Dick Francis - The Danger

'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.'

Alessia said horses slept on Sunday afternoons like everyone else, but after coffee we walked slowly round the yard anyway, patting one or two heads.

'I can't possibly get fit in a week,' Alessia said. 'Do you think I should?'

'I think you should try sitting on a horse.'

'Suppose I've lost my nerve.'

'You'd find out.'

'That's not much comfort.' She rubbed the nose of one of the horses absentmindedly, showing at least no fear of its teeth. 'Do you ride?' she asked.

'No,' I said. 'And… er… I've never been to the races.'

She was astonished. 'Never?'

I've watched them often on television.'

'Not the same at all.' She laid her own cheek briefly against the horse's. 'Would you like co go?'

'With you, yes, very much.'

Her eyes filled with sudden tears, which she blinked away impatiently. 'You see,' she said. 'That's always happening. A kind word… and something inside me melts. I do try… I honestly do try to behave decently, but I know I'm putting on an act… and underneath there's an abyss… with things coming up from it, like crying for nothing, for no reason, like now.'

'The act,' I said, 'is Oscar class.'

She swallowed and sniffed and brushed the unspilt tears away with her fingers. 'Popsy is so generous,' she said. 'I've stayed with her so often.' She paused. 'She doesn't exactly say "Snap out of it" or "Pull yourself together", but I can see her thinking it. And I expect if I were someone looking at me, I'd think it too. I mean, she must be thinking that here I am, free and undamaged, and I should be grateful and getting on with life, and that far from moping I should be full of joy and bounce.'

We wandered slowly along and peered into the shadowy interior of a box where the inmate dozed, its weight on one hip, its ears occasionally twitching.

'After Vietnam,' I said, 'when the prisoners came home, there were very many divorces. It wasn't just the sort of thing that happened after the war in Europe, when the wives grew apart from the husbands just by living, while for the men time stood still. After Vietnam it was different. Those prisoners had suffered dreadfully, and they came home to families who expected them to be joyful at their release.'