MClarke - Green Wellies and Wax Jackets Read online

  Morag Clarke

  111 High Road East, Felixstowe, Suffolk IP11 9PS

  © copyright Morag Clarke 2005 ISBN 1-89803098-7

  All rights reserved.

  Not to be copied or reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher

  Green Wellies and Wax Jackets will appeal to anyone who has ever ridden a horse, attended a riding school, fallen in love with a handsome man.

  Imagine Cinderella, the two ugly sisters, and a domineering stepmother transported to a stable yard, and the day-to-day running of a riding school. Add a film crew, one drop-dead-gorgeous actor, and a determined film producer, and you have the setting for Green Wellies and Wax Jackets – a hilarious romp through the world of show jumping and equestrian activities.

  Lewis Trevelyan wants a competent rider to star in his latest action film and Ursula Johnson, proprietor of Hollyfield Stables and Stud, thinks she has just the girl (or girls) for him, in the shape of her two ungainly daughters, Vanessa and Caroline.

  Lewis, however, has spotted another girl riding the cross-country course – a girl who intrigues him much more, and he will do anything (well, almost anything), to track her down.

  Morag is the winner of the BBC Look East final entry for the online short story

  It is also available in paperback ISBN: 1-898-03099-5 price £8.50.

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  Chapter One

  It should have been a day for remembrance a day for quiet reflection and contemplation.

  Ella smoothed the yellowing newspaper cutting between her fingers, and stared wistfully at the grainy black and white picture of her father champion show jumper Robert Johnson. `Tragic death of talented sportsman', proclaimed the newspaper headline. `The sporting world is in mourning for the loss of one of its finest show jumpers, Robert Johnson, who was killed in a car accident late last night.

  The BMW he was driving was in collision with an articulated lorry five miles north of the Dartford Tunnel...'

  `Ella! Ella!'

  The hall door slammed back on its hinges. Ella had seconds to snatch up the paper and stuff it into the nearest chest of drawers. She could hear the thud, thud of footsteps coming up the stairs.

  Her stepmother, a stout, grumpy looking woman with bleached blonde hair wound tightly into a bun at the nape of her neck, and eyes as sharp and narrow as a hawk, glared at her from the doorway. `What are you doing? I thought I told you to start cleaning the tack.'

  `I know.'

  `Well get a move on,' she said. Her chubby hands were planted firmly on each side of her generous hips. `You do know what day it is, don't you?'

  `Yes.' Ella paused in the door and glanced tearfully back at her. It had been five years since the accident. She was surprised her stepmother had remembered it.

  She hadn't.

  `The film company are coming at nine thirty, and if that saddle isn't up to scratch, there's going to be trouble, my girl. Big trouble. Now then...'

  She thought for a moment. `Saddle, bridle oh and make sure Jasper is groomed and ready. And you'd better get Nero tacked up as well.'

  `Nero?'

  Ella pulled a face. The black gelding was hard to handle, and bad tempered at the best of times. The only thing in his favour was the fact that he was a magnificent looking animal, with his dark glossy coat and long, silky mane and tail.

  `Just do it!' she said. She glanced at her watch. `Vanessa? Caroline?'

  She breezed past Ella to the other side of the landing, and rapped lightly on one of the bedroom doors. `It's time to get up, darlings. We want you to look your best for our visitors, don't we dears?'

  Ella felt mildly irritated as she made her way outside, and across the dimly lit stable yard to the tack room. A `please' or a `thank you' wouldn't have gone amiss, she thought. At least it might have made her feel better. Ursula seemed to take it for granted that she would willingly do anything for the horses, and normally, she would. But today was not a good day.

  It was a little after seven o clock, and the sun was starting to edge its way over the distant rooftops. The horses whinnied a greeting, their heads bobbing up and down over the stable doors. They had been fed and watered, and now they were looking forward to being let out for a few hours.

  Hollyfield stables and stud boasted thirty-two horses, mainly used for riding lessons, show jumping and hacking, and another twenty-four on private livery. Ursula Johnson, as Ella's legal guardian, had inherited the pride of Robert Johnson's life when he died. Technically (and according to the terms of Robert's will) she should have handed over control of the estate to Ella on her eighteenth birthday, but Ursula was never one to let the finer points of such matters concern her. In her eyes, Ella was nothing more than a child, and totally incapable of handling the business side of things. No, it was far better for her to remain in charge a point she made quite clear when one of the trustees had questioned her continuing control of the stables.

  `I'm doing it to protect the child. You must see that it makes sense. I'm quite sure that when Robert made his will he had no idea he was going to die whilst Ella was still a teenager. It's far better for all concerned if I keep on running the business until she's older and more mature. And Ella agrees with me don't you Ella?'

  At eighteen, Ella would have agreed to anything as long as she got to spend as much time as possible with her beloved horses. And Ursula had been right in one respect she didn't have a clue about running a thriving livery yard and stables.

  So Ursula continued to keep control of the business side of things, and Ella managed the welfare of the horses. It was a seemingly satisfactory arrangement for all concerned.

  Except on mornings like this, Ella thought, when she was quite tempted to tell her stepmother to go take a running jump.

  `Now then, Miss Ella, up with the larks again, I see.' Thomas Button tipped his laden wheelbarrow onto the muckheap, before striding jauntily back across the yard towards her. He was a small, wiry man, less than five feet four, who had once had aspirations to be a jockey, but a severe fall, had left him with one leg shorter than the other, and he walked with a pronounced limp. It had not, however, put him off his great love of horses. `'Tis the Irish blood in me, you see, Miss Ella,' he had once told her. `The Irish blood.'

  Her father had employed him as a groom. Ursula Johnson had downgraded him to a stable hand, (although even she admitted, begrudgingly, and not to his face, that he did have a way with animals).

  `I've got to get Jasper and Nero ready for some film company,' she said.

  `For those two great lumps of daughters to ride, I'll be bound,' Thomas muttered. His eyes narrowed slightly. `You've been crying, Miss Ella.'

  `It's nothing, Thomas.' She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

  He looked at her thoughtfully, and frowned. It was the anniversary of that awful day, so it was. A day he would never forget.

  `He was a good man, Ella. A much loved man aye, and well remembered in these parts.' He jerked his head back at the house. `By most folks, anyways,' he sneered. `Here now, you come into the tack room, and I'll make you up a warm brew.'

  `Thanks, Thomas,' she sniffed. `I mean it. Thank-you. But there's no time for tea. I've got work to do.'

  `Sure you have. Sure, and we all have.' He grinned, and his blue eyes flashed with a hint of mischief. `And I'm thinking a nice round thistle under a saddle might be a good idea.'

  Ella laughed. `Don't even think of it, Thomas.'

  `Oh, I can think of it,' he chuckled. `Sure, and I can think it.'

  So too, could Ella.
Vanessa and Caroline were not built for the show-ring. Oh yes, they could ride, but not with the grace and finesse demanded by the sport. They could kick and whip and beat a horse into clearing the jumps, but neither had the art of making a partnership with their mount. But their mother their oh so determined mother, had sights on her daughters being the next big thing in the show jumping world. Even hinted that they might stand a chance in the Olympic team.

  Some chance, Ella thought.

  `So what's it all about, this film thing?' Thomas said, as he filled the kettle from the tap above the white enamel sink, and plugged it in to boil.

  `I don't know for sure,' Ella said, as she lifted Jasper's saddle down from the rack, and started to rub it over with leather soap and a sponge. `Ursula muttered something about it a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn't really listening. All I know is that they're filming in this area and they apparently need a couple of show-jumpers for one of the shots.'

  `Anybody famous in it?'

  She shrugged. `I haven't a clue. I didn't ask.'

  `More's the pity,' Thomas said. `See, I can see you on a show horse, Miss Ella. Sure, with your style and grace. You've got your father's skill, and that's saying something. But those two puddings?' He shook his head. `Ever seen a sack of potatoes on a trampoline?'

  `Thomas!' she groaned, but she was smiling all the same as she buffed the dark brown leather of the saddle.

  `Did your mother ever ride?'

  `Yes, I think she did not professionally, of course. Not like Dad. But she used to enjoy hacking out over the moors. That's how they first met,' she added.

  `What, your ma and pa?'

  Ella nodded as she unfastened the stirrup leathers and stretched them out to clean them with the soapy sponge. `She fell off. She was out riding with an old school friend, and Dad was the first on the scene, and picked her up out of the mud. It was love at first sight, so I was told.'

  `I don't suppose you remember her that much. Weren't you just a nipper when she died?'

  Ella felt the wetness of a tear start to form in the corner of her eye. `I was nearly five,' she said. `Old enough to know what I'd lost, Thomas.'

  `Aye, you're right there.'

  Her mother had died of a particularly virulent form of cancer. Ella's memories of her were hazy with the passing of time. But she knew she had been loved, and cared for and that, as an only child, she had been the pride of her mother and father's life.

  What she remembered more than the loss of her mother, however, was the immense sadness and weariness that had affected her father in the years following his wife's death. The laughter and happiness had gone out of him. His only joy seemed to come from being with horses, and being with her.

  She could remember, even as a tiny child, being swung up on the saddle in front of him, his strong arms around her, holding her secure. The gentle swaying motion of a slowly plodding horse beneath her, and his hands over hers, helping her to hold the reins. `Like this, Ella, darling. You hold them like this.'

  She could ride on her own at the age of five, courtesy of her first little pony, Darkie a stubborn Shetland, with a penchant for parsnips, who had been nicknamed, `The Thief' by the gardener, who was forever having to extricate him from the vegetable patch. Her father would take her out on a lead rein, riding his own gentle schoolmaster alongside her. They must have looked an odd pair - him on his huge, bay hunter, and she on a squat little shaggy coated pony.

  Later, she owned Bayleaf, a pretty New Forest pony, who excelled at gymkhana games. His stable was bedecked with coloured rosettes and ribbons. Long gone now, Ella kept a boxful of photographs and mementoes of him, including a brass plated horseshoe, engraved with his name, under her bed.

  As the years passed, so too did the overwhelming air of sadness that hung over the stables. Gradually her father, her much loved and cherished father, began to enjoy life once more. His natural ability, coupled with a finely tuned competitive streak led to him becoming a British champion show-jumper, who won more awards and trophies than any other rider of his ilk.

  Ella smiled proudly, remembering.

  Thomas handed her a steaming mug of thick brown tea. `Here you are, lass, and I've put two sugars in it.'

  `But I don't take...'

  `Drink it,' he said kindly. `And pass me over that bridle. I'll give you a hand here before I put the mares out to grass.'

  Ella buffed the leather saddle until it shone. The job kept her occupied, but it didn't stop her thinking about how things had changed over the years.

  Hollyfield Stables had been a happier and more prosperous place when her father had been alive. In those days they had bred horses, as well as competed with them. Her father had brought a stallion over from Ireland Devil's Eye, he was called a magnificent animal, coal black, like the horse in her favourite storybook. He had sired a string of top class foals. She had been forbidden to ride him but one day, at the tender age of thirteen, she had sneaked onto his back, and ridden him bareback across the fields. No bridle, no saddle, just her and the horse, as free as the wind.

  Her father had been secretly impressed.

  The housekeeper, Mrs Wallace, had gone berserk. `That child's running wild,' she told him. `She needs a mother and brothers and sisters. I'm getting too old to be a nanny to her.'

  It was soon after the `wild riding incident', as it became known, that Ursula Pendlebury appeared on the scene. She had been pleasant enough to her then, Ella recalled always buying her presents and making a fuss over her. Acting like the mother she had never really known. But it had all been a charade a ploy on Ursula's part to secure herself another wealthy husband.

  No sooner had Ursula flounced down the aisle in a cloud of ivory taffeta and lace, than her true colours had started to show through.

  Little things had niggled at first. The way she took over the running of the riding school, and the manner in which she dispensed with the services of the ever loyal and elderly Mrs Wallace.

  `We don't need a live in nanny now, darling,' she told her husband. `Ella's got me to look after her.'

  What she failed to mention was the fact that her own two spoilt daughters, Vanessa and Caroline, would be given preference over Ella in everything, be it for shopping, toys, clothes, holidays or outings.

  `Well, they have lost their real father,' Ursula would say, as if that would explain her biased behaviour.

  What it meant was that Robert, always eager to please, indulged them as best he could, and Ella agreeable, easy-going Ella didn't complain.

  Instead, she devoted all her time and effort to the horses. She had her father's competitive streak when it came to competitions. She was regularly the Ponies UK junior champion, and she competed in several major National events. Her bedroom was full of cups and trophies awards that Ursula felt sure would have been given to her daughters, if only they had been given the right horse or pony to ride.

  It was Ella's great love of horses that kept her going after her father died. She threw herself into her work, and began to train through the British Horse Society to become an instructor, so that she could pass on some of her knowledge to other riders.

  She had really wanted to go away to college, but Ursula soon put paid to any of those (as she put it) fanciful ideas.

  `We need you here, Ella,' she said, appealing to her better nature. `There's no point in wasting good money when you can learn all you need to know at the stables. And if that's not enough for you, then get some books from the library. You can't abandon the horses for three years just to do a degree. It's madness. And if you won't do it for us,' she added, `then do it for them. They need you here.'

  That much was true, Ella recalled, judging by the way Vanessa and Caroline behaved around the yard.

  `Like two pompous ladies,' Thomas observed dryly. `You won't see them getting their hands dirty.'

  And he was absolutely right. Her stepsisters had no intention of exerting themselves over the mundane tasks of mucking out and grooming. Oh no, they were perfectly ha
ppy to ride and to compete, but they made sure the necessary jobs were left to somebody else that person usually being Ella.

  She didn't mind not really, she thought, as she polished the bridle and stirrup leathers until they were gleaming like new. At least she was doing a job that she loved and was working with the animals she adored. It could have been worse a lot worse.

  `How are you doing?' Thomas asked. He had soaped up the bit and cheek pieces, and polished the metal stirrup irons until they glittered like silver.

  `Nearly done,' she said, giving the leather a final rub.

  `When did you say these people were coming?' He fastened the last bits of tack together, and hung them over a hook on the stable wall as he spoke.