‘Erm, Helen …?’ she asked. ‘Any idea when you’re coming in? The kids are all waiting for you so they can open their presents.’
I’d become so one-track-minded, I’d forgotten about Santa Claus and turkey and mince pies. It was a reality check. Horses are wonderful, but so are my family and it was time to find a balance between the two again.
Chapter 4
Lucy and Freddy
At around the time Greatwood became a charity in 1998, the British Racing Industry was coming to accept that it had a responsibility to put a fund in place for retired or neglected racehorses. Only around 300 of the 4,000 to 5,000 racehorses retired annually need charitable intervention, but looking after 300 Thoroughbreds a year is an expensive and labour-intensive job by anyone’s standards.
More and more stories were appearing in the press and the momentum for change was building. Carrie Humble, founder of the Thoroughbred Rehabilitation Centre in Lancashire, together with Vivien McIrvine, Vice President of the International League for the Protection of Horses, and Graham Oldfield and Sue Collins, founders of Moorcroft Racing Welfare Centre, formed part of a well-established racing group and were all influential in the decision that racing should try to help those ex-racehorses that had fallen upon hard times.
In January 1999 the British Horseracing Board Retired Racing Welfare Group was set up, chaired by Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, and the first meeting was held at Portman Square in London. It was quite an effort for Michael and me to get there. We lived at least an hour’s drive away from Exeter station, and from there it was the best part of three hours’ train journey to London, which meant we had to head off straight after the morning feed, long before the sun was up, but it was important that we attended come what may.
The debate was lively, to say the least. One old gent told me that in his opinion the best thing to do with ex-racehorses was shoot them. Eventually, though, a consensus was reached. Everyone at the meeting – including leading representatives from all areas of horseracing – agreed that set-ups such as ours were a vital safety net for the racing profession. In recognition of this, it was agreed that the Industry would put in place a fund to provide annual grants to accredited establishments, and Greatwood was to be one of them.
So far so good, but the details were not discussed and we didn’t know when the funding would start or how it would be administered. It was gratifying that our collective voices had at least been heard, but we were still flat out to the boards caring for the horses that were currently in our care and keeping an eye on those that we had rehomed. So in short, yes, we were pleased that our work was at last recognised but, more to the point, when would this support be forthcoming?
Our local paper started a campaign and it was picked up by some of the national media, thus helping to raise our profile, but we continued to live on a knife edge. Each horse cost £100 a week to keep and we had more than twenty in our care at any one time, which meant £2000 a week or £104,000 a year. We were so short of money that we were always just a hair’s breadth away from our overdraft limit and robbing Peter to pay Paul on a weekly basis. We stretched our credit cards to the maximum, but they wouldn’t quite cover the ongoing expenses.
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