The House at World's End (9 page)

‘Give me time,’ she had said, during the weeks when she had still been afraid of losing the horse.

‘Let me go,’ Carrie said this week.

‘No, I’ll go. I’m not going to bother going after that job at the snack bar. I’m not going to bother looking for work any more. It’s hopeless.’ Tom was getting very depressed. He had started out believing he was God’s gift to all employers, and found out that no one wanted him.

‘Perhaps you’ll have more chance now that the summer’s ending,’ Carrie said.

‘You told me something like that when it was beginning.’

‘Oh well.’ If you loved someone, you would say anything to keep them happy. Tom knew that as well as she did.

‘Please let me go to see Mother.’

Tom was too depressed to argue. ‘All right. You’ll be better company than me.’

And I’ve got
news
for her! All the way in the bus, walking the two miles of road, mostly backwards with her thumb raised, although no cars stopped, Carrie rehearsed how she was going to tell her mother. Tell her the truth, but make her understand. Tell her, because she’d guess anyway, that they had stolen John, but make her see that there was no other way to save his life.

Why had she worried? She had hardly begun her story: ‘Well, you see, there is this man called Vile Bernie— ’ had hardly even begun to describe the pitiful state of John, tied to the piece of rusted iron, when tears rushed into her mother’s eyes.

She clutched Carrie’s hand and said, ‘Oh, couldn’t you have saved him?’

‘I did.’ Carrie told her how.

‘Why are you crying, Mrs Fielding?’ The Staff Nurse who never smiled bustled up, her starched apron crackling like bird shot. ‘Look, you’re making your poor little daughter cry too. For shame!’

The next thing was to start riding John.

The cracks in his feet were growing out, so Carrie walked him three miles to the forge, where a boy called Dick, with long hair and a transistor radio, was learning to be a blacksmith. He was, of course, a friend of Lester’s - Lester knew all the right people - and he had agreed to shoe John for nothing.

‘Have us all in the poorhouse.’ The old blacksmith, who did not do much these days except complain about the kind of music that came out of the radio, came out of his cottage next to the forge to see what Dick was doing. Tutting on free shoes for all these dratted kids.’

‘’S an interesting case,’ Dick said, bending face down with his long hair hanging over John’s hind foot in the lap of his leather apron. ‘Feet in a bad way. Good experience for me.’

‘What say?’ Dick had spoken through a mouthful of nails, and the transistor at full blast.

‘Good experience for him,’ Carrie shouted in the old man’s ear. ‘Like barbers learning by giving free haircuts.’

‘Stuff! The only experience that long-haired fool needs is a kick in the backside from a Suffolk Punch.’ The old blacksmith hobbled back indoors, bent and lamed from years of that kind of ‘experience’.

Dick did a good job. When it was done, he gave Carrie a leg up and she rode home, John’s shoes clopping pleasantly on the road, the view over the hedges from this new height like seeing a whole new land. People rushed by her in cars like boxes, staring ahead, too low to see anything, even if they bothered to look. Carrie felt very sorry for them.

She had no saddle or bridle, so at first she rode John bareback, in a halter with a dog leash clipped to either side for reins.

He behaved quite well, though it seemed he was more used to being driven, since he answered her voice better than her legs and would rather trot than canter, but his backbone was like riding on top of a fence.

Carrie tried putting a cushion between her and his back, but it always slipped out.

‘If you were gripping properly,’ said Em, who was watching from an upstairs window while Carrie made circles in the one flat corner of the meadow, ‘it wouldn’t fall out’

‘You come and try then.’ Carrie got off and led John towards the house, bow-legged because she was sore and stiff.

‘Not till you get a saddle.’ Em could ride, but she was one of those who could take it or leave it, impossible for a horse fool like Carrie to understand.

‘Saddles cost money.’ It was all they could do to pay for John’s feed.

‘You’ve got almost ten pounds saved.’ How did she know? The teddy bear was under a loose board in Carrie’s bedroom.

That’s for a horse.’

‘You’ve got a horse.’

‘I mean, the one I’ll buy.’ Ever since she could remember, she had been saving for her dream horse. Her dark grey Arab, her shining black thoroughbred, her bright bay with two white socks… The perfect horse. The horse to end all horses.

John butted her in the back like a goat. Aren’t I it?

‘Of course.’ She stroked his neck, then turned back to look up at Em again. ‘I wish I could make some money.’

‘I know a lady who wants a baby sitter,’ Em said. She quite liked small children, and had taken care of some of them in the village and houses round about while the mothers went to town or out to dinner.

‘Why don’t you go?’

‘I have once, but I’ll let you have the next job, since you need the money more than me.’

‘That’s awfully nice of you, Emmie.’ Carrie tried not to sound surprised, but it was surprising when she and Em were unselfish with each other.

‘Oh, I’m like that. It’s my nature.’ Em took in her head and shut the window.

When Carrie clanked Old Red up the long avenue to the house where Mrs Potter had three small children for her to take care of, she soon found out why Em had been so nice.

Mrs Potter breezed off in her car after giving Carrie only a few vague instructions, the chief of which was, ‘Let them do more or less what they like. I don’t believe in restricting children.’

What they like! What the three Potter brats like was sliding down the front stairs on tin trays, throwing stones at the greenhouse, swinging the cat by the tail, chucking food at the pictures on the dining-room walls, and finally locking Carrie in a garden shed.

She got out by climbing on a heap of coal and wriggling through a tiny window. Filthy and dishevelled, her hands and skirt black with coal dust, she was chasing the Potter children round a flower bed, when Mrs Potter drove up the avenue.

Carrie had just caught the youngest. It bit her and she took a swipe at it, missing, because she was blind with rage.

‘She hit me!’ The child broke away and ran across the flower bed, trampling petunias and zinnias, and hurled itself at its mother, clawing at her dress.

‘I dare say you asked for it.’ That was one thing about Mrs Potter. She was not strict, but not sentimental either.

‘Dear me,’ she said, as she saw the wreck of the front hall, where the trays had pushed up rugs and scratched the floor and toppled over a bust of Julius Caesar. ‘They seem to have had a lot of fun.’

‘We hate her.’ The middle child made a face like a toad.

‘I dare say she hates you too,’ Mrs Potter said amiably. ‘I don’t suppose she’ll come again.’

‘Hooray,’ said the eldest child.

‘But I
must
go to London tomorrow. Would you come, Carrie dear? I’ll give you extra money if they actually hurt you.’

Carrie showed her tooth-bruised hand.

‘Draw blood, I mean. Please, dear.’

Carrie wanted to say, ‘Get someone else to do your dirty work,’ but while she was locked in the garden shed, she had seen something. In the far corner, covered with dust and cobwebs, there was a saddle, obviously not used for ages, but it was a good make and the right size.

‘You see, I can’t get your sister Esmeralda,’ Mrs Potter was saying. Em used her full name when she went on
jobs, to sound more dignified. ‘Little Jocelyn pushed her into the fish pond, and she wasn’t very sporting about it, was she, my darling?’

‘Esmeralda stinks,’ said little Jocelyn.

‘So please help me, Carrie. I can’t miss my appointment.’

‘Well, I might— ’ Carrie began, and the middle child said, ‘Don’t bother.’

‘I might come tomorrow, but if I didn’t take the money, would you—’

‘Give it to
me!’
yelled the eldest child. ‘I’ll baby sit for Carrie. Whack! Whack!’ She thumped the dog who was asleep in the sun. ‘You bad Carrie baby, you nasty brat.’

‘Would you let me have that old saddle that’s in the shed?’

‘That old rubbish? My dear, I’ll be glad if you take it away. I mean,’ added Mrs Potter quickly, as Carrie started for the shed, ‘if you’ll come tomorrow.’

It was worth it. The children gave her such a bad time the next day that Mrs Potter gave her not only the saddle, but an old snaffle bridle that was hanging on a nail.

One of the Potters had stuck a pin in the rear tyre of Old Red, so Carrie wheeled him home with the saddle on the handlebars.

She spent her toothpaste money on a bar of glycerine soap and cleaned the saddle and bridle, leaving them in the kitchen afterwards, as she had always wanted to do. She had always wanted a kitchen where there was a saddle on the back of a chair and at least one bridle on the knob of a cupboard door.

She began to ride John all over the countryside, exploring, getting lost, coming back sometimes after dark, with a luminous glow round the edges of John’s home-going
ears and Charlie trotting right behind his heels like a coach dog. She taught John things and he taught her. She finally learned how to make him forget his fast cart trot and slip straight into a rolling canter.

‘Looks as if he’d got five legs,’ Mr Mismo grumbled, but when Carrie got used to him, he was the most comfortable horse she had ever ridden, because he was hers.

‘Use your outside leg!’ Mr Mismo was standing in the field like a riding master, while Carrie made circles round him.

‘I’m training him to my voice.’ She pulled back to a jog. ‘When I say, “Canter!” he canters.’ John cantered.

‘I knew a girl did that,’ said Mr Mismo, who always knew someone who had done everything. ‘And when she was showing at the International, her worst enemy sat by the edge of the ring and said, “Canter” when it was supposed to be Trot. Laugh!’ He slapped his knees.

‘Look how he can jump.’ Carrie hopped John over the two fallen tree trunks by the hedge. Henry and Lucy the goat, who always schooled themselves while she was schooling John, leaped over the trees behind her.

‘Look here.’ When she came back to Mr Mismo, his face was serious. ‘I’m not sure you’ve not got a natural jumper there, old dear. He uses his back amazing. See this length from croup to hock?’ He ran a hand down the back end of John. ‘Yes … yes … I’ve seen some ugly customers like this that could jump like deer. It’s not the looks, see, nor yet the power. It’s the way they use it.’

Carrie did not mind him calling John an ugly customer. She was not surprised that he might turn out to be a jumper. John could do anything.

That night, she decided to do the third thing that she had waited for. She decided that John was fit enough to
run with her and Penny-Come-Quick up into the sky where the bygone horses grazed on the Elysian star.

She rode Penny, and John galloped beside them with his neck stretched out and his growing mane and tail flying in the night. It was like a flight. The beat of the hooves on the firmament was like the thrust of wings. Carrie clung to Penny’s white mane and the cool night air streamed into her smiling face. She would never get old enough to give up this dream!

On the star, John was introduced to several interesting horses. They met a roan mare who had pulled a covered wagon in the California Gold Rush, and a big Cleveland Bay who had carried his master against the guns in the First World War, and a chariot horse and Queen Victoria’s Highland pony, and the black stallion Bucephalus.

John was asked to tell his story, so Carrie made one up for him, with all the different homes and jobs she thought he might have had, and all the hard times through which he had worked so bravely, to come at last to Black Bernie and Bottle Dump.

‘I thought I was doomed. When they bundled me into that pig van, I knew where I was going.’ The other horses nodded. All animals know when they are near the end. ‘And then,’ he told them, ‘I was rescued from the very jaws of death itself.’

Carrie twisted her fingers in Penny’s mane, looking modestly down, as John told them the story of the Great Rescue.

‘Very interesting,’ said Bucephalus, almost before he had finished, ‘but wait till you hear what happened to
me’
He had repeated the story dozens of times, but John was a new ear to listen, so he was able to tell once more the stirring tale of the Battle of Cheironeia.

‘My rider, Alexander’ (he never called him Master), ‘still only a boy of eighteen, was in command of all the cavalry. We thundered down from the hill. I can hear the drumbeat of the hooves now. I can see the flash of that sword blade in the morning sun, striking at Alexander. I reared up and trampled the enemy down, but another was upon us from the side. The cold steel of his spear was actually into my neck - see, here’s the scar.’ He turned his proud black head to one side. ‘But Alexander struck him down. We saved each other’s lives that day. Yes, my friends,’ like all conceited tellers of tales, he often repeated himself. ‘We saved each other’s lives.’

Pip’s kittens were almost due to be born. The delicate little marmalade cat with the bull’s eye striped whiskers had a heavy weight to carry about, like a woman with an overloaded shopping bag.

She began to look for nests. They found her under beds, on a pile of yellowing newspapers in the old bread oven beside the fireplace, on sacks behind the feed bin, and finally in the loft of the barn, where she had hollowed out a place and covered herself with hay, like a sleeping guinea pig.

When Carrie found her there, the little cat was in great distress. She was crying with a long-drawn-out yowl, her green eyes staring, her mouth drawn back as she panted in a way that would be natural for a dog, but looked frightening in a cat.

Something was wrong. Carrie had seen kittens born. When they lived in the old Army hut, and before that in the red brick house with the boat in the kitchen, even stray cats dropped in to have their babies, since Carrie’s mother had a natural attraction for new life.