Follyfoot Read online

  Callie nodded, sick with fear. The three large boys stood round her. With such a shrieking mob in the playground, no one would see or hear whatever they did to her.

  ‘You belong to that chap with the gimpy leg – haw haw, jolly good show and all that sort of rot.’ The Louse did a rotten imitation of what he thought would be the voice of someone like the Colonel.

  ‘My mother is married to him.’

  ‘Oh girls! It’s too romantic.’ Lewis snuffled in his horrible blocked-up nose. Then he leaned forward and put his face so close to Callie’s that she could see all the pimples and open pores. ‘You know who I am, dontcha?’

  She nodded, staring at him like a rabbit.

  ‘Your lot tried to make trouble for us. Remember that, you guys.’ He jerked his head at his friends, who were even uglier and stupider (if possible) than him. ‘We don’t like this person.’

  ‘But I’m taking care of your horse!’ Callie was bolder, thinking of poor Miss America, who was her life’s purpose at the moment.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Lewis, ‘quite right. And we’ll take care of you. Don’t forget it.’

  He snapped his thick grubby finger in Callie’s face and sauntered off, his friends behind him, singing a crude song, whose key words they changed briefly while they passed a teacher, and then took up again.

  *

  When Callie was really upset, she couldn’t talk about it. All she could do was to say she had a bad headache the next day, and all this got her was that Anna made her stay in bed and would not let her go out to the stable to take care of Miss America.

  She knew that Callie had not got a headache. That was why she did that. And because she knew she hadn’t got a headache, she sat on Callie’s bed in the dark that night and asked her what was wrong.

  ‘Oh – nothing. It’s just school.’ Callie tossed about, and the kitten who was on the bottom of the bed made a pounce at her toes.

  ‘Was there trouble? Work, or what?’

  Usually Callie did not like to have her hair touched, but when her mother stroked it at night, it was all right.

  She shook her head under the stroking hand. How was it you could manage not to cry until someone gave you sympathy? It ought to be lack of sympathy that made you cry.

  ‘What then?’

  Callie sniffed. ‘It’s just – oh, I hate the kids.’

  ‘Aren’t there any friends?’

  ‘I’m not the type that makes friends, you know that. All my friends are here. Most of them have got four legs.’

  ‘You ought to have friends your own age.’ All mothers worry once in a while that their child is ‘different’, though they wouldn’t really like it if they weren’t. ‘Perhaps we should think about boarding school.’

  ‘Mother, you promised.’

  ‘Let’s see how things go then.’

  Chapter 6

  BUT THINGS DID not go any better. They went worse. Wherever Callie went, Lewis and his gang seemed to be there, jeering at her, tripping her up, jumping out from behind lockers, tweaking a pigtail as they ran by.

  One day she was changing classrooms, going upstairs as Lewis was coming down, and he bumped into her so hard that he knocked her back down the stairs. She caught the rail and steadied herself against the wall. The rest of her class went on up the stairs. In this school, if you saw trouble brewing you got out of the way.

  ‘What do you want?’ Callie stood against the wall with her hands spread out as if she was going to be shot. When she was afraid, it went to her stomach. She thought she was going to bring up her lunch all over the Louse’s elastic-sided boots.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, little girl.’ He put on a kind of leer which he thought was a smile. ‘I got a present for you.’

  Callie managed to say, ‘Oh?’ and swallowed her lunch back down.

  ‘Knowing how much you love our four-footed friends—’ from behind his back he held out a parcel wrapped in newspaper – ‘I brought this for you.’

  Callie took it, watching him.

  ‘Go on. Open it. You’ll like it, really.’

  It smelled peculiar, but Callie gingerly unwrapped the newspaper and saw that she was holding the hoof of a dead horse. Where it had been cut off, it was congealed with black blood and dirt.

  She wrapped it up again quickly and handed it back to Lewis. She could not speak.

  ‘Don’t you recognize it?’ he jeered. ‘You should do. I thought you was so fond of poor old Beauty Queen.’

  ‘You couldn’t—’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s still our horse, ain’t it? Too bad you didn’t take better care of her, for we had to have her destroyed this morning. Very ’umane. A merciful release.’ He shoved the newspaper bundle back into Callie’s hands and ran away.

  She could not believe him. Yet she had to believe him. It was a narrow, well-bred hoof, the pale colour that goes with a chestnut’s white leg. She must telephone her mother. Yet she could not telephone her mother. As long as she didn’t hear the truth, it still could be not true.

  After she had been sick in the cloakroom, she went down to the basement furnace and got a shovel, and buried the hoof in the newspaper under the bushes behind the goal posts. Then she went back to her classroom.

  ‘Where on earth—’ Miss Golding began, then saw Callie’s face.

  ‘I was sick.’

  Immediately there was a clamour from the class of, ‘I knew that sausage was off’, ‘It was the spuds, they boil ’em in the dish-water’, ‘You won’t catch me eating their treacle roll.’

  ‘Do you want to lie down? Shall I ring up your home?’

  ‘I’m all right.’ Callie sat down.

  At the end of the day, she went to the bus like a sleepwalker, and sat at the back, staring straight ahead, not looking out of the window all the way to ride a cross-country course alongside the road, as she usually did. The bus climbed the hill and stopped by the gate of the farm.

  ‘Give my love to the old horses,’ the driver said, as he always did.

  ‘Thank you,’ Callie said, as she always did. She went under the stone arch and walked across the yard going towards the house. Her mother would be starting supper. She would turn from the stove and Callie would know at once from her face whether it was true.

  Several horses called to her. Cobbler’s Dream in the corner box banged on his door and swung his head with the flashy white blaze up and down to get her attention. She was almost to the corner of the yard where the path came in from the house when Steve backed out of the Weaver’s stable, dragging a loaded barrow.

  ‘Hi!’ he shouted. ‘Aren’t you going to see your patient?’

  Callie turned slowly round.

  ‘Her back looks much better today. You’re doing a good job.’

  Callie ran. It was not until she was in the loose box with her head against Miss America’s thin thoroughbred neck that she began to cry.

  After the Easter holidays started, Callie told her mother that she could not stay at that school.

  ‘I’d better start finding out about boarding schools.’

  ‘We can’t afford it.’

  ‘No.’ Anna laughed. ‘But you could try for a scholarship.’

  ‘I’m not clever enough.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  They did not discuss it any more. Why spoil the holidays? The days were roofed with blue sky and whipped cream clouds. The old horses luxuriated in the sun on their dozing backs. Callie rode Cobbler’s Dream, and the mule, and Hero the circus horse, and anyone else who was rideable, and she and Steve and Dora jogged up to the higher hills where the turf was patched with rings of white and yellow flowers, like fried eggs.

  Miss America’s back was healed and they could ride her too. Fleshed out and well fed, she was a pleasant ride, although her thoroughbred stride had been stiffened by pounding on roads, and from the way she chucked up her head, you could guess at the kind of hands that had tugged at her reins.

  They rode her in a snaffle, bareback to make
sure of not hurting her, and the mare flourished in the warm spring.

  ‘But there’s always a fly in the ointment,’ Dora said.

  The fly was Sidney Hammond, arriving with a lopsided trailer with the tailboard tied with rope, to take back his mare.

  ‘Don’t let her go.’ Steve and Dora cornered the Colonel in the tack room when he went to get a halter.

  ‘It’s his horse. We’ve done what we set out to do. He’s very busy, he says. He’s getting a lot of people from town, secretaries and things wanting to go pony trekking at weekends. He needs the mare.’

  ‘She isn’t a pony.’

  ‘Dora. Don’t try to annoy me.’ The Colonel did not want Miss America to go either.

  Mr Hammond was as smiley and ingratiating as ever, as well he might be, since he hadn’t paid a penny for the mare’s keep, in spite of all his blessings and promises.

  Dora kept out of his sight, in case she might need to put on the pink pants and ‘Passion Flowers’ disguise again to go and check on Miss America when she was back at the Pinecrest as Beauty Queen. Steve helped Mr Hammond load the mare, making a big fuss about spreading straw on the rotting tailboard in case of splinters.

  As the trailer pulled away, he said, ‘What a hunk of junk,’ loud enough for Mr Hammond to hear, but smiling Sidney merely waved and grinned, and leaned out of the car window to call once again, ‘I can never thank you enough, Brigadier!’

  ‘I’ll send you a bill!’ the Colonel called after him, not loud enough to hear.

  ‘You know he won’t,’ Slugger grumbled, sweeping up the old manure that Steve had kicked out of the van before he would lead Miss America in. ‘You know he’s too soft with these folk who could well pay to help out them as can’t.’

  ‘Shut up, Slugger,’ the Colonel said. ‘You know we only ask people to pay what they can afford.’

  ‘And that one could well afford.’

  ‘I said I’d send him a bill.’

  ‘Oh yes, just like he sent in a bill to that old clothes and firewood chap as brought the pony in here for two weeks’ rest and we had the beggar all winter. Have us all in Queer Street, that lot will. Oh yes, he says. Send in a bill,’ he says … Slugger grumbled away, sweeping the gravel before him with short testy jabs.

  Chapter 7

  IT WAS DORA’S birthday. She had wanted to spend it at the farm, but her mother wanted her at home, so she had to put on her skirt and go down into the town.

  Her mother, who was still hoping that she would grow out of horses, although there was no evidence, at seventeen, that she ever would, had assembled a group of ‘interesting’ people to try to show her the kind of life she was missing.

  A girl from an art school, starved and pale, with round glasses like wheel rims and a long dusty dress with a trodden hem. Two serious boys with bushy beards who were teaching problem children to get rid of their problems by screaming and hitting each other. A few grown-ups whose mouths kept on opening and shutting long after Dora had stopped listening.

  She was so bored that she ate too much to pass the time, fell asleep on the bus going home, and was carried past the village where she was supposed to change buses.

  ‘Where are we?’ She woke with a start as the driver braked round a sharp corner.

  He stopped at the next cross-roads and showed her a lane which led to the main road, where she might get another bus back.

  It was late afternoon, with twilight settling on the budding hedges in the valley, and damp beginning to rise from the ground through the new spring grass. Dora walked by the side of the road, getting her feet wet. She was not sure where she was, but when she went over a bridge, she thought she might be crossing the sluggish brown river that ran by the Pinecrest Hotel. If there were no buses on the main road, she would get a lift from the first car that would stop.

  ‘Come back with her throat cut one day, she will,’ Slugger Jones always grumbled when Dora turned up from town in a strange car or on the back of a motor-bike.

  ‘There are some weird people about these days,’ Anna warned, but Dora said, ‘No weirder than me,’ and went on hitch-hiking.

  She had promised to be back for supper. After that lunch, she could never eat again. But Anna had made a cake. And there would be no ‘interesting’ people with ‘stimulating’ talk. Just people who knew each other well, and were sure of being liked.

  Behind her in the lane, she heard the clop-clop of a trotting horse, that always stirring sound that brings people to their windows or out to the gate, even if they have their own horses to clop-clop with.

  Dora turned and stood still to watch it come by. As the man and horse came into view out of the dusk, she saw that it was Miss America. Dora stepped out into the road and held up her hand like a school crossing patrol man.

  The mare stopped of her own accord. She was not so much being ridden, as carrying an unsteady rider, who nearly pitched over her head when she stopped.

  ‘Whoops.’ He clung round Miss America’s neck and smiled foolishly at Dora, who saw that he was drunk. She also saw that the saddle with which he had so little contact was a heavy broken thing, well down on the mare’s bony withers.

  Dora saw red. She grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him off the horse. He was half-way off anyway.

  ‘Thanks.’ He landed on his feet, with the luck of a drunk. ‘I was wondering whether to get on the ground or back in the saddle.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be in that saddle.’ Furiously, Dora unbuckled the girth and lifted off the saddle. The sore back had broken open again, raw and bleeding.

  Dora swore. ‘Here – just a minute—’ The man lurched at her, but she went to the side of the road and pitched the dreadful old saddle over a thick hedge into the bushes.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ The man’s red face was woeful. ‘How am I going to ride this thing home?’

  ‘You’re not,’ Dora said.

  ‘Have to walk then.’ Strengthening himself with a swig from a flask in his breeches pocket, he looped the reins over his arm and started off down the road. The mare was slightly lame.

  Dora followed a short distance behind. The man weaved down the lane in the failing light, staggering now and then and propping himself up with a hand on the mare’s neck. When he came to the main road, he stood for a while watching the cars go past, turning his head from side to side as if he were at a tennis match.

  Dora watched him. Finally he seemed to make up his mind. He took the reins over Miss America’s head and tied them very carefully round a signpost. Then he stepped into the road with his arm raised, outlined unsteadily in the lights of a car. The luck of a drunk still held. The car stopped, and he got in and was driven away.

  Dora untied the mare and they walked along the grass at the side of the road until they came to the Dog & Whistle, where Dora could telephone for Steve to bring the horse box.

  In the farmhouse, Callie greeted her. ‘I got you a present. Want to see?’

  ‘Thanks. I got you one too. Want to see?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the foaling stable.’

  ‘A new customer!’ Callie ran out.

  Dora asked Anna, ‘Is – er, is the Colonel in a good mood?’

  ‘He was,’ Anna said. ‘What have you brought home?’

  ‘Miss America,’ Dora said. ‘Her back has broken down again.’

  The Colonel did not say much. He waited to see what would happen. When nothing happened, he telephoned the Pinecrest Hotel.

  ‘Good morning, Brigadier. Nice to hear your voice.’

  ‘I’ve got your mare.’

  ‘That’s good of you.’

  ‘Her back is almost as bad as it was before.’

  ‘That fellow – that stupid drunk – it’s all his fault. I tell you, Brigadier, this riding school game is one long headache.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I wish I knew. He came back here with a hangover and a cockeyed story about losing the saddle and tying the horse to a signpo
st. He’d been back to all the signposts on all the side turnings along the main road, and when the mare wasn’t there and wasn’t here in the stable, he thought he’d imagined the whole thing, and swore to go on the wagon.’

  ‘Good.’ The Colonel waited.

  Mr Hammond waited too. Finally he said, ‘I thought the mare might have run to you, seeing she was so well kept there before. I’m grateful, Brigadier.’

  ‘You want me to keep her?’

  ‘You know I’m short-handed here.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘But your staff is reliable. I work my fingers to the bone, but I have to leave a lot to my boys, and – well, you know what they are these days. You can’t trust them with anything. Especially a valuable horse like Beauty.’ He would not even stick up for his own family. ‘So if you could do me a favour, Brigadier, I’ll pay anything you want.’

  ‘You didn’t pay the last bill,’ the Colonel murmured without moving his lips. He hated talking about money.

  ‘The cheque is in the post.’

  Mr Hammond rang off cheerfully, with best wishes to all for the Easter season. The man was incredible. He had no shame at all.

  ‘He’s not going to get the mare back though,’ the Colonel said. ‘But somehow I don’t think he’ll ask.’

  ‘I worry about his other horses.’ Dora frowned. ‘I don’t see how he ever got a stable licence.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ Steve said. ‘Why don’t you ask the County Council, Colonel?’

  ‘They’ll think I’m suspicious.’

  ‘Well, you are.’

  At the County Council, they told him that the Pinecrest’s application for a riding-stable licence was on the files, awaiting an inspection.

  ‘Our regular man is off sick. I wonder, Colonel – I know you’re a busy man, but you’re fully qualified, and I’m sure the hotel wants to get it cleared up before the summer.’

  So the Colonel and Steve went back to the Pinecrest Hotel. He refused to take Dora in the sandals and earrings, but he did take Steve in case of trouble.

  There was no trouble. He had written authority to inspect the stable. He spent half a day there, with Sidney Hammond following him affably round and thanking him at the end for his time and trouble with a smile like the jaws of a gin trap.