Authors: K M Peyton
Poor Badger
Contents
About the Book
‘THERE ARE VERY FEW BORN STORY-TELLERS. K.M. PEYTON IS ONE OF THEM’
The Times
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. She lives in Essex with her husband.
To Hannah
CHAPTER ONE
GOING HOME FROM
school, the path led out of Safeway’s car park and across a wide stretch of rough ground towards the railway. It was spring and the ground was greening happily, bright with dandelions and —
‘Hey, look!’
Ros stopped in her tracks and Leo, trailing, walked into the back of her.
‘What?’
‘
Look!
’ Her voice quivered with glory. ‘Look!’ It squeaked, out of control.
Leo looked. Usually the field was empty, except perhaps for an old man walking his dog, but today a pony was grazing in it, held by a chain fastened to a tether. It was, even Leo could see, a very spectacular pony. It was black and white, a circus pony, very round and strong-looking. When it saw them staring,
it
lifted its head and surveyed them with a bold look from beneath a long, thick forelock. It took several paces towards them, as far as its tether would allow, and let out a soft knuckering sound of friendliness. At least, it sounded like friendliness.
‘Isn’t he gorgeous!’
Ros stood rooted in admiration. She was potty about ponies, Leo knew, just as he was potty about frogs. But the pony was, indeed, gorgeous. Although standing still, he seemed to exude vitality. His eyes shone. His coat shone. His round hooves, planted squarely, gleamed as if they had been rubbed with polish. His black bits shone like coal and his white bits like silver.
Ros was enchanted. She was nine, a tough, amiable girl whom the shy Leo was glad to have as a friend (and protector). He was happy to go along where she led and, if she thought the pony amazing, so would he.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Let’s talk to him.’
Ros approached, holding out her hand.
‘I wish I had an apple or something.’
Leo kept well behind.
The pony made his knuckering noise again and reached out to Ros. She went up close and the pony pushed at her arm quite strongly, and wobbled his lips at her hand. But the chain stopped him, fastened to a collar round his neck. Ros stroked his nose, a bit nervously at first, then more confidently. Leo kept out of range. The grass all round the pony was trampled down, as if he had walked about a
lot
. The trampling made a perfect circle round the tether pin.
‘Isn’t he beautiful!’ Ros glowed with joy, as if he were hers. ‘Isn’t he marvellous? Where’s he come from? Whose is he?’
‘He wasn’t here this morning,’ Leo said, not very cleverly.
The pony shoved and rubbed at Ros, but didn’t bite. He was strong and pushy, but kind (like Ros, Leo thought. They were a good match).
‘He needs moving,’ Ros said. ‘He’s squashed all his grass.’
‘His owner will come and do it,’ Leo said.
‘Yes. I’m going to come back after tea and bring him an apple, and perhaps his owner will be here then. We can find out what his name is.’
‘What would you call him, if he was yours?’
They walked on home, considering this question.
‘You could call him Jigsaw. Or Jester.’
Leo thought of his nature book, and the picture of a black face with a white stripe, like the pony’s.
‘I would call him Badger.’
Ros wished she’d thought of this.
‘Yes, that suits him.’
‘Shall we call him Badger then?’ Leo asked, pleased.
‘Yes. We’ll call him Badger.’ Ros was a bit cross because she hadn’t thought of it herself. But it was too good to turn down.
‘Are you coming back later?’
‘No, I’ve got a music lesson.’
‘Ugh!’ Ros made a disgusted but sympathetic noise. Leo was forced by his parents to do uplifting things, more than she was.
They crossed the railway by the footbridge. It had high metal fences on either side at the top so you couldn’t lean over and drop things on the trains. At the far side they had to cross a busy dual-carriageway road that ran alongside the railway. They had been well-trained to walk down to the automatic crossing, press the button and wait until the light turned green for them, and stopped the cars.
They had been doing the journey on their own for two years, since they were seven. Their mothers had taken a lot of trouble to train them to be very careful about the railway and the dual-carriageway, but once across those, they needn’t bother any more, because they only had to cross another field, with cows in, and go into their back gardens by gates their fathers had built in the fence. They lived three houses apart, their
houses
being in a higgledy-piggledy row of six old cottages, once lived in by railway workers and farm labourers. Now the cottages had been made rather smart, and had had garages built in their gardens.
‘What time are you going to see Badger?’ Leo asked, trying out the new name. He stood with his hand on his garden gate.
‘Six o’clock.’
‘That’s the time I have my lesson.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Ros, not unkindly.
But she wasn’t sorry she would be going on her own. Leo didn’t feel the same as she did about Badger, she knew that. To her, Badger was a fantastic bonus in her unexciting life: she had him to look forward to every day, with any luck, and she could get to know him, and he her, and feed him apples and be his friend. She couldn’t have riding lessons because her parents said they couldn’t afford it. Ros didn’t whine or argue because, with her parents, it never made any difference. Instead, she had imaginary ponies, written down in a book, with names, and she collected pictures of racehorses for her own imaginary string. She went to horse shows, and pretended all the winners were hers, really – she just let other people ride them. She pretended it
all
. It was hard work. But now, suddenly, there was real Badger.
Perhaps whoever owned him wanted a rider for him . . . perhaps a kind old man had bought him who was looking for a little girl to exercise him . . . Ros’s imagination started work again. She saw herself, crash hat over eyes, galloping over the fields on Badger. She had never actually sat on a pony, but in her imagination she could ride like the blonde and smiling British heroines of the Olympic games.
‘Hey, Mum, what do you think?’
She crashed into the kitchen and poured it all out.
‘How do you know it’s called Badger?’ her mother asked.
‘I – we – called it Badger!’
‘Oh. Very nice.’
Her mother was a strict but homely woman called Dora, once a farmer’s daughter. She worked now as a part-time secretary at the local secondary school, and was usually home well before Ros. She regretted not being able to afford a pony for Ros, but she liked animals, and they had two cats, a dog called Erm, some rabbits, and Leo’s wretched frogs in the garden pond. Leo’s mother, Mrs Cross (she was rather
suitably
named), had refused to let Leo dig a pond in his garden, so he had dug one in theirs instead. Ros’s father Harry had helped him line it with a plastic sheet and fill the bottom with earth and gravel and plant it with frog-cover: water-lilies and reeds from the garden centre. From frogspawn there had been tadpoles, and now frogs . . . it had all been a great success. Leo spent hours in their garden. The cats, having caught a few small frogs at first, now ignored them. They didn’t like the taste. Harry had to be very careful when he mowed the lawn. Leo went ahead of him, anxiously looking.
‘I’m going to take him an apple after tea.’
‘Take a carrot. Apples cost too much.’
Her mother found her two large ones, and cut them up and put them in a bag. She showed her how to offer food to ponies, with the palm held uppermost, the titbit lying in the middle.
‘He doesn’t bite. He’s very friendly.’ Ros knew about palm uppermost anyway. Grownups were always telling you things you already knew.
‘Your father’s going to be late. You needn’t wait for him. I’ll do your tea now.’
Dora Palfrey understood about things, which was more than Leo’s mother usually did. (Ros
liked
her surname being Palfrey. It was an old-fashioned word for a riding-horse, the sort medieval ladies had ridden on, draperies trailing. She liked her name actually meaning ‘horse’. It was a great privilege.)
Mrs Palfrey did Ros her favourite fish fingers and chips, and Ros changed into jeans and anorak and set off back to see Badger, the carrots stuffed in her anorak pockets. It was a fine evening with a strong smell of spring and the blackbirds singing in the hedges. Ros felt very cheerful, having discovered a pony that was almost her own, so close and friendly. But when she came over the railway bridge she saw that the pony was no longer alone, and she stopped, deeply disappointed.
There was a family with him: a dad, a mum and four children. They were all rather noisy and excited. The mum was trying to calm them down and the dad was putting a saddle on Badger. Badger was circling restlessly and a girl of about eleven was hanging on to his head, shouting at the others to keep out of the way. As a family, they seemed to use a lot of swear words, although they were laughing a lot too.
Ros went nearer. It was public ground, after all. She stood on the path, her hand closed round the carrots in her pocket.
The girl was the eldest. She was very active and tough, and had a mass of thick wiry hair that looked like a pot-scrubber on her head. She squashed a riding hat over it and hooked up the harness. Her father bunked her up into the saddle.
‘Hold on now, Fi!’
Badger was barging about in great excitement, pawing the ground and snatching at his bit. He looked nothing like a child’s ‘first pony’. But Fi’s dad was laughing, and let go without seeming to have any doubts, although mum looked a bit worried. Badger plunged away and came straight towards where Ros was standing, at a very fast trot. He lifted his knees high and held his head up and snorted as he went, looking very flashy and strong.