Goodbye, Chocolate Charlie. Marga Jonker

brass hooks that were mounted to the walls, and each saddle had a name tag below it.

      Nicky headed for a stool set against the back wall and climbed up onto it. Kneeling on the stool, she reached out and tenderly touched the two holes on the wall; the holes that had been left when the name tag had been removed. Just three months ago, the name tag there had read:

      Nicky

      Chocolate Charlie

      On the hook above the two little holes hung her own black saddle. Her dad had bought it for her in Germany soon after she’d been selected for the Western Cape provincial showjumping team. Nicky stroked the leather, which now had only one long scar left on it. Grandpa Solly had fixed the saddle, and he’d done such a good job that even this scrape was barely visible; the other scratches had completely disappeared.

      Nicky’s lost and broken stirrups and straps had all been replaced, and Charlie’s old bridle hung neatly from its hook below the saddle. It had been cleaned, and the bit had been polished to a shine. There it all was – just waiting to be used.

      Sitting on that stool with her back against the wall, Nicky could see everything that was going on in and around the stables. She closed her eyes tightly and pressed her hand to her heart, where she could still feel a searing pain. She tried to concentrate on breathing deeply and evenly.

      * * *

      “How did you bury him, Paul?” Nicky had asked one morning as she and Solitaire’s stable manager had been going about their business in the stable. Nicky had known Paul wasn’t the type to avoid her question.

      “Well, burying a horse is tough, Nicky.” Paul had said, and then hesitated. “You were there when we buried Jupiter after he got equine influenza, remember?” Calmly, he’d carried on with what he’d been doing – using a pitch fork to spread clean and dry hay.

      Nicky remembered that day very well. They’d had to use a front-end loader to tip Jupiter’s lifeless body into a massive hole that had been dug next to the farm’s scrapyard. Even with the loader it had taken Uncle Peter almost all day to dig the hole. A massive, deep hole. Jupiter’s glorious body had been scooped up by the loader and dumped into the hole as if it were nothing more than a load of sand.

      It gave Nicky the shivers to think that Charlie had been buried in the same way.

      “We thought we’d put Charlie near Jupiter,” Paul had said. Although he’d clearly felt uncomfortable, he hadn’t tried to change the subject.

      “How did you get Charlie back to Solitaire from Quagga Park Reserve?”

      Paul hadn’t answered straightaway.

      “How did you get Charlie off Snowy Mountain?” Nicky had persisted.

      “Well, see, he was already dead, and he was such a powerful animal – muscular and heavy. We had to drag him down the mountainside.”

      “But how exactly did you do it, Paul?” Something inside Nicky needed to know.

      Paul had stopped what he was doing. “We tied his legs with rope and dragged him behind the tractor. Then we used the loader to put him onto the flatbed truck. And then we buried him next to Jupiter.” Leaning on the pitch fork, he’d continued. “That’s what life is like on a farm, Nicky. Horses are born here but horses also die here. These things happen,” he’d said kindly.

      “But Charlie wasn’t just any old horse.”

      “I know, Nicky.” Paul had looked at her sympathetically. “Listen, we can’t let this thing defeat us, right? We must keep our heads up high, and breathe in and out, and carry on with life.”

      * * *

      You freak, horse murderer! It didn’t just happen – you made it happen! You made Charlie race down the mountain. You forced him to gallop on dangerous terrain. If you’d have made him walk, nothing would have happened!

      Nicky pushed her head back hard against the cold wall. She breathed in the smell of leather saddles and bridles, of the horse sweat still clinging to the numnahs. In summer, this place in the dark tack room was the coolest spot on the farm. On this autumn day, it was quite chilly, but it was her hiding place; her thinking corner.

      Her eyes were closed but Nicky could tell that someone had just entered the tack room. Probably someone calling me for lunch, she thought. I hope it’s André.

      But when she opened her eyes, she saw that it was Ratu who was staring at her from the open doorway.

      “Hey, how did you get out of the paddock? I hope you’re not a gate-opener, because that’ll be the end of you as far as Uncle Peter is concerned! Not to mention Paul!”

      The pony snorted and scraped her front hoof across the floor, as if calling to Nicky.

      “Well, you’re just going to have to go back to your paddock – or maybe into the stable next door,” Nicky calmly explained the rules to the newcomer, who was now standing half inside and half outside the tack room. “Paul doesn’t allow horses to roam around freely between the stables. In fact, he’d have a fit.”

      Nicky took a blue halter from a hook without a name tag. She approached Ratu, but then her hands started to shake – again! – and fear gripped her by the throat. Her heart started beating like a drum, thudding in her ears. Small beads of sweat began to form on her forehead.

      I don’t want to ride this pony, and this pony obviously doesn’t want to be ridden. But I want to be able to do something; to help – I don’t want to be useless any more …

      But I don’t want to replace Charlie!

      Nicky’s throat was on fire; her eyes too. For what felt like an eternity, she stood there, frozen to the spot, the halter still in her hand.

      Ratu waited patiently until Nicky had begun to unfold the halter. Like a circus horse, the pony came closer, as if she’d put the halter over her own head if she could. She pushed her face into the nose band and dropped her head all the way into the halter.

      Nicky struggled with the buckles at first, but finally managed to do them up. Then she took up the halter and gently prodded Ratu in her honey-coloured side. The mare responded immediately and turned to leave the tack room.

      By now, Nicky’s whole body was shaking and she was breathing heavily, as if she’d just run cross-country.

      Stay focused! Stay focused! This pony is new here; she shouldn’t be wandering around on her own. Horses often bite and kick unfamiliar horses. All I need to do is lead Ratu safely out of the tack room to the stable next door.

      The part of the old barn not taken up by the tack room served as a large stable. Many years ago, cows had been milked in here, but these days it was mostly used to stable mares that were on the verge of foaling. Many a foal had come into the world in this quiet space. Nicky led Ratu into the stable and, hands shaking, closed the door behind them. She didn’t even remove the halter.

      She thought back to a conversation she’d had with Dr Dave.

      “Suffering from a phobia is just like an illness. It’s something that can be cured. There’s nothing majorly wrong with you.” Dr Dave had seemed small and old to her, like a wrinkly tortoise with a leather chair for a shell.

      You’re mental, freak! You don’t want to know what happened that day because you did something terrible and wrong. You don’t want to ride any more because you don’t deserve a new horse. You destroyed the one you had. Thanks to you, a front-end loader has dumped his body into a hole in the ground!

      “The medicine that will cure the fear inside you is words. We banish fear by talking about it,” Dr Dave had explained in a sympathetic voice. “A broken arm or leg is fixed by setting it in plaster. For infection, you take antibiotics. But fears and phobias need to be talked about for the patient to heal.”

      Words, words, words … heal, heal, heal …

      Dr Dave’s voice went around in her head like a