Never before had Jacky known time drag so slowly as it did between the Peterbourne Show in June and the Horse of the Year Show in October.
For the first week after Peterbourne Jacky couldn’t believe that it was true. She would wake up in the morning and lie for a second warm and cosy, then suddenly remember and shiver with excitement. It was really true, she was going to jump Flicka at Wembley in the Leading Junior Show Jumper of the Year Championship!
Roderick wrote away for the entry forms and received a complicated booklet full of rules and regulations and forms to fill in if you wanted stabling overnight.
“Gosh,” exclaimed Jacky. “I could never sort it out myself.”
“Not to worry. You have your manager here,” said Roderick in a pompous voice. “I think I might take Midas too, just for a laugh. If I can talk Jack Tosh into having a bash at the Working Hunter with me we could take his old man’s float. That would save us a lot of bother. We shall all have a fantastic week at Wembley. Erica, you shall come as groom.” Erica grinned.
“Don’t you wish you were riding?” Jacky asked her.
“No point,” said Erica. “They wouldn’t look at Firebird because of her leg. And I’d much rather wait now and get a really good young horse to school for dressage competitions. Anyway, I wouldn’t dream of selling Firebird.”
Jacky took Flicka to four other shows throughout the summer and jumped her in the 14.2 classes. They were first twice, second once and unplaced once, on a day of wind and rain that terrified Flicka.
Jacky was careful not to overjump her pony in case she sickened her. She spent more time working at her dressage with Erica or hacking Flicka along the roads, to make sure that she was really fit, than she did jumping. But one evening, Roderick, Jack Tosh and Jacky took their horses by float to a riding school that boasted a big indoor school. Here they jumped under the strange conditions of artificial light. At first Flicka spooked and shied but soon she settled down. The other two didn’t take any notice of the lights at all.
Mr and Mrs Munro were thrilled at their daughter’s success but it didn’t stop Mr Munro asking about Jacky’s homework.
“But Daddy, I can’t do homework in the summer holidays,” Jacky cried.
“Mr Knowles’s daughter does a little arithmetic and a little English right through the holidays.”
“Oh, but look at her! You wouldn’t like me to become like that?”
Mr Munro laughed at his daughter’s disgust.
Jacky and her mother went into Tarent and bought new jodhpurs and a new riding jacket.
“They nearly drown me,” Jacky said as she showed them to Erica that evening. “Mummy wouldn’t buy them any smaller. She said I’d grow into them!”
“So you will,” giggled Erica. “In about ten years’ time. I saw Celia today and she’s got new stretch ones. She still says she’s going to Wembley but I’m sure she hasn’t qualified Calypso. They took him to Burghley for the Championship as a last hope. But they weren’t placed. I looked up the results in Horse and Hound.”
“Now that she can’t be nasty about Flicka, she just ignores me. I hope she doesn’t go. It would spoil everything to have her fat face smirking there,” said Jacky with feeling.
That evening, Mr Grunter came to see Mr Munro and offered to buy Flicka for eight hundred pounds.
“Nothing to do with me,” said Mr Munro, his face serious but his eyes twinkling. “You’ll need to ask Jacky. Flicka belongs to her.”
“If you were to offer three thousand I wouldn’t sell her,” Jacky muttered furiously.
And Mr Munro showed Mr Grunter out.
“So that’s what they’re trying to do now,” said Roderick when Jacky told him. “Going to buy a pony that someone else has qualified.”
“We’ll need to set a guard over Flicka,” said Erica. “Those Grunters would stop at nothing.”
“You can laugh,” Jacky said to Roderick, “but you don’t know them the way we do.”
Then at last it was October. The Horse of the Year Show started on Tuesday the 2nd. They were taking the horses up in Jack Tosh’s float on Thursday morning and staying until Saturday night.
“Just in case we’re needed for the Grand Parade,” joked Roderick.
Now that the show was so close, Jacky never thought of anything else from the minute she opened her eyes in the morning until she shut them at night. At school she made little lists and passed them to Erica under the desk. “Jumping studs; Bandages; Rugs,” wrote Jacky.
“Put your pencil down,” screamed Miss Hope. “I am really annoyed with you, Jacqueline Munro.”
Jacky sighed and thought for the hundredth time how awful it would be if she took the wrong course and ruined Flicka’s chances.
On Wednesday night both Jack Tosh and Jacky stayed at the Dawsons’. Everything was ready for the morning. They were leaving at five o’clock and hoped to reach London by eight; the preliminary rounds for the Leading Junior Show Jumper of the Year were at eleven-thirty in the outdoor arena.
“I shan’t sleep a wink,” Jacky said as she got into bed.
“Neither shall l,” agreed Erica, but after they had talked for about an hour Erica was asleep.
Jacky tossed and turned, thinking about tomorrow. It was her chance to prove that Flicka really was one of the top show jumping ponies. By this time tomorrow night it would be all over. Either her dreams would all have come true or they would be in ruins.
The bright moonlight streamed in through the window and Jacky remembered the night when Flicka had jumped out of the garage patch and bolted back to the riding school.
Suddenly Jacky stopped trying to sleep. It was no good, she was too excited. She would go and see Flicka, just for a few minutes. Very quietly she got out of bed, slipped on her shoes and her anorak and crept downstairs. Quietly she the back door behind herself and stood gazing around at the moon-silvered silence of the night.
She walked round to the yard. “Flicka,” she whispered, “Flicka.” And her pony looked out over the half-door of her box, surprised to see Jacky at this time of night.
“Dear pony,” Jacky murmured, running her hand down her pony’s neck and gently pulling her ears. “Do your best tomorrow. Jump well.”
Suddenly Jacky was sure that there was someone watching her. She felt the skin creep on her scalp and stood terrified, afraid to turn round. Flicka too pricked her ears sharply forward, watching something.
Jacky dug her nails into her palm. “Who’s there?” she shouted in a trembling voice. Then, forcing herself to look round, she screamed at the top of her voice, frightening the stabled horses, waking Roderick and sending him crashing downstairs to discover what was wrong. For as Jacky had looked round, a dark shape had run swiftly from the shadow of the tack room into the shelter of the trees.
“Some kid or other,” Roderick had said after he had given Jacky a lecture about going out alone in the middle of the night.
But Jacky didn’t think it had been just any kid. Jacky thought it had been Celia Grunter.