Pony Stories (3 Book Bind-Up) (Red Fox Summer Reading Collections)

by K. M. Peyton

  It was, of course, perfectly natural that he should attend the same school as herself, but the possibility of it had never entered her head. She felt almost stunned by the shock of his incredible appearance before her very eyes, reading the Bible: quite the last occupation she had ever envisaged him at. But after a few days, having become used to seeing him about, she realized that his presence at school was as remote as it had been at the Hunter Trials. He was in the form above her, which mixed with her own class scarcely at all, and, as a boy in a clique of boys, he was hardly likely to want to make friends with a girl. From a few discreet inquiries, Ruth discovered that nobody knew that he rode at all. He was a quiet boy whose only claim to fame seemed to be a second in the 100-metre back-stroke in last July’s swimming gala. And his great passion was acknowledged to be butterflies. ‘Butterflies?’ Ruth was astonished again.

  ‘Oh, he knows everything about butterflies. And moths.’

  At home Ruth said to Ron, ‘He knows everything about schooling ponies, too, but how can I get to talk to him?’

  ‘You’ll have to get interested in butterflies. And moths,’ Ron said.

  Ruth made a face. ‘That’s not one of your very best ideas. I’m just not interested in butterflies. Or moths.’

  ‘I thought it was rather a good idea myself.’

  ‘Yes, well, I should think it is a very interesting subject, if it wasn’t that I haven’t got time to think about anything else. You see, there’s homework now, and it’s getting dark earlier. And there aren’t any butterflies in the winter anyway.’

  ‘A good point,’ said Ron. ‘The Pearly Queen’s a dead loss, I take it?’

  ‘Oh, Pearl . . .’ Ruth sighed.

  Having got involved with Pearl was as much trouble as it was help. Milky Way’s presence on rides had certainly got Fly-by-Night steadied down and moving in a less erratic manner, but Ruth now worried more about Milky Way than she did about Fly-by-Night.

  ‘She’s such a sweet-natured pony, and the way Pearl treats her is awful. And in spite of being pulled about and jabbed in the mouth and completely muddled, she is so anxious to please all the time. It’s that that makes me feel so miserable. If it was Fly, he’d buck Pearl off, or turn round and bite her on the ankle like he does me sometimes, or roll on her or something. He’d stick up for himself. But poor sweet Milky Way just tries all the time, and I get sad.’

  ‘I suppose that’s what you pay seven hundred pounds for,’ Ron said. ‘Not to get rolled on, and your ankles bitten.’

  ‘Oh, yes. She’s been most beautifully schooled, and she still remembers it. She always leads on the right leg, and never refuses a jump, and she’ll do beautiful forehand turns at gates all off her own bat; but Pearl’s no idea. I get ever so miserable, thinking of poor Milky Way.’

  ‘That’s daft,’ Ron said. ‘She’ll be well fed, and comfortable most of the time.’

  ‘Yes, I know. She’s well fed all right. Stuffed with corn, yet she never gets above herself. But sometimes she goes lame, and Pearl takes no notice.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I told Pearl she ought to get the vet, but she says it’s nothing, because it wears off after a bit. Which is true. There’s nothing wrong you can see.’

  ‘You’ve got enough to worry about with your own horse, without worrying about someone else’s,’ Ron said severely. ‘You’re a born worrier.’

  ‘Yes. I’m worried about buying hay now. And getting his feet done. Money.’

  ‘Oh, we’re all worried about that.’

  Ruth knew that her father was worried about it, too. The mortgage on the new house was a large strain on the family finances, and Ruth was frightened to ask for anything for Fly in case her father said he would have to go. She had to manage on her paper-round money. By the end of September the field was so bare that she had to start buying hay, and she soon found that Fly could eat a bale in under a week. When she went up to ‘The Place’ she would see the gardener, who fed Milky Way, measuring out chaff, oats, bran and pony-nuts, and she longed to be able to do the same. ‘Not, of course, that it’s necessary,’ she told herself. For she knew that Milky Way was grossly overfed for the amount of work she did. But she would have liked a bag of pony-nuts. Half a hundredweight was over a pound to buy. She spent two shillings a week on rough carrots, and scrounged stale toast, and cabbage leaves. When the blacksmith visited ‘The Place’ to shoe Milky Way, Ruth plucked up her courage and led Fly-by-Night round, and the smith pared his hoofs down for ten shillings.

  ‘Nice l’il feet ’e’s got. ’E’ll do without shoes if you don’t do much with ’im. Just around the fields.’

  But Ruth knew he would need shoes when he jumped the Brierley Hill Hunter Trials course. She would have to join the Pony Club, too. She found that this cost a pound. She could not spare a pound, or Fly-by-Night would have starved. ‘I’ll ask for it for a Christmas present,’ she decided. ‘Every Christmas.’ But if she joined the Pony Club she would have to have jodhpurs, instead of jeans. ‘I won’t worry about that now,’ she said to herself, turning over restlessly in bed. Sometimes when she lay there, watching the deep, wintering sky all rashed over with faint stars, she would hear Fly-by-Night whinny down the field. The lonely cry would come on the draught through the bedroom window, with the smell of old grass and ploughed earth, and it stabbed Ruth to the heart.

  ‘He’s lonely,’ she said to herself, eaten with remorse. She could see him, standing in the frosty dark, whinnying to the stars. Sometimes, if she listened hard and the night was still, she would hear Milky Way reply from her open half-door at ‘The Place’. ‘Lots of people keep just one horse,’ Ruth said to herself, trying to be sensible. She always skipped the pages in the pony-books that started, ‘The horse is a gregarious animal . . .’ It hurt to think that Fly-by-Night was deprived of something essential to his happiness. ‘It’s daft,’ Ron said, ‘to worry.’ Ruth thought of Ron’s sense, and wished she had as much. ‘Don’t be sentimental,’ she told herself. She hated sentimentality towards animals, as opposed to sense, but thought that she verged on it herself at times. If she knew more, she thought. She would learn at the Pony Club, and meet people who knew, but she could not take Fly-by-Night to the Pony Club until he could be trusted to do as she wanted. She groaned, turning over again in bed so that the eiderdown fell on the floor.

  Ruth guessed that Ron had been right when he had said that Pearl was lonely, for Ruth, having introduced herself to Pearl, now found herself badgered by Pearl’s company. Unfortunately, with the best will in the world, Ruth could not get fond of Pearl: Pearl exasperated her, with her sulky moods and her bigoted ignorance, which she would not admit. They rode side by side, along the edges of the winter plough, arguing bitterly.

  Ruth, compelled by Milky Way’s unhappiness, told Pearl she rode on too tight a rein, to which Pearl retorted, ‘I ride her collected. I don’t let her sprawl about like Fly-by-Night.’

  ‘But a horse should walk on a long rein, freely,’ Ruth said. ‘You only collect her up when you’re going to do something else, to get her ready. Not all the time. You’re ruining her mouth.’

  ‘Who are you telling how to ride?’ Pearl asked haughtily. ‘Just tell me how many times I’ve fallen off, compared with you?’

  ‘Just staying on doesn’t mean to say you are a marvellous rider. Even I could stay on Milky Way. She never gives you any cause to fall off.’

  ‘That’s because I’m riding her properly,’ Pearl said pointedly. ‘If you rode Fly properly he wouldn’t buck you off.’

  ‘He doesn’t buck,’ Ruth said furiously. ‘He shies sometimes, that’s all. And I’ve never pretended I can ride well! But at least I’m willing to learn, which is more than you are. Why don’t you join the Pony Club? They would teach you.’

  ‘I don’t need teaching!’ Pearl retorted, equally furiously. ‘My pony does what I want her to do, which is more than yours does!’

  As if to prove Pearl’s point, Fly-by-N
ight decided at this moment to take exception to a tractor parked beside the hedge some ten feet away. He stopped, goggling, while Milky Way went placidly on. Pearl turned round in her saddle, smirking. Ruth, white with a seething fury, closed her legs firmly, according to the books, but Fly-by-Night started to go backwards. Goaded by Pearl’s amusement, Ruth lifted her stick and gave Fly a belt across the quarters with all the strength of her arm. The pony gave an astonished snort, gathered himself abruptly together and shot off like a cork out of a champagne bottle. By clutching a handful of mane, Ruth managed to keep her seat. She had a glimpse of Pearl’s laughter and Milky Way’s polite curvetting, and then nothing but the stubble racing under the flying hoofs, and the thick mane flying before her. Her eyes were blinded with tears of humiliation, which she pretended were caused by the wind. She did not attempt to pull Fly up, because the field was big, and she did not want to go back to Milky Way. She sat still in the saddle, still holding the mane, until the pony had topped the long rise and Ruth could see the grey water of the tidal creek lying below behind the sea-wall, and the cold pastures stretching away on either side of the river. Then Fly-by-Night dropped his head at last, and fell back into a fast, unbalanced trot, and Ruth was able to pull him up by the gate at the top. She turned round, and to her relief saw that Pearl had cantered round in a big circle and was on her way home, alone. The white Arab pony moved like a drifting sea-gull over the grass, easy, obedient. Ruth watched her, bitter at the injustice of it, while Fly-by-Night hungrily cropped at the tops of the sour yellow thistles that grew in the hedge.

  When Pearl had vanished, Ruth, ashamed now of her anger, pulled Fly-by-Night’s head up and walked back down the field. He went easily, unconcerned, and Ruth could sit and look at the hedges full of wild rose hips and pretend that she was out to enjoy the landscape. At the bottom of the field, where it was flat, she decided to do some schooling, and walked Fly-by-Night round in several big circles. Apart from a tendency to go out in the bottom corner, heading for home, he did these quite well, but when she attempted to do them at a trot he ran out each time at the home corner, and it was only by a lot of hauling and kicking that she was able to get him back on course again. It was her own inadequacy as much as the pony’s that distressed her: into her mind sprang a picture of Peter McNair trotting Fly-by-Night in compass-drawn circles, the pony flexed to the bit, his hind legs well under him. The picture had ‘GOOD’ written under it. The fact that it was entirely imaginary caused her to weep a little more as she walked back down the lane.

  When she got home she gave Fly-by-Night a net of her precious hay and went indoors with her saddle and bridle, which she kept in her bedroom. Elizabeth was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing.

  ‘Was he good?’ she asked.

  ‘No, not very.’

  ‘At least,’ Elizabeth said, ‘he will eat the bridle now.’

  And as Ruth went upstairs it was a comfort to her to remember that when Elizabeth first came, six months ago, Fly-by-Night would not even be bridled, let alone ridden in circles. ‘Perhaps,’ she thought, ‘I expect too much. I am making progress, slowly.’ And the more she remembered what Fly-by-Night wouldn’t do, six months ago, the more her spirits revived.

  But progress, during the winter, was slow. By the time Ruth got home from school it was dark, and she could only ride at week-ends. During the Christmas holidays the ground was covered with snow, and then frozen slush, and Fly-by-Night remained in his field, tugging at his hay-net. Ruth had to break the ice on the old cistern three times a day. Morosely she watched him out of the windows. Even with the paper-round money, she was only just able to afford to keep him in feed, and only for his sake would she have turned out of bed at six o’clock every morning and cycled, shivering, to the paper-shop for her bag of papers. She was very conscious that money was tight, for her mother was anxious about Christmas, and their presents were dull and necessary clothes, offered with apologies. Her father looked worried, and did the football pools every week, and said, ‘This house will be the ruin of me.’ To Ruth, the brightest moment of the holidays came two days after Christmas when she met Pearl, when she delivered their papers, and Pearl said, ‘I’ve got a new pair of jodhpurs. Do you want my old ones? I was going to throw them away.’

  The jodhpurs were beautiful, with buckskin inside the knees, and Ruth found that riding was infinitely more comfortable. She was full of gratitude, and Pearl asked her to tea once or twice, but Ruth never enjoyed life inside ‘The Place’ very much, for Pearl’s parents were very peculiar, to her eyes, using sanguinary adjectives every time they spoke and quite often shouting at each other with a viciousness that made Ruth wish she could crawl under the carpet. At other times they were very affable and called everyone ‘darling’. Their house was furnished with very plushy carpets and satin sofas that engulfed one like great soft clouds. Ruth could never make up her mind whether she liked it or not. Its air of lush comfort overwhelmed her, but a puritan streak in her was repelled by it. On the other hand, she did not like her own house very much, with its cold, functional character. She decided that she must be hard to please, until she remembered Mr. Lacey’s place, and its haphazard take-it-or-leave-it air, droopy ceilings, and pear trees looking into the bedroom windows. ‘That is how I like my places,’ she thought.

  Three days before she was due to go back to school she went out to feed Fly-by-Night and found him standing in a corner of the field with his nose stuck in the hedge and his tail clamped hard down on his hind quarters. He did not look up as she approached, which was unusual, for he usually galloped towards her whenever she went near the fence.

  ‘What’s the matter, my beautiful?’

  Fly-by-Night did not shift. Ruth felt a coldness creep over her. She recognized Fly-by-Night’s appearance as that described as ‘tucked-up’ in all the books; he had little hollows under his hip-bones and looked thin. And as she looked at him she saw that he was shivering. His legs shook, and from his back little spirals of steam rose up in the air.

  Her coldness turned to panic. She stood rooted, appalled.

  ‘Fly! What’s wrong with you?’

  But Fly rolled a miserable eye in her direction and put back his ears. His hind legs started to shake so that all his flanks quivered.

  Ruth was alone; her father and Ted were at work, and her mother had taken Elizabeth to the dentist. She was terrified, for this ailing Fly-by-Night was a stranger to her, all his cockiness extinguished. The shaking, and the wisps of steam horrified her. She ran back indoors, and hunted feverishly through her books under the chapters headed ‘Ailments of the Horse’. These chapters, never much studied until now, laid out in horrid detail the symptoms of worms, thrush, strangles, colic . . . She turned from one heading to another, and found that nearly every paragraph ended, ‘Send for the veterinary surgeon immediately.’ They nearly all said, too, ‘Lead the horse into a box well filled with fresh straw and cover the loins with a rug, or sack.’ Ruth, having no box, no straw, no rug, and no sack, pulled the blanket off her bed and took it outside. She threw it over Fly-by-Night’s steaming back, fastened it at the front with her school-house brooch and round his belly with two of Ted’s belts buckled together. Then, pulling her bicycle out of the garage, she cycled frantically round to ‘The Place’ to tell Pearl what had happened.

  Pearl said, ‘Well, get the vet. That’s what they’re for. We had one for Milly when she cut her leg on some wire.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Richards, he was called. He’s the best round here.’

  Ruth hesitated. Doctors were free, but she did not know whether vets had a version of the National Health Service for the animal world. Never having contributed anything towards it, she rather doubted whether they did. Pearl, as if divining her thoughts, said, ‘You don’t have to pay when he comes. He sends a bill later.’ This decided Ruth.

  ‘Can I use your telephone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A secretary took her message. She gave her name and addres
s and the secretary said, ‘Mr. Richards will be over as soon as he can.’

  Ruth hurried home, and spent the afternoon watching Fly-by-Night, who did not move, and rushing out into the front every time she saw a car. The eleventh car pulled up outside the gate. Ruth looked at it, and started shivering herself. The car was brand-new, with wire wheels, the sort Ted and Ron would watch with narrowed eyes, not saying anything. A man got out and said, ‘Horse here?’

  Ruth nodded. The man was immaculately dressed in a tweed suit and smelt of after-shave lotion. He took a pair of gum boots out of the car and Ruth said nervously, ‘He – he’s round the back.’

  ‘Lead on,’ said Mr. Richards.

  Ruth did as she was told, and took Mr. Richards to Fly-by-Night, who laid back his ears and presented his hind quarters, so that Ruth had to hurry back to the house and fetch a halter. Mr. Richards stood waiting, and Ruth had a terrible feeling that he was like a taxi, his fee creeping up while she wasted his time. But when she haltered Fly-by-Night, Mr. Richards just said, ‘These ponies are tough, you know,’ and after a cursory thumping, listening and peering he laughed and said, ‘What’s your mother going to say about the blanket?’

  Ruth thought the question completely beside the point.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Of course he’s all right.’

  ‘I – I thought –’

  ‘Oh, you women are all the same. Fuss, fuss, fuss,’ said Mr. Richards. ‘A little cold. He won’t die.’

  Ruth felt as if she had been run over by a steamroller. Mr. Richards drove away and she went back to Fly-by-Night and cried, ‘How was I to know? And he’ll send a bill . . .’ Fly-by-Night shivered, and Ruth hugged him. ‘Oh, Fly, the money!’