Kitty burst into noisy tears and fled round the side of the barn. Seaneen raised her eyes to the sky and went back inside. Lucy went after Kitty.
‘It’s OK for you!’ Kitty said between sobs. ‘You don’t live here. You don’t really care. We won’t be able to take in any new horses and Big Sam will get put down and Old Ned and –’
Lucy was stung by this unfairness. ‘Don’t say that! Course I care! I want to do it as much as you.’
‘You only want to do the jumping. You don’t really care about R-R-Rosevale and all the h-h-horses!’
‘I do!’
But Kitty wouldn’t be comforted. Lucy hadn’t even the heart to ride Puzzle. What was the point, if they weren’t going to do the competition?
She gloomed home down the lane, kicking savagely at the weeds, not letting herself look at Old Ned on the way past.
At home, Lucy heated up the lasagne that had been left beside the microwave. Mum was in her study, and Dad’s car wasn’t in the drive. The house was very quiet. Lucy hated quiet. She remembered the other night at Cam’s, the lovely ringing clatter of five horses trotting over the road.
Five horses.
Well, she could only ask. What was the worst Cam could say? She set the half-eaten lasagne down and went for the yellow pages. Cam’s number was easy to find – Old Mill Stables.
When Cam answered, Lucy felt suddenly shy – after all, it was a bit cheeky of her – but then she thought of Big Sam being put down, of the foals having nowhere dry for the winter, and she took a deep breath and began.
Cam seemed to think for a long time. At least she didn’t say no straight off.
‘You all have to be from the same yard, don’t you?’
‘Nobody would know.’
‘Lucy. Everybody would know. I have a professional reputation to think of.’
‘But it’s a stupid rule. Normal competitions don’t have rules like that.’
‘Normal competitions don’t have prizes like that.’
‘Oh, Cam! We’re so desperate. And we’d have a good chance with you.’
‘Let me think.’
There was a tantalising silence. Then – ‘Does Declan have a spare stable?’
‘Yes!’ Lucy nearly squeaked. ‘The skewbald cob left yesterday.’
‘So Ty could come to you on livery until after the competition.’ Cam seemed to be thinking out loud. ‘That would take care of that rule. Mind you, Declan won’t have time to do an extra horse, and I can’t come over twice a day when I have my own yard to run …’
‘I’ll do him! At least – well, I’m not allowed before school, but I can muck out when I get home, and bring him in and everything. I’m sure Declan wouldn’t mind seeing to him in the mornings. Oh, Cam, please!’
Another long silence. Then she said, ‘Well, I’ll give Declan a ring. How would that be?’
And when Lucy got to the yard next day after school there was a new head looking out over the half door of what had been the skewbald’s stable. A bay head with long inquisitive ears and an anxious expression.
‘Ty!’ Lucy stretched out her hand and stroked his nose. ‘You’ve come to save the day!’
‘LUCY?’ Erin came up to the wall where Lucy was waiting for Jade and Miranda to come out of the changing rooms after PE. They always took much longer than she did, fussing with their hair.
‘Hiya.’ She moved over to let Erin sit down.
‘D’you want to come to my granda’s new house on Saturday?’ Erin asked.
‘Um … why?’
‘I told you he was getting me a pony. I’m going to keep it at his new house. I thought you might like to come and see the place.’
She hugged her schoolbag. She looked – Lucy searched in her head for the right word – shifty. As if she wasn’t quite telling the truth. Well, Lucy didn’t quite believe in the pony-buying granda. It sounded more like the kind of thing you’d say because you wanted it to happen. People who lived where Lucy lived didn’t have pony-buying grandfathers. Lucy liked Erin but she didn’t want to waste a precious Saturday visiting some old man in a bungalow with a scruffy paddock out the back.
She suddenly saw her way out of the invitation. ‘Saturday. Aw, that’s Jade’s party,’ she said.
‘So are you invited?’ Erin gave Lucy a very direct look.
‘Um … well, not exactly. She did mention it but –’ Lucy chewed her lip. Part of her would have loved, when Jade did get around – soon, she hoped – to inviting her to the party, to say, sorry, she’d made other plans: Jade should have given more notice. But Lucy knew she wouldn’t say it.
But what if Jade never invited her? Wouldn’t going to Erin’s granda’s be better than sitting at home thinking about everybody at the party?
‘Can I let you know?’ she asked. ‘It’s only Tuesday.’
Erin stared at her. ‘So, let me get this right. You’ll come if you don’t get a better offer?’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Forget it,’ Erin said. ‘You might let that snobby cow mess you around, but I won’t let you mess me around.’
She picked up her schoolbag and walked off just as Jade and Miranda came round the corner from the gym, their long ponytails swinging.
Later that day Jade invited Lucy to her party.
Chapter 10
The Forbidden Field
AIDAN became Ty’s stable boy. Lucy had promised to do it, since the whole thing had been her idea, but on the second morning they got up to find Ty solemnly munching shrubs in the front garden. Lucy had forgotten to put the clip in the bolt of the stable door. She apologised a hundred times and promised to be more careful, but Aidan’s dad said they couldn’t take the risk with someone else’s horse. After a couple of days the big goofy-looking bay would stick his head over his half-door and neigh as soon as he heard the back door.
‘That’s your contribution to the team,’ his dad said one evening, when Aidan was pushing a towering, smelly wheelbarrow across the yard.
Looking after Ty was easy compared to watching everybody become more and more obsessed with the team.
‘You’re sulking cause you’re not in it,’ Kitty said, the first Saturday in October. They were in the tack room and Aidan had said he couldn’t stay and put the jumps up in the school; he was going out on Firefly.
‘I was the one who said I didn’t want to be in it,’ Aidan retorted, lifting Firefly’s saddle down from the rack.
Kitty said nothing.
And it was rubbish, Aidan thought, riding along the trail between the bottom field and the empty field, standing up in his stirrups so he could see over the hedge to where Big Sam was drinking from the stream. He wasn’t sulking.
Although it was October now and cool in the high-hedged, brambly lane, a thin bright sun warmed the fields, so that Old Sam’s mottled rump glowed. Firefly swung along easily and took advantage of being on a loose rein, snatching a late blackberry from the hedge. Aidan laughed and patted him.
‘This is much more fun than doing that stupid cross-country, isn’t it?’ he said. But a sudden memory scratched at him – not, for once, of his own awful failure, but of Firefly cantering easily down the wide slope of Cam’s field, with Lucy riding him expertly over the downhill jump. The lift and reach and the confident landing – Firefly had looked as if he enjoyed it all.
Only not with you, Ponyboy. Because you’re too pathetic.
Hoof-beats clattered behind him, making Firefly tense and alert. Aidan turned in surprise. He normally had the trails to himself.
It was Kitty and Lucy. ‘We’re just cooling the ponies down,’ Kitty said. Lucy gave a half smile. She and Aidan weren’t exactly not speaking. But not exactly speaking either. ‘Cam said they needed a change of scene. And guess what – Cam’s bringing up loads of her jumps for us!’
When Lucy spoke it was to Kitty. ‘Why’s that field empty?’ she asked.
Kitty shrugged. ‘Dunno. It hasn’t been used all year. Something about resting it. Or
drainage. Something boring.’
Lucy stood in her stirrups and stretched up for a better view. ‘You could put jumps in there. It’s got a nice slope. It’d be perfect.’
‘Well, we’re going to Cam’s tomorrow to train on her cross-country,’ Kitty said importantly. ‘Aidan, did you hear?’ She turned round in the saddle. ‘We’re going to Cam’s.’
‘Great,’ Aidan said in the most enthusiastic voice he could. See? that voice was meant to say, I am not sulking.
Only he might have overdone it because Kitty said, ‘Well, there’s no need to be sarcastic. And Dad says you have to come too. So there.’
OK, maybe he was sulking now. Just a bit.
Because this was a stupid waste of his time. There was stuff he could have been doing in the yard – more important stuff than this. September needed more handling, for one thing. She’d come on so well that Dad was hoping they could get her re-homed before the real winter set in, but she was very head-shy, ducking from any attempt to touch her ears.
But he hadn’t been given a choice.
‘We could do with an extra hand with the horses,’ Dad said, ‘and you can make yourself useful opening gates and things.’
From what Aidan remembered, there were only a couple of gates: it was just a ploy to make him go back to the scene of his humiliation. He wasn’t stupid.
Actually it took half an hour to load Ty, and he and Folly were both bad travellers, upsetting each other and arriving sweaty and twitching. When Ty realised he was back at his old yard he started to neigh at the top of his voice and prance like an eejit, so Aidan had his hands full until Cam rushed up to claim her horse.
‘Sorry,’ she panted. ‘Lesson went on a bit. Thanks, Aidan.’
Standing on the course beside the first jump, he shrugged himself into his anorak and prepared to be cold and bored for hours.
Cam seemed to have taken over as the chef d’équipe. She was more patient than his dad, and it was funny to hear her telling him off. ‘Don’t let her rush so much, Declan!’ Cam called out more than once. His dad was very meek about it, but then he’d had lessons from Cam for years and years when he was young. Aidan liked watching Tyrone jump. Being his stable lad had given him a special interest in the horse, who jumped carefully and suspiciously at first, but then started to relax and enjoy himself. Aidan could see Cam’s riding, quiet and consistent, with split-second timing, was giving the young horse confidence. Just as Lucy’s riding had given Firefly that night. He pushed that thought away where it couldn’t nag him.
The mood in the lorry going home was jubilant. Even Folly and Ty, tired with their efforts and knowing they were going home to warm beds and evening feeds, pulled at their hay-nets and didn’t fret.
‘When can we go again, Dad?’ Kitty asked.
Dad frowned. ‘It’s hard to get the time. There’s not much light these evenings. Cam has lessons at weekends. And Folly and Ty are such bad travellers.’
‘But they need to get used to it before the competition,’ Kitty argued.
‘And we can’t practise cross-country without riding cross-country,’ Lucy added. ‘Can we not put jumps in the empty field?’
‘No.’
‘But Dad, why not?’ Kitty whined.
‘One, I don’t want the ground messed up with galloping hooves. I’m putting the foals out there for the winter, before the barn falls down on top of them. Two, the going’s too soft. That field’s always boggy and after the wet summer … Anyway. No.’
Lucy and Kitty looked at each other and both opened their mouths to argue. Then they seemed to think better of it. But Aidan recognised Lucy’s determined look. Which, funnily enough, was very like his dad’s.
He had a feeling no wouldn’t be enough for her.
Chapter 11
Lucy’s Secret
LUCY kicked Puzzle into a trot and checked her watch. How could they only have been out for ten minutes? It felt like hours. Hacking round these lanes was so boring. Lots of slow road work, Declan and Cam had ordered. Lots of schooling. Not jumping all the time. And goodness knew when they would get back to Cam’s. It was Friday evening now and she was busy with lessons all weekend.
‘But we need to practise cross-country!’ Kitty had protested.
‘The Sunnyside team are cross-countrying every day,’ Lucy added. This wasn’t actually true but she thought it might goad Declan into thinking Rosevale must keep up. But he had only said, ‘More fool them,’ and carried on mixing feeds.
The team, with Cam, was shaping up really well. Ty had discovered a passion for cross-country, and Cam had begun talking about eventing him. Only Kitty would do the smaller jumps, which meant the other three could go for maximum points and theirs would be the score that counted.
In her most optimistic moments, Lucy thought they had a chance of the five thousand pounds.
But not like this, she gloomed. Boring old hacking.
Puzzle’s ears pricked, catching Lucy’s frustration, but he trotted steadily on. It wasn’t so bad when Declan and Cam came and they could go on the actual roads, but they were busy today, so Lucy had to ride alone and stick to the lanes because both her parents and Declan banned her from riding on the roads by herself. She would have welcomed even Aidan’s company, but Aidan was fussing round September, who was waiting for the blacksmith to trim her hooves.
She turned right into the lane that wound past the empty field. There it was, bright green, smooth and lovely, much nicer than the poached fields on either side which had been grazed all summer and were now bare and exhausted. It was a biggish field, a little steeper than Cam’s. It was a field made for cross-country. If only there was something to jump.
Well, maybe there was. The field was surrounded by a high hedge, with trees here and there. Some fallen branches lay round the edges. Nothing jumpable on its own, but surely with a bit of squidging together she could make at least a couple of jumps?
Lucy kicked her feet out of her stirrups, pulled Puzzle’s reins over his head and led him to the gate. Like most of Rosevale’s gates it had seen better days and needed a bit of persuasion to open. Puzzle didn’t help, nudging it and running backwards and then trying to graze, and she might have given up were it not for the prospect of riding cross-country.
After all, she was doing it for Rosevale. Cam and Declan were wrong not to let them practise jumping more. It was OK for them – they were old and had lots of experience. She and Kitty needed all the practice they could get. But even as she picked among the fallen branches, Puzzle grazing quite happily beside her, Lucy knew she couldn’t risk telling Kitty. It wasn’t fair to drag her into something that would only get her in trouble with Declan if they were caught.
And besides, said a little voice inside her, you don’t think it’s so important for Kitty to practise, do you? As long as you do?
And, the little voice went on, what you really want is the thrill of galloping and jumping. The team is just an excuse.
Rubbish! said Lucy’s own voice, it’s for Rosevale. And once the foals are turned out in here you’ll have lost your chance, so get on with it!
A hot and breathless twenty minutes later her hands burned with prickles and her shoulders throbbed, but she had made a course. Well, two jumps, but she could jump them both in both directions so that was four jumps really and – if she was brave enough – one of them would be a fairly steep downhill.
The trouble was it was nearly dark. There was so little time for riding these evenings. Could she risk leaving the jumps up until tomorrow? She knew that if Declan saw them they were doomed. But Declan wasn’t going to come out here at this time of the evening, and tomorrow was Saturday. There was nothing to stop her getting up really early and riding over them then. She raced through the logistics in her mind – she’d have to lug her tack home, because Declan always locked the tack room at night, but she could pretend she was cleaning it. She would also sneak Puzzle an extra-big feed to make sure he was full of energy for his early-morning ride.<
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She caught Puzzle, who’d enjoyed his unexpected snack, and rode slowly back to the yard.
‘Thought you’d got lost,’ Declan said, coming out of Midge’s stable, from where she could hear shoeing noises.
‘You said lots of slow work,’ Lucy said innocently. ‘You said it wasn’t all about raking and jumping.’
‘I didn’t say let your pony gorge himself with grass.’
‘I didn’t –’
‘His mouth’s all green froth. See – you’ve no talent for crime if you can’t hide the evidence.’
He was joking – he grinned at her and gave Puzzle a friendly pat – but Lucy, knowing what she was planning, felt her face flush.
Maybe she wouldn’t do it.
But if she didn’t, she’d have to get up early anyway to dismantle the jumps.
So she might as well have her fun.
WHEN her phone buzzed at seven, the first thing Lucy heard was the steady drum of rain on the conservatory roof under her window.
Damn! Maybe she wouldn’t bother. Her bed was so warm and cosy.
Don’t be feeble, she thought. Ten minutes later, having left a note for her parents – AT STABLES. BACK SOON – and grabbed a couple of apples – one each for her and Puzzle – she was letting herself out the back door as quietly as she could, balancing her saddle over her arm. She was glad she hadn’t actually got around to cleaning it when she saw the rain dotting it now.
Rosevale was quiet in the dawn light, the barn a mere grey heap, and all the house windows dark. The horses were in at night now, so all she had to do was give Puzzle a quick groom and tack him up. He nickered, expecting his breakfast, but he had to be content with his apple. She threw some haylage in to Ty, Midge and Firefly, the only horses in that part of the yard, to keep them quiet.
‘You can have yours afterwards,’ she promised Puzzle, slipping the bridle over his head.
Riding out of the yard would be the trickiest bit – there was no disguising the ring of horseshoe on concrete – but she’d decided that if she met anyone she’d say she was giving Puzzle an early-morning hack because she had a party to go to later. After all, he was her pony – it wasn’t as if she was doing anything wrong. She planned to dismantle the jumps straight afterwards, even though that would be a pity after her hard work last night. Still, she could hide the branches in the hedge. It would be comforting just to know they were there.
Too Many Ponies Page 5
