‘Extraordinary,’ Richard said. ‘I suppose that’s the
problem with these electronics. Get little glitches in them which come and go. Almost impossible to find.’
Then she saw it.
Saw it and realised.
Saw it as Andreas curled his gloved fingers around the bowl of his wine glass, the quick almost imperceptible flick of the thumb and the little finger, which she would have missed if she hadn’t been looking hard, the click he had devised to make the middle three fingers move, to make them curl around the bowl.
To make them look as if they were real.
She thrashed violently, trying to free herself from the bedclothes that were over her head, heavy as sandbags, smothering her, trying to free herself and escape from the blades of the fan that were coming down towards her and the ceiling that was cracking like eggshell. She heaved the bedclothes away frantically, but they fell back, crushing her body, crushing her face, blocking her mouth, her nose. She was gulping, gasping for air, twisting, helplessly.
Trapped.
She tried to scream but the sheet came into her mouth.
Too late, she realised the sheets were holding her.
Preventing her from falling.
She was slipping free of them now, slipping out into the swirling vortex below her. She grabbed the corner of one, desperately, but it held her weight only for a fraction of a second, and then tore.
‘Help!’ Her voice echoed around her as if she was in a cave. Then she plummeted downwards, hurtled through
the freezing cold air, bouncing, falling, spinning towards a tiny hole of darkness. She put her hands up, trying to ward it off, trying somehow to swim away from it.
‘
No!
’
She hurtled into the hole, trying to grip the walls, but they were covered in smooth ice and her hands slid down them, burning from the cold, from the friction. There was whiteness below, and she could see the blades of the fan scything through the air, clattering louder as she tumbled down towards them, waiting for the impact, waiting to be cut into a thousand pieces.
‘Fifty-five and a half seven. OK, hit that fucking bid. Sally, that’s Mitsubishi Heavy five hundred at fifty-five and a half I sell. OK, now buy back the bloody stock!’
Richard’s voice in the darkness.
‘I’m talking big noughts, Harry. Big noughts. No. Serious. He’s a major player, a triple-A client. We should hedge with futures. Five hundred contracts. Could be a squeeze on the market. I’m seven and a half bid for as many as they’ve got. Shit. It’s moving away from us. Take the offer. For Christ’s sake take the offer!’
His voice rambled on. She had never heard him talk in his sleep before. Never heard him talk in such a faltering, nervous voice.
The she heard children chanting.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
The children laughed, and she heard the laughter echoing, as if it was echoing around an empty classroom. It
continued, getting louder. She slipped out of bed and immediately it stopped.
Puzzled, she walked across the room. Richard stirred and grunted behind her. She lifted the curtain and stared out. The whiteness of the snow on the ground filled the night with a strange translucence. A church bell chimed three o’clock. The school opposite was dark, silent, empty. She turned and went back to bed, pulled the duvet up around her and lay staring into the darkness.
A cold breath blew into her ear, and she heard a voice, soft, whispering, taunting. Slider’s voice. Just one word.
‘Aroleid.’
Then silence.
It was snowing hard as they trudged up the hill towards the Furi lift station with their skis over their shoulders. They passed a cowshed then a row of old chalet-style buildings, PENSION GARNI said the sign on each one.
‘I thought you’d always been keen on Japanese warrants?’ Richard said.
‘Swiss franc ones only,’ Andreas replied.
It was another language. As foreign as the languages of the country they were now in. French. German. Switzer-deutsch. Snatches of foreign languages all around. Two lanky men strode in front of them, one wearing a fluorescent yellow ski suit and bright yellow boots, the other in white, with bright pink boots. They talked loudly, their feet clumping, skis slung over their shoulders. They roared with laughter. Normal people. Out for a day’s skiing. Going for it.
Going for it. Living in the fast lane. Flying at the sharp end. Style.
Death. Lying in a cellophane bag on a mortuary slab. Floating in the void. In the void where you could shout and no one could hear you. For ever.
For a moment, she did not care. She was tired of walking up the hill, tired of the snow tickling her face. Tired of being scared. She wanted to sit down. To sit down and sleep and not dream.
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay there’s the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?
Did you go on dreaming after you were dead? In the void?
‘You’re quiet this morning, Bugs,’ said Richard.
She blinked away the snow and trudged on, saying nothing, and looked again at Andreas’s padded green skiing gloves.
I think it is possible that he’s someone in the present, now, who is bothering you, worrying you – someone that you are associating with this Slider
.
He’s a banker, that’s all. A banker with a bad hand. He’s dry and arrogant; so are most bankers. What are you afraid he’s going to do? Eat you? Turn you into a frog? Jump on you when Richard’s not looking and rape you and slit your throat? Just because you imagine you saw him on that boat? He’s doing you both a favour, be nice to him.
They crossed the wooden bridge over the river and then climbed up the steep steps to join the jostling queue into the ski-lift station. She shuffled slowly forwards behind Andreas and Richard in the air that was thick with garlic and suntan lotion and lip salve and perfume.
‘Sony,’ Richard said. ‘Their seven-year warrants are a fucking good buy at the moment. Five times geared and a four percent premium.’
‘I prefer Fujitsu,’ said Andreas.
She could hear the machinery now, the whirring of the motors driving the massive cable, the scraping, sliding sound of the six-man gondolas unhooking, slowing, the metallic thump of their doors opening, the clatter of skiers pushing their skis into the racks then clambering in, the clunk of the doors shutting and the sudden roar of acceleration as the tiny cabins, like eggs, slid down the cable, gaining momentum, and through the gantry that locked them to the cable. She felt afraid of the gondolas, suddenly, afraid of the mountain, wanted to go back to the hotel.
Something hit her hard in the small of her back, and she spun round.
‘
Entschuldigung
.’ A woman was leaning forward, trying to push her skis back together, smiling apologetically, a flustered, messy-looking woman with two small girls in matching pink outfits.
She felt her skis being lifted out of her hand. She turned and saw Andreas placing them in the rack at the back of the gondola. He took her arm and propelled her in.
She looked around. ‘Richard? Where’s Richard?’
‘He is going in front.’
There were four little Japanese boys in the gondola, watching them wide-eyed. Someone shouted outside, urgently, a torrent of Japanese, and the boys scampered out seconds before the door closed.
The gondola accelerated, unbalancing her, and she sat down hard on the plastic bench. Andreas sat down opposite her, holding his ski poles, fingers neatly curled around the handles, as they swung suspended on the cable just outside the mouth of the station, then began to glide upwards.
She looked out of the window. Flash bastard. His
ultra-modern ski suit, a metallic green racing suit, and goggles pushed up on his head. Wonder if you ski as flashily as you look? Probably do, damn you.
It was snowing even harder. The wind buffeted them and the visibility seemed to be going as the weather closed in around them. The gondola juddered and she looked anxiously around, listening to the rattling of the cable and the patter of the snow hitting the windows, and caught his eye. He was watching her and smiling drily to himself.
‘The weather is not so good,’ he said, his eyes still staring, penetrating.
‘Not a nice day for boating,’ she replied.
He did not flinch.
She looked away. ‘Do you sail, Andreas? I should think Lake Geneva is a great place for sailing, or for power boating.’ She looked sharply back at him; still no reaction.
‘I am working too much. Skiing is my only relaxation.’
‘If I lived in Montreux, I’d be out on the lake all the time. Very exhilarating on a cold Sunday afternoon to roar across water, wouldn’t you think?’
‘I would not know,’ he said, turning towards the window as if he was bored with the conversation.
‘It was Ratty in
The Wind in the Willows
, wasn’t it, who said “There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
The Wind in the Willows
. Did you ever read
The Wind in the Willows?
’
‘I don’t believe so.’
She searched his face, trying to read it, trying to read the signs from the way he shifted his position, from the way he turned his head to look out of the window again, from the way he clenched his fists just a fraction.
‘Higher will be better. I think perhaps it will be above the cloud,’ he said.
She glanced up nervously again as the cable rattled loudly through the runners of a pylon, and the gondola swayed. Through the window she could see the tops of the fir trees below.
There’s more to come. So much further to fall. You’ve got the really big fall to come
.
Who the hell are you, Andreas? Or is it me? She looked again at the fingers, then at his green suit; something seemed familiar about the suit.
The gondola stopped with a jerk, and swayed wildly. She felt the fear surge through her. A gust of wind caught them and tossed them sideways. The snow and the mist seemed to be getting even denser; she heard the wind wailing mournfully through a pylon, felt it shake them again and there was a creak above her head, then a sickening rending sound, like metal tearing. Andreas was smirking again, smirking at her fear.
The cabin lurched violently, twice, then the gondola began to move forwards. There was another tearing sound above them, and the gondola lurched again. There was a loud bang. A dark shadow fell across them and her heart jumped. There was an even louder bang and a tremendous jolt, and they swung backwards.
Then the doors opened with a hiss and a dull thump, and the banker stood up.
They had arrived at the station.
He lifted her skis from the rack and stood waiting for her. She swung herself out and jumped onto the ground. There was another bang as the next gondola arrived, crashing into their empty one. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and followed him over to Richard who was standing in the queue for the exit.
Richard turned around. ‘I thought you were right
behind me. Got in a gondola with a bunch of Krauts. They didn’t speak a word of English. Did you have a nice chat?’
‘Your wife is very charming. Such a well-read lady.’ Andreas smiled again at Sam, and she looked away, up at the ceiling of the lift station, at the dark churning wheels of the machinery, listening to its rattling and grinding. There was a clang as the next gondola arrived and thudded into the rear of the one in front.
It was here, she knew. Here on the mountain. Waiting.
‘Sam!’
She heard Ken’s voice echo around the mountain and turned with a start, looking up, scanning the slope she had just skied down. But there was no one. No one but Andreas in his metallic green suit waiting to start his descent, waiting until she had stopped so she would be sure not to miss it. She looked at Richard, but he did not seem to have heard anything.
Clear.
It had sounded so clear.
Like a warning.
‘The sun’s trying to break through,’ said Richard.
She nodded and stared up again at the slope. At least they were in the lee of the wind here. Beyond the peak she could see the silhouette of the sun smouldering behind the clouds, like a cigarette burning through a tablecloth.
In the last hour, since lunch, the snow had stopped and the mist was starting to clear. They had gone higher at Andreas’s suggestion, up to the top of the glacier to
get above the worst of the weather, and he had been right. She heard the drone of the piste basher grinding up the glacier behind her, close, too close, and she turned and watched the huge red machine with its caterpillar tracks and rotating blades chomping through the snow. PISTENBULLY was emblazoned in large letters on its side. An orange warning light flashed on its roof, and its siren wailed, a short, monotone pulse, like a door hinge creaking in the wind.
Andreas launched himself off the top of a mogul, crouched low, dug his pole in, straightened his legs then bent them again, turned neatly, too damned neatly, straightened and bent his legs again, repeated his pole action and turned again, neat, snaking, even turns, his body flowing, rhythmic, exaggerating each movement as if he was giving a lesson. He headed down towards the rotating blades of the Pistenbully, in zigzagging tightly carved turns, his speed staying constant, keeping his head down.
As if he had not seen it, she thought, with a tremble of horror and excitement.
He turned again, accelerating hard away from it, then back again, straight into its path.
Straight towards the blades.
Then at the last moment he made one sharper even more stylised turn, crouched down low into a racing tuck and accelerated out of its path, straight at her, grinning demonically.
She stepped sideways, crossed her skis, lost her balance, and flailed out with her poles.
He swung into a sharp braking turn and skidded towards her, showering her with shards of cold snow.
She fell on her side with a jarring thump, and heard him roar with laughter. She dug her ski poles into the ground, and pushed herself upwards. Her skis slid away
from under her and she fell back down, hard. Bastard; she glared up at him, then at Richard, who was standing with his glove off and his finger up his nose.