Fly-by-night Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Chapter I: Ruth’s Day Out

  Chapter II: Mr. Hollis Agrees

  Chapter III: The Forty-Pound Pony

  Chapter IV: Problems

  Chapter V: The Girl at ‘The Place’

  Chapter VI: Slow Progress

  Chapter VII: Peter Takes a Fall

  Chapter VIII: ‘In Need of Care and Protection’

  Chapter IX: Ruth Watches Television

  Chapter X: Pearl Makes a Bet

  Chapter XI: Riding at Hillingdon

  Chapter XII: A Day of Decisions

  About the Author

  Also by K. M. Peyton

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Ruth has never ridden a pony before – but as soon as she lays eyes on lively Fly-by-Night, she knows he has to be hers. But where is she going to find the money for a saddle and bridle – and who is going to teach her to ride?

  FLY-BY-NIGHT

  K. M. Peyton

  To Hilary and Cracker

  Preface

  I wrote my first book when I was nine — Grey Star, the Story of a Racehorse — and after writing seven more I got my first one published by A&C Black when I was fifteen. So you can see I never decided to become a writer, I just was one. I think my compulsion to write was fuelled by my inexplicable obsession with horses which has lasted all my life. I couldn’t have a pony — as we lived in the London suburbs and had nowhere to keep one, and my parents had neither the money nor the inclination to indulge me. All my early books were, without exception, about girls who had ponies. The one to be published was called Sabre, the Horse from the Sea and was followed quite quickly by The Mandrake, a Pony and Crab the Roan. These were published under my maiden name, Kathleen Herald.

  I never thought then of writing as a career and studied to become a painter. I first went to Kingston Art School and then my parents moved to Manchester and I transferred to Manchester Art School. This was the year the war ended and the art school was inundated by ex-servicemen. I was desperately unhappy, having been parted from all my friends, lost amongst men so much older than myself, and not used to what seemed to be the never-ending rain. However I did discover the country for which I had always yearned, and went walking on Kinder Scout in the Pennines, close to where we now lived, and started a lifelong passion for remote, mountainous country. I went alone, until I met a fellow student for whom the hills had the same attraction. Mike was ex-army, an ex prisoner-of-war with a very adventurous background — the African campaign, being captured, three escapes, joining the Russian army, making his own way home after the war was over . . . he enjoyed the peace and tranquillity of the moors and mountains. When I was twenty-one I married him and we went wandering across Europe, living rough, mostly in mountains, and earning money in Paris by collecting waste paper with a decrepit tricycle with a large container in front to put our collection in. We were allocated a very prestigious area of Paris and it seems funny now to remember how we rolled up to the Ritz and the doors of Christian Dior on our tricycle with me in the container — “The tradesmen’s entrance, please!”

  I studied for another year and got my teaching diploma while Mike worked in a toffee factory, and then I got a job teaching at Northampton High School and Mike carried on free-lancing to sell drawings. He specialised in cartoons and after three years we had enough money to buy our own house — £750, ‘unfit for human habitation’, but our own. This after a last fling, a year in Canada, before we ‘settled down’. We travelled by canoe in the outback and wandered over the Rockies, got weird jobs, and drove the Trans-Canada highway — then mostly dirt — in a Morris Minor, sleeping beside the car or in it if it rained.

  We returned and got our funny little cottage fixed up in time for the arrival of our first daughter, and started to work very hard to make our way. The cottage was by the river Crouch in Essex as Mike needed to be near London for selling his work and as there were no moors or mountains in the vicinity — he decided he would switch to sailing instead. Our cottage had only a lean-to shed for a kitchen and he bought his first boat with the money we had saved up for a kitchen, so I wasn’t very pleased. But he had his life planned out and was eventually able to make his money by sailing: taking charterers and selling cartoons and articles to the sailing press. This has kept him happy all his life.

  With a baby, and soon another one, I didn’t go back to teaching but started to write fulltime. The books I wrote then were ‘potboilers’, mostly boys’ adventure stories. The Scout magazine used to buy them in serial form and Collins published them afterwards as books. These were the first ones written under the name K.M.Peyton. In The Scout they were under K and M. Peyton as Mike used to think up quite a lot of the plots, but the publishers left the ‘and’ out. I didn’t want my Christian name published as the books were supposed to be for boys. Later, with my first ‘proper’ book for Oxford University Press, Windfall, Mike dropped out of the writing but his initial remained.

  My first real books were all based on sailing as that’s what we did all the time. Three of them were runners-up for the Carnegie Medal. Then I had a great yen to go inland and write about my first love, horses, and this resulted in the Flambards series. The second of the series, The Edge of the Cloud won the Carnegie Medal and also the Guardian Award.

  These books were later made into a 13 part series by Yorkshire Television and proved very popular, filmed as ‘family’ television at prime time. The series took a year to shoot and the actors lived together at ‘Flambards’, a rambling house at Sawley in Yorkshire. They were extraordinarily well-cast, to my mind, and the riding of Christina and Mark (Christine McKenna and Steven Grives) was exceptional, as neither of them had ever ridden before. As they declared at their auditions that they could ride they had an exacting task to learn in time for the start of the series — a fortnight later. For publicity purposes they were sent out hunting with the Bramham Moor, camaramen in pursuit! They seemed to thrive on it and later used to come and stay with us and come riding on our horses. But Christine never learned to ride astride and had to bring her own side-saddle. When the shooting was over the actors all wanted to continue the story, so twelve years after I had first started the series I wrote another book, Flambards Divided, especially for the actors but, owing to personality complications with the heirarchy at Yorkshire this sequel was never made. A pity. We shot a pilot film from our own house, with our own horses, and all the actors, make-up people, hairdressers, cameramen, costume department, etc, stayed in our tiny cottage to go to work every day. It was chaotic and great fun but, in the end, a waste of time. (It also nearly caused Mike to divorce me.)

  When our elder daughter Hilary was eight I bought our first-ever pony. This was Cracker — poor little devil, he had to suffer my total inexperience in handling youngsters. He was a raw weanling from the New Forest when I bought him for forty pounds and we had never a dull moment, he being a Houdini at escaping into the far distances and a little devil when it came to being broken in. He broke us in more than the other way round. Luckily Hilary aged ten had nerves of steel. We joined the Pony Club and the bemused boss, an ex-cavalry instructor, hastily offered us a bigger, better pony, for by the time Hilary had got the measure of Cracker she had outgrown him. Many of our traumas I used when I wrote Fly-By-Night, and subsequent pony books were based largely on my experiences as Pony Club secretary and parent. Cracker was passed on to other Pony Club children and by the time he was in his teens he had a waiting list of mothers wanting him for their beginner children, so we must have done something right. He ended his days as companion to Oats, a Derby winner. (Or was he second? I can’t remembr.) />
  Hilary went on to ride hot and difficult competition ponies and when she left home to go to college I was left with two which I gave away, too afraid to sell them for possible repercussions. But I shortly found life very empty without anything in the field, so I asked my experienced friend to find me something that I could ride myself without being scared to death. So came into my life my darling Essie, a 14.2 h.h. Irish Cob, grey and white — eventually pure white — whom I rode for 22 years. Some of the best days of my life were spent with Essie — cantering in the dark over Ditchling Beacon with all the lights twinkling out at sea below, careering after hounds and never missing a jump across the Essex countryside, even starring in another film we made — Pattern of Roses. The whole hunt came and I fell off much to everyone’s amusement but luckily this never appeared on the screen. I was never competitive but just loved riding across the countryside at all the different times of year — in the snow, scrunching over autumn leaves, galloping across the stubble, paddling along the beach. Essie was perfection, always wanting to go but easy to stop, never ever refusing a jump. How lucky I was! We had other horses too, five at one time, and even now I still have two, a very old Pony Club half-Arab Palomino called George and a (borrowed) Welsh Cob mare to keep him company. I still ride, but on friends’ horses. My obsession has mellowed but never left me.

  When the Flambards series was so successful I had a letter from an agent, Michael Motley, offering to work for me. I replied that I didn’t need an agent, but he wrote a few more times and asked me out to lunch, not to talk about writing but about racing. Of course I fell for this, which resulted in my acquiring both an agent and a race-horse. There were four of us in the ownership of Wise Words, a big Irish bred chestnut gelding who matured into a long-distance chaser. He never won, but was in the frame many times, and I enjoyed some of the best days of my life going to the races with my fellow owners. They none of them were in it for the money (fortunately!) but just for the pleasure, and from my involvement I was able to write about racing. The most successful book was The Sound of Distant Cheering which was bought by Readers’ Digest and published in one of their abridged versions. (To my amazement — and humiliation — I thought it read much better abridged!) I also wrote Dear Fred, based on the life-story of the famous jockey Fred Archer, and Darkling, and — fairly recently — Blind Beauty. The horse in this last book, Buffoon, was based on dear Wise Words, whom I used to ride at exercise when he retired into the point-to-point world, and later kept at home in his old age. A sweeter-natured horse never existed.

  Like my husband I had learned to mix work with pleasure. He says that if he doesn’t go sailing he doesn’t get ideas, and I said the same about racing. This leads to a very fine life-style and we are well aware of how lucky we are.

  My relationship with Michael Motley over the years has been brilliant. Even if I felt I didn’t need an agent in my early days, I certainly couldn’t do without one now. Life becomes more complex every year and he takes all the arduous paperwork off my back but doesn’t interfere with the actual writing or criticise my work, or find me any more, which I don’t need.

  We have never moved from our haunt in Essex, save once when we moved three miles along the road to another decrepit cottage after our first one was compulsorily purchased by Essex County Council, to make way for a new town. This was a very distressing time, but turned out to be for the best, for along with the cottage we acquired fifteen acres of land which we have since planted half with woodland. We spend hours out there and I have a lovely garden and a dog to walk, and still ride with friends — I do need my outdoor life and find it hard to write when the sun is shining outside.

  Our two girls are very happy but neither have ever wanted children so we have no grand-children, which doesn’t worry me unduly when I see how much work grandparents have to do these days. They both write very well but have shown no inclination to try and write for publication. Writing does seem to me to be a compulsion. I have published a book a year for the last sixty years and don’t know what I would do if I didn’t write!

  Kathleen Peyton, January 2007

  CHAPTER I

  RUTH’S DAY OUT

  THE LITTLE GREEN book was very dog-eared. Ruth lay prone on the floor, the book propped up on the fender, studying intently a photograph of a blurry-faced woman riding a horse. The caption to the photograph read: ‘This picture shows the horse pushed evenly into the trot by the rider’s leg-aids and seat. Note the happy look of the horse, and the true movements of the diagonal legs (the off-fore and near-hind on the ground, whilst the near-fore and off-hind have simultaneously left the ground). Compare with plates 16, 17 and 18.’

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ her mother said. ‘Get up off the floor, Ruth. It’s draughty.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Ruth said.

  Her seventeen-year-old brother, Ted, home from work for the dinner-hour, peered over her shoulder, grinning. Ruth put her hand over the book. Ted sat down at the dinner-table and as Ruth got up to join him he said, ‘Note the happy look of the child, and the true movements of her diagonal legs as she crosses the floor.’

  Ruth scowled furiously.

  ‘Sitting down on her well-rounded hind quarters, she picks up the fork with her near-fore —’

  ‘Ted, give over,’ said his mother.

  Ted said, not teasing any more, ‘I passed a lot of kids dashing about on ponies on the way home. In a big field. Pony Club Trials or something. There was a notice up.’

  Ruth looked up avidly. ‘Where? Near here?’

  ‘Brierley way. Jumping and all that.’

  ‘Oh!’ Ruth’s scowl vanished and her face became all passionate anxiety. ‘If I’d known!’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Do you think it’ll still be on? If I go —’

  ‘I’ll drop you there on the way back to work if you like.’

  ‘Yes, of course! Oh, yes, I could!’

  Her mother looked at her doubtfully. ‘How are you going to get home?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll walk or find a bus or something.’

  ‘If you find a bus round these God-forsaken parts you’ll be lucky,’ Mrs. Hollis said with a sniff.

  But Ruth had no thought for afterwards. To get there was all that possessed her. She ate hurriedly, taking no notice of her mother’s disapproval. Her mother was disapproving by nature, and did not like the new place they had come to live in, which had made her more disapproving still. Mr. Hollis, a born optimist and peacemaker, said she would get used to it, but Mrs. Hollis said how could she get used to only three shops, five miles to any more and three buses a day to get there? Their house was in the middle of a new ‘development of Sunny, Spacious Homes’ that had been grafted somewhat incongruously on to the edge of an untidy village in East Anglia. The Sunnyside Estate had a concrete road and concrete lamp-posts and open-plan front gardens, but the rest of the village had gritty tarmac full of pot-holes, or mere mud, and gardens overgrown with gnarled pear trees and sour apples.

  ‘The sooner you go back to school the better,’ Mrs. Hollis said to Ruth. ‘Moping round all day with nothing to do.’

  ‘But I have something to do now,’ Ruth pointed out. She did not like her new school much.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mrs. Hollis.

  Ruth finished her pudding and said to Ted, ‘Can we go now?’

  ‘Oh, give me a chance,’ Ted said, but pushed his chair back from the table in a hopeful manner. ‘The old sausages have got to meet the digestive juices.’

  ‘I’ll get ready,’ Ruth said. She did not want her mother or Ted to see how excited she felt, and she knew it showed. She walked nonchalantly out of the room. She could feel the hot pounding of her joy in her inside: a great flushing of gorgeous anticipation. The unexpectedness of it unnerved her; usually such days, like the never-to-be-forgotten day at the Horse of the Year Show at Wembley, and the day at the Royal Windsor two years ago, were ringed on a calendar weeks before, and approached with a maximum of anticipatory sensation — so great at times as to make her
feel sick and almost incapacitate her for the great moment. Her father told her she cared too much. ‘Nothing matters that much,’ he said to her quite often. But wanting a pony did. Ruth used to cry in bed at night after going to a horse show, because she did not have a pony. ‘When we go to live in the country, perhaps you can have a pony,’ her father had said. They had lived in the country for two months now, but he had not said any more about it. Ruth wanted to ask him, but she was so frightened that he would dash her hopes that she did not dare to. She was afraid it had just been a prevaricating thing to say, and that if she asked again he would think of something else, like not being able to afford it. But soon she would ask him, Ruth thought, because it was all she thought about. She was nearly twelve, and soon it might be too late: she would grow too tall and need a horse that would certainly eat too much for her father to afford. According to a book Ruth had (a very old one that her father had bought in a junk-shop), people should start riding at ten. If you did not learn to ride as a child you would never acquire a good seat, it said, unless you joined the cavalry and received military training. Ruth realized there was no possibility of her ever joining the cavalry — she wondered if there was such a thing as a mounted policewoman? — and meanwhile, as far as she could see, her life was being wasted. If she were to say that to her father, he would laugh and say she had no sense of humour. ‘Well, I haven’t,’ Ruth thought. Her only consolation was that, for her age, she was small and thin. Pony-sized for a few years yet.

  She pulled her anorak off the hook on her bedroom door. She was already wearing jeans and a blue polo-necked jersey, so getting ready did not take long. Ted started putting on his motor-bike clothes. Ruth fetched the old crash-helmet she wore when she rode pillion, and her mother gave her her bus fare home. ‘If you can find a bus,’ she said, ‘which I doubt. Now, mind how you go, Ted. You’re not in a hurry.’