The Prize

by Stacy Gregg

“I have given you the opportunity to be my apprentice, to learn from one of the masters of dressage and you think you know more than me?” Allegra Hickman’s tone was growing harsher by the second.

  “You are not an authority on riding!” Allegra’s words were drenched in venom. “You have no right to question me, or my methods!”

  “No,” a voice behind her said. “But I do.”

  Allegra Hickman turned around. Standing on the sidelines of the arena with the world’s most thunderous expression on her face, was Tara Kelly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As Tara Kelly strode across the arena towards her, Allegra Hickman made it clear that she was not pleased to have company.

  “I wasn’t aware you were coming to visit today, Tara,” she said with a chill to her voice. “You might have given me a little warning.”

  “It’s an impromptu visit,” Tara replied. “I like to check up on my students and see how their placements are going.”

  She looked at Alice and Damsel. “And right now I’m not entirely happy with what I’m seeing here.”

  Tara walked past Allegra, ignoring the indignant look from the dressage rider, and went straight up to Damsel and undid the knotted string releasing the mare’s chin from her chest.

  “I wasn’t aware that you were working your horses in rollkur, Allegra,” Tara said.

  Allegra Hickman went straight on the defensive. “Don’t you come here and mess about with my horses and lecture me!” she shook her head in disbelief. “You – the eventer who knows nothing about proper dressage – have come to point out the error of my ways? How dare you judge my schooling!”

  “I wouldn’t call this schooling,” Tara said keeping her cool, “I would call it torture. How is tethering this poor mare’s head down like this supposed to achieve a supple, elastic back and neck? This mare could barely move. She was in pain!”

  Allegra Hickman had a defiant look in her eyes. “This is how we train young horses these days,” she snapped. “Without rollkur no horse can achieve the flashy leg movements that get the top scores. If I gave up my methods I would sacrifice my chances of ever winning another Grand Prix. This is what I have to do if I want to win.”

  “Riding a horse like that will destroy them,” Tara said. “Their bodies aren’t meant to bend to extremes.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand,” Allegra shot back. “You are ignorant of the top dressage methods.”

  Tara shook her head. “I don’t understand how someone who I once admired and respected could knowingly make her horses suffer just so she can get to the top.”

  “You think just because they’ve banned rollkur from the warm-up arenas that the riders aren’t still doing it in private?” Allegra said darkly. “Wake up, Tara! This is the real world.”

  Tara looked at the mare standing beside Allegra Hickman. The mare’s breathing had recovered now that Tara had released the knot, but she was still trembling, her coat was wet with sweat.

  “This isn’t the real world,” Tara said, “This is hell.”

  She looked up at Alice who had been in saddle on Damsel’s back the whole time. “Dismount and get your things, Miss Dupree. Your apprenticeship is over.”

  That day Alice left Allegra’s yard for the last time. She didn’t say goodbye to her employer – which was fine by her. She had nothing more to say to Allegra Hickman. But she felt a lump in her throat as she said farewell to the horses.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through this, Alice,” Tara said as they drove out the gates and on to the back roads that led to Blainford. “When you told me about what was happening, I was so shocked, I’m afraid I didn’t know how to react. If I’d had any idea that Allegra Hickman was practising rollkur I would never have placed you on her yard. It goes without saying that you will get a pass mark for your final grade this term.”

  “So what’s going to happen now?” Alice asked.

  Tara considered this. “It’s too late to find you another placement at this stage with only two weeks left in the apprenticeships, so I think the best plan would be for you to help me in the stables for the next fortnight. I’ll give you some private cross-country lessons on Caspian and we’ll get him up to speed for next year. I think he’ll be an excellent sophomore horse for you – he’s a bold jumper.”

  She had expected Alice to be happy about this, but the girl in the front seat beside her still looked upset. “Is there something wrong, Alice?”

  “I didn’t mean me. I meant what’s going to happen to the horses? What are we going to do about Damsel, the brown mare that I was riding when you came today? She’s a really lovely horse and Allegra is going to ruin her.”

  “Unfortunately that’s Allegra’s choice,” Tara replied. “She can do what she likes in the privacy of her own yard. All I can do is inform the owners of her horses about what I’ve seen at her stables – and perhaps some of them may choose to take their horses elsewhere for schooling. I’m afraid Allegra is considered to be a top rider and many of her owners will undoubtedly dismiss my concerns and leave them with her at that yard. They want results and they know Allegra will deliver.”

  “But she’s putting those horses through agony!”

  “I know,” Tara agreed. “Some of the horses will survive her methods – but many others will develop injuries and the damage will eventually make them unrideable. Even the ones who do manage to get through her training will probably have brief lives in the spotlight because their necks and backs won’t be able to stand the rollkur for long. Their careers will be short and brutal. ”

  “I’m never going to ride like that,” Alice said, tears running down her cheeks. “I don’t care if I don’t win. I’ll never be like her.”

  Tara kept her eyes on the road, and gestured at the glove box. “There are some tissues in there,” she said. And then she added, “I’m very proud of you, Alice. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already a greater horsewoman than Allegra Hickman.”

  The week that followed Patricia Kirkwood’s helicopter entrance brought a whole new nightmare for Georgie. Now that Kennedy Kirkwood had been reinstated as head girl it was becoming horribly clear to Georgie just how little Kennedy actually knew about horses.

  Kennedy had grown up being lavished with the very best instructors and horses – Patricia even paid for Hans Schockelmann to fly all the way from Europe to give Kennedy private lessons.

  But handling a horse on the ground was an entirely different story. On the Kirkwood estate there were staff to do everything, and even at Blainford Kennedy simply paid other first-years to do her dirty work like mucking out the boxes and pulling manes and tails. As a result she knew virtually nothing about the day-to-day care of her own horse. And on a busy working competition yard she was worse than useless.

  Even the most basic tasks like manoeuvring horses into their boxes at the end of the day or tying up haynets in the stalls gave her a total meltdown. Her incompetence didn’t escape Dominic Blackwell. But now he was forced to turn a blind eye to keep Patricia happy. “Get Georgie to do it for you,” he would tell Kennedy whenever he caught her making a hash of things.

  Get Georgie to do it for you. In fact, get Georgie to do everything because you don’t even know how to pick out a hoof or rug up a horse. Kennedy was head girl by name alone. Georgie was the one that Dominic Blackwell actually relied upon.

  With Kennedy at the helm, the stables lurched from one near-crisis to the next. On Friday afternoon, just when Georgie thought she had got through the week without a disaster, she caught Kennedy trying to mix raw sugarbeet into the horse feeds.

  “Kennedy,” Georgie was horrified. “You have to soak it in water for two hours first!”

  “Oh you always have to be right, don’t you? You’re such a drama queen!” Kennedy had ignored Georgie’s protests as she poured sugarbeet pellets into the tubs.

  “I’m serious!” Georgie said. “If you don’t soak it first the hard sugarbeet swells in their stomachs – it will kill them!�
�

  Kennedy stopped dishing out the pellets and put the bucket down in a huff. “Fine!” she sniffed, “You do the feeds if you’re such an expert.”

  Georgie took the beet pellets out again carefully and then hunted around the feed room. “Hey! Where’s all the sugarbeet that I already soaked last night?” she asked. “It was sitting over there in the red bucket.”

  Kennedy stiffened. “Oh,” she said. “I thought that was something disgusting. I threw it out.”

  Georgie sighed. “Never mind. I’ll give them chaffage instead.”

  She began to root about in the storage bins, digging out scoops of various feeds and putting together the meals for all the horses. She was mixing up a bin of chaffage and broodmare mix with her bare hands when Kennedy came back in. Kennedy was reading over the contents of a white folder with a gold and blue sash on the cover.

  “What’s that?”

  Kennedy glared at her. “It’s for the head girl, not the minion.”

  She sat down on a feed bin and began to flick through the folder while Georgie continued the grubby task of hand-mixing all the feeds. Georgie read the front of the folder. It was the programme for the upcoming Grand Prix at the Kentucky Horse Park.

  Georgie stopped mixing the feed. “Can I please have a look?” she asked.

  Kennedy stared at her. “Sure. Take my boyfriend and then take my competition programme!”

  Georgie groaned. “Kennedy, I keep telling you it wasn’t like that…”

  “Oh, whatever!” Kennedy clearly didn’t want to discuss Conrad. She began flicking through the programme. “It’s a two-day event,” she informed Georgie. “Saturday is the mid-grade classes, and on Sunday they’re jumping Grand Prix.”

  Kennedy turned the page and frowned. “There’s a class on the Sunday called Mirror Jumping. Is it like when you jump over a mirror?”

  Georgie shook her head. “I’ve seen them do it at Hickstead. They set up two totally identical showjumping courses – then at the exact same time two riders enter the ring and they both jump against each other. The first one to finish wins.”

  “Dominic must be entered because he’s got a tick beside it.” Kennedy sighed. “I suppose he’s expecting us to work both days. I can’t wait for this apprenticeship thing to be over!”

  Georgie’s blood suddenly ran cold. She leapt at Kennedy. “Let me see that programme!”

  “No!” Kennedy whisked it out of her range. “Your hands are filthy.”

  “Kennedy!!” Georgie reached out and made a snatch at the programme. “Give it here!”

  She had it in her hands before Kennedy could stop her and she flicked to the front of the programme. On the blue sash across the cover the date of the competition was stamped out in gold letters. Saturday the 23rd was Saturday week! The same date as the Firecracker Handicap.

  “What difference does it make?” Daisy said. “You’re not going to the Firecracker anyway. You’ve split up with Riley!”

  Georgie looked across the dining table at Daisy and resisted the urge to throw her morning porridge at her.

  “Firstly,” she said, “It’s not just Riley’s race, OK? Marco is in it too and he used to be my horse and I want to see him run.” She paused. “And secondly, I haven’t split up with Riley. We are on a break, that’s all.”

  Daisy raised an eyebrow at the other girls sitting with them at the table. Emily and Alice both said nothing.

  “A break?” Daisy continued. “And how long has it been since you began this ‘break’?” Daisy did air quotes as she said this.

  “A month,” Georgie admitted.

  “Uh-huh,” Daisy said. “And how many times have you spoken to him since then?”

  “Umm, roughly?” Georgie said.

  “Roughly.”

  “None.”

  Georgie had called every day but Riley refused to pick up the phone. And, no matter how many messages she left, he wasn’t calling her back.

  The rule at Badminton House was two phone calls a day. On Saturday Georgie had already exhausted her quota for the day, but she was so desperate to talk to Riley she decided to ignore the rules and resolved to dial him a third time. She was heading out of the room to sneak to the boarding-house phone when Alice came back in and caught her.

  “Ohmygod,” she shook her head. “Please tell me you aren’t about to go and leave another message on Riley’s answerphone.”

  “No,” Georgie lied.

  Then, suddenly she had a better idea. “No actually, I’m going out.”

  “What do you mean? Out where?”

  “I’m taking Belle for a road hack,” Georgie said.

  “Oh,” Alice said. “I’ll come with you if you want. Caspian could do with a hack.”

  “Sorry, Alice,” Georgie said. “I need to go alone.”

  As she tacked Belle up in the stables, Georgie began to think her plan was crazy. If Riley didn’t even want to speak to her over the phone, what made her think that he wanted to see her? But she didn’t care any more. She was desperate to tell him how she felt – no matter what happened.

  It had been a long time since she’d taken Belle out of the school grounds. The mare had her head held high as they rode through the silver and blue gates of the Academy and out on to the road, her ears pricked forward as she looked around. Georgie kept her on a short contact at first, but after they’d been out on the roads for a while, she relaxed the reins and Belle began to swing along, enjoying the outing. It was a sunny summer day and the Kentucky countryside was glorious. The fields went on forever, the white plank fencelines merging into one another. Every road seemed to look the same, but Georgie knew the route she was taking. She turned down one back road and then another, past more white plank fencelines and elegant horse farms until she reached the farm with a pale green beaten-up mailbox at the front gate.

  As she rode down the driveway of Clemency Farm Georgie realised she might have come all this way for nothing. Riley might not even be here today at his father’s stables.

  “Hello?” She rode Belle into the yard, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Then she heard the sound of hoof beats. There was a galloper out on the dirt track at the back of the farm. Dismounting, she led Belle around the back of the stables. Out on the track she could see a rider working his horse around the broad loop of the circuit. The rider was heading away from the stables to the far end of the track. He was a hunched figure, his body bent down low over the horse’s withers. The horse he was riding was a chestnut with a white blaze and Georgie recognised him straight away. It was Marco, and that was Riley up there on his back.

  As the horse and the rider looped back around the track towards the stables, Georgie wasn’t certain if Riley had seen her or not. He stayed motionless on Marco’s back, letting the horse run at his own pace. Georgie could tell that he was just breezing the gelding – letting him gallop, but not pushing him to go into top speed. With the race now just a week away he would have a training schedule mapped out to the very last detail and this trackwork would have been meticulously planned.

  The track at the back of the Clemency Farm stables was a makeshift affair, not quite full-sized, so Riley had to keep the horse galloping for an extra half a loop to make the right distance. Then, when Marco had passed the furlong post, he slowed the gelding up and began to trot him around the track, doing the full loop to cool him down. He was walking the horse by the time he came around for the second time and dismounted. He had seen Georgie now and she knew it – but he hadn’t given her a wave. Suddenly she felt like it had been a ridiculous idea to come here. What had she expected? That Riley would be thrilled to see her?

  Finally, the boy led the horse off the track and with Georgie right there waiting at the gate he had no choice but to acknowledge her.

  “Hey, Georgie.”

  “Hey, Riley,” she smiled at him. “Marco’s looking good.”

  Riley nodded, “He’s going OK.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause that
became an even more uncomfortable silence and then, just when it was unbearable, both of them tried to speak at once.

  “I was…”

  “Hey…”

  “You go ahead,” Georgie managed to stammer.

  “No,” Riley said. “You talk first. You’ve come here so I’m guessing you’ve got something to say.”

  Ever since the day they broke up, Georgie had been rehearsing her lines in her head, thinking of exactly what to say if Riley had ever picked up the phone.

  Riley stared at her expectantly. Georgie could feel her heart racing.

  “I do have something to say,” she paused.

  “I… umm… I… I think you should hold Marco back.”

  “What?” Riley frowned.

  “You should hold him back. Let him lose the race,” Georgie said.

  “You came here to tell me that I should let Marco lose the Firecracker?” Riley shook his head. “That’s really funny, Georgie!”

  “Not the whole race, obviously!” Georgie said. “But I’ve been thinking about the Hanley Stakes and the way The Rainmaker beat him that day. Marco was in the lead all the way until the final furlong, right? And then The Rainmaker took him in the home stretch. But that’s because Marco didn’t know he was coming. If you hold Marco back and let him look that big black stallion in the eye, then Marco will want to beat him. I know he will. If you let The Rainmaker pull away out in front of Marco and then at the last minute let him go, he’ll fight back. He’ll run him down.”

  Riley raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you came here to tell me?”

  Georgie looked down at the ground. “There was some other stuff I was going to say, about being in love with you and all that, but yeah, mostly it was about Marco.”

  “Oh,” Riley said. “Right. Good.”

  Georgie was kind of hoping he might say something more than that. But Riley just paused then handed Marco’s reins over to her. “Here – hold him for a minute. I’ve got to go and get something.”

  He returned from the stables with a brown paper envelope in his hand which he thrust at Georgie.