tended to despise personal and company wealth.
'If you're effing poor,' he'd said to me once, 'and you see some capitalist shitting around in a Roller, it's not so effing surprising you think of ways of levelling things up. If you're down to your last bit of goat cheese in Sardinia, maybe, or short of beans in Mexico, a little kidnap makes effing sense.'
'You're romantic,' I'd answered. 'What about the poor Sardinians who steal a child from a poor Sardinian village, and grind all the poor people there into poorer dust, forcing them all to pay out their pitiful savings for a ransom?'
'No one's effing perfect.'
For all that he'd been against me joining the firm in the first place, and in spite of his feeling superior in every way, whenever we'd worked together it had been without friction. He could feel his way through the psyches of kidnappers as through a minefield, but preferred to have me deal with the families of the victims.
'When you're with them, they stay in one effing piece. If I tell them what to do, they fall to effing bits.'
He was at his happiest cooperating with men in uniform, among whom he seemed to command instant recognition and respect. Good sergeants ran the army, it was said, and when he wanted to he had the air about him still.
No one was allowed to serve in the S.A.S. for an extended period, and once he'd been bounced out because of age, he'd been bored. Then someone had murmured in his ear about fighting terrorists a different way, and Liberty Market had never regretted taking him.
'I put you in for Sunday midnight on the blower, did you see, instead of me?' he said.
I nodded.
'The wife's got this effing anniversary party organised, and like as not by midnight I'll be pissed.'
'All right,' I said.
He was short for a soldier: useful for passing as a woman, he'd told me once. Sandy-haired, blue-eyed, and light on his feet, he was a fanatic about fitness, and it was he who had persuaded everyone to furnish (and use) the iron-pumping room in the basement. He never said much about his origins: the tougher parts of London, from his accent.
'When did you get back?' I asked. 'Last I heard you were in Columbia.'
'End of the week.'
'How was it?' I said.
He scowled. 'We winkled the effing hostages out safe, and then the local strength got excited and shot the shit out of the terrorists, though they'd got their effing hands up and were coming out peaceful.' He shook his head. 'Never keep their bullets to themselves, those savages. Effing stupid, the whole shitting lot of them.'
Shooting terrorists who'd surrendered was, as he'd said, effing stupid. The news would get around, and the next bunch of terrorists, knowing they'd be shot if they did and also shot if they didn't, would be more likely to kill their victims.
I had missed the Monday meeting where that debacle would have been discussed, but meanwhile there was my own report to write for the picking over of Bologna. I spent all Saturday on it and some of Sunday morning, and then drove seventy-five miles westward to Lambourn.
Popsy Teddington proved to live in a tall white house near the centre of the village, a house seeming almost suburban but surprisingly fronting a great amount of stabling. I hadn't until that day realised that racing stables could occur actually inside villages, but when I remarked on it Popsy said with a smile that I should see Newmarket, they had horses where people in other towns had garages, greenhouses and sheds.
She was standing outside when I arrived, looming over a five-foot man who seemed glad of the interruption.
'Just see to that, Sammy. Tell them I won't stand for it,' she was saying forcefully as I opened the car door. Her head turned my way and a momentary 'who-are-you?' frown crossed her forehead. 'Oh yes, Alessia's friend. She's around the back, somewhere. Come along.' She led me past the house and behind a block of stabling, and we arrived suddenly in view of a small railed paddock, where a girl on a horse was slowly cantering, watched by another girl on foot.
The little paddock seemed to be surrounded by the backs of other stables and other houses, and the grass within it had seen better days.
'I hope you can help her,' Popsy said straightly, as we approached. 'I've never known her like this. Very worrying.'
'How do you mean?' I asked.
'So insecure. She wouldn't ride out yesterday with the string, which she always does when she's here, and now look at her, she's supposed to be up on that horse, not watching my stable girl riding.'
'Has she said much about what happened to her?' I asked.
'Not a thing. She just smiles cheerfully and says it's all over.'
Alessia half turned as we drew near, and looked very relieved when she saw me.
'I was afraid you wouldn't come,' she said.
'You shouldn't have been.'
She was wearing jeans and a checked shirt and lipstick, and was still unnaturally pale from six weeks in dim light. Popsy shouted to the girl riding the horse to put it back in its stable. 'Unless, darling, you'd like…' she said to Alessia. 'After all?'
Alessia shook her head. Tomorrow, I guess.' She sounded as if she meant it, but I could see that Popsy doubted. She put a motherly arm round Alessia's shoulders and gave her a small hug. 'Darling, do just what you like. How about a drink for your thirsty traveller?' To me she said, 'Coffee? Whisky? Methylated spirits?'
'Wine,' Alessia said. 'I know he likes that.'
We went into the house: dark antique furniture, worn Indian rugs, faded chintz, a vista of horses through every window.
Popsy poured Italian wine into cut crystal glasses with a casual hand and said she would cook steaks if we were patient. Alessia watched her disappear kitchenwards and said uncomfortably, 'I'm a nuisance to her. I shouldn't have come.'
'You're quite wrong on both counts,' I said. 'It's obvious she's glad to have you.'
SI thought I'd be all right here… That I'd feel different. I mean, that I'd feel all right.'
'You're sure to, in a while.'
She glanced at me. 'It bothers me that I just can't… shake it off.'
'Like you could shake off double septic pneumonia?'
'That's different,' she protested.
'Six weeks of no sunlight, no exercise, no decent food and a steady diet of heavy sleeping pills is hardly a recipe for physical health.'
But… it's not just… physical.'
'Still less can you just shake off the non-physical.' I drank some wine. 'How are your dreams?'
She shuddered. 'Half the time I can't sleep. Ilaria said I should keep on with the sleeping pills for a while, but I don't want to, it revolts me to think of it… But when I do sleep… I have nightmares… and wake up sweating.'
'Would you like me,' I said neutrally, 'to introduce you to a psychiatrist? I know quite a good one.'
'No.' The answer was instinctive. 'I'm not mad, I'm just… not right.'
'You don't need to be dying to go to a doctor.'
She shook her head. 'I don't want to.'
She sat on a large sofa with her feet on a coffee table, looking worried.
'It's you that I want to talk to, not some shrink. You understand what happened, and to some strange doctor it would sound exaggerated. You know I'm telling the truth, but he'd be worrying half the time if I wasn't fantasising or dramatising or something and be looking for ways of putting me in the wrong. I had a friend who went to one… She told me it was weird, when she said she wanted to give up smoking he kept suggesting she was unhappy because she had repressed incestuous longings for her father.' She ended with an attempt at a laugh, but I could see what she meant. Psychiatrists were accustomed to distortion and evasion, and looked for them in the simplest remark.
'I do think all the same that you'd be better off with expert help,' I said.
'You're an expert.'
'No.'
'But it's you I want… Oh dear,' she broke off suddenly, looking most confused. 'I'm sorry… You don't want to… How stupid of me.'
'I didn't say that. I said…' I too stopped. I stood up, walked over, and sat next to her on the sofa, not touching. 'I'll untie any knots I can for you, and for as long as you want me to. That's a promise. Also a pleasure, not a chore. But you must promise me something too.'
She said 'What?' glancing at me and away.
'That if I'm doing you no good, you will try someone else.'
'A shrink?'
'Yes.'
She looked at her shoes. 'All right,' she said; and like any psychiatrist I wondered if she were lying.
Popsy's steaks came tender and juicy, and Alessia ate half of hers.
'You must build up your strength, my darling, Popsy said without censure. 'You've worked so hard to get where you are. You don't want all those ambitious little jockey-boys elbowing you out, which they will if they've half a chance.'
'I telephoned Mike,' she said. 'I said… I'd need time.'
'Now my darling,' Popsy protested. 'You get straight back on the telephone and tell him you'll be fit a week today. Say you'll be ready to race tomorrow week, without fail.'
Alessia looked at her in horror. 'I'm too weak to stay in the saddle… let alone race.'
'My darling, you've all the guts in the world. If you want to, you'll do it.'
Alessia's face said plainly that she didn't know whether she wanted to or not.
'Who's Mike?' I asked.
'Mike Noland,' Popsy said. 'The trainer she often rides for in England. He lives here, in Lambourn, up the road.'
'He said he understood,' Alessia said weakly.
'Well of course he understands. Who wouldn't? But all the same, my darling, if you want those horses back, it's you that will have to get them.'
She spoke with brisk, affectionate commonsense, hallmark of the kind and healthy who had never been at cracking point. There was a sort of quiver from where Alessia sat, and I rose unhurriedly to my feet and asked if I could help carry the empty dishes to the kitchen.
'Of course you can,' Popsy said, rising also, 'and there's cheese, if you'd like some.'
