“Otherwise we’ve no room for new cases,” Pete said.
As days passed by, Smoky grew fatter and calmer, and never failed to welcome the children with a whinny. They rode him down the lanes and round and round the wild patch in the Wrights’ garden, and without jumps, whips or bits to frighten him, he behaved beautifully.
Watching them with Smoky one afternoon, Debbie said, “You’ve done so well. I can’t thank you enough, but now it’s time we looked for an expert to re-school him properly.”
Jason turned on his heel and walked away. Jane led Smoky back to his stable and put her arms round his neck.
“I know you’re going to miss him,” Debbie said, “but we have to put our animals’ interests first.”
Jane went home, prepared tea for her mother and herself and then ran next door again and found Jason moodily slumped in front of the television set.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said.
“What?”
“We ask the riding school for advice tomorrow.”
“We can’t take Smoky down the main road,” snapped Jason without looking round. “And he needs shoes.”
“We can bike there with the snaps Mum took of him.”
“So?”
“See if they can help.”
“He’s not ours to sell.”
“Who said sell? He’s ours if we want him, if our parents agree.”
“Oh, all right,” agreed Jason, who wanted to watch his television programme in peace. “A mad idea, but I’ll come.”
It was a five-mile bike ride and when they arrived the yard was so smart they hardly dared enter. At last a pupil saw them at the gate and asked what they wanted.
“To see Christina Philby-Jones,” said Jane, who had got the owner’s name from a schoolfriend who rode there.
“Come in,” said the pupil. “My name’s Ottoline.”
“We’re Jason and Jane.”
At the tack room door, Ottoline offered them a can of Coke to drink and rang a bell. Then Christina Philby-Jones sauntered across the yard. Tall, in tight fitting cream breeches and black rubber boots, her fair hair bobbed, her eyes green-grey like the sea, she was everything Jane wanted to be.
“What can I do for you?” she asked. “Do you want to book lessons? The appointment book, please, Ottoline.”
“No, no, look!” Jane pushed the snapshots into her hands.
“A half starved pony.” Christina said, screwing her eyes up against the sun. “Not yours?”
“No. You tell her, Jane," said Jason.
“Well,” she began, and then suddenly the whole story poured out.
“Hang on,” Christina said, when Jane had finished. “Let’s look at those photos again. What do you think?” she said, passing them to Ottoline.
“Could be Bilberry,” Ottoline said. “Poor pony, he was such a super four-year-old! I heard he had changed homes.”
“Could be super again,” said Christina. She looked hard at Jane and Jason. “He came here to be backed and broken. He’s New Forest with just a touch of Arab… You look surprised. It’s not such a coincidence because we are the only people that break-in ponies for miles around. And we don’t charge the earth because it gives our working pupils experience.”
“We don’t want to lose him,” Jane said.
“He trusts us,” Jason added. “We’re riding him in a hackamore because he’s frightened of a bit.”
“That’s fine,” Christina said, “so long as it’s a temporary measure. Hackamores press on the nose and can interfere with the breathing in fast work – cross-country, that sort of thing. Listen, we could make use of a pony like that in the school.”
“We don’t want to lose him,” repeated Jane, her mind running on a single track.
“I thought we might come to some sort of arrangement,” continued Christina. “Suppose we give you both lessons, an hour each a week in term-time, more during the holidays, in exchange for the use of Smoky? And we’ll re-school him for you. I’ve got a brilliant girl called Patience starting here soon – a wonderful name, isn’t it? – and Smoky would be just the job for her. You see, I like my pupils to learn to ride and train all sorts and, from what you say, Bilberry – sorry, Smoky – is an interesting case. I shall put him in an unjointed rubber snaffle. Can you bring him over?”
“We’re not allowed to ride on the main road,” said Jason.
“Quite right,” said Christina. “Shall I pop over to see him then?”
The Jays said. “Yes, of course,” and that they must talk to Debbie and Pete, and Christina said the sanctuary people were wonderful but not exactly equitation experts. Then she took Jason’s address and shook the children’s hands as though they were grown-up. “I’ll phone tonight,” she finished. “Take great care biking back.”
Heading homewards, the children suddenly realised at the same moment that a dream was coming true.
“Lessons!” shrieked Jane. “We shall learn properly, at such a posh place, too.”
“It’s unbelievable!” Jason shouted against the wind and the sound of the cars racing past them. “But something’s sure to go wrong.”
But it didn’t because Christina wanted to help the children, who reminded her of own struggles to learn to ride, and Smoky because she remembered him as a very sweet pony with great potential, and she hated to see a good pony ruined.
The next evening at a meeting between Christina, Debbie, Pete, the Wrights, the Cooks and the Jays, Christina’s offer was accepted. Three days later the kind cattle-truck driver returned and this time Smoky was led up the ramp by Jason.
“To go to school with us,” Jane said.
Patience, who had freckles and nut-brown hair in a single plait down her back, lunged Smoky in the covered school, then rode him, first in the hackamore, later in the rubber snaffle, and whenever he put his head too high or started plunging, she circled him or rode serpentines.
Watching from the gallery the children could see he was relaxing more each day, partly, they thought, because he had returned to a place where he had been well-treated and was going back over lessons he had already learned there. Soon they rode him in the school, too, and Patience took him over poles on the ground and then cavaletti, always on a loose rein, and gradually he began to enjoy jumping again.
So they all learned together, and a year later Jane and Jason each won third prize on their re-schooled Smoky, at a local show; one in a jumping class and the other in a handy-pony competition.
When he was fifteen Jason shot up to 170 centimetres and grew out of Smoky, but Jane never grew taller than 165 centimetres. Jason stopped riding and later became an airline pilot. Jane trained as a landscape gardener and married a fruit farmer called Crispin. And when Smoky was a little old for riding-school work he came to live with Jane and Crispin and Crispin’s horse, George, and when he was twenty he helped teach their daughter, Josie, to ride. And so he ended his days happily in a paddock near their house, cherished by Jane, and, if he wanted extra attention, he would hang his head over the timber fence to be petted by Crispin’s pick-your-own customers.
Too Much Trouble
Christine Pullein-Thompson
We all cried when we sold Gypsy to the Strongs, Fiona most of all. They seemed such a nice family: three children and a rich dad, and they had promised to give her a good home.
“When you sell her we want first refusal. We don’t want her to go anywhere else,” said Fiona seriously. “We want her back.”
“That’s all right, dear, you’ll have her back, not to worry, darling,” said Mr Strong, large and affable.
“You’ll buy her a friend, won’t you?” insisted Fiona. “Because ponies are herd animals and shouldn’t be kept alone.”
And I remember I thought, Fiona’s got one hell of a cheek!
“We’ll buy another pony and a hunter for me, that’s a promise,” said Mr Strong.
When Gypsy finally went we felt bereaved. Fiona cried for hours. It was no good telling her that
her feet were nearly on the ground when she rode Gypsy. It was no good explaining that Gypsy would have hated hanging about doing nothing. Fiona had won dozens and dozens of rosettes on Gypsy and she wasn’t winning any on her new pony, Holly.
It was nearly a year later that we decided to visit Gypsy. We were going that way to see Aunt Betty and it was Mum’s idea. We filled our pockets with bits of carrot and bread and Fiona said that we must stop to buy Gypsy some Polos, because she loved them more than anything else.
The Strongs’ house was called The Chestnuts and was new pretending to be old. It had a three-car garage and a swimming pool, and a paddock of five acres and three new loose boxes. We made straight for the paddock. Fiona was leading and already calling, “Gypsy, Gypsy. Come up, Gypsy.”
Everything was immaculate, without a weed to be seen. The paddock was immaculate, too, with decorative trees planted and newly-mown grass, but there was no Gypsy in it.
“She’s not there. She’s gone,” shrieked Fiona, with tears streaming down her face.
“There must be an explanation,” said Mum, sounding worried. We hurried to the house and Mum pushed a bell which went ding-dong and in seconds Mrs Strong appeared, looking like a model.
“We dropped in, because we thought we might see Gypsy,” Mum said.
“Oh yes, Gypsy. Well, she isn’t here any more. She was too much trouble. She had trouble with her feet, we had to have the vet. We didn’t know ponies were so much trouble. Then she got out on to the lawn and ruined it.”
“She was lonely. I told you she needed a friend,”cried Fiona. “Would you like to live in solitary confinement, Mrs Strong?”
“She was dangerous. She threw the children off. And you are a very rude little girl,” replied Mrs Strong, starting to close the door.
“Dangerous?” cried Fiona in disbelief.
“Where did she go?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you. My husband dealt with it,” replied Mrs Strong before shutting the door with a bang.
I don’t think Aunt Betty enjoyed our visit. None of us felt like eating and Fiona was crying all the time.
When we reached home Mum rang Mr Strong. “He says Gypsy threw off the kids and was a load of trouble. He says she made the whole place smell of horse and there was hay everywhere. They sent her to a sale three months ago,” said Mum when she had put down the receiver.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Ring everyone we know,” cried Fiona, and did all evening.
“I think she’s gone for dog food,” Fiona said later.
“I think she’s tethered somewhere with nothing to eat, with no water and flies everywhere, which is probably worse,” I said.
“I’ll try to get catalogues of all the sales held recently. We may be able to trace her. Don’t give up hope,” Mum said.
Later Dad suggested that we advertised for Gypsy. So we wrote out an advertisement which went like this: WANTED: NEWS OF SMALL BAY PONY CALLED GYPSY SOLD IN JANUARY, REWARD OFFERED and we put our telephone number and address underneath. We sent it to three local papers and a riding magazine and waited – and waited – Fiona by the telephone for hours on end, while I waited in the road for the post morning and afternoon. Mum said we were going mad. Dad said that we had everything out of proportion. “There are people starving to death in Africa and you fuss like this over a pony,” he complained.
“But we know her. We’ve never met the people starving in Africa,” replied Fiona. “There is a difference, Dad.”
Then at last, after a week had passed, the telephone did ring. Fiona was upstairs so I got to it first and a childish voice said: “I think I know where Gypsy is. I ride her every Saturday. She’s at a riding school. She’s lovely.”
“A riding school? Which one?” I cried.
She told me the address of the Littlebrook Riding School. “And it’s all right. I don’t want any reward,” she added before putting down her receiver.
We were all overjoyed until we started to imagine the riding school.
“I bet she works all day long and is half starved,” Fiona said.
“With a saddle pressing on her withers,” I added.
“She’s probably like a toast rack. Oh, I do hate people,” cried Fiona.
The riding school was fifty miles away, but we went there the very next day. We filled our pockets with oats and carrots and bits of bread again, and Mum drove because Dad was working.
“If it’s a terrible place we’ll have to bring her home straight away. We couldn’t leave her there. Have you got your cheque book with you, Mum?” Fiona asked.
“Bring her home fifty miles?” asked Mum.
“Yes, I can ride her,” said Fiona defiantly.
“But you are too big.”
“I’ll lead her then,” said Fiona.
As we drew near the riding school, we all felt on edge. I was biting my nails to pieces and Fiona had screwed herself up into a tight ball of nerves.
“I have got my cheque book, but they may not want to sell her to us and we can’t make them,” Mum said, as though preparing us for a catastrophe.
“We’ll steal her then, or have them prosecuted,” replied Fiona.
“Now you’re being silly,” snapped Mum.
The riding school had a magnificent yard with loose boxes on three sides. Mum led the way to a door with OFFICE on it.
“We are looking for a small pony called Gypsy. She used to be ours,” she said to the proprietor, who was slim and dark-haired.
“Oh, she’s here all right. Was she stolen or something? We bought her at a sale in January in good faith,” she said.
“She taught us to ride,” said Fiona, suddenly meek and awed, I thought, by the size and poshness of our surroundings.
“We just want to see her, that’s all,” I said.
“Well, she’s over here. Follow me,” said the proprietor, whom we later learned was called Sally Timpson. “She’s a lovely little pony, isn’t she? I knew as soon as I saw her that she was all right. And she’s a real character. She had been mismanaged, that’s all. She’d had laminitis and was far too fat even though it was January.”
And then we saw Gypsy being led out of a loose box, her eyes shining, her bay coat glistening with good health.
“She’s a great favourite here,” said Sally Timpson. “You don’t want to buy her back, do you? I would hate to lose her, I really would.”
“No, we just wanted to see that she was all right, and she is, isn’t she?” asked Mum, smiling at Fiona and me.
“Even better than when she was with us,” I said.
“But how did you know she was here?” asked Sally Timpson.
I told her about the advertisement and then about the girl who had telephoned.
“Oh, that would be Emily Lester. She brings Gypsy Polos every Saturday,” said Sally Timpson, laughing.
“Oh yes, she loves Polos,” cried Fiona.
“We are going to give Emily a reward, though she said she didn’t want one. What would she like?” asked Mum.
Sally Timpson said that Emily would like a big book on riding, full of coloured illustrations. “She’s only seven and mad about horses. A real sweetie,” she said.
“So you see there are happy endings sometimes,” Mum said as we left. “Life isn’t all bad homes and lonely ponies.”
“I would like to meet Emily. I would like to thank her myself,” Fiona said. “And I would like to pay her back for all the Polos she’s bought Gypsy.”
“I hate the Strongs, because if Sally Timpson hadn’t been at the sale and hadn’t bought Gypsy, anything could have happened,” I said. “She could have been dead by now or ruined for life. And they did make some promises, didn’t they?”
“I know one thing, if we ever have to sell a pony again, I’ll be much more careful. I’ll get references and written assurances. I’ll never trust anyone again,” said Mum, driving towards home.
The Ponies Must Go
Diana Pullein-Tho
mpson
Megan Jones’s dad had worked in the mines since his teens, like his father before him who had trained the pit’s ponies. As long as Megan could remember, he had grumbled about the dirt, the back-breaking labour and the dust which might damage his lungs. But when the pit closed and Mr Jones was out of a job he became like an angry dog, snarling at everyone. Now that he had all the time in the world, he simply didn’t know what to do with himself, and, although he had been paid a large sum of money to compensate him for his dismissal, he was afraid to spend it. Other retired miners took their wives, and maybe children, for a holiday in Spain or the Greek islands or even to the United States of America, but not Dylan Jones.
When he was a miner he had spent many of his spare hours helping Megan with Snowman and Romilly, plaiting their manes before shows, using the horse trailer he hired to pull behind his car so that Megan, who was an only child, should not ride along busy roads. And he had never tired of telling her the stories his father had told him about the gallant little ponies which had worked so hard pulling trucks of coal along the underground railway.
Megan’s mother said the closing of the mine had been too sudden. Everyone had thought the government would save it and when it didn’t the shock had been too much for her husband. “Give him time and he’ll be his old self again.”
But Mr Jones, afraid he might never find another job, could only see poverty ahead and one evening, after he had spent a useless hour at the Job Centre, he told Megan the ponies must go. “We’ve all got to tighten our belts,” he said, “and I can’t go on paying for their shoes, their vet’s bills and their winter fodder.”
“Both?” she asked in a small, stricken voice.
“Yes, both, before the autumn.”
Megan didn’t cry. At thirteen and a half, she thought she was too old for tears. Instead she went up over the hill to the rough fields, which the Jones’s had rented from the Coal Board. She sat on an upturned bucket and looked sadly across to the area her dad had fenced off and rolled for a schooling ring and at the jumps he had made for her, and at the shelter and shed he had built for the ponies and their tack and fodder. Although these things had meant a great deal to Megan, she now felt her father had wasted his time. Poor Dad. Would anyone else want them now? Or would the weeds grow rank and tall, and the wood rot, and the place become tumbledown. But, most of all, her heart cried out for the ponies. She imagined the emptiness of her life when they had gone and the anxiety she would feel about their new homes.
The Pullein-Thompson Treasury of Horse and Pony Stories Page 12
