Stables S.O.S.

by Janet Rising

  “Mistaken identity!” James said, winking at me in a conspiratorial sort of way. My heart did a flip. I wish I could control it, but I can’t. I’ve given up trying to.

  “What, all three times?” Bean asked. “Give me a break!”

  “I’ve done my time and paid my dues, and I’m ready to move on,” James said dramatically. “What news from the front, anyway?”

  “Has National Heritage saved the day?” Dec asked, obviously fully briefed by his friend as well as his sister.

  We told them both the sad news. The mood got even glummer—especially when Dee joined us.

  “This SOOOOOO sucks!” she wailed, throwing her hat in her tack box so hard it rebounded out again and bounced along the floor, coming to rest under the tap, which dripped into it.

  “You know you’re not supposed to wear a hat that’s been bashed, don’t you?” Katy told her. “It’s probably damaged, and you’ll need a new one.”

  “Oh, it’s all right,” Dee told her, picking it up and brushing it off. “I’m always dropping it.”

  “No, Katy’s right…” began Bean.

  “Never mind Dee’s hat,” cried James. “Our only hope of saving Laurel Farm has failed. What are we going to do?”

  “We’d better start looking for new homes for the ponies,” said Dee, utterly defeated.

  “Don’t say that!” yelled Katy, her eyes blazing.

  “We don’t have much choice,” Dee wailed.

  Suddenly, Cat arrived in her mom’s car, slamming the door shut and running over to where we were all stood in a dejected crowd outside the tack room. Her eyes were blazing and her cheeks flushed, and as she came to an abrupt halt, she ran her fingers through her short, dark hair so that it stood up in spikes on top of her head. She managed to look both furious and despairing at once.

  “Have you seen what’s been nailed to the telephone pole by the entrance to the stables?” she yelled.

  I didn’t really care. I didn’t think anything could make this day any worse.

  I was wrong. Again.

  “There’s a notice to say that horrible Robert Collins has applied for planning permission for twelve dwellings on the site of Laurel Farm. It’s going to go through, I know it is, and we’ll never be able to stop it!”

  The vision of my Brookdale sash, burning and smoking in our fire at home, swam before my eyes. My sacrifice had definitely been in vain.

  “Twelve dwellings!” James read out, standing on tiptoe as the notice had been put quite high up on the telephone pole.

  “Told you!” snapped Cat furiously.

  “I thought someone said there were going to be hundreds of houses?” I asked.

  “Twelve—hundreds, what’s the difference?” Katy replied, shrugging her shoulders.

  The vision of a huge housing development melted in my mind, replaced by a few sorry-looking houses scattered about.

  “It says here…er…basically, it says that anyone with any objection should let the council know,” James said, reading from the plastic-covered notice.

  “Why don’t we just rip it down and burn it?” I suggested.

  “Because someone else might have some objections and that could help our case,” said Katy. “If they can’t read it, they can’t object.”

  “Who is there to object? There’s no one else within miles!” Bean pointed out.

  “That’s true. We’re the only ones who are going to be affected,” James agreed.

  “Well, let’s object then!” I said. It seemed so obvious.

  “No one will care about ponies having to move out. They mean people,” Dee said. “People have to object.”

  The notice fluttered in the breeze. It’s like a death sentence, I thought, looking at it. A black-and-white notice of misery.

  “I suppose some people would welcome it,” Katy said, almost to herself. “I mean, look at the view—imagine having a house here. I expect a lot of people would be interested in buying a house in this area.”

  “Like the Elizabethans,” Bean said quietly.

  “Well, they haven’t helped,” Katy replied. “If they’d built their house a bit better, it might still be here and we might feel a lot differently right now.”

  “They’ll all be big, expensive houses,” said James, still reading. We all looked at the board under the notice which had a picture of a new house and a laughing couple in a dining room. “LAUREL HEIGHTS” it said in big letters. “What’s Laurel Heights?” I asked.

  “The development,” explained Cat, still seething.

  “That’s what he’s calling it, apparently,” James explained, reading aloud from the smaller letters underneath. “Laurel Heights, a select, contemporary development in tranquil surroundings—get tomorrow’s lifestyle, today.”

  “You can’t get it today,” Bean pointed out. “It’s not built yet.”

  James continued reading from the notice. “It says here permission is sought for nine five-bedroom houses, two eight-bedroom houses, and a barn conversion. I mean, they’re not going to be cheap, are they? It’s hardly affordable housing our buddy Robert is planning. It’s not as though he’s providing for people without homes. Has anyone got a pen?”

  “Barn conversion?” echoed Katy.

  “What a jerk!” exploded Cat. “He’s going to turn our barn into some horrible house. What do you want a pen for, James?”

  “What? Our lovely barn where we keep the ponies’ feed and hay?” whispered Bean.

  “Your part of it isn’t lovely,” Katy told her miserably. “It’s a huge mess. Here’s a pen.”

  Bean made a face. Like that was important. James took Katy’s pen and started drawing mustaches on the laughing couple on the board.

  “Oh, that’s mature!” Katy said.

  “It makes me feel better,” James told her.

  “They’d look better if the ink was black instead of blue,” Cat pointed out.

  “Details, details!” James replied, adding some geeky round glasses.

  My imaginary community of twelve sorry-looking houses turned into a plush development of huge mansions, front doors flanked by snowy-white columns and spherical trees in metal containers along the drives.

  After James had added beards and a few zits to the laughing couple, we dawdled back along the drive to the stables. Still angry, Cat was looking for someone to take it out on. She picked her brother.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him, poking his arm with her finger.

  “He’s with me,” James told her.

  “I’m asking Dec, not you,” Cat replied.

  “Oh, let’s not argue!” exploded Katy. “We need to stay united if we’re ever going to stop Robert Collins’s plans, and another brain isn’t something to turn down.”

  “Brain? As if!” Cat snorted.

  “Speaking of plans,” Dec said, “how are the ones for the Keep Bambi Campaign coming along?”

  Everyone groaned.

  “Not so good, I take it,” Dec said, throwing his sister an exaggerated smile. He’d successfully got her back where it hurt.

  We all did what we had to do—it was too late to ride. Cat ran out to check on Bambi, and James and Dec followed in the same direction at a distance, to see Moth. Katy and Bean turned out Bluey and Tiffany, and Dee had orders from her mom to change Lester and Dolly’s water and give them haynets. They were both still stabled—the show season had started so their diets had to be carefully controlled, not to mention their exercise. Once the grass had started to thin a bit, Sophie would turn them out at night like the other ponies. It was the start of what Dee described, rather overdramatically, as her dark season. Her time was not her own, and she wasn’t allowed to do anything with Dolly without her mom’s say-so.

  With a sigh, I brushed Drum�
�s saddle mark out of his back and sponged his eyes and nose, explaining about the notice.

  “Things are going from bad to worse,” he snorted.

  “Yes,” I said, unable to think of anything else.

  “Perhaps you’re all trying too hard.”

  “What do you mean? How can we try too hard?”

  “Oh, well, sometimes the best solutions to problems just sort of occur when you’re not consciously thinking of them,” Drummer told me.

  That didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t be bothered to argue with Drummer. I felt limp, like a piece of chewed string.

  I put Drum’s halter on him and led him out to the field. Dolly stretched her nose out to him as we walked past her stable.

  “I wish I was coming out with you, Drummer,” she sighed.

  “Yeah, well, it won’t be long,” he told her.

  As soon as Drummer had gobbled up the apple I’d brought him, he dashed off to see Bambi, only rolling once he was with her. Cat was back in the stables, but I could see James and Dec on the far side of the field under a tree with Moth. James was checking Moth over, and Dec was hanging by his arms from one of the tree’s branches like an overdressed ape.

  The sun hung like a huge, red ball in the sky, which was turning pink. It was going to be a glorious sunset—but I wouldn’t see it before I went home. There was still a while left until the sun went down. I could imagine how popular houses on this site would be—who wouldn’t want to live with that view?

  James and Dec made their way back to the gate, and we all walked into the stables together. Everyone was still there. Everyone was still gloomy.

  “Phew!” puffed Katy, delving into her tack box for a can of Coke that she opened with a pssst! “It’s still hot, isn’t it?” she continued brightly, determined to lighten the mood.

  No one else wanted to.

  “I can’t believe we’re going to have to leave here,” mumbled Dee.

  “Do you think we’ll all be able to move to another yard together?” asked Bean.

  “Not likely!” said James. “What stable is going to have six places vacant all at once?”

  “Where’s Lester going?” asked Dee. “You’ve left him out.”

  “And Henry and Pippin and Mr. Higgins,” said Katy.

  “Leanne will be fine—she’ll go to some fancy dressage yard,” James told her.

  “You’re forgetting something,” said Cat glumly. “Bambi’s already got a new home so Lester can have her place.”

  Everyone went quiet.

  “We watched Emily riding Bambi the other day,” Bean said, staring into space.

  “Did you?” asked Cat. “What, while I was in the yard? I didn’t know.”

  “We thought it might provide some inspiration,” I explained.

  “It didn’t,” added Bean.

  “How did Emily do?” asked Cat, curious despite herself.

  “Bambi’s too much for Emily right now,” I said, remembering the child’s frightened face as she’d ridden around the school.

  “But she’ll get better,” Katy replied. “It’s not like Bambi is like Tiffany, all dodging around and getting hysterical at the sight of a chip bag or an oversized worm. Emily will soon be as confident as anything.”

  “Yeah, if I’d gotten Tiffany before I was a half-decent rider, she’d have turned me off riding for life,” Bean laughed. “I’d never have wanted a pony—at least, not one like Tiffany!”

  Everyone was silent. Everyone, except for Bean, was thinking the same thing. You could almost hear the whirring of collective brains in the evening air.

  “That’s it!” cried James.

  “Of course!”

  “Problem solved!”

  “Why didn’t we think of it before?”

  “That’s genius, Bean!” (That was Dec—of course.)

  “Oh, that is so going to work!”

  “What is?” asked Bean, confused.

  Leaping up, Cat threw her arms around Bean and gave her a hug. “I do believe you have just come up with the most delicious plan!” she told her.

  “I have?”

  “Somebody explain it to her,” said James, shaking his head.

  “Bambi will need to act like Tiffany for a while,” I told her.

  Bean frowned in confusion.

  “Just enough to prove to Aunt Pam that she isn’t a suitable mount for Emily,” continued Dec.

  “But only enough to scare her a bit,” Katy said doubtfully. “It would be horrible if we scared her so much she gave up riding altogether.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” agreed Cat quickly, almost managing to convince herself if no one else.

  “How will Bambi know what to do?” Bean asked.

  Four pairs of eyes swung my way. I grinned.

  “Ahhhh, of course!” sighed Bean. “Well, who’d have thought I’d be the one to come up with a plan for our Keep Bambi Campaign?”

  “Not me, for a start,” James mumbled.

  “Shame you didn’t realize you’d nailed it!” Cat told her.

  “And we’ll need Pia to brief Bambi and put the plan into action,” Katy pointed out.

  “That’s teamwork for you!” said Dec.

  “I’ve got to tell Drummer!” I said, running toward the field. He was going to be so relieved we’d come up with a plan—when we hadn’t been trying, just like he’d said. How did he do that?

  “And Bambi!” Cat called after me. “Tell Bambi, too!”

  “OK!” Katy said briskly, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s recap on what we have got and what we haven’t.”

  “I have got to clean my tack,” grumbled Dee.

  “And we haven’t!” giggled Bean.

  “You can help me, then,” Dee told her, flinging a wet sponge across the yard. It landed, splat, on Bean’s knee, leaving her with a wet patch on her pink, checkered jodhpurs.

  “That’s soaking wet and cold!” she squealed.

  “That’s funny, coming from someone who washes their hair in the stables,” James said.

  “I meant plan-wise,” Katy reminded us.

  “We have got a plan for the Keep Bambi Campaign,” said Cat, punching the air.

  “We haven’t been so lucky with our Stables S.O.S.,” James said, sighing. “So even if we are successful and Bambi stays, we may all still come up one day to find our ponies tied to the fence with their suitcases packed.”

  “Tiffany hasn’t got a suitcase,” said Bean, puzzled. James threw her a look of despair. “Oh, I get it,” said Bean, matching James’s glare. “Very funny!”

  “Not really,” mumbled Cat.

  Katy stroked Cat’s arm reassuringly. “We’re not beaten yet, are we?”

  “No!” everyone chorused. I wondered whether they felt the same as me—although I joined in with a resounding NO with everyone else, I felt far from confident that we would ever be able to save the stables.

  “We just need another idea,” said Bean. “A second chance.”

  “Exactly! And of course we’re doing this for Mrs. Collins, too,” Katy reminded us. “I bet she doesn’t want to go into some home. She’ll miss her cats and Squish.”

  “I wouldn’t miss that Twiddles-scissor-paws,” Dee said, looking around in case he materialized out of thin air. “He’s a monster cat.”

  “Not with Mrs. C, he isn’t,” I reminded her.

  A car trundled down the drive. Nobody recognized it, and we all looked up, wondering who it could be.

  It was the enemy, Robert Collins.

  Stopping the car outside his mother’s house, he got out and unlocked the front door, closing it behind him as he disappeared inside.

  “What do you think he’s up to?” I asked.

 
“Do you think he’s come to get her stuff?” Katy said. “Do you think Mrs. C is off to the home?”

  “She might be dead,” suggested James.

  “Oh, James!” exclaimed Bean. “That is so horrible! You don’t think she really is, do you?”

  “My mom said she was looking much better when she went to see her last night, so I doubt it,” Dee told us, glaring at James.

  “What else did she say?” Cat asked Dee.

  “Nothing much. Mrs. C doesn’t seem to have any notion of her son’s plans to stick her in a home. She kept telling Mom about her idea for her stair lift and asking after the cats.”

  “She really has no idea?” I asked.

  “That is so cruel,” Bean whispered.

  The door to the house flew open again, and Robert Collins came out clutching some papers. He seemed to notice us for the first time and waved halfheartedly with a weak smile.

  Nobody waved back.

  Robert Collins jumped in his car, did a three-point turn on the gravel, and sped off up the drive in a cloud of dust.

  “Do you reckon they’re the deeds to the place he’s got there?” Cat asked gravely.

  “Who knows?” said James.

  That is the worst of it, I thought. It was horrible, not knowing exactly what Robert Collins was up to.

  That evening, when I got home, I sat on my bed looking first at Epona sitting on my dressing table, and then at my beautiful Brookdale ribbons. I couldn’t help wondering whether I really would have to make another sacrifice. Was it coincidence that we’d come up with a plan for our Keep Bambi Campaign the day after I had thrown my beautiful sash in the fire? Standing on my bed I lifted my beautiful first and second place Brookdale ribbons down from the wall, together with the orange and lime Sublime Equine Challenge ribbon. OK, so they were a bit dusty, but they were still gorgeous.

  Something fluttered down to the floor. A small, rectangular white card. Jumping off the bed I bent down, flipping it up with my thumbnail, and was about to throw it in the trash when I noticed it had writing on the other side.

  Alex Willard, Equine Behaviorist, I read. His address and telephone number were underneath in smaller writing. Under that was http.alexwillard.com. He’d given it to me when we’d both been on an afternoon TV show, and I suddenly remembered why I had hidden it there. My mom, tipsy with wine and—there was no other word for it—desperate, had mistakenly believed that Alex Willard was interested in her and had threatened to call him. How embarrassing would that have been? Behind my Brookdale ribbon had seemed a good place to hide the card. I didn’t want my mom to find it and be tempted.