A fortnight after the Pony Club gymkhana the school holidays were over and Jacky was back sitting at her desk, wondering what Flicka would be doing at that particular moment and dreaming about show jumping, about doubles, trebles and jumps that were higher than she had ever jumped in her life before, while Miss Hope, in a cloud of chalk dust, talked about decimal division and adjectival clauses and the exports of Europe.
“Well, do you remember how to do analysis?” Jacky asked her father irritably after she had spent a whole evening struggling with an English grammar exercise which, even now that it was finished, she expected was all wrong. “When did you last parse a sentence?”
“Not yesterday,” admitted her father.
“Then why do I have to do it?” demanded Jacky, stuffing her English grammar books back into her school bag and taking out her history textbook. “And I’ll tell you something else. Roderick says that Richard III didn’t murder the princes in the Tower, yet there’s a photograph of them standing waiting for him to come along and suffocate them.”
“Painting,” said her father. “They didn’t have cameras then.”
“But it’s not true. Just a fairy tale. But I’ve to swot it all up. Probably this whole book is just a fairy tale. Probably everything they make us learn is just a lot of rubbish. I don’t see … ”
“Get on with it Jacky and stop talking nonsense,” said Mr Munro sharply.
“It’s not nonsense. Roderick says… ”
“Jacky,” warned her father.
Jacky propped her elbows on the table, put her fingers in her ears, stared down at the history book open in front of her and thought about Flicka.
Now that it was nearly winter the mornings were too dark for her to ride Flicka before she went to school, and by the time she had done her homework at night it was too dark then. Both Flicka and Firebird were still out all the time though Mrs Dawson had promised that when the weather was cold enough Jacky could have one of their boxes for Flicka.
“You’ll only want to bring her in at night,” Mrs Dawson had said. “She’ll be better being out during the day.”
Jacky had agreed, knowing this was the sensible thing to do, but every time she saw Midas standing clipped and fit in his box Jacky imagined what Flicka would look like if she were in all the time. She pictured her pony standing in a thick bed of straw, her clipped coat supple as velvet over her hard muscles, her mane pulled to a silken fringe and her legs clipped out, fine-boned yet strong as steel.
Jacky sighed aloud. In reality Flicka and Firebird looked like teddy bears in their thick coats and heavy manes and tails. When Jacky did manage to ride it took her ages to take the mud out of Flicka’s coat and even then she had to be careful not to groom her too much because the grease in her long coat kept the pony warm at night and dry in wet weather.
There was one mounted rally in the middle of November and, although Flicka behaved well and cleared all the jumps, Jacky knew that she wasn’t going as well as she had been in the summer.
“She wasn’t listening to me,” Jacky said as she and Erica walked their ponies home from the rally. “She was charging round when we were meant to be cantering, and her backing was terrible. I thought Mrs Marshall was going to say something.”
“For goodness’ sake stop moaning,” snapped Erica. “Moan, moan, moan, that’s all you do these days.”
“Do not,” snapped back Jacky.
“Oh yes you do. You can’t expect a pony not to forget things. Once you start schooling her regularly again she’ll be okay.”
“But she was pulling like anything today. She never used to pull like that.”
“It’s only because she was fresh. You can’t expect her to be perfect all the time.”
Jacky didn’t reply and they rode on in silence.
At the beginning of December there was an announcement in the Tarent Gazette saying that the Boxing Day meet of the Tarentshire and Westonlie Hunt would be at Threave House.
“Threave House!” Jacky exclaimed excitedly, nearly spilling her breakfast coffee as she spoke. “That’s only about five miles away! It always used to be at Doune Castle. Always. The Boxing Day meet was always held there because that’s why we could never go from Miss Henderson’s.”
“Doune Castle is a council housing estate now,” said Mrs Munro.
“But Threave House. We could hack to Threave,” and instantly Jacky’s head was filled with the thought of hounds and hunters and of herself galloping and jumping Flicka over winter-bare fields and bleak stone walls.
“I’ll need to phone Erica,” Jacky cried, jumping up from the table and dashing into the hall.
“Come back and finish your breakfast,” said her mother, but already Jacky was dialling the Dawsons’ number.
“Engaged,” she announced in disgust, coming back to the breakfast table.
She had just sat down when the phone rang.
“Finish your breakfast,” said her mother, going to answer it.
Jacky gobbled toast and marmalade. “Boxing Day,” she thought. “We’d have a week to get them fit.”
“It’s for you,” said her mother.
“Jacky? Jacky listen,” said Erica’s excited voice. “I’ve just seen it in the paper, the Boxing Day meet is at Threave House. Close enough for us to hack to it.”
“I know,” screamed Jacky. “I was just trying to phone you to tell you.”
“We’ll go?” said Erica.
“We must,” confirmed Jacky.
She cycled home with Erica after school. It was Friday so there was plenty of time for her homework over the weekend.
“Let’s bring them in first,” Erica suggested. “Give them a feed and then we can talk about the meet. I’ll put their nuts in if you go and fetch the nags.”
Jacky took two halters and went down to the field. The ponies were dark, shaggy shapes waiting at the field gate. As Jacky slipped into the field, Flicka bared her teeth, nipping Firebird’s neck, and a sudden confusion of shaking manes and stamp of hoofs shattered the silence.
“Behave yourselves,” Jacky told them sharply. “You’ll both get fed in a minute. Get up Flicka. Leave her alone.” The two ponies clopped at Jacky’s side as she led them back to their boxes, but to Jacky it wasn’t two muddy, dense-coated ponies that walked beside her but two hunters, clipped and fit, prancing on their toes as the huntsman’s horn sang through the air.
“Have you hunted before?” Jacky asked Erica when they were both sitting on the tack room table eating the pies they had bought on their way home from school.
“Rod took me with him once or twice,” said Erica through a mouthful of pie. “He’s not very keen on nursemaiding, though “
“We wouldn’t need him to look after us!” exclaimed Jacky.
“It’s quite good having him,” admitted Erica. “It’s not like a Pony Club thing you know. They take it very seriously and there’s so many things you can do wrong. It’s all very posh and superior but underneath everyone’s a bit nervous and excited. All the horses know what’s going to happen. You can feel the tightness of it all like a spring coiled up tight before it goes whee! into the air.”
Jacky munched her pie. “We MUST go,” she said.
“Where MUST you go?” asked Roderick, coming into the tack room.
“There’s a meet at Threave House on Boxing Day,” explained Erica.
“Ah!” said Roderick.
“Are you going?”
“Might be. If I’m sober.”
“Can we come with you?”
“Come with me on those two hirsute hippopotamuses?” mocked Roderick. “Most certainly not.”
“He’ll take us,” Erica said when Roderick had gone.
“When he says no like that it means yes.”
Once their Christmas holidays began, Jacky and Erica started to bring their ponies in at night.
“Lot more work,” said Erica as she and Jacky mucked out after their ponies’ first night in.
“But it gives us a chance to get them fit before Boxing Day,” said Jacky, who didn’t care how much work she had to do as long as she was with Flicka.
“Get them a bit less totally unfit,” said Erica.
The paddock was too muddy for them to do much schooling, so most of the time they hacked their ponies round the roads at a steady trot.
“I do wish it would dry up,” Jacky said as they rode past the paddock where the cans and poles were scattered in a sea of mud.
“Not much chance now until the spring.”
“If only we had an indoor school. Then we could jump all the year round.”
“Do you ever,” asked Erica, “think of anything else except jumping?”
“No,” said Jacky. “Not really. Even when I’m thinking about other things on top I’m still thinking about jumping Flicka underneath.”
The day before Christmas Day Roderick offered to trace clip their ponies.
“I’m only doing it for my own good,” he told them. “To try to stop the Master sending you both home whenever he claps eyes on you.”
Firebird had been clipped out before and didn’t make any fuss. She stood still while Roderick ran the whirring clippers under her belly, over her chest and up her neck. But when Jacky led Flicka out into the yard and Roderick switched on the clippers Flicka sprang away in alarm. At the rope’s end she goggled and shied in horror. It took them nearly an hour before they could persuade the pony to stand still while Roderick patted her with one hand and held the clippers in the other. Then Jacky remembered that she had some carrots in her bicycle basket. She fed them to Flicka one by one while Roderick did his best to clip her. But even with the distraction of the carrots Flicka fretted and fussed.
“There! Take her away,” Roderick exclaimed three hours later. “I never want to see her in my life again.”
“Thank you very, very much,” said Jacky. “She looks super.”
“Well, maybe a little bit more like a hunter and slightly less like a cart horse,” admitted Roderick, surveying his handiwork.
Christmas Day was filled with food and presents and being polite to relatives. Jacky’s best presents were a pair of jodhpurs from her mother and father and an enlarged, framed photograph of Flicka from Erica. Her worst was a pink frilly nightdress from Aunt Moira. “As if I’d ever wear that,” said Jacky scornfully.
“You will one day,” promised Mrs Munro.
Jacky snorted.
That night Jacky set her alarm for six o’clock. “How awful if I slept in,” she thought and went back down to the kitchen to get a tin plate to stand the alarm on. “Now I’m bound to hear it.”
She lay in bed thinking about tomorrow. Her riding clothes carefully cleaned and pressed were hanging in the wardrobe instead of lying in a heap on the chair. Her hard hat was brushed until it almost looked respectable and she’d bought a pair of yellow string gloves although she’d never worn gloves before when she was riding.
Jacky pictured Flicka standing in her box not knowing that tomorrow she was going hunting.
“Tomorrow!” Jacky thought and visions of hounds and hunters made her shudder with anticipation.