Hammond Innes - The Lonely Skier

He glared at me. But he made no retort and followed Aldo and the cognac out on to the belvedere. When Aldo returned, he went behind the bar and produced a cable envelope. ‘For you, signore,’ he said, handing it across to me.

‘When did this come?’ I asked him in Italian.

This morning, signore. Just before you left. Emilio brought it up when he came to fetch you this morning.’

‘Then why the hell didn’t you give it to me?’ I asked angrily. ‘Can’t you see it’s a cable and therefore important?’ He smiled sheepishly and spread his hands in the inevitable gesture that he used to explain all his shortcomings.

I ripped open the envelope. It was from Engles and read: Presume attending auction. Cable fullest report Mancini unbuy. Engles.

I folded the cable and put it in my pocket. He wanted a cabled report if Mancini was not the buyer. Had he expected there to be an unknown buyer at the auction? What difference could it make to him who bought Col da Varda? However, he wanted the information by cable and that meant going down to Cortina again. I decided to give myself a try-out on skis. I hadn’t done any skiing since I had gone up to Tolmina from Rome, and that had been two years ago. I was just going to get my ski things when I remembered a question that I wanted to put to Aldo. It had been in my mind ever since Valdini had begun to bid at the auction.

‘You remember you did not want to let us have rooms here?’ I said to him in Italian. ‘That was because Signor Valdini had instructed you to turn visitors away, wasn’t it?’

He looked helplessly towards the belvedere. He was afraid to answer. But it was clear that I was right. ‘Now importante,’ I said. It looked as though Valdini and the Contessa had planned to close the place down as soon as the purchase had been completed. Why?

I went up to my room and got my things. I typed out my reply to Engles’ cable. It read: Auction sensation. Sold unknown purchaser operating Venice lawyer. Valdini for Carla outbid Mancini two million. Unknown outbid Valdini four million. Blair.

When I got downstairs again the Contessa was alone in the bar. As I made for the door, she suddenly called out,’ Mr Blair!’

I turned. She was leaning against the bar. Her eyes were inviting and her wide mouth was made attractive by a little smile that lifted the corners of it. ‘Come and have a drink with me,’ she suggested. ‘I do not like drinking by myself. Besides, I wish to talk to you. I would like to know more about my photograph.’

I felt ill-at-ease. She was hard and hard women frighten me. Besides, how was I to explain how that photograph came into my possession? ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I have to go down to Cortina.’ My voice sounded cold and unfriendly.

The corners of her mouth drooped in mock disappointment and there was a hint of laughter in her dark eyes. She knocked back her drink and came towards me. Her ski boots made hardly a sound on the bare boards. She could have danced in them. ‘You shall not escape me so easily,’ she said, and with a ripple of laughter, she tucked her slim brown hand under my arm. ‘I too must go back to Cortina. You will not refuse to escort me?’ She did not wait for an answer, but exclaimed, ‘Oh — why are you English so stiff? You do not laugh. You are not gay. You are afraid of women. You are so reserved and so damned dignified.’ She laughed. ‘But you are nice. You have — how shall I say? — an air. And it is nice, your air. Now, you will escort me to Cortina — yes?’ She had her head cocked on one side and there was an impish gleam in her eyes that was quite disturbing. ‘Please do not look so serious, Mr Blair. I will not seduce you on the way down.’ She sighed. ‘Once — yes. But now — one gets old, you know.’ She shrugged her shoulders and walked across to her skis.

‘I am afraid it will be a question of you escorting me, Contessa,’ I apologised as I fixed my skis. ‘It is two years since I did any skiing.’

‘Do not worry,’ she said. ‘It will come back. And Cortina is not a difficult run. You need to do a lot of stemming on the first part. After that it is a straight run. Are you ready?’ She was standing poised on the slope that led into the fir woods.

My feet felt very clumsy. I remembered what Joe had said that morning about his skis feeling like a couple of canoes. That is just what mine felt like. I wished I had not told her that I was going into Cortina. ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ I said, and slithered across the belvedere to the start of the run.

She laid a slim, white-gloved hand on my arm. Her mood changed. ‘I think we are going to become good friends,’ she said. ‘I shall call you Neil. It is such a nice name. And you had better call me — Carla.’ She gave me a quick glance to see that the point had registered and then, with a smile and a flash of sticks, she plunged down into the dark firs. Whilst I was still hesitating on the brink of the run, her cry of ‘liberal’ floated back to me from the woods, telling me that already she had reached the point where the ski track from Monte Cristallo joins the Col da Varda-Cortina run.

I thrust myself forward with my sticks, saw my ski points tilt on to the slope and then I was hurtling through the cold air, my skis biting deeply on the frozen surface of the run. I took it slowly, snow-ploughing on the steeper slopes so that my ankles ached and stemming hard on the bends. The track was not really steep. But to my unaccustomed skis, it seemed precipitous as it wound down through the black trunks of the firs. I had no time to think about the Contessa’s reason for that sudden admission of identity. Brain and muscle were alike concentrated on getting down the run.

Halfway down to the road I found the Contessa waiting for me in a patch of sunlight. She looked a ghostly figure in her white ski suit, which was cream-coloured against the purer white of the snow. I nerved myself for a half-Christi and it came off. I stopped dead beside her in a flurry of ice-crisp snow. A little wobbly it was true, but still I had done it and it takes quite a bit of nerve to try it, if you haven’t been on skis for a long time and aren’t particularly good anyway.

‘Bravo!’ she applauded. She had a cigarette in her mouth and was holding the packet out to me.

I took one. I was feeling very pleased with myself. I had been trying to show off and her quietly voiced ‘bravo!’ gave me immense satisfaction. My hand was trembling with the nervous excitement of the effort as I lit her cigarette.

There was a short silence between us. It was not an embarrassed silence. It was more the silence of two people thinking out what line they are going to take. It was very quiet in the woods and the sun was warm. My body glowed and tingled. The cigarette was Turkish and the scent of it was an exotic intrusion in that solitude of snow and fir. My brain was working fast. I knew what she was going to ask. That was why she had stopped for a smoke. And I had to think of some natural explanation of how I had come by that photograph. How had Engles got hold of it? I glanced at her. She was watching me covertly through a veil of smoke. She was expecting me to say something. I nerved myself to break the silence between us. ‘So that was your photograph?’ I said, hoping that my voice did not sound nervous.

She drew deeply at her cigarette. ‘Yes,’ she said and her voice was pitched strangely low. ‘You were quite right. I was once called Carla Rometta.’ She hesitated I then. I waited and at length she said, ‘You seem to know more about my affairs than I like in a stranger. For we have not met before, you know.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We have not met before.’

‘You lied to me.’

‘I had to open the conversation somehow.’