Whispering Back (27 page)

We hardly had to discuss the matter. We were staying. We would just have to find a way to make it work.

The most frightening aspect was that the rent was such that we couldn’t simply borrow some money from either of our families to cover it if we were stuck one month. It wasn’t the sort of money that anyone we knew could simply draw out of their current account and not really notice. In fact, even if one of us were to get a reasonably well-paid full-time job, it probably wouldn’t cover the whole amount. We would simply have to be successful. We calculated that if we had x liveries at y pounds per week, and z number of horses in for training, we should be all right, but we were still acutely aware of the fine line that existed between success and failure. I kept thinking of that well-known joke: ‘How do you make a small fortune in horses? Start with a large one!’ It didn’t seem so funny any more.

Sarah and Peter informed Henry of our decision to stay, and he came down to the annexe to discuss the details. We’d only really been on waving terms before, and we were curious to find out what he was actually like. Sarah and Peter had given us the impression that Henry and his wife were rather snooty, that they lived the high life of the propertied classes, hardly having to work, income just rolling in from every direction. This image fitted in nicely with our preconceptions, but we’d already noticed that for someone who lived a life of leisure, Henry Robinson appeared to be working extremely hard. I often saw him out on his tractor in the fields, on my way to work in the early mornings, and at certain times of year we could hear the drone of the combine harvester at all times of the night and day. Henry and his right-hand-man Les, the only full-time employee on a farm of 1,500 acres, worked almost constantly to hold the farm together in a climate of great uncertainty. Even the income from renting a number of cottages in and around the estate was not without its drawbacks, for with this seeming bonanza came the huge responsibility that every last Cotswold stone used to build it was listed at grade two or higher, meaning Henry had no option but to keep all the buildings in a state of good repair using antique materials, regardless of their financial viability. We began to realise that owning a lot of property could be as much a liability as an asset, and didn’t necessarily guarantee a lot of spare income.

But even so we were shocked when Henry, politely removing his wellies when he stepped into the annexe, revealed socks full of holes. He looked at his feet as if they didn’t belong to him, and we realised it was probably just an oversight. Obviously he could afford a new pair of socks. But all of a sudden we realised he wasn’t snooty at all.

Henry was apologetic about the way we had suddenly been thrust into this major decision, but he said he knew from past experience that once people wanted to leave, there was no point in holding them back. He was clearly unimpressed with Sarah and Peter reneging on their commitment, but he didn’t want the bad will of pursuing them about it.

As we discussed the practicalities – the payment arrangements, the solicitors, the lease, the various ways of bringing income into the business – we discovered something quite shocking. ‘If the worst comes to the worst,’ I said, ‘we can always do what Sarah and Peter did, and rent out one yard, half the land, and the annexe.’

Henry’s face darkened momentarily. ‘You could,’ he said, ‘but that’s another area in which they didn’t fulfil their lease agreement. It says quite specifically that you have to inform me of any arrangements of that sort that you make.’

Adam and I looked at each other, comprehension dawning slowly. ‘Do you mean to say that Sarah and Peter didn’t ask permission to sub-let?’ we asked.

‘Not just didn’t ask permission. Didn’t even tell me they’d done it. The only reason I knew you’d moved in was that your car stayed around a lot longer than a holiday booking would.’

‘That explains a lot . . .’ Adam’s voice trailed off, and I knew what he was remembering. The bemused expression on Henry’s face when we’d introduced ourselves to him about a month after we’d moved in. The way Sarah and Peter had made us promise not to speak to Henry directly. The fact that they never wanted to bring up any of our issues with him, such as the leaking studio roof or the surfacing of the round pen . . . The round pen! Henry’s help with his JCB in spreading out the gravel and sand of the pen was all the more generous considering we weren’t even meant to be there, and no one had asked him about the pen in the first place. It also explained Adam’s first encounter with Henry’s wife, Susie.

It was one summer afternoon soon after we arrived that she came down the drive with a group of children on ponies, who picnicked in the orchard by the school. On her way past, Susie peered through the annexe window, as if looking for someone. Adam, who was doing the dishes at the time, stuck his head around the door, and asked if he could help. He had no idea who Susie was.

‘I’m looking for Sarah,’ she said.

‘You want the other part of the house,’ Adam replied helpfully, ‘the door’s just through that yard.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said.

Adam was confused. If she knew that Sarah lived in the other house, why was she looking for her here? To clarify the situation further he said, ‘We live in the annexe now. We rent it from Sarah and Peter.’

‘I think I may have made a bit of a gaffe,’ Adam told me later. ‘I didn’t realise she was Henry’s wife, I thought perhaps she was a client or something. But I can’t think why she looked so startled when I said we were living here now.’

Henry laughed when we told him this story. With the formalities out of the way, we suggested a glass of bubbly to celebrate. ‘Although it’s not very special,’ we warned him, suddenly embarrassed at the ordinariness of what we were about to offer him.

‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘as long as it’s cold and bubbly, that’s fine by me.’

The meeting with Henry set our minds at rest. We could get excited now about the prospect of living at Moor Wood on our own. Or rather, not quite on our own. Surely it made sense for Julia and her husband Danny to move into the annexe? Julia was more or less living with Us anyway with the number of courses we were both teaching on, and this way she and Danny would see more of each other. At least, that’s how we tried to sell the idea to Danny. The persuasion worked, and to our intense delight, Danny and Julia moved into the annexe about a month after we moved into the ‘big house’. The only downside was that now they were much further away from London than they had been, which meant that Danny, rather than commuting, ended up staying a few days a week in London.

Adam was particularly thrilled that we would have the place to ourselves. In recent months he had been assembling a band, having met a number of local musicians through a girl who had kept her horse with Sarah and Peter. But, in spite of having the perfect practice room in the studio, they had been forced to hire a room miles away, which severely detracted from the pleasure of ‘letting rip’ twice a week with his incredibly loud amplifier. Even the thick stone walls of the studio could not contain the noise and he hadn’t even bothered to ask Sarah and Peter for permission to rehearse there, knowing what the answer would be. ‘It’s the best band I’ve ever been in,’ he said categorically, which I found easy to believe.

Now, to my delight, SCSI would be able to practise just across the yard. This, he attempted to convince me, would be good for the horses as it would desensitise them to loud noises, and educate them regarding the beauty of ‘quality feedback’, in which he specialises. Generally, this seemed to be the case, but there was one notable exception. This horse had come from the stud owned by Charlie Watts, of the Rolling Stones. She was perhaps used to a higher calibre of performance.

To cap this period of momentous change, Adam received a phone call from someone with a brilliant suggestion. I came into the house just as he was finishing the call. ‘Hang on a minute, I’ll ask Nicole,’ he said, cupping his hand over the phone and explaining the situation. It was a young woman looking for work. ‘She just called up and said she wanted a job and did we have one for her,’ he said apologetically, as if this meant we were obliged to take her on. Certainly, anyone brave enough to do that was worth considering. As I had just come home from the course to find the yard not swept, the dishes not done, and the water buckets not filled, this struck me as a particularly good idea. I nodded enthusiastically, and Adam set up a time for Jo to come and have an interview.

Jo had seen Monty back in 1989 when he had first come over, when she was eleven. She and her mum had been instant ‘believers’, because the horses he had used had come from a neighbouring yard, so she knew they were genuinely un-started youngsters. She saw him again on a later tour, and that was where she had picked up the information about Kelly’s courses. Our riding clinics were outlined on the course details, and she had looked Woodmancote up on the map, and decided to drive out to have a look. She didn’t find our yard, hidden as it is, but thought that Woodmancote looked like an all right place to work. She had recently graduated and didn’t give it much more thought until she returned back from a summer trip to Bali and Australia. With a BSc in combined Geography and Psychology, what was more obvious than a career working as a groom in an Intelligent Horsemanship yard?

Jo worked part-time to start with, five days a week, for three hours a day. We gave her a week’s trial, and never looked back. In the early days I used to think that someone was tickling her, so often did we hear her laugh. Her role expanded when we took her on full-time, and she graduated to riding the starters and remedial horses, which took a lot of pressure off me, and meant I didn’t have to ride in the evenings after I’d been at work on the courses. Everyone should have a Jo.

But she isn’t altogether perfect. Adam, for example, has always felt she should grow taller by a foot or so. Despite his frequent suggestions that she should do so, she has remained stubbornly small. And for such a bright, cheerful, and overwhelmingly caring person, she can occasionally say things with a spectacular lack of tact. On one occasion a newly-arrived client was struggling around the yard, her husband in the car, trying to quickly unload all her horse’s stuff and inform us of all his foibles before, as she put it, ‘My husband gets too stressed out with waiting.’

Jo picked up a saddle and a sack of feed and said, ‘Well, why doesn’t he get out and help? He’s got legs, hasn’t he?’

The lady looked at Jo sadly and said quietly, ‘No, I’m afraid he hasn’t. Well, not ones that work, anyway. He’s disabled.’

Jo told me the story later, still mortified.

But apart from the odd faux pas, we sensed we were right on track. Having Jo around meant we could spend more time concentrating on the business of training horses, and the trickle of work we’d started with had turned into a steady stream. Having the place to ourselves was very exciting and, free to do our own work, we began to feel we really belonged.

Loading horses into horseboxes is one of the most common problems we deal with. Everyone knows horses are sociable, outdoors animals, but, nevertheless, we isolate horses in stables far more than they would choose, perhaps being unable to separate our own needs – a quiet, warm, dry den and a bowl of concentrated food – from those of the horse – space, a herd, grass. We can sometimes be blind to the ways in which we regularly flout these most basic rules of horse behaviour. Rare is the owner who really appreciates what they are expecting from their horse in many everyday situations. We take for granted things like tying up a horse, picking up their feet, taking them away from the herd and field, into a stable, or through a doorway. Most people, however, do have some awareness of why horses have 50 million years of reasons not to load. Every instinct tells them not to step on an unstable surface and not to be in a small enclosed space. Short of sunbathing in front of a lion’s den there are few more cardinal rules for a flight animal. In addition to going into the horsebox and being cooped up there, he has to cope with your driving, and the fact that you are taking him to whatever destination you choose – his life is literally in your hands. But how many owners – myself included – have cursed a ‘stupid’ horse that wouldn’t load?

It seems quite normal for any person who happens to be in the vicinity, at a show for example, to feel it is their duty to come up with a different method to get your horse in the horsebox, each of which is tried in turn for a short time before the next person ‘helps’. After they have done so, the job is often still not done and the prospects of success are usually somewhat worse. I’m sure many people offer to help out of very genuine concern for your predicament. They’re hoping they can get the horse in quickly for you, but they can’t devote their whole day to it. They do their best and then have to move on. Sometimes they’ll succeed and then it’s smiles and relief all round. Once when Nicole was patiently struggling to get Sensi on the trailer in Cambridge, an old man she didn’t recognise came up and quietly offered to help. He said he was a plumber from the neighbouring building site, but he seemed to have stepped out of another world. He appeared kind and gentle, so Nicole agreed. Sensi seemed intrigued by him, and after he had stroked her neck and placed one of her forefeet on the ramp, she followed him in. ‘Never be in a hurry,’ was his advice.

On other occasions, we weren’t so lucky with outside help. I vividly remember one occasion when we were moving Sensi from a yard near Milton Keynes, to take her back to Cambridge. We had been trying for about twenty minutes, parked in the middle of the yard, attempting to bribe her with food. We coaxed her onto the ramp but couldn’t get her any further. Feeling powerless, we were already embarrassed and under pressure, because Nicole’s dad was waiting to start driving. The yard owner’s husband then appeared and said he needed us to get on with it so he could take a truck through the yard. The logical thing, of course, would have been to just move out of the way and let him through, so as not to put ourselves and Sensi under even more pressure. But having spent what felt like so much time to get her just on the ramp, we couldn’t bear to let her off. We tried to get on with it.