Chapter 7

IT WAS DORA’S birthday. She had wanted to spend it at the farm, but her mother wanted her at home, so she had to put on her skirt and go down into the town.

Her mother, who was still hoping that she would grow out of horses, although there was no evidence, at seventeen, that she ever would, had assembled a group of ‘interesting’ people to try to show her the kind of life she was missing.

A girl from an art school, starved and pale, with round glasses like wheel rims and a long dusty dress with a trodden hem. Two serious boys with bushy beards who were teaching problem children to get rid of their problems by screaming and hitting each other. A few grown-ups whose mouths kept on opening and shutting long after Dora had stopped listening.

She was so bored that she ate too much to pass the time, fell asleep on the bus going home, and was carried past the village where she was supposed to change buses.

‘Where are we?’ She woke with a start as the driver braked round a sharp corner.

He stopped at the next cross-roads and showed her a lane which led to the main road, where she might get another bus back.

It was late afternoon, with twilight settling on the budding hedges in the valley, and damp beginning to rise from the ground through the new spring grass. Dora walked by the side of the road, getting her feet wet. She was not sure where she was, but when she went over a bridge, she thought she might be crossing the sluggish brown river that ran by the Pinecrest Hotel. If there were no buses on the main road, she would get a lift from the first car that would stop.

‘Come back with her throat cut one day, she will,’ Slugger Jones always grumbled when Dora turned up from town in a strange car or on the back of a motor-bike.

‘There are some weird people about these days,’ Anna warned, but Dora said, ‘No weirder than me,’ and went on hitch-hiking.

She had promised to be back for supper. After that lunch, she could never eat again. But Anna had made a cake. And there would be no ‘interesting’ people with ‘stimulating’ talk. Just people who knew each other well, and were sure of being liked.

Behind her in the lane, she heard the clop-clop of a trotting horse, that always stirring sound that brings people to their windows or out to the gate, even if they have their own horses to clop-clop with.

Dora turned and stood still to watch it come by. As the man and horse came into view out of the dusk, she saw that it was Miss America. Dora stepped out into the road and held up her hand like a school crossing patrol man.

The mare stopped of her own accord. She was not so much being ridden, as carrying an unsteady rider, who nearly pitched over her head when she stopped.

‘Whoops.’ He clung round Miss America’s neck and smiled foolishly at Dora, who saw that he was drunk. She also saw that the saddle with which he had so little contact was a heavy broken thing, well down on the mare’s bony withers.

Dora saw red. She grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him off the horse. He was half-way off anyway.

‘Thanks.’ He landed on his feet, with the luck of a drunk. ‘I was wondering whether to get on the ground or back in the saddle.’

‘You shouldn’t be in that saddle.’ Furiously, Dora unbuckled the girth and lifted off the saddle. The sore back had broken open again, raw and bleeding.

Dora swore. ‘Here – just a minute—’ The man lurched at her, but she went to the side of the road and pitched the dreadful old saddle over a thick hedge into the bushes.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ The man’s red face was woeful. ‘How am I going to ride this thing home?’

‘You’re not,’ Dora said.

‘Have to walk then.’ Strengthening himself with a swig from a flask in his breeches pocket, he looped the reins over his arm and started off down the road. The mare was slightly lame.

Dora followed a short distance behind. The man weaved down the lane in the failing light, staggering now and then and propping himself up with a hand on the mare’s neck. When he came to the main road, he stood for a while watching the cars go past, turning his head from side to side as if he were at a tennis match.

Dora watched him. Finally he seemed to make up his mind. He took the reins over Miss America’s head and tied them very carefully round a signpost. Then he stepped into the road with his arm raised, outlined unsteadily in the lights of a car. The luck of a drunk still held. The car stopped, and he got in and was driven away.

Dora untied the mare and they walked along the grass at the side of the road until they came to the Dog & Whistle, where Dora could telephone for Steve to bring the horse box.

In the farmhouse, Callie greeted her. ‘I got you a present. Want to see?’

‘Thanks. I got you one too. Want to see?’

‘Where?’

‘In the foaling stable.’

‘A new customer!’ Callie ran out.

Dora asked Anna, ‘Is – er, is the Colonel in a good mood?’

‘He was,’ Anna said. ‘What have you brought home?’

‘Miss America,’ Dora said. ‘Her back has broken down again.’

The Colonel did not say much. He waited to see what would happen. When nothing happened, he telephoned the Pinecrest Hotel.

‘Good morning, Brigadier. Nice to hear your voice.’

‘I’ve got your mare.’

‘That’s good of you.’

‘Her back is almost as bad as it was before.’

‘That fellow – that stupid drunk – it’s all his fault. I tell you, Brigadier, this riding school game is one long headache.’

‘What happened?’

‘I wish I knew. He came back here with a hangover and a cockeyed story about losing the saddle and tying the horse to a signpost. He’d been back to all the signposts on all the side turnings along the main road, and when the mare wasn’t there and wasn’t here in the stable, he thought he’d imagined the whole thing, and swore to go on the wagon.’

‘Good.’ The Colonel waited.

Mr Hammond waited too. Finally he said, ‘I thought the mare might have run to you, seeing she was so well kept there before. I’m grateful, Brigadier.’

‘You want me to keep her?’

‘You know I’m short-handed here.’

‘So am I.’

‘But your staff is reliable. I work my fingers to the bone, but I have to leave a lot to my boys, and – well, you know what they are these days. You can’t trust them with anything. Especially a valuable horse like Beauty.’ He would not even stick up for his own family. ‘So if you could do me a favour, Brigadier, I’ll pay anything you want.’

‘You didn’t pay the last bill,’ the Colonel murmured without moving his lips. He hated talking about money.

‘The cheque is in the post.’

Mr Hammond rang off cheerfully, with best wishes to all for the Easter season. The man was incredible. He had no shame at all.

‘He’s not going to get the mare back though,’ the Colonel said. ‘But somehow I don’t think he’ll ask.’

‘I worry about his other horses.’ Dora frowned. ‘I don’t see how he ever got a stable licence.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ Steve said. ‘Why don’t you ask the County Council, Colonel?’

‘They’ll think I’m suspicious.’

‘Well, you are.’

At the County Council, they told him that the Pinecrest’s application for a riding-stable licence was on the files, awaiting an inspection.

‘Our regular man is off sick. I wonder, Colonel – I know you’re a busy man, but you’re fully qualified, and I’m sure the hotel wants to get it cleared up before the summer.’

So the Colonel and Steve went back to the Pinecrest Hotel. He refused to take Dora in the sandals and earrings, but he did take Steve in case of trouble.

There was no trouble. He had written authority to inspect the stable. He spent half a day there, with Sidney Hammond following him affably round and thanking him at the end for his time and trouble with a smile like the jaws of a gin trap.

The Colonel turned in an honest and detailed report. It was not his decision whether or not to grant the licence.