A Hoof in the Door (Eventing Trilogy Book 2)

by Caroline Akrill

  We were out in the park, trying to master the sequence and the rules of the dressage test for the combined training competition. A week after Rendlesham Horse Show I had been accepted as a suitable candidate for the Hissey Training Scholarship for potential event riders, and had been sent an invitation to compete in the combined training competition to be held in three weeks’ time. Three weeks should have given me ample time to prepare, but the way things were going it seemed as if I needed three years.

  “This horse,” Henrietta said, squinting at the photograph, “is amazingly like The Comet; younger of course, and smarter, and a bit more dappled, but very like The Comet all the same.”

  “That’s Genesis,” said Nigella, who by this time knew all the intimate details of the horses and riders pictured in Training the Event Horse by heart. “He belonged to Lala Thornapple and he was one of the team when Great Britain won the Olympics. He was only six years old at the time and that’s incredibly young for an Olympic horse. He was an equine infant prodigy.”

  “You’re not supposed to be looking at the horse anyway,” I told Henrietta impatiently, “only noting the position of its legs to see if you can tell me when Legend is moving on four tracks.”

  Henrietta gave her attention to the horse’s legs and decided that she probably could.

  “Then, let’s start again,” I said, “and you can stand at the end of the arena and judge the leg-yielding.”

  Henrietta pulled a face but she jumped down from the rusted iron rail where she had been perched beside Nigella and went to take up her position. Our dressage arena was marked out with oil drums begged from the local garage and painted white with black letters on them. We had marked the centre X with an armful of straw and Legend had wasted the first quarter of an hour by refusing to walk across it, snorting, and running sideways and rolling his eyes. For all the fuss he made I might have been asking him to walk over an elephant trap.

  “Right,” Nigella decided, “we shall begin again.” She settled her Bible and the printed dressage sheet on her lap in order to bang a small saucepan lid with a tablespoon. This was intended to represent the bell, and it made Legend jump. I had to trot him round a few times before he could forget about it. Finally, we entered the arena.

  “I’m sorry, Elaine, but you’re already eliminated,” Nigella informed me. “Any horse failing to enter the arena within sixty seconds of the bell being sounded shall be eliminated.”

  I stared at her in indignation. She was still wearing the zippered ski-pants although they were no longer the unsullied white they had been. She also wore the red pill-box with the veil pulled up lest it should impede her view of Training the Event Horse. Her hair was tied back with baler twine and her feet were shod with the red tap-dancing shoes. She was nobody’s idea of a dressage coach.

  “You might have warned me,” I complained. “I had no idea!”

  “You may begin again,” she said patiently, “but do remember on future occasions. Now, enter at working trot, at X halt and salute …”

  Legend and I left the arena and re-entered at a sitting trot, managing to achieve a level halt at X.

  “Don’t let him swish his tail!” Nigella cried in alarm. “Grinding the teeth and swishing the tail are signs of nervousness or resistance on the part of the horse and will be penalized in the movement concerned and also in the collective mark at the end of the test.”

  “He isn’t grinding his teeth, and he was only swishing his tail at a fly,” I said crossly. “How can I possibly be expected to control that?”

  “Also,” Nigella continued, “the use of the voice is prohibited and will be penalized by the loss of two marks.”

  It was maddening. We would never make any progress at all at this rate. “They only mean you can't say things like ‘canter on’ to the horse!” I cried in exasperation. “We’re only practising, after all!”

  “I’m only telling you what it says in the book,” Nigella said in a defensive tone, “I’m only reading out the rules.”

  “And I’m beginning to see why you need professional tuition,” Henrietta said morosely from the end of the arena.

  Later in the day we went on a spending spree. We went into our local saddlers and explained that we wanted to buy a really good general purpose saddle suitable for cross-country and jumping. The sales lady, who was small and grey-haired, with close-cropped hair and a leather jerkin, regarded us with interest tinged with apprehension. In the days when I had first gone to work for the Fanes, they had run up huge bills for everything connected with their livery yard, and the saddlers had been one of the creditors who had been obliged to threaten to sue. We had managed to pay them before they did, but it was hardly surprising that they should hesitate to supply us now.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” Nigella assured the sales lady. “We’ve got the money, honestly.” She opened her bead-encrusted dorothy bag and displayed the Training Fund in the form of a wad of notes. The sales lady, reassured by this glimpse of hard cash, sped into action.

  By the time I had clambered in and out of two dozen saddles, all varying in their length, shape, design and fitting, I was no longer sure what I wanted and I couldn’t tell if any of them were going to fit Legend either.

  “Fetch the horse,” Henrietta commanded, “we shall have to try them on.”

  Even the sales lady thought this to be an excellent idea, and in no time at all Legend was standing in the back yard amongst the jumping poles and stands, whilst the sales lady placed saddle after saddle on his back and we squinted at them from all angles. Eventually, after much agonizing and several try-out runs up and down the road involving the addition of girth and leathers and irons, we found one that suited us exactly. By the time we had paid for the saddle and some jump stands with cups and pins, we had spent almost two hundred and fifty pounds. This meant that taking into consideration the double bridle, which had cost seventy pounds, we had only fifty pounds left, and with that we had to buy a dressage saddle.

  “Where on earth are we going to find a dressage saddle for fifty pounds?” I asked Nigella, as I drove the shooting brake down the road with its back bristling with jump stands, and Henrietta followed sedately behind on Legend. “I’m sure it’s going to be impossible, and there’s no question of doing any more fund-raising between now and the combined training competition, there isn’t time.”

  “I know,” Nigella admitted. “But I expect something will turn up. It usually does.”

  And it did.

  On the Monday morning after the advertisement for a saddle had appeared, we received one letter. It was written in the most hideous scrawl and signed with a totally illegible signature, but the gist of it was that the writer was the possessor of a dressage saddle which she was unable to use any more and might be willing to sell. There was no further information than this, no size or make or price, but it was the only reply we had, and we were desperate. Armed with the Dorothy bag containing our last fifty pounds, we set out.

  Luckily, the letter had been written on headed notepaper, so we didn’t have any trouble in deciphering the address. It took us two hours to reach the small Oxfordshire village, and the house was easy to find, having two stone gateposts surmounted with rearing horses. They were a lot nicer than the Fanes’ ivy-clad vulpines, one of which had toppled off its perch long ago and never been replaced.

  We drove up an immaculately maintained drive, passing a small stone-built stable yard, and parked in front of a mellow stone house with a sundial cut in above the door.

  “We won’t get a dressage saddle for fifty pounds from here,” Henrietta said in a depressed voice. “People who live in houses like this always buy the very best things, they never have anything cheap.”

  My heart began to lower itself into my boots. I felt sure that she was right. We got out of the shooting brake. Through the long leaded windows of the house I could see good oak furniture, gilt framed pictures and the glint of silver on every available surface. I felt thoroughly despondent.
It hardly seemed worthwhile lifting the solid brass knocker on the front door

  The door was opened by a nurse. She didn’t look too welcoming. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a starched apron and black shoes and stockings. She didn’t have a frilled cap. “Yes?” she said, raising her eyebrows at us in a questioning manner. “What do you want?”

  Nigella immediately launched into a long explanation about the advertisement and the dressage saddle and the letter we had received. The nurse frowned a bit and looked disapproving, but she let us in and left us standing in a small, panelled hall. We hoped she had gone to hunt out the letter-writer.

  The hall was lined with framed photographs of horses. When we looked closer we saw that they were event horses.

  “Look,” Henrietta said, stabbing at one of them in astonishment. “It’s the horse in the book! It’s Genesis!”

  There were a lot of photographs of Genesis, performing dressage in a boarded arena, sailing over show-jumps in front of a crowd of spectators, galloping over cross-country fences.

  “It can’t be Lala Thornapple’s house,” Nigella whispered incredulously, “it just can’t be!” But it was.

  Lala Thornapple came trotting into the hall hot-foot after the nurse. She was wearing a baggy, red, track-suit with white flashes and I saw at once why her writing was so awful, her hands were crippled with arthritis. They were set in impossibly knotted positions and it made shaking hands very difficult. Lala Thornapple was old, I suppose, but her lined face was pink, and her eyes were as bright and sparkling as a child’s. She seemed delighted to see us, and gave us a guided tour of the pictures, sometimes forgetting which horse was which and what they were doing at the time, which made it all rather confusing.

  “What about Genesis?” Nigella asked. “Is he still alive?”

  “Alive?” Lala Thornapple threw up her gnarled hands, astonished to think that anyone could ever doubt it. “Of course he’s alive! He’s out there in the stables,” she gestured through the window at the stone-built stable yard. “They’re all out there, all of these horses are in the stables; would you like to see them?”

  It occurred to me that some of them must be very old by now but, “Oh yes,” Nigella breathed, “we would.”

  “Not without a coat, Miss Thornapple,” the nurse said hastily, and whilst she was helping her charge to get her arms into an anorak, she looked at us over her shoulder and frowned and shook her head. We all looked at her blankly, not knowing what she meant. The nurse came with us down to the stable yard looking on in resignation as Lala Thornapple chattered on and on about her horses. I thought she was probably glad to have some visitors who were interested enough to listen, because the nurse didn’t look the horsey type at all.

  The stable yard was beautifully kept. There was not a weed or a wisp of straw to be seen. “You must have a jolly good groom,” Henrietta commented, “to keep everything looking so neat and clean.”

  “Oh, I have,” Miss Thornapple said happily, “I have.”

  We reached the first loose box. There was no welcoming head over the door. I felt sorry for Miss Thornapple, having horses so decrepit that they didn’t fly to the door at the sound of footsteps. Nigella went to draw the bolt, but Lala Thornapple pushed her hand gently away and drew it herself, not without some difficulty, and opened the lower door. “Now this is the famous Genesis,” she said proudly, walking into the stable and stretching out a hand to fondle his neck. “Hello, you lovely boy and how are you today?”

  I tried not to gasp, but I couldn’t help it. There was straw in the stable, beautifully bedded and laid with banked up sides, there was a water bucket filled to the brim with clean water, and there was a full hay net hung in one corner. But there was no Genesis. There was no horse at all. I looked, and I looked and I blinked, and I looked at the nurse, we all looked at the nurse, and the nurse shook her head firmly and put her finger to her lips.

  “Of course,” Lala Thornapple said, “he’s quite an old boy now, aren’t you my lovely? But you should have seen him in his youth, you should have ridden him. He was a flyer, you know, it took me all my time to hold him once he got going. It’s the dressage you see, it develops all the muscles, it makes them very powerful, and Genesis was very good at dressage.” She patted his invisible neck and turned to us. “Well,” she said briskly, “let me show you the others.”

  We met several more invisible horses, even managing to make admiring comments, and we listened to a recital of their successes in the early days of eventing. In the immaculate tack room there was a girl, carefully soaping an already spotless bridle.

  “Ah, Carol, my dear,” Lala Thornapple exclaimed, “and how have my darlings been today?”

  The girl was obviously prepared for this. She said in a perfectly serious voice, “Well, Dragoon’s leg is very much better, the swelling has almost gone now, and Genesis has eaten up today, and they were all quite well-behaved when I rode them out this morning. Of course,” she added, giving us a totally bland look, “the wind’s dropped today, and that makes all the difference.”

  “It does, my dear, it does,” Lala Thornapple agreed. She beamed at us in delight. “You see,” she said, “I told you I had a very good groom.”

  I wondered what it would be like to be a groom to a yard full of invisible horses. How would you know which leg to bandage? How would you be able to tell if a horse had eaten up? And how on earth could you saddle up for exercise? I thought it was time to leave. Nigella obviously thought so too. She was already thanking Lala Thornapple for her kindness in showing us round as a preliminary to our departure. Henrietta was still staring at the girl groom. She looked as if she was about to say something to her, then changed her mind and turned away.

  “But the saddle!” Lala Thornapple cried, throwing up her knotted hands in horror. “You haven’t seen the saddle!” She gestured anxiously at her girl groom. “Get it down, Carol, dear, it’s on the top rack, in the middle on the left-hand side.”

  Carol lifted the saddle down from the rack and placed it on the saddle horse on top of a snowy white unused stable rubber. It was beautiful; soft and supple and dark brown, deep-seated with thigh rolls and a suede seat and extended girth straps. Lala Thornapple looked at it for a long time, and I fancied that her eyes glistened with tears.

  “Oh no,” I said instinctively, “we couldn’t afford it. It’s perfectly lovely, it’s a wonderful saddle, but it’s way out of our reach.”

  Lala Thornapple looked at me sharply. “How do you know you can’t afford it?” she snapped. “I haven’t told you how much it is yet.”

  “Oh,” I said startled. “I’m sorry, I only …”

  “Don’t cross her,” the nurse whispered warningly from behind my shoulder. “Humour her if you can.” But Lala Thornapple was already beaming again.

  “When I first bought this saddle,” she said, remembering, “it was especially made for Genesis. I designed it myself and it was way ahead of its time. It isn’t old fashioned you know, even now.”

  “No,” Henrietta agreed warily, “it isn’t.”

  “But of course it’s no longer new,” Lala Thornapple said with regret, “and although it cost all of fifty pounds to be made …”

  “Fifty pounds!” Nigella couldn’t restrain herself from exclaiming, it seemed such a paltry amount.

  “It does seem a lot, doesn’t it?” Lala Thornapple agreed. “But it was made of the finest leather and suede, and the man who made it was a master saddler. Of course, I wasn’t going to ask you anything like that for it; what do you say to thirty pounds?” She looked at us expectantly.

  “Oh,” Nigella said, aghast, “we couldn’t!”

  “Then what about twenty-five?” Lala Thornapple said kindly.

  “But that’s far too cheap!” I cried. “It’s worth much, much more than that! We couldn’t possibly take it!”

  “You, young lady,” Lala Thornapple turned on me with her eyes shooting sparks, “are far too stupid ever to become an event rid
er!” She turned her attention back to Nigella.

  “Take it,” the nurse muttered behind my shoulder. “Go on, tell her you’ll take it. She’ll be ever so upset if you don’t, and I’ll have to cope with her afterwards. Money means nothing to her, and she’s had a lovely time showing you the horses. She’ll relive all this for months.”

  So we took the saddle, Genesis’ saddle, handmade from the finest leather and suede by a master craftsman, for the princely sum of thirty pounds. We were not proud of our bargain. We walked away from the immaculate yard peopled by ghosts and memories, leaving Lala Thornapple standing beside her nurse, waving her ruined hands; hands that had once guided a horse through an Olympic dressage test, and calling out to us that she might even come to watch the two-day event just for old time’s sake.

  Nobody said much on the way home. Only Nigella spoke, staring fixedly ahead into the twin pools of the headlights on the road. “When we’re rich,” she said, “and we can afford another dressage saddle, we’ll take this one back and we’ll leave it, just as it was, on the top rack, in the middle, on the left-hand side.”

  8

  All in the Mind

  “There seems to be an awful lot of horses and riders here,” Nigella commented as we bumped on to the ground where the combined training competition was to be held. “They can’t all be scholarship candidates.”

  “I expect some of them have just been invited to make up the numbers,” Henrietta said, “to make it more of a competition.”

  I took no part in this conversation because I wasn’t feeling well and it was taking me all my time to steer the horsebox. I had hardly slept a wink last night, I had just tossed and turned and worried ceaselessly about the dressage. I just knew that the test was going to be a disaster.

  “They all look very professional, don’t they?” Nigella said admiringly, as we turned into a parking space at the end of a line of smart horseboxes. “You can tell it isn’t just a horse show, all the horses are really expensive top quality animals.”