Dora at Follyfoot

by Monica Dickens

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781849399357

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  This edition first published in 2011 by

  Andersen Press Limited

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.andersenpress.co.uk

  First published in 1972 by William Heinemann Ltd

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any

  means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

  without the written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Monica Dickens to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Copyright © Monica Dickens, 1972

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

  ISBN 978 1 84939 326 3

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 1

  WHEN DORA WENT into the stable yard after lunch, Slugger was sweeping.

  ‘What’s wrong, Slugger?’

  Slugger Jones was a man of habit, whether indoors or outdoors, he slept after Sunday lunch, and he never swept the yard until after the evening feeds. Especially on a Sunday when visitors might come and scatter toffee papers, and hastily stamp out cigarettes when they saw Steve’s notice:

  EVERYTHING AT FOLLYFOOT BURNS, INCLUDING MY TEMPER

  He had originally written, ‘The Colonel’s temper,’ but had blacked that out and put ‘my’.

  ‘What’s wrong, she wants to know.’ Slugger swept towards Dora’s feet, and over them. ‘Man doing a bit of honest work and she wants to know what’s wrong.’

  Dora looked over Willy’s half door and made a face at the mule, who dozed with head down and ears lopped out from wall to wall. She felt like riding, but there was nothing much here that wasn’t lame, stiff, blind, ancient, or pensioned off from work for the rest of its life. That was the only snag about a Home of Rest for Horses. Dora and Steve were always trying to sneak in a horse that was fit enough to ride.

  Dora put a bridle on Willy and the old Army saddle that was the only one that fitted him, since his back had been permanently moulded by his days as an Army mule. When she brought him out, Slugger was leaning into the water trough to pull out the stopper.

  ‘Where are you going?’ His voice was a muffled echo inside the trough.

  ‘Into the woods. I’m still trying to teach Willy to jump logs.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go there. Not in the woods I wouldn’t, no.’

  ‘Why?’ What did he expect? Murderers? Madmen? The shadowed rides through the beechwoods were calm and safe as a cathedral.

  ‘Ask a silly question, you get a silly answer.’ Slugger was scrubbing a brush round the sides of the trough. ‘You might miss someone.’

  ‘What do you – oh, Slugger, was that what the telephone was? The Colonel?’

  The Colonel, who owned Follyfoot Farm, had been in hospital for nearly two months. He was coming home at last.

  Dora climbed on to the mule, slapped him down the shoulder with the reins because his armoured sides were impervious to legs, and rode out of the yard and down the road to be the first to greet the car.

  At the crossroads she stopped and let Willy eat grass while she lolled in the uncomfortable saddle, and drifted into her fantasy world where she was brave in adventures and always knew the right things to say.

  She heard the sports car on the hill. Even with Anna driving, the gearbox still made that unmistakable racket from losing battles with the Colonel. When the car stopped and he looked out with his lopsided smile, Dora hardly knew him. His face was thin and pale, his eyes and teeth too big. His hand on the edge of the car door was bony and white. He was still biting round his nails, but they were clean. At Follyfoot nobody’s nails were ever completely clean, finger or toe.

  ‘Hullo, Dora.’

  ‘Hullo.’ She pulled up Willy’s head, not knowing what to say. Are you all right? Well, he must be, or he wouldn’t come home. Did it hurt? Operations always hurt. I’m glad you—

  Willy suddenly dropped his head and pulled her forward on to his bristly mane.

  The Colonel laughed his old laugh that ended in a cough. Anna moved the car forward. Dora kicked Willy into his awkward canter and followed them home on the grass at the side of the road.

  Callie, the Colonel’s stepdaughter, was at the gate to open it, with his yellow mongrel dog in ecstasies, tail beating its sides. Slugger was in Wonderboy’s loose box, pretending not to be excited. He came out with his terrible old woollen cap tipped over his faded-blue eyes, and the Colonel laid an arm across his shoulders.

  ‘Good to be back, Slugger.’

  ‘How’s it gone then?’

  ‘No picnic.’

  ‘Teach you to stay away from that foul pipe.’

  ‘It was the old war wound. The doctors say it was nothing to do with smoking.’

  ‘That’s what they say. I burned that old pipe.’

  Anna wanted the Colonel to rest in the house, but he had to go all round the stables first, leaning on his stick, lamer than usual, and then out to the fields where some of the horses were grazing in the sweet spring day.

  Fanny, the one-eyed old farm horse, trotted up to him. The Weaver lifted his head with his cracked trumpet call, and then went back to chewing the fence rail, weaving hypnotically from foot to foot. Lancelot, the oldest horse at the Farm, perhaps in the world, mumbled at the grass with his long yellow teeth and looked at the Colonel through his rickety back legs. Stroller, the brewery horse, plodded up and nosed into his jacket for sugar.

  ‘He remembers which pocket.’

  The Colonel had gone into and out of hospital wearing the patched tweed jacket with the poacher’s pockets wide enough for a horse’s nose.

  In the jump field Callie was lungeing the yearling colt, Folly.

  ‘Shaping up quite nicely.’ The Colonel watched with his horsy look, eyes narrowed, a piece of hay in his mouth. Horses are always chewing grass or hay, and people who live with them catch the habit.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Callie bent as if she were going to pick up and throw a piece of earth, to make the colt trot out, head up, long legs straight, tail sailing. ‘He’s perfect!’

  The Colonel laughed. ‘Nothing changes, thank God. Where’s Steve?’

  ‘I think he’s out with the horse box,�
�� Dora said casually.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh—’ She stuck a piece of hay in her mouth too. ‘To bring in a horse.’

  ‘I thought the stable was full.’

  ‘Well it is,’ Dora said. ‘But we found this horse, you see. The junk man died, and the old lady, she tried to keep it in the back garden, tied to the clothes line, and it’s all thin and mangy like a worn old carpet, and so we …’

  ‘And so they thought it was just what we needed to keep us busy in our spare time,’ Slugger grumbled, leaning on the gate.

  The Colonel laughed. ‘Nothing changes.’

  Chapter 2

  A FEW DAYS after he came home from the hospital, the Colonel took Steve into his study for a long talk, and later he called in Dora.

  He was sitting in the leather armchair with his feet on the fender in front of a bright fire. It was a good day, but he felt the cold more than he used to.

  No one had used this room while he was away. It was so unnaturally tidy and clean that Dora stopped in the doorway to take off her boots.

  ‘Come in, come in, there’s a hell of a draught.’

  She padded in her socks over the carpet that was as thin and worn as the old horse they had just rescued from the widow’s clothes line. The horse’s name was Flypaper, because it attracted flies. Dora was treating its moth-eaten patches with Slugger’s salad oil.

  ‘Sit down, Dora.’

  She sat on the stool at the other side of the fireplace. The Colonel’s hand wandered to the desk where his chewed pipe used to be, groped for a moment, then came back to his pocket and took out a paper bag.

  ‘Have a peppermint.’ He held the bag out to Dora and took one himself. ‘Poor substitute for tobacco.’ He stuck it in his lined cheek. ‘But I’m trying.’

  ‘Are you really all right?’ The others pretended that he was the picture of health, but Dora always said what she thought. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He shifted the peppermint to the other cheek. ‘I’d rather hear that than people telling me I look wonderful when I feel like death. It’s going to be a long pull, I’m afraid.

  ‘I’ve got to go abroad for a bit, Dora. Down to the South where it’s warm and dry and there’s nothing to do.’ He made a face. ‘I’d much rather be hanging round here in the rain and mud with the horses.’

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Dora said quickly. ‘We can manage.’

  ‘Can you? I’ve been wondering if I ought to get someone in to run this place.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Dora stood up, her face stubborn. ‘I couldn’t work for anyone else.’

  ‘What about Steve?’

  ‘He’s only a boy. I wouldn’t let him boss me about.’

  ‘All right,’ the Colonel said. ‘Give it a try as your own boss. I think you can cope, between you. If you get into a muddle with bills, my accountant will help you. Just be careful with money. Don’t buy any horses. If you get a really needy case, of course take it in. Slugger will gripe, but fit it in somewhere. But no buying. Remember that Shire horse – the one you and Steve found at the Fair, and you sold the bicycle to get it?’

  ‘And then found he was stolen anyway, and I had to give him back to the farmer.’ Dora smiled, remembering the fat, sloppy horse with the curly moustache. ‘Yes, I remember. It wasn’t Steve. It was that boy Ron Stryker, and he’d stolen the bicycle.’

  ‘That was when I fired him. Useless layabout. I never should have hired him. But you take what you can get these days. If you need any help—’

  ‘We won’t.’

  ‘There’s this chap I know. Bernard Fox. The one who has the big stable over the other side of the racecourse.’

  ‘Where you can eat your dinner off the yard?’ Dora had once sneaked a look round the grand Fox stables. ‘It doesn’t even smell of horse.’

  ‘Well, we can’t all manage that, Dora.’

  As she stood with her arm on the mantelpiece among the Colonel’s photographs and trophies and the silver model of his famous grey jumper, the fire brought out the stable essence of Dora’s clothes.

  ‘But Bernard says he’ll be glad to help any time you need him.’

  ‘We won’t.’

  ‘He may look in at the Farm some time. Be reasonably polite, will you?’

  ‘I always am.’

  ‘You do try.’ The Colonel reached out and took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Go ahead with the work then, Dora. It’s all yours.’

  When she went out, Steve was grooming a horse in the corner box. His head came over the door when he heard her feet on the cinder path.

  ‘What did he say?’ He had been waiting for her to come out of the house.

  ‘He’s got to go away.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He said about being careful with money. Not buying horses, and all that. What did he say to you?’

  ‘That too, and – well, I’m more or less in charge.’

  ‘Funny,’ Dora said. ‘That’s what he said to me.’

  *

  ‘Who is in charge here?’

  The woman who stormed into the yard was red in the face under a plastic rain bonnet. ‘One of your ponies was out last night and walked all over my pansy bed.’

  ‘The black and white beggar?’ Slugger knew that Jock the Shetland was a magician pony who could squeeze through hedges and between fence rails, and undo bolts with his teeth.

  ‘I didn’t see the beastly thing.’ She glared at Slugger from under the rain bonnet. ‘Only its nasty little hoof marks, all over my pansy bed.’

  ‘Spoil many plants?’ Slugger asked.

  ‘I haven’t put any in yet. But that’s not the point. I want something done.’

  ‘I could send the boy up to rake over the bed,’ Slugger said, and the red-faced woman pounced.

  ‘Are you in charge?’

  ‘Oh dear me, no. In charge, she says. Oh no, lady.’ Slugger faded.

  ‘Who is in charge here?’

  ‘Not me.’ Steve put on a dopey face.

  ‘Not me.’ Dora backed away.

  But that evening when some visitors with children were going round the loose boxes, exclaiming and sighing and mooning over the old horses, the father asked Dora, ‘Where’s the boss then?’ and she heard herself answering, ‘Here. It’s me.’

  Then when she was with the children in the donkey’s stable, lifting them onto his back, she heard the father say to Steve, ‘Bit young, that girl, to run this place.’

  And heard Steve laugh. ‘She doesn’t, actually. I do.’

  Chapter 3

  CALLIE HAD REFUSED to go abroad with her mother and the Colonel. She made the excuse of school.

  ‘But there’s only a few more weeks,’ Anna said. ‘You could join us at the villa then. You can swim down there, and sail and play tennis, and there are lots of young people your age.’

  ‘I don’t need young people my age. I need horses. And they need me.’

  It was true. Callie was needed at Follyfoot. Steve and Dora and Slugger all worked extra hours, but the stable was full, and this was the time of year to mend fences and gates, to lime some of the fields, and prune dead branches out of trees and touch up peeling paint. Soon it would be time to get in the first crop of hay.

  Dora sat up late at the Colonel’s desk, falling asleep over bills and letters. Steve had taken over all the hoof care and the treatments for the unsound horses that the Colonel used to do. Slugger, who did the cooking as well as a thousand outside jobs, had not had a day off for weeks.

  His sister came up to the Farm in her husband’s dry-cleaning van to see if he was dead.

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Ada.’ Slugger set down a loaded wheelbarrow.

  ‘An old man like you.’ His sister clicked her loose teeth. ‘You’ll collapse on this job.’

  ‘Then I’ll be at the right place, won’t I? They can put me out to grass with the old horses.’

  Callie got up early to help in the stables before she caught the bus to school,
and did mucking out instead of homework in the evenings.

  Her teacher sent a note home. Dora answered it, signing herself ‘Guardian’, but the teacher threatened trouble if things did not improve, so Callie stayed away from school, to avoid the trouble.

  An extremely polite man came to the Farm one afternoon and found Callie in the feed shed with a brush and a big pail of whitewash. She gave him an overall and another brush, and they worked together for the rest of the afternoon, and Slugger made tea for him before he left.

  ‘Nice of him to help.’ Steve came up from the bottom field with Dolly and the cart full of planks and saws and hammers. ‘Friend of yours, Callie?’

  ‘He was the attendance officer.’

  Callie had to go back to school for the rest of the term, and she had to do her homework, to stop them writing to her mother and the Colonel.

  There were two reasons why no one must write that sort of letter to Anna and the Colonel. One: Not to worry them. Two: If he thought Steve and Dora couldn’t cope, the Colonel might bring in a manager to run Follyfoot. Or write to his friend Bernard Fox.

  The Farm was sloppier than usual. The horses were content, but there was no time to do everything. The manure pile had not been spread, and was growing out alarmingly from the side of the barn. Straw was not stacked away in the Dutch barn. The horse box was still covered in mud from its last trip across a field. They did not want the grand stable keeper coming round with burnished boots and foxy face to match his name.

  He did come. He came one morning when Steve and Dora were doing what Ron Stryker used to call ‘taking five minutes’.

  They were stretched out in the sun on two bales of straw, with Steve’s radio going. The brown mare, Pussycat, who was wandering loose in the yard to pick up dropped hay, was thoughtfully licking the sole of Steve’s shoe.

  ‘Good morning, good morning.’ He strode briskly into the yard, burnished Bernie Fox in tall polished boots and sharply-cut breeches, cap over his eyes, crisp ginger moustache at the ready. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting your work.’

  Steve jumped up and banged off the radio on a supersonic howl. Dora scrambled upright, pulling straw out of her hair. Old Puss leered with her lower lip hanging, and shambled stiffly away.