Too Many Ponies

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  TOO MANY PONIES

  About the author

  SHEENA WILKINSON has won many awards for short stories.

  Her first novel, Taking Flight, won two Children’s Books Ireland Bisto Awards, the most prestigious Irish awards for children’s books. Taking Flight won both the Honour Award for Fiction and the Children’s Choice Award, making Sheena one of only four writers ever to have received two awards in one year. It won a White Raven Award from the International Youth Library in Munich, and was chosen by IBBY (International Board for Books for Young People) as Ireland’s representative in the writing category in their 2012 Honour List.

  Grounded, the sequel, was one of The Irish Times’ Children’s Books of the Year and was shortlisted for the Children’s Books Ireland Awards 2013. In November 2012, only two years after the publication of her first novel, Sheena was awarded a Major Individual Award by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which will allow her to take a year off her full-time teaching job to concentrate on writing.

  Sheena lives in County Down with a lot of books, a timid cat and a naughty pony.

  TOO MANY PONIES

  SHEENA WILKINSON

  TOO MANY PONIES

  Published 2013 by Little Island

  7 Kenilworth Park

  Dublin 6W, Ireland

  www.littleisland.ie

  Copyright © Sheena Wilkinson 2013

  The author has asserted her moral rights.

  ISBN 978-1-908195-25-8

  All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

  British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Cover design by Pony and Trap

  Typeset in 12-point Judson by Oldtown

  Printed in Scotland by Bell & Bain Ltd.

  Little Island receives financial assistance from The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Elizabeth

  Unlike Lucy, I was sensible enough to choose a wonderful friend at the very start of first year. Many years of friendship later, this is for her, with much love.

  Contents

  Chapter 1: No Fun at Rosevale

  Chapter 2: Ponyboy

  Chapter 3: Lucy’s Brilliant Idea

  Chapter 4: Charity Case

  Chapter 5: Another Brilliant Idea

  Chapter 6: It’s Only Jumping

  Chapter 7: The Weakest Link

  Chapter 8: Quitting

  Chapter 9: A Change of Team

  Chapter 10: The Forbidden Field

  Chapter 11: Lucy’s Secret

  Chapter 12: A Change of Pony

  Chapter 13: Another Brilliant Idea

  Chapter 14: My Little Ponyboy

  Chapter 15: The Row

  Chapter 16: Lost Rider

  Chapter 17: Frightened Pony

  Chapter 18: The Final Score

  Chapter 19: Going Home

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  No Fun at Rosevale

  ALL through her first morning at secondary school, Lucy wondered who the other horsey girls in her class were. Now, in form class, when they were all meant to Get to Know Each Other, she was going to find out.

  ‘Think of your very favourite thing,’ Miss Connor called, ‘and find other people who love it too. Make a group. Talk!’ She clapped her hands and beamed.

  Thirty brand-new first years milled round muttering. Rugby players and Irish dancers and Justin Bieber fans searched for kindred spirits.

  ‘Ponies!’ Lucy shouted. ‘Over here! Ponies!’ She waved her arms around.

  A girl with a banner of blond hair ran up, followed by some others. There was a lot of screaming and jumping up and down.

  Lucy looked round the room. Most people were in a group, though some of the groups were just pairs. Aidan Kelly stood on his own by the door.

  ‘Aidan!’ Lucy called him over. ‘Ponies! Over here.’

  The room went quiet. Aidan didn’t move.

  ‘Aidan!’ Lucy called again. ‘Come on – you love ponies!’

  ‘We don’t want boys in our group,’ the blond girl said.

  ‘His dad owns the yard where I keep my pony,’ Lucy said. ‘He should definitely be in this group.’

  ‘Come on – no stragglers!’ Miss Connor called. ‘Everybody must be interested in something.’

  ‘Ooh, Aidan, you love ponies!’ somebody from the rugby group said in a put-on squeaky voice.

  The blond girl giggled. ‘That’s my twin,’ she said.

  Lucy saw the furious look Aidan gave her, but she didn’t see which group he ended up in.

  ‘Now,’ said Miss Connor, ‘let’s see which group can find out most about each other. Off you go. Lots of questions.’

  ‘Each person say the name of their pony and what colour it is and what it can do,’ bossed the blond girl. She pointed to a small red-haired girl whose name, Lucy knew, was Erin. ‘You first.’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t got a pony,’ Erin said.

  The blond girl widened her eyes as if Erin had said something outrageous like, I haven’t got a head.

  ‘So where do you ride?’

  ‘Nowhere. We could never afford lessons.’ Erin said this with, Lucy thought, a slight challenge in her voice. ‘But my granda says he’s going to get me –’

  The blond girl turned away. ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you about my pony. He’s called Cody, and he –’

  The bell blared and everybody went off to lunch. Lucy was going to wait for Aidan – he was pretty much her next-door neighbour and the only other person she knew from her primary school – but he shrugged her off with another of those angry looks. The blond girl was right, Lucy decided. They wouldn’t bother with boys. Or with people who claimed to like ponies but couldn’t even ride.

  After lunch Lucy sat with the two other pony owners on a wall in the corner of the quad – she’d have to remember not to call it the playground – and went on talking about horses. The other two kept their ponies at the same yard and had been friends for ever. Jade’s twin Josh didn’t like ponies. Of course not. Like most boys, he thought ponies were stupid. ‘There’s no boys at our yard,’ she said.

  Lucy told them all about Puzzle. How he could jump a metre, easy. How when you gave him a treat, he held it in his lips and wouldn’t eat it until you went away. How when you groomed his soft white belly he nipped you unless you remembered to dodge.

  ‘And what are his colours?’ Miranda, the other girl, asked.

  Lucy stared at her. What a funny way of talking. Why not just What colour is he? And Lucy had already told them Puzzle was a piebald – that was how he’d got his name, because the patches of black and white were like jigsaw pieces.

  ‘He’s piebald,’ she said again. ‘Black and white,’ she added, in case Miranda was a bit slow.

  Jade rolled her dark blue eyes and Miranda giggled. ‘His colours. Like, Sparkle’s are pink and silver,’ she explained. ‘And Jade’s just got new everything for her birthday for Cody, and it’s all purple.’ She ticked things off on her plump fingers. ‘Purple numnah, purple travel rug, purple brushes, purple head-collar – I bought her that.’

  Because I’m Jade’s friend, not you, her eyes said.

  ‘Ah.’ Lucy understood now. She thought of her stable at Rosevale, with all her bits and pieces piled up outside, sometimes tidy, the way Declan, the owner, insisted on, but quite often not. Occasionally she couldn’t even find her own
stuff, but Aidan and his little sister Kitty never minded lending. And nobody cared what colour things were. They were too busy looking after the horses, ponies and donkeys. ‘Too many ponies,’ Declan kept saying. As if there could be such a thing as too many ponies.

  ‘I have all different colours. Just whatever I can find.’ Her voice trailed off a bit.

  The other girls looked at her in disbelief.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’d like that,’ Jade said.

  ‘And purple really suits Cody,’ Miranda said. ‘Show Lucy that picture of him with everything on.’

  They got out their phones and showed her pictures of their yard until the bell went for the end of lunch. None of the other ponies was a patch on Puzzle, of course, but they did look smarter. There was one photo of Miranda and Jade and a crowd of other girls on their ponies, all wearing matching jodhs and jackets. Not matching each other; matching their ponies’ colours.

  ‘And their yard sounds way more fun than Rosevale,’ Lucy explained to her mum later when she picked her up from the school bus at the crossroads. Aidan had been on the bus too. She’d wanted to ask him why he’d pretended not to like ponies, but he’d been reading. ‘They go to shows all the time. And Susie – that’s who owns their yard – it’s called Sunnyside Farm, isn’t that a brilliant name? Anyway, Susie organises jumping competitions for them at the yard too, so they’ve all got heaps more rosettes than I have, and’ – she paused dramatically to let the full weight of this sink in –‘Susie let them paint their stable doors to match their ponies’ colours. Like Jade’s pony has everything purple, so his door is purple. And Miranda’s pony has everything pink and silver, so –’

  Lucy’s mum shuddered. ‘It sounds revolting.’

  ‘Oh, Mu-um. You don’t understand. They’re all friends. They get to do everything together. There’s loads of nice girls there. Susie doesn’t let just anyone in. It’s like a club. And their mums take them everywhere,’ she added.

  ‘In co-ordinating designer country casuals, no doubt,’ Lucy’s mum said, indicating right to turn into their road.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘That reminds me – someone’s bought Greenlands at last.’

  ‘No!’ Greenlands, about two miles up the road, a big old house with acres and acres of lush fields stretching uphill behind miles of stone wall, had been for sale as long as Lucy could remember, and as long as Lucy could remember she had fantasised about her parents buying it. Puzzle would have loved living on two hundred acres, and she could have had jumps everywhere. She sighed and fiddled with her seatbelt. ‘Hurry up, Mum. I can’t wait to ride Puzzle.’

  ‘Homework?’

  ‘Mostly covering books and things. I can do it after tea. You could let me off here,’ Lucy suggested. ‘To save time.’

  From the corner, where the road made a sudden right-hand bend, with Rosevale’s lane going uphill to the left, she could see Puzzle grazing under a tree with Aidan’s old pony Midge, recently passed on to Kitty. The ponies were swishing their tails to keep the flies off each other.

  ‘You are not going to the yard in your new uniform,’ her mum said. ‘It’s only ten minutes’ walk from the front door.’

  Eight minutes, Lucy reckoned, timing herself as she walked up the hill to Rosevale a short while later, having changed into jeans and wellies. But she was probably faster than Mum. Having Rosevale next door was the main reason she was allowed a pony at all. So she could do her thing with Puzzle and not need lifts all the time. Lucy’s parents were OK, but they didn’t get ponies and they were always working.

  The problem was that Rosevale wasn’t a proper livery stable. Declan didn’t mind keeping Puzzle, because they were neighbours, but really it was a sanctuary. Starving, abandoned, beaten or just plain neglected horses, ponies and donkeys were brought there from all over the country. An old lady called Doris had started it years ago, and left it to Declan and his wife Seaneen in her will. Only she hadn’t left much money to look after it.

  As she let herself in through the much-mended gate, Lucy stopped to watch Ned, the old donkey, who was supposed to be nearly forty, scratching his hairy grey flanks with his teeth. Rosevale looked scruffy in the September sun, its red corrugated iron roofs sagging and rusty. Behind the yard the house was old and grey, with millions of rooms, but freezing, Kitty had told her. All summer Declan had been saying he must get rid of the weeds along the drive, but all summer he had been too busy. Even with most of the horses out at grass, there were always some needing medical attention or being gently handled, to overcome their fear of people, or schooled, ready for re-homing. When Lucy had first come to Rosevale, she had hated to see the ponies moving on. But now she understood that these were the success stories. Once a pony was re-homed, it left space for another one. And Lucy’s proudest moments were when Declan let her help by riding some of the ponies. She was stronger than Kitty and braver than Aidan.

  Aidan worked hard in the yard – as hard as his dad, sometimes – but when Lucy asked him if he wanted to go out riding with her he usually said no. His new pony, Firefly, had been a show-jumper who fell on hard times after an injury and had been going for meat. He was fine now, but all Aidan seemed to do was hack him about the place like an old woman.

  Aidan and Kitty were OK, Lucy thought, kicking a pebble up the drive and making a cloud of dust, but Aidan was a boy, and Kitty was too young. It wasn’t like having a crowd of girls to hang round with. A pony gang.

  Aidan was in the yard when she reached it, washing what looked like a large pink dog but was in fact a tiny pink pony. At least, it wasn’t exactly pink, it was grey, but its coat was so roughened and scabby and bare in places that its pink skin shone through, the effect enhanced by the pink surgical scrub that Aidan was using. It stood patiently, resting a hind leg, only flinching when Aidan touched a sore point. Its ribs stood out like a toast-rack.

  I don’t want to see ponies like that, Lucy thought. I don’t always want to be reminded of how cruel people are, and how animals suffer. I bet there aren’t any scarecrows like that at Sunnyside Farm. I want to be on a yard that’s fun.

  Then Aidan looked up from squeezing out his sponge and grinned. He was taller than Lucy, who was short and square, and he had dark eyes which, to her relief, were no longer blazing crossly at her the way they had at school.

  ‘Hey, Lucy,’ he said. ‘Guess what? She took a carrot from me just now. First time she’s trusted anyone enough. That’s why I’m bathing her. She’s not sure about it, but it’ll make her feel better. Won’t it, gorgeous?’

  The ugly little pony’s ears flicked at the sound of his low voice.

  Lucy felt horrible. Of course she wanted to be at Rosevale. Of course she didn’t want to be on a yard full of snobby girls with their colour-coded My Little Pony bling.

  ‘Silly girls,’ she told Puzzle half an hour later. His bouncy canter stride rocking-horsed them round the sand-school. ‘We don’t care about things like that, do we?’

  She ran her hand over her pony’s black shoulder. (His other shoulder was white.) All the same, when she looked down at her faded brown numnah and her grubby saddle and her jeans and wellies – she wasn’t absolutely sure where she’d left her riding boots – she thought she might smarten herself up a bit, now that she was in secondary school. Maybe Jade would invite her and Puzzle to ride at Sunnyside Farm – maybe even to go to a competition – and she wouldn’t want to show herself up.

  ‘Lucy?’

  She looked over to the gate at the sound of Declan’s low, firm tones. He never shouted – there were too many animals at Rosevale that freaked out at a raised human voice.

  ‘Have you warmed him up properly?’ He sat easily on Folly, his grey mare, who nobody else was allowed near because she was ‘sensitive’, Declan said. A nutter, Kitty said.

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy said, crossing her fingers.

  She hadn’t warmed up for very long. It had been a long day at school, all new subjects and keeping up with her new friends, and
she’d been impatient to canter and jump, but it wouldn’t do any harm. Puzzle had been mooching round the field all day with his mates. It wasn’t as if he’d been stuck in a stable getting stiff.

  Declan went on his way, Folly’s hooves ringing on the concrete, and Alfie the grey lurcher’s claws skittering beside them. Declan hacked round the fields every evening to check on all the animals. Lucy stood up in her stirrups to see if she could see Kitty or Aidan about to put up some jumps for her, but they were brushing the yard. After what she’d said to her new friends – and she might have exaggerated a tiny bit about how well Puzzle could jump – she wanted to make sure she kept practising.

  ‘Why don’t you come and jump when you’ve finished?’ she yelled over.

  ‘Don’t shout,’ Kitty said.

  ‘We have to poo-pick the bottom paddock,’ Aidan said. ‘And Kitty has to muck out the foals.’

  ‘No, you do,’ argued Kitty.

  Lucy gave up. It was all very well, rescuing ponies and being good all the time, but it didn’t half make life boring for other people.

  Chapter 2

  Ponyboy

  MR McCLUSKY gave out the novel they were going to read in English. The Outsiders. The blurb sounded OK, but Aidan hated being read to, unless the person was good and did all the voices. Mr McClusky had a voice like water going down a plughole.

  Aidan zoned out and thought about September. She’d let him groom her yesterday, and for the first time he’d caught a glimpse of a pretty, snowy pony under the ribs and scabs. He called her September because she’d arrived on the first of September. Their dad always said not to name them, because they weren’t going to be staying. But Aidan and Kitty could never resist naming the ponies, and sometimes they did have to stay.

  September might have a chance of a new home, though. She was small and cute and willing to please. Even though humans had been horrible to her, she wanted to trust them. If Aidan had been September he’d have bitten and kicked.

  He became aware of a giggle bubbling up round him.