and what would happen to the movie if I broke my neck.
‘Do shut up,’ I said.
‘Thomas!’
I grinned at him. I said to the jockeys, ‘Two of you might care to race with me. Sorry I can’t take you all on, but we have to race the whole string tomorrow and they’ll need to be fresh. So just two. Whoever you like. We’ll go one circuit over the fences, not the hurdles, just as long as there’s no one roaming about on the course where they shouldn’t be.’
Silence.
Privately amused, I waited until Ed had drawn near with the horses and had got over his shock at my explicit clothes.
‘Ed, get a car out onto that road beside the far rails,’ I showed him where, ‘and drive round behind us. Take our doctor with you in case one of us falls.’ I pointed. ‘There he is. He’s coming now.’
Ed looked stricken. I unclipped both the walkie-talkie and my mobile phone from my belt, and gave them to him to look after.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Moncrieff said.
A jockey said, ‘We could lose our licences, racing you.’
‘No, you can’t,’ I contradicted. ‘You’re employed by the film company, and you’re out here for a rehearsal. We have permission from everyone for you to jump round the course. You’re just doing it a day earlier than planned. There’s a doctor in attendance, as we promised in your agreements. Who’ll come with me?’
They had lost the worst of their antagonism but I’d thrown the challenge back in their faces, and they weren’t having that. Two of them started for the horses and left me the third.
‘O’Hara will kill you,’ Moncrieff told me.
It so happened that they’d left me the horse that Silva had ridden the previous morning: the undisputed fastest of our bunch. I’d ridden him often at a canter and, according to his history, he was supposed to know how to jump.
‘You haven’t any breeches or boots,’ Ed said, looking with bewilderment at my ordinary trousers and brown shoes.
‘The horse won’t mind,’ I said. A little lightheadedness, I thought, wasn’t a bad idea in the circumstances.
The horse’s lad gave me a leg up, as he’d done many times. I tightened the girth and lengthened the stirrup leathers, and buckled the strap of my helmet.
The two jockeys holding me to my word were mounted and ready. I laughed down at the ring of other faces that had suddenly reverted to a better humour.
‘You’re a right lot of bastards,’ I said, and I got several grins back.
As none of the gates was locked we walked the horses without hindrance out to the track. The one-and-a-half-mile circuit ran right-handed, with nine assorted jumps on the way. I hadn’t raced for eleven years. I was crazy. It felt great.
Nasty long words like irresponsibility swam like worms into the saner regions of my mind. I did carry this multi-million motion picture on my shoulders. I did know, arrogance aside, that the soufflé I was building would collapse if the cooker were switched off.
All the same, it seemed to me somehow that I’d grown old a long time ago after too brief a youth. For perhaps three minutes I would go back to my teens.
Ed, car and doctor followed us onto the course.
One of my opponents asked me, ‘How much do you weigh?’
‘Enough to give me an excuse for losing.’
‘Bugger that,’ he said, and pointed his horse towards the task and dug him in the flanks with his heels.
I followed him immediately. I’d have no second chance, and I felt the old controlled recklessness swamp through brain and body as if I’d never been away.
I thought of the man in front as Blue, because of his colours, and the one behind me as Red. We’d had all the shiny shirts especially made for the film for eye-appeal and distinguishability, and the wardrobe people had given us the goods.
Both Blue and Red were younger than I and had not yet started their careers by the time I’d left. They were intent, I saw at once, on making no allowances, and indeed, if they had done so, the whole enterprise would have been without purpose. I simply dredged my memory for a skill that had once come naturally, and judged my horse’s stride before the first of the fences with an easy practice I’d thought long forgotten.
There was speed and there was silence. No banter, no swearing from the others. Only the thud of hooves and the brush through the dark birch of the