I shook my head, started the engine, and drove the way we'd gone three days earlier, up to the silence and the wide sky and the calling birds.
When I braked to a stop and switched off, Alessia said defensively, 'Now what? I can't just… scream.'
'If you care to walk off along there on your own and see if you want to, I'll wait here.'
Without looking at me directly she did exactly as I'd said, sliding down from the Land Rover and walking away. Her narrow figure diminished in the distance but stayed in sight, and after a fair while she came slowly back. She stopped with dry eyes at the open window beside me and said calmly, 'I can't scream. It's pointless.'
I got out of the Land Rover and stood on the grass near her. I said, 'What is it about riding in the string which makes you feel trapped?'
'Did Popsy say that?'
'No, she just said you didn't want to.'
She leaned against the front wing of the Land Rover, not looking at me.
'It's nonsense,' she said. 'I don't know why. On Friday I got dressed to go. I wanted to go… but I felt all churned up. Breathless. Worse than before my first big race… but the same sort of feeling. I went downstairs, and it got much worse. Stifling. So I told Popsy I had a headache… which was nearly true… and yesterday it was just the same. I didn't even go downstairs… I felt so wretched, but I just couldn't…'
I pondered, then said, 'Start from getting up. Think of riding clothes. Think of the horses. Think of riding through the streets. Think of everything separately, one by one, and then say at what thought you begin to feel… churned up.' She looked at me dubiously, but blinked a few times as she went through the process and then shook her head. 'I don't feel churned now. I don't know what it is… I've thought of everything.
I glanced at her very troubled face. She was taking me out of my depth, I thought. She needed professional help, not my amateur common sense. 'Why their eyes?' I said.
'Eyes…' She spoke loudly, as if the words themselves demanded violence. 'They watched me. I knew they did. When I was asleep. They came in and watched.'
She turned suddenly towards the Land Rover and did actually kick the tyre.
They came in. I know they did. I hate… I hate… I can't bear… their eyes.'
I stretched out, put my arms round her and pulled her against my chest. 'Alessia… Alessia… It doesn't matter What if they did?'
'I feel… filthy… dirty.'
'A kind of rape?' I said.
'Yes.'
'But not…?'
She shook her head silently and conclusively.
'How do you know they came in?' I said.
The zip,' she said. 'I told you I knew every stitch of the tent… I knew how many teeth in the zip. And some days, it would open higher than others. They undid the zip… and came in… and fastened it at a different level… six or seven teeth higher, ten lower… I dreaded it.'
I stood holding her, not knowing what to say.
'I try not to care,' she said. 'But I dream…' She stopped for a while, then said, 'I dream about eyes.'
I rubbed one of my hands over her back, trying to comfort. 'Tell me what else,' I said. 'What else is unbearable?'
She stood quiet for so long with her nose against my chest that I thought there might be nothing, but finally, with a hard sort of coldness, she said, 'I wanted him to like me. I wanted to please him. I told Papa and Pucinelli that his voice was cold… but that was… at the beginning. When he came each time with the microphone, to make the tapes, I was… ingratiating.' She paused. 'I… loathe… myself. I am… hateful… and dreadfully… unbearably… ashamed.'
She stopped talking and simply stood there, and after a while I said, 'Very often people who are kidnapped grow to like their kidnappers. It isn't even unusual. It's as if a normal human being can't live without some sort of friendly contact. In ordinary criminal prisons, the prisoners and warders grow into definitely friendly relationships. When a lot of hostages are taken, some of them always make friends with one or more of the terrorists holding them. Hostages sometimes beg the police who are rescuing them not to harm their kidnappers. You mustn't, you shouldn't, blame yourself for trying to make the man with the microphone like you. It's normal. Usual. And… how did he respond?
She swallowed. 'He called me… dear girl.'
'Dear girl,' I said myself, meaning it. 'Don't feel guilty. You are normal. Everyone tries to befriend their kidnappers to some extent, and it's better that they should.'
'Why?' The word was muffled, but passionate.
'Because antagonism begets antagonism. A kidnapped person who can make the kidnappers like her is much safer. They'll be less likely to harm her… and more careful, for her own sake, not to let her see their faces. They wouldn't want to kill someone they'd grown to like.'
She shivered.
'And as for coming in to see you when you were asleep… maybe they looked on you with friendship… Maybe they wanted to be sure you were all right, as they couldn't see you when you were awake.'
I wasn't sure whether I believed that last bit myself, but it was at least possible: and the rest was all true.
The lads are not the kidnappers,' I said.
'No, of course not.'
'Just other men.'
She nodded her smothered head.
'It's not the lads' eyes you dream about.'
'No.' She sighed deeply.
'Don't ride with the string until you feel OK about it. Popsy will arrange a horse for you up on the Downs.' I paused. 'Don't worry if tomorrow you still feel churned up. Knowing the reason for feelings doesn't necessarily stop them coming back.'
She stood quiet for a while and then disconnected herself slowly from my embrace, and without looking at my face said, 'I don't know where I'd be without you. In the nut-house, for sure.'
'One day,' I said mildly, 'I'll come to the Derby and cheer you home.'
She smiled and climbed into the Land Rover, but instead of pointing its nose homewards I drove on over the hill to the schooling ground.
'Where are you going?' she said.
'Nowhere. Just here.' I stopped the engine and put on the brakes. The flights of hurdles and fences lay neat and deserted on the grassy slope, and I made no move to get out of the car.
'I've been talking to Pucinelli,' I said.
'Oh.'
'He's found the second place, where you were kept those last few days.'
'Oh.' A small voice, but not panic-stricken.
'Does the Hotel Vistaclara mean anything to you?'
She frowned, thought, and shook her head.
'It's up in the mountains,' I said, 'above the place called Viralto, that you told me about. Pucinelli found the green tent there, folded, not set up, in a loft over a disused stable yard.'
'Stables?' She was surprised.
'Mm.'
She wrinkled her nose. 'There was no smell of horses.'
'They've been gone five years,' I said. 'But you said you could smell bread. The hotel makes its own, in the kitchens. The only thing is…' I paused, '… why just bread? Why not all cooking smells?'
She looked forward through the windscreen to the peaceful rolling terrain and breathed deeply of the sweet fresh air, and calmly, without strain or tears, explained.
'At night when I had eaten the meal one of them would come and tell me to put the dish and the bucket out through the zip. I could never hear them coming because of the music. I only knew they were there when they spoke.' She paused. 'Anyway, in the morning when I woke they would come and tell me to take the bucket in again… and at that point it would be clean and empty.' She stopped again. 'It was then that I could smell the bread, those last few days. Early… when the bucket was empty.' She fell silent and then turned her head to look at me, seeking my reaction.
'Pretty miserable for you,' I said.
'Mm.' She half smiled. 'It's incredible… but I got used to it. One wouldn't think one could. But it was one's own smell, after all… and after the first few days I hardly noticed it. She paused again. 'Those first days I thought I'd go mad. Not just from anxiety and guilt and fury… but from boredom. Hour after hour of nothing but that damned music… no one to talk to, nothing to see… I tried exercises, but day after day I grew less fit and more dopey, and after maybe two or three weeks I just stopped. The days seemed to run into each other, then. I just lay on the foam mattress and let the music wash in and out, and I thought about things that had happened in my life, but they seemed far away and hardly real. Reality was the bucket and pasta and a polystyrene cup of water twice a day… and hoping that the man with the microphone would think I was behaving well… and like me.'
'Mm,' I said. 'He liked you.'
'Why do you think so?' she asked, and I saw that curiously
she seemed glad at the idea, that she still wanted her kidnapper to approve of her, even though she was free.
'I think,' I said, 'that if you and he had felt hate for each other he wouldn't have risked the second ransom. He would have been very much inclined to cut his losses. I'd guess he couldn't face the thought of killing you… because he liked you.' I saw the deep smile in her eyes and decided to straighten things up in her perspective. No good would come of her falling in love with her captor in fantasy or in retrospect. 'Mind you,' I said, 'he gave your father an appalling time and stole nearly a million pounds from your family. We may thank God he liked you, but it doesn't make him an angel.'
'Oh…' She made a frustrated, very Italian gesture with her hands. 'Why are you always so… so sensible?'
'Scottish ancestors,' I said. 'The dour sort, not the firebrands. They seem to take over and spoil the fun when the quarter of me that's Spanish aches for flamenco.'
She put her head on one side, half laughing. 'That's the most I've ever heard you say about yourself.'
'Stick around,' I said.
'I don't suppose you'll believe it,' she said, sighing deeply and stretching her limbs to relax them, 'but I am after all beginning to feel fairly sane.'
