Nevertheless, it was during his years in Australia that his alcohol consumption finally spiralled out of control and he stopped seeing eye to eye with Ann. At the beginning of the nineties she returned to England with the children and left him to fend for himself – which was disastrous. He was completely at the mercy of the bottle. Terry did return to England when his father died in December 1991, and again in July 1992, to be with his mother in her final weeks, but he was noticeably unhappy and sinking even deeper into the evil depths of drink.
Eventually, at the end of 1992, Terry flew back to England for good, having divorced Ann that spring, but by all accounts, he was in a very poor state of health and living on alcohol. His liver was in pieces. Tony and his wonderful wife, Sandra, together with Terry’s first wife, Bridget – who was still extremely fond of him – did a wonderful job to get him back onto an even keel. Without their care and attention he would most probably never have bounced back. He had lost all his confidence and no longer believed in himself. He needed to re-establish himself as one of racing’s greats. He unashamedly admitted to me that he had lost his self-esteem and did not know where to go next.
After spending a number of months drying out and accepting counselling at Farm Place, a rehabilitation centre near Dorking, in Surrey, Terry returned to his old home at Upleadon, in Gloucestershire, under the watchful eye of his brother and sister-in-law. At that point, Terry Court, director of the auctioneering firm Russell, Baldwin and Bright (now Brightwells), stepped into the fray to rescue his lost friend from the abyss. He found Terry a job as an agent within the business and gave him a company car. Once again, Terry had a purpose in life.
It was because of Terry Court’s kindness that Terry Biddlecombe and I happened to meet up at the Malvern Horse Sales in September 1993.
The wheel had gone full circle. Terry had been to hell and back, but was once again full of enthusiasm for a new life, and he was ready to start the wheel rolling for the second time.
CHAPTER FOUR
Chance Meeting
The third of September, 1993, was a memorable day for me, because it proved to be the turning point in my life. It marked the occasion when I re-met Terry Biddlecombe, the three-time champion steeplechase jockey of the sixties and seventies. He had always been my childhood heart-throb. In those days he was not only highly successful, but dashing and startlingly good-looking. Terry was five years older than me, but I had often walked down to the last fence at race meetings to watch him at close quarters. I used to marvel at his riding style and his film-star appearance.
It was around eight o’clock on that bright autumn morning that I set out for the Russell, Baldwin and Bright sales at Malvern. I was due to judge the young thoroughbred horses in the pre-sales show. Julian Pritchard, my then assistant trainer and later a leading point-to-point rider, drove me to the Three Counties Showground. I always enjoy judging and I was honoured to have been asked to assess the sales entrants with two such well-known racing personalities as Jack Doyle and Toby Balding. When we reached our destination, we parked close to the ring. ‘There’s Uncle Terry,’ said Julian, pointing to a man wearing the auctioneer firm’s official tie. ‘Fancy seeing him here.’
Julian’s ‘Uncle Terry’ – in reality his second cousin – was none other than Terry Biddlecombe, the man who became my future husband, greatest lover and best-ever friend. Of course at this point, I had no way of foreseeing the future. All I knew was that it felt weird to see Terry again. I had not set eyes on him for eight years and I did not even know that he was back in the country. I thought he was still living in Australia.
Life is strange, however, and I believe in fate. Looking back, I cannot help feeling that our meeting was meant to be. Terry had been instructed by the sales company to look after me that morning – and he certainly made a good job of his assignment. At the end of the judging and during lunch with the officials, I allowed myself to be charmed by him. It wasn’t difficult. We found plenty to talk about and I was enthralled by some of his past racing stories. At the sales, he was cheeky and witty with the people around him. His jokes (both clean and otherwise) made everyone laugh and he seemed to be ultra-happy now that he was out and about once more, with a purpose in life and surrounded by his friends. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Fancy discovering my old heart-throb propping up the white railings under a tree at the Malvern showground.’
I had first met Terry in 1985, when he was working for Central Television. He had become a regular on ATV Today and the Central News Sports programme on Friday nights. His boss was sports presenter Gary Newbon, who described Terry in the Racing Post, 6 January 2014 issue, as, ‘… a good-looking bloke, a bit like Jack Nicklaus. The girls loved him. He was a great guy and a great character and lived life to the full.’ It was certainly true that Terry was much-loved in the Birmingham area and his presence on Central’s sport programmes produced good ratings. On those Friday nights he would talk about racing. ‘Terry’s Tips’ were always eagerly awaited.
In the summer of 1985, Terry had visited West Lockinge Farm with a film crew from Central Television. He had been asked to interview, ‘a girl in Oxfordshire who ran a livery yard and broke in horses for Tim Forster and Fred Winter’, two top-class National Hunt trainers who had superb horses. Yet, in the excitement of the legend of the sixties visiting West Lockinge Farm, I must have lost any common sense that I possessed.
It was a hot day, and I wanted to impress my childhood hero, so I decided that, for the filming session, I would wear a skimpy blue cotton dress and high-heeled shoes instead of my usual jeans and jodhpur boots. I must have looked more like a trainee nurse than the working boss of a livery yard.
Terry was not taken by my appearance and even less so by my handling of the horses in my care. Indeed, I had wound up my staff to such a degree that when a saddle was placed on one of the unbroken three-year-olds in the outside arena, the girl in charge barely had time to do up the buckles of the girth before the horse exploded in a series of rodeo leaps, which snapped the girth in two and sent the saddle into orbit.
I watched this performance from outside the perimeter fence, leaning over the rails from the adjacent flower bed. Terry stood beside me. It was a hot day, the roses were prickly and I was extremely embarrassed, but I will always remember Terry’s hand on my bottom and the slap he gave me, as if to say, ‘It doesn’t really matter anyway.’ Later he told me that he thought I was half-mad. He returned to Gloucestershire and I did not set eyes on him again until the Malvern meeting in 1993.
*
After the sales, I remember hoping I would see him again, but I had no idea where Terry was living or even how I could contact him. Since I have always been superstitious, I decided to leave everything to fate. I did not chase him up. I just waited.
What would be, would be.
A couple of weeks after our chance meeting, the telephone rang. My secretary, Christine Douglas Home, took the call. It was Terry, and he wanted to talk to me. My heart missed a few beats before I picked up the receiver. It was great to hear his voice again. He told me he would be racing at Cheltenham the following week and asked if maybe we could meet up. When I found Terry by the weighing room that day, I’m sure there were goose pimples on my skin. It was a strange feeling. My horses didn’t cover themselves in glory in their races but it didn’t seem to matter. I took Terry up to the Royal Box for some refreshment, courtesy of my brother-in-law, Sam Vestey, who was at that time chairman of the racecourse.
Coincidently, my father had come racing with me that day. He was not a regular race-goer but had been invited to have lunch with Sam. I introduced Terry to Dad and was happy to see them talking to each other for quite some time. On the way home Dad told me that he had enjoyed meeting him. Sadly, however, it was the first and last time they ever met. Three weeks later my father died from a heart attack while out shooting with the Vesteys.
Dad’s sudden death was a huge shock – I’d had dinner with him only the night before and he had b
een in tremendous form. From that day on, during the autumn, everything in my life became a blur. Looking back now, however, it was a wonderful way for my father to go. He lived for his shooting and he particularly enjoyed his days at Stowell Park with my sister and her family. He was 76 in 1993 and hated the thought of getting older. He always pretended to people that he was ten years younger and had even successfully changed the birthdate on his passport from 1917 to 1927.
I spent a lot of time with my mother in the weeks following Dad’s death, and strangely one of the first people to telephone me was Terry. Many people are embarrassed by death and don’t know what to say, but Terry was different. He told me how hard it had hit him when his own parents died. He was incredibly understanding and I remember him saying that he was thinking of me all the time. His words gave me a huge boost. Here was a person who really cared about me. His call was poignant.
Terry did not visit the stables at West Lockinge Farm until the end of November 1993, but when he did drive over to see the horses, he seemed to enjoy himself. This time he was complimentary about my charges and how I ran the yard. I trained the types of horses that he liked: big, strong, well-proportioned future steeplechasers with lovely outlooks. He did not stay long, but after a cup of tea in my kitchen, he announced that he would soon be back again to watch my charges on the gallops. How true these words turned out to be. I remember being sorry to see him leave, but at least I had not worn that ridiculous blue dress. I missed him as soon as he drove out of the yard. Although he was still working at the Russell, Baldwin and Bright offices in Hereford, we managed to talk on the telephone most days.
My first proper date with Terry was in December. I had runners at Hereford Racecourse and he suggested we could meet there; afterwards I could go back to his family farm at Upleadon. At that time, Terry was living in his late parents’ old house, next door to his brother, Tony, who had taken on the farm. I remember the day well. We had several runners and a winner, ridden by Jamie Osborne, who partnered many of my horses that season. Indeed, he rode over 100 winners for me when I was training. After racing, Jamie offered to drive my car home to Lockinge so that Terry could chauffeur me to Lower House Farm.
The next twenty-four hours seemed like a dream – the kind from which you awake wondering, ‘Did that really happen?’ Terry drove an oldish second-hand Honda; apparently it was his company car. We chugged slowly back to the farm with me sitting nervously on the edge of the passenger seat. The seats were so low that later I teased Terry on many occasions and told him that he looked like Humpty Dumpty. He drove carefully along the little byroads he knew so well. It was a far cry from the swift Jaguars of his jockey days, but eventually we reached his home.
It was a dark, dreary evening and cold. As soon as we arrived, I was introduced to Tony and Sandra, then shown to my room for the night. What a shock. The lovely old farmhouse was uninhabited by anybody except Terry. Before that, it had been empty for a few years and there was hardly any furniture to be seen. The bedroom – which Terry expected me to share with him – was in a bad state of disrepair. There was no heating and it was extremely damp. Water and condensation dripped down the inside of the dirty old windows. What clothes Terry had were either strewn all over the floor, or had been left hanging on the two bedroom chairs. I pretended not to be shocked but it was difficult to hide my surprise at the lack of creature comforts. He told me that the bed had belonged to his parents. It was a large double bed with a horsehair mattress, which was probably as old as the house. At Terry’s request, Sandra had supplied an under-sheet and a duvet, plus a few pillows. As we would be dining out I wanted to change out of my racing clothes, but shivered and shook as the wind whistled through the broken windowpanes and into the freezing-cold adjacent bathroom.
We had an excellent dinner at The Glasshouse Restaurant near Newent, run by a very good friend of Terry’s called Steve Pugh. As a reformed alcoholic, my escort was not drinking, but I definitely needed something to get me through the next twelve hours and Terry bought me a lovely bottle of Chablis. I only drank two glasses but, characteristically, he had the remainder of the bottle corked up for me to carry out. He never wasted anything – yet it was not exactly a romantic gesture.
That night with Terry was unforgettable, more for the discomforts than anything else. I have always hated camping but this was even worse. I had never slept with Terry before, nor indeed taken my clothes off in front of him, but I was instructed to do both. I seldom shirk an issue and my feelings for him were strong, so I did as I was told. I remember thinking to myself that if I got through the night I would be able to tackle anything.
I had taken a long, warm Viyella nightdress with me, but Terry soon whipped that off. The room was still bitterly cold and I was glad to get under the duvet. At least Terry provided some extra warmth, even if the bristles of the horse-hair mattress were almost unbearable. I had heard about Terry’s success with women in his racing heydays yet really did not expect my own first night with him to be so uncomfortable.
Fortunately, I still found him irresistible at eight o’clock the next morning. He was always a very passionate lover and lived for sex. In later years he used to say to me, ‘Any place, any time.’ Although he didn’t always get his way, we always had sex on the nights before the Cheltenham Gold Cup, because he maintained it brought us luck and he knew that I was superstitious.
That first morning after, however, I woke to find that the hair on my head was soaking wet from the condensation on the bedroom walls. Terry thought this was very funny. There were icicles on the windows and water dripping off the ceiling. My back was almost raw from where I had been scratched by the protruding bristles on the mattress. It was too cold to venture out of bed to get dressed so I nervously dressed under the duvet. Even my clothes were damp. There was no breakfast, no proper kitchen and just a kettle for a cup of coffee. After this extraordinary experience, I was grateful that Terry drove me back to West Lockinge Farm. It would probably have been better if I’d had my own car, but we did eventually get back to the farm in the old Honda. It was a quiet journey. I was still shell-shocked but despite everything, I knew that I had fallen in love with him. There would be no turning back.
*
It seemed that there was some strange kind of chemistry between Terry and me and it lasted for the next twenty years. Once he moved into West Lockinge Farmhouse, a few months later, we seldom spent any days or nights apart. It was a treasured relationship and Terry often told me that we were made for each other. He often stressed that we should never be parted. I found him to be a special person, full of devilment, not afraid of anything. Of course there were plenty of occasions when I wished the ground would swallow me up. His remarks to people were often outrageous, but many loved him all the same.
In his younger days Terry wasn’t possessive about his girlfriends and, apparently, often shared them with his mates, but as he grew older, he became extremely jealous. He hardly ever let me out of his sight and I was never allowed to go to Ireland on my own to visit my own old friends. ‘If somebody lays a hand on you, I’ll kneecap him.’ he would say. Strangely, having travelled a lot on my own in earlier years, I never wanted to go away without him.
The twenty years that we spent together were magical. We had so much fun and laughter, and he completely changed my outlook on life.
CHAPTER FIVE
Terry Moves In
It took a while for me to adjust when Terry moved in at West Lockinge Farm. This was hardly surprising, since I had lived in the farmhouse on my own for over fifteen years. Terry was still working for Russell, Baldwin and Bright when, at the beginning of 1994, he decided to spend his nights with me, yet he continued to drive to work in the Hereford offices on most days of the week. It was a good ninety-minute journey and the old blue Honda covered many miles. Terry would leave early each morning while I was feeding the horses. He always looked extremely smart in his dark suit and tie or blazer and grey trousers. I would watch him go down the drive a
nd wave to him. I remember longing for his return in the evenings.
Although we were very much in love, there was little contact between us during the day. He was hopeless with mobile phones – as indeed were many people at that time. Terry, however, never improved his skills with these valuable communication aids for as long as I knew him. To send a text message, or even to receive one, was beyond him. He used to say to me, ‘We managed perfectly well without them when I was riding and we didn’t have jockey agents, either.’ Although, at a later stage, his truck on the farm was fitted with a car phone, he frequently got into a muddle with it, as he only knew how to press two knobs. On one occasion the mobile phone he had at home had 360 unread messages recorded on it.
During those early months when Terry started living with me, I was extremely busy with the racehorses in my care. I had about sixty horses in training. On most days I was on the road, saddling runners at different racecourses and chatting to my owners, who had no idea that their trainer had suddenly acquired a live-in-lover who knew more about racing than she did. At that time my horses were performing well and stable morale was high, but as more and more horses arrived at the farm, it was clear that I needed extra help.
Julian Pritchard was still my assistant and he was a great asset, but I needed another pair of hands and more advice about placing the horses and race-riding tactics. In early January 1994, I remember telephoning Terry while I was walking the course at Nottingham Racecourse. Mick Fitzgerald was due to ride Easthorpe in a hurdle race that afternoon and the horse needed good ground to show his best form. It had rained and the turf had cut up badly, especially on the bends. Terry told me exactly how Easthorpe should be ridden and he duly won the race – leading throughout and hugging the inside rails where no other horses had been.
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