My Animals and Other Family

by Clare Balding

  My knee was bearing up pretty well. I had to do exercises every day, lifting weights draped around my ankle, to strengthen the muscles on either side. I had a long scar where the surgeon had cut in to remove the folded-over, distorted cartilage that had caused all the trouble. The ligaments were damaged, but not torn—they would recover, with time.

  Riding would be the real test. I chose Stuart because I knew he was the kindest. I led him out to the concrete mounting block so that getting into the saddle would be as easy as possible. He stood stock still, his ears pricked. I climbed gingerly into the saddle and adjusted my stirrups to be a little longer than usual. So far, so good.

  We walked up through the yard, and it felt wonderful just to be on a horse again. I was nervous, worried that I would have lost my touch or that, once I started to trot, my knee would send sharp arrows of pain to my brain. We walked up the main avenue, straight on up Christmas Tree Avenue, and turned right at the top. I wanted to take my time, to savor the smell of the trees, the sight of a deer running across the fields or a buzzard hovering overhead.

  We headed up the side of Cottington Hill and, once on the track that led steeply uphill, I asked Stuart to move into trot. This would be the big test. I sat up and down, up and down, my knees bending and my calves squeezing the sides of his big tummy. It didn’t hurt. It felt strange, but it didn’t hurt.

  I could do it! I screamed in delight and punched the air. Stuart pricked his ears and quickened up his pace. We rode through the White Horse parking lot, crossed the main road and went through the gap by the side of the five-bar gate on to the Downs.

  We cantered, with me sitting down into the saddle. We jumped on to the side of the Downs that looked over the farm. I let Stuart go a little quicker and sat up in the saddle like a jockey. I was going to be OK.

  That evening, I needed a bag of frozen peas on my knee to take down the swelling. Mum said I must have overdone it. I denied it, but the next morning I was aching all over. Inside my thighs, up my bottom, my back and my arms were screaming. Dad pronounced that the only way to deal with it was to ride through the pain. My muscles had got out of the habit and I must make them learn how to do it all over again. I was a little less demanding on my limbs for the next few days and the knee seemed to be bearing up.

  ~

  At the end of our “O” levels, my year went to the Lake District on an “Outward Bound” course. It was meant to be a year-end release, a reward for finishing our exams and a chance for us to bond in different groups than our tightly formed cliques. I was fairly unfit after a summer of exams and limited exercise, but my knee was mending and I was determined not to shirk on the physical side of things. We headed off to Penrith on the train and then across to Ullswater, where we would sleep in a Georgian mansion with dormitories for the first night.

  We were woken even earlier than my father got up and told to put on our swimming outfits. As the sun rose, a large group of shivering, yawning public school girls ran down to the lake’s edge.

  “In you get, then!” shouted the main Outward Bound organizer.

  We looked at each other. Surely we weren’t expected to get in the freezing water?

  “Come on, you bunch of overprivileged wimps!” he continued. “You’re not expecting a nice warm shower and a bar of frothy soap, are you? This is how you’d do it in the wild, so come on, get in.”

  “This is a bloody sick joke,” said my friend KT. “I thought this was meant to be a treat. Not a boot camp.”

  “Put your heads under. It doesn’t count unless you put your heads right under the water!”

  There was a younger guide there. He could only have been about twenty-two. He whispered toward where I was standing with my friends KT, Toe and Gerry.

  “It’s only water. It’s fresh, it’s clean, and it’s the best way in the world to wake up. Go on, get in. I promise you you’ll never forget the feeling.”

  I decided to get it over with as fast as I could. I pulled off my robe and broke ranks, running toward the water’s edge in my swimming outfit. It was a glacial shock to the system, but I kept running, splashing and then diving under the dark surface. The nerves in my body tingled, my brain stopped for a second and then started to transmit at a thousand volts. It was the boost that I needed to recharge my aching brain.

  The shores of Ullswater are deceptively welcoming—the water lapping over rounded boulders, inviting you in—but the depth of the lake means it is freezing cold even in the height of summer.

  I bobbed up to the surface and shouted back to the shore, “Come on, it’s incredible!”

  Mike, the younger instructor, gave me a thumbs-up from the shore. The others started to follow, one by one and then all in a rush. High-pitched screams sped across the water and bounced back from the hills on the other side. The air was filled with a storm of shrieking and nervous laughter. I swam until I was numb and then headed back. Mike was right—I did not forget the feeling.

  The second evening, we slept out on the side of the lake in bivouacs. They were makeshift shelters which, as we discovered, were not watertight. It rained hard that night, the drips coming through the “roof” and making the bedding wet. As the ground around us became increasingly sodden, some of the bivouacs started to slip toward the water’s edge. I awoke to screams from Heidi and Char, whose bivouac had slid right into the lake.

  I ran in my pajamas to help pull them out, while Mike rescued their backpacks and sleeping bags. Char never recovered, and even Heidi, who was habitually happy, was a shadow of herself until the fell run on the final day, when she took out her frustration by beating everyone to the finish. Never a natural runner and wary of my fragile knee, I hobbled along at the back with the stragglers, telling silly stories to take our minds off the agony of the cross-country run.

  Apart from that hellish end to the week, we had a wonderful time—building rafts, rappelling, rock climbing, making our way around an agility course built high in the trees.

  “Come on, Gerry, you can do it.” I was on a platform ten feet up a tree, trying to coax my friend along the wire. “Take it steady, don’t look down. That’s it.”

  “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. Don’t make me do it.” Gerry was terrified of heights.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “It’s fine, really, just look at me. Look me in the eye and keep walking.”

  Gerry started swearing at me, said she hated everyone, hated the Outward Bound and particularly me but, as she shouted obscenities, she was making progress, so I kept talking and put out my arm for her to grab as she got close. She threw herself at the platform, both of us nearly falling off it with the impact.

  “You’ve done it!” I shouted as I held on to her. “Well done, you’ve done it!”

  “I hate you. I absolutely hate you!”

  She continued to swear at me, but I told myself it was just the fear talking.

  Mike Evans was our group leader and, if he had told me to fling myself over a cliff, I would happily have done so. I knew he would always make sure I had a rope attached to me. I trusted him completely and, as I rappelled down the side of a cliff, I had fantasies of being in an action film. I held the rope out behind me with one hand, gripping lightly with the other above my head, and bounced off the cliff sides. It was fabulous.

  Away from the narrow, Z-shaped lake, we climbed toward Hellvellyn and, within an hour, were farther away from any sign of civilization than I had ever been before. After about two hours of walking, my brain stopped being cluttered with worries or daft thoughts and flicked on to a calmer setting. All I could think about was the path we were taking and the vast emptiness around us. The schoolgirl chatter had dissipated, and there was just the quiet scraping of boots and the puffing of exercising teenagers. It’s what they call “passive thinking time”—that place where your brain goes when it stops being distracted by the ephemera of life. I can only achieve it through walking
or riding for a decent stretch.

  We had huge adrenaline rushes that week, but we also had moments of absolute calm and the utter exhaustion that comes only from outdoor exertion. In Mike, we had a leader who knew how to make us find our core strength. He gently coaxed each girl through the start to any challenge—the moment when you go over the cliff edge or the tentative search for a new foothold as you climb up it—and then kept asking for more effort. He would not tolerate whining or bitching and, as he sat by the fire in his khaki cargo shorts, he demonstrated how few possessions were necessary in the hunt for happiness. All he needed was a flashlight, a penknife, a map and a compass.

  Mike knew how to challenge us enough to push us beyond our limits without snapping us in half. Unlike the boys of our age we had all met, he was not impressed by long, wavy hair or short skirts—he was only interested in how we might broaden our experience by losing ourselves in the landscape, and in testing our initiative as well as our physical ability. I dangled from his every word because, as far as I was concerned, Mike was delivering the gospel of true living. He wasn’t a fictional figure or a film star, he was real and he was my hero.

  Two years later, in 1988, I heard that Mike Evans had been killed in a climbing accident in New Zealand. I sobbed for the loss of a free spirit. I cried again when, only a few years ago, I was recording BBC Radio 4’s Ramblings on a section of the coast-to-coast path near Patterdale and came across a plaque in his memory. It was outside a remote hut that walkers use for shelter. I had to stop the recording, because my throat had constricted. In just one week he had helped me understand that the world was so much bigger and more interesting than anything I had yet experienced and that, somehow, I would find my place in it.

  ~

  Miss Houghton had written a notice in her swirly handwriting and pinned it on the board outside her ground-floor apartment. It asked to see every girl in our year individually and gave us a timetable to fill in. I put my name in the last box, thinking that I could at least ask the others what it was all about before I had to go in.

  Toe came out and told us that Miss Houghton had asked her to be a house prefect. Heidi said she had been appointed Games Captain, and Shorty was also a house prefect. We were all a little confused, as we had assumed that one of those three would be Head of House and that Miss Houghton would make that announcement later in the evening, when we were all together.

  I knocked on the door.

  “Come!” Miss Houghton’s voice tinkled.

  “Ah, Clare. Please sit down.” She took her glasses off and let them rest on her bosom, dangling from their gold chain. There was a plate on her desk of half-finished steak and kidney pie with peas and new potatoes.

  “Now, first of all, my dear, can I say, ‘Well done.’ Well done, indeed! I have never, in all my years, read such a glowing report, as it were, from the Outward Bound. You really did find your feet, didn’t you?”

  “Well,” I replied, sitting back, crossing my legs and watching Miss Houghton retrieve bits of pastry from her cavernous cheeks, “I really did enjoy it. I think I was lucky—I found some things much easier than other people did, and I’m not scared of heights.”

  Miss Houghton swallowed her masticated food, folded her hands in her lap and leaned forward.

  “My dear, you may think that you did well, as it were, because of your own achievements, but it’s not that which impressed your group leader. Oh no. It’s how you were with those who were struggling that caught his eye.”

  “Oh,” I said. I hadn’t realized we were being watched so carefully, nor had I been aware that Miss Houghton would be sent a detailed report.

  “Now, as you know,” Miss Houghton continued, about to say something that I definitely did not know, “I make some of my most important decisions after my girls return from the Outward Bound, as it is my experience that it can be the making, as it were, or the breaking of some.

  “Clare, it has been the making of you.” She paused to savor another saliva-softened morsel of food and then delivered the line I never expected to hear: “I would like to ask you if you would be my Head of House for next year.”

  I sat up and coughed.

  “You’re joking?”

  “I most certainly am not,” said Miss Houghton, offended that I could question her judgment.

  How could I be Head of House? I had been suspended and de-housed, I had spent most of the Lower and Upper IV in tears, I had never had any responsibility and there were about ten people in my year more deserving of the accolade.

  “I’m so sorry,” I finally spluttered. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you might make a joke over something so serious. Or that you might make a joke at all, about anything. I am just so . . . so surprised. Are you sure?”

  “I have never been more sure of anything,” she said. “Now if you could keep it all quiet until this evening, I would be most grateful. I will make an announcement, as it were, at our house meeting.”

  She stood up and offered me her hand. I took it.

  “You have come a long way, Clare. Well done. Well done indeed.”

  When Miss Houghton made the revelation that evening, there was a sharp intake of breath. If we’d run a book on it, I’d have made myself a 100–1 shot and would have had no takers.

  I found some change to take to the pay phone and ring home. My mother sounded as surprised as I was and was thrilled, whereas my father was matter-of-fact.

  “Quite right,” he said. “I always knew you would be.”

  I genuinely think Dad had forgotten that I had ever been in trouble. Sometimes, it’s quite useful that he never remembers a darned thing I have done.

  14.

  Ross Poldark

  Ross Poldark was not a good everyday ride. He was fine in a race, when he loved to be in front of a crowd and tended to show his best side, but at home he pulled too hard and he wouldn’t stand still to watch the other horses.

  So Dad said I was to ride one of the racehorses called Miller’s Tale. He was a son of Mill Reef, out of a mare called Canterbury Tale. It was a great name. Naming racehorses is a fun process and, for Mr. Mellon, it was part of the challenge. He picked names that were memorable, clever and often funny. All racehorse names in Britain have to be registered with Weatherby’s, who will ensure that names are not repeated and are not rude or offensive.

  Names such as Wear the Fox Hat or Sofa King Fast have been rejected on the grounds of poor taste. Other racing authorities are sometimes not as eagle-eyed or as aware of how a name might sound when a commentator is in full flow. In South Africa, Hoof Hearted had ten runs without troubling the judge while, in France, Big Tits was similarly unsuccessful.

  Much later in Mr. Mellon’s life, when discussions over the division of the family fortune were a little too regular for his liking, he bred a foal by Seeking the Gold out of You’d Be Surprised. He called it Wait for the Will.

  The Queen has proven inventive at naming horses. She has a horse in training with my brother by Motivator out of Small Fortune—he is called Bank Bonus. Years ago, a horse of the Queen’s by Young Generation was called Unknown Quantity, and one out of Contralto was called Soprano. Shaft of Light was out of Reflection. The royal names are often rather beautiful words or phrases—Zenith, Phantom Gold, Sleeping Beauty, Insular, Vitality or Tolerance (by Final Straw).

  Dad got out his Dymo Maxi printing gun and typed out my name: Clare B. I was going to appear on the slate, like a proper jockey. He slotted it into a rung next to the bottom and put Miller’s Tale in the gap for First Lot. I tried to persuade Dad to put Stuart’s name on there too (as I would be riding him Second Lot, after breakfast), but he was a trainer—he had some pride. He didn’t want to be typing out the name of a half-bred hunter who weighed over 700 kilos, or more than a ton. That would be plain embarrassing.

  The next morning, Dad woke me up at six thirty and I headed out into the yard. I
know it sounds odd, as I had spent my whole life there, but I really didn’t know much about the way the yard actually worked. I had been banned from going anywhere near it for most of my childhood, and for the past four years I had been obsessed with my own ponies and horses at the stud.

  My father employed around forty staff, and they all rode out until they got so old that their creaking bones wouldn’t take it any more. If they still wanted to be around horses, and most of them did, they would help out around the yard, muck out, sweep up—there was always someone sweeping—or take the horses swimming. It was a job for life, and among the team was a hard core of men who had been there ever since my father had started training.

  The Head Lad for nearly twenty years was Bill Palmer. He was a bow-legged ex-jump jockey whose face was weather-beaten from a life spent outdoors. He lived in brown jodhpurs, battered brown boots and a tweed cap. He used to ride in just the cap, but my father now insisted on and provided crash hats for everyone. He had seen too many head injuries. Bill was probably only a couple of years older than my father, but he seemed ancient.

  “So, Miss Clare,” he said as he pulled down a saddle for me, “going to ride a racehorse, are you? It’s about time, I s’pose. Take this bridle for now, and be sure to wash it after you’ve used it. There’s a cover here for the girth that you need to put on the laundry pile afterward. There you go.”

  Bill handed me a light leather saddle that was no more than a handspan in width, two in length and absolutely flat. The lads in the yard all had their own tack and transferred it to each horse they rode. To prevent ringworm or other skin diseases being spread around the whole string, the girth was covered in a washable cotton sheath, which was cleaned after every use.

  I set off to tack up Miller’s Tale. He was so gentle and his skin so soft that I dared not brush it. I polished him instead, with a stable rubber. His muzzle felt like satin as he took a Polo from my hand.

  One of our young apprentices, Seamus O’Gorman, was tacking up in the stable next door, so I asked him for some help. He showed me how to fold the sheet up over the top of the saddle and secure it with the surcingle, which went over the top of the girth and around the saddle, keeping it all in place. It was complicated and had to be done so fast. We pulled out at seven twenty on the dot. I made the best job I could and led Miller’s Tale out in the middle of the yard.