“We’ll trot on here,” Roderick called back over his shoulder. “Take the tickle out of their feet,” and he closed his legs against Midas’s swelling sides and let his fit chestnut hunter stride on down the road.
Behind him, Jacky and Erica urged their ponies into a fast trot.
“Wait for us,” shouted Erica, but her brother paid no attention.
“He’s in a bad mood,” Erica explained to Jacky. “Didn’t get in from the party he was at until five o’clock and he couldn’t tie his stock. Shouting and cursing and in the end Mummy had to tie it for him. She always has to do it in the end. Why he doesn’t just ask her to do it to begin with and save himself going spare over it I do not know.”
Jacky hardly heard her. She had no time for anything except Flicka. As if the pony knew something different was going to happen today she plunged forward, cantering on the road, tossing her head against the bit and shying suddenly at the least flicker of movement in the leafless hedge-rows.
“Horsebox behind,” called out Erica, and Roderick brought Midas into the side of the road but kept on trotting.
“Wave him on, Erica, the road’s clear,” Roderick shouted back.
Tucked between Firebird and Midas, Jacky heard the heavy throbbing engine of the horsebox draw level with Firebird and come crawling up behind Flicka. She sat down tight in the saddle, collecting Flicka between seat and reins as her pony tightened beneath her, cantering on the spot.
“Steady, steady,” Jacky soothed Flicka. “It’s only a horsebox. Steady the pony.”
“Why doesn’t it get on and pass us,” she thought as the box continued to crawl along just behind Flicka. It was level with Flicka’s quarters when Roderick turned round and shouted to the driver to get on past them. Jacky too glanced back and, in that second, Flicka’s nerve broke. She stormed forward into Midas, there was a clash of stirrups and Flicka was away galloping up the road.
Jacky pulled at her reins. Sawing at Flicka’s mouth she managed to bring her to a trot and turn her through an open gate into a ploughed field.
“You stupid idiot,” she told Flicka crossly as, goggle-eyed, the pony stood staring at the horsebox driving on down the road.
“Well, that was a nice exhibition,” said Roderick as he and Erica came clattering up to Flicka. “What did you want to let her get away with you like that for?”
“I didn’t want to,” stated Jacky. “Flicka just went.”
“How many oats have you been giving that pony?” Roderick asked suspiciously as they trotted on.
“I wanted to make sure she’d be fit for hunting,” Jacky answered, thinking guiltily of the big feeds that Flicka had consumed during the last day or two.
“She’s fit all right,” said Roderick in disgust, “and you look as if you’ve started your hunting already. Look at her legs.”
Jacky looked down at Flicka’s muddy hoofs.
“At least you got her stopped,” consoled Erica.
Several other horseboxes and trailers passed them on their way to the meet but Jacky managed to keep either Midas or Firebird between Flicka and their looming terror. The long drive to Threave House was lined with parked cars.
“Lot of followers,” said Roderick. “Always get a lot out on Boxing Day.”
Ahead of them a groom on a clipped bay horse led a grey and another bay and behind them a group of four women on greys talked in loud excited voices, comparing notes on their last day’s hunting.
In the large space in front of Threave House the huntsman and two whippers-in waited like statues above the tan and white froth of hounds. Around them was all the bustle and churn of the meet: black coats and pink coats; red, weather-beaten farmer faces; women with smooth make-up looking like advertisements for Moss Bros; children in jockey caps and ratcatcher and foot followers in sheepskin coats and boots. At the edge of the crowd were the horses and ponies: grooms with stick-thin legs and walnut faces led clipped hunters up and down; children held tightly on to the reins of excited ponies; parties from riding schools waited uneasily; two women riding side saddle in immaculate black habits surveyed the scene through their veils. The morning was loud with noise, high-pitched extravagant greetings, the chink of glasses, the chirruping voices of the huntsman and whippers-in as they spoke to hounds, the sudden crack of a lash and their raised anger as they rated an offender and, flung like a banner high over the texture of noise, the sudden wild whinny of a horse.
Flicka pranced from the ground as if it were red hot, her neck was arched hard and high, her ears sharply pricked as she stared about her in amazement.
“Keep her well away from hounds,” warned Roderick. “It is the sin to let your horse kick a hound.”
Jacky nodded. She was feeling as excited as Flicka. She had never been to a meet before and it was all new and strange. She could feel the tense nervousness that Erica had talked about. They were all waiting; hounds, horses and people, waiting for the galloping and jumping to begin.
Roderick led the way to a fairly quiet spot at the side of Threave House.
“Don’t let her dig up the ground like that,” he told Jacky.
“I can’t stop her,” Jacky said. “Whenever we stand still for a second she starts pawing at the ground.”
“Then keep her walking about. She’ll be through to Australia in another minute,” said Roderick crossly, looking at the hole Flicka had dug with her forefeet in the gravel.
The Hunt Secretary came up to them and they paid their cap. Then a girl that Roderick knew came over to talk to him.
“I’m going into the house with Sue,” Roderick told them.
“Shall I hold Midas for you?” offered Erica.
“No, it’s okay,” said Sue. “Mummy’s got my mare. She’ll hang on to Rod’s as well.”
“Sue is the one he’s keen on at the moment,” Erica told Jacky. “I can’t stand her.”
“And here’s someone I can’t stand,” said Jacky in disgust, as Celia Grunter in a black jacket and boots came riding across to them.
“Look at your pony,” Celia screamed. “It’s absolutely covered in mud.”
“Yours,” retorted Jacky, “looks like a Christmas tree, you’ve got so much tack on it.”
“Oh I always ride him in a drop noseband and a martingale,” Celia said scornfully.
“Then why are you wearing spurs?” asked Erica.
“When Daddy bought him for his little daughter all he needed was a snaffle,” taunted Jacky. “But I suppose you always ride him with all that ironmongery shoved in his mouth.”
“Darling,” shrieked Mrs Grunter. “What are you doing? Do come here and meet Amanda Cuthbertson.”
“Thank goodness,” said Jacky. “Thought she was going to see all the holes that Flicka’s made.”
Erica looked at the scraped gravel. “Bit of a mess,” she said, and she got off Firebird and did her best to spread the gravel back into the holes.
“I think they’re going to start,” Jacky announced as she watched the sudden flurry of action in front of Threave House.
Erica looked up from her hole-filling-in activities. “Gosh, yes,” she said, scrambling up on to Firebird as the Master on a heavyweight bay hunter led hounds down the drive. Behind him riders crushed and jostled for places, fresh hunters bucked, ponies with heads down charged like express trains—suddenly the river of energy that had been dammed up in front of Threave had burst its banks. Nothing could stop it now.
“Where’s Roderick got to?” demanded Erica as she fought to hold back Firebird.
“I can’t hold Flicka back any longer,” Jacky gasped. Her pony was plunging like a rocking horse in her eagerness to follow the hunt. “I’m going to come off if she puts in a buck like that again. Oh, come on Erica, we can’t wait for Rod.”
As she spoke, Jacky eased her fingers on Flicka’s reins and, in a flash the black pony galloped forward into the mass of horses streaming down the drive.
She rode packed in by strange horses, all urgently straining forward, like the Charge of the Light Brigade, Jacky thought. She grinned as she rode, loving the feeling of excitement, of really being alive. Once she glanced behind her but couldn’t see Erica or Firebird. There was nothing Jacky could do about it. She couldn’t stop now.
They turned into the road and, with a swell of hoofs on tarmac, cantered down it, past cars and foot followers. As they reached the end of the road the riders in front of Jacky seemed to be slowing down. Jacky stood up in her stirrups and saw that they were jumping off the road over a hunt gate. The approach to the jump was crowded with refusing hunters, riders circling their horses for a second attempt and blocking the way for the others. A competent-looking woman on a bay horse rode straight at the jump shouting to the refusers to make way there. Jacky felt Flicka chugging impatiently at the bit and, before she had time to realize what was happening, Flicka had tucked herself in at the heels of the bay. She took the hunt gate at a trot, jumping from the road and sailing over effortlessly. The woman on the bay shouted something to Jacky but Jacky couldn’t hear, for the second Flicka landed she was off in pursuit of the hunt.
They rode over muddy tracks through a wood. When Jacky came out of the wood she saw that the horses and riders were waiting together in a group. In front of them she saw the dappled shapes of hounds leaping like roe deer through the undergrowth of a small copse as they quartered to and fro trying to raise a fox.
Jacky pulled Flicka in at the back of the riders but despite Jacky’s efforts to keep her pony still, Flicka edged and fretted her way forward.
“Can’t you control that animal?” demanded a blue-cheeked woman in a high, nervous voice.
“Stand still at covert side,” growled a deep-voiced man in a top hat.
“Take the blighter home if you can’t ride it,” snarled a man whose horse had just lashed out at Flicka.
Jacky pretended not to hear. She could see herself being carried right into the middle of hounds. when, to her relief, she saw Roderick on Midas and managed to take Flicka over to him without causing too much disturbance. From the look on Roderick’s face Jacky felt that he wasn’t all that pleased to see her.
“Where’s Erica?” he hissed.
“I don’t know,” admitted Jacky.
“Wheesht,” commanded one of the side ladies, reprimanding them for talking at covert side.
Now that Flicka had found Midas, Jacky managed to keep her still but she knew from the pony’s tense alertness that the second the hunt moved on Flicka would be galloping with them.
The encouragement of the huntsman changed to a different note. He called hounds out of a blank covert and led the field back through the wood, down a lane where the riders waited while the huntsman put hounds into a patch of gorse.
Despite Jacky’s efforts to keep her back, Flicka had managed to push her way forward to the very front of the hunt. “I shouldn’t be here. I know I shouldn’t,” Jacky thought, feeling her pony quivering with anticipation of the gallop to come. In front of her were only the Master and his wife and two or three superior, hunting types on blood hunters. There wasn’t room in the lane to turn Flicka and Jacky was certain that once they all started galloping after hounds she would never be able to stop her pony. She looked back in a sudden panic trying to see Midas and Roderick but the riders waiting behind her were all strangers. Jacky felt completely alone.
Suddenly the sound of the hounds changed, there was a red flash of lithe animal as the fox broke cover on the far side of the gorse, the clear high note of the huntsman’s horn and hounds poured out of the covert and streamed after the fox. Huntsman and hunt servants galloped after them, while the Master held his field in check for a minute longer, then they too were galloping over the moor. In front of them a stone wall fanned the riders out as each rider chose his own place to jump it. With all her strength Jacky struggled to control Flicka. She pulled on the snaffle bit as hard as she could, tugging with all the power in her arms to slow down her pony’s mad, drumming speed. But it had no effect whatsoever. Over the wall Flicka went in a high wide arc that brought her on landing to the side of a young man on a grey. Racing shoulder to shoulder Flicka paced the grey downhill. Over another wall they went, jumping it side by side. Jacky felt Flicka’s hoofs clatter on fallen stones on the far side of the wall, but, without hesitating, Flicka galloped on.
“I can’t stop her,” Jacky thought wildly. “I can’t stop.”
She braced her feet against her stirrups and pulled back on her reins. “Stop, Flicka,” she cried. “Stop!”
But it was useless. She might as well have been pulling against a tank.
“Look out for the ditch on the other side,” the young man shouted as they rode at a wall together.
Jacky’s mouth was too dry to allow her to answer. She felt Flicka surge over the wall, see the ditch and stretch herself in mid-air to clear it. But the grey’s hind legs landed in the soft banking of the ditch, she heard the young man shout, was aware that his horse was coming down before Flicka carried her relentlessly on.
There were only about half a dozen riders in front of Jacky now and a little way in front of them hounds moved in a pack, running so close together that they looked like one creature moving like quicksilver over the ground
Two more walls, a hunt gate with the bar still on top, another wall and then hounds checked. They had lost the scent that had held them together and they split up now into separate dogs searching this way and that.
Flicka stopped with the other horses. She was gasping for breath and her coat was curded with sweat. Jacky felt the other riders, all men and women on fit hunters, looking down at her curiously, some smiling to see a pony at the front of the hunt, others irritated that a thirteen hand, trace-clipped pony should have galloped and jumped as well as their expensive horses. Jacky was too tired to care. Her arms felt like limp string, her hands that had been holding on so tightly to Flicka’s reins seemed suddenly to have stopped working, she couldn’t open or close them and her knees were shaking against the saddle. She looked round desperately for Roderick.
“I’ve got to take Flicka away,” she thought. “If they start running again I’ll never keep her back, never.”
But not one of the seven or eight riders grouped around the Master was Roderick. Jacky hadn’t seen any of them in her life before. She felt tears mist her eyes. She just didn’t know how to take Flicka away. Should she just turn and ride away without saying anything? Were you allowed to do that? And even if you were, Jacky wasn’t too sure that she would manage to get Flicka away from hounds. “Oh, don’t be so feeble,” she told herself furiously.
Suddenly a hound spoke. “Hark to Dauner,” cried the huntsman. “Hark to Dauner.”
Jacky felt Flicka tense beneath her as other hounds found the scent again. Like bees they swarmed together and were away.
Hunters plunged and bucked to follow them.
“Give them a chance. Hold back,” cried the huntsman.
In minutes it had started again but now Flicka was galloping neck for neck with the Master.
“Get that pony back,” he yelled at Jacky. “Get back there.”
But Jacky had no strength left to try to fight Flicka. She managed to pull her to one side of the Master’s bay before they jumped a ditch but she was powerless to hold her back.
Over a low stone wall they went and as they landed Flicka was in front of the Master. Then it happened. “Oh no!” Jacky thought. “Oh please, no!” and the next minute Flicka was galloping into hounds. They broke up in confusion, one big brown dog yelping wildly as Flicka charged through them.
Some of the words the Master used when he told Jacky to take Flicka home were new to her, or, if she’d heard them before, she’d only heard them on television.
Feeling as if she would die of shame, Jacky forced Flicka away from hounds and hunters, and the pony crabbed and jibbed. For a second as the hunt rode away Jacky thought Flicka was going to manage to carry her back to them. She flung herself to the ground and clung on to Flicka’s reins until the last horse had disappeared from sight.
Left alone the pony shrank back into her usual size. She looked thoroughly wretched. Jacky sat down on a boulder and felt sick.
Stray members of the hunt rode past and Jacky pointed out the way the hunt had gone and then one of them was Roderick.
“Did you come off?” he asked. “Flicka’s in a muck sweat.”
He dismounted and stood uneasily by Jacky, wondering if she was concussed and feeling guilty that she had been left alone.
“Never again,” said Jacky after she had related her disastrous morning to Roderick. “Never again. Flicka’s going to be a show jumper—not a hunter. I’ve made up my mind.”