Pony Club Challenge (Woodbury Pony Club Book 2)

by Josephine Pullein-Thompson

  “Has anyone seen my boots?” asked Rupert.

  As soon as the last runner had finished, everyone, trainers, competitors, parents and supporters, gathered round the scoreboard to wait for the running scores and the final totals to be chalked up. A few teams were adding what they believed to be their running points and then comparing their best three against probable best threes from other clubs, but most people, either baffled by the sheer weight of figures or realizing that such suppositional calculations were a waste of time, merely waited impatiently for the official results.

  “Well, we certainly haven’t beaten the Cranford Vale,” decided James, “because though we’re about level after the cross-country, we know they all ran better than we did.”

  “And it looks as though some of the best people will have scores up in the four thousands.” Seb sounded envious.

  “It’s terrific to see all those twelve hundreds for clear rounds though,” said Alice. “You’re the only team with four, and we didn’t do so badly with three.”

  “Lizzie deserves a medal for going clear on Ra.”

  The official scorer was beginning to write up the totals when the organizer appeared and announced them through a loudhailer. “First Girls and overall winners: Cranford Vale Girls with 11,356,” he boomed. “Second Girls: Woodbury with 11,026. Third Girls: East Tulworth with 11,012. First Boys: Cranford Vale again with 11,326. Second Boys: Woodbury with 11,290. Third Boys: Frogmorton with 10,890.

  “Then we come to the individuals. First Boy: Charles Smith of the South Barset with a total of 4,424. Second: Stephen Sykes of the Cranford Vale with 3,910. Third: James Morgan of the Woodbury with 3,830, and fourth, Woodbury again: Rupert Wheeler with 3,790. Individual Girls. First: Jane Ogden of the East Tulworth with 4,382. Second: Sandra Sykes of the Cranford Vale with 3,892. Third, Cranford Vale again: Mary Ann James with 3,782, and Fourth, Woodbury’s Lesley Rooke with 3,734.”

  The Woodbury people were either jumping about with joy, gasping with amazement or merely looking dazed when the announcer went on, “The special prizes for under twelves go to Best Boy, Tom Scudamore of the South Barset, and Best Girl, Annette Wheeler of the Woodbury. Now, if you would all come up and collect your rosettes …”

  10

  No Pistols or Ponies

  All the Woodbury Tetrathlonites slept late on Monday morning. Eventually they staggered out sleepily to inspect and offer delicious feeds to their ponies, though, as Rupert told a comfortably reclining Rosie, it was the humans who had done most of the work the day before and the ponies ought to be bringing them breakfast in bed. After lunch they revived and began to search for cowboy-like clothes and by teatime they were all looking forward to the barbecue and a chance to talk over the Tetrathlon. For, by the time the running was over, all three teams had been in an exhausted and bemused state. They had collected their rosettes in a daze and been packed into horseboxes and cars and taken home by bossily brisk parents without exchanging a word, except on the whereabouts of lost track shoes, towels and tail bandages. Alice had decided not to take her aunt and uncle to the Old Forge. She couldn’t see them enjoying a pony club party—they weren’t very good at enjoying themselves at all. She would gladly have taken Clare, but her cousin was in Spain, so she arranged to go with the Franklins. Mr Franklin was always punctual so they were the first guests to arrive, except for Mrs Spencer and Tina, who seemed to be helping and were running round frantically with toasting forks and strings of sausages.

  “What a perfect evening,” said Mr Franklin politely, as Seb, resplendent in a full Western outfit from boots, leather waistcoat to hat—though the holsters on his belt were empty—greeted them at the gate.

  “And what a perfect setting,” added Mrs Franklin, admiring the thatched cottage and sniffing the scent of roses and honeysuckle.

  “You won’t be able to smell the flowers much longer,” said Seb, “Dad’s got two barbecues going. Come in and have a drink, there’s wine for the adults and cider for us.”

  “There, you see, it was not essential that I came in jeans,” Mrs Franklin, who was wearing a pink and gold sari, muttered at Hanif. “Mrs Spencer is wearing a beautiful skirt and blouse.”

  “She looks more like a gipsy than a cowgirl,” said Alice. “Look at her huge earrings.”

  “She’s a Spanish dancer, come to entertain the cowboys,” explained Tina, hurrying by with an armful of plates. She was wearing jeans with a green shirt, her mother’s short boots, a huge belt and a red, white-spotted handkerchief tied round her neck.

  “Here are the Wheelers.” Hanif sounded relieved and, leaving the four parents to talk, the pony club members hurried to the paddock. Except for Rupert, the entire Wheeler family was dressed in clean jeans and checked shirts. He had made a very old pair of jeans more ragged and wore them with a crumpled, faded shirt, and battered, shapeless hat and bare feet. He had rubbed charcoal on his pink and white Wheeler face, to give it an unshaven look.

  “I am a cowboy, but a South American one, a gaucho,” he told Hanif and Alice. “They didn’t wear boots, because the leather shrank in the wet. They rode barefoot, with tiny stirrups for their big toes and they were poor and dirty. The North American cowboys were dirty too; Seb’s far too posh, he looks like someone playing around at a dude ranch.”

  “It’s really just a cover up, because he lost his clean jeans and couldn’t be bothered to iron his shirt or wash his face,” laughed Netti.

  “I think Seb looks great,” said Oliver enviously.

  Then the Rookes and the Robertses and David all arrived at once and suddenly the party was in full swing. Mrs Spencer handed out sausages from one barbecue, Mr Fuller chicken joints from the other. Seb poured wine and cider with a lavish hand, Tina handed round plates and paper napkins.

  They sat on straw bales and discussed the Tetrathlon. Lynne insisted on telling everyone exactly how Vulcan had jumped each fence, while Rupert’s account of Rosie’s mishaps grew more and more farfetched.

  “Here’s James, at last,” announced Oliver.

  “Where have you been, James? We missed you,” Netti told him.

  “We couldn’t persuade my father to stop packing fruit. It got later and later, so in the end Mum and I came on. He may turn up—probably just when everyone’s going home.”

  “Here, drown your sorrows.” Alice passed him a mug of cider. “We’ve got to get you and Lizzie into a party mood.”

  “It’s this field,” explained Lizzie, “it keeps bringing back horrible memories.”

  They were all eating ice cream and Seb was explaining that he’d fixed up a disco in the shelter, which was well away from the other cottages, and that there would be dancing when everyone had finished supper, when Mr Fuller called for silence. Standing on a straw bale, he said, “As the father of the newest member I really have no right to speak, but I do want to propose the toast of the Woodbury Pony Club, coupled with the name of its boss—David. It may be a small pony club, but it’s one of the friendliest, and I know that with the help of the committee of parents we’ve just been forming, it won’t be long before it’s one of the best.”

  “The Woodbury and David!” shouted everyone, holding up mugs and glasses and then drinking deep.

  “Speech!” called the parents, who were becoming quite rowdy.

  “Come on, David. Speech.”

  David climbed slowly to his feet. “I’m no good at speeches, so I’m not going to make one, but I do have a piece of good news for you. Frank Collingwood, the owner of the Coombe Manor Stud, just up the road here, was very grateful to those of you who rescued visiting brood mares from the yew wood. When I met him the other day he was still talking about it and saying that, but for your prompt action, the British bloodstock industry would have suffered quite a severe blow; those nine mares are all classically bred and they can be expected to have six or seven more foals apiece. Anyway, he went on to say that he wanted to give the Woodbury a present. I suggested that he replaced the stolen pistols and got a ve
ry vehement and quite unrepeatable reply. I thought again and suggested jumps, which went down rather better. This morning he telephoned me to say that he had ordered a set of extra-stout show jumps, a complete set of twelve fences, to be delivered as soon as possible.”

  “Hurray!” shouted James.

  “That’s really good news.”

  “Terrific. Decent jumps at last,” agreed Paul. “I hope they come in time for the next rally.”

  “That’s all,” David went on when the parents stopped clapping. “Except to say that I was very pleased with the way things went yesterday. Though we only came second in both competitions we did have the best riding results and that’s what really matters to a pony club.”

  “Hear, hear, hear,” Rupert shouted loudly as David sat down.

  “You’re drunk, Rupert Wheeler,” snapped Lesley accusingly.

  “There is one other bit of good news.” said Seb to the other pony club members, as the parents began to talk among themselves again. He looked bashfully at Tina and then down at his boots. “Dad said it would be too embarrassing to announce it publicly, but that we could tell you. Tina’s mother and my father have decided to get married.

  “They’ve been seeing each other for quite a long time,” he went on, when the others sat looking from him to Tina in speechless surprise, “but we didn’t realize that it was serious, and they didn’t want to involve us until they were sure it was going to work. Then they put off telling us because of the Tetrathlon—they didn’t want us shooting with other things on our minds—so we only heard the news last night.”

  “Are you pleased?” asked Alice.

  “Yes, I think so. Things have been so awful lately they can only get better,” answered Seb sadly.

  “I hope you’re not going back to the Frogmorton country,” snapped Lesley.

  “Nothing’s settled. We’re going to start house-hunting tomorrow. We all like it round here, but it has to be a house with a field—a biggish field—because they’re thinking of buying Bowie for Tina: she’s obviously got to have a pony of her own.”

  “You’re going to buy Bowie?” Sarah looked at Tina in amazement.

  “It’s not quite settled yet, but my mother’s talked to yours.”

  “So that’s why you were allowed to ride him yesterday,” said Lesley in a knowing voice.

  “I thought he was very expensive,” observed Lynne.

  “He is a bit,” agreed Tina, “but Mum was saving all she could to buy us a flat or house one day, and now Seb’s father’s going to buy the house, she’s going to spend some of the money on Bowie. I don’t really believe it’s all going to happen. It still seems like a dream.”

  “Do you mind having her for a sister?” Oliver asked, pointing rudely at Tina.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Seb answered slowly. “I’d rather have a sister than a brother and I’m glad she’s younger than me. I won’t be like poor old James.” He gave James a friendly thump. “His big sister’s so superior she’ll hardly speak to him.”

  “You must find a house near Woodbury, we can’t afford to lose two super pony club members,” Alice told them.

  “She’s right, you must forbid your joint parents to contemplate any house that isn’t within easy hacking distance of Garland Farm,” added Rupert firmly.

  “Could you do some ‘willing’, Netti?” Hanif asked.

  “Yes. If you stay, and Tina has Bowie, that’ll mean two more good people for teams,” decided James cheerfully. “By next year Paul and Sarah ought to have bigger ponies too and then we’ll really show the Cranford Vale; it’ll give them a real shock when they find that their days as the top pony club in Area Ten are over.”

  The Woodbury Pony Club series

  Pony Club Cup

  Pony Club Challenge

  Pony Club Trek

  Read chapter 1 of Pony Club Trek overleaf

  Chapter 1: Pony Club Trek

  Read on for the first chapter of the next book in the series, where the Woodbury Pony Club are going on a three-day trek over the Downs.

  “Do come, Harry. I know we won’t be chosen for the mounted games team, but it’ll be fun and we’ll see everyone,” pleaded Alice Drummond, dismounting from her dun pony, Saffron, and leaning over the loosebox door. “The holidays are nearly over and I can’t bear to waste a single moment of what’s left.”

  Hanif Franklin dropped his body brush and curry comb into his grooming kit box and rumpled his curly blue-black hair. His brown face wore an obstinate look and his black eyes communicated nothing. Silent eyes, thought Alice.

  “You’re so sociable and the rest of the pony club is so competitive,” he complained. “We spent the whole holidays training for the tetrathlon, and now it’s over I want to relax. Why can’t we go for a peaceful hack through the woods?”

  “You’ll be able to go for peaceful hacks every weekend when I’m back at school,” Alice argued. “It’s a lovely ride to Garland Farm. You can relax while you watch everyone else tearing up and down, trying to get into the Prince Philip team.”

  “Relax? With Jupe trampling on my toes, the Rookes quarrelling and people complaining that it’s not fair and they ought to have been picked? Some hope,” observed Hanif. He liked the Woodbury pony club members, but sometimes they all seemed terribly English while Alice with her tanned complexion, rich golden hair and dark blue eyes, could be Scandinavian. He liked her straight nose, wide mouth and determinedness, and the fact that she’d lived abroad and travelled a lot was another bond between them. And she had no parents at all which was much worse than having to put up with a difficult stepfather.

  Alice could feel him weakening. “You know you really love all the pony club scandals and dramas. Come on, tack up. We don’t want to miss any of the excitement.”

  When Hanif had saddled and bridled the impatient Jupiter, a sturdy liver chestnut of fourteen-two, and collected his crash cap, they rode along Darkwood Lane and past Shawbury, the red-brick, gabled house among the trees, where, since the death of her parents in a plane crash, Alice spent the holidays with her uncle and aunt and a shifting population of grown-up cousins.

  They took the path through the woods and forded the river Vole, low in its banks and flowing placidly after the long, sunny summer. The ponies jogged happily along the track which passed through the Waterford Farm meadows, where Saffron was turned out during the term. Then they crossed the main road and took the bridlepath, which led through stubble fields towards Garland Farm, the home of David Lumley, who had been a well-known steeplechase jockey until a crashing fall had left him disabled, and was now District Commissioner and chief instructor of the Woodbury pony club. Soon they could see the farm on the rising ground. It was sheltered by a half-circle of hills and, beyond the hills, in the distance, the smooth green humps of the Downs met the faded blue of the late summer sky.

  The four Wheelers lived at the Old Rectory, Kidlake, a village just down the road from the lane which led to Garland Farm. Their house was old and large and rather tumbledown. Both their parents worked and no one ever had the time or energy to cut back the ivy, which was gradually obscuring the upper windows, or to fix the dangling trellises, which were supposed to support the climbing roses on either side of the front door. Weeds had taken over the cobblestones of the stable yard and the sagging stable doors, clumsily re-painted bright blue by Rupert, were already peeling.

  The Wheelers, who all had straw-coloured hair, blue eyes and pink and white complexions, were hard at work. Rupert, the eldest, was cursing as he pumped up the front tyre of an elderly and unloved-looking bicycle. His pink and white face was long and his blue eyes dreamy. Lizzie and Oliver were grooming chestnut Rajah and little brown Hobbit, while Netti had her grey, Tristram, tied up outside and was washing his tail.

  “Why don’t you hack over on Rosie?” Lizzie, the second oldest, who wore her straw-coloured hair in a single plait, called to Rupert. “You could tie her up in David’s yard while you watch.”

  “Be
cause I know what would happen,” Rupert answered “The old Rooke would soon bully me into joining in. She’d have me in some useless team, consisting of Harry on lunatic Jupiter and some horrid little children from the D Ride, just to be slaughtered by Sarah Rooke and Netti and the other mounted games specialists.”

  “Don’t talk to him, he’s stopped pumping,” Netti, whose straw hair was cut short and whose blue eyes were bright and challenging, told her sister. “And we’re not going to slaughter anyone. We haven’t a hope of making up a decent team. Except for Sarah, none of the good people have the right sort of ponies. Twelve-two is the best size, so even Tristram’s too big and the fourteen-twos are useless.”

  “Hobbit’s perfect then, and I’m bound to be picked,” announced Oliver boastfully. He saw the Woodbury team winning at Wembley, cheering crowds and enormous rosettes.

  “You are not.” Netti looked at Oliver’s round cheerful face, cheeky blue eyes and curly straw hair and decided that he needed crushing. “You’re hopeless at vaulting on and you’re too lazy to practise.”

  “Do tack up, everyone, we’re going to be late,” called Lizzie, interrupting Oliver’s reply. “And Ollie, you can’t go with your bit like that,” she added in tones of horror. “It’s green.”

  “Who cares. Boring old Janet Green only gives me a mingy three for inspection however hard I try. I can’t think why David’s made her the team trainer.”

  “Oh, come on, Lizzie, stop fussing,” said Rupert as his sister ran to the tackroom for a wet rag. “I’ve got to start before this tyre goes down again, and surely everyone in the pony club must be used to Ollie’s tack cleaning by now.”

  James Morgan, large, solid and serious for his age, which was fourteen and a half, turned out of the gate of Four Cross Fruit Farm and bicycled slowly along the road in the direction of Garland Farm. Now that the tetrathlon was over the fun had gone out of the holidays, he thought gloomily. There wasn’t much point in going to Garland Farm to watch other people practising mounted games, but he supposed that some of the older members might turn up, and, anyway, nothing could be more boring than staying at home. He hoped Sebastian Fuller, his best friend, would be there. He’d meant to ring up and find out, but Seb’s father had just married the mother of another Woodbury member, which made it all a bit awkward. What if the new Mrs Fuller had answered the phone? James wouldn’t have known what on earth to say to her.