All that Glitters, page 6
She sighed again and seemed to wilt, as if life had suddenly got too much for her.
‘I got involved, which was a mistake. Her family were neighbours and she was always a mischievous child but everything went wrong when her father walked out and her mother got a new bloke. A banker who thought he knew everything. Amy adored her father and after he left she went seriously wrong. She got excluded from every school in the county, ran wild. Bankerman thought buying her a pony, giving her something to love and getting rid of her all day in a livery stable might be a good idea, so he asked me to find her a suitable pony, which I did. But because it was his idea she decided she hates it. If her own father had bought the pony it would be a roaring success but because it was the idea of the man she hates so much, she just digs in her heels, hates the pony like she hates the man and makes everyone’s life a misery.’
Millie and Imogen listened to this story with dismay.
‘So now she’s coming here?’
‘Yes. ‘
‘To make our life a misery?’
‘Excuse me, this is my place now. I wasn’t intending to take you on with it, remember. Amy Grimm is my customer and her father pays my bill. I choose my own clients. I’d rather not have Amy but I feel responsible.’
Miss Power was getting uppity again. They decided not to argue, knowing they hadn’t very good grounds, but when she had departed they moaned together, dreading the arrival of Amy Grimm.
‘What she said, about it being her place now and we’ve just got to lump it, is true. So there’s nothing we can do.’
‘We’ll be Amy’s friend and with our good guidance she’ll turn into an angel and everyone will love her.’
‘Even the pony?’
‘Yes, the pony too. We’ll love the pony, at least, even if we can’t love Amy. Wait and see.’
Chapter 6
They didn’t have long to wait. Amy and Alex arrived the next day, along with their horses in Polly’s horsebox. Millie and Imogen saw a scowling square face rimmed with thick black wild hair staring at them through the window, and next to her in the middle seat an unbelievably gorgeous young man smiling happily, blonde hair as artfully tousled as Polly’s, sky-blue rugby shirt matching his sky-blue eyes.
‘Alex’s a man!’ Imogen breathed. ‘Wow!’ What a surprise! They had expected a delicate mummy’s girl somehow, or a boring, bossy, frumpy female with whom they would have no rapport, but this – the shock stunned them. They shrank back in the doorway of their barn to recover their composure.
‘He’s gorgeous!’
‘Can’t possibly be as good as he looks …’
‘He’s helpful too – look …’
He had jumped down from the cab and was already undoing
the horsebox’s ramp to pull it down. Polly was looking grateful and eager while Amy stood picking her nose, obviously not intending to do anything helpful. Polly went up the ramp and came down with the pony that was presumably Amy’s, a very nice-looking, foursquare Welsh cob, bright chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail. Both Millie and Imogen were smitten with an instinctive yearning to own such a cracker, followed immediately by a guilt complex at betraying such disloyalty.
‘Can’t possibly be as good as he looks,’ Imogen said again. ‘Not sweet like ours.’
‘No.’
All the same he had large kind eyes and made no protest when
Amy took his halter and gave him a great jerk with the rope. ‘Put him next to Wake. The box is all ready,’ Polly said. ‘Come on, pig,’ said Amy.
Millie and Imogen were shocked.
She disappeared with the pony into the stable and the lovely
Alex went up the ramp to fetch his horse. Millie and Imogen waited on tenterhooks to see what sort of animal the gorgeous man had chosen for himself.
‘What do you bet?’ Imogen whispered. ‘An Arab?’ ‘Yeah. An Arab.’
They were right. Down the ramp pranced a beautiful snowwhite mare with a perfect Arab head. She stood still and looked all round, just as Red Sky had done, as if waiting to be photographed. She was quite chunky for an Arab, fine but not at all feeble-looking. Even more desirable than the Welsh cob.
Millie and Imogen felt that the rating of Knoll Farm Livery Stable had suddenly been elevated to the top rank with the new intake, and sensed that crawling away into the undergrowth with their poor little ponies would be the decent thing to do. But bravely they emerged from the barn and Polly made introductions.
‘Your mare is heavenly,’ Imogen said to Alex,‘What’s her name?’ ‘Sultan.’
‘You can’t call a mare Sultan! She should be Sultana.’ ‘Sultana? As, like, Stoneless Raisin or Glacé Cherry? She’s Sultan.’ Alex was grinning. Imogen didn’t quite know how to take
him, only aware that she was stricken with love at first sight. The man, not the horse.
‘Have you got ponies here?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And what are their names?’
‘Manky and Wonky.’
‘Imogen!’ Millie protested, shocked. ‘They’re Bluebell and Barney.’
‘They just look manky and wonky.’
‘Looks aren’t everything,’ Alex said kindly, obviously not believing a word he was saying.
He disappeared into the stable with his mare and Polly followed and the two girls retreated into their barn where Bluebell and Barney stood happily scratching each other’s withers, unaware that they were now found seriously wanting.
Millie said, ‘But we don’t want to win any prizes, only ride about. You didn’t have to say they were called Manky and Wonky.’
‘I’d like to show them, all the same. That they’re as good as they are, even if their heads are too big and feet are too small and all that rubbish.’
The trouble was, Millie thought with a sinking heart, that Imogen was by nature very competitive. Now the competition had arrived, she was finding Barney wanting. She hadn’t noticed before, when no other horses had been around. Even with Bluebell arriving – well, Bluebell was no competition. But now …
‘Well, I don’t want to change anything. A week or two back I didn’t have a pony at all, so I’m not complaining. And if you want to compete, you know your parents will buy you a better pony – you’ve only to ask.’
‘I don’t want another pony. I want to do it with Barney.’
‘Do what?’
‘Beat them.’
Millie thought Imogen was being uncharacteristically idiotic.
She was about to make another acerbic remark when Amy Grimm appeared in the doorway.
‘Am I interrupting?’
‘Yes,’ said Imogen.
‘I’m used to nobody wanting me. Doesn’t bother me. Are these your ponies?’
‘Yes.’
Amy came forward, not caring about her welcome, and leaned over the bar to look at Barney and Bluebell. They both stopped scratching each other and turned round and stepped towards her. Bluebell’s nostrils fluttered a welcome. Millie had a sudden peculiar feeling that the girl possessed a natural rapport with the animals, the magic of the so-called horse-whisperer. But it couldn’t be true, if she hated her own pony. She felt confused.
She said, ‘Yours is a beauty. Your chestnut.’
‘He’s boring. I hate him,’ said the girl. ‘Boring, boring, boring.’
‘Stodgy, you mean?’
‘No. Just does everything perfectly. Wins everything. Everyone hates me because I win everything. A stuffed sack could sit on him and he’d do a clear round. So what’s to like?’
Even Imogen couldn’t think of an answer. It sounded heaven. She decided to change the subject, go on the attack.
‘Polly said you were asked to leave the other place. Why was that?’
‘Oh, I rode a few of the other horses sometimes. They didn’t like it.’
‘Without permission, you mean?’
‘Yes. Quite often there was no one around. I tried them all, took them out, went for a gallop. It was great. And they loved it too, stuck all the week in their boxes. Too much food and no exercise. They galloped like crazy. I went at night-time quite often so no one would see me. But they found out in the end.’
Millie and Imogen were speechless with amazement. No wonder she got thrown out! She wasn’t as horrid as they had been expecting: they were both full of admiration for her nerve. While they were still goggling, Jake and Harry arrived to work on the machine they were building in their corner of the barn. It was a sort of boat with wheels, amphibious, very ambitious and unlikely, in the girls’ opinion, ever to work. After football it was Harry’s great passion; he was the creator and Jake the scientific partner, trying to be optimistic. It took his mind off the frustration of not being able to dig for his treasure. He prayed every night for Miss Brocklebank to die but she remained as fit as a fiddle, gardening from dawn to dusk. Millie said it would rebound on him, praying for someone to die, and it would be he himself who would be stricken with a fatal disease, so he had changed his prayer to suggesting her house would fall to bits and she would have to move and take her gardening elsewhere. Millie thought this a far more likely occurrence. Polly had obviously given up on trying to make the old girl improve her cottage and was resigned to staying in her flat in Under Standing.
‘Who’s she?’ said Jake rudely, noticing Amy. He was neurotic about not letting anyone else know about his find and thought four of them knowing was already three too many. Another one in their barn was obviously very dangerous.
‘She’s Amy,’ said Imogen. ‘She’s got a pony here so she’s going to be around. That’s Jake,’ she introduced, ‘Millie’s brother. This is Millie, that is Harry, Jake’s friend. And I’m Imogen.’
They all stared at each other and the boys said ‘Hi’ suspiciously.
‘They do their own thing,’ Imogen added. ‘They don’t bother with us.’
As if to prove this fact the boys moved over to their side of the barn and started discussing whether it would be possible to use an old tractor engine to propel it or whether the engine would be too heavy once they got afloat and sink it.
Millie and Imogen were stuck with Amy, which seemed to be the start of a new adventure.
Chapter 7
Polly Power, having been refused planning permission for her arena, went ahead and built it anyway. She said no one could see it from the road as the traffic was so heavy a driver couldn’t afford to glance sideways for even a minute.
She and Joe practised their dressage every evening but when they entered for the competition in the autumn they were beaten into second place by the duo from the Equestrian Centre. Polly was furious.
‘The judges must be blind! Emma’s horse wasn’t even sound. And she had it in rollkur for ages beforehand, which is banned.’ ‘What’s rollkur?’ asked Millie.
Imogen said, ‘You rein its head in so hard it can only see its
back feet.’
‘You’re joking!’
Millie was worried that Imogen was still determined that Bluebell
and Barney were going to compete in the big show next summer. ‘That gives us masses of time to train them,’
‘Train them to do what?’
‘Something entertaining. It doesn’t have to be strictly dressage, although that’s what everyone does, but if you read the rules it says ‘a competition to entertain the crowd by an exhibition of advanced riding’.’
‘There’s nothing very advanced about our riding.’ ‘No, well, we haven’t advanced yet. We’re going to start. We’re at the beginning of advancing.’
‘If I had the right horse,’ said Amy, ‘I would give them a spec
tacular display of advanced riding – jump into the crowd, jump
out again, ten times round the arena at flat gallop, jump over the
judges’ table, through the tea-tent – it’d be great. Perhaps we
could work together on something.’
‘And get Alex in. He could think up something. After all, he’s
an actor.’
Alex had shown his mare in hand, which entailed dressing in
a shirt, tight waistcoat, a pair of pale trousers and a bowler hat and running very fast beside his gorgeous mare as she floated across the ring at an extended trot. The rapturous applause from the spectators was as much for Alex as for the mare, it was quite
clear, and both Millie and Imogen were deeply impressed. Amy was scornful. ‘He loves dressing up. He only keeps
Sultan to show off.’
Alex himself agreed. ‘But, of course, I love it! I’m sure I’m a
prettier sight than the fat ladies in tight jodhpurs wheezing up
and down. If you find a part for me in your whatever-it-is you
are going to do I will be only too pleased to participate.
Something heroic, of course, nothing silly.’
‘So you can show off,’ said Amy.
‘Exactly. In a nutshell.’
‘Well, I can’t be heroic on my stodge of a pony,’ said Amy.
‘What can I do?’
‘Sell it,’ said Imogen. ‘Swap it for something wild. The sort
you like.’
Amy looked stunned, silenced.
Afterwards Millie said to Imogen, ‘You shouldn’t have said
that. She might.’
‘I was only joking. She asked, after all.’
‘We’re supposed to be a good influence on her, not encourage
her to do crazy things.’
They had been out riding together several times with Amy
and both had been impressed with her ease in the saddle. She
was a far better rider than either of them. Her pony was extremely
well schooled, but the girls thought perhaps that if Amy rode
either of their ponies, the ponies too might come together and
look quite different, as if they knew what they were doing.
Sometimes they watched Polly and Joe riding in the arena and
they decided that Amy was a better rider even than Polly. Polly
let her ride Red Sky one evening and the mare looked fantastic
in her hands and did all the clever stuff just as well with Amy as
she did with Polly.
Polly said to her, ‘You’re a natural. Why don’t you let me give
you lessons?’
‘I don’t need them.’
‘That’s the wrong attitude. If you’re good without lessons,
think how much better you could be if you worked at it under
instruction.’
‘Why?’
‘Why anything, Amy? Why? Why do we bother? It’s hard work
and I often ask myself why I do it. And then I think, when it comes
right after I’ve put all the hard work in, how rewarding it is, how
fantastic when something really difficult comes off perfectly. And
there’s no why about it. It is just wonderful, the reward.’ The girls weren’t used to Polly waxing lyrical and stood gaping at her. She was always so brisk and carping they mostly kept
out of her way. She certainly had a work ethic; they had learned
that her day job was running a fashion boutique in the county
town. That was a full-time job and the horses were another so it
was no wonder she was generally cross. Just like my father,
thought Millie sadly, used to cross people around her. He had
been harassing his MP about getting lights put in to stop the
traffic at the bottom of their drive so that he could get his tractor
and trailer across, but to little avail, and was now talking about
selling up altogether and finding a new farm. Jake and Millie felt
the cloud of uncertainty hanging heavily, and Jake was getting
more and more neurotic about his treasure. Millie could not
imagine life without Imogen and their life in the barn, messing
about with the ponies and mocking the boys’ lunatic efforts to
make their amphibious car. Having Bluebell gave the messing
about more purpose and she loved the hours she spent grooming
him and schooling in Polly’s arena with Imogen when the others
weren’t there. The dressage lark was quite catching and they
schooled according to the instructions of Mr Henry Wynmalen in
Imogen’s dog-eared book – free! as Imogen pointed out. It was
mostly riding according to Mr Wynmalen’s diagrams: in circles, changing directions, stopping and starting and standing still. After a bit they went off for a ride, over the ford and up the hill into the woods. When they invited Amy to come with them she said, ‘Boring! Boring!’ and they were relieved. Her scornful presence
was always discomforting.
‘She’s a pain. I wish she wasn’t around,’ Imogen said. They stood in the ford on the way home, letting the ponies
drink, swatting off the midges that swarmed in the late evening
sunshine. This boring thing was what they liked best, watching
the swirl of the current round the ponies’ legs, smelling pony
sweat and mown grass, the scent of meadowsweet, sniffing the
first dank breath of evening on the water. The river was full, even
after a hot summer, and Polly’s precious arena, wedged between
the water and the back wall of the stable, looked highly vulnerable
to the two girls who had seen the river in spate in the winter. ‘She’s crazy putting it there. All the surface will wash away if
it floods.’
The back of Miss Brocklebank’s cottage overlooked the river. It
had a bed of nettles on the bank, growing up to her back door that
was never opened. It looked even worse from the back than it did
from the front, the windows darkly curtained, the roof sagging, a
jackdaw’s nest crowning the precarious chimney. At least the front
had the glorious garden to distract the eye from the cottage’s lamentable state.
‘Jake willing her to die makes me feel bad,’ said Millie. ‘She’s the sort that doesn’t, for ages.’
‘No. But the thought of that stuff … maybe it’s nothing, but
