Poor Badger (3 page)

He trailed after her in his baggy shorts and baby Disney-decorated T-shirt, and Ros tried to be nice to him. She had lots of good friends at school but none of them were potty on horses, like her, and all had refused to come to the horse show. At least Leo, for all he was so pathetic, seemed to understand about Badger. He brought him carrots too, and once a whole box of muesli he stole out of the pantry.

Ros bought a programme. She saw Fi, dressed very smartly in a black jacket and boots, and wearing the number 137. Ros looked her up in the programme.

‘Cor!’ she said, finding it. ‘Do you know what Badger’s name is?’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Mountfitchet Meteor Light!’

Leo looked puzzled. ‘Is that a name?’

‘That’s what it says.’

‘It sounds like a firework.’

‘Fi’s is Fiona Smith.’

It was a hot day and people were sitting round the jumping ring on bales of straw. The jumps looked enormous, but little ponies seemed to be whizzing over them without any trouble. Ros could see Badger in the collecting-ring, prancing about in a very spirited manner. Fi was holding
him
hard with her vicelike hands, and Dad Smith was standing there in his shirt-sleeves grinning and geeing them up. There was a practice jump which Fi did several times, and Badger was getting more and more excited.

When he came into the ring, Fi had to wait a bit for some jumps to be put up again after the previous pony. While she was waiting, Ros heard a woman behind her say to her friend, ‘Good Lord, that’s dear old Meteor Light! I’d never have recognized him! Who on earth’s got him now?’

‘Oh, some very ignorant people bought him. Doesn’t he look poor? It was criminal not to make sure he went to a good home, after being such a brilliant winner for that family – all the rosettes they collected with him!’

‘They were asking a big price though.’

‘Yes, and these people paid it!’

‘But what have they done to him? He looks so poor.’

‘Probably the girl can’t manage him when he’s fit.’

At this point in the conversation, Fi got the hooter to start her round, and Badger leapt into action and bore down on the first jump. He was a brilliant jumper but Ros could see that Fi had
very
little control over him. He went much too fast, and after jumping the first three he went too fast round the corner at the end and Fi could not collect him up in time for the fourth. He went straight past it and raced towards the next. Fi had to haul him back and take him round in a circle.

The lady behind Ros said, in a stern voice, ‘What a horrid spectacle! That child’s no idea!’

Fi came up to the jump at such an angle that Badger could not see what to do and stopped dead. Fi shot over the jump on her own and landed in a heap.

Leo laughed. ‘Serves her right!’

‘Shut up, Leo!’ Ros felt as if she was sitting on pins. Poor Badger! He cantered round the ring and someone caught him and took him back to Fi. Fi got up looking murderous. She was legged back on. She gave Badger two tremendous whacks with her whip and Badger bucked. Fi managed to stay on. She turned him in another circle and presented him at the jump again, and this time Badger jumped so big that Fi bounced right out of the saddle and landed on his neck, her hands clutching feverishly at his ears. Badger put his head down, bucked again, and Fi landed on the ground once more.

‘Oh, really! What a farce!’ said the woman behind Ros. ‘The poor animal’s doing his best, but that idiot girl can’t ride!’

This time Badger dashed out of the ring and Dad Smith caught him in the collecting-ring. Fi got up and ran out of the ring. Dad Smith obviously wanted her to go back in and ‘get her money’s worth’ but Fi burst into tears and refused. Her father, looking very red and angry, grabbed her by the arm and marched her away from the interested spectators, trailing Badger behind.

Ros got up to go.

‘What are you doing?’ Leo asked, following.

‘I’m going to see what they do.

Leo came with her. Ros felt as if she was burning inside. She pushed through the crowd. Mr Smith led Badger back to where a large horsebox was parked in line with the others. It was quiet here, and there was no one about, only a few ponies tied up picking at their haynets. Mr Smith was in a terrible temper. He took Badger’s saddle off and threw it on the ground, then he lifted his hand and cuffed Badger about the ears. Badger pulled back, but Mr Smith jerked viciously at his mouth and said, ‘You want to be taught a lesson, you brute!’ He pulled Fi’s whip
out
of her hand and struck Badger cruelly across the face.

Ros, having followed closely behind, could not contain her rage.

‘STOP IT!’ she roared. ‘You beastly man!’

She launched herself at Mr Smith and flailed at his massive back with her fists.

He turned round in amazement and fury.

‘I’ll report you!’ Ros screamed at him. ‘I’ll tell the judge! You are cruel and beastly!’

‘Bloomin’ heck! Shut yer mouth, gel!’

Mr Smith looked round hastily and then lifted his hand menacingly to Ros. ‘You clear off, you little interfering madam, before I clock you one round the chops!’

‘It’s that stary cat, Dad,’ Fi sniffed.

‘Oh, our little miss interfering snotty-nose, is it? Where’s yer mum and dad, gel? They ought to take care of you, instead of letting you loose in public! Where do you live, gel? Tell me that! What’s your name?’

He towered over Ros, suddenly very menacing. Ros was terrified. She burst into tears.

‘What’s your name?’

Ros sobbed it out.

‘Palfrey! That’s rich!’ Mr Smith laughed in a very unpleasant way. ‘Well, just take me to your mum and dad, Miss Palfrey, and I’ll have something to say to them.’

Ros shook with tears and fear. But at this moment a girl rode up to the next-door horsebox and dismounted. She didn’t take any notice of the fraught little group round Badger, but Mr Smith had to lower his voice.

‘You haven’t heard the last of this, my girl! Now run along, or I’ll fetch a policeman.’

‘It’s you that needs a policeman!’ Leo said, very bravely, and going very red in the face. But all the same, he was already retreating as he spoke. ‘Come along, Ros.’

They crept away along the line of horseboxes. Ros was sobbing with rage and hurt.

Leo said sadly, ‘Don’t cry, Ros. Badger’ll be all right. He won’t dare hit him again, with people there.’

‘Poor darling Badger, belonging to that horrible man! What can we do to help him?’

‘Well, we give him carrots.’ Leo decided to filch another box of muesli that very night. His mother kept a good stock. ‘We could steal him away.’

‘Where to?’

‘We could look for somewhere.’

‘Do you think we could?’

‘You can do anything if you try hard enough,’ Leo said, quoting a favourite saying of his father’s. He only repeated it; he didn’t think it was true.

It didn’t sound hopeful, even to Ros, thinking of the railway line and the arterial road, not to mention Safeway’s car park, all
hemming
Badger in. And besides, stealing was wicked. But not as wicked as Dad Smith.

The show was ruined for Ros, and she went home on the bus with Leo early. Her mother was surprised, and Ros told her what had happened, but she didn’t tell her about how she had shouted at Mr Smith. She pretended she had only watched.

When it was quite late she slipped out to see Badger. He was standing dejectedly on his tether, and shifted uneasily when he saw her, as if he didn’t trust anybody any more, even her. She hugged him and gave him her titbits. His water bucket was half-full. Probably Albert had filled it. The saddle marks were still on his back. No one had bothered to rub him down and make him comfortable. He had hardly anything to eat.

‘I do wish you were mine, Badger!’

Now that he had given Fi such a bad time in the show-ring, perhaps he would be sold. But he didn’t look half the pony he had looked a few months ago. Ros remembered the shining, bouncy animal she had first set eyes on, roaming round his chain and whinnying. Now he always stood in a head-down, dejected way. Who would
want
him now? He looked like a cheap pony now, and would quite likely go to another poor home. Or could anybody be as bad as Mr Smith?

No, she had reason to decide very soon afterwards. When she went indoors the telephone rang, and she answered it, hoping it was one of her school-friends. But it was Mr Smith. She recognized his coarse, angry voice straight away.

‘I want to speak to your father!’ he said.

Ros put the receiver back and cut him off. But it rang again shortly and her father came out and picked the receiver up.

Ros went upstairs to her bedroom and sat on her bed, shivering. The thought of Mr Smith and his cruel expression was unbearable.

As she knew would happen, her father came up to her bedroom after the phone call and said to her, ‘What’s all this then, about your attacking Mr Smith? Is it true?’

Ros explained, between her hiccuping tears.

Her father listened patiently, his face grave.

‘It was wrong of you, but I do understand. I think you ought to keep out of his way in future.’

‘But I must go and see Badger! He needs me!’

‘Look, Ros, you’ve got to accept that you can’t manage the world to suit yourself. You can’t interfere. Badger is not yours. He’s not well-treated, but he’s not actually knocked about. If he’s starving, as you say, he doesn’t look it. Poor, admitted, but not at death’s door. I am very much afraid, in spite of what you think, that the people whose job it is to investigate these things, the police or the RSPCA, would consider you were wasting their time if you told them about Badger. If you like, I will contact the RSPCA and tell them the situation. They might have a word with Mr Smith. But on the other hand, if they do, he might get fed up and send Badger to market, and who knows what might happen to him there?’

‘The meat man?’

Ros threw herself down on her bed and wept.

Her father tried to cheer her up, but to himself he had to admit that Ros had got herself into a pretty miserable situation.

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER THE HORSE
show Fi didn’t come to ride Badger any more. Sometimes the little brothers and sister came, and now Badger was so run down he didn’t buck them off. They trotted round and tried to make him go faster, but he hadn’t the spirit any more, because he hadn’t enough food. They drummed on his sides with their heels and he would lurch into a weary canter, and they would shout and hit him with a stick.

Ros had been sternly warned by her father to keep out of Mr Smith’s way. She was frightened of him, anyway.

But she lay on the top of the railway bank behind the fence and watched through the long grass. Badger was getting thinner and thinner with the treatment he received. Soon, Ros thought, the RSPCA would think he was worth bothering with. Her father had told them, and they had seen Mr Smith, they said, and the result was that Mr Smith filled the water bucket more often, and sometimes brought some hay, but only sometimes. It was bad hay, not worth eating. Badger picked at it, and Mr Smith said it showed he didn’t need it.