Valkyrie
Our house was high up on a hill, about four furlongs from the stables as the crow flies. Sorry, I do that too—measure things in furlongs. In London’s Oxford Street, when asked for directions, I told a tourist that Selfridges was two furlongs farther on. It made sense to me.
A furlong is 220 yards, four furlongs equals half a mile and eight furlongs a mile. So the stables were about half a mile away, down in a hollow, protected by the Cannon Heath Down on one side, Cottington Hill behind and by our hill on the north side. Our house was called The Lynches. I have no idea what that means and, as far as I’m aware, it was never owned by anyone called Lynch.
It was not an attractive house. It had been built in the 1930s according to the fashion and had been bought for £25,000 by my parents from Granny Hastings, my mother’s paternal grandmother.
The windows had latticed lead crossing them, which prevented the light ever flooding through them the way it did at Park House. The back of the house had the rise of the hill just behind it, meaning that light from that side came only into the top-floor windows. The bathrooms were new and colorful. My parents’ bathroom was avocado, the bathroom I used was apricot and the guest shower was dark green. They all had carpet on the floor, something that continental Europeans think so unhygienic.
The kitchen was modern, with Formica tops and a cork floor. I liked to scrape away at the cork, like a dog scratching. It came up in satisfying chunks. It didn’t take long before the floor looked like it had acne, with miniature potholes all over it.
The saving grace of The Lynches was the most incredible south-facing view, right across the “Starting Gate” field, the four-furlong woodchip gallop called “the Chippings,” the peat-moss gallop called “the Peat Moss” and the grass gallops called “the Near Hedge” and “the Far Hedge.” The names were not an attempt at subtlety or postmodern irony. They said what they were and they did what they said.
So far so good, but this is where it gets confusing. The gallops we could see from the windows of The Lynches were the gallops “down below,” as opposed to the gallops up on the Downs. Learning that “up” is “down” and “down” is “up” is confusing at any age, but when you’re only just mastering the language, it’s hopeless. This was where the horses were exercised on regular, nonwork days. It was also where the younger horses were educated before they were allowed to make the hike to the Downs for their first exams.
The Starting Gate field was where the practice starting gates, or stalls, were kept. The young racehorses would be driven through them on long reins, then ridden through them and finally galloped out of them from a standing start, as if at the beginning of a race, so that by the time they got to the racecourse, they knew what they were doing.
Looking across the sweep of green, divided by hedges or tall lines of trees, the stud paddocks were to the right. This is where the foals were born and first learned to gallop on their spindly, tottering legs. They didn’t have Candy to help them get going, so I think it was harder for them than for me. Beyond those paddocks were the ancient red-brick buildings of the stables. Built to house the growing list of horses tended for by the great Victorian trainer John Porter, Park House had been designed with the express intention of keeping thoroughbred racehorses fit, healthy and relaxed.
With thick brick and stone double walls to keep them warm in winter and cool in summer, the spacious boxes were largely hidden from view so that no horse could get upset or distracted by the goings on outside. Whereas, nowadays, stables are built to give horses fresh air and a view, back in the 1880s, it was all about keeping them safe, quiet and away from prying eyes. It worked for John Porter, who was the most successful trainer of his day, with seven Derby winners, chief among them Ormonde, who, in 1886, won the Triple Crown of 2000 Guineas, Derby and St. Leger.
~
This entire fairyland for thoroughbreds was far, far away from me. I lived up on the hill in a room that the subsequent owners would use as a broom cupboard.
It had a bunk bed and bars on the window. There was a chair in the corner, and I’m pretty sure I had a chest of drawers, but there wasn’t space for anything else.
I lay on my top bunk and stared out of the window at the big mast on top of Cottington Hill. It had red lights that burned throughout the night. We called it the “television mast” and you could see it from miles away. Even now, as I drive toward Kingsclere from Ashford Hill, I feel the pull of home when I see that big, ugly mast.
The huge garden spilled down the south-facing hill toward a clump of trees. There was hardly a flat patch on it, but it was great for pretending to be a sausage roll. I liked to wrap my brother Andrew in a blanket and roll him down the slope. When he reached the bottom, he emerged from the blanket blinking and swaying. Nearly always, he fell over. I enjoyed the sport of “sausage rolling” far more than he did.
My father had proved that he could train racehorses and, thanks to the exploits of Mill Reef, he had become champion trainer in 1971. He was the hot new kid on the block, and most of the owners were satisfied. They loved to feel part of a sport, enjoying success in what was essentially a high-stakes form of poker.
There was no knowing how good a horse might be, however fine its breeding, however knowledgeable its trainer and however talented its jockey. A champion racehorse is a unique being, and it’s due partly to nature, partly to nurture. Equally, its development is part science, part art, because reading a horse is an instinctive thing. You can look at charts, consult stopwatches and plot programs, but knowing whether a racehorse is ready to give of his best is based on intuition.
Some of the owners understood horses. Others understood business, or fashion, or music. There were American philanthropists, Canadian businessmen, British entrepreneurs, members of the aristocracy and the odd dodgy dealer who liked to pay his bills in readies and always tipped the stable staff double the standard amount. There was also Her Majesty the Queen.
Twice a year, in the spring and autumn, the most high profile of my father’s owners came to the yard to see her horses. She always arrived early to see First Lot on the gallops and then have breakfast. This caused a kerfuffle. We relocated to the dining room, and my mother asked Mrs. Jessop, our daily, to come in early to help with the breakfast. I practiced curtsying for days—is it left leg behind right or the other way around? I’m still not sure.
It was OK when we were young because we could get away with not knowing how to behave. We also had Valkyrie to fall back on. The Queen would be thrilled to see her and, if we were with her, all was plain sailing.
You see, not long after I was born, the Queen had given my parents a gift. Knowing that the children of a would-be jockey turned trainer would most certainly want to ride, she gave us Valkyrie.
Valkyrie was a sweet-natured old girl, round and dark and fluffy, with a long tail that trailed the ground and a long, dark-brown mane. She was patient and wise, a proper Shetland pony schoolmistress whose first job was to teach me manners. She had no time for tantrums, shouting or foot-stamping. If she thought I was not behaving well, she would simply back me into the wall of the stable and pin me there until I calmed down. This could take minutes, it could take an hour, but she wouldn’t budge until I had settled down and said sorry.
Valkyrie would do what she wanted to do, so the trick was to make her want to do what I wanted to do. She taught me the first and most important lesson of my life: if you want a pony, a horse—or a person—to do something for you, it’s better if you ask nicely. If you are patient, kind and consistent, you will reap the rewards.
Valkyrie had taught both Prince Andrew and Prince Edward how to ride and had no doubt trodden on their toes as well. She may also have backed them into the corner of the stable when they were being naughty. Valkyrie was her own woman and would not be subject to anyone, Royal Family or commoner. I suspect that is one of the reasons the Queen was so fond of her.
When Her Majesty came to assess her blue-blooded racehorses at evening stables, I was dispatched to get Valkyrie. At the end of the line of gleaming, fit, polished bluebloods with their lads in spotless matching jackets and caps would be this little hairy Shetland pony with her equally scruffy-looking rider, neither of whom ever quite got the hang of the curtsy. The Queen smiled, crouched down and always had a long chat with Valkyrie, who generally remained well behaved. As soon as the inspection was over, Valkyrie dragged me toward the racehorses’ feed room, knowing from one illegal visit that she would find sugar beet, oats, chopped carrots, freshly pulled grass, racing nuts, molasses and all sorts of goodies that she was never allowed. She was a strong old girl and I had no chance on the end of a rope, so one of the lads had to take over and haul her away from the treasure trove of fine foods.
Valkyrie was permanently on a diet. Not because she was fat—she was, but it didn’t really matter, all Shetlands are pot-bellied—the diet was for her various ailments, which needed to be controlled, including laminitis and sweet-itch. Laminitis is a disease of the foot that, if managed well, need not cause serious problems, but it meant that Valkyrie could not be turned out in a field of lush spring grass, as it would cause a nitrogen-compound overload that would trigger an attack. I understood none of this, of course, so thought it most unfair that she wasn’t allowed to enjoy the lovely green grass.
The sweet-itch was more obvious and rather more unattractive. It was caused by an allergic reaction to insect bites, which clearly caused her great discomfort, as she always rubbed her neck and backside on the nearest fence post as hard as she could, losing lumps of mane and tail in the process and leaving bald, red, sore patches of skin. My mother did her best to keep her in the stable as much as possible, to douse her with anti-fly spray so that she didn’t get bitten when she was out being ridden and with ointments to soothe the broken skin if she did, but Valkyrie’s summer look was never her best.
I started to ride her at roughly the same time I started walking. I had a soft red leather saddle with a bar on the top to hold on to, and I had no fear because I didn’t know there was anything to be afraid of. I knew this was where I should be, where I felt comfortable and where I was at home. I was born to ride.
My brother arrived in December 1972, the year that Lester Piggott won the Derby for the sixth time on Roberto. My father was at a party at the Argentine Embassy the night my mother gave birth, but the next day he picked up his wife and their son to bring them home. Grandma was at The Lynches with a bottle of champagne. She kissed my father and patted my mother on the shoulder.
“Good girl. Well done. That’ll be that then,” she said, looking at my father with a silent signal that two children were quite enough now they had one of each. The fact that she herself had gone on to have two more boys after the allotted “one of each” was quietly ignored.
Andrew was a calm baby. He didn’t go in for tantrums, crying fits or sleepless nights. He was good in all the ways in which I had been bad. He had a sweet nature and he loved his food, gobbling up everything that was within reach.
I wasn’t much interested in him as he couldn’t really do anything, and yet he seemed to get so much attention. It was strange.
~
During the winter, Valkyrie had been to visit a Shetland pony stallion called Cornelius. They seemed to like each other and, eight months later, she was even fatter than usual.
“There’s a baby growing inside her,” my mother explained.
I thought it odd that a baby like Andrew could be growing inside Valkyrie, but figured that, if my mother said it was true, it must be.
Eleven months after her date with Cornelius, Valkyrie gave birth to Parsifal, known as Percy (the Wagner connection passed me by). Percy slipped out smoothly in the middle of the night and, by the morning, he was standing on the tiniest legs I had ever seen, feeding from Valkyrie’s swollen teats. He was lighter than her in color, with a reddish hue to his main body and a darker mane. Mum said he would be “bay.”
Percy’s nose, in the concave space between his mouth and his cheekbone, was the softest thing I had ever felt. I scratched the front of his face and looked him square in the eye.
“Percy, you are going to be my brother’s pony. I think you will be a good boy and he will love you.”
The last part of that was true. Andrew did love him, but Percy was as far from being “a good boy” as it was possible for a pony to be. Where his mother was warmth and sunshine, Percy was darkly evil. He bit, he kicked and, just as you’d got him into a nice bumpy canter, he loved to jam on the brakes and try to roll. If you hadn’t already fallen off, the only suitable exit was to jump off before you found yourself squashed underneath him.
Percy looked as if butter wouldn’t melt, but he was a little bastard. Andrew spent most of his early years being bullied by a pony no taller than a large dog. It must have been humiliating. On the plus side, he fell off a lot. My father had told us that to be proper jockeys, we had to fall off a hundred times. We took our father at his word and, as we were both keen to impress him and desperately wanted to be “proper jockeys,” we set our minds on the challenge ahead. Andrew and I worked out that to get up to a hundred falls, we would have to commit ourselves fully to the project. Ten falls a day seemed too many, but five was manageable and off we went. Or, to be more accurate, off we came.
“That’s one more. I’m going to be a proper jockey!”
Our mother was always in charge of our riding, but she did not understand why we were gleefully falling off so often. Dad had not been allowed out alone with either one of us since the one and only time he had been told to “mind Clare gets home safely.” He had handed Valkyrie over to Billy, one of the young boys working in the yard, smacked my pony on the backside and watched as we trotted off. I was barely two and a half. We headed out across the Starting Gate field, back in the direction of The Lynches. Billy was in a hurry. He didn’t much like being given the task of child minding, and did not realize that I was bumping along, hanging on for dear life.
I held on for as long as I could but, as we gathered speed, I couldn’t keep it up. I fell off. It took Billy a full furlong before he realized I wasn’t there. When he turned to look, I was in a crumpled heap in the middle of the field. I didn’t cry immediately, mainly because I was in shock, but when the tears came they came thick and fast.
“Come on now, don’t you be making a fuss,” Billy said. “Up you get, straight back on. That’s what happens when you have a fall. Got to get back in the saddle. Straight away.”
I cried all the way home as he held me in place. My mother took one look at my face, which had turned quite pale, and knew it must be serious. She sent Billy on his way, seething with anger that my father had been so irresponsible. She whipped the tack off Valkyrie, turned her out in the paddock with the shortest, least succulent grass and carried me into the house.
I was still in pain and couldn’t move my shoulder, so she left a note for my father:
Make your own lunch. Gone to hospital with Clare.
P.S. You are a bloody idiot.
My parents had a friend who was a doctor at Basingstoke Hospital Accident & Emergency. We would come to know him well. He X-rayed my shoulder.
“I’m afraid it’s broken,” Dr. Elvin explained to my mother. “Collarbone. Should take a couple of weeks to mend. Can’t do much more than try to control the pain, and I’d advise you, Emma, not to let the children anywhere near Ian.”
The good news was twofold. My bones were so soft that the break mended quickly, and Dad’s other rule was that “to be a proper jockey, you have to break your collarbone.” I had already done it and I hadn’t even turned three. This was a serious head start. Dad took until he was over fifty-five to break his collarbone and, by that age, it really hurt and took ages to mend.
~
It was 1976, the year of the long, hot summer. An Italian jockey called Gianfranco Dettori, father of Frankie, won the 2000 Guineas on Wollow. Andrew and I decided we wanted to be cowboys or, more specifically, rodeo riders. I had a full cowboy outfit but decided that, for the purposes of authenticity, Andrew should borrow it and try out the rodeo riding. I had noticed that there were no female rodeo riders and, therefore, it had to be him.
Even at the age of five, I would certainly not have turned down the opportunity of doing something just because girls weren’t meant to do it. No, I wanted Andrew to go first for a good reason.
We had worked out that what made the rodeo horses buck was a “flank strap,” a piece of leather tied under and around their flanks and touching the sensitive skin at the top of their hind legs. We duly found something that would do the trick and tied it around Valkyrie so that Andrew could reach back and pull on the strap and it would tickle her under her tummy and cause her to buck.
Well, Valkyrie had always been the mildest-mannered old lady in the world. Trying this on Percy would have been suicidal. But Valkyrie would look out for us. Putting her head down for grass was about her only vice. Or so we thought.
Good Lord, we had no idea what a mean and moody mare lay underneath that calm exterior. Andrew walked over in his chaps, plastic gun in holster and red neckerchief in place. He pulled down the tip of his cowboy hat and said, in quite a good American accent, “I’m a rockin’ rodeo rider!”
I helped him get on and led Valkyrie out into the field behind the house. I stood back and shouted, “Hold on to your hats, folks, because here in the stadium for you tonight we have Cowboy Andrew and his bucking bronco Vixen. It’s rodeo time . . .”
Andrew reached behind him and pulled the flank strap. Valkyrie, aka Vixen, went berserk. Totally and utterly bonkers. She galloped from one end of the field to the other, bucking with every stride. Andrew started screaming. His face was bright red. He was terrified. For all the falls we had practiced taking, nothing quite prepared him for this, and I don’t know whether it was a bailout or a falloff, but it was a relief to see him hit the deck.
We caught Valkyrie and took off the flank strap as quickly as we could. We led her quietly back to the stables and, when Mum asked why Andrew looked as if he had been crying, he said, “Clare hit me.”
I didn’t argue. It was better than the truth, and Mum was so used to it being the reason for his tears, she didn’t question us further.
We decided not to tell the Queen about the rodeo incident.
Andrew’s most spectacular fall came when we were galloping full pelt up the straight four-furlong wood chip strip that was used for the racehorses. It was a rare treat to be allowed on it, and we were doing our best impressions of Willie Carson (Andrew’s favorite jockey). Suddenly Percy stopped and Andrew, in the midst of head-down Carson-like pumping, carried on. He ended up face first in the wood chip. Percy had dived off sideways onto the grass and was merrily munching his way to a broader girth.
I was laughing, as I thought Andrew had done it on purpose. He hadn’t. I was keeping count of his score and told him that he was up to number fifty-six. He didn’t respond. His round face looked up, covered in brown bits of wood. He was crying. He was bruised and battered, but he hadn’t broken anything. Not this time.
My mother got fed up with us falling off before we even got into the sixties and told Dad that he had to do something.
“It doesn’t count if you’re falling off on purpose,” he said, in his important voice.
“What?” we responded together.
“Sorry, but it’s not the same. Falling off is something that happens by mistake, not by design. You can’t just go round falling off all the time. It’s dangerous, and your mother doesn’t like it.”
“Oh,” we said.
It was rather disappointing—all that effort and none of it counted.
However, it did teach both of us not to be afraid of falling. It’s funny how not being scared of something means that you no longer try to fight it and, in not fighting it, you find it doesn’t control you.
Dad inadvertently taught us not to avoid doing something because we might fall or fail. Do it, enjoy it and, if you fall, so what? You’ll get straight back on again.