Wild Horses Part 21

Nash, that day, had not one but two bodyguards in attendance but, as I reminded O'Hara, both of these bodyguards were well known to us.

'If you bring in a stranger, you're risking what you're trying to avoid,' I said. 'In cla.s.sic cases, it's the bodyguards themselves that kill the victim.' I tried a lie that I hoped would be true, and said, 'I don't think I'm in much danger, so just forget it.'

'Difficult.' He was mildly relieved, all the same, by my decision.

'Keep the paper,' I told him, 'and keep the envelope.' I gave it to him. 'And let's get on with the film.'

'I still don't like it.'

Nor did I, much; but delivering a death threat threat took little organisation or courage, and delivering a death by knife took both. took little organisation or courage, and delivering a death by knife took both.

The knife intended for Nash had been incompetently dropped. Cling to that. Forget for Christ's sake forget the intestines spilling out of Dorothea.

'Who gave you the letter?' O'Hara asked.

'One of the grips. I've seen him around but I don't know his name.'

There was never time to know the names of the between sixty and a hundred people working on a film on location. I hadn't learned even the names of the horses, neither their registered names, nor the names the lads called them, nor their invented names for the film. I didn't know the jockeys' names, nor those of the bit-part actors. It was faces I remembered, horses' faces, jockeys' faces, actors' faces from way back: my memory had always been chiefly visual.

I did forget for a while about the death threat: too much else to do.

As always with scenes involving two or three hundred people, the race took forever to set up. I spent ages on the walkie-talkie checking the status of each far-flung section but, at last, towards noon, everything seemed to be ready. The lads brought the horses from the stables and the jockeys mounted their balloted numbers and cantered down to the start.

I decided to ride on the camera truck with Moncrieff, to be nearer the action: and to guard my back, I cravenly and privately acknowledged.

Ed, equipped with loudspeaker, alerted the Huntingdon mult.i.tude to put on raceday faces and cheer the finish. The commentary, we had explained, would be missing; we had to record it separately and afterwards. Nevertheless, Ed urged, cheer whoever won.

Eventually it was he who shouted, 'Action', the command reverberating through the stands, and I, with raised pulse, who found myself begging unknown deities for perfection.

There were flaws, of course. One of the rented cameras jammed, and one of the two planted in fences got kicked to oblivion by a horse, but the race started tidily, and it was joyously clear from the first that my quasi-colleagues were playing fair.

They had seen me on the truck, when it was positioned for the start, seen me sitting on the edge of the roof of the cab, to get the best of views. They'd waved, in a way, I thought, to rea.s.sure me, and I'd waved back; and they did indeed ride their hearts out all the way round.

We had the truck driven for a lot of the way so that the camera was barely six feet from the leading horses' heads, then speeded it up to give a longer view, then slowed again, varying the angles.

Two horses fell on the backstretch second time round. I looked back with anxiety, but both jockeys got to their feet, the loose horses adding the unpremeditated facets that in the end proved the contest real.

The other riders again piled on the pressure rounding the last bend, and again they rode flat out over the last two fences and stretched every sinew to win. The finish was even faster and closer than the day before, but distinguishably Blue, Green with White Stripes, and Yellow crossed the line in the first three places; and as the truck slowed I could hear the crowd shouting them home as if they'd gambled their s.h.i.+rts. Those jockeys had ridden with an outpouring of courage that left me dry-mouthed and breathless, grateful beyond expression, bursting with admiration.

As agreed, when they jogged the tired horses back to unsaddle, another of Moncrieff's cameras continued to film them. I couldn't walk into shot to thank them, and thanks, in any form, would have been inadequate.

'h.e.l.l's teeth,' Moncrieff exclaimed, moved by the proximity to the speed and sweating commitment. 'And they do that for a living?' living?'

'Day in, day out, several times an afternoon.'

'Crazy.'

'There's nothing like it,' I said.

We changed the actor-jockey into Blue's colours and had him led into the winner's enclosure, to applause from a throng of mixed extras and townspeople. We had to do the unsaddling at that point, while the horses still steamed and sweated and stamped from the excitement of racing. We filmed Nash patting the winner's neck. We filmed the actor-jockey unbuckling the saddle while showing, to my mind, a lot too much clumsiness. We filmed the four horses being rugged and led away by the lads; and we broke for lunch.

Nash, bodyguard close, signed a host of good-natured autographs, mostly on the racecards we'd lavishly distributed.

O'Hara, again at my elbow, breathed in my ear, 'Satisfied?'

'Are you?'

'Nash and I watched the race from up in the stewards' box. Nash says those first three jockeys rode beyond the call of duty.'

'Yes, they did.'

'He says it will give fantastic bite to the victory of his his horse over Cibber's.' horse over Cibber's.'

'It'll drive Cibber mad.'

'The final straw?'

'Almost. Cibber can't stand to have his best horse beaten into second place like that by the man he hates.'

'When I read the revised script, I thought Howard had overdone the hate. I couldn't see any race inducing that level of paranoia.'

'Hate can corrode the soul to disintegration.'

'Maybe. But to show that, you needed an exceptional exceptional race...' His voice tailed off momentarily. '... and I guess you got it,' he finished, 'in your own way.' race...' His voice tailed off momentarily. '... and I guess you got it,' he finished, 'in your own way.'

I half-smiled. 'Let's find some lunch.'

'You're having it in the stewards' box with Nash and me. Do you realise I could have come up behind you just now and put a knife through your ribs? Do you realise we have roughly three hundred strangers here wandering around?'

I did realise. I went with him and lunched high up in safety.

By the time we returned to ground level and to work, one of Ed's a.s.sistants had found the grip who'd pa.s.sed on the letter. Some kid had given it to him. What kid? He looked around, bewildered. Kids were all over the place. The grip had no recollection of age, s.e.x or clothes. He'd been busy with the unloading of equipment for the following day.

's.h.i.+t,' O'Hara said.

Another of the film personnel approached as if apologetically and held out a card towards me. 'Some people called Batwillow say you're expecting them.' He looked across to where the little group stood. Jackson Wells, his wife and Lucy, and a man I didn't know.

I took the card and waved them over and had time only to say to O'Hara, 'This is our hanged lady's real husband,' before shaking their hands. They had come dressed for the races and Jackson Wells himself, in tweeds and trilby, looked indefinably more a trainer than a farmer. He introduced the stranger as 'Ridley Wells, my brother.' I shook a leathery hand.

Ridley Wells was altogether less striking than Jackson, both in colouring and personality, and he was also, I thought, less intelligent. He blinked a lot. He was dressed in riding clothes as if he had come straight from his work, which Jackson described to O'Hara as 'teaching difficult horses better manners'.

Ridley nodded, and in an accent stronger than his brother's, said self-pityingly, 'I'm out in all weathers on Newmarket Heath, but it's a thankless sort of job. I can ride better than most, but no one pays me enough. How about employing me in this film?'

Jackson resignedly shook his head at Ridley's underlying chip-on-the-shoulder att.i.tude. O'Hara said sorry, no job. Ridley looked as if he'd been badly treated; a habitual expression, I guessed. I could see why Jackson hadn't welcomed Ridley's inclusion in the day's proceedings.

Jackson still had, it seemed, the old professional trainer's eye, because after a few 'nice days' and so on, he said, 'That was some race those jocks rode. More electrifying than most of the real thing.'

'Could you see that?' O'Hara asked interestedly.

'Didn't you hear the cheering? That was no act, either. "Cheer the winner," we were told, but the cheers came easy as pie.'

'Be darned,' O'Hara said, no horseman himself. He looked at my guests thoughtfully and said impulsively to me, 'Keep the Batwillow family around you, why not?'

He meant, use them as bodyguards. He hadn't heard Jackson Wells tell me he'd have preferred not to have the film made. I felt safe, though, with his wife and daughter, so I wrapped them as a living s.h.i.+eld around me, Mrs Wells on one arm, Lucy on the other, and walked them all off to meet Nash.

Although Nash hadn't wanted to meet the man he was playing, I introduced them straightforwardly, 'Jackson Wells Nash Rourke,' and watched them shake hands with mutual reservations.

They were in several ways superficially alike: same build, same age bracket, same firm facial muscles. Jackson was blond where Nash was darker, and sunnily open, where Nash, from long megastar status, had grown self-protectively wary. Easier with the women, Nash autographed racecards for wife and daughter and effortlessly melted their hearts. He signed for Ridley also, and didn't take to him.

We were due to film Nash walking up the steps to the stands to watch (supposedly) his horse run in the race. Slightly to O'Hara's dismay, he invited Mrs Wells and Lucy to stand near him, in front of the bodyguards, for the scene. Ridley, unasked, followed them up the steps, which left Jackson Wells marooned on his feet by my side, looking as if he wished he hadn't come.

'It hasn't occurred to your wife,' I said.

'What hasn't?' he said, but he knew what I meant.

'That's she standing next to you, twenty-six years ago.'

'They're the wrong age,' he said brusquely. 'We were all kids at the time. And you're right, I don't like it.'

He bore it, however, standing rigid but quiet, while Nash, taking over from his stand-in, walked up the steps and turned on exactly the right spot to bring his face into Moncrieff's careful lighting. We shot the scene three times and I marked the first and third takes to be printed: and O'Hara stood all the while at my left elbow, riding shotgun, so to speak.

I grinned at him. 'I could get me some armour,' I said.

'It's no laughing matter.'

'No.'

One can't somehow believe in one's own imminent death. I hadn't stopped the film and I went on shooting bits of it all afternoon; and for ages at a time, like ten minutes, I stopped thinking about steel.

At one point, waiting as ever for lights and camera to be ready, I found myself a little apart from the centre of activity, standing beside Lucy, gazing into her amazing blue eyes and wondering how old she was.

She said suddenly, 'You asked Dad for a photo of Sonia so that you didn't copy her exactly in the film.'

'That's right. He hadn't kept any.'

'No,' she agreed. 'But... well... I've got one. I found it one day jammed at the back of a drawer. I meant to give it to Dad, but he won't talk about Sonia. He won't let us mention her, ever. So I just kept it.' She opened the small handbag swinging from her shoulder and handed me a creased but clearly distinguishable snapshot of a pretty girl and a good-looking young man, not Jackson. 'You won't make Yvonne look like her, will you?'

Shaking my head, I turned the photo over and read the pencilled information on the back, 'Sonia and Pig.'

'Who is Pig?' I asked.

'No idea,' Lucy said. 'I've never heard Dad mention him. But that's Dad's handwriting, so he must have known him, long ago.'

'Long ago before you were born.'

'I'm eighteen,' she said.

I felt old. I said, 'Could I borrow the photo for a while?'

She looked doubtful. 'I don't want to lose it.'

'Until tomorrow?' I suggested. 'If you came here again tomorrow...'

'I don't think there's a chance. Dad didn't really want to come at all. He only gave in to Mum so that she could meet Nash Rourke.'

'Could you and your mother come tomorrow?'

'She won't do anything if Dad doesn't like it.'

'And you?'

'I don't have a car of my own.'

'Lend me the photo for an hour, then.'

She brightened and agreed, and I gave the photo to Moncrieff with an on-my-knees expression, begging him to do me a clear negative from which we could get a positive print. It would take the usual day for travelling to London to the laboratory for development, but with reasonable luck I'd have it back in the morning.

In the morning. Die today. Shut up, I thought.

'Do you, 'I asked Lucy later, 'have a computer and a printer at home?'

'Of course, we do,' she answered, puzzled. 'No one can farm without one, nowadays. The paperwork drives Dad loco loco. Why do you ask?'

'Just wondered. We use one here all the time.' I enlarged on it, defusing my enquiry. 'Every inch of film, every lens used, every focal stop... we have a script supervisor entering the lot. We can lay our hands on any frame of film that way, and also make sure we have continuity if we shoot the next scene days later.'

She nodded in partial understanding and said, 'And who are all those odd people you see on the credits? Grips, gaffers... who are they?'

'Grips move equipment. The gaffer is in charge of the lighting equipment. The most important chap at the moment is the production manager. He's the person who arranges for vehicles and scenery and props and all sorts of things to be in the right place when we need them.'

'And you,' she said with unflattering doubt, 'are in overall charge of the whole thing?

'I and the producer.' I pointed to O'Hara. 'No us, no film.'

She said baldly, 'Dad said so, but Mum thought you were too young.'

'Are you always so frank?'

'Sixteen was h.e.l.l,' she said. 'Tongue-tied. Not long ago I broke out of the egg.'

'Congratulations.'

'Dad says I talk nonsense.'

'No better time for it. Stay and have dinner. I'll take you home later.'

'Sorry.' The response was automatic, the blue eyes full of the warnings she'd been given about date-rape and such. 'Not on our own.'

I smiled wryly. I'd thought only of not being knifed, not of bed. I'm losing it, I thought, wanting my life saved by an eighteen-year-old still half in the cradle. I fetched her snap from Moncrieff- thumbs up, he said and returned it to her.