Well Groomed (76 page)

WHEN THE LIME TREE Farm lorry – newly refitted and emblazoned with Tash’s sponsor’s name on the side – rolled into Badminton park on Tuesday afternoon, there ensued a long security checking process which was only common at the largest of international events. At most competitions, practically everyone knew everyone else and the riders were used to spectators roaming around the horse-box area or stopping to chat as they sat eating their lunch in the grub tent. At Badminton, it was a very different matter and each area was strictly guarded, regulated and restricted for the five days of the competition.

They were all issued with coloured wrist bands, which would be checked by the security guards before they were allowed near the horse yard or caravan park. They were then ordered to unload the horses who were briefly inspected for identification against their passports, and then they unpacked the tack crates from the box and settled in the vast, grand stable yard that was normally used to house the horses for the Duke of Beaufort’s Hunt.

Even set against a black, rain-heavy sky, its beauty stopped Tash in her tracks – low-built, graceful, a biscuit-umber in colour and curling around her like warm arms. The creamy old stalls seemed to buzz with excitement and anticipation. Grooms raced around settling in their charges, riders hailed one another eagerly, grumbling about the weather and their draw in the running order.

The Lime Tree Farm horses were all stabled according to that running order. Snob, who arrived later that morning with Hugo, was low in the draw and consequently quite close to Stefan’s horse, Happy Monday, also a late starter. But poor Ted had to look after both Vic and Betty who were far apart in numbers and designated stables at the opposite side of the yard, meaning that he had to dash across it in laps to care for his charges.

‘Bloody good for him too,’ Gus pointed out. ‘He’s been getting obscenely fat lately – Franny’s cooking is delicious.’

‘Which is more than can be said for Zoe’s,’ laughed Hugo. ‘I always wondered why you lot were so thin.’

‘Zoe’s a great cook – if wacky,’ Gus said grumpily. ‘The reason we’re all thin is because we can’t afford to buy food.’

Soaking in the atmosphere of the place, Tash wandered around in a state of fizzing excitement and nerves, saying hello to old friends and other fellow competitors.

Later, when she took Hunk out for a short hack in the park to acclimatise him – carefully sticking to the areas designated for exercising horses – she stared at the broad, grand old house and shuddered.

‘I’m here,’ she muttered in amazement, the realisation of just how far she’d come suddenly dawning on her. ‘We’re here. Bloody hell!’

With all the awfulness of the past few weeks she’d almost forgotten what an achievement it was. This was the biggest spectacle of the eventing calendar – the toughest, most gruelling event of the year. This ebullient, heart-kicking feeling of excitement was the reason that she had sweated and toiled and dragged herself up at dawn for months. She’d made it through the park gates and into the competition programmes. Whether she won or lost was immaterial, and trying to beat Hugo was a ridiculous whim. She didn’t care who won, she simply wanted to have a crack and revel in the experience of making it here at all.

Letting out a great whoop of delirious glee, she set Hunk into his easy, lolloping canter – almost ploughing down Brian Sedgewick, the championship favourite, who was out walking his Doberman.

The next morning they attended the competitors’ briefing in the striped marquee riders’ tent, where they were allocated their large-scale maps of the courses for Saturday’s endurance day, taken through the administrative procedures of the event, introduced to the main officials presiding, and told where to eat, drink and socialise for the four days of the competition.

Too excited to concentrate, Tash passed it in a daze as she gazed at the great and the good in the sport sitting alongside first-timers like herself. Gus, who had been there many times before and was shattered from the five a.m. start, fell asleep with his mouth open. Hugo, alongside him, stared fixedly ahead however hard Tash tried to catch his eye. He was blowing hugely hot and cold at the moment – like a faulty hand-dryer in a ladies’ loo, Tash decided with some satisfaction at her simile. She was too swept away by the whole thing to allow him to tie cat’s cradles with her heart strings. But still she found her eyes sliding towards his throughout the briefing, pulled there again and again like a ventriloquist’s dummy telling witty jokes to its straight man.

The gossip was all of Bodybuilder’s sad demise and Tash’s amazing decision to give a ride to Hugo.

‘Bloody generous of you, handing him the reins like this,’ said Brian Sedgewick as they headed from the tent to the endurance box for the first official inspection of the course. From there they were to be taken around the beginning on the roads and tracks sections – known as Phase A – in four-wheel drives. Some of those who had raced ahead were already setting out in army Land-Rovers, whooping madly. It was like the first day at camp.

‘I think you’re mad, Tash,’ Lucy Field told her, pushing her blonde ponytail into the back of her turquoise fleece jacket and ramming a baseball cap on her head to shield her eyes. ‘Hugo’s bound to beat you.’

‘Don’t be so sure,’ Brian told her, hooking an arm around Tash. ‘I think it’s bloody wise to stick to one horse on your first try here – madness to go round twice. It’s so bloody exhausting. And you’ve chosen the safer mount.’

‘Thank you.’ Tash smiled gratefully into his battered, comedian’s face.

She was rather sickened halfway around the course to hear him having a ten-pound bet with the Scottish eventer, Glen Bain, that Hugo would win the championships.

‘He’s been dying to get his hands on that horse for years . . .’

The course inspection did nothing to cheer her up.

First they were driven around both roads and tracks sections, breaking in between to spill out of their vehicles and inspect the steeplechase course – much like any used for a National Hunt race and there to test the horse’s stamina. Then it was back to the endurance box to walk around the ultimate test – Snob’s old favourite – the cross-country course.

This first inspection – the only officiated one – was perhaps the most communal and least serious of the competitors’ several course-walks. It was the first time that the riders had a chance to see any new fences close up, although most of the course was familiar as it stayed largely the same year in and out, to be run in alternate directions year by year. As they walked the course on this occasion, the riders and owners joked and gossiped between fences, exchanging tips and advice, horror stories and anecdotes, only pausing to discuss each fence fairly seriously when they came to it. All the riders would walk the course again – some several times – to measure out paces, time checks and alternative routes in and out of each fence. The later course-walkings would be far more studied, serious affairs, conducted with measuring wheels, chewed nails and pencils and pads. This time it was more about communal spirit and gasping at new fences than technicalities.

Tash was horrified by pretty much every single obstacle and felt nothing but relief that she was not facing the prospect of riding Snob around them. Whereas other events presented challenging fences at intervals, stopping the gaps between them by ‘stocking fillers’ – easier, galloping fences that allowed one to gain confidence and maintain rhythm – this course was challenge after challenge without let up. Every single obstacle presented its own series of problems, requiring thought, accuracy and skill. With Snob towing her around here, it would be like driving the wrong way up the M4. At least with the safer, more reliable Hunk she could plan her lines without worrying what would happen if he trundled up to the fence with his head between his knees, looking at the ground instead of the huge jumping effort ahead. Hunk hadn’t the same ability, but he was as accurate as laser surgery and tirelessly responsive.

The course was scattered with fences that had been around for years and still instilled fear into the greatest of riders – the vast, gaping angle of the Vicarage Vee, the yawning ditch beneath the Cross Questions, the twisting undulations of the Quarry, and, of course, the steep drop into the huge Lake which, if one rode it too boldly, could set a horse swimming in seconds.

Of the new fences one or two stood out as titanically difficult and had fellow competitors scratching their heads as they pondered sharp turns, tight arrowheads and, the latest craze amongst course designers, angled triple bounces which required horse and rider to head for a fence in a perfectly judged stride and line in order to make it over three jumps in immediate succession. These three fences, which looked like Chinese hieroglyphics in high relief when you first saw them, would be angled so acutely that the line had to be precise or the horse would either grind to a halt or drop a shoulder and run out at one of the elements.

The fence that worried Tash most was a new one called the Three Scythes and involved a lethal and complex combination of fat, solid log ‘arms’ and curved silver-painted arcs scattered with bundles of cut grass. It was a rider brain-teaser that in essence could prove easy provided the jockey had worked out exactly how to aim his horse towards it beforehand. There was only one logical direct route, which would save seconds but had absolutely no room for inaccuracy. The alternatives took one all around the houses and could effectively scupper one’s chances of winning the event. Tash had a feeling that cross-country day would be won or lost on that fence, and it was just the sort of obstacle that Snob loathed.

‘I should watch him at this one,’ she told Hugo as they stood by it, watching the beetle-browed Scottish eventer Glen Bain clambering all over the fence and declaring it a monster. ‘He might be athletic, but three bounces on a pin-point line is stretching him and he could go horribly wrong.’

‘With you, maybe,’ Hugo was staring at the line intently, ‘but I’m on board on Saturday.’

Tash refused to rise. ‘I’d check out all the alternatives really thoroughly,’ she warned. ‘If there’s a route where you don’t have to pull him up too much or turn him tightly, I’d go for that. Anything that allows him to keep his impetus and rhythm, even if it’s longer, will be safer. This is absolutely his worst type of fence.’

She trudged around the remainder of the course with Lucy Field and Penny, both of whom were frantically gossiping about the fact that Kirsty’s fiancé, thick Richie, had faxed her that weekend to say he’d been having an affair with a fellow Australian lawyer for six months and their engagement was off.

‘You’d have thought he could have waited until after Badminton!’ Lucy was appalled. ‘I call that so insensitive.’

Tash hid a smile. She guessed if there was one thing that Niall had always been, it was sensitive.

That afternoon was the first of the event’s vets’ inspections. It was a rather grand affair in front of the main house with a large number of officials in situ to preside over proceedings with the panel of vets. India had spent a large whack of the afternoon beautifying Hunk who now gleamed like a melting chocolate bar, his bay coat so shiny that Tash could almost see her pale, anxious face reflected in it as she waited to trot him up on the straight run of flat Tarmac which had been scraped out of the gravel carriage sweep. Although fit for over two months now, his tendon did give him sporadic stiffness, especially when it was cold and wet. So far that week the weather had held out, giving them a cool, blustery backdrop with just the odd glimmer of chilly sun, as though God was running a lighting check for the big summer stage show in a couple of months’ time. But the forecast for the weekend was bad and a lot of the competitors had spent the day gazing sporadically at the western horizon from which a huge blanket of storm cloud was predicted to emerge.

Because she had originally been entered on two horses, Tash was drawn as a very early number on Hunk. Snob, who was to have been her second ride, was one of the last in the draw and so Hugo wasn’t even out in front of the house as Tash trotted Hunk up before the panel. She jogged alongside him like Madonna shadowed by a huge bodyguard, trying to remember to keep his head straight as Gus had told her, which was hard as his nose kept dive-bombing her pockets for Polos.

He gambolled along happily, black ears pricked tightly forward, eyes gleaming, huge soup-plate hooves ringing out a clear, even percussion on the Tarmac. On the return leg, Tash had to sprint to keep up with him. There was no question but that he would pass. She felt immensely relieved and watched as, half an hour later, Fashion Victim passed too, although the vets were far slower in letting him through, deliberating for some seconds and calling Gus over for a quick word.

‘What did they say?’ Tash asked as they walked together back to the stable yard.

‘Oh, the usual stuff about his wind – you know how he pants like an obscene caller. He’s got a reputation for it now, so we always go through a bit of a question and answer routine about it. And they asked after his corns, like old ladies at a clinic.’

At the yard, a glamorous former Olympic eventer, Julia Ditton, whom Tash had once desperately wanted to be, was roving around preparing the pre-recorded information package that would precede the live television coverage of the endurance day on Saturday. She was interviewing grooms and riders for gossip, scratching the better-known horses’ noses in front of the camera and picking through tack boxes to explain to the folks at home what a brushing boot was.

She cornered Tash by a feed bin.

‘D’you mind awfully doing a little interview about giving Hugo the ride on Snob? I’ve already hoodwinked him into taking part. I know it’s a pain, but I’d be tremendously grateful.’

Tash reluctantly agreed. She tended to get very tongue-tied and idiotic at these things, dropping malapropisms left, right and centre as she groped for words. She’d once told a Sky reporter that she was ‘billed to thrits’ at winning Bramham. Hugo, by contrast, was supremely fluent and sexy on screen, which in part accounted for his huge female following. Commiseration letters and fan-mail had been flooding in since the weekend. Already, Snob had hundreds more good luck cards pinned up around his stable door than any other horse. Poor old Hunk only had a card from Beetroot (in India’s handwriting) and a telegram from Alexandra wishing him and Tash luck and begging the latter to call.