As we stepped out into the open, the wind pulled his last words away and sucked the breath out of our lungs and I reckoned we were still dealing with perhaps ten degrees of frost, plus chill factor, the same as the evening before. It wouldn’t go on freezing for as long as in 1963, I thought: that had been the coldest winter since 1740.
A short walk took us straight into the stable-yard, dark the night before and dimly seen, now lit comprehensively and bustling with activity.
‘Bob Watson,’ Tremayne said, ‘is no ordinary head lad. He has all sorts of skills, and takes pride in them. Any odd job, carpentering, plumbing, laying concrete, anything to improve the yard and working conditions, he suggests it and mostly does it himself.’
The object of this eulogy came to meet us, noticing I wore the ski-suit, acknowledging my thanks.
‘All ready, guv’nor,’ he said to Tremayne.
‘Good. Bring them out, Bob. Then you’d better be off, if you’re going to Reading.’
Bob nodded and gave some sort of signal and from many open doors came figures leading horses; riders in hard helmets, horses in rugs. In the lights and the dark, with plumes of steam swirling as they breathed, with the circling movements and the scrunching of icy gravel underfoot, the great elemental creatures raised in me such a sense of enjoyment and excitement that I felt for the first time truly enthusiastic about what I’d set my hand to. I wished I could paint, but no canvas, and not even film, could catch the feeling of primitive life or the tingle and smell of the frosty yard.
Bob moved through the scene giving a leg-up to each lad and they resolved themselves into a line, perhaps twenty of them, and processed away through a far exit, horses stalking on long strong legs, riders hunched on top, heads bobbing.
‘Splendid,’ I said to Tremayne, almost sighing.
He glanced at me. ‘Horses get to you, don’t they?’
‘To you too? Still?’
He nodded and said, ‘I love them,’ as if such a statement were no more than normal, and in the same tone of voice went on,’ As the jeep’s in the ditch we’ll have to go up to the gallops on the tractor. All right with you?’
‘Sure,’ I said, and got my introduction to the training of steeplechasers perched high in a cab over chain-wrapped wheels which Tremayne told me had been up to the Downs with his groundsman once already that morning to harrow the tracks and make them safe for the horses to walk on. He drove the tractor himself with the facility of long custom, spending most of his time not looking where he was going but at anything else visible around him.
His house and stables, I discovered, were right on the edge of the grassy uplands so that the horses had merely to cross one public road to be already on a downland track, and the road surface itself had been thinly covered with unidentified muck to make the icy crossing easier.
Tremayne waited until his whole string was safely over before following them at enough distance not to alarm them, then they peeled off to the right while we lumbered onwards and upwards over frozen rutted mud, making for a horizon that slowly defined itself out of shadows as the firmament grew lighter.
Through the wind Tremayne remarked that perfectly still mornings on the long east-west sweep of downland across Berkshire and Wiltshire were as rare as honest beggars. Apart from that the day broke clear and high with a pale grey washed sky that slowly turned blue over the rolling snow-dusted hills. When Tremayne stopped the tractor and the silence and isolation crept into the senses, it was easy to see that this was what it had looked like up here for thousands of years, that this primordial scene before our present eyes had also been there before man.
Tremayne prosaically told me that if we had continued up over the next brow we would have been close to the fences and hurdles of his schooling ground where his horses learned to jump. Today, he said, they would be doing only half-speed gallops on the all-weather track, and he led the way on foot from the tractor across a stretch of powdery snow to a low mound from where we could see a long dark ribbon of ground winding away down the hill and curving out of sight at the bottom.
‘They’ll come up here towards us,’ he said. ‘The all-weather surface is wood chips. Am I telling you what you already know?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell me everything.’
He grunted noncommittally and raised a pair of binoculars powerful enough to see into the riders’ minds. I looked where he was looking, but it took me much longer to spot the three dark shapes moving over the dark track. They seemed to be taking a long time to come up head-on towards us but the slowness was an illusion merely. Once they drew near and passed us their speed was vivid, stirring, a matter of muscles stretching and hooves thudding urgently on the quiet surface.
Two or three times they all came up in their turn. ‘Both of those are Fiona’s,’ Tremayne said from behind the binoculars, giving me a commentary as a pair of chestnuts scurried past, and, ‘The one on the left of this next three is my Grand National winner, Top Spin Lob.’
With interest I watched the pride of the stable go past us and begin to pull up as he reached the prow of the rise, but beside me Tremayne was stiffening in dismay and saying, ‘What the hell—?’
I looked back down the hill in the direction of his binoculars but could see only three more horses coming up the track, two in front, one behind. It wasn’t until they were almost upon us that I realised that the one at the rear had no rider.
The three horses passed us and began to slow down and Tremayne said ‘Shit’ with fervour.
‘Did the lad fall off?’ I asked inanely.
‘No doubt he did,’ Tremayne said forcefully, watching through his glasses, ‘but he’s not one of mine.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ Tremayne said, ‘that’s not my horse. Just look at him. That’s not my rug. That horse isn’t saddled and has no bridle. Can’t you see?’
When I looked, when he’d told me what to look for, then I could see. Tremayne’s horses had fawn rugs with horizontal red and blue stripes; rugs which covered the ribs and hindquarters but left the legs free for full movement. The rug of the riderless horse was brownish grey, much thicker, and fastened by straps running under the belly and round in front of the shoulders.
‘I suppose you’ll think me crazy,’ I said to Tremayne, ‘but maybe that’s the horse that was loose in the lane last night when we crashed. I mean, I saw it for only a split second, really, but it looked like that. Dark, with that sort of rug.’
‘Almost every racehorse wears that sort of rug at night in the winter,’ Tremayne said. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong, though. In a minute, I’ll find out.’
He swung his binoculars back to where another couple of his string were putting on their show and calmly watched them before referring again to the stranger.
‘They’re the last,’ he said as they sped past us. ‘Now let’s see what’s what.’
He began to walk up beside the gallop in the direction of the horses and I followed, and we soon came over the brow to where his whole string was circling on snowy grass, steam swelling in clouds from their breath after their exertions. They were silhouetted against the eastern sun, their shapes now black, now gleaming. Brilliant, freezing, moving; unforgettable morning.
Away to the left, apart from the string, the riderless horse made his own white sun-splashed plume, his nervousness apparent, his herding instincts propelling him towards his kin, his wild nature urging flight.
Tremayne reached his horses and spoke to his lads.