Summer at World's End (3 page)

At the end of the neck, she had a broad heavy head with a Roman nose like a moose. On the end of her solid legs she had huge flat feet that splayed mud out sideways. Mr Mismo said that she had been the greatest hunter across country of her day. He was very fond of her. Her name was Princess Margaret Rose, because he was very fond of the royal family too.

Carrie rode behind him down a long track through a wood. He and his horse were both the same shape from the back. He cantered, splashing up mud and wet leaves. Squirrels scuttled up trees, rooks shouted the alarm from the treetops, and blue jays went into a frenzy of scolding.

Carrie rode on a loose rein, with a poem running in her head to the rhythm of John’s canter.

Death
-
light of Spain
-
hurrah
!
Love
-
light
-
of Af-rica
!
Don
-
John
-
of Aus-tria
Is ri-ding to
-
the sea
.

Don John of Austria had been John’s official name when she took him to a show, ‘Number fifty-two - Caroline
Fielding riding Don John of Austria!’ The brush, the rails, the gate, the wall - she would never forget it.

She cantered half in a dream. The back of John’s ears rose and fell, his mane flopped to the rhythm.

He shakes - the pea-cock gar - dens as heri-ses- from -his ease
.

And - he strides - a - mong the tree - tops -

Mr Mismo stopped suddenly, elbows out and up. John ran into Princess Margaret’s tail, and Mr Mismo gave Carrie a short lecture on keeping her distance.

‘You crowd like that at a show,’ he said, ‘and they’ll put you out of the ring.’

Carrie handed him up his hat, which had fallen off when he stopped, and got back on John. ‘I’m not going to any more shows.’

At the show they had been to, where John was Don John of Austria, people had laughed, because he didn’t look like the other grand expensive horses. They stopped laughing when he jumped - the brush, the rails, the gate, the wall - all the huge jumps. He would have had a clear round if Carrie had not lost her head and her balance at the last jump and fallen off and wrecked everything, including the triple bar.

‘Broke three bars in one go,’ Mr Mismo chuckled. ‘They’ll be glad not to
see you
again, old dear.’

‘It’s not that. John’s had a hard life. He was almost dead when I found him.’ She looked sideways at Mr Mismo as they came out of the wood and trotted down a cart track. She still did not know how much he knew, or guessed, about the kidnapping of John. ‘It’s not fair to ask him to jump those awful jumps just because I want to win.’

‘You credit a horse with too much feeling,’ Mr Mismo said, slapping Princess on her broad oatmeal rump. ‘Always have.’

‘If a horse is turned out in a field where there are jumps,’ Carrie said, ‘have you ever seen him jump them on his own?’

‘Too stupid.’

‘Too clever.’

‘Well, I hope they’re cleverer than we are,’ Mr Mismo said. They had jogged twice round the edge of a large ploughed field without finding a way out. The only gate was padlocked. They could not even find the place where they came in, plunging through a thicket, Princess breaking through like a tank.

Because Mr Mismo did not want to say he had come the wrong way, he had to find a way out. They jogged round the field again until they found the easiest place, a gap in the hedge, with a hurdle across.

‘Think you and that five-legged nag can lep that?’ he asked.

Mr Mismo had given Carrie plenty of jumping advice, but she had never seen him jump. If they met a fallen log in the woods, Princess trotted over it, lifting her large feet high, as if she were trotting in the sea. If there was a proper jump across the track, Mr Mismo would say, ‘Ladies first’, and pull behind, so that Carrie wouldn’t see him ride round the jump.

If Princess Margaret had really been the finest crosscountry horse of her day, the gap in the hedge would be nothing to her, but she and John, having put their noses to the hurdle, had now put their noses together to discuss whether it was all right for Mr Mismo.

‘They’re talking about us,’ Carrie said. ‘They’re talking about the way we ride.’

‘Oh stow it, chump.’ Mr Mismo was nervous about the jump. ‘Horses don’t talk about us.’ He never liked it when Carrie said they did, although it was often obvious, after
a ride, that John and Princess Margaret Rose were swapping notes.

‘Who’s going first?’

‘I’ll show you the way,’ said Mr Mismo gallantly. Red in the face, his hat tipped forward and his arms working like pistons, he wheeled Princess round, gave her a whack with his whip, and charged through the plough at the low hurdle, growling as if it were a dangerous enemy.

‘Hup!’ he grunted, a moment after Margaret Rose had already taken off. She went hup and over. Mr Mismo leaned far back in the saddle. One hand flew up off the reins as if he were calling a cab. His hat fell off. Princess landed on the edge of a blind ditch, stumbled, recovered with a heave like an elephant coming out of a mud bath, and trotted quietly off across the next field with her stirrups swinging and her reins in loops. Mr Mismo was sitting in the ditch with his grey hair on end and his crimson cheeks blown out.

‘Always hang on to your reins, old chump,’ he had told Carrie every time she fell off. ‘Break a leg, break your neck, whatever you want, but always hang on to your reins.’

‘Are you all right?’ she called across the hedge.

‘Go after my horse!’ he shouted in answer.

He scrambled out of the way. Carrie gave John three strides and he jumped the hurdle, stretched himself cleverly to land clear of the ditch, and cantered after Princess without breaking stride. Carrie looked back and saw Mr Mismo sitting on the ground with his enormous boots stuck out in front of him and his whip in his hand, beating the ground in rage.

When Margaret Rose heard John behind her, she broke into a canter. She put on speed as he increased his, dodging among bushes so that Carrie could not get alongside to grab the flying reins. With any luck, the mare would put her foot through them and have to stop, or fall down. She did put her great flat foot through them, clear through, and galloped on with the rein round her elbow.

If the field had been bigger, John would have caught her, but just as he was coming up on her left, she switched to the right, plunged into a wood and was gone among the trees, cracking dead branches, crashing through the undergrowth, tearing off her stirrups. With any luck, she’d get caught up, but the luck was all with Margaret Rose. Somehow she got through the wood, twisting and turning and boring her way through.

Torn at by brambles, ducking under low brandies, swerving round trees, John and Carrie followed her. When they came out on the other side, with half the wood in their mane and hair, the mare had clattered across a road and into a field of turnips. A man in the turnip field shook his fist and yelled at her, and shook his fist and yelled at Carrie, pounding after.

Princess went through someone’s back garden, dragging down a laundry line, jumped a garden seat, and clattered out on to a main road with a line of baby clothes trailing
from her saddle. The mother of the baby ran out of her house, flapping her apron and screaming. A car came to a screeching halt. When Carrie and John came through a gate on to the road, cars were stopped in both directions. Princess was standing in the middle of the road. A man had got out of his car, waving his arms and shouting. She shied away from him. A car hooted at her. She kicked a dent in its front wing.

Carrie jumped off and hooked John’s reins over the gate-post. ‘Never tie your horse up by the reins if you don’t want to walk home,’ chanted the remembered voice of Mr Mismo, far behind now and probably walking home himself.

‘Come on, Princess. Come here, old girl.’ Carrie held out her hand and whistled Mr Mismo’s whistle, the notes of a blackbird’s call. The mare stood still, pricked her ears as far forward as lop ears can prick, and started towards Carrie. Just before she was close enough to reach the reins, a helpful man got out of a car, banging the door like a shot gun. Princess jumped, spun round, squeezed between two cars and galloped away down the road with a drum-rattle of hoofs.

John and Carrie went after her on the grass verge, with everyone shouting advice at them, and the mother of the baby weeping with her apron over her face, because half a week’s laundry had gone with Princess Margaret Rose.

When Carrie at last caught up with her, it was strange country. She had never been on this road, never seen this square stucco house with the gravelled drive and the neat painted stable and pasture fence.

Princess had stopped on the brow of a hill with her head up, watching a horse in the pasture. Carrie came beside her and caught her reins easily, then got off, while the
two horses put their noses down to the grass as casually as if the whole chase had been an everyday game.

There was a girl with the horse. A good-looking girl with smooth hair, clean yellow riding breeches and glossy boots. She was holding the horse on a halter and chain. He looked nervous, backing away from her, but she stroked his neck and petted him until he stood still and dropped his head, then she suddenly pulled back her arm and hit him hard behind the ears with the end of the chain.

He reared and pulled away, but she hung on, wearing gloves, while he wheeled round her, his small ears laid back. It was the chestnut horse that Michael had found in the vegetable garden.

Carrie led John and Princess up to the white paddock fence. The girl had taken sugar out of her pocket, and was holding it out towards the chestnut horse, talking to him, coaxing him. Was she going to do the same thing again -pet him and make much of him, and then suddenly hit him?

‘Hi!’ Carrie was younger than the girl, but she couldn’t stand there and say nothing. ‘Don’t treat that horse like that, you’ll ruin him!’ she called across the field.

‘That’s the whole idea,’ said the girl. She let go of the chain, throwing it across the horse’s neck hard, so that he shied away in terror. She came towards Carrie. She had a swaggering way of walking, strutting in her shiny boots as if she owned the world, her face a mixture of pride and bad temper.

‘You
want
to ruin him?’ Carrie stared. Perhaps the girl was mad. She had put one hand into the pocket of her riding breeches. Perhaps she would whip out a gun and drill Carrie and John and Princess Margaret Rose right between the eyes.

The girl came up to the fence and looked at Carrie and
the two horses with great contempt. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ Her way of talking was just as conceited as her way of walking. ‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing. My friend’s horse got loose, and I had to catch her.’

‘Fell off and let go of the reins?’ the girl jeered. ‘Some
people
!’

‘I’m glad he did,’ Carrie said angrily, ‘because I followed here and saw what you were doing to your horse. I could report you to the R.S.P.C.A. Man, you know.’ The R.S.P.C.A. Man was another friend. When he didn’t know what to do with animals he rescued, be brought them to World’s End.

‘If you’re thinking of the R.S.P.C.A., think again, you stupid little twerp,’ mocked the girl. ‘Where’s your evidence?’

‘I’d tell them.’

‘You think they’d
take your
word?’

Carrie had met some pretty insulting girls in her life. This one took the prize. She must be the ‘very rude girl’ in Tom’s note.

‘Did you come and find your horse in our yard last week?’she asked.

‘Is that your place? I might have guessed you’d come from a dump like that. Someone in your village rang the police to say they’d seen Pretty Prancer go by. So my father and I were driving round there and saw him in your yard. Not very good taste on his part.’

‘Pretty Prancer? Is that his name?’

‘Any objection?’

‘It sounds too - too sort of fancy.’

‘Well, he’s not fancy any longer,’ the girl said. ‘My father is sending me away to some hell-hole of a school. He won’t keep Prancer for me while I’m gone, so I’m
going to make sure that he’s so mean that nobody will buy him.’

‘You can’t!’ The girl
was
mad. She stood there calmly saying these terrible things, as if she didn’t care what Carrie thought.

‘Can’t what?’

‘Can’t ruin a horse by - by - It’s - it’s —’ Carrie was too upset to get the words out. If only Lester were here. He would know what to say to this brute of a girl. But Lester did not go riding with Carrie, because she knew more about it. It was the only thing she could do better than him.

‘Calm down, brat,’ the girl said. She flicked her fingers at John’s brown nose (
Bite her, John
!) and stepped back. ‘It’s my father’s problem, not yours. I’m off to school tomorrow. He’s got to spend the next three months trying to sell an unsellable horse.’

‘He could sell him to me!’ Carrie hadn’t got any money.

‘The price,’ said the girl, turning away, ‘will be very high. He’s too tricky to be worth that now, but my father’s too mean to take less than he paid for him.’ As she walked off, she picked up a stone and threw it at the chestnut horse. She was not only mad, she was a devil.

By asking directions, Carrie got back on to a road she knew, and started for home. She rode John and led Princess, who pulled back sulkily, making John do all the work and almost dragging Carrie’s arm out of its socket.

Twilight was closing in when they saw ahead of them a broad, dejected figure, slogging along at the side of the road. When he heard the sound of hoofs behind him, he straightened his shoulders, cocked his hat and took his whip out of his boot, holding it smartly under his arm like an army officer’s cane.

Mr Mismo must have been glad and relieved to see
Carrie, but all he said was, ‘If you’re leading on the off side, you should be on the other side of the road.’

He couldn’t get on. Princess had pulled off stirrups and leathers when she plunged through the wood. He climbed on a low wall, but she kept moving away. He led her under a bank, but the soft bank crumbled under him and he could not get enough footing to push himself into the saddle. Carrie got off to give him a leg up. Puffing and panting as much as Mr Mismo, she finally got him on to the mare’s broad back.