4.

Bertie

They say a person’s choice of dog reflects their personality. Some dogs, all too clearly, look like their owners—or owners can grow to look like their dogs. My favorite image from Crufts was a tall, sleek woman with long hair running alongside her Afghan hound, his ears falling up and down against his face as her hair did the same. They fell into the same rhythm, with blond locks flowing, lolloping across the arena in perfect symmetry.

My mother had her boxer. She was warm, protective and slightly smelly. Candy, that is, not my mother.

My father? Well, he had a lurcher. A proud, dismissive and vicious killing machine called Bertie.

Dad, with his jet-black hair and olive skin, always used to tell us that he was a potpourri of different bloodlines. He said he had Gypsy blood through his great-grandfather, a horse dealer in Leicestershire, and we had no reason to disbelieve him. Dad could never have lived in London or worked in an office. For one thing, he is always slightly too loud and too obvious with his observations on other people.

“Honestly, why on earth would you let yourself get like that?” he will say in a stage whisper about anyone who carries an ounce of excess flesh. This is not helpful in a crowd.

He hates to be inside and, if he could, he would spend all day out in the elements—he’s not much interested in talking to people. Animals, however, fascinate him. There is something intuitive about the way he is around horses that makes me believe he has Gypsy blood. I certainly think that his ancestors lived and worked with horses and dogs.

Dad’s father, Gerald Balding, had spent his childhood on the backs of various ponies and horses, improving them so that they could be sold by his father for a profit. His Uncle Billy had taught him and his brothers to play polo. They rode long, with one hand on the reins, turning their ponies by placing the reins on the side of the neck. The ponies and the boys learned fast as they galloped around the big field in Leicestershire, hitting a ball with a mallet.

Billy Balding taught them to be decisive and strong, to “ride off” each other, to take their line and commit to it, to be forceful with players but sensitive with their ponies, never yanking them in the mouth or exhausting them. They would hop from one pony to another, the skill of fast interchanges being as valuable as hitting the ball accurately.

In polo, there is a handicap system so that really good players can form a team with overweight, rich businessmen and make them feel as if they are contributing something. The best player is rated 10 and effectively makes his team start at –10 goals, while the worst player is rated +2 so his team starts with a 2-goal advantage. The handicaps of the four team members are added up to create a team handicap, and teams of similar ability will be pitted against each other.

Gerald Balding became a ten-goal player. The Gerald Balding Cup is still played at Cirencester Park in his memory and, to date, no British player has matched his ability.

In the 1920s and ’30s, he made the most of a golden age for polo—a thundering, fast sport that married danger and excitement with wealth and privilege. With a stroke of good fortune that would later be mirrored by his son, Gerald met and befriended an American multimillionaire who became his patron. Jock Whitney was a friend of Fred Astaire, was at times romantically linked with Tallulah Bankhead and Joan Crawford, had inherited $20 million from his father and was mad for horses.

Whitney owned Easter Hero, the Cheltenham Gold Cup winner of 1929 and ’30 who was also runner-up in the Grand National. Somewhere along the line—family history does not relate when or where—Whitney discovered Gerald Balding’s talent for polo so asked him out to New Jersey to help instruct the socially ambitious, wealthy young men who were taking up the game in droves.

Gerald encouraged his brothers Barney and Ivor to follow him to a land where they would not be limited by lack of money or social connections. They were single, handsome Englishmen with good manners and a way with horses. As far as the New Jersey set was concerned, the Balding brothers were the most eligible new bachelors in town.

There is a photo of the three of them leaning on their polo sticks, all with slicked-back coal-colored hair, wearing pantaloon-type breeches with black leather boots and short-sleeved shirts. They looked like movie stars. They played at the Meadow Brook Club on Long Island, cheered on by pretty, well-connected young women. Special trains from New York would arrive with thousands of spectators. They were living the Great Gatsby lifestyle, and yet they had inherited nothing, apart from exceptional ability on a horse.

Gerald spent the spring and summer months managing and playing for Jock Whitney’s Greentree team. In the late autumn, he headed out to India, where he played polo for the Maharajah of Jaipur, who himself was a ten-goal player.

Gerald represented England in the Westchester Cup, the big polo match against the USA, in 1930, ’36 and ’39. Along the way, he married an American called Eleanor Hoagland and, by the time he headed off for the Second World War, he had seen the birth of his eldest son, Toby, in 1936, and my father, Ian, in 1938. When he returned from the war, he and his family moved to England, where he started to train racehorses, with Jock Whitney as his major owner.

~

Many of our dogs and horses were given family names. Dad’s first lurcher was called Billy, after his great-uncle Billy who had taught his father how to play polo. Bertie was named after his grandfather, Albert. Bertie was the color of August wheat, with a smooth, velvety head and a broken, rough body of hair. His eyes were pale brown, his nose aquiline and his knobbly tail had wisps of hair hanging down from it. I thought he was a domesticated lion, and I was wary of him. He was not warm and cuddly like Candy. He would raise his lip if I came too close when he was in bed. He didn’t actually bite me, but he would snap at the air to make sure I knew it was his space.

He liked my father, and when Dad walked into the room he would be delirious with joy. He wagged that thin, bony tail so ferociously that it smashed against the furniture and split. Even if you like Jackson Pollock, you probably don’t want a bloody imitation of his art on your kitchen walls. Consequently, Bertie spent many weeks with his tail tip taped up.

The word “lurcher” comes from a word in Romany, “lur,” meaning “thief” and, my God, Bertie had that bit nailed. If you so much as glanced out of the window while eating, he would whip a potato off your plate, slinking away before you had even noticed.

Once, during Royal Ascot, when my parents had important owners staying, my mother had laid out the starter for a dinner party. It was Parma ham and melon. Mum thought she would get ahead of the game so that she could enjoy predinner drinks with the guests but, by the time they came into the dining room, there was just melon. Each and every piece of Parma ham had been delicately and thoroughly removed. There was not a shred of evidence left, to the point that my mother genuinely thought she had forgotten to put the ham out.

Bertie was in his bed, pretending to be asleep, one eye half open to survey any potential fallout. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have planted half a piece of ham in Candy’s bed while she snored, so that she got the blame.

A lurcher is a mixture of a sight hound, usually a greyhound, with a type of terrier or pastoral dog. They were invented in Norman times to get around some daft law that said that only the gentry could own smart, majestic breeds like the wolfhound or deerhound. Commoners were effectively forbidden from owning a sight hound, in case they used them to poach game.

Well, the commoners came up with something even better: the speed and eagle-eyed vision of the greyhound or whippet with the brains of a Bedlington terrier or a collie is a lethal combination. They are hunters by nature, with the ability to run, turn, jump fences, catch and kill their prey silently. They will also retrieve, bringing a hare or a rabbit back from miles away. They are stealthy, cunning and ruthless.

By the twentieth century, they had become the favorite breed of the Romany Gypsy and had learned to be good around horses. Perhaps that is why they became so popular among the racing set. There was also a rumor that they had been trained to run back home shortly after they had been sold, so that they could be sold again and again. For the first year we had Bertie, my parents kept expecting him to disappear back to his breeders, and I wouldn’t have minded much if he had.

Bertie was the perfect companion for my father. They could roam the countryside together, Bertie shadowing my father’s horse, galloping alongside him, jumping fences with him and stopping to admire the view. He liked to take off suddenly with a spurt, his teeth bared into a manic grin as he enjoyed his own grace and speed. Sometimes he did this alongside the racehorses and, if a two-year-old could keep up with Bertie for half of the straight chippings, then everyone knew it would win a race.

In full flow, the lurcher has a wild and raw beauty. The power is all in the quarters, the hind legs coming either side of the forelegs and then exploding the body forward in a series of leaps that blur into a galloping motion. Bertie’s back thighs were thick and strong, his head held straight and low, his commitment total. The trouble was that he was easily distracted. He might see a rabbit or a hare as he was belting up the gallop and, within a millisecond, he would turn and throw himself into headlong pursuit.

He took wire fences, hedges and ditches in his stride, oblivious to where the hare might lead him. All he could see was the target, and all he felt was the need to destroy it. He would spin this way and that, changing direction to cut off the hare and, as he got close, he would fling himself forward, sinking his teeth into the back of its neck, rolling and diving as he did so and breaking the hare’s neck with one flick of his own.

It was brutal to behold.

The strange thing was that he wasn’t hunting to eat—he rarely if ever tried to eat his prey—he was hunting because he had a taste for the kill. Something inside him went “ding” when he saw a rabbit, a hare or a deer, and he was off. No amount of roaring from my father would bring him back, until he returned, however long afterward, with a hint of pride in his eyes and a dead animal in his mouth. He dropped it at my father’s feet and waited to be congratulated.

Bertie was an alpha-male dog: a hunter, a killer, a thief and a rascal. Added to the mix, he was also impossibly handsome.

The lurcher, as a breed, became so popular in racing circles that, in Lambourn, the Valley of the Racehorse, a group of enthusiasts set up the Lambourn Lurcher Show. My father would not ordinarily have gone to a dog show if you paid him, but the Lambourn Lurcher Show was different, and Bertie was a canine reflection of him. He had to show off his boy.

Bertie won “Best in Show” for five years running and became the most sought-after lurcher stud dog in the south of England. Oh, that his human children had ever made my father as proud!

~

Dad spent most of his life in a distinctive uniform: dark-brown breeches, tight around the calves, baggy around the thighs, jodhpur boots, a short leather or cotton jacket and a flat tweed cap. Neither he nor any of the stable staff—“the lads,” as they were always called—wore crash hats or back protectors. Some rode out bareheaded, others with caps like John Hallum’s that were turned backward on the gallops.

Dad always liked to ride with the racehorses. In the winter he would be on one of the jumpers, and in the summer on a “hack”—a retired racehorse who was settled enough to stand and watch the others but fast enough to gallop after a loose one if a lad had fallen off. Every morning around eighty horses would be fed, groomed, ridden, washed off and given a pick of grass. Dad knew each one by name, could recite its breeding, where it had run so far and where it was likely to run next time. With time, he learned how certain horses might react, what distances would be most suitable or what ground was preferable, because he had trained their sire or their dam.

We had about forty employees, all of whom lived on-site. They were in charge of two horses each, and they fed them, groomed them, mucked them out and rode them. On work mornings, a jockey or one of the senior work riders might take over the duties on the gallops but, day to day, each lad “owned” his two horses and was responsible for them.

If they were single lads, they had a room in the Hostel, in the center of the three yards, where they had their meals cooked by Harvey and Joyce, who would also, if not actually do their washing, gently show them where the washing machine was. Some lads arrived as thirteen-year-olds, having left or been thrown out of school. They needed surrogate parents, and Harvey and Joyce became just that.

The senior or married staff lived in cottages around the place. Some had been built by John Porter, some by my grandfather and some by my father. They had to live nearby because of the hours. They were up at 6 a.m. in the winter, earlier in the summer to avoid the heat of the day, riding until midday and then either going racing or coming back for evening stables at 4:30 p.m. They worked every Saturday morning and alternate Saturday evenings and Sundays. Christmas or New Year could be taken off, but not both together.

During the seventies, the number of female employees increased and Park House was divided in two. The back wing of it, where my mother and her brothers had slept under the care of Nanny, was sealed off from the rest of the house. That provided six rooms for girls so that they could be safe from randy little corridor creepers in the middle of the night.

My father always said his job was like that of a headmaster. He was always putting out one fire or another. Two lads would have gotten into a fight because one said the other looked like a sack of potatoes in the saddle, a young girl would come to him worried she was pregnant, or a married lad claiming his wife was having an affair with the farrier, a would-be jockey felt frustrated because he wasn’t being given a chance to ride in races, another was homesick.

I am not sure that Dad would have made a full-fledged counselor, but he was honest in what he said and thought. He was also practical—encouraging all the young lads to play football in the summer and enter the Stable Lads’ Boxing Competition during the winter months so that they channeled their energy into sport rather than petty arguments or sexual conquests.

Back at home, however, my father had little clue how to deal with a temperamental toddler and a baby who wanted milk all day long. He never changed a diaper in his life, never got up in the middle of the night to see why one of us was crying and he certainly never made us a meal.

Oh, that last bit’s not true. He once made me beans on toast.

“This will be the best beans on toast you have ever had,” he said as he covered the toast in a layer of butter.

“Mmmm,” I said, wanting him to know how much I appreciated it.

“Isn’t that good? Doesn’t it taste yummy? Is it the best meal you’ve ever had?”

“Yeth”—my mouth was full—“ith the beth’d ever.”

For weeks, my father talked about having given me the most delicious meal I had ever had. He did the same with the dogs. One of his jobs around the house—no, his only job—was to feed the dogs. He did this with the concentration, the effort and the chaos of a Michelin chef. A raw egg, leftover vegetables, thinly sliced meat and stock were added to the combined dog mix that said all over the bag that it was a “complete meal” and didn’t need any extras.

“Oh diggy, dig dogs,” he liked to sing as he concocted the dogs’ food. “Oh diggy, dig dogs, yummy, yummy, yum yum.”

As he put down their bowls, he told each dog how lucky he or she was to have such a special meal, made by him. They didn’t much give a hoot and my mother got annoyed with the mess he made and the effects of the raw eggs. Dad didn’t realize that his “job” was meant to include washing up the dog bowls, but he was whistling a happy tune on his way to the office by the time they’d finished eating their banquet.

I wanted a hot chocolate before I went to bed. Mum was busy doing something so I asked my father.

“A hot chocolate, you say? A hot choccy chocolate? Well, I shall make you the best hot chocolate you have ever had. Oh yes I will.”

He was humming to himself as he poured the milk into the kettle to boil it. As he flicked the switch, even I knew this was a mistake.

“What the hell have you done?” My mother’s voice was incredulous as she surveyed the spewing foam of milk coming out of the mouth of the kettle.

I stood staring at the kettle, clasping my blanket close to my face and sucking my thumb.

“She wanted hot chocolate.” My father motioned at me, as if it was my fault.

“So you put the milk in the kettle?” My mother could not believe he had been quite so stupid.

“Yes. It needs to boil, doesn’t it?”

There was no apology, no contrition. As far as my father was concerned, it was a fault with the kettle or the milk if they didn’t get along. It certainly wasn’t his problem.

“Where were you anyway?” He turned on his heels and headed outside. “I’m taking the dogs out.”

That was his way of ending any conversation in which he did not wish to play a part. The dogs were his shield, the end to a dinner party, the excuse to avoid washing up or the reason for not hanging around at someone else’s party.

Mum sighed and cleaned up the mess. I continued to suck my thumb and determined that, in future, I would either wait for my mother or learn how to do things for myself.

~

When Andrew first arrived, he came with his own nurse. I was impressed, not so much because she was a proper nurse with a uniform and everything but because I knew she was a really good rider. In fact, she had ridden at the Olympics and had won Badminton Horse Trials. Her name was Jane Bullen, and she had ruled the world on a little horse called Our Nobby. As Jane Holderness-Roddam, she would win Badminton again on Warrior.

Jane kept her eye on Andrew, and I played innocent, even pretending to be interested in his ability to crawl or to grip anything that came toward him. I studied him carefully, watching as he developed his set habits. He was always hungry and was becoming impressively strong. When I tried to poke his eyes (purely to see what they felt like), he grasped my finger and squeezed until I screamed.

After Jane came a nanny called Liz. She had wild gray hair and a florid face. She came from Ireland and would phone home once a week to have long conversations in a language I couldn’t understand, but I liked it when she read me stories and put on different voices. I liked it even better if she made the stories up—that meant that I was in them, and so were Andrew, Valkyrie, Bertie and Candy.

I also liked Liz because she talked to me as if I was a grown-up and, in my head, I was. Even at the age of four I was mature enough to know that you should never put milk in the kettle.