Dad and Me on Horses

This is a photograph of me and my dad. I wish it wasn’t so blurry, but it is immediately recognisably me and him. Funny to think of dad in a yellow jumper. I remember this moment so well. My father was a good horseman. He had learnt to ride at Dartington Hall, the progressive boarding school he attended for a few years after arriving in England as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Lessons were optional and he chose to spend most of his time at the stables. On this summery day, we were riding the cart ponies bareback. I was eight years old and had recently returned from living in Morocco with my mother and younger sister Esther. While mum was trying to find us somewhere to live near the school she wanted us to go to in East Sussex, I had been sent to stay with my dad’s friend Penny Cuthbertson who was travelling around Gloucestershire with some other aristocratic hippies in horse drawn gypsy caravans. This was one of the happiest times in my childhood. Penny was firm in manner, loving, and matter of fact. And utterly reliable. I had a routine and a regular bedtime. There was a sort of mini larder attached to the back of the caravan which contained Jaffa Cakes and Heinz Sandwich Spread – two of my favourite things to eat in the world. We never had that kind of thing. At one point Penny allowed me to keep a pet goat which I christened Angela. On the day of this photograph, my father had driven down from London for a fleeting visit in his dark blue Bentley. While he was chatting to Penny I decided to go for a drive in his car, parked by the side of the road. It all looked so easy. I slipped into the driver’s seat and took off the handbrake – and it started to roll towards the ditch. Suddenly dad was leaping in beside me, pushing me out of the way with his body, stopping the car with an upward wrench of the handbrake as it lurched downwards. He didn’t chastise me. He only said unsmilingly, ‘You must be careful.’