Not Enough Time

by Henrietta Knight

  Lucy Biddlecombe, Terry’s youngest daughter, always loved my dogs. When she was at West Lockinge and aged seven or eight, she would drag my three white Labradors – Alice, Daisy and Caro – into the outside arena, where she put up jumps for them. She spent hours leading them over the poles and thoroughly enjoyed herself – though I doubt whether the enjoyment was mutual. When Lucy was ten, she began having some lessons at a local riding school and Terry decided that she should have a pony of her own. She was a nervous rider to begin with, but we came across a wonderful 12-hand black pony called Meg, and Lucy spent many years of fun with this super little animal. Meg was not the easiest of ponies to ride; she had a mind of her own, a very straight shoulder and a short neck. Sometimes Lucy’s friends came to Lockinge to have a ride on her, but they nearly always fell off when Meg put on the brakes. At the time of writing, in 2015, Meg is still alive, aged thirty, and looks great.

  Later on, Terry and I found Lucy two horses, which she kept at home with her mother, Ann. It gave Terry enormous pleasure to watch her jump at the Three Counties Show and, on her travels with Ann, she won numerous first prizes at shows around Gloucester. However, like Robert, she never had the killer instinct nor the desire to pursue her career as a showjumper and she now prefers to buy and educate young horses, as well as working at Tweenhills Farm & Stud. One of Lucy’s greatest memories was standing beside her father during the runnings of Best Mate’s three Cheltenham Gold Cups. Terry used to cling to her and tell her that she was his lucky mascot.

  Terry hugely enjoyed seeing James, Robert and Lucy during their childhood days and sharing his life with them. He adored them and he talked to them every week. Sadly, he saw less of his two eldest daughters, Laura and Libba. By the time Terry moved to Lockinge, they were both already established with their successful lives and careers in London.

  Nevertheless, he was extremely proud of their achievements, and from time to time they, too, visited us at the farm. Yet it does seem that Terry’s relationship with his two elder girls was rather a sad one. They never properly got to know him when they were young – which often happens when parents separate. Later in their lives, Terry went to both of their weddings and thoroughly approved of their husbands, Stephen Vakil and Mike Morrison, although he was bitterly disappointed that he was not allowed to give Libba away at her 2007 wedding in East Meon Church. He believed firmly that fathers should lead their daughters up the aisle, but in Libba’s case, the rest of the family obviously thought differently and she was accompanied by her mother. He cried on the way home, it had greatly upset him.

  It was a happy occasion in 2013 when Laura married Stephen in The Bingham Hotel in Richmond upon Thames, in Surrey. Despite not being in good health, Terry thoroughly enjoyed himself and there are some lovely photographs. After Terry died, both Libba and Laura wrote to me about him. Although life had been hard for them when they were children, they still loved their father, and I found their letters very moving.

  Libba wrote: ‘My earliest memory is of Dad trying to make my sister, Laura and me, lunch. We were at his house in Corse Lawn. It was a tuna, sweetcorn and mayo sandwich. I was about five years old. I’d give anything to be have been a fly on the wall, watching him so lovingly trying to feed his two young girls – solo parenting. He had no idea what to do, but if there was any panic, it didn’t show. It was the most delicious sandwich I’d ever tasted and I thought he was the coolest Dad ever. And if I’d been that fly, I would have told him.

  ‘Whenever I introduced Dad to a friend, his usual ice-breaking comments had us all falling around, giggling in astonishment. My husband, Mike, remembers the banter well. He also remembers phoning Dad to ask permission for my hand in marriage. After a minute of small talk, Mike nervously announced the real reason for this call. Dad immediately exclaimed, “You should have come to see me, you fucking cunt!” We have recounted this tale many times and most people react with shock and horror, tinged with amusement. I hope Dad’s reaction to Mike’s proposal was his way of saying that he cared about me. Either way, his shocking outbursts provoked much laughter.

  ‘Mum and Dad divorced when I was two years old, so we never really lived together. I grew up wanting us to be closer, but things got in the way. I often craved his attention, approval and affection, but only saw him a few times a year. My sister, Laura, and I were complete strangers, in awe of him, looking up to him, hero-worshipping him. I was too young to have seen him ride, but I could feel the magic. Seeing how people behaved around him, it was extraordinary. It made us feel all puffed up. “That’s our dad!” we’d say. By default, I probably worshipped him too, but not in a “normal-daughter” way. For many complicated reasons we considered that he was incapable, in those days, of being a father.

  ‘Even when he hit rock-bottom in his addiction, his fans or anyone who recognised him only had lovely things to say about him. I feel that I am the only one who can tell you bad things about him. If any other people had a bad story about him, they didn’t want to tell it, because he was the “legendary Terry Biddlecombe”.

  ‘That didn’t stop me trying to make a father of him. I tried to spend time with him and still vied for his attention, but there wasn’t a natural stream of conversation and we had many awkward moments and silences. Laura, naturally chatty, could handle these situations, but when it was my turn to speak, I’d rack my brains, thinking of things to say and end up asking the same old questions about horses. We didn’t know how to react around each other. We should have been close, but the truth was we didn’t know each other. Despite the awkwardness, I deeply loved my dad, and although it was only ever demonstrated in a tuna-and-sweetcorn sandwich, and a tearful farewell at Perth Airport in Australia. I think he loved me too.

  ‘His battle with booze was a tragic test of his strength. His journey to recovery was not only fully supported by my Uncle Tony and Aunty Sandra, but also by my mother, Bridget. It confused the fellow “recoverees” at Farm Place that his ex-wife of many years should be supporting him, but my mum and dad loved each other once, and it was natural that she wanted to help him. Very weirdly, it was the only time I felt part of a normal family: just the four of us. We were all being open and honest about our dad. At times it felt like being on the family holiday we never had. I’m proud of the way he confronted his addiction and tried to change. Helping him through his therapy at Farm Place was certainly an education for a rebellious teenager. It made me rethink my “I can drink eleven pints of lager in one night” mantra. Seeing Dad’s recovery was inspirational, but heart-breaking for me. I longed for him to be well again. The outside world was scary for him, but I saw him face his difficulties with courage and determination.

  ‘On his road to recovery it was wonderful to see my complicated and courageous dad nesting down on the farm with Hen. He completely adored her and she made the latter years of his life very happy ones. Almost two years after his death, I still haven’t been brave enough to go and see his empty chair at Lockinge. But very soon, between juggling two young children and building a new house, I will grow some of those Biddlecombe balls and go and have a cuppa with Hen.’

  *

  Laura also has conflicting memories of Terry. ‘For much of my life, and as his eldest child, Dad was a stranger to me and my sister, Libba. We were brought up single-handedly by my mother, Bridget – Dad’s first wife – with occasional visits to Dad at “handovers” from Mum to my wonderful grandmother, Nancy, in a pub halfway between Hampshire and Gloucestershire.

  ‘Dad was a superb-class jockey and at the top of his game, with adoring fans, but incapable – for whatever reason – of demonstrating his love to his two eldest children. Despite a lifetime of effort on my part, I regret not having known him better.

  ‘My first memory of Dad was of sitting on top of his shoulders while he mowed the lawn at The Woodlands at Corse Lawn. My second memory of him, to my mother’s horror, was of him feeding me neat mustard when I was about two. Thankfully I love it today and can eat it by the spoonful.<
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  ‘My happiest memory of Dad was when he asked me to join him at the men’s final of Wimbledon; I don’t think Hen could attend that year. We sat next to each other at a lunch… and, despite me not knowing anyone at the table, we had great fun and I was proud to say I was Terry’s daughter. It was a rare occasion to have him to myself and we chatted and laughed for most of the day. It was magic. That memory will stay with me for ever. I couldn’t even tell you who won the final; I was just happy to be spending quality time with Dad.

  ‘Now that he has gone, I can breathe easier and I can stop trying to win his affection. From the few memories I have and countless stories I hear from other people, I can now see him for his brilliance from a distance, and it is no longer painful. I think of him with his best chum, my wonderful godfather Josh Gifford, getting up to no good. They had lots of fun and laughter and that’s how I will remember them both.

  ‘It meant a lot to me when he and Hen came to my wedding in London in 2013. It was another magical day. Despite our unconventional relationship and his absence from my childhood, he was my dad.’

  *

  Although Terry had apparently enjoyed many parties in his younger days, he became extremely choosy as he got older. He did not enjoy late nights. When we were training the racehorses and getting up at 5 a.m., we were usually tired out by the evening. We always asked our owners to ring us well before 9 p.m. because after that hour we never answered the telephone until the next morning. Yet there were times when we had to attend special functions connected to our business, and there were times, too, when we went to select lunches or dinner parties. Nevertheless, eating at home in the kitchen or having an early dinner in a local pub were always preferable. If Terry did not want to go out, he made it very clear, especially if it meant meeting up with people he did not want to see or did not know. He told me to refuse many invitations. It was almost as if he were turning into a hermit.

  During my years as a trainer, we always gave a Christmas party for our staff and invited a few select jockeys and friends. The parties were held either at the Loyd Lindsay Rooms in Ardington, or at Lains Barn, a converted farm building approximately a mile away. The parties seemed to revolve around Terry and several members of my staff enjoyed organizing strippagrams for him. Terry always reacted superbly and played to his audience, even though his heart must have sunk on several occasions.

  On one of these evenings, there was a big fat lump of a girl dressed up in riding clothes. She wore huge baggy jodhpurs, an ill-fitting tight tweed jacket and long, black rubber boots. Terry visibly winced when she sat herself down on his knee and demanded a cuddle – in vain, despite twirling a riding whip and pretending to ride a chair like a horse. At most of the parties, the hired girls were good-looking and had decent figures, and Terry enjoyed covering them in baby oil and shaving foam, while the onlookers wolf-whistled and cheered him on. He entered whole-heartedly into the spirit of the parties and our staff always looked forward to the Christmas festivities.

  At home, however, Terry liked his own routine. He was a useless cook and could barely boil an egg, but he was particular about what I gave him to eat. He had some strange tastes; his favourite foods were caviar, jellied eels, oysters and steak tartare. I dislike all these, but fortunately my sister always gave him a pot of caviar at Christmas and he could get pots of jellied eels at the races, especially Plumpton, Newbury and Fontwell, where he was very friendly with Barry Cope, the wonderful man who ran the fish bars, but who sadly died a few years ago. Barry and Terry went back a long way and they always had good chats and reminisced. Terry usually ordered oysters if we were eating out at a fish restaurant. He adored them and if there were six on the menu then he would order twelve – horrible, slimy-looking things. – but they were like nectar to him. He claimed they had aphrodisiacal qualities, though I was never convinced. After a good dinner, Terry usually fell asleep very quickly. As for steak tartare, which I always told Terry looked like a plate of raw dog’s meat – he used to get chefs to send the ingredients to our table where they would be specially mixed to order in front of him. To my surprise, I found Terry’s own recipe for steak tartare in one of the cookery books on my kitchen shelf. The book is Seasonal Country Kitchen by Nikki Rowan-Kedge and Angela Rawson, and they recommend using best-quality fillet steak, which Terry advised should be accompanied by three large glasses of port: ‘Vintage or non-vintage, depending on who’s paying.’ I never saw Terry drink port during the twenty years we were together, but presumably it was a favourite tipple in his younger days.

  Despite not being able to cook in the proper sense of the word, Terry did consider himself to be the master of what he called, ‘Biddlecombe Mushroom Soup’. It was utterly undrinkable by anybody but himself. Every autumn we had an abundance of wild mushrooms in our fields and Terry picked baskets of them. He didn’t mind what age the mushrooms were; some of the older ones were almost black and crawling with maggots. He put a saucepan of water on the stove and added the chopped-up mushrooms, stalks and all, then added milk, pepper, salt, a lump of butter and several spoonfuls of cornflour. The whole lot would be left to simmer for at least an hour and all the maggots and creepy crawlies would rise to the top of the grey-coloured liquid. Once strained, the mixture was then left to set, and it became almost gelatinous – but that didn’t bother Terry. He often ate it cold, from a cereal bowl. Unsurprisingly, this recipe does not feature in any of my cookery books, nor have I ever seen this soup-making method recommended on any of the cookery programmes that Terry constantly watched on television. If he had appeared on Celebrity MasterChef, I think he would have been thrown out. Fortunately, the wild mushroom season is a short one.

  Terry was, on the whole, a very good eater and made up for the many years of dieting during his jockey days. He would poke about in the larder at lunchtime and give himself a plateful of cold meats, cheese and tomatoes, together with pickled onions and piccalilli, but at nights I did the cooking and he ate virtually everything I put in front of him. This was very rewarding, although I did have to be careful what I gave him, in case the food brought on one of his frequent attacks of gout. Herrings, sardines, liver, mackerel, kidneys, asparagus or spinach containing high levels of purine all gave him extreme pain in his joints. Our good friend and neighbour, Chris Brasher, who started the London Marathon and won a gold medal in the 3,000-metre Steeplechase at the 1956 Sydney Olympics, also suffered badly from gout. He and Terry used to compare notes, but neither of them completely avoided unsuitable foods. When Chris and his wife, Shirley, took us out for dinner, both men used to badly suffer the next day.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Training for Success

  When it became common knowledge that Terry and I were training horses as a double act, we were flattered when many racing enthusiasts started queuing up to become owners in our yard. We had a considerable number of orders to buy new horses and it was an exciting time for both of us. However, it entailed plenty of extra work – as in most cases we were searching for future stars.

  We preferred Irish-bred horses on account of their durability and toughness. It is well known that the Emerald Isle produces outstanding horses, not only for racing but also for showjumping, hunting and eventing. The milder climate in Ireland, together with an abundance of rich grass, has always produced individuals with stronger bones – probably helped by the many essential minerals naturally occurring in the soil. In the National Hunt world, many successful horses have also been bred in Europe, particularly in France and Germany, but there is something about Ireland that gives it the nod over those countries. Horses are bred in Ireland in vast numbers and buyers are spoilt for choice.

  In the summers, with our racehorses resting in the paddocks, Terry and I always had more time on our hands, and we often travelled to Irish horse sales. In particular, we enjoyed our visits to the Tattersalls Derby Sale at Fairyhouse every June. This two-day sale always has upwards of 400 horses catalogued, all unraced and usually unbroken. These horses are what i
s known as National Hunt stores: in other words, mostly three- and four-year-olds, specifically bred for jump racing. They are reared and stored until they are ready to race. Many of the horses we inspected had pedigrees going back to horses Terry rode successfully in the sixties and seventies. We saw some stunning animals.

  We loved these sales. It is always fascinating to see so many lovely horses in the same place at the same time. However the days can often be extremely tiring; there is endless walking around on concrete to assess the entrants and one has to concentrate at all times. Nevertheless they provide a great opportunity to meet up with breeders, vendors, fellow trainers and other horse racing enthusiasts. We learnt plenty from attending auctions. Over the years we had a number of excellent journeys to Ireland and managed to purchase some good-looking, sensibly priced individuals that won decent races for us at West Lockinge Farm.

  Unbroken horses, however, do have their drawbacks and, of course, it takes longer to get them ready for a racecourse. Many are excessively overweight because the vendors have crammed them with extra food so that they look more impressive to buyers. This is not good for their development. Too much fat is difficult to get rid of and means that the horses cannot be hurried. The other drawback of National Hunt horse sales is that one cannot see the horses jump.