A Three Day Event (3 page)

The op ed went on to a heart–rending human interest story about a boy whose brilliant career hopes were dashed through the duplicity of his own trainer, who had brokered a sale of an unsound horse. Even after admitting having forged a vet’s signature to make the sale, and losing the case in court, “C–FES has so far declined to strip her of her accrued professional stripes, and she continues as an official judge, steward and trainer to this day. In this self–contained and self–referring clique, the obsession with ethical behaviour characterizing the nineties everywhere else on the planet has gone completely unnoticed. Could somebody please stop the world and let these people get on?”

Barbara Lumb loudly demanded, tremulously indignant, “I do not understand why you have brought these vicious slanders to this table, Stuart! Why is this–this journalist person–this–” she peered closely at the byline–“this
Sue Parker
person
persecuting
our people like this? I call this very
disloyal
of you–”

“I couldn’t agree more!” Marion rose from her seat, a hectic glow suffusing her puffy face and neck, “I did not realize that we would be subjected to a re–hashing of this–
garbage
–at a time when we must be thinking only the most
positive
of thoughts. I mean, after all, why is all this happening all of a sudden? Why are these people suddenly attacking our sport? I’ll tell you why!”

She leaned forward on the table and lowered her head in furious prophecy, “
It’s because there are people in the sport now who were never there before. Not our sort of people at all
–”

“
Marion!”
Stuart hissed, trying desperately to remind her of who was at the table, but she was beyond his counsel–

“These people have no history in horses. They have no respect for our traditions. They have no loyalty to our institutions. These people–”

Hy’s inner alarm system was ringing at full volume. In a split second a surge of adrenaline had his heart beating frighteningly fast in a spasm of fight–or–flight paralysis.

He struggled with his options. If he interrupted her to accuse her of anti–Semitism–for there was no question but that her reference was to a lawsuit recently won by Syd and Shira Greenberg against their son’s trainer in Hudson–she would indignantly deny any such suggestion and everyone at the table would be uncomfortable. If he said nothing, he would be seething inwardly for the rest of the meeting, and feel a fool to boot.

What did he need this aggravation for? This was supposed to be a kind of honeymoon
cum
sabbatical year for him. With his marriage and his new home in Saint Armand as priorities, he had turned the daily management of the
Tissus Clar–Mor
sprawl of stores and warehouses over to his children, and repudiated the can’t–say–no syndrome that had characterized his last twenty years of fund–raising, task forces and community leadership work in Montreal.

His determination to put his own happiness first had been reinforced by the minor, but chilling little caution his heart had received last fall. He heard his ex–wife’s brother, his doctor, urging lightly,
I’m not minimizing it, Hy. But sometimes a tiny warning can be your best friend. Change your lifestyle. Eat right. Get rid of the stress. Enjoy yourself, it’s better than any medicine I can give you.

In the half–second of his hesitation, Stuart Jessop had seized the initiative and cut Marion off. “I don’t believe Mr. Jacobsen has been properly introduced to everyone. Why don’t we go round the table for a moment, and afterward I will explain why our sponsor”–he hovered worshipfully around the magic word–“for the games, the Royal Dominion Bank, asked me to include the subject at this meeting.” He patted Marion’s hand and leaned in to whisper something to her. She pressed her lips together and stared fixedly away from Hy.

This was a bad beginning. Hy was weighing up the consequences of walking out. Let them put on the goddam show without his cooperation. It must have showed in his face. A stagey cough erupted to his left. Hy looked down the table to find Roch Laurin catching his eye with a wink and a tiny shake of the head:
don’t do anything yet.
Roch began to write furiously on the back of his agenda. He folded up his note and passed it down to Hy just as Thea Ankstrom was introducing herself. Hy took the note, but waited to hear Thea speak before opening it.

Thea’s voice, low, vibrant and suffused with the promise of a passion that didn’t touch her public face, fell hypnotically on Hy’s ears. She was explaining the ‘critical path’ she meant to follow as project manager. She described the computer programs she had devised to accommodate the complex scoring patterns for all three disciplines of Dressage, Jumper and Three–Day Eventing, the most complicated system of all. All entrants’ names, colour–coded in their disciplines, would have their scores, logistical accommodations and billing progressions embedded in the same programs. It was a genial scheme. Thea was famous for her organization, as Hy now learned from the appreciative comments around him. Denise laughingly called her our “computer goddess”, and Roch joked about women who make men feel even stupider than usual.

When Bill Sutherland began to speak about regulatory constraints, Hy opened the note. Roch’s English was only functional, but his modest vocabulary and imperfect grasp of the language’s syntax had never been an impediment to him. He was a communicator, gregarious and rich in the confidence of a boy raised in the bosom of a large, close–knit family with many adoring and indulgent older sisters.

The note read, “
I know that what Marion said, her, thats piss you off. Me too. Don’t listen to that shit. I been to these meetings 1000 times. They just talk. Let that they talk. You and me, were the ones whose going to do the work, and we do what the fuck we want. Believe me you, don’t get mad. Ce n’est pas la peine. p.s. she is not crazy for pepsis non plus…
”

Hy grinned down the table at Roch who winked back. Roch’s cornflower blue eyes, ruddy skin and cheeky smile lent his face a boyish charm that even increasing baldness and a small but evident paunch did nothing to diminish. Men and women alike were drawn to his energy and
joie de vivre
.

Hy had learned very quickly after buying
Le Centre
that Roch was its heart and soul. The lively, dynamic atmosphere there was a direct reflection of Roch’s passion for the stable and its resources, and his total commitment to a life in horse and rider training. Hy calmed down and determined to take Roch’s advice. Like many successful businessmen, he had learned to trust the instincts of whoever loved what they did and had the most experience at it. Roch had been putting on successful horse shows for 25 years. He hated committees and loved to work. Hy would go with his judgment.

“…and it was only early this morning that Mr. Cosgrove from the bank gave me word that they had finalized their decision. I can tell you that this publicity came very close to provoking a cancellation of their role in the show. I needn’t remind you that without their $150,000, almost half our budget, the show could not go forward.

“And so their public relations department has struck a deal with this journalist, this–er–Miss Parker, to produce a
positive
documentary about young athletes in the sport. It appears that Miss Parker is a rather precocious and–er–spirited graduating student in the Communications/Journalism program at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto.

“Apparently she is delighted at the opportunity to be involved in such a project and understands the… mandate, so to speak, of the Bank. So she will be coming down for a week in May on the site to do preliminary interviews, with many of you, no doubt, as the principals, and she will use these interviews–edited–as voice–overs for the show, which will be filmed as it happens. I hope I have made it clear that this is a non–negotiable clause of our sponsorship, and your cooperation with Miss Parker is–shall we say–
assumed
, as it were.”

Silence reigned for a moment. Marion gazed off into the middle distance, and the agenda continued to unfold. Public relations would be handled by the people at the Château Saint Armand, again courtesy of Hy Jacobson (nod, smile), who held a partial interest there, tents and catering by
Evénements
Ltée
. Videotaping by…

Hy began to daydream. His own meetings at the head office of
Tissus
Clar
–
Mor
rarely took more than one hour. This agenda was a hodge–podge of important decisions that should have come up pre–discussed by the executive of the Federation with recommendations attached, and trivial details any sub–committee could have dealt with. There was no order of priority, and he could see large gaps in representation from involved parties.

He strolled over to the coffee urn and eyed the solitary muffin on the tray beside it. Lunch would be a while yet, he could see. Then imagining Manon’s mock–reproachful caramel eyes reminding him of his determination to shed those last five pounds, he sighed and took just the coffee back to the table. He wished he were home with Manon right now, in the newly renovated, rambling country kitchen, watching her quick, skilled hands assembling a delicious salad, or stirring one of her aromatic chunky vegetable soups, as they chatted about their respective days, the progress her new Belgian mare was making in the working trot and shoulder–in, the plans for renovating the barn and building the indoor arena…

Hy frowned as thoughts of the arena brought a niggling question to mind. Polo had said he might come over to Saint Armand one day this week from St. Lazare if he could collect all three bids for the rough exterior work. Had he mentioned what day? Hy couldn’t remember if he had told him he would be away all day today.
Damn.
It was unlike him to miss or forget to cancel an appointment of any kind. No, now that he thought of it, he was sure one of them had said to confirm first.

Hy sighed hugely and looked up to catch Thea Ankstrom’s amused eye. He smiled back. He looked forward to telling Manon about this interesting woman, as he looked forward to telling Manon everything. It was a continuing wonder to him that happiness like this had been waiting in the wings for him. Manon often said the same. Their luck in finding each other was one of the great topics of their ongoing conversation.

What if the manager at the Granby
Tissus Clar–Mor
where she worked had been more competent and the year–end figures consistently inconspicuous? What if his behaviour–the manager’s–had not become so erratic that Hy felt he must come to Granby in person to check things out? What if she–assistant manager–had been on her day off when Hy arrived and appropriated her to go over the books and question her about the operations?

Then Hy would never have noticed and exclaimed over the picture on her desk of herself and her daughter on horseback. He would not have found out that she had been a single mother for twenty lonely years. They would not have gone to dinner together at the Château Saint Armand. He would not have told her about the mistakes he had made in his own marriage and the resentment his children now felt over his impending divorce. They would not have fallen in love.

The committee was now on to Disciplines Chairmen. Dressage would be looked after by the resident Dressage trainer, Fran Briquemont, the native Belgian, but German–trained, classicist and perfectionist. His wife Eva and Manon Jacobson would assist him. Manon would also oversee the landscaping and assume hostess duties for the show as a whole.

The Three–Day Event would naturally be under the supervision of Bridget Pendunnin. The physical preparations of the cross–country course would be carried out by stable hands and extra labour paid for by grants from the provincial government.

“And of course,” Marion concluded, “Roch will be in charge of the Jumper division, but as you indicated some time ago, Roch, since you are also the General Director of the event, you will need a good deal of help–a co–chair. I have recently been in touch with Rob Taylor, who will be off the circuit for a few more months recovering from the wrist injury he suffered in Florida. And I have a surprise that I think will please you all very much.”

She stopped to enjoy the swivel of curious faces in her direction. But Hy looked in puzzlement down the table to Roch. Had he not told her? The guilty expression in Roch’s apologetic eyes gave him his answer.

CHAPTER TWO

March, 1992, Mt Armand

L
iam O’Hagan was in charge of
Le Centre
for the whole
day. He could not remember a time since his arrival there six months ago at the tail end of the show season when his boss, Roch Laurin, had left the stables for more than a few hours. And then there was always someone higher up in charge: Bridget or Fran, or Michel, Roch’s son. True, Gilles Lefebvre, Roch’s nephew, was here today, but he was junior to everyone. So was Benoit Desrochers, whose main job was to muck out mornings and afternoons and strip–clean the stalls on a rotational basis.

There was Jocelyne, who only looked after Michel’s horses, though she was supposed to help in the barn if needed, and she was working today. Jocelyne didn’t count either. But the others, the higher–ups, were all of them away, and Roch had seemed confident about Liam looking after things. He’d left early in the morning with the owner–the Jew Jacobson–for Ottawa, and would probably only be back late in the afternoon.

Of course there were no lessons scheduled to create additional hubbub and work, and few, if any, of the private clients would go out hacking in this bloody freezing weather, killing it was, he’d never get used to it. Not that he intended to. He gave this job another few months at most.
Until he’d fulfilled his mission
. Then he’d be off. To somewhere warm. Georgia, maybe. Bremen. There was activity there of the kind he was now addicted to. And horses, of course. Where there were horses, there was work for Liam O’Hagan.

Liam thought about what form his mission might take. It was a shame that it always came down to getting even, but there it was. In his earlier life, the word itself–revenge–had been charged with emotion, guilt and pain. Growing up in Belfast, seeing the wreckage and sometimes the bodies, feeling the suffering and anger of the grown–ups, hearing the gruesome stories, dreaming his own death night after night, he had used to think he would give anything to live in a world without conflict.

But it was terrible to be hated, a terrible thing. And not by one or two people, but by everyone around you. That’s how it had been since he left Ireland. And it had been hard to bear. Hard to be mocked and ostracized by the English riders in the barns where he always found work. Equally hard to be ignored and isolated by the grooms and the other lads. They all thought they were so
superior
.

He’d been lucky to get away from Belfast and Ireland altogether. He was under suspicion by association, and could probably never go back. His brother Mick now, he’d been locked up for all these years, and who knew for how many more? For what? For nothing. For keeping a few bits and pieces in the cellar for his mates.

Liam looked up and down the 130 ft. main aisle. He patrolled it to make sure the horses were all finishing their lunch, water running free from the automatic dispensers, none of them off his feed or restless or lying down too long. All the horses here were boarders and school horses, except the two stalls facing each other at the very end under the window.

Those belonged to Rockin’ Robin, Bridget’s stallion, and his nine–year old get, Robin’s Song, a gelding, owned by a Mrs. Ankstrom in Toronto. Jocelyne had told him the lady’s daughter had died in a terrible fall riding him in a Three–Day Event last year. She had told him so he wouldn’t ask dumb questions around Bridget. It was a sensitive point apparently, as the lady had never agreed to its being her daughter’s fault, and Bridget would never accept that it wasn’t.

Liam had listened to this explanation without comment, without mentioning that he knew all about the accident, because it had happened at Timberline Farm where he had been working at the time. He had helped to build the course where the girl had fallen and been crushed under the weight of the somersaulting horse. He had measured the excessive depth of the ‘drop’ jump while they were building it, and he knew whose error it was. Bridget’s. No one else’s.

He considered the unfairness of Bridget owning such a fine stallion as Rockin’ Robin. Both Rockin’ Robin and Robin’s Song were chestnuts. The stallion was bigger, a deeper liver chestnut with a wide face blaze and both had four white socks up to the knee. Liam liked a lot of “chrome” on a horse, and these were Irish Thoroughbreds, so he was prejudiced in their favour over the other horses. Not that he gave them special treatment, or not much. But he enjoyed their surliness, the way they put their ears back if you walked in on them while they were at their oats, and he liked the way you had to nip out of the way of their back feet sometimes when you were grooming them and tickled them where they didn’t like it.

Rockin’ Robin was a biter, typical stallion stuff, and Robin’s Song kicked the back wall like crazy if you didn’t feed him first. Liam wasn’t afraid of them and handled them with ease. He felt an almost proprietary interest in Robin’s Song, because the gelding had a history of colic, usually in pretty mild form, but once he, Liam, had worked through the night with the vet to get him through a bad bout. That was a good memory. He had been exhausted by dawn when the horse passed normal manure, but Dr. Gilbert, the vet, had told Liam he was a first class assistant, and they might not have saved the horse without him. He felt physically warm just thinking about his collegial friendship with Dr. Gilbert.

He knew Bridget respected him for that, though grudgingly, because she didn’t like anything else about him. The feeling was mutual. Her plummy Brit accent got across him, and he knew she played it up for his benefit, just as he found himself falling back in her presence on Irish folklorisms he’d left off long ago. But he had no problem separating his feelings about the horses from their owners.

He liked high performance horses like these two because they weren’t pets to be fussed and slobbered over, as most of the boarders did with their horses. They were big, powerful brutes–animated tools–who did their jobs well, and took their licks when they didn’t without complaining.

No one was allowed to ride either of them except Michel, or Roch if Michel was away at shows. Both Michel and Roch could be tough on a horse if he acted up, but Roch had more patience. When Michel rode them, Liam sometimes had to wash the blood out of the whip marks when he did the post–ride grooming. He disapproved strongly of this kind of thing, even though it was common practice amongst high–achieving competition riders. He wondered that Bridget didn’t take Michel to task over it. She should protect her horses’ interests better. It was one more of the many injustices he brooded over at night in his cubby–hole bedroom.

Liam now headed down to the ‘round barn’–a circular bulge running off the main barn–which was lined with nineteen stalls. Here the stalls faced onto a 10 ft wide access corridor surrounding a small inner rotunda of pie slice–shaped cells, 18 ft wide at the outside end, 3 ft wide at the blunt ‘point’. There were six cells: a tack room, a wash stall, the round ‘filet’ of a barn office, a tack box and storage room, and a spartan bedroom, where Liam slept. In daytime the rotunda received natural light through a dirty skylight.

In the round barn Liam made a slow circuit of the stalls, paying closer attention to the horses here. These horses belonged to Roch and Michel. Many of them were in transit, horses bought on spec for resale, some acquired in the hopes of high performance, quickly assessed and found wanting, and passed along as hunt horses, junior prospects or pleasure mounts. Like most horsemen Roch was a mixture of impulsiveness and astuteness in his purchases. He usually broke even or made a small profit at the end of the year. Occasionally he won big. He rarely lost big. The fun of it, the gamble, was as important as the money.

Three of the horses were extremely valuable. They were Michel’s potential and current Grand Prix mounts. The youngest and rawest of them, Maestro, had recently been purchased in Switzerland for $50,000, not by Roch, of course, but by one of Michel’s sponsors.

Beside Maestro were Aur, a bay stallion, and Amadeus, a glossy brown gelding, shaved in January to cope with the Florida heat, now thickly rugged to ward off the chill. They were owned by a consortium of businessmen, fiercely nationalistic, whose pride in Michel as a
québécois
sports hero had driven them to the outer fringes of speculative fever in the high stakes of modern equestrian one–upmanship. They had sent Michel and Roch to Europe–European warmbloods were as a rule the only serious contenders for international glory–on a
carte
blanche
spending spree.

At a small stud farm near Aachen, the Laurins found one of what they were looking for: Aur, a nine–year old Hanoverian, winning consistently at Intermediate, considered a reasonable buy at $250,000. In France they found Amadeus, already a big Grand Prix winner, but difficult. His former owner, an amateur, had paid $1,000,000 for him, then found himself out of his depth. The horse developed a bad reputation for stopping, and the Laurins got him at the bargain basement price of $350,000. Relentless in his demands, Michel had brought the horse back to winning form, and had taken over $100,000 in prize money on the Palm Beach circuit, a promising beginning.

Liam checked on these horses compulsively whenever Michel and Jocelyne were away for more than a few hours. Today he only peeked in routinely. Jocelyne would be back after lunch. No problem. The three huge creatures, dwarfing the thoroughbreds around them, dozed quietly, gently puffing warm vapour through their pink–lined nostrils and humidifying the air, offering no hint of the dynamism and explosive power they could display under saddle.

The barn was clean. The overhead fans whirred gently, freshening the air. The cold gray concrete floor, installed to support the weight of steel–reinforced stalls and 1500 pound horses, as well as to repel moisture, had been watered down, was now swept and dry. The covering anti–slip rubber matting was washed and down again. No shavings crept out from under stall doors, no bits of hay, grain or manure. The blankets hanging on the outside bars of each stall were clean and uniformly folded. The wash stall hoses were coiled and stowed. The tack was scrubbed. Bridles hung neatly in the prescribed order, saddles were ranged on their racks, fragrant with saddle soap, supple and gleaming, stirrups tucked up and polished. Grooming gear was methodically tidied away.

Liam was satisfied. Roch liked his barn ship–shape. Michel, on the other hand, was meticulous in what Liam considered a fanatical degree. Neither would have anything to complain of today. That was important. If they were pleased with his work, they would not think about him, they would take him for granted. He would not be an object of suspicion.

Liam was hungry, but lunchtime was the only hour of the day when everyone else was out of the barn, including Roch’s secretary, Marie–France. She generally took her lunch in the complex’s restaurant, coyly named ‘
De Trot’
(a play on words lost on the impenitently unilingual Liam). And she was a slave to routine. She would never enter the barn on her hour off. So now was when he was free to slip into his cubby, flip the hook and eye catch closed, pull his collection out from under his bed and dwell on it without interference. He liked to look at least once a day. At night he was usually too tired, and the light, a single sixty–watter overhead, was feeble.

There were texts, pamphlets mostly, and there were cartoons and comic books, which Liam liked better, all stowed under a camouflage layer of ordinary comic books scavenged from the clients’ lounge. He found the long, written pieces, like
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
difficult to follow. Anyway, he knew what it all added up to and how to communicate its message to others now.

He hunched over one of his favourite cartoons, a picture of the planet Earth being straddled by a huge spidery Jew with an evil leer on his monstrous, beaked–nose face, his long, proboscis–like fingers digging deep into the soft tissues of the poor victim, Earth. Why bother with words at all? This sort of thing was just the ticket for fascinating new recruits and striking terror into the Enemy.

It had been a lucky break meeting that Canadian girl, Janie Jones, training in England at his rider’s barn. She’d been friendly to him for the few weeks she was there, the only one who was, and he got the impression that Canada was a decent sort of place. She told him that if he ever went over, her dad, Brian Jones, might give him a job on his hobby farm north of Collingwood, Ontario where he was building up an eventing centre. It sounded peaceful and pretty in a rocky, wild sort of away. Romantic, like.

Timberline Farm was all of those good things plus the bonus that had changed his life forever. The farm was only five miles away from where he boarded, the little hole–in–the–wall village of Flesherton, which, it turned out, was the publishing capital of Canada for all the fascinating literature he now had spread around him.

Liam had found a cheap room in a small, dark house on the main street of the town. At first he had avoided the family who lived there, the Fressermanns. The father was blond, rubicund and beefy, and looked at him with suspicion. He was a printer by trade. The mother ran a little Sears catalogue outlet in the front room, and crept in and out of the kitchen all day with a frown and pinched lips. The daughter was sallow and thin. She wore the furtive look of a ferret and had tiny, sharp teeth. Liam was not sure what her occupation was, if any.

Then one day the daughter, Christine her name was, showed up at a horse trials. She saw the horses go for a while, but then she watched Liam at his work She hung around after the competitors all left, and took in how he organized the mess, and put the barn back to rights. He pretended not to notice her. Before leaving, she smiled shyly at him. This pleased him. She didn’t seem so bad, Liam had thought. She seemed quite pretty in a quiet sort of way.

The next night Liam was invited to sit down for dinner with her family. He was quite moved by this gesture of hospitality. It was the first invitation to eat with a real family that he had received since leaving Ireland. They hardly spoke, but they ate off matching plates and there was plenty of hot food, the kind he liked but rarely got, thick slabs of long–cooked meat, potatoes and a lot of gravy.