Alice-Miranda in the Alps (6 page)

Nina took the key from the small timber cupboard in the kitchen where every key for every lock in their rambling old house was neatly lined up, labelled and hanging on a hook. Labelling had been one of her mother's obsessions, which was just as well as her father wouldn't have had the first clue where anything was without it. She raced downstairs and through the red velvet curtain that partitioned the museum from the rest of the house. Nina unlocked
the wide timber door, making sure to leave it open. Her father would not be home for a while yet.

The girl walked among the cabinets with their strange and wonderful workings. Most of the instruments in the museum were so rare that they didn't exist anywhere else in the world. She stopped in front of her favourite piece.

Nina thought back to the time when she was just five years old, visiting the market fair in Basel with her grandfather. She had been so excited to take the long journey by train, to wander past the colourful stalls and exotic foods. She remembered rounding the corner and seeing it for the very first time. A timber-and-glass case with miniature musicians – men and women dressed in once-fine clothes, monkeys with tarnished cymbals and ballerinas in moth-eaten tutus, their faces dull and grimy from the spectre of time. The sounds it made were terrible too. She had blocked her ears at the ghastly clash of percussion and organ pipes. She hadn't known why they had travelled so far until that very case was delivered to their door several weeks later.

For months Nina watched her grandfather work on it, first pulling the whole thing apart, then painstakingly putting it back together until,
finally, it was perfect. Her mother had sewn new clothes for the figurines so they were once again suitably attired. The spinning ballerinas with bright eyes and rosy cheeks stood alongside monkeys with plush fur and gleaming cymbals. Nina's father had looked in on the pair's progress from time to time but he knew nothing of the inner workings of such contraptions. Sebastien Ebersold spent his days outdoors on the mountainside unlike Nina's grandfather, who had been a watchmaker – a man who understood the precision required to restore such splendid creations.

The unveiling had been spectacular. Her grandfather, wearing his lucky black hat, had called the family down one evening after dinner. Nina had leapt about all over the place as excited as the day she'd first spotted the cabinet in the market.

‘Is it ready, Opa?' she'd said. ‘Is it really ready?'

‘I think so.' He'd smiled at her, then walked around to the side of the cabinet and pulled the handle.

It had begun slowly as though the figurines were awakening from a deep, enchanted sleep. The tempo gradually quickened and the men, women, ballerinas and monkeys were soon twirling and prancing and strumming and plucking as the tune took hold.

Nina remembered how her grandfather had tears in his eyes as he watched the tableau come to life. Nina and her mother danced a jig arm in arm and her father stood shaking his head, wondering at his father-in-law's skill and his wife's eye for such fine detail.

That was long ago, when all had been right in Nina's world. Tourists would come to see Lars Dettwiller's Mechanical Musical Cabinet Museum filled with violinas, orchestrions, symphonions, organs for grinding, musical chairs and all other manner of automats. The museum was a renowned Alpine attraction, no doubt helped by its location across the cobblestoned street from the most beautiful hotel in all of Zermatt, the Grand Hotel Von Zwicky. The Baron and Baroness visited often and recommended the museum far and wide. There was always something new arriving from a far-flung corner of the globe, often in pieces, tarnished, broken and neglected, until her grandfather set to work restoring it.

But then almost a year ago, just after her tenth birthday, Nina had arrived home from school to find her grandfather sitting opposite her father at the kitchen table; the old man's eyes wet and his face
ashen, her father looking like a ghost. Nina would never forget the moment she discovered her mother had died. They called it an aneurysm, but she called it the end of the world.

Her grandfather closed the museum the very next day and had not stepped foot in it since. They had lost him to despair. But surely, Nina thought, the music box had been a sign that Opa wanted to live again – she just had to help him find the way.

Her father was wrong. Opa shouldn't go to a home where old people ate their suppers at four in the afternoon and sat around all day, suspended in a no-man's-land between life and death. She knew about those places. Her father's mother had been in one. Nina didn't remember much about the woman but she could recall the building and its antiseptic smell, as if she had gone there a thousand times, instead of just the two visits her parents had taken her on. She wasn't going to let her grandfather suffer the same fate.

Nina looked at the dusty orchestrion. ‘Are you ready?' she asked the figurines.

The girl walked to the side of the machine and pulled the lever. Slowly, as always, the performers took up their instruments and the tune began. She
stared through the glass at the motley band of players and crossed her fingers. If he heard them, she thought, maybe it would be enough to bring him back to them.

Millie and Alice-Miranda were riding the chairlift to the top of the run. After lunch Hugh and Hamish had decided to take the children up onto the mountain while Cecelia and Pippa did a bit of shopping. Mrs Shillingsworth had opted to go for a leisurely walk in the village to see if she could spot the famous Heidi hut and leaning tower, both well-known landmarks.

‘I think my turns were getting better on the last run,' Millie said.

‘You were fast,' Alice-Miranda said as she clacked her skis together, sending a little shower of snow onto the slope below.

Millie wrinkled her nose as a stiff breeze blew an overpowering fragrance towards them. She pointed at the stylishly dressed woman with a mane of bouncy brunette curls in the chair in front. ‘Do you think her perfume's strong enough?'

Alice-Miranda sniffed the air. ‘It is a bit much, isn't it?'

‘It smells like cloves mixed with something else I can't stand,' Millie said, trying to think what it was.

‘Ginger,' Alice-Miranda suggested.

‘Urgh, that's it,' Millie agreed. ‘It's gross.'

The woman had spent the entire ride whining loudly as she tousled her hair and fiddled with her headband while the man beside her talked nonstop on his phone. He was gesticulating wildly and at one point almost dropped his stocks.

The woman's strongly accented baby voice floated on the wind as she turned to face the man. ‘Vincenzo, when are you taking me shopping? You promised me diamonds.'

‘Not now, Sancia,' he hissed. ‘I am working.'

She pouted her bee-stung lips at him. ‘But you are always working. I want to go shopping.'

Millie and Alice-Miranda looked at one another and giggled.

‘Vincenzo,' Millie said, perfectly mimicking the woman's Italian accent, ‘when are you going to buy me the world?'

The girl hadn't thought her voice would carry forward at all and was shocked when the woman swivelled her heavily made-up face to glare at her.

‘Oops,' she gulped and looked away, pretending to wave at some skiers down below.

Alice-Miranda saw her father and Hamish reach the top of the lift and ski off to the left. ‘Daddy, wait for us,' she called.

The men were two chairs ahead of the girls, while Lucas and Jacinta were in the chair behind. Sep and Sloane had decided to start their ski lessons straight away. As the girls neared the top of the mountain, they pushed the bar up over their heads and wriggled forward on the seat, holding their poles together in front of them.

‘Push,' Millie said as their skis made contact with the snowy platform.

The pair whizzed down the slope, and realised too late that Vincenzo and his whiny girlfriend had stopped to adjust their gear, right in the middle of the runway.

‘Look out!' Alice-Miranda shouted. She managed to avoid them but Millie wasn't so lucky. With nowhere to go, the girl ran straight over the back of the man's skis.

‘What are you doing? These are brand-new,' Vincenzo barked. ‘Children who cannot ski should not be allowed up here.'

‘Sorry,' Millie squeaked. If the stupid man hadn't stopped where he did, it wouldn't have happened. She sped over to her father, turning dramatically to send a powdery spray all over his legs.

‘Look at you, Mill. When did you become such a good skier?' Hamish said with a grin.

Millie grimaced. ‘That's not what the man over there said.' As the others turned to see if they could spot Lucas and Jacinta, Millie leaned down and made a snowball. She patted it into shape, then promptly threw it at her father, whacking him on the nose.

‘Right, you little monster, that's it!' Hamish declared, clicking his boots out of his skis and staking his poles into the snow. ‘Snowball fight!'

Millie squealed as her father pelted a handful of snow in her direction. She ducked out of the way, leaving it to smack Lucas on the mouth.

‘You call
that
a snowball, Hamish?' Lucas said, wiping it off his face. I'll show you a snowball.' The boy grabbed a handful of snow and moulded it into a missile the size of a bowling ball.

‘Look out, Alice-Miranda!' Jacinta yelled as Hugh dumped a clump of snow on his daughter's head.

‘Daddy, I'm going to get you for that!' The tiny child turned around and zoomed towards him on her skis, knocking him off his feet and into a deep snow-drift. Jacinta and Millie went in for the kill, hurtling snowballs as quickly as they could make them.

‘Stop, stop!' Hugh held his hands in the air. ‘I surrender!'

Lucas had managed to cover Hamish in snow too. The man collapsed on his knees, his sides heaving with laughter. ‘Gosh, I haven't had this much fun in years.'

‘Me either,' Hugh gasped as the girls and Lucas all fell about in the snow.

Jacinta fanned out her arms and legs. ‘Look, I'm an angel,' she said.

‘You? An angel?' Millie laughed.

‘She's my angel,' Lucas whispered, and Jacinta felt her heart skip a beat.

Millie's jaw dropped in disbelief. ‘Did you really just say that?'

‘What?' Lucas said sheepishly. ‘I didn't say anything.'

‘Yes, you did.' Millie nudged the boy.

Lucas blushed and pressed his finger to his lips.

Millie nodded. ‘Don't worry, your secret's safe with me, sappy pants.'

Alice-Miranda was still wiping the snow out of her goggles when a ski instructor in his instantly recognisable red parka whizzed past. ‘Snowplough, snowplough,' he called to the two children following him.

‘Hey, that's Sep!' Lucas said, sitting up.

‘And Sloane. Look how well they're doing.' Alice-Miranda picked up her poles. ‘Come on, let's join them.'

The threesome traversed the slope back and forth until Sloane and Sep stopped beside their instructor. Alice-Miranda sped towards them.

‘Hi there,' she said with a wave.

‘Oh, hi,' Sloane said. Her grin couldn't have been any wider.

‘Did you see us?' Sep said, beaming. ‘We rode the chairlift up and neither of us has crashed at all.'

Hugh had a quick word with their instructor, whose name was Gunter. An older man, his tanned face was lined from years of winter sun.

‘These two are very impressive,' he said, nodding at the Sykes children. ‘If they continue with their lessons, I think they might even be able to conquer one of the black trails before they leave.'

Sep's eyes widened. ‘Did you guys hear that?' he gasped. ‘A black run at St Moritz – awesome!'

‘Alice-Miranda, weren't you keen to have some lessons too?' Hugh asked.

The girl nodded. ‘Could we all go together? I don't think we're that much better than Sloane and Sep and then we can help each other.'

Gunter nodded. ‘I don't mind and these two won't hold you back. I think Sloane is a lot better and braver than she gives herself credit for, and Sep is already a star.'

Sloane and Sep were positively glowing.

‘Why don't you all have a run now so Gunter can let us know if that would work?' Hugh suggested.

‘Come on, kids. Show me what you're made of,' Gunter called, whizzing off down the mountain. He stopped to watch the children as they followed in his tracks. He then led them to a series of little jumps.

‘You can do it, Sloane,' Millie called to the girl, who was the last to come down the course.

‘Here goes nothing,' Sloane yelled as she let rip. She hit the jump and leaned forward the way Gunter had taught them. For a few seconds Sloane felt as if she were flying.

‘Wow, she's awesome,' Lucas said.

The kids held their breath as Sloane sailed through the air. She nailed the landing but soon began to wobble. She was balancing on her left ski, then on her right, unable to get them both on the ground at the same time.

‘Look out!' she cried, before collecting the back of Millie's skis and sending the line of children toppling like dominoes. Gunter managed to leap out of the way just in time. The children were all in fits of giggles and completely covered in snow.

‘Is everyone all right?' Gunter called, skating over to them.

‘Good one, Sloane,' Sep said, giving his sister a push.

‘I didn't mean it. I'm sorry,' she said, dusting herself off and getting back up onto her feet.

‘That was nothing,' Gunter reassured her. ‘Are you hurt?'

Sloane shook her head.

‘Are you scared?' he asked.

Sloane shook her head again.

‘Do you want to show that jump what you're made of?'

Sloane nodded.

‘Okay, kids, let's ski down and do it all over again.' Gunter pointed his stock towards the chairlift.

The children took off after him, shrieking as they raced each other to the bottom of the slope.