Dick Francis - Wild Horses

Howard had had enough of Moncrieff, and of me too, no doubt. He got to his feet and left us, making no pretence of social civility.

‘He’s an oaf,’ Moncrieff said, ‘and he’s belly-aching all over the place, to anyone who will listen, about the bastardising of his masterpiece. A few dream lovers won’t shut him up.’

‘Who has he been belly-aching to ?’ I asked.

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes, it does. His contract forbids him to make adverse criticism of the film in public until six months after it has had a general release. If he’s talking to the actors and the crews that’s one thing. If he’s complaining to strangers, say in the bar here, I’ll have to shut him up.’

‘But can you?’ Moncrieff asked with doubt.

‘There are prickly punitive clauses in his contract. I had a sight of it, so I’d know what I could ask of him, and what I couldn’t.’

Moncrieff whistled softly through his teeth. ‘Did O’Hara write the contract?’

‘Among others. It’s pretty standard in most respects. Howard’s agent agreed to it, and Howard signed it.’ I sighed. ‘I’ll remind him tactfully tomorrow.’

Moncrieff tired of the subject. ‘About tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Still the six-thirty dawn call out in the stable yard?’

‘Definitely. The horses have to be exercised. I told all the stable lads this evening we’d be shooting them mounting and riding out through the gate to the exercise ground. They’ll be wearing their normal clothes: jeans, anoraks, crash helmets. I reminded them not to look at the cameras. We’ll take the overall scene of the lads mounting. Nash will come out of the house and be given a leg-up onto his mount. We’ll rehearse it a couple of times, not more. I don’t want to keep the horses circling too long. When Nash is mounted and comfortable the assistant trainer can lead the string out through the gate. Nash waits for them to go, and follows, last. As he leaves, he’ll look backwards and up to the window from where his wife is supposedly watching. You’ve arranged for a camera crew up there to do the wife’s point of view? Ed will be up there, supervising.’

Moncrieff nodded.

I said, ‘We’ll cut the main shot once Nash is through the gate. I hope we won’t have to do many retakes, but when we’re satisfied, the string can go on and get their regular exercise, and Nash can come back and dismount. We’re going to be repeating the whole thing on Saturday. We’ll need a new view from the wife’s room and different jackets et cetera on Nash and the lads. We’ll need close shots of hooves on the gravel, that sort of thing.’

Moncrieff nodded. ‘And Sunday?’

‘The Jockey Club people are letting us film out on the gallops, as there won’t be many real horses-in-training working that day. You and I will go out by car on the roads on Saturday with a map for you to position the cameras. I know already where best to put them.’

‘So you should, if you were brought up here.’

‘Mm. Sunday afternoon, the horses go to Huntingdon racecourse. I hope to hell we have three fine mornings.’

‘What if it rains?’

‘If it’s just drizzle, we go ahead with filming. Horses do go out in all weathers, you know.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ I said, ‘we’ll be indoors up in the enquiry-room set again, like today. The schedule you’ve got is unchanged. There are more exchanges between Cibber, Nash and others. Apart from the wide establishing shots, it’s mostly short close-ups of them speaking. The usual thing. We’ll complete Nash’s shots first. If the others don’t fluff their lines too much, we might get through most of it tomorrow. Otherwise we’ll have to carry on on Saturday afternoon as well.’

‘OK.’

Moncrieff and I finished our drinks and went our separate ways, I upstairs to my room to make an arranged phone call to O’Hara in London.

‘How did the Jockey Club scene go?’ he asked immediately.

‘Nash wowed them.’

‘Good, then.’

‘I think... well, we’ll have to see the rushes tomorrow... but I think it was a sit-up-and-take-notice performance.’

‘Good boy.’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘No, I meant... well, never mind. How’s everything else?’

‘All right, but,’ I paused, ‘we need a better ending.’

‘I agree that the proposed ending’s too weak. Hasn’t Howard any ideas?’

‘He likes the weak ending.’

‘Lean on him,’ O’Hara said.

‘Yes. Urn, you know he based his book on the obituary of the man he called Cibber? His real name was Visborough.’ I spelled it, as Howard had done. ‘Well, could you get me a copy of that obituary? It was published in the Daily Cable , Howard says. It must have been at least three years ago. Howard doesn’t know who wrote it. He never followed anything up in any way. He says simply that the obituary, and especially its inconclusiveness, was what jolted his imagination into writing the book.’

‘You don’t ask much!’

‘The Daily Cable must have a cuttings library. You’ll certainly be able to get that obituary. Could you fax it to me here at Bedford Lodge? If I knew exactly what started Howard’s imagination working in the first place, perhaps I could help him find an explosive denouement.’

‘You’ll have the obituary tomorrow,’ O’Hara promised.

‘Thanks.’

‘How’s your friend?’ he asked.

‘What friend?’

‘The one who’s dying.’

‘Oh.’ I paused. ‘He died during last night.’

‘Bad luck.’

‘He was old. Eighty something. A blacksmith turned top racing journalist, grand old character, great unusual life. Pity we can’t make a film of him .’

‘Films of good people don’t have much appeal.’

‘Ain’t that the truth.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Valentine Clark,’ I said. ‘The Daily Cable might do an obituary of him too, you never know. He wrote for the Racing Gazette . Everyone in racing knew him. And... um... he knew the real trainer, Jackson Wells, the basis of the character that Nash is playing.’

‘Did he?’ O’Hara’s attention sharpened down the line. ‘So you surely asked him what he knew of the hanging?’

‘Yes, I did. He knew no more than anyone else. The police dropped the case for lack of leads. Valentine said Jackson Wells’s wife was an unmemorable mouse. He couldn’t tell me anything helpful. It was all so very long ago.’

O’Hara almost laughed. ‘It was very long ago for you , Thomas, because you’re young. I’ll bet twenty-six years is yesterday to Jackson Wells himself.’

‘I... er... ’ I said diffidently, ‘I did think of going to see him.’

‘Jackson Wells?’

‘Yes. Well, Valentine, my dead friend, he was originally a blacksmith, as I told you. He used to shoe my grandfather’s horses regularly, and he did say he’d also sometimes shod the horses Jackson Wells trained. So perhaps I could make some excuse... following Valentine’s death... to make a nostalgic visit to Jackson Wells. What do you think?’

‘Go at once,’ O’Hara said.

‘He won’t want to talk about the wife who hanged. He has a new life now and a second wife.’

‘Try, anyway,’ O’Hara said.

‘Yes, I thought so. But he lives near Oxford... it’ll take me half a day.’

‘Worth it,’ O’Hara said. ‘I’ll OK the extra time.’

‘Good.’

‘Goodnight,’ he said. ‘I’ve a lady waiting.’

‘Good luck.’

He cursed me — ‘You son of a bitch’ — and disconnected.

I’d always loved early mornings in racing stables. I’d been down in my grandfather’s yard dawn by dawn for years, half my day lived before the first school bell. I tended, for the film, to make the horses more of a priority in my attention than perhaps I should have, moving about the yard, in close contact with the creatures I’d grown up among, and felt at home with.