Weak at the Knees (9 page)

Why did I say that - to convince myself or to let Rod know that I’m available? Just so that I don’t look too available, to erase the sound of my last answer which is hanging in the air, I start opening the packet of wafers in my right hand.

“So,” I wave them in front of his nose, “care for a biscuit?”

Rod and I are the only SFS employees driving through the night to avoid traffic and halve our journey time. I’ve decided it’s an incredibly sexy time to travel. The night holds a surreal calm and there’s something more intimate and revealing about moonlit motorways. So it’s no wonder that, with the forced proximity the close confines of the car insist on, we’re getting to know more, feel more and flirt more, in a much shorter space of time. It’s like cupid’s holding a finger on the fast-forward button.

I already know that Rod doesn’t have a proper girlfriend, just some German girl called Nina who he met last season in Kitzbuhel, the same resort he’s going back to this year. I already know that Rod thinks skiing is pretty much as good as sex and that’s what makes being a ski rep or guide the best job in the world because you get paid to ski and sex seems to be a natural by-product. I already know that he’s planning to go back home in a couple of years because nowhere beats Australia, God’s own country, where he gets to be outdoors about fifty per cent of the time in the fresh air and fantastic climate. I already know that he wants to build boats when he grows up and that even though he’s twenty-eight he still considers himself to be a big kid. I already know that if he had to live anywhere else in the world apart from Australia he’d pick the Alps because they come a close second in terms of big skies and unpolluted oxygen. I already know that he prefers European women to Australian women and he’s hoping to take one of us back with him to Oz. I already know that having his back stroked is what really turns him on. I already know that his favourite drink is fat coke, his favourite biscuit is a kit kat and vegemite beats marmite hands down. I already know that he finds me attractive because he’s started touching my arm from time to time. I already know that I find him attractive because every time he touches me I get this tingling feeling. I already know that he can’t read me like Hugo because he thinks I look like a shit-hot skier.

*****

We’re making excellent time. It’s six in the morning and Grenoble is already way behind us, with Montgenèvre now only a couple of hours away. We’re right up close to the foothills of the Alps, which even at this level are dusted with snow. We’re starting to climb, winding round one side of a steep rocky shaft. Ahead, as far forward as we can see, the sunrise has cast a gloriously warm, pink-orange hue across the mountains. The colours and vista are so powerful I’m stunned into silence.

“Wow,” I collect myself. “The light is incredible and the mountains so overwhelming.” The highest I’ve ever been in Britain is Mount Snowdon in Wales, which is only just over a thousand meters. But the foothills we’re passing now will morph into peaks three times that height and more.

“I know. It’s amazing. No matter how many times I see this, how often I go away and come back again, it makes the same impact every time, especially the sunrise. Locals call this the magic hour.”

“I can see why. I like that. The magic hour,” I repeat. The spell has been cast. I’m in awe.

“Just wait till we get to Montgenèvre,” says Rod. “I bet you’re chomping at the bit to put those skis on?”

He’s so far from the truth that I laugh.

“Rod?”

“Yes Denny.”

“You know how you were saying that you thought I looked like someone who’d be a total expert on skis?”

“Yes.”

“Well, can I let you into a little secret?”

He pats my arm playfully.

“Don’t tell me. You’ve just been asked to join team GB’s ski squad for the next Olympics and you being a rep is just a camouflage for your real purpose of being here, which is to spend as many waking hours as possible training?”

“How on earth did you guess?” I joke.

“Oh, I once knew someone who was forced to do that because the British ski team didn’t have enough money to train.”

Oh lord, he thinks I’m serious.

“Actually,” I start, “what I really wanted to admit was that I’m a supremely rubbish skier. I kind of told a little fib in my interview. I said I’d skied for four weeks when I’ve only really been once. That was twelve years ago and I wasn’t particularly good even then. But I have been to a dry ski slope quite a few times in the last month and the instructor there claimed I now ski like an intermediate.”

He shakes his head.

“You’re quite something, you know that?”

I pull a mock horrified face.

“Do you think I’m mad? Do you think I’m going to be found out and sacked on the spot for lying?”

“No, we’ll be alright. It’s only a white lie.”

We smile at the pun and he looks me up and down.

“Besides, you look perfectly proportioned for skiing,” he reassures. “If you can ski like an intermediate on a dry ski slope then I reckon you’ll be better than you think on snow which is much easier. And that’s what we’re going to do as soon as we get there.”

“What do you mean?”

He looks at his diver’s watch.

“Well, nobody else will be arriving till tonight, so we’ve got all day to practice.”

“But I’m knackered,” I protest. “We haven’t slept all night.”

“Denny, in a couple of days’ time we’re all going to go out skiing with the powers that be, Lorraine the big boss included. The choice is yours. We can either go up as soon as we get there or you can wait till we go out with everyone else. Don’t worry, adrenaline will see you through.”

“Who’s adrenaline?” I joke.

“Very funny.”

Then I realise that we’ve got there, because we pass this huge, impossible to ignore sign which reads ‘Bienvenue a Montgenèvre.’

“You couldn’t just pull in here?” I ask, wanting to savour the significance of this moment. I’m getting on with my life and here’s where the new chapter starts.

“Sure,” he says, pulling over tight to the inside rock face.

   I get out the car, walk a few paces forward where I stop and take in the view. Montgenèvre is a small, modern village which claims to be one of the first ski resorts in France. It has a lovely traditional charm, set at the foot of huge dramatic mountains. The snow-capped peaks are so enormous that they dwarf everything in their sight. They look so silent, so powerful, so knowing. I think it must have dumped it down overnight because a fresh, puffy white blanket is coating the resort. Some piles of snow look so solid that I’ve got a sudden urge to cut through them with a giant knife and fork, slicing a triangle out like a big wedge of cake. It’s a picture-perfect winter wonderland. We shouldn’t be allowed to set foot here, to destroy the perfection. This should be reserved for fairytales, for Santa and his elves. Interestingly, despite the fact that it must be cold because there’s snow all around and I can see my breath when I exhale, I don’t feel it and I’m not even wearing my Quicksilver fleece. I look up to the clear blue, cloud-free sky, and speak out loud, figuring that my back’s to Rod and he won’t be able to hear me from the car anyway.

“Ambs, I take it all back. This beats the Bahamas any day. Thank you for being my inspiration. Thank you for bringing me here.”

*****

We clear the empty wrappers and cans out the car and then dump our bags in the reception of Le Yeti, the large ramshackle chalet where everyone’s staying for the training week. 

“Right,” says Rod, tossing my hideously garish uniform jacket in my direction. It’s striped luminous blue, yellow and pink. I hold the Gore-Tex specimen at arms’ length in protest.

“This thing is hideous. How am I ever going to be able to lie low wearing this? It’s bright enough to be able to see from Alaska!”

“That’s the whole point,” he laughs, handing me my boot bag. “Now get a move on. It’s a gorgeous day so let’s make the best of it.”

Dressed identically in our SFS uniforms, we’re like a perfectly matched his and hers as we head for the chairlift. That’s sadly where our similarity ends. Rod positively swaggers at ease in his unyielding boots, skis balanced effortlessly over his right shoulder. I waddle along beside him, doing a great impression of a duck-billed platypus fighting not to slip, poles waving in my left hand, skis constantly slipping off my shoulder, forcing me to stop and regroup every five paces or so. As soon as we’ve lowered the bar in the chairlift I automatically reach for my pack of Marlborough Lights. I wouldn’t call myself a smoker, but when I’m stressed or am having a glass of wine, a dose of nicotine just seems to hit the spot. I have though, admittedly, smoked more than usual since Amber died.

“Denny,” Rod exclaims. “You’re not going to light that thing are you? Not up here in this beautiful air?”

I put them away, sheepishly, knowing that this would please Amber too. She hated the fact that I smoked, even if it was only occasional.

“You’re right, it’s just that I’m nervous,” I try to explain. “The one time I did go skiing we never took a chairlift and they didn’t have one at the dry ski slope either. It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop to let us off, so how am I not going to fall flat on my face?”

“No worries. I’ll get you off.”

“Promise?”

“Scouts’ honour.”

He doesn’t let me down. When the time comes, he pulls up the bar, grabs my arm and glides me with him, coming to a stop a few meters from the lift. “Wow,” I squeal, looking around at a scene that could have been lifted from a box of Swiss chocolates. “It’s even more beautiful up here than down there. And just listen to that silence.”

We stand a while, soaking up the quiet, filling our lungs full of fresh alpine air. The purity of the oxygen is more effective than the caffeine kick from ten double espressos downed in one. Suddenly, despite not having slept all night, as Rod put it, I’m chomping at the bit to let my skis run riot on the snow. He warns me that the real white stuff might be a tad quicker than the artificial surface and to take it easy, he’d be close behind, surveying my technique. So, without much ado I point my skis downhill and off they go, dragging me with them. After only a couple of messy parallel turns I’ve remembered my technique and squeal like a pig having its tail pulled off.

“Weeeeeeeeeeeee!Wooooooooooooooooooo! This is Amayyyyyyyzing!” My confidence builds because the snow feels so soft, so fluffy, so yielding and so safe under my skis as I slide my way down the slope turning right, then left, then right, all the while gathering speed, all the while being very vocal in my excitement. Then, without warning, I suddenly realise that I’m travelling so fast that I can’t slow myself down. I really try to make each turn count, to make a turn make me slow, but it doesn’t seem to be working because my skis have run away with me. I’m out of control, going faster and faster and faster and faster and there’s nothing I can do. I can see this obstacle in my way which I’m not sure is animate or inanimate so I hedge my bets because I know I can’t dodge it and I yell with all my might in my very best French. “Attention! Attention!” But it’s too little too late because whatever it is just plain hasn’t heard me and it’s THUD, CRASH, BANG, WALLOP!

*****

I’m sprawled face down over a pair of ski boots. I don’t yet know to whom they belong. All I do know is they’re definitely not mine. I turn my right cheek, panning from the boot upwards, until I find myself staring at this dark, Mediterranean gypsy with the most incredible pair of deep, cornflower blue eyes that I have ever seen. I double blink, to make sure I’m not hallucinating. The gypsy smiles, eyes twinkling, sunglasses perched on top of his head. “Ah, SFS est arrivé. Bonjour. Tu aimes manger la neige?”