A Hoof in the Door (Eventing Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  A

  HOOF

  IN

  THE DOOR

  by

  Caroline Akrill

  First published 1982 by Arlington Books

  This ebook edition 2014

  Copyright © Caroline Akrill 1982, 2014

  The right of Caroline Akrill to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of the eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

  Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction.

  The author would like to stress that that no character in this book relates to any person living or dead and that all incidents are entirely imaginary.

  Other books by Caroline Akrill

  Non-fiction:

  Not Quite a Horsewoman

  Showing the Ridden Pony

  Fiction:

  Eventer’s Dream

  Ticket to Ride

  Make Me a Star

  Stars Don’t Cry

  Catch a Falling Star

  Dedication

  For Elaine

  In memory of a very similar accident

  CONTENTS

  A Driving Ambition

  A Few Pounds Short

  A Maiden’s Race

  Training the Event Horse

  Show Business

  A Working Hunter

  The Message of the Dressage

  All in the Mind

  Too Awful to Contemplate

  Where are the Horses?

  Luck of a Kind

  A Substitute Eventer

  An Evening with the Pony Club

  Welcome to the Two-Day Event

  If You’re in a Pickle

  What Do We Do Now?

  1

  A Driving Ambition

  “You don’t think, Elaine,” Nigella Fane said in an enquiring tone, “That the Comet is beginning to step out a bit?”

  Almost before the words were out of her mouth, the dog cart hit a stone on the lane and bounced in the air. Nigella grabbed the side of the cart, and I snatched up the reins which had hitherto been lying unattended across The Comet’s dappled rump. Lulled by the rhythmic clopping of hooves, the rumbling of wheels, the creaking of leatherwork, and the blissful warmth of the spring sunshine, I hadn’t been paying any attention to the horse at all. I had been admiring the scenery, yet I had quite failed to notice that the scenery was slipping past at an accelerated rate.

  I stood up in the cart and yanked the slack of the reins through the terrets. “Steady boy,” I said warningly, “slow down now.” But The Comet wasn’t listening. His ears were set ominously for the way ahead and they didn’t even twitch in my direction.

  “I told you we should have fixed him with a bearing rein,” Henrietta Fane said in an irritated voice from the back seat. “If he really gets going there’ll be no holding him. You know what he’s like.”

  I knew only too well, since The Comet was my horse. I had foolishly accepted him in lieu of unpaid wages after an argument with the Fanes.

  “People haven’t used bearing reins since the days of Black Beauty,” I told Henrietta crossly. I hauled uselessly at The Comet’s cast-iron mouth. “They’re probably illegal.”

  “A pity,” Henrietta commented acidly, as the cart began to sway from side to side in a discomforting manner, “because The Comet obviously needs one.”

  I made no reply to this, being almost rocked off my balance. I lurched back into my seat and wedged my feet firmly against the front of the cart in order to get a better grip on the reins. As I sawed furiously at the grey horse’s Liverpool bit, I wondered if anyone else in the history of horsemanship had ever been run away with at the trot; because between the wide-banked ditches thick with cowslips, under the vast and luminous East Anglian sky, The Comet was certainly running away now. His neck was set solid, his head was down, his rump was swinging in a determined manner, and his front legs were shooting out like pistons, achieving elevation and suspension worthy of a dressage horse.

  “Perhaps you should try the brake,” Nigella suggested. Her voice was calm, but the knuckles of one hand showed white on the outside rail. With the other hand she clutched her hat. It was a small, red, satin pill-box with a polka-dot veil. Nigella considered it just the thing for driving.

  I looked round for anything which resembled a brake. I had found the ramshackle cart in the gloom of the disused coach-house behind the stables at Havers Hall, where it had been mouldering away for decades. If it had ever had a brake, it certainly didn’t have one now.

  “There isn’t a brake,” I said helplessly. “There’s nothing to control the speed with at all, apart from the reins.”

  “Then kindly tell that to The Comet,” Henrietta yelped, “because he doesn’t appear to know, and I’m not enjoying this very much!” I wouldn’t have changed even my own unenviable position for Henrietta’s. She was riding with her back to us on a fragile little dickey seat suspended above the lane, with her feet jammed against a wobbly foot-rest.

  By means of a herculean effort, I managed to get back on my feet in order to set the whole of my weight and strength against The Comet, leaning backwards on the reins like a Roman charioteer. Eight stones and three pounds of dead weight did nothing to impede the grey horse’s progress whatsoever, particularly as one of the reins snapped almost immediately. I hurtled backwards, almost knocking Henrietta off the dickey seat. Henrietta was still screeching when a car came round the bend.

  The car braked furiously and skidded. It swerved out of our path and mounted the bank in a desperate and noble attempt to avoid taking off our outside wheel. As we bounced against the opposite bank, I caught a momentary glimpse of the driver’s ashen face, before The Comet’s iron-shod hooves carried us relentlessly on.

  “I don’t want to add to your troubles,” Nigella gasped, “but the wheel on my side is behaving in a very peculiar fashion.”

  I had time for one last despairing heave at The Comet’s plank-like jaw, before being completely thrown off my feet by an appalling jolt and a rib-cracking rebound, followed by a prolonged splintering crash. The Comet, the lane, the banks and the sky seemed to spin round like a kaleidoscope, and when I opened my eyes again I was lying amongst the cowslips and the rogue wheel was bowling along the lane quite on its own and almost out of sight.

  The Comet stood serenely on the tarmac attached to two broken shafts. Nigella, her pill-box slightly askew, stood at his head, surveying the remains of the dog-cart which were scattered across the lane like so much kindling. “Well,” she commented, as much to the horse as to anyone. “That seems to be the end of that. I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  Henrietta scrambled up from the ditch, rubbing her elbow and looking murderous. Her anorak was split from top to bottom and her wild, waist-length hair was stuck with twigs and bleached grasses. I lay where I had landed, wondering if I would ever walk again, much less achieve my ambition to become a leading light in the world of the Three Day Event. When I had recovered sufficient nerve to move my head, I found myself facing a poster nailed to the trunk of a stag-headed oak.

  The Midvale and Westbury Hunt

  POINT TO POINT

  April 25th

  First Race at 2PM

  Hon Sec O T V Bloomfield

  Shrubbery Farm, Kettleton

  I sat up, discovering with a flood of relief that I seemed to have retained the use of my limbs. “Nigella,” I said urgently, “I’ve just had an idea!”

  Henrietta gave me a vicious look. She was examining a cut in her leg thr
ough a torn flap in her jeans. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind,” she said in a sour tone, “we would prefer not to listen to it. Breaking The Comet to harness so that we could give driving lessons was your idea, if you care to remember, and it hasn’t exactly been a roaring success; we might all have been killed.”

  “Yes, quite honestly, Elaine,” Nigella said in a resigned tone, turning her attention from the shattered dog cart to the lacerated sides of her favourite satin-laced, tap-dancing shoes, “it might be advisable to wait until we have recovered from the effects of this idea, before you suggest anything else.”

  “But look at the poster,” I implored them. “We could enter The Comet for the Point-to-Point!”

  There was a silence whilst the Fanes looked from me to the poster, to The Comet; then, “How much money do you get if you win first prize at a Point-to-Point?” Henrietta asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but quite a lot I should imagine. Hundreds probably.”

  “If we could win just enough to buy Legend a dressage saddle,” Nigella said thoughtfully, “and some jump stands with proper cups and pins …”

  “The Comet must have qualified,” I said. “He’s sure to be eligible. He’s hunted for most of the season, and he goes like a bomb. Nothing, nobody, can catch The Comet once he gets into top gear.”

  We all looked speculatively at the grey horse, weighing up his chances. The Comet was embarrassed to find that he had suddenly become the centre of our attention. He raised his head in the unbecoming Liverpool bit and the blinkers, and he stared intently into the far landscape, as if he had unexpectedly caught a glimpse of someone he knew.

  “But who will ride him?” Henrietta said. “Which one of us will race?”

  “Oh, I must,” I said firmly. “After all, it’s my event horse we are financing.”

  This was not strictly true, because Legend was actually owned by the Fanes. They had bought him when they realized that if I didn’t find a sponsor to provide me with a potential event horse, I would leave them at a crucial time, when only our combined efforts had saved their floundering livery yard from bankruptcy.

  “It can’t be you, Elaine,” Nigella pointed out in her careful way, “that wouldn’t do at all. Imagine the consequences if you had an accident. If you broke an arm or a leg our event horse wouldn’t have a rider and that would be the end of our sponsorship. No,” she decided, “it will have to be me. I will ride The Comet.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this. It was true that Nigella had ridden The Comet more often than any of us, but while hunting last season, he had bolted with her and galloped straight into the river, practically drowning them both. I still saw Nigella’s face in my nightmares, blanched and frozen, as the grey horse thundered unwaveringly towards the river bank.

  “I think we’ll forget about the Point-to-Point,” I said. Already I was sorry I had mentioned it.

  But the Fanes had taken to the idea and they were not to be put off.

  “We certainly won’t forget about it,” Henrietta declared. She set about removing the broken shafts from the tugs on The Comet’s driving pad. “It’s a stupendous idea! All Nigella has to do is sit tight and steer and let The Comet run himself out. Then she can pull up and collect the money.”

  Even Nigella raised her eyebrows at this over-simplification of Point-to-Point racing. “But at least I shall be racing over a properly laid-out course,” she said, “and it will be properly organized and stewarded. It won’t be at all like the rough-and-tumble of the hunting field.” She straightened her pill-box and slapped The Comet confidently on his neck. I knew from experience that there was no point in further argument.

  We returned to the Hall in ignominy, bowling the wheels of the cart like hoops, and leading The Comet up the pot-holey drive with his traces tied in knots at his sides like a farm horse returning from the fields. Against the backdrop of long-dead elms, Havers Hall looked grey and shabby in the sunshine. Its stucco was cracked, its brickwork was pitted, and its rows of windows were firmly shuttered against the rains of winter which had continued to seep in through the rotten woodwork.

  The horses behind the sagging iron railings of the park raised their heads at the sound of The Comet’s hooves. Ahead of them stretched a long idle summer of relaxation. There were three high-class horses belonging to our most valued clients, a pop group called Thunder and Lightning Limited. There was a thickset, pink-nosed, grey cob owned by Brenda, the Fanes’ first-ever livery client, and there was a chestnut pony which belonged to our half-witted, part-time stable help, Doreen. Apart from the liveries, there were also the Fanes’ own collection of cut-price, equine misfits, the hirelings, who were rented out during the season to unsuspecting clients who fancied a day with the Midvale and Westbury Hunt. They were all there, made fat and contented by the verdant spring grass; the mare-who-sometimes-slipped-a-stifle, the bad-tempered chestnut, Nelson, with his stitched-up eye socket, and the black-horse-who-never-stood-still. Amongst them I could see the dark bay gelding that was Legend, his summer coat already gleaming through on his shoulders and his flanks. I stopped and called to him, and after a moment of hesitation, he left the others and ambled lazily towards the fence.

  I rummaged in my pockets and came up with a few damp and unworthy horse nuts. Legend ate them without enthusiasm, then screwed up the end of his nose in disgust, displaying a row of short, yellow teeth.

  In the precious few months that I had known him, the good-looking bay horse had proved himself to be everything I had hoped for. I had no way of knowing if I would ever manage to break into the distant, expensive and exclusive world of the Three Day Event, but I did know that I had found the perfect horse with which to try. Legend was the embodiment of all my hopes and all my ambitions. Ambitions, I reflected with a twinge of misgiving, that Nigella and The Comet were about to risk their necks for.

  2

  A Few Pounds Short

  “These fences,” Nigella commented, “look a bit big from the ground.” They did. Four feet of solid, black birch, as wide as they were high, in one instance flanked with a nine foot open ditch. Stouter hearts than Nigella’s would have quailed at the sight of them.

  “If you’re having second thoughts, there’s still time to change your mind,” I told her. “It isn’t too late. We can easily scratch.”

  We stood on the Point-to-Point course with our hands stuffed into the pockets of our anoraks and the ever-present East Anglian wind numbing our cheeks. All around us the Point-to-Point Committee and the Hunt Supporters’ Club were busily engaged in raking up birch clippings and strapping hurdles together to act as wings. The Clerk of the Course, clad in ancient sheepskins and threadbare cords, was hammering in signs proclaiming WINNERS’ ENCLOSURE, and FIRST, SECOND and THIRD; and in a convenient hollow below us which theoretically should have been out of the wind but somehow managed not to be, men in duffle-jackets fought the catering marquee, the canvas slapping and billowing like the sails on a galleon.

  “There’s no question of jibbing now,” Henrietta said sharply. “The horse is qualified, fit and entered. We’re not pulling out for anything.”

  “As the owner of the horse, I think I’m entitled to make the decisions,” I pointed out, irritated by the way Henrietta had assumed control of the situation. “It isn’t actually your affair.”

  “As the owner of the eventer we are supposed to be financing,” Henrietta snapped, “it’s more my affair than anybody’s.”

  “And as the rider of the horse, and the person who is more involved than either of you,” Nigella put in, “I think you should both shut up.”

  She set off resolutely to walk the course which consisted of sixteen fences over three and three-quarter miles of undulating flint-studded clay, her beautiful, brown hair streaming out from beneath a knitted purple helmet, pulled down firmly over her ears. Nigella was taking the race very seriously and had been out running before breakfast every day for a week. Henrietta and I trailed along behind, feeling unfit.
/>   At the open ditch we came upon William and Forster, the two young whippers-in to the Midvale and Westbury Hunt. They were armed with rammers, spades and a wheelbarrow, and they were working their way round the course, filling in holes.

  “You’re not serious about racing the old grey?” William pushed his cap to the back of his ginger thatch and stared at Nigella as if she was mad.

  “I certainly am,” Nigella said. “And what is more, I shall probably win.” She was dwarfed by the fences but her confidence was unshaken.

  William was impressed but doubtful. “Well, the old horse does have a fair turn of speed when he likes,” he allowed. “He definitely can travel.”

  “And he definitely can jump,” Henrietta added, launching herself down into the clay-walled ditch. “He never stops. He’s as brave as a lion.”

  I looked at the dark, forbidding fence with the gaping yellow ditch behind it, and I thought that The Comet needed to be.

  Nick Forster didn’t speak to us. He just continued to thump at a displaced sod of turf and he kept his face turned away. He had avoided me for several months after an embarrassing scene which had involved the Fanes. He made no secret of the fact that he thought I was crazy to work for them. He had wanted me to give in my notice, and he had even helped me find another job with a good wage and the prospect of an event horse thrown in. But the Fanes had foiled him by buying Legend, and I had lost the incentive to leave. I wanted to tell Forster that I had been grateful for his help and say that perhaps we could carry on where we had left off; but I didn’t have the nerve, and anyway, the Fanes would have overheard. They disapproved of Forster because of his racy reputation, and considered him to be an unsuitable and unsettling influence.

  So I stood, awkward and silent, whilst William kept a covert eye on Henrietta, who was his secret passion, and the Fanes in their knitted helmets energetically paced out the ditch in a snowstorm of kapok emerging from the split in Henrietta’s anorak. The Fanes shopped for their clothes at Oxfam and Help the Aged. I wouldn’t actually have liked to wear Nigella’s white quilted ski-pants which didn’t fit, and bagged at the seat, and had a lot of zippers in unexpected places, nor could I have worn Henrietta’s electric-blue, satin disco trousers with black leg-warmers on top, but in my conventional groom’s winter uniform of lovat-green Husky, cords and Hunter wellingtons, with my pale, straight, uninteresting hair stuffed under a tweed cap, I suddenly felt unutterably boring and drab. No wonder Forster wasn’t interested in me. I turned to go, thinking that I should make my way back to the Fanes’ dilapidated shooting brake, when: “How’s the event horse, Elaine?” Forster asked.