I was surprised. 'Don't all of the riders jump?' I asked.
'Most of them don't ride well enough to teach. Of those three doing the schooling, two are professional jockeys and the third is Popsy's best lad.'
Popsy stood beside us, binoculars ready, as the three horses came up over the hurdles. Except for a ratatatat at the hurdles themselves it was all very quiet, mostly, I realised, because there was no broadcast commentary as on television, but partly also because of the Doppler effect. The horses seemed to be making far more noise once they were past and going away.
Popsy muttered unintelligibly under her breath and Alessia said ' Borodino jumped well,' in the sort of encouraging voice which meant the other two hadn't.
We all waited while the three schooling riders changed horses and set off again down the incline to the starting point -and I felt Alessia suddenly stir beside me and take a bottomless breath - moving from there into a small, restless, aimless circle. Popsy glanced at her but said nothing, and after a while Alessia stopped her circling and said, 'Tomorrow…'
'Today, here and now,' Popsy interrupted firmly, and yelled to a certain Bob to come over to her at once.
Bob proved to be a middle-aged lad riding a chestnut which peeled off from the group and ambled over in what looked to me a sloppy walk.
'Hop off, will you?' Popsy said, and when Bob complied she said to Alessia, 'OK, just walk round a bit. You've no helmet so I don't want you breaking the speed limit, and besides old Paperbag here isn't as fit as the others.'
She made a cradle for Alessia's knee and threw her casually up into the saddle, where the lady jockey landed with all the thump of a feather. Her feet slid into the stirrup and her hands gathered the reins, and she looked down at me for a second as if bemused at the speed with which things were happening. Then as if impelled she wheeled her mount and trotted away, following the other three horses down the schooling ground.
'At last,' Popsy said. 'And I'd begun to think she never would.'
'She's a brave girl.'
'Oh yes.' She nodded. 'One of the best.'
'She had an appalling time.'
Popsy gave me five seconds of the direct green eyes. 'So I gather,' she said, 'from her refusal to talk about it. Let it all hang out, I told her, but she just shook her head and blinked a couple of tears away, so these past few days I've stopped trying to jolly her along, it was obviously doing no good.' She raised the binoculars to watch her three horses coming up over the hurdles and then swung them back down the hill, focusing on Alessia.
'Hands like silk,' Popsy said. 'God knows where she got it from, no one else in the family knows a spavin from a splint.'
'She'll be better now,' I said, smiling. 'But don't expect…
'Instant full recovery?' she asked, as I paused.
I nodded. 'It's like a convalescence. Gradual.'
Popsy lowered the glasses and glanced at me briefly. 'She told me about your job. What you've done for her father. She says she feels safe with you.' She paused. 'I've never heard of a job like yours. I didn't know people like you existed.'
'There are quite a few of us… round the world.'
'What do you call yourself, if people ask?'
'Safety consultant, usually. Or insurance consultant. Depends how I feel.'
She smiled. 'They both sound dull and worthy.'
'Yes… er… that's the aim.'
We watched Alessia come back up the hill, cantering now, but slowly, and standing in the stirrups. Though of course I'd seen them do it, I'd never consciously noted before then that that was how jockeys rode, not sitting in the saddle but tipped right forward so their weight could be carried over the horse's shoulder, not on the lower spine. Alessia stopped beside Bob, who took hold of the horse's reins, and she dismounted by lifting her right leg forward over the horse's neck and dropping lightly, feet together, to the ground: a movement as graceful and springy as ballet.
A different dimension, I thought. The expertise of the professional. Amazing to the non-able, like seeing an artist drawing.
She patted the horse's neck, thanked Bob and came over to us, slight in shirt and jeans, smiling.
'Thanks,' she said to Popsy.
'Tomorrow?' Popsy said. 'With the string?'
Alessia nodded, rubbing the backs of her thighs. 'I'm as unfit as marshmallow.'
With calmness she watched the final trio of horses school, and then Popsy drove us again erratically back to her house, while the horses walked, to cool down.
Over coffee in the kitchen Alessia rewrote the lists of the music she listened to so often, a job she repeated out of generosity, and disliked,
'I could hum all the other tunes that I don't know the titles of,' she said. 'But frankly I don't want to hear them ever again.' She pushed the list across: Verdi, as before, and modern gentle songs like 'Yesterday' and 'Bring in the Clowns', more British and American in origin than Italian.
'I did think of something else,' she said hesitantly. 'I dreamed it, the night before last. You know how muddled things are in dreams… I was dreaming I was walking out to race. I had silks on, pink and green checks, and I know I was supposed to be going to ride, but I couldn't find the parade ring, and I asked people, but they didn't know, they were all catching trains or something and then someone said, 'At least an hour to Viralto,' and I woke up. I was sweating and my heart was thumping, but it hadn't been a nightmare, not a bad one anyway. Then I thought that I'd actually heard someone say 'at least an hour to Viralto' at that minute, and I was afraid there was someone in the room… It was horrible, really.' She put a hand on her forehead, as if the clamminess still stood there. 'But of course, when I woke up properly, there I was in Popsy's spare bedroom, perfectly safe. But my heart was still thumping.' She paused, then said, 'I think I must have heard one of them say that, when I was almost asleep.'
'This dream,' I asked slowly, considering, 'was it in English… or Italian?'
'Oh.' Her eyes widened. 'I was riding in England. Pink and green checks… one of Mike Noland's horses. I asked the way to the parade ring in English… they were English people, but that voice saying 'at least an hour to Viralto', that was Italian.' She frowned. 'How awfully odd. I translated it into English in my mind, when I woke up.'
'Do you often go to Viralto?' I asked.
'No. I don't even know where it is.'
'I'll tell Pucinelli,' I said, and she nodded consent.
'He found the house you were kept in most of the time,' I said neutrally.
'Did he?' It troubled her. 'I… I don't want…'
'You don't want to hear about it?'
'No.'
'All right.'
She sighed with relief. 'You never make me face things. I'm very graceful. I feel… I still feel I could be pushed over a cliff… break down, I suppose… if too much is forced on me. And it's absolutely ridiculous - I didn't cry at all, not once, when I was… in that tent.'
'That's thoroughly normal, and you're doing fine,' I said. 'And you look fabulous on a horse.'
She laughed. 'God knows why it took me so long. But up on the Downs… such a gorgeous morning… I just felt…' She paused. 'I love horses, you know. Most of them, anyway. They're like friends… but they live internal lives, secrets with amazing instincts. They're telepathic… I suppose I'm boring you.'
'No,' I said truthfully, and thought that it was horses, not I, who would lead her finally back to firm ground.
She came out to the car with me when I left and kissed me goodbye, cheek to cheek, as if I'd known her for years.
EIGHT
'Viralto?' Pucinelli said doubtfully. 'It's a village off one of the roads into the mountains. Very small. No roads in the village, just alleyways between houses. Are you sure she said Viralto?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Is it one of those hill-top villages with houses all stuck together with red tiled roofs and blinding white walls without windows? Ail on slopes, shut in and secret?'
'Like that, yes.'
'Would it be an hour's drive from Bologna? From the house where Alessia was kept?
'I suppose so… If you knew the way. It is not on a main road.'
'And… er… would it have a bakery?'
After the faintest of pauses he said smoothly, 'My men will be up there at once, searching thoroughly. But Andrew, it would not be usual to take a kidnapped person there, In these villages everyone knows everyone. There is no room to hide a stranger.'
'Try Viralto on the kidnapper who told you about the first house,' I said.
'You can be sure I will,' he said happily. 'He has now confessed that he was one of the four in masks who abducted Alessia. He also sometimes sat in the house at night to guard her, but he says he never spoke to her, she was always asleep.'
He paused. 'I have asked him several times every day for the name of the man in the drawings. He says the man's name is Giuseppe. He says that's what he called him and he doesn't know any other name for him. This may be true. Maybe not. I keep asking. Perhaps one day he will tell me different.'
'Enrico,' I said diffidently, 'you are an expert investigator. I hesitate to make a suggestion…'
A small laugh travelled by wire from Bologna, 'You don't hesitate very often.'
'Then… before you go to Viralto, shall we get Paolo Cenci to offer a reward for the recovery of any of the ransom money? Then you could take that promise and also the drawings of 'Giuseppe' with you… perhaps?'
'I will also take photographs of our kidnappers and of Alessia,' he said. 'Signor Cenci will surely agree to the reward. But… ' he paused, 'Viralto… was only a word in a dream.'
'A word which caused sweating and an accelerated heartbeat,' I said. 'It frightened her.'
'Did it? Hmm. Then don't worry, we'll sweep through the village like the sirocco.'
'Ask the children,' I said.
He laughed. 'Andrew Machiavelli Douglas… every child's mother would prevent us.'
'Pity.'
When we'd finished talking I telephoned to Paolo Cenci, who said 'willingly' to the reward, and then again to Pucinelli to confirm it.
'I am making a leaflet for photocopying,' he said. 'The reward offer and all the pictures. I'll call you if there are any results.'
