Always in the Ribbons
Eve Marx
photo by Amy Drucker
Anyone who knows me, knows I’m horse-mad. So instinctively do I understand them, I have often thought I am one. I was in love with horses even before Charlie, my mother’s boyfriend, signed me up for English riding lessons when I was seven. He was also horse mad but, having been born a cripple with one leg two inches shorter than the other, he had never been on one. Indulging me was like indulging himself and he would bring me along to the long-defunct Atlantic City race course where he’d tip the grooms to let me feed carrots to the horses. He also taught me about bloodlines and conformation along with the differences between an Exacta, a Trifecta, and a straight wager.
I understood that English riding was not just a passion but a discipline, so I put my heart and soul into it. I might have loved the clothes as much as the horses. Charlie took me all the way from South Jersey to E. 24th in New York, home of the Miller Harness Company, the haute couture emporium of horse attire. He shelled out a load of money for everyday schooling gear—jodphurs, half chaps and paddock boots, as well as a show jacket, breeches and tall boots as an incentive to ride well.
I took my lessons on a cheeky Welsh cob who one day bit a diamond ring clean off my mother’s finger, mistaking the stone for a sugar cube. I was desolate when she and Charlie broke up a few years later as it meant the end of my near-daily connection with horses.
Fast forward a few decades later. I am in my usual hangout, a coffee shop in a town close to Bedford, New York, a historic town that is home to billionaires like Ralph Lauren and George Soros. In walks Horse Guy, so-named by the regulars for his unusual attire of dirt-stained breeches and manure-clotted riding boots. He had a load of hair and there was always hay stuck in it. A lazy eye made him always look half asleep. His air of menace was augmented by the mean-looking black bitch dog glued to his side.
It was that reek of horse that drew me. We began talking. He told me he was a rider who wanted to write; I told him I was a writer who wanted to ride. We agreed to a trade-- I gave him writing lessons; he gave me a horse to ride. Pretty soon, I was taking Teddy, an Appaloosa pony who belonged to a rich girl who seldom rode , out for long rides on the trails maintained by the Bedford Riding Lanes Association (BRLA). I rode Teddy twice a week for an hour. The idea was to tire him out so he wouldn’t kill the girl when she did finally ride.
The Horse Guy’s barn, a rickety, no wash stall affair tucked behind a great estate turned out to be my favorite spot for writing. In no time at all I commandeered the tack room as my office and began taking care of the barn and caring for the horses. Their names were Valentine, Zumac, and the aforementioned Teddy. They were a Dutch Warmblood, a Paso Fino, and an Appaloosa pony. I spent hours every day writing, then mucking stalls. I threw down bedding, filled water buckets and fed them. My favorite part was bringing them in. You’re supposed to do it one at a time with a lead rope, but the Horse Guy had trained Valentine to lead. I opened the gate and he paraded them single file into the barn from their paddock. They all went into their stalls quietly and with no fighting. After they’d eaten their grain and were picking at their hay, I’d pick their feet.
The barn was across the road from Martha Stewart’s spread. One day, I was riding Teddy on the trails when a woman began shouting at me angrily. “Are you a member of the B.R.L.A.?” she demanded. “If not, you’re not supposed to be on these lanes! And I will report you! Isn’t that horse from (the Horse Guy’s) place?” I later heard that she was Richard Gere’s agent.
Not long after that I had a row with Horse Guy. Everyone in town thought we were having an affair, which amused me but angered him. Basically, I threatened to hit him with a shovel after I caught him beating a new horse. I started taking lessons at a tiny, fancy place just down the road where the trainer, an irascible older woman named Pam, put me on a giant 17 hand gelding Percheron cross. I was told to trot around a massive mirrored arena.
“Tits out!” she shouted as I posted around and around.
Pam drew the line at letting me canter. After six months, I was sick of dressage and trotting. I was longing to ride outside but Pam wanted to stick to the ring. Someone told me about a teenaged British kid called Alex at another farm who was giving lessons. A bold and talented young chap, Alex had me cantering at my first lesson, putting me on Hallie, a beautiful little thoroughbred mare. Hallie and I got along well and I soon learned she would jump anything. She was moody, as most mares are, and I took a certain pleasure hearing stories about her tossing off other middle-aged women riders. She never tossed me off.
It was Alex who convinced me to join the B.R.L.A. The enticement was the events, especially the hunter paces. A hunter pace is a competition, a timed event, where riders in teams of two, three, or four walk, trot, canter, jump, and cross water across miles of hill and dale. The event is meant to mimic a third-flight fox hunt minus the fox. It’s fast, it’s dangerous, there’s a chance you might die. I couldn’t get enough of it and entered every contest. But to ride in them, you had to have human partners.
That’s where the trouble began.
To say I was “not their kind” at the B.R.L.A doesn’t really begin to cover it. For starters, I didn’t have money and horses are expensive. After a couple of years of leasing horses (acceptable only for child riders bound to outgrow their mounts), I bought a pony from a dealer in Connecticut whose name raised eyebrows. He turned out to be a wonderful pony, but as far as my new friends were concerned, he came from shady stock. This snobby attitude extended not only to proven bloodlines but to where you purchased tack, what brand of breeches you wore, the label on your boots. People name-dropped their vet, who their farrier was, and where they wintered their horse in Wellington. Two lunch friends of mine got into spending contests. Before every pace they’d hit the tack shops and drop thousands to outfit their horses and themselves in new gear. They’d buy new bridles, new saddle pads, sometimes even a new saddle. A Pessoa saddle will set you back an easy $3200. An Hermes Cavale II jumping saddle costs $8200. These girls were spending money, honey.
Just paying monthly board was killing me.
I just could not keep up.
Although I made a few riding friends who were not tall, thin, or super rich, what saved me in the horse world were the Brits. Bedford was full of British at the time; there were a lot of British bankers working in the big firms in New York City and making their home in the woodsy northern suburbs. The wives tended to be riders and joined the B.R.L.A. To this day, I think of them all very fondly. They were bawdy. They discussed body parts. They also loved to drink and taught me to ride with a flask. They rightly said the only way to get up the nerve to jump fences and stonewalls was to get pissed just beforehand. Unlike the prissy anemic members of much of the B.R.L.A. set, the British women were a bit wild. They also gave me a new vocabulary. They taught me to say Piss off; bloody; and Patchy Twat. I often felt, “These are my people” even though that was impossible.
At some point Alex, who graduated from teen to young adult, used his suave newly honed social climbing skills to ditch me after he realized I was poor and would never buy a second horse. He handed me off to his mum, a lovely woman from the Midlands who turned me on to the great pleasures of apricot-studded Stilton. She became my favorite riding partner and we hunter paced as a team. We were always in the ribbons. That’s everything in the world of hunter paces. Being in the ribbons.
Ultimately, the B.R.L.A. became my whole world, all of which fell apart when my husband accepted a job across the country. I had to leave my horse behind. It tore a hole in me like no other. I made sure he was well taken care of and he was treated like a prince to the end, but leaving him was the worst thing that has ever happened to me, much worse than my husband cheating or us running out of money. Because run out of money we did in part because I had to have a horse and run with the B.R.L.A. set, an organization that, in truth, didn’t want me. See, I’d written a novel that took place on their turf and it riled a few people.
A great horse will change your life. I know this, because my pony changed mine. The truly special ones will define you. Three years ago my pony, aged 35, passed on to the great pasture in the sky. I haven’t ridden in five years. Honestly, I never want to fall in love with another horse. Still, I approach every day as if I have to ride one, which requires balance, agility, courage, and an ability to stay on. You will fall, that’s inevitable, but life demands you get back on.
Eve Marx
Eve writes police logs and is the author of some books. She currently lives in Oregon.
