My Animals and Other Family

by Clare Balding

  “Apricot,” my mother corrected me. “Those are Lord Howard de Walden’s colors.”

  They looked orange to me, and they were easy to spot. When the field came back past us, they were flying. I had never seen horses travel so fast, and I was thrilled by the sound they made—I could hear the jockeys shouting at each other, the hooves thundering and the whips cracking. For the first time in my life, racing had made my heart pound. As the field came by again, I could see the orange/apricot colors of Kris surging clear. He won easily and was crowned champion miler of 1979.

  The trip to Goodwood was a fun diversion from “the move.”

  The main house that went with the stables—Park House—had lain empty for a couple of years, and my parents decided that it made sense to sell The Lynches and put the money into converting the fourteen-bedroom house that adjoined the yard into a more manageable family home. So they divided it into two, making the back end of it—where my mother and her brothers had lived with Nanny—into permanent staff accommodation. The front end had five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a sitting room, a drawing room, a dining room and a playroom. Even at half the size of the whole house, our end was still enormous.

  My parents explained to the dogs what was going to happen. Andrew and I listened carefully, so we knew our parents were taking us all to Park House to have a look around.

  The dimensions were amazing, with huge bay windows and high ceilings. You could play tennis in the drawing room. I know because we tried.

  I ran up the stairs, with Barney bounding ahead of me and Flossy puffing behind, to check out the bedrooms.

  “Don’t take the dogs up there,” my mother shouted from the hall with a sigh that said she knew it was too late. “Yours is the room on the left.”

  I walked into the biggest bedroom I had ever seen, with a sash window in three sections looking southward toward Cottington Hill. It was the same view I had had from my cupboard at The Lynches, but it seemed so much larger; instead of looking at the television antenna from the same height, I was now looking up at it. The hill seemed the size of a mountain from down here.

  My new bedroom had a sink in the corner. This gave me real pleasure, as it meant that my toothpaste was now safe from my brother’s habit of squeezing it in the middle and not putting the top back on.

  Having paced out my bedroom and discovered that it was exactly five times as big as the cupboard I’d had as my room at The Lynches, I explored the rest of upstairs. There was a wide flight of five stairs leading up to another landing, with an enormous mirror on the wall ahead. To the left was the room that had belonged to my grandparents and would now be my parents’. There was a third door on this level, and it was closed. It was stiff and creaky and, as I pushed it back, a layer of dust was blown up in the breeze. On the shelves were rows of shoes, covered in a thick film of dust.

  There were brown-leather brogues, black dress shoes, heavy shoes with steel-capped heels, jodhpur boots, long, black hunting boots and velvet slippers. It was a museum of carefully stitched, long-unworn, handmade shoes—the shoes of a man who had long since left us.

  Grandma had moved her things out to the Pink Palace, but she had left this strange memorial to her late husband. I closed the door and wondered whether to tell my mother. For some reason, I thought the sight of her father’s shoes might upset her.

  The next time I opened that door, the space had been transformed into an airing cupboard. I don’t know where the shoes went.

  We went from a cut-off, quiet existence to being at the heart of everything that was happening.

  The “Old Kitchen,” where my grandmother’s cook had toiled away in the dark, was turned into a utility room, and a new kitchen was built on the north side of the house, looking out over the driveway and next to the office. This became the hub, with an endless stream of people coming through the back door.

  Breakfast at Park House was like going to the theater. It was a mini-drama every morning, with the regulars—my father, his assistant trainer, my mother, a nanny or au pair and us—joined by an ever-changing cast of extras. Owners who had come to see their horses, a jockey riding work, pupil assistants, visiting foreign students, family members—all played their part. When we were more than eight for breakfast, which was often, we moved into the dining room, where there was a little hole in the wall connecting it to the kitchen so food could be passed through.

  Andrew and I reveled in our new surroundings. We had a flat lawn for the first time, and it was as big as a football field. We built a Grand National assault course from old doors, tires and branches for Barney to learn to jump. He followed us like a lamb, jumping up at my arm as I ran between “Becher’s Brook” and “the Chair.”

  He was so fast and agile that he made it look easy. I struggled to keep up, leaping across the width of a door that was perilously balanced on two croquet hoops. Barney had sailed over, but I banked it, stepping on the middle of the door. It came crashing down on my foot.

  “Ow!” I bit my lip as I winced in pain, trying to be brave in front of my little brother. Barney shoved his long nose into my armpit as I sat on the lawn nursing my left foot.

  Later that day, when I still couldn’t put any weight on it, my mother took me to Basingstoke Hospital. I had broken my big toe. Andrew had little sympathy.

  “Nothing serious then,” my father said when we got home. “You’ll be riding in the morning, won’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure whether it was a question or a command but, as it happened, riding didn’t really hurt. Walking did. Running was out of the question. Andrew tried the assault course alone.

  “S’not as much fun,” he muttered, and gave up.

  We settled into life at Park House quickly, but as it was so close to the racehorses there were strict rules. Andrew and I were not allowed into the yard on our own; we had to have an adult with us at all times. We were not allowed to ride our ponies through the yard, except during breakfast, when all the racehorses were in their stables. We were not allowed to run down the tarmac stretch known as the “Straight Mile.” This was the main thoroughfare between the yards and led to the indoor school and the swimming pool.

  We were definitely not allowed in the “Color Room,” where all the silks belonging to Dad’s owners hung in an open closet, as if on display. That was the room where Mill Reef had recovered from his broken leg, and was now the domain of Spider, the Traveling Head Lad. There was a sign on the door telling everyone who entered: “God help anyone who helps themselves to anything in this room.”

  In the Color Room, Spider prepared the bag needed for each runner—passport (for the horse, not the jockey); girths; colors; chamois leather, a paper-thin, super-light square of gray polystyrene-type material that acted as a saddlecloth; bridle; grooming kit and bucket. The saddle would belong to the jockey and was as big as the weight being carried by the horse would allow. Some saddles weigh only a pound and are so tiny they are no more than a means of hanging stirrups on either side of a horse’s back.

  As for the swimming pool at the far end of the Straight Mile, we didn’t need to be told not to swim in it. It was freezing cold, ten feet deep and circular. Despite a filter system and a boy using a stick with a net to fish out droppings as fast as he could, the water wasn’t exactly crystal clear. There was no chlorine, as that was bad for the horses, and there were often “fragments” floating on the surface.

  ~

  That winter, it snowed. The Downs were covered with a crisp, white duvet and my father decided to take advantage. He did not spend that much time with us as children. We did not go on summer holidays together because he was busy, he was always doing something “important,” and in the winter my parents took a break in Barbados with other adults. Having a holiday with children was not my father’s idea of fun—at least, not until we were old enough to ski.

  The snow on the Downs gave him an idea. He told my mother he was takin
g us sledding. We all climbed into the white Subaru truck, which had its yellow winter shell covering the back of it. Andrew and I shared the front passenger seat and flung our two sleds into the back of the truck. Dad stopped at the garage and picked up two sections of long rope.

  “Right, you two—this will be the best fun ever,” he said when we got to the top of the Downs.

  The whole place was still: no birdsong, no horses galloping, no people. All was quiet. Dad tied both ropes to the tow bar at the back of the truck and looped them through the front of our sleds.

  “Hang on tight,” he said as he climbed back behind the wheel.

  The silence of the snow-clad Downs was split by the roar of a Subaru engine and the screams of two children clinging on for dear life. I don’t think my father realized quite how fast it felt behind the truck as he tore up the side of the gallop. Andrew and I kept swinging into one another. The uphill bits were just about manageable but, when we started going downhill, we had no way of stopping ourselves from catching up with the truck. I was terrified we were both going to end up as mashed potatoes underneath the exhaust pipe.

  “How’s that! Fun, eh?” Dad shouted out the window. I waved at him, my face fixed in a grimace. Andrew had such a thick Puffa jacket on that he could hardly move. There were tears streaming down his face from the icy-cold wind and exhaust fumes.

  “Brilliant. Let’s go again!” Dad was enjoying himself, at least. He put his foot down and took off. Andrew was caught unawares and fell backward as his sled lurched ahead. His legs spun right over the top of his head as he performed a backward roly-poly and was left sitting in the middle of the gallop. I was on the same side of the truck as Dad, so tried waving at him to stop, hoping he would see me in the mirror. He did, but, unfortunately, he thought I was telling him to go faster—so he did. I was screaming with terrified urgency:

  “Stop! Stop! We’ve lost Andrew. Daddy, stop.”

  All he could hear was the roar of the engine, and all he could see was one child behind him, seemingly having the time of her life. Dad was enjoying the challenge of controlling the four-wheel-drive truck as it slid over the snow and was lost in his own dream sequence, pretending he was a rally driver. Eventually, more than a mile away from where Andrew sat crying in the snow, Dad stopped.

  My voice was hoarse from shouting, so all I could do was beckon to him and point at the empty sled beside me. Dad got out of the truck.

  “Oh, how did that happen?”

  I pointed back down the gallop to a little dot in the snow.

  “That’s a shame. He missed the best bit,” Dad said. “Do you want to stay there for the ride back?”

  I shook my head as vehemently as I could, and my father looked rather disappointed when I made a run for the passenger seat. Poor Andrew was all cried out by the time we rescued him. Dad pulled him to his feet and told him not to be so pathetic.

  My mother, initially delighted that her husband was, for once, wanting to spend time with his children, was not so thrilled when we got back. That was the last time Dad took us anywhere on his own over the Christmas holidays.

  ~

  As well as “the move” to Park House, 1979 was a big year because Andrew went away. At the age of seven, with his freshly cut blond hair and his chubby cheeks, he was deemed old enough for boarding school. He looked so smart in his sweater and tie, with his cap pulled firmly on his head and his socks so high they nearly met his shorts.

  When he said good-bye, I’m not sure either of us realized that he wouldn’t be back for weeks. He wasn’t just going to a new school—he was going to prep school, where he would board fulltime.

  “He needs the discipline,” I heard my father say. “It’ll make a man of him. It didn’t do me any harm.”

  “He’s only seven.” I heard the warm baritone of Dad’s American cousin Uncle David, his voice fluffy round the edges because of his beard. “I’d hang on to this bit as long as you can. He’ll be a man long enough, and you might find you liked him better as a little boy.”

  Grandma thought sending Andrew away was a fine idea and couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been packed off to boarding school yet. The truth was that my parents weren’t at all sure any good school would take me. I had had a bit of trouble, you see.

  The school for “nice children” had decided that I didn’t really fit in. I was a bit rough around the edges, a bit loud and a bit too inclined to get into a fight. Having been taken away from there hastily, to keep it quiet from my grandmother, I was sent to Kingsclere Primary School. Keeping it quiet didn’t work.

  “She’s a tomboy,” my grandmother said, as she dropped two sweeteners into her cup of coffee. (Never sugar, always sweeteners, carried in a little gold pot she kept in her bag.)

  “That’s the trouble,” she continued. “She needs to learn a little decorum. Some manners. How to behave like a lady.”

  She would never sit down when she popped around for a chat. She always stood and kept her coat on, as if she were too busy to stay. Or as if she would rather be somewhere else.

  “I can hear, you know,” I mumbled under my breath as I sat in the corner with Flossy, curling my arms around her and burying my face in her neck.

  “She’ll be trouble all her life, I can tell.” Grandma was in full flow now, and my mother knew better than to try to defend me.

  “A proper little urchin. No wonder they couldn’t handle her. Well, they’ll sort her out at the village school. Make or break, I’d say, and at least it’s not costing you anything.”

  Grandma sighed and glanced at me in the dog bed.

  “Bloody waste of money educating girls,” she said. “I mean, beyond reading and writing, what exactly is the point?”

  I caught my mother’s eye as she raised her eyebrows.

  “Right you are”—this was Grandma’s favorite phrase, a catchall for any situation—“Right you are. I’m off. Let her hair grow a bit, will you?”

  She patted Flossy and me on the head as she strode out of the kitchen. As she shut the door, I noticed that my mother stopped grinding her teeth.

  So I started midterm at the local primary school. I thought it would be fine, because my best friend, Heather Cox, went there too. Her father worked in the yard and her mother worked for my mother with the ponies and the hunters. We were pretty much the same age and had known each other since we were tiny.

  I walked in that first day with Heather by my side, and everyone stared. I smiled and said, generally, to the air around me, “Good morning. How are you?”

  There were titters. Snorts of derision.

  A girl with earrings bumped into me. I don’t think it was an accident.

  “Think you’re better ’n us?” A big boy called Darren was cracking his knuckles.

  “Not at all,” I said, as politely as I could. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance. Most certainly I am.”

  My mother had always taught me that good manners would get you out of a sticky situation. For some reason, in this instance, the politest voice I could summon had the opposite effect.

  There was a ring of them now, all around me. Heather tried to say something but was pushed out of the way. I motioned to her to get out while she could. They were pulling at my sweater, ruffling my hair, spitting at my shoes. When one girl tried to pull my backpack away, it was as if the pin had been pulled out of my hand grenade. I lost it.

  “You bitch,” I shouted. I kicked, I hit, I bit and I took the storm of punches coming back my way without a whimper. I was just beginning to get the situation under control when Mrs. Cook came into the playground.

  “And what on earth is going on here?” Her voice did not need a megaphone. She was a human trumpet.

  I froze, my fist just above my right ear. The girl with the earrings, who was now on the concrete of the playground on her back, me sitting astride her with my left hand around
her throat, started to scream.

  “Miss, Miss, she’s trying to kill me,” she said. “I did nuffink. She’s a mentalist.”

  The evidence was against me. The crowd had dissipated. There was just me, the girl with the earrings and a boy with a nosebleed, saying, “Miss, she punched me. Look, Miss, blood.”

  I could see Heather a few feet away. She tried to stick up for me, but there wasn’t much point. I said nothing. The last time I had tried to be polite it had worked against me.

  “You, come with me,” said Mrs. Cook, pointing at me. “Let Joanne get up. Brian, you’ll be fine. It’s just a bit of blood. The rest of you get into class. Now.”

  She took me to the headmistress’s office, where she sat me down and gave me a glass of water.

  “It’s your first day,” she said. “It will get better, I promise, but fighting is not the answer. Really, it’s not.”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  “I’ll be keeping an eye on you. Now, go to your first class and try to keep out of trouble. At least for the rest of the day.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, as I crept out of the room.

  As I walked into the classroom, late on that first morning, thirty pairs of eyes turned to look at me. I searched for a desk that was free and saw Heather waving at me. She had saved me a place.

  As it turned out, the fact that I could punch a boy and make his nose bleed and that I wasn’t frightened of Joanne Jones worked in my favor. My stock had risen considerably that morning. The tough boys avoided me at break time and the girls looked a little wary.

  Heather and I sat on the concrete tube in the school yard while younger children climbed through beneath us, eating our chocolate biscuits. I didn’t really care if the rest of the school didn’t want to talk to me, as long as they weren’t trying to rip my backpack off my back.

  The evenings and the weekends were hard. I got back from school, and Andrew wasn’t there. We may have had our fights, but he was my partner in crime. We didn’t have to explain things to each other, or apologize, or feel awkward. Andrew was the only person in front of whom I didn’t feel the need for a disguise. Our life wasn’t odd to him, because he’d lived it alongside me. Now, I didn’t have him and, worse than that, he was having a set of experiences of which I was no part. Meanwhile, I was having a very different set, from which he could not save me.