Jade and the Stray

by Amy Brown

  ‘Oh,’ Jade said, disappointed and confused.

  ‘Have you been riding long?’ Michaela asked, trying to put Jade at ease.

  ‘Only as long as I’ve had Pip,’ Jade said sadly, feeling out of her depth again.

  ‘Really?’ Michaela sounded genuinely surprised. ‘You look so comfortable with her; most people take much longer to even learn how to move around horses, let alone how to ride them. You must have a natural aptitude.’

  This time Jade didn’t miss the compliment and couldn’t stop smiling. While Michaela made them each a cup of tea, Jade remembered that this visit wasn’t about her, and got the questions out of her bag.

  ‘You said that you started riding when you were Jack’s age—is that about four?’ Jade asked.

  ‘Three, actually; he’s big for his age,’ Michaela said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘Gosh—so you always knew that you wanted to be a show-jumper?’

  ‘No, that came later. I knew that I wanted to work with horses; my father trained racehorses and mum did a lot of hunting, so I was always encouraged to ride and was surrounded by horses. It was later on, when I was about eight, at Flaxton Pony Club, that I discovered show-jumping and became a bit obsessed.’

  ‘I go to Flaxton Pony Club!’ Jade said, a little bit too loudly.

  ‘It’s a good place to learn,’ Michaela said, smiling politely. ‘My daughter, Kristen, used to go there, too. She’s concentrating on her showjumping, now.’

  ‘I think I spoke to her on the phone when I called you,’ Jade said, wondering how old Kristen was. ‘She sounded about my age.’

  ‘She’s fourteen,’ Michaela said, finishing her tea. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘Well, you’ve started riding quite late, but you seem to be a quick learner. Do you jump?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Would you like to come out and see my practice course, and meet Arius?’

  ‘I’d love to!’

  For the rest of the morning, Jade was Michaela’s shadow, absorbing everything she said and trying to store every detail of the experience in her memory. She actually patted Arius’s neck—he was in a back paddock, away from the road, wearing a Weatherbeeta rug.

  By lunchtime, Michaela had answered all her questions, and hadn’t seemed bored or offended by any of them.

  ‘Thanks so much for your time, and for showing me Arius,’ Jade said, as she saddled up Pip for the ride home.

  ‘It was my pleasure; it’s nice to see enthusiastic young riders.’ Michaela checked her watch. ‘Look, it’s still half an hour before I have to give a lesson—if you like, I could give you some pointers for learning to jump Pip?’

  Jade couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I wouldn’t offer otherwise. Come on.’

  Jade followed Michaela around to the course of enormous practice jumps and watched, relieved, as Michaela lowered two of them to criss-crosses and one to a low straight-bar, and arranged some trotting poles.

  ‘Let’s begin by getting Pip trotting nicely in a circle around the jumps,’ Michaela said, in a voice that instantly relaxed both pony and rider.

  Under Michaela’s expert instruction, both Jade and Pip performed confidently.

  ‘Turn left after the trot poles this time and come around to the criss-cross. Just keep trotting, that’s right. When you get to the jump just lean forward slightly, and grab a handful of mane if need be.’

  Jade did exactly as she was told and cleared the little jump without any trouble. Pip broke into a happy canter and flicked her head slightly.

  ‘She liked that, but bring her back to a trot. You don’t need to approach a jump fast; in fact, it’s better to slow down and let your horse concentrate on their stride than to race. These are tiny for Pip anyway—she’s actually got a really nice action.’

  As Jade cantered slowly towards the straightbar, she felt in complete control. Pip cleared it with 10 centimetres to spare and continued cantering elegantly around the paddock, on the right leg.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Jade heard a girl say.

  ‘We’d better call it a day now, Jade. My next lesson’s here,’ Michaela said.

  Jade rode up to the fence and met two girls, one on an exquisite dapple-grey gelding and the other on a roan mare with crazy eyes.

  ‘This,’ Michaela said, patting the knee of the girl on the grey, ‘is Kristen. Kristen, this is Jade. She’s the one who interviewed me for the school assignment.’

  ‘Hi,’ Kristen said.

  ‘Hi,’ said Jade, all of a sudden shy. ‘You have a beautiful pony.’

  Kristen smiled and patted her mount’s neck. ‘Yeah, Dorian’s my darling. How long have you been riding?’

  ‘Five months,’ Jade said.

  ‘That’s not long; you looked pretty good.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Jade said, but Kristen seemed to have stopped listening.

  ‘Mum, Piper’s been a dog for Andy. You have to help her.’

  Andy, the girl on the roan, looked frazzled.

  ‘Bring her in here, Andy,’ Michaela said calmly. ‘Thanks, Jade! It was lovely to meet you.’

  Pip needed a big feed when she got back to Mr White’s, exhausted from the day’s excitement. As Jade watched her big pony (or small horse) gobble her late lunch, Mr White came out of the house.

  ‘Well, how did it go?’ He could see that Jade couldn’t stop smiling.

  ‘Perfectly! You wouldn’t believe it. She even gave us a jumping lesson!’

  Mr White listened attentively while Jade recounted the whole story, exaggerating at times—particularly about the size of the jumps Pip had cleared.

  ‘But,’ Jade said at the end of her story, ‘there was one thing Michaela said that was strange. She said Pip was an awkward size. What did she mean?’

  ‘Yes, I’d been thinking that myself. It didn’t seem worth worrying about until you started competing, but what with pony club and beginning to jump, we should probably give this problem some thought.’

  ‘What problem?’ Jade looked worried. Did Pip’s size mean she was weak or sick?

  ‘It’s not a problem for small shows, but for A & P shows and other bigger events, you need to have your horse or pony registered. When you register a horse or pony, you have to give its name, colour, age and size. The problem with Pip is that she’s probably 14.3 hands, which is right between pony and horse. In order to enter a pony class, your mount needs to be not larger than 14.2.’

  ‘So I can’t ride her in big shows?’ Jade said, disappointed already.

  ‘Maybe not. However, there are tricks for getting a pony down to size. You can file its hooves, or put an icepack on its withers just before it gets measured so that it shrinks down.’

  ‘I don’t want to upset Pip just so that she can compete—she’s just the right size as far as I’m concerned,’ Jade said decisively.

  ‘Good, I’m glad you feel that way. But it’s something to consider for next season.’

  ‘I can still compete in pony club events and get my D Certificate?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well, that’s all I need for now.’

  Jade got home late from Mr White’s, feeling guilty about neglecting Rose for the whole day. She’d be going back to Auckland on Sunday and Jade had spent the whole week she was here distracted by horses.

  ‘I’m sorry for leaving you by yourself,’ Jade said, when she found Rose and her granddad cooking something spicy in the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve had a great day. I slept in, then hung out with Laura, then I went shopping with your granddad. He didn’t know what to cook for a vegetarian, so I said I’d make us a kidney bean chilli.’

  ‘It smells amazing,’ Jade said hungrily, realizing that the only thing she’d eaten all day was a couple of gingernuts at Michaela’s house.

  Over dinner, Jade retold the story of her day again—and this time with even more exaggerations.


  On Sunday, Jade and her granddad saw Rose off at the bus stop. They were both a little sorry but also a little relieved as they waved goodbye to their friend. Granddad was pleased to no longer have to concern himself with vegetarian food, and Jade was glad she could focus on Pip without guilt.

  The second week of the holidays flew by. In the mornings, Jade and Becca would train for their D Certificate, and in the afternoons Jade worked on her assignment. She put more effort into it than she’d ever done for a school project before. On Saturday afternoon, she printed out the finished product (nearly 2,000 words!) on Mr White’s computer and showed it to him.

  He flicked through, reading each page. After a few minutes he handed it back and patted her on the head. ‘Splendid work,’ he said sincerely.

  9

  Certificates

  The night before the D-Certificate exam, Pip and Jade stayed at Becca’s house so that they could get ready together the next morning.

  ‘I reckon we could probably sit our C Certificates, we’ve studied so much,’ Becca said, finally putting down the Pony Club Manual and turning out the light at eleven.

  ‘That’ll be our next challenge,’ Jade said, giggling and sliding down under the covers of the spare bed.

  ‘Actually, there’s another challenge in a few months that might come before C Certificate,’ Becca said. ‘The Pony Club One Day Event.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be ready for that, would I?’

  ‘In a few months you probably would. I think we should both enter,’ Becca said, with uncharacteristic self-assurance.

  Despite talking late into the night, the girls woke fresh and rested the next morning. After a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, baked tomatoes and toast, the girls groomed their ponies thoroughly, until Dusty gleamed like melting honey and Pip shone like black velvet.

  When they arrived at the pony club grounds, the sun was unusually warm for autumn. Becca’s mum helped them unload the ponies, then went over to talk to the other mothers while the girls saddled up.

  ‘Should I be more nervous?’ Jade asked Becca as they walked in circles, warming up before the examiner arrived.

  ‘No,’ Becca said, ‘I think this’ll be a breeze. And you and Pip look so good!’

  ‘Rebecca and Jade?’ said a middle-aged woman in a tweed jacket and brown corduroy trousers.

  ‘Yes, that’s us,’ Jade said.

  ‘I’m Mrs Thompson. I’ll be your examiner today. Are you ready to begin?’

  The girls were confident but not over-confident. They’d prepared well. When asked to name three plants poisonous to horses, they each named five. When it came to saddling and unsaddling, they were competent to say the least. Pip and Dusty seemed to be in the mood for showing off, too, because they performed beautifully at the walk, trot and canter. Admittedly, Becca and Jade were at least four years older than the other two children sitting the exam, so it would have been embarrassing to fail. However, when the examiner handed out the certificates, Becca’s throwaway comment about being ready to sit the C Certificate wasn’t so unfounded.

  ‘How long have you been riding?’ Mrs Thompson asked the girls. When they replied, Mrs Thompson seemed very surprised. ‘You’re both quite precocious. I look forward to seeing you at the C-Certificate examination.’

  When Becca’s mum dropped Pip and Becca off at the Whites’ and told Mr White how well the girls had done, he looked even more proud than he had the day before when Jade had shown him her assignment on Michaela Lewis.

  ‘Well done, girls—not that I’m surprised,’ he said. ‘However, we mustn’t get cocky. Jade, you’ve still got a lot of work to do before you’ll be ready for the One Day Event. I assume you’re keen to enter?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ she said seriously.

  ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it.’

  The next day, the girls were back at school. If Jade hadn’t had such a good assignment to hand in, she wouldn’t have looked forward to it at all. Even so, the A+ she was given hardly compensated for the prospect of a long term before the next holiday and the emergence of winter.

  The Whites’ paddocks flooded, which meant that there was nowhere good to ride, and Pip’s delicate white hooves started to look suspiciously like they were getting mud fever. Mr White called the vet, and paid for his visit, which embarrassed Jade—she didn’t tell her granddad about it, knowing how he’d react.

  The mornings were colder, too, and the sun disappeared at five o’clock, meaning that Pip had to wear one of Brandy’s hand-me-down covers, which was both too large and not quite waterproof. The early darkness also meant that afterschool rides were no longer possible.

  ‘I’m not having you walking home alone in the dark, and you can’t keep asking Mr White to drive you,’ her granddad scolded when Jade was late home for dinner one night.

  ‘I wish I could drive,’ Jade muttered sullenly, making her granddad laugh.

  ‘You’re going on twelve, not fifteen, miss,’ he said, elbowing her in the ribs as they did the dishes. ‘Which reminds me, what should I get a twelve-year-old for her birthday?’

  Jade didn’t want to talk about her birthday. Although a party with Laura and Becca would be nice, celebrating without her mum and dad seemed too weird. It wasn’t something she felt like thinking about.

  ‘I don’t care; anything,’ she said, then realized how rude that sounded. ‘I’m sorry, Granddad! It’s just that you’ve done so much for me and it’s strange…’

  ‘I know, love,’ he said, putting his arms around her as she started to cry. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  Jade’s birthday was on Sunday, the second of August.

  ‘All I really want for my birthday,’ Jade had said during lunch to Becca and Laura about a fortnight before, ‘is to be ready for the One Day Event.’ While Pip’s hooves had recovered, the paddocks were still so sludgy that practising jumping and dressage was out of the question.

  ‘I’ve got some news you might like, then,’ Becca said. ‘Mum and Dad have made a dressage arena in the back paddock.’

  This did cheer Jade up. Although the test for the pre-training pony class was simple and didn’t involve anything she couldn’t already do on Pip, she still felt butterflies in her stomach when she thought about competing.

  ‘Could we come over and practise if it’s fine next weekend?’

  ‘Of course! I want you to. It’s way easier practising with someone else than alone.’

  ‘Am I going to have to get a pony?’ Laura said suddenly, in an odd voice.

  ‘That’d be great,’ Jade said.

  ‘No,’ Becca said, seeing that Laura was upset. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Laura was frowning. ‘All you ever talk about is riding—there’s only so much fun someone can have watching from the fence line.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Laura!’ Jade said. ‘You’re right: we’ve got one-track minds.’

  ‘I love horses too, but I just wish we could talk about something else sometimes. Whenever you say, “I hope it’s fine in the weekend so I can ride,” I think, “I hope it’s wet in the weekend so they’ll come over and watch a DVD.”’

  It was wet that weekend, and they did watch a DVD. They also spent some time planning Jade’s party for the following weekend. All Laura’s talk of cakes and candles and presents irritated Jade, though—it still didn’t feel right to celebrate.

  ‘Look,’ Jade said quietly, as Laura wrote a list of Jade’s favourite foods, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I want a party at all.’

  ‘You have to—it’s your birthday,’ Laura insisted. ‘Your mum would want you to.’

  ‘How would you know that?’ Jade shouted.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jade!’ Laura called as Jade left the living room, slamming the door.

  There was no more talk of parties the following week at school. And the sun had finally come out again, so Jade was happy. She even managed to do a little jumping practice on Wednesday afternoon.

  ‘If it’s fine on Sunday, could we use your dr
essage arena?’ Jade asked Becca, when Laura wasn’t listening, ‘as a sort of birthday present.’

  ‘Um,’ Becca said. ‘Me and mum will be out, running errands.’

  ‘Errands?’ Jade said suspiciously.

  When she woke on Sunday morning, her granddad was frying bacon and eggs for a birthday treat.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I had to do something special, and I’m partial to a cooked breakfast.’

  Jade laughed. ‘Thanks, Granddad. It’s perfect.’

  ‘Don’t clean up!’ Granddad said, when Jade had finished and went to the sink. ‘You’ll be wanting to go for a ride, I suppose?’

  ‘You know me well,’ she said.

  ‘It’s quite a long walk to the Whites’, isn’t it,’ he said cryptically, as Jade put on her boots.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m used to it now.’

  ‘Well, if you want to make the journey quicker, have a look in the shed.’

  Curious, Jade went out and opened the roller door. There in front of her was an old Raleigh bike with a white leather seat and a red frame, and a red helmet hanging over the handlebars. Although it was second-hand, it had obviously been beautifully restored by someone who knew what they were doing.

  ‘Granddad! It’s perfect! Thank you,’ Jade said, kissing him on the cheek.

  ‘You’re welcome, girl. If you take it to school, you’ll have time to ride Pip in the afternoons now.’

  It was a much quicker journey to the Whites’ that morning.

  ‘Nice wheels,’ Mr White said, as she rode in.

  ‘Thanks. Granddad gave it to me for my birthday.’

  ‘Your birthday? That’s right! Many happy returns. As a birthday treat, shall we do some cross-country jumping?’

  ‘I’d love to, but where?’

  ‘Have a look at the back paddock—have you really not noticed before?’