A Pony for Jean Read online

  FOR ALL CHILDREN WHO RIDE;

  ALL CHILDREN WHO WOULD RIDE

  IF THEY COULD; BUT ESPECIALLY

  FOR THOSE THREE INTREPID

  THOUGH UNORTHODOX HORSEWOMEN,

  JOSEPHINE, DIANA AND CHRISTINE.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Copyright

  I

  WHEN I heard that we were going to leave London and live in the country, I was miserable. I can’t believe that now, and I am sure that, if you are country children, you can’t believe it either, unless you have already made up your minds (which I hope you haven’t) that I was an awful little Rosemary-Ann sort of girl with curls, and frills, and frocks down to my feet at parties. I wasn’t a bit like that really, though I must confess that I was always rather clean and tidy, but that was Nurse’s fault, because she was always brushing and combing me, and Daddy’s fault too, for being rich – as he was then – and being able to afford new clothes for me, and a nurse who had nothing to do but brush and comb me. I can tell you it is an awful nuisance having rich parents.

  It may seem impossible to you, but really I had never been in the country. In the holidays Daddy and Mummy used to go abroad, and I used to go with Nurse to seaside places where there were promenades and sand and other London children – places like Westgate and Frinton. Of course I liked them because there was bathing and sand, and I was awfully young then and didn’t know that there are places with rocks and boats and fishermen; and in the same way I didn’t know that there are nicer places than London. Of course, we did the nicest things there. In the summer we used to have picnics in Kensington Gardens, and I used to sail my boat on the Round Pond, and in the winter we used to go and feed the ducks in the Serpentine, and sometimes we went down to the river and fed the seagulls. It sounds fearfully feeble now that I know what it’s like to have your own animals, but I didn’t know anything in those days and really it wasn’t my fault if nobody told me.

  When Mummy said at breakfast that we were going to live in the country, I couldn’t eat any more, and as soon as I could I went out into the garden. I loved the garden though I can see now how awful it was: in the country, tiny two-roomed cottages have bigger gardens. The part nearest to the house had been paved and made fashionable so it wasn’t any good to play in, but at the other end there were two big plane trees, and, though nothing would grow under them, people had had to leave them there because they hid the sordid backs of a very ugly row of houses. Between the fashionable part of the garden and the plane trees, there were some laurel bushes. They were always covered with soot and they smelled of cats when you crawled among them, but they were thick and secret: even Nurse couldn’t see through them from the windows.

  Behind the laurels and under the plane trees I had my hut, that a sentimental aunt had given me on my sixth birthday. It was called a ‘Wendy House,’ and you were supposed to play Peter Pan in it. Of course I didn’t play Peter Pan. Sometimes it was a shack in the Wild West, and sometimes it was a log hut surrounded by my enemies, and sometimes it was a crofter’s hut in the Highlands where I harboured Prince Charlie. It was never a Wendy House except when Aunt Daphne came to tea with Mummy.

  I went straight to my hut on that fatal morning. Shadow, our black cocker Spaniel, came with me. It was all rather complicated because Mummy had said that we had to go to live in the country because Daddy had lost his money in pepper; and an awful thought came to me that perhaps we wouldn’t be able to afford a licence for Shadow or his dinners. The hut was in a frightful mess because the day before it had been surrounded. There were corpses of honest seamen all over the floor – of course they were only Teddy Bears and dolls really.

  Shadow and I hadn’t the heart to tidy up. We sat down and mourned among the corpses. It made me feel funny inside to think of going away and leaving the plane trees and the secret laurels. Whoever bought the house would be sure to cut down the laurels because laurels are Victorian; I don’t know why, but that’s a fatal thing to be. It seemed so awfully ungrateful to go away and leave the laurels to their fate when they had always been so obliging and hidden me from Nurse with their poor, ugly, sooty, Victorian leaves.

  I cried about the things in the garden and then I began to think of the things outside. I thought of the ducks in Kensington Gardens. There were three I liked best and I had named them Lucy, Emily and Henry after the children in the Fairchild Family. I thought they would miss me when they didn’t see me coming any more with bits of bread for them in my little green basket. Of course I didn’t know then that they were probably terribly overfed and had enlarged livers, and would get on much better without me and my little green basket.

  Well, presently Mummy came out into the garden. She was looking worried, which I don’t like, and she stood in the fashionable part and called, ‘Jean!’ I called back, ‘What?’ which Nurse always said was rude, and Mummy came round the laurels. I dried my eyes hastily on Shadow’s ears, which are useful for that; and Mummy came into the hut and said, ‘Don’t you know that Mademoiselle is in the schoolroom?’

  Mademoiselle was the French person who used to teach me so that I should have a good French accent. That’s another tiresome thing about having rich parents – you have what grown-ups call ‘advantages.’ They think that you are very lucky and ought to be grateful, but I have tried both and I can tell you that it is much more fun to go to an ordinary school and have a bad French accent like other children.

  I said, ‘Can I take Shadow in with me?’ and Mummy said, ‘You’d better not. Mademoiselle doesn’t like him. She says dogs smell.’

  I hugged Shadow and buried my nose in his fur because I liked his smell. I didn’t know then that it was the smell that all gun dogs have – a country smell. I expect you know it. It is heaven to meet it again when you come home for the holidays or if you have had the misfortune to stay a few days with your Aunt in London.

  SHADOW

  Mummy stood still for a minute, apparently forgetting that Mademoiselle was in the schoolroom. Then she said, ‘Well, anyhow, Shadow will like the country. There’ll be rabbits, Shadow, and … and rats.’ Mummy had always lived in London. She didn’t know any more about the country than I did then.

  I said, ‘Oh, shall we be able to keep him?’ and Mummy said, ‘My good girl, we shan’t be as poor as all that. Of course we shall be able to keep Shadow and we shall have to have hens.’ She said (as though it’s the only thing you have to do about hens), ‘You will be able to go round with a little basket and collect the eggs.’

  I saw myself going round with a little basket. There were buttercups and daisies in the picture. I didn’t know then what hens were.

  Mummy spoilt the picture by remembering Mademoiselle in the schoolroom. She said, ‘Well, beetle off, darling,’ so I beetled off, thinking of hens and feeling much more cheerful. I went across the fashionable part of the garden, up the iron steps and through the greenhouse into the schoolroom. I saw at once that Mademoiselle was in a bad temper. Mummy told me afterwards that it was because she had just heard that we couldn’t have her any more because of pepper.

  I am not going to tell you anything about lessons because nobody wants to hear them even mentioned. I don’t suppose that you want to read about London either, so the next chapter will begin when we got to Hedgers Green.

  II

  I WISH I could tell you all the exciting things that happened to us when we first went to the country, but if I did, this book would be too long for anyone
to read and too expensive for anyone to buy except people who are still rich, and Mummy says that they are few and far between. It would take volumes to tell you all about the ducks and the geese and how we bought a wife for Shadow, and how, when I still didn’t know about shutting gates, a herd of bullocks walked into the garden and ate all our greens at six o’clock in the morning.

  In the weeks before we left London, Nurse was always saying how dull it would be for us in the country and Mademoiselle said it would be ‘très triste’ and that we should die of ‘ennui.’ But we hadn’t been at Hedgers Green for a week before we found out that we were living in a whirl of excitement. The hen house roof, which was corrugated iron, blew off and sailed over the lawn and smashed the dining-room window; Sally, Shadow’s future wife, came, and she ate my sponge and it swelled up inside her; I fell into the duck pond and came out green, and a runaway horse, with twelve tiny pigs in its cart, came past our gate and Mummy stopped it. In fact, we soon found out that every day in the country something happens, and it’s not like going to the Cinema or to museums and seeing what happened to other people: the things happen to you – they’re your own adventures. So, as I can’t tell you about everything that happened to me at Hedgers Green, I am going to tell you about the most interesting thing of all, and that was – riding.

  I must explain first that we looked for a house near Hedgers Green because we had cousins who lived there, and those were the days when we thought the country was dull and Mummy said that it would be nice to know someone. I knew the cousins a little because when they were in London buying clothes for school or going to the dentist, they used to come and have lunch with us, and they were all right as long as they were eating, but after lunch it used to be awful: they hardly ever spoke except to Shadow, and when they had finished speaking to him they used to stand at the window looking out and grumbling because there were no horses in London. There were two boys, Guy and Martin, and a girl called Camilla, who was a year younger than I was. Camilla didn’t grumble about the horses, but she used to wriggle and say why should she wear tight clothes to come up to silly old London? Sometimes the cousins had toothache and that made them worse than ever. Nurse hated them, but she said what could you expect when they lived in the country and never went anywhere or saw anything?

  I should have been sorry for my poor country cousins if they hadn’t seemed to despise me. They looked scornfully at my toys and said that my hut would hold twenty-four bantams or a dozen hens. Camilla never wore socks except in the depths of winter, and she asked me why I did, and I said because I was made to. Camilla said that once they had bought her a pair of socks and she had thrown them up on the stable roof and they had stuck on the weathercock. The gardener had got them down and then she had put them on the horns of the Ayrshire bull and nobody had dared to get them off again. Of course I had no stories like that to tell to Camilla.

  I don’t think the cousins were at all pleased about our coming to live near them. Mummy and I went to tea with them as soon as we had finished moving in and getting our small white cottage tidy. The children were all at home; it was almost the last day of the summer holidays. Their house was big, though it wasn’t a baronial hall or an ancestral castle; and they had a huge garden and lots of fields and a lovely wood where they had huts that they had made themselves. They were allowed to light fires there and cook things. But they weren’t making fires that day. They were riding.

  Cousin Agnes met us at the gate and she said, ‘Come along. The children are in the paddock.’ We went across the lawn to some white railings. On the other side of them was the paddock. Jumps had been put up there, hurdles with gorse stuck into them, and an imitation stile, and poles that you could make higher and higher. The cousins were jumping their ponies. They didn’t stop when they saw us, but waved scornfully.

  Cousin Agnes began to tell me about the ponies. She said that Guy’s black one was a five-year-old that his father had given him on his last birthday. Its name was Blackbird. Martin’s pony was called Red Knight. It was a roan cob, quite old but very clever. Camilla was riding a lovely little chestnut with a white star on its forehead. It was called after the evening star – Hesperus.

  Hesperus was being very naughty. He wouldn’t jump the stile and he bucked when Camilla tried to make him. Mummy said, ‘Isn’t he rather lively?’ and Cousin Agnes said, ‘Oh, Camilla’s all right. She can ride anything.’ I was looking at the ponies, the black and the roan and the chestnut flying along with the wind in their manes, and suddenly I wanted, more than I wanted puppies even, to hear someone say, ‘Oh, Jean’s all right. She can ride anything.’

  Cousin Agnes said, ‘I expect you’d like to help unsaddle the ponies, Jean,’ and she shouted to the cousins, ‘Come along in now. It’s tea time.’ Then she and Mummy went indoors and I stayed by the railings.

  The boys went on jumping, but Camilla rode over to me. She said, ‘What was Mummy saying?’

  I said, ‘She said you were to come in now. It’s tea time.’

  Camilla said, ‘Bother. It’s always something.’ She turned round and yelled at the boys, ‘Tea time!’ Then she said to me, ‘Do you like Hesperus? Would you like to try him?’

  I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I expect you will think that I was very silly and babyish, but you must remember that I had just seen Hesperus bucking.

  ‘SHE CAN RIDE ANYTHING’

  ‘Well, do you or don’t you?’ said Camilla in despising tones.

  Camilla is a year younger than I am and I felt furious, and Camilla’s despising me seemed worse than anything Hesperus could possibly do. I said, ‘Yes, I should like to try him,’ and I started to get on.

  Camilla said, ‘That’s the wrong side. And when you get on you should face the tail.’

  I said, ‘Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.’ This was very silly, because Camilla knew all about riding and I didn’t and it would have been much more dignified to have said so. I blush now when I think of it.

  Camilla said, ‘Oh, all right, I won’t then,’ and let go of the bridle, which she had been holding. I scrambled on and gathered the reins up anyhow.

  Guy cantered up to me.

  ‘I say, can you ride?’ he shouted.

  Of course I couldn’t. I had only ridden ponies at the seaside where a boy ran beside you. But though Hesperus felt very bouncey under me and not at all like the seaside ponies, I was still so furious with Camilla that I shouted back, ‘Yes, of course.’

  Guy stopped his pony and sat there looking at me and grinning and suddenly I felt as if something had burst inside me. I was all rage right down to my toes and the tips of my fingers. I did the maddest thing. I pulled Hesperus round and rode towards one of the jumps at a canter.

  I think Guy shouted at me, but I didn’t take any notice. I rode towards the jump and it looked very high and suddenly Hesperus’s mane and his little chestnut ears rose up in front of me, and the next thing I saw was the ground coming to meet me. There was an awful thump and I knew no more till I woke up on the sofa in the drawing-room.

  I woke up rather slowly. The first thing I heard was Cousin Agnes scolding Guy. ‘You’re a perfect fool,’ she said. ‘You ought to have stopped her,’ and she said to Mummy, ‘Claire, I shall never forgive myself. I can’t think why I’ve got such idiotic children.’

  I said, ‘It wasn’t his fault. He asked if I could ride and I said yes. It was my fault – really.’

  Everyone turned round then and looked at me. I saw to my surprise that Camilla was crying.

  Cousin Agnes said nothing, but she handed me a glass of water. I drank it and then I began to think what a fool I must look lying on the sofa like an old lady. Then I thought it didn’t matter much what I looked like. For ever and for ever the cousins would despise me.

  Mummy said, ‘Well, it certainly was your fault if you said that, when you’ve only ridden seaside ponies. But perhaps it was worth it.’ She quoted from poetry, One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a n
ame. I didn’t know what it meant then, but afterwards at school it was explained to me, and I agreed with it, and I always write it when people with autograph books ask me to write in them.

  Cousin Agnes said, ‘Well, I daresay it’s the right spirit, but it’s made my knees knock and I could do with a cup of tea.’ Once when I was in Kensington Gardens with Nurse, and Shadow had a dogfight with a Sealyham, my own knees had knocked, but it had never occurred to me that such a thing could happen to a grown-up. Somehow I think it was then that I began to like Cousin Agnes.

  Mummy said, ‘I should think that my idiot-child had better stop in here on the sofa.’

  I knew that I had acted like an idiot, so I couldn’t be offended, but I couldn’t stay on the sofa any longer and be treated as if I was ill. I jumped up and said, ‘I’m all right.’ The room was whirling round me, but it stopped after a bit and no one knew.

  We all went into the dining-room and I was only allowed a slice of thin bread and butter and a cup of tea. But there was a plate of cucumber sandwiches near me and I managed to get four.

  Mummy and Cousin Agnes talked at tea and nobody else said anything. But when we had nearly finished, Guy said suddenly, ‘If she wants to ride she might have The Toastrack.’

  Cousin Agnes said, ‘Oh, Guy, how can you?’

  Camilla said, ‘The Toastrack’s mine.’

  Guy said, ‘He’s not yours any more than he’s mine or Martin’s. You were only saying yesterday that you wouldn’t be seen dead on him.’

  Cousin Agnes said, ‘Well, it’s an idea. At least if Jean wants ever to ride again. Do you, Jean?’

  I didn’t know whether I did or not. My neck was beginning to ache and in my imagination I could still see the ground coming to meet me. But I remembered what had happened the last time I said, ‘I don’t know,’ so I said, ‘Yes,’ with firmness.

  ‘The Toastrack’s awful,’ said Martin. He had red hair and freckles and always said what came into his head without stopping to think whether it was polite or suitable. ‘Daddy bought him out of kindness. He’s been half starved and he’s all over horse bites. He simply won’t go. He can’t jump either. We’ve tried him and he just crawls over leg by leg.’