Diana Pullein-Thompson: Janet Must Ride (paperback)

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SINCE EARLY childhood I had wanted to work with horses and now I was sixteen and leaving for my first job with my little rough-haired terrier, Gangster, as my companion.
I was very excited. For the first time in my life I would be independent; earning my own living, buying my own things. I was determined to be a success; the perfect girl groom. And I optimistically expected to meet with adventure—out there in the country working for the Claudes.

I was a town child; born and brought up in a terrace house with a street lamp at my bedroom window and the smoke of chimneys and trains for ever in the air. And when I decided to spend nine months as a working pupil at a riding school the only suitable establishment with a vacancy was situated in a town. So my experience of the country was very limited.

I was sure I would like the Claudes and now, as the train puffed southwards leaving the suburbs, the housing estates, the playgrounds and the factories and carrying me deep into the green of the English countryside, I recalled my interview with my future employers.

We met in a London hotel, and the whole family was present because they had come up to town to attend the wedding of a near relative.

From the first I liked Jackie best. She stared at me throughout tea with unconcealed interest and told me quite suddenly that her pony, Pierrot, was the best in the world. She was the fairest of the Claude children and her eyes were very blue and her nose turned up at the end in a cheerful sort of way. Miriam seemed a little stiff and self-conscious, though her face and clear grey eyes were very calm. Her dark brown hair was neat, and tightly plaited into two thick pigtails. I guessed she was a neat child, with a tidy mind and reserved nature. She asked me why I had decided to become a girl groom and whether I liked the country.

Roger was looking rather pale and very clean in his new corduroy trousers and checked hacking jacket. He was small for his thirteen years and I liked his hazel eyes, squashy nose and fair hair. It was the first time he had stayed in a large hotel and he told me how he had double-locked his bedroom door and why he did not like the lift man.

I thought Mrs. Claude seemed a little worried when I shook her by the hand on my arrival, but later I realised the wrinkle between her eyes was permanent and so she always appeared to be in an anxious frame of mind. She was a small woman with a small, determined face and rather tired hazel eyes. She looked at me very intently while she was talking, as though she expected to read every reaction to her words from my face.

Mr. Claude, who was a chartered accountant by profession and the senior director of a flourishing family business, looked a little harassed. You could see by his slender, white hands that he had worked in an office most of his life. His fair hair was receding on his high, pale forehead, and I felt he spent too much time earning money to support his family. I imagined he thought of me as another expensive luxury, which he could not afford.

As the landscape changed to ploughed fields and bare March hedgerows and warm wooded hillsides, I thought of Pierrot and saw, in my mind’s eye, the low stone farmhouse and the grey walls of North Oxfordshire which Mr. Claude had described for me. I saw myself galloping over green fields and jogging down country lanes past little old cottages with hollyhocks in their gardens. I saw the sort of countrysides depicted on calendars; horses ploughing towards a golden sunset, wagons in golden cornfields and little calves running at their mothers’ sides.
There’ll be rats, Gangster, rats I said aloud, and the two elderly ladies in my carriage jumped in their seats and then smiled understandingly, and continued their hushed conversation. I opened my suitcase and pulled out two books.

For a while I read, with Gangster on my knee, and then returned to window watching and daydreaming.
Evening was falling when at last, after three changes, I arrived at the small and homely station of Fields End. The ticket collector spoke with the North Oxfordshire accent which was soon to become a familiar sound to me. A few grey sheep stood huddled in a pen near the platform. In the road outside the station two small boys were making mud pies and an old woman was walking very slowly with a heavy shopping basket. A black and white sheep dog peeped out of a farmyard gate at her, then wagged his tail and returned to his vigil.

Then, round the bend came Mrs. Claude in her Morris, with two Cairns and a Dalmatian sitting on the back seat. As she brought the car to a standstill, Gangster growled and his hackles rose. He did not like the other dogs.

“Be quiet,” I said. “You’ll be allowed to sit in the front.”
Conversation between Mrs. Claude and myself was handicapped and eventually made impossible by the growling of Gangster and the yapping of Pepper and Snuff, the two Cairns.

“I hope they are not going to be deadly enemies,” I shouted.

“Hit them. Thump them hard,” shouted Mrs. Claude. A long muddy lane led us to Court Farm, Stoneyminster, where Miriam and Jackie were awaiting our arrival. My mind was full of happy thoughts. This was to be my first job in a long line of jobs, each more important and exciting than the last. I saw them stretching before me across the years; for a few seconds I did not see the two children, nor the grey yard, but a huge calendar with the years marked on it and a graph and myself moving up and up. It was an odd sensation.

“You must have a look round now or it will be dark,” said Jackie, and I came back to reality with a jerk.

The stable yard faced south; it was cool and cobbled, sheltered on the north side by a range of five roomy loose-boxes, on the east by a barn with saddle-room attached and on the west by a garden wall and beyond it the house. In the middle of the yard a fine, well-grown walnut tree stood on a patch of grass, and by the five-barred gate a ragged elm raised its branches towards the darkening sky.
A piebald head and a grey head looked over two green loose-box doors. A black and white cat slunk from the barn and sauntered with an independent air into the meadow behind the loose-boxes.

“Look, that’s Bullseye,” said Jackie.

“Come and see the horses,” suggested Miriam.

“Oh, what a sweet little dog with a patch over his eye—like a pirate!” cried Jackie.

“He’s the dog I told you about—Gangster,” I explained.

The stables were fitted with electric light, so, in spite of the fast encroaching darkness, I was able to have a thorough look round. There were one horse, a cob, and two ponies. Corrymeela was a flea-bitten grey mare from Ireland—as her name implies—a three-quarter thoroughbred and 15.3 hands. “My Badminton horse of the future,” said Miriam.
Hop-Scotch was a chestnut cob of 14.2, hogged and docked, with an apprehensive eye and large clumsy hoofs.
Lucky Star was a J.A. jumper, a bay, part-bred Arab with black points and, of course, a white star.

“He’s a big winner,” said Mrs. Claude.

“Yes, I’ve heard of him all right,” I said.

Pierrot was a lively fourteen-year-old gelding of 12.2 hands, very fat and cheerful.

“Lucky Star is rather unreliable in the stable, but you will find the other three well-mannered to muck out and strap, though Pierrot nips a bit; he’s a little devil,” Miriam told me.

“He isn’t, he’s only playful,” contradicted Jackie.

“Oooooh! You grumbled enough when he bit you in the seat I seem to remember,” said Miriam.

“Well, anyway, Janet, I generally groom Pierrot except on school mornings,” added Jackie.

“The last girl we had was terrified of Lucky Star, but then she was a feeble thing really. He only had to put back his ears and she darted away,” said Miriam.

“I won’t do that,” I promised.

“Hop-Scotch is a dear old thing, he really is,” said Mrs. Claude.

“Have you entered Corrymeela for any cross-country events yet?” I asked.

“No, not yet, unfortunately. But we are having Major Fuller, an equitation expert, over to stay to coach me for cross-country events soon. It’s awful because he charges twenty pounds a week. Daddy’s furious,” Miriam replied.

“Daddy’s not furious, now I’ve explained the value of it to him,” said Mrs. Claude.

“That’s Bullseye and he’s mine,” said Jackie, pointing at the cat which was returning to the yard.

I admired his markings.

“He’s not nearly so pretty as the last one we had. She was marmalade. Oh, she was a dear little thing, all soft and cuddly,” Miriam told me, and at once Jackie said, “Don’t take any notice of her, Janet. Bullseye is much nicer, prettier and cleverer than Milly ever was—and more intelligent.”

“Well, of course, you would say that,” said Miriam.

“Why?’

“Just typically you.”

“Now stop arguing and take Janet indoors, Miriam, and show her to her bedroom and where to wash,” said Mrs. Claude.

The hall was small and dark, but the passages had been newly decorated in light colours. Miriam showed me the drawing-room, which was long and low and spacious with apple-green walls, and the dining-room, which smelled of furniture polish and was papered in oyster grey. My bedroom, like the hall, had not yet been redecorated and was papered with a blue and white Victorian wallpaper.

“Dreadfully old-fashioned, I’m afraid. Mummy wants to distemper it cream,” said Miriam.

The furniture was white and Victorian too. There was a white chest of drawers and wardrobe and dressing-table, and two white chairs with cane seats. The window was white and looked out over the stable roof to the fields beyond. I breathed the fresh unladen country air and laughed. “I think this is a lovely room and, in the daylight, it must have a wonderful view,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know, nothing special, but nice after a town I suppose. We are having supper early to-night, at seven, because Daddy is tired and hungry; so that gives you an hour to wash and change. We generally change out of riding clothes in the evening.”

When Miriam had left, I sat on the bed and thought for a few minutes. I supposed a skirt and jumper would do for supper. I had travelled over in my riding clothes because my suitcase was so small and they were the most bulky things to try to pack.

Gangster jumped on the blue counterpane and sat beside me and I wondered what I had better do about his supper. I felt hungry and longed for a cup of tea. I drank two glasses of water and Gangster drank one and then I washed and unpacked and changed as instructed. I put a photograph of Peewit, the pony on which I rode most as a child, by my bedside, a snapshot of my parents on my dressing-table, and my only ornament, a carved wooden horse, on the white chimney-piece. Then the room began to look more friendly and familiar. Gangster’s folding bed was coming separately by rail and had not arrived yet, so I told him he must sleep on my bed.

The hour to supper passed very slowly, and I was very foolish and did not dare venture downstairs till the gong rang. And then I was reluctant to leave my room for a moment because the moon had risen and I was looking out across the meadows of Stoneyminster to the grey church; the clouds were flying high, and the air was sharp and pleasant to the face after the stuffiness of a long train journey. I felt very much alive and ready for anything.

The atmosphere in the Claudes’ dining-room was not very congenial to conversation on that first evening. Jackie had just started staying up for supper and Mr. Claude was taking the opportunity for correcting her table manners, which were, I must admit, shocking. Every time a topic of conversation was opened or a story begun, it was interrupted by a sudden, “Jackie, really. I’ve never seen such a disgusting sight. If you are going to take big mouthfuls like that you had better go back to the nursery school,” or, “What a way to hold a fork!” and similar remarks.

Miriam occasionally added a little postscript like: “Oh, Jackie, do be sensible and eat properly. You are babyish.”
During the evening I came to the conclusion that Miriam was a bit of a prig.

Mrs. Smallwood, the cook-general, kindly made a small dinner for Gangster. After supper I wrote to my parents, felt home-sick and read a few pages of my book. Then I went to bed, wondering whether I had been right to take a living in as family kind of job.

PEOPLE
Janet Fawley, Mr and Mrs Claude, Miriam, Roger and Jackie Claude. Tanya Miller, Anne Stanmore, Major Fuller.

HORSES
Corrymeela, Hop-Scotch, Lucky Star, Pierrot, Minuet, Magpie