of the day’s sport, I saw, was, as I’d hoped, by courtesy of a commercial station that provided full day-by-day racing for grateful millions. For the big-race opening of the Flat season, they would be there in force.
‘Thomas,’ Nash repeated.
‘Er…’ I said, ‘how badly do you want to save our film? Or, in fact… me?’
‘Not badly enough to jump off a cliff.’
‘How about an interview on TV?’
He stared.
I said, ‘What if you could say on television that we’re not making a bummer of a movie? Would you want to do it?’
‘Sure,’ he said easily, ‘but it wouldn’t reach every reader of the Drumbeat.’
‘No. But what if O’Hara could get the interview transmitted to Hollywood? How about the moguls seeing it at breakfast? Your own face on the screen might tip things where O’Hara’s assurances might not. Only… how do you feel about trying?’
‘Hell, Thomas, get on with it.’
I went out onto the viewing balcony and pressed the buttons to get O’Hara: and let me not get his message service, I prayed.
He answered immediately himself, as if waiting for calls.
‘It’s Thomas,’ I said.
‘It’s too early to hear from Hollywood.’
‘No. It’s something else.’ I told him what I’d suggested to Nash, and he put his finger at once on the snags.
‘First of all,’ he said doubtfully, ‘you’d have to get the TV company to interview Nash.’
‘I could do that. It’s getting the interview onto the screen in the Hollywood conference room that I’m not sure of. Live pictures get transmitted regularly from England to the States, but I don’t know the pathways. If we could get to an LA station we could have a tape rushed round for our moguls to play on a VCR…’
‘Thomas, stop. I can fix the LA end. The transmission from England…’ he paused, sucking his teeth. ‘What station are we talking about?’
I told him. ‘The people they’ll have here are an outside broadcast unit. They’ll have engineers and camera crews and a producer or two and three or four interviewers and commentators, but they won’t have the authority or the equipment to transmit overseas. The OK would have to come from their headquarters, which are in London. They’ll have Doncaster races on their screen there. They can transmit to anywhere. Their number will be in the phone book…’
‘And you need me to use my clout.’ He sounded resigned, seeing difficulties.
‘Um,’ I said, ‘if you want Unstable Times to reach the cinema, it might be worth trying. I mean, it’s your picture too, you know. Your head on the block for engaging me.’
‘I see that.’ He paused. ‘All right, I’ll start. It’s a hell of a long shot.’
‘They’ve been known to win.’
‘Is Nash with you?’
‘Five paces away.’
‘Get him, would you?’
Nash came outside and took the phone. ‘I’ll do the interview. Thomas says he can fix it, no problem.’ He listened. ‘Yeah. Yeah. If he says he can, I guess he can. He doesn’t promise what he can’t deliver. O’Hara, you get off your ass and put Thomas and me into that meeting. It’s damn stupid to let that son-of-a-bitch Tyler sink the ship.’ He listened again, then said, ‘Get it done, O’Hara. Hang the expense. I’ll not be beaten by that scribbler.’
I listened in awe to the switched-on power of the ultimate green light and humbly thanked the fates that he saw me as an ally, not a villain.
He disconnected, handed the phone back to me and said, ‘Where do we find our interviewer?’
‘Follow me.’ I tried to make it sound light-hearted, but I was no great actor. Nash silently came with me down to the unsaddling enclosure, from where the runners of the just-run race had already departed.
‘Do you know who you are looking for?’ he asked, as I turned my head one way and another. ‘Can’t you ask?’
‘I don’t need to,’ I said, conscious, even if Nash ignored it, of everyone looking at him. ‘This television company travels with a race-caller, a paddock commentator who talks about the runners for the next race, and someone who interviews the winning jockeys and trainers afterwards, and it’s him I’m looking for… and I know him.’
‘That’s something.’
‘And there he is,’ I said, spotting him. ‘Coming?’
I slid then between the groups of people chatting in the railed area outside the weighing-room; slid where the groups parted like the Red Sea to clear a path for Nash. My acquaintance, the interviewer, began to say hello to me, saw who I was with and ended with his mouth open.
‘Nash,’ I introduced, ‘this