Gillian Baxter: Bargain Horses (eBook - pre-order available 22 May 2025)

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Gemma’s mum was waiting outside the school gates as usual, in the ancient Land Rover with the leaky canvas top and the dogs in the back. Crossing the pavement Gemma felt her school personality slipping away: that of the tidy, methodical member of the lower sixth and the responsible senior prefect giving way to Mary Conway’s daughter, the girl with the curly red hair and the muddy jeans who rode, groomed, mucked out, and competed on the horses and ponies that were her mother’s life.

“At last.” Her mother was already forcing the Land Rover into gear as Gemma settled in the rickety passenger seat, and stowed her school bag among the straw and dried mud on the floor. The Jack Russell terrier, Dock, and the Border Collie, Tip, fell on her enthusiastically, licking and pawing at her face and school shirt, and Gemma petted them and fended them off.

“This sixth form society is a pest, there’s no time left to give Weston proper work.” Mary was barging her way out into the traffic of the main road, ignoring flashing lights and blasting horns from the other road users. “Still, if we hurry you can give him a canter in the stubble. Good thing it was a wet season, it still isn’t ploughed.”

“I mustn’t be too long,” Gemma warned her. “I’ve got two essays to write, and Miss Butler is getting tired of excuses about having to ride.”

“You can write them after tea.” Mary was swinging the Land Rover into the rough track which led to home. “You’ll have plenty of time, it still isn’t light much after seven.”

Gemma supposed that she was right. Winter was the easiest time; it was as spring advanced that school and Mary Conway really clashed, during the long, light evenings which to Mary meant endless riding and to the school meant studying for exams. The Land Rover jerked to a halt outside the large static caravan in which Gemma and her mother lived, and the dogs took flying leaps out over Gemma as she opened the door. From the row of rough timber and breeze block stables Goldie, the elderly cream pony, whinnied a greeting, and Weston, the big bright bay, thrust his head out over the neighbouring door.

“I brought Goldie in for the blacksmith, and Weston’s groomed,” Mary told Gemma. “You can change and get straight out. I’ll saddle him for you.”

“Thanks.” Gemma picked up her school bag and went up the step into the caravan, feeling the horses take over. That was part of the problem; once she was away from school the horses captivated her as well, with their schooling problems, their personalities, and the show plans. It all seemed very seductive compared to essays on Keats’ odes and the Rise of the Third Reich, and yet Gemma knew that horses were not enough. They were not the whole world to her, as they had always been to her mother. To Mary the horses were everything, even at the expense of Gemma’s father, to whom they had become as big a rival for his wife’s affections as any other man would have been, and because of whom he had finally left.

Inside the caravan it was reasonably tidy. Gemma saw to that. Mary would hardly have noticed if they had eaten off the floor, except on the rare occasion when they were expecting a visitor. Then she would panic and rush about, hiding everything in cupboards until one burst open, hurling papers, bits of tack, dressage score sheets, unmended socks, unpaid bills and broken biros all over the floor. The caravan was also big enough to have separate bedrooms, so that at least Gemma had a place to keep her school books and school clothes safe from dog hairs and paws, and from the mud which, for at least ten months of the year, was all pervading.

Hooves were trampling on the strip of concrete between the caravan and the stables, and Mary called “Hurry up Gemma, I’ve got him out.” Gemma glimpsed the tossing, bright bay head and white star through her bedroom window as she dragged on jeans, and school and the outside world were blotted out.

Weston was a big, strong, enthusiastic horse, rather too enthusiastic sometimes, but galloping him across the thirty acres of damp stubble behind the caravan Gemma’s misgivings about managing him were swept away by the exhilaration of his long swinging stride, the crunch and thud of hooves in the short stubble stalks, and the sight of the gleaming bright bay neck and blowing black mane in front of her. Weston went with his ears pricked and his mouth strong, but not unkind, on the bit, and at that moment Gemma could almost believe in the future for him which her mother saw so clearly … the Pony Club teams, show-jumping, horse trials, and the entry into the bigger events towards which Mary had striven for so long. So many of the horses had been failures, so optimistically bought. “An absolute bargain, Gemma, only cheap because they couldn’t ride well enough” … or “are going abroad” … or “they want a good home”. And then there was the gradual approach of reality and disillusion; the stopping in the ring, the awful stable manners, the fear of traffic, the incurable leg problem. Finally that horse, too, was sold on, at a loss, to some hard-headed dealer who knew that women like Mary Conway walked into his yard with their incurably starry eyes every weekend, looking for the dream, the winner, the super-horse, that had led and haunted them all their lives.

“How did he go?” Back at the caravan Mary was waiting eagerly for news. Once she would have ridden the ‘bargain’ horse herself, chased her own dream, but marriage and a baby, middle age, and many nasty falls had shaken her nerve so that now her dream carried on through Gemma.

“Fine.” Gemma patted the warm, gleaming neck and dismounted while her mother fussed round the horse, running stirrups up leathers, and loosening the girth. Weston rubbed his sweaty head on Mary’s shoulder, and Gemma took off the saddle.

“He really can gallop,” she told her mother. “And today he wasn’t quite so hard to stop.”

“That’s because of all that flat work,” Mary beamed. “I knew all he really needed was some serious schooling. The girl I bought him from was useless, didn’t know the first thing about it. I’ve sent in your entry for the Pony Club Horse Trials today … the Open. The course won’t be too big, and he could win it with his eyes shut.”

“The Open?” Gemma was startled. “I thought we were going to start with the Novice?”

“Why waste time?” Mary was leading the horse towards his stable. “I tell you, his last owner was just no good. You’ll be fine.”

“Perhaps.” Gemma was not convinced. The girl who had owned Weston before had seemed quite a tough and efficient rider to her, and not so young, either. She also wished that the entry was for something other than a Pony Club event. In spite of her mother’s ambitions Gemma and the Pony Club had never got on very well. In their area the Pony Club was very much part of the establishment, members tended to come from good, solid, wealthy backgrounds, where the daughter’s, or more rarely, the son’s, pony was merely one facet of a comfortable, well-cushioned life, not the main focus of it. The Conways, with their caravan, their collection of horses and ponies, and the lack of a father-provider behind them, did not fit, in spite of Mary’s many attempts to get elected on to the committee.

Riding Weston was by no means the end of Gemma’s commitment to horses for the evening. Next there was Chessman, the plain piebald cob who was Mary’s most consistent buy so far, to be fetched in, and have the day’s mud brushed off him. Chessman was plain and solid, but he rarely came home without a rosette, and to Gemma he was worth more than all Mary’s flashy, ambitious failures. But Chessman was limited; he could not jump much higher than three foot three, and his short legs made him slow when there were long stretches of grass to be covered in an event. Gemma brushed and rugged and hugged him, and then took Goldie, who was semi-retired, and turned him out into the field with Freddy. Freddy had been her first pony, and was now more or less retired. Although Mary reckoned that Goldie and Freddy paid their way by being used to teach a few children the rudiments of riding, they really barely covered their keep, and although Gemma loved them both she could see that they were yet another drain on Mary’s desperately stretched finances.

It was dark by the time Gemma closed the gate after Goldie, returned his head collar to the shed where they kept the tack, and turned towards the caravan. The lighted windows looked deceptively cosy against the background of still almost bare spring trees, and there was a scent of onions in the air. Beefburgers, thought Gemma, as she went up the step to the door. Beefburgers and beans. It would be adequate and filling, but not imaginative. All Mary’s interest in food was expended on the oats, nuts, barley, and endless additives which she mixed with such care and consideration for her horses. Maybe if I was a horse I’d even get time and peace for homework, thought Gemma, as she let herself into the caravan.

Human
Gemma Conway, Mary Conway, Morgan Thomson, Bron Thomson, Susanne, Lucy Bell, Mr and Mrs Bell, Graham Berrisford, Mrs Parkinson

Horses
Weston, Goldie, Chessman, Caraway, Indiana