'It's so vast,' Alessia said, sighing. 'So confusing. I'd no idea.'
'We've done enough,' I agreed. 'Hungry?'
It was three-thirty by then, but time meant nothing to the Sherryatt Hotel. We went up to my room on the twelfth floor of the anonymous, enormous, bustling pile and we ordered wine and avocado shrimp salad from room service. Alessia stretched lazily on one of the armchairs and listened while I telephoned Kent Wagner.
Did I realise, he asked trenchantly, that the whole goddam population of North America was on the move through Washington, D.C., and that a list of rentals would bridge the Potomac.
'Look for a house without pumpkins,' I said.
'What?'
'Well, if you were a kidnapper, would you solemnly carve Halloween faces on pumpkins and put them on the front steps?'
'No, I guess not.' He breathed out in the ghost of a chuckle. 'Takes a limey to come up with a suggestion as dumb as that.'
'Yeah,' I said. 'I'll be at the Sherryatt this evening and at the races tomorrow, if you should want me.'
'Got it.'
I telephoned next to Liberty Market, but nothing much had developed in London. The collective fury of the members of the Jockey Club was hanging over Portman Square in a blue haze and Sir Owen Higgs had retreated for the weekend to Gloucestershire. Hoppy at Lloyds was reported to be smiling cheerfully as in spite of advising everyone else to insure against extortion the Jockey Club hadn't done so itself. Apart from that, nix.
The food arrived and we ate roughly jockey-sized amounts. Then Alessia pushed her plate away and, looking at her wine glass, said, 'Decision time, I suppose.'
'Only for you,' I said mildly. 'Yes or no.'
Still looking down she said, 'Would no… be acceptable?'
'Yes, it would,' I said seriously.
'I…" She took a deep breath. 'I want to say yes, but I feel…' She broke off, then started again. 'I don't seem to want… since the kidnap… I've thought of kissing, of love, and I'm dead… I went out with Lorenzo once or twice and he wanted to kiss me… his mouth felt like rubber to me.' She looked at me anxiously, willing me to understand. 'I did love someone passionately once, years ago, when I was eighteen. It didn't last beyond summer… We both simply grew up… but I know what it's likes what I should feel, what I should want… and I don't.'
'Darling Alessia.' I stood up and walked to the window, thinking that for this battle I wasn't strong enough, that there was a limit to controlled behaviour, that what I myself longed for now was warmth, 'I do truly love you in many ways,' I said, and found the words coming out an octave lower than in my normal voice.
'Andrew!' She came to her feet and walked towards me, searching my face and no doubt seeing there the vulnerability she wasn't accustomed to.
'Well…' I said, struggling for lightness; for a smile; for Andrew the unfailing prop. 'There's always time. You ride races now. Go shopping. Drive your car?'
She nodded.
'It all took time," I said. I wrapped my arms around her lightly and kissed her forehead. 'When rubber begins feeling like lips, let me know.'
She put her head against my shoulder and clung to me for help as she had often clung before; and it was I, really, who wanted to be enfolded and cherished and loved.
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.