My Animals and Other Family

by Clare Balding

  ~

  I was still firmly attached to the army officer, who had been sent to fight in the First Gulf War. Before he left, he had asked me to marry him. The romantic in me was desperate to say yes. I thought I could never love anyone as much as I loved him. The realist in me told me that this was the situation talking. He was going to war, I was going to university, it was all a bit weird. So I said, “Ask me again when you come back.”

  We were saying good-bye at Brize Norton airport. It’s a desperate place for farewells. I held him tight and whispered, “And make sure you do come back.”

  I walked away, turning one last time to see him standing there in his Desert Rat uniform. His bangs were falling over his left eye and, as he moved his hand up to adjust them, he turned his palm toward me and held it there until I had disappeared out of view. I had to stop the car three times on the way home because I couldn’t see through the tears.

  We wrote to each other every day (we were good at that) and I threw myself into university life, ensuring that I was always busy so that I did not have time to be terrified of where he was or what he might be doing. It was a triumph of action over thought.

  I watched the lunchtime and six o’clock news, hoping that there were no reports of Allied casualties. I waited for the letters, which arrived in batches of five or six at a time, and I rang his mother occasionally to see what she had heard. I was living parallel lives. One was the faithful girlfriend waiting and worrying, the other was the fresher student exploring an invigorating new world.

  Then, of course, there was the pull of home and the challenge of the championship. I had successfully persuaded the college of my need to have a car and, those first couple of weeks, I headed off to Newmarket at 5 a.m. to ride out for a trainer called David Morley. The effect this had on my ability to concentrate in lectures was fatal. By ten o’clock in the morning, my eyes felt as heavy as sheets of metal.

  Germaine Greer was in full flow—something to do with Shakespeare and his obsession with phallic symbols. I thought that if I just put my head on my arms on the desk, I would be able to take it in better. If I just . . .

  “You there!” The Australian voice was in my dream, shouting at me.

  I felt Colette, who was sitting next to me, dig me in the ribs. I sat up.

  “Yes, you,” said Dr. Greer. “Am I boring you?”

  “No,” I flustered, “no, not at all. It’s fascinating.”

  “And what, precisely,” she asked, “do you find most fascinating?”

  Dr. Greer was staring at me. The whole lecture theater had turned to look at me. Oh God. What the hell had she been going on about?

  “Shakespeare’s portrayal of strong, independent, witty women on equal terms with men . . . I had not thought of him as a feminist icon but, yes, I see it now.”

  I was stabbing in the half-light, because the title of the lecture was “Shakespeare: A Proto-feminist Icon.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Greer. “And?”

  I had no more to offer. I glanced at Colette’s notes. She had written in capital letters: “TAMING OF THE SHREW. MISOGYNISM OR EXPLORATION OF FEMALE INDIVIDUALITY?”

  “And . . . Kate,” I said. “In The Taming of the Shrew. An intriguing exploration of female individuality and the challenge of protecting the spirit of a woman within the confines and restrictions of traditional patriarchal marriage.”

  Germaine nodded. I was off the hook.

  “If you could make the effort to stay awake in my lectures, you might find that you take even more in,” she said, before moving on to discuss the use of the skull in Hamlet as an ironic reference to erectile dysfunction.

  ~

  My mother had lent me her mobile phone, a heavy brick of a thing with a battery that lasted about an hour before it needed recharging. I was the only student in college with one. My father rang me every couple of days to check on my weight. He didn’t have anything suitable to run in the final race of the season, a six-furlong handicap, but he had been in touch with Uncle Toby.

  “He says he’s got just the horse,” Dad said. “So you make sure you’re fit and ready because, if Uncle Toby says a horse will win, it will win.”

  I sleepwalked through lectures on Monday morning and then drove to Kingsclere. Dad sent me upstairs to weigh myself as soon as I walked in the door. I was heavy, but it didn’t matter too much as Respectable Jones, the horse selected by Uncle Toby, was carrying eleven stone seven pounds. What I did not discover until I was in the changing room at Chepstow at one o’clock the next day was that my legs had expanded so much that my breeches and boots were too tight. The thin leather boots strained as I battled to zip them up.

  For the millionth time, I asked myself why I couldn’t be tiny and featherweight like Lydia Pearce. She barely weighed eight stone, without even trying. Her horse, A Little Precious, was also carrying eleven stone seven, and Lydia could barely lift the saddle and weight cloth to get on the scales. She was carrying three stone of lead.

  “Live weight’s better than dead weight,” Uncle Toby said as he met me in the weighing room. He took me to the side of the room and put an arm conspiratorially around my shoulder.

  “Now listen,” he said. “Respectable Jones is a lovely ride. Just be careful cantering down to the start. Don’t let him out of a hack canter. He’s a sprinter, and that’s all he knows how to run—flat out.

  “He’ll jump out pretty smartish, so be ready. Let him stride along, and you’ll be fine. I know he’s not favorite but, believe me, he’ll win.”

  Unlike my father, who never had a bet, Uncle Toby was not averse to the odd gamble and, as we walked out to the paddock, I heard the PA announcer say that Respectable Jones had come in from 14–1 to 12–1 to 10–1. Someone was confident in his ability, if not in mine.

  I had driven my Mini to Chepstow, with Andrew as my co-pilot. He had left school that summer, was riding out for Uncle Toby and thinking of applying to read Equine Business Studies at Cirencester Agricultural College. This meant that a day at the races was, technically, “work.”

  “I don’t want to miss history in the making,” he said as he climbed into the car, which made me nervous.

  We walked the course together, me with a serious look on my face, him looking like a protégé trainer with, naturally, a hint of Lionel Blair. Chepstow has a long straight that rolls up and down like a big dipper. The last climb to the winning post is draining.

  “Make sure you save a bit for this,” said Andrew, as he started to run toward the winning post. I ran with him, knowing that, for good luck, I had to cross the line before he did. We were sprinting as hard as we could and, in the last few strides, I caught him and put my hands in the air, feeling like Harold Abrahams as played by Ben Cross in Chariots of Fire. He smiled at me. I think he might have let me win.

  My father was driving down later to support me, but my mother said she couldn’t come. I tried not to show it, but I was really hurt. If I was going to win the championship, I wanted her to be there—she had driven me halfway around the country chasing after rides—and if I wasn’t going to win it, I needed her there even more. I knew I was getting a little old to believe that the world revolved around me but, on this Tuesday in October, I thought that, just for an hour or so, it could.

  Racing is not a sport in which you can control the movements of others—not unless you box them in or deliberately rev up another horse to make it pull too hard or upset its stride pattern. Most of the time, you can only influence your own horse, and the rest will be whatever it is going to be. The changing room was buzzing. Sharron Murgatroyd had brought a bottle of champagne and promised to spray whichever one of us won the prize. Elaine Bronson was winding us all up, promising that she would crush me again, as she had done last year. She needed to win on Profit à Prendre with Lydia and me out of the first four.

  Lydia was quiet. Her two small children had come to
watch her, and she was desperate not to disappoint them. She had a narrow lead in the championship and just needed to finish in front of me to seal her first title. I needed to win. Nothing less would do.

  It really bothered me that Mum wasn’t there. She said that I never noticed when she was supporting me, that it was always Dad I wanted to impress, but now she wasn’t there, and I noticed. It didn’t feel right. Dad’s attention was like a spotlight—almost blinding for the length of time it was on you but soon off to another part of the stage. Mum’s was not so bright, but it was a constant, warming light—like sunshine.

  I went to the toilet for the fourth time in ten minutes, and heard the call.

  “Jockeys!”

  Murgy shouted at me, “Come on, Balding, you can’t have any pee left. We’re going. Hurry up!”

  I struggled to do up my breeches and ran to catch up with the other women. I couldn’t move freely, as everything was so tight. Uncle Toby, Dad and Andrew were standing together.

  “Minder says you’ve got two horses to watch out for,” said Uncle Toby. He always called Andrew “Minder” because, when he was young, he looked as if he was going to be too big to be a jockey and Uncle Toby joked that he would have to be his minder instead.

  “So, it’s simple: don’t let them get anywhere near you.”

  The three of them wished me good luck, and Uncle Toby walked me to the edge of the paddock, where Respectable Jones was being led around. We ran alongside him, me with my left leg sticking out as I hopped up and down on the right leg. As he gave me a leg-up, I heard the sound of ripping. My breeches had split down the back seam.

  I said nothing and thanked God that I had not had to take off my pants to save an ounce or two. As I was walking around the paddock, I heard a whistle. It was the familiar two-note whistle that my mother always used when she was trying to find us in a crowd. I started to scan the faces and heard the whistle again.

  “Mum?” I shouted.

  “Ah, she wants her mum,” I heard a gambler say.

  There was the whistle again and, just as we turned to walk out of the paddock, I saw my mother in the crowd. She smiled and gave me the thumbs-up, mouthing “Good luck.” I swallowed hard and patted Respectable Jones on the neck. It was the first time I had ever sat on him.

  “He takes a fair old grip,” said the lad leading him up. “So don’t let him get going with you on the way to the start. Trot if you have to.”

  He let me go, and I anchored the horse’s chestnut head to the left, turning it toward the rail so that he couldn’t get into any sort of a stride. It looked awful, but it worked. It also meant that I could point my bottom toward the middle of the course, away from the crowd. That way they wouldn’t see that I had split my breeches. I’m not sure which was worrying me more—the risk of being run away with before the race had even started, or the risk of exposing my backside to the world.

  We arrived at the start safely, and I felt around the back of my breeches to see if the split had spread. I would have to ride without restraint if I was going to have any effect, so to hell with modesty. In the pursuit of success, you have to risk your dignity.

  I patted Respectable Jones as we waited for the other horses to be loaded into the stalls and looked at the straight six furlongs ahead of me. In little over one minute and ten seconds, my fate would be decided. I was completely calm, despite the tear in my breeches. This would either happen or it wouldn’t, and I knew I could cope if I was beaten. I had before.

  The stalls opened, and Respectable Jones jumped straight into his stride. We were in the front line of four, with Lydia Pearce directly to my right. I am only aware of this because I have since seen the photos. In the race, all I know is that I had clear green turf ahead of me and a horse that was galloping underneath me. I held his head steady, a firm but constant contact on the reins, tried not to go too fast and counted down the furlong markers. In America and Australia, the clock is king and every work rider learns to cover furlongs in exact times—twelve seconds per furlong is the rate of a really good middle-distance horse. Sprinters can go faster and can cover a furlong in ten seconds, but they can’t keep that rate up for long. I had to conserve Respectable Jones’s energy, allow him to cover the furlongs at an even pace, keeping up his momentum for that last uphill surge to the line.

  My mind went blank. I didn’t worry about the championship, the gamblers, my father or anything else. I was, as they say, “in the zone.” More important, so was Respectable Jones. His pace did not weaken, his stride kept covering the ground with the same length and power, and it sounded like music, like the beat of a drum. We passed the one-furlong marker, and I could hear the crowd shouting. I did not dare look around and kept my eyes firmly on the strip of grass we were taking, keeping Respectable Jones straight, pushing him out as best I could up that hill. As we crossed the line, my body acknowledged the feat, even if my brain couldn’t take it in. I took my right hand off the reins and gave a low punch.

  I looked around to see Lydia Pearce half a length behind me in second place. She shouted, “Well done!”

  Elaine Bronson cantered up and whacked me on the back. Murgy smiled and said, “About time, too!”

  I did not feel immediate elation. I suspect few people do in the seconds after a big win. I think I was in shock. I tried to think how I should behave. My mother would be appalled if I appeared too triumphant, and I also knew that, if I stood up in the irons as I walked into the winner’s enclosure, everyone would see that my breeches were split.

  I patted Respectable Jones, who was hardly even blowing. For him, it had been an afternoon canter. I had managed to lose my fitness so fast that I was breathing hard, even though all I’d had to do was sit there and steer.

  The walk back to the winner’s enclosure was fabulous. All the gamblers who had backed us had gotten a decent return for their money and were cheering. The PA announcer knew the score, and announced me into the winner’s enclosure as “the new Champion Lady Rider!”

  As I slid off Respectable Jones, I tried to turn my bottom toward his body so that no one would be able to take a photo. It was not an elegant dismount.

  “Walk behind me to the weighing room,” I hissed to Andrew.

  “What?” he asked loudly.

  “Walk as close as you can behind me, like a minder.”

  This he understood, and he shadowed me back to the scales. I weighed in but, before I could run back into the weighing room to change into another pair of breeches, I was ushered straight back out for the trophy presentation. It was neither the biggest nor the best trophy of my life but, of all the winners I rode, it was the most significant, because it sealed the deal.

  I had won the Ladies’ Championship. This was going to look a lot more impressive on my list of certificates than Piano Grade 2.

  As I walked back into the changing room, Murgy unleashed the champagne bottle she had been shaking for the last five minutes. It exploded over me, and the room roared with laughter. I saw Lydia Pearce packing her stuff up and went over for a quiet word. I knew only too well how she was feeling.

  “At least you’ve got years to keep at it,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. “Look at me—you don’t get many years of race riding out of a body this big.”

  She laughed, and we both knew it was true. The one advantage was that the return in champagne on my weight would be considerably more than any other champion lady jockey before or after me.

  I dropped in at home on my way back to Cambridge, and Grandma came over for supper. It was my favorite—roast chicken with as much bread sauce as I wanted.

  “I hear you split your jodhpurs,” she said. I stared at Andrew, who looked guilty. He must have ratted on me. “I’m not surprised. You’re clearly eating well at Cambridge.”

  “I’m rowing,” I said. “It builds up your muscles.”

  “Huh,” said my grandmother. “A boa
tie, eh? Whatever next!”

  She glanced at my father and tapped the side of her nose.

  “Toby rang me, and I got 14–1. Thank God she didn’t mess it up.”

  Epilogue

  1990 was the last year that I rode with any great intent in amateur races. I had a few more winners, but never again challenged for the championship. Lydia Pearce won the Ladies’ Championship the following year and took home considerably fewer cases of champagne. Her son, Simon, now rides as an apprentice jockey for my brother.

  The pink Lanson champagne was saved for my twenty-first birthday party, where my school and university friends helped drink to the exploits of Knock Knock, Waterlow Park, Song of Sixpence and Respectable Jones.

  I became president of the Cambridge Union at the end of my second year and graduated from Newnham College with a 2.1 in English.

  Mrs. Gooder and her husband, who was director of studies at Clare College, came to stay at Park House for a weekend. She loved seeing the horses in their home environment and watching them on the gallops. We went racing at Newbury, and she could read the form perfectly.

  My relationship with the army officer did not survive our living in the same country. We had been better in long-distance letters and, when he returned from the Gulf War, mercifully unhurt, he did not propose again. I went out with a few more boys, because that’s what I thought I was meant to do, taking them out like books from the library and returning them when I didn’t get into the story. I did not treat them well, and didn’t much like the way I was around them. It was another few years before I realized I’d been looking in the wrong section of the library.

  My brother moved into Park House with his wife and children a few years ago. My parents built a new house at the end of the garden. Andrew took over the trainer’s license in January 2003 and that year trained his first Classic winner when Casual Look won the Oaks. I attempted to conduct a live TV interview with my father and my brother, but none of us could speak because we were all crying. Andrew now trains over 150 horses and employs 60 staff. He may one day be a champion trainer.