Dora at Follyfoot Read online

  ‘That was a nice pony your parents bought,’ she said.

  ‘Mm-hm.’ Chip’s deadpan gaze considered where she had seen Dora before.

  ‘Is it for you?’

  ‘Till we sell him. I’m going to train him for the race. If he wins, he’ll fetch a big price.’

  ‘What race?’

  ‘The Moonlight Steeplechase. At Mr Wheeler’s. You know.’

  Dora had heard of the Moonlight Pony Steeplechase, which the rich old man at Broadlands organised every year. But it was a posh social affair, with all the ‘Best People’ in the neighbourhood invited to a champagne buffet before the race, far removed from life at Follyfoot.

  But now she found herself envying Chip with the lovely roan pony to train, and the excitement of racing him under the moon over the fences and fields of the pony steeplechase course at Broadlands. And she boasted, ‘We may be entering too.’

  ‘You’re much too old,’ Chip said, as if Dora was fifty.

  ‘We have a rider.’

  ‘What on?’ Chip was not really interested, but the snack-bar woman was pouring beer and jokes for a lot of men, and it was a long wait for tea.

  ‘That bay pony, remember, that you sold to those people for their boy. He’s jumping like a stag, you wouldn’t know him.’

  ‘That thing!’ It was the first time Dora had seen Chip smile. She overdid it. She exploded with laughter, slapping her knees, clutching her stomach. ‘Well, that’s one I won’t have to worry about,’ she said rudely.

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Dora said, and when Chip got her tea first by pushing ahead, Dora jogged her elbow and spilled most of it into the saucer.

  It had started as a boasting joke, but the idea took root. Barney in the Moonlight Steeplechase … Dora’s mind raced ahead. Callie would have to work hard. They’d make bigger jumps, get him very fit … would Steve and Dora be invited to the buffet supper? She had no proper dress …

  She was jogged out of her ambitious dream by the sight of Ron’s friend bringing the big cream horse out of the shed and into the sales ring. She pushed through the crowd and stood by the rail, wondering if he would look at her again, trying to send him a thought message as he had done to her: Good luck, Amigo.

  The auctioneer described him as ‘a big strong horse with a lot of work in him yet. Some Clydesdale about him, I’d say.’

  ‘So’s your grandmother,’ grumbled Fred.

  Some man bid a small amount for the awkward-looking horse. He was somewhat over at the knees. He had huge feet like clogs, turned inwards in front and out behind.

  ‘Must be the dog meat blokes.’ Ron Stryker had slid between people to stand beside Dora. ‘That’s about all he’s good for, with that leg.’

  ‘What leg?’

  ‘Off fore,’ Ron said out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘He’s stiff, but he walks sound.’

  ‘Today he does.’ Ron winked. ‘Nerve block,’ he whispered. ‘Pheet!’ He moved his fingers like pushing in the plunger of a syringe. ‘That’s why he’s stiff. Tomorrow he’ll be crippled again.’

  The bidding was creeping up. A bent old fellow, in a battered felt hat turned down all round, was raising the bids just slightly ahead of the other man.

  ‘You barmy, Norman?’ Fred called across the ring to him.

  ‘He’ll pull the log cart.’

  Dora remembered seeing the old man once or twice with a thin horse and a big cart piled heavy with firewood. If the cream horse was really dead lame when the injection wore off, and Ron should know after his time with the Nicholsons’, Dora had to do something.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she had ducked under the rail and run out with her hands up. ‘Stop!’ she called to the auctioneer, to the old man, to everyone. ‘Please stop it. He can’t work, he’s lame, you can’t—’

  She was suddenly aware that she was in the middle of the sawdust ring with the old horse and Ron’s astonished friend, surrounded by faces and voices.

  She swung round. ‘Please!’ she said desperately. ‘Can’t you see he’s lame?’

  Someone laughed. Several people called out. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ the old man complained.

  ‘Go and find out, Norman,’ said Fred, and a lot more people laughed.

  Dora put her hand on the horse’s neck, staring round in fear.

  The auctioneer was professionally unruffled. ‘The horse is as you see him,’ he said smoothly. ‘Out of the ring, young lady, and let’s get on with it. The reserve is sixty, ladies and gentlemen, or the horse is withdrawn.’ He looked at the old man, who shook his head.

  ‘You pig.’ It was not said loud enough for the crowd to hear, but Dora heard it, and flinched at the anger in Mr Nicholson’s jowly face, scarlet over the rail. ‘You pig.’

  ‘Sixty is reserve, I said. If there are no more bids—’

  ‘Sixty pounds.’ Dora wanted to speak bravely, but her voice came out in a squeak. ‘I bid sixty pounds.’

  ‘And I wish you joy.’ Fred’s grumble came through the surprised, amused murmur of the crowd.

  Chapter 14

  WHEN DORA REACHED for the halter rope, Ron Stryker’s friend said, ‘Oh no, you don’t. You pay the auctioneer’s clerk first. You got the money?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dora lied. What on earth was she going to do? She looked for Ron, but he had disappeared. He had probably gone home in disgust.

  She went out of the ring to the accompaniment of hoots and whistles and a few corny jokes. In the crowd, a voice said, ‘Well done, good girl,’ but when she turned – to ask for help, for money, what? – she could not see who had spoken.

  She had bought the horse with nothing. What happened now? Would they sue her? Arrest her? The auctioneer’s clerk was looking her way, so she turned her back and found herself face to face with Ron, arms folded, head nodding, mouth pursed up tight, appraising her.

  ‘You done it now,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She could not even make excuses.

  ‘What a spectacle. Christians and lions. Better than Ben Hur.’

  ‘Ron, help me. You know these people. What shall I do?’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘What will happen when they find I can’t pay?’

  Slowly, very slowly, Ron put his hand into the pocket of his bell-bottom denims. Slowly, very slowly, he pulled out a fistful of something that looked like money. It was money. A tight roll of five-pound notes.

  Sometimes Ron had nothing. Sometimes he was loaded. You didn’t ask how.

  ‘Ron, you wouldn’t—’

  Very slowly, licking his finger, he peeled off twelve five-pound notes from the roll. Dora held out her hand. Slowly, licking his finger again, he counted them off into her palm. She closed her fist.

  ‘I can’t ever thank you.’

  ‘Shut up.’ He would not have it that way. ‘It’s only a loan, don’t forget.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I’ll see you don’t. You pay me in a month, with interest, or the horse is mine. Agree?’

  Dora nodded. There was nothing else to do.

  ‘All of it back in a month, or the horse is mine and I’ll sell it cheap to that chap with the log cart.’

  The old horse came with her, not willingly or unwillingly. He just came. His enthusiasm for life or any new scene had long ago been extinguished.

  As Dora walked away over the trodden grass, she heard a lot of shouting and clatter and saw the Nicholson family shoving the strawberry roan into their trailer by brute force. The ramp banged up and they pulled out of the gate, with the pony neighing and kicking.

  Dora and the horse turned into the road and began to plod along. Ron roared past them on the bike as if he did not know them. He had promised to tell Steve to come back with the horse box, but you never knew.

  And she did not know if Steve would come.

  Dusk came down as she and the horse walked along, and the light slipped away into lilac and green over the line of hills, and stealthily it grew
dark.

  They were quieter roads now, where the cars did not swish by in an endless stink of noise. Going up hill, Amigo slowed, and she had to walk slower. Would they ever get home? He seemed to be favouring the off foreleg already. If he went really lame, it would take her all night to get back to the Farm. All night and all day. Would Ron tell them where she was? A normal person would, but he might think it a joke not to tell. His sense of humour wasn’t normal.

  Dora was walking on the right of the road. Lights came towards her and she pushed Amigo over on to the rough grass. The headlights grew, and she saw the small roof lights of the horse box and its familiar bulk, slowing, stopping.

  Dora stood blinking in the lights, and leaned against the horse’s shoulder, waiting for Steve to get out.

  ‘All right.’ He stood behind the light. ‘Better make it a good one.’

  ‘The horse is old and lame. Ron thought they’d doctored him to sell. He was being bought to pull a heavy cart. So I – so I bought him.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Ron lent me the money. For a month.’

  ‘Then what?’ Steve stepped out into the light. He looked at the horse for a long time, and then blew out his cheeks. He and Dora were perhaps the only two people in the world who would not say the cream horse was ugly. He was a horse.

  ‘Which leg?’

  ‘Off fore.’

  He stepped round and ran his hand down the canon bone and fetlock. Amigo dropped his head and mumbled at Steve’s hair with his loose freckled lip.

  ‘Feels like a splint. And from the scars, that knee could have been broken at some time. But who’s going to pay? The Colonel said absolutely no buying. The Farm can’t pay for him.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Somehow. I’ll save up my pay.’

  ‘You already owe me most of that on the saddle.’

  ‘I’ll sell something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh – what does it matter?’ Dora began to cry. She hid her face in the tangle of white mane that flopped on the wrong side of Amigo’s neck, but Steve came round and put his hand behind her head to turn her face towards him. ‘What does it matter, Steve?’ A cobweb of tears glistened between her face and the lights. ‘It’s the horse that matters.’

  ‘Dora—’ With his back to the lights, she could not see his face. ‘What?’

  He suddenly put his arms round her and held her very close and tight, so that she had no breath to cry, and did not need to, because she was not afraid any more.

  ‘It’s going to be all right. We’ll think of something. Come on.’ He let her go and took Amigo’s rope. ‘Let’s get this old buzzard home and fed. Get up, horse, you’re going to be all right.’

  Chapter 15

  THE CREAM HORSE, Amigo, did go quite lame within a few days, and the vet said there was not much more that could be done. He did not seem to be in pain. They crushed aspirin with his feed to help the stiffness, and turned him out to graze with the more peaceful horses who would not bother a newcomer.

  The old horse behaved as if he had not been out to a proper bit of grass for years. When Dora took him to the gate and let him go, he trotted off, dot and carry, his big feet stumbling over tufts. He even tried a canter, pushing his knobbly knees through the tall grass in the corner.

  ‘He looks almost graceful,’ Dora said to Slugger, who had come along to help her in case any of the other horses were aggressive.

  ‘Well, almost like a horse, let’s put it that way.’

  ‘Look, there he goes.’

  Amigo had stopped at a muddy place much favoured for rolling. He pawed for a while, smelled the ground, sagged at all four corners, thought better of it, turned round to face the other way, pawed again, then let himself go, knees buckling with a grunt and a thump as his big bony body went over on its side.

  He rolled for five minutes, teetering on his prominent spine with four massive feet in the air when he could not quite roll over. At last he sat up like a dog, lashing the ground with his tail and shaking his head. Prince nipped at him from behind, and he staggered to his feet.

  ‘Poor old Flamingo.’ Slugger and Dora turned away.

  ‘His name’s Amigo. I told you.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘No, Amigo. It means friend.’

  ‘Then why don’t you call him Old Pal?’

  Now Dora had two special projects. Caring for Amigo, and continuing to work with Barney, who was improving every day.

  One evening when Callie had jumped the pony well and was pleased with herself and him, Dora confided to her the crazy dream about the Moonlight Steeplechase.

  ‘I’d be terrified.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, Callie.’

  ‘The jumps are big and they go flat out for that money prize. Millie Bryant told me. She rode in it last year. She fell off at the water.’

  ‘Barney could do it.’

  ‘He might. I couldn’t.’

  ‘You could. I’d ride him myself if it wasn’t fourteen and under.’

  ‘Just because you’re safely out of it,’ Callie said cynically, ‘don’t pick on me.’

  Dora put the idea back into being only a dream. Anyway, Callie was more interested in Folly than in Barney. The colt belonged to her, and she took him everywhere, like a dog, determined that they were going to grow up to have the best horse-human relationship ever achieved.

  The relationship was still rather erratic. He would do things for her if he wanted, but if there was an argument, he often won.

  ‘He still thinks he’s boss,’ Callie said when Folly pulled away again and again to the gate as she was trying to lunge him in a circle. ‘How can I explain to him that a horse is supposed to be stupider than a person?’

  Sometimes when Dora and Callie were out for a ride with Barney and Hero, they let Folly run with them, if they were not going near a road or sown fields. Hero was his mate, because they shared Callie, and the colt would follow quite well.

  They rode one evening down the hill and along a turfy ride at the bottom of a climbing wood. Folly trotting in and out of the trees as if he were a deer. Near the corner, Barney pricked his ears. Dora heard the faint sound of hoofs on the firm, chalky turf.

  ‘Better get off and grab Folly,’ she told Callie. ‘There’s another horse coming.’

  Once, the colt had followed two children on ponies home. Once, he had got into the middle of a hunt. Callie did not want to remember that day. The language still burned in her ears.

  A boy on a dark-grey pony came trotting round the corner of the wood. Before Callie could get to him, Folly jumped out over the bank. The grey pony shied and the boy fell off.

  Dora held Hero while Callie caught Folly and snapped on the leading rein. ‘I’m awfully sorry.’

  The boy was sitting on the ground, rather dazed, but hanging on to the reins of the grey pony, who stood with its body arched away from Folly, but its neck and head curved round to inspect.

  Dora came up. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so.’ He took off his riding cap and rubbed his head to see if it hurt. The boy was Jim Bunker.

  With the encouragement of Count Podgorsky and Mr Nicholson (naturally), his parents had bought this pony at vast expense so that Jim could ride in the Moonlight Steeplechase.

  ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘No. But my mother wants an invitation to Broadlands.’

  Jim was a bit scared of the pony. Her name was Grey Lady, but he called her Maggie, which sounded less scary.

  She was a lovely pony, and might give Chip and the roan some hard competition, except for her rider. His lessons with the Count had improved him enormously, but he was still rather sloppy and vague in the saddle, which was why he had fallen off when the pony shied. He had been trotting idly along with a loose rein, admiring the view, quite far from home and totally lost, but expecting eventually to come to a road or a landmark he knew.

  After he found out that he
had come quite near to the Farm, he often rode the grey mare over to Follyfoot. He would arrive in the morning, trotting on the hard road, or walking through growing wheat, or riding with the girths loose, or doing something else wrong, and liked to stay most of the day, working with the others, or just mooning about. Tennis lessons, swimming, Pony Club rallies, ‘meeting nice new friends’ – all the things his mother had planned for his holidays – were abandoned, once he discovered Follyfoot.

  He had always liked Barney better than Grey Maggie Lady, and he loved the old horses, especially Amigo, who was a dreamer like he was. If the cream horse was lying down in the field, resting his old bones in the sun, he would not bother with the effort to get up when Jim came near. Jim would stretch out behind him with his head against his bulky side, and the two of them would doze off together, under the song of a rising lark.

  Chapter 16

  ONE DAY WHEN it was too wet to ride, Jim persuaded his mother to drive him over to the Farm. She dropped him at the gate, because she did not want to risk seeing Barney. Even thinking about him made her healed fingertip throb. But when she came back for him that afternoon, Jim was in the barn helping to store bales of hay, so she had to get out of the car and look for him.

  She stood in the wide doorway and watched her lanky son heave at the hay with all the strength of his thin arms, which was not as much strength as Callie, even though she was a girl.

  ‘I wish he’d work as hard as that at home,’ she told Dora.

  ‘He’s good in the stables,’ Dora said.

  ‘Not on his own. He has to be driven out to take care of that valuable pony. Boys. Isn’t it always the way?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Dora nodded wisely, as if she had been a mother for years.

  Mrs Bunker called Jim to come down from the top of the hay. ‘The Drews are coming for dinner. With their daughter.’

  ‘That girl. Why can’t I stay here?’ Like every other child who became involved with Follyfoot, Jim would rather be here than anywhere.

  ‘Come down, Jimmy,’ his mother said mildly, which was how she always talked to him.