Whispering Back

by Adam Goodfellow

  So they had managed to herd Misty into the trailer, and brought her to me. I was naively confident that we’d quickly be able to make a big difference, and that starting her within six weeks ought not to be a problem, although I didn’t guarantee she’d be safe for children by then. Luckily, the grandchildren were too young to be riding yet, anyway. Tina was wonderful, and said I could have as long as I needed. This was very generous, as even at the modest rate of £65 per week, we would quickly exceed Misty’s market value. As meat she would go for just a few pounds; as a normal children’s riding pony, she might be worth £500.

  When her owner had left, I looked at Misty snuffling suspiciously in her ‘stable’ – this was a field shelter made secure by the addition of some zany spray-painted boards left over from a friend’s rave – and reconsidered my plan. I had intended to fetch Cobweb, our trusty old schoolmaster, from another field to keep her company. In fact, I had even thought I’d turn her out in the small enclosure that the shelter was in, but I decided against it. If she had company, ample food, water, and shelter, what possible reason could she have for wanting to overcome her terror of humans? She would simply be able to avoid us indefinitely. I fetched a bucket of water and a large mound of hay, and, trying to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible, carefully placed these in the corner of her stable. I did this by leaning over the board – I didn’t want to invade her space and make her feel vulnerable by opening the door. As it was, she expressed great alarm at this intrusion, snorting and pacing and tossing her head. I retreated and sat nearby for a while. I wanted her to realise that I could be around her without her needing to feel troubled. The urge to try to reassure her was almost irresistible, but it was clear that, for the moment, there was nothing I could do that she would not find stressful. When I heard her begin to munch the hay, I quietly left to get ready for work.

  Stepping into the Control Room at Thames Valley Police was like entering another world. It was a vast room, full of computer banks, screens, radio communications units, and recording devices. Located on the top floor of the police station, large windows looked out across the city. It reminded me of the set from Star Trek, and I always had to resist the temptation to say, ‘That is illogical, Captain’ to the shift Sergeant. Rows of uniformed operators with headsets, tapping information urgently into the computers, only reinforced the image. It could equally have been a scene from George Orwell’s 1984, as every phone and radio conversation was recorded, and it was even possible for the Sergeant or Inspector to ‘eavesdrop’ on computer screens, observing every word you typed while listening to the phone call you were receiving. This was reassuring when dealing with irate, abusive, or threatening callers, but could be unnerving the rest of the time.

  Telephone operators received calls from the public, both routine and emergency, and then sent these details to the radio operators, who communicated directly with the police officers on the beat. Everyone took turns in these two roles, and no one could ever know if they were going to spend the shift dealing with armed sieges, violent assaults, and multiple-victim road traffic accidents, or disputes over noisy neighbours and complaints about unpaid car tax. More often it was a bizarre mixture of the two. It was a strange choice of a job, perhaps, but the hours suited me, being mostly after dark or very early morning, so I could make the most of the daylight hours to be with the horses.

  The evening after Misty arrived, I worked 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. I was jumpy, irrationally expecting bad news. The thought that some thug might find Misty, cornered in the stable, and do her some unmentionable harm, would not leave me. Was this paranoia? At the time there were too many stories circulating locally of horses being stabbed, the sort of chilling cruelty that seems to occur in horrible, copy-cat cycles. It bothered me that I couldn’t promise Misty that no one would ever hurt her again. After all the violence she had so clearly suffered, I wanted to protect her but ultimately I knew I couldn’t.

  So, when I finished work, I cycled through the deserted streets of Milton Keynes, straight down to her field. An eerie stillness pervaded the silent city. I skimmed past our flat, where I could see the lights were all out – Adam must be asleep.

  She was just where I’d left her, seemingly none the worse for wear, just finishing off the last scraps of hay. I let myself into her stable, and she shot to the back, watching me warily. I sat down in the corner, and tried to make myself appear harmless. I hummed a little, and munched a snack bar, watching my breath as it floated like smoke across the cold stable. I wanted her to know that I had no intention of trying to touch her. As time went by, she relaxed: her head lowered a little, her tail wasn’t clamped quite so tightly into her body. I was sitting near her last bits of hay – if she wanted them, she’d have to come near me. This was altogether too much for her to contemplate, but as I continued to sit still and do nothing, she began to let down her guard. After half an hour or so, she rested a back leg. Another half hour, and her ears began to droop. She’d had a tiring day – another half hour, and I think she would have dozed. But it isn’t exactly warm in April at 3 a.m: my legs were cramping, and I’d lost all sensation in my feet. I got up, staggered along the side of the stable, and broke the spell.

  Her head shot up with a start, and she sprang away. As I limped and hobbled backwards and forwards along ‘my wall’, she paced backwards and forwards against ‘her wall’ – the back wall – always staying diagonally opposite me, maximising the distance between us. I kept moving slowly back and forth along the same stretch of wall – I wanted my actions to be predictable for her, and to give her a space that she could be confident I wouldn’t invade. As sensation began to return to my legs and feet, I decided to keep walking, noticing that her reaction was slowing down and becoming less violent. Then she did something that astonished me. She stopped moving.

  I stopped too, holding my breath, unsure of what to do. Why had she done this? It couldn’t have been a mistake – her spatial awareness was far too great for that. By staying in one corner as I moved back along my wall, she had deliberately chosen to allow me closer. I started trembling. Could this really mean what I thought it did? I moved a step or two away from her, desperate to reward her gesture in some way. She shuffled a half step in my direction.

  I moved again, and she took a tiny, tentative step. I forced myself to breathe. I was sure she could hear my heart racing, even though she was still a good 10 feet away from me. She was putting her desperately fragile trust in me, and I knew I mustn’t do anything to betray it. We kept up our slow, wary progress, and I came to the end of my wall. What to do? I knew I couldn’t move back towards her, that would be much too frightening for her, but if I went along the next wall, I would be moving into what was previously ‘her’ space. I decided to risk it. She hesitated a moment, and then followed me.

  At times like this, you wish you had eyes in the back of your head. I couldn’t risk looking at her – the slightest eye contact might terrify her. I didn’t even want to turn my head. But, as we crawled along the back wall, I realised we were silhouetted by the street light. She was now only about 6 feet away from my back. I watched our shadows creep closer as step by step she inched her way closer. When she was only 2 feet away, I made a huge mistake. I leaned back towards her, almost imperceptibly. She jumped back as if stung, and suddenly we were as far apart as we could be. I cursed myself for being so stupid – and greedy. That’s the problem with humans, I muttered, always pushing it too far, asking for too much, never content with what they’re given. I was stuck, now, too – I couldn’t be further away from her because we were diagonally opposite each other again now. If I moved, I’d be closer to her, and she’d have to retreat to keep her distance. I moved anyway. She moved too. I stopped, and she didn’t. I didn’t deserve it, but she’d given me another chance: she was coming closer again.

  We went around the stable three more times in this strange, shuffling dance. It was past four in the morning. I gave her more hay and water, and cycled wearily home to be
d.

  Adam is used to the fact that my feet defy the laws of thermodynamics – giving out unfeasible amounts of cold, unable to absorb heat – but even he was astonished (and awoken) by their impossible iciness. ‘Everything all right?’ he murmured drowsily.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, cuddling up to the warmth emanating from his body, ‘very all right.’

  When I woke up later that morning, I realised that my initial assumptions about Misty had been wrong. I had thought that we would spend a long time ‘negotiating’ about having people in her personal space. Her reward for allowing someone near her would be for that person to move away. It could take a week or more, working several hours a day, before she might even take a single step towards me. However, the events of the night before led me to a realisation: Misty wanted to overcome her fear as much as we wanted her to. She wanted human contact, too. But she was still terrified that someone might beat her again. I had made more progress in that first midnight session than I would have dreamt possible. Had I known how deep-rooted her problems were, however, I might not have felt so optimistic.

  After a hasty breakfast, I cycled back down to the field. When I arrived at the gate, she looked up at me but didn’t immediately back away. I tried to saunter casually up to her, moving slowly but hoping I didn’t resemble a prowling cat. The noise as I opened the door to her stable was too much, and she moved away, but as I started my slow circling of her box, she started to follow me again. She had a burr in one ear, and something stuck to one of her eyelashes, but I knew it would be days, if not weeks, before I could remove these for her. Whatever else I did, I knew I had to keep my hands to myself.

  I saw Misty several more times that day. I decided it would be a good idea if she saw lots of people, from a distance, and realised that she was still safe, and that they weren’t all out to get her. So she met my mum and Adam, and meanwhile we continued circling slowly around the stable, building up more trust with each revolution.

  My nocturnal visit that evening brought me one step closer to her. She let me stand by her near-side shoulder. Rather than trying to touch her with my hand, I leaned into her gently. She stepped back abruptly, but didn’t break away. After a few more attempts, she let my body brush against hers. Trying to keep my pulse rate low, and my adrenaline down, thinking only friendly thoughts, I gently touched her shoulder with the back of my hand. Her whole body quivered. But she stayed still. Slowly, I started to scratch her neck. As I stroked her, she very gradually started to relax, finding safety in the presence of a human being for possibly the first time in her life.

  The next morning, Adam checked her briefly on his way to work. I had arranged to go with another Monty student, called Gillian, to visit Windsor Castle, to look at a horse that she was thinking of buying from the Queen, called Never Question. She was a beautiful filly with a slight injury that would make her unsuitable for racing. Loyalty to an hereditary monarchy didn’t feature highly on the ardent socialist agenda of my youth. But my respect for the Queen grew immeasurably when I discovered how much she’d done to promote Monty’s work in this country. It was the Queen who had catapulted Monty to centre stage when, having seen some articles about his approach, she invited him from the US to demonstrate these methods. He started several of her horses for her at Windsor Castle. Deeply impressed, she insisted that he tour the UK, a journey that eventually led to him becoming one of the most famous horsemen in the world, and in turn to change my life, and bring Misty into it. So a day out at Windsor seemed appropriate.

  The stables, of course, were immaculate. The tack room was an orderly vision of supple leather and polished steel, a time-warp, belonging to an era long gone for many, a time when taking care of such matters could be a daily priority. The Queen’s Equerry had just finished showing us around one of the outside yards, when we heard a clattering of hooves behind us. Retreating quickly around the corner, we realised we had narrowly avoided meeting the Duke of Edinburgh, who was returning from a drive with his team of gorgeous Fell ponies. Our undignified rush for cover amused the Equerry, but we had no desire for a Royal encounter. Once we were sure the Duke had gone, we peered into the stables to see the Fells. Gleaming with sweat, flecked with foam, they stood gently steaming, their compact bodies bulging with power. With their long, flowing manes, and thick winter coats, they made a stark contrast to the elegant thoroughbred we had come to see, but to my eyes they were every bit as beautiful. Gillian finalised the details of the sale, and we set off for home.

  This journey back to Milton Keynes was the start of a very annoying habit that continues to plague me – getting so engrossed in a conversation about horses that I stop paying attention to the road. It wasn’t until we saw signs for Gatwick that we realised we were going the wrong way around the M25. Anxious to rectify our mistake, we left the motorway immediately – only to find ourselves on the M23, heading for the south coast! At least sitting in the rush-hour traffic gave us plenty of time to talk.

  When we got back to Milton Keynes, I asked Gillian to come and meet Misty. Misty viewed her with her customary suspicion, but seemed to be resigning herself to the notion that her social calendar would now be filled with such encounters. We must have got too engrossed again. It wasn’t until we were about to leave that we realised that someone had smashed Gillian’s car window to grab some spare change off her dashboard. It had been parked about 20 feet away on the other side of a hedge. I should have been more sympathetic, as I gave her the number for the police station, but I was far too excited. Misty had just then allowed me to touch her head!

  Over the next couple of days, I consolidated this work with Misty until I could touch her head and neck and shoulder on the near-side, and even attach a rope. I touched her headcollar, too, but was very careful not to put any pressure on her head – I didn’t want her to feel at all restrained. It was very clear that her off-side was still a non-starter – I couldn’t even move my hand over her neck to touch the other side without her panicking. On the fourth day, I let her out into the small paddock. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get near her again, but I couldn’t bear keeping her cooped up any longer.

  I needn’t have worried. By using the mildest form of aggressive body language – simply looking in her direction – I could get her attention, and then by becoming passive and moving away, I could draw her to me. As long as I didn’t move my hand too fast, I could even touch her. Best of all, she now saw her field shelter as her safety zone, and if ever she felt worried or confused, she would rush straight into it. I could simply follow her in and re-establish contact. This surprised me: horses are animals of the plains, and naturally tend to find security in wide open spaces. To be trapped in a confined space in the wild would mean certain death. I couldn’t believe my luck the first time I saw her do it. I thought it must have been a mistake, but soon realised it was a deliberate choice. It was where she had been given a space of her own, after the terrifying ordeal of travelling, and it was where we had forged the beginnings of a bond together. As long as I didn’t blow it by making her experience in the shelter an unpleasant one, I felt confident I’d always be able to get near her.

  Ten days after Misty arrived I received my first phone call from a client asking for a home visit. She had got hold of my number through Kelly and had actually called and left a message several weeks earlier, but hadn’t left a number. I had just about given up on her ever calling back, when she rang. I couldn’t have known then how important Julia Scholes would become in my life.

  She had a black, five-year-old, Welsh Cob mare, Dilly, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, with the express purpose of getting Julia back into horses after a several-year break. Julia had ridden throughout her childhood, and then worked with horses after leaving school, but like so many others she had become disillusioned with the horse ‘establishment’. Dilly had definitely been broken to harness, but possibly not to ride, and Julia wanted some help restarting her from the beginning. She also had some ground-handling issues, as D
illy had very much her own views about who should be in charge of speed and direction while being led. Julia didn’t want to send Dilly away anywhere, so I arranged to visit her at her home in Hertfordshire a fortnight later.

  This was the earliest appointment we could make, largely due to my strange hours in the Control Room, and as she drove me out to the stables where the horse was kept, I was disappointed to hear that in the meantime she’d gone ahead and backed Dilly herself. She’d just hopped on bareback, and Dilly hadn’t reacted at all. She’d probably been ridden as well as driven in the past. Julia assured me, however, that there would still be plenty to work on.

  Dilly lived on a farm open to the public, and it had animals packed away in every odd corner. There were goats, pigs, cows, chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs, and a strange assortment of stable yards crammed into all the remaining spaces. There was a shop selling a strange selection of crafts and gifts, and, I was delighted to discover, a coffee shop. The idea of having hot food and drink available where your horse lived seemed exceptionally civilised. What seemed less sensible, as Dilly had pointed out to Julia on numerous occasions, was that to get to the fields you had to lead your horse through the tables and chairs scattered outside the coffee shop and around the paddling pool filled with screaming kids, while a gaggle of territorial geese did everything they could to impede your progress.

  I didn’t feel entirely comfortable in the role of ‘expert’, but Julia was lovely, and I began to feel more at ease. Slim and strong, almost wiry, she had the kind of long, fine fingers I’ve always considered artistic. An abundance of curly brown hair added a touch of softness, and her green eyes were friendly, honest and direct. Dilly, on the other hand, had an abundance of shaggy black hair, which did nothing to soften her look, and whichever angle you viewed her from, she couldn’t be described as slim. Strong, definitely. She wasn’t an aggressive mare, but she had the air of someone who wouldn’t suffer fools gladly. I prayed she wouldn’t consider me one.