The End of Summer Page 7

  “Do you think so?” Gay asked, smiling wryly. “To be honest it feels as if all we do is slog round in circles and never get anywhere.”

  “She definitely looks trimmer. What are you doing with her? I’m trying to get Quaker and Sky Pilot fit at the moment, so I could use any tips you’ve got.”

  “What, both of them? How on earth do you find the time for that?”

  Margaret shrugged. “Get up early. It’s easier now it’s staying light longer. Quaker’s a pretty good horse, he can jump and all that, and Pilot’s not bad. If I don’t ride them now they’ll be useless in a couple of years when I’m too big for Magpie. Evelyn almost never rides either of them any more.”

  “What about James, won’t he help?”

  Margaret laughed. “Ha, that’s a joke!” she said.

  Gay wondered why it was, but Margaret didn’t explain further.

  “Are you doing anything tomorrow?” Margaret asked abruptly.

  Major Holbrooke was fascinated to watch Marion and Columbine doing the easiest dressage test. The little dapple grey mare went smoothly and kindly for the most part, and she had developed some very good paces. She was still hyper alert, ears constantly in motion ready to leap at the merest sound or perceived movement, but Marion kept a firm contact and her leg on and nothing untoward happened.

  “You’ve given me an idea,” the major said as he opened the gate for Marion to ride out of the school. “How do you feel about doing that again with more of an audience?”

  Marion chewed her lip. “She doesn’t like lots of people and horses around her,” she said.

  “Well there won’t be any horses, and we’ll tell the people to be quiet and keep still. Anyway, I think you’re underestimating yourself. You’ve got the right idea about keeping her attention. If you do the easy test I can get Donald and Dick to do the other two.”

  “I can’t imagine how I’ll ever get on!” Donald said.

  Dick laughed. “I’ll give you a leg up if you like.”

  Donald looked at him doubtfully. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he said. “I’m something of a weight you know, though it may not be obvious to everyone.”

  “I’m stronger than I look,” said Dick, proving his words by giving Donald a mighty boost up into the Widow’s saddle.

  Donald had warmed to Dick over lunch, and even more at the sight of Dick’s face when the major announced his plan. Clearly Dick was not keen to ride the E test on Echo with the whole pony club watching him.

  They had talked about ponies. Specifically about the one pony above all others who was the only one worth bothering about.

  “I had Brandy to start with, when I was small, but then I got Seafire and suddenly everything was different,” Donald had said. “Now I can’t ride her any more I don’t see as I’ll carry on riding at all. I don’t think I’d want a different horse.”

  The major’s Merry Widow was nothing like Seafire to ride. Donald found his legs just went into the right place without him having to do anything about it. It felt like sitting on top of the world. He would be perfectly happy to ride the middle test on the Widow, even with the pony club watching him, even if he forgot the whole thing, as was pretty likely. None of it mattered. It had been terrific fun teaching the younger children in the morning with Marion. Riding one of Major Holbrooke’s magical horses was going to be an amazing privilege for as long as it lasted and Donald fully intended to make the most of it.

  Dick felt edgy and tired. He’d eaten lunch, so it wasn’t that. He left his ride to practise on their own and took Echo into the schooling field so they wouldn’t keep asking him to help them. It had been interesting teaching different children. He’d been fed up about it at first, feeling protective over his proper ride and resenting handing them over to others, but had ended up caught in just the same way he always was; trying to work out ways to fix problems. Teaching was fascinating. You could just tell people what to do if you liked, and shout at them if they didn’t do it, but you weren’t going to enjoy much success if that was all you did. You had to try to find out the child’s idea of what was going on and work from there. At least, that was what Dick had gleaned so far. There was going to be a lot more to it than that though, in the end.

  Echo was being difficult. Echo was bound to be difficult, though Dick did know the test at least; he’d practised riding it on Tranquil. If he had to ride the test on Echo he’d much rather ride it with no-one looking. Echo wasn’t going to get any better, he could tell. He rode slowly over to the marked out school where Marion was waving her arms to show Sam where he needed to go next and the other children were watching, chatting and smiling. They all looked happy and excited; all except Sebastian who was sat on Idris slightly apart from the others, wearing his most bored and detached expression, but with his whole body tense and tight.

  Dick stopped Echo next to Idris. “You don’t need to ride the test at all if you don’t want to,” he said quietly.

  Sebastian looked around so fiercely that his pony lifted its head and took a step. “Yes I do,” he snapped, giving an accusing glare to go with his angry words. “And I’m going to.”

  Dick had no idea what Sebastian thought was going on, and no time to work it out either. He sat looking for a moment, but Sebastian had turned away again.

  One shouldn’t go in for a competition if one isn’t prepared to be judged, Christopher told himself in the box on the way home. But all the same it was maddening to have been beaten by Margaret Radcliffe again. Perhaps the major had added it up wrong. There had been advice to go along with the score and Christopher wasn’t particularly surprised by it; not enough flexion. Major Holbrooke had also gamely said that it had been a good effort considering Crusoe was someone else’s horse.

  Patricia had been last. She’d been cross to start with, but seemed to have got over it and was now giggling away in the back with David who was pleased with himself as he had somehow managed to come first in his test. Christopher wished he could be so cheerful. Really the afternoon had been wasted since almost all of it was spent watching other people, most of whom were entirely useless. Donald Edge had been a joke, a great lump sat up on the Widow, forgetting the test completely and having to shout for instructions. The only people, apart from Margaret, who had been worth watching at all were Marion and Dick.

  Dick and Echo were streets better than everyone else at the E test, Christopher had to admit. He wondered what Dick had been doing since the Gunston show where he’d more or less wrecked the course in the open jumping on Echo. Something, certainly. But then, Dick was a grown-up, and he rode Major Holbrooke’s horses every day; that had to have an effect.

  Christopher didn’t want to think about Marion. He had been astonished by Columbine going in a straight line and trotting calm circles, but he hadn’t been able to speak to Marion afterwards; she’d gone straight off to get the younger ones ready and shout the movements to them when they inevitably forgot them. He’d seen her watching when he was riding his test. She’d been smiling, but whether the smile was for him or Crusoe he couldn’t be sure. After that Patricia’s father had turned up with the box and demanded they be off in a great hurry and so Christopher had been swept up in loading ponies and checking everyone still had all their belongings.

  He leaned back in the passenger seat, worn out, despite his best efforts unable to stop thinking about Marion and all the times that day he might have been able to talk to her, but hadn’t.

  James and Sebastian rode away from Folly Court in something of a crowd. It wasn’t what James would have chosen, but Sebastian had warned him of its inevitability. He always ended up riding home from rallies with Gay and Jean, and usually Marion as well.

  “We can tell them we’re going a different way,” Sebastian said. “They won’t care.”

  And the girls didn’t seem to care particularly, though Jean wanted to know what was in the bags and gave him a funny look when the boys went to turn off into Spring Lane. “I don’t see how you’
re going to get to Sebastian’s house that way,” she said. “It’s in the opposite direction.”

  “I saw an owl in the copse the other day. You know, at the end of Spring Lane and down the track?” Sebastian said. “I think there’s a nest. We’re going to have a look.”

  “Come on Jean!” Gay called. “You know we have to do the ponies and help get supper when we get home.”

  James sighed with relief as Jean trotted away after her sister, and as the two boys set off up the lane he began to feel the excitement well up inside him. Finally he was going on a proper adventure, or at least, a try out for a proper adventure, with no-one to lecture on and on about riding after dark. None of the grown-ups were even going to know. He looked a little guiltily at Sebastian, wondering whether Sebastian really felt the same way. It was always so hard to tell.

  Sebastian woke up in the middle of the night and wondered where he was. He was freezing cold; the fire had gone out and two blankets and all his clothes simply weren’t enough. He shivered. James was on the other side of the fire-place, too far away to be of any thermal service. Sebastian lay there, trying to ignore the cold and go back to sleep but it didn’t work. He sat up and shrugged his stiff shoulders. The fire was only just out; there were still embers glowing.

  Sebastian knew all about campfires. Even when they had lived in London, his mother had sometimes built a fire in the garden so they could cook sausages and stay up late looking at what stars there were to be seen between the buildings. There was a million times that number of stars here. Sebastian piled some more wood on the embers of the old fire and waited for the flames to rise up and give heat.

  “So what are you doing that I’m not doing?” There was nothing else for it but to ask.

  Margaret frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. She had got Sonnet round the Radcliffe jumps in the field with energy and precision, clearing them all with room to spare. She hadn’t seemed to be doing anything at all. Gay couldn’t help but feel horribly envious, but she had been feeling that way for months now and it wasn’t doing her any good.

  “You have another go and I’ll see if I can work it out,” said Margaret.

  Gay got up on Sonnet and used her legs firmly to try to get the pony going the way Margaret had been doing. “Major Holbrooke says I’m doing too much work,” she said, already out of breath after cantering around the outside of the jumps to develop some impulsion. “But then he says ‘Legs, legs!’ all over again, as if I wasn’t using them at all.”

  Margaret didn’t say anything. Gay tried Sonnet over the jumps though she could feel already that the mare wasn’t going to jump well; her hocks weren’t under her. Sonnet cleared most of the jumps, which were only two foot, but without any kind of style.

  “Perhaps she’s tired,” Gay said listlessly. “What do you think?”

  It was strange to be spending time alone with Margaret. Usually there was a crowd of other people around, everyone pushing to get their words in and talking over each other. With just Margaret, Gay found she had to hold up both ends of the conversation. She had never thought of Margaret as a quiet person before.

  “I think I have sort of an idea,” Margaret said. Then she stopped, as if she didn’t want to say what the idea was.

  “Go on then,” Gay prompted.

  “Well, I think you’re being too nice. You’re using your leg and she’s not taking any notice. You need to ride with a stick.”

  Gay never rode with a stick; she didn’t like them. “But you rode her without a stick!” she protested.

  Margaret shrugged. “I can make her go with my legs; you can’t.”

  Gay was shocked at the directness of the comment. But she had wanted to find out hadn’t she? “You mean I just need to use my legs harder?”

  Margaret nodded. “Harder and less. But it’s just what I think. I don’t know anything really. Come on, the ponies have had enough now. Let’s go out on Pilot and Quaker.”

  James was utterly and unassailably happy. The two ponies wove in and out of the wide apart trees in the ancient wood where the sun dappled down through the leaves and the ground was soft and springy. He knew exactly where they were. He could even see Rocket and Idris walking along the dotted lines of the map in his mind. It was all so easy! Sleeping out had been a revelation. Of course, he had slept out plenty of times before near home, but always with his family around being loud and taking over everything. Sleeping out near home didn’t count. There was something empowering about waking up having slept all night on just the bare earth under a blanket. It meant one could go anywhere and do anything.

  The trees opened out and the ground underfoot became grassy, with a wide path sloping away before them.

  “Canter?” James asked, turning to look at Sebastian.

  Sebastian’s face was dirty. They hadn’t thought to bring soap, or toothbrushes either.

  “All right,” Sebastian said.

  Sebastian never said very much and James was glad. There was nothing that needed saying was there? They cantered along the track side by side. James and Rocket jumped over a log lying in the way but Sebastian managed to avoid it.

  “Can Idris jump?” James asked. They pulled up where the wide track narrowed and the trees closed in once more.

  “I don’t know,” Sebastian said.

  “He looks like he can,” said James. “Can I try and jump him, over that log? I bet he would.”

  “No.” Sebastian felt mean saying it, but he couldn’t bear to let James ride Idris. He didn’t even know why, he just knew it; he didn’t want anyone else to ride his pony, ever.

  James was looking at him strangely so he tried to smile. “Isn’t this where we turn out of the wood onto the downs?” He knew it was. Both of them knew the map by heart. There was really nothing for them to talk about at all.

  “Yes,” James said. “And we’re going to gallop. You said you would.”

  Sebastian closed his fingers on the reins and asked Idris to walk on. They followed the track on through the wood and then out into the sunshine where there was a view over the downs to take your breath away. It was like the whole world was spread out before them; to go anywhere they chose. And the openness seemed to draw the ponies out into that world. Idris danced on his toes and flung up his head and Sebastian was suddenly plunged into a bath of cold fear. That fear had never gone away properly, but it had subsided into nothing but a nagging feeling. Now it reared up and Sebastian remembered how paralysing it had once been. But Rocket was gone like his own namesake and Idris went after him, pounding away through the long grass.

  All of this was new. The adventure of riding on and on through the country, not going home before dark but keeping on, waking up and going further still; finding out the real places represented on the map. That had all involved the Idris Sebastian had become accustomed to, the well-behaved and steady Idris. Now, finally, arrived the Idris of his imagination, powering past Rocket as if they were truly flying. And the elemental magic was not only in his pony, Sebastian realised; it was in him too.

  “This isn’t the right road,” James said.

  “Are you sure?” asked Sebastian.

  They had walked along the river for miles and then crossed it, coming back on the other side and climbing up to the road that would take them home.

  “Yes, the map doesn’t make any sense. There’s supposed to be a crossroads here but there isn’t. Look.” James had got off Rocket to dig the map out of his bag and it had started to rain. The map was getting wet.

  Sebastian got off too and both boys stood staring at the map as if by doing so they could make it change to show what they wanted it to. It was obvious that they weren’t where they expected to be, there was just the one road crossing the river, no crossroads.

  “We must have been going the wrong way for miles,” James said quietly. “I thought the river didn’t look right. We must have crossed one of the tributaries instead of the main river and never noticed because it was so far down in the valley.”
/>
  “It doesn’t matter does it?” Sebastian asked. “We can just go back the way we came and we’ll get there eventually.”

  But it did matter. The place where they thought they had crossed the river was miles back. They would be lucky to get home before dark and wherever any of their parents thought they were, they were both supposed to be back in time for tea. James felt as if something cold was being poured down his back. It wasn’t even so much that his father would be angry; would probably belt him again. It was much more that this was supposed to be his and Sebastian’s thing and now everyone would know about it. They would ask questions and the whole thing would be spoiled.

  Gay was worn out. Sky Pilot had been impossible to get going at first and she had had to use the stick Margaret lent her, since her legs didn’t reach far enough and anyway, were already used up from jumping. Once he got going he was just as impossible to stop, pulling Gay’s arms out of their sockets at any opportunity. And Margaret insisted on trotting almost the whole time. Margaret was like a machine, seemingly able to keep going forever.

  “Usually I ride one and lead the other,” Margaret said. “This is much better.”

  Gay didn’t have any breath for talking and she knew her face was pink and sweaty, even though it was raining.

  “Do you do this every day?” Gay asked, after she had flung herself wearily down from Pilot in the Radcliffe stable yard.

  ‘Most days,” Margaret said. “Sometimes I ride them in the field, but they’re both devils to get going for schooling at the moment. They’ll be better when they’re fit. Do you want some tea?”

  Margaret wasn’t even out of breath.

  “Hasn’t James come back yet?” Mrs Radcliffe asked. Tea at the Radcliffe’s was a very informal affair with Dr Radcliffe doing paperwork at the table and Evelyn eating a scone while talking on the telephone in the hall.