To their left was a rock face rising straight up from the edge of the road, and to their right was an
unguarded drop down into the fast-flowing river that was getting smaller beneath them.
Unfolding.
The dream was unfolding now.
Exactly.
Calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.
They moved over even closer to the edge as a massive truck thundered down past them, and she felt the blast of its slipstream rock the Mercedes.
‘Richard, please drive a little slower.’
‘’S all right. I’m not going fast.’ He lit his cigarette. ‘Got a long way to go, and we’ve still got the fucking train journey up into the village.’
We’re not going to get there, she wanted to say. We’re going to get wiped out by a juggernaut. In a minute or two’s time. We’ll be dead. All over. Fini. Curtains. Snuffed out.
She felt a curious sense of euphoria suddenly. Of power.
Of freedom.
As if someone was telling her to relax, that the next few minutes did not matter, that nothing mattered any more. That the choice to live or die was hers. That dying would be nicer. So much fun. Live out the dream! Go for it! Be free!
She laughed. Silly. Stupid. To have been so worried.
‘What’s funny?’
Funny, The word echoed around. Funny. Then the shivers gripped her and she felt as if a million hoses were pumping iced water straight into the centre of her stomach. They squealed around a double hairpin, and she saw the low stone wall at the edge of the road.
I’m going to wake up in a minute, she thought. This is a lucid dream. I can control it.
She heard the faint blaring of horns, then a red Volkswagen
came fast down the other way, followed by a motorbike, its engine revving with a caterwauling howl, followed by a white van.
The ones she had seen. Identical. The same colours.
She was shaking with terror.
Richard. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. ‘Richard!’ she shouted, but it only came out as a whisper. She heard the horns again, closer now, vicious angry blasts. She unbuckled her seat belt.
Lay-by. They were coming to the lay-by.
‘Stop!’ She threw herself at Richard, grabbing the wheel, and felt the Mercedes swerving wildly. Richard stamped on the brakes and the car squealed to a halt.
‘For Christ’s sake, have you gone fucking mad?’ he yelled.
‘Pull off the road,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake!’ Her voice was a weird, croaking whisper. ‘Quickly!’
He glared at her, then accelerated harshly, squealing the tyres again, pulled over into the lay-by and stopped, flinging her forward. ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’
‘Out! Out! Get out!’ She opened her door, flung herself out, tripped, grabbed the swinging door and stared wide-eyes down the steep wooded gorge towards the river.
In the distance she heard the roar of a juggernaut. Two juggernauts, closer, coming closer, hurtling down; any moment they would come around the corner, one overtaking the other. Coming, coming, coming. She turned and saw Richard standing beside the Mercedes, staring at her.
They’re coming. You’ll see. You’ll see that I was right.
Where are you?
The roaring continued. Closer. Getting closer.
Richard walked around the back of the car towards
her. A car came around the corner, then another, a red Porsche with skis on the roof, a small Renault, a BMW, an Audi piled high with suitcases.
Come on.
Still the roaring.
Then she realised that it wasn’t the roaring of juggernauts. It wasn’t coming from the road at all.
It was the roaring of water in the gorge below.
She walked along the lay-by, listening to the loose stones scrunching under her feet. A small truck droned up the road past her followed by a line of cars, then nothing again except for the sound of the gorge. She walked to the wall and stared down the sheer rock face through the trees at the frothing white water of the river. She heard footsteps behind her, then felt his arm around her waist.
‘Maybe they should put me away,’ she said.
‘Maybe you should just forget your dreams, Bugs.’
They’d had to stop and put chains on the Mercedes for the last ten miles. Richard had straggled and cursed for the best part of an hour, whilst she’d hovered around in the freezing cold and tried to help, and not been much use. But it had been better than just sitting, waiting. Anything was better than that.
Maybe Ken was right.
‘
You’ve got yourself into a state, and you’ve got to let yourself come down out of it . . . Try to forget about it all
.
Yes.
Take a hard look at everything and see if it still looks the same afterwards – I think you’ll find it won’t
.
Yes. Yes, boss. Oh absolutely, sir.
Christ, I wish you were right.
Täsch was where the road ended. Richard lifted the cases out of the boot of the Mercedes and put them onto a luggage trolley. Sam stood in the snow and watched him drive off into the vast car park, the exhaust smoke trailing behind, thick and heavy in the bitterly cold afternoon air, the chains clattering and the tyres squeaking on the hard-packed snow.
The snow smelled good, smelled fresh and clean and lay everywhere. It was still falling, and tickled her face and made everything look like a Christmas card, made her think of snug log fires and roasting food, and wine, and laughter.
They were here. They’d got here. Got here because? Because the dreams had told her how? Because the plane would have crashed if they’d been on it? Because if she hadn’t made Richard row like hell they would have been run down in the boat?
Because two juggernauts would have come round the bend if she hadn’t made Richard pull off the road?
Sure they would have, Sam. By magic?
It was because we stopped that we survived.
Bullshit.
You know why you refuse to believe it, Richard? Because you’re scared, that’s why.
I’m not nuts, oh no. Slider’s playing this game with me. ‘Now you see me, now you don’t.’ ‘He’s standing right behind you . . . oh no he isn’t.’ ‘Some dreams come true and some dreams don’t.’ It’s a game, that’s all; a game you have to win.
Because if you lose you die.
She stamped her feet to warm them up and dug her gloved hands deep inside her pockets. Richard hurried back towards her in his red anorak and his white moon
boots, and they pushed the trolley together up the ramp to the funicular train to Zermatt.
The porter put their bags into the back of the electric buggy, then held the door open for them. They moved off from the station with a jerk, heading up the narrow Bahnhofstrasse, the buggy making a high-pitched whine. A stream of horse-drawn sleighs trotted past them the other way, bells jangling.
Money, she thought. You could smell it in the thick coats, in the fat chocolates and expensive watches that sparkled in the windows; you could smell it in the cigar smoke and coffee and
chocolat chaud
that hung in the frosty air along with the dung and the smell of horses; in the bustle, jostle, in the signs, Confiserie, Burgener, Chaussures, Seiler, Patek Philippe, Longines, in the smart skis rattling on smart shoulders, pink, green, Racing, Slalom, Géant and the clunking and crunching of unclipped boots. The Matterhorn rose like a monolith above the roofs of the hotels, the sun sinking down beside it, thin and dull, like a tarnished bauble in need of a polish.
Whymperstübe. Hotel Whymper. Named after the first Englishman to climb the Matterhorn. The graveyard under the bridge was full of them. So full they had run out of space. She shivered. Stone slabs sticking crookedly out of the snow like old men’s teeth. Young Englishmen along with the local traders and local heroes, all just as dead as each other, all with their epitaphs. ‘I chose to climb’, she remembered on one, and she wondered what would be on her own.
‘Hasn’t changed much,’ said Richard.
Nine years. It had been magical then. Like coming to a fairy tale. Snow and hot chocolate and soft pillows and laughter. Free. Taking the baker’s sled and tobogganing
through the streets at three in the morning. She had felt so free then. Free and silly and mad.
The buggy turned up the alleyway, braked to avoid two elderly women, then pulled up outside the Alex. They went to the reception desk and Richard filled out the forms, and the porter took their bags up to their room. It was simple and comfy with modern wooden furniture, plump pillows and a great thick duvet soft as snow. ‘We ought to call Nicky,’ she said.
‘Yah.’
She went over to the window and stared out at a school opposite, the desks abandoned for the night. She could see a display of crayoned drawings pinned to a notice board. She tried to concentrate her mind. To think.
There were so many possibilities. Maybe that’s why people ignored their premonitions: because once you started looking, trying to cover all the options, you would become a hermit, or go mad. Perhaps you couldn’t escape. All you could do was delay, buy a few hours or days or weeks, a time of terror and confusion; a bonus not worth having.
The snow was falling more heavily, and she felt the warm air from the radiator on her face.
‘How’re you feeling, Bugs?’
She raised her eyebrows.
I’d feel a lot better if—
If you believed me; but you won’t. Ken doesn’t either; not really. Only two people do. One’s dead; the other doesn’t want to know.
Laszlo. Driving away from the station as fast as he could.
But you’re not going to win, Slider. I’m not going to let you. She smiled wryly. I’m going to beat you. Doing OK so far, eh? I’m going to win. I promise.
Richard rolled over on the bed and pulled his cigarettes out of his anorak pocket. ‘What are you smiling at?’
‘How does that limerick go?’ she said.
‘“There was a young lady of Riga
Who rode with a smile on a tiger. . .
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.”’
‘Is that how you feel?’
‘Life’s a tiger,’ she said. ‘That’s how I feel.’
‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers,’ she said.
They clinked glasses. Richard swirled his wine around and took a large gulp. ‘It’s good being away on our own, don’t you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘We never seem to talk when we’re at home, do we?’
She sipped some wine. ‘What would you like to talk about?’
He shrugged and yawned. ‘Us, I suppose. We seem to have been through a bit of a thin patch—’ He inhaled deeply on his cigarette and focused on something past her. She turned her head. There was a glitzy blonde sitting at a table with a portly man a good thirty years her senior.
‘She’s not that great,’ Sam said.
‘She’s got good tits.’
‘It’s very flattering to sit here watching you ogle other women.’
He drank some more wine, then his face suddenly
became animated and he leapt up. ‘Andreas! We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow!’
She saw the banker walking stiffly towards them in a long fur-collared coat sprinkled with snow, his gloved hands by his side. She sensed a sudden chilly draught, as if he had left the outside door open, and felt goose-pimples breaking out on her flesh.
He nodded at her as he reached the table, a faint smirk on his lips; the same smirk she had seen through the slats of the blinds on the boat. She was certain.
‘How are you!’ Richard said effusively.
‘Not much changed since this morning.’ Andreas smiled coldly back at him, shook his hand, then fixed his eyes on Sam. ‘Good evening, Mrs Curtis.’
‘Good evening,’ she said, as courteously as she could, staring back into his icy cold eyes that seemed to be laughing at her.
‘So nice to see you again. I enjoyed meeting you at dinner very much. Such a pleasant evening.’
‘Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.’
‘Sit down, join us,’ Richard said, urgently signalling to a waiter for another chair.
‘You have eaten, I think,’ said Andreas. ‘I have something then I join you.’
‘No, absolutely not, you join us now,’ Richard insisted. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re happy to sit while you eat. I’ll get you a glass. Would you like some wine?’
‘Thank you.’ The banker pulled off his coat, and Richard scurried around, taking it from him then passing it on like a rugger ball to the waiter who brought the chair; he grabbed a glass from the empty table next to them, poured out some wine and put the glass down in front of Andreas. ‘Just a local one, I’m afraid. Dole, nothing grand.’
‘The local ones are the best to drink here,’ Andreas
said, sitting down and locking his eyes onto Sam’s again.
‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘Yes, of course, I’m sure you’re right. We had some excellent wines last time we were here . . . Perhaps we should have a toast. To today! Let’s have some champagne – bottle of Poo – we’ll have some Bollers if they’ve got any. I’ll get the wine list.’ He grinned. ‘Got to toast the – dematerialisation – of Richard Curtis.’ He looked at Andreas for approval, and the banker looked away dismissively, like a dog bored with a puppy.
‘They don’t find anything wrong with your car.’
‘What do you mean?’ Richard waved at the waiter again. ‘Could we have a menu –
un menu, et la carte des vins, s’il vous plaît
.’ He turned back to Andreas. ‘Nothing wrong?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe it is something – how you call it? – loose in the wiring or something. It’s fine, now. Drives very nicely.’
Nothing wrong.
Sam felt the goosepimples crawling up her neck. Nothing wrong. Like the Jaguar in Hampstead. She shook, as if she had had an electric shock. Both Richard and Andreas looked at her.
‘You all right, Bugs?’
‘Fine. Just a bit cold.’ She caught Andreas’s eyes again, the cold blue eyes in that flat featureless face that appeared so unassuming until you looked closer; neat, dull, fair hair, but lost most of it on top, almost bald except for the light fuzz; he’d probably been quite handsome when he was in his twenties, in a rather stiff sort of way. He looked a fit man now, fit and athletic, and flashily dressed in his pink cashmere sweater, cream silk shirt, and the small silver medallion on his chest.