My Animals and Other Family Read online

  We were home by Saturday, in time to watch the 1983 Grand National on the TV as Jenny Pitman became the first female trainer to win it with Corbiere. I may not have thought much about racing or been at all interested in the ninety inmates of Park House Stables who provided a living for my father and his employees, but I had felt the buzz of a big sporting event. One day, however far away it may be, I wanted to be involved in the Grand National.

  ~

  Lily the boxer puppy arrived later that spring. You could spend hours just watching her wobble about on her rubbery legs. As she strengthened up, she started to bounce around the garden like a lamb, taking off on all four feet and twisting her body in the air. She wagged her whole bottom when she was happy and she smiled like a demented clown. Mum was laughing again. We all were.

  Sleeping late is a crime nearly as disgraceful as shoplifting in my family. To sleep past nine o’clock was anathema to my father, who was always up and about as dawn was breaking. For my brother and me, growing as we were, sleep became more and more attractive. Andrew was particularly grumpy in the mornings, but both of us found waking up easier if it wasn’t our parents getting us out of bed.

  As my father raged downstairs—“How long are those bloody children going to stay in bed?”—my mother would slip upstairs with Lily, open my door to let her in and close it again. Lily was a hands-on alarm clock, jumping on top of me and licking my face until I eventually got out of bed. It was my favorite way to start the day.

  12.

  Quirk and Stuart

  With every horse or dog you love comes “the deal.” You will get hours and hours of pleasure, years of fun, education and love. In many ways, you will become more human—certainly more humane—because of the relationship you develop. Then comes the hard part. The animal will die before you. Sometimes it will die right in front of you. If you are unlucky, as I was with Ellie May, it will die right underneath you.

  It was a beautiful day. Crisp spring air, a blue sky, the pale sun giving light but little warmth. The buds on the trees were starting to burst forth and I was filled with that feeling of expectation that I got every spring. All around me there was evidence of new beginnings and the chance to develop and grow.

  There was a big field for the Berks & Bucks Drag Hunt at Highclere. We parked by the Temple of Diana, my favorite Roman goddess. Diana was goddess of the moon and the chase. She was the sister of Apollo and she was an out-and-out tomboy, wearing hunting gear all the time and carrying her bow and arrows on her shoulder. Diana was my first feminist pin-up, a strong woman who could hunt for her own food and didn’t need a man to provide for her or to define her.

  I was chatting away about Diana as I pulled the tail bandage off Ellie May and checked that her boots hadn’t slipped during the short journey from Kingsclere. There was a holler from another horse trailer and Ellie May started whinnying back. It was Ben—the giant gelding who had come over from Ireland on the same ship as her some ten years earlier. Ben had been our Uncle David’s hunter and, when Uncle David returned to America to set up a circus, Ben was sold to another Berks & Bucks member.

  Ben was infatuated with Ellie May. He charged down the ramp of his horse trailer and dragged his new owner, Peregrine, toward ours. No person, however strong, could stop Ben in full flow. He nuzzled up to Ellie May and seemed to kiss her. Only after he had finished his romantic greeting did he agree to be led back to his own trailer.

  Ellie May had looked after me on so many days’ drag hunting that I had lost count and, even if she wasn’t the finest-looking hunter on show, I had a real soft spot for her. Highclere was a highlight of the whole season because one of the lines took us on the cross-country course that was used for the BHS (that’s British Horse Society, not British Home Stores) one-day event. I loved the chance to jump the beautifully built fences; they were technically more challenging than the galloping courses I was used to at home. At Highclere, it wasn’t just a case of kick on and be brave—you had to be accurate, measure your distances and get your line right.

  I wanted to ride at the Olympics and at Badminton like my heroine Lucinda Green. In our first year at school, Mrs. Berwick had asked us all what careers we would like to pursue. My hand shot up.

  “I would like to be an eventer,” I said, with the utmost sincerity.

  “Really?” replied Mrs. Berwick. “What would you like to invent?”

  I think she was rather disappointed when I clarified my position.

  ~

  Back at Highclere, Dad was climbing aboard Poldark. To qualify for point-to-points and hunter chases, the horse had to get a certificate to say he had been out drag hunting. This was no problem, as my father loved to ride him and knew that, as Field Master, he could stay ahead of the whole field while barely out of a hack canter. Poldark looked down his nose at Ellie May, who stood helpfully next to the ramp so that I could use it to clamber on board.

  We headed off to the meet behind the Carnarvon Arms in Highclere and I let her stand next to Ben, where she was happiest. I followed Ben for the first line, with Ellie May jumping everything that he jumped. The bright-scarlet jackets of the Master and the Whipper-ins streaked away behind the hounds, who had their noses down on the ground as they followed the strong scent. Once in a while, the poor runner who had laid the scent would not be far enough ahead, and the hounds would catch him. Although it’s never much fun to be hunted down by a pack of hounds, there was no danger of them doing anything worse than licking him to death.

  As always with the drag hunt, a line covered about four miles, after which the hounds got some meat, and the horses and riders had a chance to catch their breath. As I pulled up Ellie May after the first line, she was breathing heavily and I remember worrying that she’d lost her fitness rather quickly. My mother was on foot, and I asked her to have a look to check Ellie was OK.

  We both agreed that I would take it steady on the second line and bring her back if there was any sign of tiredness. She was about seventeen years old by now, getting on a bit, but not ancient.

  At the very beginning of the second line, down in the valley with trees all around, we were cantering toward a small post and rails. It was no more than two feet six inches and just needed popping over. I asked Ellie to shorten her stride by pulling gently on the reins. There was no response. I asked again, more urgently, but instead of coming back to me, her head became heavy and her mouth was set.

  She didn’t take off at all. She just crashed straight through and, even though the top rail snapped, the impact was enough to turn her sideways and thudding to the ground. I was thrown clear and, as I scrambled back toward her, I could see her sides heaving.

  Luckily, the rest of the field had steadied up enough that they did not jump into us. My father was too far ahead to know what was going on, but Ben had pulled himself up and was charging back toward us, whether Peregrine wanted him to or not. He was whinnying frantically. Ellie May tried to nicker back at him.

  After half an hour or so, she recovered enough to get to her feet, and I led her back up the hill toward the horse trailer parking lot. We stopped frequently to allow her to find the strength to put one foot in front of the other. I was shouting out for my mother, who came running down toward me.

  “I don’t know what happened.” My voice was panicked. “She just didn’t take off. I was trying to get her back but she wouldn’t listen.”

  I was terrified. This was my mother’s horse, her trusted companion, and I had put her on the deck. I had hurt her. It was my fault.

  My mother took the reins and stroked the side of Ellie’s head. “There must be something wrong.”

  There was something—horribly—wrong. As she reached the horse trailer, Ellie staggered and collapsed. Her rib cage rose up with one last heave and then stopped. She was dead.

  I have no idea how she made it back up the hill, how she even recovered enough to stand up after the fall. Mum s
aid she hadn’t wanted to die in a place that would be inconvenient.

  Ben had refused to carry on without her and, moments later, we saw him trotting toward us, a confused Peregrine shaking his head. Ben slowed to a walk and then stopped as he came close. He lowered his head to Ellie and sniffed at her face. Then he let out a deep, guttural noise, like a strangled cry of pain, and turned away.

  They say that horses and donkeys need to see the dead body of their companion to be able to grieve. Ben needed to see Ellie May for himself, otherwise he would have spent the rest of his days hollering out for her with no reply.

  The vet said Ellie May had had a massive hemorrhage as she approached the jump. I was lucky she didn’t trap me underneath her as she fell. Awful does not begin to cover the feeling of driving home in the horse trailer with just one horse instead of two and walking back into the yard with an empty bridle. Liz was there, bustling toward us and taking Poldark from my father. She saw my eyes, red from crying all the way home, and she knew that something terrible had happened.

  A few days later I had to go back to school and I was still in shock. How do you explain what had happened to anyone who doesn’t ride? So I kept it to myself and carried on as normal, distraction being the chosen method of medication in my family.

  ~

  Ellie May had, during the course of her life with us, been mated twice with thoroughbred stallions in the hope of producing offspring with her honesty and cleverness but with the quality injection of blood that might give them a little more class. The first foal, by the successful jumps stallion Idiot’s Delight, was called Quirk and the second, by a stallion called Turnpike, was a chestnut colt called Stuart.

  Both of them were gelded while they were still young, and they were turned out until they would be old enough to be broken in. The vast majority of nonthoroughbred male horses have their testicles removed when they are still foals. Being “gelded” makes them more manageable, lighter in weight and altogether less alpha male. Racehorses are broken in before they are two years old, but other horses, who will be carrying heavier loads than seven-stone stable lads, are broken in when they are about four.

  Quirk resisted being led, he bucked when he was mounted and he dug his toes in when he was being asked to go forward. He was like a gifted but reluctant child. He hated to be made to do anything but, if you let him think he was doing it on his terms, it was a different story. He was clever. Too clever sometimes.

  When Quirk was six, I started riding him, and we got along pretty well. I had time, during the holidays, to hack him for hours and, if we went up on the Downs to school over the hunter-trial fences, I could practice again and again until he jumped the table, or the railway sleepers, or the coffin, with confidence. Mum thought it would be a good idea if I took him to Pony Club camp, because he would get a year’s experience all in one week.

  The Craven Pony Club held its summer camp at Englefield Park near Pangbourne. There was the most beautiful walled estate within, where over a hundred children on ponies could get into all sorts of trouble. Quirk would be ridden for up to six hours a day and would do dressage, show-jumping, be ridden bareback and schooled in cross-country. The stimulation would be constant.

  First things first: he had to learn to stand still. The Pony Club erected temporary stables for all the ponies. They were wooden structures forming rows of boxes with canvas roofs. They were perfectly safe and solid unless you had a strong little horse intent on pulling the whole row down. A horse like Quirk.

  “What is that racket?”

  I heard the voice of Mrs. Gardiner, our ride’s instructor, as I filled a bucket of water. She sounded a little shriller than usual. I had left Quirk for all of five minutes. As I looked back toward my stable row, I could see it rocking from side to side. There were now lots of voices, all of them shouting.

  A cloud of panic gathered around the far end of the row, the end where Quirk was stabled. I left the bucket of water and ran back, to find him swaying from side to side and pulling backward on his rope.

  “Quirk, stop it. Stop it right now,” I said, as firmly as a girl not yet turned thirteen can say anything.

  He looked around at me, and I could see that he wasn’t scared, he was just being naughty. Like a small child desperate for attention, he was making a fuss because I’d left him on his own. We compromised. I didn’t leave him tied up, and he didn’t pull the stable block down around our ears.

  By the end of the week, when he was exhausted from constant lessons and was learning manners from the horses around him as much as from our instructor, I tried it again. I tied him up and hid around the corner, near enough that if he started rocking and pulling again, I could step in before he did any damage. He stood quiet as a lamb for half an hour.

  Quirk embraced Pony Club camp. He loved the different lessons, he enjoyed meeting other horses and he particularly liked getting more food to reward his hard work.

  Ellie May’s other son, Stuart, was two years younger than Quirk and about a hand bigger. In personality, they could not have been more different. They were chalk and cheese, tomato and pineapple, Dynasty and Tenko. Both of them were fairly chunky and could put on weight easily but, when they were fit, they scrubbed up pretty well.

  Stuart was broken in gently by Spider and Danny Harrap. The trick to educating a young horse is to be consistent and firm, while always being kind. There is no point getting involved in a tug of war with a horse who has half a ton of weight to pull with—you’re going to lose. So Danny took it gently with Stuart, who responded with a degree of timidity. He was a little bit scared of his own shadow in those early days.

  My mother banned my father from going near either Stuart or Quirk. They were her horses and “off limits” to him. She said he had enough on his hands with all the horses he had to ride and, also, she didn’t want him galloping them all over the place jumping things they weren’t ready to jump. When she went away, my father snuck down to the stud and asked Carol, who had joined the stud to work alongside Liz, to saddle up Quirk for him.

  “But Guv’nor,” said a confused Carol, blushing bright red, “Mrs. B said you’re not to ride him. She told me that explicitly.”

  “Well, she’s changed her mind and told me this morning that she wanted me to,” Dad lied.

  Half an hour later, Quirk came trotting back to the stud on his own. He had bucked my father off, farted and left him sitting on the grass. Dad was furious, and decided that Quirk was a useless, temperamental, undisciplined individual. If that’s what Dad wanted to think, my mother was perfectly happy. At least it meant he wouldn’t try to ride him.

  Years later, when Quirk and my father had both mellowed with age, they struck up a most unlikely partnership. My father needed something he could ride with the string that would hack about, lead difficult horses or just stand and eat grass if he got off to inspect the racehorses. I suggested he try Quirk, who was as biddable as a polo pony and greedy enough never to move if he had the chance to munch on fresh grass.

  Although initially reluctant, my father was won around by the romance that blossomed between Quirk and his most talented racehorse of the early nineties, a sprinter called Lochsong. She was the fastest animal Dad had ever trained, but she was also one of the trickiest and would plant herself in the Starting Gate field, refusing to take a single step toward the four-furlong all-weather gallop, which had been resurfaced with a mixture of sand, rubber and oil. As she grew more successful (Lochsong won the Prix de l’Abbaye at Longchamp twice, the Nunthorpe, the King’s Stand and a host of top-class sprint handicaps), she became more and more truculent at home.

  Lochsong would not budge unless Quirk came up alongside her and led her to the gallop. Once there, she would leave him for dead as she tore off at 100 mph, with Francis Arrowsmith, known as Scully, trying desperately to maintain some sort of control. Lochsong was an all-or-nothing filly—she would either win a Group 1 like the Abba
ye in Paris without seeing another horse, or she would run away going down to the start, as she did with both Willie Carson and Frankie Dettori, and then finish dead last.

  Dad enjoyed the challenge of training Lochsong and, because she loved Quirk, he grew to love him too.

  As for Stuart, well, they never got along. Again, Dad ignored the ban (he was worse when you told him he couldn’t do something) and rode Stuart up Cottington Hill to do a recce on what would be the second line of the drag hunt. They came to a tiny post and rails in the fence line with no way round it, and Stuart refused.

  Dad smacked him with his whip. Stuart refused again and absolutely would not budge. Whatever Dad did, however hard he kicked or growled, Stuart was having none of it. They say you can’t make a horse do what he doesn’t want to do, and Stuart was out to prove it to my father. He reared and went into reverse. Dad had to come home and admit defeat.

  I took Stuart up to the same little post and rails the next day and he popped over it with no trouble at all. He wasn’t scared, he wasn’t incapable of jumping it—he just didn’t want to be strong-armed. They had attitude, these sons of Ellie May.

  Stuart was not a man’s man. He was a gentle soul, and Mum and I were very protective of him. He was bigger than Quirk and much more cuddly, a soft, mild-mannered boy, with a permanently concerned look on his face. He would take Polo mints out of my mouth, the whiskers on his muzzle lightly brushing my face. I could lean right into him and he’d put his head over my shoulder to give me a hug like a teddy bear. He loved to stop and look at a view or watch as a roe deer hopped across the field in front of him. Our rides always took time, because he didn’t like to rush anything.

  My favorite time of year was when the wheat had just been cut. Early in the morning, there was a slight haze and the fields looked as if they had been sepia-tinted, the Downs rising like an enormous blue whale behind them. I loved the colors and the quiet of the early morning. I liked to disappear on my own to the farm or up onto the Downs.