WINTER WONDERLAND (8 page)

‘Gilles is old news.’ I am deliberately blasé in my report. ‘Now I’m onto Jacques!’

‘Jacques and Gilles – you’re kidding?’ She taps straight back.

I laugh out loud – I hadn’t thought of that. Especially appropriate since I just went up a hill then came tumbling down.

‘He has the eyes of a husky dog,’ I tell her.

‘How does the husky feel about that?’ she teases.

I’m eager to chat more to her but Annique is ready to introduce me to the wonderful world of maple taffy.

‘Lose a filling for me!’ Laurie signs off.

The process begins with me paying three dollars to a lady in a little wooden cabin and in return she hands me a wooden ice-lolly stick. That’s it. A bare stick.

‘I feel like I’m missing something … ’

Annique tinkles a laugh.

‘Seriously, what happens now?’

‘Now you make your own,’ she says, pointing to a table of fresh snow where a man with a big ladle is running a thick line of liquid maple syrup …

I still can’t predict the next step.

‘Attach the syrup to your stick,’ Annique instructs me. ‘Now roll.’

‘Roll?’

‘Twist it around.’

I do so, if rather ineptly.

‘You can tap it in the snow to set it.’

This could easily be a ‘hilarious’ challenge on a daytime talk show, designed to humiliate the presenter.

‘Ooooh!’ The taste surprises me as I convey the misshapen blob to my mouth. Like golden syrup with an icy frosting. In fact the ice sprinklings taste wonderfully refreshing. I dip it back in for an extra layer.

Meanwhile Gilles is trying to position me so that the shack is behind me for the picture.

I can’t quite bring myself to look his way as I attempt to control the droopings of the still-molten treat with my tongue – the last thing I want is for him to think I’m trying to be provocative or enticing. I try instead to hold the taffy pop out to the camera but he insists I lick it. Oh jeez. Now I’ve gone and dropped a great sticky globule on my coat.

‘Nooo!’ As I go to grab it away I only serve to contaminate my gloves and spread it further across my chest. ‘Darnit!’

Annique tries to wipe the mess with a tissue, which in turn adds a layer of feathery white tufts.

‘This does not look good,’ Gilles frowns into his camera.

‘You want to run back to the hotel and change?’ Annique offers.

‘Actually,’ I say twisting at an imaginary shoulder injury, ‘maybe I should soak in the tub for a while, write up some notes … ’

I see Annique cast a furtive glance at Gilles – no doubt imagining what they could do with the bonus time.

‘I mean, I have all week to take in the Carnival attractions … ’

‘But we still meet this evening, yes?’ she enquires.

‘Dinner with the snow sculptor?’ I say as I hand Gilles the sticky end of the lollipop. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

I go directly back to the hotel, put my gunky items in for cleaning, change into dry socks and tidy my snow-spattered face. I daren’t sit down and risk losing momentum so I quickly grab my alternate coat (black Puffa), add a teal woollen scarf and matching mittens and head directly to speak with the concierge.

‘
Oui madame?
’

I place both hands on his desk to show I mean business, although the mittens do somewhat undermine my authority.

‘There is a dog-sledding company in the Île d’Orléans. It is run by Jacques Dufour aka L’homme Loup.’ My eyebrow cocks of its own accord.

‘
Oui
.’

Oh my god, he knows it.

‘Do you happen to know how to get there?’ I hope my voice didn’t just go up too high.

A brief tap of computer keys and he’s handing me a printout of a map.

The directions couldn’t be any more French – Boulevard René Lévesque to Avenue Honoré Mercier, then take the ramp to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré …

I continue reading as I step into the revolving door, only to find Gilles in the opposing compartment.

Oh no, oh no!

I push forward and try to make a bid for the taxi, but he’s too quick, scooting out of a side door and cutting in front of me. ‘Krista wait! I need to talk to you.’

‘Not now, Gilles. I’m in a hurry.’

‘Where are you going?’ he protests. ‘I thought you came back to rest?’

‘Change of plan,’ I say as I dodge past him and into the back of the cab.

‘What’s going on?’ he says, holding back the door.

I give a casual shrug as I yank the door closed. ‘I need to see a man about a dog… ’

CHAPTER EIGHT

Is this a rebound reaction to Gilles? Am I trying to attach myself to someone else so I don’t feel quite so humiliated by our situation? Why else would I feel so compelled to find this stranger? Maybe it’s not him at all. Maybe I just want to be around those beautiful dogs. I mean, wouldn’t they look wonderful in a picture?

‘So why aren’t you waiting to go with the photographer?’ My devil’s advocate enquires.

‘Because I need to ask permission first and I think the most effective way to convince him that we are legitimate is in person.’

‘And that’s all there is to it?’

Well, I suppose it doesn’t hurt that he’s the complete opposite to the ultra-groomed Gilles – The Wolfman wouldn’t even know the term ‘manscaping’. Sometimes I think that it’s all very well being aware of trends and zeitgeists, but there’s something even more appealing about a man who is oblivious to it all …

I sigh. There is of course a simpler theory: there are just some people in life that we are drawn to. The initial meeting may be fleeting, but it’s enough to make you want to follow that feeling and see where it leads.

It was interesting with Andrew because we were literally ‘attached’ from the first moment we met. The dance floor was so crowded that you couldn’t let the jostling faze you, it was just a question of seething with the masses. But then Andrew’s watch snagged in my mesh top and we tried to disengage but there really wasn’t the room so we ended up going the other way and he pulled me into him and we were sweatily bonded until the lights came up. It seemed like fate had tied a ribbon around us. Finally a man who stuck around! Prior to him I would excitedly tell the girls at work, ‘I’ve met someone!’ and by the next week it would turn into another non-starter. So I stopped telling them after a while, not wanting to be the girl who cried wolf. Though of course today I might get to do that for real!

I can’t quite believe I’m doing this. Maybe part of it is simply that I can! I certainly haven’t been in a position to pursue an attraction in a long time.

‘Not since last night,’ Laurie points out when I call her from the taxi.

‘That was different,’ I protest. ‘Gilles just landed in my lap!’

‘Whereas this guy is mysteriously out of reach?’

I huff down the phone.

Best I don’t tell her about the distant sadness in Jacques’ eyes or she will accuse me of being on one of my salvation missions. Which I’m not. I don’t think. He just intrigues me, that’s all …

‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you get there?’

‘Not really,’ I confess.

‘Excellent, that’s what I like to hear.’

‘Oh don’t!’

‘No, seriously. Your itineraries don’t leave a lot of room for going rogue. This is good. Experimental.’

‘Right.’

‘Anyway … ’ Laurie excuses herself from the conversation, reminding me that she has her cousin’s birthday party to go to and is staying over in Sutton. ‘Update me first thing tomorrow.’

‘Will do.’

I look out of the window. Since calling Laurie, the taxi has transitioned from city streets to the freeway and now we’re on a bridge rearing up and over the Saint Lawrence River, getting a bird’s-eye view of the snow-drifted waters below. It’s such an unusual sight – Sahara-style sand dunes seemingly made of whipped marshmallows – it makes me feel as though I am witness to an entirely new and fantastical landscape.

‘Île D’Orléans!’ the driver gruffs as we connect to the island.

We pass one lovely wooden home after the next, each set deep in thick Christmas cake icing. The leafless trees might look bleak and bare in another setting, but here they resemble the feathery accent twigs a florist might use in a bouquet.

I lean my head on the window glass. Everything seems so pristine in the crisp sunshine, definitely less city slush, more untrodden ground here – pretty much ruining any chance of me passing off this visit with a casual, ‘I was just in the neighbourhood!’

But I can’t turn back now, I’m too mesmerised …

It’s then the driver pulls over to have a word with a fellow cabbie and I see a family loading into their car with another one of those Jelly Baby children. There’s a lot of tottering around trying to capture said Jelly Baby and when the mum does finally scoop her up, it’s all kisses and giggles and I feel like I’m going to be sick.

I want that so much and I’m never going to have that. Why-why-why? Why so many of my friends not me? I close my eyes, trying to compose myself, trying to push away these thoughts that plague me. Why couldn’t I have a baby? If I had been able to, then Andrew wouldn’t have left me. I’m still a little in shock that he did that. Though I could sense the change in the way he looked at me almost straightaway – as though I no longer had that mystical other dimension to me. I was not physically capable of bringing a new being into the world. What you see is what you get. End of the line. And it’s not enough. Not for him. And not for me.

The driver says something to me in French. It probably isn’t, ‘
Don’t think like that, you have so much to offer!
’ but I pretend it is.

He continues for less than a mile and then slows, turns the car around, inhales as if to muster his nerve, revs the engine and roars up a snowy slope.

‘Oh my!’ This is quite an incline, I think, as we claw our way up the unpaved track: it could certainly double as a ski slope on the way down.

‘You have very good tyres!’ I comment.

‘I am a very good driver,’ he corrects me.

‘Yes you are.’

And I appreciate the extra adrenalin boost.

For a while I can’t see anything but snow, but then we mount the brow of the hill and I spy a barn, a couple of boxy buildings and one idyllic stone farmhouse, which we stop beside.

‘What does that mean?’ I ask, pointing to a sign bearing the word ‘
ACCUEIL
’.

‘Welcome. Or Reception,’ he shrugs. ‘It’s where you need to go.’

His radio crackles with a message.

‘You want to stay here?’ he asks.

‘Um … ’

Is it wise to be stranding myself in this way? I look around for further signs of life and see a man in bright blue doing a backflip out of the top floor of the barn.

My jaw drops. ‘Did you see that?’ I lurch to the window.

‘Did I see … ?’

‘A man just … ’ I stop. I must surely be seeing things. The barn has to be twenty feet high. Perhaps it was a bird or a piece of rubbish caught on the wind – some kind of peripheral vision illusion.

‘Madame?’

‘
Oui
?’

‘Tu reste ici?’

It’s then I catch a glimpse of Jacques leading a group down a pathway and my heart-leap dares me to say, ‘Yes, yes, it’s fine.
Merci!
’

I hurriedly pay the fare and then inch over to the dark red front door of the farmhouse. Before I lift the latch, I hesitate, unsure of quite what I might be walking into.

Then again, what’s the alternative? Standing here until I become a porch-side ice sculpture? In I go!

I step down into a large room lined with cold-weather gear, all clompy boots and bulky jackets, and a vast flagstone hearth housing the kind of fire that makes your face glow yellow and your cheeks flush if you so much as look at it.

‘
Bonjour! Comment est-ce que je peux vous aider?
’

I look to my left and see a petite girl with a headful of springy curls, partially restrained by a fleece beanie, sitting at a large old wooden desk.

‘Er, English?’ I prompt.

‘You are here for the three p.m. ride?’

‘Possibly … ’ I hedge my bets.

She looks confused. ‘You have a reservation?’

‘I don’t. Actually, I was hoping to speak with Jacques … ’

‘He is about to leave with the group.’

‘Oh.’

‘You can join?’

‘You mean go dog-sledding?’

She looks ever more puzzled. ‘That is what we do here.’

‘Like
now
?’

She nods. ‘It is fifty dollars for an hour.’

I picture myself swathed in cashmere blankets as Jacques stands behind me, swooshing us through the sparkling snow and into the sunset.

‘I’ll do it!’ I say, scrabbling for my purse.

‘Sebastien!
Tu es libre?
’ She addresses the lean young man who has just skulked in. He is wearing kingfisher blue, just like my phantom back-flipper.

He concedes a grunt, letting me know that I have just stolen his break.

‘He will take you.’

I hope she means up to meet Jacques. As lovely as I’m sure the Wolfman’s rear view is, I don’t particularly want to be staring at it for the next hour, unable to interact.