Lizzie Vogel 1 - Man at the Helm

18

One evening, soon after my visit to Mrs Bates, Charlie was round and he and our mother were having an altercation. A cheque she’d given him had bounced and caused major difficulties and embarrassment. It was meant to pay for some materials for his second bungalow shell and the non-payment had caused a cash-flow emergency and an interruption to the work.

‘You’ll have to ask your ex-husband,’ Charlie was saying.

‘I can’t ask for any more,’ she was saying.

‘Say you need money for something for the kids,’ he was saying.

And so the conversation went on in that vein.

In the end, our mother telephoned our father and asked for some money to take us on holiday. Our father must not have been feeling very generous. We couldn’t hear his side of the conversation, but we gathered he was saying he couldn’t keep sending money for holidays we never actually had. And seemed to want to know what the hell she was doing with all the money.

‘It’s everyday expenditure,’ she said, ‘the children are bloody expensive,’ and she plucked things out of the air desperately, ‘Lizzie went to Porlock with the school – that cost a fortune – and the ponies have had vet’s bills, we’ve had to have a new bread bin etc.’

We didn’t see this as a problem, more of a bickering between our two already divorced parents. And when, a few days after this phone call, a caravan was delivered in lieu of holiday money and our mother was beside herself with fury, we thought it very funny and were secretly pleased Charlie wouldn’t get his money. Also, and more importantly, the caravan, an Eccles Topaz, was most enchanting to my sister, Jack and me. It was second-hand but ‘in pristine condition’ and full of surprises inside with ingenious things and hidden cupboards and foldaway items. Our mother walked round it, said, ‘The petty bastard,’ and kicked it a few times.

The Eccles Topaz was very noticeable in our lane and of great interest to the neighbourhood. Anyone who walked past openly admired it: ‘Oh, you’ve got a caravan,’ and so forth. So much so, our mother considered camouflaging it with a net and leaves. And then, to make matters worse (for our mother), a man from Bagshaw Bridge garage arrived to fit a reverse periscope (a retrovisor) on to her car and extension arms to the wing mirrors. Our mother was livid and told the man to take his hands off her car, and the man said, ‘Suit yourself,’ dropped the paid-for parts on to the driveway and stomped off.

Then Mr Lomax, the Liberal candidate, was at the gate looking at the Eccles Topaz. Admiring its lines and actually patting it with his hand.

‘She’s a beauty,’ he said, ‘what are your plans?’

‘I did not buy this caravan. It was given to the children by their father in lieu of money for a holiday,’ said our mother.

‘Well, the world’s your oyster with a caravan,’ Mr Lomax said, and seemed to be of the opinion that a caravan was a jolly good thing, which made our mother even crosser.

Mr Lomax left and Charlie arrived soon after and surveyed the Eccles Topaz with a stony expression. Within a week it was gone again, plus the bits and pieces of the retrovisor and the wing mirror extensions, and we supposed Charlie got his emergency money after all.

Our mother was very anxious, we could tell. She smoked more than ever and left cigarettes burning in ashtrays and standing up on their ends and lit new ones and didn’t even take a puff. In the end, she wrote an act for the play about the situation.

Roderick: I’m sorry, Adele, I can’t give you any more money.

Adele: What about a holiday for the children?

Roderick: I made some shares in your favour and you must live on the dividends.

Adele: What about an impromptu holiday?

Roderick: I have arranged for a nearly new Eccles Topaz to be delivered from Don Amott, King of Caravans.

Adele: Well, I shall gift it to my lover, who will sell it through Exchange and Mart.

Roderick: What about the much-needed holiday?

Adele: A caravan does not equal a holiday, however pretty its name.

Miss Benedict turned up again to tell our mother that Little Jack had been refusing to take his coat off in the classroom. She seemed eager to have the interview over and done with as soon as possible, not wanting to risk any untoward turns in the conversation. They sat again at the kitchen table.

‘I just wanted you to be aware,’ said Miss Benedict.

‘Of what?’ asked our mother.

‘Of the fact.’

‘What fact?’

‘That Jack has been refusing to take his coat off,’ said Miss Benedict.

‘Is it important?’ asked our mother.

‘Well, yes. If he’s asked to take it off, he really should take it off,’ said Miss Benedict.

‘Perhaps it might help if you didn’t ask him to take it off, then he could have it on without disobeying you?’ said our clever mother.

‘But the children all have to take their coats off inside,’ explained Miss Benedict.

‘Oh, I see,’ said our mother. ‘I’ll speak to Jack about it.’

‘Thanks, that would be helpful. I was wondering if you’d had any further thoughts about getting a baby donkey,’ Miss Benedict said.

Our mother hadn’t seen that coming and was silenced while her head decoded it.

‘No, I haven’t and I shan’t,’ said our mother, eventually.

Then Little Jack entered with his coat on and said hello.

‘Hello, Jack,’ said Miss Benedict.

‘Hello,’ said Jack.

Then Miss Benedict said goodbye etc. and left.

‘Why was she here?’ asked Jack.

‘She was updating me,’ said our mother.

‘Did she take her coat off?’ asked Jack.

‘No, actually, she didn’t,’ said our mother.

We could have done without Miss Benedict coming round and harking back to Bluebell the baby donkey. It didn’t do Little Jack any favours at all, only serving to remind our mother of a recent bout of unhappiness. It was a reminder to us, though, that busybody actions are often selfish at heart and mostly don’t help the intended recipient. And coming on top of the Eccles Topaz and our father’s refusal to cooperate, it resulted in a horrible play that went way back to our mother’s miserable years at a cheap boarding school in Lincolnshire.

Miss Bruce: Adele Benson, you were seen wearing your gaberdine in the hall.

Adele: Sorry, Miss Bruce.

Miss Bruce: And do not be seen wearing any outdoor garment ever again inside the hall, form room or any other part of the school.

Adele: Yes, Miss.

Miss Bruce: Only a barmaid would wear a gaberdine inside.

Adele: Yes, Miss.

Miss: Are you planning to work in a public house, Benson?

Adele: I don’t think so, Miss.

Miss: We shall see, shan’t we?

After the demise of the Charlie Bates relationship, it was increasingly hard to know how to herd our mother into happiness. I say ‘herd’ because she was like a sheep who didn’t seem to understand the direction in which she should be trotting. And would wilfully dart away from guidance and not be nudged towards lovely, jolly things.

She disliked food (the eating of it) and had stopped cooking and she hated telly. She only really liked rugged men, whisky and ginger ale, poetry (especially love poems, annoyingly), Shakespeare plays and sunbathing. And here we were, two girls, both poetry haters and not inclined to drink.

I put all her known likes into my head and thought creatively and came up with what seemed a brilliant solution – a Scrabble tournament. Her and Little Jack in one team versus my sister and me – thinking it might overlap into poetry writing. My sister was supportive of the idea and I took it to our mother. She wasn’t keen and just said, ‘Ugh!’

However hard she tried (and she tried very hard) to recover from the Charlie Bates thing, she just couldn’t.

‘Are you still sad about Charlie?’ my sister asked her.

‘Very,’ she said. ‘The thing is, no one likes me and I’ve already had sex with two husbands in the village.’

‘And a teacher,’ my sister offered.

‘He was one of the husbands,’ said our mother, seeming to forget he was actually only engaged to be married and not a husband, as such.

And then my sister started counting and wanting a true account of the husbands and I had to elbow her.

My sister and I decided it was time to make another, more concerted play for Mr Oliphant. He has popped up a few times before, I know. That’s how it was with him. Here’s a recap on why we liked him. He loved horses and was nice. He wore a cloth cap but in a well-dressed kind of way, and had nice jackets albeit farmer-style, and had a nice rounded lump in his trousers which, my sister explained, meant good underpants and the English arrangement of his male parts, bunched up, as opposed to the European way of having it all hanging down one trouser leg and looking lopsided. Plus hiding, she said, the obviousness of an unwanted arousal.

Also, Mr Oliphant’s financial stability was reassuring. Quite often around that time bills would come through the letter box and our mother would run her hand through her hair and swear out loud and fling them in a pile under a paperweight.

Let me get something straight before we start the Mr Oliphant episode. I did not ever want my own pony. I liked ponies but I wasn’t a true horsewoman. My sister was, though, and could speak to the horse with her seat and steer it with her voice. I knew I’d only ever speak with my voice and steer with the reins – and that’s not what horses really want.

We had a couple of little ponies called Robbie and Bilbo in the paddock. Robbie was very fat and had laminitis and, though he couldn’t be ridden hard, had to be walked daily to relieve his legs. And Bilbo had a bowel thing and had suffered a twisted gut after an undetected bout of colic before being rescued by a horse refuge and then rescued from the refuge by my sister. In addition to those two invalids, my animal-loving sister had her own pony for actually riding, as opposed to just caring for. He was a New Forest pony officially called Blaze, but she was trying her utmost to change his name to Sacha – after the French singer of ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’. Her reasons for wanting to change the name being that he didn’t actually have a blaze (the facial marking) and because calling a pony ‘Blaze’ was like calling a dog ‘Rover’ and she hadn’t reached the ironic stage, aged only eleven. We all tried really hard to remember to call him Sacha and not Blaze.

My sister had acquired Blaze all by herself. She’d looked in Horse & Hound every week and the Leicester Mercury every day. And that was when she first met the well-known local equestrian Phil Oliphant. Mr P. Oliphant lived at the edge of the village and she’d popped in to see if he had any ponies for sale that might be suitable for her. Phil Oliphant had no pony for sale at that time but said he’d keep his ear to the ground for one. My sister had been pleased to know that she’d got Phil Oliphant’s ear to the ground on the search, because although he was a farmer he wasn’t a busy farmer, he was the type of farmer who owns a lot of fields but has a private income from an old uncle and never has to do any actual work on the land except for building horse jumps and places where the hunt can pass through with maximum excitement. We all knew that Prince Charles had hunted across Mr Oliphant’s fields and had fallen at one of his tiger traps – that’s how challenging they were.

Eventually, and without the help of Phil Oliphant as it happened, my sister found herself a pony – Blaze. Then, like everything else, she wanted me to have a pony too so I’d be in it with her. I didn’t want one. And apart from the awkward business of passing the war veteran Mr Nesbit and his embarrassing comments, I loved plodding around on our general family ponies and I didn’t mind doing my bit towards the upkeep of them, but I was certain I didn’t want my own. I’d seen how much work was involved and I didn’t want the responsibility.

Months had passed since Mr Oliphant had said he’d keep his ear to the ground, so we decided it was time to give things a kick-start. My sister felt his name being Phil was a blow. We’d known one other Phil, Phil Smith, our father’s lover from Vogel’s – an altogether different type of man – and she worried that our mother might see it as a sign. I was much more worried that I’d end up having to have my own pony. But we both agreed that with all his land, his love of dogs and horses and all other things considered, he’d make a marvellous man at the helm (or ‘helmsman’, as my sister had started to say). We went round to his house anyway to get the ball rolling.

He remembered us and we reminded him he was going to help us find a pony and then he remembered that too. My sister suggested we attend a horse and pony auction with him doing our bidding. I think she imagined Mr Oliphant in a bidding war with a cruel type of farmer, touching his cap for the perfect pony. I thought this a very risky strategy and thought it might result in me actually getting a pony. I’d seen this kind of thing in Laurel and Hardy and other shows, where the people don’t really want the thing they’re bidding for but end up with an oil painting or a grandfather clock when in fact they were just sneezing. And luckily Phil Oliphant felt the same, saying it would be illegal and that he might end up having to buy the damned thing.

‘But my sister needs a pony,’ said my sister, not giving up, ‘and our mother isn’t as experienced at choosing horses as you … we really need an expert equestrian.’ And that’s the thing about flattery, people don’t notice anything else if you also say they’re good-looking or experienced.

Phil Oliphant said although he couldn’t do our bidding at auction, he’d be happy to give us his professional opinion on ponies we were considering, but only if our mother was all right with that.

We told him we’d find a batch of ponies via the ads and make appointments to see the most appropriate ones and see if he might be available to accompany us on any of the viewings.

That very afternoon we rang upwards of twenty pony vendors and made appointments to view two on the following Saturday. And then we invited Mr Oliphant along and he said he’d be delighted to come. When he turned up on the day, though, our mother said she wasn’t in the mood to meet horsey Phil Oliphant, the dog judge, and said we should ask him to come back later. This was awkward, so we told him she’d got a lady’s problem and could he come back in half an hour when she’d cleaned herself up. And when he called back, she was in the mood and had changed into a silk shirt. And when they said hello, it was as if they were already in love. Phil Oliphant’s eyes flicked between our mother’s nice smoky eyes and her nipples – until she folded her arms to shield them.

And so began a long and detailed hunt for a pony for me.

I reminded my sister a number of times that I did not want a pony and that I was going along with it only for our mother’s happiness, and that once she’d got serious with Phil Oliphant, or engaged to him, we must stop looking and let me not have a pony.

My sister said, ‘Of course, that’s the plan. She’s run out of money anyway, stop worrying.’

And hearing that, I stupidly stopped worrying.

Phil Oliphant definitely took to our mother and she to him and we went to see practically every pony who lived in the area. We scoured Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Cambridgeshire as well as our own county. We saw two more Blazes, Conker, Ruby, Robin, Ruben and Zippy. We saw two very nice mares, both called Dana. We saw Eliza, Rosa and Petula, but our mother preferred geldings.

We saw a few yearlings which weren’t broken in yet. We liked Rollo, a dapple-grey, but not Martha. My sister wanted me to get William, a light bay Exmoor, but Mr Oliphant preferred Snowball, except he showed signs of crib-biting.

It was funny to see our mother, who wasn’t at all horsey and had very little experience buying ponies, being so picky and interested and pretending to look at their hooves and touching their fetlocks. Things were going well and towards the end of it I didn’t even bother going along, saying I trusted my sister’s judgement, and then even she stopped going and so it was just Phil Oliphant and our mother trotting these ponies along verges, looking at their teeth and asking country folk what was their rock bottom.

And they seemed quite happy for a while and often came home all fuzzy. In the end something must’ve happened between Phil Oliphant and our mother (my sister said he had dental crowns and didn’t use tooth picks but I think he was just too nice). Whatever it was, he was suddenly off the case and our mother, without really consulting me, made a verbal agreement on the phone regarding a six-year-old bay gelding from a riding school a few miles away. I tried to object but she explained that only the quick acquisition of a pony would shake off Phil Oliphant, which was something she was suddenly keen to do. She didn’t even listen to my side of the predicament.

We drove up to the riding stables and immediately saw a scruffy brown pony nosing around some rubbish bins in what was clearly a non-pony area. We went into the tack room to meet the owner and said we were here to view the thirteen-hand-high pony. The owner said, ‘Oh, Maxwell, right, he’s around here somewhere.’ And he whistled from the tack room door, then shouted, ‘Come oi, come oi,’ and banged a stirrup iron against the wall. The brown dustbin pony appeared and came rushing up to the owner – looking more like a dog than a pony – and the owner said, ‘Meet Maxwell.’

‘Why isn’t he with the other ponies?’ I asked.

‘Maxwell does his own thing,’ said the owner, or words to that effect.

Maxwell came sniffing round us and got his teeth round a tube of fruit Polos I had in my pocket. He pulled at them. The owner gave him a smack on the muzzle. ‘You can’t keep stuff in your pockets with Maxwell around.’ He laughed and showed us the flappy mess that had once been a pocket at the front of his overcoat.

The owner said Maxwell was a real character, full of charisma, hilarious and always up to his tricks. I wasn’t particularly pleased to hear that. Charisma and character are not all that desirable in a pony. You want them to be normal, trustworthy and good at zigzagging through poles.

I gave our mother and my sister pleading looks and said I really wasn’t sure Maxwell was right for me – him being so charismatic etc. and me not really ready for my own pony. But, for their own separate but desperate reasons, both our mother and my sister wanted to acquire this oddball of a pony and before I knew it our mother had handed over fifty-five guineas – a guinea being slightly more than one pound in horse and livestock money – and Maxwell arrived by Rice trailer the next day with a saddle, bridle and head-collar. He was by far the cheapest pony we’d looked at.

So in addition to my other worries I now had a charismatic Welsh Mountain pony to look after day in day out, seven days a week, summer, winter, spring and autumn. He was twelve hands and three inches high at the withers. That was how come he was so cheap (that and his charisma), because ponies are sorted by the hand and half and Maxwell, at 12h 3in, was one inch too tall to enter the 12h 2in classes at gymkhanas and shows. This put him in classes with the likes of Sacha ridden by the likes of my sister and other dedicated horsemen and horsewomen. Not kids like me.

I didn’t mind that much, pleased to never have to win anything. I minded much more about the everyday. The keeping this pony alive and not letting him die or harm anything or kill anyone. I suppose a bit like being a parent.

Although my sister was terribly disappointed that somehow we’d let horse-loving Phil Oliphant slip through our fingers, it was a huge consolation to her that I now had Maxwell and therefore as much on my plate as she had on hers (almost). In the first days of pony-ownership, I lost my cool with my sister and reminded her that I had never wanted a pony and that I’d only agreed to look for one so our mother could have sex with Phil Oliphant. And now Phil Oliphant was nowhere to be seen and I had this extra burden. A charismatic burden.

My sister wondered if we might add the riding school man to the list, him being horsey and handsome in a Heathcliffy kind of way, but I just yelled at her that she’d have to find a man on her own from now on as I’d be too busy. Also, that if the Heathcliffy riding school man came anywhere near me, I’d insist on his taking Maxwell back before I allowed him anywhere near our mother.