by Kate Lattey
“Can someone else go while he’s mucking around doing that?” Hayley asked imperiously. “We’re going to be here forever at this rate. Tess, get over here and take his place!”
Tess reluctantly rode over towards me, and I turned Tani away, finally managing to pull the spur off my boot. The judge started them and Hayley burned off up the line of poles, leaving the others practically at a standstill. I got my second spur off and looked around for somewhere to put them. There was a bunch of parents standing around watching, but they were all focused on watching the race as it unfolded, so I buckled the spurs together and threaded the strap through the D ring on the front of my saddle.
Hayley came tearing across the finish line as the judge yelled at her to turn around before she flattened someone. She was smirking as she waited on her puffing pony for the other three riders to complete the race.
“Hayley’s through to the final. Second heat!”
I rode Taniwha forward and took the space on the far left that Tess had just vacated. I patted my pony’s sleek black neck, wondering if the lack of spurs would spoil our chances. Taniwha was always much more obedient when I had them on.
“Ready Tani?” I asked him as the judge told the girl on the other end to move up so she was in line with the rest of us.
“Ready, set, go!”
I set my heels to Tani’s sides and he shot forward like a bullet out of a gun. He raced toward the line of poles, and I shifted my weight to the right, then left, then right again and so on, going so close to the poles that my toes almost brushed them as we passed. We were the first to get to the other end, and I shortened my right rein and pulled Tani’s head around. He curved his body around the pole and we wove back down to the finish, light years ahead of everyone else, just like Hayley had been.
“Looks like you’ve got some competition today,” someone said to Hayley, who sneered.
“It’s fast, but Pink’s faster. Just watch.”
“Boy on the black pony is through to the final,” the judge said. “Next heat, line up!”
There were no ponies as fast as Pink and Tani in the next two heats, and as I lined up next to Hayley for the final, I could see her watching me out of the corner of her eye, knowing that I was her main competition.
“Get ready to get smoked,” she said with a smirk.
I just grinned at her. “You’ll be the one getting smoked ‘cause Tani’s on fire.”
“Ready, set, go!”
I heard Hayley yelling at her pony, urging it on, as we tore up the bending poles, our ponies neck and neck. Pink’s head was in front as we reached the far pole, but her speed was her undoing as she overshot the turn. Taniwha coiled his body around the top pole and shot forward again, tearing back down the line to finish a length in front of her.
I was grinning so hard it hurt and patting Taniwha with both hands as the race finished, and the judge called us over to get our ribbons. She tied the bright red ribbon around Tani’s neck, which looked great against his black coat and matched his saddle blanket perfectly.
“Well done. That was pretty slick!”
“Thanks. We’ve been practicing.”
“I can tell.”
The judge moved on to Hayley, whose second place ribbon was blue. She thanked the judge as it was tied around Pink’s neck, then turned to look at me.
“Your pony’s faster than it looks.”
I grinned at her. “And your pony’s slower than it looks.”
Hayley’s eyes narrowed, but she was still smiling. “I’ll get you in the barrel race. Pink’s got an unbeaten record.”
I laughed. “Not for long.”
I soon discovered that I’d been practicing the barrel race backwards from the way it was supposed to be run, which was unfortunate, but I managed to work out how to reverse the pattern without stuffing it up. Once again, it was Tani’s speed off the line and tight turns that gave us the edge, and although Pink was quick across the ground, she went wider around the barrels than Taniwha did. We waited with bated breath for the timed results, and I was stoked to grab the win by half a second.
Hayley shook her head at me as the ribbons were handed out.
“That pony’s a freak. I suppose it’s good at the flag race too?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t practiced that one.”
Her face lit up. “Come on then, ride against me in the first heat and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Never one to back down from a challenge, I agreed. I’d never practiced the game, but I was always breaking off branches and waving them around while I was riding, pretending to be having sword fights and jousting against invisible opponents, so he didn’t even blink at the flags that I pulled out of the cones. I had a sharp eye and good coordination, but Hayley was well ahead with one flag left to pick up when she missed the top cone, and dropped her flag. Swearing, she leapt off Pink and shoved the flag back into the cone, then struggled to control her spinning pony so she could remount. But Pink was fired up and having none of it, and by the time Hayley had managed to regain the saddle, Tani and I had caught up. We were neck and neck as we each grabbed our last flag. Pink edged ahead on the run up to the top cone, but she was still fired up and lost her brakes. Hayley swore at her and hauled the pony around as Tani skipped around the top cone and I placed the flag firmly into it, then urged him home. I could hear Pink behind me, gaining ground fast, and we crossed the line in almost a dead heat. Pulling up, we were both looking at the judge as she wrote something on her clipboard, then looked up.
“Black pony by a nose. Next heat, line up.”
Now Hayley was really getting mad. “I thought you didn’t know how to do a flag race!” she demanded.
“I didn’t. But I’m a quick learner,” I told her with a grin.
“You’re a pain in the neck is what you are,” she told me mercilessly, then rode off to stand with her mother.
Tess managed to win her own heat and lined up next to me in the final. I grinned at her as we readied ourselves on the start line, but she was focused forward with a serious expression. I wondered how often she smiled.
Taniwha and I won the flag race easily, and followed it up with another win in the Tin Can race, after Hayley turned too tight at the far end and caught her foot on the bending pole. The can she’d placed on top of it went flying, and by the time she’d protested with the judge, dismounted and retrieved it, replaced it on the pole and managed to remount her jibbing pony, she’d ended up in fourth place.
I couldn’t stop grinning, and as my confidence soared from my amazing success. I’d gone there to win, but even my highest expectations hadn’t involved beating Hayley in the first four games of the day!
My successful run didn’t last. The next game was the post box race, another one I’d never practiced before, although I had plenty of experience at shoving newspapers into letterboxes from all the times when I’d used Taniwha on my paper run. But Hayley didn’t make any mistakes this time, and I finished a close second in the final to collect my first blue ribbon for the day. Hayley was pretty smug about it, but I just shrugged it off when she tried to gloat.
“Thought I’d better let you win at least one,” I told her. “Wouldn’t want you getting embarrassed in front of your family.”
“At least my family’s here to watch me. Where’s yours?” she fired back, making an exaggerated show of looking around for them.
“They don’t bother coming to little shows like this,” I told her. “They’re waiting for when I’m riding at the Olympics.”
Hayley laughed out loud. “I’d like to see that.”
“You will someday,” I promised her.
At the tender age of eleven and three-quarters, I had no idea what it took to ride at the Olympics, only that it was something that only the very best riders got to do, and I was determined to become one of them. I would be a better rider than Hayley one day, be better than anyone here. I only had to look back at how far I’d come already, and how
much I’d improved in such a short time.
“Yeah right. You’re delusional,” Hayley told me.
“Just you wait,” I replied. “Someday soon you’ll be begging me to ride your horses for you.”
Hayley raised her eyebrows. “Not bloody likely.”
Taniwha and I returned to our winning streak with a first place in the stepping stones, because much to Hayley’s irritation it was a game that involved getting on and off your pony. Although Pink actually decided to stand still in the final, all the time I’d spent riding bareback meant that I could vault on and off Taniwha easily, and I cantered home on a loose rein with the rest of the field still trying to get their feet in the stirrups.
By that point, Hayley had started loudly dismissing gymkhanas as pointless and childish, and saying that she was only there for the jumping anyway, and she’d like to see me beat her in the jump off. I was quietly confident that Taniwha’s ability to cut corners would pay off, and he hardly ever knocked poles down, but as we walked the show jumping course, I started to worry. The jumps we had at home were familiar, but I couldn’t help thinking about that disastrous day at Pony Club when he’d refused to go over a pole on the ground. I didn’t want Hayley to know that I was nervous though, so I followed her around the course walk, pretending that I knew what I was doing but really eavesdropping on her conversation with Tess.
“Don’t cut the corner to the planks because they’ll fall down easier than a pole so you have to be certain of them,” she told her sister, before casting an irritated look over her shoulder at me. “Can I help you?”
“I’m walking the course, just like you.”
She stopped and waited for me to walk past her, but I just stopped next to Tess and grinned at her, trying to get that elusive smile out of her. None came, and Hayley rolled her eyes and marched off, with Tess hurrying along next to her and me continuing to follow behind.
Hayley refused to jump first, saying she wanted to see how the course would ride, but by the time she went into the ring as the fourth rider to jump, nobody had even made it all the way around the course. Watching the other kids fail had cheered me up a bit, but Taniwha brought me quickly back down to earth when he refused the practice jump.
I rode over to the steward, who was standing at the gap in the rope fence where we went into the jumping ring.
“Am I allowed to wear spurs for the jumping?”
“Sure,” she said, much to my relief, and I quickly buckled them back onto my boots.
This time Taniwha sensed that I meant business, and he jumped carefully over the practice jumps. I was trotting over to the ring when Hayley finished with a clear round, and she patted Pink as she cantered backed to the gate.
“Well done,” I said as we passed each other on my way into the jumping ring.
“Try not to fall off,” she mocked, rejecting my attempt at being friendly.
Taniwha was a bit spooky and suspicious of the new jumps, slowing down in front of each one and snorting at it, but they were low enough that he could pop over them even from a trot, in a couple of cases, and while he hit one or two rails, nothing fell down, and I was grinning from ear to ear as I cantered Tani through the finish flags.
Tess came into the ring as I rode out, and I wished her good luck, but she didn’t seem to hear me. I walked Taniwha out of the ring and jumped off his back and let him eat grass while I watched her ride. She did well, but she cut the corner to the planks and knocked them down.
I heard Hayley groan. “I told her not to cut that corner! What is she, stupid or something?”
Tess came trotting out of the ring and was immediately lambasted by Hayley. I felt sorry for her, and wondered if I should go over and say something nice to her until her their mum walked up and told Hayley to leave her sister alone. I was relieved for a moment, until her mum started telling Tess that she hadn’t spent good money on that pony for her to forget to follow basic instructions from her sister, who was only trying to help. Tess rode away with a blank expression as the next rider went into the ring, and I sat down in the grass and leaned against Tani’s forelegs as the sun finally came out.
In the end, three riders managed to go clear in the first round, and we were called back to jump off. The other rider was so overcome by the fact that she’d made it into the jump off that she forgot how to ride and was eliminated at the first fence for three refusals. Hayley went next, and she had a very fast clear round, jumping off sharp angles and galloping between the jumps.
“Beat that,” she told me as I trotted past her.
I was pretty sure that Tani couldn’t go as fast as Pink, but we gave it our best shot. I hadn’t practiced tight turns and angles, and Tani knocked one of the jumps down when I asked him to turn really tight to it, but he cleared the rest of the course okay, and the judge who was handing out the ribbons reckoned he wasn’t too far behind Pink, which made me smile and Hayley scowl.
We cantered a lap of honour around the jumping arena, which Tani thought was another race, and his attempt at passing Pink made her bolt, so we ended up doing several laps of honour before Hayley and I regained control of our ponies. I thought we were done for the day, and prepared to ride home, but the judge called me back and said she still had to award ribbons for the Best Pony Club Pony. I wasn’t surprised to see Tess win the event, because her pony was very well-behaved and did everything well, and a girl on a short-legged grey pony was second, which was also well-deserved since she was a pretty hopeless rider but the pony didn’t put a foot wrong all day. But I was genuinely surprised when the judge called Tani in for third place. She tied the yellow ribbon around his neck with a smile.
“He’s no oil painting, this pony, but he’s a nice all-rounder, and he’s got a willing attitude,” she told me, patting Tani’s neck. “You could’ve placed higher but he did buck a few times, so I had to mark him down for that.”
“Last time I brought him to Pony Club he chucked me off four times and then ran home,” I told her happily. “He’s improved a lot.”
The judge looked startled, and I was suddenly pleased that she’d already given us the ribbon and couldn’t change her mind.
“He didn’t! Did he?” she asked in surprise. “Well butter would hardly have melted in his mouth today. Well done both of you.”
She called Hayley forward for fourth place, which Hayley accepted with a touch of disdain, then dismissed us. I waited to say thank you to the judge, then followed the example of all the other kids and tied all of Taniwha’s ribbons around his neck. They all posed for photos taken by their proud parents, but there was nobody to take a photo of me, so with a last look around at the chattering gymkhana, I rode out of the gate and down the road towards home.
Taniwha was keen to get back to his paddock, and as he marched along, I stared proudly at the brightly coloured ribbons around his neck. Five red ones, two blues and a yellow. The first two events had been a disaster, but after that we’d got ribbons in everything, and I couldn’t have asked for a better day. Even the sun had come out now, joining in the celebration, and I kicked my feet out of the stirrups and let my legs hang down along Taniwha’s sides as he walked steadily on.
When I got back to Murray’s I found him sitting on the garden bench with Sprout at his feet, waiting for me. He stood up slowly as I rode down the driveway and halted Taniwha on the lawn in front of him.
“Had a good day then?” he asked me.
“Not bad,” I grinned, sliding off Taniwha’s back and hugging him around the neck. He jerked away from me and put his head down to eat, making all of the ribbons slide down his neck and sit behind his ears. “Didn’t win the jumping though. Hayley beat me, her pony’s really good. But I smoked her in the games!”
“John Maxwell’s daughter?” Murray asked, and I looked at him, startled.
“Is she?”
“Blonde girl, curly hair, superiority complex?” Murray asked, and I nodded. “That’s the one. He’s got another daughter too, I forget her name.�
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“Tess. She was there today. She’s a lot nicer than Hayley.”
“Hmm.”
“So do they live out on that huge farm we went past?” I asked him curiously, and when he nodded, any smugness I’d felt about beating Hayley in the games evaporated. I would’ve willingly lost every single time if I could’ve spent just one day living there. I bet she didn’t even appreciate how good she had it.
“I’ll beat her next time,” I told Murray determinedly. “I’m gonna practice and practice until Tani’s a better jumper than her pony.”
Murray looked dubious. “Good luck with that. You’ve done well today, but I’m going to give you a reality check here, boy. You’ll never beat the kids with money. Every time you train your horse to be better than theirs, they’ll just buy an even better one and beat you again. Trust me, that’s how life works.”
“Your positive outlook on life is really inspirational to me,” I told Murray as I removed the last of Taniwha’s ribbons and shoved them in my pocket. “I’ll have money one day too, and I’ll buy even better horses than they have.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” Murray said. “I’m guessing you haven’t heard the news.”
I looked up at him curiously, wondering what he meant. My golden day was about to come to an end, and my whole life was about to change.
“They’re closing down the meatworks. Your old man’s out of a job.”
DARK DAYS
Things changed after that, both quickly and slowly. We stayed in the house in Waipuk for several months while some of the workers protested the closure. There were union meetings and marches, but after a while that all faded away as most people surrendered to the inevitable and went looking for other jobs. Some families moved out of town, but Dad stubbornly refused to budge. He’d left school at fourteen and had never worked anywhere other than at the works. He didn’t know how to do anything else, and any jobs that were going in town had dozens of applicants. Occasionally a day or two of farm labouring would come up, and he’d get a bit of work out of that, but unlike some of his mates, he was never offered more work after the job was done. Dad reckoned that the farmers just didn’t like him, and that they weren’t prepared to help out a man who was down on his luck.
