Wild Horses Part 18

The real thing, of course, would be filmed separately on the following Monday, with Ed in charge of wide, establishing shots of full stands, large crowd movement and bookmakers shouting the odds. Cut in with our own scenes, the joins of real to acted would be invisible given no rain.

Cibber stood in the parade ring with his wife (Silva), and I positioned Nash's stand-in within easy scowling distance. Moncrieff rolled his camera around on a dolly to get interesting architectural background. It all, as ever, took time, but as soon as possible I sent the townspeople home. Boredom was my enemy; bore them, and they wouldn't return. Every child received a helium balloon on leaving (UNSTABLE TIMES in blue on silver), given with jokes and thanks. in blue on silver), given with jokes and thanks.

The jockeys had been asked to stay in the parade ring for a briefing. I found them standing stiffly in a group there, their att.i.tude distrustful and surly.

Not understanding this, I began, 'Just pretend it's a normal race tomorrow. Do everything you normally do on the way down to the start.'

One of them almost belligerently interrupted, 'Is it true you raced once as an amateur?'

'Well, yes, for three seasons.'

'Why did you stop?'

I frowned. It wasn't their business to ask such questions, and certainly not like an inquisition, but I needed their cooperation, so I said mildly, 'I went to Hollywood to make films of horses instead.'

Silence.

'What's the matter?' I asked.

After a long pause, one of them told me, 'It says about you in the Drumbeat Drumbeat...'

'Ah.' Light arrived. I looked at the cool faces, all highly cynical. I needed these jockeys to ride their hearts out the next day; and I could see with absolute clarity that they weren't going to.

How odd, I thought, that I'd feared losing my authority over the film crews, but in fact had had little difficulty in re-establishing it, only to find now that I'd lost it among men I thought I understood. I asked if they'd watched the Lincoln and seen me talking to Greg Compa.s.s. None had. They'd been too busy working, they said. They'd been riding in races.

I said, 'If any of you has doubts about doing a good job for me tomorrow, I'll race him here and now.'

I didn't know I was going to say it until I did. Once said, there was no going back.

They stared.

I said, 'I'm not incompetent or a buffoon or a tyrant. Newspapers tell lies. Surely you know?'

They loosened up a little and a few began staring at their boots instead of my face, but one of them slowly and silently unb.u.t.toned his shiny green and white striped shirt. He took it off and held it out. Underneath he wore the usual thin blue sweater, with a white stock round his neck.

I unclipped the walkie-talkie from my belt and whistled up Ed.

'Where are you?' I asked.

'In the stables.'

'Good. Send three of the horses back, will you, with racing saddles and bridles, each led by a lad.'

'Sure. Which three?'

'The three fastest,' I said. 'And find the doctor we brought with us. Ask him to come to the parade ring.'

'You don't have to be an effing hero,' one of the jockeys said. 'We get your point.'

The one who'd removed his colours, however, still held them out as a challenge.

I unzipped my navy windproof jacket, took it off, and dropped it on the gra.s.s. I pulled off my sweater, ditto, and unb.u.t.toned my shirt, which followed. I wore no jersey underneath, but I didn't feel my bare skin chill in the wind: too much else to think about. I put on the offered green and white stripes and pointed to the stock. Silently, it was handed over, and I tied it neatly, thanking my stars that I remembered how.

As it had been only a rehearsal that afternoon, and all on foot, no one carried a whip and none of the jockeys was wearing the normal shock-absorbing body protector that shielded fallen riders from horses' hooves. No one mentioned this absence. I b.u.t.toned the shirt and pushed the tails down inside my trousers; and I was pa.s.sed a crash helmet with a scarlet cap.

Ed, in the distance, was walking back with three horses.

Moncrieff suddenly arrived at my elbow and demanded, 'What in h.e.l.l are you doing?'

'Going for a ride.' I put on the helmet and left the strap hanging.

'You can't!'

'Be a pal and don't film it in case I fall off.'

Moncrieff threw his arms out and appealed to the jockeys. 'You can't let him. Tell him to stop.'

'They've read the Drumbeat Drumbeat,' I said succinctly, 'and do we want one h.e.l.l of a race tomorrow, or do we not?'

Moncrieff understood all right, but made ineffectual noises about insurance, and moguls, and O'Hara, and what would happen to the movie if I broke my neck.

'Do shut up,' I said.

'Thomas!'

I grinned at him. I said to the jockeys, 'Two of you might care to race with me. Sorry I can't take you all on, but we have to race the whole string tomorrow and they'll need to be fresh. So just two. Whoever you like. We'll go one circuit over the fences, not the hurdles, just as long as there's no one roaming about on the course where they shouldn't be.'

Silence.

Privately amused, I waited until Ed had drawn near with the horses and had got over his shock at my explicit clothes.

'Ed, get a car out onto that road beside the far rails,' I showed him where, 'and drive round behind us. Take our doctor with you in case one of us falls.' I pointed. 'There he is. He's coming now.'

Ed looked stricken. I unclipped both the walkie-talkie and my mobile phone from my belt, and gave them to him to look after.

'I don't believe this,' Moncrieff said.

A jockey said, 'We could lose our licences, racing you.'

'No, you can't,' I contradicted. 'You're employed by the film company, and you're out here for a rehearsal. We have permission from everyone for you to jump round the course. You're just doing it a day earlier than planned. There's a doctor in attendance, as we promised in your agreements. Who'll come with me?'

They had lost the worst of their antagonism but I'd thrown the challenge back in their faces, and they weren't having that that. Two of them started for the horses and left me the third.

'O'Hara will kill kill you,' Moncrieff told me. you,' Moncrieff told me.

It so happened that they'd left me the horse that Silva had ridden the previous morning: the undisputed fastest of our bunch. I'd ridden him often at a canter and, according to his history, he was supposed to know how to jump.

'You haven't any breeches or boots,' Ed said, looking with bewilderment at my ordinary trousers and brown shoes.

'The horse won't mind,' I said. A little lightheadedness, I thought, wasn't a bad idea in the circ.u.mstances.

The horse's lad gave me a leg up, as he'd done many times. I tightened the girth and lengthened the stirrup leathers, and buckled the strap of my helmet.

The two jockeys holding me to my word were mounted and ready. I laughed down at the ring of other faces that had suddenly reverted to a better humour.

'You're a right lot of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' I said, and I got several grins back.

As none of the gates was locked we walked the horses without hindrance out to the track. The one-and-a-half-mile circuit ran right-handed, with nine a.s.sorted jumps on the way. I hadn't raced for eleven years. I was crazy. It felt great.

Nasty long words like irresponsibility swam like worms into the saner regions of my mind. I did carry this multi-million motion picture on my shoulders. I did know, arrogance aside, that the souffle I was building would collapse if the cooker were switched off.

All the same, it seemed to me somehow that I'd grown old a long time ago after too brief a youth. For perhaps three minutes I would go back to my teens.

Ed, car and doctor followed us onto the course.

One of my opponents asked me, 'How much do you weigh?'

'Enough to give me an excuse for losing.'

'b.u.g.g.e.r that,' he said, and pointed his horse towards the task and dug him in the flanks with his heels.

I followed him immediately. I'd have no second chance, and I felt the old controlled recklessness swamp through brain and body as if I'd never been away.

I thought of the man in front as Blue, because of his colours, and the one behind me as Red. We'd had all the shiny shirts especially made for the film for eye-appeal and distinguishability, and the wardrobe people had given us the goods.

Both Blue and Red were younger than I and had not yet started their careers by the time I'd left. They were intent, I saw at once, on making no allowances, and indeed, if they had done so, the whole enterprise would have been without purpose. I simply dredged my memory for a skill that had once come naturally, and judged my horse's stride before the first of the fences with an easy practice I'd thought long forgotten.

There was speed and there was silence. No banter, no swearing from the others. Only the thud of hooves and the brush through the dark birch of the fences. Only the gritting determination and the old exaltation.

My G.o.d, I thought in mid-air, why ever did I give this up? But I knew the answer. At nineteen I'd been too tall and growing too heavy, and starving down to a professional riding weight had made me feel ill.

Half a mile and two jumps later I felt the first quiver of unfitness in my muscles and remembered that both Blue and Red had been at racing peak for several months. The speed they took in their stride used all my strength. We'd rounded the bottom turn and had straightened three abreast into the long far side before I seriously considered that I'd been a fool or at least definitely foolhardy to set off in this roller-coaster, and I jumped the next four close-together fences concentrating mainly on desperately keeping my weight as far forward as possible.

Riding with one's centre of gravity over the horse's shoulder was best for speed aerodynamically, but placed the jockey in a prime position for being catapulted off forwards if his mount hit a fence. The alternative was to slow the pace before jumping, sit back, let the reins slide long through one's fingers, and maybe raise an arm up and back to maintain balance before landing. An habitually raised arm, termed 'calling a cab', was the trademark of amateurism. To do it once couldn't be helped, but five or six raised arms would bring me pity, not in the least what I was out there trying to earn. I was going to go over Huntingdon's jumps with my weight forward if it killed me.

Which of course it might.

With this last mordant thought, and with straining muscles and labouring lungs, I reached the long last bend towards home: two more fences to jump, and the run-in and winning post after.

Experienced jockeys that they were, Blue and Red had waited for that last bend before piling on the ultimate pressure. I quickened with them, determined only not to be ignominiously tailed-off, and my mount responded, as most thoroughbreds do, with an inbred compulsion to put his head in front.

I don't know about the others, but I rode over the last two fences as if it mattered like the Grand National; but even so, it wasn't enough. We finished in order, Red, Green, Blue, flat out past the winning post, with half a length and half a length between first and second and second and third.

We pulled up and trotted back to the gate. I felt weak enough for falling off. I breathed deeply through my nose, having told many actors in my time that the most reliable evidence of exhaustion was to gasp with the mouth open.

With Blue and Red leading the way, we rejoined the other jockeys. No one said much. We dismounted and gave the reins to the lads. I could feel my fingers trembling as I unbuckled the helmet and hoped the jockeys couldn't see. I took off the helmet, returning it to the man who'd lent it, and brushed sweat off my forehead with my thumb. Still no sound above half-heard murmurs. I unb.u.t.toned the striped colours, forcing my hands to the task, and fumbled too much over untying the stock. Still with breaths heaving in my belly, I handed shirt and stock back, and took my own clothes from someone who'd lifted them from the gra.s.s. I hadn't the strength to put them on, but simply held them over my arm.

It struck me that what everyone was feeling, including myself, was chiefly embarra.s.sment, so I made my best stab at lightness.

'OK!' I said. 'Tomorrow, then? You'll race?'

Blue said, 'Yes', and the others nodded.

'Fine. See you.'

I raised a smile that was genuine, even if only half wattage, and turned away to walk over to where Moncrieff, curse him, was trying to pretend he hadn't had a video camera on his shoulder the whole time.

A voice behind me called, 'Mr Lyon.'

I paused and turned. Mr Lyon, indeed! A surprise.

The one with the green and white stripes said, 'You did make your point.'

I managed a better smile and a flap of a hand and plodded across the gra.s.s to Moncrieff.

's.h.i.t,' he said.

'Anything but. We might now get a brilliant race tomorrow. They're not going to let themselves do worse than a panting amateur.'

'Put your shirt on, you'll die of cold.'

But not of a broken neck, I thought, and felt warm and spent and thunderously happy.

Ed gave me back the mobile phone saying that O'Hara had called while he, Ed, was driving round the course, and had wanted to know where I was.

'What did you tell him?' I asked.

'I said you were riding. He wants you to call him back.'

'Right.'

I set off towards my car and its driver and called O'Hara as I went. He had spent time with Howard, it seemed, who was now enthusiastic over the witchcraft angle and wanted it emphasised. Scenes were positively dripping off his pen.

'Yeah,' I said, 'but restrain him. Witches do not hang themselves themselves, and we still need our designated murderer.'

'You have,' O'Hara said dryly, 'a habit of putting your finger on the b.u.t.ton.' He paused briefly. 'Howard told me where Alison Visborough lives.'

'Did you bargain with him? A deal?'

'It's possible,' O'Hara said stiffly, 'that we may not wring the last cent out of him.'

I smiled.

'Anyhow, go see her, will you? Some place in Leicestershire.'

'When? We're shooting all day tomorrow.'

'Uh, now. Howard phoned her. She's expecting you.'