Fair Girls and Grey Horses

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  Diana and I shared the double bed in the caravan. For some reason we hated this. Mamma said that we should be like knights of old and sleep with a sword between us, but we had no sword and could think of nothing to put in its place. Mamma and Josephine had the single beds and Cappy and Denis slept in the lean-to tent with Barney in his basket. Dinah, being car sick, had been left at home. As far as I can remember there was no one else staying on the farm, and by today’s standards the site left much to be desired. To reach it one drove through an incredibly old-fashioned farmyard, where sometimes, when an animal had recently been slaughtered, the drains ran red with blood. During our last stay there was a great deal of rain, and on leaving we became bogged down. We were rescued by two enormous shire horses who easily pulled our car and caravan out of the mire, proving what we had been saying all along – horses are better than cars.

  Much of our time was spent with our horses. Our ponies were hogged. Sometimes Mamma cut their manes with red-handled clippers, but more often we rode to the Maxwells’ stables near Kingwood Common, where the groom clipped them for a tip. Otherwise clipping was done with a machine driven by a man turning a handle, while another held the horse and the third, the expert, did the actual clipping. Milkmaid and Rum were clipped once a year and, when turned out, wore New Zealand rugs which were quite an innovation then. Our nearest forge had three farriers and was only a hundred yards away. A set of shoes cost around six shillings, depending on the size of your horse. When a pony staying with us developed colic, it was put down to eating the husks of acorns by the vet who called. The pony recovered, but it was an expensive visit and for years afterwards we kept two bottles of drench collecting dust in the stable. One bottle was given at the onset of colic, the next if the symptoms persisted after forty-five minutes. And what a struggle ensued when this was done! I remember much of a drench smelling of linseed and, I believe, turpentine running down my arm. Some vets insist now that such drenches only made matters worse and these days such concoctions are mostly give by a stomach tube; but I do remember them working on the few occasions when we used them.

  Our ponies were fed meadow hay in the winter, delivered in trusses and cut from a stack. Their feed consisted of oats, bran and chaff. On wet days when the ponies stayed in we amused them by playing records on Nana’s old wind-up gramophone. We would write down their preferences, decided by pricked ears, calm expressions and shining eyes. The hymns always won. The dogs also seemed to prefer hymns. Sometimes we gave them lessons in the nursery. Religion was a popular subject with us, if not with them, and to this day my Bible has pages daubed with Dinah’s paw marks.

  Mamma believed in labour-saving devices and when Milky had stable stains on her, rather than washing her these were rubbed out with a chalk block called CLEANFUR, which was actually intended for dogs.

  We loved riding with Mamma, who always dismounted in what she said was the Russian way, flinging one leg over the pommel of her saddle before sliding down. Personally I think it had more to do with riding side-saddle in her youth than Russia.

  Our saddles were flat-seated with almost no cantle and the knee flaps were so small that, as one grew, one’s knees were off them most of the time. Eggbutt snaffles were yet to be invented and sore mouths were quite commonplace. At first our girths were made of webbing, and, since there were two of them, it was easy for flesh to be caught between. Worse than this, sweaty webbing dries stiff and hard so girth galls were quite prevalent. We wore crash caps, as they were called then, and were not allowed to ride without them. Mamma wore a bowler hat and we all wore lace up shoes; our previous breeches and socks had now been replaced by jodhpurs which in those days were flared at the sides.

  My legs flapped wildly as I rode, like windmills it was said. Sometimes Mamma would say, ‘See how long you can keep a leaf between your knees and the saddle.’ Sadly even quite a large leaf vanished in minutes, while my legs continued working overtime.

  We were not short of rides. Mamma gave them names: The Ipsden Gallop, The Plough, Binfield Heath, The Kidmore End Gallop and The Nutwalk were a few of them. And we did gallop. The Ipsden Gallop was one of our longer rides. We rode past the Devil’s Churchyard to reach it, an eerie place with dark yew trees and a smell of thyme; then on down the long hill to Ipsden. Here, because the road was slippery, we always dismounted and led our ponies. Remounting we would see the Goring Gap ahead, so open and wide and quite different to the beech woods nearer home. We would ride along a long straight road and then turn right up the gallop itself, which was wide and straight too, downhill at first and then uphill for the final furlong. The ponies were keyed up and jogging long before they reached the gallop which must have been a mile in length; afterwards we rode on loose reins through Hailey and on to Checkendon where the beech woods began again.

  Sometimes, riding through Splashers Bottom past where Dinah went when she was in season, where the middle-aged woman living with her mother was still called Baby (which caused much merriment among us), we would turn right, and see the inhabitants of Boro’ Court – a huge mausoleum-type lunatic asylum built by Lord Wyfold for his mistress, it was said – pulling carts through the dark garden there. Years later a gardener told me that when he worked there he had been given permission to hit the inmates, but had never in fact touched them.

  The Wyfold Gallop passed nearby as well, and here one stopped to open small hunting gates, something at which we soon became experts, which stood us in good stead later. There was a ride through the park near Cane End House, and another further down the road where one passed huge rusting machines belonging to the owner of the house. Steam engines predominated, for he was apparently certain that one day they would be needed again, and in a way they probably were, melted down in the war, I believe, for guns or ammunition. To me, they added mystery to an old man living alone in the ancient, slowly decaying house, so beautiful but so neglected. The Kidmore End Gallop ended near his brother’s house, which was smaller, and it seemed that he too was a recluse.

  The ride called Binfield Heath really began near the Bottle and Glass pub and skirted Crowsley Park which contained another beautiful house. Huge, with an impressive ha-ha, it was inhabited by two brothers, both bachelor clergymen, it was said. In the days when Colonel and Mrs Baskerville had lived there, Crowsley Park had boasted a garden good enough to be open to the public, but little of it still remained. A herd of deer roamed free in the park and there were notices warning walkers to keep away during the rutting season. Thinking of The Hound of the Baskervilles added more mystery to this house, which one could only glimpse beyond the big fences which surrounded it. On the way to the Bottle and Glass one passed the old stable yard, and what tales I wove around it. There was a ride through Bottom Wood to Satwell where the artist Cecil Aldin had lived next to the hunt kennels which were there then and where in later years the Woodland Foxhounds were kept.

  There was The Plough, from which one could ride on to Bolts Cross and through Lambridge Woods, then down a steep hill and on past the cemetery to the Traveller’s Rest, a large townlike pub, long gone. Here we could never resist cantering to Henley along the Fair Mile which was mostly wide and empty except for a few goats tethered, and a drive to a large house also called The Grove. Having completed our mile we would ride back and then home through the Fleming estate, always quickly for fear of being stopped, as it wasn’t quite a bridlepath. Many of our rides ended at Kingwood Common where Polish troops were stationed in the war and which later became a prisoner-of-war camp. Sometimes we rode through Witheridge Hill and then past the cottage belonging to Alistair Sim, and then on to Nettlebed. Other days we rode past the Maharajah’s Well at Stoke Row or down a lane where we stopped to eat bread and cheese and drink cider at a remote pub called the Crooked Billet. Here in the beech wood nearby were groups of dark-complexioned men making chairs beneath the tall trees, and riding by we would shout, ‘Good morning’ as one did in the country in those days. Loud engines were switched off at our approach for people knew t
hen that horses are easily upset, and most had or were still working with them; so a nervous horse would be led past a frightening object with many a pat and kind word.

  As a child Mamma was allowed only one day a season with the Bicester Hunt. This left her with a great yearning for hunting. She had ridden side-saddle then and jumped all the fences which came her way, though she had never had a jumping lesson in her life. Her favourite hunter was Sweet Briar who came from Mr Rhodes’ stable at the Lamb and Flag in St Giles, Oxford.

  Before we hunted properly Mamma sent us beagling, which she said would help us to understand how horses felt in the hunting field. Effie Barker was the Master of the Beagles (later she became a highly respected Master of the Garth Hunt). Mamma greatly admired Effie, I think because she was dashing, strong and independent. Personally, I never understood much of what was going on. I ran wildly in my plimsolls, which grew wetter and wetter and more and more slimy inside, enjoying the opportunity to tear around places where I had never been before. I never thought about the unfortunate hares which were being hunted until one day there was a kill. My sisters and I had been helping Effie Barker all day. Due to a broken collarbone she had one arm in a sling and we had opened gates for her and held up strands of wire. So after the kill she presented us with the dead hare’s pad. I cannot remember which one of us accepted it, but looking at the small paw I was overcome by a feeling of melancholy. But to everyone else it was a well-earned trophy, which Mamma took to the taxidermist in Reading to be preserved and mounted on wood with our names inscribed underneath.

  Real hunting was much more fun than beagling. Having too few ponies meant that two of us usually stayed behind to muck out and make the bran mashes. Being left behind and having lunch alone with Cappy was always an ordeal for me. Those hunting always hacked to the meet, usually a distance of four or five miles but occasionally as long as twelve. At first we hunted with the Woodland Harriers, started by a young army officer who greatly impressed Mamma by calling in a suit to request her help in persuading the farmers to let hounds cross their land. His name was Captain Fane and the hounds were called Harriers because, as a serving officer, he was not allowed to be a Master of Foxhounds. The name was of course a mere formality; we actually hunted foxes. I don’t think any one of us was interested in killing anything, but we loved the sound of the horn, the cry of hounds, the thundering of hoofs, a distant holler. We were brought up to treat a Master of Hounds as God. At the meet one greeted him or her by saying, ‘Good morning, Master.’ At the end of the day before setting off for home, one said, ‘Goodnight, Master.’ During the day a Master could do no wrong. Heading a fox – turning him back towards hounds – was the worst crime one could commit in the hunting field, for it spoilt the day for everyone else. We did not hang back, galloping ahead to open gates, holding the Master’s horse if needed; we were always around calling out, ‘I’ll do it.’

  I must have been nine or ten when, after we had been hunting all day, a fox was killed at dusk in the osiers near Playhatch, and there were only Mamma and I left of the field to witness it. I dismounted and loosened Milky’s girth and was then surprised to be blooded and given the brush of the dead fox while Mamma was given the pad. They must have been hung on our saddle Ds for the long ride home. Mamma was delighted for me, as it was a great honour to be given the brush, but I was a trifle bewildered. It seemed unearned, for all I had done was to enjoy myself. But to Mamma who longed for us to be ‘Fair girls … who never went wide of a fence or a kiss’, it was another step in the right direction. So, as darkness fell that day, we remounted and hacked home, stopping to loosen our tired hunters’ girths and walking part of the way, bearing our trophies with us.

  There were many other wonderful hunts. And although sometimes we would ride twelve miles home after a particularly good run, by the light of a winter moon, the ponies loved hunting as much as we did. The joy of crossing the countryside on a good horse was such fun that even when I was in my twenties sitting on a train I would still in my imagination be on a horse, choosing the best way across the landscape outside the window. Without hunting, life would have held few excitements during the long winter months and before long I was addicted to it. My first trilogy was about children who start their own pack of hounds; though it sold thousands over several years, it is of course unacceptable today.

  After Captain Fane went to war and was subsequently killed, the Woodland Harriers became the Woodland Foxhounds and that great horseman Henry Wynmalen became joint master with a Colonel Hill. They employed a professional huntsman but it remained a small and friendly pack.

  Sometimes we had lunch in Aunt Dot and Uncle John’s charming house at Headington. They had it built themselves and called it Bareacres. Great-uncle Teddy, hating any exaggeration and deciding that the whole property was little more than an acre in size, always addressed it as ‘Barely an Acre’. On one occasion when we lunched there, I remember Mamma and Aunt Dot sitting in the sunny drawing room which overlooked the garden, while we children sat squashed together at the kitchen table with our young cousin Paulla, in a high chair flanked by Maud, her nanny, and Mrs Hicks, the enormously fat cook. The kitchen smelt of gas, and Mrs Hicks, hot from standing over the hot stove, smelt too. We ate boiled suet pudding while I longed to be sitting in the drawing room with Mamma and Aunt Dot. I think we all did. Paulla says now that when she stayed with us in the war, Cappy did not address a single word to her. As a child, I cannot recall Uncle John speaking a single word to me either. I remember him as a slightly eccentric and very erudite figure, printer to the Oxford University Press, who spent his free time in his study working on a collection of memorabilia made up of the sort of things no one had ever collected before – the paper used to wrap oranges, posters, cigarette cartons, prospectuses and much else. We considered it a crazy occupation, but we could not have been more wrong, for it is now the highly respected Doctor John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera at the New Bodleian Library in Oxford. Our first, and I think only, prospectus for the Grove Riding School is in the collection, having been printed and designed by Uncle John.

  Uncle John and Aunt Dot showed me great kindness in later years, and when Denis while up at Oxford appeared at Bareacres in winter shivering and without an overcoat, an outfitter was despatched to Christ Church to fit him out with an overcoat. Denis was equally surprised to receive a small allowance from Uncle John with a letter stating that he was not to write a thank you letter or mention it. Later in the war when Denis was in Italy he received an equally cryptic letter saying something like: ‘I understand that you have been promoted to the rank of Captain so are no longer in need of money, so I am stopping your allowance forthwith.’ In other ways Uncle John was tight with money. He and Aunt Dot did not have a car and it was said that they bought a machine which turned butter into cream because butter was actually cheaper. But this may have been family folklore.

  Uncle Percival, known as Uncle P, was tall with a moustache and had been gassed in the First World War, when he had been a balloonist. He became a solicitor and later an ADC to the Queen, whose signed photograph he kept on his desk. It was said that his mother, a German, was the only person killed when a bomb was dropped on Walsall during the First World War. But again this may be just folklore. I remember Uncle P taking us to the Royal Show and to our great surprise, when the time came to go home, being unable to find his car. Fortunately, after much frantic searching I found it to much acclaim. Uncle P was very kind to Denis when he was at prep school in Warwickshire and our parents were too busy or too hard up to fetch him home for half-term. He and Aunt May would collect him and take him camping, which he much enjoyed. Looking back I think we were lucky with our uncles. We were lucky too with our aunts, May and Dorothea. Aunt May was invariably kind. Aunt Dot, as we called Dorothea, was colour blind, so rare a phenomenon in women that learned doctors came to examine her when she was young. Aunt Dot could not tell green and brown apart. She liked mending and sometimes our brown jodhpurs were patched
in green and our green socks darned with brown wool. I am glad to say we were too polite to remark on such a minor misfortune.

  We continued playing with our farm animals on the nursery floor for a long time. But the game became more involved. Josephine’s main character, Captain Alec Horseshoe, was made from pipe cleaners with black boots and white breeches and became an expert on equitation, while Diana’s and my characters, Squadron Leader Charlie Hoof and Commander Duncan Snaffles, remained in permanent sitting positions because they had been bought sitting on tractors. They wore large hats and bright shirts.

  All three had small farms and, more importantly, horses. Captain Alec Horseshoe had a favourite black with a white blaze called Dauntless. Charlie Hoof’s favourite was a lightweight spotted horse called Trooper, while Duncan Snaffles’s unbeatable jumper was called Spider and was soon so worn with use that he became the colour of metal. Fortunately, after a time we acquired pots of enamel paint and then Spider became a strange chestnut-cum-dark bay with a blaze. Loose-boxes were made out of shoe boxes and I remember nailing kindling wood together to make fences and then creosoting them. Commander Duncan Snaffles had a charming white farm house. Josephine made one using Denis’s fretsaw for Captain Alec Horseshoe, but it had no interior. She painted its walls to look like grey stone and glued on appropriate curtains to each window; brocade for the drawing room, crimson velvet for the dining room and a learned dark brown for the library. I have the feeling that Captain Alec Horseshoe was in a different class to his two companions!

  There were other characters too – labourers in smocks, milkmaids with stools, milkmen with milk churns and carts always pulled by thin-legged prancy horses. We gave many of the humans strange mannerisms, and on one amazing day one came to life. He was Ronald, a red-faced middle-aged farmer who wore a bowler hat and had the most annoying habit of saying ‘Hm ha’ between his sentences. His arrival was always dreaded by the farmyard people, and when one day a man appeared to see Cappy and, though not so red-faced as Ronald, also said ‘Hm ha’ between his sentences, we were flabbergasted. Cappy, soon bored by his company, told us to show him our bantams, but whenever he said the fatal ‘Hm ha’, whoever was nearest collapsed into uncontrollable giggles and had to be relieved by one of the others. He must have thought us three very silly girls.