My grandfather looked best of all on a horse. His substantial belly and comfortable hugeness somehow seemed to dissolve into the saddle, and his  thick white hair could be seen from afar by the polo players, the best in the world, whom he umpired with immaculate British fairness. He was so famous as an umpire that when he retired from British American Tobacco (BAT to the initiated) he was given a papier mache  model of himself holding a polo stick on a beautiful chestnut horse!it slowly fell apart but was his pride and joy. Fiat also paid homage to his riding skills by making a curious advertisement for cars that featured mu grandfather as a Bengal Lancer in his full regalia. The beautiful outfit later came to be used in a fancy dress by my brother.

My uncle, the Count, had been a Hungarian cavalry officer. Yet I never once saw him on a horse. He was quite diffident when on one memorable Christmas we were allowed to ride our ponies from the Hurlingham Club stables to the house, as a treat. They looked totally out of place nibbling the trimmed lawn and outside the veranda. He never even looked at the ponies.

The stables were my first claim to fame, and not one to be proud of. One day for reasons I can never explain, I got it into my head that we had to carve our initials into the stucco wall on the second floor which was a vast mice filled loft where probably hay had once been kept for it made one sneeze. So VM, DL and DH (my best friend was with us) are there to this day, but I was in huge trouble and grounded for days after that incident, as my grandfather was on the Club Committee and felt mortified about it. The stables were one of my favourite places in the world. Horse sweat and the sounds of hooves and munching, the irresistible mix of smoke form the little fire Tito, the groom, warmed his kettle on for mate, tobacco and a faint whiff of wine, somehow mingled to comprise my definition of bliss. I have never lost it! I sink into a sensation of comfort and familiarity whenever a hint of one of these aromas hits me. 

Horses. The treasured aroma of my childhood. How was I to imagine that one day a startled mare called Paloma was to be the agent of death, snatching my first daughter from me? I loved horses with a passion only children understand. Girly ecstasy was to lick the rock salt in my pony’s box, then hold it for him to lick, or mixing the bran in winter and smelling that cosy aroma as I tipped it steaming into his nosebag, or simply inhaling the heady sea smell of horse sweat as I flung my arms around his neck in farewell after a long ride. I spent hours plaiting string into a fringe to keep the flies out of his eyes. I trained him to rear up at a sound from me along with a special tug on the reins. I brushed him with more devotion than I ever brushed my own hair. And yet at the age of 8 I committed my first sin, against him.

I had been taken to inscrutable classes in which I was told that it was a heinous sin to bite the white sliver of bread called a host, that I was to swallow reverently when I made my First Communion in a month’s time. I had to recite all sorts of rules and queer sentences called the Catechism. It meant nothing to me at all but I did what I was asked to please my Daddy. A bridal long white dress was commissioned, and I was gifted many little holy pictures, and one of the possessions I treasured most all through my childhood and teenage years: my Daddy gave me a crucifix. It was just the right size to clutch it in one hand as I fell asleep. I cannot recall how it was lost to me, just as he was. They both faded out of my life by the time I was twenty two, leaving in both cases a quietly melancholy absence.

The Polish priest was concealed by a metal mesh. The confessional smelled of beeswax polish and mellow wood. It was warm and safe in there. Until the Father asked her in a heavy accent “Yes my dear child what are your sins that you wish to confess for the first time?”. Trembling despite herself, for she had rehearsed this many times,  she replied that she had not sinned. “But you must have done something bad”. She racked her brains, and suddenly remembered the one sin, the first sin, against her pony. When she was approaching a small jump which seemed enormous to Perico and to the rider, she held her breath and gave a gentle squeeze with her knees and an encouraging kick, as usual, but as he approached the jump he simply took fright and dug his heels in, refusing to jump. She flew over the jump without him and landed unhurt in a humiliated heap on the other side. That was when her temper got the better of her, as she rushed round the jump and with her willow switch whacked his face and shouted at him you naughty boy you naughty boy why did you do that? Her father later wrote to her mother (who was in London far away) that “the child has quite a temper on her”.

Her last confession was at the age of eighteen when she had spent Good Friday in passionate embraces with a very good looking older man of little brain, a big heart and expert hands, and her conscience suddenly got the better of her. But she was unable to keep the resolution and decided it was useless to confess anything when you never knew what life would bring. It gave her the first insight into how little her devout Convent years had been able to give her in terms of tools for transformation as she liked to call the Path of Spirituality, and it was only India, one cool night on the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi that was to open that window, a decade later.

She will have pianos wherever she goes

The pain was a crimson wave, hot and sudden, as the chair the child was swinging on tilted and fell backwards onto the metal radiator, cutting her head. Today was piano class -in-Town day, and grandmother Fafa had already put her gloves on as she did whenever she made a trip into Town, for a lady avoids handling money and getting her hands soiled. The nurse screamed in her Scottish-Argentine tones,  “oj the child is hurrrt, get some ice Maria”, and the maid who spoke no English surprisingly arrived in a flash with the entire red ice bucket that was always kept full on the drinks trolley. Nonetheless, the little one bravely stood up and steadied herself, accepting the icepack on her wound, and declared she was going to piano with or without ice, but she was going. This was much in character. The, to her, gigantic gleaming dark wood grand piano that dominated the entire far corner of the drawing room , was deeply, one could say,  almost spiritually important to her, though she was of course unable to express it in any way except by fervently practising at the age of five, every day at least once. She was especially eager to have her class this day for there was a charity concert coming up in aid of the victims of the recent polio epidemic. Beethoven’s Ecossaise was a little ambitious but Madame Kussrov was confident the child could memorize it in time.

Madame K, not as exotic in ancestry as her married name suggested, was an Argentine prodigy who for reasons unknown never became a concert player but chose to devote her extraordinary facility with children talented or brutish, to musical initiation through piano. But it was not that simple. She did something no one has probably ever done. She devised a way of playing with her fingers on top of the tiny hands of 4, 5 and up to 6 or 7 year old children, until they memorized in a tactile and natural way, pieces far beyond what their maturity normally allows. She spurned notation until they reached the age of ten. I thrived under her miraculous hands.

The great day came, and there is a photo of a tiny girl with a huge satin bow and long hair in a white party dress, perched on a piano stool her feet dangling in the air, playing to a hall full of expensive people donating to the polio fund. Beethoven himself might have melted as her tiny fingers leapt along the keyboard and her heart grew wings. This outrageous joy has pursued her ever since, for she has had pianos wherever she goes….and Beethoven etched his profundity and the depth of musical experience deep into her very soul.

The grand piano was eventually sold, but her other grandmother left her a Bechstein, a collector’s item since the tone it had was so crystal clear that many found it too harsh. But for her it was clarity, like the sound of bells or tinkling glass, and Bach resounded across Mallin Ahogado, a forested corner of Patagonia where it ended up after travelling by sea in the early 20th century all the way from Berlin in the care of two rather wild Irish brothers, my great uncles. My Gran had fingers that I recognize are the master key to mine, long but slightly practical and untapering fingers. I always liked to think of them as peasant’s hands. The greatest gift of my entire life was that piano, or perhaps the lessons with Madame K were even greater. When I inherited the piano it reached me in many pieces, keys hidden somewhere inside, strings coiled all over the place and uplayable, woodworm here and there to complete the ruination. I took it to a piano maker and he gasped, but not as I thought at the horrendous condition it was in, but at the age and potential of this jewel. Nine months later it was ready. He offered to exchange it for a Steinway grand piano, and that was when I realized it was not an ordinary piano but some kind of magical piece. He had found every single part of it intact, simply out of place, and had had to replace nothing. It was sheer fairy dust as so much of my life has been! And I can still feel the scar on the back of my head.

Third time lucky

“I’ll just pop in on the baby before I leave” she thought, dabbing a spot of Channel No5 behind her ears. She opened the door of the nursery and noticed it was rather warm now, as the coal fire in the grate had been on for some time. When she bent over to kiss her baby, she felt her knees give way, and for a moment the room spun and she could not even call out to the maid who was also the Nanny. Then she grabbed her baby and ran out of the room calling loudly for help. “She’s blue, she’s blue, help me, oh God, Maria, Patricio, what am I to do?”.

In minutes the baby stirred and started crying, as air replaced the carbon monoxide that the coal fire had generated and that had almost killed her. Her mother sank onto the sofa sobbing. This was the first time of many that she would blame herself, and it was, indeed, her doing that the fire was lit and no windows left open.

When the baby started toddling, she was put into knee high leather boots, as for some reason they suspected she might have a mild form of polio. This did not deter her from exploring every nook and cranny inside and out. One day she noticed some tadpoles squirming in the little pond, toddled closer for a better look and somehow tripped and fell flat on her face, into the pond. The gardener happened to be close by and fished her out coughing and spluttering, still smiling and pointing to the tadpoles.

The third attempt to stop breathing came when she was playing in the shallow end of the swimming pool, wearing a striped sunhat. Certain she was a fish, she slipped under the water, and the hat stayed on the top, floating serenely. Her cousin aged four, one year her senior, shrieked “there is V’s hat”, and her mother yet again felt the knees give way, but managed to jump in and grab her. She emerged gagging for air and smiling, muttering “fishes, Mama, fishes”. This was the third time lucky, thought her mother, whatever am I going to do with this child?”