Diana Glass
The Help
‘Oh, look!’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘How charming! I can’t remember the last time I saw skaters at home. Can you, Jane?’
The Grand Alpine Express is skirting a frozen lake. The skaters are bright points of colour and movement against the paleness of the scene as they flit to and fro.
‘No, my dear,’ says Miss Marple. ‘Yet for those of us who had a Victorian childhood it was such a mainstay of the winter.’
‘Diana,’ Mrs Bantry turns to me. ‘Did you check the timetable, for the trains? If we should want to come back down the mountain for anything?’
‘Yes, Mrs Bantry,’ I tell her. ‘The last one down’s at ten p.m., the last one up half an hour later. And in the morning the first one down is at eight, the first up at eight-thirty.’
‘I wonder why they run so late?’ Mrs Bantry says.
‘I suppose so that guests can visit the town for dinner,’ I say. ‘And there’s a casino – one of the only legal ones in Switzerland.’
‘Well, we shan’t need that, shall we Jane?’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘But perhaps a nice supper …’
‘I do enjoy a game of Bridge,’ Miss Marple says, thoughtfully. ‘But I would never play cards for money. It has never seemed to me something a real lady should do. Perhaps I am very old-fashioned.’
Mrs Bantry’s friend is the perfect image of a little old lady – almost too perfect, in fact – with a pile of fleecy wool in her lap and her knitting needles clicking together almost in time with the clackety-clack of the cog railway system.
Nothing puts her off her rhythm: not the juddering of the carriage or the jostling of the man’s shoulder beside her, nor the sudden change in gradient as the train begins its climb up the mountain.
‘The hotel does have its own games room,’ I say. ‘Just off the library, according to the brochure.’
‘Diana,’ Mrs Bantry tells her elderly friend, ‘is frightfully efficient and really makes life so much easier, especially now that I don’t seem to be able to hold a fact in my head for longer than a couple of minutes.’
I like Mrs Bantry, even if she does sometimes talk about me as though I’m not there. Now she turns to me: ‘How many languages is it that you speak, Diana?’
‘Three,’ I say.
‘You met one another on a train, I think?’ Miss Marple asks.
‘Yes,’ I explain. ‘I was coming down from London to visit my aunt, in Much Benham. Mrs Bantry and I began talking and she mentioned she needed someone to help get her affairs in order after—’ I pause, not quite sure how to go on.
‘After Arthur’s death,’ Mrs Bantry supplies matter-of-factly.
‘Yes,’ I say, gratefully. ‘And to help with booking some travel. I was ready to drop my secretarial work at the War Office down to a day a week, so we made a plan there and then.’
Mrs Bantry smiles approvingly. ‘You have been such a comfort to a lonely old woman these past few months, my dear. Of course, I have my four and they have made sure to visit their old mama, but they’re all so busy with their own lives!
’ She sighs, then seems to rally as she takes in the view.
‘And it was you who suggested this place, wasn’t it, Diana?
Or …’ she frowns, ‘or did I read about it in the paper? See! I’m becoming so forgetful. ’
‘I think you received a brochure, Mrs Bantry,’ I say.
‘Yes, I remember it! A glorious full-page colour thing. One wonders if they specially target widows looking to fritter away their husbands’ estates.
And they always make things seem rather better than they really are.
Though this may be the exception. Just look at it!
’ She sweeps a hand at the view through the train windows.
The carpet of fallen snow seems to glow as though lit from within.
A tiny, downy black squirrel springs from one laden fir branch to the next, showering snow.
And as we round the next bend, I catch a shiver of movement among the dark sentinel firs and three chamois, shaggy in their brown winter coats, spring gracefully away from the red metal monster that has just disturbed their peace.
The little train is really grinding its way up the mountainside now.
You can feel the weight of it being tugged effortfully up the slope as the cogs clunk into place with the teeth on the track.
There are exclamations as several travelling cases and a couple of bags begin a slow slide down the aisle.
Through the trees on the far side of the train one has glimpses of St Celeste down below: a toy town now, any signs of life lost to view.
We pass through a brief band of cloud and everything disappears for a few moments – then we are above them and I am reminded of the few times I have been in an aeroplane: that strange sense of disconnection from the world below.
A Frenchman points out an eagle soaring in graceful arcs some way beneath us.
Inside the train there’s a press of bodies, our fellow hotel guests, a moist fug of breath.
Static prickles as fur-clad shoulders rub together.
There was a slightly unseemly rush when we boarded for the windows on the side with the better views of the peaks.
The British in our group were left huffing crossly about continental sharp elbows.
I look about at our fellow travellers – our fellow guests.
The Americans appear slightly healthier and more prosperous than the rest – the lack of rationing.
The French have the best furs, the Italians the most elegant luggage.
The English, unfortunately, seem rather grey and dull.
There are even Germans. Every time they speak the old British army type across the aisle visibly bristles.
There are also some five or six groups of nuns, differentiated by slight differences in their robes: navy, black, pale blue.
I look back at the two elderly women and experience a small shock as I realise that Miss Marple is watching me with those china-blue eyes, her head tilted slightly to one side.
I smile, politely, wait for her to glance away.
She doesn’t, apparently entirely unembarrassed to have been caught out in her curiosity.
I can’t help wondering what she sees. Is she looking at me with a kind of fellow feeling?
Another spare woman. The four or so decades that separate our ages don’t signify.
We are just as useful (or useless) to society.
Neither of us is productive – of children or anything else.
We are the companions. The left-behind women.
Mrs Bantry, as a married woman – albeit recently widowed – is of a different register.
She carries with her an authority that we will never achieve.
I like helping Mrs Bantry, though. It gives me a sense of purpose and also camaraderie – a definite improvement on some of the duller work in the War Office.
‘That’s a beautiful necklace, dear.’
I take a moment to realise that Miss Marple is speaking to me, looking over her knitting needles.
‘Thank you.’
‘May I … ?’
‘Oh, of course.’ I lift it out of the neck of my shirt to show her the ring on its chain.
‘Silver,’ she says, almost like a jeweller appraising it, ‘two hearts and seven garnets. How charming.’
‘Thank you.’ She lets go and I sit back, rather relieved when Mrs Bantry turns to Miss Marple and says, ‘What would you like to do while we’re here, Jane?’
‘I think I shall mainly enjoy sitting inside and looking out at the mountains,’ Miss Marple says. ‘I feel their freezing majesty can be best appreciated from a position of warmth and comfort. Also, there is my rheumatism. I’ve brought my bird-watching binoculars, too.’
‘But Jane,’ Mrs Bantry says, ‘it’s wintertime! Surely there won’t be any birds worth watching.’
‘Oh,’ says Miss Marple, widening her faded blue eyes just a little, ‘but do you know, I’m sure that I will find there is enough to look at. There usually is. Certainly, that is the case in St Mary Mead.’
‘Jane,’ Mrs Bantry says, indulgently, ‘somehow you manage to look the very picture of innocence saying that. And yet I’m sure you are being rather devious.’
Miss Marple pats the pile of fleecy wool in her lap as though it were a small patient dog. ‘But not at all, Dolly. Not at all.’
‘What is that you’re making, dear?’
‘This? Oh, it’s an Alpine sweater for dear Raymond.
I think it will suit him so well, if he can be persuaded to wear it: he does like to dress in such a modern way.
Do you know, I think this will be one of the first times in recent years when I have been on a little holiday without Raymond’s patronage.
He is so generous. But at the same time, one can feel somewhat …
beholden. Oh, perhaps that isn’t the right word.
But he does like to express – opinions on where I travel, that sort of thing.
’ And then, hurriedly, ‘Only, you know, because he is so protective.’
‘Well, I forbid you to feel beholden to me,’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘We have dear old Gossington Hall to thank, really – may its new owners treat it well.’
The train lets out a long, mournful howl as it enters the mountain tunnel, the staccato of the cog mechanism sounding now like a gigantic sewing machine, echoing off the rock. I read that they had to bore the track into the rock here because the mountain is completely sheer outside.
The train feels warmer, even a little stifling, as the outside world recedes. And suddenly the window has become a black mirror. My face is reflected back at me: paler, stranger, hollows where the eyes should be. A death’s head. I turn away.
And then we are out of the tunnel again.
My ears pop from the altitude. The world below us is completely lost to view beneath a swirling layer of cloud.
The snowpack is visibly thicker up here, the branches of the trees, too, laden with snow unlike the ones below.
We have our first sighting of the hotel between them: like glimpses snatched through a torn white curtain.
Waiting for us – which only adds to the sense of otherworldliness – are several horse-drawn sledges, the horses tossing their heads with a cascade of sleigh bells, and huffing white steaming breaths into the frigid air.
Each one is helmed by a driver in red and gold livery, gold-braided pillboxes atop their heads.
‘Jane,’ Mrs Bantry cries, in delight. ‘Aren’t you glad we’ve come?’
‘Yes,’ Miss Marple says, ‘but I’d almost rather they let us walk. It’s not such a great distance. Horses, you know. I do wonder if we put too much trust in such giant, unruly beasts …’
But she is ushered firmly into the back seat of the sleigh by another liveried member of staff with a red, frost-nipped nose.
‘We have had new snow up here, Madame,’ he informs her, handing her a thick rug to place over her knees.
‘It is very thick, difficult for walking. And be especially careful after dark too … it turns so quickly to ice.’
We are whisked along an avenue of firs, the snow whispering beneath the runners of the sleigh, faces tight with cold in the freezing air.
Then the trees recede and the Grand Alpine stands majestic in front of us, blazing out in all its glory, emanating strains of music and the voices of unseen guests.
I take in the fairy-tale gothic towers at either end of the building, the painted red shutters, the hotel’s name picked out in ornate gold letters that stand on proud stilts above the central part of the leaded roof.
The light pours rose gold from every window: a warm and welcoming contrast from the freezing grey wilderness without.
Two liveried footmen stand either side of a revolving door, ready with gold luggage carts.
A bustling terrace is just visible around the corner, facing the majesty of the peaks above.
I made sure to read the brochure from cover to cover so I would have a working knowledge of the place from the outset.
There is the famous red gondola, tracking its way up the mountain, also a couple of chair and button lifts; the very latest technology and a sharp contrast to the romantic timelessness of the sleighs.
The serpentine groove twisting down the mountainside must be the infamous Verglas toboggan run.
Scattered across the broad white slopes are tiny, coloured dots – the skiers – like hundreds-and-thousands shaken onto the cream top of a trifle.
As they step down from the sleighs each guest is handed a small flask of hot chocolate by a red-and-gold-uniformed member of staff.
The chocolate is dark and glossy, so thick it hardly moves when you tilt the cup, and delicately spiced with cinnamon.
I can’t remember ever having tasted anything as rich as this: certainly not since the war.
‘Oh,’ Mrs Bantry says, in an awed voice, after taking a sip.
‘It makes you question whether the sad affair we have in England really is chocolate. No wonder it was booked up every weekend besides this one!’ She pulls a face.
‘Though I’m not sure Arthur would approve of all this.
He was very upset with the Swiss for their neutrality.
And then … well, he really didn’t like spending money.
I’m sure he would see this all as rather profligate.
But I live in such a small way now that he’s gone.
I’m not extravagant in anything else. And with his death …
it was a reminder of how very fleeting our time is.
Of all the things one hasn’t done, you know—’
She halts at the sound of a far-off mechanical howl. I turn and can just make out the red gleam of the distant train, gathering pace as it enters the trees, then disappearing out of sight as it begins its journey back down the mountain.
Mrs Bantry says, ‘It does make one feel rather – odd. To know that now the train has gone we’re rather marooned up here.
I am glad to be here with you, Jane. Your company is always a comfort.
And you, Diana, you are so very capable.
’ Then she frowns. ‘Listen to me! How melodramatic I sound. But once one has had the experience of waking up to a body in one’s own library, one never really loses the sense that just about anything might happen. ’