Wild Horses - By Dick Francis Page 0,70

on its dolly for the first scene of the day, which was the exodus of the jockeys from the weighing-room on their way out to the parade ring before the race. Half way along their path a child extra was to dash forward to offer an autograph book to the actor-jockey. Ed, directing a second camera, would film the jockey’s friendly reaction in close up, registering his face, his blue colours, and his nice-guy status, while the other jockeys went on their way through the shot behind him.

In the event we shot the sequence twice, though thanks to rehearsal it went smoothly the first time. Insurance, though, to my mind, was never wasted.

Between the two takes, I talked to the jockeys, joining them where they waited in the weighing-room. I thanked them for their brilliant race the day before and they made nothing of it, joking. All prickliness had vanished absolutely. They called me Thomas. They said several of them would be racing over the course for real at the Huntingdon meeting the following Monday, but it would be the old nitty-gritty, not the joys of make-believe land. Any time I made another racing film, they said with typically mocking humour, they would stampede in the opposite direction.

When they were recalled for the re-take walk to the parade ring, I went out before them and watched from beside Moncrieff: then with the two printable shots in the can Moncrieff took the camera and crew into the parade ring itself, where the camera could swivel on a turntable to take an almost 360 degrees view of the horses being led round. I stood in the centre of the ring beside him, overseeing things.

As always it was the setting up that took the time: the positioning of extras playing the small groups of owners and trainers, the extras playing racing officials and stewards, the townspeople filling the viewing steps round the ring, the rehearsing of the jockeys so that each went to an allotted owner, the ensuring that the jockeys of the two deadly rivals would arrive in the ring together – the actor-jockey in blue, the other in green and white stripes – and part at a designated spot to join the two groups containing Nash and Cibber.

Nash’s main two bodyguards, dressed as owners, carried binoculars as if they would rather have had guns. The apparently elderly lady completing that group was a twenty-eight-year-old martial arts champion with lioness instincts.

Cibber’s group included Silva dressed as befitted a Jockey Club member’s wife in well-cut wool coat, knee-high boots and fur hat; warm and pretty in the chill wind. Cibber’s ‘trainer’, off-course, taught judo. O’Hara had taken these precautions. My own shadow, the one he’d insisted on, the evening before, stood beside me in the ring, looking dim. He was supposed to be a black-belt but I had more faith in polystyrene.

Later in the day we would do close-ups of Cibber’s acrid fury at having to suffer Nash, his wife’s lover, in unbearable proximity: close-ups of Silva looking lovingly at Nash, goading poor Cibber further; close-ups of Nash behaving with good manners, neutral towards Cibber, circumspect with Silva; short essential close shots that would take an age to light.

Meanwhile, with the horses being led round the ring and with everyone in their allotted places, we filmed the entry of the jockeys. Miraculously they all went to the right groups, touched their caps to the owners, made pretence conversations, watched the horses; behaved as jockeys do. The actor-jockey in blue joined Nash. Green and white stripes went to Cibber. No one tripped over cables, no one wandered inappropriately into shot, no one swore.

‘Hallelujah,’ Moncrieff breathed, sweating beside me when Ed yelled ‘Cut.’

‘And print,’ I added. ‘And do it again.’

We broke for lunch. Nash, in the centre of the parade ring, signed autographs one by one for a well-behaved but apparently endless single line of people, shepherded closely by one of Ed’s assistants. O’Hara, the bodyguard and the lioness formed a human wall round the mega-star’s back.

We ate again, Nash, O’Hara and I, up high in the stewards’ box.

Threats to the film apart, it had been a satisfactory morning; we all knew that the scenes had gone well.

O’Hara said, ‘Howard’s here, did you know?’

‘Howard!’ Nash exclaimed with disgust.

‘A very quiet Howard,’ O’Hara amplified, grimly amused. ‘Howard is putty in our hands.’

‘I don’t think his views have changed,’ I said. ‘He’s been frightened. He’ll keep his mouth shut. I’d describe it as a plug in a