Poor Badger (8 page)

‘There’s more wrong on their side than there is on the littl’un’s here. I saw that pony. Wicked neglect, that was.’

‘Well —’ Harry stood staring across the fields, at a loss now. ‘You’re quite right. But – all the same – I’m not having my child breaking the law.’

‘She done right, mate. But suit yerself.’

Sid shrugged again.

‘I got work to do,’ he said, and left them, walking away under the tunnel.

Harry and Ros stood in the cold air, looking after him. Ros was tingling with half-fear, half-excitement.

‘Oh, Dad!’

Ros could not express her feelings; she had the shivers. Harry put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a little hug.

‘Can I give Badger his carrots?’ She broke away and ran across the grass towards the wire fence that kept the animals off the caravan. She called Badger and he came out of the barn, head up, ears pricked, recognizing her voice. He came over to the fence and gave her his little knuckering noise of welcome, and she flung her arms round his neck.

‘Oh, you like it here, Badger, don’t you? I’ll never let them take you away, I promise!’

Her father watched her, his eyes full of anxiety. Even he could see that Badger was already showing his old spark, freed of his tether and fed for three days on good food. He was still a ragbag of staring ribs and dull, matted coat, but his expression was bright, his ears all optimism. The awful dejection, tail to wind and snow, was no longer apparent.

Harry could not bear the thought of breaking Ros’s heart.

He stood looking at his feet, at the patterns his gumboot soles made in the snow. In the caravan, four sleek greyhounds watched him out of the window. The crows wheeled against the sky.

‘What are you going to do, Dad?’ Ros asked anxiously as they walked home.

‘I’m thinking about it.’

They passed the farm turning and the riding school, and followed the slushy tractor tracks. Harry walked in silence.

When they got home, he turned to Ros and said, ‘We’ve got to go to the police, Ros. I’m sorry. As it stands, you’re a thief. I can’t just accept that my daughter is a thief. If everyone took what they wanted, how could we get on in this life? It’s a very basic law, not to take other people’s property. I believe in it, and you must too.’

‘But —’

‘I know you did it for Badger. All right. What Sid says is true – that you did a good thing rather than a bad thing. But you’re still a thief. It’s a right muddle, like a whole lot of things that happen. There’s no exact answer. So, as Sid seems to have a pretty sensible outlook on life, we’ll do what he suggests, go to the police and enquire if
Badger’s
disappearance has been reported. And go from there.’

‘Do you really think Mr Smith might not have reported it?’

‘I don’t know. Looking after the pony was obviously a great drag, as far as he was concerned. He might be glad to be rid of him. And there’s nothing in the local paper about a pony being stolen. So it could be . . .’

Harry got the car out when they got home, and told Ros to hop in. They drove to the police station. Ros had got the big shivers by now, and sat huddled down under her seatbelt, listening to her heart thumping with apprehension.

‘What are you going to say?’

‘Ask if a piebald pony has been reported missing.’

‘Not say where it is!’

‘No, just say we saw the tether lying, and wondered if it had got away. We’re worried about its safety.’

‘What if they say yes, and what do you know about it?’

‘I’ll prevaricate.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Make it up as I go along.’

He gave her a quick hug and got out of the
car
. She watched him disappear into the police station.

Oh, Badger! Ros sat trembling. It was the worst feeling she had ever had in her life, even worse than when she had attacked Dad Smith at the horse show.

It felt like hours.

Her father came out and straight across to the car.

‘What do you think? They’ve never heard of him. No word of a piebald pony stolen, nothing at all.’

‘You mean —?’

‘It means he never reported it. Which seems to me, he doesn’t care. He’s glad to be rid of him.’

‘Oh Dad!’

Ros didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Badger could stay in his lovely field with kind, sensible Sid and the cow and the donkey and the barnful of good hay! He would grow round and fat and shining again, and have strength to gallop and kick up his heels. He would never whinny in the night again, stranded on his tether without food and shelter.

‘Sid can keep him! He
wants
him – you can tell. He likes him, doesn’t he?’

‘I certainly got that impression.’

‘Can we go and tell him?’

‘We’ll go back this afternoon.’

Ros sat in the car feeling as if all her senses were zinging. Her head reeled. Her father was laughing – he was as relieved as she was. When they got home they told the story to Dora Palfrey, and then Leo came round, hot-cheeked and said, ‘Guess what?’

‘What?’

‘I came home from Safeway’s this morning and I met Albert – you know, with the dog – and he said he saw Mr Smith come with some rotten old hay for Badger, and when he saw he’d gone he just collected up the chain and the tether pin and said to Albert, “Blooming good riddance!” and drove away!’

‘Well, that just about buttons it up,’ Harry said.

Ros told Leo about visiting Sid and the police station.

‘Sid wants him, and now he can have him. Can’t he, Dad? It’s all right?’

‘It sounds all right to me.’

‘It’s very all right,’ Leo said.

‘And we can visit him every day.’

After lunch they all went back to tell Sid what had happened. The snow was falling – it was going to be a white Christmas. But a
happy
white Christmas. Ros was bursting with happiness. She could never have enjoyed the snow if Badger had still been standing there abandoned beside the railway line. He came for her carrots, and pushed his soft lips at her pockets and Sid stood watching them, chewing his cigarette.

‘Ponies need work,’ he said. ‘I might get him a cart, and do some scrap-collecting. I did that once. There’s money in it, close to a town like this. He’s just the job for that. He’d like that. Now he’s mine like.’

‘Well, yes, we’d like you to keep him, now it seems all straight with the police.’

‘You might meet Mr Smith, when he’s in the cart,’ Ros said dubiously.

Sid grinned. ‘I know how to handle the likes of Mr Smith!’

‘I can come and see him?’

‘Every day, mate.’

The carrots were all gone and it was beginning to get dark. The headlights of the cars on the main road made distant weaving patterns through the leafless trees and the snow was growing crunchy underfoot. Ros went home with her father, thinking about Badger. She had had a dream of riding him one day . . .

‘I wish —’

‘I know, love.’

They turned out of Sid’s lane towards home.

‘He’s happy. That’s what matters. And pulling a cart is a good job for a pony – steady, slow work . . . horses thrive on that. You know the old canal horses, that pulled the barges, used to live till forty, it suited them so?’

What odd things her father did know.

‘Do you think it will suit Badger?’

‘Better than showjumping.’

Ros remembered the day at the show, and shivered.

Badger had got his Christmas and was going to stay lucky, she knew that now. And she had got very nearly everything she had ever wanted. No one ever got
everything
after all – how dull that would be. She gave a little skip in the snow, and her father laughed.

‘Happy Christmas!’

Happy Christmas after all.

About the Author

Kathleen M Peyton is a top-selling author of more than thirty novels, the best-known of which is FLAMBARDS which, with its sequels, was made into a TV serial. The winner of both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for her work, this is her seventh title for the Transworld children’s lists.

Also by K.M. Peyton

DARKLING

THE WILD BOY AND QUEEN MOON

THE BOY WHO WASN’T THERE

POOR BADGER
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 15714 3

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company

This ebook edition published 2012

Copyright © K. M. Peyton, 2012
Illustrations copyright © Mary Lonsdale, 2012

First Published in Great Britain

Corgi Childrens 2012

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