already tacked up Mrs Wilkinson,’ Etta told him, ‘and although she bucked and kicked at first, Dora thinks she’s already broken, so she was probably a flat horse.’
Nice lady, thought Valent, delighted to see how Etta had perked up, and how pretty she looked with her pale skin tanned, her hair washed and her dark blue eyes no longer swollen and bloodshot.
As he made his way through the puddles, hearing the rain slapping on the hard summer leaves, he noticed a little tree he was sure hadn’t been there last time. Next moment Chisolm had leapt over the half-door and, butting and nibbling, escorted him to his car.
When Dora started hacking Mrs Wilkinson out, Chisolm trotted behind them, and when autumn came, she taught Mrs Wilkinson to climb up banks and eat blackberries off the bushes. They were soon denuding Valent’s trees of apples and pears.
When Charlie Radcliffe came to check on Mrs Wilkinson, her new goat friend had got so possessive, she stamped her cloven foot and butted Charlie out of the field. When Charlie had recovered his dignity and his medicine case, he thought the whole thing very funny.
‘Little bugger nearly got me in the nuts,’ he pronounced from behind the safety of the gate. ‘You’ve done a fantastic job, Etta. Mrs Wilkinson looks wonderful, and she’s certainly fit enough to go hunting.’
The following week Joey mounted Mrs Wilkinson for a ride round the orchard, which ended with her carrying his fifteen-stone bulk round the valley.
‘She’s incredibly strong,’ he reported in amazement.
Meanwhile Dora, who’d been riding Mrs Wilkinson all over Larkshire, jumping anything in her path, also spent a lot of time teaching her tricks: making faces, sticking out her tongue for a Polo, shaking hooves and bowing. Chisolm, as had been noted, was very quick with her little horns. Both of them spent hours kicking and heading a football.
31
A captivated village had a whip-round to pay for the cap when Dora took Mrs Wilkinson hunting for the first time. Early in November the West Larks Hunt met at Willowwood Hall. Having alerted people with a notice in the Fox, Dora expected a good turnout, but was apprehensive of how Mrs Wilkinson might react. Her fears increased when Etta refused to go along.
‘But Mrs Wilkinson has got to hunt six times to qualify to run in a point-to-point,’ protested a horrified Dora. ‘She’s such a progressive horse, you can’t deprive her of the chance.’
‘I accept that hunting may be good for Wilkie, but I’m not coming to support it,’ said Etta. ‘Nor is Chisolm. Hounds might eat her. I’m sorry, Dora.’
Denied her two comfort blankets on the day, Mrs Wilkinson neighed with increasing desperation. But it would have been hard to say who looked better: Mrs Wilkinson, with her pewter coat gleaming, neat plaits and newly washed white and silver tail, or Dora in her dark blue riding coat, snow-white stock for which she’d abandoned her Pony Club tie, and new black leather boots. These had been bought with the proceeds from several stories – including the rescue of Chisolm.
If only Paris could see me now, thought Dora, waving her whip at passers-by and admiring her reflection in the village shop window as she trotted up the high street. So sad Wilkie was blind in her right eye and couldn’t admire herself as well.
Willowwood Hall, dozing in the low-angled morning sun, swarmed with horses and riders, gossiping and knocking back drink. An already trembling, sweating Mrs Wilkinson was further unnerved to be greeted by loud cheers.
The atmosphere was unusually relaxed because Ione had been called away to chair a Compostium in London. This enabled Alban to sex up his wife’s innocuous cider cup with lashings of brandy and sloe gin. Nor was there anyone to bellow if hounds, horses or foot followers (mostly retired people in flat caps or pull-on felts and dung-coloured coats) absent-mindedly trod on a precious plant.
In compensation, in between handing round flapjacks, fruit cake, Kit Kats and trays of drink, Mop Idol and Phoebe clanked Compost Club collecting tins.
It was a beautiful day with enough cloud for the sun to idle in and out, casting magic shadows on rolling downs and gold cascades of willows, then lighting up ash-blond stubble and rich brown ploughed fields. Huge proud trees rippled gold, orange and olive green against the rough grass as hounds roved around Ione’s orchard and garden, and strayed out through the door into the churchyard. Dirty white, freckled, beige and white, brown, black and