She rode in the race the next day, a star in her own firmament.
The racecourse had come alive, crowds pressing, shouting, betting, cheering. The grandstands were packed. One had to slide round strangers to reach any goal. I had my hand stamped and checked and my name taken and ticked, and Eric Rickenbacker welcomed me busily to the biggest day of his year.
The president's dining room, so echoingly empty previously, spilled over now with chattering guests all having a wow of a time. Ice clinked and waitresses passed with small silver trays and a large buffet table offered crab cakes to aficionados.
Paolo Cenci was there with the Goldonis and Lucchese, all of them looking nervous as they sat together at one of the tables. I collected a glass of wine from an offered trayful and went over to see them, wishing them well.
'Brunelleschi kicked his groom,' Paolo Cenci said.
'Is that good or bad?'
'No one knows,' he said.
I kept the giggle in my stomach. 'How's Alessia?' I asked.
'Less worried than anyone else.'
I glanced at the other faces; at Lucchese, fiercely intense, at Bruno Goldoni, frowning, and at Beatrice, yesterday's glow extinguished.
'It's her job,' I said.
They offered me a place at their table but I thanked them and wandered away, too restless to want to be with them.
'Any news from London?' Eric Rickenbacker said in my ear, passing close.
'None this morning.'
He clicked his tongue, indicating sympathy. 'Poor Morgan. Should have been here. Instead…' he shrugged resignedly, moving away, greeting new guests, kissing cheeks, clapping shoulders, welcoming a hundred friends.
The Washington International was making the world's news. Poor Morgan, had he been there, wouldn't have caused a ripple.
They saved the big race until ninth of the ten on the card, the whole afternoon a titillation, a preparation, with dollars flooding meanwhile into the Pari-mutuel and losing tickets filling the trashcans.
The whole of the front of the main stands was filled in with glass, keeping out the weather, rain or shine. To one slowly growing used to the rigours of English courses the luxury was extraordinary but, when I commented on it, one of Rickenbacker's guests said reasonably that warm betters betted, cold betters stayed at home. A proportion of the day's take at the Pari-mutuel went to the racecourse: racegoer comfort was essential.
For me the afternoon passed interminably, but in due course all the foreign owners and trainers left the president's dining room to go down nearer the action and speed their horses on their way.
I stayed in the eyrie, belonging nowhere, watching the girl I knew so well come out onto the track; a tiny gold and white figure far below, one in a procession, each contestant led and accompanied by a liveried outrider. No loose horses on the way to the post, I thought. No runaways, no bolters.
A trumpet sounded a fanfare to announce the race. A frenzy of punters fluttered fistfuls of notes. The runners walked in procession across in front of the stands and cantered thereafter to the start, each still with as escort. Alessia looked from that distance identical with the other jockeys: I wouldn't have known her except for the colours.
I felt, far more disturbingly than on the English tracks, a sense of being no part of her real life. She lived most intensely there, on a horse, where her skill filled her. All I could ever be to her as a lover, I thought, was a support: and I would settle for that, if she would come to it.
The runners circled on the grass, because the one and a half mile International was run on living green turf, not on dirt. They were fed into the stalls on the far side of the track. Lights still flickered on the Pari-mutuel, changing the odds: races in America tended to start when the punters had finished, not to any rigid clock.
They were off, they were running, the gold and white figure with them, going faster than the wind and to my mind crawling like slow motion.
Brunelleschi, the brute who kicked, put his bad moods to good use, shouldering his way robustly round the first bunched-up bend, forcing himself through until there was a clear view ahead. Doesn't like to be shut in, Alessia had said. She gave him room and she held him straight: they came past the stands for the first time in fourth place, the whole field close together. Round the top bend left-handed, down the back stretch, round the last corner towards home.
Two of the leaders dropped back: Brunelleschi kept on going. Alessia swung her stick twice, aimed the black beast straight at the target and rode like a white and gold arrow to the bull.
She won the race, that girl, and was cheered as she came to the winners' enclosure in front of the stands. She was photographed and filmed, her head back, her mouth laughing. As Brunelleschi stamped around in his winner's garland of laurels (what else?) she reached forward and gave his dark sweating neck a wide-armed exultant pat, and the crowd again cheered.
I wholeheartedly shared in her joy: and felt lonely.
They all came up to the dining room for champagne - winners, losers and Eric Rickenbacker looking ecstatic.
'Well done,' I said to her.
'Did you see?' She was high, high with achievement.
'Yes, I did.'
'Isn't it fantastic?'
'The day of a lifetime.'
'Oh, I do love you,' she said, laughing, and turned away immediately, and talked with animation to a throng of admirers. Ah, Andrew, I thought wryly, how do you like it? And I answered myself; better than nothing.
When I finally got back to the hotel the message button was flashing on my telephone. My office in England had called when I was out. Please would I get through to them straight away.
Gerry Clayton was on the switchboard.
'Your Italian friend rang from Bologna,' he said. 'The policeman, Pucinelli…'
'Yes?'
'He wants you to telephone. I couldn't understand him very well, but I think he said he had found Giuseppe-Peter.'
EIGHTEEN
By the time I got the message it was three in the morning, Italian time. On the premise, however, that the law neither slumbered nor slept I put the call through straightaway to the carabinieri, and was answered by a yawning Italian who spoke no English.
Pucinelli was not there.
It was not known when Pucinelli would be there next.
It was not known' if Pucinelli was in his own house.
I gave my name, spelling it carefully letter by letter but knowing it would look unpronounceable to most Italians.
I will telephone again, I said; and he said, 'Good.'
At one in the morning, Washington time, I telephoned Pucinelli's own home, reckoning his family would be shaping to breakfast. His wife answered, children's voices in the background, and I asked for her husband, in Italian.
'Enrico is in Milan,' she said, speaking slowly for my sake. 'He told me to give you a message.' A short pause with paper noises, then: 'Telephone this house at fourteen hours today. He will return by that time. He says it is very important, he has found your friend.'
'In Milan?' I asked,
'I don't know. Enrico said only to ask you to telephone.'
I thanked her and disconnected, and slept fitfully while four thousand miles away Pucinelli travelled home. At fourteen hours, two p.m. his time, eight a.m. in Washington, I got through again to his house and found he had been called out on duty the minute he returned.
'He is sorry. Telephone his office at seventeen hours.'
By that time, I reckoned, my fingernails would be bitten to the knuckle. My stomach positively hurt with impatience. I ordered breakfast from room service to quieten it and read the Washington Sunday papers and fidgeted, and finally at eleven I got him.
'Andrew, how are you?' he said.
'Dying of suspense.'
'What?'
'Never mind.'
'Where are you?' he said. 'Your office said America.'
'Yes. Washington. Have you really found Giuseppe-Peter?'
'Yes and no.'
'What do you mean?'
'You remember,' he said, 'that we have been enquiring all the time among horse people, and also that we were going to try some students' reunions, to see if anyone recognised him from the drawing.'
'Yes, of course,' I said.
We had drifted automatically into our normal habit of speaking two languages, and it seemed just as satisfactory as ever.
'We have succeeded in both places. In both worlds.' He paused for effect and sounded undeniably smug. 'He lives near Milan. He is thirty-four now. He went to Milan University as a student and joined radical political groups. It is believed he was an activist, a member of the Red Brigades, but no one knows for sure. I was told it was a fact, but there was no true evidence. Anyway, he did not continue in political life after he left university. He left without sitting his final examinations. The university asked him to leave, but not because of his radical opinions. They made him leave because he forged cheques. He was not prosecuted, which I think is a mistake.'
'Mm,' I agreed, riveted.
