I'm often asked if I read outside my genre of historical romance. The answer is an unequivocal and resounding yes. Books are a feast and I devour them. I enjoy and follow my fellow Books We Love authors, but beyond that, I have a penchant for Lee Child, Jane Austen (still) and many, many more both old and new. A recent search for a much-loved book, The Old House at Railes by Mary E Pearce turned up something totally unexpected, an autobiography Good Morning.... Good Night by Tim Langley.
The only Tim Langley I had ever known was huntsman at the Berkeley Hunt where I had worked in my teens as a groom during the 1962-63 season. Could it be the same Tim Langley? Yes, it could and now I have my copy with the cover embellished with the same illustration as a birthday card I have kept for many years of Tim with the Berekeley Hounds. Tim was a real gentleman, always well turned out and polite, but definitely a character.
I never hunted, and today fox hunting is viewed through a very different lens, but I loved the hunt horses. I had three in my string: chestnut Duet who was a real sweetheart, grey Thor who had the longest back of any horse I've ever known, and Tangerine, another chestnut who never learnt to walk but jiggled and jogged along working himself into a sweat and always took forever to cool down.
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| Duet |
This was my first home away from home and it's no wonder I now write historical fiction. Berekeley Castle was our backdrop. It has been the ancestral home of the Berkeley family since the first motte and bailey was erected at the time of the Norman Conquest. The stables were built during the time of Queen Anne (1702 - 1707) and had barely changed at all. The last window on the second floor was our bathroom, the next window along was the kitchen, and the flat apartment was shared by us four girl grooms.
The routine was all about the horses, from getting up at 4 am for first feeds and skipping out the stables, then exercising them at 7 am for two hours. After checking their hay nets and water buckets we would have our breakfast. Then it was back to the stables for proper mucking out and grooming. Lunchtime the horses were fed again with the hay net and water bucket checks and in the afternoons we cleaned tack, swept the yard, and did whatever odd jobs needed doing. Anyone who has ever had the care of stabled horses will understand the routine of feeding little and often, taking away the waste product and generally keeping everything in order. We all took turns at the early morning starts and the ten o'clock last stables.
After a month, when my parents came to visit me for the first time, they were so shocked they threatened to haul me home. I'd lost weight with all the extra physical work, they were appalled at our flat, and I was as happy as a cricket. I stayed. Each horse had its own character. Duet was such an obliging gentleman, Thor had a weird sense of humour as if you bent over anywhere near him he was likely to nip your backside. He also had a way of moving without you noticing
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| Thor |
until he had you pinned against the stable wall and would then look over his shoulder at you as much as to say "What are you going to do now?"
After all this time I don't remember all of the horses. There was Trio, a full brother to Duet. Zulaika, who loved to watch the birds, Wexford, a big grey who was so fat when he came in after being at grass all summer that we didn't have a saddle that fit him, Doctor who had navicular disease and had to be euthanized, Big Ears (if I remember correctly her real name was Lady Jane) and a black thoroughbred called Judes Hill.
After a day's hunting, he was always the one we had the most trouble settling down. I won't go into all the reasons this can happen, only that no one went to bed until any of the horses had calmed down, cooled down, and could be safely left. I'm not a poet, but I did write this after one particularly late night.
JUDES HILL
Ten o’clock.
Last rounds.
Sweet smell of hay
Drifts from warm stables
Where horses shuffle, sigh,
And soft whiskery muzzles
Nuzzle goodnight.
But not Judes Hill.
He has been hunting today
And his thoroughbred body
Is hunting still.
Sheen of sweat on neck,
White striped face stark
Above the stable door,
He peers into the night.
His ears twitch this way, that.
Has he missed the plaintive
Wail of Master’s horn
Sounding ‘Gone Away’?
Was that the full cry of
Hounds in flight?
Steel strikes stone under his
Restless feet.
I unbuckle surcingles,
Loosen steaming rugs.
Islands of foam float
On the sea of neck,
Shoulder, flank.
On with his cooling sheet
And out into the night
We go.
We walk and walk,
This horse and I.
He stamps his feet and tosses his head,
His mane flutters like
Tattered rags against his neck.
I talk about everything
and nothing into his willing ears
until his head drops,
and the thrill of the chase
drains from his body.
Now we can rest.
From beach ponies to the hunters, from friends' horses to our much loved Arab, the books about horses that I have read and still like to read, I think you've gathered by now that I have a passion for this marvellous creature that is unlikely to ever go away. Horses appear, in one way or another, in all of my books. In historical novels how can they not? And even in my contemporary western romances, cowboys need horses. Look out for my next contemporary western, available for preorder now and releasing on June 1st.
