My Animals and Other Family

by Clare Balding

  “Forgotten the dandy brush?” Seamus was pulling bits of straw from Miller’s Tale’s black tail. “And what about your hoof pick?”

  Miller’s Tale was spreading caked droppings all over the yard as his hooves met the tarmac and the contents were banged out. I had forgotten to pick out his feet. It was not a good start.

  All the lads led their horses toward Bill, who grabbed the reins with his left hand and gave them a leg-up with his right. I watched how it was done and presented myself with my left leg sticking out.

  “One, two, three,” said Bill, making a lifting motion on “three.” Nothing happened. I stayed firmly rooted to the spot, hopping on one leg to keep up with Miller’s Tale, who was walking toward the gates.

  “You’ve got to help me,” explained Bill. “You have to jump on ‘three.’”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize. I always use the mounting block.”

  I scrambled into the saddle in a rather undignified manner. Many of the younger lads just vaulted, wriggled and swung their legs in the saddle. For that, you need a little more natural spring than I possessed, and a little less dead weight.

  The saddle for other equestrian pursuits is designed to help keep you in place, to allow you to sit deep and to “feel” a horse. If a normal saddle is a chair, a racing saddle is a bar stool. You don’t sit on it, you use it to perch.

  Once I was on board, I gave Miller’s Tale a pat and joined the crowd of chattering riders in the indoor school. My stirrups felt perilously short, but I didn’t want to look as if I didn’t know what I was doing.

  The colts were at the front of the string, fillies at the back, and the geldings, like Miller’s Tale, could go anywhere they wanted. We went right at the back. The indoor school is a big ring built of concrete breeze blocks, forming a circular corridor about eight feet wide. The outside wall is solid, the inside wall open to the elements from just above the height of a horse’s head. If it rains and the wind is blowing in an unhelpful direction, the rider’s face gets battered but the horse is fully protected. As was true for most things at Kingsclere, the comfort of the horses came first.

  My father stood on his hack at the open gates to the indoor school. He watched each horse walk by and asked each rider if they felt OK—the horse that is, not the person. He wasn’t interested in human coughs and colds, but if one of the horses had given a cough or taken a false step or felt strange for any reason, he wanted to know. I came past at the back of the string, my stirrups shorter than I had ever had them.

  “All right there, Clare?” Dad called.

  “Yes, I’m fine, thanks,” I replied.

  “Not you, you idiot, Miller’s Tale—is he all right?” he said firmly.

  “Yes. Yes, I think so,” I said, not really sure what he was meant to feel like.

  We walked another circuit or two, and then I heard Dad yell to Spider and John Matthias, who were at the front: “Jog on now. Eight circuits. Come on, let’s get going.”

  The entire string of forty horses eased forward into trot. Some of them bucked, others snorted. The riders all sat tight, bracing themselves for the usual signs of freshness and well-being. It was then I noticed that I seemed to be the only one with my stirrups hiked up short. The others all had a nice long length of leather, allowing their legs to wrap around their horses. I looked like a frog, hopping up and down as I did rising trot around and around in circles.

  After three laps, I realized why they had their stirrups long. Doing rising trot with short stirrups is absolute agony. My thighs felt as if I had lit them with a blowtorch. They were burning with pain. As we trotted past my father, still watching from the main entrance, I said, “How many more?”

  “Five.”

  Good God, I wasn’t sure I could last one more at this rate. It was nothing to do with my knee this time, but my muscles were protesting.

  Bill was directly behind me.

  “Getting a bit tired, Miss Clare?” he laughed. “Rest your hands on his withers and just stand. He’ll do the rest.”

  The relief as I kept myself in the raised position was immediate. Miller’s Tale plodded on, following the horse in front, and I could effectively freewheel until the cries of “Whoa” came back through the string and we could pull up into walk. You can’t do this on a fresh young two-year-old, but on a sweet old gelding like Miller’s Tale the odd shortcut is allowed.

  “Best to wait until after you’ve trotted to shorten your stirrups,” said Bill as he pulled up his leathers.

  Oh, what good advice. How very helpful. Thanks so much for telling me this now it’s over.

  We headed out of the school, around the cinder track and into the Starting Gate field. The “round chippings” was a huge circular track of wood chip where we would have our first canter. The string stayed in exactly the same order, with the colts at the front and the fillies at the back.

  Spider set the pace at the front, with every horse a length behind. Some pulled for their heads, others settled beautifully. Miller’s Tale was a gent. He wouldn’t dream of running away with a teenager on her first day riding a racehorse. Other horses would not be so kind.

  Dad came trotting over to have a word.

  “Let him have his head,” he said. “You need to relax a little more. Flatten your back, keep your lower leg still—it’s moving backward and forwards all the time—and just keep a light contact on his mouth.”

  He moved to the front of the string and started shouting out instructions. Nearly all of us were put into pairs, a few into a group of three, and one horse, who was particularly difficult, would canter on his own. I was paired with Bill, who was riding a horse called Mailman. The lads around me hitched their stirrups up a little bit shorter, so I did the same. It was a bit like getting into a steaming bath: I had got used to the temperature by now and could take a little more heat.

  I followed Bill to the bottom of the straight four-furlong gallop, left a gap while he set off and let Miller’s Tale find his stride. I sat up and rested my hands on the withers, slipping a finger under the neck strap to keep my hands still. Bill set off so fast I had to give my horse a squeeze to catch up. Then, suddenly, Miller’s Tale was pulling my arms out. I could enjoy the magic of galloping at speed on an animal that has been designed to do exactly that.

  The faster a horse is traveling, the more the weight of the rider needs to be positioned forward, over the shoulder. In the 1870s, Degas painted jockeys with long stirrups, their legs hanging down below a horse’s stomach. This increases control and security, because it’s hard to fall off, but impedes the speed of the horse.

  Two American jockeys revolutionized the British jockeys’ riding style. Willie Simms rode with great success in America and came to Britain in 1895, to be followed two years later by Tod Sloan. Sloan won five consecutive races at Newmarket in 1898 using the “monkey crouch,” which sealed the fate of the old British bolt-upright style.

  Miller’s Tale pulled himself up at the top of the hill—he had been doing this for so long he knew exactly where the gallop ended—and I patted him furiously as we walked along the path and down the hedgerow toward my father.

  “Good boy. You are a good lad,” I gushed.

  “All right, Bill?” my father asked.

  “Yes, Guv’nor. He feels great. He’ll be ready to run next week, I’d say.”

  “All right, Clare?”

  “Oh, he was lovely. Just lovely.” I was still patting Miller’s Tale furiously.

  “For Christ’s sake, girl, he’s not a pony. Leave him be for a second,” he snapped. “What were you doing for the first two furlongs? Climbing all over Mailman, you were. You looked like a sack of potatoes. You need to find a bit of muscle somewhere.”

  He was right. Riding racehorses was about as similar to my kind of riding as flying is to driving. I would need to start again from scratch.

  Back in a norma
l saddle, I was still persevering with the madness of Henry. I took him up on the Downs and tried to make him jump the Team Chase course at a sensible pace. He hopped up and down on the spot and then shot forward, hot breath steaming from his nostrils like a dragon. I tried dropping my hands completely, thinking that, if I didn’t resist him, he wouldn’t fight for his head. That didn’t work so well.

  We came into the double of brush hedges that separated the first paddock of jumps from the second so fast he tipped up at the second part. I crashed to the ground, cracking two ribs in the process. I didn’t need to go to the hospital, but it was darned uncomfortable for a while. Every time I laughed, it hurt, and when I tried to sneeze, my body would cut out just before “atishoo.”

  My point-to-point debut was put on hold.

  ~

  Most horses like attention and respond to affection. They like to be stroked, patted, kissed and cuddled. They like it almost as much as we do, but we do it for us, to make us feel better and to make us feel loved. It’s why humans domesticated animals in the first place—to bring something warm and furry into our lives that needs us.

  Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, argues that horses have domesticated humans as much as we have domesticated them. I believe that horses bring out the best in us. They judge us not by how we look, what we’re wearing or how powerful or rich we are, they judge us in terms of sensitivity, consistency and patience. They demand standards of behavior and levels of kindness that we, as humans, then strive to maintain.

  I wonder if that’s why some of the most famous and powerful people in the world—the Queen, the Aga Khan, Sheikh Mohammed, even Madonna—develop strong relationships with horses. Perhaps, surrounded by those who flatter, it’s the only way they can get a true reflection of themselves. The horse will be their honest mirror.

  During the First World War, the British Army acquired over a million horses. The Great War was the last of the major cavalry encounters, because it saw the arrival of an enemy the horse could not match—the tank. The tank was stronger, but the horses provided the men with so much more than just a means of transport. For many, the only thread connecting them with sanity in the face of such despair and chaos was the daily care for their horse. Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse tells that story through the eyes of Joey, a plow horse who is called up to fight.

  In the midst of extreme inhumanity, man is given a chance to show his humanity. Respect for human life was disintegrating before their eyes, but the moral code of care for their horses held as strong as it could until the end. If only we could say that we honored them after the end of the war but, largely speaking, we did not. Of the half-million or so horses that survived, only 62,000 were deemed worthy of being transported home. It was the largest ever loss of British horses.

  I rode a horse for a while who could have been an officer’s charger. Henry had run away with me once too often, Stuart wasn’t ready for competition and Quirk was lame, so my mother organized for us to borrow a horse for the summer. A cartoonist called Tony Cuthbert who drag hunted with the Berks & Bucks had been trying his hand at eventing, but it wasn’t working out that well. He was having particular trouble with this one horse, so he figured a break for both of them might be the answer.

  Tony’s horse trailer was even bigger than the six-berth trailer that took the racehorses to all parts of the country. It didn’t hold as many horses, but it had living quarters, a shower and a TV. It was too big to park at the stud, so it had to be taken up to the yard for the ramp to be let down. I had no idea what sort of a horse was coming to stay, but I hadn’t expected this.

  If the horse trailer was enormous, so was the horse that emerged. Tony said he was over seventeen hands high, but no one had ever been able to get a measuring stick near enough to him to get an accurate reading. He was called Pot Luck and, as he came down the ramp, he was dripping with sweat.

  “Hates the horse trailer,” said Tony. “He’s a shocker to load and doesn’t like traveling.”

  I took the rope from Tony and put my hand toward Pot Luck’s head to calm him. He pulled away from me and put his ears back.

  “Thanks so much for having him.” Tony was talking to my mother. “Weight off my mind, to be honest. I’m not sure he likes me much.”

  I led Pots away, and we walked slowly down to the stud. He spooked at a bird in the tree, at the foals, at the tractor in its shed and, seemingly most terrifying of all, at a dandelion. Yes, a dandelion.

  This giant of a horse, who weighed enough to crush a truck and looked as if he could lead the Charge of the Light Brigade, was scared of his own shadow. He hesitated at the red-brick arch that led into the yard and started to resist me. I let the rope go slack and moved back toward him.

  “Come on, you old fool,” I said, trying to sound jolly and encouraging. “Honestly, there’s nothing to be scared of. It’s just an arch.”

  Carol came out of the tack room at the far end carrying a head collar. Well, it might as well have been an air gun. Pots rushed backward; the rope in my hands suddenly tugged hard, pulling me into the air with the force of it. I clung on and used all my weight to set myself against him. I didn’t want to get into a tug of war so, as soon as I was close enough, I slackened the rope again and let him stand.

  He was quivering like a jellyfish. He wasn’t like Frank or Quirk or Hattie, who could behave like this out of naughtiness. He was genuinely terrified. I stood just under his head, and waited. I talked to him constantly, in a low voice, just nonsense but getting him used to the sound of me.

  I got a packet of Polos out of my pocket and put one in my hand, not offering it to him but just letting it sit in the palm of my hand. Pots could have trampled me, he could have bitten me or pulled away and got loose, but he didn’t. All horses are curious—whether they are foals or adults—and they will stay with the thing or the person that interests them.

  The usual clattering of the stud carried on around us, the sounds of horses being brought in from the fields, being fed, watered and groomed. I explained to Pots who they all were and what was happening. Slowly, his head came lower and, eventually, I felt his breath behind my neck. I carried on chatting, trying not to move my hands or my head and, as his nostrils came toward my left ear, I started to breathe more deeply, through my nose, as a horse does.

  He hesitated for a second and then kept coming, his head appearing over my shoulder and reaching for my hand. I raised my palm just a fraction to make it easier for him, but his head shot back and we had to start again from scratch. I have no idea how long it took, but I had time on my side and I knew that this first bonding would be crucial.

  When Pot Luck finally succumbed, he took the Polo from my palm, chewed it and spat it out. His top lip curled back in disgust, and I started laughing. He looked so funny, behaving like a baby spitting out its food. He let me stroke the side of his enormous head and, as I slowly inched closer, he leaned toward me.

  “Here we go, big man. Do you want to see your new room?”

  I started to walk steadily toward the arch, leaving the rope slack so that, if he came, he was doing it because he wanted to. Gingerly, he placed one hoof in front of the other and followed me into the yard. We turned left toward his stall, where Carol had laid a deep bed of fresh straw and a big pile of sweet hay. As we got toward the door, Pots barged past me, squeezing me against the side. I let go of the rope as he charged in, and slammed the door shut before he could change his mind.

  In the stable on the opposite side of the quadrangle, the noble head of Ross Poldark poked over the top of his door. He was having his summer break but, earlier that year, he had, finally, carried me in my first point-to-point.

  It had been at Hackwood Park on Saturday, April 4, in the Ladies’ Open. I had borrowed Dad’s racing breeches and boots. Both were too big, but he would not allow me to wear my eventing gear. For one thing, it was too heavy, and for another, as he said, “Yo
u’ll look like a bloody amateur.”

  “But I thought this was an amateur sport? Isn’t that what point-to-pointing is?” I asked.

  “Yes, but there’s amateur and there’s amateur.”

  It was clear I could be one but not the other. I could take part in this sport for the love of it, as in the French or Latin translation of “amateur,” but I must not seem amateur in the British sense of “a bit rubbish.” The point-to-point has its roots in Ireland, where, two hundred and fifty years ago, people would race on horseback from one point to another. Often, they would use the steeple of a church as a highly visible point to race toward—hence the term “steeplechasing.”

  I didn’t really want to ride in a point-to-point at all. It was just one of those things that had taken on a life of its own. Dad had said it would happen, and therefore it was happening. The trouble was, I couldn’t win. I could, in theory, win the actual race, but if I did it would be Poldark’s victory, and if I didn’t it would be my fault. I felt inadequate and nervous, so I dealt with it by being grumpy and pretending I didn’t care.

  Hackwood Park is on the outskirts of Basingstoke, less than half an hour from Kingsclere. I traveled in the horse trailer with Mum and Liz, who would lead up Poldark. Dad and Andrew came later in the car. The weather was atrocious, so the field had been reduced to just four. As long as I stayed in the saddle, I thought, I would be placed in my very first race.

  The circuit at Hackwood is a tight left-hand oval of only a mile, so you have to go three times around. I walked the course with my father, who tried to explain to me the importance of taking the inside line. With it being such a tight course, he reckoned I could save lengths if I was always on the inside at the bends. I was more worried about counting the number of times we were going around so that I didn’t ride for home a circuit too early.