Mothering Sunday: A Romance

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Once upon a time, before the boys were killed and when there were more horses than cars, before the male servants disappeared and they made do, at Upleigh and at Beechwood, with just a cook and a maid, the Sheringhams had owned not just four horses in their own stable, but what might be called a ‘real horse’, a racehorse, a thoroughbred. Its name was Fandango. It was stabled near Newbury. It had never won a damn thing. But it was the family’s indulgence, their hope for fame and glory on the racecourses of southern England. The deal was that Ma and Pa — otherwise known in his strange language as ‘the shower’—owned the head and body and he and Dick and Freddy had a leg each.

‘What about the fourth leg?’

‘Oh the fourth leg. That was always the question.’

For most of the time it was just a name, never seen, though an expensively quartered and trained name. It had been sold in 1915—when he’d been fifteen too. ‘Before you showed up, Jay.’ But once, long ago, early one June morning, they’d all gone, for the strange, mad expedition of it, just to watch it, just to watch Fandango, their horse, being galloped over the downs. Just to stand at the rail and watch it, with other horses, thundering towards them, then flashing past. He and Ma and Pa and Dick and Freddy. And — who knows? — some other ghostly interested party who really owned the fourth leg.

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