Riding With The Lyntons

by Diana Pullein-Thompson

  I didn’t try to dig us out that day, at least not until twilight, when suddenly, as I was peeling potatoes for dinner, I saw a man on skis coming down the lane, a small bald man with a ski stick in one hand and a small black case in the other.

  It was snowing hard now and he wore goggles to protect his eyes. For a few seconds I wondered where he was going and what he was doing, and then I realised he was opening our garden gate and I dashed to one of the front windows, and, flinging it open, called, “Hallo, do you want one of us?”

  “I’m Doctor Phillips. Your father telephoned me to come and see your mother. I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday,” said the bald man.

  I picked up the spade and started to climb out of the window.

  “I shall have to dig the snow away from the door before you can get in,” I told him.

  “Hi, wait a moment,” said Doctor Phillips. “Perhaps I can squeeze in through that window and save you the trouble. Will that snow there stand my weight without skis do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I’m sinking now a bit myself. It’s pretty soft.”

  “I can have a try I suppose. You pop back in. Where’s your father?”

  “In bed, too, with flu.”

  “Dear, oh dear, what a sad state of affairs,” remarked Doctor Phillips unbuckling his skis and, with an enormous effort, scrambling through the window.

  “I’ve left my car up on the big road,” he explained. “It’s wonderful to have an excuse and chance to ski in England. You should make your parents get you some skis and have a shot yourself.”

  “Everything depends on Forget Not Thy Cloak. I’ll take you up to them now,” I said, and then I shouted to my parents, so that they should be prepared, “Here’s Dr Phillips. He’s just arrived on skis. I’m bringing him up.”

  I left him in their bedroom and started to dig snow away from the front door. It was a strange beautiful night without darkness, and now that snow was falling again, it had grown warmer. The earlier wind had swept the branches of our oak clear and they stood naked against the whiteness of the sky. The hedges either side of the lane were like wide banks, for the snow had been swept up against them, and the trees close by looked short and stumpy as the snow mounted higher and higher against their trunks. Now that the doctor had come I felt sure my parents would be all right and, for the first time since Jingle’s death, I started to sing. Magic sat by the window watching me wistfully. She wanted to be out too. But I was afraid she might fall into a snowdrift and disappear for ever, and so I made her stay indoors.

  I had just cleared away enough to open the front door a few inches when Dr Phillips reappeared.

  “It’s only flu,” he said. “Nothing to worry about, and I’ve given them some medicine.”

  “I’m so glad you’ve come,” I said.

  “I killed two birds with one stone, actually, because I had a call from the Lyntons. Mrs Lynton and Gillian are down with it, too. The others are all right, though.”

  I felt a stab of remorse as I saw Jingle again in that terrible night at the roadside.

  “Do you know anything about Jon’s arm?” I asked.

  “He’s not out of hospital yet,” said the doctor. “But he’ll be absolutely all right in the end. You know them I suppose.”

  “Well, yes. They let me ride one of their ponies,” I told him.

  “Get on all right with Mr Lynton?” asked the doctor.

  “I think so. Would you like a cup of tea or a drink, by the way?” I suggested.

  “No, I must be off now, thanks. Can you fish my skis in through the window? I might as well put them on here and go out through the door. Your parents must stay in bed for twenty-four hours after their temperatures are normal. Do you think you can manage all right on your own? How old are you?”

  “Yes, I’m just eleven,” I told him.

  “I’ll pop in at the farm and ask them to get you down some milk and eggs as soon as possible. Don’t worry about your parents. There’s nothing much wrong with them and your mother is over the worst.” The doctor finished fixing his skis and then, after shaking me politely by the hand, he walked out into the night.

  I sat down for a few minutes and thought about Dr Phillips’ remarks about the Lyntons. It sounded as though their father was not considered an easy man; perhaps they were not considered an easy family. But no one, I thought could be easier than Jon.

  Presently I went up to my parents to ask whether cold ham and mashed potatoes, followed by peaches, would be all right for dinner, and to have a chat about the doctor, for when one lives buried in the country every caller, every chance visitor is of the greatest interest.

  My parents seemed to feel very much better. They talked quite merrily, and laughed about our fast diminishing store of food.

  “I was mad not to stock up,” said Mummy. “Absolutely crazy. But the snow surely can’t last much longer.”

  But she was rather too optimistic, for the next day was as bad, and so was the one after that, and the next and the next one. And the snow piled higher and higher against our doors and the drifts in the lane and the garden grew more and more alarming.

  My parents were up again by now with hearty appetites, and we were down to our last tin of fruit and our last tin of soup.

  “I’m absolutely sick of peaches and soup, anyway,” said Daddy. “We shall have to get up the lane somehow to the farm, the Lyntons’ or the Stag’s Head.”

  “If only it would freeze so that the snow was hard,” grumbled Mummy.

  “If only we hadn’t got flu at the vital moment,” said Daddy. “We must dig our way through the drifts. They are probably only lying down here at the bottom of the lane. Higher up it won’t be so deep.”

  We had two spades and we took it in turns to rest. We were all a little weaker than usual as a result of the flu, and it took us a long time to make any headway. But for two days very little snow fell and by that time we were through the drifts and walking up the lane, feeling as though we had just stepped out of prison.

  There was no sign of life at the Lyntons’, apart from the horses in the yard looking over loose box doors, and the farm could only sell us six eggs and a quart of milk, but the man at the Stag’s Head was much more helpful.

  “We always stock up well before Christmas with everything we can, even though we don’t get cut off as you do down in the valley,” he explained, giving us bags of flour and blocks of margarine and butter. “I can’t give you any fresh meat, I’m afraid, but the wife’s got plenty of tinned, and I’ll let you have a couple of loaves because the baker managed to get to us the day before yesterday and we took as many as he could spare.

  We thanked him profusely and filled our baskets, and then Daddy asked him about the conditions of the road and the man told us that the snowplough would probably be coming that way the day after the morrow, which meant we could perhaps take our car out then.

  We walked home feeling as though a siege had been lifted.

  “There’s nothing like going short of things to make you appreciate them,” said Daddy.

  “Next year I’m going to spend pounds and pounds on food in the autumn,” said Mummy. “If you get good royalties in October.”

  As we passed the Lyntons’ on our way back I could see Paula carrying a bucket of water across the yard, and Toots was at her heels.

  And I thought, they’ll never like me again because I was the cause of Jingle’s death. And I shall never forget that dreadful night.

  Chapter Eleven

  Three days later a great thaw started. Our roof leaked and everywhere there was a sound of dripping water, all through the day, all through the night the noise was in our ears. Underfoot the ground was wet and slushy; our lane ran with water like a shallow stream. Overhead the sun shone from sapphire skies, lightening our spirits and giving us strength after the flu.

  In a way our illness had been a godsend for me, because I had been too busy to dwell much on Jingle’s death, and wi
th the passage of the days the memory was becoming a little less painful, although each time I walked up the lane and saw the empty field, the fatal gate, the chestnut trees, I was filled afresh with remorse.

  All too soon the holidays were over, and I was leaving Sparrow Cottage to start the spring term at school without having seen the Lyntons again. I had no idea what their reaction would be when we met once more, as inevitably we must since we lived so close to one another: and now I half dreaded an encounter for it would rake up all my unhappy thoughts about poor dead Jingle just as they were beginning to die down a little.

  Daddy had heard from his publishers that his Christmas sales of Forget Not Thy Cloak had been excellent, and so he was hoping for a large sum of money in April when he gets some royalties. His publishers had also sold one of his earlier books to a firm who bring out special cheap paper-backed editions and he was expecting quite a large lump sum on that too. So, taking everything into consideration there seemed a strong chance that I would be able to have a pony of my own in the spring, which made me even more anxious than usual for the term to pass quickly.

  Mary goes to the same boarding-school as I, and is my best friend there. Unfortunately, she’s not interested in riding and horses, so I couldn’t discuss my future mount with her. However, another girl in my form is a very good rider and wins a lot of jumping competitions, and she gave me a great deal of advice until my mind was whirling with the thought of splints, spavins, broken-winded horses and so on.

  Perhaps because I was looking forward with such enthusiasm, the first half of term passed very quickly and soon I was being borne swiftly to Pynemouth once more, this time in an express train. The fields either side of the railway line were grey and bleak, silent in the grip of a sharp March wind, dry and hard after many frosts. Although I was travelling west the air seemed to grow colder every mile, but my hopes rose higher and my heart grew warmer at the thought of home.

  At last we were pulling into Pynemouth station and there was Daddy on the platform with Magic at his side, looking oceans larger than when I had last seen her.

  “Not much news except that there’s a meet close by on Saturday,” he said, as we drove out into the country.

  “Can I go?” I asked quickly. “On foot I mean.”

  Daddy said I could and he would drive me there and leave me. It was only two miles away, so I could probably walk home afterwards, but he would make a point of going up to the Stag’s Head for a drink at half-past five, so I could ring there if I was stranded anywhere.

  I kissed Magic for a bit, and then I said what should I wear and Daddy said I had better ask Mummy, but he would imagine corduroy trousers to be the best get-up.

  As we drew near Sparrow Cottage, he told me that the leaking had been so disastrous it had ruined part of the living-room carpet – that he had paid vast sums to have the roof mended, which had taken ten days and caused havoc. He also told me that Mummy had now succeeded in house-training Magic, “So the cottage is now absolutely dry with no puddles of any sort,” he finished. I wondered vaguely whether the vast sums would make my parents too poor to buy me a pony after all, but I didn’t say anything, except, “How wonderful, and how clever of Mummy,” because I was very pleased indeed that Magic was now all right in the house. It meant, too, that she could now sleep in my bedroom, and I knew my parents would buy me a pony if they possibly could.

  When I reached home there was a surprise for me in the garden: a Rhode Island Red hen and eight chicks were pecking around in a run.

  “There are some more at the back,” said Mummy, kissing me. “Pop round and have a look.”

  I wandered round to the back of our cottage and found four more Rhode Island Red hens with a very handsome cock in one of those ark henhouses and runs which you can shift to a clean piece of ground every day. Of course, I was overjoyed, for we had never kept any animals in London and to have even a few hens was a new experience.

  “Now go and look at your shed,” Mummy told me.

  “We’ve made a few alterations,” Daddy added.

  I found the door of the stable for my future pony had been cut in half like a loose box door and the window had been altered and made so that it would be opened and shut. The floor also had been levelled.

  “We’ve left the whitewashing for you to do and then it’s complete, I think,” said Daddy.

  “It’s wonderful. What a marvellous surprise. Thank you so much,” I said.

  “The money came in for the paper-backed edition of Stella, so we’ve had a little to spend. It paid for the roof, too,” Mummy explained.

  It was lovely to be home, home in the country, with a garden, with hens and a dog. I looked at our neat paddock with the charming beech hedge running around it. I looked at our oak, naked of leaves, a noble figure against the grey skies. I looked at the hills stretching away as far as the eye could see; kind English hills with the wine-dark woods amongst them, and I was filled with happiness.

  “Have you managed to write a lot?” I asked Daddy.

  “Quite a lot. But the trouble is one gets slower and slower with age. But I think it’s better than anything I’ve done before. It’s got terrific action in it, and I hope suspense. At least it seems to have at the moment, but probably it will seem as dull as ditchwater when I read the typescript through tomorrow,” said Daddy.

  “Come on indoors and let’s have tea. It’s icy out here,” Mummy suggested.

  “You haven’t been up to your bedroom yet,” she added as we reached the cottage.

  I said that was true but I was going up there now; and I collected my horrible school satchel and hurried up the stairs.

  “I’m going to change out of my beastly uniform, too,” I shouted, as I began to climb my own special piece of staircase. When I flung open my door I knew at once there had been a change. I couldn’t think what it was at first and then suddenly I realised the walls had been painted off-white which was much more restful to the eyes than the stark, white of the uneven whitewash which had covered them before. The door and the window had been painted a beautiful shade of sky-blue. I stood and admired these alterations for a few moments and then I changed into my corduroy slacks and a polo-collared pullover and went down to find my parents to thank them for the alterations they had wrought in my room.

  “I got stuck for a few days and simply couldn’t write a thing. Painting your room saved my sanity,” said Daddy.

  I wanted to ask my parents if they had seen anything of the Lyntons, but in my usual silly way, just because it was so important to me, I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I shall see them hunting tomorrow. I thought, and then I’ll see their expressions when I come into view. If only Jon is there. I’m sure everything will be all right. He will know that the open gate was all a mistake; he’ll know that I am terribly sorry about Jingle.

  After tea I started to teach Magic to shake hands. She was very intelligent and within half an hour she was beginning to have a glimmering of understanding and would lift a paw if I tapped her leg once with my fore-finger.

  My parents told me how there had been a great freeze after the thaw, how icicles had dangled from the trees and the lane had become one vast sheet of ice.

  “It was fantastic. One really felt as though one was in fairyland when one walked in the wood with those tremendous eerie icicles hanging in the most weird shapes from the branches and the frost lying like Christmas decorations over everything. We wished you were here, because we could have taught you to skate,” said Daddy. “You could fit in my boots now if we put some paper round your ankles.”

  We went out on the pond and met Mr Lynton, skating quite wildly. He was most jovial and insisted on standing us drinks at the Stag’s Head.

  “He said you were a shy child with lovely eyes,” Mummy told me.

  “Elfin was the adjective he used, I think – rather whimsical I thought for a man of his proportions,” added Daddy. “Jon’s back at school and his arm is all right.”

  “You haven’
t told us anything about your school. How was it?” Mummy reproached me.

  “Just as usual. There’s been a few changes. That awful Miss Stratford has left and a most peculiar person has come in her place, a Miss Noodle – of all names. She’s bespectacled, serious and has a nervous tic,” I told them.

  “Poor thing. I do hope you don’t make fun of her. It’s horrid to tease people with nervous afflictions,” said Mummy.

  “It’s barbaric,” said Daddy.

  “I don’t, but some people do. If only her name wasn’t Miss Noodle,” I sighed.

  After tea I brushed Magic with my clothes brush; and then I walked out into the evening to shut up the chickens for Mummy.

  The air was clear and sharp. A myriad of stars looked down on the wind-swept world from an ink-blue sky. The bare trees whispered of nightfall; a bird sang sadly in the hedgerow; a cow moo-ed unhappily for her calf from whom she had been parted.

  The lovely country sounds, I thought, breathing a great breath of the clean, cold air. The lovely country sights . . . stars winking in the darkness, trees moving in the dusk . . . flowers closing their neat little faces for the night; dew falling, touching the fields with silver . . . sunlight, starlight, moonlight . . . Oh, how I love it all!

  I stood and gazed at those glorious hills dividing us from the restless sea beyond. I felt superbly happy. I shall never tire of those lanes, those meadows, those hills and those woods, I thought . . . not if I live here to be a hundred.

  Suddenly my mind switched to the dust and dirt of London, to the grey streets, to the endless roar of traffic, drowning even thought at times; to the rush of a thousand feet, hurrying on from one appointment to another, never stopping to see the starlight; to the harassed faces rushing from escalator to street and onwards through the years, without being aware that out here in the country the hills tore one’s heart with their beauty; the lanes in the spring smelt like heaven; that there was time to stand and stare in peace and tranquillity. In my mind I started to write a poem about it all, but then Mummy called and I had to go indoors and the moment and the mood were lost.