The Prize Read online

  “Julie,” Blackwell said turning momentarily to Georgie. “Grab a pitchfork and start clearing the dung out of the boxes.”

  He turned back to Kennedy. “Let me introduce you to the horses, Kennedy, and then you can help me with the afternoon workouts while Julie does the feeds.”

  “My name is Georgie,” Georgie muttered. But Blackwell didn’t hear her. He was too busy introducing his horses to the new head girl.

  Chapter Five

  Alice Dupree sat in the minibus with a sense of impending doom. Ever since she had been assigned to apprentice to dressage rider Allegra Hickman she’d decided there was just one reasonable conclusion to be reached.

  Tara Kelly must hate her.

  What other explanation could there possibly be for lumbering Alice with the very worst assignment in the whole class?

  If dressage was a vegetable, it would be Brussels sprouts. It was like torture – Alice had Caspian sitting idly in the stables when they should be doing cross-country lessons and here she was stuck with dressage grooming for a whole term!

  With a thundercloud hovering over her head, Alice got off the minibus at Allegra Hickman’s front gates. She was in such a foul mood that it took her a while to notice how nice the place was. There was a little white cottage with a wraparound veranda at the front, and a driveway edged by a hedge smothered in tiny white flowers led to the barn and stables out the back. The stables were big enough for eight horses and there was a concrete wash-down bay and a space to park the horse truck. It was all very basic, except for the dressage arena which was Olympic-sized.

  In the arena, astride the most enormous black horse Alice had ever seen, was Allegra Hickman. She was wearing white jodhpurs, an old faded yellow shirt and a baseball cap on her head instead of a helmet. She sat in her dressage saddle with her legs long and straight, her hands held up delicately in front of her, as if she were proffering a silver cocktail tray filled with drinks. She had the most amazing posture, her spine erect and her eyes dead ahead as she came down the long side of the arena in a lovely extended trot and then headed towards a long bank of enormous mirrors that lined the far end of the arena. Once the black horse was positioned in front of the mirrors, Allegra Hickman slowed him down and began to trot on the spot, looking at herself in the mirror to check her position and the movement of the horse. The black horse lifted his white-bandaged legs in a perfect piaffe, then Allegra urged him seamlessly into a canter and began to weave sideways across the arena in a balletic half-pass.

  As they reached the long side of the arena, Allegra spotted Alice standing and watching them. She pulled the black horse to a halt and then relaxed the reins so the horse could stretch his neck as she walked over to join her new apprentice.

  “Hi!” she said. “I’m almost done. There’s a seat over there.”

  Alice looked over beyond the flowering hedge and saw a cute white wooden shed that looked a bit like a bus stop – a dinky shelter with a wooden bench seat at the side of the arena. She made her way over and sat down on the bench to watch Allegra finish the workout.

  Allegra picked up her reins and the black horse elevated into the air like a hovercraft and floated across the school. The dressage trainer drove forward with her legs and held the black horse with her hands so that the energy collected beneath her. The great black stallion was like a coiled spring as they moved their way across the centre of the arena in a series of perfect one-tempi changes.

  “I’m trying to get him to use his hindquarters more,” Allegra called out to Alice as she rode the flying changes. “Sometimes he has a tendency to be a little downhill and I really have to work him to keep him in front of my legs.”

  Alice nodded but she had no idea what Allegra meant. As far as she could tell the horse looked perfect.

  Allegra cantered around the arena and came down again to try the tempi changes once more. The black horse flung out his front legs like a schoolgirl doing double-dutch over a skipping rope.

  “That was much better!” Allegra seemed pleased. “Did you notice how nicely he lifted his knees?”

  As she continued to school the horse Allegra kept her focus but managed to also keep talking simultaneously the whole time to Alice. Even though it all looked perfect from the sidelines, Allegra was hyper-critical of her performance and was constantly pointing out when the horse performed nicely and when his movements needed improvement. “That pirouette was a bit rushed – my fault!” she would say. Or “watch how his trot improves when I ask for more energy…”

  Alice found it surprisingly interesting to watch with Allegra’s running commentary.

  “This horse, Virtuoso, has just started competing at Grand Prix level so he knows the movements but he needs to establish them and make them second nature,” Allegra told Alice as she pushed the black stallion sideways in a canter half-pass all the way to the centre line and then back again in the opposite direction.

  “Now that was a perfect half-pass, good lad!” She pulled the horse up to a walk and gave him a slappy pat on the neck to reward him. “Very good, Virtuoso!”

  Allegra came over to the bench seat and dismounted.

  “Right!” she said. “Your turn!”

  “Me?” Alice squeaked. “I’m only grooming for you.”

  “Not at this yard,” Allerga countered. “One of the perks of being on my team is that you get a regular private lesson. So why don’t you mount up and we’ll get started.”

  “Ummm,” Alice wasn’t sure how to phrase it without being rude, “I’m not really that into dressage.”

  Allegra arched a sceptical eyebrow. “No, of course. You’re an eventer, aren’t you? Don’t worry – I know the score. I was a Blainford pupil myself years ago and I don’t imagine things have changed. The eventing kids all think they’re far too cool to do anything except jumping – leave the dressage to the geeks, huh?”

  “Umm, yeah, kind of.” Alice admitted.

  Allegra shook her head in disbelief. “Well then, little miss eventer, why don’t you get onboard and show me what you’ve got?”

  She held out the reins and Alice ducked through the white post and rails fence and stepped on to the soft sand surface of the dressage arena.

  “I’ll leg you up,” Allegra offered.

  Alice was about to say that she didn’t need it but then she noticed the size of the black horse. Standing next to Virtuoso was like standing beside a mountain.

  “I know, he’s big,” Allegra said, clocking Alice’s expression. “Seventeen hands. A typical warmblood in both build and temperament too. He’s quite… opinionated.”

  In the saddle, Alice’s legs didn’t even reach the stirrup irons. Allegra had to shorten the leathers by four holes.

  “You’ll learn to stretch and ride with your legs in the longer position while you’re here,” Allegra told her, “But for now you can keep your stirrups short.”

  Settling into the saddle, Alice picked up the reins and asked Virtuoso to move forwards. As soon as she put her legs on he stepped violently sideways underneath her.

  “Too much with the right leg,” Allegra corrected her. “He thinks you want him to do a pirouette. You must be careful, Alice, he’s so finely tuned that if you move your legs or your hands in any direction, or so much as lighten your seat bones to one side then Virtuoso will take that as a cue. Now, put your legs on lightly together and ask him to move forward at a walk and then go into trot.”

  Alice tried again. She wrapped her lower legs around the enormous girth of the black horse and with the gentlest squeeze she asked him to walk and then asked again to trot.

  The power of the horse beneath her felt like a rocket igniting its thrusters. Virtuoso’s strides almost took her breath away as he sprang forward into a trot that was so elevated and graceful the horse seemed to almost float in the air between strides. Alice had to gather her wits about her to stay with him as he flew along the long side of the arena.

  “That’s good,” Allegra said. “Don’t try to sl
ow him down. I know his movement feels huge but you must keep your legs strong. Ride him from the hocks! Balance him back with your seat! Now bring him across the arena and ask him to extend that trot.”

  Alice turned across from the corner of the arena and clucked with her tongue. “Come on, boy!”

  Baffled by her aids, Virtuoso suddenly tried to launch into a canter, and then, when Alice panicked and pulled back on the reins, he threw his head up in the air.

  Alice kept a firm grip and tried to regain control with the reins, but now Virtuoso really took offence. As his rider flailed wildly to control him, Virtuoso mistook her confused cues as a request for a pirouette and in a swift, single manoeuvre the massive black horse began to pivot on his hindquarters and fling his front legs around so that he was spinning in a circle. Alice lost both her stirrups and suddenly fell forward on to his neck.

  Virtuoso gave a startled snort and then launched himself straight up into the air with a massive buck. Alice had nothing to hold her in the saddle and went flying through the air. Her last thought before she hit the sand was that it was a very long way to fall off this big black horse.

  One thing eventers know how to do though is fall off. Alice landed with a tumble roll and was on her feet again before Allegra Hickman had reached her side.

  “I’m OK,” Alice said, dusting herself off, feeling slightly shaken. “I just wasn’t really expecting that.”

  “Neither was he!” Allegra Hickman replied. “If you bounce around on his back like that then you’re going to be eating sand every day for the rest of term.”

  Alice looked hurt. “He’s a difficult horse.”

  “He’s not,” Allegra Hickman disagreed. “But if you make a mistake he’ll call you on it straight away just like he did today. Don’t be afraid of that – you can use it to your advantage. If you ride him well, he’ll reward you for it.”

  “He looked so easy when you were on him,” Alice realised how lame this sounded as soon as the words left her mouth.

  “That’s the whole point of dressage,” Allegra Hickman replied. “You do it well and make it look easy, when in fact it’s the hardest thing in the world.”

  Allegra put a firm hand on Alice’s shoulder. “Ready to get back up there?”

  Alice looked nervous. Allegra smiled. “I’m gonna uncover your inner dressage geek, Alice Dupree – just you wait and see.”

  Dominic Blackwell currently had four Grand Prix mounts: Maximillion, Polaris, Cameo and Cardinal, and five other extremely valuable up-and-coming Warmbloods in his stable.

  “Nothing but the best, that’s Blackwell’s motto!” Blackwell told Georgie. “Blackwell has an eye for quality horse flesh.”

  More like an eye for other people’s chequebooks, Georgie thought.

  She knew that in the real world most professional riders didn’t own their mounts. But it was the way that Dominic Blackwell talked about his horses as if they were money in the bank – just possessions instead of personalities. He spent his whole day on the phone making ingratiating cooing noises to appease his rich sponsors and hardly paid a blind bit of notice to the actual horses themselves.

  Blackwell was in this sport for the money and prestige and it was clear that the lure of Patricia Kirkwood was driving him crazy. He literally fell over himself treating Kennedy like a princess, immediately giving her the riding duties on his second-string horses.

  Georgie tried not to dwell on the unfairness of this as she mucked out the stables like Cinderella with a pitchfork in her hands. It wasn’t that she minded the hard work, but when the final scores were tallied at the end of term there was no doubt which one of them would be getting the better mark from Dominic Blackwell.

  Tacking up the gorgeous horses in the stables so that Kennedy could ride them almost broke Georgie’s heart. She would have loved the chance to get onboard any of the exquisite showjumpers in Blackwell’s string.

  Kennedy, of course, was entirely unimpressed by the opportunity she’d been given. One horse was the same as the next as far as she was concerned.

  It’s not that Kennedy’s a bad rider, Georgie thought. It was more that she lacked a natural empathy for the horses that she rode. She’d been given lessons by some of the best instructors in the world but Kennedy still tended to ride robotically and treat every single horse as if it were exactly the same as the last. Compared to a rider like Riley, Kennedy had no instinct or feel.

  Not that Dominic Blackwell seemed to notice. He had the same loveless attitude to horses as Kennedy. Meanwhile Georgie was back on the ground in the stables, shovelling dung and filling haynets.

  You shall go to the ball, Cinders, she told herself as she filled yet another barrow with manure that afternoon. But that seemed as unlikely as a mouse turning into a coachman. How was she going to win Dominic Blackwell over when all she ever did was clean out his loose boxes? She was at the bottom of the apprentice heap right now and unlucky Georgie looked doomed to lose.

  Chapter Six

  Are you coming to dinner or not?” Alice asked impatiently as she held the bedroom door.

  “I don’t think I can move,” Georgie groaned, lying face down on the bed.

  Her body ached from the afternoon spent shovelling dung and polishing tack, but it was more than that.

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Listen, my apprenticeship sucks too, you know.”

  “I thought you said Allegra was cool to work for?” Georgie said, not moving.

  “She is,” Alice said. “But it’s still dressage. I’d much rather be on a showjumping yard.”

  “Not on Blackwell’s,” Georgie groaned. “I can’t believe he made Kennedy his head girl!”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s a travesty,” Alice said dryly, “now pull yourself together, we’re leaving.”

  Georgie groaned and dragged herself up.

  Daisy and Emily joined them on the front steps of the boarding house and the four girls made their way up the driveway towards the dining hall.

  An endless stream of complaints punctuated their walk from Badminton House to the main school grounds as the girls compared aches and pains.

  “You should see the inside of my thighs!” Emily said. “They’re virtually purple with bruises. Tina Dixon is obsessed with doing sitting trot with no stirrups. I spent half the afternoon trying to stay onboard this bonkers mare of hers while she kept telling me that all I needed to do was relax and stop gripping with my thighs.”

  “At least your injuries are from riding,” Georgie said. “I broke my back trying to muck out the loose boxes while Kennedy got to ride all afternoon.”

  “Georgie, don’t let her take advantage!” Emily insisted. “Tell Dominic Blackwell that it’s not fair and you should both be doing stuff equally.”

  “It’s no good,” Georgie groaned. “Dominic knows who her stepmum is and he’s being totally greasy. Kennedy has convinced him that she’s his access-point to endless riches and that she can get him the ride on Tantalus. He’s so busy sucking up to her he can’t even be bothered with me.”

  “You just need to impress him,” Alice said.

  “How? With my dung-shovelling abilities? He can’t even get my name right!”

  “Well, what are you going to do?” Emily asked.

  “Georgie’s just gonna have to cope. Georgie has no choice. Georgie needs to suck it up,” Georgie replied.

  “Why are you talking like that?” Emily frowned.

  “That’s how Dominic talks!” Georgie giggled. “He refers to himself in the third person!”

  Alice pulled a face. “You’re not serious?”

  Georgie began to imitate him. “Blackwell has the best stables in the Northern Hemisphere! Blackwell runs a tight ship! Blackwell is… a total nutter as far as I can tell. Honestly, I am so knackered. I’m going straight to bed after we do our homework.”

  “Ohmygod!” Emily suddenly remembered, wincing. “Sorry Georgie, I forgot to tell you. Conrad was looking for you earlier on. He said to tell you that you�
��re supposed to report to the Burghley House tack room tonight to do your fatigues.”

  Georgie had survived a day of hard labour, slogging while Kennedy rode. And now her rival’s vindictive prefect boyfriend was going to make it worse. Her misery was complete.

  Georgie concentrated on stabbing her pasta with her fork and glumly followed the conversation over dinner that evening. Daisy proved to be a welcome distraction as she was telling the Badminton House girls about her first day with polo rider Seb Upton-Baker.

  “He wanders around the yard in these tight white breeches like someone out of a Jilly Cooper novel,” Daisy said rolling her eyes. “All the girl grooms follow him around like dogs with their tongues hanging out. I think they only work there in the hope that he’ll ask them out.”

  “Including you?” Alice asked.

  Daisy looked insulted. “Eww! He’s, like, twice my age!”

  “You could do worse than a jet-set international playboy,” Alice laughed. “His last girlfriend was a supermodel.”

  “I’d rather be a polo player than go out with one,” Daisy replied sniffily.

  “You are a polo player,” Emily pointed out to her. “We’re in the school team, remember?”

  “A proper player, I mean.” Daisy said. “Seb is an eight-goal player and the way he rides is totally amazing. I tried to play stick and ball with him and some of the other grooms. I thought I would know the ropes from the Bluegrass Cup but this high-goal stuff is so much more intense. And you should see the way he runs the stables. The grooms treat those ponies like gold.”

  “Well, I fell off a seventeen hand horse today,” Alice said. She seemed remarkably cheery about it. “Allegra let me ride Virtuoso. He’s her Grand Prix horse. He can do the most incredible stuff like flying one-time changes.”