Wild Horses

by Dick Francis

  He wanted me to travel in his car, but I called Robbie Gill's mobile and found I could briefly see Dorothea, if I arrived by seven.

  At the hospital the egregious Paul had positioned himself in a chair outside the single room into which Dorothea had been moved. He rose heavily to his feet at the sight of me, but to my surprise made none of the objections I was expecting.

  “My mother wants to see you,” he said disapprovingly. “I've told her I don't want you here, but all she does is cry.”

  There had been, I thought, a subtle change in Paul. His pompous inner certainty seemed to have rocked: the external bombast sounded much the same, but half its fire had gone.

  “You're not to tire her,” he lectured. “Five minutes, that's all.”

  Paul himself opened Dorothea's door, and caftie in with me purposefully.

  Dorothea lay on a high bed, her head supported by a bank of pillows, her old face almost as colourless as the cotton except for dark disturbing bruises and threadlike minutely stitched cuts. There were tubes, a bag delivering drops of blood, another bag of clear liquid, and a system that allowed her to run painkillers into her veins when she needed it. Her hold on life looked negligible. Her eyes were closed and her white body was motionless, even the slow rise and fall of her chest seeming too slight to register on the covering sheet.

  “Dorothea,” I said quietly. “It's Thomas. I've come.”

  Very faintly, she smiled.

  Paul's loud voice broke her peace. “I've told him, Mother, that he has five minutes. And, of course, I will remain here at hand.”

  Dorothea, murmuring, said she wanted to talk to me alone.

  “Don't be silly, Mother.”

  Two tears appeared below her eyelids and trembled in the lashes.

  “Oh, for heaven's sake,” Paul said brusquely. “She does that all the time.” He turned on his heel and gave her her wish, seeming hurt at her rejection. “Five minutes,” he threatened as a parting shot.

  “Paul's gone,” I said, as the door closed behind him. “How are you feeling?”

  “So tired, dear.” Her voice, though still a murmur, was perfectly clear. “I don't remember how I got here.”

  “No, I've been told. Robbie Gill told me.”

  “Robbie Gill is very kind.”

  “Hold my hand, dear.”

  I pulled the visitor's chair to her side and did as she asked, vividly remembering Valentine's grasp of my wrist, exactly a week ago. Dorothea, however, had no sins to confess.

  “Paul told me,” she said, “that someone tore my house apart, looking for something.”

  “I'm afraid so. Yes, I saw it.”

  “What were they looking for?”

  “Don't you know?”

  “No, dear. The police asked me. It must have been something Valentine had. Sometimes I think I know. Sometimes I think I hear him shouting at me, to tell him. Then it all goes away again.”

  “Who was shouting?”

  She said doubtfully, “Paul was shouting.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “He does shout, you know. He means well. He's my son, my sweet baby.” Tears of weakness and regret ran down her cheeks. “Why do precious little babies grow ...?” Her question ended in a quiet sob, unanswerable. “He wants to look after me.”

  I said, “Did Robbie Gill talk to you about a nursing home?”

  “So kind. I'd like to go there. But Paul says ...” She stopped, fluttering a white hand exhaustedly. “I haven't the strength to argue.”

  “Let Robbie Gill move you,” I urged. “In a day or two, when you're stronger.”

  “Paul says ...” She stopped, the effort of opposing him too much.

  “Just rest,” I said. ‘Don't worry. Just lie and drift and get stronger.”

  “So kind, dear.” She lay quiet for a long minute, then said, “I'm sure I know what he was looking for, but I can't remember it.”

  “What Paul was looking for?”

  “No, dear. Not Paul.” She frowned. “It's all jumbled up.” After another pause she said, “How many knives did I have?”

  “How many ...?”

  “The police asked me. How many knives in the kitchen. I can't remember.”

  “No one knows how many knives they have in the kitchen.”

  “No. They said there weren't any knives in the house with blood on them.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “Perhaps when I go home I'll see which knife is missing.”

  “Yes, perhaps. Would you like me to tidy your house up a bit?”

  “I can't ask you.”

  “I'd like to do it.”

  “Paul wants to. He keeps asking. He gets so angry with me, but I don't know who has the key. So silly, isn't it? I can't go home because I haven't got the key.”

  “I'll find the key,” I said. “Is there anything you want from there?”

  “No, dear. I just want to be at home with Valentine.” The slow tears came. “Valentine's dead.”

  I stroked her soft hand.

  “It was a photo album,” she said suddenly, opening her eyes.

  “What was?”

  “What they were looking for.” She looked at me worriedly, pale blue shadows round her eyes.

  “What photo album?”

  “I don't know. I haven't got one, just some old snaps I keep in a box. Some pictures of Paul when he was little. I never had a camera, but friends gave me snaps...”

  “Where's the box?”

  “In my bedroom. But it's not an album ... I didn't think of it before. Everything's so confusing.”

  “Mm. Don't let it worry you. And Robbie Gill will be cross if I tire you, let alone Paul.”

  A smile shone briefly in the old eyes. “I might as well be tired. I've nothing else to do.”

  I laughed. “It's just a shame,” I said, “that Paul took Valentine's books after all. He swears he didn't, but he must have done because they aren't in the house.”

  Dorothea frowned. “No, dear, Paul didn't take them.”

  “Didn't he?” I was sceptical. “Did he send someone else?”

  “No, dear.” Her forehead wrinkled further. “Valentine wanted you to have his books and I know he would have been furious if Paul had taken them because he wasn't very fond of Paul, only put up with him for my sake, such a pity.”

  “So ... who took them?”

  “Bill Robinson, dear. He has them safe.”

  “But Dorothea, who is Bill Robinson, and where and why does he have the books?”

  She smiled guiltily. “I was afraid, you see, dear, that Paul would come back and persuade me to let him take them. He tires me out sometimes until I do what he wants, but he's my son, dear, after all ... So I asked Bill Robinson to come and pick them all up and put them in his garage, and he's a chum of mine, dear, so he came and took them, and they'll be quite safe, dear, he's a nice young man, he mends motorbikes.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I went to bed after midnight, thinking that although I had not died today, it was now already tomorrow.

  Nash and I had eaten dinner together in harmony over his scenes-to-come in the parade ring, where his jockey would be wearing blue, while Gibber's would be in the green and white stripes.

  After the evening preparation for the Jockey Club enquiry scene, Nash had, without baldly saying so, let me realise that he much preferred to rehearse everything with me in private, so that on set little needed to be asked or answered, his performances being already clear in his mind. I didn't know if he worked in this way with every director, but between the two of us it was notably fruitful in regard to his readiness for every shot. That we were saving time and running ahead of schedule was in this way chiefly his doing.

  As usual I'd spent the last two hours of the evening with Moncrieff, putting together with him the plan of positions and lights for the parade-ring cameras, also for those catching the pre-race routines of horses being saddled and led from the saddling boxes, being led round the parade ring, being
de-rugged and mounted.

  Multiple cameras, though not cheap in themselves, also saved time: I would later cut together, from several lengthy shots, the snippets and pieces that in shorthand would give an overall impression of the whole pre-race tension. The slap of leather straps into buckles, the brushing of oil to gloss the hoof, the close shots of muscle moving below shining coat. It needed only two seconds of graphic visual image to flash an impression of urgency and intent, but it took maybe ten long minutes of filming to capture each.

  Pace had a lot to do with good film-making. There would be no flash-flash-flash over the dream/fantasy sequences, only a slowly developing realisation of their significances.

  Well... so I hoped.

  While my silent young driver took me towards Huntingdon in the morning I thought of Dorothea's preservation of Valentine's books, and of the new uncertainty beneath Paul's bluster. He hadn't tried to cut short my visit to the patient: the five allowed minutes had stretched to ten, until I myself thought that she'd talked enough.

  Paul had walked with me from her room to the hospital exit, his breath agitated and deep as if he wanted to say something but couldn't bring himself entirely to the point. I gave him time and opportunity, but he was not, as his uncle had been, desperate enough for confession.

  Paul was shouting, Dorothea had said. For her sake, I hoped to God she'd got things mixed up.

  At Huntingdon racecourse, before eight o'clock, the gates were already wide open to admit the local inhabitants. Breakfast, provided free for all-comers via the film's caterers, ran to endless hot dogs out of a raised-sided van. The weather, though cold, still smiled. Cheerful faces abounded. I needn't have worried that the townspeople would be too bored to return: word of mouth had acted positively and we ended with an even larger crowd than on the day before.

  The publicity department of the film company had provided five hundred T-shirts, one to be given that day to thank every local helper on departure - (much to my amusement the front of each T-shirt carried the slogan, UNSTABLE TIMES in large letters, but if one looked closely at some extra tiny letters it read UNSTABLE AT ALL TIMES) - and I began to think they hadn't ordered enough.

  The Huntingdon racecourse officials having been generous and helpful throughout, we had had unlimited access to everything we'd wanted. I was so keen not to abuse their welcome that I'd screwed O'Hara's arm to provide an army of scavengers to clean up all trash left by us.

  “They'll have their own cleaning staff,” he'd protested. “We're paying them, after all.”

  “Goodwill is beyond price.”

  He'd instructed the production manager to have the place left spotless.

  The weighing-room and the jockeys' changing-rooms were already unlocked when I arrived on the course, and the wardrobe people were there too, laying out the jockeys' bright colours alongside their breeches and boots.

  We had had all their gear made especially for the film, not just the colours. Everything except the racing saddles, which had been hired, belonged to the company.

  There were twenty sets across the board, as we'd allowed for tears and spares and hadn't, at time of ordering, known how many horses we would end with. In the changing-rooms I found that none of the jockeys had already arrived - they'd been called for nine o'clock - and I had no difficulty at all in scooping up what I wanted and locking myself privately into the bathroom.

  I had taken with me two of the body protectors designed to save fallen jockeys from the worst effects of kicks. Stripped down to shirt and underpants, I put on the first and zipped it up the front.

  In essence, the body protector was a blue cotton lightweight waistcoat padded throughout with flat polystyrene oblongs, about six inches by four, by half an inch thick. The polystyrene pieces, stitched into place, covered the trunk from the neck to below the waist, with a further extension at the back to cover the coccyx at the base of the spine. From there a soft wide belt led forward between the legs to fasten to the vest in front, a scheme which prevented the protector from being displaced. Extra pieces led like epaulettes over the shoulders and down the upper arms, to be fastened round the arm with Velcro.

  Although I'd taken the largest available, the protector fitted tight and snugly. When I put the second on top, the front zip wouldn't meet to fasten across my chest; a problem I half solved by straining my trousers over both protectors and cinching my waist with my belt to hold everything together. I ended feeling like a

  hunch-shouldered quarterback, but with my ordinary sweater on top and my windproof blue jacket fastened over all, I didn't in the mirror look much bigger.

  I had no idea how a jockey's kick protector would stand up to a knife, but psychologically an inch of polystyrene and four layers of sturdy cotton cloth was better than nothing, and I couldn't afford to spend the whole busy day worrying about something that would probably not happen.

  I'd happily ridden flat out over jumps round the racecourse without a body protector, risking my neck. I would as happily have done it again. Odd how fear had different faces.

  Outside, Moncrieff had already positioned his camera on its dolly for the first scene of the day, which was the exodus of the jockeys from the weighing-room on their way out to the parade ring before the race. Halfway along their path a child extra was to dash forward to offer an autograph book to the actor-jockey. Ed, directing a second camera, would film the jockey's friendly reaction in close-up, registering his face, his blue colours, and his nice-guy status, while the other jockeys went on their way through the shot behind him.

  In the event we shot the sequence twice, though thanks to rehearsal it went smoothly the first time. Insurance, though, to my mind, was never wasted.

  Between the two takes, I talked to the jockeys, joining them where they waited in the weighing-room. I thanked them for their brilliant race the day before and they made nothing of it, joking. All prickliness had vanished absolutely. They called me Thomas. They said several of them would be racing over the course for real at the Huntingdon meeting the following Monday, but it would be the old nitty-gritty, not the joys of make-believe land. Any time I made another racing film, they said with typically mocking humour, they would stampede in the opposite direction.

  When they were recalled for the retake walk to the parade ring, I went out before them and watched from beside Moncrieff: then with the two printable shots in the can Moncrieff took the camera and crew into the parade ring itself, where the camera could swivel on a turntable to take an almost 360-degrees view of the horses being led round. I stood in the centre of the ring beside him, overseeing things.

  As always it was the setting up that took the time: the positioning of extras playing the small groups of owners and trainers, the extras playing racing officials and stewards, the townspeople filling the viewing steps round the ring, the rehearsing of the jockeys so that each went to an allotted owner, the ensuring that the jockeys of the two deadly rivals would arrive in the ring together - the actor-jockey in blue, the other in green and white stripes - and part at a designated spot to join the two groups containing Nash and Gibber.

  Nash's main two bodyguards, dressed as owners, carried binoculars as if they would rather have had guns. The apparently elderly lady completing that group was a twenty-eight-year-old martial arts champion with lioness instincts.

  Gibber's group included Silva dressed as befitted a Jockey Club member's wife in well-cut wool coat, knee-high boots and fur hat; warm and pretty in the chill wind. Gibber's 'trainer', off-course, taught judo. O'Hara had taken these precautions. My own shadow, the one he'd insisted on, the evening before, stood beside me in the ring, looking dim. He was supposed to be a black-belt but I had more faith in polystyrene.

  Later in the day we would do close-ups of Gibber's acrid fury at having to suffer Nash, his wife's lover, in unbearable proximity: close-ups of Silva looking lovingly at Nash, goading poor Gibber further; close-ups of Nash behaving with good manners, neutral towards Gibber, circumspect with Silva; short essentia
l close shots that would take an age to light.

  Meanwhile, with the horses being led round the ring and with everyone in their allotted places, we filmed the entry of the jockeys. Miraculously they all went to the right groups, touched their caps to the owners, made pretence conversations, watched the horses; behaved as jockeys do. The actor-jockey in blue joined Nash. Green and white stripes went to Gibber. No one tripped over cables, no one wandered inappropriately into shot, no one swore.

  “Hallelujah,” Moncrieff breathed, sweating beside me when Ed yelled “Cut.”

  “And print,” I added. “And do it again.”

  We broke for lunch. Nash, in the centre of the parade ring, signed autographs one by one for a well-behaved but apparently endless single line of people, shepherded closely by one of Ed's assistants. O'Hara, the bodyguard and the lioness formed a human wall round the mega-star's back.

  We ate again, Nash, O'Hara and I, up high in the stewards' box.

  Threats to the film apart, it had been a satisfactory morning; we all knew that the scenes had gone well.

  O'Hara said, “Howard's here, did you know?”

  “Howard!” Nash exclaimed with disgust.

  “A very quiet Howard,” O'Hara amplified, grimly amused. “Howard is putty in our hands.”

  “I don't think his views have changed,” I said. “He's been frightened. He'll keep his mouth shut. I'd describe it as a plug in a volcano. There's no doubt he passionately meant what he said to Alison Visborough. He stirred her up enough to relay his gripes to her friend on the Drumbeat and what he said to her, that's how he still feels.”

  “But,” O'Hara protested, “he wouldn't want the film actually stopped, would he?”

  “His full screenplay fee became payable on the first day of principal photography - the first day of filming in Newmarket. It's normal, of course, and it's in his contract. Finished or abandoned, the film can't earn him more money, unless it makes unlikely zillions. And I think he still wants me sacked. He's still convinced I'm butchering his bestseller.”

  “Which you are,” Nash smiled.