Wild Horses - By Dick Francis Page 0,37

affection in the drawing-room. I had transferred it to the bedroom, letting the verbal restraint remain, but contrasting it with growing physical desire. Silva, without self-consciousness (‘bodies are natural’) had allowed delicately lit shots of her nudity in the bathroom. The rushes had quickened many pulses, including my own. Whether she chose to admit it or not, there was a sensual quality in Silva’s acting diametrically opposite to her chosen off-screen stance.

She had been away from Newmarket for the past week fulfilling an unbreakable commitment somewhere else, but was due to ride a horse on the Heath that morning, making use of an equestrian skill she was proud of. As happened in almost all films, we were not shooting the scenes chronologically: the coming encounter between the trainer and Cibber’s wife was their first, their meeting, all innocence at the start but with, in no time, a promise developing in their eyes.

Silva said disapprovingly, ‘I hope you got me a good horse.’

‘He’s fast,’ I said, nodding.

‘And good looking?’

‘Of course.’

‘And well trained?’

‘I’ve been riding him myself.’

Without comment she transferred her near-universal disapproval to Moncrieff, whom she considered a male chauvinist despite his spectacular ability to make even ugly women look beautiful on screen.

After so many years spent studying female curves one might have expected Moncrieff to have grown an impervious skin, but every time we’d worked together he had fallen in love with the leading lady, and Silva looked like being no exception.

‘Platonic,’ I’d advised him. ‘Strictly hands off. OK?’

‘She needs me,’ he’d pleaded.

‘Light her and leave her.’

‘Such cheekbones!’

Silva had fortunately so far given him the reverse of encouragement. I’d noticed from the first day I met her that she looked with more favour on men with suits, ties, short haircuts and clean-shaven faces, an inclination that should ensure the comparative invisibility of straggle-bearded, shambling, sloppily-dressed Moncrieff.

‘I think,’ I said to Silva politely, ‘they’re expecting you in make-up.’

She demanded, ‘Are you telling me I’m late?’

I shook my head. ‘The meeting has set everyone back. But I hope to finish the Heath scenes by lunchtime.’

She loped off, skirts flapping, making her own sort of statement.

‘Gorgeous,’ Moncrieff breathed.

‘Dangerous,’ I said.

Nash arrived, yawning, in his Rolls, and went into the house to the wardrobe and make-up departments. He was followed into the stable yard almost immediately by a man of very similar build, riding a bicycle which braked hard with a spraying of gravel beside Moncrieff and me.

‘Morning,’ the newcomer said briefly, dismounting. No deference in sight.

‘Good morning, Ivan,’ I answered.

‘Are we still in business?’

‘You’re late,’ I said.

He rightly took the comment as disapproval and wordlessly retreated, with his bicycle, into the house.

‘I don’t like him,’ Moncrieff said. ‘Saucy bugger.’

‘Never mind. Make him look like St George, a shining champion.’

Nash himself had great presence just sitting on a horse but any speed faster than a walk revealed deficiencies, so for distance shots of him trotting or cantering we were using a stuntman, Ivan, instead. Ivan made a living riding in front of cameras and had picked up a truculent manner that would prevent his ever getting further in his profession. He had a habit, I’d been told, of holding forth in pubs about how close he was to Nash Rourke, for whom he had doubled on an earlier picture. Nash this, Nash that, Nash and I… In actual fact, they met seldom and conversed less. Ivan had mushroomed a relationship from a few short businesslike exchanges.

Trainers in many other racing centres drove out in Land Rovers to watch their strings work, but on Newmarket’s mainly roadless Heath it was still the norm to oversee everything from horseback and there was no doubt Nash looked more imposing in the saddle than operating a four-wheel drive. The mega-star’s sex appeal brought in the pennies. My job was to make it powerful while looking natural, which in Nash’s case wasn’t hard.

Moncrieff was driven off up one of the few roads in a camera truck, with a second crew following, to positions we’d agreed the previous evening. The string of horses would canter up a hill, be followed broadside by one camera and head-on by a second as they came over the brow into the low-in-the-sky sunlight; rather, I hoped, like an orchestral flourish of brass after a muted but lyrical introduction. I often heard soundtracks in my head long before any composer approached them.

Ed, knowing to the minute when to start the action, remained down by the stable. Though I could easily have driven, I chose to