by Kate Lattey
Pony Jumpers
#3
TRIPLE BAR
Kate Lattey
1st Edition
Copyright 2015 © by Kate Lattey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Preview of #4: FOUR FAULTS
More books by Kate Lattey
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Find & Follow
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Some of the characters and storylines in this novel will be familiar to readers of my earlier full-length works, Dare to Dream and Dream On. This story does contain spoilers for those books, so I do recommend reading them first (or after) you read this novel. Both books are available for download on Kindle at Amazon.com.
However in saying that, this book does stand on its own without requiring prior knowledge, so it is not a prerequisite.
* * *
“Don’t be distracted by criticism.
Remember the only taste of success some people have
is when they take a bite out of yours.”
- George Morris
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
“Next to jump will be Susannah Andrews, and she rides Flying High.”
I could hear their voices as I trotted Teddy into the ring, even as I tried not to. The low murmur of disapproval that always seemed to follow me around was audible even over the crackling of the loudspeaker. I took a deep breath, trying not to see the way that people nudged each other and pointed at me, the sneers on their faces, the way they leaned against the railings and watched closely as I rode.
Ever since I’d returned last season and re-entered the competition world, it had been there like white noise, tarnishing everything.
I hadn’t wanted to come back at first. I’d turned the ponies out after that disastrous Horse of the Year show eighteen months ago, had their shoes pulled and let their coats grow thick and warm, shut myself into the house and ignored them as much as I could. Lucy had come in twice a day to feed them and change their covers and muck out the paddocks, and I’d pretended that the ponies who had been so important to me simply didn’t exist.
Until one day when I was sitting in my room, feeling miserable about everything and somewhat illogically wishing that I could have been an only child and then none of this would have ever happened, and I’d looked out of the window to see Lucy slogging relentlessly through driving rain, leading all three ponies into the barn for their evening feeds. Solid, dependable Buck with his head bowed against the weather. Little Springbok with his high white stockings plastered in mud. Naughty Teddy playing up, tugging at the end of the rope and spinning around, trying to aim a kick at Bok just because he was within reach. I’d sat and watched them, sympathising with Lucy for having to deal with the boys when they were in such bad moods, and then I’d realised that I couldn’t really relate to her at all. I didn’t know what that felt like because I’d never done any of that work.
I’d never had to.
The grooming, the handling, the mucking-out – those were chores that had always been done for me. My job wasn’t to get dirty, or drag recalcitrant ponies through the rain, or scrub buckets or clean tack or pull manes. My job was to ride. I’d come home from school to find my ponies groomed and waiting, saddled for me one by one, to be returned to Lucy after I rode to cool them out and put them away, while I went into the house to eat my dinner and do my homework. There was no other way to fit them in around school, Dad had insisted, and I’d never thought twice about it. It was just how we lived, and how things were done. How they’d always been done. But I had started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t the best way, just because it was the easiest for me. Had started to wonder how my ponies felt about only seeing me when I was on their backs. Had started to envy the relationships that other riders had with their mounts, the unity they shared.
I’d looked around my room at the ribbons and sashes and rosettes hanging from the walls, at the photos of my ponies clearing the highest fences with me crouched in the saddle, a look of utter determination on my face. I’d made myself look hard at the pictures, at my legs swinging backwards over the fences, at my body lying low over my pony’s neck, my hands grasping at the reins as I turned them in mid-air. At the way that Teddy’s eyes were bulging as I pulled him around a tight turn, at the way the veins popped out on Buck’s lathered neck, at Springbok’s open mouth, dripping with foam.
I’d looked hard at them all, and I hadn’t liked what I’d seen.
So I’d gone outside, dashing through the horizontal rain until I’d reached the stables, where Lucy was mixing up feeds while the boys stood in their stalls and waited. Buck was leaning patiently over his door, staring eagerly down the aisle towards the feed room. Springbok was pacing back and forth at the front of his stable, and Teddy was pawing furiously at his bedding, demanding that he be fed immediately.
I’d tried to speak to them, but they’d all three ignored me, so I’d stood there and watched as Lucy came out of the feed room with three buckets in her hands. She’d stopped when she’d seen me, looking surprised.
“Is everything okay?”
“Fine. Can I help?”
I think that was the most surprised I’d ever seen her, but she’d handed me Teddy’s feed bucket and told me to give it to him. I’d unlatched his door and pulled it open, and he’d backed away from me, giving me a wary look as I tipped his feed into the corner bin. I’d waited for him to come and get it, wanting to run my hand down his strong neck and feel his fluffy winter coat against my palm. But he’d hesitated, watching me warily, and had only come for his dinner when I’d moved out of the way.
I’d stepped back into the aisle with tears in my eyes, wondering when my ponies had become afraid of me, and why I’d never noticed it before.
That day had marked the start of a new approach to my riding. I’d taken over the barn chores over winter while the ponies were turned out, convincing my father that if I found that I needed Lucy’s guidance when we brought them back in for the season that we’d hire her back. I hadn’t planned to, but as the ponies had come back into work I’d realised just how much I didn’t know. Luckily for me, Lucy was always generous with her time and knowledge, and soon got me up to speed. She was one of the first people who actually believed that I’d turned over a new leaf.
She’d also been the one to recommend Bruce Goddard to me as a coach, and he’d been a godsend. I’d told my father that if I was going to keep riding, I wanted more lessons, not more ponies. I didn’t need more tack, I needed more skills. And Bruce was a hard taskmaster. I’m sure he’d come in to coach me with a very closed mind, being as aware as everyone else of what had gone down a few months earlier, but I was determined to win him over, and eventually I had. The greatest endorsement he could’ve ever given me had come at the end of last season, when he’d recommended to another of his students, Bubbles Deveraux, that she sell her top Grand Prix pony to me when she moved back to the United States. After months of all the other riders in New Zealand telling me that they
’d rather shoot their ponies than have them belong to me, Bruce convincing Bubbles that I would be the right owner for her beloved Skybeau was a huge leap forward. I’d been thrilled, not only to have such a talented show jumper, but to know that my bad reputation was fading.
I should’ve known better. People have long memories, and it seemed that no amount of good riding could outweigh the bad. The memory of what had happened in the past clung to me like a bad smell, making everyone turn up their noses and look away when I approached. I’d come close to quitting so many times, but I’d grown up with the sport, and I still loved it. And I had something left to prove, even if I only managed to prove it to a handful of people.
I wasn’t going to walk away without a fight. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
The start bell rang, bringing me back to the present. I squeezed Teddy gently up into a canter, then made a steadying circle before approaching the flags. I focused on the first fence, a blue and white ascending oxer, eyeing up the distance as we approached. Teddy’s quick canter stride covered the grassy turf beneath us, his studded hooves digging into the ground, my seat just touching the saddle, my weight sinking into my stirrups.
Eyes up. Hands still. Legs on.
We found a good distance, I closed my leg a little tighter against his sleek grey sides, and Teddy jumped.
Everything else disappeared.
I focused on the next fence, cantered the bending line with just enough pace to get Teddy to the best possible distance to jump from. I concentrated on his length of stride, balanced him on the turns, watched his small ears prick forward every time he locked onto the jump ahead of us. Only heard the thudding of his hooves against the ground, the rattle of a rail as it bounced in its cups, the way his breath came more heavily as we progressed around the course.
Five fences to go. Teddy bent his grey body around the corner, flexing his ribcage around my inside leg, his hindquarters pumping out the energy that I was keeping so carefully contained in my hand. I flexed my fingers on the reins, checking that he was concentrating on me and not just thinking about the jump ahead of him. He lifted his head slightly and I felt him tense underneath me. Waiting for the jab in the mouth that he still thought was coming.
Muscle memory.
Bruce talked about that all the time. Teaching the body to react instinctively with the correct response. Training your eye to look for the next fence, training your body to sit up when the horse bucks, training your ankle to flex as far as humanly possible downward. Training your mind to react so quickly to a short or long distance that you could help your horse out every time. You’re not always going to find the best distance, he’d told me. You’re going to get it wrong sometimes, but you have to know how to give your pony the best chance to clear the fence when you do.
Ponies developed muscle memory too – especially experienced ones like Teddy. He knew how to snap his forelegs up quickly to avoid taking a rail, how to pivot on his inside hind leg during a tight turn, how to chip in a short stride when a jump came up unexpectedly. He’d been trained to bend his body when he felt my leg against the girth, to go forward when I used a driving aid, to land on the inside lead when I looked around a corner in mid-air.
He also knew how to run away from pressure on his mouth, and throw his head into the air when my hands moved suddenly. He knew how to panic when he had a refusal because he was preparing himself for a retaliatory whipping. He knew to flinch away when someone raised their hand towards his head, in case they were going to leave him with another scar like the one that sat above his left eye.
I didn’t do those things. Not anymore. But Teddy didn’t know that, and his lasting memories of mistreatment were still strong enough to override the new responses that I was trying to teach him.
I softened my fingers on the reins again and kept my legs against his sides, urging him forward. Wanted him to forgive me, and trust again, and jump because he was balanced out of the turn and about to get to the oxer on a perfect stride, and I’d ridden it well and he had absolutely no reason to say no.
But he didn’t jump. He backed off the fence, then slammed both forelegs into the freshly mown grass and came to an abrupt halt. I took a steadying breath as Teddy jittered under me, dancing as though he was stepping on hot coals. Fretting over the punishment he thought was coming. He needn’t have worried. I didn’t even carry a whip anymore.
I shortened my reins and circled him away, then pushed him back into a canter. I didn’t blame him for not wanting to jump, but I needed him to do it. Not for me, but for Dad. I wasn’t going to be allowed to keep riding and competing this pony if he wouldn’t jump. It wasn’t a good look, Dad said. Reminded people of the bad things that’d happened. Better by far to ride ponies like Buck and Skip, who just went over the jumps no matter what I did. But Teddy wasn’t going to make my life easy, and that’s why I wanted to keep riding him. I wanted to get him on my side.
I gave Teddy the best ride I could, and this time he went over. And over the next fence, and the next. And I relaxed as he settled into his stride, and felt a surge of achievement and confidence. It was working. Teddy was going to do it. And then he stopped again, and this time I wasn’t ready for it at all, and I went flying over his head and into the poles, knocking the fence to the ground as Teddy fled, wild-eyed, back to the gate.
“I don’t see why you want to keep riding him.”
I shrugged one shoulder and stabbed a meatball with my fork. “Because he’s my favourite. And we’ve had him forever.”
“Why would he be your favourite?” Mum stared at me, eyebrows knotting together in the middle. “He’s done nothing but give you grief lately.”
Exactly, I wanted to say. Lately. Not always. Not before. A little, last season, but he’d picked his game back up after a couple of average shows and been a consistent placegetter. But lately something had changed, and I wanted to know what it was. Was it me, something I was doing? Or was it him? He appeared to be perfectly healthy, and the vet had already been called twice to check him over, but had found nothing. He’d had the chiropractor see him, had x-rays taken of all four legs, had acupuncture and massage treatments - the whole nine yards. About the only thing we hadn’t tried was a horse psychic, because my parents refused to believe in any of that “mumbo-jumbo”, as Mum called it. Dad had another name for it that I wasn’t allowed to repeat.
“We could put him on the market, but nobody’s going to buy him right now anyway,” Dad grumbled.
Mum sighed and made a tutting noise, neither of them listening to me at all. As usual.
“Maybe we should drop him down the heights and give him some lower starts. He could still clean up around the metre-tens, and we could sell him on to a young kid who wants mileage,” Mum suggested.
Dad nodded, shovelling pasta into his mouth and talking around it. “Could do. He’s clearly not going to do the Grand Prix again.”
“You don’t know that.” How could I explain to them that if I didn’t keep trying, everyone’s opinions of me would just be confirmed? Everyone thought I couldn’t ride anything that hadn’t already been trained for me. That I could only ride pushbutton ponies – nothing tricky, nothing quirky, nothing that took a bit of finesse. Maybe they were right, and maybe they were wrong. Even I didn’t know the answer to that. But I desperately wanted to find out. “It might be my fault. Maybe I’m not giving him a decent ride.”
“You give everything a brilliant ride, darling,” Mum said. I chased a pea across my plate and ignored her.
“You rode that bay mare beautifully, and everyone said she was a devil of a thing. But she was like putty in your hands. Never had a problem with her at all.” Oh great. This again. I shovelled more food onto my fork as Dad carried on. “You shouldn’t have let those people bully us out of the sale.”
“I told you already,” I said, my frustration building. We’d been over and over this. It was as though he thought that by bringing it up repeatedly, he could somehow change the cou
rse of history. Or maybe he just wanted me to admit that I was wrong, and a coward. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. “We couldn’t buy Molly, not after Katy’s parents came up with a counter offer. And Steph wanted her to stay with Katy, if possible.”
“Steph gave us first refusal. We’d shaken on it. It was as good as done, and then you just conceded defeat and let her sell the pony out from under us.”
“I don’t need a third Grand Prix pony.” It was the only excuse I could come up with that Dad would listen to, and it was a struggle at that. “I already told you that. If you want to buy me a fourth pony, we should get a young one that I can produce.”
I didn’t need a fourth pony either, but there was no convincing Dad of that.
“Waste of time,” Dad countered. “You’ve only got two seasons left and if you win that Pony of the Year title this year, which you should, considering the horsepower you’re sitting on now, we’ll sell the ponies and move you up onto hacks. Get a good Young Rider horse, and a Junior. See if you can’t take out both titles in the same year. Hasn’t been done before, but someone has to be a trail blazer, and I reckon it could be you. With the right horses...”
His eyes lit up as he talked, and I stared down at my plate. I used to love it when he talked that way. Planning for the season ahead, discussing the shows and the successes we’d have. I’d sit with him and join in with his ambitious plans, agreeing that I was well capable of winning every class we entered, because if you weren’t going to win then there was no point in even entering. Prizes were there to be won, and you did what you had to do to get the victory. And it had been fun at first, and gratifying that my success meant so much to him. For years it had been all about my brother, but once he’d left home and gone off to University, the attention had switched over to me. The attention and the pressure, both of which swiftly became oppressive.