ride up onto the Heath to join Moncrieff; and I rode the horse we’d allotted to Silva, to get its back down: that is to say, to warm him up so that he would go sweetly with her and not buck. Silva might be proud of her riding, but O’Hara wouldn’t thank me for getting her dumped on her exquisite backside.
The terrible Ivan was to canter alone to the brow of the hill, riding Nash’s usual mount. He was to stop there, turn his horse, and stand silhouetted against the brightening sky. I’d asked him particularly not to waste the precious light-slot by getting it wrong.
He’d been insulted that I should expect him to get it wrong.
‘Don’t then,’ I said.
I joined Moncrieff by the truck positioned half way up the hill, and breathed sighs of relief when Ivan obliged us with a beautifully ridden canter up the hill, stopping and turning at the right place, horse and rider stark and splendidly black against a halo of gold.
‘Holy Moses,’ Moncrieff said, intently looking through the lens. ‘It’s a beaut.’ He ran a long fifteen seconds’ worth before cutting.
‘Again?’ I suggested.
Moncrieff checked that the film had run properly through the camera gate and shook his head. ‘It was about perfect.’
‘Great. Print. Let’s reload fresh stock for the next long shot of the rest of the horses.’
I called down to Ed on our walkie-talkie system, told him to stick to schedule, had the shot numbered as always by the clapper board operator and watched while the string was filmed streaming uphill at a fast canter. I called up the out-of-sight camera over the brow of the hill to start rolling, but perfection was an elusive quality and it was only after I’d ridden over the hill myself to organise things from up there, only after some huffing and puffing and two retakes, that I got my flourish of trumpets.
With the crowd shots at last in the can; everyone on horseback milled around waiting for clearance and instructions. Ivan was still importantly riding Nash’s horse, but a little apart, and I myself was now down on foot conferring with Moncrieff, eyes concentrating on his records of exposed footage.
I didn’t see what happened. I heard an indignant shout from Ivan and a clamour from other voices. I sensed and felt a lot of startled movement among the riders, but at first I assumed it to be the sort of everyday commotion when one in a company of horses lets fly with his heels at another.
Ivan, swearing, was picking himself up off the ground. One horse with its rider detached itself from the group and raced off over the hill in the direction of Newmarket town. I thought with irritation that I’d need to rap a knuckle or two and grudged the waste of time.
Ivan came storming up to me with his complaint.
‘That madman,’ he said furiously, ‘came at me with a knife!’
‘He can’t have done.’
‘Look, then.’ He raised his left arm so that I could see his jacket, the tweed coat identical to that usually worn in the training scenes by Nash. At about waist level the cloth was cut open for seven or eight inches from front to back.
‘I’m telling you!’ Ivan was rigid with fear on top of indignation. ‘He had a knife.’
Convinced and enormously alarmed, I glanced instinctively to find the horse I’d been riding, but he was being led around a good way off. Nearest in the matter of transport stood one of the camera trucks, though pointing in the wrong direction. I scrambled behind its steering wheel, made a stunt-worthy threepoint turn and raced across the turf in the direction of Newmarket, coming into view of the fleeing horseman in the distance as soon as I was over the hilltop.
He was too far ahead for me to have a realistic chance of catching up with him. Over grass, a horse was as fast as the truck; and he had only to reach the town and to slow to a walk to become instantly invisible, as Newmarket was threaded through and through with special paths known as horse-walks which had been purpose-laid to allow strings of horses to transfer to the gallops on the Heath from their stables in the town without having to disrupt traffic on the roads. Any rider moving slowly on a horse-walk became an unremarkable part of the general scenery, even on a Sunday morning.
It crossed my mind that I should perhaps try to catch him on