Diana Glass
The Help
As instructed, I lie down on my front on the small leather-padded platform of the sled.
My face is a few centimetres from the ice.
I can feel the cold breath of it on my cheeks.
It is hard as stone beneath the rakes of my toecaps.
I take a shaky breath. The nerves are getting to me now.
Skiing, upright and with some degree of control, is one matter …
I’m not sure I had quite appreciated what it would feel like, readying myself to hurtle down a mountain head-first.
What am I doing?
I think of Mrs Bantry’s words at the bottom … I’m not sure I am up to it, actually. But then some rebel impulse moves me to push off, before I can change my mind.
The bone-shaking, terrifying descent begins.
The ice is a deafening roar, even through the protective shell of my helmet.
Flurries of loose snow fly up into the lenses of my goggles, temporarily blinding me at times, although I’m not sure it is helpful to see.
Perhaps better to only feel – and pray. My knees judder against the ice and I scrabble for purchase with my splayed feet but the rakes don’t seem to make any difference to the constant acceleration.
A couple of times the sled rounds a bend and I find myself slung right up the wall of ice and sure I’m about to fly out of the side of the chute, but miraculously I stay the course.
For the finale I’m tossed off a small ledge and for what seems like an age feel the air rushing about me and beneath the sled before it slams back onto the ice, rushing faster and faster and I’m gritting my teeth, actually closing my eyes in terror …
until finally the track begins to flatten and then rise upwards.
The sled slows, slows and eventually comes to a halt on a bed of soft snow.
Afterwards, I lie panting in the snow until two of the staff run to help me off the sled.
I haven’t felt pure terror like that for a very long time and yet there was something about the fear …
something fortifying. It felt almost cauterizing, like a hot knife used to cut away rotten flesh.
It feels as though it returned me to myself.
A complete contrast to the numb grey fog I have existed in for the last few years in London.
I check the time on my watch. Just over a minute, from top to bottom.
I want to go back up. I find my skis again, shuffle my way to the button lift.
There is Bruno Crane, going up just in front of me.
I take hold of the metal with one hand and am yanked up the slope.
A couple of times I see Crane wobble and keel to the side as though about to fall, though it is difficult to tell if bad balance or alcohol is to blame.
At the top of the button, he does something strange.
Rather than turning left towards the top of the toboggan run he turns right and begins to walk across the slope towards an isolated copse of pine trees, which cluster together some way above the main tree line.
In the white expanse they look like a band of brave souls who have managed to make it further up the mountain than their peers.
A few paces from the trees he turns around as though checking to see if he is being observed. I don’t quite manage to look away in time, so he catches me watching him. Then he gives a horrible sort of leer and gestures toward his crotch. ‘Have to answer a call of nature, m’dear!’
Lucky I am so wrapped up that he likely can’t see my expression, because it’s difficult to conceal the powerful wave of dislike I feel for him in this moment.