‘Coming, sir, coming!’
‘Ger – ger – good luck!’ Josh called.
‘Five seconds …’ the official warned.
Melinda reset her stop watch.
‘Go!’ She pressed start on her watch and was gone.
She had never really stretched the Grey Goose, always leaving something in reserve, because once she started jumping she was so naturally quick and nimble at her fences for a big horse that her racing pedigree gave her a good three or four seconds’ headway over her rivals without ever having to notch her up into top gear.
But for Melinda, today was different. The optimum time of four minutes fifteen seconds set was more than challenging, it was the fastest time the pair had so far had to meet, so if all went well they were really going to have to go for it, and some.
The first five fences presented no problem, although when Melinda got a good view from behind the mare’s head at the sixth, she momentarily trembled inwardly. But the mare made nothing of it, barely checking her stride, and taking off without Melinda’s having to ask, landing well clear of danger and picking up as soon as her feet touched the ground.
With that Melinda’s confidence returned and together they flew, Melinda knowing that anything was possible, and all she had to do was to keep Goosey in her hands, keep her balance, find the right stride, and go.
* * *
Jack had been away from Hope for so long, yet now he was back and beside her again he felt so depressed at seeing her still where she was that his confidence deserted him and he felt too self-conscious to play her his song. In fact for days now he had been with her in hospital, back to his old routine, and not daring to play it because, in his heart of hearts, he felt it just was not good enough.
It was Hope who had brought back his confidence in himself, it was Hope who had made him feel he could go back on tour again, face real people, real audiences, but it had been with old songs, and the people had been old fans, and they had come to hear their old favourites, his ‘evergreens’, and this song was new. No-one except Rusty and Mandrake really knew what it was like, and now that Jack was no longer with them he had lost his confidence again somewhere on the road.
And so he talked to her and played her many things as he sat with her, but not his song. It just was not good enough, not now that he was back with her, not now that he was sitting with her. His song for her that had been meant to be so brilliant now seemed to him to be lacking in everything he had wanted it to be, lacking even in the one ingredient with which he had so longed to fill it.
He walked restlessly up and down the hospital room thinking about all this, and wondering in the next second how Melinda and Josh were getting on, and in the following second how Letty and James were liking their nanny and whether she was too old for them, but finishing up, as he always did, by reassuring himself that having an older person to look after them was good because it meant they were growing up with all ages, and Hope had always said that was good.
He stopped.
That was probably the matter! Hope had said so much to him, all of which he remembered, but she had never said what she thought of his work, she had only ever smiled when, his confidence returning, he had started to play to her. ‘La Giaconda’ he had used to call her, saying she had a smile just like the painting. He looked across at her. Oh to see her smile again, just once.
Melinda could not believe how well the mare was going. It was impossible to think she could keep going as she was. Foot perfect, every stride in place, as if she too was counting.
‘You are a genius!’ she called to her after they had been through the water complex. It seemed they had flown the course so far with hardly a check, passing the beautiful ruin of a Palladian mansion and flying off the steps, and according to Melinda’s stop watch they were still within the time.
But perhaps they had become too confident, lost their concentration for a second, for suddenly as they approached the next Goosey lost her impulsion and her stride, shortening up into the fence and losing her footing, so that as the mare took off Melinda found herself without stirrups and round the mare’s neck. With a second arrow-head marking the next jump coming up, she had no chance.
‘Stay on, Mellie, stay on!’ she heard a voice that was not her own saying. ‘Stay on for me, Mellie!’
Mums. Dear God. She had to stay on, if only for her.
The mare must have heard Hope too, because instead of running out to the right at the second part of the fence, which ninety per cent of horses would have done, she not only righted herself but jumped the rails clean, all by herself, unaided by Melinda who by now was hanging halfway down the horse’s shoulder.
With Melinda clinging on grimly and without stirrups, their troubles were by no means over. With Tyro Tyres looming before them and Melinda still fighting for her balance and trying to get at least one foot back in her irons, while using the reins to keep herself on the mare rather than steer her, the natural consequence had to be Goosey’s galloping straight, unchecked, thereby losing precious seconds until Melinda could right herself.
‘Whoa, Goosey!’ Melinda yelled at her horse.
And miraculously for a moment Goosey slowed her gallop, checking with a bounce as she did so, and very nearly catapulting Melinda, but this time out of the side door. But, feeling the mare stopping, Melinda used the check to the very opposite effect, pushing against the mare’s neck, and allowing the momentum to throw her backwards. The moment she felt herself going in that direction, even before her backside hit the saddle, Melinda gathered her reins and hauled right, hard. The Grey Goose turned, changing direction as if on a sixpence, her sudden swing causing Melinda once again to bounce back up out of her saddle – but at least by now they were straightened and as Melinda’s feet still searched desperately to find their irons, she yelled once again, ‘Go, go, go!’
Goosey went. In fact now that they were clearing Tyro Tyres, although there were still no irons, Melinda had a moment of inspiration. She kicked her left foot free of the stirrup for which she had been feeling and finding herself perched exactly where she knew she should be, at the point of balance, and giving just enough rein, she leaned back, easing the pressure on the mare’s mouth as she landed.
And they were over, after which there was just enough time for Melinda to pitch forward and tap the irons back onto her toes.
Now they were back on track, and in so many ways Melinda settled herself – not just into the gallop position, but into the knowledge that whatever happened after that, they could surely survive anything?
‘That cost us four seconds, Goosey,’ she cried, ‘we are going to have to kick on,’ and as she did so she felt the mare remember her past on the racecourse and slip into top gear, eating up the ground as she went.
All right, so he would play his song to her. After all, he had written it to her, and so he must take his courage into his hands and play it to her. And if it was terrible, it was terrible, what did it matter?
But of course it did matter enormously to him that the song should sound as he wanted it to, that it should be as he wanted it to be, for her whom he loved so much.
‘I’m going to play you my song, if only to keep my mind off how Melinda and Josh are doing at that blasted event,’ he finally confessed to Hope. ‘Your daughter is mad, and so is the whole horse world, but there you are, she’s doing what she wants to do, and thank God Josh and she are friends again, because for a while that relationship seemed to be staying on hold, and some.’
Having kicked on Melinda expected to find the tank empty once she came to the last set of fences, and it would not have been surprising had she done so, but far from it. The mare not only found more under the bonnet, but she went into over-drive, as if she herself knew that she had to give more than she even knew she had, flying the second last and galloping up to the last in a fashion that was simply breathtaking.
Josh and Barley had watched many horses falter towards the end, but now they stood by the finish seeing
the Grey Goose seemingly lengthening instead of shortening over the trakaener and flying finally with such a leap that the fence judges whooped in amazement and the small crowd of onlookers cheered.
‘Go, Goosey, go!’
Melinda sat down into the saddle and rode as hard as she could for the line, and they flew past the finish where those right on the line spun round in semicircles as the grey mare flashed by them.
‘Yes!’ Melinda cried, checking her watch as she began to haul the horse in one-handed. ‘Yes, yes, Goose, you’ve only gone and done it!’
They were one second inside the optimum time. It was literally unbelievable.
Jack put the tape away again. He could not play it to her. And it was nothing to do with Hope and himself being on their own, with her still being there, with his confidence suddenly ebbing, it was all to do with something else. He stopped, and then started up his thoughts again.
It was all to do with his thinking, all the time that he was with Rusty in Wales, all the time that he was with Rusty and Mandrake, on the long drive there, and on the long drive back, all that time he had kept imagining that somehow or other, somehow, with this song, he could bring about the miracle. But now, faced with playing it to her, his courage faltered, and he realized he could not face failure. All his hopes for Hope fading. And his song just being a song that had brought him and Rusty together again, but not Hope and himself. He sat down beside her, and put his head in his hands. He was too afraid to do anything and yet at the same time in such despair that to do nothing seemed to be almost worse.
Melinda flung herself off Goosey, and straight into Josh’s arms, and as she did so that daydream of long ago came back to her – herself flinging herself off the newly arrived Grey Goose into Josh’s arms.
It was only a delighted hug, and of course there was one for Barley too, and the two girls danced delightedly round in a circle for a moment before turning back to the horse, while Josh looked on and laughed at their unaffected exuberance, knowing that they were celebrating long days and weeks of hard work and dedication, of belief in the teeth of despair, of loyalty to an ideal. It was different for him. Melinda’s hugging him that way was quite different, that was rather more than a celebration of a sporting achievement, that was more about making something of a future that might be spent together.
‘So now, now we wait.’ Barley loosened Goosey’s tack. ‘This the worst bit though, isn’t it?’ she asked the mare, pulling at her ears and pulling a face at Melinda at the same time. ‘The very worst bit, the waiting, I always think. I hate waiting.’
‘Yes, me too.’ Melinda looked away and for a moment the delight in her eyes faded and she could no longer concentrate on the timing of her round, or on what Josh was saying about other rounds, or make sense of anything. Something had happened in the last minute, and for no reason she remembered the last part of her mother’s dream, the picture of them all together.
‘But I couldn’t see where I was, Mellie!’
The moment Claire opened the door of 38 Cheshire Street, she knew. As usual she arrived a good half an hour before Crawford’s secretary, Marjorie, but despite her not having yet arrived, nevertheless Claire knew that something had happened, and so when the telephone rang and she heard Marjorie’s voice it was as if she had been given that half an hour to prepare herself to take the news calmly, so that when Marjorie arrived she was waiting to comfort her.
The previous evening Rose had returned from the studio knowing without any doubt that do what he would Sir Godfrey Brimpton could never shake her performance. He might be playing the lead, and Rose Merriott might have been cast against his wishes, but nothing, nothing that he could do would shake her confidence in how she should play the title role of The Wild Duck.
The atmosphere on the studio floor had started off only vaguely interested the first day. The technicians on a small-budget ‘art house’ movie were always more anxious just to get it done and over with, Perry Francis the director told Rose, than to get it done brilliantly. But from the moment everyone on set realized that Sir Godfrey was preparing to throw the book at the unknown ingenue playing opposite him, they lined up to watch what they would undoubtedly have thought was going to be more of a major attraction than the film itself, namely an old star making mincemeat of a young player.
But the old actor could not shake Rose. He tried to, of course. Yet, hours though he kept her waiting to play their scenes together, days that he complained volubly and incessantly that she was ‘not giving him anything’, all were as nothing before Rose’s almost supernaturally unshakeable confidence.
‘Perry’s seen the rushes,’ Charles told her, day after day, and day after day the message was always the same. ‘He’s delighted. Sir G may be still throwing the book at you, but you are doing nothing to his too much!’
Rose sighed with delight, while the professor’s arms went round her, and they kissed, because they had become lovers.
‘I have been in a sweat. I didn’t like to tell you, you know, but the thought of letting you down, after all that work on the play together. Figure-toi!’
‘Don’t mind me, it’s you doing it, you must forget your professor, put me out of your mind, once you’re on the floor.’
‘Forget the person who put me up for it? After all those other actresses had read for it, to walk into a film part on one reading, all thanks to you, and you tell me to forget you? I carry you with me to the studios, in my heart!’ Rose pointed to her chest dramatically. ‘Right in there, and you know it.’
‘Your reading was so intelligent you had to go up for it, and besides, I knew Perry was looking for someone completely fresh.’
Rose stood up. ‘And you arranged for Perry to read me last, you cunning old thing!’ She stopped and slowly, slowly, sank into the splits, which she could still just do, miracle of miracles. ‘But are you sure Perry is really, really pleased with me?’
Charles smiled. Over the past weeks he had come to realize that Rose, while gallantly always assuming an outward confidence, actually needed propping up at every turn – although not, it seemed, once in front of the cameras.
‘Quite sure. I am quite sure that he is not only pleased with you, he is thrilled.’ He paused. ‘Now it’s my turn. How come, and from where, did you finally put together your performance? Because Perry told me it is quite unshakeable, that the old man simply can’t live with you, can’t go your speed, he has to sprint behind, which he is not used to doing at all with young actors, it seems.’
‘No, and nor shall he catch up with me, the old devil.’ Rose looked up from bowing her head over her knees, her arms, swanlike, over her head. ‘But if you want to know the story of how I came to sew up my performance, set it in stone, if you will, it is actually quite simple. The other week I went off with Lily – you know Lily? – course you do. Well, I went off with her to do a really drench-making promotion girl thingy, at the races. So there I was in my divinely horrible suit and a sash with a promotion logo on it which says something so perfectly embarrassing that I can’t even repeat it, when who should win the second race but my future stepmother, and my father. Of course as soon as I realized this and saw them swanning up to take their prize, I hid.’
Rose folded both her legs and arms solemnly in front of her now, looking, it seemed to Charles, exactly like something out of a story illustrated by Arthur Rackham, with her long hair, streamlined body and serious, almost mystical expression.
‘But you can’t hide from my father. Never could. I don’t know what it is, but he’s one of those people who always seems to find you, wherever you are. And as soon as he and this woman – this Muffin – as soon as he saw me in this awful suit with this promotion sash across me, he started to laugh, and much worse – she did too. And I mean they didn’t laugh, they cracked up.’
Rose stopped again, remembering the pain.
‘It was just so shaming. You can imagine? First of all seeing them there, and then to see them laughing at me. And that’s when I re
alized, in one, what you had been on about all the time we were working on pieces together, what you had been on about when we read The Wild Duck together. About the selfishness of the father, and why he’s always hiding himself in his dark room, and why the daughter goes to save the wild duck and why she ends up shooting herself, sacrificing herself. And why the father will go on being just the same, in spite of everything, that it won’t change him at all. I understood it in a flash, and I mean that deep down understanding that you really need in order to become someone else, to inhabit the character properly, I understood it all, because of standing there that day and seeing my father laughing at me. It came to me at once, and no-one can take away that feeling of pain. And you know what?’
Charles shook his head but Rose waited, so finally he said, ‘No. No, I don’t know what. What?’
‘I take my sash to the studio every day, and every day, before I’m needed, I stand quite quietly at my dressing room mirror and I drape the sash around me, and all those feelings come back, and when I finally take it off and go out there, there’s nothing that hateful old devil can do about my performance, he can’t shake me, I am the Wild Duck.’
‘Of course you know he has left you the painting? The Cozen? He did so want you to have it, I know. As soon as it is finished being cleaned – months and months yet – he wanted you to have it. He told me so, and since I am his chief executor I shan’t forget his wishes in a hurry, of course I shan’t. Good heavens, he will never leave me, not for a moment. Even though he has gone, I will always hear his voice. He was so brave, though, wasn’t he? Always so brave and so cheerful, and pretending to everyone all the time that he was just the same as he had always been. Died in his sleep, you know, quietly and beautifully. What a dear man. Never will I meet such a dear man again, so dear.’
Marjorie was rambling on as people in shock are prone to do, her plump, pretty, middle-aged face reflecting her devotion to Crawford Haye, and as she did so, walking round the great top room where Claire and Crawford had first had drinks that first evening when she had been to the auction, it seemed to Claire that she could see Crawford smiling at them both from somewhere in the room.
Love Song Page 39
