‘Lovely,’ I said quietly, walking across. I reached out a cautious hand, making sure she’d seen it first, to stroke a silky chestnut neck. ‘Is that the first time you’ve lunged her?’
‘Second. Might put a blanket on her tomorrow.’
I smiled. Received horsey wisdom suggested one might not do this until the age of three, but Dad had his own method of breaking horses, which involved treating them like adults from an early age. He’d adopted the same policy with me. He’d never turned a hair at teenage indulgences, never joined the clucking mothers who endlessly dissected their children’s love – or rather sex – lives; indeed he had no problem with my sexuality at all. What he did mind very much, though, was whose car I got into.
‘How long have you been driving?’ he’d quiz some surprised seventeen-year-old boy, probably Ben, as he came to pick me up.
‘Um, about three weeks, Mr Mortimer.’
‘Shift across and let Poppy drive, would you?’
‘OK,’ the boy would say, stunned. And he’d shift, because of course I’d been driving untaxed cars since I was twelve.
There again, as many of the mothers muttered, it was all very well. He was lucky with me. I hadn’t rebelled. I hadn’t had sex at thirteen, didn’t get pissed on a regular basis and I hated smoking. Now if Peter Mortimer had had our Chloe, for instance, they’d say, rolling their eyes … and Dad would smile, incline his head and agree. Privately, though, he’d wonder whether, if our Chloe had been around enough whisky and overflowing ashtrays in her formative years, had sipped Famous Grouse straight from the bottle and been sick, taken a puff of Capstan Full Strength and been sick again, and not had the rules and regulations about such things almost planted in her shoulder bag, she would have been in so much of a hurry. Would it have been such a thrill?
Jennie’s mother, Barbara, hadn’t been like that: quietly tutting and waiting in the wings for Peter and Poppy to come a cropper. Barbara, like Gran, had been discreetly helpful, taking me and Jennie to Boots and letting us fill a basket each: a bit of make-up, shampoo. ‘You’ll want some conditioner now, Poppy.’ Quietly popping in some STs – ‘For your drawer, by your bed,’ she’d explained. Things Dad really wouldn’t have a clue about.
So yes, we’d had a bit of a support network. But so subtle and considerate you’d hardly know it was there, like a cobweb. When some busybody in the village had suggested Social Services look at the state of our bathroom, which at that point not only had a whisky optic on the wall so Dad could top up his glass in the bath, but also some guppies of mine living in the tub, Barbara and Gran had pointed out, metaphorically rolling up their sleeves, that it was summer, and Peter and Poppy swam in the river every day, so what was the problem? The busybody backed off and the fish stayed a couple more weeks until Dad, half-cut, accidentally pulled the plug out. I remember being distraught and Dad couldn’t have been more sorry; but then, he was always sorry after he’d been drinking heavily. I make the distinction heavily, because Dad always drank, it was just that sometimes he drank a bit more than usual. If truth be told, he was probably always faintly sloshed after midday, but so amiable and jolly no one really minded. He never got to the abusive or slurring, embarrassing stage, because when he got too tight he simply fell asleep wherever he happened to be. He’d wake up flat on his back in the garden, or on a sofa, or beside one of his mares in a stable. Then he’d blink a bit, look faintly surprised at his surroundings and say, ‘Right. Must crack on.’
These days I doubt I’d have been allowed to stay with him, I thought, as we walked the filly back to her stable. Yet would Dad have parked me with Gran while he went cycling in Majorca? Or, OK, hunting in Ireland? No, he would not. If he went to Ireland I went too, whilst the lad down the road did the horses. The one and only time I didn’t accompany him was when someone tipped the school off that I was about to have my annual day’s holiday at the Newmarket sales. Dad, rebuked by my teacher, had sheepishly