Camilla came back to the servery looking thunderous. “I’m warning you, Melvyn,” she shouted, “if I have one more complaint I’m going off duty! I’ve got a man going berserk out here because he’s been waiting three quarters of an hour for a goujon!”
“And I reckon I’ve got a good case for wiring a jaw,” a disembodied voice replied from inside the cloud of steam, “and I’m sure as hell not thinking about the horse.”
>>> “I won’t be very long. I’ll take the shorter route, it’s about an hour.” Melissa mounted the chestnut pony and fiddled about with reins, stirrups and leathers. “You are sure you’ll be all right? You know Douglas wouldn’t approve if he knew.”
“Douglas wouldn’t approve of a lot of things if he knew about them.” I grinned up at her. “I’ll be fine, honestly. Being on my own around the stables is great, and anyway, I’ve got Moonlight.”
Melissa pulled a face. “And you’re welcome to him. Creepy sort of horse he is, never takes his eyes off you and never had a day’s lameness since he arrived. Still, he was your choice.”
“I don’t regret it. And I’ll be riding him soon.”
Melissa turned the chestnut pony towards the gate. “Not all that soon, you won’t. The RDA instructor said you might have to wait another six months before you can ride at home.”
“Hrmmm,” I said.
“And hrmmm to you too! But at least buying Moonlight got you back to the RDA, I have to give him credit for that.” Melissa and the chestnut threaded their way through the gate, closed it and trotted off down the drift which led to the lane. The pony’s hooves rattled briefly on the tarmac and gradually faded into the distance.
I called to Moonlight and when he came, took a comb from the grooming bag at the side of my chair and began to tidy his long, wavy mane, no longer matted and tangled as it had been that day in the dealer’s field.
The white horse looked better now, more beautiful, less ribby; the poverty marks on his quarters were almost gone Only the eyes remained the same, deep and dark and knowing. Other horses dozed, closed their eyes, dreamed their private dreams, but the white horse watched and waited.
“Hi!”
The blonde, slim, good looking youth riding a showy Arab mare was quite a sight as he rode along the post and rail fence. “I thought I’d come to say hello. I’m Alan Saunders, I’ve just moved my horses into the stable yard next door. Is he Andalusian?”
The Arab mare nickered from the fence. The white horse flipped an ear but made no move to turn his head.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know anything about his breeding.”
“I’d say he is. You can tell by that strong front, the way the croup drops away, the heavy mane, even the colour. Where did you get him?”
“From a dealer.”
“Is he rideable?”
I frowned. “Of course he’s rideable.” I attached no importance to the slipping stifle.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
Now I had embarrassed him. “Not by me, obviously. Not yet, apparently it will be a few months yet before I’m allowed to try. I’m learning with the RDA.”
“I see. Of course you’ve seen him ridden?”
“Not exactly, no.”
The Arab mare began to dig a hole with a front foot, impatient to be away. Alan Saunders cuffed her head gently.
“You mean you didn’t get anyone to try him for you?” He looked astonished. “Then how do you know he’s suitable?”
All these questions were really rather tiresome. “Look, I bought him because I liked him. I knew him. I’d seen him before. I’d ridden him before. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“I see.” He grinned. “Are you always this prickly?”
I thought about it. “Nearly always.”
“How long have you been in a wheelchair?”
“Almost two years. I was in a road accident. My mother was killed.”
“I’m sorry. Is there any hope for improvement?”
“There didn’t seem to be at first. But when I went riding it was painful. Apparently that was a good sign. Since then, yes, I have improved.”
“So the riding made all the difference.”
“So it seems.”
“And some day soon you’ll be riding this fellow.”
“Yes.”
“But not before someone else rides him first, I hope.”
“I don’t believe I know what you mean.”
“I think you know exactly what I mean. Horses get out of practice if you don’t ride them regularly. They forget their manners. So it would be better if he was put back into regular work before you start.”
Of course it was logical, the only sensible course, but the white horse was different…
“Would you like me to ride him?”
I stared. “You?”
He looked offended. “I can ride quite well, you know. As a matter of fact I train eventers. I’m not entirely without experience.”
“Well, no, I didn’t mean that… I’m sure...” I looked at the white horse, into the dark eyes like deep, bottomless pools. Was it my imagination or had they changed imperceptibly, become more guarded? But why not let an experienced rider be first in the saddle? Better Alan Saunders than Melissa who had no empathy with the white horse whatsoever. “I think that might be quite a good idea,” I said.
“OK. Well, no time like the present!”
The next minute the Arab mare was through the gate and, girth loosened, reins stuck behind her stirrups, was shut in the chestnut pony’s stable whilst Moonlight’s new, unused Havana leather saddle and bridle were carried from the tack room. Somehow I hadn’t meant, didn’t want, things to move this fast.
“Look, Alan, wait… I’m not sure you should!”
But already the white horse was bridled. Was it just fancy that I thought I caught a glint of rebelliousness in his eye?
“Alan, there’s something else… something I haven’t told you about him. The dealer said he had a…”
But the saddle was on and Alan had his foot in the stirrup and it was too late. It was as if I knew what was going to happen, as if I expected it and what did happen had nothing whatever to do with a slipping stifle.
As I watched, the white horse wheeled away without giving his rider a second to gather the reins, flew across the field, swerved, then swooped forward into a great powerful bucking arc, hurling Alan Saunders, experienced trainer of event horses, through the air as if he were no more than a puppet.
I did not want to look but eventually I parted my fingers and stared at the figure lying, completely motionless, on the ground. The white horse was completely motionless as well, standing nearby with trailing reins and lowered head and in his eyes some expression, reproach or triumph, but from so far away, how could I know?
It seemed that someone had better move and it had to be me. I sent my chair across the grass and reached the figure just as it proved to be alive, sitting up, holding its ribs, gasping, winded, shocked.
“What can I say? I’m so sorry – I’m just glad you’re all right!”
“No thanks to our Andalusian friend over there!” With difficulty he clambered to his feet. “Listen,” he was forced to cling on to the wheelchair. “Sweetheart, believe me, he’s not a suitable mount for you! If you try to ride him he’ll kill you. He’s got one hell of a buck in him. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was like being airborne!”
“I bet it was.” I tried not to smile.
Too soon the sound of approaching hooves on tarmac heralded the return of Melissa on the chestnut pony. In an instant I had the white horse by the rein and was unbuckling the throatlash.
“Alan,” I commanded, “help me. Take off the saddle. And whatever you do, say nothing to my sister about this. Say nothing to anyone. Not yet. Promise me, promise!”
He looked at me, and from me to the white horse, and from the white horse back to me. He rubbed a piece of grass from his cheek and he looked undecided.
“I�
��ll only promise if you make a promise.”
“What sort of promise?”
“That you’ll never try to ride him. That you let me find you a suitable horse, a quiet old plodder, to ride in six months’ time.”
I looked at the grey horse and the grey horse watched and waited.
“I promise,” I said.<<<
Behind the vicarage a gloomy mass of vegetation hid the stables from view. Laurels dripped. Pools of water lay in wait for the unlit and unwary on the untended drive. I thought it a miserable place for a horse to live in isolation even if it did save hours of travelling every day.
Only one top door was open in the L-shaped block. I knew that was the one I was looking for. I walked boldly across the gravel, wanting the white horse to hear me, unwilling to approach him in silence, in the dark, unannounced. At the end of the block I could see the dark shape of the horsebox but Anthony was not in it. I had left him plotting the shots for tomorrow’s schedule with the Director and some of the crew behind the drawn curtains of the lounge bar. Armed with no more than a tube of strong mints, I had come to beard the dragon in his den.
The very first time I had seen the white horse I had been struck by his spectacular beauty. He was not like The Raven who had the close satin coat with the hard shine, the straight glossy mane and tail of the thoroughbred. He was not like any horse I had seen before. I suppose that compared with the classical lines of The Raven, his was a more savage, primitive beauty. He was a rococo horse, romantic, the sort of horse who could have stepped out of a painting by Van Dyck or Velazquez, with the crinkled lavishness of his mane and tail, the slender elegance of his legs, his thick, powerful neck, the nobility of his head with its slightly convex profile, the sharply pointed ears, the velvety darkness of his nostrils, the steady watchfulness of the black-fringed eyes. From the start I had been mesmerized by the horse called The Blizzard.
Anthony, of course, had seen this. He had purposely not told me the horse was stabled behind the vicarage because he wanted me to stay away. It was quite clear from the way the horse was swiftly removed from the set once the action was over that I was not going to be allowed to build any sort of relationship which might prove troublesome. I was to be allowed near him for the purpose of the film and that was that.
And yet I was to be working with the horse for weeks. Tomorrow I was to ride him for the first time, and I was determined to get to know him. Of course, there was his chilling reputation to consider, but I found it hard to believe he was a rogue horse. I did not want to believe it. Then there was the question of the wiring. I knew this was cruel, so did Hender, so did Anthony. The horse had been wired before, perhaps he had always been wired for loose work. It didn’t explain his behaviour or justify it, but neither was it in any way a cure, it was just a safety precaution for the handler, the actors and the film crew.
I had hated the reshooting of the dream sequence at Televsion City. The white horse had behaved impeccably and the wiring didn’t show. There was a little more movement of the lips perhaps, nothing more than that; the wiring had been done after the silver bridle had been put on and had to be snipped before it could be removed. All this had been done discreetly inside the horsebox, but I had known as soon as I walked on to the studio floor and saw the horse being worked on the conveyor belt wearing the silver bridle instead of the headcollar, that it was done.
I had not been able to look Anthony in the eye during the shooting, and even Angel had kept her distance. Not that there had been any time for acrimony or shows of temperament, the Director had seen to that. Three takes and cut! It’s a wrap. Let’s go home folks. The next thing I knew I was back behind the servery counting out goujons. Well, I was sick of it. Sick of being treated like a piece of human scenery, sick of the Sow and Pigs, sick of the lot of them. And tonight I was going to visit my dream horse.
My dream horse, standing in the darkened stable, gleamed like a spectre. He stood, untied, in all his baroque majesty and he looked at me with his black, watchful eyes without surprise, as if I was expected, as if he had known I was coming.
I unbolted the lower door and went into the stable. He was muzzled. Well, he would be because the stable was unlocked and open to anyone, to any village child who might wander round the back of the vicarage looking for mischief. It was a sensible precaution whilst Anthony was not about. That he would be unmuzzled later was made obvious by the filled haynet lying outside the door, and by the glint of water in the bucket in the corner of the stable.
“Moonlight. Come.”
The white horse came. He knew me. Of course he knew me. I stroked the beautiful face. I ran my fingers through his long, wavy forelock. I rubbed his powerful neck, and felt the soft skin under his jowl, and all the time the white horse watched and waited. Almost without realizing it my fingers found the buckle on the headstall of the muzzle. I pulled the strap from its keeper. I was not afraid. Why should I be?
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Anthony’s voice. My fingers froze on the headstall.
“Do up the buckle, Grace. Don’t be a fool.”
Damn Anthony. Obviously I had not been as artful as I thought; he must have seen me slip away or noticed I was missing and guessed where I would be.
“Do up the buckle, Grace. Don’t be obstinate. Now isn’t the time.” The red tip of a cigarette glowed briefly outside the stable door. “Do you know why Hender isn’t working the horse himself?”
I hadn’t thought about it. Yet the horse called The Blizzard belonged to Hender and it was logical for a horse to have only one handler…
“Hender’s strapped up with tape. He’s got three crushed ribs. Do you want to know how it happened? Shall I tell you?”
I did not want him to tell me. I stood in the stable beside the white horse and my heart began to contract.
“The horse you are about to unmuzzle turned on him in the horsebox when he was being loaded for the first day’s filming. Hender loves that horse. He’s lived with him every day for the past three months. He’s worked him, strapped him, fed him, shed tears over him and he’s never raised a finger against him even though he’s been kicked and bitten until he’s black and blue. Yet for all that, the horse turned on him when he was being loaded and because there wasn’t room to kick and he couldn’t get his head round to bite, he crushed him against the partition instead. If someone hadn’t been on the ramp to pull up the floor bolt, Hender wouldn’t have three crushed ribs to worry about. Hender wouldn’t be worrying at all. Because Hender would be a mortuary case.”
I stood with my hand on the headstall and the white horse watched and waited, and my heart began to ache and ache.
“Do up the buckle, Grace. He’s not a dream horse. In the States he killed his handler. That’s why he was shipped over here. He was offered to me and I refused him, but Hender wanted to give him one more chance. There’s nothing magical about The Blizzard. He’s a killer.”
I did up the buckle. What else could I do? I could no longer see the beautiful baroque horse because my eyes were scalding, but perhaps that was just as well.
It was the end of a dream for me, the death of an illusion. And a lesson every actress has to learn sooner or later. A film is just a film, nothing more. Fact must never be allowed to merge with fiction. Reality is everything. Because for one moment in the darkened stable we had not been The Blizzard and Grace Darling, we had been Moonlight and Eileen.
>>> “I can’t do it, Eileen. Don’t ask me. If anything happened…”
“Nothing will happen. How can it? You’ll be leading him. If I start to wobble, you can stop. Look, I know they want me to take him to the RDA first, but I’m not going to do that whatever they say. I want to ride him here. I shall ride him here.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Melissa groaned, agonized by indecision, “say you fall.”
“If I fall you can catch me.”
“And anyway,” Melissa said, clutching at straws, “how will I get you on him? It isn’t a
s if we’ve got a mounting ramp like the RDA. I can’t lift you, it’s impossible.”
I had thought of that. “We can use hay bales. Three would make good steps and I can help myself to a certain extent. I’m not the dead weight I was.”
With a troubled expression Melissa stacked the hay bales. “If Douglas knew what we were up to he’d go potty.”
“If he knew you left me alone in the field whilst you went off for rides, he’d go equally potty.”
Melissa gave me a vengeful look. “That sounds like blackmail to me.”
“I prefer to think of it as one good turn deserving another.”
She stood back in order to survey her handiwork. “I always thought that being crippled was somehow ennobling, that people changed, became less demanding, more unselfish.”
“A common belief. But quite untrue. Now go and get the tack.”<<<
“Grace, can I have a private word?”
Camilla narrowed her eyes. “Make sure you bring her back, Mister Sylvester, she’s needed for the next shoot.”
“Since when have you been appointed Director, Miss Cook?” Anthony enquired.
I allowed myself to be led away from the set, out of sight and earshot of the crew, behind the stables.
“You haven’t told anyone about yesterday, about the horse?”
“I haven’t said a word. You asked me not to.”
“Good. I don’t want Camilla to know. She pretends well when the cameras are rolling, but she’s scared of horses and already terrified of The Blizzard.”
“I know.”
“Especially I don’t want her to know I’m working the horse unwired for the next shoot. I haven’t told anybody, not even Melvyn, because the last thing I want is any tension on the set. I can’t afford to have an atmosphere build-up.”
“But why work him unwired? Is it wise? Is it really necessary?”
“I’m afraid so. There are too many head shots and one in particular, right at the end, where the wires would certainly show. I don’t want to do it, but I haven’t any choice.”
Only a few days ago I had refused to work with a horse which had its jaws wired, but now I was aware of the risks. “But what if something happens: What if...”
Catch a Falling Star (The Silver Bridle Book 3) Page 6
