I couldn’t hear him stamping and snorting from my bedroom, and last seen, when I’d snuck out to the barn in my dressing gown, quietly munching hay, albeit with a slightly wary expression on his face – yes, that night, as I stood in front of my dressing-table mirror, I felt reassured. I’d poured myself into my kit – pour being the operative word – and now felt something like courage returning. All the riding I’d ever done in my youth had been in jeans and wellies, but Dad had cajoled a neighbouring teenager into lending me some clothes. The skintight jodhpurs and an ancient jacket of mine, which didn’t so much nip in as charge, ensured I looked the part. I could barely breathe, of course, but surely that was the point? All accessories – long black boots, velvet cap, snowy white stock – were borrowed from Dad’s same friend and completed the glamorous, sexy look, I decided, gazing delightedly at my reflection. My cheeks were flushed and my eyes very bright, which helped, but then I had drunk nearly a whole bottle of wine. For Dutch courage. So that when I slapped my whip against my boot and snarled, ‘Knock’em dead, Poppy. You show that snooty lot you were practically born in the saddle,’ even I was pretty sure it was the drink talking. My reflection sniggered in agreement.
Later, when I’d polished off the remains of the bottle in front of the telly – madness not to – I went upstairs to bed. My equine ensemble had by now come adrift, all restraining buttons and zips undone and agape. Whip in hand and still in my boots, I swaggered across the bedroom to draw the curtains. I felt a bit like John Wayne. But before I reached the window I caught sight of my reflection in the dressing-table mirror, and halted. This, I decided, swaying slightly, was what I’d look like post-hunt, after a hard day in the saddle: windblown, unkempt, but exhilarated. All woman. Steadying myself on the back of the dressing-table chair I straddled it backwards, swivelling to see what my bum looked like in the mirror. Not bad. I executed a rising trot to see how it would fare going up and down, away from the meet, as it were. Very passable. Then I hung on to the chair and leaned forward to mimic a gallop, bottom out of the saddle, bobbing slightly, whip flourished. Suddenly I froze, mid-bob. Mr Fish, across the road, was drawing back from his bedroom window in alarm, no doubt hastening to find Mrs Fish and tell her that the young widow opposite was not so much finding her feet as strapping them into black leather, brandishing sex toys, and heading to Sodom, Gomorrah, and beyond.
21
As I clambered into the lorry the following morning the drink was still talking, but telling me something very different. Dad had come over early, as promised, and found me locked in the bathroom feeling neither sexy nor brave, courtesy of a paralysing hangover and a very scary horse. Thumper, when I’d flapped out in dressing gown and wellies to politely suggest he might like to get up and have some brecker, had rounded on me with such indignant wild eyes and flaring nostrils that I’d turned and fled. Typical man, I thought, running back inside. He spends the night at my place then, the next morning, acts like he’s never seen me before in his life.
‘I’m not coming out, Dad!’ I bleated through the bathroom door. ‘He’s morphed into one of the seven horses of the Apocalypse. Thinks he’s in a Schwarzenegger movie!’
‘Nonsense, he’s just feeling a bit displaced. I’ll go and have a word, love.’
Sure enough, when I peeked through the bathroom window sometime later, under my father’s professional guidance Thumper had indeed meekly succumbed. He was now washed and dressed and tied up outside the barn, his tail still a bit wet, but sleek and gleaming, mane plaited, shiny tack in place. It was inevitable, then, of course, that the white-faced daughter would be subjected to the same kind but firm hand, and soon I was being herded into my bedroom to change into clothes that didn’t feel nearly so glamorous as they had the night before, and thence into the lorry, at which point I informed my father I was going to be sick.
‘Drink,’ he ordered, handing me his hip flask as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the cab