Wild Horses

by Dick Francis

  Ed looked stricken. I undipped both the walkie-talkie and my mobile phone from my belt, and gave them to him to look after.

  “I don't believe this,” Moncrieff said.

  A jockey said, “We could lose our licences, racing you.”

  “No, you can't,” I contradicted. “You're employed by the film company, and you're out here for a rehearsal. We have permission from everyone for you to jump round the course. You're just doing it a day earlier than planned. There's a doctor in attendance, as we promised in your agreements. Who'll come with me?”

  They had lost the worst of their antagonism but I'd thrown the challenge back in their faces, and they weren't having that. Two of them started for the horses and left me the third.

  “O'Hara will kill you,” Moncrieff told me.

  It so happened that they'd left me the horse that Silva had ridden the previous morning: the undisputed fastest of our bunch. I'd ridden him often at a canter and, according to his history, he was supposed to know how to jump.

  “You haven't any breeches or boots,” Ed said, looking with bewilderment at my ordinary trousers and brown shoes.

  “The horse won't mind,” I said. A little light-headedness, I thought, wasn't a bad idea in the circumstances.

  The horse's lad gave me a leg up, as he'd done many times. I tightened the girth and lengthened the stirrup leathers, and buckled the strap of my helmet.

  The two jockeys holding me to my word were mounted and ready. I laughed down at the ring of other faces that had suddenly reverted to a better humour.

  “You're a right lot of bastards,” I said, and I got several grins back.

  As none of the gates was locked we walked the horses without hindrance out to the track. The one-and-a-half-mile circuit ran right-handed, with nine assorted jumps on the way. I hadn't raced for eleven years. I was crazy. It felt great.

  Nasty long words like irresponsibility swam like worms into the saner regions of my mind. I did carry this multi-million motion picture on my shoulders. I did know, arrogance aside, that the soufflé I was building would collapse if the cooker were switched off.

  All the same, it seemed to me somehow that I'd grown old a long time ago after too brief a youth. For perhaps three minutes I would go back to my teens.

  Ed, car and doctor followed us onto the course.

  One of my opponents asked me, “How much do you weigh?”

  “Enough to give me an excuse for losing.”

  “Bugger that,” he said, and pointed his horse towards the task and dug him in the flanks with his heels.

  I followed him immediately. I'd have no second chance, and I felt the old controlled recklessness swamp through brain and body as if I'd never been away.

  I thought of the man in front as Blue, because of his colours, and the one behind me as Red. We'd had all the shiny shirts especially made for the film for eye-appeal and distinguishability, and the wardrobe people had given us the goods.

  Both Blue and Red were younger than I and had not yet started their careers by the time I'd left. They were intent, I saw at once, on making no allowances, and indeed, if they had done so, the whole enterprise would have been without purpose. I simply dredged my memory for a skill that had once come naturally, and judged my horse's stride before the first of the fences with an easy practice I'd thought long forgotten.

  There was speed and there was silence. No banter, no swearing from the others. Only the thud of hooves and the brush through the dark birch of the fences. Only the gritting determination and the old exaltation.

  My God, I thought in mid-air, why ever did I give this up? But I knew the answer. At nineteen I'd been too tall and growing too heavy, and starving down to a professional riding weight had made me feel ill.

  Half a mile and two jumps later I felt the first quiver of unfitness in my muscles and remembered that both Blue and Red had been at racing peak for several months. The speed they took in their stride used all my strength. We'd rounded the bottom turn and had straightened three abreast into the long far side before I seriously considered that I'd been a fool - or at least definitely foolhardy - to set off on this roller-coaster, and I jumped the next four close-together fences concentrating mainly on desperately keeping my weight as far forward as possible.

  Riding with one's centre of gravity over the horse's shoulder was best for speed aerodynamically, but placed the jockey in a prime position for being catapulted off forwards if his mount hit a fence. The alternative was to slow the pace before jumping, sit back, let the reins slide long through one's fingers, and maybe raise an arm up and back to maintain balance before landing. An habitually raised arm, termed 'calling a cab', was the trade-mark of amateurism. To do it once couldn't be helped, but five or six raised arms would bring me pity, not in the least what I was out there trying to earn. I was going to go over Huntingdon's jumps with my weight forward if it killed me.

  Which of course it might.

  With this last mordant thought, and with straining muscles and labouring lungs, I reached the long last bend towards home: two more fences to jump, and the run-in and winning post after.

  Experienced jockeys that they were, Blue and Red had waited for that last bend before piling on the ultimate pressure. I quickened with them, determined only not to be ignominiously tailed-off, and my mount responded, as most thoroughbreds do, with an inbred compulsion to put his head in front.

  I don't know about the others, but I rode over the last two fences as if it mattered like the Grand National; but even so, it wasn't enough. We finished in order, Red, Green, Blue, flat out past the winning post, with half a length and half a length between first and second and second and third.

  We pulled up and trotted back to the gate. I felt weak enough for falling off. I breathed deeply through my nose, having told many actors in my time that the most reliable evidence of exhaustion was to gasp with the mouth open.

  With Blue and Red leading the way, we rejoined the other jockeys. No one said much. We dismounted and gave the reins to the lads. I could feel my fingers trembling as I unbuckled the helmet and hoped the jockeys couldn't see. I took off the helmet, returning it to the man who'd lent it, and brushed sweat off my forehead with my thumb. Still no sound above half-heard murmurs. I unbuttoned the striped colours, forcing my hands to the task, and fumbled too much over untying the stock. Still with breaths heaving in my belly, I handed shirt and stock back, and took my own clothes from someone who'd lifted them from the grass. I hadn't the strength to put them on, but simply held them over my arm.

  It struck me that what everyone was feeling, including myself, was chiefly embarrassment, so I made my best stab at lightness.

  “OK!” I said. “Tomorrow, then? You'll race?”

  Blue said, “Yes”, and the others nodded.

  “Fine. See you.”

  I raised a smile that was genuine, even if only half wattage, and turned away to walk over to where Moncrieff, curse him, was trying to pretend he hadn't had a video camera on his shoulder the whole time.

  A voice behind me called, “Mr Lyon.”

  I paused and turned. Mr Lyon, indeed! A surprise.

  The one with the green and white stripes said, “You did make your point.” I managed a better smile and a flap of a hand and plodded across the grass to Moncrieff.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Anything but. We might now get a brilliant race tomorrow. They're not going to let themselves do worse than a panting amateur.”

  “Put your shirt on, you'll die of cold.”

  But not of a broken neck, I thought, and felt warm and spent and thunderously happy.

  Ed gave me back the mobile phone saying that O'Hara had called while he, Ed, was driving round the course, and had wanted to know where I was.

  “What did you tell him?” I asked.

  “I said you were riding. He wants you to call him back.”

  I set off towards my car and its driver and called O'Hara as I went. He had spent time with Howard, it
seemed, who was now enthusiastic over the witchcraft angle and wanted it emphasised. Scenes were positively dripping off his pen.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but restrain him. Witches do not hang themselves, and we still need our designated murderer.”

  “You have,” O'Hara said dryly, “a habit of putting your finger on the button.” He paused briefly. “Howard told me where Alison Visborough lives.”

  “Did you bargain with him? A deal?”

  “It's possible,” O'Hara said stiffly, “that we may not wring the last cent out of nun.”

  I smiled.

  “Anyhow, go see her, will you? Some place in Leicestershire.”

  “When? We're shooting all day tomorrow.”

  “Uh, now. Howard phoned her. She's expecting you.”

  Now? Can't someone else do it?”

  I'd been up since four that morning and it was by now five-forty in the afternoon and I needed a shower and I felt knackered, to put it politely. Leicestershire began a lot of miles in the wrong direction.

  O'Hara said, “I thought you'd be interested to meet her, and she has her mother living with her.”

  “The Audrey?”

  O'Hara confirmed it. “Silva's character in the movie.”

  “Well ... yes, I'm interested. OK, I'll go. What's the address?”

  He told it to me in detail, phone number included. “Howard's busting a gut trying to be helpful.”

  “I'll bet.”

  O'Hara said, changing the subject, “Ed said you were riding?”

  Amused by his oblique question, I answered, “I rode round the course with a couple of the jockeys for them to see what we'll be needing tomorrow.”

  “You take care.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Always.”

  We said goodbye and I walked onwards to the car, making another phone call, this time to Robbie Gill.

  “Thomas Lyon,” I said, when I reached him. “How's my girl?”

  “Still in intensive care. I've liaised with her surgeon. He's slapped a "Do not move" notice on her, which should hold while she needs drip feeds. Two or three days, anyway. I can't stand that son of hers. What a bully!”

  “What's he been doing?”

  “The nurses threaten a mutiny. He's so bloody lordly”

  “Is Dorothea awake yet?”

  “Yes, she's talked briefly to the police. Apparently the last thing she remembers is setting off to walk home from supper with a widowed friend who lives only a quarter of a mile away. They watch TV together sometimes and she felt like company with Valentine gone. Lucky she wasn't at home earlier.”

  “I guess so. Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I asked the police. They gave me the sort of guff which means they haven't a clue.”

  “I'd like to see her.”

  “I told her that you'd been asking. She was obviously pleased. Perhaps tomorrow evening, or the next day.”

  “I'll phone you,” I said.

  I reached the car, delivered the change of plans to the driver and consulted the road map. A matter of turn right onto the A14, go north-west, skirt Kettering, press onwards. Forty miles perhaps to Market Harborough. Wake me when we reach that point, I said, and went to sleep on the back seat.

  Alison Visborough's hideaway proclaimed her personality from the gateposts onwards. A crumbling tarmac drive led to an old two-storey house, brick-built, possibly eighteenth century, but without distinction. Fields near the house were divided into many paddocks, all fenced with weathered wooden rails, some occupied by well-muscled but plain horses. A larger paddock to one side held a variety of flakily-painted gates, poles and fake walls, the paraphernalia of show jumping. At the far end, a man in a tweed jacket and high-domed black riding hat cantered a horse slowly round in a circle, looking down and concentrating on the leading foreleg, practising dressage. A child, watching him, held a workaday pony by the reins. Lesson, it appeared, being given and received.

  Everything about the place looked tidy and efficient and spoke of a possible shortage of funds.

  My driver drew up outside the undemonstrative front door. He had said he would check that we had arrived at the right place, but he had no need to. The door opened before he could reach it, to reveal a full-bosomed middle-aged woman dressed in jodhpurs, shirt and dull green sweater, accompanied by two half-grown Labrador dogs.

  “Mr Lyon?” Her voice reached me, loud, imperious, displeased.

  My driver gestured to the car, out of which I unenthusiastically climbed.

  “I'm Thomas Lyon,” I said, approaching her.

  She shook my hand as an unwelcome social obligation and similarly invited me into her house, leaving my driver to look after himself.

  “I am Alison Visborough. Howard warned me to expect you,” she announced, leading me into a cold tidy room furnished with hard-stuffed, blue-green armchairs and sofas which looked inviting but repelled boarders, so to speak. I perched on the inhospitable edge of one of them, and she on another. The dogs had been unceremoniously left in the hall.

  “You are younger than I expected,” she pronounced, her vowels unselfconsciously plummy. “Are you sure you are who you say?”

  “Quite often.”

  She stared.

  I said, “I'm not the ogre you described to the Drumbeat.”

  “You were driving Howard to despair,” she said crisply. “Something had to be done. I did not expect all this fuss. Still less did I intend to bring trouble to Howard. He has explained that your wretched film company are angry with me, but when I perceive an injustice, I must speak out.”

  “Always?” I asked with interest.

  “Of course.”

  “And does it often get you into trouble?”

  “I am not to be deterred by opposition.”

  “For Howard's sake,” I said, “could you write a short apology to the film company?”

  She shook her head indignantly, then thought it over, and finally looked indecisive, an unusual state for her, I guessed.

  She had short dark hair with grey advancing, also unafraid brown eyes, weathered skin, no lipstick and ringless work-roughened hands. A woman hard on herself and on everyone else, but admired by Howard.

  I asked, “Who did you talk to, who works for the Drumbeat?”

  She hesitated again and looked not over-pleased. “I didn't say,” she grudgingly answered, “exactly what she wrote in the paper.”

  “She's an old acquaintance. We went to the same school. She works on the "Hot from the Stars" team, and I thought it would help Howard in his fight against you. She didn't write what was printed. She just passed on the information to one of the columnists, as she always does. She gathers the material, you see, and then it gets sensationalised, she explained to me, by someone whose job it is to do that.”

  Sensationalised. What a process! Yet without it, I supposed, Howard's gripe wouldn't have been worth the space.

  “How long,” I enquired, “have you known Howard?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I only wondered about the length of your commitment to him.”

  With a touch of the belligerence I was coming to expect, she said, “I can be committed to a good cause within five minutes.”

  “I'm sure.”

  “Actually, we've known Howard since he came to visit us after Daddy died.”

  The word Daddy came naturally: it was only I who found it odd and incongruous in someone of her age.

  “He came to see your mother?”

  “Principally, I suppose so.”

  “Because of the obituary?”

  She nodded. “Howard found it interesting.”

  “Mm.” I paused. “Have you any idea who wrote that obituary?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  I shrugged. “Interest. It seemed to me it was written from personal feelings.”

  “I see.” She let seconds pass, then said, “I w
rote that myself. It was edited by the paper, but the gist of it was mine.”

  “Was it?” I was non-committal. “You wrote about your father's potential career being blighted by Sonia's death?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You wrote as if you cared.”

  “Of course I cared,” she said vehemently. “Daddy would never discuss it with me, but I knew he was bitter.”

  “Uh,” I said, “but why did Sonia's death make him give up politics?”

  Impatiently, as if it were self-evident, she said, “Scandal, of course. But he would never talk about it. He would never have let this film be made. Rodbury and I were also against it, but we were powerless. The book was Howard's, not ours. Our name, Daddy's name, doesn't appear in it. Howard says you forced him to make the ridiculously untrue changes to his work, so of course I felt someone had to stop you. For Howard's sake and, yes, for Daddy's memory, I had to do it.”

  And nearly succeeded, I thought.

  I said, without trying to defend either myself or film company policy, “Excuse me, but who is Rodbury?”

  “My brother, Roddy.”

  Roddy, of course.

  “Could I possibly,” I asked, “meet your mother?”

  “What for?”

  “To pay my respects.”

  It hung in the balance, but it wasn't left to her to decide. The half-closed door was pushed open by a walking stick in the hands of a thin seventyish lady with a limp. She advanced slowly and forbiddingly and, while I rose to my feet, informed me that I was a monster.

  “You are the person, aren't you,” she accused with tight lips, “who says I was unfaithful to my husband with Jackson Wells? Jackson Wells!” There was a world of outraged class-distinction in her thin voice. “Dreadful man! I warned my sister not to marry him, but she was headstrong and wouldn't listen. He wasn't good enough for her. And as for you thinking that I ... I...” Words almost failed her. “I could hardly even be civil to the man - and he was almost twenty years younger than I.”

  She shook with vibrant disapproval. Her daughter rose, took her mother's arm and helped her towards one of the chairs whose overstuffed firmness suddenly made sense.

  She had short white curling hair and high cheekbones, and must once have been pretty, but either pain or a general disapproval of life had given her mouth a pinched bad-tempered downturn. I thought of Silva and her glowing beauty, and reckoned the two women would probably not want to meet.