Whispering Back (23 page)

Adam had phoned me on Rohan’s mobile earlier, and we were relieved to hear that his dad’s condition was not quite as serious as was originally feared, and he was ‘comfortable’. Adam was going to spend the next day, Monday, in London, then drive up to Moor Wood in the evening, and from there go to the course on Tuesday morning. I had confidently assured him that I would be fine loading the horses on my own, but as I lay in bed, I wondered. It had been hard work loading so many heavy inanimate objects all day, but would live horses be any easier?

In the event, my fears proved entirely justified.

Of the six horses that were in our care at the time, Major (our friend Jenny’s horse that we had been looking after for some time and were soon to own) and Cobweb were 100 per cent reliable loaders. Cobweb, however, was staying behind for a few weeks to teach the kids at the Japanese school. The other four all had question marks over them. Sensi was notoriously bad. Finn had been so bad loading that once when I hired a box to take Wilberforce to the vet, the driver mentioned him in passing as the worst pony he had ever had to load. He hadn’t realised that I knew Finn at the time (we hadn’t yet taken him on), and just referred to him as that ‘
^****
ing stubborn little Exmoor git from Newport Pagnell’, naming the yard where Finn used to live. The Chief, whose owner wanted us to continue his training, had only once been in a box, and Misty, after all, had become ours only after she had refused to go home in a trailer. When we moved them all to Long Street it had been easier, more fun, and cheaper to ride or walk than hire a box. In an ideal world, I would have worked on getting them all really good to load before the day I had to move them, but as well as being just a bit busy, I simply didn’t have a box or trailer to practise with, and Leslie, who had agreed to transport them, had been unwilling to let me use his.

Julia had come over to lend moral and practical support, for which I was profoundly grateful. I’d decided that, in view of the stallion’s hormones and Sensi’s displeasure, the best way for them to travel was for the Chief, Finn and Major to be in the horsebox, driven by Leslie, and for Misty and Sensi to travel in a trailer that belonged to a student from a previous course, Cathy, who had very kindly offered to drive the horses over to Moor Wood. Leslie backed the lorry up to a loading bay. This meant that the ramp was horizontal, which made it a lot easier. The box was open and inviting, and I felt sure the Chief would follow Leslie straight in, as I went off to make preparations for the other horses in the trailer. But I was interrupted by Julia just a few minutes later.

‘I’m not sure it’s such a good idea for Leslie to be loading the Chief. He seems to be getting a little frightened.’

For some reason, I had assumed Julia had meant that the stallion was getting worried. One look at the situation revealed her meaning immediately, however. The Chief was getting angry. It was Leslie who was getting frightened. His face had turned an ashen shade of grey, and although he was sternly saying things like, ‘Come on now and stop messing around,’ there was a tremor in his voice.

Oddly enough, Finn, now that he didn’t have to climb a ramp, was strolling in and out of the box quite merrily, as if he’d been doing it all his life. That Finn was inside only seemed to agitate the Chief further. It was as if he was annoyed with Finn for undermining his protest. His ears were flat back, his eyes were rolling, and he was pawing the ground furiously with a foreleg.

‘Shall I have a go?’ I asked, as tactfully as possible. ‘I shouldn’t really be giving you my dirty work, after all.’

‘Just be careful,’ warned Leslie, ‘he’s a vicious brute. He nearly got me with his feet a couple of times.’

The Chief was seriously annoyed, but after I’d stroked his hot, damp, neck for a while, his irritation seemed to dissolve a little. I moved him backwards and forwards a few times, just a few steps, and rewarded him extravagantly every time he complied. I asked him to step onto the ramp, and he resisted angrily, leaning back against the pressure, and jerking his head from side to side. I met his resistance with one concerted pull, leaning all my body weight back against him, but as always ready to release should he rear up. He stamped his foot hard on the ramp, once, and then shot into the box, nearly bowling me over in the process. By the time Finn was ensconced beside him, he was happily munching his hay, playfully taking bites out of those parts of Finn that he could reach over the partition. Major tucked himself in beside Finn, like a perfect Police horse.

Sensi was another story. Cathy had offered to load her, and I had gladly agreed, feeling it would be easier for someone who wasn’t emotionally involved. Sensi eventually agreed to go in, after she’d exhausted every other option, and we’d shut down every possible escape route.

We’d put Sensi in first, being the larger horse, so that we could swing the partitions across and give her a bit more space initially, but this meant that the space for Misty didn’t look very inviting, particularly as Sensi was swishing her tail in a most unwelcoming way. The trailer was in the corner of the school, with a fence along one side, and straw bales stacked up on the other. I was at a loss as to how to get Misty to step up the ramp. I had never used any kind of force with her, and even getting her to back up and come forward felt a bit strong. In the end, Cathy suggested holding a line behind her – not touching her with it at all – and without any better suggestions, I agreed. Misty saw the line, backed up towards it, felt it against her quarters, panicked, and pulled back. I let go, and Misty set off frantically around the school, hotly pursued by the lead rope. She stopped in a corner and stood trembling. I gently gathered up the rope and led her slowly back to the box, wondering what on earth we could try next. To my astonishment, as I led her up to the ramp one more time, she leapt straight on. I guess she was more frightened by the ropes than the trailer.

With everyone on board, it was time for one last quick check around to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, a quick squeeze with Julia, whom I’d be seeing the next day on the course, and then I set off in the car to try to catch up with Leslie and the other horses, who’d left about twenty minutes before us.

I managed to get to Moor Wood in time to unload the horses. The stallion leapt out of the box, neighing loudly, and passaged impressively across the yard. Finn, who couldn’t passage to save his life, ambled across the yard like he’d been there all his life, and following his example, the stallion soon settled down. Major looked around, probably wondering where the football match was.

As Leslie drank his tea in the annexe, I was glad we were parting on good terms. He seemed very genuine when he said, ‘I wish you well. Good luck.’

Months later I saw an ad in
Horse and Rider
. I was looking idly through the ‘Horses for Sale’ section, and my eye was caught by a photo of a horse that looked very familiar, a striking grey Arab. I looked at the phone number, and realised with a shock that it was indeed Leslie’s number. It was the horse that he’d been trying unsuccessfully for several months to break in, misrepresented as a genuine, unstarted youngster. We’d had our differences, but I’d always thought he was a decent, if somewhat unfriendly and awkward person. I just couldn’t believe that he would pull such a deception, and try to sell such a horse knowing not only that someone could get hurt, but almost certainly
would
get hurt, and that the horse was likely to be destroyed as an untrainable and dangerous animal. I know it’s common practice in the horse world to send difficult horses to the sales, on the understanding of ‘buyer beware’, and some people consider this honourable enough, but to me this deceit was a step too far. I looked at the front of the magazine, and realised the edition was already well out of date. There was no point phoning up and telling the editor. Months later I found out from Jane that someone had indeed bought the horse, a mother and daughter team, who were intending to break the horse in themselves and do endurance riding with him. We never heard if they survived the experience or not.

Leslie had just left when Cathy arrived with Sensi and Misty, who were delighted with their new space, and charged around it several times, causing chaos in the adjoining fields, before settling down to eat.

When Adam arrived later that evening, we put up the round pen. The light was fading, and bats were flickering around us. We looked out across the valley to where the glow of the setting sun could be seen dimly through the trees. Adam looked harried and care-worn, but as we worked on, the colour returned to his cheeks, and the systematic, repetitive work seemed to revive his spirits. By the time we were pushing in the last holding pin, the moon was high, and the stars were glittering through the fast-clearing cloud. Adam hugged me and we both stared up at the heavens, fascinated to see a night sky that was never visible in Milton Keynes, unable to pierce through the nightly blanket of light-pollution.

Finn was visibly unimpressed the next morning when we turned him out, not into the fields, but into the round pen with the stallion. We had placed the pen on the site of an old cow byre, and it was all hard-standing, with just a thin smattering of short grass to occupy them. Finn usually accepts his role as playmate to the big-and-burly with good grace, but occasionally he feels the restraints of the job quite keenly. He got the position as a result of three major attributes: he’s made out of rhinoceros hide; he isn’t intimidated by anyone (except, oddly enough, Misty, the only one who’s smaller than him); and he’ll play for hours at a time. This makes him worth his weight in gold to us, and although we don’t have to call on his services all that often, when we do, he’s invaluable. After an hour or two of being with Finn, the Chief was so calm, willing and manageable, that no one would have guessed he was a stallion at all. I don’t know if all Exmoor ponies are as bold and cheeky as Finn, but I suspect many would make excellent companions for stallions.

To appease him, I set about putting up some electric fencing so that they could have a portion of the field to themselves. This worked well and the Chief seemed to respect it until, predictably enough, we went away for a few days.

On the Friday after we arrived at Moor Wood, Monty came over to England to do a mini-tour. Really, one of us should have stayed behind, but our landlady Sarah kindly offered to look after the horses for us. It didn’t seem fair for Adam to miss the tour that was part of his course, and Kelly wanted me to go along to do the merchandise. While we were away we received a call to say that the stallion had broken out, got in with our other horses, and generally caused chaos. Luckily he hadn’t got in with Sarah’s lot, or things could have got very ugly. As it was, he had sustained a nasty kick to the inside of one of his forelegs, which Sarah was taking care of. It had taken them hours to catch all the horses and separate them out again, and to repair the damage to the fence. In our hearts, we knew we should have just had the stallion stay in the pen, but it would have meant more mucking out and hay-fetching, and we wanted to give Sarah and Peter as little extra work as possible. Besides, in the first few days that he’d been in the field he had shown no sign at all of wanting to break out. They were very good about it, but we felt terrible. It didn’t seem like the best start to our tenancy. And it confirmed in my mind the suspicion started by the flood during the April tour: whenever I went away, something bad happened.

It was the evening after the tour, and the stallion’s wound was beginning to heal nicely. Our new farrier was in the yard, putting some shoes on the horses, when Adam said, ‘Perhaps we should ask him to take Sensi’s back shoes off, so we can get the Chief to cover her. I think she’s in season. And we won’t have him for all that much longer.’

‘Oh, I don’t know!’ I said crossly. We hadn’t got back until the early hours of the morning, and I didn’t want to have to think about anything. ‘I don’t think she’s in season, anyway.’

Sensi chose that moment to spread her back legs and urinate copiously, producing a stream of hormone drenched fluid. The acrid smell left no doubt as to her reproductive receptivity.

‘Although I suppose he might as well remove the shoes anyway,’ I conceded.

The conception was an unorthodox mating, watched with fascination by the neighbour’s two young children. We didn’t want to interfere too much, yet we weren’t quite confident enough to leave them to their own devices. But aside from one worrying moment when the stallion nearly strangled himself with Sensi’s lead rope, it went fairly smoothly. When it was over, we led a rather smug-looking Sensi away. For some reason, Adam and I both felt certain that she had conceived, and I think Sensi knew too. She had no further need of the stallion, and when he whinnied plaintively across the field to her later, she didn’t even flick an ear in his direction.

Two weeks later she ran straight through a metal gate and broke her nose in twenty-five places.

I found her and Major munching the long sweet grass on the triangle outside their field when I went to do the morning check. At first glance, they looked fine, perhaps just a little guilty. Sensi is a brilliant escapologist, and I thought perhaps she’d worked out how to open the catch on one of the gates. She looked like she had a slight graze on her nose, but closer inspection revealed that quite a large portion of her face was caved in, and that every time she exhaled, blood bubbled from two deep puncture wounds to her sinus. It was definitely time to call the vet.

It may have been the lack of breakfast, or it may have been the way the vet diligently pointed out the various cracks and breaks and holes as she carefully probed the wound, but either way I felt quite faint as I held the saline wash for her. A nagging thought pushed itself to the front of my mind:

‘Do you think this could affect her foal? We think she conceived a fortnight ago . . .’

The vet’s face said it all. Horses tend to abort or reabsorb the foetus when they undergo severe shocks. We would just have to wait and see. The ultrasound scan was booked in for a week or so.