A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams (23 page)

When we arrived back at five past twelve, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. The front door had been left ajar, and that was it. Gina and I had left a bouquet of flowers and a card wishing the new owners of our old house success and happiness there. What a contrast to the reception we were getting. Still, they do say, ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk!’

That wasn’t the only time that day that expression rang true. We spent the rest of the day familiarizing ourselves with the house and its grounds and unpacking, and were just enjoying a well-deserved cup of tea in the kitchen when I heard the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel drive. I looked out of the window and saw a man of the cloth getting out of the car. ‘Gina, quick, go and fetch Katie and Faye. It looks like the vicar is here to welcome us,’ I said.

We picked up the girls and opened the front door, cheerful smiles on our faces. ‘Hello, vicar,’ we chorused.

‘Are Mr and Mrs Wood still here?’ he enquired. His tone was almost stern.

‘No, I’m sorry, you’ve missed them,’ I replied. ‘They’ve already left.’

‘Oh dear. I called to say goodbye.’ He was obviously disappointed.

Gina and I stood there, still smiling, waiting for him to say hello and to welcome us to his parish, but he turned his back on us, walked away and drove off without so much as another word. We were speechless, standing in our doorway in total disbelief. He hadn’t even said hello!

And that wasn’t the end of it. There was to be a third strange occurrence. That Sunday morning was too good a day for staying indoors, so after breakfast I suggested we take the girls and dogs for a long walk. Gina suggested that we go through the woods, which were just past our boundary fence. We wrapped ourselves up well with hats, gloves and scarves to protect us from the cold, and set off. We felt like explorers, while the dogs looked more like wolves sloping through the undergrowth, picking up the different scents of the wild foxes and rabbits that lived there.

We must have covered six miles or more by the time we got back to the house and were all ready for a hot drink. Just as I was about to take my first sip, the phone rang. I picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ I said. A well-spoken lady asked if I was the new owner of Abbots Walk. ‘Why, yes I am. How can I help?’ I answered.

‘My name is Nancy Wright, and I own the farm just next to you. We’re all members of Neighbourhood Watch here in Whitegate,’ she explained. ‘And if anything untoward or suspicious happens we immediately ring around to inform our neighbours. I just wanted to tell you that there are lots of gypsies in the area, and in fact I saw some on my land this morning.’ She went on to describe the people she had seen in great detail. She told me where she lived and where she had seen them. Looking out of the kitchen window, I could just make out the farm where she lived.

‘Oh yes, I can see your place now,’ I told her. ‘I’ll make sure to keep my eyes open.’

I put down the phone and turned to Gina and told her what the woman had said.

I took it all very seriously and immediately went upstairs to look through the bedroom windows, which gave me a bird’s-eye view of the whole area, to see if I could see anything suspicious. Disappointingly, there was nothing. As I headed back downstairs, I thought back to the description Mrs Wright had given me of the travellers she had seen. She had mentioned a gang with children and wild dogs. Stepping over Carla and Ranger, who were lying sprawled full length on the kitchen floor, it dawned on me. ‘That cheeky cow was describing us!’ I called out to Gina. ‘We’re the bloody gypsies she was talking about!’

‘Give over, Jeff,’ Gina replied. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I’m not. Look at the evidence.’ I was taking this very personally. ‘She said she saw a man and a woman with children and dogs on her land this morning. That was us – we were walking close by there today. What’s more, we were dressed more like townies than people who live in the country – I was wearing a black leather coat and a black wool hat!’ Gina started to laugh. ‘I don’t know what you’re laughing at,’ I told her. ‘Your choice of clothing wasn’t much better!’

Within a few seconds, we were all laughing at the silliness of it all, including the girls, who loved the idea of being gypsies. A few days later, however, we did go out and buy ourselves Barbour jackets and green wellingtons. We didn’t want to be mistaken for gypsies again!

It took many years for our neighbours to accept us city slickers, and in the beginning it was very hard. It was like being stranded in the middle of the back of nowhere. If Katie and Faye had not settled so well into their new school, Gina and I would have most probably returned to somewhere nearer Liverpool. But we persevered, and eventually we felt at home there. We bought Katie and Faye ponies for their birthdays, and I ended up with a mad Arab horse called Diego who spent most of his time throwing me to the ground. On the odd occasion when I did manage to stay on, we would all go out riding together as a family. I even began to feel like a real lord of the manor.

Now that we were comfortably off, I kept my promise to my dear mum and made sure that Dad and June did not want for anything. I could never bring myself to call him Dad, though, always referring to him as ‘the Boss’. I came to love my father over the years, and we became good friends. And even though he never said it, I knew that he loved me and was very proud of all that I had achieved.

21. Sport of Kings

In May 1987, on a glorious Saturday afternoon, I was driving along the A49 on my way home, only a mile away from our house, when I noticed a sign at the side of the road saying, ‘Polo: 3 p.m. today’. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was ten past three, so I pulled off the road into a large field, where there were lots of horseboxes lined up, and dozens of horses tethered alongside them. Ahead of me there were cars parked in a long line, with people standing around watching the game, so I did the same, and quickly became absorbed in the game. I had never seen anything like this before. I hadn’t even heard of polo. It’s not exactly the sort of thing a boy growing up in Liverpool would have heard about. The horses thundered past, their hooves pounding the turf and sending vibrations through the ground. I was fascinated. There and then, I just knew I wanted to play this game. But how did you learn? Who should I ask?

A short while later, a bell sounded and the players rode off the field, heading towards their wagons to change their horses. I was close enough to see that the horse’s flanks were heaving as they struggled for breath, their sides lathered in sweat – and the riders looked just as hot. Within minutes, most of the players had returned to the field, except for one rider, who remained seated on his fresh horse at the edge of the field. Thinking that this might be a good opportunity, I approached him. Screening my eyes from the sun with my hand, I said, ‘Excuse me,’ in my best English, trying to hide my Liverpool accent. ‘How do you learn to play polo?’ I stood there, smiling and waiting for him to reply.

‘F*** off’ was the response, the tone loud and clipped. ‘Can’t you see I’m bloody playing? Just f*** off.’

I stood there, gob-smacked to hear someone swear at me in the posh accent of a High Court judge when I was asking a simple, polite question! Then the man kicked his horse hard in the ribs and galloped back on to the field.

Despite the man’s rudeness, however, I was still determined to learn how to play. Polo appealed to me on several levels. It was played on horses, and I was just starting to learn to ride; it was a team game, which I always loved; and it was played with a ball. What appealed most, however, was the adrenalin rush: such was the air of excitement and danger, you could almost smell it on the horses and riders as they charged past in full play.

The man who’d been commentating on the microphone looked more approachable, so I decided to go and have a word with him. ‘Dingo,’ he advised. ‘He gives lessons. That’s his box over there.’ Thanking him, I went off in the direction of his horsebox. Getting closer, I could see a man kneeling down and washing his pony’s legs. Once again in my best, most polite, English, I asked if he was Dingo, and said that I would like to learn to play.

‘For God’s sake, f*** off!’ he said. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’

I just turned and left, walking back to my car. I was astounded. I had only spoken to three people, all very posh, and two of them had told me to eff off. In the world I grew up in, that was fighting talk.

I told Gina all about the game and how great I thought it was, and she was keen to see for herself, so the next day, we packed up a picnic and I took her and the girls to watch. After a while, she seemed to be as engrossed in it as I was. While we were sitting watching, Katie and Faye had found some other children to play with, and they were running around having a good time.

A little while later, Katie came over to us, bringing one of her little friends with her. ‘Daddy, Daddy, this is Sarah. She’s in my class at school! She’s my friend. Her daddy plays polo, and he’s over there!’ She had no idea what she’d done: I now had an opening! Gina and I went over to introduce ourselves and started chatting about schools and children, but I soon turned the conversation to polo.

They were nice people, and Geoff, Sarah’s father, had only just started playing himself. After a while he stood up and announced that he was going on to play. Gina and I remained with his wife, watching the game and chatting. At the finish, they invited us into the club house for a drink and introduced us to a couple of other members. It was a brilliant end to a great afternoon.

The following weekend, we went back, and this time I got talking to a man called Steven Leung, who had been a member of the club for the past two seasons. He gave me an insight into the people that played there, laying on his accent thick to demonstrate his point: ‘Me Chinee man. They no like me velly much. You long-haired Liverpool man. They no like you either.’ And so was born a long-lasting friendship.

Gina and I were determined to learn how to play. We joined the club and bought two ponies from fellow members. They were ‘schoolmasters’ – experienced horses that know the rules better than the rider does. We paid £3,000 for each one. But within a week, both ponies had gone lame. And they hated getting into the horsebox I’d bought too. I’d paid £2,500 for it, and it too turned out to be ‘lame’; it was always breaking down. In hindsight, we were a bit naive. We had been led like lambs to the slaughter!

Polo is a complex and dangerous game, with rules that are hard enough to understand without having to master all the skills of horsemanship required. By the end of the season, I was frustrated. We were always put in the last two chukkas with the junior boys and girls aged between twelve and sixteen. Having forked out well over £10,000 and gone through a lot of hassle, I was no closer to knowing how to play.

One day, I overheard the experienced players talking in the clubhouse about Argentina, and how it was the best place to learn and to buy young ponies cheaply. I remembered that I’d met an Argentinian, known as Manuel, at the club, when he’d been on a promotional visit to the UK. He’d given me his business card with details of the polo school he ran there, but I hadn’t thought much of it at the time and had filed it away. A few days later, I talked to Steven Leung about going over to Argentina, and he thought it was a great idea, and asked if he could join me. It was agreed there and then that the two of us would go together.

I would like to point out that when I booked the flights, I knew nothing about Argentina. I had no idea where it was, let alone that we had recently been at war with the country over a remote group of islands. I was always so busy working I never had a chance to watch the news, and of course I had never read a newspaper in my life. It turned out, it was the other side of the world – or else we’d chosen the longest possible route. We changed planes four times and spent several hours sitting in airport lounges waiting for connecting flights. It took us over thirty-six hours to get there.

We arrived in Buenos Aires at 10 p.m. local time. It was dark outside, and there was nobody there to meet us. The airport emptied, and still no one turned up. After an hour or so, Steve and I agreed to call Manuel. It was a very bad line, with much crackling and interference, making his English even harder to understand, but eventually I managed to catch the words ‘José’, ‘outside’ and ‘waiting’. I left the airport building and began to look for a man called José. There were several taxi drivers lounging around smoking, one or two guys sitting in cars, and others just hanging about. What was I supposed to do – walk up and down, asking for a José who knew Manuel? For all I knew, José was the most popular man’s name in Argentina and they could all be called bleeding José.

For some unknown reason, my attention was caught by an old, dirty grey truck parked some way away. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I muttered. ‘What’s the betting that’s bloody José?’ Tired, frustrated and annoyed, I ran over to it. There was a man sitting behind the wheel, his chin resting on his chest and a straw cowboy hat pulled down over his face. He was snoring loudly, and to someone as tired as me, this was like a red rag to a bull. I rapped loudly on the car window, shouting at him to wake up. Waking with a start, he leapt out of the car, bumping his head on the car roof and landing at my feet. ‘José?’ I demanded loudly.

Nodding his head frantically, he replied, ‘
Si, seňor. Si, seňor
.’

‘Manuel Llinas?’ I asked.

‘
Si, seňor. Si, seňor
.’

This was hardly informative. No matter what I said, he would just say, ‘
Si, seňor. Si, seňor
.’ At this stage, I was so fed up I just pointed to a blurred mass of human beings and suitcases in the distance. It was Steven’s problem now.

Without waiting for me, José had jumped in the truck and reversed at high speed back to the airport terminal. I was chuckling to myself at the thought of Steven and José communicating with each other – one in heavily accented English and the other with a vocabulary limited to ‘
Si, seňor
’! They must have managed somehow, however, because when I joined them we were all set to leave.