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JONATHAN, watching his mother sifting through the Pony Club files, saw her suddenly not as his mother, but as a formidable, efficient, clever, middle-aged woman. It came as quite a shock. Equally suddenly, he realized that it was himself growing up that saw her like that, detaching himself from his family; it was nothing they had done. He couldn’t call his mother ‘Mummy’ any more. It sounded too soppy. And ‘Mother’ was unfamiliar as yet. She wouldn’t answer to ‘Mum’, as she was too well-bred. She herself still used the term well-bred for people, instead of just for animals; it made Jonathan curl up. In spite of this, she was all right, as mothers went.

‘We’re going to have a job scraping up a team for the Area Trials next summer,’ she said to him.

Jonathan yawned, to hint that he wasn’t terribly interested in the Pony Club any more.

‘There’s you and Jess, of course, in spite of your being the DC’s own children, which I still find rather embarrassing . . .’

She was the DC, which was the antediluvian term the Pony Club used for its Branch bosses. It stood for District Commissioner, and harked back to the days of the Empire. Really, Jonathan thought, it was all too childish, a big game for the ambitious adults.

‘For Heaven’s sake don’t count me in this year,’ he said peevishly. ‘It messes up the whole summer.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ his mother said in her cracking-down voice. ‘You’re not sixteen till June. You’ve got another whole summer to ride in the team and Railwayman’s going as well as ever. I certainly won’t let you drop out.’

‘Thank you very much,’ he said bitterly.

‘Put another log on the fire. We aren’t saving them any more. Jim brought another load up from Pot Wood yesterday.’

Jonathan heaved another half-hundredweight log into the ancient fire-place and watched an explosion of sparks spray across the soot-dark recess. It was snowing outside, a wet slow drift spattering the dusk. He was grateful for his privilege, sitting there with his knees close to the embers, feeling the warmth striking through his thin denims. He had been selling Christmas things in the Oxfam shop all day, and now didn’t even have to go out and do his own horse for the night, for there was a groom to do it for him. Having been surrounded all day by posters of starving children, his own life suddenly seemed a bit odd, even pointless. His mother, for example, frowning over her card index. As if it mattered!

‘There’s Peter McNair, of course, if he happens to have a decent pony when the moment comes. You can never count on his father doing the right thing. He only thinks of the money.’

‘Well, it is his living,’ Jonathan pointed out.

Mr. McNair was a horse-dealer, and his son’s mounts came and went. The good ones mostly went, and Peter was left with the pigs.

‘If only he hadn’t sold that chestnut, Toadhill Flax,’ Mrs. Meredith grieved. ‘Peter and that animal — what a combination! They could have gone right to the very top. Made for each other. I wonder what became of that pony? I’ve never heard of it since it was sold.’

‘No.’

‘We’ve got the riders. What about that odd little girl — Ruth somebody, that Peter McNair’s friendly with? She’s keen. Doesn’t know a thing, but the heart’s in the right place. Her pony’s a bit small though.’

‘Fly-by-Night?’

‘That’s it. She’ll want a new one this year.’

‘I doubt if she’ll get one. Her family’s not a bit horsy. Garden full of motor bikes and she has to do a paper-round to keep herself in horse-shoes.’

‘Oh.’

No privilege there. Jonathan knew that if he was Ruth Hollis, doing it all from scratch, he wouldn’t ever get in any team. He was too blooming lazy. Even now, while Jim was doing Railway for the night, re-rugging him, mucking him out, filling hay-nets, he, Jonathan, sat staring into the fire . . . working in Oxfam had given him a guilt complex.

‘There’s some new people taken Hill Farm,’ his mother was saying. ‘They’ve got horses, and the girl’s Pony Club — moved from Suffolk, I believe. From what I’ve heard she might be useful. We’ll have to look them up. Name of Parker.’

He grunted. As if he cared! How seriously his mother took it. Everything she did, from training her point-to-point horse to peeling potatoes, she did thoroughly, with minimum fuss and maximum efficiency. Even the Pony Club, inherited from Major Banks . . . it wouldn’t be any old Pony Club now; it would be a good Pony Club, with winning teams and a serious reputation. And all for what? Jonathan groaned. His mother looked at him sharply.

‘Really, Jonathan, what a mess you do look! The Sutton-Popes are coming round for drinks in an hour. Do go and put on something presentable.’

To order your copy of The Team see our online shop, visit our Edinburgh bookshop or one of our Stockists.