Poor Badger

by K. M. Peyton

  Then he stood on the railway bridge and looked up at the moon, and all round at the brightly lit, silent, sleeping world, and he felt a great burst of joy surging out of his chest and into his throat so that he had to open his mouth to let it out. He stood on the bridge and yelled. His voice was like a trumpet: a fanfare to delight.

  ‘Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!’ he shouted.

  And nothing moved. The road, the railway were still, like a stage-set, and – stagiest of all – the great white moon shining overhead. Leo had never been out alone at night before. He felt he had never done anything before, not anything at all. He had been asleep all his life, compared with how he felt now. He never wanted to go to bed again. He didn’t want to go home. He wanted to stand on the bridge and shout. So he did, until a distant beam showed a car coming. It had a blue light on top, revolving. It was a police car. Leo ducked down and stayed silent on the bridge until it had passed. Perhaps it was looking for Badger? But it would never find him. Only someone in gumboots could find Badger, and there were no signs any more of the way he had gone.

  ‘Hooray!’ shouted Leo.

  He ran across the bridge with the bucket and jumped down the steps to the bottom. It seemed a great pity, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to do any more. To spin it out, Leo walked back up the road, to go back past Badger, the way they had taken earlier. He sang as he walked, ‘Green Grow the Rushes O’, but couldn’t remember after ‘Seven for the seven stars in the sky’, so started on a song his father sang while he was in the bath: ‘My name is MacNamara, I’m the leader of the band’. But the cars were getting more frequent now and he had to hide six times before he got to the lane. He slid down the far side, to make a change, and then walked silently in case the greyhounds heard him.

  Badger was still grazing ravenously, and the cow and the donkey were out now and grazing near him. They were all quite friendly by the look of it. Badger did not even lift his head as Leo hung over the gate.

  Leo left the bucket inside the gate for Sid and went on home. At last he was feeling tired. But magnificently tired, as he had never felt before, tired like a giant, with a great giant weariness, and a great giant content. The lane was dark and silent. Nothing stirred. Leo went in like a burglar, quiet as a cat.

  Perhaps that’s what I’ll be – a burglar, he thought.

  Then he thought, I am. And slept.

  Next day it snowed, deep and thick. It was almost Christmas. Ros knew they couldn’t have done it, not in the snow, and was deeply, deeply happy. Underneath, that is. On top, she was jumpy with nerves, waiting for a policeman to knock on the door, or Dad Smith to ring up. Her mother thought she was sickening for something. She was white-faced and twitchy, and kept getting the shivers. Some general! She daren’t go over the railway bridge, in case she met Dad Smith discovering his pony had been stolen. She kept wondering what he was doing about it. Even if he had discovered it yet. He didn’t come every day, not now that he knew Albert filled the water bucket.

  The police didn’t come, and nobody rang up.

  Ros lay low for the whole of the next day, yawning a lot, but the day after, when nothing had happened, she decided to venture out. She couldn’t help wanting to see Badger again, to see that he was still there. For all she knew, Dad Smith had found him and taken him away.

  Leo said, ‘Return to the scene of the crime – that’s what murderers do.’

  ‘No one’ll see us. Nobody goes up there.’

  ‘We’ll leave tracks.’

  They went, all the same. It was still snowing. ‘Our tracks’ll get covered up.’

  But they made deep, blueish scars in the untouched snow. The tractor tracks had browned the lane where it left their houses, but after they had passed the riding school and the turning to the farm, the small lane up to the tunnel was unmarked, a pure white river running between the jagged darkness of the bare hedges. At the top they could see the dark hole of the tunnel, and hear the distant hum of the traffic behind the trees.

  ‘When Sid goes out, he goes under the tunnel. He doesn’t come this way,’ Leo said.

  ‘Nobody comes this way,’ Ros said.

  ‘If you were a detective in Siberia, or Alaska, it would all be quite easy,’ Leo said, looking back with satisfaction at their trail. He was full of confidence. He stamped his feet and made flurries in the snow. He turned round and walked backwards.

  ‘That’s a way to trick them. They think you’re going the other way. I should’ve worn my father’s gumboots. That would’ve fooled them still more.’

  ‘They’d have fallen off.’

  Leo started making very long strides. ‘I’m a little man with very long legs, they’ll think.’

  ‘And a small brain,’ Ros said, getting rather annoyed at Leo’s tricks.

  The cold air stung her face, making her eyes water. The sky was brownish, and the falling flakes white and soft, wet on her cheeks. But there was no wind, and the hedges stood stark, holding the snow in their arms. Where there was a gap in the hedge, the snow had drifted deep. Ros shivered, frightened for Badger. She was desperate to see if he was all right.

  But when they came to the stream at the bottom of Sid’s field, they saw Badger standing at the top with the cow and the donkey. They were all eating hay, which had been set out separately in three piles.

  ‘Three piles!’ Ros whispered.

  Sid had taken Badger. He was feeding him. He hadn’t taken him to the police station.

  Relief filled her, swamping her shivers and jitters. She leaned on the gate, watching how eagerly Badger was eating the good hay. It wasn’t the mouldy stuff Dad Smith had supplied. He was gobbling it up. Ros wanted to go up the field to talk to him, but daren’t.

  ‘I bet he’ll come if you call him,’ Leo said.

  ‘No, we shouldn’t let Sid see us.’

  She thought she could see Sid’s face in the caravan window, and turned to go home, nervous again. Their tracks in the snow seemed to shout to the sky – ‘Look what we’ve done!’

  Their plan had worked better than she had ever dreamed. Yet the success did not seem to make her happy, not even after seeing Badger. She still felt nervous and guilty. She kept wanting to go and visit Badger, to see he was still there, but every time she felt worse, instead of better. Her parents thought she was ill. She couldn’t eat. She kept thinking of Dad Smith arriving at the door, full of his terrible rage. She discovered that she was no general. It was Leo who had turned into a general, suddenly a new boy, full of confidence.

  Ros’s parents thought she was feverish.

  ‘I shall have to take you to the doctor,’ her mother said. ‘I can’t think what’s wrong with you. It’s three days now – picking at your food! And you look like a ghost.’

  Ros said nothing. Her father was giving her thoughtful looks, saying nothing too.

  In the evening the phone rang. Her mother answered it, and shouted to her father, who was watching television, ‘It’s for you. A Mr Smith.’

  Ros let out a choking cry and rushed out of the room. She fled up to the bathroom and locked herself in. All she could think of was the red, aggressive face looming over her at the horse show, the beefy arm raised, the awful threats. Yet, even being so afraid, the thought of Badger in Sid’s lovely field gave her a deep feeling of defiance. It’s Badger who matters, she thought. Even being so afraid, she wouldn’t have changed anything. She sat on the edge of the bath, trying to be brave, and not being very successful.

  The phone call seemed to take a long time. She sat there realizing that it was all up, and that she had to face the consequences, and that she now had an even harder job on her hands to save Badger. The thought of Dad Smith taking him back was unbearable. Instead of crying and shivering, she did her best to stiffen herself into a figure of resolution and courage. It was extremely difficult. She went on sitting on the edge of the bath. Outside it was dark and snowing again.

  After a long time her father came upstairs and called her name. She didn’t an
swer. He tried the bathroom door.

  ‘Ros?’

  ‘Dad.’ Softly.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Surely he knew?

  ‘Let me in.’

  She got up and unlocked the door. Her father looked down at her curiously. He looked so sympathetic and reliable that her new-found courage gave way and she burst into tears. He put his arms round her and she buried her face in the front of his pullover. She wept.

  ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘What did – what did he say? Mr – Mr Smith –?’

  ‘Mr Smith? He said he was sorry he hadn’t been in to service the boiler but his wife’s had to go into hospital with blood pressure and they’ve decided to keep her in until the baby’s born, and that means there’s no one at home to look after their old gran and one way or another it’s a bit difficult to get away just now, but with luck he’ll get round in another week or two. Why do you want to know?’

  Ros took her face out of her father’s pullover and looked up at him, amazed.

  ‘He – it was – wasn’t – it wasn’t that Mr Smith?’

  ‘What Mr Smith?’

  ‘The one who owns Badger?’

  ‘No. Why should it be?’

  ‘Oh – oh! Oh, Dad!’

  Ros flung her arms round him, half crying, half laughing. He held her, and laughed too.

  ‘What’s all this about? What’s got into you, Rosalind Palfrey?’

  So she told him. She told him everything that had happened.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE NEXT DAY was Christmas Eve. Harry Palfrey decided to take the day off.

  ‘We’ll go for a walk, you and me,’ he said to Ros.

  ‘Where to?’

  Ros was still dithery, although unloading all her cares on to her father had made her feel very much better, and hungry again. She had bacon and egg for breakfast. Surprisingly, neither of her parents had said very much about what she had done. Not to her, at least. When she was in bed, she had heard them talking in the room below, right up until she fell asleep.

  ‘We’ll go up and have a chat to Sid, I thought.’

  He fetched his gumboots out of the garage.

  ‘Can Leo come?’

  ‘Of course.’

  But Leo was having a piano lesson.

  His backwards footsteps still showed in the snow. As he had walked backwards both ways, his footsteps looked just the same as Ros’s, who had walked forwards.

  ‘Ages since I’ve been up here,’ Harry said cheerfully, as they ploughed up the lane. Big dollops of thawing snow fell on them from the branches above. The air was softer, and crows wheeled, black as coal, against the damp grey sky. This time they did not stop at the bottom of the field, but went on up the lane towards the tunnel, to where the caravan stood with its back to the trees and the road. Badger was in the barn still eating. They went in the gate and up the ash path to the caravan door. Sid was just coming out, cap pulled well down, dirty muffler tied round his neck. He was a small, quiet man with gaps in his teeth, brown like a gypsy, neither young nor old. He had a thin cigarette hanging from his lower lip.

  ‘Good morning,’ Harry said.

  Sid did not answer, just looked.

  ‘It’s about the piebald pony.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘My daughter here put it in your field.’

  ‘Did she now?’

  Sid stood with his hands in his pockets, and stared at Ros. He had dark brown eyes, very shiny and quick, like a small animal used to living by its wits.

  ‘She took it from its tether by Safeway’s car park and put it here because she thought it was being ill-treated. Not a very smart thing to do.’

  Sid went on looking at Ros, till she felt embarrassed. Then he winked at her.

  To Harry he said, shifting his cigarette to one side, ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘I want to sort it out. She’s stolen it, and put the onus on you. You could be in trouble for receiving stolen goods. We wouldn’t want that to happen.’

  Sid chewed on his fag-end once more.

  He grinned. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘You reckon it’s all right for the pony to stay here for the time being, then, while I see the police?’

  He hadn’t mentioned the police to Ros, up till now. At the dread word, all Ros’s shivers came back.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Why bring the police into it?’ Sid said.

  Ros’s feelings exactly.

  ‘Get it sorted out,’ Harry said.

  ‘We’ve sorted it out,’ Sid said. ‘That man . . . kept it on that tether – he don’t deserve no pony.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t! Dad, he doesn’t!’ Ros could see that Sid was exactly the right sort of man.

  ‘I agree. All the same, it needs to be sorted out.’ Harry’s voice was very firm.

  Sid shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Nobody’s bin looking, mind you. Ask ’em first, if it’s bin reported missing. It wasn’t treated like a pony anyone cared about. Anyone wanted, like.’

  ‘That’s perfectly true.’

  Ros could see that Sid was a man after her own heart.

  ‘Oh, Dad, don’t tell them what I did!’

  ‘Stupid, that’d be,’ Sid said.

  Harry stood there, considering.

  ‘There’s more wrong on their side than there is on the littl’un’s here. I saw that pony. Wicked neglect, that was.’

  ‘Well —’ Harry stood staring across the fields, at a loss now. ‘You’re quite right. But – all the same – I’m not having my child breaking the law.’

  ‘She done right, mate. But suit yerself.’

  Sid shrugged again.

  ‘I got work to do,’ he said, and left them, walking away under the tunnel.

  Harry and Ros stood in the cold air, looking after him. Ros was tingling with half-fear, half-excitement.

  ‘Oh, Dad!’

  Ros could not express her feelings; she had the shivers. Harry put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a little hug.

  ‘Can I give Badger his carrots?’ She broke away and ran across the grass towards the wire fence that kept the animals off the caravan. She called Badger and he came out of the barn, head up, ears pricked, recognizing her voice. He came over to the fence and gave her his little knuckering noise of welcome, and she flung her arms round his neck.

  ‘Oh, you like it here, Badger, don’t you? I’ll never let them take you away, I promise!’

  Her father watched her, his eyes full of anxiety. Even he could see that Badger was already showing his old spark, freed of his tether and fed for three days on good food. He was still a ragbag of staring ribs and dull, matted coat, but his expression was bright, his ears all optimism. The awful dejection, tail to wind and snow, was no longer apparent.

  Harry could not bear the thought of breaking Ros’s heart.

  He stood looking at his feet, at the patterns his gumboot soles made in the snow. In the caravan, four sleek greyhounds watched him out of the window. The crows wheeled against the sky.

  ‘What are you going to do, Dad?’ Ros asked anxiously as they walked home.

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  They passed the farm turning and the riding school, and followed the slushy tractor tracks. Harry walked in silence.

  When they got home, he turned to Ros and said, ‘We’ve got to go to the police, Ros. I’m sorry. As it stands, you’re a thief. I can’t just accept that my daughter is a thief. If everyone took what they wanted, how could we get on in this life? It’s a very basic law, not to take other people’s property. I believe in it, and you must too.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘I know you did it for Badger. All right. What Sid says is true – that you did a good thing rather than a bad thing. But you’re still a thief. It’s a right muddle, like a whole lot of things that happen. There’s no exact answer. So, as Sid seems to have a pretty sensible outlook on life, we’ll do what he suggests, go to the police and e
nquire if Badger’s disappearance has been reported. And go from there.’

  ‘Do you really think Mr Smith might not have reported it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Looking after the pony was obviously a great drag, as far as he was concerned. He might be glad to be rid of him. And there’s nothing in the local paper about a pony being stolen. So it could be . . .’

  Harry got the car out when they got home, and told Ros to hop in. They drove to the police station. Ros had got the big shivers by now, and sat huddled down under her seatbelt, listening to her heart thumping with apprehension.

  ‘What are you going to say?’

  ‘Ask if a piebald pony has been reported missing.’

  ‘Not say where it is!’

  ‘No, just say we saw the tether lying, and wondered if it had got away. We’re worried about its safety.’

  ‘What if they say yes, and what do you know about it?’

  ‘I’ll prevaricate.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Make it up as I go along.’

  He gave her a quick hug and got out of the car. She watched him disappear into the police station.

  Oh, Badger! Ros sat trembling. It was the worst feeling she had ever had in her life, even worse than when she had attacked Dad Smith at the horse show.

  It felt like hours.

  Her father came out and straight across to the car.

  ‘What do you think? They’ve never heard of him. No word of a piebald pony stolen, nothing at all.’

  ‘You mean —?’

  ‘It means he never reported it. Which seems to me, he doesn’t care. He’s glad to be rid of him.’

  ‘Oh Dad!’

  Ros didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Badger could stay in his lovely field with kind, sensible Sid and the cow and the donkey and the barnful of good hay! He would grow round and fat and shining again, and have strength to gallop and kick up his heels. He would never whinny in the night again, stranded on his tether without food and shelter.