BOBBY and Heath did not wake the pupils the following morning. They usually had Sundays off anyway, and it was better if they slept as long as they could. Thelma would normally have got up to muck out her own pony, Arak, who was one of the lucky few who had escaped.
It was a grey, mild morning with quite a strong wind blowing, the sort of day for a long, wild ride across the hills, or for walking miles with a dog, and at this early hour the village of Bracken Hills was deserted. The two girls had to enter the yard from the field gate, as the drive was still blocked, and they stopped in the gateway to stare, shocked by the ruin in front of them. In daylight the scene of desolation was even worse, littered wreckage and rubble, jagged, blackened walls, churned up cinders and pools of dirty water, the archway that had once been over the entrance gone, its bricks mingled with the other wreckage, and the tops missing from several of the poplar trees behind the stables, sliced off by the ’plane as it swooped in. It must have been a miracle that he had not crashed a few yards earlier, right on the village, Bobby realised. There were two policemen on the scene, ready to fend off any curious visitors, or souvenir hunters, and they greeted the two girls with a properly sober, “Good morning.”
“Have you heard any more about the ’plane?” Bobby asked them, after returning the greeting.
“No, Miss,” replied the older of the two. “We took over from the night squad a half-hour ago, and there was nothing new known then.”
Bobby thanked him, and she and Heath collected mucking out tools and made their way along the cinder track to the new boxes, wondering about the mystery. It seemed more than odd that an aeroplane could just appear from nowhere, and crash, and not be claimed by anyone. Dorcas was lame, and several of the others were very stiff and sore, but otherwise they seemed to have settled down, and Shelta and June were in the best of spirits, and longing for breakfast.
Somehow that morning never seemed quite real. Several people telephoned while the girls were having their breakfast to ask how they were, and offer their sympathies, and the pupils, who were up by then, hardly said a word. They had all been happy at Bracken, and besides being sad because of the fire, and the horses lost, they were afraid that they would have to go somewhere else to finish their training for the British Horse Society examinations. Heath telephoned the hospital, and was told that Guy was “As well as could be expected”, but would not be allowed visitors yet. Then Bobby telephoned her guardians at their London flat, to tell them that she was all right, in case they had seen the papers, and were anxious about her, and was told by their maid that Charles Camberwell was already on his way down to Bracken by car to see her. Surprised, as she sometimes was, by the evidence that Charles, unlike his hard, beautiful wife, really did care what happened to her, Bobby thanked the girl, and put down the ’phone. She had been in the Camberwells’ charge for several years now, ever since the death of her father, but she had not lived with them much, and she and Mrs. Camberwell had never got on very well together.
The vet arrived while they were grooming, and seemed satisfied with all the horses, though he said that Dorcas would definitely be off work for some time. He also asked if they had managed to arrange for anyone to start clearing the yard, and if they knew whose ’plane it was.
“No, no one seems to know yet,” Bobby told him. “It seems ridiculous. And I suppose we can’t do anything about the yard until the wreckage of the ’plane can be moved.”
“Oh well, the insurance on the thing should cover the costs of rebuilding,” the vet reminded her. “And Guy is well insured, isn’t he?”
“Yes, we should be all right,” Heath told him. She was the more practical of the two girls, and had a good head for figures, which meant that she usually helped Guy with the book work of the stables. “But of course it’s the horses who are the big loss, Sergeant, for instance, and Silver Shoes, and the jumping ponies, Cavalier and Sea Mist.”
“Yes, of course,” agreed the vet. “But at least you’ve still got Shelta and June Evening, Coffee, and Pink Froth.”
“Oh, it could have been worse,” admitted Heath. “Though I’d rather not imagine that.”
They had finished the hay and straw that the vet had supplied the evening before, and as it was a Sunday there was nowhere open for them to buy more, but there was another riding school in Bracken, and Bobby borrowed the vet’s car to go and try them for some. Heath remained at the stables to help the vet, and in case anyone wanted her. Being twenty-one, and having been at Bracken longer than Bobby, who anyway was only eighteen, she was head girl, though really there was little difference between their positions. But Heath was the one who, in Guy’s absence, usually made the decisions.
The other stable was owned by Captain Roberts, and catered mainly for less ambitious riders than Guy, people who only wanted a quiet hack, and who did not want to learn much. It was at this stable that the girls from Bracken House School rode, and Bobby had first met the Captain when she had been sent there as a boarder by the Camberwells, with their daughter. Actually Captain Roberts would shortly be leaving the district, to take over a riding school at Wimbledon, and Bobby was afraid that he might not have enough hay in stock to give her any. But she was lucky. The Captain, a tall, thin, fair-haired, military man, was glad to help. He was not known for his warm or sympathetic nature, but he seemed genuinely concerned about the fire.
“I was away last night in Wimbledon, attending to some business,” he explained. “Otherwise I should have come round at once to see if I could be of any help. I hope Mr. Mathews will recover quickly. Now, what can I offer you? Hay, straw, corn?”
“Could you let me have four bales of hay, and two straw?” asked Bobby. “We have short feed.”
“Yes, certainly. I am leaving on Tuesday, you know, it’s rather sooner than I expected, and so I am overstocked with feed,” explained the Captain.
“Is anyone else taking Low Lane stables?” Bobby asked him.
“Yes. Not a school, a riding club,” replied the Captain. “The Abbington and District Club. The manageress is a Miss Jacobs, who seems a very capable young woman.”
They loaded the hay and straw into the back of the station wagon, and Bobby thanked the Captain, and wished him good luck at Wimbledon, in case she did not see him again. Then she was driving down Low Lane towards home with the bales of straw sticking out of the open back of the car.
Charles Camberwell had arrived by the time she got back to the stables, and was full of concern for them. He was thankful to find that Bobby was unhurt, and anxious to know if there was anything that he could do to help. Bobby assured him that there was nothing, and Charles was invited to lunch. During the meal Bobby questioned him about her young cousins, his children, and learned that Ellen was at finishing school still, thoroughly enjoying it, and that Roger had decided that he wanted to be a vet, and had put his name down for the Royal Veterinary College when he was eighteen. Mrs. Camberwell seemed to be enjoying her usual round of parties, first nights, and fashion shows, though at their country house near Bognor the new girl groom had brought Helen’s horses in, and was getting them fit for the season’s shows.
After coffee in the lounge Charles decided that he must get back, and Bobby accompanied him to the door.
“You will let me know if there is anything I can do, won’t you Roberta?” he asked her.
“I will,” Bobby promised him. “And thank you very much for coming down.”
“That’s quite all right my dear,” Charles smiled at her. “After all, you are my ward, you know, and Helen and I are very fond of you.”
Bobby smiled back, and wished him a warm goodbye. She did not think that Helen had much interest in her, but it was nice to know that there was someone like Charles in the background if she ever needed him.
Heath and Bobby spent that afternoon trying to make some sort of plan for the future. Their greatest problem was going to be finding horses for their large clientele, with only a few ponies, cobs, and school hacks left, apart from Shelta and June, whom they hoped to keep taking to a few shows, to prevent Guy’s stables becoming completely forgotten in the show world. There was still no news about the ’plane, and trying to get information from the police was like questioning a stone wall. But even if there was something odd about that, Guy’s insurance should cover the costs of rebuilding and re-stocking. But the pupils would obviously have to go to some other stable to finish their training. It would not be fair to expect them to go on at Bracken with the inadequate horses, and without Guy to instruct.
“Oh well, it shouldn’t take too long to get back to normal,” said Heath, as they walked back to the stables to feed late that afternoon. “And it’s no use making many plans until we’ve seen Guy.”
Bobby agreed. But it did seem awful that they had to start almost over again when the success of the stables was so recent. She remembered Bracken as she had first known it, a rather unsuccessful dealer’s yard, Guy usually deep in debt, and having very varying successes at the local shows. He had even been forced to sell Shelta, who had in those days belonged to him, in order to get himself out of debt, and put the stables on the road to success. Helen Camberwell had bought her, and almost ruined her with her rough, ham-handed riding, until Bobby had managed to buy her back, and take her home to Guy’s. Then Guy had offered her a job, and so started Bobby and her chestnut mare on their way to the top in show jumping, the mare’s brilliance also serving to advertise his stable.
Heath was allowed to see Guy for a short time on Monday evening, but with strict instructions not to discuss business. However, Guy gave her no choice, and she returned with full instructions on the future of the pupils, and some ideas for the management of the stables under the new temporary conditions. The pupils, Guy said, must be transferred to Charnley Equitation Centre, which was owned by some friends of his, the Dirks. The pupils were not at all pleased. They had thoroughly enjoyed their stay at Bracken, and in spite of the shortage of horses and the loss of Guy as an instructor they did not want to leave. It took much persuasion from Bobby and Heath, and many reminders that they would merely be monopolising horses which could be used for the regular outside clientele, which would not help Bracken at all, before they would agree to go.
“Thank goodness for that,” said Heath, when she and Bobby at last found themselves alone in Guy’s office at the back of the house. “I thought we’d never persuade them, and they couldn’t possibly have stopped. No one could train for their B.H.S. on creatures like Goldcrest and Cloisonné.”
There had been no more information about the ’plane’s origin, and it was quite clear by now that there was something very queer about the whole thing. The police would not allow anything to be moved, but the insurance investigator from the company with whom Guy was insured would be down the next day to examine the ruins, and arrange for their claim. Bobby typed a letter to Charnley, asking them if they could take the pupils, and she also wrote to all their more important clients, explaining the situation, and assuring them that they would remain open as near to normally as possible.
The news about Guy had not been too good. He was still partly paralysed from the back injury, and the doctors could not at present say whether or not he would ever regain the full use of his legs. Heath wished for Bobby’s sake, besides anything else, that the news could have been better. She did not think that even Bobby herself knew how much Guy meant to her. At the moment Bobby was intent on stamping and sealing envelopes, her short brown hair ruffled, her white Aertex shirt open at the neck. The touch of lipstick that she had put on that morning had worn off long ago, and she looked much nearer fifteen than eighteen. But her dark eyes were shadowed, and Heath knew that the tragedy had touched the more sensitive younger girl more deeply than it had herself.
The following morning dawned bright and clear, the sun shone brilliantly on the new green of trees and hedgerows, and the sun was warm on their backs as they started the mucking out. Life suddenly seemed very much better. Bobby took a ride out from June, and Yoland Farmer, the sixteen-year-old girl who had always shown Guy’s ponies for him, arrived home from a week-end in London, and came straight round to see the damage, and make certain for herself that Coffee and Froth, her two favourites, were all right. She had telephoned on Sunday morning as soon as she had heard the news, but until now she had been unable to get back to see them.
The insurance investigator arrived that afternoon, and after a brief glance at the damage he asked to speak to Heath in private. Rather surprised, Heath cleared the pupils out of the tack room, and shut the door.
“Yes?” she asked him.
“Miss Graham, did you have much to do with the financial side of the business?” asked the man. He was tall and thin, with a hollow face and thin brown hair.
“Well, quite a bit,” replied Heath. “I used to help Guy with the accounts and so on, and with the arrangements for the insurance when he took it up a year ago.”
“He was not insured before that, was he?” asked the man.
“No,” agreed Heath. “Things weren’t going very well, and the stables weren’t up to much in those days. Hardly worth the money for the premiums.”
“I see.” Mr. Trevor, for that was his name, glanced down at the papers he held, and then said, “The point is, Miss Graham, that the payments on your policy do not appear to be up to date. The last was due on the fifteenth of April, and we have no record of its being paid.”
“But it’s almost the end of the month,” exclaimed Heath. “I’m sure it was paid. I remember typing the letter.”
“Perhaps it was never posted?” suggested Mr. Trevor.
“It must have been,” replied Heath. “We wouldn’t have left it lying about. Someone would have taken it straight to the post.”
“And yet it never reached us,” said Mr. Trevor. “Loss in the post of properly addressed letters is not common, you know, Miss Graham.”
His tone edged on coldness, and Heath knew that he did not believe that the letter had ever been written. And yet she was certain it had. Bobby was called in, and questioned, but she knew nothing about it, though she was astonished to hear that it did not seem to have been paid. Heath asked if they would still have any chance of getting the claim. Mr. Trevor looked doubtful, shook his head, and began to put his papers back into his brief case.
“You may find that my company will allow you a small amount of the claim,” he replied. “But unless the whole thing is our mistake, which I am afraid seems doubtful, that will be the most that you can hope for. I’m sorry.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Bobby, as they watched Mr. Trevor walk down the field towards his parked car. “We shall be in an awful mess if we don’t get that insurance.”
“I’m going up to the house,” replied Heath. “If it wasn’t posted, then it must still be somewhere in the office.”
She went off, leaving Bobby to start the tack cleaning with her mind in a whirl of anxiety and puzzlement.
They did not find the letter. Neither did Heath cease to be certain that she had typed it. But anyway it seemed that they had no hope of getting their full claim. And the following lunch time they received another, though not quite so unexpected, blow. Heath answered the telephone, and the others, watching her face through the open door of the dining-room, guessed that it was not good news. Bobby instantly thought of Guy. Could he be worse? But it was not about Guy. It was the police.
“They’ve traced the ’plane, at last,” Heath explained, coming back to the table. “Not that it helps us much. It was stolen.”
“Stolen?” gasped Bobby. “But hasn’t anyone missed it until now?”
“It was a charter ’plane, belonging to a small company who were on the point of liquidation,” replied Heath. “It was grounded anyway, waiting to be repaired, and no one went near the hangar until yesterday. It wasn’t even a proper airfield, but a disused R.A.F. place. The police think it was taken by two escaped convicts who were last heard of heading for that area.”
“Then we shan’t get any money from them, either?” asked Bobby.
“It doesn’t look like it,” replied Heath sadly.
For a moment there was silence. The pupils, who would be leaving the next day, stared at their plates, and Bobby tried not to burst into tears. This was the last straw. Surely it was not possible for any one place to have this much misfortune. The crash itself had been bad enough, but on top of that they had Guy in hospital, trouble about the insurance claim, and now no compensation. And just as they had seemed to be getting firmly established as one of the best small stables in the South. She pushed her plate away, unable to face any more food even if it was charlotte russe, one of Mrs. Joyce’s specialities, and stood up.
“I’m going to take Shelta out,” she told them. “I’ll be back to take the ride, Heath.”
She hurried out of the room and Heath began to eat again, though with a preoccupied expression on her face. Things certainly seemed pretty black.
Bobby took the two o’clock ride from Froth. It was not particularly successful. They had been forced to use some of the seldom ridden ponies and cobs from the field, and they were naturally rather fresh. One small boy fell off twice, and had to go on the leading rein, and Bobby wished that they had not attempted to accommodate such a large ride when they had not really enough safe ponies. Ruining their pupils’ nerves was not going to improve their chances of keeping the stables open, which since lunch time looked as though it was going to be a struggle. Froth was still feeling upset, and was all over the place shying and stopping, and Bobby was heartily glad to get back to the stables. Everything seemed to be against them, she decided, as the tack was hauled along the muddy causeway to the tack room in the corner of the derelict yard. And the piles of greasy, mud spattered tack did not make things look any brighter. With a sigh Bobby stripped Froth’s saddle, and began to wash the leather lining.
Heath made arrangements for the yard to be cleared, now that the ’plane could be removed, as however short of money they were it was a job that had to be done, and she also arranged for Spenser’s, the Hestonbridge builders, to have a look at the yard, and give them an estimate for rebuilding. After all, as she remarked to Bobby, someone might always leave them a fortune, if they could find the money no other way.
“We might manage to have half of it done, anyway,” she went on, becoming serious. “It would be a start.”
Bobby agreed, realising that Guy had been doing pretty well for the last year or so, and must have a little money in the bank. And they still had as many riders as they could accommodate, two young liveries in the field to be schooled, and the possibility of those people whose horses had been killed in the fire replacing them. On the other hand of course there would be all the usual expenses, the mortgage payments on the house, their own wages and the wages of the Joyces and Lucy, the maid, the horses’ feed, vet’s bills, and shoeing. But if Heath thought partly rebuilding might be possible she was probably right. She usually was.
The pupils left the next morning in a hired horse box with Arak. Bobby and Heath were sorry to see them go, but the sooner they arrived at Charnley and got some regular lessons again the better. The workmen arrived, and the clearance work began, hampered by the thick drizzle which blew greyly through the gaps where the boxes had once stood, and added to the water in the deep ruts which criss-crossed the once tidy cinder yard. The fire was not yet a week behind them, but already the place looked old and derelict, with swiftly growing weeds showing green shoots among the rubble, and the blackened bricks softened by rain. It did not seem possible that it would ever again look as it had done only last Saturday, immaculate and inhabited, and alive with all the bustle of a busy riding school.
Heath went to see Guy again that night. Mr. Trevor had telephoned them that day to say that there was definitely no record of the last premium having been paid, but that he thought the company would be willing to pay about half the amount due. And so the news that Heath had to tell him was not quite so bad as it might have been. They also had to arrange for Heath to draw cheques from Guy’s account while he was in hospital, so that she could pay people like the feed merchants, the blacksmith, and the vet. Bobby would have liked to visit Guy herself, but that side of the business was far more Heath’s responsibility. The doctor had told Heath that it was quite all right now to discuss business arrangements with Guy so long as she did so as unalarmingly as possible. Bobby fed the horses, and was beginning to tidy the tack room before going home to Cedarwood when the telephone rang. She answered it, and a woman’s voice asked to speak to Mr. Mathews. Bobby told her that he was not there, and asked if she could help.
“Is that Miss Morton?” asked the woman.
“Yes,” agreed Bobby, wondering who she was talking to.
“Well, perhaps you can help me,” said the woman. “It’s Mrs. Goldman speaking. We live at Abbington. It’s about a young horse that we bought for my daughter three weeks ago. He was supposed to be well schooled and a promising jumper, but since we have had him he has put my daughter down so many times that we are seriously thinking of sending him to the next sale. I was wondering, though, if it would be possible for you or Mr. Mathews to come over some time and ride him for me, just to make sure that it is the horse’s fault, and not anything that my daughter is not doing properly which upsets him. He seemed such a good buy at the time, and he was not cheap. I should hate to make a mistake about him.”
“Well, I’m afraid Mr. Mathews won’t be able to try him,” Bobby told her. She explained about the accident, and Mrs. Goldman expressed horror. She said that she had seen something about a ’plane crash in the newspaper, but had not bothered to read it properly as she had been very busy during the last few days. She went on to suggest that, if Bobby still intended to take Shelta to Dovington show on Saturday she might like to try the young horse then, as Isabel was taking her other horse, and the new one could go along in the trailer. Bobby agreed, hoping that she would not fall off or do anything else stupid, and arranged to meet the Goldmans by the secretary’s tent during the lunch interval, if they did not run into each other earlier. Then Mrs. Goldman rang off, and Bobby put the receiver down, wondering just what she had let herself in for.
There was a letter from her old Bracken House school friend, Silvia Wheatley, awaiting Bobby on the hall table. Silvia was now working in London as a radiologist in a Chelsea hospital, and was living in rooms with a girl from the same place. She seemed thoroughly happy in London, and for a moment Bobby almost envied her. Her life sounded so much easier and less anxious. But Bobby had already once chosen between a steady, comfortable indoor job and Bracken, and she knew that her choice would always be the same.
Heath arrived home just before supper, her green plastic mackintosh running water, and a sodden scarf tied over her damp red hair. Guy, she said, seemed a bit better, and appeared to have been half expecting the bad news about the lack of compensation. But he had been very startled by the trouble over the insurance, and like Heath he was certain that it had been paid. Heath was to speak to the bank, to see whether the cheque had ever been cashed, and was to look through the stubs in his old cheque books to see if there was any record of the payment there. Bobby told her about Mrs. Goldman’s young horse, and Heath said that Guy was hoping that Bobby would go to Dovington.
“He’d like you to ride June as well as Shelta,” she said. “We can’t both go because of the riders.”
“I shall have to go this week, I suppose, because of Mrs. Goldman,” said Bobby. “But just because I’ve got Shelta it doesn’t mean that I have to be the only one to enjoy myself. You must go to the next show.”
“We can argue about that later,” replied Heath, who knew that Shelta and her jumping were about the most important things in Bobby’s life. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we got this young horse to school?”
“Where would we keep him, in the tack room?” retorted Bobby.
“Oh, we’d find somewhere,” replied Heath hopefully.
Yoland, a slight, fair girl, came to exercise Coffee the follow evening, after spending her day at the secretarial college, which she had only started to attend that week. She intended to take a job with horses eventually, but her parents insisted that she also had some other training. It was she who realised that without Captain Roberts the girls from Bracken House School must have stopped riding.
“Perhaps they’ll come here,” said Heath, not very hopefully. “There isn’t anyone else this side of Hestonbridge.”
“I suppose they might,” agreed Bobby, who had not thought of this before, in spite of her sojourn at the school. “I shouldn’t think they’ll stop riding. It was too popular with the parents.”
“It would be very useful if they did come to us,” said Heath.
“We’d have a job to fit them in at present, but it would be a regular income if we had a contract with them, and it would help to make up for some of the custom that we’re bound to lose, especially from the more advanced riders who always had lessons from Guy.”
“I wonder why they haven’t made any inquiries yet,” said Yoland. “Miss Wilson never did really approve of us, did she Bobby?”
“No, not really,” admitted Bobby. “The girls all called Guy ‘That dealer’, and they were always running down his horses. But we could try taking more rides up towards the House. If the girls see us, and Miss Wilson has decided to stop riding completely, it may make them realise what they’re missing, and pester her for lessons again.”
“Yes, I suppose it might,” agreed Heath. “If any of them dare to pester the Dragon. I don’t mind where we take the rides, but we’d better attempt to keep loose ponies out of the school grounds. I can just imagine Miss Wilson meeting Snow Goose on the steps.”
The others laughed, and the subject was changed, but both Heath and Bobby began to take all the riders who went out for a hack past the high, wrought iron gates in the long red brick wall of Bracken House.
Heath spoke to the bank, and looked through all Guy’s old cheque books, but she found no record of the cheque for the insurance premium. It had not been cashed at the bank, and reluctantly they were forced to decide that it must have been completely overlooked, or lost. There were one or two blank stubs in the books, where Guy had forgotten to fill in the amount and to whom paid, but there was not even a carbon of the letter that Heath was sure she had typed. Even Heath was at last convinced that she must be mistaken.
They had an evening ride that Friday, and Bobby was unable to visit Guy, as they were both needed in the indoor school. The ponies that had been temporarily stabled there were now turned out.
Usually Guy would have taken these advanced evening lessons, with the girls riding as pupils, and there would have been twelve or more horses moving through the yellow gaslight inside the oblong building, but now, with the pupils mounted on what horses they could raise from their mixed collection of plugs, ponies, and youngsters Bobby and Heath had to struggle to teach something to people as advanced as themselves. They were both thoroughly glad when the evening was over.