The End of Summer by Naomi Jessica Rose

Author:Naomi Jessica Rose [Rose, Naomi Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2018-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

“Watch out for this one,” Major Holbrooke said warningly to Dick.

Dick woke up a little. His day had begun astonishingly early and some of it had involved frantic physical effort, putting up jumps and clearing them away. He had been enjoying the senior jumping; the last four competitors had all gone clear so there had been nothing for him to do.

Patricia Powell’s Cloud was a nice looking horse. He looked as if he could jump anyway, with his short back and high rump. He trotted languidly around the ring and seemed to come alive as he did so, as if he was emerging from a daydream. He bounded off towards the first jump leaving his rider behind with her hands in her stomach and her legs stuck out.

And he proceeded around the course in more or less the same fashion, bouncing and excitable, while Patricia hauled at his mouth ineffectually. Cloud didn’t seem to care. He hurtled round corners, hitting half the jumps and sending them flying, eventually and inevitably casting his rider aside and fleeing the ring all by himself.

Dick left the horse and ran for the rider, getting there quicker than all of the other stewards by virtue of being either younger or fitter than any of them. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Oh I daresay,” said Patricia. She managed to get to her feet, but made it look difficult, holding her shoulder and moving her head very slowly.

“You’d better come and sit down,’ Dick said.

“I’m perfectly fine!” But Patricia allowed herself to be led off to the secretary’s tent where there were chairs and drinks of water and with any luck some kind motherly person to whom she could be handed over.

“Oh goodness,” said Patricia, sinking into a chair. “My head’s going round! I wonder where Cloud’s got to.”

Dick smiled and sat down next to her. There was nobody in the tent at all, not even the secretary, though there was a queue of anxious people waiting for her to come back from wherever she’d gone. Patricia seemed all right. She was walking and talking, saying things that made sense. She had said she felt dizzy, but her face had plenty of colour and she was laughing. Dick was just about to say something about having no doubt that someone would have caught her horse and that she shouldn’t worry when Christopher burst into the tent, towing an unwilling Cloud along with him.

“There you are!” Christopher exclaimed. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not remotely all right!” Patricia said.

Dick was interested. Patricia had been being polite and self-deprecating before, but now Christopher had arrived she changed instantly into something entirely different.

“I’m utterly fed up and I want to go home. First we come nowhere in the showing and now this! Do you know where Daddy is?”

“What’s this horse doing in here?” The secretary was back with the precious cup of tea she had gone out to fetch and immediately everyone who had been waiting crowded nearer and began talking at once.

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