The Prize (9 page)

The only horse in the stables that Georgie didn't like handling was Maxi. The big grey Holsteiner could be bullish and unpredictable. Twice now Georgie had to fling herself to the far side of his loose box to get out of the way of a sudden strike from his front hooves.

Georgie was doing exactly what every good groom should do, getting to know each of the horses in her care, understanding their individual needs and what made them tick. But none of it seemed to impress her boss. By the end of the first week, Blackwell was solely focused on wangling an invitation from Kennedy to join the Kirkwood's next summer holidays in the Bahamas. As for Georgie, he gave her about as much attention as he gave his horses and she was almost resigned to changing her name to Julie.

“No, no make him halt, Alice!” Allegra Hickman shook her head in disbelief. “What on earth is wrong with you today?”

Alice had arrived at Allegra's yard that afternoon feeling confused. She was in awe of Allegra's skill as a Grand Prix dressage rider, and yet she felt conflicted. Georgie and Daisy had both been adamant that rollkur was wrong but should she trust her friends or the woman who was fast becoming her mentor?

“You are so tense up there your whole position in the saddle is falling apart,” Allegra said, striding over to take Virtuoso's reins. “Something is clearly bothering you, so why don't you tell me what's wrong?”

“There's nothing bothering me,” Alice replied feebly.

“Alice,” Allegra shook her head, “your words are telling me one thing but your body is telling me another.”

Alice looked extremely uncomfortable. “I don't know how to say this…”

“Cut to the chase, Alice,” Allegra was losing patience.

Alice took a deep breath. “OK, I saw you riding… on Friday… you were in the arena schooling Esprit and you were… ummm…”

Allegra frowned, “I was what? Come on, Alice, spit it out!”

“You were doing rollkur!”

“Oh. I see,” Allegra said. “And I take it that you're opposed to rollkur, is that right?”

Alice didn't know what to say. “I guess.”

“The way that I ride is challenging for those who do not understand, Alice,” Allegra said, “but I had hoped that you would be smart enough to grasp my methods.”

Alice's heart was racing. “I know you're a great rider, Allegra, but the way the horse was bent over like that seemed really unnatural…”

“What is natural?” Allegra asked. “Think about human athletes, and the way they train. If you are a runner you don't just run, do you? You lift weights to build muscle and do stretches to get limber.”

Allegra paused. “My horse is an athlete and rollkur helps to train every muscle in his body. Yes, the techniques might possibly be dangerous in the wrong hands but I'm not some rank amateur!”

Allegra Hickman looked disappointed with her pupil. “Alice, where are these accusations coming from? You've seen me ride. My horses look happy, don't they?”

“Um, I suppose so,” Alice said. She wanted to mention the swishing tails and the flat-back ears that she had seen on that Friday afternoon but maybe she had exaggerated these things in her mind. After all, this was the great Allegra Hickman that she was talking to – one of the best dressage riders in the world. Alice was beginning to feel very silly and more than a little ashamed for bringing it up.

“I didn't mean to upset you.”

Allegra Hickman shook her head. “Please don't apologise. I'm glad that you asked me about this, Alice. I want you to understand the importance of hyperflexion. Once you are ready, you will be able to use it too and then you will see what a great suppling and submission aid it can be to create the perfect dressage horse.”

She looked up at the girl still sitting on the big black horse. “Trust me, Alice,” she reassured her. “I am one of the best dressage riders in the world. I think I know what I'm doing, don't you?”

Alice nodded.

“Good!” Allegra looked pleased. “Dismount and let's untack him. I have some caramel cookies waiting for us in the kitchen. What do you say, my star apprentice?”

Alice gave a half-hearted smile. “Thank you.”

Chapter Nine

G
eorgie had been thinking about her disastrous visit from Riley and she'd come to the conclusion that their break-up was all her fault.

“No. It's my fault!” Alice insisted as they walked to the stables together. Alice had already apologised a million times for sticking her foot in it and telling Riley about Conrad. But Georgie had insisted that Alice didn't have anything to be sorry about.

“I needed to tell him and I just didn't know how,” Georgie said. “At least now he knows.”

“But you didn't mean for this to happen,” Alice said. “Conrad's the one with the ‘busy lips' and you're paying the price.”

Georgie wished more than anything that she could erase the kiss with Conrad – but in a strange way one good thing had come out of the incident in the tack room that day. The conversation that she'd had with the Burghley house prefect had jogged Georgie's memory about her Reiner Klimke book, and when the girls started their early morning showjumping sessions she had pulled out her old copy and found the chapter on gymnastic cavaletti for showjumpers. The book showed step-by-step pictures on how to set up cavaletti to encourage the horses to be elastic and lengthen or shorten their stride on command and use their backs and necks properly over fences.

The Klimke book quickly became their bible for the morning workouts and soon the girls could see the results. Their horses were rounder and softer when they jumped and Georgie was constantly amazed at just what a clever athlete Belle was proving to be. The mare always put her feet in the right place to get herself out of trouble and never refused a fence.

“If only Dominic could see the way I've been jumping on Belle, he might give me the ride on one of his horses,” Georgie told Alice.

Friday marked the end of the second week of their apprenticeships and at Blackwell's yard that afternoon Georgie celebrated this anniversary by tidying the tack room. She had spent hours cleaning it from top to bottom when Dominic Blackwell stuck his head in.

“Ah, Julie,” he said. “Make sure you loop the reins
through
the nosebands before you hang the bridles up, please. It all looks very sloppy the way it is now. And store the numnahs in a separate stack from the other saddle blankets. It's much neater that way.” He shook his head. “It could really do with a clean-up in here, Julie.”

“Yes, Dominic,” Georgie replied as sweetly as she could through her gritted teeth. Just the other day he had told her specifically not to separate the saddle blankets and numnahs. It was classic Dominic Blackwell. He always changed his mind and acted as if he'd said the same thing all along – there was no use arguing with him.

“Oh, and Julie?” Dominic added, “Can you come down to the arena once you're done. I'm going to brief you and Kennedy on the game plan for tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? But that was Saturday. Georgie hastily re-stacked the blankets and tidied the bridles and then headed down to the arena where Dominic was riding one of his young mid-grade horses, a grey mare called Flair, while Kennedy was working a handsome dark chocolate brown appaloosa with a lovely white blanket on his rump around the arena over the jumps. The appaloosa's name was Star Spangled Banner – Banner for short.

“I'm taking the mid-grade horses to a qualifier tomorrow at the Kentucky Horse Park,” Dominic said. “So I will need both of you onboard as grooms. You'll need to be here by six am. Julie, I want you to pack the truck tonight. We'll need all the usual kit.”

“Kennedy,” he turned to her, “as head girl you're in charge. Team Blackwell must run like clockwork. I'm relying on you. Don't let me down.”

Georgie had never been to the Kentucky Horse Park before and she was dying to check it out. In the heart of bluegrass country, the Horse Park had been the venue for the 2010 World Equestrian Games and was the home of the famed Kentucky Three-day Event.

As they drove in through the competitor's entrance, Georgie could see the four-star cross-country course in the distance, and ahead to the right, the stables which housed hundreds of horses during the big events at the grounds. She could also see the massive indoor stadium that accommodated thousands of spectators who came here to watch everything from Western cutting horses to gymnastic teams performing dramatic acrobatics on the broad backs of vaulting horses.

The most popular dates on the calendar at the Horse Park were the days of the Grand Prix showjumping series when all the seats would be sold-out to a maximum capacity crowd.

Today's showjumping was a mid-grade qualifier, but there was still a reasonable turn-out in the grandstands, with a couple of thousand spectators gathered to watch the day's competition.

“Do you think your stepmum would like tickets to watch me ride here in Kentucky the next time she visits you?” Dominic asked Kennedy as he drove the horse truck through the gates. He'd been working his way up to this for weeks and now he was really putting the pressure on for Kennedy to introduce him to Mrs Kirkwood. But the more he pushed, the more disinterested Kennedy became.

“She's pretty busy with Hans Schockelmann,” Kennedy said. “So I hardly ever see her. She never comes here. She spends most of her time in Paris these days.”

Dominic Blackwell was taken aback. “Well,” he said tersely. “Why don't you ask her and we'll see?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Kennedy said casually.

Dominic Blackwell scowled. He'd put a lot of effort into being nice to this girl to get closer to the Kirkwood fortune but it didn't appear to be paying off. He was beginning to think he'd been wasting his charm on this feckless red-headed child. “There's our parking space,” said Georgie, pointing out their allocated spot beside the day pens. Dominic parked the truck and set off for the registration tent, leaving the two girls to unload the horses.

Blackwell had brought along his second-stringers and up-and-comers, the horses that needed experience and points on the scoreboard in order to rise up the ranks.

There were four horses on the truck and two of them Georgie knew already. Star Spangled Banner, the mare that Kennedy had been riding the other day, was an Appaloosa Warmblood. Flair was a Selle Francaise. Both of these horses were on the cusp of progressing to the big league and today Dominic Blackwell would be jumping them over fences set at a metre thirty.

The other two horses were more of an unknown quantity. Navajo, the big bay mare with the wide, white blaze, was well-bred but relatively unproven. The Optimist, a novice chestnut gelding, was a horse that Dominic Blackwell had taken on behalf of a sponsor. From the way he talked about the chestnut it was clear that he didn't think much of the horse's abilities.

Georgie led Star Spangled Banner and Flair down the ramp and tied them side-by-side along the right hand wall of the truck.

She could see Kennedy dithering about with the other two horses.

“Tie them up next to these two,” Georgie instructed.

Kennedy did this, but then stood about looking lost and useless. Georgie soon figured that Kennedy had probably never groomed at a competition before – Kirkwoods were used to employing grooms, not being grooms themselves.

Georgie, on the other hand, had grown up attending competitions with her mum. Ginny Parker had proper professional grooms helping her, but she'd always given her ‘little junior groom' jobs to do like filling the horse's water buckets or sorting out sets of tendon boots as a way of keeping young Georgie occupied during long days at events.

Georgie hadn't realised at the time, but watching and helping the professional grooms at work had been an education. From the moment they arrived at the Kentucky Horse Park, Georgie instinctively knew the drill. She immediately got to work grooming the horses and marking the DB chequerboard pattern on to their glossy rumps before wrenching studs into the bottom of the horses' hind shoes for better grip when they were jumping. As she worked away, Kennedy stood by looking gormless.

“Kennedy,” Georgie finally lost her cool. “Stop standing around and do something!”

Kennedy looked genuinely baffled. “Like what?”

Georgie tossed a tub of tiny black rubber bands to her. “Take these and go and plait Banner's mane!”

Reluctantly, Kennedy picked up the tub and headed to the other end of the truck to start plaiting up Banner.

Georgie, meanwhile, plaited up the other three horses, moving along the line doing tiny braids and then rolling them up and securing them with the bands into tight and precise plaits – an odd number along the neck plus one for the forelock. By the time she had finished she found Kennedy still only halfway through Banner's mane.

“Kennedy!” Georgie couldn't help it. “What's taken you so long? I've already plaited three horses!”

“She won't stand still,” Kennedy complained. “She keeps fidgeting. She's going to stand on my feet!”

Georgie sighed. “You go and start unpacking the tack then, and I'll finish plaiting her.”

Kennedy wasn't happy with this solution. “You can't give me orders, you know,” she said, “I'm the head girl, not you. You go and do the tack! I'm going to finish plaiting.”

As she was carrying the saddles out of the truck, Georgie had glanced over at Kennedy and thought there was something weird about the way that she was plaiting Banner's mane. The plaits were a bit of a mess and falling apart – but it was more than that.

Kennedy had finished the whole neck and was doing the forelock when Dominic Blackwell returned. He took one look at Banner's plaits and totally exploded.

“What have you done, Kennedy?” Blackwell roared. “You complete moron! You've plaited the mane on the wrong side of the neck!”

Kennedy had failed to notice that Star Spangled Banner's mane had fallen to the left side by mistake and she had braided in the plaits to the left. The horse's mane should have been swept over to the right side. And by the way Dominic Blackwell went on, you would have sworn life and death were hanging in the balance!

“Undo the plaits and start again!” he fumed. “I'm not riding into that arena with a mane like that.”

Dominic Blackwell took a closer look at Kennedy's atrocious plaits, the bits of hair poking out and the rubber bands coming undone and he revised his orders. “Get Julie to redo them – she's better at plaiting than you are. You can bandage the legs.”

Kennedy had no choice but to step aside and Georgie took over, re-plaiting the entire mane on the correct side.

Meanwhile, having been reassigned to leg bandaging, Kennedy made a complete hash of that too. This time Dominic took one look at the wobbly bandages that were gappy and twisted with bits hanging out and made Georgie step in and unwrap and do them again.

Kennedy spent the rest of the morning in a sulk doing the only job that Blackwell trusted her with, pre-mixing the hard feeds and filling the hay nets and buckets of water. And even then Blackwell asked Georgie to keep an eye on her.

Georgie worked like a dog that day, constantly covering up Kennedy's mistakes. But it was when the competition got underway that her skills really came into play. Georgie knew the ropes from the years working with her mum and she remembered what Ginny Parker always used to say: that a great groom didn't need to be asked for anything because they were always one step ahead of their rider.

Georgie was exactly that, anticipating Dominic Blackwell's needs and accurately delivering what he wanted. The minute that Blackwell emerged from the arena after a showjumping round she would be there to take the reins of his horse and hand him a bottle of water. She had the horses all tacked up and ready to go the moment that he needed them.

Blackwell never said thank you – but Georgie could tell that he was pleased with her even if he wasn't prepared to show it.

Kennedy, however, was not so lucky. She had been worse than useless all day, but there was an aura about her, as if she assumed that her family connections made her immune to Blackwell's vicious attacks. She was about to discover just how wrong she was.