The Horses of Follyfoot Read online

  ‘She’s lame in that near hind leg.’

  ‘She’s always moved a little funny.’ The father came up now with a bottle of ginger beer, moon-faced, the sun glinting on his round glasses. ‘That’s why we got her so cheap.’

  ‘And the girls adore Dopey. They take endless care of her. Don’t you, girls? Don’t you, girls?’ The mother shouted at her sulky daughters, who scowled back at her. ‘She’s a darling. We wouldn’t hurt her for the world.’

  ‘You are hurting her,’ Dora said. ‘You can’t ride her in our show.’

  Dora could be pretty blunt where horses were concerned. She did not especially try to be rude. It just came naturally.

  ‘We’ve come all this way,’ the father said.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ whined Marcia.

  ‘You’re to have your fun,’ the father ordered. ‘Dopey will be all right. You’ll see.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Dora. ‘We’ll see.’ And kept an eye on them.

  Chapter 4

  IN THE TRUE Love Race, pairs of riders held a strip of paper between them to represent the marriage licence. When the paper broke, they were divorced and eliminated. Callie and Toby paired off. Dora wanted to go with Steve, but there was too much competition for him from the pony-farm girls.

  ‘Will you be my partner?’ Amanda Crowley rode up on the roan.

  ‘I told you, you can’t—’

  ‘She’s all right now. I need a partner.’

  ‘I’ve got one.’ Dora hastily grabbed at the flare of Mrs Oldcastle’s breeches.

  Harold cantered steadily around the outside of the ring, as if he were on rails. The mule kept veering towards the middle of the field, since the Colonel was there as ring steward, with horse nuts at the bottom of his poacher’s pocket. Dora and Mrs Oldcastle were divorced after half a round. So was Amanda Crowley, since Dopey was very slow, and the girl perched on the steeplechaser couldn’t hold him back.

  Dora bided her time.

  In the Refusal Race, you had to trot up to a jump, stop the horse and sail over the jump by yourself on to Anna’s spare-room mattress. Easy for Dora, since Willy naturally refused any jump. The mule trotted up to the jump with his rough, wavering gait and stopped dead with his neck out. Dora hurled herself through the air with her eyes shut, landed on her back on the mattress and looked up into a startled face under a brand-new green sporting cap, worn dead straight.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Dora. There was nothing else to say.

  ‘Oh – hi there.’ The face said uncertainly. ‘I – er, I’m looking for the Colonel.’

  ‘Over there.’ Dora scrambled to her feet. She nodded to where the Colonel, in shabby old clothes, was lolling on Stroller’s bare back, his unlit pipe in his mouth and his hat tipped over his eyes against the sun.

  ‘Could have fooled me,’ said the stranger. He must be the American from the hospital.

  When Dora called, the Colonel slid off Stroller and came across with his large brown hand held out.

  ‘Blankenheimer, my dear chap. It’s good to see you.’

  Mr Blankenheimer shook hands with him and stepped quickly out of the way as Willy, unpredictable as all mules, suddenly decided to jump after all. He came over in his own fashion, front end on its own, back end following a bit later, landed on the mattress, put his foot on his reins, threw up his head, broke the rein, wandered away and bit Coffee in the rump.

  Mr Blankenheimer laughed nervously. ‘Quite a circus you have here.’

  ‘Great, isn’t it?’ The Colonel had not even stepped out of the way as the mule jumped, just bent his tall frame slightly sideways. ‘It’s our spring horse show.’

  ‘Oh, pardon me.’ The American was all dressed up as if he thought it was a real horse show: a bright jacket, shirt and tie with a foxhead pin, crisp trousers, jodphur boots that squeaked.

  He was rather nice. He was gentle and eager to please. He smiled a lot, and cheered mildly and clapped. In the Relay Race, when everyone yelled for the ponies, not the riders – ‘Come on, Pansy! Get going, Coffee!’ – he yelled too: ‘C’mawn, Cawfee!’

  He helped to put up jumps. He sat with Ron on a bale of hay, sucking a wisp of it and discussing the odds on the 3.30 race at Sandown. He held ponies for people who were soaking their faces in the apple bobbing. He poured cider for Anna in the Nosebag Race; you galloped to one end of the ring, grabbed a doughnut off a string with your teeth, and ate it before you got back to the other end, where you were handed a cup of cider, and had to trot back without spilling it. Then you drank it, if there was any left.

  ‘More fun than a barrel of monkeys,’ was the opinion of Mr Blankenheimer.

  In the last jumping event, Amanda Crowley brought poor Dopey on to the course, carrying the long stick.

  The Colonel put out a hand and caught the roan mare’s rein as she turned her towards the first jump. ‘No whip.’ He took it away from her.

  ‘She won’t jump without it,’ the girl protested. ‘She’s a pig.’

  ‘No,’ said the Colonel mildly. ‘She’s old and tired.’

  He let Amanda have three tries, since he knew the horse would not jump. After the third refusal, he silently handed her back the stick, and she rode off angrily to get some food out of the boot of her car.

  ‘Look here.’ Mr and Mrs Crowley were on the scene. ‘It’s not good enough.’

  ‘To jump her, it isn’t.’ The Colonel was good at protecting horses from people like this. ‘Dora’s right. The horse is lame behind.’

  ‘All very well for Dora,’ the mother said, some spite looking out of her small black eyes above the swollen cheeks. ‘She’s got a stable full of horses to ride.’ (Willy? Lame Hero? Spot, whose back was too broad and flat to do anything but stand on it? The shetlands?) ‘My girls have only Dopey.’

  ‘And spoil her to match.’ The father had a manner part aggressive, part whining. ‘Gone without, we have, to feed this animal. I’m not a rich man, Colonel, as you know, but I’ll not have it said … Gone without meat on the table…’

  ‘Horses don’t eat meat.’ The Colonel was easily bored. He had stopped listening.

  Chapter 5

  AT THE END of the show, when Mr Blankenheimer was presenting the rosettes made by Anna out of wrapping paper, a small commotion made itself known at the far end of the field.

  One of the Crowley girls, long stick in hand, had somehow beaten the roan mare into the in-and-out, and was trying to beat her out again.

  Steve rode Miss America fast to the end of the field, jumped off, and into the in-and-out, grabbed the stick and whacked the Crowley girl across her fat rump.

  ‘He hit me – ai-ai-ai!’

  The father let out with his right fist and punched Steve in the face. Steve punched him back, and then they were down together, rolling about on the ground between the jumps, the roan mare nervously lifting her feet so as not to step on them.

  Dora could only stand and watch from a distance. Steve had been in trouble before for fighting. When his temper was strong, he could really hurt somebody. Mr Cowley was lucky. He wriggled away, got up, shouted to the Colonel that he would sue him (‘I’ll be suing you,’ added Ron), and left the scene.

  ‘Will they really sue?’ Mr Blankenheimer had watched the drama with his eyes popping under the green cap.

  The Colonel grunted impatiently. ‘It’s just talk. Always looking for trouble. That’s the way they live.’

  ‘Are all English horse shows like this?’ the American asked.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ said Ron. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet. Stick around, mate.’

  Dora liked this small gentle man. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the horses.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ He looked at his watch in the fussy way of a man ruled by time. ‘I can’t. I have a business appointment.’

  ‘To see the stallion?’ Dora would like to go too.

  ‘No, Miss – er.’ He had been too shy to call anybody by name yet, except when he was shouting for the ponies. ‘To see some �
� er – tiling. I’m here on business too. The construction business. I’m after some of your laminated, self-adhesive mosaic. You folks are way ahead of us, I have to tell you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Dora was out of her depth. ‘Can you come back tomorrow and see the horses?’

  ‘Could I?’ Mr Blankenheimer beamed at the favour. It was really a favour for Dora. She never got tired of showing off the horses and telling their histories. ‘This is Puss, who was being ridden to London with a petition for the Queen … this is Ginger, who used to pull a milk cart … this is poor old Frank see the dent in his head from the tight halter…’

  Blackenheimer was back the next day in his stiff, formal clothes, walking as uncertainly into the yard as if he were an unwelcome tax collector.

  The Colonel was trimming feet. He greeted Mr Blankenheimer from an upside-down face, without letting go of Dolly’s back foot. Once you let it down, it was hard to pick up again. Mr Blankenheimer seemed a bit nervous of him. He stood and watched, and folded his arms, and put his hands in his pockets and then behind his back, and cleared his throat, while the Colonel went on paring with his sharp curved knife, making the whistling hiss between his teeth with which all the horses were so familiar. The Colonel was shy too, and when he was with another shy person, it could be paralysing. Dora, rescuing Mr Blankenheimer to begin his tour of the inmates, wondered what the two of them had talked about, trapped in that green hospital room with the high beds and sterile smells.

  All the horses were out except Lancelot, who had one of his groggy spells today. He would rather be groggy indoors, than outside where the others could bother him.

  Some people thought Lancelot was ugly, with his bony frame and patchy skewbald hide, but to Dora he was beautiful.

  ‘He’d be dead if it wasn’t for Follyfoot,’ she said.

  ‘Some folks would say he should be put – er, put to sleep,’ Mr Blankenheimer said sadly.

  ‘The Colonel doesn’t believe in taking a horse’s life if they can still enjoy it,’ Dora said. ‘That’s half the point of this place.’

  ‘It’s splendid,’ Mr Blankenheimer said. ‘Very fine. A Home of Rest for Horses. How British can you get? You could never have a place like this in the States. We’re too practical about horses over there. Not sentimental.’

  ‘Not crazy, you mean.’ Steve came out of Hero’s stable pushing a barrow with a rickety wheel. It had been on the brink of collapse for months. A lot of the equipment at Follyfoot was old and groggy, like Lancelot. But the Colonel was plagued with bills for winter feed and bedding. When the barrow wheel let go and tipped its load almost on Mr Blankenheimer’s neat feet, Steve sighed, and went off to the tool shed for some dowelling to mend the wheel again.

  Dora took the American round the fields and showed him the horses and told him how each one had come here. He thrilled to hear the story of Callie stealing Hero from the circus, and when he heard about Ranger, whose jaw had been half torn off by a cruel wire bit, his eyes filled with ready tears.

  She told him how Folly had been born in a ditch where Specs was trapped, and how Cobbler’s Dream had found them.

  He was fascinated. He loved the idea and the ideals of Follyfoot.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if—’

  ‘If what?’

  ‘Just a dream, I guess, Miss – er—’

  ‘Dora.’

  She could not call him Earl. Nor Mr Blankenheimer. She called him Mr Blank.

  Since he was a racehorse owner, she showed off Folly proudly.

  ‘Look at that length from croup to hock.’ She made the shrewd face that people make when they size up horseflesh. ‘And see the muscle here already.’ Dora gripped the negligible crest of Folly’s young neck, and the colt struck out with his narrow hoof and ducked away. ‘Look at the bone on him, look at the bone.’

  ‘I’ll say.’ Mr Blank narrowed his eyes and imitated Dora’s shrewd face. He did not know much, but he had a natural feeling for horses. He did not laugh at Dora, like the last visitor who had said, ‘Doesn’t it bother you to feed these old nags when half the world is starving?’

  He wanted to go into the hay barn, to remind himself of his boyhood in Indiana.

  ‘I love places like this.’ They sat down on a bale of hay and inhaled the dusty sweet smell of outdoor preserved indoors which gave the barn its special atmosphere. The old beams were curtained with cobwebs, the floor stamped into troughs and hollows by generations of working feet.

  ‘Where my race horses are, it’s all so grand. I don’t even know where they keep the hay. It’s too tidy. Where I keep my daughter’s horse, they don’t even feed hay. Just roughage pellets. On schedule. You can’t bring carrots or sugar in your pocket.’ He sighed. ‘You know, Dora, I’m glad it was you showed me around today. You’re kinda – kinda old shoe.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Dora said. ‘Thanks, Mr Blank.’

  ‘Why do you call me that?’

  ‘It suits you.’

  ‘You think so?’ He turned an unhappy face to her. ‘You think I’m a nothing?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Other people do. They don’t pay me too much notice.’

  ‘Look at it this way, Mr Blank.’ Dora thought quickly. ‘There was a blank in my life, and you fill it.’

  ‘Gee. Wow.’ If she’d handed him a thousand pounds, he could not have been more pleased. Especially since he didn’t need a thousand pounds.

  They seemed to have made friends. She’d call him Blank. He’d call her Door.

  ‘I like you, Blank.’ Dora had not made a new friend for ages.

  ‘I like you, Door.’

  Blank Door. A codename. ‘No Handle.’

  On the way to get his car they took a detour to see the last few horses in the top field. Magic, the black police horse, was grazing peacefully with the sun on his round shining quarters and his full tail swishing rhythmically.

  ‘He’s twenty-five,’ Dora said. ‘Been on the streets almost all his life. Riots. Parades. Traffic. He’s done his work. Now he’s enjoying his rest.’

  ‘My gosh,’ Blank said. ‘That old guy looks fitter than a lot of horses who are still working. Look at that roan horse there was all the trouble about yesterday. This is where that one ought to be.’

  ‘I know,’ said Dora. ‘I wish we had her.’

  ‘If she had her way,’ Slugger had come to lean over the gate with them, ‘half the horses in the county would be at Follyfoot Farm.’

  ‘It’s agony, though,’ Dora said. ‘People are so stupid. I suppose they mean well, but they have all the wrong sort of sentiment, creeps like the Crowleys. I wish we could get them to see that Dopey shouldn’t be ridden. Dopey – what an insult to a horse. I’m sure the Colonel would take her here.’

  ‘Oh my Gawd.’ Slugger pulled his woollen cap down over his best eye.

  Dora continued to grumble about the Crowleys. ‘They’re always carrying on about not having meat on the table and how they starve themselves to feed the “dahling” horse. But one look at those fat pigs, and you know who comes first in that family.’

  ‘If they want meat, they could shoot the horse and put him on the table then, couldn’t they?’ Slugger’s jokes could be pretty sick.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Now, lookit—’

  Door and Blank spoke together. They exchanged a ‘No Handle’ look of understanding.

  ‘What are you planning?’ Slugger lifted the edge of his cap to see.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Dora. ‘I wish I was.’

  ‘Gawd help us all,’ said Slugger.

  Chapter 6

  AFTER BLANK HAD driven away in his hired car, turning to wave and grazing the gatepost, Dora still could not talk at supper about anything else but Dopey.

  ‘I can’t get that poor mare out of my mind,’ she said, sitting at the round kitchen table, picking at Anna’s meat pie.

  ‘And I’ve still got that man’s knuckles on my face.’ Steve rubbed his cheek, which had come up into a br
uise of interesting colours.

  ‘It is awful,’ Dora fretted. ‘That horse will never be sound, and those dopes will never give her up. I wish we could steal her.’

  ‘You’ve stolen enough horses in your day,’ Steve said. ‘Britain’s number one horse thief, you are. If you’d been sentenced for all the horses you’ve stolen or swindled people out of, you’d be doing hard labour for the next two hundred years.

  ‘That would be good.’ Callie looked up. ‘Then she could go down the mines and work with the ponies.’

  ‘Women don’t work in mines, stupid.’ Steve kicked her under the table.

  ‘I wish they did.’ Callie made a toad face at him. ‘Then I could go and work with the pit ponies.’

  ‘They don’t have ponies in mines any more, stupid.’

  Callie sulked. Sometimes it was hard being the only child among grown-ups. But when her mother asked her if she would like to have friends to stay, she couldn’t think of anyone to ask. She didn’t really have friends, except Toby. The horses were her friends. And Dora and Steve, and Ron when he wasn’t being mean.

  Sometimes they treated her like a silly kid. At other times they loaded a whole lot of work and responsibility on her. Her father would have understood. When your father is dead, it’s easy to daydream that he would have understood everything.

  She pushed back her chair into the fireplace and ran upstairs to look at the picture of him over her bed, sitting loosely on his famous steeplechaser, Wonderboy, who was still at Follyfoot, idling the last of his days.

  Anna followed her upstairs and sat on the bed.

  ‘I love that picture,’ she said.

  ‘How could you marry the Colonel,’ Callie said, still sulking, ‘if you loved my father?’

  ‘You were glad when I married him,’ Anna said, surprised.

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘And you’re glad now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Anna.

  ‘Well then,’ said Callie, and sighed.

  When Callie came back to the kitchen, Steve reached and picked up her chair from the fireplace, not even taking his fork out of the mashed potato. Callie often pushed her chair into the fireplace and ran out of the room. No one bothered to look up. They had all been through that stage. Dora went back to it sometimes, when things went really wrong.