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During that time of great anxiety, we really valued our friendship with Father Jeremy and his wife Clarissa. She often brought groups of children to the farm to visit, and she would supply sumptuous picnics that we could all enjoy: cakes with flamboyant coloured icing topped with seasonal decorations, sausages, sandwiches, buns and home-made biscuits. There was always far too much and the leftovers would feed Michael and me for a couple of days afterwards. I suspect she planned it that way.
The horses never seemed to mind little people rushing around whooping and shrieking. Even the most nervous mares that were startled by cars would lower their heads to allow the children to stroke their noses, turning a blind eye to the general mayhem. For their part the children begged to be allowed to ride a horse and, after some consideration, we nominated Chic as the calmest, steadiest one.
Chic was still looking after Jack, her adoptive foal, but she was happy to let the children sit on her back and was careful not to move a muscle when they clustered around her feet. Whenever I climbed on her, she tended to fidget but with the kids she stood stock still. She looked after them just as well as she looked after Jack, always keeping an eye out for him no matter what else was going on.
One day I photographed Chic with several children on her back and sent a copy of the picture to Vivien Mc-Irvine, along with another photo of a group of kids who had climbed a haystack and were jumping off with unfurled umbrellas in an attempt to imitate Mary Poppins. I’d wanted her to see how well it was all going, but the very next day the phone rang.
‘Helen, what on earth do you think you are doing? Do you have any idea of the litigation that would follow if one of those kids falls and injures himself? If there’s an accident, you’d all be for the high jump!’
It shows how naïve I was back then that the possibility hadn’t even occurred to me. I thought it was great that everyone was having such a lovely time and never considered any repercussions. After that I made sure the children always wore hard hats before riding the horses, but I still let them mess around and let off steam. It had to be exciting on the farm or they wouldn’t have wanted to come.
The children came in groups of twelve to fifteen at a time, and it wasn’t all fun and games for them, because I set them to work mucking out, helping with the feeding or sweeping the yard. They didn’t seem to mind because the same few came back time after time, dropped off and picked up by their parents. One Saturday, we got a phone call from a man we knew through the church.
‘I’ve heard you have children coming to the farm to help, and I wondered if we could bring my daughter Lucy?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ I said straight away, then added quickly, ‘What age is she?’ I didn’t want to end up babysitting for someone I’d have to take to the loo all the time.
‘Fourteen.’
‘That’s fine, then.’
He hesitated. ‘It’s just that … Lucy’s been having a bit of trouble at school. I don’t know exactly what’s going on but she doesn’t seem to have any friends and she’s unhappy. We have to drag her out the door in the morning. I thought maybe she could make some new friends at Greatwood, and be of use to you at the same time.’
My curiosity was aroused. ‘Of course she can come. I look forward to meeting her.’
An hour later, a car pulled into the yard and our friend got out along with a lanky girl with a shock of ginger hair. Her legs were so skinny her kneecaps looked like hubcaps, and when she smiled I saw her teeth were too big for her mouth. She was at an awkward age.
‘Hi, Lucy,’ I said, shaking her hand. ‘There are some other kids mucking out in that barn over there. If you’d like to join them, someone will find you a shovel.’ I didn’t believe in hanging around exchanging pleasantries while there was work to be done. ‘Don’t worry – I’ll keep an eye on her,’ I promised her dad before he drove off.
I left the children in the barn on their own for a bit, then curiosity got the better of me and I sneaked up to listen in to the conversation I could hear in snatches.
‘I know all about horses,’ I heard Lucy saying. ‘I’ve been riding since I was about two years old.’
‘No one can ride at two,’ another kid intervened.
‘Well, I did,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve ridden lots of racehorses. There’s not a horse I can’t ride. My dad’s going to buy me a horse of my own soon. Maybe he’ll get one of the ones here.’
Her dad hadn’t mentioned any such thing to me and I knew they didn’t have the space or the money to keep a horse, but maybe there was some kind of misunderstanding.
Later that morning, Chic was in the yard and I decided to offer Lucy a chance to ride her. ‘Lucy, I overheard you saying you like riding. Would you like to have a go on Chic?’
She blushed and mumbled something to the ground and I assumed she felt shy with me, and perhaps embarrassed that I had overheard her boasting.
‘She’s out in the yard here. Come along.’
At 15.3, Chic is quite a big horse for a smallish girl. I wouldn’t have let Lucy ride off on her but planned to lead her round the yard on Chic’s back. But as soon as I legged her up, I realised she didn’t have a clue what to do because she nearly fell straight off the other side. I looked up at her face and saw that she was ashen. She was utterly terrified. I don’t think she’d ever been on a horse before and suddenly there she was, more than five feet off the ground, having told everyone she was an experienced rider. The other children were all standing around watching so I knew I had to find a way to get her off without making her lose face.
‘Goodness, silly me,’ I exclaimed. ‘I haven’t got any stirrups short enough for you. I’m sorry but you won’t be able to ride today after all. Do you want to come down?’
I caught her as she slid off Chic’s back and skulked back into the barn again.
Later I told Michael about it. ‘I bet that’s why she hasn’t got friends at school if she’s always boasting and making up stories. Why do you think she feels the need to do that?’
‘They’re a good, loving family. I suppose she just feels insecure for some reason. Are you happy to have her come back and help again?’
‘Of course, yes. The more the merrier. It might be good for her.’
I kept half an eye out for Lucy from then on and I realised she wasn’t stupid – in fact she seemed rather bright – but she was so eager to be liked that she overdid it. If she went up to cuddle a dog, she clung on so hard that it wriggled away yelping. When she approached a hen to catch it, she was too keen and scared it off. She tried her hardest to make friends with the other children, but she did everything the wrong way. If she wasn’t boasting that her dad was loaded, or that she could read a book faster than anyone else, or that she was top of the class, then she was laughing raucously at her own, unfunny jokes. The other children soon began to give her a wide berth, and I didn’t blame them, but the more they tried to avoid her, the harder Lucy tried to make them like her.
I had a groom at the time called Sandy who helped us to train the horses. She was about twenty and Lucy was desperate to get on with her. She was cloying in her affections but still she used completely the wrong tactics. Instead of listening to Sandy’s conversation, Lucy felt she had to impress her with her knowledge of pop music, or computers, or things that were all far too old for her. Whatever Sandy said, she had to go one better. If Sandy had a new CD, Lucy boasted that she had seen the band live in concert. If Sandy mentioned a TV programme she liked, Lucy claimed to have it on video. Sandy was kind to her, but I could tell Lucy annoyed her with her constant wheedling. I knew that inside she was a frightened little girl, but I had no idea how to teach that girl better social skills. Where do you start?
Despite her lack of friends at Greatwood, Lucy was obviously happy with us. One Saturday, her father got out of the car and came over to have a word.
‘Lucy’s mother and I are so grateful for everything you’re doing for her,’ he said. ‘The school holidays are just starting and we wondered if she could spend more time here. Only if she’s useful, of course.’
In fact, she was a good worker, picking things up the first time she was told, and thinking for herself if need be. ‘I’d be delighted,’ I said.
‘I think she might be interested in working with horses when she leaves school, and we want to encourage her in her ambitions.’
‘She should stay here for a couple of weeks and get a taste of the early starts before she makes up her mind about working with horses,’ I quipped, and before I knew it, it had been agreed that Lucy would move in with us for two weeks over the summer. She’d got under my skin and I wanted to help her out if I could.
For two weeks Lucy slept in our spare room, ate her meals with us, and I didn’t for one moment regret the decision. She used to get up with me at 5am to boil the huge vats of barley on our Aga for horse feed. She’d help feed the other animals as well, then wash out the feed buckets, muck out the barns, and keep everything neat and tidy around the yard. She became adept at slipping a head collar on the horses and talking quietly to them when they needed to stand still, for example if the farrier was there to trim their hooves. All in all, she was a great asset to me – but still the other children didn’t warm to her.
While Lucy was there, we had a visit one day from a racehorse owner driving a Mercedes, who’d come to check us out and decide if we were the best home for one of his retired horses. I think the stables were a lot more dilapidated than he was used to, but when he saw the condition of our animals, he agreed that his horse, Freddy, could come to us. He duly arrived the next day in a smart trailer. Freddy was a smallish bay with a white blaze down his nose and he was in peak condition, having only come out of training a few weeks before. He danced about as he was unloaded, putting flight to the hens and some geese.
Freddy had had an ignominious end to his ten-year racing career, going from being the winner of Group 1 races at the age of two to trailing at the back of the field more recently. It would take a degree of expertise to retrain him for another career, but I thought we had a good chance of managing it. I stood him in a stable for a day or so to get used to us, then Lucy was with me when I led him up to the field at the end of the lane where we kept our other geldings. Freddy was as naughty as a two-year-old colt, rearing up on his hind legs as I led him, and I thought, ‘Uh-oh, we’re going to have our work cut out.’ He was obviously a highly strung creature.
As soon as I released him into the field, he galloped straight up to the other horses and tried to push his way into the middle of the herd. He obviously didn’t know that there was a pecking order in a herd and new members have to approach slowly and show respect. One horse nosed him roughly out of the way, then another did the same.
‘What are they doing?’ Lucy cried, and I realised she had tears in her eyes. ‘They’re going to hurt him.’
‘No, they won’t,’ I said, watching carefully just in case I was wrong. Freddy approached the group again, but they wouldn’t let him near, rejecting his advances until eventually, head down, he wandered off to graze on his own in a corner.
‘Why won’t they be friends with him?’ Lucy asked, her voice cracking.
Suddenly I realised this was touching a raw nerve for her and I chose my words carefully. ‘Freddy’s been used to being on his own a lot, or with his trainer and jockey, and he’s forgotten how to get on with other horses. He has to earn his place in the herd and wait for them to invite him in instead of charging full pelt into the middle and demanding attention. But don’t worry. It will work itself out eventually.’
‘He must be really upset about it.’
‘Yes, he probably is. But it will be all right in the end.’ At least I hoped it would.
We had to supplement Freddy’s diet while he adjusted to grazing, having previously been fed on concentrates. It became Lucy’s job to go up to the field twice a day and feed him from a bucket, trying to keep it hidden from the rest of the herd so they didn’t think he was getting special treatment, which would have made things much harder. As Lucy fed him, she would stroke his nose and whisper to him, and it was obvious that this lonely girl felt a great affinity for the lonely horse.
From time to time, if another horse was standing separately from the rest of the herd, Freddy would try another approach, sauntering up hopefully, but he was usually met with a hostile kick or a push. He’d panic then canter away again to his solitary grazing. After a few days of this, he started to get nervous when other horses came near and I was concerned that the situation wasn’t resolving itself as quickly as I’d hoped. Fear is always alienating. If a child is scared of dogs and starts behaving oddly around them, even the friendliest breeds of dog will respond by barking or jumping up and will scare the child even more. However, if a child can stay calm, the dogs will be calm too, and it’s the same with horses. Freddy would have to learn to calm down, and this would take time.
‘Why don’t they understand that he only wants to make friends?’ Lucy asked me over and over again.
‘He’s already got a friend,’ I told her. ‘Have you noticed how much he brightens up when you come along?’ It was true. Freddy always rushed over as soon as he saw Lucy approaching the field, whether she was carrying a feed bucket or not. One day, I saw the two of them lying on the grass beside each other, with Lucy chatting quietly and Freddy still and listening. I would have loved to have eavesdropped but if they’d noticed me, it would have spoiled the moment.
‘Freddy was lying down in the field today,’ Lucy told me later, and I knew that was a good sign, because it meant he was settling and wasn’t so scared of the others.
Not long after that, there were a few telltale signs that Freddy was being accepted by the herd. It started with some sniffing of noses, and then a little grooming of necks. Freddy let the others make the approach without either running away or responding with too much eagerness, and in return it seemed they were beginning to accept him.
Around this time, I watched Lucy trying to catch Flirty Gertie one morning, trying hard not to laugh as she kept slipping out of reach. Finally I stepped in to help. I talked to Gertie quietly, approaching very gradually then stooping down using slow, careful movements, and she let me pick her up.
‘Do you see how I did that?’ I asked. ‘You can’t force your presence on a hen, especially not one like Gertie. You need to gain her trust first of all.’
‘OK,’ Lucy nodded, and over the next few days I watched her get the hang of it. She was getting on better with the dogs as well, and one lunchtime I eavesdropped while Sandy was telling her about a new CD she’d bought and Lucy didn’t interrupt once to boast that she had better CDs at home. She was learning.
I’d like to say Lucy became friends with the other children at Greatwood that summer, but nothing happens that quickly after a bad first impression has been formed. However, she made a firm friend of Freddy. After the two weeks she stayed with us, Lucy kept popping back to see Freddy whenever she could, and as soon as he spotted her coming down the lane, Freddy would rush up to the fence to greet her. There was a meeting of kindred spirits there that I think helped both of them through a difficult time.
The summer holidays ended and Lucy went back to school, so she could only visit us at weekends. Her father phoned us one evening, though.
‘I can’t thank you enough for what you did for Lucy over the summer,’ he said. ‘She seems much more settled at school and has made some new friends, so we’re very grateful.’
‘So are we,’ I said. ‘She helped us to settle a highly temperamental racehorse who needed the kind of one-toone attention I didn’t have time to give it. Your daughter is good with horses. She has a knack.’
A few months later, Lucy’s family moved overseas and we lost touch. Still, we felt something rather wonderful had happened. We were feeling particularly pleased with ourselves when we got a sharp reminder not to take anything for granted – the bank foreclosed our account. We couldn’t take out cash or write cheques for anything any more. In order to keep going, we had to sit down and apply for as many credit cards as we could, with the maximum credit limit they would give us. From now on we would be living off the never-never.
Chapter 5
Sophie and Darcy Day
A car pulling a trailer came up the drive and stopped in the yard one morning in late summer. Usually horses start stamping when their trailer comes to a standstill but there was no sound from this one and I worried that its occupant might have got injured on the journey, and might even be down, although I would have thought that the driver would have heard if anything untoward had happened.
Michael let the tailgate down and a desperate sight met my eyes. Darcy was bony, her head hanging low over the bars, and her coat was matted and discoloured. Over the years, I’d seen many horses in poor condition but this one rocked me on my heels. I climbed into the trailer to untie her, talking in a soft, low voice, but she didn’t even raise her head to look at me. This was an animal who had given up on the world.
The woman driver introduced herself and told us that she had rescued Darcy from a place where she was being severely neglected but that she couldn’t afford to keep her herself. Would we be able to help? Of course we would. There was no question. I was just concerned about how I was going to get her to back down the ramp out of the trailer because she was in such weak condition she could have collapsed at any time.
Gently, step by faltering step, Michael guided her down while I helped at the other end, until she stood trembling in the yard in front of us. She was a mess. Her eyes were dull and streaming, her bones protruding through her coat, her hind legs swollen and oozing a yellow discharge, her tail a tangled mass of wet hair and diarrhoea, her hooves long and overgrown. Her temperature was sky high and I knew she needed intravenous medication quickly. I went indoors to ring Adrian, the local vet, while Michael led Darcy slowly to the old sheep barn where she could be nursed in peace. We had a nursery paddock in front of the house where we sometimes put poorly horses because we could listen out for them in the night, but it was clear that Darcy was nowhere near well enough to be outside.
When Adrian arrived, he whistled through his teeth. The strain of the journey had obviously taken its toll on Darcy. She was clearly very distressed and had broken out in a heavy sweat. Her temperature remained way above normal, her hind legs were hot and swollen and the skin had split in several places.
‘It’s a nasty case of lymphangitis,’ Adrian said, ‘started from infected cuts on her legs.’ He injected her with a hefty dose of painkillers, as well as antibiotics and anti-inflammatories to kick-start the healing process.
Michael brought out some buckets of warm water and Adrian cleaned Darcy’s hind legs as best he could, then bandaged them. He bathed her eyes and put in some eyedrops. The only good news to emerge from his head-to-hoof medical check was that she didn’t have lice, which would have meant that we would have been forced to keep her in isolation.
‘She may develop colic,’ Adrian said. ‘I can’t tell yet. You’ll have to keep a close eye on her temperature and watch her like a hawk for the next few days to see if she turns the corner.’
The word ‘if’ hung in the air. What he was saying was that there was a good chance she wouldn’t. This horse seemed to have lost the will to live.
‘She needs company,’ I said to Michael. ‘Maybe if we bring in another horse and they get along together, she’ll perk up a bit.’
He agreed – but which one should it be?
‘Tish!’ we both said together.
Tish was a little Shetland pony, only 28 inches tall, who had come to us after a horrific incident in which several men had attacked him with shovels and beaten him badly, all because he bit a child who was petting him at a show. Who knows what that child was actually doing to him at the time? Those men didn’t wait to hear if there had been any provocation before laying into him. Once he arrived at Greatwood and recovered from his beating, we found Tish to be a cheeky, cheerful, entertaining character with a strong personality, who wouldn’t let any of the much bigger horses take advantage. He’d be the ideal equine companion for Darcy: too small to appear a threat, but perky enough to attract her attention.
I went out to the field to try to catch Tish – no mean feat when he doesn’t want to be caught – and finally managed to lead him to the sheep barn where Darcy was standing alone in the corner. Tish marched straight in and helped himself to a huge mouthful of the fresh meadow hay we had left for Darcy. Darcy looked up, surprised, then edged over to sniff Tish’s bottom. Tish gave a swift warning kick with one of his back feet and carried on munching. Darcy went over to stand beside him, avoiding the back legs, looked cautiously out of the corner of her eye, and then bent down and picked up a wisp of hay in her mouth. They stood side by side eating from the same pile, which meant they were accepting each other. It was a huge step forwards for Darcy.
For the rest of the day Tish and Darcy ignored each other but at the same time continued to be quite happy in each other’s company, so we felt confident enough to leave them overnight in the same barn. Next morning, I hurried outside as soon as I awoke to find Darcy’s temperature had gone down. Her eyes were brightening and she was obviously feeling a lot better, although she still paid no attention to Michael or me. She accepted everything we did for her with a resigned air but without any responsiveness or gratitude.
We had to walk her a few times a day to help the swelling in her legs, and when we led her out of the barn, Tish would call out for her and she would whinny in reply. A relationship was forming. Within three days, they were inseparable and when we wanted to take Darcy out for a walk, Tish had to be taken along as well. Darcy had made a friend.
A few days after Darcy’s arrival, a car pulled into the yard and a woman wound down the window to talk to Michael.
‘We heard that you have children here to help on Saturday mornings and we wondered if you would have our daughter Sophie?’
He glanced into the back seat and saw a dark-haired girl staring at her lap. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s fine.’
The woman started talking, and it was as if the flood-gates opened. ‘Her father and I are very worried. You see, she’s stopped talking – she hasn’t spoken a word for two years. We don’t know what to do but she likes reading books about horses and we heard about you and thought maybe …’
‘That’s fine,’ Michael said again, curious now about this girl who seemingly didn’t talk.
‘We’ll be back in a couple of hours,’ the mother said. ‘We don’t want her to be a burden to you. We’ll just do a bit of shopping and come back. She’s got a mobile phone in her pocket with our number on it and if she rings, we’ll come straight away.’
The car door opened and Sophie stepped out, a sullen look on her face. She was overweight and had made no effort with her appearance, with her baggy, ill-fitting clothes and her lanky, unwashed hair. But more than that, it was her general demeanour that told me she was depressed. She was hunched, as though there were a heavy weight pressing down on her, and she could barely find the energy to lift one foot after the other and walk.
As her parents drove off, I swept over and introduced myself. ‘I’m just on the way to change the dressings on a horse called Darcy,’ I told her. ‘Come with me.’ On the way to the barn, I explained about the condition Darcy had arrived in just a few days earlier and what steps we were taking to try to help her. There was no reaction and I began to wonder if Sophie had a hearing as well as a speech problem.
And then the three of us – Michael, Sophie and me – walked into the barn, and Darcy astonished us by going straight over to Sophie and lowering her head to be petted.
‘I brought her a great big breakfast this morning and she never comes over to me,’ I complained, but really I didn’t mind at all. We never ask for anything in return from horses we rescue. That’s not how it works.
I could tell Sophie was pleased. She held out her hands and Darcy put her nose into them. Even though she must still have been feeling rotten with her legs and all her other health complaints, she was able to make a connection with this silent little child.
I laid out the equipment for changing the dressings and as I worked, I asked Sophie to hand me the items I needed. She seemed bright enough, finding the correct bandages or tubes of ointment and holding them out until I was ready to take them, but it felt strange talking to someone who never talked back. Michael and I found ourselves chatting more than we normally would have just to fill the silence.
After I’d finished with Darcy, I led Sophie to the hen house and showed her how to look for eggs, and how to feed the chickens, then she just trailed round helping me with my normal jobs for the next couple of hours until her parents came back. I decided not to introduce her to the rest of the children in the stable, because they wouldn’t have been able to resist asking questions and possibly even making fun of her. It seemed better to keep her busy and out of the way of the others.
When Sophie saw her parents’ car, she walked across to it with the same sullen posture as when she’d arrived, opened the back door and climbed in. She didn’t so much as wave goodbye to us.
‘Thank you very much,’ her mother shouted out of the window as they left.
‘Do you think she’ll be back next week?’ I asked Michael.
‘I don’t know.’
‘She seems very troubled. I wonder what that could be about?’
‘Who knows? Perhaps she’s perfectly capable of speaking and has just decided to rebel, but you’d think the odd word would have slipped out at some stage over the last two years.’ Michael rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
‘I was wondering if she’s had some kind of traumatic experience. Maybe she’s being bullied at school.’
I’d been bullied myself, back at the age of thirteen. We’d left the farm where I’d had such a happy childhood with my horses, and moved to a town. At the new school I was sent to, the other girls found me very unstreetwise. They were interested in boys and dating, while all I cared about was animals. On the first day, one girl ran a finger down my back to see if I was wearing a bra, and they all laughed when they found I wasn’t. They weren’t violent towards me but they treated me as though I were some lowly creature, not worthy of attention, so I’ve always felt sympathetic to any children in the same situation.
During the following week, my thoughts kept returning to Sophie and I wondered whether I should have handled her differently, but I decided that my policy of just treating her as if everything were completely normal was the best one. She didn’t want me bombarding her with questions and I’m sure she’d had enough people coaxing and cajoling her to speak both at home and at school. It seemed most natural to me to pretend everything was fine, that her silence was nothing out of the ordinary.
