GINNY was woken at six-thirty the following morning by Tamara rapping on her bedroom door, and when she emerged, dressed, and still shivering from the cold of her room and the water in which she had washed, Tamara was drinking tea in the kitchen and waiting for her impatiently.
Ginny swallowed her hot tea rapidly, and they plunged out into the frozen morning. It was just light, the first cold hint of dawn turning the high, pale sky to white above the silent earth. The garden, Ginny now saw, was a wild tangle of shrubbery, evergreens and bamboo, stunted trees, and huge hydrangea bushes, brown under their coating of snow, the dead flower-heads made beautiful once more by their flashing garments of frost. There had been no more snow in the night and the stable yard was still crisscrossed by their footprints, frozen hard now, so that Ginny stumbled in them, and was told sharply by Tamara to pick her feet up, as though she were a horse. Bates was already in the tack-room, lighting the stove with crumpled balls of newspaper, and making clouds of bluish smoke. Tamara instructed Ginny to remove her windbreaker, presented her with a pitchfork, and dispatched her to muck out Golden Prize.
“He’s to be done properly,” she warned Ginny. “Every corner clean, and the old straw down again for the day bed. And pick out his feet into a skip; you’ll find one hanging behind the feed shed.”
Ginny nodded, and went off across the frozen yard.
Bates straightened up from the stove, which was beginning to roar, and gazed after her.
“That’s a better girl than most you’ve had,” he told Tamara. “She won’t scare so easy, I’ll be bound.”
“We’ll soon see,” replied Tamara. “She’ll probably be off to Miss Fenton in five minutes, like all the rest.”
But in her heart she knew that it was unlikely.
Mucking out at Tamara’s, Ginny quickly discovered, was a very different thing from mucking out at Vic’s. There was so much more straw to be moved, sometimes it seemed to weigh a ton on the prongs of her fork, and when she shook the bed down again it had to be really smooth and even to satisfy Tamara, an effect which was far more difficult to achieve than it seemed. Tamara and Bates worked with smooth, swift efficiency, Tamara especially was almost machine-like in her speed, whisking from box to box, and separating dirty straw from clean in a matter of seconds, her fork flying, and her brush reaching easily into even the most awkward corners. Ginny, determined not to be outdone, set her teeth and worked at top speed. She was extremely gratified when she succeeded in finishing the last of her four boxes only a few moments after Tamara finished hers.
When the mucking out was finished the horses were fed, then Tamara and Ginny went up to the house for breakfast. Bates, Tamara explained, preferred to get his own in his caravan.
Breakfast was very fatty bacon, fried bread, toast, and tea.
Afterwards they started the grooming. “Thoroughly,” instructed Tamara again. Plenty of hard body-brushing, and the currycomb was to be tapped free from grease where she could inspect the resulting pile, and keep a check on how much work Ginny was putting in. Slightly nettled by this attitude, Ginny put all her weight and skill into the job, and Tamara was surprised by the excellent quality of the results. The girl even seemed to be as quick as she was herself. She felt a momentary wave of doubt. It would not do for Ginny to become too good, and for her to begin to rely on the child.
The stable work finished, Tamara looked at the grey sky and the still-frozen yard, and said that they would exercise the horses in the school.
“I’ll ride Cayenne,” she decided. “Bates, you take Prize; and Ginny, saddle Mosaic for yourself.”
Ginny was delighted. She had not dared to hope for a ride so soon, and she liked Mosaic, with his stocky build and slightly Arabian head and his unusual colouring.
“Bring him across carefully,” Tamara warned her, as Ginny led the horse out on to the frozen snow. She had already slid back the heavy double doors, and was standing just inside on the dark tan, holding Cayenne’s reins.
Mosaic followed Ginny across with great care, snorting his distrust of the treacherous ice, and taking very short steps. Bates was bringing out the palomino, and White Lion screamed at the other horses. Then Bates, too, was inside the big, rather dark building, and Tamara slid the doors together and told Ginny to mount. Bates had already swung himself quietly into Golden Prize’s saddle, and was walking him across the school.
Mosaic felt broad after Vic’s thin ponies, but very comfortable. Ginny adjusted her stirrups, discovering the recessed stirrup bars with delight, and walked him on after Prize. Tamara had mounted Cayenne with a smooth vault, and was walking him round the school in the opposite direction. The chestnut’s head was very high, his ears turned back, and his wicked eyes showed a flash of white. Ginny had a few minutes in which to get used to Mosaic and take in the details of the school.
It was a big building as indoor schools go, with a high roof and long windows set just above eye level. There was a big mirror on one wall and a smaller one in a corner, so that it was possible to examine one’s position from every angle. Just to the right of the big doors was a small balcony, slightly above floor level, from which spectators could watch the ride. The school markers were painted in black on white cards and nailed to the walls.
Bates told Prize to trot on, and Ginny sent Mosaic after him, finding his stride smooth and his mouth much the lightest she had ever handled. They passed Tamara, still riding Cayenne in the opposite direction, and the big chestnut clamped his tail down and tried to buck.
“He’s nappy,” explained Bates quietly over his shoulder to Ginny.
Ginny nodded, watching Cayenne as he trotted on up the long side of the school.
Tamara could certainly ride: to Ginny her position looked faultless. Her hands were light and extremely sensitive and quiet on the reins, and her shattered face absorbed. Gradually Cayenne settled down. They cantered, changed the rein, still in two rides, and cantered again. Then Tamara took the lead, forming them into one ride, and sent Cayenne on at an extended trot. In front of Ginny, Prize glided after him, his gold-and-white forelegs flashing, his white tail carried high and proudly. Mosaic wanted to canter, and Ginny had to concentrate hard to prevent him from doing so, and persuade him to trot properly.
“Sitting trot, Ginny,” ordered Tamara over her shoulder.
Ginny stopped rising, and tried to relax and let her body merge with the movements of her mount. She had tried this before on Vic’s ponies, in desperate attempts to improve her riding, finding it very difficult on such rough, unschooled animals. But on Mosaic it seemed the simplest thing in the world, almost easier than rising, he was so comfortable. Tamara kept them going for some time, extended trot, ordinary trot, changing the rein, circling, and figures of eight, all at the sitting trot. Cayenne seemed to have surrendered completely to Tamara’s will: he had stopped arguing with her, and he was instantly obedient to every aid she gave him. Then, at last, Tamara called a halt, and told them to let their horses walk round and cool off. She held Cayenne back to wait for Ginny.
“It’s a shame you’ve had no one to teach you,” she said. “You’ve picked up a lot of bad habits—self-taught people always do. I won’t bother about your leg—it seems to do its work all right anyway—but apart from that your other toe goes down at the least excuse, you round your shoulders and look down, and you’re inclined to be rough on that pony’s mouth. I’m sorry about that: you could have fine hands, you probably did once, before you ruined them on a lot of iron-mouthed scarecrows.”
You’ve a dozen other faults as well, but I won’t try to recite them all.”
Ginny was bitterly disappointed by this recitation of her hopelessness. But Tamara’s tone had been abrupt, and she was determined not to let the girl see how her words had hurt.
“So I’m no good,” she said flatly. “Sorry you had to drag me this far to find out.”
For a moment Tamara stared at her in silence, her battered face and odd eyes giving away absolutely nothing of her thoughts. Then she said, “No, you aren’t any good. I hardly expected you to be yet. But you might be one day, unless you want to back out. I warn you, it’s hard work, and you might not make it in the end. Miss Fenton would take you on like a shot if you want her to, and you’ll probably be winning potato races and novice ‘Never-to-have-won-a-rosette’ jumping classes on her fat sheep in five minutes. Here you’ll be lucky if you see the inside of a show ring, let alone a dressage arena, this year. So don’t say I haven’t warned you.”
“I never expected to ride in shows,” Ginny told her. “And I certainly don’t want to back out. I want to learn to ride, to really ride, and to school good horses. It’s the only thing I want, and I don’t care how long it takes.”
“All right then.” Tamara’s eyes gleamed with a look that Ginny was to come to know, for it meant that she was about to suggest or do something startling. “We’d better see what you can really do, then. That pony’s too comfortable, a baby could ride him. You can ride Cayenne.”
Ginny was on the verge of stupidly exclaiming “Cayenne!” when she realized that it was just what Tamara expected her to do, and instead she dismounted, ducked under Mosaic’s head, and took Cayenne’s reins from Tamara, who was already on the ground. Tamara grinned briefly to herself. She might have guessed that Ginny would not make the obvious exclamation and give her the opportunity of being sarcastic. She told Bates to take Prize out, and Cayenne tried to dive after him. Ginny, now in the saddle, swung him back and made him walk on up the school. Tamara closed the doors, mounted Mosaic, and took up her position in the centre.
Ginny was really concentrating on Cayenne—something that she had not done on the gentle appaloosa. She was also trying to remember and correct the faults that Tamara had listed, and the effect was one of stiffness and tension. Tamara sighed audibly, and Ginny looked up, startled.
“You look like a hop pole now,” Tamara told her bluntly. “You’ll never be able to ride that horse if you stiffen up like that. Forget what I said was wrong with you for now ; just see what you can do with him. Trot on.”
Going back thankfully to her usual position, Ginny touched the chestnut with her heels, and he jumped forward. He was a very different proposition from Mosaic, she discovered. He felt immensely tall, and yet narrow, and his head seemed miles away on the end of his arching, elegant red neck. His ears were turned back towards her, so that she could see the soft red-brown hairs inside, and his eyes rolled back suspiciously. There was a slight stiffness about him, an unwillingness to answer the aids of this strange rider, and the problem of gaining his confidence and co-operation soon absorbed Ginny completely. From the centre, sitting on the peaceful Mosaic with the reins loose on his dark roan neck, Tamara watched critically. In spite of her bad habits and awkward leg and the disappointing inclination towards roughness of her hands, there was something about Ginny’s riding that set it apart from that of the usual run of inexperienced young hopefuls. Impossible as it seemed with the number of faults she had, Ginny already possessed the gift of becoming one with her horse, of getting into his mind and knowing what he felt and how he thought and reacted, and what he was going to do next. Watching her now, her sharp, white face intent under that blazing, wiry hair, Tamara knew that, one by one, she was discovering Cayenne’s dislikes and suspicions, and adapting her own, certainly individual, style of riding to suit them. Already she had realized that he liked a long rein, and she had lengthened them just enough to give him the freedom he demanded without giving him a chance to get out of control, and she had also discovered that he liked to feel her legs against him all the time, not only when she was giving him an aid, and she was realizing that the thing that upset him the quickest was any trace of indecision in his rider.
Tamara let them trot and canter on either rein without interfering, noticing how Ginny dealt with the chestnut’s attempts to play up almost before they began, and knowing that it would be a rare horse who would ever fight her in earnest. Then she told them to walk, and called them into the centre. Cayenne stood beside Mosaic with his ears pricked and his eyes calm and bright, and Ginny patted his long, bright neck.
“He went quite well for you,” admitted Tamara. “Did you find him difficult?”
“Not really, but he’s awfully interesting to ride,” Ginny told her. “It’s easy to feel what he doesn’t like, and then you can put it right.”
“Yes.”
Tamara was startled by the utter simplicity of Ginny’s reply and the clarity of her explanation of the essence of her gift. Most people, Tamara knew, herself included, would have taken many more words to explain it far less clearly in far more complicated terms. Staring at Ginny, she knew suddenly that it was possible that she was looking at someone with genius. But could she, Tamara Blake, develop it and bring it out? Tamara knew that she was not the world’s best instructress, and also she wondered if she really wanted a genius in her stable, a genius who might well prove indispensable to her if her riding really developed as it seemed it might. But it was much too early to worry about that yet. She would take Ginny in hand, Tamara decided, and see how things turned out. Ginny was waiting for criticism or instructions, wondering rather uncomfortably why Tamara was staring at her as though she could see right through her, and Tamara jerked herself back to the present.
“As I told you before, it’s possible you could be good,” she told Ginny. “But it will certainly take work. You’ve a lot to correct, and as you’re set in those bad habits by now it won’t be easy. You’ll have to go right back to the beginning, and do a lot of riding without stirrups and dull school work. But we won’t start today, Cayenne’s had enough, and I can’t have my liveries acting as school horses for pupils. I just wanted to see what you made of him. It’ll be back to my horses tomorrow. Come on, let’s put these two in; it’s time I lunged those mad bays.”
Ginny stabled Mosaic with her mind in a whirl. Tamara had actually said she could possibly be good. And she had seemed pleased with the way Cayenne had gone.
“I’ll work,” vowed Ginny. “I’ll work at it until I either manage to get somewhere or drop dead in the attempt.”
She gave Mosaic’s thick, sleek neck a final pat and let herself out into the frozen yard. Flash was leaning out of his loose-box almost opposite, his ears pricked and eyes bright for the first time in months. He was obviously greatly interested in his new surroundings, and Ginny felt a sudden rush of affection for him. It had been through him that she had met Tamara, and it was wonderful to see him so happy after the many wretched weeks he had spent in Branton.
Tamara and Bates were crossing the yard towards the school once more, each leading one of the bay pair in a cavesson head-collar and white lunge-rein. Ginny took Mosaic’s tack into the tack-room and found her way into the balcony to watch.
Tamara was at the far end of the school with the gelding, Count, and Bates had the mare, Countess, who was the more spiteful of the two. They were both magnificent horses, as strong as bulls and as elegant as show hunters, and they lunged like twin furies, going in great leaps and bucks, Count rearing, then flinging himself forward, bucking, and rearing again, while Countess aimed sly kicks at Bates, who was circling with her inside the much wider circle made by her sleek, cantering form at the end of the rein, and when he scolded her she would fling up her head and squeal, her ears flat against her black mane, her dark eyes flashing red in the light from the windows. Then Tamara called Count in to send him round on the other rein, and caught sight of Ginny in the balcony.
“Don’t stand about doing nothing,” she shouted. “Go and start on the tack we used this morning. I suppose you can clean tack?”
“I can,” Ginny shouted back, seeing Bates’ half-hidden grin, and knowing that this was just Tamara’s normal manner.
She had washed two saddles and their stirrup leathers and girths by the time Bates and Tamara returned from stabling the bays, and she was starting on the last saddle. Tamara looked at them critically but made no comment. She took down White Lion’s tack, and went off across the yard to saddle him for a session in the school, and Bates began to help Ginny, half of whose attention was on the white stallion whom Tamara was leading out of his box.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” she said longingly. “Where did Miss Blake get him?”
“She took a course at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna two years ago,” replied Bates. “Brought him back with her. Cost her a fortune, he did; nearly broke her; but she says he’s worth it. He’s certainly a pretty sight.”
“He’s gorgeous,” agreed Ginny. “Have you known Miss Blake for a long time, Mr. Bates?”
“I used to work for her father,” replied Bates. “I was with him for a good few years.”
“It must have been interesting,” said Ginny, fishing hopefully for some details of Tamara’s past and what sounded to her like a wonderful childhood.
“Yes,” agreed Bates. “Though he was a hard man to work for.” He did not seem inclined to go on, so Ginny gave up. There would be plenty of other opportunities to find out more about her rather strange employer when she had been at Hampton a little longer.
During the next few days Ginny began to settle down at Hampton and find her way about the stables and Tamara’s methods. The house and stables were set in the gently rolling country of the Sussex weald, with the South Downs raising their bare, rounded shoulders into the sky not far away, so that when, on her third day there, the sun came out, they were blinding with their shining whiteness and blue shadows, a brilliant, fluorescent barrier between sea and land. That morning the sun was hot on her back as she groomed, the yard and roofs were turned to gold, and the snow began to melt swiftly under the warm rays, slipping with sudden plops from roof-tops and trees, and turning to water underfoot, though it still lay hard and dead white in the shadows. Ginny thought that she had never known such beauty: the still snow turned to gold and flashing silver, the iron roofs and rose-misted trees glistening with water as the ice vanished, and the world filled with awakening sounds and scents: the ripple of running water and the rustle of leaves, with the sweetness of wet earth and the aromatic tang of wet shrubbery.
Tamara, Ginny soon realized, had very few regular riders, and it was not difficult to see why. She was an impatient, sarcastic teacher, and however hard she tried she did not possess the gift of passing on her own undoubted brilliance in the saddle to her pupils. Tamara herself was perfectly aware of this, and it did not help to make her a better-tempered instructress. Ginny’s riding made little progress: if anything, she seemed to get worse. Tamara’s insistence that she must go right back to the beginning and start all over again with an absolutely correct position was not helping. Ginny could arrange herself in that position, except for her bad leg, she could even stay in it after a fashion when her horse trotted and cantered, but at the same time she lost all her gift of feeling her horse, of getting into his mind, and her ability to ride him forward and make him stride out freely in a straight line. In the position that Tamara insisted she should adopt she found it impossible to merge her body and hands with her horse’s movement, and she could not relax. As soon as she did she slipped back into her old slouching, untidy position, and at lesson after lesson this deadlock reduced them both to fury, and many sparks flew under the high roof of the indoor school. But Ginny mentally set her teeth and grimly kept on trying. Somehow, some day, she would learn to ride, and ride properly, she determined.
There was one cheering thing, however, about her physical reactions to life at Hampton Stables. For the first few days, by evening, her leg had ached almost unbearably with the unaccustomedly heavy work and the efforts she forced it to make in riding, but by the end of the first ten days it was immensely better, and Ginny even imagined that she could see the first signs of returning fullness in the shrunken muscles. And for Flash life had become perfect. Already he was visibly better. His ribs were still prominent, but the skin over them was loosening up and starting to regain some signs of a bloom, and he was beginning to let down a little instead of looking like a starving whippet. His eyes were always bright now, and he was much more alert. The breeding was back in his stance and the way he held his head, and he showed signs of the bold, handsome youngster that he had once been.
“He could make something yet,” said Tamara one day. “He’s only eight, and that stiffness has almost gone now he’s out of that damp stable. He might even make a dressage horse; his stride can be long enough sometimes.”
Ginny was delighted. It would be wonderful if Flash could do something like that. She had received a letter from Doreen only that morning, telling her that Vic Tyler had been caught and sentenced to six months imprisonment—which might mean only five, with time off for good behaviour. But until then, at least, it looked as though Flash would be hers. And somehow, she was determined, she would prevent him from ever having to return to Branton and Vic.
Ginny had been at Hampton for a fortnight before she got an opportunity to see Tamara’s bays in harness. The roads had remained icy on and off, and Tamara and Bates had lunged them for exercise, as they had on Ginny’s first day. But on March 2nd, a brilliant, windy day of flashing sun and shadow and wild, tossing trees, Tamara suddenly flung down the rag with which she was cleaning some of the eternally dirty tack and announced that she was sick of the sight of the yard.
“I’ll take the bays out,” she said. “Coming, Ginny?”
Ginny agreed in sudden excitement. She had never ridden behind horses before, and it promised to be a thrilling experience. Bates helped Tamara to harness the pair, who became immediately excited at the prospect of an outing, and Ginny helped Tamara to pull the light four-wheeled trap out of the Dutch barn behind the stables, where it was kept along with the old car and the dog-cart. The two horses were backed into position, not without difficulty, and the traces were linked to roller bolts and pole.
“Get in,” Tamara ordered Ginny. “You won’t have time when I get up.”
Ginny obeyed, finding herself startlingly high up above the shining, restless dark bay quarters, and Tamara collected the reins while Bates hung on to the horses’ heads, and sprang up beside her.
“Right,” she shouted to Bates, who let go and sprang aside.
Count and Countess, already strung up like race-horses at the starting tape, leaped forward into their harness, and they were off, swinging across the yard into the drive, wet gravel spraying from under the yellow wheels, and horses’ heads appearing over box doors in sudden frantic excitement. The flying hooves of the two powerful horses flung up the stones in showers as they hurtled down the long drive, wet branches whipped the high back wheels, singing across the flashing spokes, and Tamara sat back on the high seat, her feet firm against the dashboard, her shoulders braced against the combined strength of her two horses. Ginny was thrilled. She had never known anything like this before: the wild, cold March wind in her hair, the vibration of the light trap under her, and the swift lift and swing of the thrusting quarters below them, the light shifting across glowing, muscular backs and polished harness, and glinting on buckles and brasses, while all around them were the first signs of the coming spring roused by the shrill clarion call of the first winds of March. Beside her Tamara’s face was set with the effort of controlling the bays, but her odd eyes glowed with a radiance that Ginny had never seen before, and the wind went wild through her curling black hair and whipped bright colour into her scarred face.
Nearly at the bottom of the long drive, with the bays wild with their own power, Ginny saw the brown-and-white baker’s van swing in between the white gate-posts, and stop dead as the driver slammed on his brakes at the sight of them. Tamara was slowing the bays, putting every atom of strength she possessed into the attempts, but Ginny knew that they could not possibly stop before they were past the van and actually in the gateway, where Tamara had been planning to stop in any case. The driver had no time to reverse—he was as far over as he could get—and Tamara pulled the bays as far to the left as possible. Two wheels were off the gravel and running in the shallow drainage ditch, wet branches whipped Ginny’s face, and she half closed her eyes against their sharp sting. Tamara’s face was expressionless, the radiance still shining in her eyes, her muscular hands perfectly steady on the reins. Ginny caught a quick glimpse of the van driver’s white, frightened face as the offside wheels rushed towards him, then Tamara had gained that extra inch of space, though Countess and Ginny were almost in the shrubbery, and they were past, the wheels barely brushing the side of the stationary van, and Tamara was bringing the horses to a halt in the gateway. Ginny let out her unconsciously held breath in a long sigh, and Tamara glanced at her maliciously.
“Scared?” she asked.
“I didn’t think the drive was that wide,” Ginny told her.
Tamara grinned. “Well, it was,” she said, as the bays swung out into the empty road.
They headed towards the Downs, the bays’ hooves ringing on the hard tarmac, their heads and tails carried high, white froth flying from their bits as they fretted to go faster. Tamara held them with apparent ease, pleased with the obvious admiration of people they passed, saluting the few whom she both knew and remained on good terms with by a slight gesture with the long driving-whip. Just beyond Hampton, Ginny saw a short string of ponies on the road ahead of them, coming towards them, and Tamara shortened the pair’s stride to pass. The rider in the lead looked familiar, and as they came closer Ginny realized that it was Angela, on a fat chestnut pony in its winter coat. She went scarlet at the sight of them, and Ginny saw Tamara grin with a mixture of malice and scorn as she raised her whip to salute them. The ponies jogged a little as the turn-out passed them, but they were too placid to bother much, and Ginny knew that she did not envy her predecessor her new job. Whatever the drawbacks to working for Tamara might be, she decided that it was better than the mundane, dead-end life of working for a Miss Fenton.
As the first freshness of the bays wore off Ginny realized that they were not merely a mad pair of horses harnessed haphazard to a trap, but a thoroughly experienced, brilliant pair of harness horses who could handle a vehicle as though it were part of themselves, and who, once they had settled down, would answer to the least sign from Tamara’s quiet hands.
They circled back towards the stables through peaceful Sussex lanes, past bare, rose-misted woods in which the clinging ivy stood out brilliant green against the darker depths, and past fields of springing seed and rolling fallow, with all the time the nearby green-and-gold bareness of the Downs in the changing, flying light and shade of clouds and wind and spring sun. Branton seemed ten thousand miles away, and when Tamara said casually, as they approached the stables once more, “By the way, we’ll be busy this week-end. I’m holding a dressage meeting on Saturday,” Ginny’s happiness was complete.
Getting ready for dressage tests, Ginny quickly discovered, involved a great deal of preparation. There were judging cards and numbers to be sorted, entries to be listed, competitors had to be notified of their starting times so that they could arrive in time to ride their horses in before their test, and as there was also a combined training competition, involving dressage and a short showjumping course, Tamara’s battered jumps had to be repaired. And at the same time there was all the usual work to be done, and the exercising, schooling, and the few lessons to be given.
“Do you do much jumping in summer?” Ginny asked one day, when the three of them were painting jumps in the Dutch barn.
“Some,” replied Tamara. “I have to with the liveries. Gaylord, for instance, is destined to be a show jumper. He’s just here for a course of field dressage first to supple him up and make him obedient. I don’t deny that it does horses good to have some fun once in a while, over jumps, but I don’t agree with this country’s mania for jumping. The trouble is that most people haven’t a clue about dressage: to them it’s only a means to the end of turning out a show jumper, not an art in itself. But classical riding—High School, that is—is an art completely separate from anything else. There’s nothing like it. Done well it’s pure poetry in motion, and even elementary dressage—in other words, the normal basic training of a riding horse—can be, if you take the trouble, instead of being content with a few badly done circles and movements that are worse than nothing at all.”
Ginny had never before known her so enthusiastic about anything. There could be no doubt as to where Tamara’s first love lay—her interest in driving was as nothing compared to her enthusiasm now. But Ginny hoped that she would be given a chance to do some jumping some day, though at present her experience in that line lay only in hopping over logs and ditches on Vic’s ponies, or trotting over cavalettis in Tamara’s school in the hope that it might improve her position.
Tamara’s dressage tests, Ginny learned, were a fairly regular event, patronized by the same small group of enthusiasts each time. She did not bother to advertise them, and Ginny guessed that she ran them purely for the love of dressage, and not for any practical reason. In some ways Tamara Blake seemed to be surprisingly impractical, and Ginny sometimes wondered what she would do for money if she got no more film work, for the liveries would scarcely bring in enough to keep all the horses in the yard and their owner and her staff.
On Saturday morning the yard was spotless by nine o’clock. The indoor school had been hosed and raked the night before, and the jumps were stacked ready outside. Tamara fetched the judges—two quite well-known personalities in the small dressage world—from Hampton station in the car, and by the time she returned with them the first boxes had arrived and were parked in the big field behind the school to unload. Ginny had only been to one horse show in her life—an agricultural show ten miles from Branton at which Vic had been running a popcorn stand—and she was thrilled to feel the same festive atmosphere and the same tension about Tamara’s stables that morning. Beautifully turned-out horses began to appear in the field, ridden by equally well-turned out riders in black coats and boots, white or fawn breeches, stocks, and bowler hats. Tamara installed the judges—two solemn-faced, middle-aged people, a man and a woman—at the front of the balcony with their starting bell, judging cards, and lists of entries, and hurried out to organize the first competitor: a tall, thin, pale-faced young man named John Rees-Brown, who was riding a nice-looking black mare. Ginny would have liked to watch, but Tamara kept her too busy dashing about checking arrivals and running errands, and actually she found watching the various riders warming their horses up in the field almost as interesting.
“Ginny,” shouted Tamara from the gate, as the second competitor left the school. “Shirley Campbell’s next. Where is she?”
Looking frantically round the field, Ginny saw a plump girl on a bright bay riding wobbly circles around a dark-haired man on foot in the far corner, and began to run towards them, finding Shirley’s number against her name on the list she held. She was right, she saw, as she dodged a cantering grey and saw the black number 11 on the plump girl’s arm.
“Miss Campbell,” she called. “Miss Campbell, you’re next.” The girl hauled her mount to a halt and gasped.
“But he’s not ready,” she wailed, as Ginny panted up to them. “I thought I’d got ages yet.”
“Someone hasn’t turned up,” explained Ginny. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Captain Jokai, tell them I’m not ready,” begged the girl, her wide blue eyes fixed imploringly on her dark, good-looking instructor.
“You will be all right,” he assured her. “Your horse is ready; it is you who are not, or who think you are not. Make up your mind that you can do it, that everything is fine, go in and smile happily at the judge, and you will ride a perfect test. Come along now, Shirley, you must be bold.”
“I don’t feel it,” said Shirley unhappily. “I wish Mummy had never made me come.”
But she turned her horse across the field towards the school and her instructor and Ginny wished her luck. Then the man sighed.
“I am afraid that her family are wasting their money and my time on that young lady,” he told Ginny, “She has no real interest, no flair for this kind of riding, or for any competition riding.”
“Does her family make her compete, then?” Ginny asked him.
“Yes, I am afraid that is so,” agreed the man. “Her mother was a very keen rider to hounds in her youth, but now she has turned her attention to dressage. She herself knows nothing, but she is determined that her daughter shall become an expert, and I am employed for the purpose of working this miracle.”
“Poor Shirley!” said Ginny, as they began to follow the horse across the field. “It must be awful for her if she doesn’t enjoy it.”
“I agree, it must,” the instructor told her. “Do you work here?”
“Yes, I’ve been here about three weeks,” Ginny told him. “I’d love to have Shirley’s chances. Though I am pretty lucky to be here, I never dreamed I’d ever have a job as wonderful as this is. I’m Ginny Harris, by the way.”
“My name is Andras Jokai,” said the man. “You wish to study dressage, then?”
“Yes, more than anything else,” agreed Ginny. “But I don’t know if I’ll ever be any good.”
“I am sure you will, as you wish it so much,” Andras told her. “Now I must leave you. Shirley’s test will have begun.”
He turned aside into the school balcony, closing the door very softly behind him. Pausing to look again at her list, Ginny wondered where he came from. His name and his accent were far from English, and there was a hint of something grave, almost tragic, in his thin, dark face and dark, brilliant eyes,
Ginny guessed from Shirley’s expression when she came out of the school that she had not done well, but it was not until the marks went up on the blackboard by the tack-room that she learned just how badly the girl had managed to do. She felt sorry for both Shirley and her instructor. Perhaps it was better not to have horsey parents.
It was not until the second test—the Elementary—was half over that Ginny got time to watch, but it had been worth waiting for.
Never had she dreamed that horses could be trained to such precision and obedience, that they could become so supple and graceful and so completely one with their rider’s every thought and almost invisible command. She watched three horses go through the test, one of them the eventual winner, a beautiful dark chestnut horse ridden by an elderly, stern-faced man with wonderfully long legs and back, and a position that was beyond criticism. Standing in the balcony behind the judges with the small, intent audience Ginny was spellbound. This was not riding as she had known it. This was art compared to makeshift; this was, as Tamara had said, poetry in motion, not the exotic, intricate poetry of Haute École, but pure, clear-cut poetry of basic line and supple movement, of lightness and grace and the striving for perfection. When Tamara fetched her out of the balcony to help arrange the jumps in preparation for the combined training, Ginny was in a daze, her mind filled with gliding horses weaving careful patterns across the dark, soft tan, of thudding hooves and fluttering nostrils, proudly carried tails, and bold heads bent obediently to the bit and their rider’s will.
She was glad that the chestnut won, glad that she had been able to watch his test; but his rider looked bored and impassive as he received the rosette, as though he had succeeded so often that the presentation was merely a formality, and the result a foregone conclusion.
Ginny was able to watch the whole of the jumping, as she was told by Tamara to stay inside to rebuild any jumps that were knocked down. She found it exciting; there was something immensely thrilling about the controlled power of a horse jumping, the soaring grace of the leap, and the smooth shock of the landing, but it did not stir her in the same way that dressage had, and she decided that if she had to watch too much of it she might easily become bored. Shirley Campbell was one of those entered for the combined training, but she was no more successful than she had been in the dressage, and was eliminated for three refusals. The eventual winner was the thin young man on the black. Tamara herself presented the rosettes to the winners of this class, and as the last of the four horses vanished through the doors into the yard afterwards, a member of the audience, an elegant, beautifully made-up, middle-aged woman with smooth, fair hair, called, “Are you going to give us a show on the Lion now, Tamara?”
Tamara looked up towards the voice and grinned, her eyes suddenly pleased. “It depends whether or not anyone will stay to watch me,” she replied.
“There aren’t many of us who won’t,” the woman assured her, and someone else—a younger, dark-haired girl dressed in a coat and slacks—said, “Come on, Tamara, give us our money’s worth. It’s half the reason we pay colossal box fees to get here.”
Tamara laughed. “That, and the rosettes you pick up, Sue,” she retorted. “Two today, isn’t it?”
“And I’ve sold the horse,” Sue told her, amid a roar of laughter. Tamara grinned up at them silently for a moment longer, her eyes shiningly happy in her suddenly radiant face. Ginny had never seen her like this before, never felt the easy comradeship that warmed the big school now, the cheerful, teasing friendship of people who shared the same interests in the same places, who met frequently in usually friendly rivalry, and many of whom relied on one another for their livings and their business contacts. This, then, was the real heart of her new world, this small gathering of specialists and experts, people who made horses and dressage their lives and their livelihood, and who were all now so wholeheartedly ready to admire the most gifted among them, Tamara Blake.
“All right,” said Tamara at last. “You’ve asked for it. Ginny, saddle the Lion for me, please.”
There was a friendly ripple of applause from the balcony at this decision, and, still smiling, Tamara went off to change, while Ginny dashed across the yard to fetch the white stallion’s tack.