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Making Allowances
Chapter 7, Part 1
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To cut a long story short, I
went to University and I eventually graduated. I did not, however, become a
Journalist, or an English teacher. Instead, I went to work for a Marketing
Company. People change, circumstances dictate which paths we take, along which
we often discover that the things we once dreamt about, are no longer the things
we want. Sometimes, the dreams come true no matter how hard we try to resist
them, or stop them in their path. I suppose it depends on the dream. I guess I
just stopped wanting to be a teacher or a journalist; or a writer, for that
matter.. My father, by contrast, never
stopped wanting to be a jockey. This was evident very early into my college
life. I made a conscious effort in the first few terms to go home as little as
possible. I had not spent any extended period away from home before. In many
respects, although I had seen many things that some adults never get to see, I
was still a pretty naïve country boy. I found the City a tough, often mean and
dangerous place. It would have been easy to seek refuge at home in the early
days but I stuck it out and very gradually, began to feel more comfortable in my
new surroundings. The few trips home made me
appreciate the improvement in Dad. He was looking far healthier, less tired, he
was eating and sleeping better, he seemed altogether more at ease. He had found
a job, after a long time out of work, and slowly he was getting his life back on
the rails. Yet, there was still a
deep-rooted concern, always hanging in the back of my mind, despite all of the
positive signs, there was something I could see in my father. Whether Mum,
Granddad or my sisters could detect it, I cannot say. If they did, they never
said, and my brother was too young to know. I saw it though. He was
looking for a way back into the saddle. During the Christmas holiday,
I would regularly go running, to stay in training for the football I was playing
at college. When Dad suggested that he came along too, I thought at first that
he was just coming along for company. He would ride a bike, I would run. Then
later he would run part of the way and I would meet him on the way back. Then he
was trying to do the whole run. It dawned on me after a while that he wasn’t
doing this for me, but for himself. And he was pretty fit. At home, we had the stable
block, as I have said. Even during the years of his recuperation, one of my
uncles, Ray, kept a young filly there. Briefly, Dad had bought an old
point-to-pointer some years before. He raced her a few times locally, but
despite her sweet nature, she was extremely moderate. He ended up keeping her
virtually as a pet, turning her out in a nearby field that belonged to a friend. One day, someone left a gate
open and the horse wandered into another field, where she became caught up in a
coil of barbed wire. The poor mare ripped one of her hind legs so badly that the
vet was of the opinion that she be put down. My Uncle Ray refused to agree, and
nursed the mare back to relative health. Dad gave him the horse, as my uncle was
keen to send her to stud and see if he could breed a chaser, hence the filly. With Dad incapacitated, Ray
looked after the mare and the filly, keeping them both at our house in the
stable block. He spent all of his spare time looking after them, exercising the
mare and breaking-in, then working the filly. Uncle Ray was a knowledgeable
horseman, who had worked on farms and stables, and had also held a conditional
licence for some years, but his dreams lay in a different direction to Dad’s,
he wanted to breed a champion. As Dad got better, and Ray
(some years Dad’s elder) grew older, Dad began to take a greater part in
working and schooling the filly. On that Christmas trip home, we took a horse
box down to the coast, early one morning to work the filly on the beach. With Dad “up”, I watched
them galloping across the horizon at low tide, cutting through the wet sand,
scything through the breeze. Dad sat rock still, fully extended, legs pushing
forwards, arms fighting the irresistible force of the filly’s lunging neck. As
they galloped back and forth in the chill morning air, I found myself wondering
about the thrill Dad was feeling, battling to harness the speed and power of
this beautiful horse, I would never know how that felt. I had ridden a little,
but never at that speed; I had cantered, but this was flying! Perhaps, I thought, for that
brief moment, I could forgive his madness. As they trotted back, Dad was
smiling, almost laughing, like a child after a ferris -wheel ride. Like the
father I had known as a little boy.“ Nearly pulled me bloody arms off!” he
remarked, with an air of exhilaration. “You’re not in bad shape,
actually”, I complimented him. “Yeah, reckon I’m nearly
ready..” he said ominously. A few months later, back at
college, I phoned home one night. I was talking to Mum about what I was taking
for a heavy cold and assuring her that I was eating properly, but I could tell
that something was bothering her, not too greatly, but bothering her just the
same. She seemed almost in a hurry to get past the niceties, which wasn’t like
her at all. “Anyway,” she announced,
“your father’s got something to tell you.” On he came, shouting as
usual; he never did get the hang of the phone. “Alright champ?” “Not too bad”, I replied.
”What’s new?” “I’ve got my licence
back! Great eh?” I felt a strange, sinking
sensation. In a split second I had to decide how to react, should I be pleased,
or should I give him a piece of my mind? I felt that it would be easier, given
that I didn’t want us to fall out over the phone, to sound pleased. “Erm, yeah, blimey, erm
great, Dad. You said you would one day. Nice to think you could hop back on if
you wanted to.” “What d’ya mean if
I wanted to?” he retorted, “I’ve got a ride!” “What?!!” “Riding! In a point to
point” “When?” “Next Saturday.” (“Shit,” I thought,
perhaps this was an elaborate hoax.) “This is a wind-up isn’t
it?” “No, honest to God.” I tried to conceal my panic
and dismay, as we carried on chatting. Finally, he said he had to go, but my
sister Clare (the elder of the two girls) wanted to speak to me. She picked up
the phone and made a few general enquiries until I heard the door close in the
background. Now, she got down to the serious business. “Has he told you?” “About his ride?” “No, that he’s been
elected as Prime Minister…Yes, of course
the ride!!” “Well yeah.” “You’ve got to stop
him!” “How?” “I don’t know, think of
something.” “I don’t know as if I
can, without causing a row. “ “But think of Mum, after
everything she’s been through, he’s prepared to put her through it all
again, and the rest of us. What was the point of all that pain if he’s going
to get straight back on a horse and do it again?” “Well,” I began, but
Clare was still unloading, I had to interrupt her. “You asked me a question,
let me finish”. “Just tell me why.” “Remember when you had your
first boyfriend?” I began. “He wasn’t going to kill
me!” she snapped. “Can I finish?” “Sorry” “I told you he was a prat,
and your mates told you that they saw him out with another girl. Then he dumped
you and you cried for days, we all told you that you were better off without the
little toe-rag, but what happened, he came crawling back and asked you back out,
and you said yes! And the same thing
happened again. But hey, that, I guess, is what happens when you love someone.
It’s blind, enough people say it, so it must be true. Dad loves racing, it’s
probably the only thing that kept him going on all those dark days when it would
have been easier to lie down and die. You can’t take it away from him. You
can’t deny it to him, he loves it.” “More than he loves Mum and
us?” “No, that’s a different
love. That’s a two-way kind of love, a love we have to show him in return.
By making allowances. The only way we can show it is to let him do this
race.” “But what about his
feelings for us?” “Ask him, but to ask him
might be to stop him. And I don’t know whether it is in our best interest to
do this.” “Why not?” “Think about it. Deny him,
he won’t go through with it, but he’ll spend the rest of his life wondering
whether he was good enough to come back. To leave that question unanswered is to
condemn him. He might get to the stage where, if nothing else ever happens to
him, he might resent us from stopping him from fulfilling his dream. On the
other hand, if we let it go, there won’t be any tension or family arguments,
he goes off, has his race, comes home, mission accomplished, and everybody lives
happily ever after.” Clare thought about it. “What does Mum say?” I
asked. “Not much,” she replied. “Has she said she wants to
stop him?” I asked “Well no.” “Well then, I think we
should try and let it go. He might have second thoughts himself yet, you
know.” “I can’t see it”, Clare
replied doubtfully, “he’s told everyone, his pride wouldn’t let him back
down now.” “Well, the best thing we
can do is try and support him. Tell you what, if it would make you feel better,
I’ll come home and we’ll go and watch the meeting.”
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If you would like to contact Richie, please email him at: richie@baylands.fsnet.co.uk
© Copyright Richie Phillips. No unauthorised reproduction allowed. |
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