by Kate Lattey
She doesn’t deserve that, I think to myself as I stand in the small bathroom, brushing my teeth before bed. She deserves better than me. I think of Claudia again, so polished and efficient as a rider, and I cringe as I remember her telling me off for going too fast at Taupo. I’d laughed off her comments at the time, but she was probably cringing on the sidelines, wishing she was the one in the saddle. Knowing she could do it all so much better.
I spit into the sink and rinse my mouth, then pick up my toiletries with a sigh. Staring into the mirror, I tuck stray pieces of blonde hair behind my ears and check my expression. I don’t want anyone to be asking me what’s wrong, or if I’m okay. Anneke already picked up on something at dinner, and I had to work extra hard at being cheerful all evening to put her off the scent. The only thing worse than knowing that you’re not good enough to ride your pony would be admitting it to someone else – especially someone as talented and disciplined as Anneke.
She could probably ride Finn better than me too, I think miserably as I head towards the door. Probably everyone here could… I stop as I hear a noise behind me, and turn back around. There are three toilet stalls, and I hadn’t realised that there was someone in the middle one until I’d just heard the unmistakeable sound of vomiting.
“Are you okay?”
There’s no answer, and I set down my toiletries by the sink before gently tapping on the stall door.
“Are you all right in there?” I ask again.
The toilet flushes, and the door opens as I’m leaning against it, pulling me off balance. I recover quickly as I come face to face with Carly, who scowls as she brushes past me.
“I’m fine.”
She goes to the sink and drinks quickly from the tap, smoothly pulling her hair out of the way with one hand as she rinses her mouth out. I stand awkwardly and stare at her, and she straightens up, wiping the back of her mouth with her hand, her expression still bitter.
“That meal was disgusting,” she tells me firmly. “I think I’ve got food poisoning.”
She does look pale, and her face has a light sheen of sweat on it. She pushes her fringe back off her forehead, then swings around and marches out of the room with her nose in the air. After a moment, I turn off the tap, collect my things, and follow her out into the night.
The next morning over breakfast, Eleanor steps up to the front of the room and clears her throat.
“Today is competition day,” she tells us loudly. “We’re going to put you into your teams and run some simulated competitions. This is make-or-break. The top placed riders today for each squad will make the team, with the reserves picked at each selector’s discretion.”
Anneke winks at me. “So you’ve just gotta beat Alec or Sarah,” she whispers across the table as Eleanor continues on. “And even if you don’t, you’re guaranteed Reserve.”
She’s right. With only the three of us left in the trials, I’m guaranteed a slot no matter what happens, and I smile back at her, trying not to feel deflated by the idea of having only made it into the team by default.
Better to be in the team by default than not at all, I remind myself. After all, that’s why I came here in the first place.
I’m feeling quietly determined as we walk down to the ponies’ yards, but I’m in for a shock when we arrive. Jack and Finn are where we left them, but standing in the yard next door to my pony, cheerfully pulling at a full haynet, is a pretty dapple grey pony. I stop in my tracks at the sight of him, and Alec almost collides with me.
“What’re you doing?” he grumbles, then catches sight of lies ahead of us. “Who’s that?”
I don’t have to answer him, because as he speaks, Tegan appears from the other side of Ghost, body brush in hand.
“You guys finally finished eating? Man, you’ve been in there for hours!”
Alec has pushed past me and is unbuckling Jack’s neckrug as I find my tongue.
“I thought you said you were never going to ride Ghost?” I ask Tegan as I reach Finn’s yard and reach out to pat her. My pony looks at me suspiciously and steps out of my reach, her ears flipped back. Not making me feel better, I mentally scold Finn, but she doesn’t care.
“Yeah, well. Don’t go thinking I’m happy about it, because I’m not,” Tegan tells me as she slings Ghost’s saddle onto his back, treating the expensive tack with the same casual disdain as she does her pony.
Ghost turns his elegant head towards me and I hold my hand out for him to sniff. He’s gentle and curious, snuffling across my palm with a sweet, eager expression, and I can’t help wishing he was mine. At least I’d be grateful to have him.
“He’s sweet,” I tell my friend as Finn’s head appears over my shoulder, her teeth bared as she lunges at Ghost. He jumps back in fright, almost landing on Tegan’s foot. She smacks him on the shoulder and yells at him to calm down as Eleanor marches past, asking me why I haven’t even taken my pony’s cover off yet, and do I think the whole squad is going to wait around for me to get my butt into gear?
Steph is standing in the middle of the big arena with one of the other coaches, and Eleanor makes a point of checking her clipboard as Alec, Tegan and I ride in.
“That’s the last of them, finally,” she states loudly. “Right, we’re starting off with an Accumulator class. The course is set up and every jump is numbered from one to ten. The number of the jump is the number of points you get for jumping it, and we’re going to give you forty-five seconds to jump as many fences as you can. You can only jump each fence twice, and if you knock it down, you can’t jump it again. You don’t lose points for taking rails, but you don’t accumulate those points either. After your time’s up, you can jump the Joker fence.” She motions towards a single pole with no ground line, and my stomach quakes at the immense height of it. “You get extra points for clearing the Joker, but you lose that number of points if you have a refusal or knock it down. In theory you can elect not to jump it, but today you all have to give it a go. We’ll add up the top three scores from each team - most points wins. Get off your ponies and walk the course in your teams. Central riders, you walk the course with Bruce. West Coast, you’re with Steph.”
I slide from Finn’s saddle and hand her reins off to one of the Senior riders who is standing by the sidelines, suddenly realising that the entire rest of the camp is here and watching us. I take a deep breath and follow Steph, listening carefully as she explains the jumps and trying not to think about what she thinks of me. The lowest, easiest jump is number one, a simple oxer only about 90cm high. But that’s the only straightforward fence on the course, and I’m sure that the wall, worth ten points, is built way bigger than 1m, which is the maximum height we are supposed to be jumping at Cambridge. Nobody else seems bothered about the height though, so I keep my mouth shut. I haven’t even dared to look too closely at the Joker, and I try not to think about it.
“Remember, there’s no course set, so you can jump whatever you want within the rules,” Steph says. “Have a plan, but if you’re going towards a jump, jump it! And you’re against the clock, so if you have a refusal, don’t muck around – go straight to the next fence and keep going.”
I remount and start warming up as Steph calls out the order. “We’ll alternate the riders for each team, so Anneke you’ll go first, then Alec, followed by Carly, then Jay.”
She lists the rest of the names, but I’ve stopped listening, focusing only on Finn. I circle and bend her, then jump her over the practice fence, which for a wonder she clears calmly. I prepare to circle back for a second run at it, but I’m suddenly being called in to jump. As I trot her into the ring, feeling unprepared and more than a little nervous, and I realise that Bruce Goddard is standing next to Steph in the middle of the arena, holding a clipboard. I’m about to be judged by an Olympic level rider, and my stomach turns to ice as I watch Carly bury her chestnut pony at the base of the Joker. Finn would stop if I tried to jump from that short of a distance, but Carly’s pony is amazing and twists his body over
the fence, landing clear. Carly gives him a relieved pat and I push Finn forward, looking over the course as a couple of the senior riders replace the rails that Carly knocked down.
One of them glances at me as I ride past, and nudges her friend. “This is the pony that Steph rode yesterday. It’s got an amazing jump, wait ‘til you see it go.”
I take a breath, listen for my bell, then push Finn into a canter. Through the flags and over number one, then turn left and jump number five. I focus on the course that I planned, steering Finn firmly around the tight corners. The first few fences go okay, but her blood is up and she’s getting faster and faster, despite my attempts to slow her down. It’s a struggle to manage the turn towards fence seven but I haul Finn around, apologising internally as I point her at the wide oxer. She takes off too early and doesn’t quite make it, the back rail tumbling to the ground behind us.
No points for that one and I can’t jump it again, so I change my course plan and swing around to the right towards number three, holding Finn hard, and she finally steadies up a little. Unfortunately I’ve thrown her off her stride, and she gets too close to the jump and takes that rail down too. Finn bucks and throws her head around, mad at herself for listening to me, and I apologise out loud as we head down to the wall. It looks stupidly huge, at least as big as the one where we’d crashed and burned at Taupo, and I hold my breath as we approach. Finn eyes it up, steadies her stride, lunges forward, then slams on the brakes at the last second, sliding into the jump and dislodging the bricks.
“Time’s up,” Steph calls, and I nod, unable to even look in her direction. “Go jump the Joker fence. Sit up, balance, wait,” she adds, and I nod again, wondering what kind of top score she could’ve managed if she was on Finn right now.
Don’t think about her, concentrate! I tell myself as I canter Finn towards the Joker. It looks impossibly high but I tell myself to stop thinking about the height, and worry about keeping Finn collected. Sit up, balance, wait, I remind myself, and miraculously, Finn clears the big jump with ease.
Steph calls out my final score. “Thirty-two, plus fifty for the Joker. Eighty-two total.”
I pat Finn as I trot out of the ring, trying to calculate what my score would’ve been if I hadn’t had those two rails down. Ninety-two, which would’ve been close to Alec’s ninety-eight, but still wouldn’t have touched Anneke’s trailblazing one hundred and fifteen.
But once the final points are tallied, we discover that our West Coast team has pipped the Central team by a margin of one point. Since it’s four against three, our lowest score is dropped, but luckily for me it’s not mine – Tegan struggled to steer Ghost around the ridiculously tight turns she had planned, and knocked down the Joker to finish on a pitiful score of fifty-five. We ignore her mumblings about how Nugget could’ve done it ten times better, and move into the next arena where a different course is set up.
“This is the Jigsaw,” Steph explains. “Twelve fences, and two riders. You go through the start flags together, jump six fences each, then back through the finish flags. It’s a speed class, so don’t muck around out there. West Coast can start with Alec and Sarah, then Jay and Tegan. One of you guys in Central can go twice, or someone can sit it out. You decide.”
We leave them to sort that out as Tegan and I walk out into the middle of the jumps and look around us in confusion.
“How do we decide who jumps what?” I ask her, and she shrugs.
“Go with your strengths,” Steph says, walking up behind us. “Who can do tighter turns?”
“Finn,” Tegan says immediately. “Ghost is so unbendable it’s ridiculous.”
Steph looks slightly dubious about all the blame going onto the athletic-looking Ghost, but she surveys the course thoughtfully.
“Well then, give Finn the inside turns and Ghost the outside ones. If Tegan jumps one, two and three, then goes to seven, nine and five, Jay can start over eight, then go to four, turn inside to twelve, then ten, eleven and finish over six, which puts you nice and close to the finish flags.”
I stare at the jumps, trying to work out what she’s envisioned. I’m about to ask her to walk it with me when she is called away by Sarah, who is having an argument with Alec about whether or not it’s possible to make the turn from fence five to fence twelve, so I walk it on my own, dubiously pacing out the tight distances. Finn is going to have to bend like a snake to get around this course clear, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I decide to give it my very best shot. At least the jumps are a little lower this time, and more within my comfort zone.
Alec and Sarah jump first, and have one rail down each, then Tegan and I trot into the arena side by side for our turn. I get a burst of excited energy as the bell rings, and we circle in opposite directions, then both canter through the flags in unison. I split off to the left and jump fence eight as Tegan heads down to number one, and I lose sight of her after that as I concentrate fully on getting Finn around the course. She jumps valiantly, making the tight turns that Steph dictated, but although she goes over them all, she takes two rails down with her. We finish over number six and gallop through the flags, then I look around for Tegan. She’s right behind me, urging Ghost on as she flies through the finish.
“That was awesome!”
I’m still trying to catch my breath. “How’d you go?”
“Clear! What about you?” She looks behind her to see the poles being picked up and grimaces. “You have rails?”
“Yeah, a couple. The turns were really tight and I didn’t balance her well enough,” I admit. “But she jumped everything first time.”
“Yeah, great,” Tegan mutters as I follow her out of the gate.
Noah and Anneke are the last combination out, and they fly around the course, leaving all the fences up for an easy victory, and give each other a victorious fist-bump as they ride out of the arena. I can see the Central selectors nodding and smiling amongst themselves, and I wonder if all of the combinations who make it to Cambridge are going to be that good. I’m starting to feel frighteningly outclassed.
We spend the remainder of the day watching the rest of the teams do their rounds. The West Coast team gets well and truly thrashed in the Juniors, but the Seniors hold their own, with one of our West Coast riders jumping an amazing Accumulator round to win by miles. Her horse turns on a sixpence and jumps from anywhere, and his rider is in perfect unison with him. I watch breathlessly, wondering if I’ll ever be able to ride like that.
“Who is she?” I ask Tegan, who’s standing next to me.
“Ellie Warren. You must know her, she wins everything.”
“I can see why.” I can’t keep the admiration out of my voice.
“Well, that horse is amazing. He used to be a four-star eventer and was going to the Olympics and everything, but he developed a breathing problem and he couldn’t do cross-country anymore. So she’s made him into a show jumper.”
I watch Ellie as she flies over the Joker, her chestnut horse’s knees tucked tightly to his chest, ears pricked determinedly forward. She pats his arched neck as she trots out of the ring, and I start thinking about how everyone has a story. Whether they’ve come from humble beginnings or had every opportunity handed to them, whether they’ve had good horses or bad horses or just average ones, nobody is just there, just existing. We all got here somehow, we all came from somewhere, and usually it’s the journey that makes life interesting.
Camp ends on an anti-climax when they decide not to finalise the teams until the following evening, so we spend the afternoon packing and tidying our bunkrooms until our transport arrives to pick us up. I give Anneke a hug goodbye and drag my bags down to the yard, then go back to sweep up the room. By the time I get back down I realise that Alec and I are suddenly the only ones left. The yard is very empty and quiet with everyone gone. I can see Eleanor working in the tack room, but I decide she’s best avoided so I go to check on Finn and Jack. They’re fine, nibbling on the stubs of grass that are remaining in their
yards, and I wander back to discover Alec mucking out the covered yards.
“Has she enlisted you as slave labour?” I ask him in surprise, meaning Eleanor, but he shakes his head.
“Nah, I haven’t seen her. But can you believe this mess? Who leaves a yard like this?”
Alec doesn’t get riled up too easily, but he’s pretty mad as he motions at the mucky yards that our departed teammates have left behind. He shakes his head as he turns back and forks up more manure, flicking it towards the wheelbarrow behind him. Half of it bounces out again and lands on my boots.
“You’re terrible at this,” I tell him. “Here, give me that fork while you empty the wheelbarrow.”
Alec grins as he grabs the wheelbarrow handles and heads off towards the muck heap. I find another wheelbarrow get to work. It’s been a long time since I’ve mucked out a box, but it all comes back to me as I bank the dry shavings up around the outside of the yard, letting gravity work for me as the loose manure rolls back down to the base. Once that’s done, I dig out the wet patch of urine that whoever was using this yard had tried to hide under a thin layer of shavings, then spread the remaining bedding evenly across the ground. Alec isn’t back yet so I start on the next yard, and that’s when Eleanor finds me.
“Who asked you to do that?”
I push my hair out of my eyes with my forearm as I turn towards her. “Nobody. Alec started and I took over while he went to empty his barrow.” Her head turns to see Alec walking back from the muck heap, pushing the wheelbarrow and whistling cheerily.
Eleanor does a double take, and I realise that she’s reconsidering her opinion of Alec. “Well. Thank you both.”
“Might as well do something, beats standing around all day,” Alec says as he parks the wheelbarrow next to the yard I’ve finished and grabs another muck fork. “And Mum’s always late, so chances are we’ll have these done before she arrives.”