Bad Girls Good Women (30 page)

‘How funny that you don’t ski,’ Sophia murmured. ‘When it’s so important to him.’

‘Is it?’ Julia shook out the last blouse and hung it up in the communal wardrobe. It was full of large, sensible tweed skirts and three almost identical taffeta dance dresses. ‘Do you all ski?’ It was as if she had asked,
Do you all breathe?

‘You don’t need taffeta dresses to ski in.’

‘Oh no. Those are for the Swann Ball. Everyone goes.’

Julia didn’t enquire any further.

Julia went slowly downstairs to the kitchen, where she found Frau Uberl. The Swiss woman beamed at her, and Julia, with relief, recognised foreign impartiality to class and probably ski-competence as well.

‘You will be wanting something to eat, no?’

‘Yes please.’

The plate that was put in front of her was piled up with meatballs and sauce and potatoes smothered in cheese. Julia stared at it in amazement. ‘Frau Uberl? Thank you, but I can’t possibly eat all this.’

‘Ach, you will. You are as thin as a pin. You will need it if you ski this afternoon.’

I doubt it
, Julia thought, but she struggled with it as best she could. The Frau clucked over her left-overs, but then Josh arrived to rescue her.

He was wearing navy ski pants and a light blue padded jacket with a knitted collar and cuffs. He had laced ski-boots and a navy knitted cap with a tiny US flag stitched to it. He held his skis over his shoulder with one arm curled lightly round them, and he looked absurdly handsome. Julia followed him down the path.

‘Let’s go and rent you some skis.’ He looked her up and down. She had changed into the nearest approximation of ski-wear that her wardrobe would yield, and Josh nodded briskly. ‘That’ll do for the nursery slopes. Are you going to ski in those earrings?’ ‘Bloody nursery slopes,’ Julia snarled under her breath. ‘Yes, I’m going to ski in these earrings. I’m probably going to die in them as well.’

Josh grinned. ‘You won’t die. You’ll enjoy it.’

He set off with Julia panting along beside him. She felt possessive and greedy and afraid and inadequate all together, and it was galling that she could hardly even keep pace with him through the slippery snow.

‘Josh! Why have I got to stay with these girls? I can’t bear them. I want to be with you.’

He looked faintly surprised. ‘I told you why. It’s important to appear to behave, at least. Look, when I first came out here I thought the English and their little clubs were so goddam snooty that I skied alone for a month. But once you get to know them, they’re okay. Obey their rules, that’s all, and they’ll be your friends.’

As if to prove his point they came down to the railway track where another fussy little train was waiting to climb on upwards. People leaned out of its windows and shouted, ‘Coo-eee! Josh, we heard you’d arrived. We’re going up to Black Rock, are you coming?’

He waved back, grinning. ‘No, I’m going to the nursery slopes.’

‘Ha ha ha. What’s the secret? Hiding yourself until Sunday?’

‘Wait and see.’

Julia plodded on, thoroughly disheartened. ‘I’m cramping your style,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

He put his free arm round her shoulders. Julia managed to stop herself burying her head against his anorak. ‘I’m glad you’re here. We’ll have a good time, you’ll see. Sophia Bliss and the others are nice girls. Just not very much like you.’

‘Not much,’ Julia agreed, thinking
Swann Ball indeed. Taffeta dress and all
.

‘Why don’t you give them a chance? Watch them. You might even learn something.’

‘I might,’ she conceded, doubting whether it was anything she would want to know. Then she thought of Felix. They had been gentle with each other since the night of the funeral. Jessie’s death and their failure in bed had drawn them close. Felix had made her critical of her own clothes, taught her the difference between good food and bad food, made her aware of the existence of style. Felix was always telling her to use her eyes and ears. Perhaps Josh was right. Perhaps the Belindas could teach her something, even if it was only never to wear tight pants over thirty-eight-inch hips. And some breathless upper-class argot.
Might come in useful some day
, Julia thought philosophically.

They reached the ski-hire shop and Julia submitted herself to having boots strapped to her feet and poles thrust into her hands.

After that, everything was awful.

Josh came to the beginners’ slope but Julia soon begged him to go away and leave her to her humiliation. He went, bestowing her on the Swiss ski-school instructor and a gaggle of tiny Dutch and German children. For the first time in her adult life Julia discovered that her rangy height was a disadvantage. She had further to fall than the little children, and every puff of wind seemed enough to blow her over. She fell so often that it began to seem simpler just to lie in the snow, only Heini the instructor came and hauled her to her feet again.

Snow filled her mouth and ears and slid down her neck. Her hands froze to her poles and her legs ached so that she could hardly lift her skis. She wobbled and slithered and Heini yelled, ‘Bend your knees!’ and the children sliced cheekily past her.

At the end of the afternoon, when the snow had turned blue in the fading light, half a dozen skiers appeared at the top of the slope. They swooped down together, their immaculate pure christies carving a sinuous line down to the village. They were whooping and calling to each other, and Julia recognised Belinda and her friends. They were as graceful as swans on their skis. She ducked her head and shrank behind Heini and the children, impressed in spite of herself.

Julia didn’t see anything of Josh while there was enough light to ski by. She knew that he went across to Mürren and climbed the Schilthorn to ski the Inferno route, but when she asked him about it he shook his head and didn’t answer.

In the evenings they went out together, but never alone. They ate in candlelit restaurants and drank glühwein in tiny, cosy bars crowded round tables with the other skiers. As well as Joy and her girls and the other DHO regulars there were Inferno competitors who eyed Josh surreptitiously and tried to make him talk about his practice. Amongst them were the members of the military teams competing for the Montgomery Cup. Sophia and her friends found the British and American soldiers particularly fascinating, although Julia was secretly gratified to notice that they looked at her far oftener than they did at the other girls in their reindeer-patterned jumpers.

Josh saw it too. He winked and squeezed her hand.

The only other skier who Julia liked was a sandy-haired tough-looking Scot called Alex. She mentioned him to Sophia as they scrambled home through the silent, biting dark before Frau Uberl’s midnight curfew.

‘Oh no, not him. You can’t,’ Sophia shrieked. ‘He’s utterly non-sku. He wears his socks outside his ski-pants.’

Julia smiled in the blue dark. Felix would like that.

By Sunday morning, the day of the race, Julia was so stiff and bruised that she could hardly walk. She lowered herself out of bed and groaned on all fours on the shiny floorboards.

Belinda was infuriatingly doing kneebends by the window. She came round the end of Julia’s bed and peered down at her. Then she held out her hand. Julia glared at it, but she needed help. She took the hand and Belinda pulled her upright.

‘Ouch. Oh, God. I can’t walk. I’m crippled.’

Belinda giggled. ‘It’ll get better after today. Promise. You’ll start to loosen up. You know, I saw you with Heini yesterday.’ ‘How embarrassing.’

‘Not a bit. You’re doing really well. Isn’t she, Felicity?’

‘Brilliantly.’

To her surprise, Julia felt herself turning crimson with pleasure. Their praise was unexpected and welcome, but it was also a gesture of friendship. She had turned into enough of a skier for a truce to be called.

She smiled at them. ‘Thanks.’

‘Are you going to watch the race?’ Belinda asked.

‘I don’t know where to go,’ Julia admitted. Josh had told her airily to go with the girls. She did know how desperately she wanted to see him compete.

‘Come with us. We’re going up the Alibubble.’

‘I will, then. Thanks again.’

Josh had set out while it was still dark.

He reached the top of the Allmendhubel funicular at eight thirty, and with his skis over his shoulder he started to climb. He set himself a careful, steady pace. There were almost four hours of climbing ahead of him. The race would begin at midday, and the thirty-two competitors would be started at thirty-second intervals. Josh knew from experience that it required perfect timing not to arrive hurried and winded, and not to have to wait for too long on the summit of the freezing mountain.

He frowned at the snow as he climbed steadily beside the downhill route. It had been unseasonably warm and wet at the beginning of February, but fresh heavy snow had fallen on the slippery base in the last week. He prodded his long pole into the glistening powder as he tramped upwards. When he glanced towards the heights above he could pick out the figures of other competitors, black and grey specks against the snow.

Julia and the others clambered out of the funicular just before midday. A handful of spectators was already clustered in the lee of the station hut, cheerfully passing flasks amongst them. Belinda produced the provisions Frau Uberl had sent and they gulped thankfully at hot chocolate laced with plum brandy.

Sophia looked at her watch. ‘Exactly twelve.’

Josh was number fifteen. In seven minutes, he would be on his way down. Julia felt her heart knocking painfully in her chest.

Josh was waiting in a silent line of skiers. He knew most of them, although they were barely recognisable beneath their caps and yellow-lensed goggles. No one spoke. The Swiss official at the head of the line raised his arm and then dropped it. The first competitor plunged away. Josh heard the thrilling swish of skis through the powder, but he didn’t look. He was breathing slowly and evenly. His fingers flexed in the loops of his poles. He was following the course in his head, every twist and dive of the endless, treacherous fourteen kilometres.

Swish. Swish. Starter after starter.

Josh moved forward in the line. Swish. Two people ahead of him. He eased his goggles over his eyes. In a little more than thirty minutes, with luck, he would be at Lauterbrunnen, nearly three thousand feet below.

Next but one. The Scot, Alex Mackintosh, was just ahead at number fourteen. The raised arm fell again and Josh was at the head of the line. He had taught himself never to feel nerves, Fear was one thing, it was a safeguard, but nerves were simply destructive. The seconds ticked off. In the last two or three, as he crouched ready for the arm signal, he wondered where Julia would be watching.

Swish.

Josh didn’t hear the rasp of his own skis. He was off, traversing the opening slope that was as steep as a roof. Down, and down, with the powder spurting up behind him. So fast that it was gone while the starter’s arm still flickered in his head. At the bottom, a sweeping left turn and into the Engetal, the Happy Valley. Ahead lay a great schuss, a huge S-shaped sweep that dropped more than a thousand feet.

Josh was travelling like a bullet. The speed pinned the flesh of his face to the bones, carving a white smile beneath the blank goggles. But behind the yellow shields his eyes were like an eagle’s. They saw every bump and turn and carved out a path for him before his skis sliced over it. He had become a machine, as he always did when he skied at his best. His blood froze and his body fused to the skis.

Down. The wind and the snow plumes and the sweet slicing turns.

On down. Like flying, but rawer. Like diving, but faster and fiercer. Like sex. Like death itself.

Almost the bottom of the Happy Valley. A right-hand turn and ahead a flat traverse, then a rise to the Mürren ski hut, and the control point.

Josh’s head jerked up.

He heard the roll of thunder before he saw anything. But he knew that it wasn’t thunder. It was a crack and a spreading roar that came from the Schwarzgrat, high overhead. The noise rose up to choke him, indistinguishable from his own fear. Then he saw the snow falling off the cliffs. Only it wasn’t snow any more. It was vast white monuments that dropped and sent up billowing clouds and brought rocks and trees and churning debris racing towards him.

Josh turned with such violence that spraying snow lashed his face. He shot away at an angle with the avalanche clawing at him like a nightmare. And out of the corner of his eye, in one split second, Josh saw Alex Mackintosh. The ragged white wall swept him up and threw him over and over like a twig, and then he was gone.

The leading edge of the avalanche caught Josh at the same instant. It smashed him down and punched the breath out of his body. He folded his arms helplessly around his head as the snow gagged him, blinded him and sucked him down. His skis were torn off and he was pitched into blackness, uselessly clawing and fighting against its brutal strength.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity of suffocating terror, it was suddenly quiet. Josh opened his eyes, very slowly, as if his eyelids were weighted. There was blue sky above him.

He was gasping for breath and whimpering like an animal, but even as he lay there he knew that he had never seen anything so beautiful as that pure, ice-blue sky.

He stared at it, fighting for his breath, with the euphoric realisation
Pm not buried
singing in his head. For a long moment he couldn’t move, and he looked up into the wonderful space above him as content as a baby. And then he remembered Mackintosh. He sucked more air into his burning lungs and tried to struggle on to all fours. Pain throbbed down his left side and Josh swung his head from side to side, trying to clear the mist of it. He saw then that the snow had engulfed him up to his thighs. He kicked and writhed, hauling at the debris with his hands to pull himself free. At last he lurched to his feet and saw his skis sticking out of the snow behind him. Josh lunged towards them, one hand pressed to his side, jerking like a clumsy marionette over the snow blocks.