Diana Glass
The Help
For a moment I stare at the motionless figure lying face-down on the train platform, becoming gradually aware of the sound of my own panicky breathing in the silence of the morning.
Just as I begin to wonder if he’s ever going to move again, I see Bruno Crane stir, then groan.
He clambers unsteadily to his knees, unfolding with all the grace of a broken umbrella, his eyes bleary, nose just beginning to bleed from the impact of the fall.
As he staggers to his full height he pitches forward and takes hold of one of my shoulders to steady himself; I lurch away from him, hardly able to contain my disgust. As though he’s unable to support the weight of his upper half without help he folds forward at the waist and vomits clear liquid onto the snow-covered platform.
A small pause, a belch … and then he vomits again.
Finally, he straightens, wiping his mouth.
I should get on the train. I should just leave him here, now I know he’s not dead. But for a moment I just stand here, transfixed.
The driver’s cabin is opening, evidently the man has seen the commotion from the train. It’s not going anywhere for the time being. I’m caught between the urge to escape into the carriage and a kind of voyeuristic fascination.
Now he finds his voice and is pathetically apologetic.
‘Missed the last train back up from town. Had to spend the night in the Casino. I suppose there are worse places to find oneself.’ He attempts a smile, but in a horrible contrast his eyes are those of a badly wounded animal.
He has the look of a man who has spent the night, Prometheus-like, having his liver pecked out. I could almost pity him.
I board the train back down the mountain to the town. Returning to ground level feels a little like re-entering the real world once more, after leaving some enchanted kingdom. It feels slightly easier to breathe, and I don’t think that is just the altitude.
I find an odd selection of shops: one selling wooden cuckoo clocks, several selling religious ornaments, a couple selling hats, gloves, and slippers, made from the different pelts of mountain animals, and one selling – improbably – clothing for maids and kitchen staff; though perhaps it’s not all that odd, considering the concentration of hotels opening in these parts.
Unfortunately for Mrs Bantry, though, no shops selling tea, Darjeeling or otherwise.
I catch sight of a couple of guests from the hotel; we nod to each other like members of a secret society. I even spy the actress, trying on a fur hat as the owner of the shop wrestles with her Irish wolfhound.
Back up at the hotel once more I find Mrs Bantry sitting with Miss Marple on the terrace behind the hotel, drinking steaming, white-frothed coffees. I hand Mrs Bantry yesterday’s papers (the most recent I could find in English) and apologise for returning without the asked-for Darjeeling.
‘Oh, not to worry,’ she says. ‘I’ll simply spend the whole week drinking these, which the nice young man on ice skates there,’ she indicates one of the gliding waiters, ‘tells me is called a “cappuccino”, after the Capuchin monks. Speaking of the clergy, look over there! Can it be? Yes. Nuns! Skiing nuns.’
There they are, descending the slope above us: five, no, six nuns, black shapes looking for all the world like giant crows swooping down the mountainside.
‘One doesn’t think of nuns skiing,’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘I suppose there is no reason why they shouldn’t. I wonder what they’re all doing.’
‘They’re returning from Terce.’ This is spoken – rather pompously – by the purple-faced, grey-whiskered old army type who threw open the window in the library last night.
‘They always do it at the statue of the Virgin up there. Have to go up on skins because the gondola isn’t open until ten past nine.
Surprisingly athletic! I say, are you all English?
’ He gives us a little salute. ‘Colonel Chapman, very pleased to meet you all.’
‘Terce?’ Mrs Bantry asks.
‘The third hour of prayer, dear,’ Miss Marple says. ‘Usually about nine o’clock, I think.’ And then, by way of explanation, ‘I grew up in a cathedral close, you know.’
‘Yes,’ Colonel Chapman says, looking a little annoyed at being unable to supply the explanation himself.
But he makes up for it by saying: ‘Here it’s the most important hour of prayer, because it was around then, they say, that the vision of the Virgin appeared on the mountain to some goatherds.
They observe Terce at the statue up there. ’
He points and about halfway up I can just make out a silver form stationed atop one of the rocks, reflecting the morning sunlight.
A little while later, at Mrs Bantry’s insistence – ‘Please, go, Diana! I shan’t need you for hours.
I’ll be happy here in the sun with Lord Peter Wimsey …
oh, though perhaps you could book me one of the therapies in the spa first?
’ – I borrow some skis from the hotel and take the gondola up the mountain.
My fellow travellers are a middle-aged couple and a man around my own age.
I recognise him as the man with the prematurely silver hair from the terrace yesterday.
It takes a little getting used to, trusting in this metal box suspended so high above the white slopes and the bristled tops of the few pines that have managed to grow above the main tree line.
They didn’t have anything like this in Scotland, where I learned to ski in the late Thirties: there, whatever you wanted to ski down you had to have climbed yourself.
I try not to think about how insubstantial the coupling mechanism looked compared to the cabin itself.
I’m not the only one: the man in the couple next to me makes nervous little whimpers at every sway.
His wife seems to be counting down the stanchions until we reach the top in order to keep him calm.
From up here, in the mid-morning sunlight, I can make out the brightly coloured forms of skiers floating down the white slopes like confetti.
I feel a thrill of adrenaline at the thought of joining them.
Will I remember how to do it? Will I remember how to be the version of myself who would think nothing of throwing herself head-first at danger?
Now I can make out the upper reaches of the glacier too – the parts that are hidden from the hotel by the mountainside.
There I can just make out a small dark shape that seems to cling to one of the rock flanks of the glacier.
I wish I had binoculars. I take out my camera and look through the viewfinder, which offers me some magnification.
A kind of mountain hut, I think, or climber’s refuge.
A sudden swing of the gondola sends me careering forwards; my skis falling with a clatter. I seem to be moments away from crashing to the metal floor of the gondola myself when I’m caught from behind.
‘Are you all right?’
I turn to see my rescuer – it’s the man with the silver hair. His eyes are a curiously dark blue, almost navy. He wears a red patterned Alpine sweater beneath a sheepskin jacket. His accent is unplaceable – it could be French or French-speaking Swiss.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Thank you. I was mainly worried about my camera. But we’re both in one piece.’
He smiles at me. ‘I’m glad to hear it. You don’t want to fall before you’ve even got to the snow.’ He takes out a gloved hand. ‘Christophe.’
I take it. ‘Diana.’
‘Enchanté. You too are staying at the Grand Alpine alone?’
‘I’m here with my employer. She’s kindly given me the morning to ski.’
‘Well, enjoy it today.’ He points. ‘You see that strange light on the horizon there, towards Italy? Almost purple?’
‘Yes,’ I say, peering. It is an odd colour … the mauve of a fresh bruise.
‘That means snow – and a lot of it. Soon, perhaps tomorrow.’
‘One doesn’t think of snow being bad for skiing!’
He shrugs. ‘It is if you can’t see beyond your ski tips. Or you can’t move for fear of being buried by an avalanche. In the past the mountain people – my people – would see a light like that and know to stay indoors.’