Muck and Magic Read online

  Table of Contents

  Muck & Magic

  Copyright

  UNTIL THAT MORNING, until my bike ride up into the Dales, I had always known exactly what I was going to do with my life. I was going to be the fastest woman ever on two wheels, a world champion cyclist, win an Olympic gold medal, and not just one. Three. I was going to be the next Laura Trott, no question.

  I think I could ride a bike almost before I could walk. My mum had made sure of that. She loved cycling and spent every hour she could out on the road – when she wasn’t being head teacher at the village school, that is. It was a new job for her, we were in a new house and I was in a new school trying to make new friends, which wasn’t easy. Dad stayed home and looked after us. He fed us, washed our clothes – no ironing, because he hated ironing – did the building of the racing bikes in his shed. The radio was always on inside, playing loud heavy metal, always heavy metal.

  There were floor to ceiling photographs and newspaper cuttings in there of all our great cycling heroes and heroines. There was Beryl Burton, Mum’s favourite, who had been a world champion a long while ago, before she or I were born. My hero, Laura Trott, was up there too, and so was Dad’s: “Wiggo”, Bradley Wiggins, or as Dad always called him, “The Wonderful Wiggo of Woz”.

  Dad didn’t cycle any more himself. He’d had a bad fall when he was young and broken his hip. Gruesomely, he kept a yellowing and grim reminder of his hip replacement operation right beside him on his workbench: his old hip joint. He would often rub it for luck, and always made sure Mum and I did too, before we went out for a ride. Neither of us had ever fallen off and hurt ourselves, not seriously anyway. Just a silly superstition, Mum called it. But she still gave it a lucky rub every time we went off for a ride, and so did I.

  Like Mum I’ve always been rather short and thin, skinny some people say. All my life, Gran never stopped going on about it. “Our Bonny, just look at her,” she’d say, measuring me up yet again against the kitchen door, a dreaded ritual whenever she came round for my birthday. “She don’t grow upwards, nor sideways neither. There’s hardly nothing of her.” And it was true, I wasn’t as tall as I wanted to be. Long legs are good for cycling and I longed for them. I desperately wanted to grow into a bigger bike, a faster one, a bike like Laura Trott’s. At school I had always been “little Bonny”, now I was “tiddler” or “teeny tot”. Everyone ribbed me about my height. I didn’t mind that much. After all, Laura Trott wasn’t that tall, was she? And she was slight, well, quite slight. I could be small and still be a world champion, still win three Olympic gold medals. It could even help to be shorter, I thought. They could call me what they liked.

  Of course everyone already knew at school and in the village that our whole family lived and breathed cycling. They would see us out on the road, after school and at weekends, Mum and me pedalling away. Sometimes, when we were doing time trials, Dad would be there too with his stopwatch and whistle. We were quite a threesome, always out whatever the weather. Mum would never let a hill defeat her, and neither would I. The older I was, and the stronger I became, the more I found I could keep up with her.

  That January, as we were cycling home together side by side, she told me that from now on perhaps I should go out on my own more often, that she felt she was holding me back. “And anyway,” she went on, “I’ve got so much to do at school these days, and I’m not as young as I was. I’ll still be your trainer though. You may be faster than me, Bonny, but you’re not faster than my Beryl, nor your beloved Laura Trott, not yet.”

  So after that we would only go out cycling together occasionally, just for fun, on sunny weekends. Mostly I went out cycling on my own. I missed Mum being there, but I liked being on my own too. I could be Laura in my head much better with no one else about.

  On the morning of the day that changed my life – my twelfth birthday it was – I realized as soon as I got up that Mum and Dad were much more excited than I was. I knew something was up. At breakfast they kept looking at each other knowingly, and giggling like a couple of kids. Some private joke, I thought. Then without warning Dad was behind me, and putting his hands over my eyes. “Surprise, Bonny,” he said. “No peeking.” I heard Mum going out and coming back in again. Dad took away his hands. Mum was standing there with a brand-new racing bike. It was a red, all aluminium, 16 speed Giordano Libero – a wonder bike! Maybe it wasn’t like Laura’s, a Pinarello Dogma F8 with a custom paint job, but it was a wonder bike all the same. I was speechless. Together, this bike and I would fly like the wind!

  I don’t remember finishing my breakfast. I was upstairs, into my cycling gear, downstairs and out of the door in a flash. No goodbyes, just a wave and a thank you, and I was gone. I didn’t decide where to go. I just went. Within minutes I was up in the Dales, purring along on my beautiful, magnificent, supreme, wonderful new bike. Alone with the wind and the rain, I was in seventh heaven. I mooed at cows, cawed at crows, bleated at sheep. There were lambs sheltering under the dry-stone walls, and the rain was turning to hail now, but I didn’t mind. This was bliss. This was the best.

  I was coming down the hill fast, I remember, too fast, but I still wanted to go faster. I looked up and saw some horses out in a field, gambolling about in the hail, tossing their heads and shaking their manes. It was those horses that distracted me – that’s my excuse, anyway. A sheep came wandering out into the road in front of me, a lamb following her. I braked, and the wheels seemed to slide away from under me.

  I found myself lying there on my back in the ditch, my head spinning. It was a while before I could sit up. A couple of sheep wandered past me up a farm track, as if nothing had happened. I could see at once that my knee was bleeding but it didn’t hurt. I got up. I could stand. I was wobbly, but I could stand. Hailstones were battering me, bouncing off my head. I stood the bike up, and crouched down to examine it. Everything seemed fine – at first. Then I noticed that my front tyre was flat, and not a little flat either, but completely deflated. My beautiful new bike was unscratched though, so far as I could see. I was relieved and annoyed at the same time and still trying to work out what to do next, when I became aware that I was being watched. Three horses were scrutinizing me from the other side of the dry-stone wall: a massive bay hunter, a chubby looking pony with a face like a chipmunk, and a tall grey horse with a fine-boned head. They were all looking at me over the wall. The little one nickered, then both the others did too. I never knew horses could laugh until then.

  “Don’t you laugh at me,” I told them, and I wasn’t just pretending to be cross either. “It was your fault I fell off. And look at what you’ve done. Flat tyre. Thank you very much. Now what am I supposed to do?”

  Quite why I went over and patted them after that, I have no idea. I’d never been so close to horses before, but somehow I wasn’t at all nervous of them. They seemed to want me to stay with them, to get to know me. They had kind eyes, all of them. They liked me. I reached out to stroke them. But it soon became evident, as they snuffled at my hand, that it was food they were after, a tidbit of some kind. I had none but I patted and stroked them all, as equally as I could. That was important to them, I thought, because they seemed quite jealous of one another. I talked to them, told them who I was and all about Laura Trott. But after a while they became bored with me, or more likely fed up that I had no food to give them, and wandered off.

  I watched them go, sad they were leaving me. Then a dog yapped and someone called from the farmhouse at the top of the track, and off they galloped, neighing and nickering away, their hooves thundering and throwing up mud, their manes flowing. The sight of them racing up the field left me smiling inside.

  I could see a woman in a headscarf and a long blue coat walking to the horses across the l
awn below the farmhouse. She had a bucket in each hand and was shaking them, and calling to the horses. She climbed the fence and emptied the buckets into a long trough, then stood back, the dog sitting at her heels, and watched them racing up the field towards her. That was when she looked up and noticed me. She stared at me for a few moments, then turned and walked away. She didn’t even wave. Not very friendly, I thought. It was as she walked away that I noticed there were several animals on the lawn below the house, all standing very still. There was a buffalo, a wild boar, a baboon and a horse lying down. And there were people too: a shepherd driving his sheep, a running man, again all absolutely still, as still as statues. It took me a while to realize that was exactly what they must be – statues.

  By now I was cold and my leg ached. I had to get going. After a bit of a walk, a kind farmer gave me a lift back home to the village in his Land Rover, my bike in the back. It took a while – I had cycled much further than I thought. Once home, Mum tended to my knee and Dad to my bike. I told them how, where and why the accident had happened, told them it was the horses’ fault too – which made them smile. I mentioned the woman up at the farmhouse, who hadn’t seemed at all friendly, and about the strange statues in her garden. Mum said she’d been up that way once or twice and remembered the statues, but had never seen anyone there.

  My knee healed in time. Dad mended my puncture and checked that everything on my bike was as it should be – he wouldn’t let me ride again until he’d finished. But I couldn’t put those horses out of my mind. They galloped through my dreams, day and night. Once I was allowed to cycle again, I started planning all my training rides to go past that farm track at the bottom of the hill where I had fallen off, just so that I could see the horses again. I would see the lady in the scarf sometimes too, sitting outside on a step sketching, or striding across the field in her long coat, the horses following her.

  By now I’d given the horses names. The tall grey one I called Peg, after Pegasus, the legendary flying horse I had read about at school; the small one I always thought of now as Tiny Tim; and the great big bay became Big Ben to me. After a while, just riding by the horses wasn’t good enough. I’d bring carrots for them, and I’d stop for a drink at the bottom of the hill, then wait by the dry-stone wall for them to come for their tidbits. It wouldn’t be long before I’d see them gallop down to the wall to greet me, whinnying and kicking up their hooves, and farting too sometimes, which made me smile. I loved feeding them, with their warm breath on my hand and their rubbery lips and whiskers.

  I’d make a fuss of them all, give each of them their carrots – more for Peg because she wasn’t as pushy as the other two. I’d talk to her especially, whisper in her ear about my new school, and friends and enemies, about Mum and Dad and cycling. I loved every moment with my horses but I always looked up from time to time at the farmhouse beyond, just in case I could catch sight of the lady in the long coat. The rare times I did, she would just lift her hand and walk away. I would wave back, because I wanted to be friendly, but she always kept her distance, never came over. I hoped to meet her and would always get back on my bike reluctantly. I would be back to homework after that – there was a lot of that now that I was in secondary school – and to the sameness of the house, Mum looking stressed after her day at school and Dad at work in his shed, heavy metal on full volume.

  When I wasn’t out cycling or doing my homework, I would lie in my room and find myself dreaming of those horses, Peg in particular. I pictured myself riding her bareback through forests and meadows, up rutty mountain passes, and fording rushing streams where she’d stop to drink. I’d go to sleep at night under the stars lying down beside her, my head resting on her warm back. But when I woke, her back was always my pillow and I could hear Dad in the bathroom next door, gargling and spitting into the basin.

  I lived for the moment when school was over and I could cycle off to feed the horses. Peg would rest her heavy head on my shoulder and I’d hear those carrots crunching inside her grinding jaw. As for my cycling ambitions, I still loved my bike and Laura Trott, still wanted to be Olympic champion three times over; but I knew I went for cycle rides now, not just to train and to go faster, not only to leave home and school behind me, but even more to see my horses, and maybe one day to meet the lady in the scarf and the long blue coat.

  It was spring. Mum was threatening to come out on training rides with me again. I think she had picked up on my lack of focus, that I might have other things on my mind besides cycling. Dad knew it too. “She’s got to learn to motivate herself,” I heard him telling her. “You can’t do it for her. We have to leave her be.” So for the most part I could still go out on my own, to my great relief, and when I did it was always in the same direction, up into the Dales, to my horses.

  It was a bright, cold Saturday morning and I was off and out early on my bike. The roads were dry, so I rode fast. I got to the end of the farm track in twenty-five minutes – a record. There were daffodils growing now all along the grass verge by the dry-stone wall, so many it was hard to find a way through without treading on them. I leant my bike up against the wall as usual and fished in my pocket for the carrots. Tiny Tim came scampering over as he always did and Big Ben wandered lazily up behind him, his tail flicking nonchalantly. But there was no sign of Peg in the field at all. When Big Ben had finished his carrot, he started chewing at the saddle of my bike and knocked it over. I was just picking it up when I saw the lady in the long coat striding down the field towards me, her little dog yapping at her heels. She wasn’t wearing her usual headscarf. I saw that her hair was entirely white, a wild curly mop, almost down to her shoulders. Her face was somehow both old and young at the same time.

  “Who are you?” she asked. It was just a straight question, not a challenge.

  “Bonny,” I replied.

  “I’ve seen you here before, haven’t I?” she asked me. “You like the horses?”

  I nodded. “Especially the grey one. But she’s not here today.”

  “It’s the spring grass. I have to keep her inside from now on.”

  “Why?” I asked. The dog was snuffling around my feet. I stood still, hoping it wasn’t the biting kind.

  “Percy won’t hurt you. All bark and no bite,” she said. “Laminitis,” she went on, “she gets it easily on new grass. She’s fine all through the winter, eats all the grass she likes, no trouble. But she’s only got to sniff the spring grass and the laminitis comes back. It heats the hoof, makes her lame.” She waved away the two horses. She was scrutinizing me and my bike. “Nice bike. Fast, is it?”

  I smiled. “Very,” I said.

  “So are the horses, some of them – not that little fellow of course. But they’re an awful lot of work.”

  “Work?” I didn’t understand.

  “Well, Bonny, you have to bring them in, groom them, pick out their feet, feed them, muck them out. Heavy work. And I’m not as young as I was.” She paused, looking at me hard for a moment or two. “You don’t want a job, do you, in the stables? Be a big help. Merry, the one with laminitis, needs a good long walk every day, and all of them a good mucking out. Paying job of course. Three pounds an hour, what do you say?”

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t have to think about it.

  “You could come for a couple of hours at weekends,” she went on. “How would that be?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “I’ll see you next Saturday then, Bonny,” she said. “You’ll need wellies. I’ve got some spare ones somewhere, for my nephew when he comes. You’re about his size I should think. I’ll look them out. You be careful on the roads now. Don’t go too fast. You don’t want to fall off, do you? Lot safer on a horse.” She smiled at me then, in a knowing sort of way. She must have seen me come off that day. She turned and walked away.

  I cycled home that day singing my heart out, and high as a kite. It was my first paying job, and I’d be looking after Peg – it was difficult to think of her as Merry. I didn’t tell anyon
e at home. So far as they were concerned, I was out training on my bike. They were always happy if I was doing that. Where I went on my bike was my own business. Best just to keep everything to myself, I thought, less complicated. So next Saturday I found myself cycling up the farm track towards the house. It was full of potholes and puddles. I had to go carefully so that I didn’t damage my bike. I came out onto a smooth tarmac lane, under an avenue of high trees that whispered at me in the wind as I cycled by, where I could pedal freely, and hear the comforting tic-a-tac tic-a-tac of my wheels turning.

  Everywhere in amongst the trees were more creatures: deer, foxes, badgers, all still, all looking at me, all statues. And there, by the house, were the sculptures I had seen before, the life-sized buffalo, baboon, wild boar, lying down horse and the running man, a giant now that I was close to him, along with the shepherd and his sheep.

  There was a cobbled stable yard behind the house. Peg was looking out at me over the stable door, ears pricked, shaking her mane, tossing her head and whinnying. Above the yard a flock of doves fluttered around a clock tower, and then settled on the tiled roof, cooing at me. I didn’t like to call out to the lady. I went over to Peg, gave her a carrot and stroked her nose. “Morning, Peg,” I said. “S’pose I’d better call you Merry. Morning, Merry.” That was when I noticed a pair of wellies waiting by the back door of the house, with a piece of paper slipped into one of them. I took it out and read:

  It was not signed.

  Until then I had not given it a single thought, but I had never led a horse or ridden one in all my life. Come to that, I hadn’t mucked out a stable either. Merry had a halter on her already, and a rope hung from a hook beside the stable. I put the wellies on – they were only a little too big – clipped the rope onto the halter, opened the stable door and led her out, praying she would behave. I needn’t have worried. It was Merry that took me for a walk. I simply stopped whenever she did, let her nibble for a while, and then asked her gently if it wasn’t time to move on.