Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

“That’s okay with me,” I said. I had no desire ever to see St Moritz again.

We signed in. As usual, everybody at the reception and behind the concierge’s desk knew Fabian and seemed deeply pleased to see him. He moved from place to place in waves of welcome.

“The ladies,” the concierge said, “left a message. They are in the bar.”

“What a surprise,” Fabian said.

The bar was a large dark room, but not so dark that I couldn’t see Lily and Eunice at the other end. They were still in ski clothes and they were seated at a table with five men. There was a magnum of champagne on the table and Lily was telling a story which I couldn’t hear, but which ended with a loud burst of laughter that made the other people in the bar turn and look at their table.

I stopped at the door. I doubted that either Fabian or I would be greeted with pleasure. “They haven’t been wasting their time, have they?” I said.

“I didn’t doubt that they would.” He was undisturbed as usual.

“I think I’ll go up to my room and take a bath,” I said. “Call me when you’re ready for dinner.”

Fabian smiled slightly. “Faint heart,” he said.

“Up yours,” I said. As I left the bar, there was another burst of male laughter. Fabian strolled toward the table.

As I went up to the concierge’s desk, a group of youngsters came out into the hall from a doorway that led to a bowling alley. They were a mixed bunch of girls and boys, the boys with long hair, some of them with beards, although the oldest couldn’t have been more than seventeen. There was a high-pitched gabble of conversation in French and English. I remembered what Fabian had just said about going to school in Scranton. I felt the wrong age, in the wrong place. One of the girls, the prettiest of the lot, stared at me. She had long, uncared-for blonde hair that almost hid a tiny pink face, and she was wearing skin-tight jeans with flowers embroidered in pastel colors over babyish full hips. She pushed her hair back from her eyes in a languid, womanly gesture. She wore green eye-shadow, but no lipstick. Her gaze made me uneasy, and I turned my back to ask for the key.

“Mr Grimes …” the voice was hesitant, high-pitched, childish.

I looked around. She had let the other boys and girls in her group go out the front door and was alone now. “You are Douglas Grimes, aren’t you?” she said.

“Yes.”

“You’re the pilot.”

“Yes.” I didn’t see the need of correcting the tense.

“You don’t remember me, I suppose?”

“I’m afraid not, miss.”

“I’m Didi Wales. Dorothea. Of course it was ages ago. Three years. I had buckteeth and had braces that I wore at night.” She shook her head and the long blonde hair obscured her face. “I wouldn’t expect. Nobody remembers a thirteen-year-old brat.” She threw her hair back and smiled, showing that she no longer needed braces. Her teeth were nice, white, young-American teeth. “Stowe,” she said. “You used to ski once in a while with my mother and father.”

“Of course,” I said, remembering. “How are they? Your mother and father?”

“They’re divorced,” she said. Of course I thought, I could have bet on it. “My mother is recovering from her heartbreak in Palm Beach. With a tennis player.” The girl giggled. “And I’m stashed away here.”

“It doesn’t seem like such a hardship,” I said.

“If you only knew,” she said. “I used to like to watch you ski. You never showed off, like the rest of the boys.”

Boy, I thought. Miles Fabian was the only other person who had called me a boy since I was twenty.

“I could tell it was you,” the girl went on, “even a mile away on the slope. You used to ski with a very nice, pretty lady. Is the here with you?”

“No,” I said. “You were reading Wuthering Heights the last time I saw you.”

“Kid stuff,” she said. “You once led me down Suicide Six in a snowstorm. Do you remember?”

“Of course,” I said. Lying.

“It’s nice of you to say so. Even if you don’t. It was my accomplishment of the year. Have you just arrived?”

“Yes.” She was the first person who had recognized me since I had come to Europe and I hoped the last.

“Are you going to stay here long?” She sounded like a little girl who was afraid to stay alone at night when her parents were going out.

“A few days.”

“Do you know Gstaad?”

“This is my first time.”

“Maybe I could lead you this time.” Again there was the languid gesture of pushing her hair back.

“That’s very kind of you, Didi,” I said.

“If you’re not otherwise occupied,” she said formally.

A boy with a beard came back through the door and shouted, “Didi, are you going to stand there gabbing all night?”

She made an impatient gesture of her hand. “I’m talking to an old friend of my family. Screw off.” She smiled gently at me. “Boys these days,” she said. “They think they own you body and soul. Hairy beasts. You never saw such a spoiled bunch of kids. I fear for the world when they finally grow up.”

I tried not to smile.

“You think I’m peculiar, don’t you?” It was an accusation, sharp and clear.

“Not at all.”

“You ought to see them arriving in Geneva after holidays,” she said. “In their father’s private Lear jets. Or driving up to the school in Rolls-Royces. A royal pageant of corruption.”

This time I couldn’t help smiling.

“You think the way I talk is funny.” She shrugged. “I read a lot.”

“I know.”

“I’m an only child,” she said, “and my parents were always someplace else.”

“Have you been analyzed?” I asked.

“Not really.” She shrugged again. “Of course, they tried. I didn’t love them enough, so they thought I was neurotic. Tant pis for them. Do you speak French?”

“No,” I said. “But I guess I could figure out what tant pis meant.”

“It’s an over-rated language,” she said. “Everything rhymes with everything else. Well, I’ve enjoyed our little conversation. When I write home, whom should I send your regards to, my mother or my father?”

“Both,” I said.

“Both,” she said. “That’s a laugh. There is no both. To be continued in our next. Welcome to never-never land, Mr Grimes.” She put out her hand and I shook it. The hand was small and soft and dry. She went through the door, the embroidered flowers on her plump buttocks waving.

I shook my head, pitying her father and her mother, thinking, maybe going to school in Scranton wasn’t so bad after all. I took the elevator and went upstairs and ran a hot bath. As I soaked, I played with the idea of writing a short note to Fabian and quietly getting on the next train out of Gstaad.

At dinner that night, there were only the four of us. Lily, Eunice, Fabian, and myself. As unostentatiously as possible, I kept studying Eunice, trying to imagine what it would be like fitting across the breakfast table from her ten years from now, twenty years from now. Imagining sharing a bottle of port with her father, who hunted three times a week. Standing at the baptismal font with her, as our children were christened. Miles Fabian as godfather? Visiting our son at what would it be – Eton? All I knew about English public schools had been gleaned from books by men like Kipling, Waugh, Orwell, Connolly. I decided against Eton.

The few days of skiing had given Eunice’s complexion a pretty flush, summery colors. She was wearing a figured silk , dress that clung to her figure. Buxom today, would she be stately later? The old saw had it, as Fabian had pointed out, that it was just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one. But was it?