‘She’s out in the yard here. Come along.’
At 15.3, Chic is quite a big horse for a smallish girl. I wouldn’t have let Lucy ride off on her but planned to lead her round the yard on Chic’s back. But as soon as I legged her up, I realised she didn’t have a clue what to do because she nearly fell straight off the other side. I looked up at her face and saw that she was ashen. She was utterly terrified. I don’t think she’d ever been on a horse before and suddenly there she was, more than five feet off the ground, having told everyone she was an experienced rider. The other children were all standing around watching so I knew I had to find a way to get her off without making her lose face.
‘Goodness, silly me,’ I exclaimed. ‘I haven’t got any stirrups short enough for you. I’m sorry but you won’t be able to ride today after all. Do you want to come down?’
I caught her as she slid off Chic’s back and skulked back into the barn again.
Later I told Michael about it. ‘I bet that’s why she hasn’t got friends at school if she’s always boasting and making up stories. Why do you think she feels the need to do that?’
‘They’re a good, loving family. I suppose she just feels insecure for some reason. Are you happy to have her come back and help again?’
‘Of course, yes. The more the merrier. It might be good for her.’
I kept half an eye out for Lucy from then on and I realised she wasn’t stupid – in fact she seemed rather bright – but she was so eager to be liked that she overdid it. If she went up to cuddle a dog, she clung on so hard that it wriggled away yelping. When she approached a hen to catch it, she was too keen and scared it off. She tried her hardest to make friends with the other children, but she did everything the wrong way. If she wasn’t boasting that her dad was loaded, or that she could read a book faster than anyone else, or that she was top of the class, then she was laughing raucously at her own, unfunny jokes. The other children soon began to give her a wide berth, and I didn’t blame them, but the more they tried to avoid her, the harder Lucy tried to make them like her.
I had a groom at the time called Sandy who helped us to train the horses. She was about twenty and Lucy was desperate to get on with her. She was cloying in her affections but still she used completely the wrong tactics. Instead of listening to Sandy’s conversation, Lucy felt she had to impress her with her knowledge of pop music, or computers, or things that were all far too old for her. Whatever Sandy said, she had to go one better. If Sandy had a new CD, Lucy boasted that she had seen the band live in concert. If Sandy mentioned a TV programme she liked, Lucy claimed to have it on video. Sandy was kind to her, but I could tell Lucy annoyed her with her constant wheedling. I knew that inside she was a frightened little girl, but I had no idea how to teach that girl better social skills. Where do you start?
Despite her lack of friends at Greatwood, Lucy was obviously happy with us. One Saturday, her father got out of the car and came over to have a word.
‘Lucy’s mother and I are so grateful for everything you’re doing for her,’ he said. ‘The school holidays are just starting and we wondered if she could spend more time here. Only if she’s useful, of course.’
In fact, she was a good worker, picking things up the first time she was told, and thinking for herself if need be. ‘I’d be delighted,’ I said.
‘I think she might be interested in working with horses when she leaves school, and we want to encourage her in her ambitions.’
‘She should stay here for a couple of weeks and get a taste of the early starts before she makes up her mind about working with horses,’ I quipped, and before I knew it, it had been agreed that Lucy would move in with us for two weeks over the summer. She’d got under my skin and I wanted to help her out if I could.
For two weeks Lucy slept in our spare room, ate her meals with us, and I didn’t for one moment regret the decision. She used to get up with me at 5am to boil the huge vats of barley on our Aga for horse feed. She’d help feed the other animals as well, then wash out the feed buckets, muck out the barns, and keep everything neat and tidy around the yard. She became adept at slipping a head collar on the horses and talking quietly to them when they needed to stand still, for example if the farrier was there to trim their hooves. All in all, she was a great asset to me – but still the other children didn’t warm to her.
While Lucy was there, we had a visit one day from a racehorse owner driving a Mercedes, who’d come to check us out and decide if we were the best home for one of his retired horses. I think the stables were a lot more dilapidated than he was used to, but when he saw the condition of our animals, he agreed that his horse, Freddy, could come to us. He duly arrived the next day in a smart trailer. Freddy was a smallish bay with a white blaze down his nose and he was in peak condition, having only come out of training a few weeks before. He danced about as he was unloaded, putting flight to the hens and some geese.
Freddy had had an ignominious end to his ten-year racing career, going from being the winner of Group 1 races at the age of two to trailing at the back of the field more recently. It would take a degree of expertise to retrain him for another career, but I thought we had a good chance of managing it. I stood him in a stable for a day or so to get used to us, then Lucy was with me when I led him up to the field at the end of the lane where we kept our other geldings. Freddy was as naughty as a two-year-old colt, rearing up on his hind legs as I led him, and I thought, ‘Uh-oh, we’re going to have our work cut out.’ He was obviously a highly strung creature.
As soon as I released him into the field, he galloped straight up to the other horses and tried to push his way into the middle of the herd. He obviously didn’t know that there was a pecking order in a herd and new members have to approach slowly and show respect. One horse nosed him roughly out of the way, then another did the same.
‘What are they doing?’ Lucy cried, and I realised she had tears in her eyes. ‘They’re going to hurt him.’
‘No, they won’t,’ I said, watching carefully just in case I was wrong. Freddy approached the group again, but they wouldn’t let him near, rejecting his advances until eventually, head down, he wandered off to graze on his own in a corner.
‘Why won’t they be friends with him?’ Lucy asked, her voice cracking.
Suddenly I realised this was touching a raw nerve for her and I chose my words carefully. ‘Freddy’s been used to being on his own a lot, or with his trainer and jockey, and he’s forgotten how to get on with other horses. He has to earn his place in the herd and wait for them to invite him in instead of charging full pelt into the middle and demanding attention. But don’t worry. It will work itself out eventually.’
‘He must be really upset about it.’
‘Yes, he probably is. But it will be all right in the end.’ At least I hoped it would.
We had to supplement Freddy’s diet while he adjusted to grazing, having previously been fed on concentrates. It became Lucy’s job to go up to the field twice a day and feed him from a bucket, trying to keep it hidden from the rest of the herd so they didn’t think he was getting special treatment, which would have made things much harder. As Lucy fed him, she would stroke his nose and whisper to him, and it was obvious that this lonely girl felt a great affinity for the lonely horse.
From time to time, if another horse was standing separately from the rest of the herd, Freddy would try another approach, sauntering up hopefully, but he was usually met with a hostile kick or a push. He’d panic then canter away again to his solitary grazing. After a few days of this, he started to get nervous when other horses came near and I was concerned that the situation wasn’t resolving itself as quickly as I’d hoped. Fear is always alienating. If a child is scared of dogs and starts behaving oddly around them, even the friendliest breeds of dog will respond by barking or jumping up and will scare the child even more. However, if a child can stay calm, the dogs will be calm too, and it’s the same with horses. Freddy would have to learn to calm down, and this would take time.
‘Why