My head felt heavy as I lifted it off the pillow, waking from a jolly good night’s sleep. The air was calm, the curtains weren’t even fluttering in front of the open window and I really felt up to the challenge of drawing today. I swung my legs out of bed and gave my whole body a vigorous shake, getting it in the mood for hard work before a late afternoon departure to Fontaburn Hall.
If it wasn’t for Lucy Redjacket, chief mucker-out-er and step-in landlady, I would certainly have burst into tears last Tuesday, turned on my heel and gone straight back home to Sussex. Drawing Aidan McCann’s horses was proving to be a struggle. Lucy, however, generously welcomed me into her cottage adjoining the stables and despite there being ten years between us we’ve muddled along together with ease, her never once showing any resentment at giving up precious time each day to help me cordon off whichever horse it is I’m attempting to draw.
Today my sitter was a gelding, Wearing the Trousers, a supreme steeplechaser with thirty-four victories, including a Gold Cup and two King George VI Chases. He may be worth an arm and a leg, so Lucy told me, but his career as a model was quite a different matter. Wearing the Trousers he certainly was. Frisky like you cannot imagine, gallivanting all over the place and absolutely impossible to draw. It really was quite frightening at times, what with a bucking behind and a whiplashing neck.
By the early afternoon the heat had got the better of him and finally he relaxed, although by then time was short and I only just managed to get down a few sketches before the clock struck and maddeningly I had to pack up for the day.
It was all Mum’s fault and quite unlike her to have gone to such lengths to get me this evening’s invitation. Perhaps she pitied me more than she let on for being unmarried, and hearing that her second cousin once removed’s goddaughter achieved it and married above herself, Mum fancied the chances for her own daughter: me.
But, to be fair, as I packed my overnight bag, I thought of Mum, sitting at home in south London bubbling over with excitement anticipating her daughter’s time ahead, and I knew deep down inside it was a good thing for me to get out. Weekends away are something the introspections of my art keep me from doing much of the time. And when these rare, out-of-the-ordinary invitations such as Archibald’s come along, I’m not one to shy away.
In truth, I am and always have been rather fascinated by privileged people and I confess that I do like to be spoilt once in a while. So, with these happy thoughts in my mind I put on a smile and skipped downstairs.
‘Susie!’ said Lucy as I approached the yard in my very comfortable new trainers (not the running sort) to say my goodbyes. Her ginger-and-white cat Red-Rum was by her side; a pet I love despite my father’s rhetoric, ‘Mahls love cooking and hate cats.’
‘That’s me off, Lucy.’
‘Wal, you enjoy yourself,’ she said with her recognisable Norfolk intonation. ‘You’ll be finished and leaving me for good far too soon now we’ve got the knack of cordoning off these beauts.’
‘It’s all thanks to you that I’ve broken the back of them,’ I said as I smiled at the horses’ heads looming out of the metal-topped stable doors, awaiting their final meal of the day.
Canny has ninety-five National Hunt horses in total, two quads of stables back to back, interconnected by a not-so-pretty red brick arch. And I don’t notice it now but the horsy smell of this set-up had initially taken a certain amount of getting used to. It got up my nose like nothing I’d ever come across before, but then I’ve got a very sensitive nose.
Aside from that pong and the functional aesthetics, Canny’s yard is the equivalent of five-star hotel accommodation. High-net-worth animals, kept in cotton wool, fed well and receiving top-class care and attention by some underpaid groom such as Lucy, who is in love with the horses, other members of equally committed staff and the boss, or all three at once.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind helping me again next week?’ I asked, knowing I would struggle without her.
‘Would be my pleasure, Susie,’ she said, sounding uncharacteristically grown up.
‘Thanks so much. I’ll be back Sunday night.’
‘For dinner?’ she asked, and disloyally I wanted to say no. Lucy had many qualities but cooking was not one of them.
‘Great, Sunday’s a rest day so I’ll have plenty of time to make us something special.’
My tummy churned at the thought as I walked away and waved to her shapely silhouette in the late afternoon sun. Our scruffy work clothes were about all Lucy and I had in common, so when I said my goodbyes wearing a pretty chiffon dress I could tell from her expression it took her by surprise.
Little did she know this summer dress was an excuse for me to wear my new, slinky underwear. I’ve been longing to put it on since my brief shopping spree in Paris last month. A particularly indulgent trip all thanks to Hillary Trotter, an eccentric spinster from Surrey, who had paid me a lot of money to do a life-sized drawing of her pot-bellied pig, Honk.
‘Snort, snort,’ I said in my car as I remembered the sound I had to make to get Honk looking alert. The thought cheered me up. A portly pig had been a lot easier to draw than Canny’s impetuous horses. Their scooting haphazardly about the paddock as soon as I took out my camera, and then putting their ears back whenever I want to sketch their heads, or eating grass with their backs to me, has made me quite miserable most of the time.
There’s something about art, when it becomes a struggle, that strips you bare and makes you feel absolutely dreadful about yourself. It’s the lack of aptitude for what you’re trying to accomplish that eats away at you and makes you wish you were better at what you do. The only thing that had really picked up my mood this past week was a text on Thursday from my heartthrob Toby Cropper.
Hi Susie, want to join me walking the Peddars Way
in Norfolk this weekend? I’m on annual leave. Toby
x
Toby and I are in touch but it’s sporadic and this last-minute invitation came as a surprise. When I replied saying ‘I’m coincidentally also in Norfolk but sadly can’t join you,’ he’d suggested, ‘What about meeting for a crab in Cromer on Sunday?’
As much as I wanted to say yes, I knew it would be rude to shorten my already short visit to Fontaburn Hall. So, I deferred my reply for twenty-four hours in the hopes I could come up with an alternative plan. I discussed it with Lucy whose unconditional enthusiasm at having him to stay clinched the deal and I sent a text.
It’s now a day and a half later and I’m still waiting for his reply. But as I beetled along in my car to join the Honourable Archibald Barnabas Cooke Wellingham’s house party, I decided that Toby must have intermittent mobile reception on the north Norfolk coast.