>>> “Yes, but how disabled is disabled?” Douglas Grant argued. “You have to be able to get onto the animal for a start. Surely riding is one of those sports like swimming, requiring the use of the whole of the body.”
I had been silent for long enough. “Don’t talk across me as if I’m not involved,” I burst out. “I may be crippled, but I still have my mental faculties!”
They turned their faces towards me, astonished.
“It was my question! It was me who asked!”
“We know that, there’s no need to get upset. We were only ...”
“You were doing what you always do, discussing me over my head!”
My father sighed in a way that was both apologetic and resigned. “Yes, we probably were. But for a long time you haven’t seemed particularly interested in discussing your problems.”
“I’m interested now.” I stared at them mutinously.
“Look,” Melissa said in a placatory tone, “If you’re really that interested why don’t I ring them up this afternoon and find out if you can ride. They’re probably listed in the telephone directory.”
“No. Don’t do that.” I pulled a serving dish to within reach and helped myself to a large spoonful of mashed potatoes. “I’ve got a better idea.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. I’m tired of people doing things for me. I’ll find the number and I’ll ring them myself.”<<<
“Cut!”
Check the gate!”
The Production Assistant leaned over the table. “Melvyn says it was fine, he wants one more take just in case.”
The next take was even better.
The Director appeared. “OK fellas, it’s a wrap. Kill the lights. That’s it for today.”
I left the set on a high but it didn’t last long. Anthony was waiting for our return at the Sow and Pigs. It was bad news. On the way back to the stables from Television City the day before, the horsebox had been shunted by a lorry at some traffic lights. Neither he nor Angel had suffered more than cricked necks, but The Raven, in being precipitated forward by the impact, had strained a tendon and would be unable to work for three months.
It appeared that there was only one horse in the country who could match The Raven for performance and save the film. There were certain problems to be overcome, certain precautions that would have to be taken, but the horse was free and currently in the Sylvester yard.
His name was The Blizzard.
“But what about the dream sequence?” I remembered how beautifully The Raven had cantered on the conveyor belt in front of the blue cloth in the studio costing two hundred a minute. “What about the video for the theme song?”
“I guess we can get away with the video being different, but unless we can dye the new horse black, and we’ve only dyed bits of them before, we got to reshoot. Holy Moses, imagine what that’s going to do to our budget.” The Director sat in the minibus with his hands clasped between his knees and his expression was tragic. “First we get the Black Death, now even the horse is sick. I tell you, Grace Darling, sometimes I think I’ll take an early retirement. Get myself a nice allotment.”
We were on our way to a morning’s filming with the local Riding for the Disabled Association. Every time we set out on a shoot we had a smaller crew, and at the Sow and Pigs Joanna was dividing her time between running the bars and nursing the afflicted. The serial seemed to be jinxed.
The thought of having to go back to Television City, this time with The Blizzard, was appalling, but there seemed to be no alternative. We could hardly substitute a white horse for a black one and expect people to believe they were the same animal, any more than one could substitute a white actor for a black actor half-way through a play and retain any sort of credibility.
Kevin, chomping his way through a Mars Bar, had a suggestion to offer. “Why don’t we say it went white from shock?” This was followed by an inane bray of laughter silenced by the Director who hit him over the head with a rolled up newspaper.
“There must be other black horses,” Camilla said in an irritated voice. “I don’t see why this one was so special.”
Camilla was in a particularly obnoxious frame of mind that morning, and as a question this was hardly worth answering. The Raven was the most famous stunt horse in the country. He had become a household name through his regular appearances in television commercials for an international company. Whenever a film producer needed a circus horse who could perform High School and walk on his hind legs, or a western horse to cut cattle, fall at the gallop, or play dead, or even a wild horse with a flowing mane to canter up a hill and stand at the top silhouetted against a sunset, it was The Raven he thought of. The horse was a star and Tom Silver’s serial had been written with him in mind. No other horse could take his place – except, apparently, the horse called The Blizzard who had something loose inside his head. Just thinking about him made the hairs rise on the back of my neck.
“Sure, there are plenty of black horses,” the Director said heavily. “The fields are full of them. Trouble is they got nothing between the ears except hay.”
Camilla pulled a face. “Well, I’ll be glad when all the horse scenes are in the can. I loathe the brutes.”
The Director raised his head and turned round in his seat. “Now you listen to me, Miss Smartie Pants,” he said in a threatening voice, “when I cast you, you said you liked horses and that better be the truth. You told me your hobby was horse riding and that better be the truth as well. I got enough trouble on this film without you being here on false pretences.”
Camilla gave him one of her infuriatingly sweet smiles. “Now that’s where you’re wrong, Melvyn, because I didn’t say I liked horses at all. I said I could ride and that is the truth. I also said I rode regularly and that’s the truth as well; it’s a skill an actress can’t afford to be without. But I didn’t say I liked horses because that’s not the same thing at all. I didn’t lie my way into the part like someone I could mention.” Having delivered this parting shot, she flounced off to sit at the back of the bus.
We both knew who the someone was. It was me. And it was true that I had lied at the audition, saying I could ride when I had never even sat on a horse in my life because I so desperately wanted the part. But I had trained hard and I could ride now and at least I had also learned to love horses.
“Why is she such a bitch?” I groaned.
The Director grinned. “You think because she’s a bitch, she shouldn’t be such a good actress, Grace Darling? You think that to deserve that sort of natural talent she ought to be a nice kid? Come on, sweetheart, you know better than to expect life to hand out accomplishments on a fair basis; you’ve been around long enough to be realistic.”
For the sake of realism we were now turning into the entrance of the Riding for the Disabled Centre where we were to film our heroine and her sister alongside genuinely disabled children. I had thought this might be difficult, that using such children for the purposes of a commercial film might be regarded as lacking in taste, that it would be an undignified intrusion into the privacy of children whose lives had been rendered uncomfortable enough by the hand of fate, but actually it was the easiest thing in the world. The Association was glad of the publicity, the children were thrilled to be taking part, and the staff and helpers welcomed us wholeheartedly. In the end, the only person who was difficult was Camilla.
The car park was overflowing with our vehicles, cables snaked through the stable yards, tracking had been laid, cameras set up, lighting positioned. Ponies, helpers and children swarmed everywhere.
Some of the children were deaf or blind, some had Downs syndrome or were spastic; the physically handicapped walked with callipers, the more seriously disabled were in wheelchairs. Even if some were unable to make much sense of what was happening, without exception they were all in a state of high excitement, stimulated by the hectic atmosphere and the unfamiliar activities of the film unit. The noise was indescribable.
“Wha
t a bloody row! Can’t somebody keep them quiet?” Camilla grumbled.
The Director regarded her with exasperation. “Who wants them quiet? Who minds a little authenticity? I like the racket, it shows the kids are enjoying themselves.”
From between the tracks in front of the camera dolly he removed a small infant who had been monitoring the proceedings with round, trusting eyes and a floppy grin out of the corner of which trailed a long strand of saliva.
“Oh God, I don’t think I can stand this.” Camilla turned her face away. “Nobody told me I’d be filming with a bunch of loonies.”
“OK everybody. Standby. Let’s have a walk-through.”
I took up my position in my wheelchair and Camilla pushed me into the stable yard. The cameraman, seated on the dolly, tracked alongside, pushed along the rails by a member of the crew known as the Grips. There was to be no dialogue at this point, only background noise recorded independently, the point of the shot being to record Eileen’s reactions to entering a world almost entirely peopled by the physically disabled and made alien by the uncontrolled bedlam of the mentally handicapped en masse and in high spirits. This was accomplished in three takes after which the cameramen changed to tripods and we moved down to the mounting area.
Here the ponies had been trained to walk down a concrete ramp and stand on the flat below whilst the children were placed in the saddle from above. The mounting pit was like a huge dry sheep-dip and a clever alternative to the tricky business of trying to lift and arrange a heavy, uncoordinated child into the saddle from the ground.
Mounting was accompanied by a great deal of noise and hilarity, with cheerful banter and encouragement from both helpers and onlookers. The ponies were unperturbed by this, nor were they in the least put out by the appearance of lights, cameras and large sheets of polystyrene held up as reflectors, which said a lot for their temperament and training.
Camilla couldn’t bear it. You could sense that every squeal went through her like a knife. Every shriek made her wince. Her pretty face tightened, her eyes became dangerously bright.
“I just can’t understand why they bother,” she said in an angry voice. “Most of them don’t seem to realize they’re even on a horse! What good can it do? What’s the point of it?” The sight of the dangling limbs and empty, expressionless face of one of the more severe cases finished her off altogether and she marched back to the minibus to await her call.
The helper allocated to me brushed away the somewhat embarrassed apology I tried to make.
“Some people just can’t take it, that’s all. And it isn’t such an unnatural reaction if you think about it. Birds push their imperfect offspring out of the nest as a matter of instinct; some people cross the road when they see a handicapped person approaching, and a party of handicapped people, whether physically or mentally affected, sends them running in the opposite direction. They find it an emotional trauma and it’s something we have learned to live with. But don’t necessarily assume she doesn’t care. Quite often the people who turn away are more affected than any of us.”
My mount was Billy Blue, a piebald with black patches fading to blue, a pink nose and a yellowing tail, the top of which was spiked like a bottle brush. It took a few dry runs to get the mounting right because it was hard to let my legs flop and dangle instead of sliding naturally round Billy Blue’s well-covered ribs with my feet seeking the familiar tread of the stirrups. But eventually the Director proclaimed himself satisfied and Camilla was given her call.
The mounting shot turned out well. Camilla, transformed in front of the cameras into a professional again, supported me out of the wheelchair. I looked down at the patiently waiting Billy Blue and whispered “I can’t.” Camilla said “Oh yes you can.” The helpers chipped in with “No such words as can’t here,” and similar cheering platitudes, and down I went on to Billy Blue allowing my feet to be placed in the stirrups, trying to remember how it felt to be on a horse for the first time, looking down and finding the ground a long way off, lurching at the first shock of movement, supported by a helper either side of the saddle with a leader at Billy Blue’s head.
A slow and ambling progress was made towards the manège where the other children were riding, with a cameraman sitting in my wheelchair filming as he went, being pushed by Kevin.
The action now moved to the manège where some more ambling around was filmed, plus some arm-swinging exercises with the other children in the background after which the crew followed Camilla to a corner of the paddock away from everyone else and took some shots of her mounting and trotting in circles and cantering over small jumps, because in the story she had riding lessons as well.
Whilst the crew were occupied with Camilla I leaned over the rail and watched a blind boy having a jumping lesson, something I would have considered an impossibility before today. Seven jumps of about two feet six had been set up and directions were being called out by his instructress. “Now to your left… right rein slightly… straighten up… four, three, two, one – over!” As the pony cleared each obstacle his rider’s face was the very embodiment of joy.
But in the script, Eileen’s lesson had been a disaster and there followed a tearful scene as Camilla wheeled me out of the yard tracked once more by the cameraman on the dolly. We had collected quite an audience by this time and Kevin was having quite a job keeping them under control. At the start of the shoot I had to unbuckle the jockey skull harness, pull off the hat and hurl it to the ground.
“Must remember not to use that again,” one of the helpers murmured, apologized, was hushed, and we started again.
I was supposed to throw the hat in an agony of bitter frustration at finding riding in real life nothing remotely like riding in the dream. As it bounced on the concrete I dropped my head into my hands. I knew that if I squeezed my eyes hard enough they would turn pink and produce tears. I squeezed hard.
>>> “I don’t know what you expected,” Melissa said in a peevish voice. “Surely you didn’t think you could just get on and ride, not just like that without any previous experience, nobody can do that even…”
“Even when they’re not crippled you mean? I don’t know why you should be embarrassed to use the word! You may as well say it! It’s a fact so why not get used to it!” Agonized, I propelled the chair forward.
Melissa caught the back of the chair, slowing it. “Oh, Eileen,” she said in a despairing voice, “was it so awful?”
“Yes.” I dropped my head into my hands in anguish. “Terrible. Humiliating. And unexpectedly painful.”
“Are you going to try again?”
“No!”
“But why not? You were so keen, and it’s sure to get easier, it has to. Everybody improves with practice. Some of the kids here have worse disabilities than you, most…”
“Most won’t improve, and you know it! I don’t want to be like them! I don’t want to come here ever again!”
“But you haven’t given it a fair trial! And you were so adamant about wanting to come here!”
“And now I’m adamant about not wanting to come back!”
There was nothing to be gained by argument and Melissa knew it. Nevertheless she was angry as she pushed the chair out of the yard, away from the children, the helpers, the ponies.
“All right, if that’s the way you want it, if you want to give up before you’ve even started, we’ll forget it! And that’s all right because we’ll find something else for you to do instead; something sensible; something suitable. Maybe you could learn the piano or play the guitar, perhaps you should take up watercolour or oil painting…” Something in her voice made me look up to see that she was weeping, great rivers of tears coursing down her cheeks, “maybe you could even do tapestry, or crochet…”<<<
The tears were not in the script and they were certainly not for Eileen. I knew they were for the boy with the dangling limbs and the little girl with the floppy grin. Whether the Director knew was open to doubt but he was wise enough to be satisfied with jus
t one take, to call it a wrap.
I could not honestly say I liked Camilla after that, but it made her a lot easier to live with.
>>> “I can’t think why you wanted me to come. I don’t know why I agreed.” Ungraciously I allowed myself to be lifted out of the back of the car and placed in the wheelchair. “Talk about rubbing salt into the wound. I was the one who wanted to ride, Melissa was the one who got hooked, and now it’s Melissa who’s getting a pony. If that isn’t just typical.”
“The pony is for both of you,” Douglas said. “You know that.”
“It’s going to be rather an unequal partnership though isn’t it, with Melissa the only one who can ride it.”
“You might show a little interest, Eileen,” Melissa said in reproof. “We want to be sure you like the pony because if you do, you might eventually change your mind about riding lessons.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“You might.”
“I shan’t.”
“Oh, be like that then!”
“I shall be.”
“God, you are so difficult.”
“But then I’ve got an excuse to be difficult, haven’t I?”
“You were difficult before you had the excuse.”
“Do stop bickering you two.” Douglas, looking exasperated, walked on ahead to shake the hand of the horse dealer who was approaching across the gravel.
I applied the brake to the wheelchair, stopping Melissa short. “Look, don’t take me any further, I’m just going to be in the way. You know I can’t go in and out of stables and things, so you go and look at the ponies and I’ll see the ones you like enough to ride. I’d rather stay out here, honestly.”
Melissa looked doubtful.
“Oh, go on Melissa! I don’t need a nursemaid and I can hardly run away!”
Catch a Falling Star (The Silver Bridle Book 3) Page 4