Grasping the Moon by Irena Szirtes

    We heard little of child abduction in1957, but I recall June and Brenda Gill disappeared while skipping in a London street, because my parents’ horror – and disbelief -  struck me hard. I was seven years old, and rural Yorkshire seemed a universe away from London. Even when I turned thirteen in Spring ’63, the moors murders were yet to shock and shake us. In my world, significant crime was rare. Everyone knew the village bobby drank with his pals at The Railway Inn well after closing time: the landlord simply locked the door. In my world, young men appeared before magistrates for something as trivial as spouting rude words at policemen. Molly, who, along with her husband Thomas, owned the Welsh pony stud I visited at weekends, was a magistrate herself, and told me how she struggled to keep a suitably grave face when offending words were passed round the bench on pieces of paper.

    I had a dedicated bodyguard, should danger dare lurk in our dale. Jess, a red terrier who kept rats from our pigeon lofts, could read ill-intent at forty paces and kept herself well primed for throat-ripping. Once turned eleven, I had permission to roam freely in her company, even attend trotting and whippet races, though Mum drew the line at Appleby Fair. It was simple: any pervert who somehow got near enough to lay a finger on me, would most definitely suffer more violence than I.

Jess’ companion Josie, a cross-spaniel more inclined to mother rats than kill them, had helped mum and dad raise three orphan kittens. She often washed the sides of Jess’ face as though Jess were her own pup, and preferred a quiet life by the fire.

   My contemporaries were falling in love with Beatles and embracing flower power, but I had a different dream. I loved working on the stud with Thomas and Molly, but longed for a pony of my own.

 “Maybe YOUR children will have ponies,” Mum once said, who knew keeping ponies in shoes and paid livery was out the question.

“Maybe YOU don’t know how much I want one!” I retorted. I knew that would sting, because Mum lived with humiliation: her  grandfather’s loss of a barn complex, and six acres of land the family had owned for generations.

   Thomas and Molly, however, had ponies and land galore, and understood my desire perfectly. Both in their seventies, they seemed younger than any of my middle-aged great aunts and uncles. They laughed a lot. Thomas was a born story teller, and imbued random events with such hilarity, we often laughed ourselves to tears. My favourite was the convoluted tale of how he chanced upon a local farmer, who’d immediately exclaimed, 

“Good God, man, it’s you! I thought you were dead!”

  I loved Thomas and Molly. They assumed no airs and graces, despite being landed gentry; they would ask my opinions as though I were grown up, and genuinely enjoyed the company of young people. They had no children of their own. Once they assumed family would come, but it never did.

“They’d have been funny little devils!” Thomas would quip, if the subject of children ever arose.

   Best of all, Thomas and Molly encouraged all things horse. They  encouraged the very dream that unsettled my parents: that the barn and land, lost in a card game by my great grandfather, should be bought back, that I should have a pony of my own. It seems the winner's  family had resettled in Yorkshire only one generation earlier.  Stanley Carr kept his gambling among friends, and made good use of the land. Stanley’s son William inherited, but addiction to gambling and alcohol meant the stock was neglected and the land badly managed. Eventually William, resented by locals as a good-for-nothing “off-comer” who’d usurped and abused good land, abandoned Yorkshire for a factory job in the Midlands. It had been my grandfather’s wish to buy back the land, especially as it languished overgrown. Mum inherited his land fund, and felt duty-bound to add to it whenever she could, though she found  land ownership a rather daunting idea. Meanwhile Thomas, who knew the story as well as anyone, took it upon himself to use his connections to trace the current owner, Roger, who’d been Mum’s classmate before the Carrs moved away. Thomas suggested Roger sell back the land and barn, and told me he would help us restore it, that the price of L’eau-L’eau, my favourite Welsh riding pony, would never come between us. I fretted and dreamed, became obsessed by the idea we should buy; the thought of owning L’eau-L’eau burned me up. I ate and slept that dream until schoolwork slid downhill.  I began to add birthday and Christmas money to the fund, as well as any portion of my allowance I could spare. Mum suggested I buy premium bonds to keep track of my contributions, but perhaps her real reason was conviction the purchase wouldn’t happen any time soon. Roger stubbornly and consistently refused to sell.

   Roger had no love for our community. He remembered being shunned and bullied mercilessly, while grownups were no better: they turned a blind eye, despised his family and drove them away. Thomas tried to get Roger to see reason: the land, after all, was no benefit to him, but money surely would be. My hopes still soared, though eventually, Thomas’ calls and letters remained unanswered. My parents insisted it wasn’t the right time, but my obsession continued to grow. I would walk the grass track behind our house, just to lean on the gate and look at it all. I didn’t see ragwort and brambles; I saw a free-running stream, a barn repaired and aired, filled with fragrant hay; I saw a swept yard below, with new gates and straw bedded stalls. I saw ponies grazing all the way to the village lane beyond; I saw L’eau-leau sheltering in the shade, saw myself riding her among wildflowers.  The dream became so real, I convinced myself it would happen; that it had to.

credit Irena Szirtes

    One Friday evening I returned from school to find my parents excited, though pensive and restless. Thomas had news: Roger had died suddenly some eleven months before. He’d always been a loner, and died intestate, but solicitors traced his long-estranged sister Sandra, who inherited the buildings and land. Unlike Roger, Sandra had rejected gambling and alcoholism. She’d moved away to university, married a stockbroker, and enjoyed a sober life in suburban Surrey. Sandra saw no reason to keep the land and agreed to sell.

   I was ecstatic. At the stud on Saturday, Molly poured my very first glass of champagne, and we decorated L’eau-l’eau and her stable with ribbons. Thomas recommended his own solicitor, and offered to loan my parents any shortfall interest free, though they wouldn’t hear of it: there was enough in the fund to make a top-up loan attainable through normal channels. I waited restlessly for legalities to end, so we could set about restoration and regeneration. I was sure I’d languished long enough, that precious teen years were passing me by, while the barn stood padlocked and the pasture lay wasted. Then I fretted about how long it would be before weeds were destroyed, and the land restored for equine grazing and hay. There was a stream to clear, drystone walls to mend, a roof to repair, as well as clearing the barn and stalls of any rubbish. Thomas negotiated help from a local farmer, Billy Braithwaite, whose tractor could access the land from the grass track, as well as from the village lane beyond.

   Being the first family members to enter the barn after so many years felt significant. Thomas and Molly were there too; we stepped inside without a word. Shafts of sunlight arrowed through ventilation slots and clouds of dancing dust. Magical? Suffocating stench overwhelmed us: rats! Josie stood by wagging her tail, while Jess dispatched so many, so quickly, they soon lay twisted at our feet, eyes and yellow teeth stark in the gloom. Clearing what rats left behind took longer; we masked up, and Thomas used his land-rover to cart away the bagged detritus. There was plenty more rubbish to dispose of: rotting ladders, rusted wire, loose hay, threadbare hessian sacks.  We discovered a locked chest; Dad broke it open to find documents bundled in faded ribbon, and a family Bible wrapped in newspaper. If my premium bonds had won the jackpot, I doubt Mum would have been more delighted. She hugged each bundle to her chest, and carefully bagged them to take home. Her family reputation had been redeemed. We’d reclaimed the inheritance lost in disgrace, in that foolish game of chance.

   Against the north wall of the barn, under extensive roof leaks, were bales of mouldering hay floor to ceiling. Removing it would take time, so we’d leave it until last, right before disinfection. Meanwhile, dreams were morphing into reality before my eyes. Unmoved by sixties pop culture,  I planned flower power of my own, pastures full of it, and my very own hayfield. I was euphoric. It was ridiculous to dream of marrying Beatles, but my dream was truly coming alive. I felt powerful: perhaps my imagination was so potent, my desire so strong, I had actually dragged my dream into reality. I smoked no pot, but felt high, invincible. I didn’t heed Mum, who felt I’d become a little smug, nor did I recognise ‘smug’ was her kindest word for youthful arrogance.

   It eventually fell to Thomas, Billy and I to shift the old bales. The blackened hay seemed to represent the past with all its lack and longing, and once it was out the door, I knew my dream would begin to fully form. Jess grew more excited with every disappearing bale, willing more rats to dash out from behind them.

   It was when I caught hold of one from the last batch - carefully, in case the twine was rotten - something slipped from behind the bale to my left. Time froze. Thomas blanched grim and grey; Billy’s mouth dropped open. Ice-cold filaments streaked through our every capillary.  I didn’t fully comprehend what I saw, though Jess did: her hair bristled, her body leaned back while her head stretched forward, before she turned to walk right out. But Josie licked the little skeleton hand, softly nudging its fingers, in the hope her nurturing instinct might return flesh and life to the tiny bones.

   “Come away,” Thomas said. I dropped the bale, and we exited without a word. 

  The police were called and the barn cordoned off. My dream lay comatose. Shock bleached us cold. We gave statements. Police from afar were drafted in, and soon began investigating the life and movements of the late Roger Carr.

    Brenda and June were identified through dental records, and Brenda’s small gold ring. Shock gave way to unreasoning guilt, tears and night terrors. I am ashamed to say I also harboured resentment. I resented my beautiful dream being infiltrated by evil, festering inside it like mould spores in the hay, and resented yet more delay. Many times I stood by the cordoned barn and roared anger, horror and frustration to the heavens.

    This teenage selfishness began to fade, if reluctantly, once the barn was released to be thoroughly cleaned and sanitised. At last I was free to go ahead and use the whole complex, but, to my surprise, I could not - it seemed irreverent, inappropriate. We decided to keep the barn and stalls barred, at least for the foreseeable future, only to be opened for routine maintenance. Exception was made when June and Brenda’s family travelled to Yorkshire. Agony of not knowing was now the agony of knowing, yet they were grateful to see the girls’ first resting place, relieved proper funerals would be arranged at last.

    Because I couldn’t initially face using the barn, Billy and his son helped us build a row of wooden looseboxes. There were six: one for L’eau-l’eau, one for Zac, her mountain pony companion, and four more for storage. I had just left school and was earning money of my own, and it felt so good to help fill the store rooms. At long last, the ponies moved in, but I found enjoying them was always mixed with thinking of June and Brenda. That little bone hand had embedded itself right inside my dream.

     Thinking of the girls became talking about them with Zac and L’eau-l’eau, about everything I’d felt. During those talks I discovered  something beautiful for the very first time: the presence of horses brings healing. An idea birthed: I decided to create a day-ride to begin and end at the barn, called ‘June and Brenda’s Way.’ The ride took in three bridleways, the lanes and village pub, where horses could be tethered, as well as the riverbank and fell side. Molly suggested the route be officially named, recognised and opened, and used her know-how and influence to get that done. We fenced off the pastures to create access from the grass track to the barn. There we provided tethering rings, a water trough, and picnic tables.  The ride was officially opened in 1970, marked with a memorial plaque and map on the barn wall. It felt comforting to let the girls – and their family -  know they weren’t forgotten.

    My flawed dream helped me understand how complex life can be, how all we do and say reverberates through the world and out of our control. I see now, there was beauty enough to sustain me despite everything  - owning L’eau-L’eau was different than I’d imagined, yet surpassed my expectations, and set the course of my life.  I knew June and Brenda should have enjoyed all they longed for, too.  I would have lost my dream, had I been playing on their London Street in 1957. That’s why I promised the girls, and myself, I’d never give up  chasing dreams. There might well be setbacks, but I’m resolved to keep chasing, however old I grow. Better reach for the stars and grasp the moon, than never reach out at all. 

credit Irena Szirtes