'I don't believe it!'
A head further along the large table was gravely nodding. 'A scurrilous suggestion, if it is expressed as a question, may or may not be considered libel. There are grey areas.'
My steward friend said blankly, 'That's not justice!'
'It's the law.'
'You knew that?' Nash said to me.
'Mm.'
'Did Howard know it?'
'Whoever wrote that piece certainly did.'
Nash said, 'Shit!' and not a single face objected.
'What Nash really needs,' I said, 'is a reliable tip for the Lincoln.'
They laughed and with relief turned to the serious business of the day. I half-heard the knowledgeable form-talk and thought that five hours could be a long torture. Barely forty minutes of it had so far passed. My pulse still raced from anxiety. My whole professional life probably hung on whether the moguls who would be bidden to the breakfast table were putting in a good night's sleep. Saturday morning. Golf day. I would be doubly unpopular.
I went down with Nash and a couple of the stewards' other lunch guests to see the horses walking round the parade ring before the first race. Nash looked at the horses: the racecrowd progressively looked at Nash. He seemed to take the staring for granted, just as he would have done back home in Hollywood, and he signed a few autographs for wide-eyed teenagers with pleasant politeness.
'How do I put a bet on?' he asked me, signing away.
'I'll do it for you if you like. Which horse, how much?'
'Hell knows.' He raised his eyes briefly and pointed to a horse being at that point mounted by a jockey in scarlet and yellow stripes. 'That one. Twenty.'
'Will you be all right if I leave you?'
'I'm a grown boy, you know.'
Grinning, I turned away, walked to the Tote, and bet twenty pounds to win on the horse called Wasp. Nash, waiting for me to retrieve him, returned with me to the stewards' room, from where we watched Wasp finish an unobtrusive fifth.
'I owe you,' Nash said. 'Pick me one yourself for the next race.'
The races as always were being shown on closed-circuit television on sets throughout the bars and the grandstands. A set in the stewards' room was busy with a replay of the just-finished race, Wasp still finishing fifth, the jockey busy to the end.
I stared breathlessly at the screen.
'Thomas? Thomas Thomas,' Nash said forcefully in my ear, 'come back from wherever you've gone.'
'Television,' I said.
Nash said ironically, 'It's been around a while, you know.'
'Yes, but...' I picked up a copy of the Racing Gazette Racing Gazette that was lying on the table and turned from Valentine's obituary to the pages laying out the Doncaster programme. Television coverage of the day's sport, I saw, was, as I'd hoped, by courtesy of a commercial station that provided full day-by-day racing for grateful millions. For the big-race opening of the Flat season, they would be there in force. that was lying on the table and turned from Valentine's obituary to the pages laying out the Doncaster programme. Television coverage of the day's sport, I saw, was, as I'd hoped, by courtesy of a commercial station that provided full day-by-day racing for grateful millions. For the big-race opening of the Flat season, they would be there in force.
'Thomas,' Nash repeated.
'Er...' I said, 'how badly do you want to save our film? Or, in fact... me?'
'Not badly enough to jump off a cliff.'
'How about an interview on TV?'
He stared.
I said, 'What if you could say on television that we're not not making a bummer of a movie? Would you want to do it?' making a bummer of a movie? Would you want to do it?'
'Sure,' he said easily, 'but it wouldn't reach every reader of the Drumbeat Drumbeat.'
'No. But what if O'Hara could get the interview transmitted to Hollywood? How about the moguls seeing it at breakfast? Your own face on the screen might tip things where O'Hara's assurances might not. Only... how do you feel about trying?'
'Hell, Thomas, get on with it.'
I went out onto the viewing balcony and pressed the buttons to get O'Hara: and let me not get his message service, I prayed.
He answered immediately himself, as if waiting for calls.
'It's Thomas,' I said.
'It's too early to hear from Hollywood.'
'No. It's something else.' I told him what I'd suggested to Nash, and he put his finger at once on the snags.
'First of all,' he said doubtfully, 'you'd have to get the TV company to interview Nash.'
'I could do that. It's getting the interview onto the screen in the Hollywood conference room that I'm not sure of. Live pictures get transmitted regularly from England to the States, but I don't know the pathways. If we could get to an LA station we could have a tape rushed round for our moguls to play on a VCR...'
'Thomas, stop. I can fix the LA end. The transmission from England...' he paused, sucking his teeth. 'What station are we talking about?'
I told him. 'The people they'll have here are an outside broadcast unit. They'll have engineers and camera crews and a producer or two and three or four interviewers and commentators, but they won't have the authority or the equipment to transmit overseas. The OK would have to come from their headquarters, which are in London. They'll have Doncaster races on their screen there. They can transmit to anywhere. Their number will be in the phone book...'
'And you need me to use my clout.' He sounded resigned, seeing difficulties.
'Um,' I said, 'if you want Unstable Times Unstable Times to reach the cinema, it might be worth trying. I mean, it's your picture too, you know. Your head on the block for engaging me.' to reach the cinema, it might be worth trying. I mean, it's your picture too, you know. Your head on the block for engaging me.'
'I see that.' He paused. 'All right, I'll start. It's a hell of a long shot.'
'They've been known to win.'
'Is Nash with you?'
'Five paces away.'
'Get him, would you?'
Nash came outside and took the phone. 'I'll do the interview. Thomas says he can fix it, no problem.' He listened. 'Yeah. Yeah. If he says he can, I guess he can. He doesn't promise what he can't deliver. O'Hara, you get off your ass and put Thomas and me into that meeting. It's damn stupid to let that son-of-a-bitch Tyler sink the ship.' He listened again, then said, 'Get it done, O'Hara. Hang the expense. I'll not be beaten by that scribbler scribbler.'
I listened in awe to the switched-on power of the ultimate green light and humbly thanked the fates that he saw me as an ally, not a villain.
He disconnected, handed the phone back to me and said, 'Where do we find our interviewer?'
'Follow me.' I tried to make it sound light-hearted, but I was no great actor. Nash silently came with me down to the unsaddling enclosure, from where the runners of the just-run race had already departed.
'Do you know who you are looking for?' he asked, as I turned my head one way and another. 'Can't you ask?'
'I don't need to,' I said, conscious, even if Nash ignored it, of everyone looking at him him. 'This television company travels with a race-caller, a paddock commentator who talks about the runners for the next race, and someone who interviews the winning jockeys and trainers afterwards, and it's him I'm looking for... and I know him.'
'That's something.'
'And there he is,' I said, spotting him. 'Coming?'
I slid then between the groups of people chatting in the railed area outside the weighing-room; slid where the groups parted like the Red Sea to clear a path for Nash. My acquaintance, the interviewer, began to say hello to me, saw who I was with and ended with his mouth open.
'Nash,' I introduced, 'this is Greg Compass: Greg... Nash Rourke.'
Greg came to his senses like any seasoned television performer should and with genuine welcome shook the hand that had fired a hundred harmless bullets.
'He's here to see the Lincoln,' I explained. 'How about some inside information?'
'Gallico,' Greg suggested promptly. 'He's bursting out of his skin, so they say.' He looked thoughtfully at Nash and without pressing him asked, 'Do you mind if I say you're here? I expect Thomas told you I do the ghastly chat stuff for all the couch potatoes?'
'I did tell him, yes.'
'Thomas and I,' Greg explained, 'used to ride against each other, when I was a jockey and we were young.'
'You're all so tall,' Nash exclaimed.
'Jump jockeys are mostly taller. Ex-jump jockeys get to be racing commentators or journalists, things like that. Live it first. Talk about it after.' He was comically self-deprecating, though in fact he'd been a top career jockey, not an amateur like me. He was forty, slender, striking, stylish. He took a breath. 'Well...'
'You can certainly say I'm here,' Nash assured him.
'Great. Um...' He hesitated.
'Ask him,' I said, half-smiling.
Greg glanced at me and back to Nash. 'I suppose... I couldn't get you in front of my camera?'
Nash gave me a dry sideways look and in his best slay-them gravelly bass said that he saw no reason why not.
'I did hear you were in Newmarket, making a film,' Greg said. 'I suppose I can say so?'
'Sure. Thomas is directing it.'
'Yes. Word gets around.'
I pulled a folded Drumbeat Drumbeat page from my pocket and handed it to Greg. page from my pocket and handed it to Greg.
'If you'll let him,' I said, 'Nash would very briefly like to contradict what's written in that 'Hot from the Stars' column.'
Greg read it through quickly, his expression darkening from simple curiosity to indignation.
'Difficult to sue,' he exclaimed, it's all questions. Is it true?'
'It's true the film story is different from the book,' I said.
Nash assured him, 'I didn't say those things and I don't think them. The film is going well. All I'd like to say, if you'll let me, is that one shouldn't believe newspapers.'
'Thomas?' Greg raised his eyebrows at me. 'You're using me, aren't you?'
'Yes. But that column's assassinating me. If Nash can say on screen that it's not true, we can beam him to the moneymen in Hollywood and hope to prevent them from taking the column seriously.'
He thought it over. He sighed. 'All right, then, but very casual, OK? I'll put you both together in shot.'
'Innocence by association,' I said gratefully.
'Always a bright boy.' He looked at his watch. 'How about after the Lincoln? An hour from now. After I've talked to the winning trainer and jockey and the owners, if they're here. We could slot it in at that point. I'll tell my producer. Thomas, you remember where the camera is? Come there after the Lincoln. And Thomas, you owe me.'
'Two seats for the premier,' I said. 'Without you, there may not be one.'
'Four seats.'
'A whole row,' I said.
'Done.' Greg looked at Nash. 'What is this over-hyped buffoon of an ineffectual bullyboy really like as a director?'
'Worse,' Nash said.
We did the interview, Nash and I side by side. Greg introduced us to the viewers, asked if Nash had backed the winner of the Lincoln Gallico congratulated him and said he hoped Nash was enjoying his visit to Britain.
Nash said, 'I'm making a film here. Very enjoyable.' He nodded affably. He added a few details casually, as Greg had wanted, but left no listeners in doubt that the racing film we were making in Newmarket was going well.
'Didn't I read an uncomplimentary report...?' Greg prompted quizzically.
'Yes,' Nash agreed, nodding, 'Words were put into my mouth that I never said. So what else is new? Never believe newspapers.'
'You're playing a trainer, aren't you?' Greg asked the questions we had asked him to ask as if he'd just that minute thought of them. 'How's it going with the riding?'
'I can sit on a horse,' Nash smiled. 'I can't ride like Thomas.'
'Do you ride in the film?' Greg asked me helpfully.
'No, he doesn't,' Nash said, 'but he takes a horse out on the Heath to gallop it sometimes. Still, I can beat him at golf.'
The affection in his voice said more than a thousand words. Greg wound up the interview good-naturedly and expertly handed on the couch potatoes to the paddock commentator for profiles of the next race's runners.