Chapter 21

IT WAS SOMETHING to tell at school.

‘Our horses are in a film,’ Callie said, to anyone who would listen. She did not usually have much to say at school. It was safer to keep quiet, so that nobody could find out what your real self was like, and attack it.

‘Our horses are in a film,’ she told Rosa Duff, who sat next to her.

‘Go on,’ Rosa said.

‘It’s called The Mad Cavalier. You’ll have to see it.’

‘Is it a horror film?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

Toby, who had been born chattering, and had never learned to keep his mouth shut, even when he was teased, boasted to the younger ones.

‘My horse was in a film.’

‘Your horse. You ain’t got a horse.’

‘I have then. I ride it.’

‘It ain’t yours.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I know it ain’t.’

‘Well, that’s all you know then, because it is.’

The arguments scuffled back and forth, as they did every day among the small boys. Toby’s story of the film was submerged in a turmoil of arms and legs.

‘Break it up, break it up.’ Two or three big boys lounged across the playground, pushing through the smaller ones. If you did not nip out of the way, you got shoved aside or knocked down.

‘Toby’s a film star!’ One of the small boys jumped up and down like a frog, pointing at Toby, trying to get on the right side of Lewis Hammond by jeering.

‘I ain’t said—’

‘Better not say nothing.’ Lewis pushed his face close up and wiped his horrible nose back and forth across Toby’s button nose so hard it made his eyes water.

The Louse swaggered on.

The frog boy was still jumping up and down inanely, jabbing a finger at Toby.

‘Toby is a li-ar,’ he sang. ‘Where is Toby’s fa-ther?’

Toby’s father was in prison, but he did not think they knew that.

‘Shut up!’ he screamed, his eyes still watering, from rage as well as pain. ‘You think you’re so big, but we got a famous film star at our place, so stuff that.’

He was at the Farm so much that it was ‘our place’, just as the horses were ‘our horses’.

‘Go on.’ The boy stood still.

‘Who is it then?’ The others, who had been running after the Louse and Co., throwing gravel as near as they dared, turned and came back.

‘Cosmo Spence.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Been dead for years.’

‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’ Toby told Mac about letting the secret out at school.

‘I told you not to tell anyone.’

‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Toby said cheerfully. ‘Most of them had never heard of you and the others thought you were dead.’

Instead of cheering him, this upset Mac more than the letting out of his secret.

‘You see,’ he said. ‘I am finished. They don’t know me any more, the kids.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to be known.’

‘Only if I choose. Not if they choose.’

He was gloomy for the rest of the afternoon, muttering about being all washed up, and giving the best years of his life, and nobody caring.

But towards evening, there was a tremendous noise in the road outside. Three cars pulled up together, and a crowd of screaming women rushed into the yard. ‘Where is he? Where is he?’

The schoolchildren had told their mothers, and they had all come looking for Cosmo Spence, idol of their youth.

‘Cosmo!’ They rushed at him like a pack of yapping beagles.

Dora looked at Mac, and saw that he was terrified. He was pale and shaking, unable to move. She pushed him into a stable and bolted the door.

His fans were streaming through the archway. Dora had been washing down the yard. The hose was still running. She grabbed it, twisted the nozzle to a full jet and turned it on the women.

Their giggling shrilled to screams. They ran, skittering over the cobbles, while Dora stood in front of the stable door where Mac crouched, holding the hose like a fireman, flushing out one woman who had ducked behind a wheelbarrow, and chasing her out after the others, through the arch and into the cars.

‘Thanks, pal.’ Mac stood up and peered cautiously over the door.

‘You still want to be known?’

‘No, sir. It brought it all back. The shakes. Geez, I’d be a nervous wreck if I ever had to go to a première again. They tear your guts out. It’s terrifying. They eat you alive.’

‘Like vampires,’ Dora said.

‘Yeah. They suck your blood.’

Next morning, they found him in his room, packing the few clothes and possessions that he owned.

‘I hate to let you down,’ he told the Colonel, ‘but after yesterday, I can’t stay here.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to the States, I guess.’

‘To Hollywood?’

‘No, sir. Being here at the Farm has taught me a hell of a lot. It’s shown me the way I want to live. I’m going to get me a ranch somewhere and start a place like this for old horses in the States. Get a couple of good kids to work with me—’

‘I’ll come,’ Callie said.

‘Maybe later.’ He smiled at her with his very white teeth which had been straightened and capped in his film star days. ‘I’ll be there a long time, honey. Just another old horse put out to grass.’