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

by K. M. Peyton

  Ruth heard her mother say something about going out to work and her father replied, ‘That would mean giving up Elizabeth.’ There were a few more sentences she did not catch, and then she heard her father say, half-humorously, ‘Poor Ruthie will be selling papers to feed herself, let alone that darned pony of hers.’

  ‘You’d like to give up this house, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’d like to stop having to worry about money.’

  Ruth went on washing up, with a cold feel in the pit of her stomach. Fly-by-Night was so vulnerable, when her parents talked about money. Keeping him on the paper money was desperately hard as it was, and was going to be a lot harder when she started getting him shod. And next year he would need to be in hard condition for the Hunter Trials, which would mean more expensive food – not to mention the Pony Club subscription. Ruth knew that if she started thinking about all this, she would feel sick. It had happened before.

  Later on, before she went to bed, her father said to her, quite gently, ‘Ruth, this pony of yours . . .’

  ‘I pay for him all myself,’ Ruth said frantically. ‘I’ve never asked you for anything, not since the saddle!’

  Her father put down a little brown envelope on the table. It was addressed to him. Inside was a bill for three pounds, thirteen shillings and sixpence.

  ‘But he never even did anything!’ Ruth wept, incensed by the tactlessness of Mr. Richards’s timing in sending out his bill, as much as by the bill itself. ‘He only said I fussed!’

  ‘He came,’ her father said sadly. ‘That’s what they charge for, just coming. You don’t make a habit of this?’ he added, waving the bill.

  ‘Only once. And I shall pay it. It’s not for you. It’s mine. He addressed it wrong.’

  ‘I shall pay it,’ her father said firmly.

  ‘But you –’

  ‘Look, things may be difficult, but I’m not so hard up that I can’t pay this bill. Now stop crying. I’m not angry. But if this happens another time, I want you to tell me, not keep it secret.’

  ‘Yes.’

  *

  Thank heaven, Ruth thought, that summer had come, and the field was bright with new grass. There was no more hay to buy, and she could save her money, get a hoard in for next winter. She wondered, now, if she was desperately selfish, to want this thing so badly. With all the family troubles.

  ‘But what difference would it make if you gave him up?’ Ron said very sensibly. ‘It wouldn’t pay off the mortgage, what you would get for him.’

  ‘No one would buy him, the way he is,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Things’ll come all right,’ Ron said optimistically. ‘They usually do. Ted’s coming along fine.’

  That was the main thing, after all, Ruth remembered. Ted was going to be in hospital for three months, the doctors said. Ron and Ruth went to visit him on the nights her parents didn’t go (on the motor bike, but slowly, in deference to Mrs. Hollis’s instruction). He had been put on to basket-making, to while away the time, and had been carried away with creative fervour, weaving baskets five feet high.

  ‘What are they for?’ Ruth asked, amazed.

  ‘Waste-paper baskets,’ Ted said happily.

  ‘But nobody’s got that much waste paper,’ said Ron.

  One evening, when Ruth was waiting for Ron to pick her up, a woman arrived at the door. Ruth, answering the bell recognized her as Mrs. Challoner, the Child Care woman, and asked her in.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my calling at this time,’ the woman said to Ruth’s mother, ‘but something urgent has come up, and I’ve come to see if you can help me out. It’s only a short-term case, a child we think would be better away from its parents for a month or so. Needs a stable atmosphere, just to be accepted into a normal family, carry on at school, no fuss. The psychiatrist passed it on to me, and I wondered if you could possibly help.’

  Ron called at this moment, and Ruth left her parents discussing the situation with the woman in the living-room, and went out into the kitchen with Ron. She repeated what she had heard to Ron, and Ron said, ‘It’ll get a stable atmosphere here all right, if you’ve got anything to do with it.’

  Ruth smiled. ‘Of course, Ted’s room’s empty now, so I expect Mum will agree.’

  They went to the hospital and told Ted that his bed was being taken over. ‘You’ll be out in the garage when you come home,’ Ron told him. ‘Better start weaving yourself a bed.’

  ‘They’re out of cane,’ Ted said sadly. ‘The old girl says I’ve used up six months’ stock. I’ve sounded her out about having the cylinder head in here so that I can polish the parts – but she wasn’t very keen. She’s starting me on tapestry tomorrow.’

  ‘Very nice, my boy, very nice. Knitting’s next on the list, after tapestry. And when you’ve used up six months’ stock of wool there are a few bales of crochet cotton down in the storeroom.’

  When Ruth got home she found her parents watching television.

  ‘Are we having that child?’ she asked curiously.

  Her mother nodded. ‘Yes. It’s only for a month or two. Mrs. Challoner is bringing me all the details tomorrow morning, and says she’ll deliver the child in the afternoon. How’s Ted, by the way?’

  ‘He’s doing tapestry.’

  This evoked some amusement, and Mrs. Hollis said she would take him socks to darn the following evening. ‘You see that this new child has a pleasant evening tomorrow, Ruth. It’s a pity we’ve got to go out the first night, but the sister wants to speak to us. I told Mrs. Challoner how we’re fixed, but she seems to think it will work out all right. So we’ll give it a trial.’

  Ruth went home from school the following evening, curious, and a little nervous. It was a warm evening. The children were playing in the road with tricycles and skipping-ropes, and soon the open-plan fronts would whirr to the noise of lawn-mowers. She thought of Ted, imprisoned in his bed for the sake of a moment’s over-impetuosity on the motor bike, and was sorry for him. ‘He should have done it in November, if he was going to do it at all,’ she thought.

  She went in through the kitchen door.

  ‘Oh, Ruth,’ her mother said. There was a boy sitting at the table, reading a newspaper. ‘This is Peter, Ruth, who’s going to stay for a bit.’

  It was Peter McNair.

  9

  RUTH WATCHES TELEVISION

  RUTH WAS SO shattered by the unexpectedness of the situation that she could not speak. She opened her mouth, and no words came out. Peter looked up and said, ‘Oh hullo,’ without much interest, and Mrs. Hollis said, ‘I suppose you two know each other, if you’re at the same school? By sight, at any rate.’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said.

  Ruth shut her mouth, as it would not work, and dropped her satchel on the floor.

  Mrs. Hollis said to Peter, ‘Do you like liver and bacon?’ and Peter replied, ‘Yes, I don’t mind it.’

  ‘Pick up your satchel, Ruth,’ Mrs. Hollis said. ‘Are you sickening for something? You look blotchy.’

  ‘No,’ Ruth said dimly. She groped for her satchel, and fled out of the kitchen. She ran upstairs, and locked herself in the lavatory. She was shaking all over, and felt an insane desire to laugh out loud. In her satchel she had a book on butterflies. ‘But he’s downstairs! Here to stay! Him! Of all the people in the world . . .’

  ‘Ruth, are you being sick or something?’ her mother asked outside the door.

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  ‘Well, before you come down, just make up Ted’s bed, will you? I don’t seem to have got anything done today, and the dinner’s cooking now. I’ve put the sheets out.’

  Ruth did as she was told. Ted’s room was impersonal without Ted’s untidiness stamping it. Ruth spread the sheets and felt herself coming back to earth, warm, elated. The shock dissolved into a feeling of utter satisfaction at the ways of the world. By the time she was smoothing the quilt the satisfaction had given way to a feeling of extreme curiosity as to why Peter McNair had come into the Child Care
Department, and why he was better parted from his parents. As far as she knew, he did not have a mother. But from what she had last seen of his father it did not seem unreasonable to suppose that Peter would be happier away from him. Who had interceded for him? she wondered. She had noticed that he had been away from school for the last three days, but it had never entered her wildest dreams that he could be the urgent case Mrs. Challoner had been talking about.

  She went downstairs slowly, back into the kitchen. Elizabeth was laying the table with a lot of clatter; the bacon was spluttering noisily under the grill, and Peter stood staring out of the window with his hands in his pockets. Fly-by-Night was out of sight in the field, but Peter showed no interest in the hoof-marked back garden. Always a reserved boy, it occurred to Ruth that, during the time she had known him, he had got gradually more and more withdrawn. Because he rarely showed any emotions, it did not mean, she realized, that he did not feel any, and what was happening to him now could scarcely be less than a personal crisis in his life; yet he did not look upset. He had the slightly watchful expression in his eyes that Ruth now knew was his normal expression; his whole attitude was one of observing, recording, and passing no opinion. But Ruth saw now that it was not because he had no opinions to pass. For the first time it occurred to her that, under his stocky, unrevealing shell, he was very much aware, and as sensitive to hurt as any more normally extroverted child, if not more so. And really, when it came to the subject of problems to solve, he had more troubles by far than she had. It was more to the point now that she should try to make things come right for Peter than that he should make things come right for her. This change of outlook came to Ruth in the moment that it took her mother to pull the grill-pan out from under the grill, and say, ‘Ruth, make the tea.’

  ‘Elizabeth, wash your hands. They’re filthy,’ Ruth said, from force of habit, going to the tea-caddy. How strangely things worked out, she was thinking. Her mother put out the meal for the three of them, and they sat down to it. Peter had a good appetite, whatever his spiritual starvation, and there was no need to force a conversation when they were all so healthily occupied. When he had finished Peter said to Mrs. Hollis, ‘Can I go and have a look round before it gets dark? Isn’t there a creek at the bottom of the lane – the lane that goes to the right, off the estate?’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Ruth said.

  ‘You can go,’ Mrs. Hollis said. ‘But be back by seven, before I have to go out.’

  ‘Can I come?’ Elizabeth asked Peter.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Peter said.

  Elizabeth leapt eagerly from the table and fetched her gum boots. Peter went out with her, apparently quite happy that she should accompany him.

  ‘I’m glad she wanted to go,’ Mrs. Hollis said to Ruth, pouring herself a cup of tea and sitting down rather wearily. ‘She’ll keep tabs on him. He’s not likely to throw himself in, with her around. And I didn’t want to say no to him, the first night.’

  Ruth looked at her mother, shocked. ‘Throw himself in? Surely it’s not that bad?’

  ‘Well, no normal, happy child presents itself at a police-station and says it refuses to go home, and please could they find it somewhere to live. Which is apparently what he did.’

  ‘But very sensible, if you feel like that,’ Ruth couldn’t help pointing out. ‘Better than running away in an aimless fashion. And his father is beastly.’

  ‘So I understand. Mrs. Challoner had to do some investigating, and went to see him, and said that he was absolutely flabbergasted at what Peter had done. He said if he came back it would all be all right, but Peter flatly refused to go. It seems that since the mother died, three or four years ago, the father more or less drowned his sorrows in work, to the exclusion of all else.’

  ‘The horse-dealing business,’ Ruth put in.

  ‘Yes. I realized it was the same McNairs that you went to see last year, when Mrs. Challoner was telling me all this. Apparently Peter was expected to go along with his father, and submerge himself in the horse business, too, but Peter had other ideas. It seems he’s not the slightest bit interested in horses. He didn’t worry very much at first, but as he got older, and presumably more competent, his father expected him to be riding all the time. He started keeping him away from school, just to ride. And Peter got fed up. The last straw was apparently when his father stopped him eating bread and potatoes because he was getting too heavy. So he just walked out.’

  ‘Good for him.’

  ‘Mrs. Challoner thought it would just be a matter of talking Peter into going back home, and smoothing things over, but when the psychiatrist fellow looked into it, he said Peter was on no account to go back. So that’s how we got landed with him. Mrs. Challoner knew about Ted, so knew we had a spare room. And round she came.’

  ‘Queer,’ Ruth said. She was still bemused by the way things had worked out. ‘He’s a marvellous rider.’

  Her mother looked at her sharply. ‘After what I’ve told you, I hope you’ll have more sense than to start talking horses to him. I told Mrs. Challoner that she might not have chosen a very good place for him, what with you and your horse-nonsense, but she didn’t think that merely seeing a pony out of his bedroom window would be more than he could bear. But you’re on no account to trouble him with your pony problems, Ruth.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘That’s the one thing that really wouldn’t do him any good at all. He has to go and see the psychiatrist once a week, so they must consider he needs watching. I don’t want you to upset him.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t!’ Ruth said indignantly.

  ‘We’ve enough problems to get on with at the moment. We don’t want any more.’ Mrs. Hollis finished her cup of tea and looked at the time. ‘Your father will be in in a minute. I must put his meal on.’

  Ruth started to do her homework on the cleared end of the table. But she could not concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing. She kept thinking of Peter being under her nose all the time, and herself not being able to ask him about Fly-by-Night, when everything went wrong. ‘Torture,’ she thought, digging her pencil deep into her notebook, making an agonized doodle. ‘Cruelty to children.’ She drew a little girl, transfixed by an arrow. ‘It’s me that will be going to the psychiatrist when Peter’s finished.’ She longed to tell Ron what had happened, and see the expression on his face.

  All her tack was dirty and needed cleaning, but she spent the evening watching the television. Peter sat on the other end of the sofa, staring at the screen. The only conversation that passed between them at all was a few desultory remarks about school.

  10

  PEARL MAKES A BET

  IT WAS A hot summer, the hottest for years. The ground was baked hard, and big cracks opened up in the clay down by the creek. Ruth rode Fly-by-Night along the dry paths, her thighs sticky with heat against the saddle, flies singing in a cloud round the pony’s head. If it hadn’t been for the goal she was working for, she would have been very content. Fly-by-Night had stopped bolting with her; he trotted and cantered when she asked, and nearly always stopped when she wanted. But he had a definite mind of his own, which was still a match for her riding. There were days when she had battles with him, long-drawn-out miserable affairs which she won by patience rather than skill. She could not rely on his obedience; she could not be sure, when approaching even a small ditch, that he was going to jump it. The fences at Brierley were as impossible as mountains, by his present standards.

  Ron said, ‘If you take him to a Pony Club meeting, they will teach you how to do it. Isn’t that what it’s for?’

  Ruth agreed that it was. ‘They only meet in the school holidays. I’ll go to the first one in August.’ She did not want to admit to Ron that the thought of going to the first meeting terrified her. She was afraid Fly-by-Night would make a fool of her in front of all those competent girls.

  Even if she had not been given definite instructions about not troubling Peter with her ‘nonsense’, Ruth realized, as s
he got to know Peter better, that her own instinct would have stopped her from opening the subject. It was as if Peter, normal in all other respects, had put up a sort of barrier where horses were concerned. He never passed a comment on Fly-by-Night, seeming almost not to see him. When Ruth passed him out riding – which she did quite often, for he went down to the creek a lot to swim, or look for butterflies – he would just nod his head to her, but never linger, or stop to watch, or pass any remark. He never mentioned any of his riding experiences, or his home, or his father, or his brothers, as if none of his past life had ever happened. Ruth supposed this was a symptom of the disturbance that the psychiatrist was interested in, but when she asked him what he did at the psychiatrist’s – having pictured him lying on a couch recounting his life-history – he said, ‘Oh, we go to Lyons and eat chocolate éclairs,’ which did not help Ruth at all.

  But in all other respects Peter became a normal member of the family. He was no trouble at all, quiet, obedient, perfectly good-natured. At first he hardly spoke at all, but gradually he thawed out. He smiled more often, and at school, Ruth noticed, was far more lively than he had been. When the time came for Ted to come home from hospital Mr. and Mrs. Hollis decided that he might just as well stay. They had got used to having him around, and there was room for another bed in Ted’s room. Mrs. Challoner was very pleased with their decision. ‘He’s settled down so well with you. It would be such a shame to have to move him just at the moment. His father’s gone abroad, you know, so perhaps the change will do the gentleman good. I hope so, because Peter will have to go back to him eventually.’ Ruth hoped the nasty Mr. McNair would stay abroad for a long time. She liked Peter, and was still hopeful that, after a few more sessions eating chocolate éclairs, he would get round to talking ‘horse-nonsense’ with her.

  As the first meeting of the Pony Club approached at the end of July she tried to convince herself that she had nothing to worry about, but she was not very successful. She tried to tell herself that this meeting would, in fact, solve her problems, because that’s what the meetings were for, but she dreaded her introduction to the ranks of those capable, cold-eyed girls. She longed to ask Peter about them, and about what happened at the meetings. She got as far as saying to him, ‘I’m going to a Pony Club meeting on Wednesday,’ but Peter only said, ‘And the best of British luck,’ which did nothing to make her feel any more optimistic. If he thought she needed it, it was no more than she felt herself.