am sometimes asked these days how I got started. I should love to be able to say that it was all because I had some dream, some vision, or maybe that I just studied very hard. None of this would really be true. I owe what I am, what I have become, what I do each day of my life, to a bicycle ride I took a long time ago now, when I was twelve years old – and also to a pile of muck, horse muck.
The bike was new that Christmas. It was maroon, and I remember it was called a Raleigh Wayfarer. It had all you could ever dream of in a bike – in those days. It had a bell, a dynamo lamp front and rear, five gears and a silver pump. I loved it instantly and spent every hour I could out riding it. And when I wasn’t riding it, I was polishing it.
We lived on the edge of town, so it was easy to ride off down Mill Lane past the estate, along the back of the soap factory where my father worked, and then out into the countryside beyond. How I loved it. In a car, you zoomed past so fast that the cows and the trees were only ever brief, blurred memories. On my bike I was close to everything for the first time. I felt the cold and the rain on my face. I mooed at the cows, and they looked up and blinked at me lazily. I shouted at the crows and watched them lift off cawing and croaking into the wind. But best of all, no one knew where I was – and that included me sometimes. I was always getting myself lost and coming back at dusk, late. I would brace myself for all the sighing and tutting and ticking off that inevitably followed. I bore it all stoically because they didn’t really mean it, and anyway it had all been worth it. I’d had a taste of real freedom and I wanted more of it.
After a while I discovered a circuit that seemed to be just about ideal. It was a two-hour run, not too many hills going up, plenty going down, a winding country lane that criss-crossed a river past narrow cottages where hardly anyone seemed to live, under the shadow of a church where sometimes I stopped and put flowers on the graves that everyone else seemed to have forgotten, and then along the three-barred iron fence where the horses always galloped over to see me, their tails and heads high, their ears pricked.
There were three of them: a massive bay hunter that looked down on me from a great height, a chubby little pony with a face like a chipmunk, and a fine-boned grey that flowed and floated over the ground with such grace and ease that I felt like clapping every time I saw her move. She made me laugh too because she often made rude, farty noises as she came trotting over to see me. I called her Peg after a flying horse called Pegasus that I’d read about in a book. The small one I called Chip, and the great bay, Big Boy. I’d cuddle them all, give each of them a sugar lump – two for Peg because she wasn’t as pushy as the other two – told them my troubles, cuddled them a little more and went on my way, always reluctantly.
I hated to leave them because I was on my way back home after that, back to homework, and the sameness of the house, and my mother’s harassed scurrying and my little brother’s endless tantrums. I lay in my room and dreamed of those horses, of Peg in particular. I pictured myself riding her bareback through flowery meadows, up rutty mountain passes, fording rushing streams where she’d stop to drink. I’d go to sleep at nights lying down on the straw with her, my head resting on her warm belly. But when I woke, her belly was always my pillow, and my father was in the bathroom next door, gargling and spitting into the sink, and there was school to face, again. But after school I’d be off on my bike and that was all that mattered to me. I gave up ballet lessons on Tuesdays. I gave up cello lessons on Fridays. I never missed a single day, no matter what the weather – rain, sleet, hail – I simply rode through it all, living for the moment when Peg would rest her heavy head on my shoulder and I’d hear that sugar lump crunching inside her great grinding jaw.
It was spring. I know that because there were daffodils all along the grass verge by the fence, and there was nowhere to lie my bike down on the ground without squashing them. So I leant it up against the fence and fished in my pocket for the sugar lumps. Chip came scampering over as he always did, and Big Boy wandered lazily up behind him, his tail flicking nonchalantly. But I saw no sign of Peg. When Big Boy had finished his sugar lump, he started chewing at the saddle of my bike and knocked it over. I was just picking it up when I saw her coming across the field towards me. She wore long green boots and a jersey covered in plants and stars, gold against the dark, deep blue of space. But what struck me most was her hair, the wild white curly mop of it, around her face that was somehow both old and young at the same time.
“Who are you?” she asked. It was just a straight question, not a challenge.
“Bonnie,” I replied.
“She’s not here,” said the woman.
“Where is she?”
“It’s the spring grass. I have to keep her inside from now on.”
“Why?”
“Laminitis. She’s fine all through the winter, eats all the grass she likes no trouble. But she’s only got to sniff the spring grass and it comes back. It heats the hoof, makes her lame.” She waved away the two horses and came closer, scrutinising me. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? You like horses, don’t you?” I smiled. “Me too,” she went on. “But they’re a lot of work.”
“Work?” I didn’t understand.
“Bring them in, put them out, groom them, pick out their feet, feed them, muck them out. I’m not as young as I was, Bonnie. You don’t want a job do you, in the stables? Be a big help. The grey needs a good long walk every day, and a good mucking out. Three pounds an hour, what do you say?”
Just like that. I said yes, of course. I could come evenings and weekends.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said. “You’ll need wellies. I’ve got some that should fit. You be careful on the roads now.” And she turned and walked away.
I cycled home that day singing my heart out and high as a kite. It was my first paying job, and I’d be looking after Peg. It really was a dream come true.
I didn’t tell anyone at home, nor at school. Where I went on my bike, what I did, was my own business, no one else’s. Besides there was always the chance that Father would stop me – you never knew with him. And I certainly didn’t want any of my school friends oaring in on this. At least two of them knew all about horses, or they said they did, and I knew they would never stop telling me the right way to do this or that. Best just to keep everything to myself.
To get to the house the next day – you couldn’t see it from the road – I cycled up a long drive through high trees that whispered at me. I had to weave around the pot-holes, bump over sleeping policemen, but then came out on to a smooth tarmac lane where I could freewheel downhill and hear the comforting tic-a-tic of my wheels beneath me.
I nearly came off when I first saw them. Everywhere in amongst the trees there were animals, but none of them moved. They just looked at me. There were wild boar, dogs, horses and gigantic men running through trees like hunters. But all were as still as statues. They were statues. Then I saw the stables on my right, Peg looking out at me, ears pricked and shaking her mane. Beyond the stables was a long house of flint and brick with a tiled roof, and a clock tower with doves fluttering around it.
The stable block was deserted. I didn’t like to call out, so I opened the gate and went over to Peg and stroked her nose. That was when I noticed a pair of wellies waiting by the door, and slipped into one of them was a piece of paper. I took it out and read:
Hope these fit. Take her for a walk down the tracks, not in the fields. She can nibble the grass, but not too much. Then muck out the stables. Save what dry straw you can – it’s expensive. When you’ve done, shake out half a bale in her stable – you’ll find straw and hay in the barn. She has two slices of hay in her rack. Don’t forget to fill up the water buckets.
It was not signed.
Until then I had not given it a single thought, but I had never led a horse or ridden a horse in all my life. Come to that, I hadn’t mucked out a stable either. Peg had a halter on her already, and a rope hung from a hook beside the stable. I put the wellies on
– they were only a little too big – clipped on the rope, opened the stable door and led her out, hoping, praying she would behave. I need not have worried. It was Peg that took me for a walk. I simply stopped whenever she did, let her nibble for a while, and then asked her gently if it wasn’t time to move on. She knew the way, up the track through the woods, past the running men and the wild boar, then forking off down past the ponds where a bronze water buffalo drank without ever moving his lips. White fish glided ghostly under the shadow of his nose. The path led upwards from there, past a hen house where a solitary goose stretched his neck, flapped his wings and honked at us. Peg stopped for a moment, lifted her nose and wrinkled it at the goose who began preening himself busily. After a while I found myself coming back to the stable-yard gate and Peg led me in. I tied her up in the yard and set about mucking out the stables.
I was emptying the wheelbarrow on to the muck heap when I felt someone behind me. I turned round. She was older than I remembered her, greyer in the face, and more frail. She was dressed in jeans and a rough sweater this time, and seemed to be covered in white powder, as if someone had thrown flour at her. Even her cheeks were smudged with it. She glowed when she smiled.
“Where’s there’s muck there’s money, that’s what they say,” she laughed; and then she shook her head. “Not true, I’m afraid, Bonnie. Where there’s muck, there’s magic. Now that’s true.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. “Horse muck,” she went on by way of explanation. “Best magic in the world for vegetables. I’ve got leeks in my garden longer than, longer than …” She looked around her. “Twice as long as your bicycle pump. All the soil asks is that we feed it with that stuff, and it’ll do anything we want it to. It’s like anything, Bonnie, you have to put in more than you take out. You want some tea when you’ve finished?”
“Yes please.”
“Come up to the house then. You can have your money.” She laughed at that. “Maybe there is money in muck after all.”
As I watched her walk away, a small yappy dog came bustling across the lawn, ran at her and sprang into her arms. She cradled him, put him over her shoulder and disappeared into the house.
I finished mucking out the stable as quickly as I could, shook out some fresh straw, filled up the water buckets and led Peg back in. I gave her a goodbye kiss on the nose and rode my bike up to the house.
I found her in the kitchen, cutting bread.
“I’ve got peanut butter or honey,” she said. I didn’t like either, but I didn’t say so.
“Honey,” I said. She carried the mugs of tea, and I carried the plate of sandwiches. I followed her out across a cobbled courtyard, accompanied by the yappy dog, down some steps and into a great glass building where there stood a gigantic white horse. The floor was covered in newspaper, and everywhere was crunchy underfoot with plaster. The shelves all around were full of sculpted heads and arms and legs and hands. A white sculpture of a dog stood guard over the plate of sandwiches and never even sniffed them. She sipped her tea between her hands and looked up at the giant horse. The horse looked just like Peg, only a lot bigger.
“It’s no good,” she sighed. “She needs a rider.” She turned to me suddenly. “You wouldn’t be the rider, would you?” she asked.
“I can’t ride.”
“You wouldn’t have to, not really. You’d just sit there, that’s all, and I’d sketch you.”
“What, now?”
“Why not? After tea be all right?”
And so I found myself sitting astride Peg that same afternoon in the stable yard. She was tied up by her rope, pulling contentedly at her hay net and paying no attention to us whatsoever. It felt strange up there, with Peg shifting warm underneath me. There was no saddle, and she asked me to hold the reins one-handed, loosely, to feel “I was part of the horse”. The worst of it was that I was hot, stifling hot, because she had dressed me up as an Arab. I had great swathes of cloth over and around my head and I was draped to my feet with a long heavy robe so that nothing could be seen of my jeans or sweater or wellies.
“I never told you my name, did I?” said the lady, sketching furiously on a huge pad. “That was rude of me. I’m Liza. When you come tomorrow, you can give me a hand making you if you like. I’m not as strong as I was, and I’m in a hurry to get on with this. You can mix the plaster for me. Would you like that?” Peg snorted and pawed the ground. “I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?” She laughed, and walked round behind the horse, turning the page of her sketch pad. “I want to do one more from this side and one from the front, then you can go home.”
Half an hour later when she let me down and unwrapped me, my bottom was stiff and sore.
“Can I see?” I asked her.
“I’ll show you tomorrow,” she said. “You will come, won’t you?” She knew I would, and I did.
I came every day after that to muck out the stables and to walk Peg, but what I looked forward to most – even more than being with Peg – was mixing up Liza’s plaster for her in the bucket, climbing the stepladder with it, watching her lay the strips of cloth dunked in the wet plaster over the frame of the rider, building me up from the iron skeleton of wire, to what looked at first like an Egyptian mummy, then a riding Arab at one with his horse, his robes shrouding him with mystery. I knew all the while it was me in that skeleton, me inside that mummy. I was the Arab sitting astride his horse looking out over the desert. She worked ceaselessly, and with such a fierce determination that I didn’t like to interrupt. We were joined together by a common, comfortable silence.
At the end of a month or so we stood back, the two of us, and looked up at the horse and rider, finished.
“Well,” said Liza, her hands on her hips. “What do you think, Bonnie?”
“I wish,” I whispered, touching the tail of the horse, “I just wish I could do it.”
“But you did do it, Bonnie,” she said and I felt her hand on my shoulder. “We did it together. I couldn’t have done it without you.” She was a little breathless as she spoke. “Without you, that horse would never have had a rider. I’d never have thought of it. Without you mixing my plaster, holding the bucket, I couldn’t have done it.” Her hand gripped me tighter. “Do you want to do one of your own?”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. But you have to look around you first, not just glance, but really look. You have to breathe it in, become a part of it, feel that you’re a part of it. You draw what you see, what you feel. Then you make what you’ve drawn. Use clay if you like, or do what I do and build up plaster over a wire frame. Then set to work with your chisel, just like I do, until it’s how you want it. If I can do it, you can do it. I tell you what. You can have a corner of my studio if you like, just so long as you don’t talk when I’m working. How’s that?”
So my joyous spring blossomed into a wonderful summer. After a while, I even dared to ride Peg bareback sometimes on the way back to the stable yard; and I never forgot what Liza told me. I looked about me. I listened. And the more I listened and the more I looked, the more I felt at home in this new world. I became a creature of the place. I belonged there as much as the wren that sang at me high on the vegetable garden wall, as much as the green dragonfly hovering over the pool by the water buffalo. I sketched Peg. I sketched Big Boy (I couldn’t sketch Chip – he just came out round). I bent my wire frames into shape and I began to build my first horse sculpture, layer on layer of strips of cloth dunked in plaster just like Liza did. I moulded them into shape on the frame, and when they dried I chipped away and sanded. But I was never happy with what I’d done.
All this time, Liza worked on beside me in the studio, and harder, faster, more intensely than ever. I helped her whenever she asked me too, mixing, holding the bucket for her, just as I had done before.
It was a Rising Christ, she said, Christ rising from the dead, his face strong, yet gentle too, immortal it seemed; but his body, vulnerable and mortal. From time to time she’d come over and look at my stum
py effort that looked as much like a dog as a horse to me, and she would walk round it nodding her approval. “Coming on, coming on,” she’d say. “Maybe just a little bit off here perhaps.” And she’d chisel away for a minute or two, and a neck or leg would come to sudden life.
I told her once, “It’s like magic.”
She thought for a moment, and said, “That’s exactly what it is, Bonnie. It’s a God-given thing, a God-given magic, and it’s not to be wasted. Don’t waste it, Bonnie. Don’t ever waste it.”
The horse and rider came back from the foundry, bronze now and magnificent. I marvelled at it. It stood outside her studio, and when it caught the red of the evening sun, I could scarcely take my eyes off it. But these days Liza seemed to tire more easily, and she would sit longer over her tea, gazing out at her horse and rider.
“I am so pleased with that, Bonnie,” she said, “so pleased we did it together.”
The Christ figure was finished and went off to the foundry a few weeks before I had to go on my summer holiday. “By the time you come back again,” said Liza, “it should be back. It’s going to hang above the door of the village church. Isn’t that nice? It’ll be there for ever. Well, not for ever. Nothing is for ever.”
The holiday was in Cornwall. We stayed where we always did, in Cadgwith, and I drew every day. I drew boats and gulls and lobster pots. I made sculptures with wet sand – sleeping giants, turtles, whales – and everyone thought I was mad not to go swimming and boating. The sun shone for fourteen days. I never had such a perfect holiday, even though I didn’t have my bike, or Peg or Liza with me.
My first day back, the day before school began, I cycled out to Liza’s place with my best boat drawing in a stiff envelope under my sweater. The stable yard was deserted. There were no horses in the fields. Peg wasn’t in her stable and I could find no one up at the house, no Liza, no yappy dog. I stopped in the village to ask but there was no one about. It was like a ghost village. Then the church bell began to ring. I leant my bike up against the churchyard wall and ran up the path. There was Liza’s Rising Christ glowing in the sun above the doorway, and inside they were singing hymns.