'You don't understand.' It was an entreaty; but I wouldn't and couldn't give him what he wanted.
'If your father will give you anything you ask,' I said slowly, 'Ask him to go back to Switzerland and leave you alone.'
It was he then who shook his head, but helplessly, not in disagreement.
'Please,' he said again, but without any hope in his voice, 'I must- ride Archangel. My father believes that you are going to let me, even though I told him you wouldn't- I am so afraid that if you don't, he really will destroy the stable- and then I will not be able to race again- and I can't- bear-' He limped to a stop.
'Tell him,' I suggested without emphasis, 'That if he destroys the stable you will hate him for ever.'
He looked at me numbly. 'I think I would,' he said.
'Then tell him so, before he does it.'
'I'll-' He swallowed. 'I'll try.'
He didn't turn up to ride out the next morning, the first he had missed since his bump on the head. Etty suggested it was time some of the other apprentices had more chances than the very few I had given them, and indicated that their earlier ill-feeling towards Alessandro had all returned with interest.
I agreed with her for the sake of peace, and drove off for my Sunday visit south.
My father was bearing the stable's successes with fortitude and finding some comfort in its losses. He did however seem genuinely to want Archangel to win the Guineas, and told me he had had long telephone talks with Tommy Hoylake about how it should be ridden.
He said that his assistant trainer was finally showing signs of coming out of his coma, though the doctors feared irreparable brain damage. He thought he would have to find a replacement.
His own leg was mending properly at last, he said. He hoped to be home in time for the Derby; and he wouldn't be needing me after that.
The hours spent with Gillie were the usual oasis of peace and amusement, and bed-time was even more satisfactory than usual.
Most of the newspapers that day carried summings-up of the Guineas, with varying assessments of Archangel's chances. They all agreed that Hoylake's big race temperament was a considerable asset.
I wondered if Enso read the English papers.
I hoped he didn't.
There were to be no race meetings for the next two days, not until Ascot and Catterick on Wednesday, followed by the Newmarket Guineas meeting on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Monday morning, Alessandro appeared on leaden feet with charcoal shadows round his eyes, and said his father was practically raving because Tommy Hoylake was still down to ride Archangel.
'I told him,' he said, That you wouldn't let me ride him. I told him I understood why you wouldn't. I told him I would never forgive him if he did any more harm here. But he doesn't really listen. I don't know- he's different, somehow. Not how he used to be.'
But Enso, I imagined, was what he had always been. It was Alessandro himself who had changed.
I said merely, 'Stop fretting over it and bend your mind to a couple of races you had better win for your own sake.'
'What?' he said vaguely.
'Wake up, you silly nit. You're throwing away all you've worked so hard for. It soon won't matter a damn if you're warned off for life, you're riding so atrociously you won't get any rides anyway.'
He blinked, and the old fury made a temporary comeback. 'You will not speak to me like that.'
'Want to bet?'
'Oh-' he said in exasperation. 'You and my father, you tear me apart.'
'You'll have to choose your own life,' I said matter-of-factly. 'And if it still includes being a jockey, mind you win at Catterick. I'm running Buckram there in the apprentice race, and I should give one of the other lads the chance, but I'm putting you up again, and if you don't win they will likely lynch you.'
The ghost of the arrogant lift of the nose did its best. His heart was no longer in it.
'And on Thursday, here at Newmarket, you can ride Lancat in the Heath Handicap. It's a straight mile, for three-year-olds only, and I reckon he should win it, on his Teesside form. So get cracking, study those races and know approximately what the opposition might do. And you bloody well win them both. Understand?'
He gave me a long stare in which there was all of the old intensity but none of the old hostility.
'Yes,' he said finally. 'I understand. I am to bloody well win them both.' A faint smile rose and died in his eyes over the first attempt at a joke I had ever heard him make.
Etty was tight-lipped and angry over Buckram. My father would not approve, she said; and another private report was clearly on its way.
I sent Vic Young up to Catterick and went myself with three other horses to Ascot, telling myself that I was in duty bound to escort the owners at the biggest meeting, and that it had nothing to do with wanting to avoid Enso.
Out on the Heath during the wait at the bottom of Side Hill for two other stables to complete their canters, I discussed with Alessandro the tactics he proposed using. Apart from the shadows which persisted round his eyes he seemed to have regained some of his former race-day icy calm. It had yet to survive a long drive in his father's company, but it was a hopeful sign.
Buckram finished second. I felt distinctly disappointed when I saw his name on the 'Results from Other Meetings' board at Ascot, but when I got back to Rowley Lodge Vic Young was just returning with Buckram, and he was, for him, enthusiastic
'He rode a good race,' he said, nodding. 'Intelligent, you might say. Not his fault he got beat. Not like those stinking efforts last week. He didn't look the same boy, not at all.'
The boy walked into the Newmarket parade ring the following afternoon with all the inward-looking self-possession I could want.
'It's a straight mile,' I said, 'Don't get tempted by the optical illusion that the winning post is much nearer than it really is. You'll know where you are by the furlong posts. Don't pick him up until you've passed the one with two on it, by the bushes, even if you think it looks wrong.'
'I won't,' he said seriously. And he didn't.
He rode a copybook race, cool, well paced, unflustered. From looking boxed-in two furlongs out he suddenly sprinted through a split-second opening and reached the winning post an extended length ahead of his nearest rival. With his 5 lb. apprentice allowance and his Teesside form he had carried a lot of public money, and he earned his cheers.
When he slid down from Lancat in the winner's unsaddling enclosure he gave me again the warm rare smile, and I reckoned that as well as too much weight and too much arrogance, he was going to kick the worst problem of too much father.
But his focus shifted to somewhere behind me and the smile changed and disintegrated, first into a deprecating smirk and then into plain apprehension.
I turned round.
Enso stood inside the small white railed enclosure.
Enso, staring at me with the towering venom of the dispossessed.
I stared back. Nothing else to do. But for the first time, I feared I couldn't contain him.
For the first time, I was afraid.
I dare say it was asking for trouble to work at the desk in the oak room after I'd seen round the stables and poured myself a modest scotch. But this time it was a fine light evening on the last day in April, not midnight in a freezing February.
The door opened with an aggressive crash and Enso walked through it with his two men behind him, the stony faced familiar Carlo and another with a long nose, small mouth and no evidence of loving-kindness.
Enso was accompanied by his gun, and the gun was accompanied by its silencer.
'Stand up' he said.
I slowly stood.
He waved the gun towards the door.
'Come,' he said.
I didn't move.
The gun steadied on the central area of my chest. He handled the wicked looking thing as coolly, as familiarly, as a toothbrush.
'I am close to killing you,' he said in such a way that I saw no reason not to believe him. 'If you do not come at once, you will go nowhere.'