Ticket to Ride (Eventing Trilogy Book 3)

by Caroline Akrill

  “I wouldn’t,” I protested, “I promise I won’t say a word.”

  The washing machine now began to vibrate in an alarming way and to creep across the kitchen until it reached the limit of its cable where it rattled and fretted with impotent fury. We halted its progress by propping a corner with Die Klassiche Reitkunst.

  After a noisy interval the machine turned itself off with a small bang. I lifted the lid cautiously. The clothes were bound together in a distressingly tangled lump, speckled with undissolved detergent.

  “We can’t have got it hot enough,” Viv concluded. She turned the dial on the side of the machine to BOIL. I watched with some trepidation as the water began to bubble and steam billowed, but at last the speckles turned to suds. “That’s done it,” Viv said in a satisfied voice. “It’ll be done in no time.”

  Soap suds worked their way between the lid and the top of the machine, inching slowly down the sides and threatening the safety of Die Klassiche Reitkunst, then, with a mighty whooshing of the rinse and more furious vibratings, they were banished and the cycle came to an abrupt end. We pulled out the jumble of clothes and put them in the spinner. They seemed terribly hot.

  “They certainly look clean, anyhow,” Viv observed as she transferred them to the laundry basket, then abruptly her tone changed. “Cor, strike a light, Elaine,” she groaned, “just take a look at these.”

  I looked over her shoulder and saw that she was holding up Selina’s beautiful breeches. They were hardly recognizable. All the lovely soft creamy suede strappings had shrunk to a quarter of their original size; not only that, but they were transformed into something utterly repulsive, dark and slippery and slimy to the touch, like raw pig’s liver.

  “It must be because we boiled them,” I said, appalled, “they’re ruined!” It was small consolation to look at the rest of the breeches and see that they had survived because they had self-strappings.

  “We’ll have to do something,” Viv said, “Selina will go mad. She’ll go absolutely barmy.”

  We couldn’t think of anything. We stood in the steamed up kitchen and we stared at the breeeches, aghast.

  “We’ll try drying them,” Viv declared. “First we’ll get them dry, then we’ll iron them out flat, but we’ll stretch them as much as we can now, whilst they’re still wet.”

  We pulled at the breeches until we heard the stitching begin to pop, then we fetched the electric kettle and held the strappings as close to it as we dared. With the steam from the machine and the hot clothes and the strappings, the Duke of Newcastle’s kitchen turned into a turkish bath, the windows poured. My hair hung lank to my shoulders and Viv’s orange spikes stood on end so that she resembled a frightened cockatoo. In spite of all this the strappings were no better when they were dry. In fact they were worse. They toasted to a crisp and when we tried to iron out the crinkles, they broke up like biscuits. It was simply terrible.

  There was only one thing to do. I ran for my cell, rummaged through my drawer and found my own identical breeches lying in their tissue, lovingly wrapped against their day of glory, and I substituted them for Selina’s ruined ones. Viv crept out of the Duke of Newcastle’s back door and buried the remains of the old ones in the muckheaps with the fish slice.

  “There’s a devastatingly handsome young man asking for you in the yard, Elaine,” Selina beamed round the door of our cell as I brushed my hair and fixed it with a slide. “Have you known him long?” She came in and settled herself on her bed in anticipation of some interesting gossip. For someone who could be incrdibly tart with anyone she suspected of showing an interest in her affairs, she showed an extraordinary curiosity about every last detail of other people’s lives, and never tired of asking questions.

  “About eighteen months,” I said. “He works for the Midvale and Westbury Hunt.”

  “Does he really,” she said, impressed, “and does he wear scarlet? I should think he would look simply divine in scarlet.”

  “Yes, he wears scarlet,” I said, “he’s first whipper-in.”

  “Oh, how marvellous!” Selina clasped her hands together and looked beatific. “And is it unbearably romantic?”

  I remembered the mud, and the lost shoes, and the rain, and Nelson’s saddle, black, like old washleather. “No,” I said, “not very, it’s a plough country.”

  “Not the hunting,” Selina said crossly, “I mean the relationship.”

  “Oh,” I said in a shocked voice, “I couldn’t possibly tell you that. I set rather a high value on personal privacy.” I snatched up my good navy guernsey and smiled at her vexed expression as I made for the door.

  I walked through the yards, looking for Nick. Everywhere was unusually quiet as Monday was a rest day at the training centre; no horses were exercised, no lessons were given, and only a skeleton staff were retained in order to feed, water, and attend to basic necessary duties. I looked in to see Legend on my way past his box, but he was busy with a hay net and couldn’t be bothered with any acknowledgment other than the cock of an ear in my direction.

  Nick was waiting in the car park, leaning with his elbows on the roof of his white sports car, and smoking a cigarette. He was wearing his best Italian suede trousers, an open-necked shirt with a cravat, and a hacking jacket. I could see why Selina had considered him devastating.

  “I thought we’d go for a picnic,” he said.

  “A picnic?” I looked doubtfiully at the sky which was cloudy and a little threatening. “Is that a good idea?”

  He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and opened the passenger door for me, squinting his dark fringed eyes against the smoke. “As I’ve actually been shopping for the food, it had better be.”

  I studied him cautiously as he got into the driving seat and slammed the door. He didn’t seem to be in an awfully good mood and I wondered what had annoyed him. We had had many a bitter battle in the past because of his uncertain temper, but I didn’t feel like an argument today – after my first week at the training centre, I was too tired for one thing.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him. “Is everything alright?”

  “Everything’s fine,” he said shortly. “I just don’t feel like seeking company, that’s all, and anyway, we’ve got to talk.”

  This sounded unpromising, especially as he immediately pushed a Queen cassette into the tape deck which made talking out of the question. He drove on, and I sat silently. As the cassette played and the throttle roared, and the main road became a side road, the side road became a lane, the lane became a cart-track, and the cart-track petered out on to a grassy bank beside a meandering stream sheltered by a copse of hazel trees, golden with catkins.

  “Oh,” I said, delighted. “It’s lovely – how did you know it was here?”

  Nick opened up the boot and pulled out picnic things which included two mohair day rugs with the initials MWH on the sides. “I once had a girlfriend who lived in Crookham,” he said.

  I flopped down on one of the rugs, feeling rather squashed. Nick had had a lot of girlfriends in the past, and if rumour was to be believed, not all of them had been single either. I watched him open a bottle of white wine with a practised hand, and accepted some in a plastic tumbler. He sat down on the rug and looked at me in an expectant manner.

  “Well?” he said.

  I looked at him in surprise. “Well what?” I asked.

  “Perhaps it would help if I gave you a clue,” he said. “On my way over I popped in to see the Fanes.”

  “Oh yes,” I said, “and was she pretty?”

  He looked at me for a moment as if he didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “The new girl,” I told him, “you know, wonder woman.”

  He frowned. “No,” he said, and after some consideration, he added, “she’s tough, strong, efficient, and capable, but she isn’t pretty.”

  “I see,” I said. “So she is as good as they said she was.” I stared down into my plastic tumbler and felt my heart drop several inc
hes because I had believed the Fanes capable of exaggeration, and now I knew they had told the truth. “What does the yard look like?” I asked him.

  “The yard looks tidy, the cobbles are weeded, the boxes are properly mucked out, the horses are well strapped.” Nick regarded me steadily over the rim of his tumbler. “She’s worth every penny of fifty pounds a week.”

  I didn’t believe it. “The Fanes aren’t paying her that much,” I said incredulously, “they couldn’t afford it!”

  “But it’s the going rate for an experienced groom, isn’t it?” Nick asked in an even tone. “After all, it’s what you’ll be getting.”

  I took a sip of wine. “I’d like to think so,” I said, “but I’ll bet you anything that the Fanes aren’t paying her more than fifteen pounds a week, less probably.”

  “Plus use of the horsebox, a room of her own, time off to compete, and keep of her own horse?”

  “Has she got her own horse?” I said, nettled by the idea. “They didn’t say.”

  “They said quite a lot to me,” Nick said, splashing more wine into his tumbler – the bottle was already half empty.

  “Don’t you think we should have something to eat?” I suggested. “You’re not supposed to drink and drive.”

  “We’ll eat when you’ve told me what you told the Fanes,” he said coldly, “unless what Henrietta said was true and you didn’t intend to tell anyone about where you are going after the course.”

  With my mind still gnawing away miserably over the success of the new girl, I hardly heard what he said. I rolled over and looked into the stream. “Tell me about the riding lessons and the grass liveries,” I said. After all, I thought, it’s me she’s replacing, I’m entitled to know.

  The next minute I was hauled up into a sitting position by the neck of my good navy guernsey and Nick’s face was next to my own. “And I think I am entitled to know about your new job, Elaine,” he said in a dangerously quiet voice.

  I stared at him, quite unable to speak.

  “Or don’t you want me to know?” he continued. “Perhaps Henrietta was telling the truth for once, was she, when she said it was to be a secret?” He let go of my guernsey and turned away. “You could have told me,” he said in disgust, “you might have spared me having to hear it second-hand from the Fanes.”

  I let out a sigh and put down my tumbler. Now I could see why he had been in such a bad mood, what all the dropped hints about wages and time off to compete had been leading up to. Trust the Fanes, I thought resentfully, to cast a blight even when they couldn’t be present to do it in person.

  “It isn’t true,” I said. “Honestly, Nick, I haven’t got a job, not yet, I’ve only just sent off my advertisement.”

  He turned back to me, scowling, not knowing whether to believe me or not.

  “I haven’t,” I assured him, “I just couldn’t bear the Fanes to think I haven’t got anything at all, when they were so cock-a-hoop over wonder woman, so I made it up. Anyway,” I added, “you need money to advertise, and until they brought my wages, I hadn’t any.”

  This reminded me that I still owed him the petrol money and I searched through my pockets and presented him with it. He took it, but reluctantly. Now I had explained how things were, I knew that he believed me, but it was a little while before his humour was restored.

  We lay on the hunt day rugs and stared into the stream.

  “Now you’ve finally got away from the Fanes,” Nick told me, “you have to steel yourself to forget them. They’ve found someone else to feel responsible for their equine cripples and to run their business, so you can put them behind you and set your sights on better things.”

  “It would be a lot easier if the better things were already in sight,” I said, “and if the Fanes didn’t insist on having a stake in Legend.” Also, I thought rather miserably, it won’t be easy to forget them. The Fanes, the unbearable, irritating, eccentric, irreplaceable Fanes, were going to leave a big gap in my life. We both fell silent, thinking about the Fanes.

  “Once,” said Nick, “a horse and a chance to event were all you wanted.”

  “And now,” I said, feeling desolate, “it’s all I’ve got.”

  The first spot of rain fell upon the back of my neck. Nick immediately jumped to his feet and began to throw things into the boot of the car.

  “I don’t think we’ll bother with the picnic, after all,” he said in a cheerful voice, “I’ll take you for tea in Crookham instead. I know the perfect place.”

  I didn’t doubt it.

  9

  Such An Excellent Store

  The following week we were to ride the cross-country course as a whole for the first time. It was a testing course, consisting of twenty-nine fences up and down hill, through water and woodland, and even though the chief had drilled us over the most awkward fences individually, we were all anxious about it by the time the day came. When Phillip, whose turn it was to cook, suggested a fried breakfast, we all groaned.

  Phillip was visibly disappointed as, far from objecting to being included on the rota, he had actually been looking forward to showing off his talents as a chef. He contented himself with laying our beastly formica table with elaborate care, lining up the cereal packets and the bowls, putting out side plates, searching out saucers for our motley collection of mugs, scraping the marmalade into a basin, and decanting the milk into a jug; he even cut up the butter into neat little squares.

  “Gordon Bennett,” Alice commented when she saw it, “who’s coming for breakfast, the Queen?”

  Alice was not riding because The Talisman still had a puffy leg as a result of hitting the double. He was not actually lame, but the chief had decided he should do light work only until the leg was back to normal, and he had appointed Alice timekeeper and starter for the cross-country. She was not looking her best this morning, having finally been persuaded to see the nurse, who ran a mini-surgery in the yard two mornings a week to deal with bites, kicks, sprains, crushed toes, lice, ringworm, bumps on the head, and all the other minor ailments and accidents that working pupils and students were wont to suffer from. Nurse had issued Alice with some green acne ointment which made the spots look even more unsightly, and Alice, who didn’t care what she looked like, made a point of plastering her face with it before every lesson to annoy the chief who, suspecting that she was being insubordinate, but unable to do very much about it, gave her some searching looks.

  Selina appeared for breakfast, still in her track suit and running shoes, having managed to finish the morning run looking as immaculate as when she had started out. “Well, this is an improvement, I must say,” she said. She settled herself at the table and looked round approvingly.

  Mandy, flushed and wheezing, flopped into her chair with her Sony Walkman still in place, and Phillip, setting an evenly browned rack of toast in front of us, plucked the earphones off the top of her head in protest. If it had been anyone else, Mandy would have snatched them back, but as she was in love with Phillip, she switched it off and gave him a cow-eyed look of adoration.

  Annemarie, whose table manners left a lot to be desired, threw herself into the vacant chair, grabbed a piece of Phillip’s beautiful toast, piled three squares of butter on to it, flattened it with her knife, stirred her coffee with the blade and plunged it, still dripping, into the marmalade. Despite this appalling display, she still complained unceasingly about the quality of our accomodation, comparing it unfavourably with that of the Reitschule.

  “I wasn’t able to find a jam spoon,” Phillip apologized, “sorry.”

  Annemarie paused with a loaded toast inches from her mouth. “There are not any jam spoons to be found in this hole of a place,” she said with her customary disgust.

  “And even if there were,” Selina pointed out, “some people might not know what they were for.”

  One by one we got up from the table and went to get changed for the cross-country. I managed to be ready first and was sitting on Mandy’s bed, having just negot
iated the loan of a hairnet from Annemarie, when the door burst open and Selina appeared, looking furious.

  “These breeches have shrunk!” she raged, her face white with temper. “Lillywhites promised me faithfully they were pre-shrunk and machine washable!”

  I had forgotten about the breeches, but now I saw with dismay that the velcro fastenings only reached to her knees, and the waistband didn’t meet at all. In retrospect, this was hardly surprising because my breeches were two sizes smaller than the ones they had replaced, but it had been a fact I had failed to consider in the anxiety of the moment.

  There seemed nothing for it but to tell Selina what had happened. I opened my mouth to confess everything and offer to buy her a new pair of breeches, but she was not to be interrupted.

  “I think it’s utterly disgraceful,” she stormed. “I shall create the most almighty scene, and what is more, I shall close my account!” She raced out of the cell, still wearing the breeches, to ring the store from the pay phone in the lecture hall.

  Annemarie, who knew the story of the breeches, looked after her with vengeful satisfaction. “Now there is going to be trouble,” she said, “just you wait.”

  I didn’t have to wait long, Selina returned a few minutes later, looking serene.

  “What did they say?” I breathed, trying hard not to sound over-anxious.

  Selina smiled at the memory. “Well, of course, they were most apologetic,” she said. “I must admit to being positively warmed by their concern. They intend to take the matter up with the manufacturer, and naturally, they are sending an immediate replacement.”

  “Well… naturally,” I said, “I mean… why not?”

  “I must say they are such an excellent store,” Selina went on in a self-congratulatory tone, “but I am, after all, one of their most valued customers.” She sat down on the bed and peeled off the offending breeches and, after a moment of thoughtful hesitation, held them out to me. “They should be just about your size now, Elaine,” she said in her sweetest voice, “do please take them, and no…” she held up a restraining hand as my jaw fell open, “please don’t try to thank me, they are no earthly use to me, after all.” She rose from the bed, patted my shoulder in a queenly gesture, and went off in her lace-trimmed knickers to hunt out her second best.