“It would be so awful if I made a mess of things again, after Kensington,” she said. “People might think you hadn’t taught me properly, and you certainly have. I’d hate to let you and Phoenix down.”

  “You won’t,” Bobby assured her. “I’m certain of that. Come and help us feed, and forget tomorrow for a bit.”

  Isabel obeyed, and they joined Heath, who was putting out feeds in the barn. The yard looked very different now. The new boxes were finished, and it only remained for the workmen to clear up their debris and depart. Only the single row of broken walls, with their blackened edges and grass growing in the crevices, remained to show where sudden tragedy had struck. The girls paused for a moment in the barn doorway to look round the yard. Guy, sitting in his chair, was talking to the foreman, and the other remaining workmen were loading unused bricks into a lorry.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” exclaimed Heath. “We’ll have the horses back in here by next week, or earlier. Things will really be back to normal at last.”

  Bobby agreed that it was wonderful, but she was still not certain that it would really seem the same as before the fire. Somehow people seemed to have rather forgotten their existence. A lot could depend on Phoenix’s performance at Stonefell Park next day, as there would be a lot of well-known people there, besides many onlookers, and if Phoenix went well it could prove the real turning point back to their old position as a really good, efficient, reliable stable with a full yard, money in the bank, and a secure future. But if he went badly it could do the opposite, frighten people with young horses needing schooling into sending them somewhere else, turn away prospective pupils, and rekindle the harmful rumours that they were going downhill and were just about finished. She suddenly wished that tomorrow was over.

  It had hardly rained for over a month now, and the ground was very hard. But Phoenix had legs like iron, and at least it should not be too slippery, decided Bobby, as they returned to Cedarwood that evening. Guy would be coming to Stonefell Park the following day in the Goldmans’ station wagon, but he would not be able to walk round the cross-country course with them, and would have to be driven to some vantage point in the car. Bobby and Heath were both going, and Yoland would feed in for them at lunch time, as the event was being held on a Thursday, which was not a particularly busy day at Bracken. They had been warning their pupils for two weeks that there would be no riding that day.

  Bobby woke on the morning of the one day event to the dismal sound of rain pattering on the window of her room, and for a moment she had visions of Phoenix skating round the cross-country course, and turning somersaults into a quarry as big as the one at Badminton. Then she got out of bed and went across to the window to discover one large dark cloud hanging overhead, surrounded by the clear blue sky of early morning. Even as she watched the cloud moved away, and sunlight flooded the garden, and shone into her room, lighting unusual corners near the ceiling at this very early hour. But as she and Heath walked down to the stables later the sun vanished again, and another cloud swept rain across the valley.

  “It’s more like April than September,” complained Heath, as they hurried for the shelter of the tack room. “Let’s hope this is the last shower.”

  “We can always hope,” agreed Bobby, looking towards the horizon, banked with grey layers of cloud, from which the showers seemed to break away to drift across the blue centre of the sky, and draw their curtains of rain across Bracken. “But I think it’s going to be really changeable, as the weather forecast would tell us.”

  “Oh well, let’s hope Phoenix gets all the bright intervals,” said Heath, as they collected pitch-forks and brooms, and started the mucking out.

  Isabel arrived later in the station wagon driven by her mother. She was very nervous, but of what she might do wrong rather than of Phoenix. She, Heath, and Bobby were to travel in the box with the chestnut while Mr. Joyce drove. Mrs. Goldman went on to collect Guy.

  10

  THE sun was shining, but the roads and hedges were still wet from the last shower when they reached Stonefell Park at ten o’clock. Isabel was due to ride in the dressage test at ten-thirty. The novice event came first, and the open would be ridden later, over a slightly larger course. Stonefell Park was very impressive, and Isabel grew even more nervous as the box turned in between the imposing stone pillars of the gateway. The dressage arenas were laid out in front of the lovely Elizabethan house, and the cross-country course lay across the rolling parkland beyond them. The show jumping ring looked extremely professional and Isabel’s hands were shaking as she tried to unfasten the box door.

  “I’m sure I shall forget everything, and get lost in the cross-country,” she told Bobby, as the box ramp was lowered.

  “Don’t be silly. You’ll be perfectly all right,” Bobby assured her, as the partition was unbolted, and Phoenix greeted the in-rush of fresh air and sunlight with an eager whinny.

  He came out eagerly, and stood gazing around him as his rug was stripped off, and his saddle put on. Bobby bridled him, and Isabel put on her hat and gloves. The powerful, fit chestnut with his bold head and tremendous quarters looked ready for anything, and Isabel’s nervousness vanished once she was in the saddle. He was rather excited at first, but he did not take long to settle down, and by the time ten-thirty drew near, and the horse before Phoenix entered the test N arena he was going beautifully.

  Bobby and Heath followed the chestnut up to the arena, and joined Guy and Mrs. Goldman at the Goldmans’ car. Another shower swept across the park, people turned up their mackintosh collars, and pushed their hands into their pockets; Mrs. Goldman threw Guy’s old mackintosh round Bobby’s shoulders, as she had forgotten to bring her own, and Phoenix entered the arena.

  He was a little fresh, but Guy assured everyone that it should not matter, as the judge expected it at the start of an event such as this. Apart from a rather too strong canter, and a great willingness to go on, Phoenix went well. One turn on the forehand could have been better, and he jogged once during the free walk, but there was a loud ripple of applause as he left the arena on a loose rein, and Guy said, “That was pretty good. So far, I should think only Buccaneer was better, and he hasn’t a lot of scope across country, or he hadn’t, in the spring.”

  Isabel looked much happier when Bobby and Heath met her at the boxes.

  “Didn’t he go well?” she exclaimed, dismounting. “I never thought he’d be that good. But he did feel fresh. I thought he was going to decide to buck me off.”

  “Guy thinks you were very good,” Bobby told her.

  “Does he? How wonderful,” exclaimed Isabel, helping Bobby and Heath to unsaddle and rug up her horse. “Do we walk the course now? I’m sure it’s frightful.”

  “Yes, we’d better go round,” agreed Bobby. “Do you mind hanging on to Phoenix, Heath?”

  “No, of course not,” Heath assured them. “You go on.”

  Bobby and Isabel set off, Bobby wishing that Guy could have gone with them to give advice. But that, of course, was impossible, though he had ridden here himself the year before, and would know whether the course had been changed much when they described it to him.

  The cross-country looked very fair to Bobby, although Isabel looked rather unhappy. The highest fence was three foot six, and the first just three feet. Some of the spreads were quite large, but nothing that Phoenix would be unable to jump. There was a quarry, but it was comparatively simple, a very low fence with a reasonably gentle slope below it, and a post and rails just before the steeper slope up on the other side. The worst obstacle seemed to be the road crossing, a post and rails on to a low, stone faced bank, down on to tan bark, across the road, and out over a ditch with a cut and laid hedge beyond it. The ground was by now not very good. It was still hard, but there was a thin coating of greasy mud on top. Back at the car Guy was eager to hear about the course, and said that he did not think it had been changed much from last year.

  “It was a good course to ride then,” he told Isabel. “Phoenix should get round easily, given reasonable luck.”

  “A good course.” Bobby remembered Guy driving into the yard late in the evening a year ago, with the Open class rosette on his windscreen, delighted at his favourite horse’s performance after the split pastern that Sergeant had suffered the season before. If only Phoenix could repeat that success in the novice. His dressage marks should be out by now, she realised. She said as much to Isabel, and they hurried over to the board to join the small crowd of anxiously waiting competitors. Phoenix’s marks were up, and they were delighted to find that he was standing second to Buccaneer with 42 penalty marks. A grey was at present in the arena, and did not appear to be going very well, her rider looked hot and flustered, and the mare was peeping at the markers, and refusing to go straight.

  When the novice tests ended Isabel had dropped to fourth place, and Buccaneer was second to a bay gelding ridden by a well-known combined training expert, Rowland Green. His horse was called Emerald Isle.

  There was a lunch break of three-quarters of an hour, and the novice section of the cross-country would start at one-thirty. Isabel ate little lunch, and Bobby did not do much better. She knew that Guy was feeling much the same, although he was talking cheerfully enough to Mrs. Goldman. Heath, as usual, seemed calm enough, but it was always difficult to know what the red-haired girl was thinking, and Bobby suspected that she was just as tense as the rest of them.

  At last it was time to get Phoenix ready again. It was dry at the moment, although there were dark clouds on the horizon, looming slowly over the old oak trees which dotted the park. Phoenix was excited again, and did not want to stand while his jumping studs were screwed in, his bandages put on, his rugs removed, and his saddle put in place. But at length he was ready, and Isabel collected her hat and stick, and mounted. She had removed her black jacket, and replaced it with a yellow sweater, which made her skin look more sallow than usual, but showed off her long black hair to perfection. She and Phoenix looked very professional as she rode him away towards the start, the chestnut dancing a little, tail carried high, and neck arched, with the green and yellow circingle strapped over his jumping saddle, and the white nylon girth, plaited leather reins, and bridle with the drop noseband, his rider quiet and competent with her short stirrups, sitting down well at the walk in her deep-seated saddle, the reins long, her legs slim in black boots and fawn breeches, the black and white number, ninety-three, standing out against the yellow of her jersey, and her plaits hanging straight beneath her black cap.

  “Let’s hope the rain holds off until she’s started, anyway,” said Heath, glancing at the lowering sky.

  Mrs. Goldman had got permission to park the station wagon at a good vantage point, from which most of the cross-country course was visible, and the girls joined them there. Phoenix was due to start at two-fifteen, and there were several horses still to go before him. The going was obviously very slippery. Two horses skidded into fence eight, the stile into the copse, and refused, and Buccaneer fell at the last fence but one, rails with a ditch on the landing side, but he was remounted, and finished the course.

  “She’ll be the next to start,” exclaimed Bobby, turning to Guy. “Number ninety-two’s just gone.”

  “Good. I don’t think it’ll rain for another few minutes,” replied Guy, glancing from the slowly drifting dark clouds to Phoenix, a brilliant, moving shape down by the start.

  “They must do well,” said Bobby, in a low voice, as Isabel told Phoenix to trot, and began to circle behind the start.

  “Don’t worry, they will,” Guy assured her, with more confidence than he actually felt.

  Bobby looked at him, surprised that he could sound so calm when so much of his future could depend on how Phoenix went. And it would be her future as well, Bobby realised, for some day she knew she was going to marry Guy. Watching her anxious, eager face as they waited for the whistle that would start Isabel and Phoenix on their way, Guy noticed, not for the first time, how much Bobby had grown up during that long, difficult summer. He had realised it first when he came home from hospital, something in her eyes and her manner, the way she spoke, and the way she behaved with the children. But she was still very young, not yet nineteen, and for a while Guy was content to wait. There would be plenty of time to ask her to marry him when she was a little older, and when things at Bracken were more settled. Down at the start, the whistle blew, and Isabel turned Phoenix between the posts, starting at a steady hand gallop on the way to the first fence.

  “Number ninety-three, Miss Isabel Goldman riding Mrs. Goldman’s Phoenix, has started the cross-country phase,” announced the loudspeakers, as Isabel began to steady her horse for the first plain brush fence. Phoenix jumped easily, ears pricked, wanting to gallop on after landing, but there was a sharp left-handed turn followed by the second fence, a post and rails, and Isabel kept him going steadily until this was behind them. Then she let him gallop on towards fence three, the oak tree log, which Phoenix cleared with a scornful flick of his tail, as though it was hardly worth bothering about. Isabel was riding well, keeping Phoenix going in to his bridle at a good, steady hand gallop, as they approached fence four, the Trakehner. Phoenix took off too soon, but Isabel managed to catch up with him, and leave his quarters free, and with a slight scramble they made it, and were galloping on towards the road crossing.

  “Number ninety-three, Miss Goldman on Phoenix, is approaching fence five,” said the loudspeakers.

  “Oh, be careful,” breathed Mrs. Goldman, as her daughter steadied Phoenix for the jump into the lane. Bobby held her breath, as Isabel slowed her horse almost to a trot. Phoenix took the double jump down easily, landing well out from the bank, and kicking up the wet tan as he crossed the road, and jumped out over the ditch and cut and laid into a rather rough field crossed by tractor ruts. Phoenix crossed the ridges like a cat, to jump out over a five-barred gate, and turn right, towards the bullfinch which led back on to the road. Mrs. Goldman handed Bobby the binoculars and shaded her eyes with her hand as the sun broke momentarily through the cloud. Phoenix took the bullfinch fast, too fast, Bobby thought, but he was through, and across the road, entering the next field through a gap in the hedge, and going on again towards the stile into the copse that had caused so much trouble. It was on a slight downward slope, and after jumping it Phoenix and Isabel would be out of sight to the watchers on the hill until they came to fence eleven, the open water. The chestnut jumped in slowly, and they all waited breathlessly, counting the seconds until she should reappear, having jumped the wall out of the copse, and a ditch and brush. “Any moment now,” said Guy, who was timing her, and as he spoke Phoenix appeared, galloping strongly, with Isabel standing in her stirrups, her black plaits streaming behind her.

  “He can’t have made any bad mistakes then,” said Heath, as Phoenix came fast towards the open water, which he cleared with a great, arching leap, as though jumping a five-barred gate as well. There was a ripple of movement among the onlookers around the jump, which meant applause, though the Bracken people were too far away to hear it, and Phoenix was galloping on towards the quarry, which was partly hidden by a small pine enclosure. They saw him jump in, and then he was out of sight until he came out on the other side, and went on downhill towards the pond jump, a small post and rails into a shallow pool, at which Phoenix, who had not seen one before, hesitated. Isabel used her legs hard, and he jumped in, crossing the pond with much knee action and tremendous splashing, to plunge out on to dry land with such obvious relief that the group of onlookers laughed and clapped as he went on towards the drop fence.

  “Miss Goldman riding Phoenix, number ninety-three, is approaching fence fifteen, going very strongly,” said the loudspeakers.

  Phoenix took the drop fence fast, landing so far out that he hardly noticed the drop, and Isabel let him gallop on towards the last fence but one, the rails and ditch at which Buccaneer had fallen.

  “Steady girl,” exclaimed Guy, who now had the glasses. “She’s going much too fast,” he told Bobby.

  Phoenix was not looking at the rails, his ears were back, his head down, and he was galloping hard. Isabel suddenly appeared to notice how close she was, and took a frantic pull at her horse’s mouth. Phoenix saw the fence, and at the last moment tried to steady himself. Then the fence was on top of them, and he jumped, awkwardly, hitting the top rail hard with his forelegs, and somehow bucking over with his hind legs. He landed on his knees with his hind legs in the ditch, and Isabel clinging desperately to the mane, and leaning right forward with the reins loose, giving her horse as much freedom as she could while remaining on his back. With a scramble and a snort Phoenix regained his feet, Isabel pushed herself back into the saddle, and gathered up the reins. The chestnut broke into a canter again, and the loudspeakers said, “Number ninety-three, Phoenix, pecked at fence sixteen, but is now going on.”

  Phoenix cleared the last fence, a ditch and brush, without trouble, and Isabel pushed him on for the run in. They passed the finishing line fast, and then Isabel brought her horse back to a walk, and flung herself forward to hug him. Everyone piled into the station wagon, and Mrs. Goldman drove back to the boxes as fast as she dared over the rough ground. Isabel had just dismounted, and was loosening the girths when they arrived, and everyone scrambled out to congratulate her, and pat Phoenix, who was dark with sweat, but not blowing unduly hard, and whose attention was chiefly on what Isabel was finding for him in her breeches pocket. The sun finally gave up its struggle with the clouds, and the rain came sweeping down across the park.

  “Quick, get him into the box,” cried Bobby, pulling Guy’s large and ancient mackintosh over her head, and rushing to open the partition.

  Phoenix’s rugs were thrown over him, and he was bundled inside, where his bridle was exchanged for a head collar. Outside the rain drove in drifts across the park land, and in the distance they could see a black horse galloping towards the open water, head down, his rider’s shoulders hunched against the rain. Guy was still sitting in the station wagon, as he could not climb into the high passenger compartment of the box, and the others stood in the doorway, watching the rain. Bobby put her hands into the deep pockets of her mackintosh, wondering how Phoenix would behave in the jumping, and her fingers touched paper. Bobby pulled the crumpled envelope out, and looked at it without much interest. Then the address caught her eye. The Greenlands Insurance Company Ltd. Suddenly excited, Bobby tore open the flap. Inside was a short note, and a cheque to cover the Insurance premium on Bracken Hills Riding School. For a moment Bobby stared at it unbelievingly. Then she flung herself out of the box, and handed it wordlessly to Guy, while everyone else looked on in startled silence.

 

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