Fly-by-night

by K. M. Peyton

  Ruth nodded, still panting. Even the large man had his hands full holding Woodlark. She turned round to see what had happened to Peter, and saw him emerging from the wood, climbing the rail. Ruth expected him to look shocked and pale, but, apart from the fact that he was covered in mud, he looked as if nothing untoward had happened at all.

  ‘Is she all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Seems to be,’ the man said.

  There seemed to be no question of Peter’s not continuing, in spite of the severity of the fall. After a brief examination of the mare’s forelegs, he went round to the near-side to mount, while the man endeavoured to hold her. Woodlark was in a frenzy of nervous excitement, swinging round in circles, her hind legs bunched beneath her. Peter stood patiently, waiting his moment, then was up and in the saddle with one movement, so that the mare scarcely knew it.

  The man grinned and said, ‘Your father selling this as a child’s first pony?’

  ‘More like tenth, I should think,’ Peter said.

  ‘Wait till I get back to my seat.’

  The man let go and hurried away, and Peter turned the mare away and cantered her in a tight circle. Ruth went back to her spot in the hedge, not envying Peter at all. He went to the bar slowly, holding the mare in, so that she was almost cantering on the spot. Peter’s face showed nothing but intense concentration. Ruth held her breath for him, more nervous than he. She could see the wildness in the mare’s eyes, and the curbed energy in her pirouetting hind legs. With a lesser rider she would have run out, or stopped, but, by what seemed a miracle to Ruth, Peter got her clear over the bar and down the bank in impeccable style. He rode her through the wood, twisting and turning through the trees, but when she saw the way out through the gate, and the open field beyond, she fought for her bit, pulling like a train. Peter managed to stop her, but then could not get her to approach the gate at all. Thwarted in her desire to do as she wished. Woodlark started to go up on her hind legs.

  Ruth groaned to herself, watching the exhibition with a sweaty feeling, as if she were personally involved. ‘Suppose Fly-by-Night does this next year?’ she thought. But immediately she knew that Fly-by-Night was no Woodlark, exasperating as she might find him at times. Peter was on his own with Woodlark, fighting a personal battle, for Ruth could see that the stewards up the hill were getting ready for the next class, having given up waiting for the reappearance of the little mare out of the wood. The scoring man was waiting, but impatiently, knowing that his score-sheet was wanted up the field. Presently the girl Ruth called Cat’s Eyes came cantering down the field on the grey pony to collect it, and the man climbed up the muddy bank to hand it over.

  ‘Major Banks says please will you clear the course,’ she said.

  The man turned round and bawled through the wood, ‘Will you retire, please, Peter!’

  As Peter had been trying to get out of the wood for the last five minutes, Ruth did not see that the instruction was going to alter anything for him. Woodlark, covered with sweat, was still napping sulkily, but with less vigour, and was appreciably nearer to the gate. Given time, Peter was going to win, but his orders to retire altered the situation. Ruth, watching, and thinking, ‘Whatever will he do?’ did not guess that the problem could be so easily resolved. Peter turned Woodlark away from the gate and cantered her back some forty feet along the path. Then, turning her sharply on her hocks, he sent her off at a sharp pace towards the gate. She flew the obstacle with at least two feet to spare and galloped away back to the collecting-ring.

  Ruth went back up the hill, tired, as if she had confronted all Peter’s problems herself. Every time she thought of herself doing it all on Fly-by-Night she went hot and cold with fright. ‘If I feel like this now,’ she thought, ‘what will I feel like on the actual day?’ It was a daunting thought, to be countered with scornful, Ron-like opinions to put the whole thing in its proper place: a potty Pony Club competition without even any spectators . . . as if it mattered whether one fell in a ditch or won a red rosette. It was a nothing . . . fun for the kiddies . . .

  Obviously Mr. McNair did not think it a nothing. When Ruth got to the top of the hill she saw that Woodlark was already unsaddled and ready to go into the trailer. Mr. McNair stood by her with a sharp look in his eyes, smoking a cigarette and not looking at all sympathetic. He was talking to Peter and, although Ruth could not hear what he was saying, she could tell that it was nasty. She watched from a distance, pricking with indignation. McNair ought to be glad that Peter was alive, after a fall like that, she thought. But Peter, coming out of the horse-box, did not seem to be upset. His face, as usual, showed no expression, but Ruth thought that, if he had any feelings at all, he must be fed up.

  She hoped, after catching Woodlark in that spectacular fashion, Peter might remember her face and acknowledge her the next time they passed at school. But when school started again, Peter, in blazer and flannels, was as remote as he had ever been.

  It was spring, and the grass was growing; the sun had warmth again. Ruth decided to start learning about butterflies.

  CHAPTER VIII

  ‘IN NEED OF CARE AND PROTECTION’

  RON, THE EVER-HELPFUL, said he had a good book on butterflies which he would lend her. Ruth did not think the idea was likely to bear fruit, and could not help getting the giggles when the boys inquired politely how the lepidoptery was going.

  One spring evening, when Ruth was leaning on the kitchen window-sill, thinking how nicely the grass was growing, the familiar racket of the motor bike came to a crescendo in the drive outside, shutting out the noise of next door’s lawn-mower. Mrs. Hollis automatically went to the oven to get Ted’s dinner out, but when the door opened it was Ron who stood there, not Ted.

  ‘Oh, Mrs. Hollis,’ he said in a queer voice.

  Ruth looked up sharply. Ron was as white as a sheet.

  ‘What is it?’ her mother said.

  ‘It’s Ted. He — he’s —’

  ‘He’s had an accident?’

  Ruth felt herself go cold all over. Her mother stood by the oven, tense, bright-eyed.

  Ron nodded.

  ‘How bad is it?’ How sharp, how cool her mother was, Ruth thought, amazed. Just as if she had expected it all the time. It was Ron who looked terrible. Ruth was shivering.

  ‘He’s not — not dead. I don’t know how bad. They’ve taken him to Burnt Wood casualty!’

  ‘Sit down,’ Mrs. Hollis said to Ron. ‘Here.’ She pulled a chair out for him, and took his crash-helmet. ‘The kettle’s boiling. I’ll make you a cup of tea, and some brandy in it.’ She sounded completely matter-of-fact, as if Ron had come to tell her that Ted would be late for tea. Ron buried his face in his hands and said, ‘I didn’t know it could happen like that, so quick. Oh God, it was awful.’ He was almost crying.

  Mrs. Hollis was very gentle with Ron, as if what had happened to Ted was of no importance. Ruth, enormously impressed by her mother’s self-control, could not stop crying. Nothing like this had ever touched her before: the evening remained fixed in her memory ever afterwards as the blackest thing that had ever happened. When her father came home he took her mother to the hospital, where she stayed all night and the next day as well. The hours passed like days. Ted was critically ill with concussion and several fractures. Ruth, like Ron, could not believe that the irrepressible Ted could possibly be extinguished so simply, in spite of the fact that the newspapers were full of tales of fatal accidents every day; she prayed stubbornly, as up till now she had only prayed for Fly-by-Night, and every morning woke to the feeling that she came to think of as ‘a dark cloud’. The house seemed quite different without Ted in it.

  Ruth thought that if Ted merely went on living her dark cloud would dissolve and life would, by comparison, become rosy and sweet once more. But life, of course — she realized rather bitterly a few weeks later — is not so simple. Ted was pronounced out of danger, but the consequences of the accident now spread a different sort of gloom through the house.

  Rut
h, washing up in the kitchen, heard her father say to her mother over his cup of tea, ‘It’s only when a thing like this happens that it comes home to me how much we’ve been counting on Ted’s money. It was all wrong, of course, but knowing his tenner a week was there was always a nice thought. It’s been nothing but worry since we saddled ourselves with this mortgage.’

  Ruth heard her mother say something about going out to work and her father replied, ‘That would mean giving up Elizabeth.’ There were a few more sentences she did not catch, and then she heard her father say, half-humorously, ‘Poor Ruthie will be selling papers to feed herself, let alone that darned pony of hers.’

  ‘You’d like to give up this house, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’d like to stop having to worry about money.’

  Ruth went on washing up, with a cold feel in the pit of her stomach. Fly-by-Night was so vulnerable, when her parents talked about money. Keeping him on the paper money was desperately hard as it was, and was going to be a lot harder when she started getting him shod. And next year he would need to be in hard condition for the Hunter Trials, which would mean more expensive food — not to mention the Pony Club subscription. Ruth knew that if she started thinking about all this, she would feel sick. It had happened before.

  Later on, before she went to bed, her father said to her, quite gently, ‘Ruth, this pony of yours . . .’

  ‘I pay for him all myself,’ Ruth said frantically. ‘I’ve never asked you for anything, not since the saddle!’

  Her father put down a little brown envelope on the table. It was addressed to him. Inside was a bill for three pounds, thirteen shillings and sixpence.

  ‘But he never even did anything!’ Ruth wept, incensed by the tactlessness of Mr. Richards’s timing in sending out his bill, as much as by the bill itself. ‘He only said I fussed!’

  ‘He came,’ her father said sadly. ‘That’s what they charge for, just coming. You don’t make a habit of this?’ he added, waving the bill.

  ‘Only once. And I shall pay it. It’s not for you. It’s mine. He addressed it wrong.’

  ‘I shall pay it,’ her father said firmly.

  ‘But you —’

  ‘Look, things may be difficult, but I’m not so hard up that I can’t pay this bill. Now stop crying. I’m not angry. But if this happens another time, I want you to tell me, not keep it secret.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Thank heaven, Ruth thought, that summer had come, and the field was bright with new grass. There was no more hay to buy, and she could save her money, get a hoard in for next winter. She wondered, now, if she was desperately selfish, to want this thing so badly? With all the family troubles?

  ‘But what difference would it make if you gave him up?’ Ron said very sensibly. ‘It wouldn’t pay off the mortgage, what you would get for him.’

  ‘No one would buy him, the way he is,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Things’ll come all right,’ Ron said optimistically. ‘They usually do. Ted’s coming along fine.’

  That was the main thing, after all, Ruth remembered. Ted was going to be in hospital for three months, the doctors said. Ron and Ruth went to visit him on the nights her parents didn’t go (on the motor bike, but slowly, in deference to Mrs. Hollis’s instruction). He had been put on to basket-making, to while away the time, and had been carried away with creative fervour, weaving baskets five feet high.

  ‘What are they for?’ Ruth asked, amazed.

  ‘Waste-paper baskets,’ Ted said happily.

  ‘But nobody’s got that much waste paper,’ said Ron. One evening, when Ruth was waiting for Ron to pick her up, a woman arrived at the door. Ruth, answering the bell, recognized her as Mrs. Challoner, the Child Care woman, and asked her in.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my calling at this time,’ the woman said to Ruth’s mother, ‘but something urgent has come up, and I’ve come to see if you can help me out. It’s only a short-term case, a child we think would be better away from its parents for a month or so. Needs a stable atmosphere, just to be accepted into a normal family, carry on at school, no fuss. The psychiatrist passed it on to me, and I wondered if you could possibly help.’

  Ron called at this moment, and Ruth left her parents discussing the situation with the woman in the living-room, and went out into the kitchen with Ron. She repeated what she had heard to Ron, and Ron said, ‘It’ll get a stable atmosphere here all right, if you’ve got anything to do with it.’

  Ruth smiled. ‘Of course, Ted’s room’s empty now, so I expect Mum will agree.’

  They went to the hospital and told Ted that his bed was being taken over. ‘You’ll be out in the garage when you come home,’ Ron told him. ‘Better start weaving yourself a bed.’

  ‘They’re out of cane,’ Ted said sadly. ‘The old girl says I’ve used up six months’ stock. I’ve sounded her out about having the cylinder head in here so that I can polish the parts — but she wasn’t very keen. She’s starting me on tapestry tomorrow.’

  ‘Very nice, my boy, very nice. Knitting’s next on the list, after tapestry. And when you’ve used up six months’ stock of wool there are a few bales of crochet cotton down in the storeroom.’

  When Ruth got home she found her parents watching television.

  ‘Are we having that child?’ she asked curiously.

  Her mother nodded. ‘Yes. It’s only for a month or two. Mrs. Challoner is bringing me all the details tomorrow morning, and says she’ll deliver the child in the afternoon. How’s Ted, by the way?’

  ‘He’s doing tapestry.’

  This evoked some amusement, and Mrs. Hollis said she would take him socks to darn the following evening. ‘You see that this new child has a pleasant evening tomorrow, Ruth. It’s a pity we’ve got to go out the first night, but the sister wants to speak to us. I told Mrs. Challoner how we’re fixed, but she seems to think it will work out all right. So we’ll give it a trial.’

  Ruth went home from school the following evening, curious, and a little nervous. It was a warm evening. The children were playing in the road with tricycles and skipping-ropes, and soon the open-plan fronts would whirr to the noise of lawn-mowers. She thought of Ted, imprisoned in his bed for the sake of a moment’s over-impetuosity on the motor bike, and was sorry for him. ‘He should have done it in November, if he was going to do it at all,’ she thought. She went in through the kitchen door.

  ‘Oh, Ruth,’ her mother said. There was a boy sitting at the table, reading a newspaper. ‘This is Peter, Ruth, who’s going to stay for a bit.’

  It was Peter McNair.

  CHAPTER IX

  RUTH WATCHES TELEVISION

  RUTH WAS SO shattered by the unexpectedness of the situation that she could not speak. She opened her mouth, and no words came out. Peter looked up and said, ‘Oh hullo,’ without much interest, and Mrs. Hollis said, ‘I suppose you two know each other, if you’re at the same school? By sight, at any rate.’ ‘Yes,’ Peter said.

  Ruth shut her mouth, as it would not work, and dropped her satchel on the floor.

  Mrs. Hollis said to Peter, ‘Do you like liver and bacon?’ and Peter replied, ‘Yes, I don’t mind it.’

  ‘Pick up your satchel, Ruth,’ Mrs. Hollis said. ‘Are you sickening for something? You look blotchy.’

  ‘No,’ Ruth said dimly. She groped for her satchel, and fled out of the kitchen. She ran upstairs, and locked herself in the lavatory. She was shaking all over, and felt an insane desire to laugh out loud. In her satchel she had a book on butterflies. ‘But he’s downstairs! Here to stay! Him! Of all the people in the world . . .’

  ‘Ruth, are you being sick or something?’ her mother asked outside the door.

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  ‘Well, before you come down, just make up Ted’s bed, will you? I don’t seem to have got anything done today, and the dinner’s cooking now. I’ve put the sheets out.’

  Ruth did as she was told. Ted’s room was impersonal without Ted’s untidiness stamping it. Ru
th spread the sheets and felt herself coming back to earth, warm, elated. The shock dissolved into a feeling of utter satisfaction at the ways of the world. By the time she was smoothing the quilt the satisfaction had given way to a feeling of extreme curiosity as to why Peter McNair had come into the Child Care Department, and why he was better parted from his parents. As far as she knew, he did not have a mother. But from what she had last seen of his father it did not seem unreasonable to suppose that Peter would be happier away from him. Who had interceded for him? she wondered. She had noticed that he had been away from school for the last three days, but it had never entered her wildest dreams that he could be the urgent case Mrs. Challoner had been talking about.

  She went downstairs slowly, back into the kitchen. Elizabeth was laying the table with a lot of clatter; the bacon was spluttering noisily under the grill, and Peter stood staring out of the window with his hands in his pockets. Fly-by-Night was out of sight in the field, but Peter showed no interest in the hoof-marked back garden. Always a reserved boy, it occurred to Ruth that, during the time she had known him, he had got gradually more and more withdrawn. Because he rarely showed any emotions, it did not mean, she realized, that he did not feel any, and what was happening to him now could scarcely be less than a personal crisis in his life; yet he did not look upset. He had the slightly watchful expression in his eyes that Ruth now knew was his normal expression; his whole attitude was one of observing, recording, and passing no opinion. But Ruth saw now that it was not because he had no opinions to pass. For the first time it occurred to her that, under his stocky, unrevealing shell, he was very much aware, and as sensitive to hurt as any more normally extroverted child, if not more so. And really, when it came to the subject of problems to solve, he had more troubles by far than she had. It was more to the point now that she should try to make things come right for Peter than that he should make things come right for her. This change of outlook came to Ruth in the moment that it took her mother to pull the grill-pan out from under the grill, and say, ‘Ruth, make the tea.’