Catherine Narracott
The Wife
My skis whisper as we plummet down an avenue of firs, the trees running together in a blackish blur.
The air is a freezing rush against my face and the snow a cold embrace: the powder knee-high and yet almost weightless.
This must be the closest a person can come to flying.
I could shout with joy. In the winters we skied every single day at the Swiss school – I loved the freedom of those afternoons on the mountain.
And hours upon hours of ballet lessons taught me excellent balance and control.
We pass the tall woman with dark-gold hair, the elderly ladies’ companion. She is an excellent skier, fluid and economical, not at all showy – somehow exactly as one might expect from the look of her.
As we stop at the top of a ridge, my husband turns to me. ‘Darling,’ he says, solicitously, ‘you might want to try using a bit more weight in the downhill leg in your half-christie.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Thank you. I’ll try that next time. You’re right, of course.’
He isn’t. I know that would overbalance the whole thing. I never fall and I can match him turn for turn. Actually, I’m the better skier by some distance. He leans back, and he is too showy with his turns. But of course I would never tell him.
We continue downwards. And then … I’m not quite sure what comes over me but suddenly I find myself shifting my skis to a near-vertical line and overtaking my husband.
The whole slope is open and empty in front of me.
The speed and the freedom of it! I can hear Anthony calling to me but for several glorious arcing turns I pretend that I can’t hear him.
Then I realise I am being foolish and sweep to a stop.
‘For God’s sake, Catherine,’ he says, as he joins me, more crossly now and breathing hard because I think he’s been trying to keep up with me.
‘You’re totally out of control. You should stay behind me.
This slope is steep, and there are some nasty bumps.
You don’t want to get caught out and take a tumble. ’
‘Of course, darling,’ I say. ‘You’re absolutely right.’
This is what he wants, so of course he will get it.
I have been trained to be the perfect partner in life, after all.
That’s what finishing school is, really.
A polishing of a raw green girl (though I was never very raw and green – Mummy saw to that) in plaits and pleats into the refined form of A Society Wife.
I know the right forms of address for all persons of importance; I know the topics of conversation to cover with a bishop and a duke and even a member of the Royal Family.
I know how to run a household of tens of staff (even if we can’t actually afford them these days).
Most importantly of all, I know to follow my husband’s lead in all things.
I know what happens if we don’t both do what he wants.
I let him guide me down the rest of this slope and, on the next, teach me how to approach the moguls (though I long ago learned to turn on instinct – when the mogul “tells” you to – and not always between them, as he does, which inevitably leads to one getting further and further out of control).
We stop at a little refreshment kiosk halfway down: a sweet little structure shaped like a miniature chalet with deckchairs and wooden tables arranged in the snow outside.
Several of the other Grand Alpine guests are there: I see the elderly ladies’ companion, a couple of the nuns who seem to ski as well as anyone else here, and – I experience a sudden jolt of alarm – the young man with the glasses who bothered us yesterday, a red bobble hat covering his sandy hair.
Oh no. I don’t tell Anthony I’ve spotted him, lest he react badly.
My husband is currently looking at a map of the area that he has unfolded on his lap, studying it hard, no doubt plotting the rest of our skiing itinerary. We order two hot chocolates.
‘Hasn’t been near any nuts, has it?’ he asks the member of hotel staff behind the counter. ‘And a tot of rum in it, please. Little wartime trick,’ he tells me. ‘Keeps the wolves from the door.’ He peers at me. ‘You still look half asleep! Did you take one of your little pills?’
I nod. I have many little pills that all do different things.
A year ago, Anthony made an appointment for me with a very discreet Harley Street doctor.
The one all of the society wives go to, apparently – though you would never know it.
I was having some trouble coping, I suppose you might say.
He gave me some pills for my low blood pressure (I get very dizzy if I stand up too fast).
Also for sleeping, because I’m not very good at that.
Then her pills for the morning – to counteract the drowsiness from the night pills ? and some more pills for the afternoon to counterbalance the morning pills and calm me down.
It felt lovely and easy for a while, like having a little nap in the passenger seat and letting someone else do the driving.
There really isn’t a condition my doctor won’t prescribe for.
Sometimes, when I’ve been a little bored, I’ve wondered about inventing some, just to see what he comes up with.
I take out the little silver box with the little ‘wake-me-uppers’ in, pop one into my mouth and wash it down with a few sips of hot chocolate. I leave the rest to grow a rubbery skin.
We sit for a while looking at the view of the peaks opposite – still majestic but more forbidding, without the same covering of trees.
I cast about for interesting titbits of conversation.
I tell him all about the galleries I visited in London a couple of weeks ago.
For a long time, I rather wanted to pursue painting myself – I know I have a good eye for colour and form.
But Mummy says proper women painters are all ‘sapphic hairy types who stink of turpentine’ and I should confine myself to ‘the odd watercolour’.
As I walked through the rooms of Impressionist landscapes, I made notes in my little Asprey notebook – I checked them this morning to remind myself. Be culturally informed but never intellectual, sprinkle knowledge but never flood.
‘Christ,’ Anthony says, his gaze wandering over my shoulder. ‘Give me the Old Masters any day. Is that what you do after you go to the clinic, then? Moon about over some artists who didn’t know how to hold a paintbrush properly?’
Even though he’s wearing a pair of dark glasses for the snow glare I sense his eyes aren’t on me.
While he stubs out his cigarette, I look behind me and see a figure in a white mink jacket, cropped at the hip, and salopettes so outrageously tight one wonders at the engineering of the seams, particularly over the hips and seat.
She must have been hidden from us before, reclined in one of the deckchairs.
Her lips are painted the same ladybird red as the gondola making its ascent above the slopes.
Her candyfloss platinum hair seems a little dirty against the pure white of her fur and the fresh snow.
Her shapely bottom protrudes as she fastens her skis to her boots.
‘Oh!’ I say. ‘Darling: there’s that woman again. The actress. Sylvia Sinclair.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Is it?’ Funny thing, he is barely glancing at her now, where before he was looking intently.
‘What a very odd outfit,’ I say. ‘To wear for sport. Still,’ – I say this as she begins to move – ‘I suppose you could hardly call what she is doing sport.’ She is inching forward in a kind of crouch, knees together, her behind thrust out, arms crooked and back rounded.
Hardly the glamorous silver screen siren the world knows.
‘You have to wonder,’ I say, ‘how she actually managed to get up here in the first place, if that’s how she skis. It’s so steep, above us and—’
‘Can we stop talking about that bloody woman!’ He cuts me off, his voice sharp. Then he seems to catch himself, softens and says, ‘I don’t want to blather on about some Hollywood floozy. It’s a – a pleasure – to have this time alone together. I’m so glad we arranged this little holiday.’
‘Well, I think I rather invited myself,’ I say.
‘Nonsense!’ he says, with a chuckle. ‘I insisted you came!’
This isn’t true and I have no doubt that he knows it, too.
In fact, I recall that when I first suggested I accompany his skiing trip he seemed distinctly put out.
But I suppose all married couples have these little pretences, these little white lies they tell one another – and most of the time they signify nothing.
There is a sudden commotion a few yards away: a large cloud of powdered snow and a tirade of unsavoury and very unladylike curses as Sylvia Sinclair clatters to the ground, skis crossed. Every skier at the kiosk is watching her – every skier except my husband.
‘Oh darling, look, she’s fallen over! Should we help her? We’re the nearest …’
‘No!’ he exclaims, then clearly realises he has been too abrupt. ‘She shouldn’t be here in the first place if she can’t ski.’
‘Darling,’ I say, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Not so loud! She’ll be able to hear you.’
‘I don’t care!’ he almost shouts. ‘Perhaps it would be better if she did. Frankly it was utterly stupid of her to come. She is making an embarrassment of herself! She shouldn’t be relying on others for help. It is entirely irresponsible.’ This time, it seems, he almost wants her to hear.
‘Darling,’ I say. ‘You’re … you’re not being very kind.’ I for one can’t just stand here and watch! I stumble over to her through the snow and offer a hand. She takes a hold of it.
I pull her to her feet with difficulty: she weighs a good deal more than me. As I do I catch a scent: bold, blowsy floral notes over-laced with a frankincense smokiness.
Funny thing. It isn’t the first time I’ve smelled it.
‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ she says. Her voice, breathy. The lazy American drawl. I think of the voice on the end of the phone that day in my husband’s London apartment. The breathy little-girlishness of it.
The London apartment: I never stayed there but the tedium and quiet of the countryside had got to me. I’d come up to do some shopping in the sales while Anthony was at Chequers with the PM and at the last minute I borrowed the keys from his desk drawer, in case I missed the last train home.
The phone had rung. I can’t tell you what it was that made me answer it. I’d never pick up at home: it’s always been the work of our housekeeper, Mrs Grady … until a couple of weeks ago when we let her go. There is nothing more bourgeois than answering one’s own phone.
The voice on the other end – breathy, a little girlish but at the same time all sex – asking if my husband was at home. ‘Is Tony in?’ she asked. I’m not even allowed to call him Tony. And then, ‘Who’s there?’
I drop her hand. Then I look over at my husband.
He has begun putting his skis back on, facing in the opposite direction, as though nothing at all were happening just a few yards behind him.
It would be far less telling for him to have turned and watched the interaction.
After a moment, he actually pushes off and continues down the slope without me.
He could give no clearer sign of a guilty conscience.