Pony Club Challenge (Woodbury Pony Club Book 2) Read online

  Pony Club Challenge

  Josephine Pullein-Thompson

  Contents

  Josephine Pullein-Thompson (1923–2014)

  The Woodbury map

  Members and Officials of the Woodbury Branch of the Pony Club

  1. Will David Be Disappointed?

  2. The Challenge

  3. “I Hate Him!”

  4. Guns Are Dangerous

  5. You’re Jealous

  6. We’re in Real Trouble

  7. Wider Repercussions

  8. Back In Business

  9. Mixed Fortunes

  10. No Pistols or Ponies

  The Woodbury Pony Club series

  Chapter 1: Pony Club Trek

  Jane Badger Books

  Josephine Pullein-Thompson (1923–2014)

  Josephine Pullein-Thompson was born in 1923 into a bohemian family, with a mother and siblings who all wrote. When they were teenagers, she and her sisters, twins Christine and Diana Pullein-Thompson, started a successful riding school.

  Josephine was connected with the Pony Club all her life, and was the district commissioner for the Woodland Pony Club in Oxfordshire. She wrote over 30 books, and it’s perhaps no coincidence that her two most popular series feature pony clubs: the West Barsetshire, who feature in the Noel and Henry series, and the Woodbury Pony Club. The pony club, with its wide variety of characters, gave her plenty of scope for the sort of character-driven story she most enjoyed, allied to solid and effective instruction on how to ride well.

  There is a good 40 years between the series. Six Ponies, the first Noel and Henry book, was written during World War II and portrays an arcadia that Josephine herself said had never really existed.

  The Woodbury series reflects the very different world of the 1980s in which it was written. There are children with difficult family backgrounds, and there is Hanif, who is of Pakistani heritage. And there are parents who are very much more involved with the Pony Club, and the ponies, than the more hands-off variety of the earlier series.

  With the Woodbury series, Josephine Pullein-Thompson displayed what is arguably some of her finest writing, and I am delighted to be able to bring the series back into print.

  Jane Badger, 2020

  Members and Officials of the Woodbury Branch of the Pony Club

  DAVID LUMLEY, ex steeplechase jockey. Lives at Garland Farm.

  MRS ROOKE, Hon. Secretary. Lives at 20, The Heights, Woodbury.

  LESLEY ROOKE, her eldest daughter. Owns Stardust, 14-hands chestnut mare.

  SARAH ROOKE owns Chess, 13-hands piebald gelding, and Bowie, 13.3 bay gelding.

  JULIAN ROOKE, their rather unhorsy younger brother.

  MR AND MRS ROBERTS run Garland Farm for David Lumley. They live at Garland Farm Cottage.

  LYNNE ROBERTS owns Berry, 13.1 red-roan mare.

  PAUL ROBERTS owns Banjo, 12.2 black gelding.

  ALICE DRUMMOND owns Saffron, 14.1 dun gelding. Lives with her uncle and aunt at Shawbury, Darkwood Lane.

  MARGARET AND PETER HUTCHINSON, Alice's aunt and uncle.

  CLARE HUTCHINSON, one of Alice's four cousins.

  HANIF (HARRY) FRANKLIN owns Jupiter, 14.2 liver-chestnut gelding. Lives at Barn Cottage, Great Coxwell.

  JAMES MORGAN shares Ferdinand, 15.1 dark brown gelding, with his mother. Lives at Four Cross Fruit Farm.

  RUPERT WHEELER, the eldest of the family, owns Rosie, 14.1 light bay mare. Lives at The Old Rectory, Kidlake.

  ELIZABETH WHEELER owns Rajah, 14.1½ chestnut gelding.

  ANNETTE WHEELER owns Tristram, 13.2 grey Welsh gelding.

  OLIVER WHEELER owns Hobbit, 12.2 dark brown Dartmoor gelding.

  TINA SPENCER. No pony. Helps at the riding school and lives at 5 Mill Cottages, Woodbury.

  SEBASTIAN FULLER, owns Jigsaw, 14.2 skewbald gelding. Lives temporarily at the Old Forge, Kiddleworth.

  JULIA CARTWRIGHT and JANET GREEN. Pony Club instructors.

  1

  Will David Be Disappointed?

  Alice Drummond waved goodbye to Mr Crankshaw and rode her dun pony, Saffron, down the track to the river. It was the first day of the summer holidays; she had made the long journey home from school the day before.

  Home, thought Alice. Well, since her parents’ death, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Peter were always telling her that she must look upon Shawbury as her home. But then, even when her parents were alive, she had never had a proper one—a house full of brothers and sisters, dogs, kittens and rabbits, where you’ve lived for as long as you can remember. Her father had worked for a multi-national company so they had moved about the world living in smart company flats in Rio de Janeiro, Washington and Mexico City. She hadn’t had a brother or sister—there were just the three of them, and she had never had a pet, not even a hamster, until Saffron. He had become hers after that miraculous day last holidays when the Woodbury Pony Club had won the Area Cup. She had ridden Saffron, hired for the holidays, but afterwards Clare, the youngest of her four grown-up cousins and her only real friend among them, had persuaded Aunt Margaret to buy him. He’d spent the term turned out on his ex-owner’s farm and was now fat and sleek from the rich grass of the water meadows.

  The pony club fixture list was a bit of a disappointment, thought Alice, splashing through the ford. She had hoped that David Lumley, their instructor and district commissioner, who had been a famous steeplechase jockey until a crashing fall had left him disabled, would run another course. In her wildest dreams she had even imagined a camp, but there were only working rallies, a picnic ride and a test day on the fixture card. As she took the silent, leafy path through the beechwoods, she wondered whether David was all right; she did hope that they hadn’t worn him out last holidays. Then she thought about Harry Franklin and wondered if he would still want to ride with her. That was the worst of going to boarding school, you didn’t see people for ages and they changed. She conjured up Harry’s brown face, dark eyes and curly, blue-black hair. He was bound to be older and taller, but she’d telephone him as soon as she had settled Saffron and see if the rest of him was the same.

  Alice heard her aunt’s champion springer spaniels barking in their kennels and saw the red-brick, gabled house through the trees. Last holidays it had seemed a dismal, dripping place, but now, on a hot summer’s day, the house and garden looked deliciously shady and cool.

  The Rookes were cleaning tack in the old conservatory attached to their tall, red Victorian house on Woodbury Heights. Neither Mr Rooke, who was a solicitor, or Mrs Rooke, who was the pony club secretary, cared about plants or gardening, so the conservatory had long ago become a tack room and a general dumping ground for unwanted objects.

  Generally, Lesley and Sarah, who hated doing anything together, managed to stagger their tack cleaning, but as their school had only broken up that day, there had been very little time to prepare for the first rally of the holidays. “You could have cleaned yours on Monday, you didn’t have anything like the amount of homework I had,” complained Lesley, glaring at her younger sister through thick-lensed glasses as she waited impatiently for the metal polish.

  “Well, I didn’t.” Sarah shook the can with deliberate slowness and then applied the polish to her cloth with irritating precision. She was much prettier than her sister, with a narrow face, mouse-brown hair cut in a fringe and she didn’t have to wear glasses, but her mouth was rather small and thin-lipped. “Anyway, you’re lucky that Julian’s not cleaning tack too,” Sarah went on. “If Tina hadn’t cleaned his there would have been three of us sharing; that wouldn’t have pleased you.”

  “Tina won’t go on cleaning it now she’s not ri
ding Chess, and I can’t see Mummy making Julian do anything, so you’ll have two sets to clean and two ponies to look after,” Lesley told her sister. “If the great Sarah’s such a brilliant rider she has to have two ponies at her disposal, she can jolly well see to them. I’m not going to help out,” she added spitefully. She hated Sarah for being their mother’s favourite.

  “You’re jealous. It’s not my fault if the only thing you’re good at is dreary old dressage. Anyway, Tina may go on helping. Just because Mummy’s put Julian down for every rally it doesn’t mean he’ll go, and if he doesn’t Tina can have Chess.”

  “You can’t expect her to bike up here and do all the work on the chance of a ride.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Sarah retorted. “That’s what she does at the riding school.”

  “Well, if she’s fool enough to let you use her, that’s her business, but don’t think you’ll get me doing extra work so that Mummy’s pet can be in all the teams,” sneered Lesley.

  “No one’s asked you. And I know what you’re afraid of,” Sarah snapped back. “You thought you were the only person who could do dressage, but now I’ve got a decently schooled pony like Bowie you’re terrified I’ll beat you at that too.”

  At the Old Rectory at Kidlake, the Wheelers were having a family flap. It was getting dark, there was no light in the tack room and, when they had moved all the tack and cleaning materials into the kitchen, they found they were low on saddle soap and that the tin of metal polish wadding had had its lid left off and had dried up.

  “Ra’s tail is full of burrs, his mane needs pulling and this tack’s filthy,” moaned Lizzie, the second eldest of the Wheelers, as she dismantled her saddle.

  “I’ve found this old tin of metal polish, it was dried up too, but I’ve added a bit of water,” said Netti, inspecting the result critically. “There’s just enough for badges; the stirrups and bits will have to stay tarnished. Come on, hand your badges over; you know how the Old Rooke goes on and on if they’re dirty.”

  “Oh, she goes on about everything,” complained Oliver, the youngest of the Wheelers, who had the same pink and white complexion, the same pale, straw-coloured hair as his brother and sisters, but a rounder, cheekier face. “She’s a real pain.”

  “Still, she does a lot of work for the pony club,” Lizzie, who wore her flaxen hair in one thick plait, pointed out. “I know David’s much nicer and a terribly good instructor, but I don’t suppose he’d do the boring things like collecting subscriptions and sending out fixture cards.”

  “I wish Julia would be secretary as well as junior instructor,” grumbled Oliver. “She’s really nice.”

  Rupert’s pink and white face, which was long and dreamy, appeared round the kitchen door. “Has anyone seen my boots?” he asked.

  “But I thought it was your bridle you were looking for.” A note of irritation crept into Lizzie’s usually patient voice. “No, I’ve found that. It’s been hanging on a tree by the field gate; it’s been rained on and it’s hideously stiff,” Rupert explained. “I’ve got all my tack now. It’s just my boots.”

  “You’ll have to use neat’s-foot oil,” Lizzie told him as she looked at the cardboard-stiff bridle. “We’re running out of saddle soap. And you must do something about the drop noseband, it belongs to Harry Franklin,” she reminded him.

  “Harry won’t mind, but his stepfather’s terrible fussy,” added Netti. “Can I have your badge, Rupert? I don’t want too many sniffy remarks on the Wheelers’ turnout from the Old Rooke.”

  “One thing is, we haven’t got far to go,” said Oliver, dipping Hobbit’s green encrusted bit into the bucket of water.

  “Yes, but that makes it even worse when we’re always last or late,” lamented Lizzie, scrubbing hard at a greasy saddleflap. “Do you think that David will be very disappointed when he finds we haven’t done much schooling in the term? Do you think he expects the ponies to have improved?” she asked anxiously.

  “He’ll get a very nasty shock if he expects anything so unlikely,” answered Rupert, swamping his bridle and the kitchen floor with neat’s foot oil. “Rosie’s so fat she can scarcely waddle, and I’m quite sure she’s forgotten everything she learned last holidays, including how to take off.”

  “Oh, we won’t be anything like as hopeless as we were last holidays,” Lizzie told her brother. “David’s instruction changed us completely. Don’t you remember everyone’s amazement when we all whizzed round the cross-country at the Area Cup? Even Julia said it was a miracle. No, I’m just afraid he may be disappointed that we haven’t schooled the ponies since then.”

  “Perhaps our lack of improvement will make him run another course,” suggested Netti. “Working rallies and a picnic ride aren’t going to help much.”

  “I don’t see why we can’t have a camp—all the other pony clubs do,” complained Oliver. “Except for boring inspections, they have a terrific time at the Cranford Vale camp and, on the last night, no one, not even the juniors, goes to bed until two in the morning.”

  Tina Spencer sat on the bench in Woodbury’s only launderette and watched the sheets, towels and her best white riding shirt spinning round. It was a job she took over in the holidays to help her mother, who worked long hours at Fanny’s Food and Wine Bar in Cross Street.

  Tina was feeling rather dreary about the rally. After all the fun and excitement of having the dark brown Dartmoor, Hobbit, to ride in the Easter holidays and then of competing in the Area Cup, it was difficult to go back to being a “dismounted member”, a pony-less person; hanging about, watching other people ride. Still, anything was better than sitting alone in the flat with nothing much to do, and Lynne Roberts, who was always generous, would probably let her have a short ride on Berry. You’re getting spoiled, she told herself, you’ll soon be as bad as Sarah. You had such a lovely term with Chess to ride every weekend and practically every evening; you can’t expect the holidays to be like that too. But she couldn’t help feeling envious of Sarah; she was so lucky. To be given a lovely second pony like Bowie before you had really outgrown your first, and to be allowed to keep Chess as well. It was true she was to share the stout little piebald with her younger brother, Julian, but he didn’t ride much. Not that I’d swop Mum for Mrs Rooke, she thought. Not for a second. She smiled as she visualized the tall, grim, rather old-fashioned-looking figure, in her drab clothes, and the magnified eyes glaring from behind thick glasses, and then her own mother, wild-haired, bright and laughing, dressed in a colourful shirt and jeans—centuries younger. She and Mum were more like sisters, people said, than mother and daughter. Anyway, she wasn’t missing anything as special as a camp. She would have felt hard done by if she had had to watch the others ride away for a wonderful week in tents. And there would have been no hope of hiring a pony on Mum’s wages; they just kept the two of them and paid the rent of the flat in the little street of crooked cottages near the river. The River Vole meandered slowly along the north side of Woodbury, an old market town famous for its square of Elizabethan houses and its ancient stone bridge.

  At Four Cross Fruit Farm, James Morgan, who was large and solid for his age, which was fourteen, was feeling cross and ungrateful.

  “But there’s no point in making all this fuss about a few miserable working rallies,” he told his mother. “If we had a pony club show, or I was going to be in an interbranch team, there might be some point in you grooming Ferdie up to the nines and me spending hours polishing the tack. I thought things were going to be better now that David was in charge, but all he’s arranged are these feeble working rallies and a pathetic picnic ride. The Cranford Vale are having a camp and a show and a barbecue. I can hear all the other pony clubs pitying us again.”

  “I’m sure David’s doing his best,” said Mrs Morgan. “He wrote to all the parents asking them either to come on the committee or to help in other ways, but the trouble is that everyone’s so busy. And you must remember he’s disabled and make allowances.”

  “This
boy I know at school, Seb Fuller, is probably coming to live near Woodbury,” James went on. “His parents split up some time ago and now they’re selling their house. He’s very fed up. He’s got his own pony and belongs to the Frogmorton but everyone there has told him what a hopeless, piddling little pony club we are.”

  “You beat the Frogmorton hollow in the Area Cup,” protested Mrs Morgan. “Our teams were first and third, and they weren’t placed at all.”

  “But the Area Cup is only for hopeless people, anyway,” James snapped at her. “The people who are good enough for real interbranch teams aren’t allowed to enter. The Cranford Vale didn’t bother.”

  “That’s not true. The Cup is for junior teams and the Woodbury’s a young pony club; you have to give David time to build it up. And being so small makes it very friendly. How would you like to go to a huge rally where no one spoke to you?”

  “I wouldn’t mind if they had decent cross-country events and, anyway, all the big branches have camps where you get to know people.”

  “You’re being over-critical; you know very well you had a wonderful time last holidays.”

  “And you might say thank you to Mum for all the days she’s spent tack cleaning and grooming so that you can be the shiniest member of the Woodbury,” James’s elder sister Nina told him, and then put on the headphones of her walkabout radio to escape his answer.

  “Stand, Jupe.” Hanif Franklin made another dab at Jupiter’s mud-caked, liver-chestnut stomach and then continued the argument with his mother. “Don’t you understand? She may not want to ride everywhere with me these holidays. At Easter she was sad and lonely, but now she has plenty of English friends.”