The Horses of Follyfoot

by Monica Dickens

  She was still agonising over the roan mare. ‘Did you hear what he said? “I’m not a rich man, you know, Colonel.”’ She imitated Mr Crowley’s whining voice. ‘I hate it when people cry poor.’

  ‘Well, they are poor,’ Steve said.

  ‘So are we.’ There was never enough money at Follyfoot. The Colonel waged a monthly battle with the bills that silted up his office desk like river mud.

  ‘I wish we weren’t,’ Dora sighed. ‘I wish we could buy that mare, and take care of her here. If we made a really good offer—’

  ‘If, if, if,’ the Colonel said. ‘You’ve got two dreams, Dora. One is about all the horses you could steal if you had the nerve. The other is about all the things you could do if you had the money.’

  ‘I know. I’d buy this gorgeous bay thoroughbred. Two white feet. Small neat head with those sort of smiley, dark blue eyes. Stepping out really free. Fit and supple. All that muscle moving like cream…Remember David, Steve, how he moved, and how he held his head, that natural flexion …’ She went off into a dream of beautiful horses, with her elbow on the table and her cheek in her hand.

  ‘If you’re not going to eat your pudding,’ Callie said, ‘I’ll have it.’

  In the night, Dora had a revelation. She got revelations sometimes in the night, and heard voices. She felt she must be psychic. Sometimes she heard horses neighing, and the thunder of hoofs on hard hill turf.

  Tonight she was into a dream of the open sea. She was swimming on a splendid horse, her arms round its crested neck, which was somehow part of the cresting waves. Suddenly, in her sleep or in her waking, a voice said very clearly, ‘Door.’

  She was wide awake in an instant, and sat upright. It had sounded just as if Blank were in the room.

  That was the revelation. Blank had money. She would ask him to go to the Crowleys and buy the roan mare.

  It was early, only just growing light, but Dora got up and went down to muck out. She had to do something with the energy of her excitement.

  At a decent hour, she telephoned Blank at his hotel.

  ‘Could you possibly come up here right away?’

  ‘Well, gee, honey – Door – I don’t know that I can. I have this guy to see about the recycled caulking strips, and—’

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ Dora said. ‘A matter of life and death.’

  Blank’s life did not normally hold such drama. He was up at the farm before Dora and Steve had finished the morning work. Dora had not told Steve yet. She didn’t quite know why. Something about the money? Though he called her a horse thief, he had always shared in her plots and schemes of rescue. But somehow today…

  When Blank came across the yard, she said, ‘No Handle,’ and pushed him into an empty loose box to tell him the plan.

  He became very excited, but nervous too, his hands shaking, his eyes glancing from Dora to the door as if he expected to see a posse of sheriffs after him already.

  ‘What’ll I say?’ he kept asking, even while she was telling him. ‘What’ll I say?’

  ‘You can say you’ve seen this horse of theirs,’ Dora repeated, ‘and that you like his looks, and nothing will satisfy you but to buy him.’

  She described the little patch of field where Dopey lived out her boring days on a bare patch of ground, with no shade.

  ‘You can say you were driving by. You can say you’re a mad American millionaire. Say you’re the Mafia. Say your wife fancies the mare and won’t be denied. Say anything, but get that horse.’ She fixed him with a stern eye.

  ‘Yes, Door, yes.’ His eyes met hers at last. ‘I’ll do it.’

  He went out of the loose box, walking with his knees slightly bent, shoulders rounded, fists clenched. Dora did not have to worry whether to tell Steve, Blank told him at once.

  ‘I’m off on a mission of mercy, my boy.’ He held out his hand. ‘Wish me luck.’

  ‘What has she got you into?’ Steve took his hand and grinned at Dora.

  ‘I got myself into it. There’s no turning back. Wish me luck.’ He now held out his hand to Slugger, walking past with buckets. Slugger set down the buckets, wiped his hand on his baggy trousers, shook Blank’s hand, picked up the buckets and walked on. Dora hoped Blank wasn’t going to tell everyone he met on the way.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Steve asked Dora.

  ‘I don’t know. Something about it being money. What we’ve done before, it’s been us doing it. We haven’t used anyone’s money. I thought—’

  ‘With money,’ Steve said, ‘it’s better not to think about it. Just either spend it or don’t.’

  Dora was good at creating complicated questions. Steve was good at giving simple answers.

  After dropping Blank round the corner from the Crowleys, Dora and Steve took the horse box and waited in a side road some distance away. An eternity passed, during which they imagined Blank kidnapped for ransom, arrested, beaten up by Mr Crowley, poisoned by Mrs Crowley, forced to marry the oldest daughter Juliette, who was even fatter and stupider than Amanda and Marcia. At last they heard the faint sound of hoofs on the road. The hoof beats grew louder, and Blank appeared round the corner of a hedge, leading the mare slowly, a smile of pure triumphant happiness on his innocent face.

  ‘How did you do it?’ Dora jumped down from the cab of the horse box.

  He stopped, looked at the ground, and scraped the gravel of the road with his toe.

  ‘I charmed her,’ he admitted. ‘I really think I charmed her.’

  ‘With money?’ Steve jumped down and took the mare’s halter rope.

  ‘No.’ Blank looked up. ‘With my charm.’

  ‘And how much money?’ insisted Steve.

  ‘More than I should have.’ He looked down again. ‘But it wasn’t that easy. When Mrs Crowley asked me where I was taking the horse, I had to make up this story about a man delivering another horse for me, and how he would meet me on the road, and we would take the mare to this place I have, with all this good grass and so on. She wanted to know where, so I said Wales. It was the only place I could think of. “Oh,” she says, “Wales, my girlhood home. Whereabouts?” “Well, I’m just moving houses.” “Where to?” “Well, they’ve changed the name of the village because it was ugly, so I—” “No Welsh names are ugly,” she says. Phew!’ He mopped his beaded brow and shook his head. ‘You know how when you start with one lie, you get into more and more? I had my fingers crossed in both pockets.’

  Dora put her arms around Dopey’s thin neck, as she sagged in the road, resting the lame hind leg.

  ‘Thanks, Blank,’ she said.

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Isn’t it fun to be a horse thief?’

  ‘Hey, wait a minute, Door,’ Blank said. ‘I paid for that horse.’

  ‘How much, then?’ Steve asked. ‘Tell us.’

  Blank named an outrageous figure, about twenty times as much as the poor old roan was worth, even for dog meat and sofa stuffing.

  Steve whistled. ‘With that money, you could have bought us a really super horse to ride.’

  He was joking, but Blank turned on him a solemn look. ‘But that’s not the idea of Follyfoot, is it? I thought—’

  ‘Of course not.’ Dora patted his hand. ‘You’ve caught on very quickly, Blank.’

  Chapter 7

  MR BLANK WAS in love with the whole idea of Follyfoot. He wished he didn’t have to go back to America tomorrow. Instead of going to visit the manufacturer of stretchable caulking recycled from paper cups and used tea bags, he stayed to let Dora teach him how to muck out and put down clean bedding in the stable he prepared for his mare.

  ‘So they’ve got you in the business, Blankenheimer.’ The Colonel came and smiled over the door. ‘Let’s keep her in a bit till we see what we can do for that leg. What do you call her?’

  ‘Not Dopey, that’s for sure.’ Blank bent down to tease straw around the mare’s front feet. ‘If she was a gelding, I’d call him Man-o’-War, after the most famous racehorse in the
world.’

  ‘Why not Woman-o’-War?’ asked Dora.

  ‘I like it.’

  Dopey was rechristened Woman.

  It was too late for Blank to keep his appointment with the tea-bag man so he decided, in his flush of happiness about Woman, to go and buy a present for his wife.

  It was market day in the town in the valley. He pottered round the antique stalls, looking at silver gravy boats and tortoiseshell snuff boxes. Nothing took his eye, so he wandered on to the livestock section of the market, where the goats and chickens were.

  A chocolate-coloured donkey was tied to the outside of the goat pen. It had a white nose and stomach and white rims to the purple pools of its eyes. Its eyelashes were longer than the ones Mrs Blankenheimer had bought to go to the golf-club dance, and had to trim down because they pushed her glasses off.

  A small boy was sitting on the ground near the donkey, smoking a cigarette.

  When Blank stopped in front of him, he squinted suspiciously up through the cigarette smoke.

  ‘It’s all right, son,’ Blank said. ‘I’m not going to tell you not to smoke at your age.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said the boy consolingly. ‘You don’t have to. Want to buy a donkey?’

  ‘Not really. I just bought a horse.’

  ‘Go on.’ The boy was not interested.

  ‘Is it your donkey?’ It was a pretty, delicate thing in its smooth summer coat, the shadow of the cross over its withers, neat shell feet, dished-in face, fat enough and well cared for. Somebody’s pet.

  ‘Nah.’ The boy looked at him sideways. ‘I brought it down to get it sold. Belonged to my sister, see, what died. Her greatest pet, it was.’

  ‘Oh, how sad.’ Tears welled in Blank’s eyes. If Dora were here, she would have wanted to buy the donkey at once. ‘Can’t you keep it?’

  ‘Can’t afford to, because of the funeral bills, see.’

  That did it. Blank handed over the price the boy asked and took the donkey’s halter rope. Dora would be proud of him. He lifted the donkey into the back seat of his car, folded its legs neatly on the seat, and took it back to Follyfoot.

  The donkey accepted these events calmly. It lay like a dog on the seat of the hired car, its white muzzle resting on its foreleg, regarding the passing countryside with violet eyes.

  It was only when Blank was halfway up the winding hill to the farm that he remembered that he had not bought a present for his wife.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ Ron Stryker opened the back seat of Blank’s car. ‘What makes you think we need a donkey?’

  ‘But look at those eyes. I know Dora will be glad to have her.’

  ‘Dora don’t run this place.’ Ron’s eyes were sharp under the lank ginger hair. ‘You’ll have to take it back. The Colonel don’t want another donkey.’

  ‘But I’ve bought her. I can’t take her back to the States. Where’s Dora?’

  ‘I dunno. She was around. Must have gone off somewhere.’

  Blank left the donkey in the car and locked it, so that Ron could not play any tricks. He did not trust this sharp-tongued, red-haired boy with the wild laugh, unrecognisable as either humour or wickedness.

  The day was losing its light early. The clouds were low, and a damp mist had curled up from the valley to shroud the farm and fields. Blank went round the looseboxes, but there was nobody there except Woman, resting her groggy leg and too busy with her hay to greet her saviour.

  He went into the tack room and called up the stairs for Steve. No answer.

  ‘Dora!’ He went down the path to the misted fields, calling for her. ‘Door! Door! Door!’ The rooks, swaying about in the invisible tops of the elms, gave him back, ‘Door! Door!’

  At last he saw her, ambling up the slope from the stream, sitting on the grey donkey, bare feet hanging, eyes half-closed. Behind her, the slow movement of old horses trailed out of the mist, following the donkey, who was like a bell wether to the herd.

  ‘I bought you a present.’ Blank opened the gate.

  ‘What is it?’ Dora’s eyes opened.

  ‘That boy, the one with the red hair, he says you don’t want it. It’s a – it’s a – well, you’ll have to see.’

  When each horse had turned into its own stable and dropped its head in the manger, and Dora had shut the doors on them, she went out to the car. The chocolate donkey was still meditating on the back seat.

  She said at once, ‘Thanks, Blank.’

  ‘This kid’s sister died, you see. It was her pet. That boy – he said you didn’t want another donkey, but—’

  ‘There’s always room for one more at Follyfoot,’ Dora said.

  ‘This is such a great outfit.’ Blank shook his head, smiling. ‘I wish I could … I’ve got a bit of money, you know. Suppose I could start a place like this in New England, where I live. What would people think of it?’

  ‘They’d think you were as crazy as us,’ Dora laughed.

  ‘Right now, they don’t think I’m anything at all,’ he said in his worst Blank nothing manner. ‘But I could show ’em, couldn’t I? If I did – lookit, Door – would you come out and help me get it going?’

  ‘I couldn’t, Blank, I have to work here.’

  ‘Don’t you get a vacation?’

  ‘Well, I do, but my mother…’ Dora had half-promised her mother to go on a cultural tour of the churches of the upper Rhine.

  ‘I’d pay your fare.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ She blushed. Again money – someone else’s money – was confusing things.

  ‘You could ride my daughter’s horse.’ He watched her.

  ‘Doesn’t she ride it?’

  ‘Not this year.’ He looked very sad. Was the daughter dead? ‘Last year she rode, but somewhere along the line she matoored, or whatever they call it. I bought Robin for her. Now she won’t ride him.’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘In the summer perhaps I could come, when all the horses are out. The work’s easier then.’

  ‘In the summer.’ He nodded. ‘Bye, Door.’

  ‘Bye, Blank.’ Smiling, she stood with the brown donkey and watched him safely past the gatepost. It was only after his car had turned the corner that she began to get scared. Go to America? Stay with a strange family, with a mysteriously ‘matoor’ daughter and a father who was shyer than she was. She must be mad. She would have to get out of it somehow.

  The summer was weeks away. Anything might happen before then.

  Chapter 8

  BUT NOTHING DID happen. June drew near. Dora’s passport photo looked like a wanted criminal. Blank sent over her ticket. The Colonel had agreed willingly. Steve and Callie were jealous.

  Ron was fed up. The cheap horse auctions were coming up. The Colonel had that gleam in his eye. There’d be newcomers to the farm and Dora gone jet-setting across the Atlantic.

  ‘Who’s to do the work?’ Ron demanded. ‘Who’s to do her work then?’

  ‘It won’t be you, that’s certain,’ Steve said.

  ‘No, because I’ll be on the Costa Brava,’ Ron said. ‘I’m taking me holidays in Spain.’

  ‘You can’t have no holiday,’ Slugger told him.

  ‘How can Dora then?’

  ‘She don’t miss all the work days you do.’

  But Slugger was dubious about Dora’s trip. All he knew of America was from television. In his mind, the United States and hell were the same place.

  ‘But it’s to help start another Follyfoot there,’ Dora said. ‘It’s a wonderful chance. Other countries might copy it. Follyfoot International. It could be the start of a whole world movement for old horses.’

  ‘We’ve lost her.’ Slugger sniffed his lower lip up towards his nose. ‘She’s gone idealistic on us.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ Dora dropped her starry-eyed act, which was as much to convince herself as Slugger. ‘I don’t really want to go.’

  Dora’s mother was disappointed about the Rhine cathedrals, but she thou
ght it would be a wonderful chance for Dora to get away from horses. Her mother had never come to terms with the turn that Dora’s life had taken the day she met the Colonel and decided that her career began, and possibly ended, among the old horses of Follyfoot.

  ‘I’m not getting away from horses,’ Dora said. ‘Mr Blankenheimer has a lot of them.’

  ‘But racehorses,’ her mother said. Racehorses were all right. They lived in proper stables with proper grooms, and performed a proper function in life. ‘If they have a racing stable, they must be pretty grand people. You’ll have to get some proper clothes.’

  ‘Don’t they wear jeans in the United States?’ Dora asked.

  ‘You’re hopeless,’ her mother said, and took Dora to a department store.

  They bought some shorts because it was going to be hot, and a swim suit and some bright slacks and cotton dresses and one long skirt for what Dora’s mother called The Evenings.

  Dora was wearing a pair of heavy ankle boots with her jeans that day. The long flowered skirt looked all right until she moved. Then it looked very odd with the boots clumping about underneath.

  Dora looked at herself mournfully in the unflattering mirror of the fitting room. ‘I hope the days at the Blankenheimers are going to be all right,’ she said dolefully, ‘because I don’t think I’m going to enjoy the evenings much.’

  Her mother said. ‘It’s the chance of a lifetime.’

  ‘Might be the end of a lifetime.’ Dora had never flown before. She was afraid.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said her mother, who flew regularly to France, Italy, Germany, and didn’t let on that she had a lucky charm at the bottom of her pocket. ‘People fly every day.’

  ‘But they’re not scared,’ Dora said, as if that were the only thing that kept them from crashing.

  ‘Let’s see if we can find a nice white frilly blouse to go with that skirt,’ her mother said to cheer her up.