“You won’t get me!” yelled Derek into the face of the skeleton, if you could call it a face. “This isn’t musical chairs. This is life and death, and I’m not afraid. I’m a Mellett, my father is a director of fourteen companies. My mother is the film star Marlene Carson. We’re used to winning. We are on the up and up. We belong to the ruling class!”
But his voice was carried away by the moaning wind and the skeleton went on grinning unperturbed. Derek’s confidence started to ebb then, it was as though all his strength was going, all his beliefs, all his pride.
“Go away,” he hissed. “I’m a prefect. Next year I’ll be head boy. My grandmother was related to the Queen. My grandfather won the VC in 1918. You can’t touch me. You wouldn’t dare.”
But he knew it wasn’t true. The skeleton was not interested in his relations. He was out to get him. Derek could stand waiting no longer.
“I’ll get you!” he screamed. “I’ll teach you a lesson, you swine, I’ll beat the daylights out of you. I’ll break your arms, I’ll kick your guts out.” And then he leapt, his arms outstretched, his hands reaching for the grinning skull; but his arms met nothing, and the hoofs went on across the moors, and he heard a laugh which echoed and re-echoed. Then there was nothing but the dry grass, the pale moonlight, the moaning wind, and he was drifting away and could not fight any more.
He tried to say, “I’m a Mellett. My father is a director of fourteen companies, my mother…” but the words wouldn’t come. Instead the wind moaned, “Pride comes before a fall.” And the hills echoed it, and without another word, Derek passed out.
Felicity was still galloping. She could see a light now, which meant safety, but she was still too frightened to think properly and over everything else lay the fearsome catastrophe of Lucy. What had happened to her? Where was she? Felicity blamed herself. If only I had stayed with her. If only, if only… The words went on ringing in her head as she drew rein by a small farmhouse. Her tears were coming unasked in an unstoppable flood.
She tied Socrates to a gate. His head hung low, his sides were drenched in sweat. He suddenly looked old and too tired to take any interest in anything any more.
She ran to the house and knocked on a low wooden door, crying at the same time, “Is anyone at home? Please open up. Be quick, please be quick.”
“What is it?” asked an old woman, opening the door a crack and peering out as though she expected the Devil himself.
“I need help – the police, anyone,” cried Felicity.
“You’ve been up on them hills, haven’t you?” asked the old lady after a short, agonising pause. “Didn’t anyone tell you that’s not a place to go of a night on account of the old squire’s son?”
Felicity shook her head. She felt like screaming. Everything was taking far too long.
“I’ve lost my two brothers and my little sister, Lucy, and she’s only seven. Can I telephone? Please, I must be quick.” She could feel panic running through her in sharp stabs of pain, and her teeth started to chatter as though they didn’t belong to her any more, and that made her remember the skeleton’s teeth.
But the old lady was opening the door now, calling over her shoulder at the same time. “George, George! Here’s a young lady who’s lost her brothers and little sister up on the pike.”
Felicity could see the telephone on a table in a small, low-ceilinged room, and it was like a miracle.
She rushed inside and picked it up. Another three seconds and she was saying, “Daddy, is that you?” thanking God that she had remembered the number.
“We’ve met a ghost,” she shrieked through her chattering teeth. “I got away, but I lost the others. I don’t know where they are. They may be dead or something. I don’t know, I don’t know.”
It was like someone else talking, and all the time her tears were falling like rain on a pad of paper which said “Messages” in red at the top.
“What are you talking about?” Mr Mellett shouted down the line. “I thought you were at a show. Who is lost?”
“Them. The others,” whispered Felicity as the room spun round and round. “I’m in a farmhouse. We met a ghost.”
“There’s no such thing,” answered Mr Mellett. “Speak up. Where’s Derek?”
But Felicity had fainted.
George was putting rugs and a flask of tea into a Land Rover. He was old and slow.
“He caused enough trouble when he was alive, but he’s fifty times worse dead,” he said.
“The girl’s fainted. I’ve given her father directions,” replied his wife. “Hurry, George. The little girl is only seven. They can die of fright at that age.”
“I don’t know what parents are coming to, letting little girls ride on the moors at night,” grumbled George.
“Here they are now!” exclaimed his wife, as a car pulled up and Mr and Mrs Mellett stepped out of their Mercedes.
“Where is Felicity? Has she come to?” cried Mrs Mellett, smelling of perfume and wearing a suede coat.
“In there. I will take you inside. You must excuse the state of the house,” replied the old woman, wiping her hands on her apron.
“I shall come with you,” Mr Mellett told George, climbing into the Land Rover. “I expect they are all right. We’re a tough lot, Tough as old leather.”
He was wearing suede shoes and a suit.
“I’ve known little girls die of fright, like baby rabbits,” George replied gloomily, starting the engine.
They found Lucy first, small and huddled like a hurt animal in the beam of the headlights. She was screaming. She had been screaming for a long time and her voice was hoarse and her eyes were not focusing properly. She stopped screaming when she saw them and started to shout “I want Mummy, I want Mummy” over and over again.
“It’s all right, darling,” said George, wrapping her in a rug. “We’re taking you to Mummy.”
He propped her up on the seat at the back of the Land Rover where she sat staring at the canvas sides of the vehicle without seeing them, and drove on.
Simon was walking in a circle, concussed. He seemed to be concentrating very hard. He shook George by the hand and said, “I expect to win the jumping,” in an aggressive voice; then he started to clap loudly and to shout, “Well done, Derek, well done…”
They sat him opposite Lucy, whom he ignored, and drove on.
Derek was lying like someone dead, his face was ashen in the moonlight, and for one second Mr Mellett’s heart gave an uncomfortable leap and he thought, he’s dead. But George knew better. “He’s in a coma, or unconscious,” he said. “Let’s lift him into the Land Rover – gently does it.”
“Well, that’s the lot,” said Mr Mellett, grim-faced. “Now tell me about the maniac who is responsible and I’ll have the police after him. I’ll have him arrested and put inside, if it’s the last thing I do. I know the local magistrate here, and the chief constable. I’ll leave no stone unturned. I’ve got influence, you understand.”
“There’s some influence won’t influence,” said George, darkly. “And one of them is ghosts.”
Later, sitting in front of a turf fire, George told Mr and Mrs Mellett and Felicity, who had recovered enough to listen, about the squire’s son. All the ponies had been found by this time. Lucy, Simon and Derek were in bed in various parts of the house, and the doctor had been called.
Mr and Mrs Mellett sipped ginger wine, and the fire cast strange shadows on the old walls.
“It’s the old squire’s son, and it’s a sad tale,” said George, lighting his pipe. “As sad as any you read in the newspapers these days. He lived where you live now, what’s called Hillsbottom Farm nowadays, though most people round here call it Hellsbottom. It was a big place in the old days and old squire Brownly lived there with his slip of a wife and their six sons, but it was the eldest, young Rufus, who ruled the roost. There wasn’t anyone that wasn’t afraid of him, except, some said, the squire. He was a terrible lad by all accounts. He beat and kicked the farm lads, and
twice he galloped a horse to death. Not for any need, you understand, just for the fun of it. He set fire to the barn one year after a tiff with his father and burnt all the hay put by for the winter.”
“That was in my mother’s time,” interrupted the old lady. “She was kitchenmaid at the house, and scared to death of young Rufus.”
“But the squire was decent enough,” continued George, “and, with time, he came to hate Rufus. He used to shout at him, ‘It’s your arrogance I can’t stand. Pride comes before a fall. Why won’t you learn that, you fool?’ ‘What fall?’ Rufus would shout. ‘I’m not going to fall.’
“Anyway, it ended in a quarrel. Some say the old squire had had too much to drink and didn’t know what he was saying,” continued George. “But I think he was sensible enough, though they say he was as mad as an old bull and had a gun in his hand.”
“He turned him out,” said the old lady, her voice cracking.
“He told him to get out and never come back,” continued George, “and young Rufus took the best horse in the stable, his father’s pride and joy. He rode out on yon pike and the snow was coming down in barrowloads, and the wind was howling like a pack of wolves.”
“And he never came back,” said Felicity.
“They thought he would but he never did. The squire rode up to look for him, and to this day no one knows what happened. Some say there was a shot, some say the squire shot him, but no one knows for sure,” continued George, as though Felicity had never spoken.
“And they never found a body, nothing to point to where he went,” said the old lady, “but they say he still rides up there on his father’s horse.”
“The house was burnt down, some said it was done out of spite, some said Rufus did it,” said George, prodding the glowing turf.
Pride comes before a fall, thought Felicity. He was proud, and so were we. But we are still alive…
“I shall sell the farm,” said Mr Mellett. “I only bought it as an investment. We’ll go back to Berkshire in the morning.”
Felicity thought, dear, safe, beautiful Berkshire. Poor Rufus, perhaps he meant to go back, to repent and say he was sorry. Instead he died there up on the pike.
“We saw him! He was there this evening,” she said slowly, and she remembered her prayers and how they were answered. We’ve got a second chance, she thought. We can try to be nicer.
The old lady had risen and was opening the door for the doctor.
Felicity looked at her father. He seemed much smaller, crouched over the turf fire. “You will have to believe in ghosts now,” she said.
Downright Cruelty
Christine Pullein-Thompson
“He’s tethered out there on the common, all weathers,” said Mrs Beazley, enormous in flowered apron and white sandals. “And he’s stretching his poor neck for every bite. He’s not a young pony either, you can see that. Mr Smith’s talking about reporting them to the RSPCA.”
“Them” were the Colchesters, a new family who had come to live in the village.
It was late breakfast time and nearly the whole of the Leadbetter family were in the beamed farmhouse kitchen, leaning against the Aga with mugs in their hands.
“We’ll have to see them, won’t we?” asked Sally, who was ten with blue eyes. “We’ll have to tell them they’re cruel.”
“But nicely,” said Mummy.
“I don’t see how we can be nice, because cruelty isn’t nice,” said Eddie. “So why should we be nice? I vote we go and give them hell.”
“I suggest you leave them alone; it’s their business, not ours, and their pony has nothing to do with us,” said Dad.
“A crowd of us can go,” continued Eddie, as though Dad had never spoken. “I’ll get some of my friends for back-up support.”
“And it is our business, Dad,” said Sally. “Because we love horses, that’s why.”
“It’s downright cruelty, that’s what it is,” said Mrs Beazley firmly, picking up a dustpan and brush. “All weathers with nothing but mud to stand on, it shouldn’t be allowed.”
“Leave them alone,” said Dad, putting on his Wellington boots. “That’s my advice. Don’t interfere.”
“You mean turn a blind eye,” answered Eddie. “It’s like saying nothing when your neighbour is battering his children to death. We all have a duty, Dad. And if that poor old pony is being ill-treated, we must do something. After all, we do know about ponies.”
Sally thought that was like Eddie; everything was cut and dried with him, black and white, as though grey did not exist. “I think we should investigate,” she said.
They checked their own ponies, who were still out, before Eddie went to the telephone and rang his friends. Sally could hear him talking, sounding important. “There’s this pony tethered on the common standing on bare mud, never moved,” he said. “I want us to go and see his owners, will you come and back me up? … Yes, well I suppose Sally will have to come too. You know how she is… Okay, seven o’clock then…”
He put down the receiver. “We’re going this evening; then we’ll be able to talk to Mr Colchester,” he said.
“Why not Mrs?” asked Sally.
“Better to talk to the man,” Eddie replied grandly.
Evening seemed a long time coming. It was September and the leaves were changing colour on the trees, the ponies shedding their summer coats, the loft stacked high with hay.
Eddie’s friends wore leather jackets and smelt of motorbike oil. “Well, let’s get this little business settled then,” the largest said.
The Colchester children were talking to the pony when they reached the common; he was dark brown with a small star and about twelve hands high.
“What’s he called then?” asked Eddie.
“Star,” said the girl, who looked about eight.
“We want to see your dad,” Eddie said next.
“He’s not in yet,” said the boy. “Can I take a message?”
“We’ll wait… but it’s about Star actually,” Eddie said. “There have been some complaints.”
“Yes, we know. He got loose yesterday but he won’t get loose again,” the girl said. “He slipped his strap. Ben didn’t do it up tight enough.”
“It’s not that,” said Eddie.
“What is it, then?” asked the boy.
“We’ll wait for your dad,” said Eddie.
“Yes, we will,” agreed one of Eddie’s friends.
“I’ll just get Star some water,” said the girl nervously. “I won’t be a minute.”
As though we need her around, thought Eddie, while Sally thought of her own pony, alone in five acres, rolling when he liked, standing under the big sycamore or in the shelter when it was hot.
She started to pat Star, saying, “He’s quite fat, actually.”
“We know he needs shoeing,” said the boy, apologetically. “Being new we had a job to find a blacksmith, but he’s coming next week; it’s all fixed up.”
And suddenly Sally felt doubtful for the first time. “It’s nothing to do with his shoes, son,” said Eddie, sounding like Dad. “We all have blacksmith problems.”
“Have you got many horses then?” asked Ben.
“Twelve. We breed Welsh cobs,” said Eddie.
“How lovely,” said the girl, holding a bucket of water up to Star. “So you must have acres of land. I wish we had.”
“Here’s Dad,” said the boy as a car approached, which they followed into an untidy yard full of upturned wheelbarrows and old plastic bags.
Mr Colchester was a big man in a suit, with a striped shirt underneath.
“They’ve come to see us about Star, Dad,” Ben said.
“What now? I’m in a hurry. And he isn’t free, you can’t ride him,” he said, looking at Sally. “Sorry.”
“We’ve got twelve horses of our own,” Eddie replied icily. “So we don’t need to borrow yours.”
“That’s all right then.” Mr Colchester was going towards the house now.
�
�It’s about the way you look after your pony, sir,” called Eddie. “The village doesn’t like it; they don’t think he should stand on mud, chained in all weathers, straining for every mouthful of grass. Everybody’s fed up with it, actually. Why don’t you move him regularly, or buy him a longer chain if you’re too lazy to move him to a new patch? It’s bad enough being tethered, without being starved as well.”
Sally thought, He’s going too far, there’s no need to be rude.
Mr Colchester seemed to be growing bigger and for an awful moment Sally thought he was about to pick up Eddie by the collar and fling him into the road. Then he seemed to explode.
“My wife is an AI; she’s trained. She has probably forgotten more about horses than you’ll ever learn. Star is tethered out here because he gets laminitis; and if he has hay or is in the stable he gets asthma. He has problems, that’s why we have him, because no one else will. Have you ever seen a pony with laminitis? Do you know how painful it is? Would you like to talk to my wife? We’re building him a shelter in the yard, only it isn’t ready yet. Do you want to know anything else…?”
“No,” said Eddie suddenly scarlet. “Nothing. You’ve made your point.”
“Clear off then,” shouted Mr Colchester. “Before I do something I may regret later, and next time you go accusing someone of cruelty get your facts right first.”
“Yes,” said Eddie.
“You weren’t to know,” said the boy.
“It isn’t their fault, Dad. There’s no need to shout,” cried the girl after his retreating figure.
And turning for home Sally thought, They’re so nice. We should have talked to them first; now they will hate us for ever. We should never have believed Mrs Beazley.
The Pullein-Thompson Treasury of Horse and Pony Stories Page 8
