looked across to where the little group stood. Jackson Wells, his wife and Lucy, and a man I didn’t know.
I took the card and waved them over and had time only to say to O’Hara, ‘This is our hanged lady’s real husband,’ before shaking their hands. They had come dressed for the races and Jackson Wells himself, in tweeds and trilby, looked indefinably more a trainer than a farmer. He introduced the stranger as ‘Ridley Wells, my brother.’ I shook a leathery hand.
Ridley Wells was altogether less striking than Jackson, both in colouring and personality, and he was also, I thought, less intelligent. He blinked a lot. He was dressed in riding clothes as if he had come straight from his work, which Jackson described to O’Hara as ‘teaching difficult horses better manners’.
Ridley nodded, and in an accent stronger than his brother’s, said self-pityingly, ‘I’m out in all weathers on Newmarket Heath, but it’s a thankless sort of job. I can ride better than most, but no one pays me enough. How about employing me in this film?’
Jackson resignedly shook his head at Ridley’s underlying chip-on-the-shoulder attitude. O’Hara said sorry, no job. Ridley looked as if he’d been badly treated; a habitual expression, I guessed. I could see why Jackson hadn’t welcomed Ridley’s inclusion in the day’s proceedings.
Jackson still had, it seemed, the old professional trainer’s eye, because after a few ‘nice days’ and so on, he said, ‘That was some race those jocks rode. More electrifying than most of the real thing.’
‘Could you see that?’ O’Hara asked interestedly.
‘Didn’t you hear the cheering? That was no act, either. “Cheer the winner,” we were told, but the cheers came easy as pie.’
‘Be darned,’ O’Hara said, no horseman himself. He looked at my guests thoughtfully and said impulsively to me, ‘Keep the Batwillow family around you, why not?’
He meant, use them as bodyguards. He hadn’t heard Jackson Wells tell me he’d have preferred not to have the film made. I felt safe, though, with his wife and daughter, so I wrapped them as a living shield around me, Mrs Wells on one arm, Lucy on the other, and walked them all off to meet Nash.
Although Nash hadn’t wanted to meet the man he was playing, I introduced them straightforwardly, ‘Jackson Wells – Nash Rourke,’ and watched them shake hands with mutual reservations.
They were in several ways superficially alike: same build, same age bracket, same firm facial muscles. Jackson was blond where Nash was darker, and sunnily open, where Nash, from long megastar status, had grown self-protectively wary. Easier with the women, Nash autographed racecards for wife and daughter and effortlessly melted their hearts. He signed for Ridley also, and didn’t take to him.
We were due to film Nash walking up the steps to the stands to watch (supposedly) his horse run in the race. Slightly to O’Hara’s dismay, he invited Mrs Wells and Lucy to stand near him, in front of the bodyguards, for the scene. Ridley, unasked, followed them up the steps, which left Jackson Wells marooned on his feet by my side, looking as if he wished he hadn’t come.
‘It hasn’t occurred to your wife,’ I said.
‘What hasn’t?’ he said, but he knew what I meant.
‘That’s she standing next to you, twenty-six years ago.’
‘They’re the wrong age,’ he said brusquely. ‘We were all kids at the time. And you’re right, I don’t like it.’
He bore it, however, standing rigid but quiet, while Nash, taking over from his stand-in, walked up the steps and turned on exactly the right spot to bring his face into Moncrieff’s careful lighting. We shot the scene three times and I marked the first and third takes to be printed: and O’Hara stood all the while at my left elbow, riding shotgun, so to speak.
I grinned at him. ‘I could get me some armour,’ I said.
‘It’s no laughing matter.’
‘No.’
One can’t somehow believe in one’s own imminent death. I hadn’t stopped the film and I went on shooting bits of it all afternoon; and for ages at a time, like ten minutes, I stopped thinking about steel.
At one point, waiting as ever for lights and camera to be ready, I found myself a little apart from the centre of activity, standing beside Lucy, gazing into her amazing blue eyes and wondering how old she was.
She said suddenly, ‘You asked Dad for a photo of Sonia so that you didn’t copy her exactly in the film.’