Riding With The Lyntons

by Diana Pullein-Thompson

  “Your throat’s hoarse and you look very red in the face. Half a mo’.” She fetched the thermometer and shoved it in my mouth.

  “One hundred and three,” she said, a moment later. “Come on, undress and hop into bed. You’ve obviously got flu. No wonder you left the gate open with a temperature like that.”

  It was wonderful to have some sort of excuse, and in the still watches of the night the fact that I was ill was the only comfort when I thought again and again about the accident. I relived those moments I had spent feeding the two ponies, arranging the piles of hay under the chestnut trees. I walked across the wet meadow once more and, in my mind’s eye, I opened the gate and swung it back into place and stepped out into the muddy lane. Gradually my mind started to go round in circles and every time I came back at last to the same place – the lane, the swinging gate, the silence which I could not fill with a click.

  Chapter Nine

  My temperature stayed above normal for four days and so my parents made me stay in bed.

  I read the two books I had been given for Christmas and The Children of the New Forest, and I wrote a great many letters with my new fountain pen. And all the time I hoped the Lyntons would hear of my flu, so that it could be an excuse for me for leaving the gate open. In fact, I almost hoped to develop pneumonia. For then surely they would be haunted by remorse when they remembered their fury.

  Daddy said I had been silly and absent-minded to leave the gate open and it was very bad luck that Jingle went on the big road and got knocked down by a car, but on the other hand, it had been a mistake and one didn’t break up friendships because of mistakes. But then, I didn’t tell him about my own silly retorts. I didn’t tell him I had said I would never ride Firelight again and I didn’t tell him I had shouted, “I hate you all.” And those words of mine seemed final and irrevocable.

  Over and over again I remembered how nice Jon and Paulla had been, and that made everything worse.

  When I was up and about again I began to feel bored. I helped Daddy garden. I started to write a book. I played with Magic hour after hour, until Mummy said I was exciting her too much and unless I was careful she would have fits or hysteria. I avoided the Lyntons’ house and only took walks in the lane behind Sparrow Cottage. And yet I longed to know how Jon was faring.

  “You are an idiot,” said Mummy. “For all you know they didn’t mean what they were saying; any more than you did. They’re probably wondering why you don’t go up there.”

  “I bet they aren’t,” I said, “and I’m sure Annette was in earnest. I’m not just turning up at the stables, not for anything.”

  “Invite Paulla and Gillian to tea here, then,” suggested Mummy.

  “Oh, don’t let’s talk about it. I want to wait for a bit. Perhaps they’ll come and see me. If that happens I shall ask them,” I said, and I went away and climbed the oak, because suddenly I wanted to escape from everything and everybody.

  As I sat astride a branch with the wind in my hair and the world at my feet, I began to wonder whether there was any deed which I could do which would counteract the harm I had done. If only I could save one of the Lyntons’ animals from disaster, I thought, then my mistake with the gate would be wiped out for ever. If only burglars would decide to burgle their house, or fire would set their hay alight, or flu would send them all to bed, then perhaps I could do something, then perhaps we would forget our furious words.

  The next day we went shopping in Eggcombe and I bought Magic a brown leather collar and lead. In the end I had decided on brown because my parents had suggested that Labradors were tough gun dogs, who needed tough collars and leads – not fancy ones like poodles. I didn’t spend much money on her, because I knew she would soon grow out of the collar and she would probably chew the lead. But I planned to get her some specially nice ones later on.

  On the way home it started to snow in thin watery flakes, which melted as soon as they touched the windscreen. The sky was a light unattractive grey and the air was cold and still.

  “I must get some more coal in at once,” said Mummy. “We may be snowbound down here for months.”

  In the afternoon I started to teach Magic to lead. She was very unco-operative at first and every few moments she sat down and refused to budge, but after a quarter of an hour she was better and I took her for a little walk in the lane.

  The next morning, I wakened to find the hills wrapped in snow. I leapt from bed and found our garden was white, too. The whole scene before my eyes was like an attractive Christmas card and a great silence lay over the land. Even our oak could not lift its leaves beneath their weight of snow; even the clouds hung still as death in the cold, close air.

  I dressed quickly and warmly and collected Magic. I rushed outside and started to make a snowman to surprise my parents; it was cold work at first but in my haste to finish him before my parents wakened I soon grew hot. Magic was very excited; she dashed about at tremendous speed, biting mouthfuls of snow and spitting them out again; she raced round and round in small circles and every now and then, she flung herself against my legs.

  My footsteps spoilt the beautiful look of the garden. The untrammelled whiteness, which had struck me so forcibly, was now ruined, but my snowman was growing more handsome every moment. I gave him two stones for eyes and traced a mouth with my finger and then I sculptured him a nose in snow. He was a very short man without proper legs and with short misshapen arms which clung closely to his sides, but I was pleased with his face, and particularly with his Roman nose and cruel, strange mouth.

  When he was finished I dashed indoors and took my parents each a cup of tea.

  “Jump out of bed and look through the window. There’s a man in the garden,” I said, giggling.

  “Nonsense,” said Daddy.

  “He’s a trespasser and he won’t go away. He wants to see the master of the house,” I told them, making my tone more serious.

  At last, moaning about the cold, they climbed out of bed and were amazed to see the snow.

  “But it’s beautiful!” Daddy exclaimed. “Wonderful. Much nicer than winter in London.”

  “I wish I had got the coal in,” said Mummy.

  “But my snowman,” I said. “Can’t you see him?”

  “You are imagining things. You must have got flu again. There’s no one there,” Daddy told me.

  “But he is. He’s by the gate,” I said, rushing to the window, only to see that my beautiful aristocratic creation had already collapsed into an ignoble pile of snow.

  I felt a wave of disappointment and then I thought: Oh, never mind. What does it matter?

  “He’s died,” I told my parents, “and I’m going down now to make breakfast. You won’t be very long, will you?”

  I’m not much of a cook, but that morning I managed better than usually, and within half an hour the porridge, boiled eggs and toast were ready. During breakfast Daddy said he would make me a toboggan out of the old wood which he had found in the shed. He’s quite a good carpenter, and he promised it would be ready by the afternoon. “The slope behind us will be excellent for tobogganing,” he said.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about your quarrels and misfortunes with the Lyntons,” Mummy told me, “and I’ve decided that you really ought to ring up and ask after Jon. Dash it all, you haven’t had a row with him, have you? And he’s older than the others so he is sure to understand it was all a mistake.”

  “I don’t want to get Paulla or Annette or Donald on the telephone,” I said.

  “Someone has always got to step down after a quarrel if one is not to be enemies for life, and it might as well be you,” Daddy told me.

  “All right. I do want to know how Jon and Jangle are, so I will telephone,” I said. “But not now – later.”

  After breakfast I took Magic for a walk and, remembering my new resolution, to look out for possible deeds to do, I went up the lane towards the Lyntons’ house. Jangle was out in another field by himself, looking rather dejected
and lonely. His thick mane was covered in snow and so was much of his coat, so the he looked three-quarters white from a distance.

  Presently I became aware of a faint mewing sound in the hedge on my left, and Magic began to sniff the air with interest. I pushed aside the snow-laden thorns and looked down into the hedge and there at the bottom I saw a tiny tabby kitten, one of the Lyntons’ kittens, crouching miserably in the snow. I bent down and picked her up. She was very cold and unhappy. I held her under my coat and consoling her as best I could I walked on up the lane. I thought, this is a God-sent opportunity to see them; and yet I couldn’t see really why the Lyntons would want me back anyway. Now Jingle was dead they would want Firelight for themselves and somehow the family were such a complete unit in themselves that I could only wonder why they had ever bothered with me at all.

  So it was in a pessimistic frame of mind that I walked very slowly up their drive. I could have pushed the kitten through their garden hedge and fled, but since this opportunity of seeing them again had suddenly arrived out of nowhere I felt I must take advantage of it. Besides, why behave like a coward? I’m not afraid of the Lyntons, I told myself, as I turned the corner and arrived in their stable yard.

  There seemed no one around. I supposed I had better put the kitten in the saddle-room and depart and then it occurred to me that she was probably hungry, so leading Magic and holding the kitten in the warm beneath my coat, I walked up the garden path and banged on the back door.

  Who will answer? I wondered . . . Paulla, Gillian, Donald, Annette? I found myself hoping above everything that it would be Gillian. She’s a pacifist, I thought, she won’t say anything awful and then I won’t either. Annette and Donald will be rude. But Paulla, what will she say? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know. She was so close to Jon that she might sway him against me, if he wasn’t already. I didn’t want to risk an encounter with Paulla yet.

  Now the door was opening, I waited, a fixed smile on my face, a sense of awkwardness filling my being.

  But the face which met my expectant gaze wasn’t a Lynton face; it was grizzled; it was old; it was apple-cheeked it was the face of the woman who worked for them in their house.

  A toothless smile greeted me. A sense of disappointment silenced me. The was a pause and then the old woman said:

  “’Ullo, ducks, and what can I do for you? The children ‘ave all gone off tobogganing.”

  “It’s the kitten,” I said, “here look.” I pulled the pathetic tabby bundle from beneath my coat. “She was lost in the snow down in our lane. She’s hungry and cold and miserable.”

  “Oh, the poor little thing. Never mind, we’ll soon put that to rights. Come in a moment. It’s cold with the door open.”

  Somehow, I felt I shouldn’t be in the Lyntons’ kitchen, but I was glad to warm my hands on their Aga stove and to watch the kitten lapping milk.

  “How’s Jon?” I asked at last.

  “’E ‘ad the operation yesterday – doing nicely they say. ‘E’ll be back in just a week. Should be as right as rain in a couple of months so they say. ‘E’ll be in plaster for a bit, of course,” the old woman said.

  “Will the arm look all right in the end?” I asked.

  The old woman said she thought it would, and then she said, “’aven’t been up ‘ere lately yourself, ‘ave you. Been ill?”

  “Flu,” I said quickly. I wanted to ask whether the children were still annoyed with me, whether they had said anything about my leaving the gate open. But I didn’t know how to begin, so in the end I said, “I think I must go back now. Goodbye, thank you so much,” and I hurried away down the garden path.

  I peeped at Firelight and the other horses. (Buccaneer’s leg was bandaged, so I supposed he was still lame) and then I started again for home with rather a tired Magic plodding through the snow at my heels.

  Chapter Ten

  In the afternoon Daddy, Mummy and I went tobogganing on the slope behind our house. Daddy had made a very long sledge so that we could all sit on it at once, and we seemed to get up an enormous speed as we sped down the snow-clad hill. I had never tobogganed before and I found it tremendously exciting. We had to take Magic with us, because she was still at the chewing stage and we were afraid that if we left her alone in the house we would return to find half our belongings in ribbons.

  In the evening Mummy complained of a sore throat and it was soon obvious that she had flu, too. Daddy made her go to bed at once and took her temperature and found it be one hundred and three. We gave her soup, a boiled egg and fruit for dinner, which Daddy seemed to think was a light digestible menu; and then we ate together by the fire in the living-room, while the air outside grew warmer and snow started to fall again in large white flakes.

  After dinner Daddy sat down at his typewriter and started to work; and I made Mummy a hot lemon drink and then went to bed.

  In the morning we found a silent world wrapped in the deepest snow I had ever seen in my life, and we couldn’t open either of our doors to walk outside. Mummy’s temperature was one hundred and one, and she complained that all her bones ached. She would only eat the last apple we had in the house for breakfast. Daddy and I had porridge, eggs and toast and marmalade and then, fearing that we might be cut off for some days, we took stock of our provisions.

  Mummy had laid in a small store of tins; apricots, peaches, raspberries, soups, peas and fruit juices. In addition we had half a loaf of bread, a jug of milk, three chops, a few slices of ham, butter, cheese, jam and marmalade, and also a little food for Magic.

  “I suppose we can survive for a little while on all this,” said Daddy. “Perhaps they can let us have some eggs at the farm. I can’t see the butcher, baker or grocery vans reaching us here for a few days.”

  “Let’s get the doors open,” I suggested. “I’ll climb through the window and fetch the spade.”

  The snow was soft and treacherous. I had to walk lightly to avoid sinking in too far at each step. I reached the shed, fetched the spade and made my way back again. With snow up to my knees I started to dig by the front door.

  It was very hard work and I grew hot, but I made progress and within a quarter of an hour we could open the front door.

  “Wonderful,” said Daddy. “Now I’ll deal with the back one. It’s not really necessary but I hate feeling imprisoned in any way.”

  I wandered back upstairs to see Mummy. Her cheeks looked flushed with two red blobs of colour on each cheek-bone, and her eyes were very bright. She sat up in bed and said, “Hallo, how are you getting on? I wish you would take those two fish off the wall.”

  “I’m all right, thanks. But, Mummy, there aren’t any fish,” I said. “There’s nothing on that wall, but an oil painting. You know, the Peter Smith landscape, the oil he gave you.”

  “Well I can’t help it,” said Mummy, in disgruntled accents. “There are two large brown fish there. I can see them and they are annoying me.” She turned over on her side with an angry sigh and closed her eyes. I looked at her for a few moments and then I dashed downstairs and round to the back door.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” I called. “I think Mummy’s going mad. She thinks Peter Smith’s painting has turned into two fish, brown ones.”

  Daddy put down his spade and came indoors. “She’s delirious,” he said.

  “She’s going mad,” I said.

  “Pull yourself together, Lesley, for goodness’ sake. People often get delirious and imagine things when they have high temperatures, so stop being silly,” said Daddy. “Your mother is particularly prone to delirium.”

  I blew my nose and said, “Sorry.” And then Daddy said, “That’s better. You’re only making things worse by panicking. I think I’ll slip up to the Stag’s Head and see if I can ring the doctor, although I can’t see how he can reach us. Go upstairs and if your mother is awake give her two aspirins. It’s four hours since she had her last.”

  Mummy was asleep, so I crept out of the room, went downstairs again and started to prepare
lunch. Daddy and I had forgotten to look in the vegetable rack when we took stock, and now I was pleased to find that we had several pounds of potatoes and a few carrots and onions. I peeled some of these and put them on to boil; and then I opened a tin of soup, which I thought would be warm and light fare for Mummy. It was tomato. I didn’t know whether Daddy would want me to cook the chops or not, so I left them and laid Mummy’s tray and a table in the warm kitchen for Daddy and I. Then I made lunch for Magic and fed her.

  I wondered again whether the Lyntons had caught flu and, if so, who would look after the ponies? They employed an old man to care for the garden and I supposed he could dole out food and water. If we had been on the telephone I think I might have rung them up, but at that moment I could not very well leave the house and tramp up to the Stag’s Head in Daddy’s footsteps. Instead I made the beds and then sat at the window, looking at the wonderful white world before me, admiring those quiet hills climbing upwards to meet a sky almost as white as themselves, admiring our lane winding between snow-decked hedges, with Daddy’s large footprints black and dramatic against the snow.

  It was all new to me and if Mummy had not been ill upstairs and Jingle had not been dead, I would have been madly excited. We’ve hit on a bad patch of luck, I thought, looking up the lane and seeing Daddy’s dark head above the hedges.

  “He was out on his rounds, but I left a message. I doubt that he’ll get here,” said Daddy, plonking himself down in a chair and pulling off his boots before going upstairs to see Mummy.

  He was right. Dusk fell and there was still no sign of the doctor. Night came and we were still deserted and snow-bound. Dawn broke on the next day to show us an even whiter world, with a cold wind sweeping down the hills and snow drifting down into our valley.

  And, worse still, Daddy wakened with a headache. He got up and pretended there was nothing wrong with him, but he couldn’t manage to eat his breakfast and every moment he grew redder in the face. Mummy, thank goodness, was better. Her delirium had passed away and she was well enough to see that Daddy was ill and ought to be in bed. For some time my parents argued about which of them should be in bed and which up, and then they both decided to be in bed and I said I would cook them lunch. They were not at all hungry, so I only gave them chicken soup and tinned peaches.