Wild Horses

by Dick Francis

  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 shirts. 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.

  “Hell's teeth,” Moncrieff exclaimed, moved by the proximity to the speed and sweating commitment. “And they do that for a living!?”

  “Day in, day out, several times an afternoon.”

  “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 horse over Gibber's.”

  “It'll drive Gibber mad.”

  “The final straw?”

  “Almost. Gibber 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 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 assistants had found the grip who'd passed 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, sex or clothes. He'd been busy with the unloading of scenery for the following day.

  “Shit,” 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 attitude. 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 shield 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 mega-star 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 she's 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.”

  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 o
f 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. 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 scenery. 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 hell,” she said. “Tongue-tied. Not long ago I broke out of the egg.”

  “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.

  “I didn't mean,” she said awkwardly, sixteen surfacing again after all. “I mean, I don't want to offend you ...”

  “But no casting couches. It's all right.”

  She blushed and retreated, sane and confused, to her parents, and I thought bed wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all.

  The trouble with making films, I acknowledged, was the way the occupation gobbled time. For the three months of any pre-production, I worked flat out to put the film together, choosing locations, getting the feel - the vision - in place, altering the screenplay, living with the characters. During production, like now, I worked seven days a week with little sleep. Post-production - the recording of music and sound effects, the cutting together of scenes and parts of scenes to make an impact and tell a story, the debates and the meetings and the previews - all of those often had to be scrambled into just a further three months. And with one film done, another crowded on my heels. I'd made three films lately in under two years. This new one had by far the biggest budget. I loved the work, I was lucky to be wanted, I felt no flicker of regret: I just didn't seem to have time to look for a wife.

  One day, I guessed, it might happen like a thunderbolt. The skies, however, had to date vouchsafed only scattered showers, and Lucy looked like a continuing drought.

  Someone unexpectedly knocked my elbow. I whirled round with surging heartbeat and found myself face to face with Moncrieff.

  “Jumpy!” he said, watching me reach for composure. “What were you expecting? A tiger?”

  “With claws,” I agreed. I got things under control and we discussed the next scene.

  “Are you all right?” Moncrieff asked, puzzled. “Not ill?”

  Not ill, I thought, but plain scared. I said, “Every­thing's fine. But ... er ... some nutter wants to get the film stopped, and if you see anyone in my area raising a blunt instrument, give me a holler.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Is that why O'Hara has been standing behind you whenever he can?’

  ‘I guess so.”

  He thought it over. “Nasty knife, that, on the gallops.” A pause. “It got effing close to Ivan.”

  “Do me a favour and don't remind me.”

  “Just keep my eyes open?”

  “Got it.”

  We lit and shot some non-speaking takes of Nash's emotions during the race. The block of crowd behind him, mostly bona fide extras but some townspeople, also Mrs Wells, Lucy, Ridley and Nash's bodyguards, responded faithfully to Ed's exhortations, looking for each shot to where he pointed, oohing and aahing, showing anxiety, showing excitement and finally cheering wildly as they watched in memory the horses racing to the finish.

  All of the faces except Nash's would be very slightly out of focus, thanks to Moncrieffs wizardry with lenses. One of his favourite lenses had to be focused principally on the light in the actor's eyes. Everything else on the actor's head would be a tiny shade fuzzy, his neck, hair, the lot.

  “The daylight's going,” Moncrieff told me eventually, though to any eye but his the change was too slight to notice. “We should wrap for today.”

  Ed through his megaphone thanked the citizens of Huntingdon for their work and invited them back for the morrow. They clapped. Happy faces all round. Nash signed autographs with the bodyguards at his shoulders.

  Lucy, glowing with the day's pleasures, walked to where I was checking through the following day's schedule with O'Hara, and handed me a flat white box about a foot long by three inches wide, fastened shut with a rubber band.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I don't know,” she said. “A boy asked me to give it to you.”

  “What boy?”

  'Just a boy. A present, he said. Aren't you going to open it?'

  O'Hara took it out of my hands, stripped off the rubber band and cautiously opened the box himself. Inside, on a bed of crunched-up white office paper, lay a knife.

  I swallowed. The knife had a handle of dark polished wood, ridged round and round to give a good grip. There was a businesslike black hilt and a narrow black blade nearly six inches long: all in all, good looking and efficient.

  “Wow,” Lucy said. “It's beautiful.”

  O'Hara closed the box without touching the knife and, restoring the rubber
band, stuck it in his outside jacket pocket. I thought it was better to get a knife in a box than in the body.

  “We should stop all boys from leaving,” O'Hara said, but he could see, as I could, that it was already too late. Half of the crowd had already walked homewards through the gates.

  “Is something the matter?” Lucy asked, frowning, sensing our alarm.

  “No,” I smiled at the blue eyes. “I hope you've had a good day.”

  I kissed her cheek. In public, she allowed it. She said, “I'd better go, Dad's waiting,” and made a carefree departure, waving.

  O'Hara took the white box from his pocket and carefully opened it again, picking out of the raised lid a folded strip of the same white paper. He handed it to me and I looked at its message.

  Again a computer print out, it said, 'Tomorrow'.

  O'Hara and I walked out together towards the cars and I told him about Dorothea and her injuries. I described again for him, as I had two days earlier, the knife that had been dropped on the Heath.

  He stopped dead in mid-stride. “Are you saying,” he demanded, “that your friend was attacked with that knife? The one on the Heath?”

  “I don't know.”

  “But,” he protested, bemused, “what possible connection could there be between her and our film?”

  “I don't know”

  “It can't have been the same knife.” He walked on, troubled but certain.

  “The only connection,” I said, going with him, “is the fact that long ago Dorothea's brother Valentine put shoes on Jackson Wells's racehorses.”

  “Much too distant to have any significance.”

  “And Valentine said he once gave a knife to someone called Derry.”

  “Hell's teeth, Thomas, you're rambling.”

  “Yes. Valentine was at the time.”

  “Valentine was what?”

  “Rambling,” I said. “Delirious.”

  I killed the Cornish boy ...

  Too many knives.

  “You are not,” O'Hara said strongly, “going to get knifed tomorrow.”

  He laughed. “You're a jackass, Thomas.”