older than I am and he’d taken it for granted he would inherit everything. He had been generously treated all his life. Daddy bought all his showjumpers for him, and only insisted that Rodbury should earn his own keep by giving lessons. Perfectly reasonable, I thought, as Daddy wasn’t unduly rich. He divided his money between the three of us. None of us is rich.’ She paused again. ‘I expect you wonder why I’m telling you this. It’s because I want you to be fair to Daddy’s memory.’
I couldn’t be, not in the way she wanted.
I said, ‘Think of this film as being about fictional people, not about your father and mother. The people in the film are not in the least like your parents. They are not them. They are inventions.’
‘Mummy will never be persuaded.’
I took her with me into the parade ring where Moncrieff as ever was busy with lights.
‘I’m going to show you two people,’ I said to Alison. ‘Tell me what you think.’
She looked puzzled, but her gaze followed where I pointed to a nearby couple, and she looked without emotion at Cibber, a sober fifty, and at lovely young Silva in her well-cut coat and polished narrow boots and bewitching fur hat.
‘Well?’ Alison demanded. ‘They look nice enough. Who are they?’
‘Mr and Mrs Cibber,’ I said.
‘What?’ She whirled towards me, half way to fury. Then, thinking better of a direct physical attack, turned back thoughtfully and simply stared.
‘Beyond them,’ I said, ‘is Nash Rourke. He plays the character loosely based on Jackson Wells.’
Alison speechlessly stared at the broad-shouldered heartthrob whose benign intelligence was unmistakable from twenty feet.
‘Come with me,’ I said.
Dazed, she followed, and I took her to where Greg Compass and Lucy seemed finally to have found Lucy’s father.
‘These people,’ I told Alison, ‘are Greg Compass, who interviews racing people on TV.’
Alison briefly nodded in recognition.
‘This family,’ I said neutrally, ‘are Mr and Mrs Jackson Wells and their daughter, Lucy.’
Alison’s mouth opened but no words came out. Jackson Wells, good-looking and smiling, stood between his two wholesome, well-groomed women, waiting for me to complete the introduction.
‘Alison Visborough,’ I said.
Jackson Wells’s sunny face darkened. He said, almost spitting, ‘Her daughter!’
‘You see,’ I said to Alison, ‘Jackson Wells dislikes your mother as intensely as she dislikes him. No way in real life would they ever have had a love affair. The people in this film are not them.’
Alison remained dumb. I took her arm, wheeling her away.
‘Your mother,’ I said, ‘is making herself ill. Persuade her to turn her back on what we are doing. Make her interested in something else, and don’t let her see the completed film. Believe that I mean no disrespect to her or to your father’s memory. I am making a movie about fictional people. I have some sympathy with your mother’s feelings, but she will not get the film abandoned.’
Alison found her voice. ‘You are ruthless,’ she said.
‘Quite likely. However, I admire you, Miss Visborough, as Howard does. I admire your good sense and your loyalty to your father. I regret your anger but I can’t remove its cause. Cibber in the film is not a nice man at all, I have to warn you. All I can say again is, don’t identify him with your father.’
‘Howard did!’
‘Howard wrote Cibber as a good man without powerful emotions. There’s no conflict or drama in that. Conflict is the essence of drama… first lesson of film-making. Anyway, I apologise to you and your mother and brother, but until last week I hardly knew you existed.’
‘Oh, Roddy!’ she said without affection. ‘Don’t worry about him. He doesn’t care very much. He and Daddy were pretty cold to each other. Too different, I suppose. Rodbury – and I call him by his full name because Roddy sounds like a nice little boy, but he would never let me join in his games when we were children, and other girls were so wrong when they said I was lucky having an older brother –’ She broke off abruptly. ‘I don’t know why I said that. I don’t talk to people easily. Particularly not to people I disapprove of. Anyway, Rodbury wouldn’t care what you said about Daddy as long as he didn’t lose money over it. He only pretends to Mummy that he cares, because he’s always conning her into buying things for him.’
‘He’s not married?’
She shook her head. ‘He boasts about girls. More talk than action, I sometimes think.’