Whispering Back

by Adam Goodfellow

  As I drove along the empty motorway to Milton Keynes that October night, rain lashing against the windscreen, it suddenly struck me. If there was no reason why Nicole couldn’t be a ‘horse whisperer’, why couldn’t I?

  When I was seventeen, I decided to run away from school and get expelled. It was a decision I made in a flash, which led, almost inevitably, to disaster. But it was the best decision I had ever made. In a moment I found myself penniless, busking on the streets of Paris, but I also began to find my identity. In the next weeks and months I learned more about myself, and the world, than I had in all the years before, when I’d studied so much and yet been so insulated from real life. Having fourteen O Levels, I discovered, was not of much use on the street. I had to rely on my judgement, which was, unfortunately, not very reliable. I had gone to France largely because of a friend, who lied to me and betrayed me (and nearly kicked my head in too) before I decided to haul myself back across the Channel, having nearly been arrested yet again. All of a sudden I went from being at a top public school, heading for one of the best universities in the world, to washing dishes for £2.30 an hour. I found out what it is like to be at the bottom, exploited by the NHS, by taxpayers, by an employment agency that earned more than I did from my labour, and sometimes even by co-workers. But finally I was free. I was no longer overprivileged and unappreciative. I had learned something.

  I wanted to work for myself. I wanted to work for horses. I decided then and there, driving through the rain on the M25, to give up my job, go on the course and get my Monty Roberts Preliminary Certificate of Horsemanship.

  TEN

  On the road with Monty

  (Nicole)

  ‘Nick, it’s Kelly. Listen, I’ve got some news for you. I hope you won’t be upset, but I’ve decided not to go on the tour this time.’

  ‘Oh! Why not?’

  ‘Well, there’s just so much to do here. You’ll all be fine without me. But you’ll have to take my place – and introduce Monty.’

  ‘No.’ I don’t often say no to Kelly, but then again she doesn’t often make preposterous suggestions.

  ‘Good, I’ll take that as a yes.’

  It was hard to imagine a tour without Kelly. She often joked that she didn’t do anything on tour except drive Monty from venue to venue and keep him stocked up with Diet Coke, but in fact she was the driving force behind it, keeping everyone happy and holding the whole troupe together. It was going to be very hard without her. But either I was going to leave the country or I was going to have to stand in the middle of a round pen, speak into a microphone in front of hundreds of people, and introduce Monty Roberts.

  The tour was starting in four weeks, and although I did get some sleep, whenever I woke up, I only had to think ‘I’ll be introducing Monty’ to be instantly wide awake. Kelly had looked over the wording of my very brief speech, and proclaimed it suitable, but I was still terrified that she was showing a profound lack of judgement in choosing me for the job. True, I could speak confidently to a roomful of students about the principles of join-up, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t make a run for it when faced with numbers in excess of 1,200. There had to be someone else better suited to the task.

  ‘No,’ she reassured me, just the slightest hint of irritation in her voice, ‘you’ll be fine! Just don’t mention the mane killer.’

  We laughed at the memory of Kelly’s horrendous gaffe. On a previous tour we had been promoting a gadget that could shorten and thin a mane painlessly, without the need of pulling the hair out by its roots. Many people were sceptical about its effectiveness, thinking it would damage the hair. Kelly meant to refer to it as a humane mane puller, but somehow managed to say humane mane killer. The manufacturers were less than pleased with this endorsement. Yet I was confident I had the potential to outdo Kelly’s faux pas. I had certainly witnessed far worse. At the end of one of our more memorable university seminars, my Director of Studies stood up to express her appreciation for the guest lecturers, who had spoken on Freudian Feminist Psychoanalysis. ‘I’d like to spank our speakers,’ she said, before turning various shades of crimson as the auditorium erupted in laughter.

  The first venue was Gleneagles, in Scotland, which meant driving up the day before. Julia, Hannah Rose (who helped with the books, videos, training aids and so on that people want to buy), and I were travelling in the motor home. On the way up, we stopped off in the Lake District to collect Simon Raynor, Monty’s young English rider. I was feeling tense about my impending humiliation and the first thing I said to Simon when we picked him up was, ‘You can only ask me ten questions between here and Scotland.’

  By the time he’d said ‘Why? Really? Only ten? Are you sure?’ and was already down to six, I was confident I’d be able to concentrate on memorising my speech.

  I’ve never seen the attraction of ‘performing’ in front of large groups of people. I’d stopped acting in plays at the age of five, for example, and never dreamed about being a singer (unless it meant I could meet David Bowie). Julia could understand where I was coming from, and was visibly relieved she hadn’t been asked to do the job. Simon was sympathetic, but as a charming extrovert who adores being the centre of attention, he couldn’t quite understand my concerns.

  The exponential effect of four horse-obsessed people having in-depth conversations in the motor home meant that, again, we came off the motorway at the wrong junction, and headed in the opposite direction for at least fifteen miles.

  ‘What is it with Scotland?’ I queried petulantly. ‘Why do none of the villages we’re travelling through appear on this map?’

  Once we’d solved the mystery I told the group about my experience of travelling the wrong way around the M25 and not noticing for 70 miles. They gasped incredulously, as we shot past the turning to Gleneagles.

  Time behaves peculiarly on tour, sometimes going painfully slowly (when waiting to load up the last few things at one o’clock in the morning, so we can start driving to the next venue), but more commonly very quickly. A couple of hours will just slip away unnoticed, and then all of a sudden up to 2,000 people arrive all at once. On this particular evening, time marched consistently and deliberately on, ignoring my fervent wish that it would just stand still. To my dismay, I realised that a steady stream of people were turning up. That dashed my rather unrealistic hope that everyone would just decide to stay at home.

  Niel (sic), the soundman, showed me how to use the microphone – a simple matter of switching it on and holding it in the right place, but he still had to go through it several times with me. ‘You’d better check with Monty which end of the arena he’s coming in from,’ he said.

  Monty was already surrounded by people wanting his autograph and asking him questions, but I pushed through to the front.

  ‘Oh yeah, we’ll go in from this side,’ he smiled. I nodded numbly, and started to walk off.

  ‘Hey, are you all right? Are you nervous at all?’ He must have caught a glance of my ashen face and terrified eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be all right. If you make a mistake, don’t panic, just keep talking. It really doesn’t matter, and anyway, most people won’t be paying that much attention.’ He patted me reassuringly on the back, and absurdly I felt a thousand times better.

  I was immensely proud, standing next to Monty, waiting to go into the pen. ‘Big Country’ started playing, and Monty gave me a nudge, and then a moment later, a shove. As I marched into the pen, I remembered to smile, and tried to keep my voice low to minimise the tremors and avoid sounding squeaky.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Gleneagles Equestrian centre. I’m Nicole Golding, and I teach with Kelly Marks on the Monty Roberts Intelligent Horsemanship courses held in Witney, Oxfordshire. On these courses, people often tell us how much seeing Monty work has changed their lives . . .’

  This is all right, I was thinking. I know this stuff. I’m proud to be associated with Kelly and Monty, and it’s great to be able to say it.
Now, mustn’t miss out anyone I’m meant to thank, and don’t even think of saying ‘humane mane killer’.

  Good, nearly home and dry. Just a little bit more and I’m out of here.

  And, at that moment, my mind went blank. Nothing. Oh no! What was the last bit? I’d been joking all afternoon about how I’d just introduce Monty by saying ‘and here’s the man who needs no introduction’. Was it too late? Could I just say ‘So without further ado’, or had I left it too long already? What had Monty said to do if I got into trouble? Ah, yes, just keep talking. Oh.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Monty glance sharply at me. I thought I could hear all my friends holding their breath. I was pleased with myself for not saying ‘um’, but on the other hand I hadn’t uttered a word for about seven seconds, which felt like a lifetime. Suddenly it all came back to me. I blurted out the last words, before I could forget them again.

  Everyone clapped as Monty entered the pen, and I felt overwhelmed with relief.

  Later that night, at the end of the ‘round pen meeting’ we customarily held to go over any problems and smooth them out for the next venue, Monty looked over and said, ‘Nicole, did you—’

  ‘Completely forget what I was going to say?’ I cut in. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said kindly, ‘I wouldn’t admit to that. Let’s just call it a dramatic pause.’

  People often ask what it’s like to tour with Monty, and it’s astonishingly difficult to come up with a simple answer. Travelling around the UK with the team has been an incredible experience, with each tour being different, and every demonstration yielding new learning. Perhaps the early days were particularly special. Monty’s seemingly sudden emergence onto the scene shook the foundations of the horse world to the core. Thousands and thousands of people who had become disillusioned with the prevailing methods and attitudes finally had someone who was offering another way. They streamed into draughty indoor arenas all over the country, packing them to the rafters. Young and old alike sat mesmerised, frozen with fascination and cold, as Monty worked his inimitable magic, a blend of common sense and genius, logic and intuition, and breathtaking skill. Night after night, the touring team saw horse after horse transformed, the change so radical it seemed almost miraculous, the miracles so commonplace they seemed almost mundane.

  After every performance Monty was inundated with people. After years of rejection and ridicule, this acceptance was tremendously gratifying for him. There was the occasional sceptic, but overwhelmingly the crowd wanted to express their admiration and gratitude. To be told that they were right, that they didn’t have to hit horses, didn’t have to shout and ‘show the horse who’s boss’, came as a big relief to many. At the same time, they were being shown ways of getting a pushy horse to regard them with a different level of respect. Many who had been out of horses for years because they couldn’t stand the atmosphere returned to their old passion with the conviction and confidence to challenge the old notions.

  Clearly, this was not an altogether comfortable experience for the people being challenged. Used to their role as the local experts, conventional horsemen all around the world were unaccustomed to being held to account over their methods. In particular, they found the assertion ‘you have to hurt them before they hurt you’ difficult to justify in the face of such obvious success with non-violent techniques. In countries such as Argentina, where macho methods of breaking horses can result in a 60 per cent death rate, Monty has even received death threats. There are still people who declaim the methods as a ‘fix’, believing that the spectacular results can’t possibly be real. There were also the ‘we were already doing it this way’ people, who claimed they had been using the exact same methods for years, only had never brought it to anyone’s attention. To be told simultaneously that his results were too astonishing to be believable and also too mundane to be note-worthy must have been a bewildering message for Monty, but criticism simply egged him on, making him still more determined.

  In the early days, the team travelled around in motor homes, and the pen and merchandise travelled in a horsebox. Monty, Kelly and any book publicists stayed in local B and Bs or hotels. The sight of a horsebox fuelled the sceptics’ suspicions that we brought horses around with us, but the logic of this always bemused me. If we had been bringing our own horses, how would we have trained them to perform as such convincing raw horses, buckers and rearers, kickers and biters and non-loaders? And then to become so compliant? And to do this consistently night after night? It would have been an achievement even more remarkable than the ones Monty performed each evening with the horses from the local area. And what about the people who came to more than one demonstration? Wouldn’t they have noticed if we were using the same horses?

  Some of my fondest memories are of my first tour, when we tended to drive during the day. We would sit around until the small hours of the morning, drinking tea, or wine if there was any, discussing the evening’s demo, and gradually ‘coming down’ from the rush of activity that ended every night – packing up merchandise, chairs, and round pen. Then at about eight in the morning, we would receive a ten-minute warning for departure from the drivers on the team. Anyone who needed to would stumble out to the loos, still in their pyjamas, attracting strange looks from the yard staff at the venue. I always found it faintly astonishing how empty and ordinary the arenas looked in the mornings, with just the occasional chip mashed into the surface to indicate that anything unusual had happened the night before. Sometimes, we would emerge to find the arena had been transformed into a show ground, and we were suddenly surrounded by shiny horseboxes and gleaming show jumpers.

  The part of the operation that hasn’t changed from tour to tour is the setting up in the afternoon. We would usually descend on the venue at around 2 p.m., check that the tiered seating was in the right place, and suss out any potential problems for the door later on. Some venues were arranged like rabbit warrens, and we quickly learnt that recruiting local helpers to prevent unauthorised entry was a bad idea. By ‘unauthorised’, we meant anyone without a ticket. They thought it meant anyone they didn’t recognise . . . Once the pen was set up, Monty could start viewing the horses. Each of the eight or ten horses brought by the general public would be introduced to the pen by Ian Vandenberghe, a top practitioner in Monty’s methods, and moved around it for a couple of circuits to check for soundness. Monty, Kelly, and several others in the team, together with the owner, would be looking for signs of lameness, whether from being a little stiff after a long journey, or due to more chronic long-term problems. And although all the owners are required to have the horses checked out physically before they bring them to the demonstration, Ian would check for bad backs and sharp teeth as well. Monty wouldn’t work on a horse that was in any physical discomfort. So often the behavioural problem would have its cause in some physical condition, and we needed to know that this was no longer an issue before the horse could be asked to work through its behavioural difficulties. Ian would also drape a rope over the horses’ backs, and draw it up like a girth to check that the horse appeared ‘raw’. Particularly in the early days we were worried about being set up. The last thing we wanted was for someone to present a horse for starting, and to then turn around and show us (or rather, the local press) a picture of the horse being ridden previously. If a horse appeared too quiet, it was rejected. Monty wanted the horse to be a good demonstration for the public and would almost always choose the most challenging of the horses presented.

  At the end of the prepping, Ian and I would discuss the arrangement of the signing line. The idea behind this was that people who had bought books on the night could be ‘fast-tracked’ to Monty to get them signed, and people who just wanted their tickets signed would be in a separate queue. Apparently this was a popular set-up in every other country in the world that Monty was touring in. But not in Britain. Unless the queues were of approximately equal length, no one would consent to using the special line. We put up signs, explained the sys
tem to people as they bought their book, and even stationed team members on the queues to direct people appropriately. To no avail. People simply didn’t want preferential treatment. Monty has never given up on this system, and we’ve never been able to satisfactorily enforce it.

  Although the roles and jobs don’t change at all from tour to tour, the people fulfilling them have varied over time, and when ‘old regulars’ have found themselves unable to attend a tour because of the dates clashing with other commitments, there’s always been plenty of new blood to step in.

  Two of the most entertaining new recruits were cowboys from the US, whom Monty had brought over to be his riders. I first met Zane and Matt at Kelly’s. Shivering and hunched into their denim jackets, with their black, broad-rimmed hats pulled down over their eyes, they were muttering and moaning about the ‘disgusting English weather’, having just walked back from the pub during a light April shower. Used to the Californian sunshine, they were clearly disappointed by the climate. I couldn’t help wondering how they’d react when they discovered how cold an indoor school can be at ten o’clock at night.

  Zane was tall and slender, and unreasonably good-looking. He was the archetypal image of a cowboy except that, being a fervent Mormon, he didn’t do any of the things you might expect a cowboy to do, except rope cattle and ride bucking horses. He didn’t even spit, let alone swear or drink, and was a devoted husband, a source of great disappointment to many in the audience. A gentle soul, he was easily shocked, and would blush if he heard a woman swear. He was a fantastic rider, sensitive and kind, and able to stay on virtually any horse, whatever it threw at him.