9.

Hattie

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At the age of ten, I had taken a Common Entrance exam. Despite a woeful score of 13 percent in math, I had been accepted by a boarding school called Downe House. It was the same school my mother had been to twenty years earlier. It sat high on a hill on the outskirts of Newbury, less than twenty minutes from home. The buildings were all white, with red-tiled roofs. The girls wore long, dark-green cloaks, which made them look as if they were skating or moving on wheels as they swept through the arched cloisters or ran down the outdoor amphitheater known as the Greek Steps.

On the first day of the first term we arrived late. It was just getting dark and in the murky half-light all I could make out were the tennis courts and the big white walls that protected the school from the outside world.

Andrew had told me that boarding school was fun. He seemed to have made lots of friends and he was on the rugby team, but Andrew was quite easy to please. When he made a mistake, everyone laughed. Early on at Caldicott, his class was asked if they could name the seasons of the year. Andrew’s hand shot up.

“Flat and National Hunt,” he said, with confidence.

“I’m sorry?” His teacher had no idea what he was talking about.

“In racing,” Andrew explained, “there are two seasons. The flat season, which runs roughly from the beginning of April until November. And the jumps season, also known as the National Hunt season, which runs from October to the end of April.”

Technically, my brother was correct. But it was not the answer his teacher had expected.

“That’s excellent, Andrew. A very original and detailed answer. Anyone else?”

On the way to Down House, I hugged Flossy tight in the back of my mother’s Citroën Dyane. She was getting on a bit by now—her teeth were rotting, she had cysts between her toes, she was overweight and her bottom burps had got even worse—but I had begged my mother to let her come with us. Flossy snuffled at me, and I’m pretty sure she said, “Be strong. Be yourself. You’ll be fine.”

My mother helped me with my suitcase and came with me to the door of Darwin, a new house that had been recently opened for the Remove year. It was named after Charles Darwin, who had lived at Down House in Kent, where in 1907 Olive Willis had founded a girls’ boarding school. By 1921, the number of pupils had outgrown the surroundings and the school was moved to a former nunnery called the Cloisters in Cold Ash, Berkshire.

There were six houses in total—four for the senior girls and two for the first year. Hill House was bigger and was set down in the woods, at the end of a long path. I always thought it was rather spooky. Darwin was less architecturally impressive, but it was functional and convenient, being closer to the classrooms and the dining room.

A tall woman with a beaked nose, hair scraped off her face and glasses on a chain answered the door.

“You are late.” She glared at my mother, who retreated without saying a word.

“You must be Clare. I am Mrs. Berwick,” she said, her words precise and trimmed at the edges. She would train us to write with our letters sloping forward, as that reflected an eager mind; sloping backward denoted laziness. “Follow me,” she continued, the heels of her sensible shoes clacking on the floor of the corridor. I trotted after her.

I realized I had forgotten to say good-bye to my mother but, by the time I turned around, she had gone. I waved at the empty space she had left behind and followed the daunting Mrs. Berwick into a room where twelve other girls were sitting on squishy sofas and beanbags. I sat cross-legged on the floor, as we used to do in assembly at Kingsclere Primary School.

“What’s that smell?” I heard one girl with long hair scooped up in a scrunchie say to another, also with long, tumbling hair.

“I think it’s coming from over thar.” The other girl pointed toward me.

I sniffed at my clothes and realized that I did smell of Flossy. I tried to tuck myself into as tight a ball as I could, hoping I would disappear. Mrs. Berwick looked down her beaky nose and told us all what we could and, mainly, what we couldn’t do.

I was sharing a room with two other girls who were much older than me. Everyone was older than me by nearly a year and they all seemed to have been to boarding school before.

“What does your father do?” a girl asked me, as she wound her long blond hair around her index finger.

“My dad’s a racehorse trainer,” I answered.

There was a snort from one corner, giggles from another. I heard the word “Dad” being uttered with incredulity.

“You mean your father’s a stable boy?” the blond girl said.

“No, he’s a trainer. He trained Mill Reef.” Usually, that was my get-out-of-jail card.

“Huh,” said a girl whose father was a colonel in the army. “Mill Reef? Never heard of him. But if you were born in a barnful of horses, that explains why you stink of manure!”

The other girls started laughing hysterically, rolling around on the floor together. I got up and silently left the room.

“I can ride. I can ride,” I said to myself.

It was the one thing I knew I could do better than anyone else at this school.

We were straight into lessons the next day, which meant wearing the uniform of green and white striped shirts, green skirt, red or green sweater and green blazer with red stripes. I chose to wear the red sweater as it was new, whereas my green one was secondhand. Everyone else had chosen green. My skirt needed to be rolled over a few times, as it was on the big side.

“You’ll grow into it,” my mother had promised me.

Mum had refused to buy me the burgundy penny loafers that were on the school uniform list because they were “ridiculously expensive.” Instead, I had orthopedic shoes that would support my arches. I hated them.

The dining room, large enough to seat nearly three hundred girls, had a wooden floor with timber posts around the side that supported a gallery above. There was a store up there of secondhand uniforms, and my mother had instructed me to go there as soon as I could to get a cloak. Beneath the red-lined hood, underneath the chain with which I could hang the cloak, were the name tapes of girls who had owned it before me. There were five previous owners, which meant that this cloak was at least twenty-five years old. It felt like a historic object and, as I wrapped it around me, I decided that my cloak would have magic powers. I could be invisible, indestructible. That cloak would be my savior. What I did not yet know was that the cloak would also be my downfall.

I was not stupid and rapidly realized that I needed to work on my language and my accent. Where I said “Yes,” they said “Yah.” When I said “Year,” they said “Yar.” Where I said “No,” they said “I don’t think so.” When I said “I beg your pardon?” they said “Sorry?” Everything you liked was “cool,” everything you didn’t was “gross.”

My challenge was to break the code and, although there were some things I knew not to do or not to say—“serviette,” for example—there were other things that flummoxed me: I had no idea that black Wellington boots with yellow soles and a waterproof anorak were off limits as wet-weather gear. Hunter boots and Barbour jackets were the only acceptable outdoor attire. I was better off getting wet than wearing what my mother and I had packed for the winter months.

Through the course of that first week, my accent duly modified, I started to make friends, and my brand-new best, best friend was called Jenny. We sat next to each other in class, I saved her a place at lunch, she laughed at my jokes and we talked about our ponies together. She invited me to stay with her in Jersey during the holidays. I was amazed. If it was this easy to make friends at boarding school, I was going to have a ball. I would have cut my finger and mixed it with the blood of her finger if she had asked me to be a blood sister.

The weekend came and, after Saturday-morning lessons, for the first time we changed out of our uniforms into “mufti.” That’s what we called our own clothes. I had packed a sparse mufti collection, just my favorite things and a couple of new shirts with flowers on them that my mother had bought me. This was 1981—one of the greatest racing years ever. Aldaniti won the Grand National with Bob Champion, recently recovered from cancer, in the saddle. Shergar won the Derby by a record-breaking ten lengths. In second place was a horse trained by my father called Glint of Gold. His jockey, John Matthias, who had breakfast with us every morning, hadn’t been able to see Shergar because he was so far in front. John genuinely thought he had won.

Unfortunately for me, I may have known which horses finished first in the Derby and the Grand National in 1981, but I was way off the pace as a clotheshorse. My wardrobe was firmly stuck in 1975.

Had I known anything about fashion, I would’ve known this was the era of drainpipe trousers. Jenny had a pair of bright-yellow, skin-tight jeans and a baggy, collarless shirt hanging out underneath an oversize cashmere sweater she had “borrowed” from her father. I emerged from my three-bed dorm wearing my usual outfit.

Jenny looked me up and down and said, with thinly veiled disgust, “What the hell are you wearing?”

“These are my favorite pants,” I explained, smiling.

They were blue cord flares, slightly worn at the knees, with creases down the front ironed in by Mrs. Jessop. I wore them with the black polo neck with the gold hoop on it that I wore when I was pretending to be a jockey—the one Grandma had knitted me. It was a little tight these days, but it kept me warm.

“Well, you’re not coming anywhere near me. Not dressed like that.” Jenny turned on her winkle-picker heels and marched off.

I saw her later with a gang from Hill House, all of them in drainpipes and baggy cashmere or lambswool sweaters pulled over their hands. They were just hanging out, not doing anything special, but they clearly knew that they were “in” and I was “out.” They knew the rules for mufti were even stricter than those for school uniforms.

Jenny looked at me with an expression that smacked not of hatred but of something much more dangerous—pity. Such a tough thing to fight. You can fight outright prejudice, you can shout back at someone who offends you, but pity is utterly draining. There is no way to respond, no way to defend yourself and there is no coming back because pity says you will never be equals.

Human beings are tribal. Despite our supposed superiority to other animals, we are remarkably herdlike. As children, we are more willing to discover our own character, plow our own furrow, but as society impacts upon us—in other words, the knowledge that the opinion of others has influence—we retreat to a position of safety. We hit puberty and suddenly we need to fit in, we require safety in numbers. Some people grow out of this fear of being different, this reluctance to swim against the tide. Others do not.

Right then, at ten years old and in my first week at boarding school, I did not want to stand out. I wanted to be just like Jenny and her friends. I wanted to look the same, sound the same, think the same.

I spent the afternoon in my room, with a needle and thread, taking in the lower legs of my cords. I was thrilled with the outcome—the lower legs were tight and sort of straight. When I emerged, Mrs. Berwick was standing outside her flat at the end of the corridor.

“Are we impersonating a frog, my dear? How very o-rig-i-nal.” She separated the syllables and peered at me over her glasses and her beak.

I spent most subsequent weekends pretending I was either going to or coming back from lacrosse practice—that meant I could wear tracksuit bottoms and my green games sweater and get away with it.

After a month, we were allowed a long weekend away from school. It was called the Short Exeat. Most of the other girls seemed to be meeting up in Sloane Square near somewhere called the King’s Road in London. I watched them greet their parents. A kiss on both cheeks, a bear hug from their fathers—it was physical. We didn’t do that in our family. My mother’s idea of a public display of affection was a wave, from a distance. As for my grandmother, even a wave was pushing it.

I stood outside waiting for my mother. Annabel’s parents had come down from Scotland to take her out for the weekend. I stared at Jenny’s divorced parents, watching how they each hugged her in turn, hanging on for a long, long time before backing away and allowing the other one to come forward. I had never before met anyone whose parents were divorced, so I was fascinated. I probably stared a bit too intently, because Jenny gave me a dirty look as she climbed into the front seat of her father’s Mercedes. Her mother followed them in a Range Rover. They kept cars in the UK as well as at home in Jersey, so that they didn’t have to hire one. Or two.

I looked at my watch and wasn’t surprised that my parents were late. It was a Saturday—work morning on the gallops. Dad would be busy. Too busy to come and pick me up, I supposed. My mother would have been making sure everyone had breakfast. She’d be here soon. It was eleven o’clock.

The next time I looked it was twelve o’clock and all the other girls had long gone. Mrs. Berwick came out and saw me sitting on the concrete step, a small bag at my feet.

“Who’s picking you up?” she asked.

“My mother, I think,” I replied.

“Have you called her? Is everything all right? Could she have been called away on an emergency? Could she be ill? You cannot sit here all weekend, my dear.”

I found a ten-pence coin and headed off to the phone booth in the corner of the Darwin common room. I think my mother said, “Oh shit,” or words to that effect. She had forgotten. Clean forgotten her daughter’s first Short Exeat from her boarding school. Of course I didn’t tell Mrs. Berwick that—I said she’d had a car crash and was waiting for the AA but would be here as soon as she could. Half an hour later, my mother came racing through the gates of Downe House in her blue Citroën Dyane, which had clearly not been in a crash.

“I do hope you’re all right,” said Mrs. Berwick, looking as concerned as I’d ever seen her. “Such a terrible thing to happen. I had a crash only last year. Very disturbing. You may find you’ll be suffering from shock for days to come.”

“I don’t know what you m—” My mother was interrupted from whatever she was about to say by me, flinging myself at her like a koala bear, my arms wrapping around her stomach.

“Mummy,” I cried. “I’m so glad you’re all right. Thank God for that. Thank God.”

As I hugged her, I pushed her toward the driver’s door and forced her into the car.

“Best to get straight back in the saddle,” I said as I slammed the door and gave Mrs. Berwick a knowing glance. “That’s what Daddy always says when you have a fall. ‘Get straight back in the saddle.’”

I waved Mrs. Berwick good-bye and headed off home to see Frank and Flossy.

~

We had many nannies. There had been Jane the nurse, who looked after Andrew when he was a baby; Liz the Irish nanny, who found us when we had run away from home—we had only gotten to the bottom of the hill before Andrew realized he’d forgotten to pack his pajamas; Jackie Knee; and then Annie the Nanny, who was the sister of John the Jockey; Elaine, who crashed my mother’s car; Emma, who told tales about triangular aliens and took us swimming in Basingstoke; and Geraldine, who left when Andrew walked in on her having a bath for the third time.

Once I went to boarding school as well as Andrew, we didn’t need a full-time nanny so we had an au pair over the summer. One of the French ones pointed at a bowl of cherries and asked my father what they were called in English. “Nipples,” he replied. He kept a totally straight face as she asked if she could have another nipple. For one reason or another, none of the au pairs came back for a second summer.

I was reading Black Beauty by Anna Sewell—again—when the front doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” I shouted and ran through the hall, across the white and black marble tiles, skidding to a stop by the heavy door. The glass in it was thick, distorting the shapes on either side. I stood there for a few seconds, eyeing up the silhouette on the outside.

I opened it.

“Hello, I am Clare Balding. Who are you?”

I looked at him from the floor up. The shiny, expensive shoes, the impeccably cut suit, the round tortoiseshell glasses perched on a prominent nose, the receding gray hairline. This man had the aura of importance.

“Well, well,” he said slowly, examining me with as much care as I had bestowed upon him. “You look a little like your father, a little like your mother and, most of all, you look a lot like you.”

“Good,” I said. “I want to be me.”

He handed me his hat as I held open the door and then crouched down so that he was eye level with me.

“Never forget that, my dear. Whatever the world throws at you, you must be your own person, responsible for your own decisions and your own destiny.

“I am Arnold Weinstock, by the way, and I am here to see your father, but it has been my pleasure to see you.”

“Ah, Lord Weinstock.” My father was charging through the house. “I’m so sorry, sir. I hope my daughter has been behaving.”

Dad’s hand was gripping my shoulder now, just a little more tightly than I would’ve liked.

“She has been quite delightful,” said Lord Weinstock. “She has spirit.”

They started to walk together toward the drawing room, and I heard Lord Weinstock say, “If that girl ever needs a job, you just let me know.”

I did not realize it then but Arnold Weinstock was one of the most respected businessmen of the twentieth century. As managing director of the General Electric Company, he had masterminded its development into a firm with an annual turnover of £11 billion. As far as my father was concerned, he was a hugely knowledgeable owner and breeder of racehorses, including the 1979 Derby winner, Troy.

~

That winter and over the spring, I had a growth spurt. All of a sudden, I was not just too tall for Frank, I was too tall for ponies, so my mother and I went in search of my first proper horse. Most people think the difference between horses and ponies is purely a size issue and, to some extent, it is. Ponies generally go up to fourteen hands two inches in height, and a horse is anything above that, but just as a tall child is still a child, there are some tall ponies and some small horses.

The other differences are in attitude and in looks. Ponies tend to be—how to put this politely—slightly dumpy in their proportions. They have a bushy mane and tail, thickset necks, stumpy legs and round tummies. Horses are rather finer in their hair, their bones and their skin. But where the ponies have the upper hand is in intelligence. You will rarely find a pony who is not the equal of or superior to their rider in terms of how fast they can learn.

This does not always work in a rider’s favor, as a clever pony is not necessarily a good pony. They work out what they like doing and also what they don’t like doing. They will test your patience and your willpower, your skill and your strength.

All in all, I have always thought that ponies are harder to ride than horses, so a child who rides well at eight or ten years old will always ride well.

My mother had seen an ad in Horse & Hound for a bay mare. She was sixteen hands high, twelve years old, and she was called Hattie. We went to try her in Ashampstead, a village about twenty miles from Kingsclere.

“She’s beautiful,” I said, patting her on the neck. I could not quite believe I was going to ride something so beautiful. I got a leg-up—it was a long way into the saddle—and rode her into the field. Even though Hattie was big, she felt as though she fit. We trotted and cantered around the field and then popped over a few show jumps. She was lovely.

“Do you like her?” my mother asked as I came toward her and Hattie’s owner, Mrs. Williams.

“She does flying changes! Did you see? And she goes from walk to canter! Wow, she’s amazing.” I was buzzing. This was like tasting wine or eating smoked salmon—it felt so grown up.

My mother smiled and started talking to Mrs. Williams in her “money” voice. I gave Hattie a pat and walked her back to the stables. I had never really ridden a mare before. I didn’t think there would be much difference. It’s funny how wrong you can be.

Hattie came home with us that day. The first time I rode her up through the yard, I felt so proud. Spider whistled as I walked by with Hattie’s head down and her neck arched, like a proper dressage horse.

“My word, young Clare, that’s a good-looking mare you’ve got there.”

I sat a few feet taller and squeezed slightly with my legs so that her hind legs came up underneath her and she walked even more elegantly.

One of the three-year-old colts came out of the top yard, with a young blond boy called Danny Harrap riding. I liked Danny. He was only a few years older than me and he wanted to be a jockey. Nearly all the young boys who joined our yard came with the ambition of being a jockey. Many of them would get the chance to ride in “apprentice” races, a few of them would do well, and maybe one or two would make it and become full-fledged professional jockeys.

Those who didn’t make it—and they were the majority—did not fail because they weren’t good enough, they failed because they were built too big. They were too tall or too heavy, or enjoyed food and drink too much to keep their body weight below 112 pounds. Racing is a tough master for a jockey. You can be as talented as the next person, but you have to be light, or there is no future.

Danny was a beautiful rider. He was kind and sympathetic, he never lost his temper with a horse and my father often used him on difficult animals and to break in yearlings—teaching them to accept a saddle, a bridle and a rider on their back. Danny rode into the Straight Mile, and I was just ahead of him.

I still have no idea how Hattie knew it was a colt behind her. She must have smelled him. Her tail suddenly shot up over her back and she started prancing on the spot. She was making a strange noise and started backing up toward the young colt.

“Bloody hell, watch out,” shouted Danny.

I was trying hard to watch out, but there was nothing I could do. I kicked her in the ribs, smacked her down the shoulder with my stick, but she was still racing backward. She seemed to be spraying urine as she did so.

Spider started laughing. “She’s a madam, all right. You’ve got your hands full there,” he said. “Just trot on by, Danny. Go on, that’s a lad. On you go. She’s only winking at you, that’s all. Ha ha!”

I was so ashamed. My beautiful bay mare was an out-and-out tart. She was at her worst when she was in season and so I had to learn about the estrous cycle of horses. Mares come into season (i.e., are sexually receptive) from the spring to the autumn about every three weeks. Their hormones are triggered by the lengthening of the days and, as the gestation period of a horse is eleven months, in the wild they naturally avoid getting pregnant during the winter months, as that would mean giving birth in the winter as well, when a foal in the wild would have little chance of surviving.

Hattie seemed to be in season from March to November, pretty much all the time. She would shove her backside under the nose of any male horse—colt or gelding—within a hundred yards. She wanted it so badly that I had to keep her well away from the racehorses and any other horse at a one-day event or a show-jumping competition. It may have been a valuable biology lesson but, to me, it was mortifying.

My father had trained many tricky fillies and showed more interest in Hattie’s development than he ever had in mine. He told me to keep her busy and to make sure she was as fit as she could be.

“She’ll be better if she’s busy, but you can’t force a mare,” he said. “They’re funny like that.”

I now realize that, although my father trained many good fillies, he never rode a mare. They were too fickle for him. He preferred a big, brave gelding who wouldn’t question his desire to jump everything in sight at speed.

As for owners, Dad was direct and honest with them. He may have been born into a horse-dealing family, but he lacked the persuasive qualities of a salesman. He thought it much better to tell owners whether their horses were any good or not, rather than allow them to dream of the Derby if a donkey derby was the only thing their precious colt or filly was likely to win.

Some owners are happy with phone calls about the progress of their horses; others like to see their physical and mental development for themselves. The latter group tend to be those who know what they are looking at and are less driven by results, more by achieving a greater understanding of the equine bloodlines they are developing.

My father rang his owners each Sunday to discuss the likely running plans for their horses. If he had shown any interest in current affairs or life outside Park House Stables, he would have had interesting conversations, as his owners had influence over a broad range of businesses and countries. Occasionally, if something so big had happened that even he couldn’t miss it, he might stray off the topic of racing. There was betting on the General Election, with prices offered on who would be prime minister, what the majority would be and which individual seats would be won. It was therefore covered in the Sporting Life.

When he rang Buckingham Palace, he was put through to the Queen immediately.

In May 1979, he started their conversation thus:

“Your Majesty.”

“Ian, how are you?”

“Fine. All well here. The horses are in good shape and I think we’ll have runners at Royal Ascot.”

He went into more detail about which horses were being aimed at which races and told the Queen about the one or two who had had slight setbacks and would need time to recover. She took it all in, made the odd comment and, as he reached the end of his update, the Queen said, “By the way, what do you think of the election result?”

The Conservatives had won the election and Margaret Thatcher had become the country’s first female prime minister. Dad was vaguely aware that this event had occurred, but as it did not affect his daily life, he had not given it an awful lot of thought. My father is not a stupid man, but he does sometimes lack intelligence and that is the only way I can explain his reply.

“Well, it’s going to take a while to get used to a woman running the country.”

Honestly, that’s what he said. To the Queen.

I have always thought it is entirely to her credit that the Queen did not remove her horses straight away. Maybe she thought my father was a “card,” an oddity, a bit of a loose cannon. Maybe he amused her. Or maybe she just concentrated on his ability to train racehorses and ignored the rest.

The Queen liked to track the behavior of her horses from birth onward—which ones were being difficult, which were showing promise, who liked to lead on the gallops, who might pull and who might show reluctance. Whenever she came to see her horses, my father would make sure Andrew and I were prepped well in advance:

On this April day in the early 1980s, my father had neglected to tell us that the Queen was coming to Kingsclere. So it was that I came charging in from riding Hattie to find two men wearing suits sitting at the kitchen table. I thought perhaps someone had been murdered and these two charlies were in charge of the investigation. I had been watching Bergerac and that was just the sort of thing that was always happening in Jersey.

“Wotcha,” I shouted through the door, as I tugged off my jodhpur boots in the dogs’ room. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Next door in the dining room,” said the one who looked like the chief inspector.

Skidding along the cork floor in my socks into the kitchen, I saw Mrs. Jessop carefully placing bacon and sausages on to one of the smart china serving dishes.

“Oh great, cooked breakfast!” I said excitedly. As I ran out of the kitchen I thought I heard Mrs. Jessop saying something about someone feeling queasy or queer—it started with a Q.

I flung open the dining-room door and, in my haste, fell into the room. I was wearing my green-cord riding jodhpurs, with stains from two weeks of wear, one red sock and one blue, my favorite rugby shirt and a spotted handkerchief around my neck.

The Queen, who was sitting at the head of our dining-room table, was dressed rather more soberly in a navy-blue dress suit. My entrance had caused a break in the conversation, one of those uncomfortable silences you always hope will not happen because of you. And then it does, and there’s not a lot you can do except say, “Sausages. Yummy!”

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.