A pony tale full of feeling and captured at full gallop
An illicit equine affair kindled a passion for horses, but precipitated a painful family drama when all was at last revealed.
A devilishly handsome chap named Edward was my first love. Our clandestine romance began in greenest, deepest Surrey. I was seven and Edward was a pony. I’d tag along with my friend David, who lived across the road, as he walked to nearby stables each day after school to feed his “family horse”, named Charles after the then young prince of the realm.
Edward was the pony in the next stall, owned by folk in London who rarely visited. A piebald with soft eyes, he smelled of sweet hay and malty soap, and I imagined riding him into the sunset, and escaping from Mum and Dad, who were very kind but full of various fears about Gypsies, foxes, and their only daughter catching colds in the consumptive English weather.
My parents were not about to entertain the idea of a “family horse” as my father’s job as a foreign correspondent involved moving countries every few years. So owning one was a “daft idea”, he announced. But he agreed I could join a club that would “provide” a pony, as if it were a piece of furniture. He had no idea what that would entail in terms of paying for “costumes” and training and how many hours he’d spend each weekend watching me fall off, miss jumps, fail at dressage and generally stuff up things. But I eventually won a ribbon or two and brought no shame to the family name.
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Pony tale full of feeling, captured at a gallop
An illicit equine affair kindled a passion for horses, but precipitated a painful family drama when all was at last revealed.
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By this stage, a cousin of David’s had bought “Edward” and he was still stabled with Charles. Said cousin renamed him Flash, due to the lightning-shaped white mark on one flank but barely came to see him. Stablehands did the mucking out of his stall and exercised him so David and I would then steal “Edward” at regular intervals and we’d trot out with Charles. I felt ridiculously happy and loved the idea of being on the lam, dispelling any guilt by reasoning that I nobly fed him all my lunchbox apples, even the very best Cockle Pippins.
It was a casual arrangement that somehow became permanent. David went off to boarding school and one of his younger brothers looked after Charles. I continued to visit Edward after school each day. My parents were successfully fooled by the skipping rope I always carried as a diversionary prop. They thought I was playing with other kids on the street. By osmosis, Edward had become mine and I loved him fiercely, as only young girls can. I dreamt that one day we’d have adventures at least as daring as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five gang, to whom I was devoted.
My father read those books to me every night, arriving home off the train from London and, without removing his hat or overcoat, striding upstairs and reaching for my latest favourite. Five Go to Mystery Moor was the best. The plot revolved around stables and a young Gypsy boy named Sniffer. How could you not love it to bits?
When Dad occasionally forgot, I was quite grown-up and would detour into reading Beatrix Potter aloud, I tolerated Jemima Puddleduck and Squirrel Nutkin but never forgave Ms Potter for not writing specifically about ponies. I created a character called Eddie Ponyface, for starters. Honestly, it wasn’t that difficult.
Then Dad announced he’d been transferred to the Canberra bureau of the then Fairfax publishing empire and we’d been booked a passage from Southampton to Sydney on the Arcadia. “But what about Edward?” I screamed. “Who?” replied my parents in unison. I confessed my clandestine affair, the impossibility of separation from my beloved, and threatened a hunger strike. “Who’s been paying for the hay?” thundered Dad, as if that could possibly matter, and what else was pocket money supposed to buy, anyway. “The case of the missing carrots has been solved!” exclaimed Mum from behind a veil of filter-tip smoke.
My tantrums failed. We boarded Arcadia. David promised his family would look after Edward and never let him “forget me”. For five and a half weeks at sea, I wailed to my “monstrous” parents that I hated them. The books on ponies they’d purchased for the voyage did nothing to appease me, even the several with “five horseshoe ratings”. I threw at least three out the porthole. By the time we docked in Sydney, I was spent. There were to be no more ponies in my life.
But sometimes things come full circle. My granddaughter went riding with me last Christmas in the Blue Mountains. “Could you buy me a horse, please, Nonna?” she asked after just one circuit of a field. I told her I once had a pony and then, holding back the tears, I suggested that as she doesn’t actually live in Australia we could borrow one from time to time on holidays. “Promise, Nonna!” she squealed. Game on. The little Mia Susan Kurosawa has no idea of what crafty lengths her Nonna has been known to go to.
Susan Kurosawa is associate editor (travel) of The Australian.