We’ve only been here a week, but I have already sensed a different code of living here in the mountains. They’re a fiercely close-knit community, with their own unique ways. People come, people go, but ultimately they only look after their own. The women eye us with suspicion. They chat to us, smile at us and joke with us, but you can tell they’ll never get too close. Their men, on the other hand, welcome us warmly. With this instant, honest show of hospitality, Michel and Alexandre are letting us into their tight circle.
It turns out they’re ‘pisteurs’, part of the resort’s mountain rescue team. The hero stretcher-bearers who ski injured punters down the mountain. Michel’s got an open, friendly face. His hair’s sandy brown, his complexion is rugged and weathered. He’s endearingly shy. As he hands me a steaming mug full of hot chocolate dashed with a generous measure of Courvoisier, I notice his jacket has the name Michel du Pape embroidered on it.
“Any relation to Châteauneuf-du-Pape?” I ask. I remember it as one of Hugo’s favourite red wines. He tells me there’s no connection whatsoever, his original family name was Papillon, but his great, great grandfather had religious pretensions and changed it to Pape which means ‘Pope’. Then his walkie-talkie starts crackling some undecipherable French instruction. The two men are instantly up on their feet, gathering ropes and beepers, telling us there’s an emergency and that we can stay there until the lifts open again. They’re halfway out the door when he adds that he’s putting on a big dinner bash on Saturday night in a mountain restaurant and we’re invited.
Gina answers that we’d love to come, thank you very much and Michel replies that he’ll pick us up at 8.30pm. It’s not until they’ve gone that I remind her that Saturday is the first day of our season so we might be busy, and if we’re not busy then more than likely we’ll be too knackered. I blow on my drink to cool it, take a sip and feel the brandy warm my insides. Gina casts me an admonishing look and tells me I’d better learn to let my hair down, that the season is short, the mountain shindig sounds like fun and it was a privilege to have been asked. She asks if I know what Carpe Diem means. I tell her I don’t – although I know that I should because it’s Latin for something and Hugo must have used it on me. She tells me it means ‘Seize the Day’ and that I should start living by it. I take another sip, finally accepting that Gina was right and that at long last (and Hugo would be shocked by my about-turn) Latin was good for something.
It’s the third time I’ve climbed to my hotel today to check everything’s in place for my first group’s arrival tomorrow. The hotel’s name, Club de Vacances, is emblazoned in neon blue squiggles down one side of the building, a concrete, no-frills high-rise. It’s quite possibly the ugliest building in the resort, but despite its lack of rustic-chic allure, I love my hotel and am sure my school children will love it too. I’m also sure they will hate what I hate about it. Not the fact that it’s got a great view, but the fact that it’s at the highest point in the whole resort, perched atop a hill of its own, with at least five hundred and thirty seven of those awful steel steps (I’m still counting them) to tread to get there. At least every ten stairs or so, I have to stop, to recover my breath and to force myself to keep going. I’m blaming it on the altitude, but the truth is that I’m just not fit enough. Amber was right. I’ve never done enough exercise and now it shows.
Gina, on the other hand, needs to be as athletic as a snail on Mogadon to make it to her place, because our flat is literally
in
her apart-hotel complex. The workers’ entrance to her restaurant is right next door to us. And I’m sure she’s fitter than I am, with such wondrous legs how could she not be? Where is the justice of her easy life compared to mine? I’m going to have to do this climb six days a week as of the day after tomorrow, at 7.45am when I go to meet my group for breakfast, and then for lunch and then dinner and possibly even some in-between times. Amber must be having a good old giggle from on high.
*****
“I’m pleased you’re back,” says Gina, when I finally return, slightly wheezing and blowing my nose. “I got bored without you and decided to be constructive.”
She’s sitting at the kitchen table, with her laptop open.
“I’ve worked out our daily schedule. If we stick to this,” she scrolls down the page so I can see, “we’ll be laughing. I reckon organisation’s the key to having loads of spare time.”
I sit down and take a closer look.
SAMPLE GINA/DANNI DAY
Key: Danni = D
Gina = G
* =
0730: D wake-up
0755: G wake-up……NB 25 minute extra lie in ha ha!
0800: Breakfast with group (D&G don’t eat)
0900: Ski School 2.5 hours (D & G check all kids go up the mountain unless they’ve a bloody good excuse e.g. broken leg/arm/collar bone)
0915 - 0930: D & G WORKING BREAKFAST Breakfast and paperwork in flat (D & G take turns buying brekkie from the boulangerie)
0930 – 1145: D & G free time HURRAH! (skiing/sleeping/*other?!
1200: Group lunch in hotel (D & G might not eat)
1345: Kids back in Ski School 2.5 hours
1400 – 1845 D & G free time again HURRAH! (lunch up mountain/skiing/sleeping/*other?!)
1900: Group dinner in hotel (D & G definitely eat – no cooking allowed in flat unless v special circumstances)
2000 – 2100: Four nights a week only – options with group/make lots of money!
(Broom Ball/Ice-skating/ten-pin bowling/crepe or fondue evening)
2100: D & G FREE
(NB: should one of our kids have a major accident this schedule no longer applies)
For the umpteenth time I realise how lucky I am to be here. What would I be doing back in London right now? No doubt I might have eventually found myself some dull, dead-end job. Half my peers are working round the clock, in the City, lawyers, bankers, and it seems the more hours they work, the less they get paid. Many of them are too busy to wonder whether they’re actually happy or not. The other half is at best doing jobs they’re ambivalent about, and at worse still unemployed. I only know two people who actually enjoy their work. One’s Hugo, the other’s a college friend who’s a model. M&S recently signed her to be their bra pin-up.
“So?” asks Gina. “What do you think?”
“I think if we actually stick to this, this could feel like one big holiday.”
“I need to find somewhere to print this up,” she says
“Good idea.”
I give the schedule one last look-over.
“By the way, what’s ‘other’? You’ve forgotten to fill in the key?”
She slants the screen back in her direction and raises her eyebrows with a cheeky grin.
“While we’re on the subject, you have
got
to go check out next door.”
“Why?”
“I met my chef for the first time while you were out and he is gorgeous. Think Javier Bardem!”
“I can’t just waltz in,” I protest.
“Yes you can. He said he was keen to meet the other half of SFS.”
“Alright then,” I surrender. “I’ll see if they’ve got a printer there too.”
I head for the door. “By the way, what’s his name?”
“Pierre.”
*****
The worker’s entrance is open. I enter, noting upside-down chairs resting on tables so dusty they don’t look like they’ve been touched since the end of the last season. A radio is blaring out some tacky French pop. I follow the direction of the music and spy the back of a man sporting a tall, floppy white paper hat. As I creep closer I can hear him humming along to the music. He’s chopping onions.
“Pierre?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Pierre?” I call louder. He jumps, and turns around with tears in his eyes.
“Sad song?”
“Non. Les oignons.”
I introduce myself and admire his Latino looks. He is a doppelganger for Javier Bardem, Gina’s spot-on. We exchange pleasantries and he apologises for not having much time because he’s got ten industrial-sized shepherd’s pies to freeze before he picks his daughter up from crèche and so far he hasn’t even finished chopping one onion. I’m in the middle of saying goodbye and scouting for any evidence that there might be a printer here, when I notice a solitary cookbook on his shelf. I place a hand on the book’s spine.
“May I?” I ask.
“Oui, bien sûr,” he replies, his concentration never veering from his knife and the onion which he’s attacking so violently I’m worried for his fingertips.
I lift the book down. It’s a compact hard-back called
Sauces for Seduction
and it’s in English. When I ask where he got it from he tells me it was a gift from one of last years’ school groups. He tells me I can keep it, because he doesn’t understand a word of it anyway. I accept the present, and make a swift exit.
*****
“So?” demands Gina, when I’m back. “What do you think?”
“Gorgeous, but he’s too short. You’re head and shoulders taller than him.”
“That’s not true. He’s exactly my height. Besides, I prefer a man who’s on my eye-level. It means I avoid neck-crick.
“Yes, well don’t go getting excited. He told me he’s got a kid and now I remember, the chef in my hotel told me all about Pierre, only I didn’t realise it was your Pierre at the time. He’s apparently got a reputation for being a terrible cook and the only reason he keeps his job is because he’s married to his boss’s daughter. So I’d steer well clear if I were you.”
Gina dismisses this advice, more interested in the contents of my right hand.
“What’s that?”
I pass her
Sauces for Seduction
.
“It was a present for Pierre from one of last years’ groups and now it’s a present for us.”
“Ooh,” says Gina, flicking through the pages, “do you think that means we’ve made an impression?”
It was only she who wanted to make and impression, and thankfully, she’s too busy sniffing out recipes to see me raise a quizzical eyebrow.
*****
Stop; pant; splutter; pitter-patter heart, blow nose. I’m walking up a beginner’s nursery slope and finding it such a challenge that I can’t begin to imagine how Hilary could have ever conquered Everest. No doubt he would never have attempted it wearing my Skechers flatforms.
“Ça va?” asks Michel.
I nod, indicating that I’m fine to carry on. I’m starting to think that someone, somewhere, is pulling my puppet strings, part of a grand plan to make me a fit woman against my will. And that someone has to be Amber, getting her own back at me being such an unwilling tennis partner for all those years.
It’s past 8pm, but I was up at the crack of dawn this morning to go to the airport and pick up my first group. Our nearest airport is bizarrely Turin, in Italy, not France, and it was the first time I’d crossed the border. As soon as the season’s properly underway, I’m looking forward to skiing into Italy from our resort. It’s a fabulously surreal notion that you can be living somewhere that feels so French and then ski a kilometre or so into a completely different country, with a different language, culture and cuisine. Gina’s as excited as I am about skiing into the neighbouring resort of Claviere to have a bowl of Italian pasta for lunch, finished off with an authentic cappuccino.
Everything so far has gone according to plan, and indeed according to Gina’s schedule, which I finally managed to get printed up for us at my hotel and is now pinned to the cork board on our lounge wall. I’ve checked my first group into the Club de Vacances and have had them all fitted up with skis, boots, and ski passes. I even managed to convince them to eat their dinner. This was the hardest task of all. They’d been eyeing up their stew suspiciously because there were legs on the bone which looked so small they were convinced it had to be either rabbit or frogs. I reassured them that it was definitely chicken to the point that not only did they all wipe their plates clean, but half of them even had seconds. It wasn’t till much later that I found out from the chef that it had indeed been bunny.
Anyway, as if the day hasn’t been eventful or long enough, Gina and I are now on our way to the shindig with Michel and Alexandre, the pisteurs. When they’d told us it was in a mountain restaurant, we hadn’t realised that they meant it was in the mountain restaurant half-way up the ski slopes, and we would have to climb a thousand meters on foot to get there because the gondola closes at 4.30pm.
“I thought it was bad enough,” I puff to Michel as my boots crunch the crusty snow underfoot, “that I have to walk up to the Club de Vacances three times a day, and now this?”