‘I’ll get you another,’ his mother said automatically, but she was desolate too, her dreams of the race and the party and the glory all shattered.
‘I’ll never ride again,’ Jim said, with a long white face of tragedy.
His mother was too upset to tell him, ‘Yes, you will.’
*
The next day, the day before the race, Dora rode Barney out alone all morning, following the way Jim used to ride between his house and Follyfoot, turning into farms where the grey pony might have gone looking for other horses, searching woods and thickets where she might have run blindly in and got caught up in the undergrowth.
‘How do you expect that poor little beggar to run tomorrow?’ Ron asked when she brought Barney back at midday, tired and sweating.
‘We’re not going to the race.’
‘Don’t be daft. I may get my money from you yet. He and Callie will have a better chance.’
‘Not against the roan. They’ve got what they wanted.’
‘You’re not thinking—?’ Ron looked shocked.
‘I’m not thinking anything,’ Dora said wearily. ‘I don’t know what I think any more. Come on, Barnacle, if you’ve finished your lunch, we’re going out again.’
‘Take it easy,’ Ron said cheerfully.
Steve was out with the truck, looking hopelessly round the roads, while Dora rode hopelessly on the field paths. They met in the lane that ran along the bottom of the gorse common. Dora came down the bank with Barney, and found Steve sitting on the bonnet of the truck eating a sandwich and staring moodily across the broad valley. Cows and sheep and distant horses grazed, and tractors moved across ridged fields, you could not have recognised a grey pony even if it was somewhere there.
‘Any clues?’
‘Only negative. I’ve just rung the Bunkers,’ Steve said. ‘The police still haven’t heard anything.’
‘It’s hopeless, isn’t it, Steve?’ Dora got off Barney and let him tear grass off the bank.
‘Not yet. If she’d been hit on the road, the police would know.’
‘Suppose we never hear anything?’
‘Then we’ll never know. It will be like that poor dog Roger, who went away when he was ill.’
‘I hate that. It’s better to see an animal dead than not know.’
‘No.’ Steve shook his head. ‘It’s better to go on hoping.’
‘I wish you had the horse box instead of the truck,’ Dora said. ‘Poor old Barney could get a lift home.’
‘He’s all right. He’s so fit. It’s a shame he can’t do the steeplechase course.’
‘I couldn’t go, could you, Steve?’
‘Not without Maggie. Not without at least knowing where she is.’
It was quite a long way home. Dora pushed on, trying to keep out of her mind the terrible visions of the beautiful grey pony smashing into a speeding car, lying out somewhere with a broken leg, stolen, abused perhaps, chased by shouting boys with stones, running into wire in her panic.
Barney was fit enough to trot steadily along, but at a crossroads where they should have gone straight on, he stopped and tried to turn left, and would not answer the pressure of Dora’s legs.
‘Come on.’ He was never like this now. He had become a calm, trusting pony who never shied or stopped or whipped round.
He stood like a mule, listening with his big ears.
‘All right.’ Dora heard hooves too. ‘So there’s another horse somewhere. There are about ten thousand horses in this county. If you stop for every one of them, we’ll never get home.’
It was a grey pony. It moved from the shelter of some overhanging trees. Barney called. The pony lifted its head and broke into a trot, its rider wobbling bareback, hanging on to a halter rope with one hand and the mane with the other, red hair flopping.
‘Told you to take it easy, didn’t I?’ Ron grinned. ‘Whoa, Maggie.’ He hauled the pony in and slid off, wincing. ‘I’m as sore as the old lady who rode the cow.’
‘How on earth did you find her?’ Dora could speak at last.
‘How on earth?’ Ron mimicked her. ‘Not, “Thanks, Ron dear,” or, “Oh you clever boy.” Just, “How on earth did you, a dope like you—?”’
‘Oh, shut up.’ Dora was so relieved that laughter came easily. Or was it tears that wanted to come? ‘Oh Ron, I don’t care. I’m just so glad she’s all right. You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.’
‘Like what? You accusing me of something?’ Ron’s eyes were sharp. ‘Just because I’ve got a lot of good friends who keep their eyes peeled and their ears to the ground – contortionists, they are – and know everything that goes on, I’m always getting accused. Going to have it on my tombstone. “Ronald Arbuthnot Stryker. Always Accused.”’
‘Where was she?’
‘Man found her over Harlow way. Run herself into the ground, she had, and he got a halter on her. Seeing she was classy-looking, he was going to keep her in hopes of a reward. I persuaded him different.’
‘How?’
‘I have my methods.’ He closed one eye. With Ron, you never knew whether to believe the whole story, or part of it, or none of it.
Dora asked him no more, and he told her no more.
Chapter 22
STEVE WAS WILD with joy. Everybody was. Apart from a few nicks and scratches on Grey Lady’s legs, and a piece of skin torn off her shoulder, she had not suffered from her terrifying adventure.
The run across country and the long jog back with Ron had calmed her down. The Weaver was turned out, and she walked peacefully into his loose box and put her pretty head straight into the manger to lip up the chaff the finicky old horse had left.
‘She’ll be all right to race tomorrow.’ Steve brought her a big feed. ‘Ring up the Bunkers, Dora, and tell them she’s here. They’ll hit the ceiling.’
Dora was heading for the house, but Ron stopped her.
‘Are you mad? After all I’ve been through to get that animal back. There’s still tonight, you know. There’s still danger.’ A word Ron loved.
‘He’s right,’ Steve said. ‘Let’s keep her hidden.’ He came out of the loose box and shut and bolted the top door. ‘Don’t trust a soul.’
‘I must tell Jim, and put him out of his misery. He can keep a secret.’
‘It wouldn’t need words to give it away. He’s got to keep his misery, right up to the last moment when we tell him he can put on his new boots and his mum can put on her new dress and meet us at Broadlands. And then watch some people’s teeth gnashing!’ Steve gnashed his own like castanets.
‘You still don’t think it was Mr Bunker’s cigarette?’
‘I’m not taking any chances. I’m going to see that pony win tomorrow if it’s the last thing I do.’
Dora went to tell Amigo. ‘All is not lost, old friend.’
He had never thought it would be. He hung his heavy head over Dora’s shoulder and dreamed of an eternity of easy living.
‘Even if Grey Lady doesn’t win,’ she told him. ‘I’ll get your money somehow.’
She heard Steve call Callie to go and clean Barney’s saddle and bridle. There was that too. The saddler was getting a bit restless. She ought to be worrying, but somehow, standing in the stable with her kind old horse, sharing his content, it was hard to worry.
No time for worrying the next day. No time for anything except finishing the work of the Farm and then starting to get Grey Lady and Barnacle Bill ready for the Moonlight Steeplechase.
‘Since it’s going to be run in the middle of the night,’ Slugger grumbled, ‘it hardly seems worth using all my washing-up liquid on the manes and tails. “Makes your dishes sparkle like the dewy morn.”’ He picked up the empty bottle and read the label. ‘Fat lot of good it’s going to do Maggie and old Barn to be sparkling like the dew when there’s thirty ponies kicking mud in their faces, all shoving together at Beecher’s Brook with the banks like a sponge.’
‘They won’t get mud in their
faces,’ Dora was plaiting Barney’s wet mane, and spoke through a mouthful of rubber bands, ‘because they’ll be in front.’
‘I don’t like it.’ Slugger shook his head and stuck out his lower lip. He had never liked it. ‘If the Colonel was here, he’d not let you go.’
‘If the Colonel was here,’ Callie said from underneath Barney, where she was trimming his heels with Anna’s scissors, ‘he’d be at the front of the crowd yelling, “Legs, dammit, legs! Where’s your impulsion?”’ Memories of her jumping lessons with the Colonel.
‘It’s all right for them that can watch the race.’ Slugger sniffed. ‘But how’d you like to be left here biting your nails and wondering who’s coming home on a stretcher – you or that pony?’
‘Oh, thank you for minding,’ Callie said.
But Dora, realising what was behind the grumbles, said, ‘Of course you’re coming, Slugger. You’ve got to come.’
‘Didn’t get no invitation, did I?’
With Callie’s parents away, Dora and Steve had been sent their invitations to the supper party.
‘You’re the groom,’ Dora said. ‘We’ve got to have a groom. All the posh people will.’
‘What about me?’ Ron asked. ‘If it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be no Grey Lady.’
‘So you’ll be her groom. Two ponies, two grooms. I told you we were going posh. You can wear Steve’s jodhpurs.’
‘Like hell he can,’ Steve objected. ‘What’ll I wear?’
‘You’ll wear the suit.’ Steve had only one set of garments that could reasonably be called a suit.
‘Only if you wear the dress.’ Dora had only one dress that could reasonably be called suitable for Mr Wheeler’s party.
Two hours before it was to start, Dora rang up Mrs Bunker. ‘Yes?’ Jim’s mother had been answering the telephone with this dead voice ever since the disaster of the fire, expecting no good news.
‘Put on the red dress, Cinderella. You’re going to the ball.’
‘What ball? Don’t play tricks with me, Dora, I’ve got a splitting head.’
‘Take an aspirin. You’re going to Mr Wheeler’s champagne supper.’
‘It’s only for people who have a child in the race.’
‘But you have! You have! Grey Lady is here and we’re taking her over to Broadlands with Barney. I can’t explain now.’ Dora cut short a babble of excitement from the other end of the wire. ‘Just get yourself and Jim dressed, and we’ll see you there.’
‘He’s gone to bed. He’s exhausted.’
‘Wake him up. Give him some vitamin pills. Tell him he’s going to win!’
Chapter 23
STEVE’S JODPHURS WERE too big for Ron, who was less muscular. He reefed them in round his waist with his gaudiest tie, and put on his pointed cowboy boots and a sinister long black sweater. He added an Indian headband and a tin Peace symbol – Peace, for someone like Ron who was always making trouble! – on a thong round his neck.
Slugger looked less sensational, but more correct. He had brushed and pressed his Army breeches, and Dora had sewn a leather patch on the frayed elbow of his tweed jacket, and found him a check cap of the Colonel’s. They stuffed it with newspaper to keep it off his ears.
Callie, with her hair in two tight pigtails, wore her father’s blue and gold racing silks proudly. Steve borrowed Ron’s orange shirt to go with the suit. Only Dora was still in her old bleached jeans as they loaded the ponies, rushing Grey Lady into the box as if there were spies everywhere.
Dora had the yellow dress and sandals in a paper bag under the front seat where the five of them sat crushed together, singing ‘One Meat Ball’ to keep their nerves calm. The moon was up and full, its mysterious face half smiling in a cloudless sky.
‘I wish it was raining.’ Callie shivered.
‘Nervous?’
‘No. Yes. No.’ Callie looked at Steve. He was nervous about Grey Lady. He did not want her to be nervous about Barney. ‘I’m excited, that’s all.’
‘He’ll go well for you.’ Dora squeezed with the arm that was round Callie to make more room. ‘He’s a good pony. The best.’
‘If everybody else dropped down dead,’ Ron said. ‘The waiter roared across the hall, “We don’t serve bread with one meat baw-haw-haw!…” ’
At Broadlands, Dora changed into her dress in the horse box, combed her hair and put on the sandals. Barney was being walked round by Slugger, bow-legged, very horsy, eyeing the other ponies under the peak of the Colonel’s cap. Grey Lady was still in the horse box. They would not take her out until just before the race.
On the terrace in front of the big pillared house, the local socials were drinking and chattering. Coloured lamps hung in the white portico and along the windows of the great house. There were candles in glass bowls on the little supper tables. Yellow flares streamed dramatically from the balustrade.
Floodlights in the trees lit the wide sweep of parkland that was the start of the course, and its finish. Beyond, at the bottom of the slight slope, you could see the first fence, a brush jump, clear and black in the moonlight, and beyond that the post and rails, and then the corner of the copse, where they would turn across a stony road and over the bank. Headlights of cars, parked to light the tricky take-off, silhouetted the young trees.
Dora had walked the course twice with Callie. She knew every jump, every turn and stretch of rough going. It looked very different now, the fences bigger, the rails more solid, the grass waiting white and challenging for the charge of galloping hoofs.
Steve and Dora managed to get themselves on to the terrace by climbing over a dark corner of the balustrade, to avoid coming up the main steps in the light and the stares. They stood shyly in a corner, and a waitress brought them something on a silver tray which she said was ginger ale, but which tasted in Dora’s excitement as if it might be champagne.
They saw Sir Arthur and his wife, very much at ease, talking about ‘the tribe’, as they called their three sons, who were indistinguishable in looks and behaviour, except that the youngest was even ruder than the others.
They saw the local Master of Foxhounds, a television personality who would rather be behind his pack than in front of the cameras. They saw Mrs Hatch of the Pony Club, with her picket-fence teeth, and the famous horse-master Count Podgorsky, slim and elegant, with shining hair and shoes apparently made from the same material.
They saw the Nicholsons, beefy and too loud in this company, talking up ‘fantastic’ horses they had for sale, and putting down a great deal of champagne with their little fingers crooked, to show they knew what was what.
They saw – help! – Bernard Fox’s crinkly ginger hair moving through the gathering towards their corner, an amused smile lifting his marmalade moustache.
‘Dorothy?’
‘Hullo.’ The yellow dress had felt all right, but instantly it felt all wrong, and Dora knew it was too short.
‘I hardly recognised you. You look very nice.’
‘Thanks.’ Dora tried to move behind a small table, because he was looking at her legs.
Bernard Fox stayed, smiling at her, twirling his glass. He was obviously trying to find some slightly less insulting way of asking, How on earth did you two get here?, so to get rid of him, Dora said, ‘We brought the bay pony. The Colonel’s stepdaughter is riding him.’
‘Done any training gallops lately?’ Burnished Bernie was mellower tonight. It must be the champagne.
‘Oh yes.’ Dora glanced at Steve. She still had not told him about the racecourse, in case he thought it was silly. ‘At the Farm.’
‘Good girl.’ Bernie laughed at her, and then wagged his head and chuckled to himself, ‘Couldn’t believe my eyes,’ remembering Dora in the unsaddling enclosure.
‘What did he mean?’ Steve whispered when he finally moved off.
‘He couldn’t believe seeing us here,’ Dora said.
‘I didn’t like the way he looked at you.’
‘Nor did I.’ But Dora took a q
uick look down at her brown legs, and could not help feeling a bit pleased that Bernard Fox had admired them.
The Bunkers had still not arrived.
Suppose they never came. Suppose Jim refused to ride. Suppose Mrs Bunker refused to come to the party because it was too late to go to the hairdresser. Suppose Mr Bunker had put his foot down because he was still upset about being suspected of causing the fire.
Steve and Dora went through a dozen anxieties. Below the terrace, the young riders were having a picnic supper on the grass, their coloured shirts and jerseys vivid in the light of the flares. They looked over the edge and saw Callie eating stolidly. Saw several girls in a group, giggling. Saw others sitting alone, too nervous to eat. Sir Arthur’s boys throwing food about. A tall boy in glasses who looked too old to ride. Mrs Hatch’s daughter with her teeth spaced like her mother’s. No Jim.
‘If they don’t show up, I’m leaving,’ Steve fretted. ‘Ron can drive the box home. I’ll hitchhike.’
‘May as well have the supper,’ Dora persuaded him. But although the guests had begun to help themselves from the long buffet tables at the back of the terrace, piled with marvellous-looking food, she and Steve were too shy to push through the chattering crowd, who juggled plates and forks and glasses, looking for places at the table.
‘Come on, come on, you’ve got no supper.’
A short old man, twisted like a dune tree, limped up to them, leaning on a knobbly stick. He had thick white hair, eyebrows like fluffs of cotton wool, and a pointed white beard. His face was aged and lined, with faded-blue eyes that smiled at them, a more simple, direct face than many of the others here.
‘It’s – you’re Mr Wheeler, aren’t you?’ Dora asked, embarrassed because they had been too shy to speak to him when they arrived.
‘Forgive me for not greeting you before,’ he said, removing her embarrassment. ‘You’re from Follyfoot Farm, aren’t you? Steve and Dora. Good. Good.’ He had a way of looking at you closely, not staring insolently like Bernard Fox, but attentively, as if it mattered to him to know what you were like. ‘Come on. Get some food before the savages devour it all.’
Dora at Follyfoot Page 10
