A HORSE CALLED SEPTEMBER Read online




  STRAW HAT

  First published in 1976 by Dobson Books Ltd

  This ebook edition 2012 by Straw Hat

  Copyright © Anne Digby 1976, 1989, 2012

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the above publisher, Straw Hat

  A Catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN-13: 978-1-899587-40-7

  Mary Wilkins and Anna Dewar were inseparable. They had grown up together, gone to school together, learned to ride together on Anna's horse September. They had even shared their first show-jumping triumph. Mary thought things would never change. But Anna's father had plans for her – plans that included sending her away to Kilmingdean School, an expensive, snobbish establishment that specialized in turning out show-jumping champions.

  Anna promised to write, but her letters soon dried up. Mary was left behind, employed now by Mr Dewar to look after September, but on no account to jump him. She was forced to watch as Mr Dewar crippled September through overwork, and could do nothing.

  But, when it finally seemed as if Mary would lose both Anna and September completely, she embarked upon a daring scheme to rescue September and win back the respect and friendship of Anna and her father.

  A classic tale of two girls' friendship, its break-up – and the horse that changes their lives forever.

  Cover image taken from the first edition of A Horse Called September.

  Artist: BERYL SANDERS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright & Permissions

  About this Book

  Chapter 1 Bad News for Mary

  Chapter 2 Anna's Promise

  Chapter 3 September Misbehaves

  Chapter 4 A Rival

  Chapter 5 Hoping Against Hope

  Chapter 6 From Bad to Worse

  Chapter 7 The Homecoming

  Chapter 8 Disaster

  Chapter 9 Death Sentence

  Chapter 10 To Save September

  Chapter 11 A Wonderful Secret

  Chapter 12 Face to Face

  Chapter 13 The Plan

  Chapter 14 To Imchester

  Chapter 15 Winning – and Losing

  Chapter 16 Return to Happiness

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  ONE

  BAD NEWS FOR MARY

  Anna broke the bad news to Mary on a Thursday evening. Mary was just inside the stable giving September some oats. Anna's words, spoken slowly, shocked her.

  Only then did she realize that she had been foolish to believe that things would never change on Chestnut Farm, that such a happy way of life could go on for ever.

  Of course, she should have guessed. Anna's father owned Chestnut Farm and Mary's father worked for him as his cowman. The Dewars lived in the lovely thatched Devon farmhouse and their fields and woods rolled southward over the hill as far as the eye could see and down to the sea beyond. Mary Wilkins and her father lived in a small cottage down the muddy lane past the cow byres; it went with the job.

  The differences had never bothered the two girls. Neither had any brothers or sisters and they had grown up together on the lonely farm, glad of each other's friendship. When they were little, Mr Dewar had bought two ponies so that they could ride to the village school together by way of the bridleway that skirted the wooded hill. It was over four miles by way of the road.

  That was how their great love of riding had begun.

  When they were eleven they transferred to Silverstock Comprehensive School in a distant market town and were no longer able to ride to school, but instead were picked up from the end of the lane by school bus each morning at ten minutes to eight.

  Shortly after they left the village school, Mr Dewar sold the two ponies. Mary had fought to keep 'her' pony, Pickle.

  'Please, Dad,' she had begged. 'We could buy Pickle from Mr Dewar and keep him in our wood shed, it's plenty big enough.'

  'And what would we buy him with?' asked John Wilkins.

  'With my post office savings of course, Dad.' Mary had put away birthday money and Christmas money and odd-job money for years. 'I've nearly forty pounds.'

  'The pony would cost every penny of that,' said her father. 'In any case, you need that money by you. There'll be all sorts of things you'll be wanting once you've been at your new school a while. You'll want to keep up with the others, I daresay.'

  'No, I won't!' Mary had protested. 'There's nothing I could ever want compared with buying Pickle and having him for my own. I'm sure Mr Dewar wouldn't want more than thirty-five pounds for him, seeing he's half mine already. And it's my money, Dad—'

  'Have you ever thought how much it costs to keep a horse?' asked her father quietly. 'We'd have to feed the animal, apart from all the extras and you never know when you'll need to call the vet in. Mr Dewar's looked after all that up to now, let you have the use of the pony all these years, so that you two girls could get to school. You should count yourself lucky—'

  'Please, Dad. You're being mean. There must be ways you could save money.'

  'Hold your tongue, child!' John Wilkins was a big man and slow to anger, but he was angry now. 'I'm surprised at you, thinking I could afford for you to have a pony of your own. Where do you get such grand ideas from? You've no need of a pony now, and that's the end of it.'

  It was different for Anna. Although she was sad to say goodbye to her pony, she was excited at the same time. Her father had promised to buy her a proper horse, a show-jumper, in its place. Both girls had shown a great talent for show-jumping and carried off many prizes on Pickle and Prune at local gymkhanas. No matter how busy he was at the farm, Mr Dewar always found time to come and watch his daughter perform. He believed that Anna had a great future in front of her as a show-jumper, and the new horse was to be the first step along the road.

  'He may not look much, and he's not been schooled too well, but he's got the makings of a magnificent jumper,' said Mr Dewar, the day he bought the horse. 'You'll see. They're bringing him over tomorrow.'

  Anna couldn't wait to tell Mary the news. She ran through the farmyard and past the cowsheds, where John Wilkins was busy milking, and down the lane to Primrose Cottage. She burst into the sitting-room, where Mary was getting the fire to light. Her father would soon be back for his supper and now that it was autumn he liked to eat in front of a warm fire.

  'He's coming tomorrow! The new horse —'

  She saw the wistful look on Mary's face, and knelt down on the floor beside her, putting an arm round her shoulders.

  'Our new horse,' she said. 'You know we're going to share him, the way we've always shared everything.'

  Mary, who was still missing Pickle badly, felt better after that. She did not even mind that Anna, who was thoughtless about such things, had brought a whole lot of farmyard mud into the sitting room with her, and she just had time to brush it up into the dustpan before her father came in for his supper.

  The next day Mary helped Anna clean out the stable in readiness for the new arrival She lingered over the job as long as possible, anxious not to miss its coming. At last the horse-box drew up in the farmyard and the big animal was brought gently down the ramp. For Mary, it was love at first sight. He was a long-legged rather gawky-looking horse, certainly not very beautiful. But there was something quite endearing about him, all the more so because, being a highly-strung animal, his legs had been bound up for the journey with wads of cotton wool beneath the hooves, so that he looked rather like a horse in bedsocks.<
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  He shrank back nervously from Anna's first touch and Mary could tell at once that she was disappointed. She had dreamt about his arrival for so long, studied pictures of many beautiful thoroughbred horses and watched the famous show-jumpers in action on television. Now she felt let down.

  'He – he looks rather ordinary, a bit clumsy,' she said. 'Are you sure he can jump, Daddy?'

  'Quite sure,' said Mr Dewar. 'I've had my eye on him for quite a long time. I told you he wasn't much to look at.'

  'I think he's beautiful,' said Mary.

  Mr Dewar, who usually hardly noticed Mary, gave her a brief smile.

  'I expect Anna will let you ride him sometimes.'

  After her first disappointment, Anna was determined to make a champion of the horse. She gave him a new name – September –because that was the month he came to live with them at Chestnut Farm, and because his coat was dappled russet and brown, like autumn leaves.

  From the start, true to her promise, she tried to share him with Mary in every possible way. He had fallen into bad habits, especially the way he held his head when jumping. In fact at first he was a little reluctant to jump at all. The girls quickly realized that his mouth had been badly jagged at some time by a novice jumper and it was mainly due to Mary's patience that he was cured.

  She took him over jumps barely a foot high to start with, holding on to a strap she had fastened round his neck so that his head was completely free as he jumped. Before long she was able to dispense with the strap and hold the reins with just the right amount of gentle pressure required as they jumped. Within a few weeks September was holding his head correctly and jumping beautifully for both girls.

  That had all been a long time ago. On the Thursday when Anna broke the bad news to Mary, a sunny spring day towards the end of the Easter holidays, there was a magnificent rosette marked '1st' pinned to September's stable door. It had been won the previous day at a local gymkhana in the major show-jumping event of the day.

  The days when Anna and Mary had competed in children's events on the ponies seemed far off now. To Mr Dewar's delight Anna was now one of the leading young show-jumpers in the county, competing against adults and regularly winning cups and money prizes.

  Mary was given less chance to ride September these days, and rarely to jump him, on Mr Dewar's orders. But the thrill of accompanying Anna to events, helping to groom the horse beforehand and taking pleasure in their successes, was somehow compensation enough.

  On the Thursday morning the two girls walked down to the bay to collect mussels, having put September out to graze.

  'He deserves a quiet day after yesterday,' said Anna. 'What a crowd.'

  Together they relived the thrill of the previous day's event, going through Anna's final clear round in minute detail. Then as they came down from the wooded hill on to the sandy foreshore Anna spoke quietly of her father's next ambition for her.

  'He's entered me for the Western Counties' Championship at the beginning of September. It's sponsored by a cigarette firm and the first prize is three thousand pounds.'

  'Anna!'

  After that the girls could talk of nothing else and lingered on the seashore long after they had filled the bucket full of mussels. It was not until Mary remarked that the tide was coming in that Anna looked at her watch, and suddenly went pale.

  'It's past lunch time. Daddy will be furious! '

  Mr Dewar was waiting in the farmyard for Anna's return. He was wearing a smart tweed suit and his car was parked nearby. He stared straight through Mary and then spoke curtly to Anna.

  'Get changed and get in the car. You'll have to do without lunch. You know we have to be in Plymouth this afternoon to buy your clothes.'

  Mary stared at Anna in surprise that her friend had not mentioned such a big event. But Anna turned away and hurried into the house and, conscious that Mr Dewar was looking at her with some disapproval, Mary picked up the bucket full of mussels.

  'I'll take these home and boil 'em and then share them out.'

  'Do as you wish, Mary.'

  'Why should Anna have gone all the way to Plymouth just to buy some clothes?' Mary said to her father later. 'Her mother usually takes her in to Silverstock.'

  'You live your life, Mary,' replied Mr Wilkins tersely. 'And let Anna Dewar live hers.'

  In the stable that evening, Mary heard the car come back. She saw Mr Dewar getting some dress-boxes out of the boot, with little frills of white tissue paper frothing out of them. She turned back to continue feeding September his oats, and then she heard Anna's footsteps coming across the cobbled yard towards the stable.

  'Mary, there's something I haven't told you.'

  Anna was leaning over the stable door, swinging slowly, her hair very fair in a slant of evening sunlight. Mary felt peculiar.

  'I shan't be going back to Silverstock next week. I'm going away.'

  'Going away?' repeated Mary inanely. She was stupefied with shock.

  'To school. Daddy's sending me to Kilmingdean.'

  That was the beginning of all the changes.

  TWO

  ANNA'S PROMISE

  'Why does he want you to go to boarding school?' was all Mary could think of to say, her heart feeling like a stone within her. 'Why?'

  'Well, because of the riding, I suppose,' said Anna awkwardly.

  She stopped swinging on the stable door now and came and stood beside Mary in the shadows, just in front of September's loose box. The horse looked up from his oats as she arrived and contentedly let her stroke his muzzle.

  'The riding?

  'Well, yes. It's a big thing at Kilmingdean.'

  Suddenly Mary realized that Anna was talking about one of the most famous girls' boarding schools in the West. She had read about it in the newspapers. The daughters of Heads of State had been there in the past and so had some of the country's leading women show-jumpers.

  'You'll meet quite different sorts of girls there, then?' Mary said, and she felt frightened. 'Different from—' she was going to say 'me' but changed it. 'Different from Silverstock School. Daughters of top families and all that. Your dad would like that for you?'

  'Yes,' said Anna, with honesty. 'He wants me to mix with people from my own sort of background, now I'm growing up.'

  Mary was silent.

  'But it's the riding more than anything,' Anna said hastily. 'I should really have started after the summer holidays, that's the start of the new school year, but he's managed to get me in for the summer term. I don't know how he wangled it. The riding instruction is so fantastic there, you get about ten hours a week. He thinks it'll make all the difference to the Western Counties' Championship.'

  'He must be dead set on you winning it.'

  'He is.' Anna frowned, and sighed a little, like someone carrying a heavy burden. 'It seems terribly important to him, I can't quite understand it. I almost feel as though I'll let him down if I don't win it.'

  'But that's silly,' Mary protested. 'With all that money to be won some of the top jumpers will be there. It would be just great if you could win it, but surely your dad doesn't expect . . .'

  'Anna!'

  Mary felt Anna's body stiffen beside her as Mr Dewar's voice rang out across the farmyard in the still evening air.

  'Come and bring some of these boxes in. And your mother wants you to get tidied up. The Donaldsons are coming for dinner.'

  Anna ran over to the stable door and leaned out.

  'Just saying goodnight to September, Daddy.'

  Then she ran lightly back to Mary's side and squeezed her hand warmly. Mary's loyalty over the Championship had touched her.

  'Cheer up,' she said. 'I feel awful about keeping it from you, but Daddy's only been able to fix it up at the last minute. Let's have a proper talk—tomorrow. I've got the whole day free. Let's get a picnic and go down to the beach.'

  'Okay.'

  Anna went. Mary heard her footsteps echoing over the cobbles and then, a few seconds later, the sound of the farmho
use door shutting. Left alone with September in the shadowy stable, the tears began to roll down her cheeks.

  'What do you think of it?' she whispered to him.

  Sensing her misery, the horse nuzzled her. Mary put an arm round him and stroked his mane. She thought of waiting for the school bus at the end of the lane every morning on her own, and coming back on her own every evening. All the funny things that happened during the day – she would have no one to tell them to.

  'She'll be gone for three whole months. She'll be riding other horses instead of you, September. Entering competitions down there – and we won't be able to share in them with her.'

  In the comforting presence of the horse, Mary cried openly. Outside the orange sky darkened and dusk fell. At last she tip-toed home, under cover of darkness, and went straight up to her bedroom so that her father would not see that she had been crying.

  The next day some of her feelings of foreboding, that nothing could ever be the same again, were dispelled. It was a beautiful day and both girls lived it to the full.

  Mary was woken by April sunshine shafting in through her bedroom window and the sound of her father taking the cows down the lane after milking time. She got up and cooked him a big breakfast. When they had both eaten she did her jobs around the cottage and then took a bag of provisions across to the farm to make a picnic.

  She let herself in through the back door of the farmhouse into the huge warm kitchen. Although she had never even seen the rest of the farmhouse she had always been allowed to come and wait for Anna in the kitchen, and she loved the big friendly room with its long old-fashioned cooking range, its gleaming copper pans and the oak-beamed ceiling that was hung with onions, hams and every kind of fragrant herb.

  She had just begun to butter some bread on the long pinewood table when Anna came in, crept up behind her and covered Mary's eyes with her hands.

  'Snap!'

  Mary wriggled round and then laughed. The two girls were identically dressed in blue denim jeans and white polo-necked jumpers. Anna took the knife from Mary's hand.

  'I'll make the picnic—you go and saddle up September.'