Showjumpers Read online

  Beside the two boys sat Bunny Redpath and Blair Danner, never seen without chewing gum in their mouths. Bunny rode a pinto mustang, while Blair had a sorrel gelding that perfectly matched her chestnut hair. She had qualified for a scholarship for Blainford because she was a national junior champion at barrel racing.

  At the next table sat the dressage geeks from Stars of Pau house – Isabel Weiss, Mitty Janssen and Reina Romero. Although serious and swotty, they were gifted riders. Isabel, who wore her blonde hair in a plait that wrapped around her head like an alice band, was from Frankfurt in Germany. Mitty, who was from Holland, was Isabel’s best friend. The third member of their group, Reina, was Spanish and rode a long-maned grey Andalusian called Destino. Although some of the other riders considered dressage to be a ‘sissy option', Isabel and Mitty had thoroughly proven their courage by joining Tara Kelly’s cross-country class at the start of term. Isabel had been the first student to be eliminated, but Mitty was doing rather better than everyone expected on her big Swedish Warmblood. Georgie smiled at Isabel and Mitty and gave them a wave as she headed for her own table where the others were waiting.

  The eventers – Georgie’s gang – sat at the same table in the far left corner of the room. These riders were the core of the first-year eventing class. Friends and yet rivals at the same time, they were all driven by the same goal, to secure top ranking in cross-country by the end of the year. The palpable tension amongst the group arose from an unavoidable fact: not all of them would last the year.

  The cross-country class was renowned for its high drop-out rate. Riders fell by the wayside with broken bones and shattered nerves – and if that wasn’t bad enough, there was also their teacher to contend with.

  Tara Kelly was the head of Blainford Academy’s eventing department and taught the cross-country class. She had a policy of ‘sorting the wheat from the chaff', which meant that for the first term she put the class through a gruelling elimination process and got rid of any students that she didn’t think were good enough.

  Elimination was brutal, but Tara’s argument was that it was for the pupils’ own good. Cross-country was not your usual subject. It was a deadly game and by term two, when the jumps began to get really scary and dangerous, it was vital that only the very best riders, who had the courage and skills to cope with riding at such a high level, remained.

  The riders at Georgie and Alice’s table included Georgie’s fellow Brit Daisy King. Georgie had been hoping that she and Daisy might have developed a common bond since they were both English, but if anything the rivalry between them had become even more intense at Blainford. Next to Daisy was her Badminton House room mate, Emily Tait. Emily was a quiet, unassuming rider, and yet she’d managed to ride her big black Thoroughbred, Barclay, to victory in the mid-term exam point-to-point, trouncing all the others to come home in first place.

  Beside Emily sat the French rider, Nicholas Laurent. Confident to the point of arrogance, Laurent had been a superstar back home in Bordeaux. After all, he’d made the national junior eventing team by the age of eleven. Laurent’s greatest competition, at least when it came to conceit, was undoubtedly Matt Garrett. The Australian rider had a swagger to his riding style and was annoyingly brilliant across country. Georgie wanted to dislike him, but was constantly impressed by his instinctive cunning and sheer bravado.

  Georgie’s best friend in the cross-country class, apart from Alice, was Cameron Fraser. He was a Scottish rider who had the most amazing natural ‘stickability’ on a horse. He could ride through a water complex, lose his reins and stirrups and still emerge out the other side on his horse’s back. Cameron shared a dorm room with the rider sitting beside him, Alex Chang. Despite being on the Chinese junior eventing team, Alex spoke with a very pronounced English accent. His mother was a diplomat and Alex had learnt to ride in Oxfordshire. He’d brought his own horse with him to Blainford, a grey Anglo-Arab gelding called Tatou.

  Georgie had a secret crush on Tatou, who was quite easily the prettiest horse in the whole of Blainford. If she were to ride any horse instead of Belladonna then it would definitely be Alex Chang’s stunning dapple grey. And as for secret crushes, late in the boarding house the night before, Emily had confided to Georgie that she had a crush on Alex himself!

  The eventing clique was tightly knit. They all knew everything about each other, as Georgie was beginning to realise.

  “So what’s this about you and Kirkwood?” Cameron launched straight in as soon as she sat down. “Do you want me to have a go at him?”

  “No, thanks, Cam,” Georgie smiled awkwardly.

  “Probably just as well,” Cameron admitted. “I’m a totally rubbish fighter. The one and only time I’ve ever been in a scrap was with my best mate back in Coldstream, and I ended up with a black eye.”

  “That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Georgie said.

  “My best mate was called Annabel,” Cameron pointed out.

  Georgie laughed. “It’s OK, Cam,” she said. “I’m not going to ask you to defend my honour.”

  “Not if you fight like a girl,” Alice agreed. She had a better suggestion. “We should quarter him.”

  “What do you mean?” Georgie asked.

  “You know, like in medieval times, how people were hung, drawn and quartered?” Alice explained. “We’d just do the last bit, the quartering. All you have to do is tie a horse to each of his arms and legs and then get them to gallop in four different directions and he’ll get ripped into four different quarters.”

  “Gross!” Emily said.

  “But effective,” Alice replied, looking pleased, “and we could use our own horses.”

  “Well,” Cameron said as he finished his lunch. “I’d love to stay here talking about torture, but it’s time we all went and experienced it instead.”

  He was right. Lunchtime was over and they were due at their next class. It was time for their lesson with Tara Kelly.

  Chapter Six

  After almost a week off, Georgie had been excited about getting back on Belle again – but when she saw the mare her heart sank.

  “She’s like a hippo,” Georgie moaned as she brought Belle inside and tied the mud-caked mare up at the hitching posts next to Alice’s horse, William, and Cameron’s big piebald, Paddy. “It’s going to take forever to get her cleaned up.”

  Now that the rainy weather was setting in and the fields were muddy, Georgie had been expecting to keep Belle boxed in the stables. But there were too many horses at Blainford for everyone to be assigned loose boxes, and so it had been decided that the school horses would continue to graze outdoors.

  The divide between the pupils who were rich enough to afford to keep their own horses at Blainford and those who weren’t had never been more brutal. Georgie would have to deal with a muddy horse for months until the weather improved.

  Underneath the winter rug, she was surprised to see how furry Belle had become in less than a week. Autumn days were shorter and the decrease in sunlight had stimulated the growth of the horses’ winter coats.

  Even with her thick layer of winter fuzz, you could see how finely built and beautiful Belladonna was. She was a deep red bay with a jet-black mane and tail and black points, and a stunning white heart-shaped marking on her forehead.

  When Georgie had first met the mare she had been struck by how much Belle resembled the Warmblood mare Boudicca, who had once belonged to her mother. And it turned out there was a good reason for this – Belle was Boudicca’s foal. As Georgie got to know Belle better, she could see the differences between the two horses. Although she shared Boudicca’s distinctive markings and exquisitely shaped head, physically Belle was much finer, with a lighter frame. Belle was also half-Thoroughbred. Her sire had been a racehorse and his bloodlines gave her a delicate refinement and, in theory, a swiftness that Boudicca had never possessed. However, being half-Thoroughbred also accounted for the young mare’s hot-headedness. The mare had talent, there was no doubt about it, but she wasn’t an e
asy ride.

  Georgie had only just managed to get the mud off when she realised that they were due in the arena already. She’d been hoping to tidy up Belle’s tail and pull her mane, but there simply wasn’t time. The riders were already assembling in front of the cross-country jumps, waiting for Tara Kelly, who was walking across the field towards them.

  For someone with such a formidable reputation, Tara was a slight figure. If she were a horse then she would undoubtedly have been a Thoroughbred – all lean limbs and fine bones. Tara was dressed today in pale cream jodhpurs, a crisp white shirt and a padded beige gilet with her shiny walnut-brown hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “I hope you all had a good mid-term break and a chance to recover after the last exam.” Tara said briskly, addressing the line-up.

  “I know that many of you have House Showjumping commitments, and bearing that in mind I have decided not to schedule an end-of-term exam.”

  There was a ripple of relief among the riders until Tara added, “Instead, I will be assessing your progress throughout. You’ll be given a grade at the end of term and the rider with the lowest overall mark will be leaving the class.”

  Tara’s lesson today was a re-introduction to the basics of cross-country. She had set up a short course of just five fences: a small rustic log to begin with and then a low bank that the horse had to drop down, followed by a more substantial bounce fence, then a brush, followed three strides later by a bullfinch – a trimmed hedge that had spindly bits of tree sticking up out of the top of it.

  Tara asked the riders to dismount and they walked the stridings on the course while she talked to them about the correct approach for each jump.

  “The first jump is straightforward. Consider it a lesson in being focused on what lies ahead,” she explained.

  “Once you are in mid-air over the log you should already be preparing for the next jump. There are only four strides before you reach the bank, and you’ll need to bring your horse back to a trot so they have a chance to get a good look before they jump down.”

  Tara leapt down the bank and the riders followed her on to the bounce fence.

  “Take it at a steady canter. If your horse tries to put in an extra stride, you’ll end up in trouble.”

  Georgie thought that the fourth fence, the brush, would be the toughest. It was almost a metre and a half wide and seemed huge.

  “The hedge is the simplest jump,” Tara said dismissively. “It’s what we call a ‘rider frightener'. It might look big and imposing to you, but your horse will take it easily – as long as you don’t lose your nerve.”

  She walked on, measuring out the two strides to the bullfinch. “Don’t let your horse hesitate. Otherwise they will balloon over the very tips of the hedge and do an enormous jump rather than staying low through the spindly upper branches as they are supposed to.”

  The riders remounted and under Tara’s watchful eye they took the course one at a time. Nicholas Laurent went first on his Selle Francais gelding, Lagerfeld, and the others all watched as he flew the first four fences expertly, doing everything by the book. At fence five, however, he forgot what Tara had said and allowed his horse to stand off and do an enormous stag leap that almost unseated him.

  “That’s OK.” Tara wasn’t fazed. “Not bad for a first try. Now you’ll know to have a bit more impulsion the next time you come at it.”

  Cameron came through second on Paddy. He took the log fence and then let Paddy charge at the bank.

  “Slow to a trot!” Tara shouted. Cameron managed to slow Paddy a little, but the big piebald still took the bank with a flying leap. He took the bounce and the brush beautifully after that and flew the bullfinch perfectly.

  “Seat of the pants stuff at the beginning there, Mr Fraser,” Tara said. “A bit more control, please! Can we have you now, please, Arden?”

  Georgie had really been hoping that Arden and Kennedy might have decided to change classes this term and take a different subject, so she’d been sorely disappointed when she saw the two showjumperettes tacking up that afternoon.

  Arden came in at the first jump on her brown mare, Prada, growling at the horse and threatening her with her whip. Prada took a late stride and Arden gave a shriek as she flung her arms around the mare’s neck. It looked like she might fall at the first jump, but Arden managed to get back into the saddle and keep going. After that, Prada stumbled her way around to finish the course.

  “You need to ride more positively, Miss Mortimer!” Tara told her. “Can we have you next, Georgie?”

  All this time, Georgie had been working Belle on a twenty-metre circle. The mare was explosive and kept surging forward with every stride, and Georgie was having trouble calming her down. Tara watched her efforts with concern.

  “Did you get a chance to ride her over the mid-term break?”

  Georgie shook her head.

  Tara nodded. “Well it shows. Five days without being ridden is too much. I suggest you get down to the stables early in the morning and give her some work on a lunge rein before class. She’s far too fresh.”

  Georgie had been so preoccupied with James that she hadn’t even thought of lungeing Belle to get rid of her excess energy. Now she realised Tara was right. The horse beneath her was dangerously keen and she was about to tackle a cross-country course.

  Things started to go wrong well before they even reached the first jump. Belle began doing little pig roots. These weren’t what you’d call a proper buck; Belle’s jerky movements were little sproinky leaps of excitement, like a fawn bouncing up in the air on all fours from the sheer joy of being alive.

  “Don’t try and approach the fence when she’s being like that. Give her another circle to settle her in,” Tara said with a worried expression on her face.

  But Belle didn’t settle. As she came in to face the jump she had her nose so far up in the air that she almost smacked Georgie in the face. And as soon as she came down after the log she surged off in such a mad rush that Georgie had no hope of turning her to take the bank. In fact, she had trouble just pulling the mare to a stop.

  “You need to react faster when she does that, Miss Parker!” Tara instructed. “Come in over the log again and turn her in time to take the bank.”

  Georgie did as she was told, but in attempting to steady the mare down to a reasonable speed she hung on to Belle’s mouth so tightly that the mare refused point blank to jump the log. Georgie came in to try again, but the mare still refused.

  “Stop hanging on.” Tara was firm this time. “Let her go.”

  As they came into the jump, Georgie could feel herself panicking and she threw the reins at Belle right in front of the rustic log. Belle propped and then lunged forward and did a bizarre stag leap sideways over the corner of the fence. Completely taken by surprise, Georgie flew forward in the saddle, losing her stirrups. Unbalanced by her rider, Belle threw in a big buck for good measure and Georgie flew straight up and out of the saddle. She saw the ground coming towards her face in a sickening rush and managed to curl herself up into a ball just in time. The wind got knocked out of her on impact and Georgie felt that awful sensation of being unable to get any air back into her lungs as she gasped like a fish on the ground.

  Tara was the first one by her side.

  “Stay still,” she told Georgie. “Don’t hurry to get up – take your time and breathe. Is anything broken?”

  Nothing was broken – but Georgie was trembling as she took Belle’s reins back from Tara.

  “Pop her over the log so she knows she can’t get away with refusing it, and then you’re done for the day,” Tara told her.

  Pop her over the log, Georgie thought as she circled Belle into the fence. Yeah right, easier said than done. As she came at the jump in a rush, Georgie could feel her classmates’ eyes on her. She wanted to make a nice job of it, but instead, Belle flicked her head, yanking the reins free and charging the log at a mad gallop. It was all Georgie could do to stay on her. But the nightmare lesson was ov
er – for Georgie at least. For some students, however, it was just beginning.

  “Mitty!” Tara called out, “can you come through now, please?”

  Standing beside the jump, Mitty Janssen had been watching as Georgie and Belle made a hash of the course. She looked very nervous. And now, as she came in to ride at the very first jump, it was clear from Mitty’s approach that she was scared.

  “Miss Janssen!” Tara called out to her. “Sit up and ride positively into the fence!”

  Mitty circled again and came back at the jump at a canter, but way before she had even got close, her big brown Warmblood was swerving and refusing.

  “Come in at a strong canter. Sit up and drive him with your legs. Look over the fence and give with your hands!” Tara was calling out instructions, but as Mitty’s horse slid to a stop right in front of the jump on the third try it was clearly no use.

  “Miss Janssen—” Tara began, but Mitty cut her off.

  “No!” she shouted, turning back to face Tara. “You can stop giving me advice. I don’t want to do it and the horse doesn’t want to do it.”

  “Mitty, if you’ll just…” Tara began again. But Mitty was having none of it. She’d ripped off her back protector and thrown it on the ground at Tara’s feet.

  “I thought it would be easier this term,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “But every time it is the same. ‘Feel the fear and learn to conquer it.’ Well, I am tired of feeling fear. I am a dressage rider. I don’t know what I’m even doing in this class!”

  She looked at the back protector lying in the mud. “You can give that to someone who needs it,” she told Tara. “Because I quit!”

  “Well, that was a fun way to kick off this half-term,” Alice said as they walked the horses back to the stables. “Poor Mitty – out before we even began.”

  “I don’t blame her. That was the worst class ever,” Georgie groaned. “Me and Belle must be bottom of the class ranking after that!”

  Alice frowned. “Now Mitty’s quit do we still have to worry about elimination?”