The End of Summer Page 2

  “I know I’m not a very experienced, but I really like her and I can’t stand the thought of her going off with strangers. And you’ll help me, won’t you?”

  Christopher groaned inwardly. What was Marion playing at? If she was going to buy Columbine and then expect him to help her all the time it wasn’t much different to keeping the mare himself. Still, if Marion had the money he might as well take it. She would get tired of Columbine soon enough when she realised she couldn’t manage her, then it would be her pigeon. “If you really want her it’s no skin off my nose,” he said. “I think you’re an idiot though, honestly. She’s crazy. When do you want to come and get her? Soon as possible as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Who are you calling an idiot?” David asked. “I’m surprised anyone wants to ring you up if that’s how you’re going to speak to them.”

  “Shut up!” Christopher barked at him. “No I didn’t mean you!” he added hastily to Marion. “What did you say? This place is a madhouse!”

  “Is tomorrow too soon?” asked Marion.

  February

  The phone rang. Major Holbrooke looked up from The Times in dismay.

  “I’ll go,” Mrs Holbrooke said, putting down the tongs.

  “No, you’re busy,” said her husband. “And anyway, it’s bound to be for me. I have had a feeling of foreboding about today all week; this will be it coming to fruition.”

  Mrs Holbrooke laughed. George was joking of course. He always pretended the pony club was a thankless toil that he suffered for the sake of his better soul, but it wasn’t really true. He enjoyed it all immensely, and the more drama the better. Mrs Holbrooke enjoyed it too in a way, even though her role was merely to reassure anxious parents and provide warm drinks at lunchtime. Today she was happy because George was happy, but also because Dick had come for breakfast.

  “Do you want eggs?” she asked him.

  Dick smiled. “Yes please. And bacon. I can do bacon now, I’ve been practising.”

  Mrs Holbrooke looked at Dick and wondered how one could love someone so much after knowing them such a short time. Dick had moved out of the house into the stable yard now he was a groom and Mrs Holbrooke missed him, it was as simple as that.

  “George said you are going to join the army,” she said. And so it seemed that even borrowed breakfasts were going to be limited.

  Dick nodded. “Yes. Well, National Service, not the proper army. I think it will be interesting.”

  “I can’t think why we need an army any more; the war is over isn’t it?”

  “Oh, but…”

  Dick was interrupted by the loud slam of a door and Major Holbrooke swearing equally loudly.

  “Good heavens!” said Mrs Holbrooke.

  Major Holbrooke flung himself into his chair at the breakfast table disgustedly. “Well, you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear I was absolutely right,” he said. “Disaster.”

  “I’m sure it can’t be that bad,” Mrs Holbrooke said soothingly.

  “No probably not. Only that Miss Sinclair’s promised instructor for the middle ride is not coming after all, and chooses the morning of the rally to let anyone know.”

  Mrs Holbrooke laughed. “Well I do seem to remember you speaking rather ill of said person’s qualifications last week,” she said.

  “Did I? I don’t see how I could have when I’ve never even met her. Never will now, I dare say.”

  “I thought Tommy Wilkinson had said her ideas were, er, not entirely orthodox?”

  “Tommy hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. She would have been all right I’m sure, blast the woman!”

  “Well you won’t get anyone else at this late notice. You’ll have to put them all together. That’s what you always used to do in the old days.”

  “There weren’t so damn many of them in the old days,” Major Holbrooke said darkly. He looked at Dick who was staring intently into his plate of bacon and eggs with a strange glint of a smile twisting the corner of his mouth. The major had seen that expression before just once or twice in the past week, and fleetingly; it was new. It was possible that Dick had a whole other personality hidden away somewhere waiting to reveal itself. Still the major didn’t have time to think about that. He had a problem to solve. He dug into his own breakfast resolutely. It was irritating that Noel had taken off so quickly. He wasn’t at all sure Dick would make an adequate replacement for her, despite all Noel’s glowing recommendations. The major had meant to do some spying, but now he wouldn’t be able. He couldn’t see any other way than to combine the middle ride with his own, as Carol had suggested, and that would mean he would be far too busy to slope off and watch anyone else.

  “It should be all right, I suppose,” he said. “The older ones are generally hopeless and Christopher won’t be able to complain since his is the worst behaved horse of the lot.”

  Christopher was feeling pleased with himself up on Crusoe. It was good to be riding a horse that would go in a straight line for a change. Columbine was behaving worse than ever, but of course, she would, with Marion.

  Christopher looked back to where the mare was backing away from a garden gate next to the road that someone had had the audacity to paint green. Marion looked anxious; she was leaning forward and had the reins too short. Columbine lurched back suddenly and Marion bounced in the saddle, inadvertently pulling on the mare’s mouth and making her panic even more. They were going to be late if she kept on like that.

  “Hurry up Marion!” Christopher called. “Ride her forward!”

  “I think I’m going to get off and lead her,” Marion said.

  “No don’t do that! Honestly, we’ll be here all day. Ride her forward. She’ll never go anywhere if you don’t show some confidence.”

  Marion tried to do what Christopher suggested, but it only made Columbine go back faster. Any minute now a car would come along and they were blocking the whole road. It was stupid of me to buy her, Marion thought. If only I could ride as well as Christopher!

  She slid down ungracefully and stroked the mare’s neck, noticing how much she was sweating. “You silly thing!” she said. “It’s only an old gate, look.”

  “Oh come on Marion!” Christopher called.

  “You go ahead,” Marion said to him. “I might try going the other way if she won’t go past.”

  “But that’s miles further; you’ll miss the whole rally!”

  “I don’t mind, really! But don’t you wait for us. There’s no reason for you to miss it too.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” Christopher said. He frowned down at Marion and then turned Crusoe and set of at a trot in the right direction.

  Marion watched him go and patted Columbine’s shoulder absent-mindedly. Christopher looked very impressive on Crusoe, she thought, so neatly held together and sure of himself. It was worth all the struggle to have that, she decided.

  With no-one looking at her or trying to make her do anything Columbine had stretched her nose down into the grass in the verge and seemed to have completely forgotten about the evil green gate. Marion eased her head up and they walked along the road on the wrong side, the reins hanging loose. Perhaps we ought to walk the whole way, Marion thought uncertainly. She didn’t feel like getting back on. Sitting on Columbine in the middle of the main road was honestly terrifying. Now Christopher had gone she saw no need for it. There was nothing wrong with walking. When they got there, if they got there she would be able to ride Columbine in the major’s school where there was a soft landing.

  Sebastian felt sick. He always did when he rode Idris and he despised himself for it, but there it was. They were going along the lane towards Folly Court, just walking, with his mother walking by his side on her own feet.

  Sebastian always found it difficult to think of things to say to people, even his own family. His mother was like that too, despite being an artist. She walked along the muddy lane in her flowing skirts with her hair flying around her in the wind and she didn’t talk at all. Sebastian could s
ee her staring at the winter countryside in awe, being inspired. They had lived in London before, but when his father left, his mother had decided that they would go and live in the country because, she said, it was what she had always wanted.

  And it was all right really, living in the country. Sebastian did not miss the noisy-busy streets of the city at all. But he didn’t know anyone here; there was barely anyone here to know it seemed.

  “Who’s that?” Gay asked her younger sister Jean as they trotted along the lane towards Folly Court.

  There was a pony just ahead; a big Welsh pony with a small boy riding him and a woman walking by his side who looked like a gypsy.

  “Don’t know,” said Jean, peering. “Oh, yes I do! He was at the last rally. In the Yeomanry. Don’t know his name though.”

  Gay was in an effervescent mood, like usual. She felt perfectly comfortable trotting along on Sonnet, now her pony, not borrowed any longer. It would be nice if Sonnet went with a little more energy though. That’s what the major was bound to say to her, what he always said. Gay tried to push Sonnet into a more powerful trot.

  “Oy, don’t go racing off and leave me behind!” Jean shrieked.

  Gay sighed. That was the problem with little sisters. She caught up with the boy on his Welsh pony without really meaning to. “Hello!” she said cheerfully. “Are you going to the pony club rally?”

  Sebastian felt a lurch in his stomach. He had heard the girls coming. It was inevitable that on the way to a pony club rally one would meet members of the pony club, he supposed. “Yes,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sebastian liked company well enough. He liked being with his mother at home and he had lots of friends at school. Boys though. You could spend a whole afternoon with a large gang of boys without anybody particularly saying anything. Girls were different. Girls always seemed to want to talk.

  The boy on the pony was older than he had looked from a distance, he was about the same age as Jean, but he was small; much too small for his pony. Gay couldn’t help but gape stupidly at the pony because he was so beautiful. He was dark bay with a long tangly black mane and a great arched neck. He looked incredibly powerful, much too much for such a small boy, especially as the boy didn’t look as if he had the first idea about how to ride. “My name’s Gay,” she said. “And this is Sonnet. This is my sister Jean and Biddy.” It was quite a lot of people to introduce. The boy didn’t say anything. They had all stopped and stood in the lane, the three ponies standing still and patient and well-behaved.

  “You can come with us if you like,” Gay went on. “It’s not much further. Then your mother can go home. I don’t suppose you really want to hang around at a pony club rally all day do you? Our mother would hate it!” Gay directed her comments at the strange gypsy woman who she supposed was the boy’s mother.

  “Yes, perhaps you are right,” the woman said. “Thank you.” She looked at the boy for a moment and then she just walked away without saying anything to him at all.

  What strange people! Gay thought.

  “What’s your name?” asked Jean.

  “Margaret, what are you doing? Aren’t you ready yet?”

  Margaret pretended not to hear her brother, James’ protestations. Really, James did know how to whine. She had just noticed a grass stain on Magpie’s off hock and was frantically trying to brush it off.

  James looked in through the stable door. He had been up on Rocket for ten minutes already, waiting. “I’m going without you,” he said.

  “All right, all right, I’m coming. Get out of the way!” Margaret chucked the water brush into the straw and vaulted onto her pony, pushing the stable door open with her foot and clattering out into the yard. “We won’t be late if you hurry up and trot,” she said.

  “I like that!” said James. “It’s you who’s taken such ages to get ready!”

  “Well your pony doesn’t have blooming great white socks does he?” Margaret set off trotting up the lane, leaving James to keep up or not as he chose.

  “Goodness! None of them can ride at all!” Susan whispered to Dick as they watched the children walk around the track in the school.

  Dick laughed. “Well they wouldn’t be in the beginners’ class if they could, would they?”

  “I don’t suppose they would!”

  Susan hadn’t realised there was a pony club rally that day. She was quite out of touch with those sorts of things. She had walked over to Folly Court to see her horse, Tranquil, who was staying there to be looked after since she had so stupidly broken her arm and couldn’t look after him herself. She had been too nosy not to come and see Dick teaching.

  “Perhaps you could make yourself useful and rescue Griffin from Grace,” Dick said to her.

  Susan didn’t really know any of the children in the ride, they were mostly new to the pony club, but it wasn’t difficult to work out who he was talking about.

  “All right, what shall I do?” she asked.

  It was going to be a long morning, Major Holbrooke decided. He realised he was in a negative frame of mind, but didn’t seem to be able to think what to do about it. He stared glumly at his ride. Every single one of them needed to fix something, but there was no doubt some were going to get bored waiting for him to sort out the worst ones. There were just too many of them!

  “What are we doing today Major Holbrooke?” Christopher called. “We’ll need to split into two groups if we’re going to get any decent jumping in.”

  The major wondered what the devil Christopher was doing riding Marion’s horse when Marion herself wasn’t even there, but he felt it was safer not to ask. “Today,” he said firmly, “we are going to go back to basics.” He looked at Christopher in a way calculated to quell any kind of protest. It worked. “But before we begin I would like to ask if Margaret and Gay would be agreeable to switching ponies for the morning. I think that both of you will learn more if you do.”

  Sebastian had begun to get used to the way his stomach felt, but that didn’t make it feel any better. He wondered if closing his eyes would help but decided against trying it. Really it was safe enough in the school, he supposed. The school had a fence round it, but then perhaps Idris would take it upon himself to leap over that fence and dance off into the beyond. It seemed enormously unlikely. Idris simply walked on, halted and trotted when asked, but to Sebastian every movement held the possibility of the unexpected.

  Sebastian knew how to ride, to a certain extent. He had taken riding lessons in London and at school too, but those lessons were nothing like riding Idris. At a riding lesson your pony would be brought out for you, all groomed and tacked up ready and all you would have to do was mount and ride into the school, or go out as part of an orderly train in twos round the Row. And none of the riding school ponies Sebastian had ever ridden were filled with elemental magic. They were all just ordinary, like Buster and Laddie, the hairy ponies belonging to those two sisters, and Griffin, the little dapple grey show pony. Even Joey, napping cheekily to the gate and Clover, refusing to budge were ordinary compared to Idris.

  Something made Sebastian look up and away from the track in front of him where his eyes had been fixed, as if in a trance. The sound of a horse coming into the stable yard. The sound made the hairs on the back of Sebastian’s neck stand up because the horse was not walking steadily, or even trotting. It was skittering, rushing, hesitating and dashing along with no rhythm or predictability about its movements.

  Another dapple-grey. It was wearing a saddle but it wasn’t ridden. The girl there with it was on the ground, holding the reins, but being flung about by the terrified horse. Sebastian’s heart seemed to stop. He felt a hand on his knee, Dick’s hand.

  “Hop down, I should,” Dick said.

  Clover stood and whinnied, then trotted to the fence, head up, ignoring her rider. Joey bucked and Sam fell off. The dapple-grey horse ran backwards, back into the stable yard and its girl slipped and fell, letting the rein go. Dick ran.

  Columbine w
as all right. Dick put her in a box and by that time Marion was back up on her feet.

  “Nothing broken, I take it?” he asked.

  “No, I’m fine. Apart from being an idiot.” Marion pursed her lips and blinked away tears.

  Dick was floored. He didn’t know Marion very well. “I have to get back to that lot,” he said. “Come with me!” He took her hand and pulled her after him towards the school.

  Susan had managed to get Sam back up on Joey and he seemed happy enough, but Isabella was crying and Sebastian was still on the ground next to his pony, both of them standing like rocks.

  “I’m so sorry,” Marion said. “I didn’t mean to sabotage your ride!”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Susan. “Now you’re here you can help. Grab hold of Joey and I’ll see if I can cheer Isabella up at all.”

  “You don’t have to get back on if you don’t want to,” Dick said quietly to Sebastian.

  Sebastian looked at him blankly and then turned to mount his pony. You could see his hands shaking if you looked. It reminded Dick of a time when a pony had first turned up in his own life and he had been expected to ride it. A pony just as tall as Idris, and Dick was only nine years old, terrified, but determined to live up to unreasonable expectations. But then that pony had been Crispin. Dick looked up and was shocked to catch a glare from Sebastian filled with pure malice. It only lasted a second, then Sebastian’s face went back to its usual inscrutable. I don’t know anything, Dick thought.

  Gay tried to recall the way she had been feeling that morning, riding along the lanes to the rally. She could remember it in theory, but that was all. How could things change so quickly and so utterly? She didn’t think much of it when the major had asked her to swap ponies with Margaret. The idea of riding Margaret’s push-button pony had intrigued her, but it turned out Magpie wasn’t much like the way Margaret made him look. What had Gay been doing all this time thinking she could ride? Magpie was a strange, slippery character. He was well enough schooled and would do what she asked him to, roughly, but he had none of the calm reassurance that characterised both Biddy and Sonnet, the only ponies Gay had ever really ridden. Magpie was uncertain, and his uncertainty leeched at Gay’s confidence as the rally wore on until she began to question every thought.