Star Dancer (6 page)

AS THE DAYS PASSED
, however, there was no sign of Anto and the other boys at the stables. Each time Ger caught the bus he looked very carefully for them first. If they were watching him, they were doing it from hiding.

He could imagine all too clearly the sort of trouble they would cause. They wouldn’t see the beauty of the horses, or the perfection of neat rows of saddles and bridles each in their own place in the tackroom, or the generosity and friendliness the other people at the stables had shown to Ger. No, the gang would only see The Enemy, and a thousand new ways to hit out at them.

All the same, Anto and the others are my mates too, Ger told himself. Maybe I don’t really belong with Star Dancer. Maybe I belong with them. But Star Dancer had shown him a very different world, and he could not give it up.

Once he got to the stables he could always forget about Anto and all his other problems. It was as if they didn’t exist. For a whole day at a time he was just Ger Casey who-was-learning-to-ride-horses. He didn’t have a mother who liked the drink, or a father doing time.

One day Suzanne invited him to walk over to her house and have lunch. Her mother made chicken salad for them, and they ate on a table outside under some big old trees. The house wasn’t at all the way Ger had imagined. It wasn’t a mansion, just a bungalow with a B&B sign on the gatepost. But it was clean and smelled good, and nothing inside was broken.

‘You must be rolling in money to have so many new things,’ Ger remarked to Suzanne.

She laughed. ‘Us? Not at all. My dad owns a newsagent’s. We’re just ordinary people.’

‘But you’ve got Star Dancer.’

‘A lot of people who aren’t rich own horses, Ger. I do babysitting to help pay for Dancer’s livery, you know.’

‘You work?’ Ger asked in surprise.

‘Of course. Same as you do. Well, not at the stables, but I work just as hard sometimes! Taking care of little kids isn’t always easy.’

Suzanne took another bite of her chicken salad and swallowed a big drink of milk. ‘I’ll be glad when I’m older,’ she went on, ‘because then I can get a real job on the weekends. Maybe in the newsagent’s.’

‘D’you really need to?’

‘I do, of course. I … I have this dream, Ger. I’ve never told this to anyone but you. And Dancer. Someday I’d like to ride for Ireland.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well … someday I’d like to be on an Olympic Team.’

Ger stared at her. ‘You mean like the army?’

‘Not exactly. Civilians ride on Olympic Teams, you know. There are three equestrian teams, though we don’t have all three in this country yet. There’s showjumping and combined training, and dressage. Three different teams.’

‘They have dressage in the Olympic Games?’ Ger asked in astonishment.

‘They do, and it must be so beautiful! I’d give anything to see
it.’

‘Could Star Dancer be in the Olympic Games?’ Ger asked eagerly.

Suzanne looked sad. ‘Not really. He’s a wonderful horse, but he’s not able for that level of competition. I’ll learn all I can from him, and then, if I can afford a better horse, I’ll move up to the next level.’

‘But what’ll you do with Dancer then?’

‘I don’t know,’ Suzanne replied. ‘I don’t want to think about that.’

‘Is it dressage you want to do in the Olympics?’

Suzanne looked down at her plate. ‘I’d really like to jump,’ she admitted. ‘Maybe I could make the showjumping team. Or the eventing team.’ She raised her eyes and met his. ‘Now that I have the magic and
can
jump,’ she said with a warm smile. ‘Oh Ger, just imagine! It’d mean years and years and years of work, of course. But I don’t mind about that. Just to have the chance!’

Ger stared at her. He had never imagined such a dream. But this was one that could come true. Suzanne believed it could, and she didn’t make up stories.

A boy or girl could work hard and someday, if they were very lucky, ride a horse in the Olympic Games.

It seemed incredible.

But Ger believed her.

‘I’ll have to find a sponsor at some stage,’ Suzanne was saying. ‘When I’m older. If I’ve been doing well. Sometimes a person or a company will sponsor a really good rider, help pay their expenses and all. If I could find a sponsor it wouldn’t matter that we don’t have much money. But I’ll have to get to be really good first and
do a lot of winning, so someone will be willing to sponsor me.’

‘You can do it, Suzanne O,’ Ger said eagerly. ‘I know you can, like I knew you could jump.’

And if you can do it, he thought to himself, maybe even I could do it. If I got really good. If I found a sponsor, whatever that is … Ger felt as if a balloon was swelling inside his chest. Suddenly the world was full of possibilities. Until he met Star Dancer, he had thought his world was bounded by derelict houses and his future was probably prison.

But now …! Now he was beginning to think anything was possible.

I am really sitting here, he thought, under these trees, eating a meal off unchipped plates, thinking about riding in the Olympics.

And it could happen.

It could.

Someday …

‘What are you children so serious about?’ Mrs O’Gorman said, bringing out the dessert. Cream cakes, Ger noticed hungrily.

‘Talking about me riding in the Olympics someday, maybe,’ Suzanne said.

Ger saw the shadow cross Mrs O’Gorman’s face. ‘That’s a nice dream, dear,’ she said gently. ‘But there are years and years before you need to think about that. You’ll grow and change and be interested in other things.’ She said it as if she hoped that was what would happen.

‘Your mam doesn’t like to think about you riding in the Olympics,’ Ger remarked to Suzanne when they had finished their lunch and were walking back down the road to the stables.

‘She doesn’t mind, she just thinks I’ll grow out of it. But I
won’t!’

‘You’d think she’d want you to do it. She used to ride, you said.’

‘She did. She gave it up before I was born, though.’

How could anyone give up riding? Ger wondered. He didn’t think Suzanne would grow out of it. He didn’t think he would, either. Not now that he knew there was a chance. A very slim chance, if you were very very good.

I’ll be that good, Ger promised himself.

He began trying to be nearby whenever anyone was having a riding lesson, and listening very carefully to what they were told. He read all the horse magazines he found lying around the stables, although he had to puzzle out a lot of the harder words. But it got easier with practice, just like riding.

‘It’s hard to get that boy to go home at night,’ Brendan Walsh said, laughing, to Anne Fitzpatrick. ‘After he’s done all his work he still hangs around here, asking questions, looking for more to do. You’d think he had no home to go to.’

Then came the weekend of Suzanne’s next dressage show. It was being held some distance away, far down in Wicklow, and Mr O’Gorman was going to drive Suzanne and her mother down in his car. Star Dancer would go in the big horse box with some other horses from the stables.

‘Would you like to go with us and be my groom?’ Suzanne asked.

‘I would, of course!’ Ger assured her.

On the morning of the show, Ger hitchhiked out to the stables. No buses ran early enough to get him there in time to leave with the O’Gormans. He would really have liked to ride to the show in
the horse box, but Brendan Walsh wouldn’t let him.

On the way down, Ger learned something new about Suzanne. In spite of her excitement, she was almost put to sleep by the long car ride. When he mentioned it to her she laughed.

‘Cars always make me sleep,’ she told Ger.

The dressage event was held on a lovely green meadow behind a large stables. It was different from the RDS. Ger enjoyed being so far out in the country. The air smelled clean and he could hear birds singing in the hedgerows. He curried and brushed Dancer until the horse shone, and put grease on his hoofs to make them shine too. Dancer was, he firmly believed, the most beautiful horse there. He was very proud to be seen walking with the horse.

Suzanne was riding him in two dressage tests. One was just for young riders, but the second had adults in it too. To Ger’s delight she won the first test and got third place in the other one. Some photographers took her picture for the local newspaper.

‘My groom belongs in this picture too,’ Suzanne told them. She caught Ger by the arm and pulled him in to stand with her and Star Dancer. Ger could feel the heat rising into his face, but he was pleased. A picture in the paper.

Him. Ger Casey!

On the way back home, Suzanne fell fast asleep, curled up on the back seat of the car. Her father had fastened her rosettes to the sun visor, and he and Mrs O’Gorman talked in low tones so as not to disturb their sleeping daughter. But Ger could hear them.

‘You should’ve been watching,’ Mr O’Gorman told his wife. ‘Why come with us if you won’t watch her ride? She needs to know you’re proud of her.’

‘I am proud of her. I just can’t watch. I start thinking about …’

‘I know,’ her husband interrupted. She said nothing more. But Ger was left wondering.

After that, they went to several more dressage shows as the summer progressed. Mostly they were just for young riders of pony club age, doing the same basic figures over and over again, not always very well. Ger had to admit it could be pretty boring.

But sometimes there were higher level classes for more advanced horses. Usually adults rode them, and some of the things they did were so graceful and beautiful it made Ger’s throat ache, wishing it was himself in the saddle. Dressage was a dream of perfection that haunted him.

Ger Casey in the saddle. Ger Casey in tight white breeches and a black silk hat, looking proud and elegant. Ger Casey controlling a thousand pounds worth of muscular horseflesh with just the slightest pressure of his leg against the horse’s side.

He didn’t picture himself as a general leading an army any more, but as a competitor in the Olympic Games.

He tried to learn everything he could about the Olympics. The equestrian events weren’t as well known as some of the other events, but everyone in Ireland seemed to know that the Irish showjumping team had always been very good.

‘Why isn’t there an Irish dressage team?’ Ger once asked Brendan.

‘We’ve never had horses and riders up to that standard,’ Brendan explained. ‘The Germans and Swiss and some of the other countries produce great dressage horses. Our riders have always been more interested in jumping, though.’

‘But we could have one who was good enough, couldn’t we?’ Ger asked hopefully.

Brendan looked down at Ger’s eager, freckled face. ‘I suppose we could, lad,’ he agreed. ‘Someday.’

Someday.

Suzanne was working very hard on her jumping. Now that she was no longer afraid – at least hardly ever – she and Dancer practised several days a week. Ger went to watch when he could. Sometimes they jumped the painted coloured rails in the showjumping course. Other times they went around the rustic fences of timber and stone and ditch and bank that were the cross-country course. On yet other days Anne had them go through a series of cavaletti, single white rails only a few inches from the ground that made Dancer pick up his feet very high and measure his stride very carefully between each one.

There was a lot to learn about riding.

‘I thought it’d be easy,’ Ger admitted to Suzanne. ‘I thought you just sat on the horse and told it what to do.’

Suzanne laughed. ‘Don’t I wish! But it wouldn’t be as much fun if it was so easy, Ger. When something’s hard to do, you really feel great after you’ve done it.’

When Suzanne had completed a course of jumps on Dancer, she felt very good about herself. Sometimes it was hard to recall how scared she had been.

But she never forgot to ask Ger for the little red stone whenever she and Star Dancer did any jumping.

As the summer wore on, there were more and more things to go to. Even when Star Dancer was not entered, Suzanne wanted to go to every event and gymkhana and point-to-point in the area, and when he could, her father was willing to drive her there. Soon it was a habit to take Ger too.

‘Please let him have the afternoon off to go with us, Mr Walsh,’ Suzanne would beg Brendan. ‘He’s all caught up with his work, you know he is. And if he gets behind I’ll help him when we get back. Please?’

Brendan always protested, but he always gave in. He could never resist Suzanne. ‘Besides,’ as he told Anne Fitzpatrick, ‘anyone with half an eye could see the good it’s doing the lad, being out in the country and around horses. He’s even standing up straighter and that shifty look is gone off his face. Who are we to begrudge him a bit of fun too?’

Anne suggested Suzanne enter Star Dancer in a gymkhana. ‘He can be a little nervous in a strange place,’ she reminded the girl. ‘The activity and buzz at a gymkhana will help him get used to unusual sights and sounds.’

‘You’ll love the gymkhanas,’ Suzanne told Ger. ‘They aren’t really horse shows at all, they’re more like games on horseback. I mean, they aren’t as serious, and everyone has a lot of fun.’

‘Will there be any dressage?’ Ger wanted to know.

‘No. But there’ll be some pony races and loads of fun things. You’ll see.’

The gymkhana was great fun. Mr O’Gorman didn’t take them this time, they rode down in the horse box with Anne, who was bringing Dancer and another horse. Everyone had a great day. Dancer won three more rosettes.

Once more, pictures were taken. This time the photographer was a man sent down by one of the Dublin newspapers to take pictures of ‘A Country Gymkhana’. After Suzanne and Dancer won their second class, he took a lot of pictures of the two of them together. Then Suzanne insisted on having Ger stand with them
and the photographer took more pictures. A man who was with him asked Suzanne a lot of questions and wrote the answers in a notebook. He took down her name, Dancer’s, Ger’s, the name of the stables, and even asked where Suzanne went to school.

When that question was asked Ger slipped away.

The day was very hot. He noticed a booth selling ice cream, and decided to buy a cone for himself. He had already taken the first sweet, creamy bite when he remembered how generous Suzanne always was with him. She even shared the glory of being photographed. So he bought another cone to take to her.