Lesley's Horse

A true story about loss and friendship

 

Lesley’s Horse

 

A short story by Carey Lenehan Copyright 1998

 

 

3019 Words

 

 

 

I looked across the field at the little bay gelding, who stood looking back, ears pricked and pointing my way, and I remembered the first time I had seen that head, less than a year ago. It had been that lovely, shapely little head that had charmed me in his favour. It seemed quite impossible that all the hopes and expectations for that head would now come to nothing. It seemed only a moment since we had found him, and now.....

 

Lesley and I had been into our fifth week of horsehunting, I think, or perhaps our sixth. We had seen every possible excuse for a horse and some that were simply inexcusable, had vetted two, to no avail and I suppose we were both waiting for a miracle really. I was becoming increasingly sceptical of such a possibility. Yet we had kept on trying.

We had driven from Oxfordshire into the bustling London metropolis and then wound our way laboriously around the North Circular before eventually finding the right location. The livery yard was tucked behind a rather elite housing estate and proved to be a kind of rural idyll amidst the urban madness. One hundred acres of fields and woodland and an American barn full of North Londoner’s liveried horses. As we pulled up in the neatly arranged car park we looked at each other with resignation. Today’s horse was suspiciously cheap and was probably a dog but we had to look, because you just never knew. The surroundings were encouraging, surely expensive. Would a dog live here? I grinned at my friend.

“Let’s go and have a look then.”

I hefted my baby out of her carseat and balanced her sleepy form on my hip, tucking my coat around her as I did so. Eliza was an old hand at this and had accompanied us on at least a dozen such outings. She wriggled against me, clutched at my neck with strong pinching fingers and stuffed the other thumb in her mouth, blue eyes drawn to the dark doorway of the long barn beyond. Only six months before, Lesley had clutched my hands and whispered encouragement into my ear as I had screamed my baby into the world. In return for her monumental support, I had pledged to aid her in her ambition to buy a horse. I was starting to regret my decision.

Yet today I was hopeful. You might say I had a hunch. It had certainly taken some persuasion to get Lesley to come this far to look. Yet now we were here it seemed the trip might have been worth it. It was one of those rare sunny days in February where everyone walks around in T-shirts pretending it is Spring. Lesley’s restless 13yr old daughter, Chloe, squinted against the sun and shook her skinny, jodpured legs to loosen them after the car journey.

“This looks good Mum, don’t you think? I think they’ll have some nice horses here. I think this one will be a nice one, don’t you Mum? If this one is a nice one, we should buy it Mum. It’ll be a nice one, I know it will....”

“Just shut up Chloe.” responded her mother irritably. They were going through that phase where they alternately adored and hated each other but Chloe’s patience was wearing thin after all the weeks of fruitless searching. Each horse we saw just ‘had to be’ the one, as far as Chloe was concerned and each one we turned down, for one reason or another, was an agony of frustration to this almost-woman child who desperately wanted her own horse.

I walked away from them, tilted to one side like a sailor on a canted deck, Ellie weighting my right hip. Stepping inside the long barn, stables all the way down each side, I scanned the few protruding equine heads hopefully. Sometimes that was all you needed to see. About halfway down, a very breedy dark bay head appeared over the box door and looked our way. Big, well-set, dark eyes appraised me, much as I appraised them, and immediately I hoped this was our horse.

The little crowd behind me caught up. The owner of the horse we had come to see had linked up with her prospective buyer and the two women, trailed by a somewhat disconsolate Chloe, reached my shoulder, already chatting like old friends.

“Here Chloe.” I said, unhipping my daughter, “take Eliza for a bit.” Chloe obliging held out her arms and the, now wakeful, baby readily jumped from one hug to the other. The two women walked into the barn and I followed, keeping my eye on the elegant head of the bay horse. Lesley looked from side to side, earnest and interested, checking out the occupants. She had waited all her life for this, her first horse, and was thoroughly enjoying her new pastime, even if she and her daughter did sometimes seem to chafe at my over-caution.

Yet for myself, the well-meaning self-proclaimed expert, this whole enterprise was a minefield of disaster. If I recommended the wrong horse, I risked not only our friendship, but also her money and her daughter’s life. I knew full well the consequences of advising under such circumstances and was not prepared to hurry. Yet even so, I did hope this would be the one.

Christine, the blonde and rather vivacious vendor, did indeed lead us, as I had hoped, to the box containing the breedy bay head. Inside, under a layer or two of rugs, the elegant head belonged to an equally elegant body the colour of Elizabethan Oak. He was a lightweight with chiselled features and fine, unblemished legs. There was no white on him anywhere bar a small crescent-shaped spattering of white hairs on one hind cannon bone. He looked bigger than his stated 15.3 hands and had a deep, well sprung chest and good strong quarters. He was a little gem.

“He cribs a little bit.” said the owner, running her hand down the glossy neck. “That’s why he’s so cheap. And I want to find a good home for him because he is such a sweet horse. I really want to keep him, but my husband just won’t hear of it. I’ve so enjoyed having him. He’s been a perfect gentleman, but I really do need something my little girl can ride.”

I nodded. The vendor seemed genuine, wealthy, uncomplicated, with an overbearing husband and a disabled daughter who needed a plod. This was clearly no plod.
I did the once-over, checking teeth, legs, feet, looking for scars and lumps, trying to notice any hidden blemishes or detect any obvious faults. All seemed well. Christine dressed the little gelding in a set of very clean tack and led him out of the stable and down to the far end of the barn. We all followed, watching him walk away. I hoped Lesley was remembering some of the things I had told her to look for. This horse was narrow and moved quite close behind. She seemed oblivious. When I looked at her face I didn’t see the sharp, assessing look I had hoped for, but a big, excited, cheesy grin. Oh dear, I thought to myself, she already wants it.

We had been on the verge of handing over dosh for a horse the day before. She had ridden a very prancy arab at a dealers yard not far from where she lived. It had been quite a departure from the sensible cobs and rather plain hunters we had been looking at up until then. Lesley, rather uninspired by the horses previous to it, had been wildly excited by its head-tossing exuberance.

“If this one isn’t any good, “ she had told me in the car, “I’m just going to buy that Arab. We probably won’t find anything nicer.”

“Be patient,” I had replied, for the hundredth time that month, “the right horse will come along. Perhaps this one today....”

For me the pressure was on once she handed over her money. I was in no particular hurry to get to that stage, even though I knew it was inevitable.

We ambled round to a very tidy sand school where Christine mounted and rode some orderly circles at walk, trot and canter. The horse moved well, went well and looked well. There didn’t seem to be a catch, did there? After a few minutes she returned to us and I stepped forward to have my go. The horse glanced sideways at me warily. Did I rustle as I approached, did I smell? I don’t know what was wrong, but as I put my foot in the stirrup and started to put weight into it, the breedy beast took an almighty leap away from me and charged off. I stayed with him for a couple of yards and then landed in an ungainly heap on the scuffed-up sand. No one laughed.

Christine caught her horse and I felt embarrassed. Chloe and Lesley just looked nonplussed as though they were wondering whether this counted as a vice. I took the reins from Christine again and made friends with the horse, huffing down my nose at him and rubbing his forehead in that circular way all horses seem to like. This time when I went to mount, he stood perfectly still and with my dignity only slightly dented, I took him around the school.

He did go nicely, no doubt about it. He had an irritating way of snatching the bit and tossing his head, but he was certainly streets ahead of anything else we had seen. I returned to the group of onlookers and dismounted, handing my reins to Lesley and taking Eliza from Chloe. “Your turn,” I said.

Lesley looked eager and apprehensive at the same time. She took a moment to get to know the horse and then climbed up, not struggling too much. She was a self confessed novice, but in fact she rode quite adequately and surprisingly, the little horse seemed to go better for her than he had for me. She asked to ride him down the lane and the rest of us walked after her in the sunshine as she rode down the lane and round the bend out of sight. After perhaps ten minutes or so, she reappeared and rode back up the lane towards us. She looked happy. No, that’s not right. Decided, she looked decided.
“I like him.” She told Christine.

“Good. Well, I knew you would, I mean he’s lovely isn’t he?” said Christine all at once, pleased, but dismayed too. Lesley dismounted.

“Chloe? Do you want to ride him back?” Chloe walked forward without much enthusiasm. She was self-conscious about the standard of her riding, knowing that she was a relative beginner and sometimes looked wobbly. But she did get up and rode the horse back to the stable area, seeming to be at home, appearing to be happy. For his part, the horse, Floyd, carried her carefully and respectfully, rising to the responsibility thrust upon him. Lesley looked at me expectantly, dragging back from the group, wanting to talk. I stopped, allowing Christine and Chloe to go on ahead.
“Well?” she urged me, “what do you think? Do you like him?”

I nodded. “I think he’s lovely. I think he’s fine.”

“But what about when you were trying to ride him? What about that, do you think that might be a problem. If he did that to Chloe....?”

“No, I think that was my fault. He seems fine Lesley, really. Do you like him?”

“Yes!” she was adamant. Her face was full of sunshine and smiles. “Yes, I do. I’m going to buy him. What do you think?”
“If you like him. I can’t see any reason why not.” I grinned back. Inside I quelled a flutter of nerves. This would be where my ‘knowledge’ got put to the test. If we were about to buy a dud, mine would be the first head to roll.

For Lesley, I think the rest of the day became a blur. A price was agreed there and then almost across the horse’s glossy back. Christine rugged him up rather sadly and shut him away with his feed before leading us back to her beautifully decorated house for coffee and business. She issued Lesley with his papers and vaccination cards and in return Lesley handed her a cheque for almost a thousand pounds. Cheap by market standards, but still a lot for a first time buyer to part with. Her car had cost less.

Half an hour later we were on the way home. Every so often, Lesley burst out laughing, an almost hysterical note in her voice. “I’ve really done it. I’ve bought a horse. OhMyGod... I’ve bought a horse. I really have. I’ve really done it!”

Chloe and I had teased her good-naturedly between bursts of excited conversation. I was in no doubt at all that their lives changed that day, no doubt at all.
He was delivered, still glossy and beautiful, a few days later, bounding down the ramp of a little white horse-box, led by his proud new owner and looking around for a feed. We had turned him out apprehensively with the other ten horses that lived in the field and Lesley had been forced to watch while her new acquisition was chased from pillar to post by the herd.

He did settle in, little Floyd, eventually, and over the next ten months or so, I watched my friend Lesley conduct a love affair with him that stood second to none. Chloe had found herself competing for the chance to get near the horse and often her ears were so full of do’s and don’ts when she was allowed to ride, that she didn’t bother for fear of getting something wrong and incurring her mother’s outrage.

All through the summer, Lesley fussed over feeding, was this right for him, would that be better? She leafed through tack catalogues and buried her nose in articles about colic, ragwort poisoning and laminitis. I soothed her fears when she worried, and chided her gently when she got it wrong, but for the most part I stood back and watched her love the horse she had waited her whole life for and felt glad that so far, our ‘gift horse’ had not kicked either of us in the mouth.

Summer had hardened into winter but her enthusiasm didn’t waver an inch. Out into the cold dark night she went, armed with feedbucket and under-rugs. She became my early morning call, stopping by every morning after dropping her son to school, catching me out on days I decided to lounge in bed with the baby later than nine o’clock. I rode out with her several times but in fact her blood was too hot for me. Floyd was a quick horse and Lesley liked to feel the wind in her face. My own horse was an aged hunter whose best speed was sedate. Lesley took to riding with hotter companions and I tried not to worry about her safety or her horses tendons. They always came home in more or less one piece though, flushed, sweating and invigorated. He really was a cracking little horse.

 

And then this morning, a grey, February, Monday morning, it had all ended. It was barely seven-thirty and the windows in my house which overlooked the horse field were still curtained. Lesley had come early to feed, on her way home from a nightshift. I had been making coffee when I heard her wails of distress and had rushed out into the garden immediately. Something was terribly wrong.

I felt my stomach clench, my heart grow cold as I looked across the field in disbelief. When Lesley had come howling up the garden path, screaming that her horse had “broken his bloody leg” she had not been overreacting. Even from here, perhaps 500yds away, I could see. Floyd’s pricked ears were all that was normal about him. As the little horse shifted uneasily in a half circle, forelegs moving, one hindleg turning, I could see that the other one, held inches off the ground, was swinging back and forth like a broken branch hanging in a stiff breeze.

“Oh God Lesley...” was all I could say, holding her in my arms as she sobbed. I looked over her shoulder at the pricked ears of the little oak coloured horse. Poor Floyd. Poor Lesley. What bloody bad luck. What a way to start a Monday morning. And now there was only one way it would finish, with the death of a love affair I had started. I went to the phone to call the vet. I wished that I had stayed in bed.

Less than an hour later I stood over the gaunt and cooling carcass of that pretty little horse, numbly surveying the damage he had somehow managed to do to himself in the middle of a flat field on a quiet winter’s night. The ground was trodden to mud in a semi-circle where he had shifted back and forth awaiting human aid. A stupid, pointless accident with no blame to lay and no reason for the pain it would cause. I covered the broken horse with an old rug and went back to the house.

Lesley was crouched in my living room, her face grey with misery and loss. A cooling cup of coffee was clenched in her fists, clearly forgotten.
She looked up at me as I entered and she looked as bleak as I felt.
“What do I do now?” she wailed, close to tears again.

I looked at her with some sternness. The pleasure of owning Floyd had only been due in part to the horse himself. Most of what she enjoyed could be continued if only she could see past the personal loss.

“You really want to know?” I responded. She nodded, looking lost. I smiled at her as best I could and said with an inward sigh,

“You get another one.”

Reviews

[Max Arnold]

thank you for entering my contest. this, unfortunately, is a horse-owner's tale. I am not a horse owner, and you did little to let me in on the mystic of owning horses. it's pretty, I suppose. but you failed to step past the genre, and reach the rest of us readers.