My Animals and Other Family

by Clare Balding

  The color was much brighter than it had looked on the side of the can, and it was hard to get a really smooth finish, especially with the broom. We soldiered on for an hour or so before we heard our mother calling us in for tea. I stood back to admire our handiwork and, as I did so, a shadow fell across the floor.

  There was a figure standing in the doorway. It was taller than my mother, wearing a skirt and a turtleneck sweater. The shadow had its hands on its hips. Andrew was facing the door.

  “Hello, Grandma,” he said, cheerfully. “Look what we’ve done.”

  I turned around, slowly, hoping that our enterprise would find favor. My grandmother made a sort of whistling noise with her nose. It was a strange sound, but I knew it wasn’t good. She did not look happy. She did not look proud. She looked quite the opposite. She turned on her heel and marched back toward the house, meeting my mother midway across the lawn.

  “Your children are out of control,” I heard her say. “They are feral little urchins. I will come back when you have sorted them out.”

  My mother approached the Puppy Shed.

  “Oh God. Oh my dear God. I’m so sorry, Candy,” she said to her boxer. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Her voice was still and quiet.

  “Leave it. Leave it all. I will tell your father about this.”

  That’s when I knew it was really bad. I wanted to argue our case, to reason with my mother, but my tongue was so sore that I could only communicate through sign language—and that didn’t seem to get my point across. It’s not as if we were trying to be deliberately naughty. We had been trying to help. We really had.

  Mum marched us back into the house, and the next hour smelled strongly of turpentine. She had to cut paint out of our hair, throw away our clothes, wipe us down with cotton wool doused in turpentine and then put us in the bath. She left us with Liz, the Irish nanny, as she disappeared to clear up as best she could and wipe paint from the short coats of the puppies.

  When my father got back from evening stables, I could hear him laughing downstairs.

  “Ian, it’s not funny,” I heard my mother say. “You should have seen the state of them. You’re going to have to do something. My mother said they were feral—feral, for God’s sake. She wouldn’t even stay for tea.”

  I heard my father climb the stairs, and I was breathing quickly as he opened my door. I was frightened he was going to spank me so I pretended to be asleep. I wanted to tell him that we weren’t really furry. Or at least we hadn’t meant to be. I didn’t know why it was a bad thing to be furry, but clearly Grandma didn’t like furry children. My tongue was still throbbing. I opened my eyes a little bit and saw him standing there with his hunting crop by his side. I held my breath. He tapped it against his leg.

  “I know you can hear me,” he said. “Make sure you say sorry to your mother in the morning, and don’t do it again.”

  With that, he shut the door. I couldn’t sleep for ages and, when I did, I dreamed I was swimming in a pool of paint.

  We were banned from the Puppy Shed for the next week, which was torture. We both said sorry to Mum, who just shook her head sadly. Grandma didn’t come to see us for ages and, when she did, she took one look at my head and said, “What have you done to her hair? She looks like a bloody lesbian.”

  ~

  Andrew and I were keen to hone our skills as jockeys. My mother said we were only allowed to ride Valkyrie for an hour every morning. We both thought our Shetland pony would have preferred to spend all day with us, but Mum said something about “abusing her good nature,” which I never really understood.

  “What is going on?” It was my mother.

  Andrew and I were in the middle of the kitchen, with Valkyrie.

  “She’s come in for some lunch,” I said matter-of-factly.

  I was brushing her mane as she tucked into a bowl of cereal. Andrew was picking his nose and looking slightly confused.

  “It was Clare’s idea,” he said, under his breath.

  “Look, Mummy, she loves Shreddies,” I said, by way of distraction. “And she’s really comfortable. She wanted to see where we live and we couldn’t stop her.”

  It was bad timing, as I’m convinced my mother was coming round to the idea of Valkyrie having lunch with us every day, but the pot-bellied pony lifted her tail and dumped a steaming pile of poo on the kitchen floor.

  “Take her back to the stable. Right now.” My mother did not raise her voice often and, when she did, it was scary. What she usually did was count to ten. I would often wait until she got to eight, just to be sure she wasn’t joshing, but there was no count this time. It was to happen right away.

  “Can’t she finish her Shred—”

  “She most certainly cannot.”

  I pulled Valkyrie’s head, with difficulty, out of the bowl and trudged out of the kitchen with my pony reluctantly in tow. Andrew stayed where he was, disowning any part in the project, while I stayed with Valkyrie in her stable, telling her about all the other rooms in the house and how I would have taken her upstairs to see my bedroom except that she wouldn’t have been able to fit through the door.

  Some hours later, Liz came to get me and, when I returned to the kitchen, the floor was sparkling clean.

  ~

  Dad was keen on a golfer called Tom Watson but cross with the England cricket team because they had lost some big series to Australia. Red Rum had won his third Grand National. A big, flashy chestnut with white socks and a white blaze down his face called The Minstrel won the Derby under a driving finish from Lester Piggott. Andrew was upset because Willie Carson, his favorite jockey, had finished second.

  My father was trying to consolidate the position he had earned courtesy of Mill Reef, but even that early in his career he knew he would never enjoy another season so perfect. If you have trained the best horse anyone has ever seen, it would be sheer arrogance to expect another one like him to come along.

  So he did the best with what he was given, and with people like Paul Mellon, the Queen and the Canadian millionaire Bud McDougald, who bred their own stock and liked to see them race in their own colors, life was good. He was a top-ten trainer and he was based at a place that was horse heaven on earth.

  There is a book called Kingsclere that was published in 1896. It is by John Porter, the most successful trainer of the Victorian era and the man who put Park House on the racing map. Between 1863 and his retirement in 1905, he trained twenty-three Classic winners, including seven Derby winners. All of them were prepared and cared for on the gallops of Cannon Heath Downs and the stables of Park House.

  When he first arrived at Kingsclere, Porter asked a shepherd what sort of country it was.

  “Well, zur,” came the reply, “I can tell you that in a very few words. It is too poor a country to live in and it’s far too healthy to die in. We just hangs on as long as we likes, and then we comes up here and gets blowed away.”

  We had a gallop man a bit like that shepherd. He was called Jonna Holley and was a big, round man with a weather-beaten face who spent all day patrolling the Downs, either on his tractor or on foot, repairing the divots made by the hooves of horses thundering up the gallops. I liked Jonna. He didn’t say much, but he kept an eye on all of us and he knew the Downs, the sheep in the fields and the buzzards that swept overhead. He was a man of the land. He didn’t come to the stables except to fill up the tractor with diesel, and yet he knew every horse and every rider.

  What were the Downs made of? Chalk, grass, a few trees and Jonna.

  The only things Jonna wouldn’t have known were the stables. They were indoors, and he didn’t do indoors. The design of the yard was precise. The boxes were twelve feet wide, deep and high; the floor had to be made of a material that does not allow a horse to slip; and there should be no sharp edges.

  “In fact,” wrote John Porter, “there should be no projec
tions or sharp rises in any part of the stable where a horse can possibly injure himself. He is sure to do this if there is half a chance.”

  Every decision, whether it was the design and placement of hayracks and ventilation shafts, drainage, the paving or the material that is best for roofing, was made with the health and welfare of the horse in mind.

  Kingsclere outlines best practice for feeding racehorses, with high-quality oats, a few beans or peas for flavor and some chaff (cut hay) to help them chew. They should have a bran mash twice a week, carrots now and then, and fresh grass. Porter was a stickler for tidiness and expected the horses and their stables to look perfect morning and evening.

  The horses came first at Park House, but the staff who worked there in the late 1800s were also well treated, by comparison with other yards. Mr. Dollar tells John Porter that in many racing establishments the lads “have to perform their ablutions in the stables bucket with the aid of the sponge and cloths that have been used for grooming the horses.” At Kingsclere, they had bathrooms, lavatories and a dormitory, as well as a recreation room and a dining room where their meals were cooked by “The Captain.” It amazes me how little has really changed.

  There is no longer a curfew with lights out at ten o’clock every night, nor a requirement for the lads to go to church on Sundays, but the daily routine is much the same: feeding, morning exercise, grooming, grazing, rest for the horses in the afternoon, evening stables when all the horses are inspected, and an evening feed.

  The dedication of the trainer was, and still is, complete. There are no shortcuts with racehorses, no decisions that can be made by others, no substitute for knowing your own horses. Good staff are essential: a wise Head Lad, a supportive assistant trainer and a lively Traveling Head Lad, who is in charge of the horses when they leave the stables for racecourses around the world. These are all essential, but the trainer needs to be on top of it all.

  John Porter felt the same about the responsibility of being a trainer in 1894 as my father did eighty years later:

  He can see nothing through other eyes. He must make a separate study of each horse; find out his constitutional peculiarities; watch daily, even hourly, the progress he is making, so as to have his charge in perfect condition on the day of his race. He must not be a week too soon, or a week too late, for that means defeat.

  To be a trainer is not a job; it is not even a career: it is a way of life. My father did not really enjoy going on holiday because he felt he should be at home with the horses. He would allow himself a week off, maybe two, in the winter—but from February to the end of November he was working fulltime.

  I say “working,” but I’m not sure he thought of it that way—it was what he was put on earth to do. Dad only ever paid himself a small salary. Every penny of profit made in prize money would be plowed back into the business—for new gallops or a new yard, to build a swimming pool for the horses (one of the first in Britain) or to improve the footing in the avenues and walkways so that there was no danger of a horse picking up a stone bruise.

  There is an old saying, “No hoof, no horse,” and my father employed a full-time farrier. He had a forge where he shaped the steel shoes the horses wore for their everyday work and the light, aluminum ones they wore on race days. Weight is crucial in racing—the more weight a horse carries, the more he will be slowed down. So it is important to have the lightest shoes possible, but aluminum shoes are fragile, so they can’t be worn for longer than about twenty-four hours.

  Our farrier was called Speedy. I think this may have been ironic, as he was not the fastest worker in the world. As well as tending the racehorses, he would make regular checks on the horses up at The Lynches, including Valkyrie and Percy. Andrew and I weren’t sure about Speedy. He didn’t seem to like us much.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as he was getting out of his Ford Cortina. It was bright red, with a black roof. It was a warm day, so the windows were half open.

  Speedy slammed the door and looked down at me, his shoulder-length hair falling over a wide-collared shirt.

  “What’s it to you?” he asked.

  I stood my ground and put my hand down to Flossy, who was by my side. I could feel his aggression. Speedy was strapping on the leather chaps that protected his legs while he placed a horse or pony’s hoof on his thigh. Hanging from the hook above the back seat of his car was a blue velvet suit.

  He went to the trunk of the car to get his bag of files, hammers, nails and shoes.

  “I need to know,” I said importantly. “You can’t just turn up here. What are you doing?”

  Speedy was hot, he was irritated and he was in a hurry.

  “I’ve come to chop your pony’s head off,” he stated as he walked off toward the stables.

  I was aghast. I stood rooted to the spot for a moment and then ran to get Andrew. I even played by his rules to make sure I got his attention straight away.

  “Alan! Quick!” I shouted. “We’ve got to do something. Speedy is going to chop Valkyrie’s head off. He said so. He told me he’s going to do it.”

  Andrew could see that I was not joking. This was a clear and present danger to our pony’s life. We must take action. We crept through to the block of four stables that looked across to Cottington Hill. Speedy was in the first of the stables, shoeing Milo—Dad’s point-to-pointer, which was meant to have been his wedding present to my mother.

  It would take him a while to get to Valkyrie, so we had time to exact our revenge and still prevent him from doing her any harm.

  The gravel parking area by the back door of The Lynches was in the process of being resurfaced. There was a huge pile of sticky red sand and clay mixture near Speedy’s car.

  My brother and I looked at each other. We looked at the pile of what I believe is called “hoggin,” and we looked at Speedy’s car. I nodded at Andrew and we got to work.

  We shoveled as much hoggin as we could through the open windows of the car. I remember enjoying the repetitive motion of going from the pile to the car and back again, watching the red-mulch mound shrink on the outside and grow on the inside. We worked until we were exhausted, and we did a good job.

  “Now we need to stop him,” I told Andrew, and we marched off toward the stables. Speedy was about to start work on Valkyrie.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “Leave her alone!”

  Andrew joined in: “Don’t do it!”

  “Shh, now,” Speedy said, “you’ll scare the horses. What is the matter with you two?”

  My mother appeared. “What’s all this commotion?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s going to chop Valkyrie’s head off. He told me he was going to. Don’t let him, Mummy, don’t let him. He’s a murderer!”

  She looked at Speedy and raised her right eyebrow. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “I was only joking,” he said, with nails in his mouth. He bent over and started filing Valkyrie’s front hoof.

  Andrew and I glanced at each other, and at our palms, which were scarlet from the hoggin. We were red-handed, but we had not yet been caught.

  Andrew and I were hiding in the wigwam at the far end of the garden when we heard Speedy roar. It turns out he was due to wear the velvet suit to a party that night. It was his best. It also turns out that red clay and sand doesn’t come out, even after drycleaning. It’s also almost impossible to remove from the stitching of car seats or from the floor surface.

  My mother had to buy Speedy a replacement suit. She also had to pay for the car to be valet cleaned. We both got smacked with the back of the hairbrush, but it didn’t really hurt, and I always felt the moral victory was ours. Years later, Mum admitted that she thought it was a bloody stupid thing for Speedy to have said.

  I stayed in my room with Flossy for comfort. She was big and solid and, when she didn’t have wind, she smelled safe. She looked at me with her big, sad face wh
ile I told her what had happened, and she licked the tears off my cheeks. She was my best friend.

  6.

  Volcano

  Growing up is tough if you ride ponies. Getting taller is the hardest thing to deal with because it means you have to move on. Just as you have learned to understand a pony, trust it and love it, you grow out of it and have to build a relationship with a new, bigger pony. One marriage ends and another has to begin straight away. These marriages are not all an equal, happy meeting of minds.

  It was with dread that I realized I would not be small enough or light enough to ride Valkyrie forever. I was six and a half years old; Andrew was not yet five and was riding her son, Percy. They were getting on like a house on fire. By which I mean, destructively.

  Percy would do pretty much what he wanted to do, and Andrew would go along with it. Mostly, they were kept on the lead rein, but on the odd occasion they were set free they would merrily head off together in whichever direction Percy fancied, my brother deaf to the shouts of my mother as he bounced along in the saddle. Percy would stop to munch grass whenever he felt like it or suddenly take off at as fast a gallop as his hairy little legs would allow, my brother clinging on for dear life.

  This may explain why Andrew is the most conciliatory person I know. He will always take the path of least resistance, hates to have a quarrel and can’t bear anyone making a fuss. Even if he knows the option being offered to him is daft or dangerous, he will do it to avoid saying no. He just wants affection, attention and food—a bit like a dog, really.

  Whenever I went to talk to Percy in his stable or in the field, his little ears would go flat back, his eyes would narrow and he would grab my jacket, or my sweater, or my bare flesh with his teeth. He picked on small people, or on adults when they weren’t watching. I think he did it for a bit of fun, just to watch someone in pain. He was a bully and, like all bullies, he was also a coward. When he had taken a particularly painful lump out of my arm, I told my father that he was a rascal and Dad went out to have stern words. Percy cowered in the corner of the stall and, from that point on, if ever he heard my father’s voice, he would bolt to the farthest corner of the field.