My Animals and Other Family

by Clare Balding

  My father made that growling noise that I thought must make his throat feel a bit sore as I headed for the table in the corner where there was a hot plate with my mother’s best china dishes, laden with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages and mushrooms.

  I had rather missed my moment to curtsy and say “Your Majesty,” so I just carried on with breakfast, as if nothing was any different. Keep your line and kick on—that’s what Dad always said about riding. I figured it was the same in life.

  The Queen drank tea, not coffee. She liked it weak and without milk. Only one slice of toast, and none of the eggs, sausages, bacon, hash browns, mushrooms or tomatoes that were on offer. Her gloves were to the side of her plate, and on her feet were black court shoes. She seemed very small and rather quiet—not at all as she was on the television when my father made us watch her Christmas speech.

  My father glared at me, but it was too late to say anything now. So I concentrated hard on buttering my toast, smothering it with marmalade and cutting my sausage long-ways. It was an American delicacy—sausage on toast with marmalade—and I had decided that this would be part of what made me “interesting” and “different.” Sausages on toast with marmalade would form part of my statement to the world.

  The trouble with concentrating hard on cutting a sausage long-ways is that, if you press too hard, it’s a bit like squeezing a bar of soap. The sausage can shoot out of your grasp. I know this; I know this only too well. I can still recall in slow motion the way my sausage shot across the table toward the Queen as she sipped her tea.

  Quick as a flash, I tried to grab it. I knocked over the milk jug. My mother yelped. My father growled again. The Queen glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.

  I froze, wishing I could crawl under the table and pretend I was a dog. My brother seized the sausage and shoved it back on my plate. My mother mopped up the milk with that look in her eye that said, “I am not even going to count to ten. You are in so much trouble.”

  I knew my parents couldn’t actually say or do anything until the Queen had left. That gave me time. Time to escape. My father escorted the Queen out of the front door and took her to the stables to watch Second Lot “pulling out” of the yard. The horses walked around the huge flowerpot as my father identified each one and told Her Majesty about their breeding and their achievements.

  The Queen’s knowledge of racing is extraordinarily detailed. She remembers all sorts of facts and behavioral quirks of horses from previous generations and can spot inherited traits in her own horses and those of other people. As the horses left the yard to begin their trek up to the Downs, my father jumped in his Subaru truck and told the Queen’s chauffeur to follow him in the royal Range Rover.

  The Queen’s racing manager and great friend, Lord Carnarvon, was with her as they headed up to the gallops. The Queen never said very much when watching her horses. She asked questions and absorbed the answers, fascinated by the detail and diversity of equine behavior.

  I was not on hand to witness any of this, as I had disappeared to the stud to sit in the corner of a field and talk to the foals. It was something my mother liked me to do, as it familiarized the foals with human contact. I would just read a book and wait for them to come up and nudge me.

  The timid ones would take a while but, as they realized I wasn’t a threat and that I was more a curiosity, they came closer and started to take an interest. It was a game of patience but, in moments like this, it was a useful one to play. I did not want to go back to the house and, at least if I was here with the foals, I was doing something useful.

  In my absence, the Queen watched through binoculars as her horses galloped, she talked to the lads riding them and discussed options with my father and Lord Carnarvon. An hour or so later, with the detectives in tow, she was driven back through the village and headed off to Newbury Races.

  I calculated that, if I was gone for three hours, Dad would have already left for the races and my mother might, if I was lucky, have gone with him. I was right on the first count, wrong on the second.

  As I crept back up the drive and silently opened the back door, Flossy and Bertie jumped up to say hello. Flossy came toward me, wagging her hips, Bertie peeled back his lips in a trademark grin/grimace. Cindy stayed in her bed, the lazy cow. My mother came into the kitchen and looked at me without saying a word. She just shook her head.

  I went up to my room and stayed there for the rest of the day, reading Frankenstein and wishing I was a scientist so that I could create an alternative form of human life.

  When she started talking to me again, Mum drove the horse trailer to competitions the length and breadth of the country, where Hattie and I would perform, with some success. We weren’t world-beaters, but she could do a decent dressage test and jumped well enough that we usually came home with a rosette of one color or another. My father would say the same thing every time.

  “Did you win?”

  If the answer was no, he wasn’t interested. I tried to explain to him that at most one-day events you have a field of around seventy competitors. It is statistically hard to win. A top-ten finish is outstanding. My father, however, was a man whose life depended on results. If you weren’t first past the post, you were a loser.

  My mother would share my delight at finishing tenth or seventh or fifth, knowing that we had performed well and that I was enjoying myself. We understood how it worked and, as far as we were concerned, Dad just didn’t get it.

  10.

  Ellie May

  It would be too easy to think that snobbery is a trait restricted to human beings. Horses can also be arrogant, and thoroughbreds, bred for beauty and speed, tend to be the most self-admiring and superior of all. Then there are horses who are slightly less refined, whose bones are thicker and whose coat does not gleam like mahogany, however much it is brushed and polished. They look like grown-up ponies. These horses are referred to, even by people who would hesitate to define themselves as snobs, as “common.”

  Ellie May was as common as you like. She had a deep girth, a thick-haired mane and tail, an enormous backside and a head that was pretty only to those who believe boxer dogs beautiful. Consequently, my mother adored her. Ellie May was Mum’s hunter and, a bit like my beloved Frank, her mouth had all the sensitivity of a block of concrete.

  Ellie May may have had a bit of Irish Draft in her and a bit of cob. She was chunky and strong, with an ankle sock of white on her hind legs, a tiny line of white above her near-fore hoof and a small white star at the center of her head. She was officially “bay,” meaning she had a black mane and tail and a deep-brown body, neck, face and upper legs. She was fifteen hands three inches high and about seventeen hands round: to ride her, my mother’s legs went out sideways before they dropped downward.

  Ellie May was no beauty, but she was safe and reliable. She would never fall, never refuse, and although she could pull she wasn’t fast enough to run away with her rider. She would plod along at the same pace, see a fence and shorten her stride accordingly, finding a place to put down her hooves where no space looked available. If two fences were five strides apart, Ellie May could fit in seven.

  “She looks like a carthorse,” my father would say from his tall, handsome thoroughbred.

  “Well,” said my mother at the opening meet of the Berks & Bucks Draghounds, “let’s just see who comes home in one piece, shall we?”

  My father duly fell off three times as his fancy horse jammed on the brakes at the last minute, once sending him flying over a hedge on his own, while my mother took the sensible options and returned without a hiccup. She and Ellie May knew their limits and preferred to remain within them.

  My mother was firmly of the belief that there is no point looking the part if you can’t do the job.

  Unfortunately for me, Mum’s lack of interest in physical appearance meant that she had no truck with “fashion.” My growth spurt meant that I needed a new
set of clothes and, while she relented enough to buy me blue suede ankle boots and purple-and-white-striped leg warmers, she stopped short at collarless shirts and oversized cashmere sweaters. She also refused to buy me white jeans because they were “impractical.” I managed to catch my father at a weak moment and persuaded him to give me a few old shirts and sweaters that had shrunk in the wash. With a pair of scissors and a bit of uneven sewing, the shirts were transformed into collarless ones, while the sweaters were stretched over the back of an armchair until they hung loose and shapeless, just how I wanted them.

  ~

  My year in the Removes at Downe House had come to an end and we were allocated what would be our senior accommodation. A house was more than a place to live, it was also the team for which you would play, the group you would represent, and it would form the basis of the friendships you’d make. There were four houses at Downe House, and each had a different character. Tedworth was known as being quite academic, Aisholt was sporty, Holcombe was laid back and Ancren Gate (known as AG) had a reputation for being anarchic.

  We were all moving from a tight-knit, tiny cluster of sixteen girls in Darwin to be divided up into random groups with the Hill House girls and then flung into one of those four houses, where we mixed with all of the girls up to the age of sixteen. It was potluck.

  The Removes sat together as Mrs. Berwick called out the names and which house they had been assigned. There were cheers as girls who were friends discovered they would be in the same house for the next five years. These were nascent friendships that would become cemented into unbreakable bonds.

  “Clare Balding,” announced Mrs. Berwick, “Ancren Gate.”

  There were no cheers. If anything, there was a sigh. None of those already selected for AG particularly wanted me there, and all the friends I had made in Darwin and through lacrosse—Becks, Toe, Heidi, Char, Katherine, Cass and Shorty—were going into Aisholt or Tedworth.

  The AG gang were confident, casual and detached. They seemed older than their years, and infinitely more sophisticated. I longed to be able to flick my hair from one side of my head to another, I dreamed of having a leather jacket, an older brother and a chalet in Switzerland. I so wanted to belong to this gang and yet I knew it was impossible—unless I changed.

  I would have to impress them by being even cooler, even more daring, than they were. I would have to be the wildest child of the lot.

  Some lessons in life, you learn the hard way.

  AG was separated from the rest of the school. It was half a mile down a tarmac drive, surrounded by pine trees. We would cycle or walk up to the main school, our cloaks billowing out behind us like trainee witches’. It felt like an exclusive world, a closed environment where we could live and behave differently. Perhaps it was that degree of separation that encouraged those who felt they could write their own rules.

  I was in a four-bed dorm with three other girls known as Bear, Pickle and Snorter (this was a girls’ school—we all had nicknames). They had all been in Hill House together and were firm friends. Bear was tall, with long, dark hair and a voice so deep you’d swear she’d been smoking since the day she was born. Pickle was thin as a rake and had scruffy blond hair permanently tied back into a scrunchie, with wisps carefully pulled out to fall around her face, which was drawn and worried. She bit her fingernails and had patches of dry skin on her arms, which she scratched when she was fretting. Snorter was always snorting. She would snort her food, snort out her words and snort when she was laughing. Her job was to laugh at everything Bear said, whether it was funny or not. She was a one-woman show reel of canned laughter.

  As I unpacked my trunk on the first day of Michaelmas term 1982, I had a strange sense of foreboding. This was not going to end well.

  Lessons were fine. I really loved learning. Having been a long way behind the others in subjects that hadn’t been covered at my primary school, particularly in French, Latin, math (I just didn’t get it), religious studies and chemistry, I was slowly catching up. My savior was English. I couldn’t get enough of reading, and I could use a book as a shield. I could disappear into my own little world, where the fact that I wasn’t included in the AG gang didn’t matter anymore.

  I was fascinated by Greek and Roman myths. (I particularly noticed Golden Fleece winning the Derby that year, with Pat Eddery in the saddle, because of Jason and the Argonauts.) I enjoyed the impossible challenges thrown down to humans, the tragedy of vanity—Narcissus falling in love with his own reflection or Echo’s mournful cry haunting remote, rocky places. I loved the story of Pandora opening the box she had been told to leave closed. Out flew pestilence, war, disease and a myriad of evils. She shut the box and heard a knocking. The last thing remaining in the box was hope, without which none of us would be able to cope with life. I would remind myself of this tale when things went wrong—which they did.

  The girls in my dorm largely ignored me. So I decided it was time to do something attention grabbing. We were on a school outing to Oxford, all of us wearing our skirts, blazers and long green cloaks. A small group, including me, took a detour into W. H. Smith.

  “Time for some fun,” said Bear. “The one who comes out with the most free gear is the winner.”

  Snorter snorted her approval. Pickle looked nervous but nodded enthusiastically.

  “Come on, Balders,” Bear said to me. “Stop being such a square.”

  So the gauntlet was laid down. In my head, I would be Hercules. I would fulfill the impossible task and become a hero in the process. My magic cloak would protect me. So I started to scan the shelves, accidently knocking off five bags of Opal Fruits. I bent down to pick them up, my cloak covering the ground beneath me. Four of the bags made it back onto the shelf, one went invisibly into my blazer pocket. Sherbet Dip Dabs were next, followed by strawberry Chewits and a packet of green-and-white-striped Pacer mints.

  Underneath my cloak, my pockets were bulging. I could see Snorter and Pickle slipping smaller but more valuable items into their pockets—a fountain pen, ink cartridges, a Dennis the Menace ruler and even a cassette of Thriller. I could hear my heart thudding against my chest as I turned for the door. The rush of adrenaline made me feel faint.

  Outwardly, I remained calm and cool. I even smiled at the assistant as I walked out, and said, “Thank you so much.”

  We had agreed to meet up in a side street around the corner from Smith’s. I got there first and waited nervously for the other three to appear. Pickle came sprinting around the corner, her face flushed. She was giggling hysterically as she showed me some of the booty in her pockets.

  “Wow, that was awesome. But so scary too. I sooo thought I was going to get caught.” Pickle was almost crying with relief.

  Snorter appeared at a rapid rate a few minutes later. “Ohmygod, ohmygod,” she snorted. “The security bloke came in. With a walkie-talkie and everything. And Bear’s still in there. Ohmygod, ohmygod! What if she gets caught? What will we do?”

  We looked at each other in shock, and then Pickle said, with tears in her eyes, “If my parents find out, I’m dead meat.”

  She put her arms around Snorter and me. Together we formed a tight ring, chanting as one, “Bring back Bear! Bring back Bear!”

  For the first time, I had been allowed into the group. Adversity—well, crime—had united us. Then came a deep, raspy voice.

  “What the hell are you lot up to? You haven’t gone soft on me, have you?”

  I looked through the sliver of a gap between Pickle and Snorter’s bodies to see the familiar swagger of our gang leader.

  “The Bear!” we said in unison. “The Bear is back.”

  We were all talking at the same time, all asking the same questions as fast as we could. None of it made any sense, but the sentiment was genuine. If you could smell relief, we stank of it.

  We started to count the goods and to divide them equally between us. We were like
the Four Musketeers or the Famous Five minus Timmy the dog, and I was high on love, laughter and adrenaline. We developed our own terms: “What did you buy?” covered goods you paid for, whereas “What did you get?” meant “What did you steal?”

  Bear was the undisputed shoplifting queen. She came back from Newbury once wearing a brand-new leather jacket.

  “Wow, how much did that cost?” I asked, still envious of anything that resembled a fashionable item of clothing.

  “Nothing,” said Bear laconically. “Well, it would have cost over a hundred quid if I’d paid for it,” she said, running her right hand through her hair. “But I didn’t, did I? I tried it on, liked it and walked out with it on.”

  I gasped. I was staggered at the daring. Pickle and Snorter were told of the Bear’s latest achievement, but it was strictly a dorm secret. No one outside those four beds was to know about it.

  ~

  It is a Downe House tradition that, when it is someone’s birthday, a collection is made in a trash bin. The bin fills up with Hunkydory colored writing paper, purple Sailor pen cartridges, sweets, stickers, felt-tip pens and the like. If the birthday girl is really popular, the bin will overflow with goodies. If she is not, it will be a rather measly offering. The deal is that you only ask for gifts from your year and the years below; you never ask an older girl for presents.

  As the youngest year in AG, we were constantly getting a knock on the door and the call of “Whacky-bee!” That’s what the birthday bin was called—a whacky-bee. Our dorm, obviously, had a huge collection of gifts, so we would happily pass on our stolen goods throughout the house. That way I could tell myself that, in fact, we were robbing from the rich to give to the poor.

  This, of course, was a ludicrous defense. 1. No girl at Downe House was poor, and 2. Stealing from shops was not the same as robbing taxes back from draconian landowners to divide among the poor who paid them in the first place.