Dora at Follyfoot Read online

‘Push-button ponies,’ Callie said, to cover her jealousy of the splendid well-schooled ponies trotting round the ring in the Under 12.2 Hands class. ‘What’s the fun of that?’

  ‘More fun than something that either won’t go or runs away.’ Phyllis stood at the rails with a know-all face, wearing jodhpurs to look like an exhibitor.

  ‘If you’re referring to the day Willie wouldn’t move and Stroller took Steve into the pond—’ Dora began, but Phyllis was laughing at something in the ring, high in her nose, an unusual sound. She didn’t laugh much, and when she did it was at, not with, people.

  ‘Look at that,’ she jeered. ‘If that’s a push-button pony, someone’s pushing the wrong button, right?’

  Out among the show ponies and the snobby little girls with hard eyes, someone had mistakenly sent a long-legged boy, top heavy on a tiny dun Shetland. His feet were almost on the ground. When they cantered, he had to lean back to keep his balance. The little pony was slower than the others. They passed it or bumped into it, the snobby little girls swearing at it from the sides of their mouths without losing their smug, professional faces. One of them flicked at the Shetland with a whip as she went by. It swerved, and the boy lost his balance. His jockey cap, which was too big for him, tipped over his eyes.

  He pushed it back vaguely and cantered on. He was a thin, dreamy-looking boy, apparently unaware that he was a spectacle.

  ‘Somebody ought to tell him.’ Dora could hardly look. ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘Let him make an ass of himself.’ Phyllis Weatherby laughed in her nose again. ‘Serves him right.’

  ‘I meant not fair to the pony. He’s much too big for it.’

  ‘A Shetland can carry twelve stone.’ Phyllis and Dora had got into the habit of always arguing. Either of them would say black was white to contradict the other.

  The rosettes were awarded. Four smug faces rode out of the ring, and ten disgruntled ones, plus the dreamy boy who did not seem to have noticed defeat. Outside the gate, his parents, plump and tweedy, received him and the pony with hugs and lumps of sugar, and the father took several pictures, getting in the way of the next class going into the ring.

  ‘Let’s go and tell them,’ Callie urged Dora.

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Phyllis said. But when she was watching the next class, with comments to show she knew a thing or two: ‘Snappy little roan … pulls like a train … overflexed, etc., etc.,’ they slipped away.

  Walking over to the horse box lines, Dora asked Callie, ‘What shall we say?’

  ‘He’s too big for the pony. It’s cruel.’

  ‘But they look as if they were just stupid, not cruel.’

  ‘Stupidity is cruelty.’ Callie echoed the Colonel. ‘People who don’t know anything about horses shouldn’t be allowed to keep them.’

  But this was one of the most difficult things about being in the business of animal rescue. Easy to attack deliberately cruel owners who beat or starved their horses, or drove old crocks into the ground. Much harder to tell kind, sentimental fools that their ‘pet’ was suffering through their ignorance.

  It was too late anyway to tell the plump tweed-suited people anything. Among the smartly-painted horse boxes and trailers was a red minibus. As Dora and Callie came up they saw it move away, the father driving, the mother beside him in her mauve tweed hat to match her suit, and the dreamy boy in the back with the dun pony.

  They must have lifted it in, and it was small enough to stand between the seats, like a dog.

  ‘Let’s follow them.’

  Phyllis had come after Dora and Callie to see what they were up to. She behaved like their keeper, in or out of the stable.

  ‘Want a laugh?’ They pointed to the minibus turning out of the gates of the showground. ‘Guess what’s in that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get the car and we’ll show you. Let’s follow them.’

  They caught up with the red bus. The dun pony’s head was sticking out of the back window, so Phyllis had her laugh. She passed the bus, hooted, then slowed down to let it pass her, so she could get another laugh. The boy’s face was alongside the pony’s, his fair hair blowing with its mane. Callie waved at him and grinned, so that he would not think they were making fun of him, and he waved back.

  In a suburban road of neat houses with trimmed lawns and clipped hedges, the red bus stopped at a white stucco house called The Firs, and turned up the drive. Phyllis slowed for a last look.

  ‘I’m going to tell them now.’ Dora turned the handle of the car door.

  ‘You can’t do that.’ Phyllis moved forward as the door opened. Dora and Callie fell out, and she drove away without them. Leaning back to pull the door shut, she shouted, ‘All right, walk home, right?’

  They picked themselves up from the drive, picked gravel out of the palms of their hands and followed the bus.

  Chapter 6

  THERE WAS A sign on the side of the red minibus, ‘J. R. Bunker Ltd. Builders and Decorators.’

  ‘We saw your pony at the show,’ Dora said. ‘Can we have another look at it?’

  ‘Help yourself.’ Mr Bunker was headed for the house. ‘Mind she doesn’t bite.’

  The dun pony had been put into a garden shed, which she shared with flower pots and spades and more dangerous things like scythes and empty bottles. There was no window and no half door. She stood in the dark, and when Dora opened the door, she nipped out under her arm and off into the garden.

  Callie ran to catch her.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mrs Bunker said. ‘She always does that. My little lawn mower, I call her.’

  Callie was tugging at the pony’s mane, but she could not move her, nor get her head up from the turf.

  ‘She’ll only come if you hold sugar in front of her,’ Mrs Bunker said. ‘Or an ice-cream cornet. She loves chocolate ices, anything sweet. That’s why we call her Lollipop.’

  ‘Is it good for her?’ A question was more tactful than a statement.

  ‘Good heavens, I don’t know.’ Mrs Bunker turned on Dora, her round amber eyes like glass beads without much behind them. ‘But I’m so fond of dumb animals, you see, I can’t deny them what they want.’

  ‘That’s not being kind,’ Dora said bluntly, her tactfulness used up. ‘That’s being foolish. Did you give your son everything he wanted when he was a baby?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The round eyes were surprised at the question. ‘He’s our only child, you see.’

  The dreamy boy was sitting on a wall, kicking the heels of his riding boots and humming to himself. His pony had not been fed or watered. His saddle was on the ground where he had dropped it. His bridle hung upside down on the branch of a tree.

  ‘He’s too big for Lollipop.’ Callie had her belt round the neck of the dun pony, whose ears did not reach her shoulder.

  ‘I know, isn’t it absurd? But all the children round here go to the shows, so Jim does too, though he never wins, because the judges are crooked. The whole thing is rigged.’

  ‘It’s because he’s too big for the pony,’ Callie repeated.

  ‘Should we get another one?’

  ‘Oh no!’ Dora burst out. ‘I mean, you’d have to build a proper stable, wouldn’t you, and find out how to take care of it. There’s a lot more to keeping a horse than sugar and chocolate cornets.’

  ‘We didn’t know.’ Mrs Bunker twisted her plump ringed hands. ‘Everyone seems to have a pony. We didn’t know it was all that difficult. How do you girls know so much?’

  ‘We work at Follyfoot Farm,’ Dora said. ‘The Home of Rest for Horses.’

  Mrs Bunker’s eyes misted over at once. Always a bad sign when people began to blubber at the mere idea of an old horse. ‘Ah, the dear patient beasts. I read a piece in the papers about the horse you rescued with the broken jaw. I couldn’t do that kind of work. I’m too sensitive. I can’t stand suffering.’

  ‘You’re making Lollipop suffer,’ Callie said.

  Mrs Bunker’s hands went to her mout
h. ‘Oh, but we didn’t know. We didn’t know.’

  ‘Famous last words,’ Dora muttered.

  ‘Perhaps we should get rid of her – send her to the auction sales.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. You don’t know who’ll buy her. Find her a good home.’

  ‘It would break Jim’s heart.’

  ‘No it wouldn’t, Mum, honest.’ The boy, who had not spoken a word so far, slid down from the wall and came over. ‘I don’t care whether I ride or not, honest I don’t.’

  ‘Oh, but you do! Everybody rides. The Maxwell children ride, and the Browns, and all Sir Arthur’s kiddies up at the Manor. All the children round here have ponies, and all those who don’t wish they had.’

  ‘They can have Lollipop then.’ Jim kicked a stone along the path, went after it and kicked it again, scuffing the toe of his riding boot, trying to kick it into a drain.

  ‘We could look for a home for her,’ Callie said.

  ‘But I’d be so sad. How could I face those trusting eyes?’

  ‘We could have her at the Farm till we—’

  Dora trod on Callie’s toe. ‘No more horses, the Colonel said,’ she hissed.

  ‘He said not to buy any.’ Callie turned back to Mrs Bunker. ‘Till we find a good home.’

  Mrs Bunker went to ask her husband who, for all his proud photographing, seemed glad to have Lollipop off his hands. He came out at once and put her into the bus before they could change their minds. Callie and Dora sat at the back with the pony. Jim did not come. He sat on one of the gateposts with a magazine, waved to Lollipop and went back at once to the magazine.

  Halfway up the hill, a light truck came up behind them. Dora and the pony happened to look out of the window together, and the truck swerved and nearly went into a tree. It was Steve.

  He recovered and passed them, tapping his head to show they were mad. At the gate of the Farm, he opened the door of the bus, and the pony hopped neatly down.

  ‘What the—?’

  ‘Just for a short time,’ Dora told him in the soothing voice she used on the Colonel.

  ‘We agreed not to take in anything unless we both—’

  ‘Case of desperate need,’ Dora whispered. ‘Extreme brutality.’

  Steve scratched his head. The amiable parents in the minibus did not look like extreme brutes.

  Phyllis Weatherby was waiting too, in the entrance to the stable yard.

  ‘How dare you!’ She was red in the face, trying to shout through closed lips. ‘How dare you!’

  ‘These nice young people are going to find a home for dear little Lollipop.’ Mrs Bunker leaned out of the bus window, all smiles and beads.

  ‘Not here, they aren’t,’ Phyllis Weatherby said rudely.

  Mr Bunker, fearing a hitch, put the bus into gear and moved off before Phyllis could put the pony back in.

  ‘Wait!’ she called, and ran after them in her classy corduroys, knock-kneed instead of bow-legged, which she should be at her age if she was really as horsy as she said. ‘Come back!’

  The bus gathered speed. She stopped and shook her fist. Mrs Bunker pretended she thought she was waving, and waved back gaily out of the window.

  Phyllis Weatherby was so angry she was almost in tears, Dora was almost sorry for her.

  ‘I told you not to interfere with that pony. I told you!’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘You’re not the boss.’ Steve had to be on Dora’s side, against Phyllis.

  ‘Mr Fox said—’

  ‘Mr Fox, Mr Fox. He’s not the boss either.’

  ‘I’m going to tell him.’

  ‘Tell away.’ Steve laughed. If he had not been bigger than Phyllis, she would have hit him.

  ‘Where are you going with that pony?’ She picked on Callie, who was smaller. ‘There’s no stable room, and if you put it out, the others will kick its stupid head in.’

  ‘I’m not going to.’ Callie was walking the little pony like a dog on a lead.

  ‘Take it back,’ Phyllis Weatherby ordered. ‘It’s a long walk, but serve you right. Take it back.’

  She stormed into Flypaper’s stable and began ferociously mucking out, swearing at the amiable horse to ‘Move over! Get up, damn you!’ Flypaper stood by the end wall and looked at her with hurt, astonished eyes.

  Callie tied the pony to a stake on what had been a lawn by the house when anyone had time to keep a lawn.

  Dora went to get her jacket out of Phyllis Weatherby’s car. Steve called her urgently to help with Lancelot, who had sagged down to roll and couldn’t get up, and she ran, leaving the car door open.

  This is what they pieced together afterwards:

  Callie was famous for rotten knots. Lollipop, who was a clever little pony, must have untied the rope with her teeth, wandered away and got into the car, reminded of her own minibus. When Phyllis left, still blindly furious, she banged shut the door and did not find out until she slammed on the brakes at the Cross Keys Hotel and a soft nose bumped the back of her neck, that she had a tiny pony sitting on the floor of her car.

  ‘Carried on shouting,’ the hotel manager told Dora on the telephone. ‘She turns the pony loose, goes straight upstairs and packs her bags and takes off. “Send the bill to the Farm,” she says.’

  ‘Oh Lord.’

  ‘It’s not so much that, since I trust the Colonel. But the pony is in my wife’s kitchen garden. She’s holding it off her lettuce seedlings with a rake.’

  Dora went on her bicycle to fetch Lollipop, and led her home, trotting by the back wheel. A car with a silver thoroughbred on the radiator slowed alongside.

  ‘Phyllis Weatherby stopped by my place on her way home,’ Bernard Fox said. ‘Had some trouble?’

  ‘Oh no, no trouble at all.’ Dora wobbled. It is hard to ride a bicycle slowly and talk to someone in a car without bashing into it or falling off, especially when you are leading a pony.

  ‘Phyllis was very upset.’

  ‘She was tired. Working too hard.’

  ‘Some strange story about someone putting a horse in her car…’

  ‘There you are, you see. Hallucinations from overwork.’

  ‘It will be hard to find another worker like that.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ Dora put the hand with the leading rein on to the handlebar and steadied herself with her other hand on his car. ‘We’ve got someone.’

  ‘Have you really?’

  Dora nodded. Not quite as big a lie without speech.

  ‘I’ll stop in and have a chat with them.’

  ‘They’re not there yet. They should be coming in a few days.’

  ‘If they don’t, I’ll find you someone else.’

  Dora let go the car as he drove on, wobbled sideways, and the Shetland pony bit her on the ankle.

  Chapter 7

  THEY SAT UP late that evening, laughing about Lollipop in the back seat, and worrying about Bernard Fox.

  ‘If we don’t find another stable hand,’ Dora was lying on the floor with the Colonel’s yellow mongrel, ‘burnished Bernie will.’

  ‘And it could be worse than Phyllis.’

  ‘Impossible.’ Slugger had disliked Phyllis from the first day, when she told him to put his hands under the tap before he went to work in the stable. ‘Before!’ He was still stewing over it. ‘“Carrying germs of disease,” she says. So I says to her, “If there’s any disease round here, it’s in your head.”’

  ‘You didn’t,’ Callie said.

  ‘I should have. The next one we get, I’m going to tell ’em first day who’s boss here.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Me.’ Slugger thumped his chest into a hacking cough.

  ‘Who are we going to get? The Colonel tried all the agencies when Ron Stryker left, and there wasn’t anyone who knew one end of a horse from the other.’

  ‘Easy,’ Slugger said. ‘One end bites and the other kicks.’

  ‘We’ll have to try.’ Steve tipped back his chair. ‘Oh Lord.’ He let it down with a crash.
‘Suppose Bernard Fox persuades Phyllis to come back?’

  ‘She was in love with him,’ Callie said sombrely. ‘The master horseman.’

  With no Phyllis Weatherby to clash buckets and throw stones at windows, they all slept late. Callie missed the bus for school, so Steve took her down in the truck and went on into Town to go round the employment agencies.

  Dora went out to start feeds. She whistled her way round the stables, glad to be on her own, although there was so much work to do. It was easier to start a day by yourself, and work your way gradually into sharing it with other people.

  Horses, that was different. It was biologically impossible for a horse to get on your nerves. They were always glad to see you, each one greeting you in its own way. Wonderboy with a high neigh. Ginger with a low whinny. The Weaver with a hoof tattoo on his door. Stroller nodding his head up and down. Hero standing diagonally across his box with his nose in the manger to make sure you knew where to put the feed.

  Prince, who would never trust people again, stood at the back of his box, flicking his ears. Dora spoke to him and went in quietly. He was still nervous, even with months of gentle handling, after his terrible experience at the brutal hands of the Night Riders. His mouth was permanently ruined by the crude wire bit. Dora was tipping the soft mash of bran and crushed oats and molasses into the manger when a shattering roar made the horse jump, and tread on her toe.

  It is the hardest thing in the world to get a horse off your toe. Pushing her shoulder against his, Dora finally managed to get Prince off her poor big toe, which was already permanently bruised and blue, the trademark of a horse keeper.

  She limped angrily out to see who was insane enough to ride a motorcycle into a farm full of horses.

  She might have known. Strolling across the yard, lighting a cigarette and throwing down the burning match, his long red hair tangled on the shoulders of a fringed purple jacket—

  ‘Ron. Ron Stryker. I might have known.’

  ‘Missed me, eh? Knew you would. So I took pity on you and came back to work.’

  ‘The Colonel’s not here.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be glad. Always liked me, did the Colonel.’

  ‘Is that why he fired you?’