Chapter Twelve #2
‘He would think of it as disrespectful to sing anything else,’ said Andrea. ‘He once waited many hours for Robin Gibb after a concert and told him that he only ever sang the Bee Gees, and Robin said that was a wonderful thing. So now he says it is a matter of honour.’
‘Can’t he ask Robin for permission to diversify?’ asked Lucy.
‘Robin died in 2012,’ said Andrea. ‘Please don’t mention it to Felix, he gets very upset. He tried to go to the funeral in England, but they wouldn’t let him into the church. So now we go every year in May to lay flowers on his grave.’
‘Right,’ said Lucy, as Monica raised her eyebrows to communicate how entirely unhinged she thought Felix was. ‘What if I made a request? Asked you to sing something else?’
Andrea shook her head, looking alarmed. ‘Felix does not take requests. Unless it’s a Bee Gees song. But when I’m alone, I sing Adele songs. She is a beautiful singer.’
‘Isn’t a Bee Gees-only set quite short?’ Lucy could only think of three or four Bee Gees hits, but she was hardly a superfan.
‘You would be surprised,’ said Andrea wearily, like this wasn’t the first time she’d had this conversation. ‘They had many hits, and also wrote some very famous songs for other artists. For example, they wrote “Islands in the Stream” for Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.’
‘Oh, I love that song,’ said Lucy.
‘So do I,’ said Andrea, looking slightly haunted. ‘Thankfully.’
Lucy pressed her lips together, suppressing the urge to laugh.
The realisation dawned on her that she was trapped in a mountain bar with a Swiss ladies’ man, his long-suffering wife, their lonely daughter, two Dutch gays, one of whom was possibly a minor royal, an anxious work colleague who was secretly sleeping with their boss, and a Bee Gees tribute act that didn’t take requests.
Even in her wildest dreams, she couldn’t make this shit up.
‘Shall we carry this through?’ asked Monica, picking up a tray of plates of artfully placed meat and cheese.
They gathered up as much as they could carry and transferred it to one of the tables in the bar, where the rest of the group were knocking back shots of J?germeister, their cheeks pink from the cold.
‘The weather is pretty scary,’ said Nate, his face crumpling into a grimace as he swallowed down the shot. ‘But Gunther says the best way not to think about it is to stay drunk. This stuff is disgusting.’
‘Can I get some of that?’ asked Lucy, holding out Nate’s shot glass so Gunther could fill it up with the dark, syrupy liquid.
The snow was still battering the windows, but there was now a stack of logs next to the blazing wood burner, and the room felt warm and steamy after the cool of the kitchen.
The prospect of not sobering up suddenly felt extremely appealing.
‘Be my guest,’ said Nate with a shudder.
Lucy tipped up the glass and swallowed it down, a foul mixture of cough medicine and aniseed.
She pulled a face at Alex, who was shooting a video of everyone knocking back shots and chatting animatedly in various languages, most of which she didn’t understand.
Monica started handing round plates for the buffet, and the whole scene felt like the most bizarre party Lucy had ever been to.
‘I need a caption,’ said Alex. ‘Something funny.’
‘J?ger party in the snowbound Guntherhütte,’ said Lucy. ‘If you can’t get home, you might as well get drunk.’
‘That’s perfect,’ said Alex, looking at Lucy with a new-found admiration.
‘Lucy’s a writer,’ said Nate. ‘A very good one, actually.’
Alex had already gone back to tapping frantically on his screen and wasn’t listening, but Lucy appreciated the compliment all the same. She and Nate edged back into their booth where they could watch the unfolding party.
‘How’s your day going so far?’ asked Nate, nibbling at the corner of a slice of cheese.
Lucy thought about it, processing what felt like thousands of tiny events since she’d woken up barely ten hours ago.
The bus ride, lunch, wine, playing board games with Nate, the avalanche, the phone call to her mother.
And that was before she even scratched the surface of the hundred different ways today had been about Leo.
‘Today was always going to be a weird day,’ she said, her eyes fixed firmly on her plate. ‘And usually I spend it with my parents, which is . . . difficult in a different way.’
‘Yeah,’ said Nate. ‘I bet that’s pretty tough.’
‘But I figure if Leo was here he’d be loving the drama and drinking Gunther’s bar dry. He’d also be telling me to write everything down, so I don’t forget.’
‘Isn’t that what phones are for?’ asked Nate.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ Lucy saw that Alex was videoing again from over by the door, but this time she turned away a little and ignored him.
‘We should talk about you. You haven’t told me anything about your family.
’ She glanced sideways at him, taking in the strong profile and his hair falling in loose curls over his ears, still wet from the snow.
‘Nothing much to tell,’ said Nate. ‘I have family in France, but I’ve lived in and around Bristol since I was a baby. A couple of years in Paris when I first joined LUNA, then back home.’
‘Can I join you?’ said Chantal, sliding into their booth with her plate of food before they could answer.
‘Sure.’ Lucy tried not to feel annoyed that an opportunity to find out more about Nate had been interrupted.
She rationalised that they were in a small bar with seven other people, so any private conversations would have to wait until they retired to their attic later.
In Lucy’s head it was a dark, cobwebby space accessed via a ceiling hatch and lined with itchy insulation, like the attic at her parents’ house.
But maybe in Switzerland they did things differently.
‘Du sprichst Deutsch, ja?’ said Chantal to Nate, gazing at him in wonder. Lucy’s German didn’t extend much beyond ordering two beers, but she knew enough to understand that Chantal was trying to cut her out of the conversation.
‘Yes, but Lucy doesn’t,’ said Nate firmly. ‘So I think English would be more polite.’ Chantal looked crestfallen, and Lucy resisted the childish urge to stick her tongue out.
‘Of course,’ said Chantal. ‘We learn English at school from very young here in Switzerland. What kind of work do you do?’ She addressed the question to both of them, but it was clear that Chantal was really only interested in Nate.
Lucy was too tired to compete for Nate’s affections, so she said nothing.
‘We both work for an advertising agency,’ Nate replied. ‘But Lucy is the talented one. She’s an amazing writer.’
‘Oh,’ said Chantal, looking a bit sick. ‘That’s nice.’
‘I write ads for condoms,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s hardly Dostoyevsky.’
‘Condoms?’ Chantal’s expression was a picture of innocence. ‘That’s very useful, after what you were telling us in the kitchen. I hope they give you lots of free samples.’
‘I really need to charge my phone,’ said Lucy quickly, giving Chantal a hard stare and turning around to see if Alex’s charger was still in use. He’d unplugged it and the cable was hanging loose, but before she could ask the question the lights went out and the room was plunged into darkness.