beneath Paul’s bluster. He hadn’t tried to cut short my visit to the patient: the five allowed minutes had stretched to ten, until I myself thought that she’d talked enough.
Paul had walked with me from her room to the hospital exit, his breath agitated and deep as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t bring himself entirely to the point. I gave him time and opportunity, but he was not, as his uncle had been, desperate enough for confession.
Paul was shouting, Dorothea had said. For her sake, I hoped to God she’d got things mixed up.
At Huntingdon racecourse, before eight o’clock, the gates were already wide open to admit the local inhabitants. Breakfast, provided free for all-comers via the film’s caterers, ran to endless hot dogs out of a raised-sided van. The weather, though cold, still smiled. Cheerful faces abounded. I needn’t have worried that the townspeople would be too bored to return: word of mouth had acted positively and we ended with an even larger crowd than on the day before.
The publicity department of the film company had provided five hundred T-shirts, one to be given that day to thank every local helper on departure – (much to my amusement the front of each T- shirt carried the slogan, UNSTABLE TIMES in large letters, but if one looked closely at some extra tiny letters it read UNSTABLE AT ALL TIMES) – and I began to think they hadn’t ordered enough.
The Huntingdon racecourse officials having been generous and helpful throughout, we had had unlimited access to everything we’d wanted. I was so keen not to abuse their welcome that I’d screwed O’Hara’s arm to provide an army of scavengers to clean up all trash left by us.
‘They’ll have their own cleaning staff,’ he’d protested. ‘We’re paying them, after all.’
‘Goodwill is beyond price.’
He’d instructed the production manager to have the place left spotless.
The weighing-room and the jockeys’ changing-rooms were already unlocked when I arrived on the course, and the wardrobe people were there too, laying out the jockeys’ bright colours alongside their breeches and boots.
We had had all their gear made especially for the film, not just the colours. Everything except the racing saddles, which had been hired, belonged to the company.
There were twenty sets across the board, as we’d allowed for tears and spares and hadn’t, at time of ordering, known how many horses we would end with. In the changing—rooms I found that none of the jockeys had already arrived – they’d been called for nine o’clock – and I had no difficulty at all in scooping up what I wanted and locking myself privately into the bathroom.
I had taken with me two of the body protectors designed to save fallen jockeys from the worst effects of kicks. Stripped down to shirt and underpants, I put on the first and zipped it up the front.
In essence, the body protector was a blue cotton lightweight waistcoat padded throughout with flat polystyrene oblongs, about six inches by four, by half an inch thick. The polystyrene pieces, stitched into place, covered the trunk from the neck to below the waist, with a further extension at the back to cover the coccyx at the base of the spine. From there a soft wide belt led forward between the legs to fasten to the vest in front, a scheme which prevented the protector from being displaced. Extra pieces led like epaulettes over the shoulders and down the upper arms, to be fastened round the arm with Velcro.
Although I’d taken the largest available, the protector fitted tight and snugly. When I put the second on top, the front zip wouldn’t meet to fasten across my chest; a problem I half solved by straining my trousers over both protectors and cinching my waist with my belt to hold everything together. I ended feeling like a hunch-shouldered quarterback, but with my ordinary sweater on top and my windproof blue jacket fastened over all, I didn’t in the mirror look much bigger.
I had no idea how a jockey’s kick protector would stand up to a knife, but psychologically an inch of polystyrene and four layers of sturdy cotton cloth was better than nothing, and I couldn’t afford to spend the whole busy day worrying about something that would probably not happen.
I’d happily ridden flat out over jumps round the racecourse without a body protector, risking my neck. I would as happily have done it again. Odd how fear had different faces.
Outside, Moncrieff had already positioned his camera