by Dick Francis
The door from the hall opened suddenly and a boy and a girl, quite remarkably alike, came in. He, about twenty, had the slightly sullen air of one whose feelings of rebellion had not carried him as far as actually leaving his palatial home. She, about fifteen, had the uncomplicated directness of one to whom the idea of rebellion had not yet occurred.
‘Oh sorry,’ she said. ‘Didn’t know we had anyone for dinner.’ She came across the room in her jeans and a pale yellow tee-shirt, with her brother behind her dressed very much the same.
Van Huren said, ‘This is my son Jonathan, and my daughter Sally…’
I stood up to shake hands with the girl, which seemed to amuse her.
‘I say,’ she said. ‘Did anyone ever tell you you look like Edward Lincoln?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’
‘You are what?’
‘Edward Lincoln.’
‘Oh yeah.’ She took a closer look. ‘Oh golly. Good heavens. So you are.’ Then doubtfully, afraid I was making a fool of her, ‘Are you really?’
Her father said, ‘Mr Lincoln is a friend of Mrs Cavesey…’
‘Aunt Nerissa! Oh yes. She told us once that she knew you well… She’s such a darling, isn’t she?’
‘She is,’ I agreed, sitting down again.
Jonathan looked at me steadily with a cold and unimpressed eye.
‘I never go to see your sort of film,’ he stated.
I smiled mildly and made no answer: it was typical of the putting-down brand of remark made to me with varying degrees of aggression almost every week of my life. Experience had long ago shown that the only unprovocative reply was silence.
‘Well, I do,’ Sally said. ‘I’ve seen quite a few of them. Was it really you riding that horse in Spy Across Country, like the posters said?’
I nodded. ‘Mm.’
She looked at me consideringly. ‘Wouldn’t you have found it easier in a hackamore?’
I laughed involuntarily. ‘Well, no. I know the script said the horse had a very light mouth, but the one they actually gave me to ride had a hard one.’
‘Sally is a great little horsewoman,’ her mother said unnecessarily. ‘She won the big pony class at the Rand Easter Show.’
‘On Rojedda Reef,’ Sally added.
The name meant nothing to me. But the others clearly thought it would. They looked at me expectantly, and in the end it was Jonathan who said with superiority, ‘It’s the name of our gold mine.’
‘Really? I didn’t know you had a gold mine.’ I half deliberately said it with the same inflection that father and son had said they didn’t see my films, and Quentin van Huren heard it. He turned his head quite sharply towards me, and I could feel the internal smile coming out of my eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, holding my gaze. ‘I see.’ His lips twitched. ‘Would you care to go down one? To see what goes on?’
From the surprised expressions on the rest of his family, I gathered that what he had offered was more or less the equivalent of my suggesting a press conference.
‘I’d like it enormously,’ I assured him. ‘I really would.’
‘I’m flying down to Welkom on Monday morning,’ he said. ‘That’s the town where Rojedda is… I’ll be there the whole week, but if you care to come down with me Monday, you can fly back again the same evening.’
I said that that would be great.
By the end of dinner the van Huren-Lincoln entente had progressed to the point where three of the family decided to go to Germiston that Saturday to watch Nerissa’s horses run. Jonathan said he had more important things to do.
‘Like what?’ Sally demanded.
Jonathan didn’t really know.
Chapter Seven
Friday turned out to be a meagre day for world news, which left a lot too much space for the perils of Katya. Seldom had the Press been invited in advance to such a spectacle, and in most papers it seemed to have made the front page.
One of them first unkindly suggested that it had all been a publicity stunt which had gone wrong, and then denied it most unconvincingly in the following paragraph.
I wondered, reading it, how many people would believe just that. I wondered, remembering that mischievous smile, whether Katya could possibly even have set it up herself. She and Roderick, between them.
But she wouldn’t have risked her life. Not unless she hadn’t realised she was risking it.
I picked up the Rand Daily Star, to see what they had made of Roderick’s information, and found that he had written the piece himself. ‘By our own Rand Daily Star eye-witness, Roderick Hodge’ it announced at the top. Considering his emotional involvement it was not too highly coloured, but it was he, more than any of the others, who stressed, as Conrad had done, that if Katya had not taken the microphone away from me, it would have been I who got the shock.
I wondered how much Roderick wished I had done. For one thing, it would have made a better story.
With a twisting smile I read on to the end. Katya, he reported finally, was being detained in hospital overnight, her condition described as ‘comfortable’.
I shoved the papers aside, and while I showered and shaved came to two conclusions. One was that what I had done was not particularly remarkable and certainly not worth the coverage, and the other was that after this I was going to have even more trouble explaining to Nerissa why all I could bring her were guesses, not proof.
Down at the reception desk I asked if they could get me a packed lunch and hire me a horse for the day out in some decent riding country. Certainly, they said, and waved a few magic wands: by mid-morning I was twenty-five miles north of Johannesburg setting out along a dirt road in brilliant sunshine on a pensioned off racehorse who had seen better days. I took a deep contented breath of the sweet smell of Africa and padded along with a great feeling of freedom. The people who owned the horse had gently insisted on sending their head boy along with me so that I shouldn’t get lost, but as he spoke little English and I no Bantu, I found him a most peaceful companion. George was small, rode well, and had a great line in banana-shaped smiles.
We passed a cross-roads where there was a large stall, all by itself, loaded with bright orange fruit and festooned with pineapples, with one man beaming beside them.
‘Naartjies,’ George said, pointing.
I made signs that I didn’t understand. One thing about being an actor, it occasionally came in useful.
‘Naartjies.’ George repeated, dismounting from his horse and leading it towards the stall. I grasped the fact that George wanted to buy, so I called to him and fished out a five rand note. George smiled, negotiated rapidly, and returned with a huge string bag of naartjies, two ripe pineapples, and most of the money.
In easy undemanding companionship we rode further, dismounted in some shade, ate a pineapple each, and cold chicken from the Iguana Rock, and drank some refreshing unsweet apple juice from tins George had been given to bring along. The naartjies turned out to be like large lumpy tangerines with green patches on the skin: they also tasted like tangerine, but better.
George ate his lunch thirty feet away from me. I beckoned to him to come closer, but he wouldn’t.
In the afternoon we trotted and cantered a long way over tough scrubby brown dried grass, and finally, walking to cool the horses, found ourselves approaching the home stables from the opposite direction to the way we set out.
They asked ten rand for the hire of the horse, though the day I had had was worth a thousand, and I gave George five rand for himself, which his employers whispered was too much. George with a last dazzling smile handed me the bag of naartjies and they all gave me friendly waves when I left. If only life were all so natural, so undemanding, so unfettered.
Five miles down the road I reflected that if it were, I would be bored to death.
Conrad was before me at the Iguana.
He met me as I came into the hall and surveyed me from head to foot, dust, sweat, naartjies and all.
&n
bsp; ‘What on earth have you been doing, dear boy?’
‘Riding.’
‘What a pity I haven’t an Arriflex with me,’ he exclaimed.
‘What a shot… you standing there looking like a gypsy with your back to the light… and those oranges… have to work it into our next film together, can’t waste a shot like that…’
‘You’re early,’ I remarked.
‘Might as well wait here as anywhere else.’
‘Come upstairs, then, while I change.’
He came up to my room and with unfailing instinct chose the most comfortable chair.
‘Have a naartjie,’ I said.
I’d rather have a Martini, dear boy.’
‘Order one, then.’
He rang for his drink and it came while I was in the shower. I towelled dry and went back into the bedroom in underpants to find him equipped also with a Churchillsized cigar, wreathed in smoke and smelling of London clubs and plutocracy. He was looking through the pile of newspapers which still lay tidily on the table, but in the end left them undisturbed.
‘I’ve seen all those,’ he said. ‘How do you like being a real hero, for a change?’
‘Don’t be nutty. What’s so heroic about first aid?’
He grinned. Changed the subject.
‘What in hell’s name made you come out here for a premiere after all those years of refusing to show your face off the screen?’
‘I came to see some horses,’ I said, and explained about Nerissa.
‘Oh, well, then, dear boy, that does make more sense, I agree. And have you found out what’s wrong?’
I shrugged. ‘Not really. Don’t see how I can.’ I fished out a clean shirt and buttoned it on. ‘I’m going to Germiston races tomorrow, and I’ll keep my eyes open again, but I doubt if anyone could ever prove anything against Greville Arknold.’ I put on some socks and dark blue trousers, and some slip-on shoes. ‘What are you and Evan doing here, anyway?’
‘Film making. What else?’
‘What film?’
‘Some goddam awful story about elephants that Evan took it into his head to do. It was all set up before he got roped in to finish Man in a Car, and since he chose to ponce around in Spain for all that time, we were late getting out here. Should be down in the Kruger Game Park by now.’
I brushed my hair.
‘Who’s playing the lead?’
‘Drix Goddart.’
I glanced at Conrad over my shoulder. He smiled sardonically.
‘Wax in Evan’s hands, dear boy. Laps up direction like a well patted puppy.’
‘Nice for you all.’
‘He’s so neurotic that if someone doesn’t tell him every five minutes that he’s brilliant, he thinks everyone hates him.’
‘Is he here with you?’
‘No, thank God. He was supposed to be, but now he comes out with all the rest of the team after Evan and I have sorted out which locations we want to use.’
I put down the brushes and fastened my watch round my wrist. Keys, change, handkerchief into trouser pockets.
‘Did you see the rushes of the desert scenes while you were in England?’ Conrad asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Evan didn’t invite me.’
‘Just like him.’ He took a long swallow and rolled the Martini round his teeth. He squinted at the long ash on the end of his mini-torpedo. He said, ‘They were good.’
‘So they damn well ought to be. We did them enough times.’
He smiled without looking at me. ‘You won’t like the finished film.’
After a pause, as he didn’t explain, I said, ‘Why not?’
‘There’s something in it besides and beyond acting.’ He paused again, considering his words. ‘Even to a jaundiced eye like mine, dear boy, the quality of suffering is shattering.’
I didn’t say anything. He swivelled his eyes in my direction.
‘Usually you do not reveal much of yourself, do you?
Well, this time, dear boy, this time…’
I compressed my lips. I knew what I’d done. I’d known while I did it. I had just hoped that no one would be perceptive enough to notice.
‘Will the critics see what you saw?’ I asked.
He smiled lop-sidedly. ‘Bound to, aren’t they? The best ones, anyway.’
I stared despondently at the carpet. The trouble with interpreting scenes too well, with taking an emotion and making the audience feel it sharply, was that it meant stripping oneself naked in public. Nothing as simple as naked skin, but letting the whole world peer into one’s mind, one’s beliefs, one’s experience.
To be able to reproduce a feeling so that others could recognise it, and perhaps understand it for the first time, one had to have some idea of what it felt like in reality. To show that one knew, meant revealing what one had felt. Revealing oneself too nakedly did not come easily to a private man, and if one did not reveal oneself, one never became a great actor.
I was not a great actor. I was competent and popular, but unless I whole-heartedly took the step into frightening personal exposure, I would never do anything great. There was always for me, in acting beyond a certain limit, an element of mental distress. But I had thought, when I risked doing it in the car, that my own self would be merged indiscernibly with the trials the fictional character was enduring.
I had done it because of Evan: to spite him, more than to please him. There was a point beyond which no director could claim credit for an actor’s performance, and I had gone a long way beyond that point.
‘What are you thinking?’ Conrad demanded.
‘I was deciding to stick exclusively in future to unreal entertaining escapades, as in the past.’
‘You’re a coward, dear boy.’
‘Yes.’
He tapped the ash off his cigar.
‘No one is going to be satisfied, if you do.’
‘Of course they are.’
‘Uhuh.’ He shook his head. ‘No one will settle for paste after they see they could have the real thing.’
‘Stop drinking Martinis,’ I said. ‘They give you rotten ideas.’
I walked across the room, picked up my jacket, put it on, and stowed wallet and diary inside it.
‘Let’s go down to the bar,’ I said.
He levered himself obediently out of the chair.
‘You can’t run away from yourself for ever, dear boy.’
‘I’m not the man you think I am.’
‘Oh yes,’ Conrad said. ‘Dear boy, you are.’
At Germiston races the next day I found waiting for me at the gate not only the free entrance tickets promised by Greville Arknold, but also a racecourse official with a duplicate set and instructions to take me up to lunch with the Chairman of the Race Club.
I meekly followed where he led, and was presently shown into a large dining-room where about a hundred people were already eating at long tables. The whole van Huren family, including a sulky Jonathan, occupied chairs near the end of the table closest to the door, and when he saw me come in, van Huren himself rose to his feet.
‘Mr Klugvoigt, this is Edward Lincoln,’ he said to the man sitting at the end of the table: and to me added, ‘Mr Klugvoigt is the Chairman.’
Klugvoigt stood up, shook hands, indicated the empty chair on his left, and we all sat down.
Vivi van Huren in a sweeping green hat sat opposite me, on the Chairman’s right, with her husband beside her. Sally van Huren was on my left, with her brother beyond. They all seemed to know Klugvoigt well, and as a personality he had much in common with van Huren: same air of wealth and substance, same self confidence, same bulk of body and acuity of mind.
Once past the preliminaries and the politenesses (how did I like South Africa: nowhere so comfortable as the Iguana Rock: how long was I staying) the conversation veered naturally back to the chief matter in hand.
Horses.
The van Hurens owned a four-year-old which had finished third in the Dunlop Gold Cup a month ear
lier, but they were giving it a breather during these less important months. Klugvoigt owned two three-year-olds running that afternoon with nothing much expected.
I steered the conversation round to Nerissa’s horses without much difficulty, and from there to Greville Arknold, asking, but not pointedly, how he was in general regarded, both as man and trainer.
Neither van Huren nor Klugvoigt were of the kind to come straight out with what they thought. It was Jonathan who leant forward and let out the jet of truth.
‘He’s a rude bloody bastard with hands as heavy as a gold brick.’
‘I have to advise Nerissa, when I get home,’ I commented.
‘Aunt Portia always said he had a way with horses,’ Sally objected, in defence.
‘Yeah. Backwards,’ said Jonathan.
Van Huren gave him a flickering glance in which humour was by no means lacking, but he changed the subject immediately with the expertise of one thoroughly awake to the risk of slander.
‘Your Clifford Wenkins, Link, telephoned to me yesterday afternoon to offer us all some tickets to your premiere.’ He looked amused. I gratefully accepted that he had loosened with me to the point of dropping the meticulous ‘Mr’ and thought that in an hour or two I might get around to Quentin.
‘Apparently he had had second thoughts about his abruptness to me when I asked for your address.’
‘Probably been doing some belated homework,’ agreed Klugvoigt, who seemed to know all about it.
‘It’s only a… an adventure film,’ I said. ‘You might not enjoy it.’
He gave me a dry sardonic smile. ‘You won’t accuse me again of condemning what I haven’t seen.’
I smiled back. I considerably liked Nerissa’s sister’s husband’s brother.
We finished the excellent lunch and wandered out for the first race. Horses were already being mounted, and Vivi and Sally hurried off to upset the odds with a couple of rand.
‘Your friend Wenkins said he would be here today,’ van Huren remarked.
‘Oh dear.’
He chuckled.
Arknold, in the parade ring, was throwing his magenta-shirted jockey up into the saddle.
‘How heavy is a gold brick?’ I asked.
Van Huren followed my gaze. ‘Seventy-two pounds, usually. You can’t lift them as easily, though, as seventy-two pounds of jockey.’