Working Trot
TO MICHAEL
The greatest earthly joy
is without a doubt to be
found on a horse’s back.
—Colonel Alois Podhajsky
CONTENTS
SUMMER
AUTUMN
WINTER
SPRING
SUMMER
THE SIGN WAS MODEST: simply “MacLiesh Farm, Tom and Marion MacLiesh,” and a silhouetted horse below.
“You’re sure this is the right place, James?” his mother asked, turning into the drive.
James nodded. It couldn’t be much more obvious, but that wasn’t the real question. His mother was giving him one last chance to back out. He glanced at her. He hadn’t felt this threatened since childhood—not that his parents could stop him now, but they made him feel young and ridiculous. For God’s sake, he wanted to ride horses? For a career?
The Mercedes swooped up the hill and into the yard, and James forgot to worry. It was all as he remembered from his brief visit five years ago: the maze of paddocks surrounding the red barn, the hayloft door standing open with a marmalade cat sitting there, the venerable white house, and even the sable collie, five years older and fatter, rolling toward them at a stiff canter.
His mother pulled up to the house, giving it a dubious look. On second glance, it wasn’t really white. Sometime ago it had been scraped and primed, but nobody had gotten around to painting it. Several of the windows were cracked, all were smudged, and there were no shutters. James saw his mother’s mouth draw down in disapproval, and he flinched. She just couldn’t understand that there were more important things.
Like horses? Angrily he pushed upright, out the car door. They’d kept at him so long that even his own thoughts were betraying him. He’d fought hard for this, with words and silences, and until now he thought he’d won. But their doubts weren’t foreign to him, after all, and they’d taken root.
“Hello there, Emily, James.” Aunt Marion was coming from the barn to greet them, straight, angular, brisk, and ladylike. Her sharp-nosed, weathered face, familiar in the equestrian magazines of two continents, reassured James. Here was a professional rider, as poised, attractive, and intelligent as his own mother. She was living proof that he had not surrendered himself to barbarism.
“You’ve arrived just in time for lunch,” she was saying. “I was just going in for a bit myself.” She held open the front door for them. “Please excuse our mess—there’s no time for housecleaning up here until winter. We just give things a little lick and a great big promise.”
James’s mother smiled politely.
They went down a dim, narrow corridor and into the large kitchen. For a moment James saw it through his mother’s eyes and was taken aback. Then he focused—breakfast dishes in the sink, a saddle on the back of one chair, two snaffle bits on the seat of another, and pictures from old horse calendars on the walls. One end wall was completely covered with black-and-white eight-by-ten photographs, and a camera and a bottle of developing fluid rested on the mantelpiece, among a collection of nails, bolts, and string. It was a working room, which was what a kitchen should be, James thought. He wondered who the photographer was.
“Tom is schooling in the lower field,” Aunt Marion said, getting out a bottle of iced tea. “He should be back soon. And how is Douglas these days, Emily?”
“Oh, busy,” James’s mother replied vaguely, glancing at her son. James avoided the look. His plan had upset things royally at home, but this was one point on which he refused to feel guilty. He’d spent all winter screwing up his courage for this move. It would be easier for him, too, to follow the path his father had planned for him. But then he’d never know.
Aunt Marion was getting bread and sandwich meats from the refrigerator. As she set them down, a tiger cat hurtled up onto the table, with a wild, rusty wail. Marion scooped him up before he could reach the meat, carried him, squawking and flailing, to a window, and calmly tossed him out. “My apologies. We found him half-starved a year ago, and he still goes a little batty at mealtimes.”
James stole a glance at his mother. She sat poised between disapproval and shocked laughter. He gave a grin to push things over on the side of laughter. Good old Mom; you could usually count on her sense of humor in a pinch.
With the cat gone, they enjoyed a casual, civilized lunch. Another cat joined them, but it had a sense of decorum and merely sat on a chair, looking worthy. James was picking at crumbs and trying to decide if he wanted another sandwich when he heard a horse come into the yard. He wanted to run to the window to look at it like a little kid. “Here’s Tom,” said Marion, getting out the iced tea again.
In a few minutes footsteps sounded down the hall, and Uncle Tom entered. He wasn’t larger than life, as James remembered him, but he was certainly life-size—six feet tall, lean and sinewy, with a fresh, blocky face bright from the outdoors. The collie came in at his heels, wagged at everyone, and flopped down under the table.
“Hello, Emily, nice seeing you again. And James—I’m glad to have you here!” He shook hands firmly, surveying James with sparkling gray eyes. “From the sound of it, I’m sure we’ll do some good work together. Still have that feisty black pony?”
“Kubbadar? I’ve leased him out for the past two years.”
“Good—glad he’s being used. That’s the shame of ponies, even large ones. Just when you’ve achieved a real working partnership, you’ve outgrown them. That’s why I gave Gloria a horse.”
He took his place at the table, and the polite chitchat resumed. James began to see the value of small talk. Tom and Marion had nothing in common with his mother. James’s parents had never kept in touch with this cousin, of whom they weren’t particularly proud. To a banker, horse training was not a real profession, even if you were the best. This had been made painfully clear to James in the past few months. Despite this, talk flowed readily, smoothing over the incompatibilities. Nothing insincere—simply nothing important. It was actually quite pleasant, when it could easily have been the reverse.
At last James’s mother looked at her watch and said, almost regretfully, that she had to go. It was a long drive home. Tom and Marion came outside, helped unload James’s things, and tactfully disappeared with them. Relieved, his mother turned to him.
“You will write, won’t you?” James nodded. At boarding school he hadn’t been very consistent about writing, and he didn’t like to promise.
“And you’ll visit once in a while?”
“Yes.”
“Well …” He wished she would go. There was nothing to say now. He could understand her hesitation, though. Oddly enough, he almost always understood his mother, though they rarely agreed. He hugged her.
“It’s going to be OK, Mom, don’t worry. And I’ll keep in touch.”
“All right then.” She got into the car. “Have fun, and … I hope this is the right thing, James.”
“Don’t worry, Mom, I haven’t signed any contracts.”
James watched her out of sight and then hesitated. He longed to investigate the barn; the marmalade cat had descended from the loft and sat in the doorway, like a footman waiting to announce him. He supposed he couldn’t just wander away, though. Slowly he moved toward the house, feeling alone. Doubtless his aunt and uncle were waiting, wondering about him, planning how to fit him into the family. How would he fit?
He found them at the table, discussing a sales pamphlet. “We’re going to an auction this afternoon,” Marion told James, folding the pamphlet. “I’d ask you to come along, but I think it would be better for you to meet the horses and get acquainted with the place.” She rummaged in a drawer as she spoke, eventually finding the checkbook. “Gloria will be back in half an hour to show you around. Meantime, make yourself at home. Your room’s upstairs, end of the hall.”
Trying not to feel abandoned, James watched them drive away, drawing an empty horse trailer behind their pickup. He didn’t feel much like unpacking. He always had to get used to new surroundings first.
He took a quick tour of the house. It was rambling and a little shabby, very different from his parents’ Colonial. His mother’s rooms were well defined, with separate color schemes and different moods. Here everything blurred together, all vague, wispy curtains, pale wallpaper, white paint. It created a sense of air and space, but James wasn’t sure he liked it. Working kitchens were fine, but he preferred the rest of a house to be more elegant.
One thing he did like was the overflowing bookshelves in every room. The family taste ran primarily to horse books, but there was an amazing breadth and scope. (“So there,” under his breath, to the counselor at school who thought he would become intellectually narrow.) Books in French and German were worn and underscored, and topics ranged far afield. James browsed for fifteen minutes and was settled on the couch with the memoirs of a famous polo player when Gloria came home.
He remembered her as a chubby, pink-cheeked girl who hadn’t said six words to him. She was still square-shouldered and compact. She had a smooth, grave face, and she had retained her reserve, which he interpreted as shyness.
“Hello, are you James?”
“Yes—Gloria? Hi.”
“Um … Mom and Dad aren’t here?”
“They went to an auction. They told me to wait and you’d show me around.”
“Oh. OK. I’ll be right down.” She hurried upstairs and returned a few minutes later in an old jersey and patched riding pants. They went outside, followed by the old collie.
“What’s his name?” James asked.
“Brucie.” Brucie gave a cheerful woof in reply and bounced a few yards in mock pursuit of the marmalade cat, who trotted casually into the barn.
On the threshold James hesitated, savoring the moment. He’d been in this position before, looking down a row of stall doors which seemed to guard all the pearls of the Orient. At such a moment all the horses you’d ever seen or imagined seemed about to appear, in glowing colors and drumlike sounds, rich earthy scents, silk and velvet, their cadence and spring and flight. Yet when they were brought out, they seemed ordinary and imperfect, just horses after all. You had to go back and look deeper. It was on the second or third tour that you found the one or two fine creatures that set you dreaming again, of the places they might carry you, and how.
All this between one step and the next, as he moved toward the first stall. It contained a coal-black Thoroughbred gelding, tall, flat-muscled, and angular, with a quick hazel eye. Gloria led him out, walking to one side to avoid the hooves, which snapped down menacingly at each step. She held him by the cheekpiece of the halter, on a stiff arm. “This is Oberon. He’s been an amateur steeplechaser, but Dad wants to event with him. He’s got the speed and jump, but he’s a rare handful.”
“I can see that,” said James. The gelding’s arrogant head reminded him of Kubbadar, but the temper was unquestionably worse. “Nasty eye, don’t you think?”
“Nasty everything!” Gloria turned him back into the stall, standing well away from his heels as he passed.
All the stalls had back doors opening into the paddocks. The next horse was outside, grazing. She came instantly to Gloria’s whistle, with a quick, halting step. “Dynasty Two. Do you remember her?” James nodded, searching the chestnut mare for the qualities he’d idolized. Five years ago Marion MacLiesh and Dynasty Two had been the unbeatable show jumping combination and James’s greatest heroes. Arthritis had forced the mare’s retirement, and she was now heavy with foal. The deep, low-bellied swelling of her barrel seemed all wrong when James remembered her skimming the jumps at Madison Square Garden.
“When is she due?”
“In about a week.” Gloria patted Dynasty sympathetically, and they moved on. The next stall contained a tall, flaming chestnut gelding, the kind of horse that makes your heart beat harder. He walked in long, sweeping strides, looking far away over Gloria’s head as though he were seeing a great hurdle set in the heavens. Hope awoke in James. After all, one of the horses here was to be his project.
“This is Lucknow, Jennifer Bascomb’s main eventing horse. He’s about the best that money can buy, and she’s going places with him.” James nodded, devouring the horse with his eyes. He was not strictly beautiful after all. Everything was cut right, but it was cut rough. It was the spirit blazing out of him, more than outward form, that made him a great horse.
He was returned to his stall, and they moved to the next. James strode ahead in his eagerness and leaned over the door. He didn’t see a horse but Gloria opened the door and took him through. In the sun beside the doorway a white stallion drowsed. Gloria spoke to him. “Hello, Ghazal.”
The horse’s ears came forward, and he turned toward them. James liked his head, with its cordial, dignified expression. He was fat, though, and lacked the Thoroughbred’s blaze of nervous energy. Somebody’s pet, he thought, looking to the paddock beyond.
Gloria’s voice kept him with the white stallion. “His name is Conversano Ghazal—half Lippizaner and half Polish Arab. Dad bought him in Pennsylvania two years ago, but nobody’s worked with him much. He’s your project.”
Just like that? James looked at her in surprise, but she didn’t seem to see. He studied Ghazal again, more closely. After all, the three horses he’d just seen were jumpers, big, dramatic animals. His own mount would be a dressage horse. He wasn’t sure what the conformational differences were supposed to be.
He followed Gloria eagerly up and down the rows of stalls, examining each horse and asking its history, hoping to find an alternative. Unfortunately it seemed that he’d already met the most outstanding individuals. There was a glowing bay half Morgan mare called Josy, Gloria’s horse, and three others, fine animals, but not extraordinary. These were described as the summer re-schooling projects, which left James curious.
When they’d been to all the stalls, Gloria took him to the back of the barn and opened a door to a large silent room. Directly ahead a dozen saddles, rich and darkly gleaming, hung on wall racks. James was drawn to them as some people are to jewelry store windows. Almost more than horses themselves, saddles made him long to ride.
Looking around, he took in the sheen of silk ribbons on the walls, the trophies, festooning bridles, halters, longeing cavessons, and other strips of leather, all well used and well oiled.
“Here’s the medicine chest,” said Gloria, opening a small wooden trunk. “Gauze, bandages, sulfodene, wound dressing, ointment, colic drench, et cetera.” James felt comforted at the array, remembering one desperate morning when Kub had come in with a bleeding cut and he could find nothing but Band-Aids in the household medicine cabinet.
“The veterinarians’ phone numbers are taped here on the lid,” Gloria went on, “and there’s a telephone over there in the corner. If you ever use up something in here, write it on this pad, so Dad knows to replace it. Also, there’s a fire extinguisher in here, two in the stable, and one in the loft. You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No.”
“Good, because you’d have to quit. A drink or so is allowed sometimes in the evening, once in a while a weekend furlough, but other than that it’s pretty disciplined. But you know that, I suppose.”
James nodded. Tom and Marion had welcomed him as family, but with Gloria he felt like a summer camper or a new hired hand who wasn’t expected to give satisfaction. Overcorrecting for shyness, he decided hopefully.
“Well, since we’re here, we may as well get to work.”
“Work?”
“Yes. Take that saddle and tack up Ghazal. He needs exercise, and you may as well get acquainted.”
You say “may as well” too much, James thought, picking up the saddle and following her.
He haltered Ghazal, led him out, and crosstied him in the aisle. After getting a soft body brush, fly spray, and hoof pick from the tack room, he gave the stallion a quick grooming. His eyes, adjusting to the new type of horse, began to take in details: the depth of chest, cleanness of leg, strong curve of neck, shortness of back, power of croup. Yes, here was a good horse. Except for the height of tail carriage, the Lippizaner dominated the Arab completely. Not even the stallion’s character was Arab. James didn’t mind—he liked the dignity. On the other hand, he would have welcomed a little more interest on Ghazal’s part. The stallion was self-sufficient, almost aloof, and that could be irritating.
Mounted, he followed Gloria, on her bay mare, up the hill behind the house and into the woods. They trotted along the winding trails, quiet save for the thud of hooves and the jingle of bits. James was surprised by Ghazal’s gaits. He moved like a big horse, springily and smoothly, alert to everything. For the most part he was obedient, but James still felt he was being condescended to, in the kindest possible way, and he resented it.
They came out into a hillside field, dotted with jumps. James and Gloria pulled up to watch a girl, astride an enthusiastic bay jumper, working over the course. The horse was a good one, the girl a fine, strong rider, and for a few seconds James regretted not having the guts for jumping anymore. In Pony Club he’d done a lot, but lately he couldn’t forget the danger to the horse’s legs and his own spine. It was a key reason for his going into dressage. He listened to the familiar pattern of sounds: the bunching of hooves before the jump, the silent moment, the thud and thrust of landing, and the evening out into rhythm as the horse regained its stride.
“Who is that?”
“Jennifer Bascomb, our other student.” As the other girl finished the course she waved and moved out onto the field.
Student! James guessed it was the right word, but he didn’t like the way Gloria said it. He watched her narrowly as she began to jump.
For the daughter of Tom and Marion MacLiesh, she wasn’t that hot a rider. She had a steady seat and light hands but did nothing with them, letting the mare jump as she pleased. This was with typical Morgan snortiness and exaggeration—ears pert and a triumphant toss of the head for every fence accomplished. It looked pretty, but unguided and careless.
Finishing, Gloria pulled up beside them, and James knew it was his turn. He circled Ghazal wide at the trot, assessing him and measuring the jumps. They were moderate and well within Ghazal’s ability, he hoped. He pointed the stallion at the first one and, sensing a sudden bubbling of enthusiasm, unleashed it. Ghazal’s quarters bunched. Two fierce, digging strides, and he exploded over the fence. His landing was awkward, but James steadied him, already looking to the next jump. This time he knew to take a firm hold, but Ghazal’s exuberance was difficult to contain. For those few strides just before each fence, he reminded James of Kubbadar.
Finishing in his turn, he brought the stallion up, blowing slightly, beside the girls. “He likes that! Has he done much jumping?”
“A little,” said Gloria. “He’s powerful, but Mom doesn’t think he could ever excel, because he puts too much energy into it. He erupts over a fence, where Dynasty used to just float.”
James nodded. That was probably true.
“I haven’t introduced you two. Jennifer Bascomb, this is James MacLiesh, my cousin.”
“I heard you were coming.” She had level brown eyes, a voice that already sounded professional, and a serious, plain face. She could be attractive, James thought. She carries herself well, has nice hair.…
“Come on,” said Gloria. “These guys need another mile or so under their belts, and then we have two more to do.”
James followed meekly, on a rambling circle that eventually led them back to the original trail. The land was hilly, rocky, very unlike the Connecticut countryside he was used to. There were unexpected rewards, though: topping a rise to see another farm on the next hill over, white house, red barn, cattle scattered down a sloping pasture; a dip into a gully, with a rushing brook at the bottom and young birches on the rim; the doe bounding away through the brush and Ghazal forgetting his dignity and trying to follow. For James, Vermont had been a place they passed through; he was glad he was going to like it.
Back at the barn he dismounted stiffly. Ghazal was turned into the stall, and James was given one of the summer projects, a spare brown gelding. Gloria saddled a dapple gray. “Go ahead of me,” she told James, “and don’t try to stop him till you get back here. If you do, he’ll flip over backward on you.”
Trying to conceal his misgivings, James mounted the brown horse. He held his neck stiffly and his ears were tense, whether with temper or fear James couldn’t tell. A strong dislike of the bit was certainly involved. The gelding responded to the barest touch of the reins, with disconcerting quickness. Once moving, he wanted to move fast, and his loose, sliding trot left the gray far behind. At the top of the hill James looked over his shoulder. The gray stood stock-still at the corner of the house, ears flattened obstinately, while Gloria plied heels and whip.
There was no stopping his own mount, so James continued uneasily. He found the jump field, and Jennifer pointed out the next path. From then on bewilderment set in. Nothing looked familiar, and the gelding was not stopping to let him figure things out. They came out into an unfamiliar field, on a sharp slope, and the gelding pounded downhill across it. James was bumped forward until he thought he would pitch over the horse’s head, but his one spasmodic clutch at the reins caused such a savage flattening of ears that he didn’t dare try again. At the bottom of the field a stone wall cut across their path. The gelding swerved and continued along it at the same headlong pace.
“James!” Gloria sat the gray at the top of the hill. “Not that way—you turn up here!”