– Shona! Shona! Are you awake?
I didn’t answer. I wanted to get back inside the dream because the ticket collector was old and weak and I knew I could get past him, but the rapping on my door grew frantic and my dream covering shrivelled, leaving me alone in the blue light of dawn, shipwrecked on a narrow bed.
I went to the door, feeling for my sense of balance, feeling for the light switch.
Mme Durebex’ eyes went straight to the long johns. I was acutely aware of the sewn-up fly, the false bulge down there. I did a mental about face, holding onto the door handle. Mme Durebex gave me a look that suggested a rude question, then regained her composure.
– Can you meet me on the mountain at one-thirty? I have to do some shopping and Renaud has a class, so you can ski with the boys this afternoon.
Relieved, I went back into my room. I dressed in the lightest, warmest clothes I had.
It was a beautiful day. The snow was fresh, the sky was clear. I was going to ski! I would have to get out there now and practise before I met them. I wondered if I could get back my skiing legs in a few hours.
I chose a pair of skis and boots from the room of gear and went down to have them adjusted and waxed. The boots were lighter than boots used to be; the skis too, and shorter and wider.
I took the poma first. The sensation of ground sliding beneath me was soothing. I did a blue run, not trusting myself with more than a snowplough over a bump. Then I did a green run, lifting my inside ski and turning with deliberation.
Other skiers were coming out. I moved up the mountain to the red runs. I leant forward, going faster, twisting around moguls, going straight over them now, letting speed carry me through the air. I kept my skis together. I fell, I got up. I turned outside the tracks to feel the fresh pleasure of last night’s snow.
I took the cable car to the top of the mountain. I clicked into my skis and followed the curve down beneath the station. I stopped there to look.
There were so many possibilities. I could descend under the cable car, zigzag that steep and bumpy terrain, then straight through the bottleneck of fir copses concealing the next station. I could go across to the right and make my way down a series of slopes, little vignettes connected by tracks through forest. Or to the left, a vast unadorned stretch, big-dipper to the bottom, where the skiers swooped back and forth like birds of prey.
The Alps glittered in the sunlight. I could see Mont Blanc, a whitish mound beyond the purple-grey points, mottled with snow. The air was thin and pure in my lungs. I felt a rush of joy at being here, my options seemed as limitless as the landscape. I ate my chocolate, watching the skiers descend, watching them drop off the chairlift two by two diagonally below me. Laurent, Hugues and Mme Durebex were somewhere on the mountain. But I didn’t look for her lemon-yellow ski suit, I pushed off.
Two more hours of freedom.
An aerial view simplifies, and those moguls, inviting from the cable car, were treacherous to be among. I worked my way around them. I could even do the black runs, the most difficult. It was true I used to be able to wedeln, but more than a snowplough now was unexpected. I’d assumed this skill to be locked up in my childhood. I’d underestimated the permanency of things. Gradually, the moves were returning.
Once again I stood beneath the station at the top of the mountain, contemplating my choice of runs. A family came down and stopped just below me. Ksh, ksh, ksh, ksh. Two adults, two teenagers. I could tell they were a family by the way they argued over which run to take. Now it was past midday and I had done every run, and every run was iced over by the people who’d skied it before me.
What I wanted was a new path. I wanted virgin bush, just as I used to when I walked along the foreshore below my parents’ house in Sydney. A paltry strip of bush around the harbour it may have been, but I always walked through it fantasising that it was a wilderness, and that I would strike a new path. But whenever I left the track I struck a bullants’ nest, or a spider web, and all too quickly came across the track again.
The family split up, calling to one another, On se voit en bas!
I followed one of the teenagers. I overtook him. I was in a hurry.
My rendezvous with Mme Durebex and the boys was at the top of the mountain. When we met it was like workmates from the office going out together for the first time. We looked at one another with curiosity and apprehension. Up here things were different. Mme Durebex was confident and lithe. She adjusted her attire and checked the boys’ with the efficacy of a motor mechanic. She ran her eyes over me, then said, Bon. On y va?
We did the run halfway down. Not talking, absorbed in the sport, we did it again all the way down. Hugues was a timorous skier, Laurent was a maniac. It didn’t take long for us to spread out. I noticed Laurent watching me edgily, as though he were trying to decide whether I was friend or foe. We were definitely friends when I’d arrived at the chalet – the way he’d been so happy to see me, and the games of chess we’d played. I wondered what I’d I done to make him turn against me.
I realised it was just that – I’d become friends with him. If Hugues was any indication, a friend to Laurent was a rival, especially on the mountain. And I was a friend with the weak yet insuperable authority of an au pair girl. I was helpless before Laurent’s resentment; if I were him I would probably have been just the same.
I stopped just above Mme Durebex, who was waiting at the bottom of the slope.
– Why didn’t you tell us you could ski this well? she said, almost resentfully.
– I thought I’d forgotten how to, I mumbled, tucking my chin into the collar of my parka.
I wished I hadn’t been so self-deprecating to begin with. It made it hard to enjoy compliments when they came, it made it obvious to everyone else how much I expected of myself. Erasing the ego so carefully is just another way of paying it a lot of attention.
We waited for Hugues, then took off. My spirits soaring now, I soared over a mogul and fell flat on my face. Laurent swept past me, jeering, then fell flat on his face. One of his skis speared down into the trees. Watching Mme Durebex sidestep all the way back up with it, and Laurent weeping and shivering, I remembered my parents with me, how patient they must have been.
Mme Durebex left us after this run, and Laurent’s disgust with me increased. He jumped every queue, he took off as fast as possible when we reached the top. We would quickly lose him, then come across him sprawled behind some mogul, all skis and stocks, whimpering for help.
It was not till the second time up in the cable car that I noticed Hugues had his boots on the wrong feet. I changed them around. Bent over, I saw Laurent’s legs moving away from us. He glared at us from the other side of the car, he glared back at the people he had pushed aside to get there. He hated everyone. There was nothing to be done with him. I turned back to Hugues, amazed his feet didn’t ache. He said phlegmatically, It was my mother that do it. I said in my head, But …
We had to be home by four-thirty. The boys raced each other back to the chalet. It was like the hare and the tortoise, with Laurent’s speed broken by spectacular falls and Hugues going at it doggedly. I panted to keep ahead, my ears still hurting from Mme Durebex’ shouts when the boys had brought snow through the foyer the day before.
I had to blockade the door.
– Knock the snow off your skis.
– No!
– Prop them against the wall, don’t just throw them there. Neatly!
– NO!
– You can’t come inside in your ski boots. Take them off! Both of you!
– NO! NO! NO!
They thrashed about in the slush, punching me, then each other. I stood firm, my heart sinking. I knew everyone in the chalet would have heard us by now. Then they had a head-on collision. My laughter made them madder than ever. Hugues blubbered, hand on his temple, and Laurent screamed at me.
– But it’s the fault of you! For what you go like this? You are a fool! You’re a fool! YOU’RE A FOOL!
For the first time, I felt completely humiliated by him. If Laurent caught sight of this he would have delivered the final blow, he would have annihilated me. But he was too busy nursing the lump on his head and trying to annihilate Hugues, a much easier victim.
Small compensation. I kept my woollen hat pulled down low, my goggles across my forehead, and I stood against the doorframe for support.
Exhausted, unhappy, I sat with Françoise in the study while Laurent and Hugues had baths. I was dreading the English lesson. I was afraid of facing those two boys, and this made me furious, furious with myself for my weakness.
– Don’t worry, Shona, Françoise comforted. You’ve seen how his parents are. That’s what makes him misbehave, but it’s you that can put him back in his place.
– I don’t want to put him back in his place, that’s not what I want.
– Mais il faut! Françoise insisted. You’re a good teacher, you’re good for him.
– He doesn’t like me any more, I said glumly.
Françoise made a clucking sound, and I sensed pity, an abhorrent maternal sort of pity, and I left the room with the excuse that there was an English lesson to prepare.
Even if I’d wanted to put Laurent back in his place, I wouldn’t have been able to. I didn’t know where his place was; I didn’t know where mine was either. One thing I did know was that I no longer believed my silent self-assertions that the Durebex didn’t really matter to me, that it was just a job and I could walk away any time.
I was caught up in their lives now, that was obvious. I was in deep, squeezed deep inside the knot of this family.
Each night in my hot little room, I wrote in my journal. From the wall above the table, Sydney and the Elliott children looked down on me. The ghosts of my family haunting me, I wrote about the Durebex family, larger than life, flesh and blood around me. Strangers. I wrote down everything that happened, immersing myself in this French family to escape mine, illuminating their lives to shed some light on my own.