The Auditions (17 page)

It was working. Day by day, Belladonna was relinquishing her secrets to Georgie, and the girl was listening all the time, trying to figure out what made her tick.

Georgie would sometimes skip lunch in the cafeteria, taking a sandwich and a cereal bar from the boarding house and spend the hour with Belladonna grooming her instead. This was partly to avoid James Kirkwood, who she hadn’t spoken to since Kennedy had put an end to their conversation at the polo, but mostly so she could spend as much time as possible with the bay mare.

One afternoon, when their riding class had finished, Georgie stayed behind with Alice to pull the horses’ manes, combing and yanking out the hairs by the roots to shorten the mane and ready it for plaiting. You would have thought this would have hurt the horses, but Belladonna actually liked having her mane pulled and almost went to sleep while Georgie worked her way up the neck.

“I’m thinking of changing her name,” Georgie admitted to Alice. “Belladonna is a bit of a mouthful.”

“How about just shortening it to Bella?” Alice suggested.

“I don’t know.” Georgie pulled a face. “It’s a bit
Twilight
, isn’t it?”

Alice shrugged. “Then how about Belle? You know, like a Southern Belle? I don’t think you should change it completely. It’s bad luck to change a horse’s name.” She said this last part with such conviction that it was clear she had been through a bad experience in the past.

“OK then,” Georgie said, “Belle it is.”

“It means beautiful in French, doesn’t it?” Alice said. “And she’s a very beautiful mare.”

“She is, isn’t she?” Georgie agreed. As she said this, she felt her heart swelling with pride. Her beautiful mare. She was finally beginning to feel like she and Belle were developing that special bond with each other.

That weekend, there was polo on the main field on Saturday, a round robin tournament between various teams from Luhmuhlen, Lexington and Burghley. This was not a grand event so there were no marquees and champagne this time. “We’re going to go and watch anyway, though,” Alice told Georgie. “The trials for the girls’ teams begin after half-term and I might pick up some playing tips.”

Alice looked in the bedroom mirror and pushed astraw Stetson down on top of her jet-black hair. “I’m meeting Emily and Daisy at the field, do you want to come with me?”

“OK,” Georgie said. If Burghley House were playing in the polo then the chances were that James Kirkwood would be playing. Georgie hadn’t spoken to him since the match that first weekend. Maybe James Kirkwood didn’t want to have anything to do with a girl who couldn’t afford to bring her own horse to the academy like Kennedy had said. She had seen James around the school since then, but he was always with the same gang of boys from Burghley. Not that she wanted to talk to him anyway. The last thing she wanted was for James Kirkwood to think she was turning up just to see him.

“He’s not here!”
Georgie’s eyes scanned the field as the eight players came out for the next chukka. James wasn’t amongst them and she couldn’t see him over at the rails with the polo ponies either.

“Who’s not here?” Alice said. Then she clicked.

“Ohmygod! You’re not still crushing on James Kirkwood.”

“No!” Georgie said defensively. “I mean, maybe just a little…”

Alice raised an eyebrow at her.

“All right!” Georgie admitted. “I still think he’s totally hot.”

“He is totally hot,” Alice agreed. “And he is also a Kirkwood. And in the year above us. And he’s Kennedy’s brother …”

“And,” Emily added, “he’s coming over this way!”

“Quick!” Georgie said. “Act like we haven’t been talking about him!”

Alice looked bewildered. “How do we do that?”

“Hey, Georgie.” James gave her that lopsided killer grin. He was obviously playing in the round robin because he was wearing his white polo breeches and house colours.

“Oh, hey, James,” Georgie said, “I didn’t notice you here. I was so busy watching the game.”

“Oh, you’re busy,” James said. “That’s a shame.”

“No!” Georgie said. “I’m not really. Why?”

“I was just wondering,” James said, “if you wanted to be my stick chick, you know, come and pass me my mallets and hold my horses while I play.”

Georgie’s face fell. “I get it,” she said, “I’m too poor to bring my own horse to school cos I’m not a trust fund kid like you, so that means I’m only good enough to be your groom.”

“What?” James’s easy-going smile disappeared. “I didn’t mean that. I just wondered if you wanted to …”

“Well, I don’t,” Georgie snapped. “I’m at this school to ride, not to brush and saddle up other people’s horses.”

James raised his hands up to calm her down. “Fine, I get it. Forget I asked, OK?”

He turned round and strode off back towards the polo ponies. Georgie watched him leave, still fuming at the nerve of him.

“What are you doing?” Alice rounded on her. “What’s wrong with you? I thought you liked him.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be his ‘stick chick’,”

Georgie said, doing sarcastic air quotes with her fingers.

“Georgie!” Alice shook her head in disbelief. “Polo boys always get their girlfriends to be their stick chick. It’s supposed to be romantic.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“James Kirkwood just asked you out and you rejected him and called him a trust fund kid!”

Georgie groaned. She couldn’t believe she’d blown it so badly. “Should I go over and apologise and tell him I’ll groom for him?”

“Too late,” Alice said. “Somebody has beaten you to it.”

James was standing next to a grey horse, strapping on his knee pads, and there was a girl holding the pony for him. As James took the reins from her, Arden Mortimer looked ridiculously pleased with herself.

“You’ve driven him into the arms of Arden,” Alice said melodramatically.

“Very funny, Alice,” Georgie said darkly.

“He probably just chose her because he reallyneeded someone to be his stick chick for him,” Emily offered kindly.

“Really?” Georgie said. “That’s not what Alice said when he asked me though, is it?”

So far Georgie’s two encounters with James on the polo field had both been disasters. But at least they made for funny emails to send to Lily.

I don’t know how I feel about him, Georgie wrote to Lily that evening. He’s totally part of a different clique to me and his snotty sister is so awful, but he is sooooo cute and seems really nice! It is totally confusing!

I cannot believe how similar our love lives are, Lily wrote back. Yesterday in biology class we were dissecting frogs and Craig Borell threw his frog’s legs at me. At the time I thought “eww yuck frog!” but now I see that, really, I should have thrown them back as a sign of my mutual devotion. If only I’d done that–we could be engaged by now!

Georgie took the point. Just because James had asked her to brush his pony was no sign that they were destined to be together. She needed to stop obsessingabout him. Which wouldn’t be difficult since she was certain he wouldn’t want anything more to do with her.

Her other emails home to Lucinda and her father didn’t mention the polo, or James obviously. She wrote to her dad about the looming mid-terms, assuring him that she was studying hard. Her email to Lucinda was less confident.

Tomorrow is the last cross-country class before the exams, she wrote. We’ve been practising all the jumps on the course, but you know what Tara is like, she always manages to pull something at the last minute …

Georgie was right. Tara Kelly was about to change the game.

“As you all know,” Tara addressed the eventing class, “the mid-term exam is next Monday. This year I’m setting an exam that will incorporate the jumps that we’ve been practising and will also test your boldness and speed across country.”

Tara looked at the expectant faces in front of her. “We’re riding a point-to-point,” she told them.

Most of the riders looked back blankly. It was clear that none of them, with perhaps the exception of her British pupils, Georgie, Daisy and Cameron, had even heard the term before.

“A point-to-point is a steeplechase race over open countryside,” Tara continued. “You won’t be riding one at a time, taking your turn like a regular cross-country. You’ll all race as a pack. There will be a three-kilometre race over open ground at the start, with hedges and low gates to hurdle, and then in the final quarter you will tackle three cross-country fences. They will be a real test, not only of your ability but also your endurance levels. By the time you reach them, you’ll be tired and the fences will be a tough challenge for both horse and rider.”

Tara didn’t tell them which cross-country fences they would be jumping, but Georgie figured that the water jump and the coffin must be on the list.

“The first rider to cross the finish line will take out the number one place in the class ranking,” Tara told them. “And the last rider will face elimination.”“Do you think Tara is really going to get rid of one of us?” Emily asked as they sat in the dining hall after class that evening.

“She doesn’t make jokes, remember?” Georgie pointed out. “The last one across the line will be first to leave the class.”

No one felt much like eating. The other girls had already risen from the table and Georgie was following after them when Kennedy accidentally-on-purpose got in her way.

“Oh hey, Georgie,” Kennedy said. “I was just saying to Arden and Tori that it’s going to feel so strange in class after next week once you’re gone. You know, when you come last in the point-to-point and get eliminated.”

Georgie tried to ignore Kennedy and step around her, but when the showjumperettes formed a barricade and blocked her path Georgie finally lost it.

“You know, Kennedy, ever since I got here, all I’ve heard from you is how you came top of your auditions and how much better you are than me,” Georgie said. “Isn’t it about time you stopped talking about it and actually proved it?”

Georgie’s voice was so loud it had silenced the dining hall. Everyone was staring at them. Kennedy’s face dropped.

“Let’s make a bet,” Georgie said. “If I beat you in the class ranking, then you have to muck out Belle’s stall for the rest of the term.”

Standing beside Kennedy, Arden and Tori giggled nervously. The whole room waited for Kennedy to speak. James, who was seated at a table on the far side of the room, was watching and listening with an amused expression. Conrad Miller, meanwhile, looked totally astonished.

Kennedy regained her composure and gave Georgie a smug look. “You want to bet on it? Well bring it on, Little Miss Britain’s Got No Talent,” she said. “Why not? I just hope you shovel dung better than you ride. Parker, you’re going down. And when you do the whole school is going to be watching.”

Georgie slammed her dinner tray into the stack and turned on her heels. “I’m not planning on losing, Kennedy, so you better get your pitchfork ready.”

As she stormed out of the dining room, Georgiecould sense that Conrad Miller was right behind her but she didn’t care. She was standing up to the Blainford cliques and fighting back. Defiantly she swung the door of the dining hall open and kept walking straight ahead on to the grass.

“Parker!” She heard Conrad Miller shouting after her. “You’re on the quad again. You’ve got fatigues.”

O
nce the rest of the school heard about the showdown in the dining hall the eventing class exam the following Monday became a must-see event. Any students with a spare period that afternoon gathered on the novice cross-country course to watch the competition.

The course had been pegged out with red flags and the first two and a half kilometres of the steeplechase phase ran around the perimeter of the school along a broad flat track mown through the fields of long grass. Jumps were natural obstacles, hedges and stone walls that divided the fields, plus a few extra ones that had been specially erected. After the horses and riders had ridden this phase they looped back towards the crosscountry course to jump the final three fences. As

Georgie had expected, these included the trakehner over the ditch, the water complex, and then finally the coffin.

It was a glorious sunny day and the spectators were finding shade and staking out vantage points at strategic trouble spots where the action looked set to happen. Most of them were gathering around the coffin, clearly convinced that this would be where the most thrills and spills might happen as the riders barrelled home for the finish line.

The coffin was still Georgie’s bogey fence. She had yet to successfully get Belle over it. She remembered that Lucinda had once told her it was easier to jump bogey fences when you were out competing as your blood was up and adrenalin was pumping. She hoped her trainer was right. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she rode Belladonna out to join the rest of her classmates at the start line.

The twelve eventing riders were all seasoned crosscountry competitors, but none of them had ridden an event quite like this one before.

“I feel like I’m entered in the Grand National!” Camsaid as he walked Paddy around, trying to keep the coloured cob calm.

The riders all wore their Blainford uniforms with numbered bibs on their chests so that Kenny, who was helping out today, could keep track of the order in which the riders crossed the finish line. Georgie gave Kenny a wave and Blainford’s driver came over to say hello.

“Now this here is more like it!” Kenny said brightly. “This is a real horse race.”

Kenny looked around to see if anyone was nearby and then he leaned over and whispered to Georgie, “Don’t tell Miss Kelly, but I’m running a book on it. There’s been some big bets laid.”

“So who are they betting on?” Georgie wanted to know. “Who is the favourite?”

Kenny spat out his tobacco and looked around the field where the riders and their mounts were circling, preparing for the race.

“That chestnut over there,” he pointed across the field, “he’s got the most money riding on him.”

Georgie looked over where Kenny was pointing. The chestnut was Versace.

This was not the Grand National. There were no starting gates here today for the horses to enter, no metal cage. Instead, there was a rope. It was stretched across the start line and two senior boys from Luhmuhlen House held either end.