Ticket to Ride (Eventing Trilogy Book 3)

by Caroline Akrill

  Two people were standing beside the wings. They were Nigella and Henrietta Fane.

  7

  Where Own Horse Welcomed

  I managed to pull Legend up after a few strides and I stared at them, speechless.

  “I don’t know why you’re looking at us like that,” Henrietta said in an annoyed tone, “you knew we were coming; we said we would bring your wages.”

  “They said in the office it would be perfectly all right to come up here,” Nigella said, “as long as we kept out of sight, and didn’t get in the way.” She wore a vast, shapeless jersey above some grubby lilac culottes, and below them, her hunting boots.

  As I still hadn’t said anything, Henrietta said, “I suppose you do still want your wages? Nick seemed to think you were pretty desperate.”

  “Why?” I asked her, “have you brought them?” I looked at her suspiciously because I didn’t actually believe it.

  “Of course we’ve brought them,” Nigella said, “why else would we be here?”

  “Other than to see Legend, of course,” Henrietta put in swiftly, in case for one moment I might imagine they had softened in their attitude.

  “Well, if you have brought my wages,” I said, “I would rather like to have them, please.”

  Henrietta pulled a crumpled brown envelope with a window in it out of her appallingly ancient anorak. She held it out to me wordlessly and I took it from her.

  “We haven’t mamaged to pay you everything that we owe you,” Nigella was forced to admit now she was faced with the presence of the envelope, “but we did manage to pay you half – well,” she added, as I took out and counted the five ten pound notes it contained, “almost half.”

  Inside the envelope there was also a folded piece of paper. I opened it out, expecting it to be an IOU, but it was no such thing, it was a garage bill.

  To recovery of Horse Box

  Registration number

  SPD 347W £50.50

  To repairs to two

  punctured tyres £20.20

  VAT at 20% £14.14

  Total £84.84

  “I think this belongs to you,” I said. I held it out to Henrietta.

  She made no move to take it.

  “Now look here,” I said angrily, “you don’t actually expect me to pay the garage bill out of my own wages? I’m not responsible for the upkeep of the horsebox. It wasn’t my fault the spare tyre hadn’t been repaired!”

  There was at this point an approaching thunder of hooves, which necessitated a timely removal of ourselves to a safe distance in order to avoid being trampled by Phillip Hastings and his amazing roan horse.

  We watched him rise up over the brush and canter strongly onwards before we resumed our conversation.

  “But Elaine,” Nigella protested, “if you hadn’t used the box to come to the training centre, the second puncture might never have happened and the clients would have had the spare repaired. We wouldn’t have been expected to pay.”

  “But you expect me to pay,” I blazed back at them furiously. “Even though you claim to have a financial interest in my horse, you don’t seem at all keen to share responsibility when it actually comes to parting with hard cash!”

  “We weren’t supposed to have been using the horsebox at all,” Henrietta countered angrily. “We only allowed you to use it out of kindness. If you had hired a box it would have cost twice that much!”

  “And as you hadn’t paid me any wages for six months,” I said bitterly, “you knew I couldn’t do that.”

  There was a dreadful silence after this, broken by the sound of more hooves as Viv and Balthazar breasted the fence and pounded onwards.

  “What have you come for, anyway?” I asked them in a dispirited voice.

  “We came to bring your wages,” Nigella said, “we came to see how you were, to see Legend, and to tell you our new girl has started and that things are looking up for us.”

  “She’s shutting off half the park so that we can make our own hay for the winter,” Henrietta said in a satisfied tone. “She’s giving riding lessons on the hirelings, and we’re to take horses for breaking and schooling. That’s not to mention the grass liveries; we’ve already got two of those.”

  “In other words,” I said, annoyed, “you’ve come to gloat.”

  “Not gloat, Elaine,” Nigella protested, “we just thought you’d like to know how things are, so you won’t feel so guilty about leaving us in the lurch.”

  “Nigella,” I said crossly, “I don’t feel guilty about leaving you in the lurch.”

  “Oh yes you do,” Henrietta said, “Nick told us.”

  I stared at her angrily, wounded to think that Nick had seen fit to repeat what I had regarded as our private conversation.

  Annemarie came over the brush, glaring at us as she cantered past. The little bay’s neck was ridged with wrinkles due to being held so furiously in check. Legend began to sidle and shake his head, anxious to be away.

  “As you will shortly be very prosperous due to all this increased business,” I said, “perhaps you’ll feel able to drop your ridiculous claim to a share in my horse, especially as you’ve replaced me so advantageously that you’ll never need my services again.”

  Henrietta frowned. “Why should we,” she demanded, “when we’re entitled to it?”

  “It isn’t just the money, Elaine,” Nigella pointed out, “we don’t want to jeopardize your career in the least. We like having an interest in an event horse, it’s opened up a whole new world for us. We’ve never had more fun than we’ve had in the last eighteen months.”

  Henrietta made no move to agree. She stared down at her sawn-off wellingtons, the toes mended by means of a patch from a cycle puncture repair kit. If this was true, she wasn’t going to allow me the satisfaction of hearing her say it.

  “And we’re all so looking forward to coming to the junior trial,” Nigella continued, adding anxiously, “you will want us to come, won’t you… it will be all right, won’t it?” As I made no reply but continued to stare angrily at Henrietta, she blurted out, “Mummy told me to say she misses you terribly.”

  I didn’t want to hear this. I ddn’t want to hear any of it; not how much Lady Jennifer was missing me, not how the new girl was going to achieve miracles – miracles that if I had stayed and been less determined to pursue my own eventing career, I might have achieved myself. “I have to go now,” I said, “I’m supposed to be under instruction and already the chief will be wondering where I am.” I made to turn Legend away.

  Henrietta looked up. She eyed me in a speculative manner. “I suppose you’ve already got a new job organized for when you finish the course?” she said. “We haven’t actually seen your advertisement in Horse & Hound, but we could have missed it, of course.”

  “I suppose you have advertised, Elaine?” Nigella said in a worried voice. “Because with only three weeks to go, there isn’t a lot of time left.”

  I didn’t need Nigella to tell me this and I didn’t want the Fanes to know I hadn’t placed an advertisement yet. Nor did I want to admit, even to myself, that the reason I had hesitated was that I had hoped that their new groom would be useless, and that they would beg me to go back. Despite the awfulness of Havers Hall, despite the way they had behaved over Legend and my wages, I realized that I was missing them terribly – Lady Jennifer, the horses – my horses – and even the Fanes themselves. But nothing, nothing in the world, would have allowed me to confess it, and so I lied. “Yes,” I said, “I advertised under a box number. I’ve found a place.”

  There was a silence. Then: “I expect they offered you better wages than ours,” Henrietta said in a quizzing tone.

  “Since I wasn’t shown your advertisement, I wouldn’t know what wages you offered,” I snapped, “but I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult to offer better wages than you paid me.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be like that about it,” Henrietta retorted, “if you don’t want us to know what you do consider to be a
decent wage, I’m sure we don’t want to know anyway. I’m sure we’re not all that interested.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I told her, “I’m getting fifty pounds a week.”

  “Fifty pounds a week!” Nigella gasped. “Really?”

  “And free board and lodging and keep for Legend,” I added.

  “Goodness,” Nigella exclaimed, “we can’t really compete with anything like that.”

  “And time off for eventing?” Henrietta enquired.

  “And time off for eventing,” I said.

  “And use of a horsebox?”

  “And use of a horsebox.”

  “With a room of your own, not having to share with others?”

  “Yes.”

  “Heavens,” said Henrietta. I could see she was having difficulty in swallowing all this, which was hardly surprising since it sounded unlikely, even to my own ears.

  “Where is it?” she said.

  “Where is what?” I said, holding up Legend who was by now digging a hole in the turf with an impatiently flailing foreleg.

  “The job, where is the job? Which county?”

  “Oh,” I said vaguely, “I’ve got a choice of two or three similar places and I haven’t decided which to take yet.”

  Nigella suddenly turned away. “When you go,” she said in a strained little voice, “you will leave us a forwarding address, won’t you? We don’t want to lose touch.”

  “Because of Legend,” Henrietta added quickly, before I could think it was me they wanted to keep in touch with. “We shall need to know where he is.”

  For some appallingly sentimental reason my eyes suddenly filled with tears and I jerked Legend away almost roughly. I said, “I really do have to go now, I’ll see you at the trial, I expect.”

  Mandy and Fox Me now appeared over the brush and I loosed Legend to canter after them.

  “Elaine…” Nigella began in a choked voice as we bounded past, “we…” but I couldn’t turn back and, blinking hard, I rode on in a wide arc, past the brush fence to be confronted with the Range Rover bumping along gently, followed by the rest of the class.

  “Fall in, Miss Elliot,” the chief barked from the driver’s window. “I want to see you take the brush again, and this time I want to see a more decisive approach; I want to see positive, controlled horsemanship.”

  I trotted Legend back down the rise and set his head towards the brush once more. This time he didn’t hesitate, and when we landed, the Fanes were nowhere to be seen.

  Later the same day, when I returned to the Duke of Newcastle after the evening stint of tack cleaning, I found a piece of the Fanes’ ancient notepaper with a crest on it in the bottom of my suitcase, borrowed Viv’s ballpoint pen, and I was just about to help myself to an envelope from the stack of papers beneath Selina’s bed, where she also kept her typewriter and a professional-looking camera, when the bedroom door opened.

  “Elaine!” Selina exclaimed in a shocked voice. “How could you snoop into my private belongings, when I have expressly asked you not to?”

  I got up, feeling guilty. “I’m not snooping,” I said defensively, “I’m only desperate for an envelope. I’ve got a very important letter to write and when I tried to ask you for one, you were on the pay phone in the lecture hall and you waved me away.”

  Observing that I hadn’t disturbed her stack of type-written papers, Selina softened. “Well, you may have an envelope, of course,”she said sweetly, “but please remember never to touch my belongings again. I do set a very high value on my privacy.”

  From the way she locked me out of our bedroom when she was busily engaged on her typewriter I knew this to be true, so I took the proffered envelope with suitably humble thanks and left her to it.

  I went into the sitting room and sat at the formica-topped table. Alice sat at the other end reading a romantic novel with a lurid cover, absently picking at her spots. Mandy sat in front of the electric fire, its one bar glowing bravely, with her Sony Walkman clamped over her floppy hair. Annemarie was slumped in an armchair, deep into Die Klassiche Reitkunst. Phillip and Viv were in the kitchen making toast and coffee.

  Painstakingly I began to word my advertisement:

  Experienced girl groom, Horsemaster’s Cert., prepared to consider any situation where own horse welcomed. Write Box…

  8

  Washday

  “Do you have to get a job to go to after the course?” Viv wanted to know as, after morning stables on Monday, we prepared for our stint at the washing rota. “What about your old man? Couldn’t you go back to him for a bit?” She raised her head from the collection of empty Vim cannisters, rusting Brillo pads and dried up tins of boot polish which cluttered the clammy little cupboard under the kitchen sink. She handed me a packet of detergent.

  I thought of my father and his little terraced town house with its minute paved backyard, ‘my patio,’ he called it, his rented garage three streets away which housed his beloved Morris Minor, twenty years old and still, as he proudly boasted, ‘in showroom condition,’ and his modest building society savings account. We lived in different worlds my father and I, and I knew I could never go back.

  “There’s nowhere to keep Legend,” I said, “my father doesn’t really like horses, and I know he’ll think I’m crazy when I tell him I’m not going back to the Fanes. He thinks they’re wonderful, especially Lady Jennifer.” The detergent was set into a solid brick. I tore off its cardboard wrapping, laid it on the draining board and began to break it up with a fork. “No, I’ll have to get a job, it’s the only answer.”

  Viv slammed the cupboard doors shut and straightened up. She trundled the old-fashioned twin-tub washing machine out of its corner, causing alarm amongst a family of spiders. “Perhaps we should swop fathers for a while, you and me,” she suggested. “My old man may have the money, but yours sounds as if he’s got the sense to leave you to live your own life.” She connected the hose to the tap and turned on the water.

  I looked at her, interested. “You mean if you hadn’t got the scholarship, you could still have had the training anyway?” I hadn’t realized that there was so much money to be made out of selling Indian sandals and belts, and I thought it fortunate that Alice didn’t know of it because she was always making snide remarks in front of Selina about people who could afford to pay taking up places on scholarships designed for those who couldn’t.

  “I could, but it’s got to the stage where I won’t take his money, so I probably wouldn’t have.”

  “But you do want to event?”

  She shrugged her narrow shoulders in a typical gesture as we watched the water splash into the machine. “How does anyone know what they want,” she said, “especially with an old man like mine, always interfering, making arrangements, paying for things; finishing school, a hairdressing course, a secretarial course. I’ve hopped out of them all, but he never gives up, and now I’ve got Balthazar. It started off with just a few riding lessons, then a better instructor, then suddenly I’d got this horse, the best horse money could buy, and it seemed a waste really, not to event, because everyone said he could do it, and here I am…” she looked at me in genuine despair. “If only he’d just leave me alone and give me a chance to decide what I want to do.”

  I sprinkled some lumpy detergent into the water and it whirled round on the top, partly submerged, like a cluster of icebergs. “But surely,” I said, “you wouldn’t put up with all this,” I waved an arm around the Duke of Newcastle’s incredibly squalid little kitchen, “and the work, and the running, and the lungeing, and everything, if you didn’t want to do it? No one would.”

  As the water began to steam, she looked up and gave me an elfin grin. “Ah, well, that’s my competitive spirit asserting itself, isn’t it? I’m going to get into the team now, just to spite Annemarie and the bloody Reitschule. Just for the satisfaction of seeing her face when the chief reads out my name instead of hers; because that little Hanoverian of hers isn’t going to make it, he hasn’t got
the scope.”

  We began to load the first wash into the washing machine, and I reflected that already intense rivalries had sprung up between the scholarship students, between Alice and Selina, and between Viv and Annemarie who had only shared a cell for one night before war had been declared. Now Annemarie shared with Mandy, and Viv with Alice.

  “Anyway,” Viv declared, “I’m glad you haven’t got too much money, Elaine, because money spoils. It changes your values, and, if you haven’t actually earned it yourself, it stunts your growth and makes you lose your direction until, in the end, you doubt your own ability and lose your self respect.” She grabbed a pair of jeans out of my hands before they hit the water. “Don’t put those in – they’ll dye everything blue!”

  I could see that this might well be true, but it didn’t stop me wishing I had some money; just enough to pay off the Fanes and to secure a roof over our heads for me and for Legend. “What about your mother?” I wondered. “Do you get on all right with her?” My own mother had left home, for a man fifteen years her junior, when I was ten.

  Water suddenly began to fly about and splash over the sides of the machine although the lumps of detergent still bobbed on the top in an unpromising manner. I slapped on the lid, hoping to contain it.

  “My mother’s dead,” Viv said gloomily. “If she’d been alive things would be different – we got on famously, my mum and I. She didn’t expect me to be anything other than what I was, what I wanted to be, but my old man married again and I’ve got a stepmother now – oh, you should see her Elaine, she really thinks she’s somebody and I hate her. She hates me as well but she pretends she doesn’t, so I won’t live at home any more. I live with my gran. The old man hates it and he’s forever trying to get her to send me back, but she won’t, and I won’t go back, not while she’s there, I couldn’t stand it.” She grinned at me, her humour suddenly restored. “So there you have it, but don’t tell anyone, Elaine,” she warned, “I’ll skin you if you do!”