Weak at the Knees (17 page)

Rightly or wrongly, the next morning I wake up early (05.30) elated and energized, desperate to start the day, despite the ungodly hour. My eyes are bright and wide-open. It’s the glow of new love that’s responsible. Who wants to sleep when you can re-live the giddy freshness of a new person’s touch and lips? Particularly when that new person makes me feel how I feel – different to ever before and more than I ever imagined possible. That’s how good it was. I can’t imagine feeling this way about anyone else ever again. Right now, this second, rightly or wrongly, I feel dangerously happy.

The furthest place injured Rosemary needed to get to was back to the hotel. So after the doctor had bandaged her and prescribed some aspirin, I took her to the Club de Vacances and stayed for dinner with the group. Then I returned to the flat. I thought about it, I really did. I thought about not going to the piano bar, not meeting Olivier, redeeming myself and showing great strength of character by keeping my promise to Amber from this moment onwards. I thought about it and
had
resolved to be strong and not to go. Then Gina returned. I’m not blaming her, because she knew nothing about Olivier kissing me in the flat earlier or about the posse of ski instructors set to descend upon the piano bar after their meeting. So when Gina suggested we go out to that very same venue, I put up very little resistance. Because I knew it would make her happy and to make up for being a hypocritical bitch regarding her and Pierre. Of course, on reflection, I could have suggested we go elsewhere. That idea did cross my mind, but I let it flit right on out, convincing myself that it didn’t matter anyway because I had resolved to say no from this point forwards. And Gina’s very presence would make it impossible for me to misbehave.

We had the place practically to ourselves when we arrived. It wasn’t till 20.30 that Olivier marched in with his colleagues. Just seeing him walk through the door made my heart skip a beat, my insides turn to jelly. He stood for a short while at the bar buying a round, chatting to the patron and then he and a couple of his friends came over to sit with Gina and I. It was all very nice. Conversation was animated, vaguely debauched and definitely tipsy. Just over an hour later I was thinking how nice this was, that maybe Olivier and I could be just good friends and that maybe I wouldn’t have to cut him out of my life entirely, when he said he had to go. With what I took as a hinting glance in my direction, he asked if anyone needed a lift anywhere. I lied, muttering that I had some urgent hotel business to attend to and that his lift would save me from climbing 537 steps. My brain seemed to have lost all control over my mouth.

Taking me as good as my word, he drove me to the Club de Vacances and parked up. I was wondering what to do or say, deciding that it was best to do and say nothing, but just get out of the car and go into the hotel. I leaned over, intending to air brush his cheeks with mine, but it didn’t quite happen that way. A stronger, more powerful force than my conscience, a force more powerful than morality, changed my path of navigation at the last second, making my lips meet his, melt deliciously into his, over and over and over again, sending shivers of pleasure through every limb in my body. My skin tingled, my head spun, I felt light-headed even though I was sitting down. That’s all we did for over an hour. Kiss and kiss and kiss, tasting each other, pressing our bodies close and steaming up the car. I didn’t want it to ever stop. I never realised that kissing could be so sensual and powerful and overwhelming. If Olivier and I were to never progress beyond kissing, then it would be enough, as long as I could keep on doing it forever. Finally, when he had to go, he hugged me tight and told me he’d wanted to kiss me since the first time we met, when I lay crashed in a snowy heap at his feet.

*****

I buy the pains aux raisins after my early morning visit to the hotel and float back to the flat, still joyous, still remarkably not feeling an ounce of remorse or guilt. Gina, on the other hand, isn’t looking quite so happy. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, eyes bloodshot, nose streaming. I walk over to her and stroke my hand up and down her back.

“Hey you, what’s up?”

“It’s Pierre,” she snorts, shoulders heaving. “He told me it was over. He went home and told his wife about us last night.”

I’m shocked. I’d imagined that the first rule of infidelity was not to tell.

“He said,” she continues, gasping for air in-between sobs, “that things had been bad at home for a while and he wanted to come clean. Apparently she’s forgiven him and, if anything, it’s brought them closer. She realised that she didn’t want to lose him.”

Gina lapses into one long, high-pitched wail. I hug her and promise her it will feel better soon. When she’s finally exhaled all the air from her diaphragm she pulls back, smiling wetly. “It’s because I stopped making him carrots, isn’t it?”

I’m wondering how to cheer her up when I have an idea. “Hang on a tick,” I say, leaving her wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands and blowing her nose with a shredded recycled piece of tissue. I go to my bedroom and in the time it takes for me to rummage around and find what I’m looking for, Gina’s opened the paper bag from the boulangerie and has started nibbling on her pastry. I hand her a pair of psychedelic patterned leggings I’d bought at the beginning of the season from the one decent clothes shop Montgenèvre has to offer. Gina had fallen in love with them and rushed straight out to get some of her own but had come back empty-handed because I’d apparently bought the last pair.

“These are for you,” I offer.

Her face lights up.

“Why are you giving me these?”

“I want to cheer you up.”

“Oh Dan, I can’t accept these. I know how much you like them.”

“I think you like them even more. Please, I really want you to have them.”

“Then thank you,” she says, “and you can borrow them any time you like.”

She stands up and delivers a whopping, sucker kiss to my right cheek.

“Right then,” I decide to take control of Gina’s life and shortly, I think, my own. “Finish your breakfast and then we’re going skiing. It’s a gorgeous day and it will help take your mind off things.”

*****

Gina and I are sitting on the longest two-seater chairlift in the resort. It’s a fifteen minute glide over a lake. At least we’ve been told it’s a lake. We can’t actually see it because during winter it’s covered in snow. We’re both deeply elsewhere. Gina is no doubt thinking about Pierre. My happiness is slowly starting to dissipate. Amber hasn’t paid an actual visit since her pre-kiss warning, but perhaps in her own way she has. Perhaps this whole Pierre episode is my warning that there’s no point messing with a married man. It can only end in tears. Who’s to say my liaison wouldn’t have a similarly ignominious ending?

Or maybe Amber’s getting at me through Topol, because that’s who’s entered my head and playing with my moral conscience now, Topol, from the film
Fiddler on the
Roof.
The story’s set before the Russian revolution and Topol is the patriarch of this Jewish family. His favourite daughter committed a double whammy no-no for the times. Not only did she marry without her father’s permission, she married a Russian gentile, a non-Jew. She asked him to accept them and there’s this really poignant, stretching for tissue-box moment in the movie where Topol examines his beliefs and principles. I’ve now got this scene and a new, more personalised script syncopating in my skull. It’s driving me crazy.

Scene from
Fiddler on the Roof

Topol in field, scratching head

Accept them? How can I accept them? Can I deny everything I believe in?

On the other hand, can I deny my own daughter?

On the other hand, how can I turn my back on my faith, on my people?

On the other hand, she’s my daughter.

On the other hand, if I bend that far I’ll break.

On the other hand, NO! There IS no other hand. NO, NO, NO!

Scene from inside Danni’s head

Danni, in chairlift, sitting next to married man dumpee
.

Danni: Newwer let him go. That’s what my grandma said.

Topol: On the other hand, he’s married.

Danni: On the other hand, he’s not got children.

Topol: On the other hand, you promised Amber.

Danni: On the other hand, what if he’s THE one?

Topol: On the other hand, he can’t be THE one, because he’s somebody else’s one
.

Danni: On the other hand, what if he made a mistake?

Topol: On the other hand could you live with ruining his life AND his wife’s?

Danni: On the other hand, we can’t choose who we fall for.

Topol: On the other hand life is full of choices. Adultery’s the wrong choice.

Danni: On the other hand, he’s the one who’s married. It’s his lookout.

Topol: On the other hand, how can you turn your back on your principles?

Danni: On the other hand, we’re allowed to change our principles.

Topol: On the other hand, if you do that, you’re not the person you thought you were.

Danni: On the other hand, what if I no longer give a toss?

Topol: Danni Lewis, I don’t believe that for one minute. NO! There IS no other hand.

NO, NO, NO!

By the time we get to the end of the chairlift I am in no doubt as to what I sadly have to do. Whether his kissing is dreamy or not and whether he makes my legs give way or not, whether he makes me dizzy or not, happier than ever or not, it cannot continue. I shall find him later and tell him. Gina and I simultaneously pull our hats down over our ears, wind our ski pole straps round our hands and skate to the top of the slope, where we point our skis forward and bomb down, full throttle.

*****

We’re queuing up to repeat that chairlift when Michel and Alexandre pop up out of nowhere.

“Hello Danni,” Michel smiles shyly.

I try to smile back, but my heart isn’t in it. My head is too full of Michel’s brother to be able to relax.

“Can we come with you?” he asks.

I want to say ‘no’, but Michel is a really nice guy and I don’t want to be rude, so I tell him: “of course”. It’s a two-seater chairlift. Alexandre gets on with Gina, which leaves Michel and me to pair up together. Once we’re on and have pulled the bar down I can think of nothing to say. I’m not in the mood for idle chitchat. I just want silence. Michel lights a cigarette, draws on it and smiles shyly.