Dick Francis - The Danger

'Andrew's coming up on the Downs to see the schooling,' Popsy said.

'Great.'

'You're not riding?' I asked Alessia.

'No… I… anyway, Popsy's horses are jumpers.'

Popsy made a face as if to say that wasn't a satisfactory reason for not riding them, but passed no other comment. She and I talked for a while about things in general and Alessia said not much.

We all three sat on the front seat of a dusty Land Rover while Popsy drove with more verve than caution out of Lambourn and along a side road and finally up a bumpy track to open stretches of grassland.

Away on the horizon the rolling terrain melted into blue haze, and under our feet, as we stepped from the Land Rover, the close turf had been mown to two inches. Except for a bird call or two in the distance there was a gentle enveloping silence, which was in itself extraordinary. No drone of aeroplanes, no clamour of voices, no hum of faraway traffic. Just wide air and warm sunlight and the faint rustle from one's own clothes.

'You like it, don't you?' observed Popsy, watching my face.

I nodded.

'You should be up here in January with the wind howling across. Though mind you, it's beautiful even when you're freezing.'

She scanned a nearby valley with a hand shading her eyes. 'The horses will be coming up from there at half-speed canter,' she said. 'They'll pass us here. Then we'll follow them up in the Land Rover to the schooling fences,'

I nodded again, not reckoning I'd know a half-speed canter from a slow waltz, but in fact when the row of horses appeared like black dots from the valley I soon saw what speed she meant. She watched with concentration through large binoculars as the dots became shapes and the shapes flying horses, lowering the glasses only when the string of ten went past, still one behind the other so that she had a clear view of each. She pursed her mouth but seemed otherwise not too displeased, and we were soon careering along in their wake, jerking to a stop over the brow of the hill and disembarking to find the horses circling with tossing heads and puffing breath.

'See those fences over there?' said Popsy, pointing to isolated limber and brushwood obstacles looking like refugees from a racecourse. 'Those are schooling fences. To teach the horses how to jump.' She peered into my face, and I nodded. 'The set on this side, they're hurdles. The far ones are… er… fences. For steeplechasers.' I nodded again. 'From the start of the schooling ground up to here there are six hurdles - and six fences - so you can give a horse a good work-out if you want to, but today I'm sending my lot over these top four only, as they're not fully fit.'

She left us abruptly and strode over to her excited four-legged family, and Alessia with affection said, 'She's a good trainer. She can see when a horse isn't feeling right, even if there's nothing obviously wrong. When she walks into the yard all the horses instantly know she's there. You see all the heads come out, like a chorus.'

Popsy was despatching three of the horses towards the lower end of the schooling ground. 'Those three will come up over the hurdles,' Alessia said. "Then those riders will change onto three more horses and start again.'

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,