Ursula Young went off about her business, and although I caught sight of both her and Calder during the afternoon, I didn’t see them again to speak to. I went back to London on the train, spent two hours of Sunday morning on the telephone, and early Sunday afternoon drove off to Hertfordshire in search of Oliver Knowles.
He lived in a square hundred-year-old stark red brick house which to my taste would have been friendlier if softened by trailing creeper. Blurred outlines, however, were not in Oliver Knowles’ souclass="underline" a crisp bare tidiness was apparent in every corner of his spread.
His land was divided into a good number of paddocks of various sizes, each bordered by an immaculate fence of white rails; and the upkeep of those, I judged, as I pulled up on the weedless gravel before the front door, must alone cost a fortune. There was a scattering of mares and foals in the distance in the paddocks, mostly heads down to the grass, sniffing out the last tender shoots of the dying year. The day itself was cold with a muted sun dipping already towards distant hills, the sky quiet with the greyness of coming winter, the damp air smelling of mustiness, wood smoke and dead leaves.
There were no dead leaves as such to be seen. No flower beds, no ornamental hedges, no nearby trees. A barren mind, I thought, behind a business whose aim was fertility and the creation of life.
Oliver Knowles himself opened his front door to my knock, proving to be a pleasant lean man with an efficient, cultured manner of authority and politeness. Accustomed to command, I diagnosed. Feels easy with it; second nature. Positive, straightforward, self-controlled. Charming also, in an understated way.
‘Mr Ekaterin?’ he shook hands, smiling. ‘I must confess I expected someone... older.’
There were several answers to that, such as ‘time will take care of it’ and ‘I’ll be older tomorrow’, but nothing seemed appropriate. Instead I said ‘I report back’ to reassure him, which it did, and he invited me into his house.
Predictably the interior was also painfully tidy, such papers and magazines as were to be seen being squared up with the surface they rested on. The furniture was antique, well polished, brass handles shining, and the carpets venerably from Persia. He led me into a sitting room which was also office, the walls thickly covered with framed photographs of horses, mares and foals, and the window giving on to a view of, across a further expanse of gravel, an archway leading into an extensive stable yard.
‘Boxes for mares,’ he said, following my eyes. ‘Beyond them, the foaling boxes. Beyond those, the breeding pen, with the stallion boxes on the far side of that again. My stud groom’s bungalow and the lads’ hostel, those roofs you can see in the hollow, they’re just beyond the stallions.’ He paused. ‘Would you care perhaps to look round?’
‘Very much,’ I said.
‘Come along, then.’ He led the way to a door at the back of the house, collecting an overcoat and a black retriever from a mud room on the way. ‘Go on then, Squibs, old fellow,’ he said, fondly watching his dog squeeze ecstatically through the opening outside door. ‘Breath of fresh air won’t hurt you.’
We walked across to the stable arch with Squibs circling and zig-zagging nose-down to the gravel.
‘It’s our quietest time of year, of course,’ Oliver Knowles said. ‘We have our own mares here, of course, and quite a few at livery.’ He looked at my face to see if I understood and decided to explain anyway. ‘They belong to people who own broodmares but have nowhere of their own to keep them. They pay us to board them.’
I nodded.
‘Then we have the foals born to the mares this past spring and of course the three stallions. Total of seventy-eight at the moment.’
‘And next spring,’ I said, ‘the mares coming to your stallions will arrive?’
‘That’s right.’ He nodded. ‘They come here a month or five weeks before they’re due to give birth to the foals they are already carrying, so as to be near the stallion within the month following. They have to foal here, because the foals would be too delicate straight after birth to travel.’
‘And... how long do they stay here?’
‘About three months altogether, by which time we hope the mare is safely in foal again.’
‘There isn’t much pause then,’ I said. ‘Between... er... pregnancies?’
He glanced at me with civil amusement. ‘Mares come into use nine days after foaling, but normally we would think this a bit too soon for breeding. The oestrus — heat you would call it — lasts six days, then there’s an interval of fifteen days, then the mare comes into use again for six days, and this time we breed her. Mind you,’ he added, ‘Nature being what it is, this cycle doesn’t work to the minute. In some mares the oestrus will last only two days, in some as much as eleven. We try to have the mare covered two or three times while she’s in heat, for the best chance of getting her in foal. A great deal depends on the stud groom’s judgement, and I’ve a great chap just now, he has a great feel for mares, a sixth sense, you might say.’
He led me briskly across the first big oblong yard where long dark equine heads peered inquisitively from over half-open stable doors, and through a passage on the far side which led to a second yard of almost the same size but whose doors were fully shut.
‘None of these boxes is occupied at the moment,’ he said, waving a hand around. ‘We have to have the capacity, though, for when the mares come.’
Beyond the second yard lay a third, a good deal smaller and again with closed doors.
‘Foaling boxes,’ Oliver Knowles explained. ‘All empty now, of course.’
The black dog trotted ahead of us, knowing the way. Beyond the foaling boxes lay a wide path between two small paddocks of about half an acre each, and at the end of the path, to the left, rose a fair sized barn with a row of windows just below its roof.
‘Breeding shed,’ Oliver Knowles said economically, producing a heavy key ring from his trouser pocket and unlocking a door set into a large roll-aside entrance. He gestured to me to go in, and I found myself in a bare concrete-floored expanse surrounded by white walls topped with the high windows, through which the dying sun wanly shone.
‘During the season of course the floor in here is covered with peat,’ he said.
I nodded vaguely and thought of life being generated purposefully in that quiet place, and we returned prosaically to the outer world with Oliver Knowles locking the door again behind us.
Along another short path between two more small paddocks we came to another small stable yard, this time of only six boxes, with feed room, tack room, hay and peat storage alongside.
‘Stallions,’ Oliver Knowles said.
Three heads almost immediately appeared over the half-doors, three sets of dark liquid eyes turning inquisitively our way.
‘Rotaboy,’ my host said, walking to the first head and producing a carrot unexpectedly. The black mobile lips whiffled over the outstretched palm and sucked the goodie in: strong teeth crunched a few times and Rotaboy nudged Oliver Knowles for a second helping. Oliver Knowles produced another carrot, held it out as before, and briefly patted the horse’s neck.
‘He’ll be twenty next year,’ he said. ‘Getting old, eh, old fella?’
He walked along to the next box and repeated the carrot routine. ‘This one is Diarist, rising sixteen.’
By the third box he said, ‘This is Parakeet,’ and delivered the treats and the pat. ‘Parakeet turns twelve on January 1st.’