The Horses of Follyfoot

by Monica Dickens

  He tossed his head about and his ears moved alertly back and forth every time one of the other horses snorted or banged the side of its box. But when Dora went in to him he examined her very gently, blowing into her hand, and going over her hair with his nose to see what kind of animal she was.

  He had looked a little nervous when she was standing outside the door, but a horse’s expression can visibly soften when he feels reassured. Dora saw that gentle, almost smiling look in the dark blue eye that means a horse who relates well to people.

  ‘He likes you, Door,’ Blank said.

  ‘I like him.’ Dora was enchanted. All of a sudden she wasn’t homesick any more. Before, her mind had looked forward over the next three weeks, telling herself that if she could hang on for twenty-one days it would be time to go home. Now, when her mind looked forward, the date of leaving seemed like a threat, the twenty-one days not nearly long enough.

  Dora went back to the tack room to get the saddle, which had a polished brass plate under the handle saying JODY BLANKENHEIMER. Chuckie Fiske did not lower the magazine or take her feet off the table, but as Dora went out of the door with saddle and bridle, she said, ‘Watch it, kid. He’s pretty fresh.’

  Dora rode by nature, not by technique. She had learned from horses, and there had not been many good ones. If she knew a horse well, she could figure out how to handle him, but she was naturally nervous with a strange horse if she felt he knew more than she did.

  Blank led her out to the gate of the white-railed riding ring as if he were leading one of his racehorses to the paddock. Two girls in shorts with ponytails who were sunning themselves in the grass, chewing gum, sat up to watch, Dora was sorry to see. She was sorrier still to see Chuckie Fiske come out of a side door of the stable and wander over to the ring.

  Dora let Robin walk round the track with a loose rein. He felt edgy, very much on his toes.

  ‘Let him walk around on a loose rein,’ Chuckie ordered, Dora came level.

  ‘I am,’ Dora muttered to Robin.

  Robin’s back was a bit humped. When she felt him relax, Dora let him trot on.

  ‘Let him trot on there!’ shouted Chuckie. The girls in the grass giggled.

  At the far end of the ring, a riding trail went off into the wood. A woman on a big, narrow chestnut came down the trail, riding ‘saddle seat’, with her stirrups long and her legs stuck out. The horse was artificially showy, feet and tail carried exaggeratedly high. They stopped at the end of the ring and watched Dora.

  Robin trotted out with easy elegance, toes just slightly turned in – that was the quarter horse in him – stride long and swinging. That was the thoroughbred. His head was set just right, the neck flexed high. He had obviously been beautifully schooled.

  ‘Canter him!’ Chuckie called.

  Oh God, she couldn’t make him canter. She squeezed, sat down in the saddle. She chirruped. She said, ‘Canter’, under her breath, in case Chuckie disapproved. She turned Robin in a small circle for the canter lead, but all he did was trot faster.

  ‘Don’t you know how to set him into a canter?’ Chuckie called out.

  ‘No,’ said Dora to Robin.

  She pulled him back to a walk, pretending she did not want to canter. When she got to where the woman sat on the showy chestnut, the woman said, ‘Hey, you the girl from England?’

  Dora pulled Robin up.

  ‘I’ll give you a tip,’ the woman said. ‘American horses only canter out of a walk. Pull him back. Get him on his toes. Just use your outside leg and you got it made.’

  Robin stretched his neck towards the chestnut.

  ‘Get going,’ the woman said. ‘She’ll kill us if they squeal and strike.’

  Dora walked, jogged a few collected steps, sat down in the saddle, squeezed with her outside leg, and Robin moved into the smoothest controlled canter she had ever felt. On a horse like this, she could be a good rider. She was not even aware of Chuckie leaning on the rail, of Blank with his arms folded, nodding happily, of the girls in the grass lying back again now that the fun was over.

  Robin’s canter was so creamy that Dora felt glued to the saddle, her torso moving rhythmically as he moved. She took him diagonally across the ring and off again in the other direction. He did a flying change of leads as if he had invented it. Dora had never ridden so well. She had never ridden a horse like this. Robin. She was in love.

  Chapter 12

  THAT EVENING DORA met Blank’s daughter Jody.

  She had gone up to her room to take a shower after her ride and, as so often happens in strange houses, when she came downstairs, there was nobody about. There was a smell of something in the oven, but Mrs Blank was not in the kitchen. Blank was not in his den. Neither of them was out on the terrace.

  Dora wandered into the tidy living room and did a tour of the family pictures. The Blanks at their wedding, the bridegroom looking as if it were a funeral. A beautiful baby. A beautiful toddler. An eager small girl on a show pony, dressed to the teeth, rosettes on her bridle. The same girl, older, on Robin with his mane and tail plaited, also with rosettes.

  ‘That was in the bad old days.’

  The girl in the photograph had come into the room, older now, tattier, the eager look replaced by an air of disillusion, eyes heavily made up in a white face, long brown dress with the hem undone.

  ‘I’m Jody.’ She sat down and kicked off her sandals. Her feet were as dirty as Dora’s were at Follyfoot. They were clean in America, where she did not muck out stables.

  Ill at ease with the girl, her mind jetted back across the Atlantic and saw Steve and Slugger and Ron with the forks and barrows, mucking out.

  No. If it was eight p.m. here, it would be one a.m. in England. The only person who could conceivably be mucking out now would be Callie, who had once got up in her sleep and been found by Steve when he came home late from a party. She was pushing a wheelbarrow in pyjamas and bare feet, her eyes fixed on nothing.

  She and Jody sat on opposite sides of the room and looked at each other. They were about the same age, but there was nothing to say.

  ‘I – er, I rode your horse today,’ Dora said at last.

  ‘Oh yeah? What d’you think of him?’

  ‘He’s fantastic. Best horse I ever rode. He’s beautifully schooled. Is that your doing?’

  ‘Somewhat, I guess. I did work on him last summer. Nothing else to do then.’

  ‘What is there to do this summer?’ Dora asked.

  ‘I go around with this group, that’s what’s to do. Vince and the It. They’re kinda terrific.’

  ‘Do you mind me riding Robin?’ Dora asked.

  ‘Hell, no. Why should I care?’

  ‘Your father said – said that it would be all right.’

  ‘No, I mean, honest,’ said Jody. ‘I’m glad you came.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Keeps Dad happy, what the hell? Keeps him out of my hair.’

  The Blanks came in from the garden where they had been picking lettuce. They had steak and salad. Dora was famished. The food was marvellous. Much too much of it. She wanted to wrap up the rest of the steak and ship it back to Steve.

  ‘You should see how well Dora rides Robin,’ Blank said.

  ‘Oh—’ Dora shot a look at Jody. ‘Anyone can ride him.’

  ‘You and Jody can. He goes well for girls. They’ll miss you,’ he said to his bored daughter, ‘at the County Fair. First year you won’t have been.’

  ‘First year I haven’t been a dumb kid, let’s face it.’

  ‘It’s a pity, though. All the big exhibitors will be at the Three-Day Show. Good opportunity to clean up.’

  ‘Oh, Dad, for God’s sake.’

  A horn sounded outside and Jody got up and went out with a bang of the screen door.

  ‘Why don’t you let Dora show the horse, Earl, if she’s so good?’ Mrs Blank suggested.

  ‘You want to, Door?’ Blank’s eyes were eager.

  Oh no.

  ‘Have to ge
t Chuckie to school you a bit, of course.’

  Oh no.

  Chuckie Fiske’s schooling was pretty brutal, but Dora learned a lot. She was to ride Robin in the class for Hunters Under Saddle. She learned how to keep him on the rail, not get into a bunch with other horses, keep him relaxed yet moving strongly on, trot him collected, trot him extended, stop square after a hand gallop, back him straight.

  Chuckie’s method was short on praise and long on anguished yells. Dora was the only person who could contrive to have the perfect horse cantering on the wrong lead.

  ‘Dora!’ shouted Chuckie. ‘You British bungler! If you have to do that, for pity’s sake change leads before the judge turns round and looks at you.’

  ‘How can I tell when he’s going to?’

  ‘How can she tell?’ Chuckie clutched her short grey hair and appealed to the sky. ‘Anyone who isn’t a total idiot can tell.’

  Chuckie took Robin to the show in an enormous van with three or four of her other horses and the gum-chewing girls who efficiently rode them.

  When Dora arrived at the County Fair showgrounds with Blank, she couldn’t believe her eyes. If these were the people left over after the cream had gone to the Three-Day Show, what on earth must the cream look like?

  She had never seen so many beautiful, well-kept horses all together in one place. Robin, who was the best-looking horse she had ever had any dealings with, looked unremarkable among the splendid thoroughbreds. The proud quarter horse blood which showed in his rounded quarters and crested neck and pigeon toes might be something that, if he were a person, he would want to disguise, like a thick waist or pimples.

  Robin, however, was not at all crushed by such grand company. When Chuckie said, ‘Throw a leg over him and work him out a bit,’ Dora took him over to the edge of the showground, where some girls were doing supple, minutely controlled circles and figures of eight. Robin bucked and squealed. He tossed his head, a relic of the days when he was what they called ‘Western broke’ in a lethal bit that punishes a horse if he tries to take hold, which is how Western horses learn to stop dead.

  Dora went back to the van to put a martingale on Robin while she got him worked down to his usual controllable self.

  A girl on a grey Welsh pony, serious and determined, was jumping back and forth over a bar, held by her father and an older brother. As the pony jumped, high and neat, they raised the light bar skilfully to rap the fetlocks and make it pick up its back feet.

  Dora stopped Robin to watch. The man looked round casually, then looked again and smiled.

  ‘Hullo, there,’ he said. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ It was Bob Nelson, from the plane, the man she had been to Iceland with.

  ‘How nice you look.’ Dora was dressed in Jody’s last year’s breeches and jacket and boots. ‘I didn’t know you rode in shows.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Dora said. ‘It’s just for fun.’

  ‘Of course. It’s no use if it isn’t fun,’ Mr Nelson said, his words contradicted by the fiercely determined girl, who rode up saying, ‘Gee, Dad, if Colombo doesn’t win, I’ll kill myself.’

  Her brother said to Dora, ‘Nice horse that bay. Very good type.’ He was a tall boy, slow and easy going, shorts and big knees and a flop of fair hair, and one of those voices that is born to have it easy. ‘He certainly goes well for you.’

  He grinned generously, and Dora grinned back under Jody’s riding cap, flattered.

  If Steve were like that, casual, assured, with one of those voices, would she like him better? On her mind’s screen came a picture of her last sight of Steve, going off with Dolly in the blue cart to mend fences, hair unbrushed, clothes looking as if he’d slept in them, waving goodbye to her not with a grin, but with the kind of lost, forlorn look he used to wear when he first came to Follyfoot from a life of trouble. No, she wouldn’t like him better.

  Watching the classes before hers, Dora became increasingly sick and nervous. If she actually threw up, would they let her miss her class? Chuckie had talked about not making a mistake in front of the judge, but the riders Dora watched did not seem to make any mistakes at all. It was hard to see how, before the end of the class, the judge eliminated some and decided who would stay to be placed.

  ‘Come on – hurry!’ Blank, in his stylish horse-show suit and straw hat called her back to the van to have Robin polished and her boots repolished, a hairnet put over her protesting locks and the number eighty-two tied around her waist. Jody’s boots were too tight. Her dark blue jacket was too narrow in the shoulders. Her cap was too big, and stuffed with handkerchiefs. Dora was uncomfortable and scared. She heard Chuckie Fiske’s voice calling, ‘Hey, Dora!’ but paid no attention. She didn’t want last-minute instructions.

  ‘The last time I’ll get conned into riding in a horse show,’ she told Robin as they joined the line going into the ring. It was a glorious day. The fierce heat had gone from the air. A breeze pushed small firm clouds across the very blue sky of New England. A day to be out with sandwiches in one pocket and an orange in the other, riding the hills beyond Follyfoot, with no plan at all except getting back for supper.

  When she was in the ring with the other horses, Dora saw that Robin could hold his own. Some of the thoroughbreds were a bit weedy. One had a very short stride. Another poked its head. Another was being clumsily ridden by a boy who let him bend in a curve at corners.

  When the loudspeaker said, ‘Canter’, Robin slid smoothly into his creamy canter. The brown with the blaze was on the wrong lead. Hooray! Dora prayed with fleeting spite that the judge would notice, then forgot everybody else to concentrate on showing Robin off as he deserved.

  ‘All right, all right.’ Much too soon, when she was beginning to enjoy herself, although the boots were giving her hell, the ring steward called them into the middle of the ring.

  The announcer’s voice came over the microphone. ‘The following are excused. One hundred and twenty. Nineteen. Thirty-four. Thirty-six …’ Confident that Robin had gone well enough to be kept back among the finalists, Dora could afford to feel sorry for those who weren’t. ‘One thirty eight. Eighty-two.’ It was like a blow to the pit of the stomach. ‘The rest of you get back out on the rail, on your left circle.’

  Dora rode out of the ring at the end of the string of riders who did not seem to care. She saw Blank’s disappointed face and turned the other way, saw the amiable grin of the Nelson boy, about to say, ‘Too bad,’ swerved away and almost ran over Chuckie Fiske sitting on a camp stool drinking beer.

  ‘It wasn’t fair,’ Dora said childishly. ‘He went beautifully.’

  ‘Didn’t toss his head one bit, did he? Maybe,’ Chuckie took a long swallow of beer, and fixed Dora with an eye over the can, ‘maybe that’s why they don’t allow martingales in showing classes.’

  ‘Is that why I was kicked out?’

  ‘Sure was.’

  Dora remembered Chuckie calling her for last-minute instructions. She pulled Robin away, went back to the van to take off his saddle and bridle and walked away with him in a halter to let him eat grass and forget.

  Chapter 13

  DORA WAS PRETTY resilient. When she was knocked down by life, she could usually find some way of bouncing herself back up again.

  When she got over being angry at herself about the martingale, she bounced back with the thought that at least she could say that she could have won if she hadn’t worn it, which was better than saying that she couldn’t win. And she and Robin had done well, a good partnership. Only ten more days with this horse. She would ride every day and then say goodbye to him for ever and go back to Willy the mule, and tell tales about her partnership with the bay horse, which no one would quite believe.

  That evening after dinner, a terrible row blazed up at the Blankenheimers’ house.

  Jody’s boyfriend Vince, of Vince and the It, was there, lounging on a terrace chair and picking skin off the soles of his feet.

  Although she didn’t like him, Mrs Blank was pleased that Jody and h
e had stayed home for dinner. She had made barbecued spare ribs and pineapple upside-down cake, much too heavy and rich for this weather.

  Mosquitoes were beginning to bite. ‘We’ll have to go indoors,’ someone said, but they were too full of food to bother.

  Mrs Blank got up to get the can of insecticide. She sprayed it over the remains of Jody’s cake. Jody didn’t want it, but she said, ‘Hey, Mom, cut it out,’ in her ugliest ‘Hey, Mom’ voice.

  ‘You can’t be too careful,’ her mother fussed. ‘I heard on the television that the suspected cases of encephalitis could be the start of an epidemic.’

  ‘Scaremongering by the media,’ Vince scoffed. He didn’t watch television.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ Mrs Blank snapped at him.

  ‘Don’t snap at Vince,’ Jody snapped at her.

  ‘Two kids have been taken to hospital because they were bitten by mosquitoes that may have bitten infected horses. They could die, those kids.’

  ‘Do you know ’em?’ Vince asked.

  ‘No,’ Blank said. ‘But they’re somebody’s kids, and they may be dying.’

  ‘That’s so typical of the both of you,’ Jody said. ‘You waste a lot of useless sentiment on a couple of strangers, and ignore what’s going on with your own daughter.’

  ‘Go on.’ Vince nudged her with his big toe. ‘Tell ’em.’

  ‘It’s like this, Dad,’ Jody began belligerently. ‘I gotta have a new car.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the VW?’

  ‘It was OK once, when I was a kid, but look, Dad, it’s falling apart.’

  ‘It’s only a year old,’ her father said mildly. ‘If you’d taken a bit more care of it, remembered to put oil in once in a while—’

  ‘I’ve seen this fantastic white Jaguar,’ Jody said. ‘I could get it on a really good trade-in for the Volks. Only need to add a couple of thousand dollars.’