Josh frowned and tipped his hat forward as Zoe bumped around the manège. ‘Not like that,’ he said.
‘How then?’ she asked.
‘Just ride properly.’
Zoe pulled on the reins. Cobber continued his shambling trot for a while and then came to an abrupt halt. Zoe fell forwards onto his neck. ‘Josh, you can’t just say ride properly. You have to tell me what I’m doing wrong.’
A cloud of frustration darkened his face. ‘I know what to do, I just don’t know how to tell you.’ He stared at the ground and kicked at the base of a post.
‘Let’s try again,’ said Zoe. ‘What should I do?’
‘Go round,’ he said without looking up. Zoe kicked her horse into a trot again. Cobber angrily swished his tail and kept yawing to the left, aiming for the stable. Zoe struggled to straighten him up, pulling on the right rein and trying to remember to rise to the trot.
Riding in the ring was a lot harder than following along behind the other horses. So much to remember. It was like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. Cobber poked his nose and opened his mouth to avoid the action of the bit. He veered towards the gate, jaw braced, and broke into a canter. Josh rushed to close it, causing Cobber to swerve at speed. Zoe lost her balance and hit the ground before she had time to be scared.
She could taste dirt. Grit found its way into her eyes making everything blurry. But it wasn’t like when she fell off as a girl. No excruciating pain in her shoulder, no gasping for air that would not enter her lungs. The reality was infinitely less frightening than the memory. Josh came over. ‘Don’t worry, I’m all right.’ She climbed unsteadily to her feet, blinking like mad until her vision cleared.
But instead of concern on Josh’s face, there was anger. ‘You’ll ruin everything.’
She eyed him warily while catching her breath. Then she brushed herself off and went to catch Cobber. What did Josh mean? It’s not like she fell off on purpose. ‘We can stop if you want.’
This seemed to infuriate him further. ‘If you fall off, Quinn will stop you riding. That’s what he did with me.’
‘It’s not the same thing,’ she said. ‘Your brother won’t stop me riding just because I came off. I’m not hurt.’
‘He will so,’ said Josh, ‘and then I won’t be allowed down to the stables any more.’
So that was it. Quinn hadn’t wanted Josh to teach her. He’d needed a lot of persuading and it wouldn’t take much to make him change his mind.
‘I’ll try my hardest not to fall off again,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
That seemed to mollify him. ‘Get on,’ he said. ‘And trot in a circle.’
Zoe tried a second time, but the same thing happened. Cobber ignored her steering, carted her to the gate and promptly fell asleep. He stood there, immoveable, swishing his tail and resting a hind leg, dozing in the sunshine.
‘No,’ called Josh, his voice rising. ‘That’s wrong. You need to leg yield.’
‘What’s leg yield?’
He looked blank. This was hopeless. Why did she ever think that Josh could teach her anything. ‘I give up.’ She dismounted. ‘If you can’t tell me what I’m doing wrong, this won’t work.’
Josh’s face became a mask of misery. He seemed to be struggling with something, searching for words that wouldn’t come. This riding business had been a mistake. It was just upsetting him. Zoe reached for the latch on the gate.
‘I can’t tell you,’ he said. ‘But I can show you.’ Like a flash he was in the saddle. The transformation in Cobber was instantaneous. Head raised, alert, one ear flicked back listening to Josh’s murmured ‘Here we go.’ The boy didn’t appear to move a muscle, but suddenly Cobber was cantering a neat circle. With arched neck, collected stride and a lively but controlled energy, he looked nothing like the bored plodder of a few minutes earlier.
‘That’s amazing,’ called Zoe. ‘How did you do that?’
Josh trotted to the gate, radiant with joy. ‘Watch,’ he said.
Zoe watched as he turned Cobber from the gate and out into the middle of the manège, but couldn’t see what he was doing differently. He looked at her expectantly. ‘What am I supposed to be seeing?’ she said.
He returned to the gate. ‘Don’t just watch my hands.’
He was right; that’s exactly what she’d been doing. With exaggerated slowness Josh tweaked the right rein. This time she paid attention to the rest of him. He seemed to sit down deeper in the saddle. His left leg moved back a fraction, pressing into Cobber’s flank behind the girth, causing him to move away from it and to the right. ‘Leg yield.’ Josh did it again. Whenever he applied his left leg Cobber moved to the right. Zoe walked around him, watching from a different angle as he switched legs. Now Cobber was moving to the left away from the pressure of Josh’s right leg.
‘Let me try,’ said Zoe. Josh dismounted. This time when Cobber napped left towards the gate she was ready. She pushed her left leg firmly against his side. At first nothing happened, and Cobber continued moving in the wrong direction. But when she dug her heel in a little more insistently he straightened up and walked to the middle of the manège. A shrill note pierced the air. What on earth? Josh stood with his dolphin training whistle to his lips, the one he always carried round his neck on a lanyard. He nodded, and she used her inside rein to steer the horse’s front half, while her outside leg steered the back half. It worked, prompting another whistle. Cobber stopped poking his nose and trotted a passable circle.
‘Again,’ yelled Josh. He wasn’t scowling at her any more.
After half an hour of practice, and with the reinforcement of Josh’s whistle, she found her rhythm, and could get Cobber to reliably trot around the perimeter of the manège and stop when asked.
‘That’s enough for one day,’ she said. ‘I’m pooped.’ Zoe leaned down to pat his neck, breathing in the delicious smell of horse, sweat and dust.
Back at the stables, she unsaddled her horse under Josh’s watchful eye. Whenever he didn’t approve of something she did, like the way she removed Cobber’s bridle, he’d tap her on the shoulder and take over. To be honest, it was more of a thump than a tap, but she was prepared to put up with it. Zoe observed him carefully as he completed the task, and then had another go at it. When she did something right, like taking off the bridle without knocking Cobber’s teeth, for instance, she received an encouraging whistle, which made her smile.
Absurd? Absolutely. But the fact was, it worked. Josh didn’t have the words or communication skills to instruct her verbally, but with this system she was improving fast. After all, why shouldn’t humans respond to the principles of operant conditioning training as well as any other animal? And Josh was a whiz at it, keenly observant and prompt to reward any correct action she performed. Her thoughts turned to the centre’s dolphin shows. Josh was always right beside Bridget, blowing his whistle and kneeling to use that clicker of his underwater where it was hard for the dolphins to hear. At first Zoe had considered his presence there as a mere indulgence on Bridget’s part, but now she knew better. Josh had a way with animals.
Zoe hosed off her horse, and they led him past the tennis courts to the turnout paddocks. Sunshine soaked into her, making her drowsy right down to her bones. Even Cobber seemed day-dreamy, hanging his head and dawdling. The rhythmic coo of a plump wonga pigeon was all that broke the afternoon silence.
That was, until a trumpeting neigh from the paddock ahead woke Cobber up. With pricked ears and arched neck, he pranced down the track like a young colt. ‘Show off,’ laughed Zoe. ‘Who are you trying to impress?’ There, through the trees, in a little paddock by herself, Aisha: racing along the rails like a mad thing, heading straight for the corner by the gate. Zoe’s face turned ashen. The mare would never stop in time.
Josh sprinted for the fence. What should she do? There was nothing. Poor Josh. Poor Aisha. The mare careened towards the fence at an impossible angle. But at the last minute she gathered herself and made a giant leap, clearing the gate easily, landing sure-footed as a cat. ‘She’s over,’ shrieked Zoe.
Aisha shook her head, slowed her stride and came to a dancing halt before them. Cobber stretched out his neck to touch the mare’s velvet muzzle with his own, atremble with admiration. Josh stroked her shiny damp neck. His face shone with relief and delight. Zoe put Cobber in the paddock and handed Josh the empty halter. ‘Here.’ Aisha lowered her chiselled head into the noseband as soon as Josh held it out, and let him fasten it around her ears. The gesture was so gracious, her expression so kind, it was impossible to believe she was the rogue Quinn and Bridget made her out to be. ‘What a pretty head,’ said Zoe.
Josh nodded. ‘She’s so beautiful, I feel all weird inside just looking at her.’
‘What do we do now?’ asked Zoe.
‘Aisha wants to go with us,’ he said. ‘She hates being alone. She wants to come for a walk.’
Zoe started to say, Won’t Quinn mind? but stopped herself. Of course he’d mind. He’d forbidden Josh to go anywhere near Aisha, forbidden him to ride at all. She thought back to the flare of anger between them in the Bundaberg hotel. Even hopping on Cobber briefly, the way Josh had, was against Quinn’s rules.
Zoe studied the boy’s eager face. ‘Okay,’ she said. What could a little walk hurt? If anybody could handle himself around Aisha, it was Josh. Although she knew Quinn was only looking out for his brother, separating Josh from horses didn’t make much sense. ‘Come on, girl.’
They walked up the track, one on either side of the mare. Aisha was glad to be out, that much was plain. She walked with a springy step, ears pricked and head high, gazing about with wide-eyed enthusiasm. Sometimes she stopped to examine something along the way: a tree stump, an irrigation pipe, an oddly-shaped rock. Josh hummed as they walked, which seemed to settle her, and she behaved herself perfectly.
When they returned the mare to her paddock, Josh was loath to leave. He picked handfuls of grass, feeding her over the fence and rubbing her ears till Zoe convinced him it was time to go. Aisha stood at the gate, a forlorn figure, watching them until they rounded the corner of the tennis courts and disappeared from her sight.
Josh took sudden hold of her arm, his expression intense. ‘Don’t tell Quinn.’
Zoe gently pulled away from him, and ran her fingers through the blueberry ash flowers on the side of the path. What to say? How clever Josh had been today, training her with the whistle like that. How happy and engaged he’d been with the horses, almost like a normal boy. How could she take that away from him? ‘You have my word, Josh,’ she said. ‘I won’t say a thing.’