The Wish Pony

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘I should go home,’ I said but fell into step with them.

  Magda looked at me. ‘You could send a message from Bailey’s place.’

  ‘Send a message? You mean ring her?’

  ‘Yes, of course – sorry, so last century. Bailey is fixing up a paperback computer for me.’

  ‘Paperback?’

  ‘She means a notebook. It’s a notebook computer, Magda. Think of making notes, not reading.’

  ‘Ah, yes, notepad. Well, whatever it is, Bailey is fixing it and I’ll then be very much this century. You can phone your mother and tell her I’ll bring you home. It isn’t far. We’ll have got there and rung her well before she’s even thought of worrying.’

  ‘Okay. If you’re sure I’m not a nuisance.’

  ‘Not to me,’ Magda shrugged.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Bailey said, as if it was entirely natural that I’d be walking home with him.

  My feet did a little skip-walk all of their own accord. I was walking home with Bailey Ferguson. I didn’t like him. Not the way every girl liked Curtis Shaw, Maddie Shaw’s big brother who was so hot he sizzled. But I’d always been curious about Bailey. Being one of the Geeketeers never bothered him. He always seemed happy. He was equally happy volunteering the answers for tricky maths or science questions as he was playing soccer – not something he could do at all. He didn’t seem to mind when he missed the ball and everyone laughed, or when his glasses fell off and he had to get down on his hands and knees and feel for them in the overgrown grass. He seemed to move around in a happy bubble. And I wanted to know how he did it.

  Bailey’s mum was there, sitting on the floor of the lounge room in the dark. The television wasn’t even on. I would have expected Bailey’s mum – maker of the edible Christmas tree and the Halloween treats – to be the kind of mother who would have whipped up a batch of muffins or anzac biscuits at the first sign of a visitor. But she just looked up, smiled the smallest smile that hardly lifted the sides of her mouth and stayed on the floor. She seemed to be listening to some music the rest of us couldn’t hear. Bailey went right up to her and put his arms around her, awkwardly because of the way she was sitting.

  ‘How are you, Mu … Debbie? How has today been?’

  Bailey’s mum just nodded and whispered something I didn’t hear.

  ‘That’s good. I’m pleased. Magda’s here because I’m helping her with her laptop and my friend Ruby from school is here too. She’s watching. She needs to ring her mother, okay? Just to tell her where she is. Magda lives right across the road from them, isn’t that amazing, Mum? I mean, Debbie?’

  Bailey’s mum looked up again and at me and nodded and smiled her unsmiling smile again. I couldn’t understand why Bailey was talking to her as though she was sick or deaf.

  I called Mum who said it was fine that I was at Bailey’s – wasn’t he one of those dux boys whose mum was a doctor? – and to make sure I thanked Magda for bringing me home. It was a blessing, really, she said, as she didn’t feel well at all. Not that that was strange these days.

  Magda’s notebook computer turned out to be almost the same as her phone – quite large and clunky. Nothing like my mum’s notebook which she used to run her card-making business, when it ran, which wasn’t lately. Magda’s notebook was more encyclopedia sized, I said, and Bailey snorted with laughter. I felt quite pleased to have made him laugh.

  While he showed Magda how to use MSN, I looked around the room. It was definitely boysville. The doona cover was Doctor Who. There were old socks under the bed and various bits of clothing strewn all over the floor but the laundry bag – navy blue with white writing that said ‘Wash Me’ – was empty. He had not one, but three bookcases in his room and the books (science fiction and fantasy, I could tell from the covers) on one of them were two deep. Around, under and on top of the desk lay all sorts of computer parts as well as two working computers. There was a Doctor Who poster on the wall and the famous map, bristling with pins.

  Bailey must have seen me looking around.

  ‘It’s normally a bit cleaner than this,’ he said. ‘My dad used to yell at me before it got to this stage. But he’s left now, so I can’t be bothered to tidy it up. Yet.’

  ‘He’s left?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bailey said crisply and turned back to Magda’s notebook, ‘some time ago.’

  It made sense – Debbie sitting in the dark, the absence of muffins, Magda picking Bailey up.

  ‘Oh, Bailey,’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘How could you have when you’re the first person – I mean the first person my own age – that I’ve told?’

  I felt as though I’d been handed some kind of award. ‘When did he go?’ I asked softly.

  ‘Weeks ago. They had a big argument and he just got up and left. But not like the other times when he stormed out. This was different. He wasn’t yelling or anything. So I know he’s not coming back no matter what Mum says. I just know.’

  Magda put her hand on Bailey’s head – she didn’t stroke his dark curly hair or anything, just kept her hand there, for company. Bailey turned the notebook off and then said in a different kind of voice, a grown-up kind of voice, ‘Now, we’re just rebooting this, Magda, and then you try to send an email and have a go at MSN, okay?’

  ‘Oh Bailey, how wonderful! Thank you.’ Magda’s hand stayed on Bailey’s head while her other hand fossicked around in her coat pockets looking for something. ‘Here it is,’ she crowed. ‘Always be prepared, that was a motto I learnt somewhere years and years ago – an email address.’

  ‘Right, well you try it now.’ Bailey stood back and I browsed the bookshelves so Magda could write her email in privacy. ‘You can borrow anything you like,’ Bailey offered, ‘you might like some of the fantasy books.’

  ‘Oh thanks, but I’m still reading The Cuckoo Clock.’

  ‘Do you only read one book at a time?’

  ‘Yes, of course. That way I’ve finished it and I know what’s happened. If I didn’t read only one, I’d get confused. I’d mix up the stories. Wouldn’t I?’

  Bailey shrugged. ‘I don’t,’ he said, ‘and I read hundreds at a time. Well, five anyway.’ He pointed to underneath the bed where I could actually count five books lying facedown, all open and in various stages of being read.

  ‘Terrible,’ Magda said, ‘scatterbrained, that’s what it is. It’s a good thing you’re so smart, Bailey Ferguson, because if you weren’t you’d never get anything done.’

  ‘He got four awards last year,’ I told her – I thought that was the kind of thing a great great godmother should know.

  ‘And how many did you get?’

  ‘Only one. But I only ever get one, or sometimes two if I get the Tried Hard in something.’

  ‘She almost always gets the Art Award,’ Bailey said, ‘and that’s one of the hardest to get, I reckon, because it’s so subjective. Don’t you think, Magda?’

  ‘Very true,’ Magda said. ‘Well, that’s that sent. Now which button turns this thing off?’

  I wondered what subjective meant and I was going to ask Mum when I got home but she was lying down. I was about to ask Dad over takeaway chicken dinner – Mum was having hers on a tray – when a sudden wailing noise from the bedroom made both Dad and me leap up and run to Mum.

  She was standing at the bedroom door clutching the balloon and around her feet was a kind of puddle of water.

  ‘Mum!’ I couldn’t believe it. She’d wet herself. My mother had wet herself like a kinder kid.

  ‘Rita!’ Dad almost screamed. ‘I’ll ring an ambulance. Don’t move.’

  ‘Mum doesn’t need an ambulance,’ I said, ‘she needs a nappy.’

  Dad shot me a vicious look. ‘Her waters have broken,’ he said angrily, ‘that means the baby’s coming.’

  ‘What? But the baby can’t come yet. It’s too early ...’

  ‘Exactly.’ Dad’s voice, even from the lounge room, sounded cold.

  ‘Oh
Mum!’ I didn’t know what to do. If I hugged her, would that make the baby come more quickly? She was shaking and I picked up her dressing gown and hung it on her shoulders.

  ‘Thanks, Ruby,’ she whispered, ‘thanks.’ Her voice was small and scared and when she looked at me her eyes were scared as well. She looked like a little girl who’d suddenly realised she was lost.

  ‘Oh Mum.’ I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t because she was crying and I had to look after her. ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I don’t know, Ruby,’ and the tears spilled down her face.

  I found a hanky in her bedside-table drawer and mopped up her face. ‘You just stay there, Mum, it’ll be okay. I can hear Dad putting the phone back. That will mean the ambulance is on its way. They’ll look after you.’

  ‘It’s hurting,’ she said, ‘the contractions have started. I shouldn’t be having this baby yet. It’s not time. He won’t be big enough, Ruby. He’ll be too little. He’ll … die.’

  ‘Mum, don’t cry,’ I said hopelessly, feeling my face get wet from my own tears, ‘it’ll be fine. Really really little babies still live. I’ve seen photos in the paper.’

  The ambulance arrived at the same time as Magda. The ambulance men drove off with Mum on a stretcher and Dad beside her, paler than I’d ever seen him, holding her hand.

  Magda was wearing a purple dressing gown and a paler purple turban.

  ‘I was doing my Tibetan whirls,’ she said to me as we both watched the ambulance drive away, its siren blaring, ‘that’s why the dressing gown. Oh Ruby, your poor mother!’

  ‘Magda,’ I said, ‘I want you to take the Wish Pony. I think it’s my fault the baby’s going to come early. It’s all my fault.’

  Of course she’d blame me, the Wish Pony thought. Why not? Easier to do that, after all. Easy not to look into your own conscience. Huh! He snorted through his nostrils. Well, she’s stuck with me. That’s the rules. Magda knows.

  Still he felt sorry for the girl with the shiny name. It was awful having a sick mother and then the possibility of your baby brother not living long enough to get to know him. It wasn’t any wonder she was upset. He would have liked to whiffle gently into her face and nudge his head under her hands so she had to pat him, but he couldn’t do that.

  Instead he wished for her.

  I wish the shiny girl’s brother lives.

  I wish her mother gets better fast.

  He wished these two wishes over and over. They thudded through his head like hoof beats.

  It seemed like hours before Magda spoke. She and I just looked at each other until my eyes burned from trying not to blink.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said finally, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve given him to you and I can’t take him back again.’

  ‘Why not? Why can’t I give him to you? You gave him to me, I give him to you. That makes sense.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, fiddling the bobbles on her dressing gown, ‘you don’t seriously think a little glass ornamental horse has anything to do with your mother going into premature labour, do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes, that’s exactly what I think. I wished it and he made it come true. He’s not just glass, Magda, you know that. He feels warm when you touch him and sometimes I can almost hear him whinny.’

  ‘He’s still just an ornament,’ Magda said almost angrily, ‘and I won’t take him back. He’s yours now. I suggest you wish harder to undo the wish you’ve made – if you believe in that nonsense. Also, you might try to do some good deeds to make up for the nasty little thoughts you’ve been thinking. That should put the universe back in balance.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to think nasty thoughts. I didn’t know anyone was listening.’ I glared at Magda. ‘I didn’t want this to happen.’

  ‘A little tiny bit of you must have,’ Magda said calmly, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t have wished for it.’

  My heart stuttered. Magda was right. A little bit of me, the thoughtless, selfish bit, had wanted … not for this exactly, but certainly not to have a brother. Or, not even not to have a brother, but not to have all the changes that having a brother involved.

  ‘I’m as bad as Mary from The Secret Garden,’ I told her, ‘before she became nice. I’m worse, really, because Mum and Dad do love me.’

  ‘Oh, Ruby, you’ve just hit a little rough patch, that’s all. It can happen to anyone. Anyway, you can change things – Mary changed.’

  ‘With the help of a garden, not to mention the robin and Dickon.’

  ‘Well, there you go. That’s all you need. Go and get the Wish Pony and start wishing – you want things to go well with your mum and you want a garden.’

  As if that was going to work. But I did what Magda told me, holding on hard to the Wish Pony. I wasn’t sure about wishing for a garden but it couldn’t hurt. I needed all the help I could get.

  Magda made a cup of tea.

  ‘Probably shouldn’t have caffeine,’ she said, turning the tea pot three times, ‘after yoga. It seems contradictory. But there you are. People are complex.’

  I fetched Mum’s good tea cup without her even asking and watched her drink two cups in silence.

  ‘So – any luck?’ she asked, tipping the tea leaves into the compost bin.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, not with your mum, of course, not so soon. But with the garden?’

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, let’s go out and have a look, shall we? What would you like in this secret garden?’

  ‘Magda, it’s dark, and the garden wouldn’t be for me,’ I said following her out. ‘It would be for Mum. A secret garden for her. Somewhere she could sit. A bit of sun and a bit of shade. Flowers. Not just ferns everywhere. Some pretty flowers for her to look at while she nurses the … my brother.’

  ‘Now you’re thinking,’ Magda said approvingly, ‘that’s my girl! Pass me that torch.’

  In my hand, the Wish Pony seemed to give a little shiver, the kind you make when someone scratches you in exactly the right place. I didn’t tell Magda. If she wanted to think he was just an ornamental horse, she could.

  ‘Pansies,’ I said, remembering Mum’s collage, ‘she likes pansies. Look, Magda – there’s a spot under the lillypilly tree. Do you think we could put pansies in a pot somewhere near there?’

  The lillypilly tree was on next door’s property, but shaded our side of the fence. On our side, a group of tall tree ferns arrowed up until they ended in a crown of fronds. There was just enough space between them and the next group for a couple of wide pots of flowers and a chair.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Magda said, waving the torch around and catching a possum in its beam. The possum stared at us for a frightened second and then scrambled further up the tree. ‘We’ll have to get some pots and a punnet or two of pansies. Have you got any money?’

  ‘I can do some chores around the house,’ I said. ‘Dad gives me five dollars for cleaning the upstairs bathroom and four dollars for sweeping the entrance hall and tidying the shoes. Would that be enough?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Magda said, ‘not if you want big pots. Maybe you could ask your father for some money?’

  I shook my head. I wanted this to be entirely my idea and nothing to do with Dad.

  ‘Babysitting?’ Magda suggested. ‘That would even give you practice looking after children younger than yourself.’

  ‘I’m not old enough,’ I said, ‘and anyway, there aren’t many kids around our street, just dogs. Hey, Magda – do you reckon you have to be a certain age to be a dogwalker? I could do that.’

  ‘I think you just have to have strong arms!’ Magda said. ‘Roll your sleeves up, Ruby – how are those muscles?’

  ‘I’ll type something up on the computer and do a letterbox drop,’ I said. ‘I’ll put one in every box on this street and the next – except that corner place with the big barking dog. I hate him.’

  ‘He’s probably the one who needs you most,’ M
agda said. ‘I bet he barks because he longs to be out and about. You’ll have to call yourself something snappy – something that makes people look at your flier before they just put it in the recycle bin with all the other advertising.’

  ‘With a picture,’ I said, ‘a picture of a really happy dog.’

  ‘You can come and do it on my tabletop,’ Magda said proudly. ‘It’s all hooked up now to bandwidth and I bought a little printer.’

  ‘Magda, that’s really nice of you, but we probably should stay here in case Dad calls. And Magda, you’ve got a notebook or a laptop, not a tabletop. It’s broadband, too.’

  Magda waved her hand in the air, ‘Broadband, brass band, jazz band, I don’t care what it is. It lets me be on SNM and talk to people across the other side of the world.’

  ‘MSN,’ I said gently. ‘You’re lucky you have someone to talk to.’

  ‘I talk to Bailey, among other people. I can count you in to our next conversation if you’re on NSM too.’

  ‘Oh, that’s okay,’ I was surprisingly nervous about the idea of talking to Bailey, ‘but I’ll give you my MSN details and then we could talk sometimes.’

  ‘We talk now, face to face,’ Magda said, ‘much easier guessing what you really mean when I can see you and not just horrible grinning faces.’

  It took Magda and me the better part of the night to design my flier but when we had finished it looked fantastic!

  I put my name at the bottom with our phone number and we found this terrific drawing of a poodle highstepping along with ribbons in her topknot that we inserted at the very top of the flier. It looked so professional. I wrote the poem myself – the only help Magda had to give me was to suggest other words for dog. I didn’t think of pooch, but when she did, I thought of prancing. It’s an alliteration – prancing pooch. We’ve just done them in school.