Hammond Innes - The Lonely Skier

‘What’s he gibbering about?’ Joe asked. And when I told him, his cheeks began to quiver with anger. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Tell the oaf to take his head out of that ridiculous hatch and come out here where my toe can get acquainted with the seat of his pants. I’d be delighted to have an excuse to go back to that nice comfortable hotel. But I’m damned if I go down that slittovia again. Once is quite enough for one day.’

I opened the door that framed Aide’s face and he came out, looking scared. I told him that my friend and I were getting angry. He began to gabble Italian at us again. ‘Oh, to hell with it!’ Joe exclaimed. ‘Let’s have a look at the rooms. There should be six and I was told only two were occupied.’

I nodded and we tramped up the uncarpeted stairs, Aldo following with a flood of Italian. At the top was a long corridor. The rooms were little match-board cubicles leading off it. The first door I opened revealed an empty room. I turned to Aldo. He spread his arms and drew down the corners of his mouth. The next door I opened showed a room with the bed unmade and clothes strewn around. The third room was actually occupied. Aldo had rushed to prevent my opening it, but Joe had swept him aside. A short, neat little man with long, sleek hair turning grey at the temples and a face that looked like a piece of dark crinkled rubber stood facing the door as I opened it. He was wildly overdressed for a man living in the Col da Varda hut. He wore a natty near-dun-coloured suiting, a blue silk shirt and a yellow tie with red yachts sailing across it. He held a comb in his left hand and his attitude was curiously defensive. ‘You are looking for me?’ he asked in almost perfect English.

I hastened to explain. Aldo ducked beneath Joe’s arm and became voluble. It was a duet in English and Italian. The occupant of the room cut Aldo short with a gesture of annoyance. ‘My name is Stefan Valdini,’ he said. ‘This man is a fool,’ he added, pointing to Aldo. ‘He tries to save himself work by discouraging people from staying here. He is a lazy dog.’ He had a soft purring voice that was a shade better than suave. ‘Cretino!’ He flung the offensive term mildly at Aldo as though it were common usage. ‘There are four rooms vacant. Give the English the two end ones.’

I had expected Aldo to become angry — you can call an Italian a bastard and give the crudest and most colourful description of his entire family and he will do no more than grin, but call him ‘cretino’ and he usually becomes speechless with rage. But Aldo only grinned slavishly and said, ‘Si, si, Signer Valdini — pronto.’

So we found ourselves ushered into the two end cubicles. The window of Joe’s room looked straight down the trackway of the slittovia. Mine, however, faced south across the belvedere. I could only see the slittovia by leaning out and getting the drips from the overhanging snow down my neck. It was a grand view. The whole hillside of pines fell away, rank on rank of pointed treetops, to the valley. And to the right, above me, the great bastions of Monte Cristallo towered cold and forbidding even in the sunlight. ‘Rum place, Neil.’ Joe Wesson’s bulk filled the narrow doorway. ‘Who was the little man who looked like a pimp for a high-class bordello’) Behaved as though he owned the place.’

‘Don’t know,’ I said. I was busy unpacking my things and my mind was thinking what a place it was for the setting of a skiing film. ‘Oldest inhabitant, perhaps — though he certainly looked as though he’d be more at home in a night club.’

‘Well, now we’re in we may as well have a drink to celebrate,’ Joe muttered. ‘I’ll be at the bar. I’m going to try some of that red biddy they call grappa.’

The first sleigh-load of skiers arrived whilst I was still unpacking. They were a colourful crowd, sunburned and brightly clad. They thronged the belvedere, lounging in the warm sun, drinking out of tall glasses. They were talking happily in several languages. I watched them, fascinated, as in groups of two or three, or alone, they put on their skis and swooped out of sight down the slalom run to Tre Croci or disappeared into the dark firs, whooping ‘Liberal’ as they took the gentler track back to Cortina. Anna, a half-Italian, half-Austrian waitress, flirted in and out among the tables with trays laden with salami and eggs and ravioli. She had big laughing eyes and there was a quick smile and better service for the men who had no women with them. What a scene for Technicolor! The colours stood out so startlingly against the black and white background.

The novelty of the setting was a spur to my determination to write something that Engles would accept. If I couldn’t write a script here, I knew I should never be able to write one. I was still planning the script in my mind as I went down to join Joe at the bar.

At the bottom of the stairs, I came upon a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who was having a heated argument with Aldo. He had long, very thick-growing hair, strangely shot with.grey. His face was deeply tanned, except where the white of a scar showed against the bulge of his jaw muscles. He was wearing an all-white ski suit with a yellow scarf round his neck. I realised what the trouble was immediately. ‘Have you booked a room here?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This man is either a fool or he has given the room to somebody else and doesn’t want to admit it.’

‘I’ve just had the same trouble,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t want visitors. He just doesn’t. But there are two rooms vacant at the moment. There’s nobody in the one at the top of the stairs, so I should go up and stake your claim.’

‘I will. Many thanks.’ He gave me a lazy smile and took his things up the stairs. Aldo gave a shrug and dropped the corners of his mouth. Then he followed on.

Joe and I spent the remainder of the morning sitting out in the sunshine drinking cognac and discussing the shots Engles would expect. The multi-coloured plumage of the skiers and the babel of tongues that ranged from the tinselled guttural of Austrian to the liquid flood of Italian was a background to our conversation; absorbed, but not remarked in detail. Joe was no longer disgruntled at being perched up here on the cold shoulder of an Alp. He was a cameraman now, interested only in angles and lights and setting. He was an artist who has been given a good subject. And I was doubly preoccupied — I was listening to Joe and at the same time rolling an idea for a script round my mind.

I did not notice her arrive. I don’t know how long she had been there. I just glanced up suddenly and saw her. Her head and shoulders stood out against the white backcloth of a snow-draped fir. For a second I was puzzled. I thought I knew her and yet I could not place her. Then, as I stared, she took off her dark glasses and looked straight at me, dangling them languidly between long slender brown fingers. And then I remembered and dived for my wallet and the photograph Engles had given me.

The likeness was striking. But I wasn’t sure. The photograph was old and faded, and the girl who had signed herself ‘Carla’ had shorter, sleeked-back hair. But the features looked the same. I glanced up again at the woman seated at the table on the other side of the belvedere. Her raven black hair swept up in a great wave above her high forehead and tumbled in a mass to her shoulders. The way she sat and her every movement proclaimed an almost animal consciousness of her body. She wasn’t particularly young, nor was she particularly beautiful. Her mouth, scarlet to match her ski suit, was too wide and full, and there were deep lines at the corners of her eyes. But she was exciting. She was all of a man’s baser thoughts come true. She caught my eye as I compared her with the photograph in my hand. Her glance was an idle caress, speculative and not disinterested, like the gaze of an animal that is bored and is looking for someone to play with.