and afterwards. Nevertheless, Ed urged, cheer whoever won.
Eventually it was he who shouted, ‘Action’, the command reverberating through the stands, and I, with raised pulse, who found myself begging unknown deities for perfection.
There were flaws, of course. One of the rented cameras jammed, and one of the two planted in fences got kicked to oblivion by a horse, but the race started tidily, and it was joyously clear from the first that my quasi-colleagues were playing fair.
They had seen me on the truck, when it was positioned for the start, seen me sitting on the edge of the roof of the cab, to get the best of views. They’d waved, in a way, I thought, to reassure me, and I’d waved back; and they did indeed ride their hearts out all the way round.
We had the truck driven for a lot of the way so that the camera was barely six feet from the leading horses’ heads, then speeded it up to give a longer view, then slowed again, varying the angles.
Two horses fell on the backstretch second time round. I looked back with anxiety, but both jockeys got to their feet, the loose horses adding the unpremeditated facets that in the end proved the contest real.
The other riders again piled on the pressure rounding the last bend, and again they rode flat out over the last two fences and stretched every sinew to win. The finish was even faster and closer than the day before, but distinguishably Blue, Green with White Stripes, and Yellow crossed the line in the first three places; and as the truck slowed I could hear the crowd shouting them home as if they’d gambled their shirts. Those jockeys had ridden with an outpouring of courage that left me dry-mouthed and breathless, grateful beyond expression, bursting with admiration.
As agreed, when they jogged the tired horses back to unsaddle, another of Moncrieff’s cameras continued to film them. I couldn’t walk into shot to thank them, and thanks, in any form, would have been inadequate.
‘Hell’s teeth,’ Moncrieff exclaimed, moved by the proximity to the speed and sweating commitment. ‘And they do that for a living?’
‘Day in, day out, several times an afternoon.’
‘Crazy.’
‘There’s nothing like it,’ I said.
We changed the actor-jockey into Blue’s colours and had him led into the winner’s enclosure, to applause from a throng of mixed extras and townspeople. We had to do the unsaddling at that point, while the horses still steamed and sweated and stamped from the excitement of racing. We filmed Nash patting the winner’s neck. We filmed the actor-jockey unbuckling the saddle while showing, to my mind, a lot too much clumsiness. We filmed the four horses being rugged and led away by the lads; and we broke for lunch.
Nash, bodyguard close, signed a host of good-natured autographs, mostly on the racecards we’d lavishly distributed.
O’Hara, again at my elbow, breathed in my ear, ‘Satisfied?’
‘Are you?’
‘Nash and I watched the race from up in the stewards’ box. Nash says those first three jockeys rode beyond the call of duty.’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘He says it will give fantastic bite to the victory of his horse over Cibber’s.’
‘It’ll drive Cibber mad.’
‘The final straw?’
‘Almost. Cibber can’t stand to have his best horse beaten into second place like that by the man he hates.’
‘When I read the revised script, I thought Howard had overdone the hate. I couldn’t see any race inducing that level of paranoia.’
‘Hate can corrode the soul to disintegration.’
‘Maybe. But to show that, you needed an exceptional race…’ His voice tailed off momentarily. ‘… and I guess you got it,’ he finished, ‘in your own way.’
I half-smiled. ‘Let’s find some lunch.’
‘You’re having it in the stewards’ box with Nash and me. Do you realise I could have come up behind you just now and put a knife through your ribs? Do you realise we have roughly three hundred strangers here wandering around?’
I did realise. I went with him and lunched high up in safety.
By the time we returned to ground level and to work, one of Ed’s assistants had found the grip who’d passed on the letter. Some kid had given it to him. What kid? He looked around, bewildered. Kids were all over the place. The grip had no recollection of age, sex or clothes. He’d been busy with the unloading of equipment for the following day.
‘Shit,’ O’Hara said.
Another of the film personnel approached as if apologetically and held out a card towards me. ‘Some people called Batwillow say you’re expecting them.’ He