Chapter 12
The next morning it was still raining and Caroline suggested that Poppy invite Scarlett over for lunch. Poppy was upstairs daydreaming about Cloud when she heard her friend at the back door and by the time she had jumped down the stairs, two at a time, Scarlett was deep in conversation with Caroline in the kitchen. They were talking about the girls’ new school and Scarlett was regaling Caroline with outrageous stories about the children from her primary school who would be in their year. Caroline had seemed down in the dumps recently but her face was animated as she listened to Scarlett’s colourful descriptions of her former classmates and she laughed out loud as Scarlett told a story about a particularly obnoxious boy called Darren who had once fed chalk dust to the class goldfish. I never make her laugh like that, thought Poppy despondently, as she pasted a smile to her face and walked in to join them.
“Do you two want to give me a hand with the vegetables?” Caroline asked. The three of them spent the next half an hour at the kitchen table shelling peas, slicing runner beans and discussing the pros and cons of their new burgundy and navy school uniform. Poppy’s was hanging up in her wardrobe, a glaring reminder that the summer holiday was almost over.
After lunch Poppy finally managed to get Scarlett on her own when the two of them went to muck out Chester’s stable. She was bursting to recount the previous day’s conversation with Tory.
“That explains everything. No wonder Tory and her daughter fell out. Poor Tory, she must have been heart-broken. I suppose I would only have been about five at the time, otherwise I would have remembered it,” said Scarlett. “One thing that puzzles me though,” she continued. “How did Cloud avoid being rounded up with all the Dartmoor ponies in the drift every year?”
“I’m pretty sure Tory used to hide him in Chester’s stable while the drift was on,” said Poppy, who’d thought of little else all night. “Which means Cloud must still trust her, despite everything.”
“But why hide him? Why didn’t she just come clean and give him a permanent home where he’d be safe and cared for?” asked Scarlett, puzzled.
“Because George Blackstone still owns him, I suppose. According to Tory he wouldn’t sell Cloud back to her after Caitlyn died, even though she pleaded with him to. Perhaps he still thinks he can make a competition pony out of Cloud.”
Scarlett knew the belligerent farmer of old, and suspected that he’d refused to sell the pony back to Tory out of sheer pig-headedness, but she kept the thought to herself.
“What about this year though, Scarlett?” wailed Poppy. “What’s going to happen to Cloud now Tory’s in Tavistock? He’ll be rounded up and sent back to George Blackstone who’ll pick up where he left off five years ago, trying to ‘beat some sense into him’. I can’t let that happen.”
“Don’t panic. We just need to come up with a plan. I’ll find out when the drift is - my dad’ll know - and you need to speak to Tory again and tell her we need to know how she managed to catch Cloud.”
“Who’s Cloud?” piped up a voice from the stable door and Poppy’s heart sank right to the bottom of her borrowed jodhpur boots. Who knew how much of the conversation Charlie had heard.
“No-one for you to worry about, little brother. Come on Scarlett, we’re done here. Why don’t you go inside and dry off while I go and catch Chester.” She grabbed the donkey’s headcollar from its peg and headed for Chester’s paddock, irritated to see that Charlie was following her.
“Is Cloud the white pony we saw by the stream?” he asked, running to keep up with her as she strode across the field, her head bent against the driving rain.
“None of your business. And anyway, you never call a horse white, it’s always grey,” she said, knowing she was splitting hairs but hoping it would put him off the scent. No such luck.
“It is my business. And if you don’t tell me I’ll tell mum about the pony and it’ll be her business too,” he replied, smiling evilly at his sister.
Poppy knew she had lost. Charlie was as tenacious as a fox terrier. She stopped and turned to face her brother, sighing loudly. “Alright, I will tell you but not now. Tonight, I promise. But you’ve got to give me your word that you won’t breathe a whisper of it to anyone, especially Caroline. And I mean that, OK?”
She tried to look as menacing as she could but Charlie wasn’t exactly quaking in his wellies. Instead, while nodding vigorously, he was trying hard to suppress a jubilant smile. Typical, she thought, as she caught Chester and led him to the shelter of his newly mucked-out stable. She would now need to baby-sit Charlie as they tried to rescue Cloud from the drift. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about.
Satisfied he wouldn’t be missing out on any excitement, Charlie disappeared back indoors. Poppy tied Chester up inside the stable and began rubbing him down with an old towel.
“Did you help Tory look after Cloud?” she murmured to the old donkey. He turned and looked at her with his clear brown eyes and Poppy got the sense that he had been very much involved in the annual rescue operation. She remembered back to their first night at Riverdale when she’d heard a horse’s lonely whinny and Chester had returned the call. The two had been stablemates for almost a year before Caitlyn’s death. As she scratched the donkey’s ears absentmindedly she realised he probably held the key to saving Cloud from the drift and a life of certain misery with George Blackstone.
The rain was still beating its relentless tattoo against the windows of Riverdale that evening as Poppy, Charlie and Caroline settled down after dinner to watch the six o’clock news. Her dad was giving a live broadcast from the Middle East.
“When is Dad coming home?” asked Poppy, who was cheered to see her leather friendship bracelet peeking out from his right cuff.
“We were hoping he’d be back before you both started school but he texted this afternoon to say he might have to do another couple of weeks,” said Caroline, her eyes fixed on the television screen. After his report the presenter turned to a story about a reported sighting of a puma-type animal in the Peak District.
“See!” shouted Charlie, bouncing up and down on the sofa. “There are big cats in the wild. It’s not just me who thinks so.”
“I’ll read Charlie his story tonight if you like,” Poppy offered a grateful Caroline, who had purple shadows under her eyes.
“That would be brilliant, thanks Poppy. Make sure he cleans his teeth and washes his face. You know how allergic he is to soap.”
“Will do. Come on Charlie, let’s get you to bed. What do you fancy tonight - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or Spongebob Squarepants?”
“Spongebob, of course!” replied the six-year-old, following his sister out of the room.
Fifteen minutes later Charlie’s face had been scrubbed clean, his teeth had been brushed and he was sitting in bed sucking his thumb, a long-held habit only the family were ever allowed to witness. He took his thumb out briefly to ask, “Now will you tell me about Cloud?”
Poppy gave him an edited version of the pony’s history and how he had come to be roaming wild on the moors. “Now we need to work out how to keep him safe from this year’s drift, otherwise Blackstone will get his hands on him again and either sell him or, even worse, keep him.”
“Couldn’t you just buy him?” asked Charlie, with all the logic of a six-year-old.
“I’ve got about two pounds fifty in my piggy bank, Charlie. I spent all my money on Chester’s new grooming kit,” she reminded him.
“We need to find a way to capture him then, don’t we?” He went quiet, his thumb firmly in, as he pondered the challenge. “I know!” he said, sitting up suddenly. “I can creep up on him upwind, and when I’m close enough I’ll spit a sleeping dart through a straw into his bottom. You can get a headcollar on him while he’s knocked out.”
Poppy’s raised eyebrows were enough to tell Charlie it wasn’t going to happen.
“Alright then, we’ll dig a massive pit, cover it with branches and put a bucket of Chester’s pony nuts in the middle
. Then when Cloud comes over for a nibble, he’ll drop down into the pit.”
Poppy tutted. “There’s a saying Dad uses sometimes. Softly, softly, catchee monkey.”
Charlie looked baffled. “But we want to catch a pony, not a monkey.”
“You twit! It means I need to be patient if I stand any chance of catching Cloud. He’s lost all faith in humans - apart from Tory - so I’m going to have to gain his trust and that could take ages.”
“Please let me help you, Poppy. I promise I’ll do whatever you say, and my tracking skills might come in useful.” Poppy sincerely doubted it, but she had a feeling Charlie meant what he said, and it might be useful to have an extra pair of hands if Scarlett wasn’t around.
“OK then. But you must give me your word you won’t tell Caroline,” she reiterated. She knelt down in front of his bookcase, tracing her fingers along the book spines until she came to Spongebob Squarepants.
“Why don’t you ever call her mum?” said a small voice from the bed.
“Because she’s not my mum and never will be.” Poppy glanced at her half-brother, still sucking his thumb and looking at her solemnly with Caroline’s big blue eyes.
“But your mum’s dead so she’s the only one you’ve got. You don’t even seem to like her very much most of the time.”
“You’re too young to understand,” said Poppy, neatly side-stepping the question. “Come on, shall we see what’s happening in Bikini Bottom?”