GINNY kept to her decision not to accept lessons from Andras until Tamara came out of hospital, but she could not resist slipping into the balcony sometimes to watch, and Andras, knowing that she was there, tried to include the correction of her worst faults in his lectures to his pupils, who continued to increase steadily in numbers as word of his capabilities as an instructor got about. His theories on teaching riding were, to Ginny, fascinating, and very encouraging. Unlike Tamara, he did not advise those people who had been riding for some time and who had picked up bad habits or individual styles to go right back to the beginning, as he explained that this was very nearly impossible for them, and it also destroyed any natural ability which had developed, such as Ginny’s gift for sensing her horses’ thoughts, and for riding them on. Instead he adapted the theory of the classical seat to suit individual natural ability, pointing out to his pupils their faults, but only asking them to improve on them slowly, as they felt able to without losing their natural style. If one of them seemed unable to improve, he did not insist, but merely explained what he wanted the horse to do and how it should go, and to Ginny the natural, apparently unconscious improvement of his pupils under this method was almost miraculous. Their riding never became stiff, and they were too absorbed to be nervous. On her lone schooling sessions and exercise rides with the others she attempted as far as she was able without help to put his ideas into practice. Andras watched her progress covertly, with pleasure. One day, he realized, she was going to be exceptionally good, and he hoped that it would not be too long before she felt able to accept lessons from him.
Tamara was in hospital for almost a fortnight, for the delay before getting treatment had made her injuries worse than they need have been, and the fever took some time to subside. The flat seemed very empty without her: even the cats were out hunting for most of the night. Ginny was not nervous; being alone in the place did not worry her, but she knew that she would be glad when Tamara returned and the flat came to life once more. Tamara, of course, was worrying about the stables and Andras's effect on them, and Ginny went several times to visit her and assure her that nothing had been changed, and to emphasize the fact that Tamara was still in charge by asking her advice on stable matters. Tamara looked out of place in hospital; her scarred, weather-beaten face and springing black curls belonged out of doors, not in the neat white bed in the over-heated ward, and her brusque, sarcastic manner made her an unpopular patient with nurses and the other occupants of the ward alike.
Andras eventually fetched Tamara home in the first glowing week of May, but the atmosphere between them when they arrived was distinctly cool. Ginny had done her best with the shabby flat, and the windows were open to the warm, brilliant day. The heavy scent of bluebells flooded into the room, tinged with the hot, spiced scent of hawthorn flowers, and everything was dusted and tidy. The kettle was ready filled on the unlighted stove, and tea ready set on the table. Tamara sank into one of her ragged armchairs and looked round with a touch of irritation.
“What on earth have you done to the place, Ginny?” she demanded. “It looks like a museum. Where are the rest of my books? And what have you done with my boots and Snow Ranger's bit and shoes?”
“I've put the books in the cupboard in your room, the boots are in the kitchen, and the bit and shoes are in that drawer. They wanted cleaning, and I hadn't time,” explained Ginny.
“Then you can just bring everything back again,” said Tamara. “I hope there have been less changes in the stable?”
This was an obvious dig at Andras, but he merely smiled and assured her that there had been none. Slightly mollified, Tamara told him to sit down, and instructed Ginny to make the tea.
It proved impossible to make Tamara take things easily now that she was home. She spent all her time at the stables, watching Andras's lessons without comment, but criticizing his methods of doing almost everything else. Andras kept his temper with increasing difficulty, and even Ginny's affection for her employer was dangerously strained.
“There'll be an explosion one of these days,” Bates told Ginny gloomily. “Andras, he'll take it for a time because he's grateful to her for giving him the job, but he's not the kind who'll put up with her for ever, and Miss Tamara's not going to give over until she's happy he knows who's boss. She's treating him worse than she treats her girl grooms, except you. She likes you more'n she'll admit.”
“It'll be awful for the stables if Andras suddenly goes now, just when people are getting to know about him and how good he is,” said Ginny.
“It won't do us any good,” agreed Bates.
For the next few days the atmosphere at Hampton Stables was almost unbearable. Ginny escaped as often as she could on exercise rides with Bates, or to school Flash in the field, as Andras was usually in possession of the school when Tamara was not using it. Ten days after her return from hospital she seemed to have completely forgotten the accident, but her activity seemed to have no ill effect on her recovery. Ginny still did not join Andras's lessons, as she knew what the atmosphere would be like if she did, and she guessed that Tamara must be terribly afraid of being hurt, to behave as she was doing. Then Andras tried suggesting his ideas about the business to Tamara, and was immediately turned down flat.
“But why will you not do this?” Andras asked her, when his suggestion of arranging with a nearby hotel to take resident pupils had also been scorned. “It is not reasonable to refuse. It was you who appointed me, therefore why will you not let me help you with your business, which is surely the reason for my being here?”
“I appointed you simply as an instructor,” retorted Tamara. “I offered you a shares basis as salary, as it was the only thing I could afford. But I do not consider your suggestions practical or attractive, and I am certainly not bound to agree with them.”
Andras, knowing himself, for the moment, beaten, gave up. The situation was becoming impossible for both himself and Tamara, and he could not imagine how Ginny would ever feel able to accept lessons from him. And in a way this seemed the worst part of this difficult situation.
Tamara knew that Ginny was longing to join Andras's lessons, and she also knew why she did not do so. Seeing the girl schooling alone in the field, Tamara realized how selfish she was being, but she could not bear the thought of Ginny joining the ranks of Andras's admiring pupils. She was watching Ginny trotting circles one afternoon when Andras came quietly up behind her.
“That child could be very good,” he said.
“She will be,” Tamara told him shortly.
“With no one to instruct her?” asked Andras.
“Ginny will get all the instruction she needs,” snapped Tamara.
“I see,” said Andras.
Tamara swung round to glare at him. “Everyone knows you're the only person in the world capable of teaching riding,” she told him. “Though a few people do seem to have learned quite successfully without your help.”
“Miss Blake, why will you not let Ginny join my classes?” asked Andras. “It would not take up too much of her time, and she so deserves to learn.”
“I'm not stopping her,” Tamara told him. “Ginny has never suggested taking lessons from you.”
“Because she is too fond of you to wish to hurt your feelings,” said Andras. “But you are putting a very great strain on her affection for you by treating her like this.”
“How dare you lecture me?” snapped Tamara. “Have you no sense of gratitude? If it wasn't for me you and that horse of yours would be sleeping in the ditches, and if you won't accept this job as it is, that's where you will be.”
“I am grateful to you,” Andras told her quietly. “You gave me work and a home, and made it possible for me to keep Ambassador. But by refusing to give Ginny the freedom to join my lessons you are hurting not only her, but yourself also. And another thing, you are turning yourself into a tyrant, and I have seen enough of tyranny to know that I might possibly be little worse off in a ditch.”
“Then it's a shame you didn't keep to one,” retorted Tamara furiously, and stalked away.
Andras sighed, and turned back to watch Ginny. He did not want to leave Hampton and return to the uncertainty of searching for a new job and the probability of having to sell Ambassador, but he knew enough of himself to realize that he could not stay in the present circumstances much longer.
But Andras's words had more effect than he imagined they would, and that evening Tamara told an astonished and delighted Ginny that she was to join Andras's lesson the following morning. Tamara felt a wave of jealous resentment sweep over her at the sight of Ginny's radiant face, but she managed to hide it. After all, why should she worry about keeping the admiration and affection of this ugly, common child? She got what she wanted from her—hard work—and she was getting the same from Andras. What on earth was she worrying about? And if Andras could teach Ginny to ride better, she would be very useful to take on any surplus schooling that she herself could not manage.
Ginny knew that never in her life would she forget her first riding lesson from Andras Jokai. She rode Flash, for it was a special occasion, and she wanted to share it with him. Andras, who always took his lessons mounted, was on his magnificent Ambassador, and the other pupil, a less experienced but more correct girl named Lydia, was on Golden Prize.
They spent the first ten minutes riding their horses in, mainly at a trot and canter, to allow them to relax and settle down, and also to give Andras an opportunity to study their riding. Ginny, concentrating hard, tried to remember all that she had heard Andras teach, and to eliminate as many of her faults as she could. The natural result was that she became stiff.
“Walk, please,” said Andras, from the centre, where he sat on his glowing dark-brown horse, one hand light on the snaffle reins, his dark eyes fixed intently on Ginny's thin, stiff figure and still awkward leg, and her intense white face as she concentrated on riding her free striding bay. “Ginny, relax. Do not try to correct your faults for the moment. Let me see how you normally ride.”
Ginny obediently relaxed, and Flash promptly lost his slightly worried expression and moved forward happily, one ear pricked forward and the other back. Ginny's thin shoulders were rounded beneath her blue shirt, her spine curved, and her toes went down as she used her legs. But her hands had lost their roughness; on the thin, supple reins their long boniness became beauty, and they were the sensitive, mobile link between two brains, human and equine, which now worked as one. Andras felt a sudden flood of excitement run through him. An instructor might search all his life for one pupil with a third of Virginia Harris's gift and her great potentiality, and he, Andras Jokai, had one dropped at his feet through the unwilling help of prickly, difficult Tamara Blake. Watching Ginny as she circled the school behind Lydia and Golden Prize, his only fear was that he would be tempted to take her too fast. With almost the sense of one starting on a long, ultimately rewarding voyage into treasure-filled seas, he began the lesson.
To Ginny his clear, simple instructions sliced through the muddle of theory and half-explained method in her mind like shafts of brilliant light, and the long ladder ahead was suddenly clear. Most of his corrections were slight—mere adjustments to her natural way of sitting—but they seemed to draw the rest of her body into far clearer line. The major faults that she had collected during her ragged riding career he said could only be corrected through her mind and as she felt the time come.
“You sit now a little straighter, a little more in a position from which you can drive your horse forward with greater and greater power, and each day, as you progress, you will find yourself closer to the ideal,” Andras explained. “You will think to yourself, my horse is going well, he is obeying me; I can feel his faults and I will correct them, but at the same time perhaps I can sit a little straighter, bring back my shoulders and brace my back a little more, and drop my heels farther. And as you continue it will be so. But we will not rush. Better a less than classical position than a classical position which is of no practical use. An exercise that would be of great use to you is lunging. We will try it this evening, perhaps?”
“If Tamara doesn't mind,” agreed Ginny; and Andras nodded, with a silent sigh. If only there was not that strife, for he feared that when it came to a major rift between himself and Tamara Blake—as he was afraid eventually it must—Ginny would be lost to him.
Apart from teaching the two girls, Andras was also very interested in Flash.
“His stride needs to develop further,” he told Ginny. “It should be longer; he is idle with his hocks, they trail, and he is lacking in impulsion. He should do a great deal of trotting, in large circles on both reins. You must drive him forward at all times on to a long, pliant rein. Do not allow him to lean or overbend. His neck should be naturally bent, and he should drop his nose to the bit, but never fix your hands and pull his head into position. That is a very common mistake. The horse should not be held or forced on to the bit; he should come on to it quietly and naturally as he feels comfortable and able. Once he will do that you are indeed at the start of a long and rewarding road.”
When the ride left the school Tamara was watching from Icicle’s box, and she saw at once from Ginny’s white, rapt face that the lesson had been a complete success. Trying unsuccessfully to smother her jealousy, she turned back to saddle the grey.
Tamara did not refuse to let them use the school and Mosaic that evening. There seemed no point in doing so. While they worked she took Cayenne into the field and schooled him hard for half an hour. The chestnut was going to be a success. Under her tuition he had improved beyond all recognition since his arrival just before Christmas, and if she could have kept him, Tamara knew that she could turn him into a Prix St. George horse. But he would be going back to his owner soon, for he was destined to be a show horse, probably a light-weight hunter, which Tamara thought an utter waste. So few people took dressage as a serious end in itself. Gaylord was another who would depart soon to take up his career as a show jumper, and only Icicle was intended to be a dressage horse. He would be at Hampton for some time yet, as his owner was abroad. The thought came unbidden into her mind that if she accepted Andras’s idea about running a dressage centre it might have aroused interest in more people, and even brought her more horses to school and given her prestige in the horse world. But it would have been Andras who would get the prestige and enjoy the rewards of such a venture, she told herself, while she would be nowhere. She had been right to refuse. Keeping that thought firmly in her she rode Cayenne smoothly into a half pass across the outdoor school.
Ginny found being lunged far harder than it appeared. Andras had removed the stirrups from the saddle and knotted the reins, and she was instructed not to worry about her horse, but only about herself. Knees as low as she could force them, back straight, shoulders back, arms folded. She must concentrate entirely on her seat and on getting right down into the saddle. Andras sent the appaloosa round him at a steady trot, ordering her to relax. Mosaic was comfortable, but even then it was difficult to keep the position, especially during the transitions from walk to trot and back again. Andras did not ask her to keep it up for more than twenty minutes, then he called Mosaic into the centre and patted him.
“That was not bad for a first attempt,” he told her. “In Vienna the students of the Spanish Riding School are lunged every morning for three months.”
“Help,” exclaimed Ginny, sliding to the ground. “My legs ache like mad already.”
“That will wear off as you become used to it,” Andras assured her. “Your bad leg, is that worse?”
“No, I hardly notice that now,” Ginny told him happily. “It's got miles better since I came here.”
Tamara was still riding when they left the school, and Ginny started straight away on Mosaic's tack. Tamara must be shown that lending him for these lessons did not mean any inconvenience to her or to Bates.
All this time Ginny was saving desperately for the time when Vic came out of prison and wanted to claim his horse. She had no idea what he would want—she hoped that it would be very little—but it dawned on her that if he saw Flash now he would realize how much more valuable the horse had become, and the price might very well be far beyond her. She never went out to the cinema or dancing or to any other outside event which would cost any of her precious pocket money—still all that she received apart from her board. Even then some of it had to go on things like stamps and toothpaste, but Tamara, in one of her generous moments, had unearthed for her an old pair of jodhpurs and a hard hat, so at the moment clothes made no demands on her savings. From her letters it seemed that at home Doreen was having a wonderful time, with parties and dances and a thrilling new boyfriend, but Ginny did not envy her. Hampton Stables more than filled her life for the moment.
Finding her one Sunday afternoon sitting on Flash's manger in a shaft of sunlight, and fondling his nose as he searched her pockets, Andras asked her how the saving was progressing.
“I haven't got much,” replied Ginny. “Hardly anything. Tamara gave me an extra pound for that filming, and I've two pounds in the post office that Dad gave me for my birthday. Then I've saved three since I've been here. That's all.”
“Six pounds,” said Andras. “It is not a great deal. Ginny, if it comes to an emergency, will you let me lend you the money?”
“You, lend it to me?” Ginny gasped. “But, Andras, you can't. I mean, you aren't rich or anything, are you?”
“Far from it,” agreed Andras. “But I think I could help. I have a little saved, and he is too good a horse to be ruined by neglect and ignorance.”
“It's wonderful of you to offer,” said Ginny. “I'll never be able to thank you enough.”
“There is no need to thank me,” Andras told her. “I should regret losing Flash as much as you would. I look forward to the day when I shall see you both compete successfully in the Prix St. George.”
“Andras, do you think we ever could?” gasped Ginny.
“I do not think it impossible,” replied Andras, smiling at her expression. “But do not forget, if you need help to buy your horse, I will be very pleased to assist you.”
He was gone before she could start to thank him, and Ginny flung her arms round Flash's neck. How wonderful it was not to live in dread of Vic's return any longer! And how kind Andras was! And Tamara; for it had been she who first rescued Flash from the misery in which he had been kept. She wished yet again that Andras and Tamara could settle down into a firm, agreeable partnership, instead of being constantly at war with one another.
That evening, purely by coincidence, Tamara, in her abrupt way, made the same offer that Andras had made earlier. Ginny did not know what to say. She could not accept both offers, and for Flash's sake she must accept one. Andras had been first, but Tamara would be desperately hurt if his was the one she accepted.
“It's awfully kind of you,” said Ginny anxiously. “You've done so much for us already. I can't keep taking from you all the time.”
“I'm not giving you anything; it's only a loan,” retorted Tamara. “Will you take it or not?”
Ginny did not know what to say or how to explain, if explanations were possible. She seemed to be in an impossible position, and she saw the dawning suspicion on Tamara's face.
“So that's it.” Tamara sounded furious. “Andras has got in first, has he? I suppose he thinks that if he can bribe you over to his side he'll have more chance of putting some of his crazy ideas into operation. I suppose I might have known you'd already have arranged something, with the way you both moon over that horse.”
“Andras was just being nice,” cried Ginny, stung at last into rebellion. “He knew I was worried about Flash, and he wanted to help, like you do. Of course he isn't trying to bribe me.”
“Very convincing,” said Tamara sarcastically. “In any case, it doesn't matter, because it won't get him anywhere, I can assure you.”
“But, Tamara …” began Ginny.
“The subject is closed,” snapped Tamara. “You've made your own arrangements, and that's that. Now for goodness’ sake go and cook some spaghetti or something. It's your turn.”
Knowing that further argument was useless, Ginny did as she was told, and Tamara walked restlessly across the room to the window. Deep down she knew that she was not being fair to either Andras or Ginny, but she could not help it. If only she had never been forced to choose between ruining her horses on film work, or employing Andras Jokai. And if only his undeniably good ideas had been hers, and she had dared to put them into operation, then she would be able to concentrate on the kind of riding she loved.
May—a beautiful month that year—slipped past swiftly, filled with work and interest for Ginny, considerable satisfaction for Andras, and torment for Tamara, as Gaylord and Cayenne returned to their owners, and no more liveries seemed forthcoming. More and more she seemed forced to rely on Andras for her living: almost all the stable's income was from his pupils now that she no longer accepted film-riding engagements. Also he was invited to lecture to a riding club on the theory of teaching riding, and she knew that his name was becoming far better known than her own. It was with relief that she opened an envelope one brilliant day just before the end of the month and discovered a letter from a film company asking her if she could supply and drive the pair for them for a week, and offering her a good, solid payment for the work. This was the kind of film job that she would accept, and it was good to know that someone wanted her instead of Andras. She remembered with a slight stab of guilt that she had once promised to teach Ginny to drive. But there had never been time, and anyway, she told herself bitterly, Ginny seemed quite happy with Andras's lessons.
“I shan't need any help with them,” she told her staff later that day. “I'll do them myself. And I expect to find everything in order when I get back.”
She replied to the film company agreeing to supply the horses, and early the next week she departed in her box with Count and Countess inside. The appropriate vehicles were being supplied by the company. In spite of her fondness for Tamara, Ginny could not help a slight sense of relief when the box turned out of the yard. But her relief turned to horror that afternoon, when Andras suddenly sprang his plan on them during the tack-cleaning session.
“It is now or never,” he told them firmly. “This week, while she is away, we must transform the character of Hampton Stables to that of the Hampton Dressage Centre. And on Sunday, the day that she is due home, we will have the Grand Opening, which will include a special demonstration of Haute École by Miss Tamara Blake, student of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.”
For a moment they were silent with shock. Then Ginny exclaimed, “Andras, you can't! You'll break her heart. It's a horrible trick to play on her. It's stealing her business, doing just what I've always tried to make her believe you'd never do.”
“But things are impossible as they are,” Andras pointed out; “for her as well as for me. Now that she does only driving for the films, and has only one livery, she is in any case forced to depend on the money that my pupils pay, and she hates that. With Hampton run as a dressage centre—something almost entirely new and different—she will come into her own once more. She will find herself with horses to school—for at that she is far more gifted than I—and she will be invited to give demonstrations and lectures with White Lion and perhaps other highly trained horses. On that I would not dream to intrude. It is her province, mine is to teach, they are our vocations. But unless she is forced into it she will never take the first step.”
“Are you sure that it really will work?” asked Ginny. “Won't we just go on the same, only with a different name?”
“I do not think so,” replied Andras. “Our chief trouble now is only lack of publicity, and this scheme would provide us with the remedy to that. In any case, I am afraid that I have gone too far now to turn back, as I took the risk of inserting an advertisement in Horse and Hound—rather a large one—headed by a photograph which I borrowed from this room of Miss Blake on Lion.”
“Andras,” gasped Ginny. “Didn't she see it?”
Andras shook his head. “As you know, we get our paper rather late here,” he said. “It arrived this morning, and she was in too great a hurry to stop to read it.”
“There's one mistake you've made,” said Bates unexpectedly. “Miss Tamara's taken Horse and Hound with her. Asked me if I'd finished with it, and said she'd read it while she's waiting about at the studios. She'll hardly miss seeing your contribution.”
“Oh, Mr. Bates!” Ginny's voice was sharp with distress. “Andras, how could you do it? Poor Tamara ! What can we do?”
“Doesn't seem like there's anything you can do now,” replied Bates, before Andras could speak. “What's done is done, and it could be that it won't be such a bad thing. I agree with the Captain that it's time something was done; and she'd never do it herself.”
“You see, Ginny?” asked Andras. “There is no need to worry. She can, after all, always dismiss me and return to normal once more if she does object to what I have done.”
“Of course she'll object,” Ginny told him. “She'll be frightfully hurt and furious. I know she's maddening when she won't change anything, but after all Hampton does belong to her.”
“Of course it does,” agreed Andras. “But as I have said, I will leave if she asks me to. I have tried to discuss this with her but she would never listen, and so in despair I decided to go ahead, since we simply cannot go on as we are.”
“I suppose not,” admitted Ginny doubtfully. But she could not help wishing that somehow the coming experiment could be stopped. Tamara could, of course, forbid him to hold the opening, but it would be difficult to stop people coming, and turning them away when they arrived would do the stables nothing but harm. Ginny began to wish that next Sunday was over.
Tamara reached the studios at lunch-time, and was passed in through the bleak iron side gates without question by the gateman. She drove through the familiar studio roads between the white, hangar-like studios, turning left at some miniature traffic lights and edging past a tractor pulling a long trailer piled high with 'flats'—large sections of background scenery; then she was drawing up on a sand drive beside the stables, which were wooden, and of a rather more permanent nature than those at the television film studios. She was lowering the ramp, with Count shrieking excitedly at the sudden inrush of light, when the horse master arrived—a tall, lank-haired, shovel-chinned man named Dawlish, whom she had known for years.
“Brought those two demons again, have you?” he asked, looking into the box. “Still as mad as ever?”
“Madder,” replied Tamara, glowing with pleasure at his greeting. She liked to be assured that her pair were notorious.
“Suppose you'll be giving this up completely soon?” asked Dawlish. “Be too busy with your fancy new business.”
“What fancy new business?” demanded Tamara, startled.
“Your dressage centre, or whatever it is,” replied Dawlish. “I saw your advert. on Saturday in the Horse and Hound.”
“My advertisement? What advertisement?” asked Tamara, wondering what on earth the idiot was talking about, and trying to quell the sudden faint suspicion in her mind.
“Maybe I've got it wrong.” Dawlish was doubtful now that he was faced with her amazement. “I'll fetch the paper. Probably read the name backwards or something.”
He went off towards his caravan, and Tamara unloaded her two horses and put them into the two empty boxes, which were well bedded down with peat moss, as straw was too big a fire hazard here. Count rushed round to stare over his door, his ears almost touching and his dark eyes flaring with excitement, while next to him Countess explored her box and then leaned out with flattened ears to squeal at her next-door neighbour on the other side. Tamara went to meet Dawlish, who was returning with a folded copy of Horse and Hound, which he held out to her.
“There you are,” he said, with mild triumph. “That photo's you, isn't it? And surely it's your place?”
Tamara almost snatched the paper from him, and read in mounting fury and horror. How dared Andras do such a thing? It was a quarter-page advertisement, artistically done with a black border and the name in thick print above the small picture of herself riding White Lion in a piaffe. It read :
HAMPTON DRESSAGE CENTRE
It has been decided to extend the premises formally known as 'Hampton Stables', at High Hampton, Sussex, to form the first British dressage centre. This will not be a club, but will be open to anyone interested in this branch of riding and training for instruction and information. Liveries will be accepted for schooling to advanced levels, and both resident and non-resident pupils will be welcome. Demonstrations and lectures at home and away will be one of our chief functions, and dressage tests will be staged regularly in the excellent indoor school. Another speciality will be field dressage for the improvement of show jumpers, hunters, or hacks. The principal is Miss Tamara Blake, former pupil of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, assisted by Captain Andras Jokai, late of the Hungarian Cavalry. A Grand Opening and Demonstration of Haute École will be held on Sunday, June 8th, at 3 p.m. All are welcome.
“How dared he?” Tamara's eyes were blazing in her shattered face: she had gone dead white, and her nostrils quivered with fury. Dawlish was taken aback by her obvious rage.
“Is something wrong?” he asked doubtfully. “Has someone been playing a practical joke?”
“Somebody's been playing at something, I don't call it a joke,” Tamara blazed at him. “How dared he do this? And using my name as well. Ginny knew—she must have done, the scheming little cat. Anything to get her precious lessons, I suppose, and the money to buy her ridiculous horse.”
Dawlish was staring at her in amazement, unable to understand what she was talking about, but Tamara had no intention of explaining. She threw the paper back at him, turned, and stormed away towards her horses, furiously planning retaliation. She was still too angry to feel the deep hurt of betrayal and robbery that she would feel later, when she realized again what it would mean to her if Andras succeeded in what she imagined to be his plan to take control of Hampton completely, and when she had time to realize that Ginny, too, must have betrayed her. That did not come until night, when she lay in her sleeping-bag in the deep straw on the horse-box floor, listening to the rising wind whining through the slats in the wooden sides and feeling the icy desolation of her loss. For what was there that she could do but return at the end of the week to face the changes that Andras and Ginny had made as they robbed her of her hard-won security?
Ginny did not enjoy that week, in spite of her lessons with Andras and a sudden improvement in Flash, who, after weeks of work, suddenly began to stride out as he should, bringing his normally depressingly idle hocks into proper use, and going forward on to his bit like a coming champion. She and Andras had been schooling him hard, and he had been taught most of the basic school movements, including the turn on the forehand, shoulder in, half pass, and simple change of leg, involving two strides at the trot before leading off on to the other leg, but until now he had been inclined to lack impulsion, and without hard work on Ginny's part he would drop behind the bit. Therefore this should have been a moment for rejoicing, but somehow Ginny found that impossible with the coming week-end and Tamara's return looming over them.
Already there had been a lot of interest shown in their enterprise, and the telephone was busier than it had been since Ginny's arrival at Hampton. Andras took most of the calls, and his fascinating accent and meticulous English must, Ginny was certain, be attracting people as much as his obvious knowledge, and Tamara's unusual riding experience in Vienna. But in spite of Andras's charm and the full information that he was able to give them, people still asked to speak to Miss Blake, and Ginny realized that she was the greater draw. If only Tamara could be made to realize the same thing.
During the week that Tamara was away, White Lion was exercised entirely on the lunge-rein, as Tamara flatly forbade anyone else to ride him, and they hoped that he would not be over-fresh for the demonstration. If Tamara agreed to give it, that was. Ginny was becoming increasingly afraid that she might not. Her lack of communication with them was almost sinister, for it seemed to imply that she was saving her fury to be vented on them on Sunday, when she returned, or that she was planning some retaliation, possibly that of not turning up until the opening was over, though Ginny hoped not, for that was liable to hurt her more than anyone, if everything went off without her.
There were several small material alterations to be made in preparation for the opening. The chief of them was the erection of the new sign-board in place of Tamara's old, unobtrusive strip of weathered wood which announced barely, 'Hampton Stables'. The new board had been painted by Andras, with the aid of stencils and black and white paint. It was square in shape, and the name, 'Hampton Dressage Centre', was in clear, direct script. The only other wording was Tamara's name and the telephone number. It was hung from a gallow-post just to one side of the gateway, where it could not possibly be missed by anyone passing. Looking at it from the road for the first time, Ginny felt a sudden sense of panic. This thing, this plan of Andras's, seemed suddenly to be running away with them. Ahead she saw Tamara's fury and the end of her life at Hampton Stables. She could even end up at Miss Fenton's yet. Glancing at Andras, standing in the middle of the road in his breeches and dark-red sweater, his handsome head thrown back and a satisfied expression on his thin, good-looking face as he studied his handiwork, she suddenly felt a wave of resentment. Why should he put her job and Tamara's happiness in so much jeopardy, merely because he thought that he had a good idea? Then he looked round at her and smiled, and she saw the anxiety in his eyes, and realized that she was not the only one to be worried about the outcome of his plan. After all, he probably stood to lose more than anyone if things went wrong, for he had nowhere else to go.
The other jobs done during the busy week included repainting all the old school markers, acquiring a selection of leaflets from the British Horse Society, relating to dressage and Haute École, and copies of the dressage tests, and making arrangements for the photographing and reporting of the opening by a local photographic agency and several horse magazines, who readily promised to cover the event. Then, suddenly it seemed, it was Saturday evening, and they were hosing and raking the school in preparation for the morrow. Only one more night to go.
Tamara's week filming had been fairly successful, the bays had gone well, apart from a few shows of temperament which the company had learned to expect from them, but she had not enjoyed anything about it. She was thankful when it was over at last and she could concentrate on returning to Hampton and sorting things out. She had considered making them look ridiculous by arriving too late for the demonstration, but it seemed a pointless idea when she realized that Andras would merely give it in her place, and perhaps even on her stallion. She was very far from being in a good temper as she loaded her horses and drove out of the studios that warm Sunday morning in June.