That night we drank and ate like kings. At that time there was none of the virgin olive oil or lattes of modern Ireland. We filled our bellies with home-made soda bread, Irish whiskey and rubbery Gubbeen cheese. Fish was in abundance and the meat was good, too. I had a few Irish whiskeys then steak, potatoes and, of course, bottles of wine. Before I went to bed I laid out my hunting clothes – breeches, a tweed jacket, hat and long black leather boots, which I waxed and polished until they shone. In the morning I washed, drank a cup of thick brown Barry’s tea and swallowed a mouthful of soft soda bread spread with salty butter. While I waited for the rest of the house to get ready, I paced up and down, hoping that the day would live up to expectations.
I rode down to the meet, and among the thirty of us gathered there was a hunting priest on a piebald cob. Schoolchildren, who should have been in class, were mounted on hairy ponies. Farmers on Thoroughbreds arrived with their wives on Irish draught horses, and rubbed shoulders with the sons and daughters of wealthy parents on flashy animals, all wanting to get on with the day. This was a ragbag of individuals, all gathered with one aim in mind – to chase a fox. I wasn’t nervous, just rather delighted that I was combining a passion for the horse and work at the same time. This was the beating heart of rural Ireland at its most glorious.
The Ireland of thirty years ago was a country where, if a wall fell, it was up to riders to close the gap using barbed wire, and where nature was allowed to overflow unchecked. Anyone out riding had to pick their way through acres of unkempt land, keeping a careful eye on where they were going. I trotted off with Zachariah as though we were old friends. He stopped and started and galloped at my instruction, like a gentleman waiting for me to tell him what to do next. We went through gateways and cantered up hills. He broke into a sweat but never appeared anxious. He was going to look after me was Zachariah.
As the morning went on and I became more confident I tried hurdling larger and larger obstacles. Jumping off a bank down into a riverbed, Zachariah stumbled but collected himself quickly and went on cantering through the water and scrambling up the other side. He was as taken by the occasion as I was, but although he was just as excited as me he wasn’t pulling, and would always wait for me to guide him before starting his gallop.
I had noticed that some of the other riders were jumping barbed wire fences, which I had avoided to begin with, having never jumped them before, but as the day progressed so my courage grew. A barbed wire fence is probably the most difficult thing a horse will be asked to jump. It is vertically upright, difficult for the equine eye to discern and, if you become entangled in it, it cuts you like cheese wire. As I sat watching the others jump over the wire, I thought they were mad, but earlier someone had hung hessian grain sacks and plastic fertilizer ones over the barbs so that the hunters wouldn’t cut themselves if they dropped a leg low when jumping, and they didn’t seem to be having any problems.
By lunchtime we had tracked a fox, the hounds were in full cry and were in full flight across the open fields. As we galloped to the top of a wide-open hill, we were confronted by a large wall. Horses were stopping and refusing to jump. Some approached, then, losing their nerve, ran out to the side. The wall was around five feet high, the same height as others we had cleared easily all day. Emboldened by how well the morning had gone so far, and egged on by some of the field, I said I’d put Zachariah over and the others could follow. The only shame was that the girl I’d come out to Ireland with was nowhere to be seen; she was going to miss my finest equine moment.
A mother and her daughter were queuing up behind me. They knew Zachariah and assured me he’d ‘pop over’ the wall with no problem. I agreed wholeheartedly. We turned a circle, broke into a canter and went steadily towards the wall. Any rider will tell you that you only ever realize how big a wall is when you’re bearing down on it, the full scale of it only becoming apparent in the split second after you have left the ground. Just as we were about to take off, I realized that it was much bigger than I had anticipated, but I need not have worried as Zachariah leapt beautifully. In that moment I became calm again, thinking that, while I was not in complete control, at least Zachariah was. I loosened the reins slightly and I gave myself over to him.
On top of the wall, unseen, lay several strands of barbed wire. Underneath me and out of my sight, Zachariah’s front hoofs clipped the coping stones on top of the wall and he scooped up the clawed wire with his forelegs. The pain must have been unimaginable, and he was still rising, gathering momentum as the spikes started to take hold of his forelegs, tightening with every centimetre further that he travelled. I looked to the right to witness fencing posts pinging out of the ground before they broke and splintered around me. Then it was happening on my left as well. As we landed, a dollop of metallic-tasting blood hit me in the mouth. I was in big trouble. Zachariah and I were the stone in a lethal barbed wire catapult. The mother behind me shouted at her daughter not to watch. ‘Look away,’ she cried, as I was battling to steady Zachariah, as the wire tightened and the ground in front of me turned red. He started bucking, trying to free himself of the wire that was cutting deeper and deeper into his flesh, as it took hold around his neck
Zachariah bobbed one way and twisted another and then the wire wrapped itself round my left knee. As he bucked ferociously beneath me, I was trying to get off to calm him down and all I could think of was that this poor young horse was going to die under me. But not before he had torn off with my leg wrapped in the wire, losing a limb as half a ton of horse hared off, dragging me behind him by the leg. I looked around, shouting out for someone to help us, but there was no one there, the mother and daughter having disappeared from sight on the other side of the wall.
Like a bronco in a rodeo, Zachariah took one last corkscrew of a turn. He bucked so high that the wire ran down his neck and ripped a two-inch hole in the toe of my boot, slicing straight through the leather, but miraculously missing my toes. There was blood everywhere, pumping out of Zachariah’s neck, covering the ground and mixing with the sweat on my face. This was not how it was supposed to end. I was twenty-eight and about to die, and taking a borrowed horse with me. I’d done nothing with my life. I didn’t want it to end like this.
In a final leap, Zachariah flung me from the saddle and galloped off down the hill, blood pouring from his neck with yards and yards of barbed wire and fencing posts chasing after him. I was shaking, near-hysterical. A man galloped off in hot pursuit of the still bleeding Zachariah. The mother and daughter gathered round to comfort me, and ask if I was OK. I just shook, unable to move. All the joy of the morning had evaporated in an instant, rich pleasure turned suddenly to horror.
Zachariah was eventually caught. I ran down the hill after him, stripping off my thick tweed jacket as I went. He was standing, shaking, sweating and frightened. I tied the jacket round his neck like a tourniquet, pulling it tight to stem the bleeding. We were only half a mile from home and someone called a vet from a nearby farmhouse and asked him to get to the house to tend an injured horse. We couldn’t decide whether to wait for a car and trailer or just run back. Zachariah was in shock and I decided to lead him, trotting back to the stables, thinking all the time he was going to die on me, right there in that lush country lane. The blood was still seeping from his neck but I took solace in the wise words a vet once uttered to me: ‘If a horse severs an artery he’s usually dead within forty-five seconds.’
Zachariah was still with me. I pounded down the lanes, egging him on to keep up, all the time thinking he would collapse. The vet was waiting, with a drip to pump an iron solution into Zachariah and slowly he began the delicate process of patching him up. There was nothing more I could do. I went into the house, poured a large whiskey, smoked a cigarette and I never got on another horse again. Zachariah survived.
My girlfriend left me not long afterwards, and for the next twenty years I couldn’t bring myself to get back in the saddle. And this was the problem. I had not ridden a horse since then, and, to be frank, was still terrified that the memories of Ireland would come rushing back at me the moment I got back on a horse. To do this properly and not get spooked I was going to need a plodder, a horse that could get my confidence back. But where would I find a horse that would look after me, and who would be mad enough to lend me one?
Chapter Four
A year before we married, Rose and I were looking for a house to rent