“The event horse is OK,” I said, flustered, “the event horse is fine.”
“Except that it’s a little short of funds, and the Fanes have got to do damned foolhardy things like racing the old grey to finance it.” Forster’s voice was friendly enough, but the final thump he gave the turf was a vicious one.
“There isn’t any cash,” I admitted. “After the hunting season the income from the yard has dropped off to practically nothing.” There was no point in pretending. I tried not to look at Forster. I knew all about his rather insolent mouth, the way his black hair curled over the back of his collar, and the thick curve of lashes over his blue eyes.
“And did you really expect that there ever would be any cash?” Forster enquired. “Knowing the Fanes as you do, did you honestly expect it?” He threw the rammer at the wheelbarrow where it landed with an almighty crash. “Honestly, Elaine,” he said in an exasperated voice, “I said you were a fool to go and work for them in the first place, but I never imagined you would let them trap you into working for them for nothing for ever.”
Henrietta had noticed our conversation and immediately decided that it was time to leave. “Elaine!” she shouted, “We’re going back to the car! Are you coming?”
“Anyhow,” Forster went on, as the spade clattered into the wheelbarrow beside the rammer, “I hope you’re going to try for the Hissey Scholarship this year.”
I waved at Henrietta to let her know that I would follow. “Try for the what?” I said.
“Felix Hissey’s training scholarship for event riders,” Forster said. “He’s always given a couple every year, but this year he’s giving more, and it’s being properly organized through the BHS. You have to be eighteen and have a promising young event horse to participate.” He paused and raised his shoulders. “Well, you’re eighteen, and you’ve got a promising young event horse …”
“I’ve also got the Fanes,” I pointed out, “and Legend is their property, I can’t just do as I like.” As if to reinforce this, there was a further shriek from Henrietta.
“Elaine!” she yelled. “Do come on!”
“Anyway,” I said, remembering, “Felix Hissey probably wouldn’t even let me try for it; after all, I did turn down his job.”
“Turning down his job won’t enter into it,” Forster said. “Felix Hissey doesn’t do the choosing any more, it’s all done by the BHS, he just puts up the money.”
I had never seriously considered trying for a training scholarship before. Now it seemed to be the perfect solution. So perfect, in fact, that there just had to be a fly in the ointment somewhere, and I rather suspected that the fly would turn out to be the Fanes.
“I’ll get you the details, anyway,” Forster said. “I might be able to give them to you at the Point-to-Point.”
“But please don’t say anything to the Fanes about it,” I begged him. “I shall have to ask them first, and they might not like the idea.” I ran off up the course towards the Fanes, pleased on two counts. Forster was speaking to me again and there was a chance, if remote, of a training scholarship. Things were looking up.
On the way home we made a detour in order to visit Help the Aged, because Nigella needed a suitable jersey to race in.
“It’s Mummy’s duty day,” Henrietta said. “She’s sure to find us something.”
Lady Jennifer Fane was equally confident. “But I know I shall be able to put my hand on the very thing!” she trilled. “You can’t imagine how many jerseys people bring to the shop, we turn away simply hundreds!”
She flung open several drawers, but all she could find was a pale green angora trimmed with a little pocket and a button.
“No, no,” Henrietta said. “That won’t do at all. We need a big, thick jersey with a stripe across the front or hoops on the sleeves.”
Lady Jennifer looked at us in genuine despair. She was tall and thin and highly strung, and she had Given Her Life to Charity. “I’m frightfully sorry,” she said. “I can’t offer you anything with stripes or hoops.” We might have been customers in Harrods.
“We really need a man’s jersey,” Nigella said. She flicked along a rail of dubious looking garments and discovered a pair of ginger velvet knickerbockers. She pulled them out and surveyed them with admiration tinged with regret. “Size eight! Could anyone possibly be that size?”
Lady Jennifer disappeared through a bead curtain and returned bearing a red jersey of immense proportions. It was clumsily knitted and misshapen, but she laid it out on the glass-topped counter as if it was the finest cashmere. “I really don’t know if this would be the slightest use to you at all,” she said. “But it is the most marvellously warm colour, and I do have another in the most heavenly shade of blue.”
“What we really need is a two-tone jersey,” I explained. “It’s for the Point-to-Point. Nigella ought to have racing colours in red and blue to match the silks on my cross-country hat.”
Lady Jenifer had done her best, but now she looked defeated. A lot of wispy, grey hair had escaped from her unwieldy French pleat. “I haven’t got a red and blue jersey, Elaine,” she sighed, “only a red jersey and a blue jersey.”
“I know what to do,” Henrietta declared. “We can pull the sleeves off the red one and fix them onto the blue one.” She leaned over the red jersey and picked experimentally at the sleeve join, to ascertain that all this was possible.
“Oh,” Lady Jenifer shrilled in alarm, “I really don’t think …”
“We’ll buy them both,” Nigella interposed hastily, “naturally.”
“And naturally,” I said in a low voice to Nigella, “you have some money to pay for them, because I haven’t.”
“It’s all right,” Nigella said reassuringly, “we can probably open an account.”
“We don’t have accounts at Help the Aged,” Lady Jennifer said sharply.
“Perhaps we could do a swop then,” Nigella suggested. “Your jerseys for ours.”
Lady Jennifer frowned. She wanted to help us, but her loyalty to The Cause was being severely stretched. “Not Henrietta’s” she said firmly. “Henrietta is so frightfully hard on jerseys. She picks at the wrists constantly; she always did, even as an infant.”
This proved to be true, because when Henrietta took off her anorak, her jersey was unpicked practically to mid-arm.
“Mine’s all right anyway,” Nigella said. She pulled off her slightly discoloured Arran and replaced it with the red jumper. Apologetically, she added, “We shall have to have yours as well, Elaine.”
I hadn’t expected this. I was fond of my good navy Guernsey. It had been a Christmas present from my father and I was loath to part with it.
“Come on, Elaine,” Henrietta said impatiently. “Hand it over.”
Unhappily, I peeled off my Husky.
The Comet stood at the start of our improvised Point-to-Point course as if hewn from stone. With his noble bearing and his distinguished good looks, he could have been a top-flight steeplechaser. But Nigella, in the quilted ski-pants, to which, as a concession to horsemanship, she had added jodhpur boots frilled at the ankles with withered elastic, and a hard hat with the ventilator button missing, looked anything but a jockey.
Henrietta raised the flag, fashioned by means of a twig and a small, white, housemaid’s apron, discovered during the ritual laying of rat-poison in the attics, and a legacy of the Fanes’ former gentility.
“Once round,” she commanded, “at half speed.” But it was clear, once the flag had been dropped and the first furlong had been covered, that the horse had other ideas.
The Comet galloped like an express train with an unrelenting thunder of hooves and his yellowing tail streaming like a banner behind him. He flew unerringly over the wild, untrimmed hedge, bore onwards in a wide half-circle across the park, and took, without the least falter in his stride, the log pile which was part of Legend’s painfully built cross-country course. After this he made an unscheduled turn to the left, and despite Nigella’s determined effo
rts to screw his head round to the right, he continued at a powerful speed towards the stable yard and the comfortable privacy of his own loose box.
“Henrietta,” I said, “what happens if he does that tomorrow?” I thought of the network of lanes with their slippery tarmac, the jaunting gin-and-tonic traffic, and the fast-running river which had flooded its banks, all of which lay between The Comet and his stable; the stable where he stood like a statue for hours and hours and dreamed his mysterious dreams. Despite the fact that the grey horse was lofty and self-absorbed, and feigned indifference to man or beast, or perhaps even because of it, I felt something catch hold of my heart and give it a little twist.
“How can it possibly happen tomorrow?” Henrietta said scornfully. “He’s hardly likely to make a bolt for home, because he won’t know which direction to take; he won’t know where he is! After all,” she added, as she tossed away the twig and tied the apron round her waist with a flourish, “he isn’t a homing pigeon.”
We slung The Comet’s saddle from the spring balance we used for weighing hay nets in the barn. It weighed twenty-five pounds. Nigella weighed herself on the scales outside the village chemists, and even with five extra jumpers and her long riding boots, she couldn’t make more than nine stone two pounds. The starting weight, which included the saddle, irons, leathers, girth and breastplate, was eleven and a half stones.
“Weights,” I told them. “We shall be expected to provide weights.”
“What sort of weights?” Henrietta wanted to know.
“The sort of weights you carry when you’re eventing,” I said. “In a weight cloth with pouches on each side, and straps to attach it to the saddle.”
“What are they made of, these weights?” Nigella wondered.
“Lead,” I informed them. “Lead pipe normally, you cut it up into pound and half-pound pieces, and then you hammer them flat.”
“We haven’t any lead pipe,” Nigella said, dismayed. “I’m sure of it.”
“Can’t we use something else?” Henrietta suggested. “Sugar or something?”
We lapsed into giggles, thinking of The Comet struggling round the Point-to-Point course with panniers full of sugar packets.
“There must be something else we can use,” Henrietta said.
“No,” I assured her, “it has to be lead.”
Nigella subsided on to a convenient hay bale. She looked weary and oddly rounded in all the jerseys, topped off by the awful blue one with the red sleeves. “Where on earth are we going to get lead from, at this time of night?” she sighed.
We all fell silent, thinking about it, then: “I think I know,” said Henrietta, and she vanished into the darkness with a torch.
“I expect she’s seen a piece of pipe lying around somewhere,” Nigella said, but when Henrietta returned, it wasn’t with a piece of pipe.
Where she had found the wide strip of lead flashing with the prettily scalloped edges, neither Nigella or I thought fit to enquire. But the next time it rained, I noticed that the little portico with the Doric columns and the pointed roof which sheltered the main entrance to the hall leaked like a sieve.
3
A Maiden’s Race
There was a flurry of race-cards as I led The Comet into the paddock.
“Hold on a minute, miss!” A steward ran after me in order to tie a number on my arm. He looked at The Comet in admiration. “Nice horse, miss,” he said, “got a powerful hindquarter on him.”
The powerful hindquarter was the result of dragging half a tree round the park as part of being broken to harness, but there was no time to go into this with the steward. “You mind you don’t get him kicked, miss,” he warned. “Some of these beggars are over the top.” Other horses were piling up behind. One of them ran backwards and stood on end, pulling the leading-rein out of its attendant’s grasp. There was a short interval of chaos until it was recaptured.
I led The Comet along the inside of the rails. Some of the other runners in the Ladies’ Race were already parading, sidling along with their tails up, rolling their eyes and snatching at their bits, upset by the atmosphere of excitement, the proximity of the jostling crowd, and the hoarse shouts of the bookmakers. The Comet was unmoved by it all. He stalked along, looking regal. People looked him up hastily as he passed them by.
“Good-looking grey, what’s its number?”
“Grand sort of animal that.”
“Number twenty-two. The Comet.”
“My God,” somebody else exclaimed, aghast. “It’s the Fanes’ old grey! It’s unstoppable!”
In the middle of the paddock, Nigella waited in her red and blue. Henrietta stood beside her with the saddlery. She looked unfamiliar and even vaguely fashionable in one of Lady Jennifer’s ancient tweed suits which dated from the New Look. When the steward had finally managed to get all the runners forward, he waved us in to saddle up. The Comet was the only grey.
Nigella looked pale but composed. She pulled off the paddock sheet and Henrietta put on the weight cloth, followed by the number cloth and the saddle. The Comet stood like a statue whilst I reached under his belly for the girths.
“Some of the others look a bit hot,” Nigella remarked, taking in all the plunging and snorting going on around us.
“With a bit of luck they’ll wear themselves out before they get to the start,” Henrietta said. “I reckon Mrs Lydia Lane’s horse is the one to watch.”
Mrs Lydia Lane’s horse was a massive foam-flecked bay, who pinned his ears back and lashed out as a groom pulled up the surcingle. Mrs Lydia Lane wore beautiful calf boots with silky trousers tucked into them like a Cossack, and a dark and glossy fur coat. She looked very glamorous.
“No wonder Nick Forster found her so attractive,” Henrietta commented.
I didn’t rise to this, being engaged in replacing the paddock sheet.
“It was the talk of the county, at the time,” Henrietta went on. “There was quite a scandal. I do believe that her husband threatened to shoot him.”
“I don’t know why you are telling me all this,” I said, flipping The Comet’s tail over the fillet string. “It isn’t as if I’m actually interested.”
“Oh,” Henrietta said innocently. “I thought you were.”
It was not the moment to fall out with Henrietta. I led The Comet back into the walk-round. He may have been a bolter, but he was mine, and I was proud of him. He had taken everything in his implacable stride; the early preparation, the journey, the arrival and the unfamiliar surroundings, the noise and bustle of the course; and now he sailed round the paddock with the demeanour of one who paraded in public every day of his life. He looked a wise, experienced, sensible and powerful horse, in fact just the kind the punters tend to fancy for the Ladies Race. He had no breeding entered on the race-card, no impressive thoroughbred blood-lines, and no previous form whatsoever. He was just The Comet. Grey Gelding. Breeding unknown. Aged. But already the odds were shortening on the Tote from rank outsider to 8-1 against.
Buoyed up by the general excitement and the sense of occasion, I had lost most of my former uneasiness about the Point-to-Point, but now, through a gap in the crowd, I saw the winner of the last race being led down to the horse-boxes with distended nostrils, pumping sides and lowered head. His neck was black with sweat and there was blood on one of his hind legs. I was suddenly terribly afraid for The Comet.
“Turn your horses in please!” the steward shouted. Everyone stopped on the perimeter of the ring and turned their horses’ heads to the centre. Up on the number frame, Nigella’s name and The Comet’s number had appeared. Henrietta removed the paddock sheet for the last time and tightened the girths. She legged Nigella into the saddle. Nigella’s hands were trembling as she took up the reins, but she still managed to give me a reassuring smile. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “Really.”
Outside the paddock I unclipped the leading-rein and pulled it through The Comet’s snaffle rings. “Nigella,” I pleaded, “do take care. Please don’
t take any chances.”
Mrs Lydia Lane’s horse flew past us with an enormous bound which nearly unseated its jockey. Next to The Comet, the rider of a raw-boned chestnut took out her teeth and handed them to her attendant for safe-keeping. The huntsman, dressed in his scarlet with brass buttons flashing in the sunlight, rode forward to lead the parade of runners on to the course.
“Good luck!” Henrietta shouted after Nigella. “Make sure you’re first back!” She was bright-eyed and flushed with excitement. In contrast, Nigella looked cool and determined.
Mrs Lydia Lane’s horse was the first to canter away towards the start, shaking its head, scattering froth like snow. The Comet cantered steadily; it was easy to distinguish the grey with the red and the blue.
“We’ll find a good place to watch from,” Henrietta said in an agitated voice. “Over there, up on the rise! We should be able to see the whole course from there!” She set off towards the rise at a run, dodging through knots of people.
“Here,” Forster’s voice said. “You might need these.” He gave me some papers which I stuffed into my pocket, and he put a pair of binoculars into my hands. I tried to thank him, but he was gone, jumping into the Hunt Land Rover which bucketed after the runners to take up its position on the course.
A Hoof in the Door (Eventing Trilogy Book 2) Page 2
