try to raise some money to buy her,” said Bean. “That’s the best idea yet.”

  “That would be brilliant—except that my Aunt Pam doesn’t want to sell Bambi,” Cat reminded us all, “she wants her back.”

  “Would you be able to keep her if you could buy her?” asked Katy.

  Cat nodded. “My family pays for her keep now,” she explained. “But they can’t afford the money up front to buy a pony. When Bambi goes, that’s it, I’m pony-less.”

  “Don’t forget Dee’s idea,” I said, waiting for the inevitable response.

  Everyone groaned.

  “No séances!” cried Katy, making Tiffany jump.

  “That’s Dee’s answer to everything,” mumbled James.

  “Exactly when did you all hold a séance?” asked Cat. She asked it every time the subject came up. Nobody wanted to tell her because it had happened when we’d been competing against her, and memories were not especially warm—for anyone. The idea had been to call up Dee’s dear departed granddad, but instead we’d got some lunatic named Adam Rowe who had just wanted to spell out bad death all the time. Nice! It had been totally scary, and we’d all been freaked out—except for James, which only made us more convinced that he’d been pushing the Ouija board planchette around and spelling out the words himself as a joke. Some joke!

  “I thought the ‘Let’s find a more suitable pony for AP’s kids’ plan was a good idea,” interrupted James, anxious to move on from the séance subject.

  “Yes, apart from us not having any money to buy one. And AP, as you like to call my Aunt Pam,” Cat said, “as we’ve already established, wants her beloved Bambi back, not just any old pony. It’s a no go!”

  We all pulled up at the bottom of the Sloping Field, and I could feel Drummer start to bunch underneath me in anticipation. All the ponies knew that the Sloping Field meant only one thing: a flat-out gallop from the bottom to the top with the added fun of a leap across the stream that snaked its way across the middle. I could hear all the ponies psyching one another up—Bambi and Drummer were already challenging each other to a race.