Country life
My friend Trigger
Leanda de Lisle
It was a bit of a shock discovering that Roy Rogers has died. I'd assumed he'd been dead for years — it being almost impossible to imagine a film star outliving one's passion for them. Not that I actually ever had a passion for Roy Rogers. It was for his horse Trigger and, according to Roy Roger's obituary in the Daily Telegraph, Trigger did die while I was a little girl. He died and was stuffed. Stuffed even before I discovered the Roy Rogers annual I read after lunch everyday at nursery school. The annual I hit poor Edwin with.
Edwin came to school in his slippers and had nose bleeds, so you can see why I might want to smack him. However, that incident with the annual has been on my conscience ever since. I wonder where Edwin is now. The majority of the dozen pupils taught by my father's old governess suffered horrible fates. Some became heroin addicts, others are dead. I expect Edwin is wandering around with a totally flat head. I'm certain Miss Hall was in no way to blame — even if she was for ever whacking me across the back of the hand with a ruler for holding my pencil 'like a lamp-post'.
Miss Hall's was a charming school. We sat at little trestle tables covered in checked tablecloths and spelt out sentences with let- ters from a box. Edwin usually lay on the floor by my table, with a cold flannel on his forehead. I stared about me, the business with letters being rather tedious. There was a large picture of a mare with her foal on one wall, I remember. The foal was bay, the mother was white — or 'grey' as they say in horsy circles — with a dark mane and tail. Unusual colouring, but not, I decided, as beautiful as an American palomino. The front of the Roy Rogers annual showed Trigger's head, with his platinum forelock tumbling down his chestnut face. What a super model. This was the horse my mother had loved when she was a girl. Roy Rogers's obituary must have brought back memories to quite an age span of Telegraph readers. I expect many of them were as shocked as I was to see Trigger referred to as 'it' — and in the Daily Telegraph of all papers. Whatever next? Receipts for horse meat carpaccio from Windsor Castle? I'd make the hacks responsible read the entire My Friend Flicka series, the Silver Brumby series, that Thirties book about Tirnanog, the horsy heaven and, of course, several Roy Rogers annuals. That would learn them, as they say.
Still, to be generous, it's possible that the Daily Telegraph's obituaries desk confused Trigger the icon with Trigger, our demonic palomino hamster. She could easily be an it. Her return from boarding-school was heralded by the death of the little hamster we bought to replace her some time ago. I told my youngest son that the burden of being sweet had become too much for him, but I'm not sure that's really true. The little hamster is more likely to have died of fright anticipating Trigger's return. During the past few weeks she has grown to the size of a well-developed guinea pig. I sup- pose we should be grateful she's not yet the size of a horse.
Roy Rogers's Trigger must have taken quite a lot of stuffing. I read that he was preserved rearing up on his hind legs. I think that's horrid. Embalming, in whatev- er form, is for a Lenin, a Ho Chi Min or even a Castro, but not a rearing horse. Politicians may be uptight, but Trigger should live on in our imagination as a mus- cular, breathing creature, not an 'it'. Ham- ster or no hamster, I find myself wondering whether Edwin grew up to be the obituar- ies editor of the Daily Telegraph. It would explain a great deal.
Is someone smoking a cigar, or is it the odour of sanctity?'
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