by Melanie Reid
My first task was to get up close and personal with a horse again. Fifteen months after my fall, I went to visit Tammy, a gentle old mare with kind eyes, a liver chestnut coat and sun-kissed blonde highlights. I think her owner, my friend Gillian, was more nervous than I was. We both cried a little, of course, while I got as close to Tammy as it was safe to, and she loomed over me, burying her rubbery lips in the crook of my neck. She sighed deeply, exhaling a sweet gust of grassy breath down my T-shirt, her whiskers tickling my cheek. Jane Smiley, the novelist, said that the eyes of a horse always told you something a little bit beyond your comprehension. They always asked more of you than you were able to give. For Smiley, the horse was life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life’s mystery and unpredictability, of life’s generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever-changing contemplation. And, I could now add, a bringer of cruel harvest. I was pretty sure that the kind mare was aware of the tension and grief inside me. She didn’t ask anything; she simply rested her nose near my face and offered profound, silent comfort.
I had never been sentimental about horses – they live, they die, some like Fergus were special and you cried over them, most were not and you didn’t – but having them around was always a joy. You can be entirely rational about pleasure. They weren’t my babies and I was far from anthropomorphic about them, but I loved their smell, their beauty, their grace, their generosity, the thrills of riding them. Some people needed to wear nice clothes or drink alcohol to forget or be happy; I needed only to stand in the darkened stable at night, listening to that primitive sound of big, placid creatures munching contently at their haynets. It used to make me feel at peace with the world. The moment with Tammy, of reconnecting with one again, the creature of my dreams, the slayer of my dreams, was an emotional occasion; a moment of intense bitter-sweetness. Going to visit my own horse, the one I had fallen off, was not an option: Terry was far away, in a happy hacking-only home, and it would have been too upsetting to see him. I never did. The woman who bought him sent me two sensitive emails to tell me where he was and how he was doing, and then backed discreetly out of touch. I was very grateful to her for that.
Still determinedly rational, in the cool shadow of Tammy’s barn, I also realised exactly how limited I was around horses as an immobile tetraplegic. Even touch, that most elemental communication with them, was compromised by my inability to straighten my fingers. I couldn’t offer a Polo mint on the palm of my hand. I couldn’t grip her lead rope, or reach her neck, let alone have the endorphin-sparking satisfaction of a long, smooth caress down her shoulder. An affectionate rub with a clenched fist at the point where her leg joined her chest was my only option, and it really was second best. There was no way of leaning in and pressing my face into her coat for that unforgettably sweet, heady scent of grass and leather and warm horse, because I couldn’t get close enough. The diver in the shark cage, unable to escape the metal skirts around her. The golden rule of being around these equines, for anyone, was always be ready for the unexpected and never, ever sit down or kneel next to them, at risk of being trampled or kicked should they startle. Stuck in a wheelchair next to a flight animal, I was utterly vulnerable, there totally on trust. I looked up, appraising the height to her withers, and quailed. How could I possibly ever get up there? From a wheelchair vantage point, she was impossibly tall and narrow. I wasn’t capable of lifting my backside high enough to slide up a board into the seat of an SUV, let alone standing and swinging a leg out from my hip. Once again the physical isolation of my condition was reinforced, the denial of proper, reciprocal touch with anyone or anything living.
Five months later, I was sitting in a saddle on top of a horse again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Melly Met Nelly
We had sold our horses in our fathers’ time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
Edwin Muir, ‘The Horses’
The hoist tightened round my thighs and ribcage and scooped me gently into midair, backside dangling. Both my body and mind had entered a kind of private ice age; I stopped breathing some time ago. I was trapped in a most improbable confusion of present and past lives, swinging powerless in a hoist, as in hospital, but on a deliciously familiar horsey stage – cold echoey indoor school, earthy smells, dirty anoraks, the whispered shuffle of heavy hooves, creaky leather. As I was swung out into space I glimpsed below me, impossibly insecure and narrow, the waiting back of a horse. Then the hoist whirred again, and I was lowered onto the saddle, which I couldn’t actually feel. I just felt a new sensation of perching, wobbling; and the helpers were gently stretching my legs down Nelly’s sides. The mare was relaxed, uninterested; just a normal day in the office for her. The hoist was removed and I was upright, miles high it seemed, teetering, unsupported but for my hands wedged in a strap in front of me, beset with paralysis and anxiety.
‘Breathe,’ advised Sara Smith, my new mentor at the Riding for the Disabled Association.
She grinned up at me. ‘It helps if you breathe.’
On the hoist. Keep looking at Sara and pretend not to be scared.
You know that kind of weird, detached sensation you sometimes get, as if you’re an observer instead of a participant in your own life? As if things are happening to someone else, not to you? That’s how it felt. Two worlds had elided. I was back, but in my new body. Twenty months after the fall, I had returned to the saddle and I didn’t know if I was brave or crazy or a bit of both. Deep down, I was aware that, childlike, I was hoping that it had all been a bad dream and that horses might offer some strong magic to reawaken my old life. At the very least, I wanted to make reality a little better. Riding could do that.
Then there was the practical aspect. My recovery had progressed to the point where this had become possible. From alive-but-deader-than-dead Asia A, I had developed some power in my torso and much better balance. The emotionally loaded horse question had turned itself into a personal physical goal. It became an unspoken part of the challenge: not just to get on my feet again, but to see if I would ever become strong enough to sit in a saddle, hold myself upright in it, balance, stay on board, swing my legs. The stories of physiotherapy benefits from horse-riding were impressive – children with cerebral palsy who had revolutionised their core strength through being on the back of a horse. I wanted to see if I could do it. And there I was – not, sadly, poised in my dressage saddle, but flopped upon a wide flat treeless one suitable for disabled bottoms. But I was on a horse again.
Nelly was a twelve-year-old, 16.1-hands-high bay mare, one of those wise, easygoing, multi-talented horses who gift themselves to the service of humankind. She’d been destined for eventing but proved too lazy. Nothing much bothered Nelly: she served as a vaulting horse for the disabled kids, cantering in slow, rhythmic circles while they leapt and somersaulted on and off her. She did a reasonable dressage test with a competent disabled or special needs rider; and she carried tense, very crippled people like me in ordinary lessons without turning a hair. That first time, I stayed on her back for a very short time. Initially, those first few minutes, I was terrified, not of falling off, or hurting myself – I was, with hindsight, stupidly cavalier about that – but of failure. What if I couldn’t balance? What if I made a fool of myself and wasted everyone’s time? What fools pride makes of us all.
Sara suggested we try a little walk around the arena and it struck me, as we readied ourselves, that to the outsider we must have had a certain timeless quality, the foot soldiers clustered around the badly injured comrade, ushering them from the field of battle aboard some requisitioned mount. I was starting to perfect that random, fly-
on-the-wall perspective, watching myself with detachment. Sometimes self-mocking, sometimes in self-preservation, it was a way of making sense of the unfamiliar situations I faced. So there we were, a medieval grouping, with the horse ambling in the centre, dreaming of her haynet, and at both of my knees people designated as side-walkers, ready to grip a leg to hold me on board. One of them was my friend Tanya, who had driven me to the stables, and now was faintly grey with anxiety, hands hovering to catch me. Someone else was at the front, leading the mare; Sara was floating, the officer commanding the troop. After the first lurch, as the horse began to move, when I almost retched with alarm, it got easier. Even in that first brief taster, the feel was enticing: the sway of my body with the horse as she walked; the sense of connection and rhythm. I was a sack of potatoes by able-bodied riders’ standards but I could, to my delight, hold myself upright, grasping that strap over the front of the saddle.
As soon as I could, I returned to the stables and sat on Nelly again: the second time felt so much better. My legs relaxed and I breathed. I got a glimpse of how much good her movement could do me in terms of physical and mental rehabilitation. My torso and hips swung with the horse’s stride, mimicking walking. Once again I was in touch with, communicating with, a living creature. I was forced to use every fraction of remaining active muscle I had to keep myself upright – exhausting, but possible in short stretches. The mind-wiping effect, though, was profound – there were brief snatches during the thirty-minute session when I concentrated so hard I simply forgot I was paralysed, something I never thought could happen. Sara, a woman possessed of a special quota of serenity, smiled at my improvement and said simply: ‘Muscle memory is an amazing thing.’ She’d seen it all before. Tanya, meanwhile, joked that the London Paralympics dressage might just be a little too close, but offered to groom for me at the next Olympics in Rio. The blood fizzed in my veins. Now I could have ambition and dreams again, although back in my wheelchair my emotions slumped at the old realities of the unhealed, unhealable body. But I tried to take my lead from the animals. Don’t fret. Don’t analyse. Accept. Be. Live placidly in the now. Therein, perhaps, lay peace and a greater wisdom. When a Times photographer came to take pictures and Nelly was asked to stand motionless, me balancing on her back inside a circle of flashlight umbrellas on stands, she earned even more respect. She snorted the first time and her skin flinched when the lights flashed; otherwise, heroically, she didn’t move a muscle. Just out of shot, Sara hovered, poised to grab her reins.
The riding, like so many things I attempted to do, was always marginal. By that I mean I could only just manage it, pushing myself right to the edge of my physical limitations. The rigid tone in my legs was a real problem. To combat it I took a near enough maximum dose of baclofen. It reduced the worst of the spasm and made life more liveable. (Though God knows what it does to your brain or your body long-term. I once asked Dr Mark Bacon, the scientific director of Spinal Research, what the long-term side-effects were. ‘Nobody knows,’ he said apologetically.) Spinal injury’s a bit like that all round: you make the best of it in the here and now. Don’t ask too many questions. Don’t look into the future. Don’t make plans. You’re lucky to be around.
In addition to a steady diet of baclofen, I started to use another drug, clonazepam, to soften my hips. Clonazepam is one of the family of benzodiazepines, sedatives and muscle relaxants (including Valium), much abused as street drugs and very addictive, but of serious practical value for spinal injuries. In hospital I used it to ease my telegraph-pole legs and allow me to put on my trousers when I was fighting FIM. Now, as the drug was quick-acting, I would take a quarter of a tablet once I had arrived at the stables, ten minutes before getting on Nelly, so that my hips would open enough to let me sit upright in the saddle, legs apart.
In the paralysed rest of my life, though, away from the escapism, other things were going wrong with my body. Only now was I beginning to grasp how fundamental guts were to all-over health; indeed, that they were probably responsible for much of my nausea, oedema and spasm since I left hospital. When your guts go wrong as a tetraplegic, daily life tips into out-and-out war, trying to combat bowel accidents at any time of the day. I went to extraordinary lengths to make sure I’d be safe on riding days, contorting myself for hours on the shower chair. It was a daily, gruesome form of torture. Mornings were indescribably hard. Later, when a mammogram showed I had developed atypical ductal hyperplasia (ADH, a kind of pre-pre-cancerous condition) in my right breast, I was absolutely convinced it was as a result of trauma caused by straining over the arm of the shower chair to reach my bottom. At the stables though, I could be released from ill health and hurt.
The sessions with Nelly were going so well that Sara carved out two lunchtimes a week when I could come. By now I had gained enough confidence and fluency in my car to be able to drive myself to the yard, another huge frontier conquered. In the car, there was free movement, autonomy – I found I could forget, however briefly, that I was paralysed. On Nelly’s back, I felt the same liberation. I became the centaur, moving free again. Good RDA horses are amazingly steady, tolerant and forgiving. They wait. They endure. I had seen Nelly being ridden by the able-bodied staff, when she had leapt sideways and tanked off, mouth set against the bit; but when disabled riders were on board she was a saint. Or so I convinced myself at the time.
So often, the riding took away the spasms. Sometimes at the beginning of a session I had to prop my arms against the mare’s neck, fighting to stop my body doubling up, but after five minutes of being led around the indoor riding school, I was able to relax my arms. I would still feel like one of those wooden dolly pegs with which our mothers used to hang out the washing in the 1960s. Then, after another ten minutes’ walking, my pelvis would start to unlock and swing with the horse’s movement. Then the spell would start to work. As soon as I softened, Nelly would walk more freely; and suddenly we were in tune, horse and rider as one. In a practised procedure, the side-walkers slowly fell back, giving us more space. Then it was just Sara leading the mare, and then she dropped physical contact and simply walked at her head, no lead rope. From nowhere, a little enchantment settled on us.
Subsequent weeks saw progress. I arrived one day to find Nelly tacked up in a normal saddle, instead of a treeless one. To my paralysed body it felt like swapping a seat astride a sofa back for one balancing on a wooden pole. Help, I cried inside. That saddle looked tiny. Hoisted aboard, the staff tucked my legs back behind the knee rolls and my pelvis automatically tilted forward, holding me erect. No spasm, no slumping now. I felt astonishingly secure, so much so that I could take my hands off the safety strap and wave my arms around and turn my torso. Three-quarters of the way through my allotted time, I glanced down at Sara and said, ‘This is amazing. I could trot.’ Her eyes lit up. She was an extraordinary mixture of patience and go-for-it elan. She made you feel anything was possible. She was a former British ski team racer, who once went downhill at ten million miles an hour. ‘Well, if it feels right, it usually means it is right,’ she said and while my jaw was still flapping she took hold of my knee, nodded at Matthew, the other helper, and asked the mare for trot. We did three strides: a bizarre, fleeting flashback of another life, another body.
Soon I was riding balancing just on my seat bones – hands holding the reins instead of clutching the safety strap. By now the staff were standing back much more, letting me be the one in control of Nelly. I began to trust the mare more and more, controlling her with my hands hooked into special loops on the reins.
Aside from the emotional solace, riding was proving to be remarkable physiotherapy. Nelly’s walk did indeed mimic a human one; my pelvis swayed with hers. I could sit up straighter for longer. On one occasion, after I was winched off her back, my legs were so loose that I could lift them into the car myself – normally I need someone to do it for me. Suddenly, riding started to have some resemblance to how it used to feel: studying my position in the big mirror on the wall; trying to lift
my upper body; keeping my shoulders back; pointing, to use the vulgarity beloved of riding instructors, my tits at the horse’s ears. In the mirror, concentrating fiercely, I saw just me on a horse, striving for self-carriage and lightness, as in the old days.
For Dave, who came to watch me just once, it was poignant. ‘It was just like seeing the old you riding at home,’ was all he said. But if relationships work, at their deepest level, it is by generosity and he was delighted to see me so thrilled. Happiness is so often the result of trying to make someone else happy, or at least help them to be happy. Nelly was proving immense therapy. Increasingly I rode with Sara merely walking at my left knee. Then came the day she stepped back a few paces, and finally I started to ride independently, just me and the horse, a partnership based on balance and trust. When I got off, soon afterwards, my legs were actually floppy, my stomach muscles no longer in spasm. I was high as a kite, and it was nothing to do with any drugs. I gloried in the motion and the empowerment, steering Nelly around the school, my hands trying to establish a relationship with her mouth. Like old times. My hands, funnily enough, were softer, in the horse rider’s sense of being sympathetic, than they had been able-bodied. Using a long stick in each hand to touch her sides, replacing the commands from my legs, I was able to persuade Nelly to relax her jaw and perform dressage moves – tight, ten-metre circles; changes of rein; semicircles and loops. I built up to a serpentine, a multiple ‘S’ movement, pretending that I was normal, imagining that I was bending Nelly around my inside leg and allowing my outside leg to swing back behind the girth. Maybe, just maybe, the muscles would start to remember. A riding arena is marked with letters. Circle at B. Change the rein H to F. That alphabet was my release from prison – my weekly forty minutes of escape, forty which felt like five, it went so fast – me and her: slowly weaving our way around inside the chill indoor school, my mind wiped clean of anything but my communication with her.