“That’s a pile of steaming bollocks,” says Chetwynd-Pitt.
“It’s the truth. I’ve never been in love. And that’s okay. The colorblind get by just fine not knowing blue from purple.”
“You can’t have met the right girl,” decides Quinn the idiot.
“Or met too many right girls,” suggests Fitzsimmons.
“Human beings,” I inhale my wine’s nutmeggy steam, “are walking bundles of cravings. Cravings for food, water, shelter, warmth; sex and companionship; status, a tribe to belong to; kicks, control, purpose; and so on, all the way down to chocolate-brown bathroom suites. Love is one way to satisfy some of these cravings. But love’s not just the drug; it’s also the dealer. Love wants love in return, am I right, Olly? Like drugs, the highs look divine, and I envy the users. But when the side effects kick in — jealousy, the rages, grief, I think, Count me out. Elizabethans equated romantic love with insanity. Buddhists view it as a brat throwing a tantrum at the picnic of the calm mind. I—”
“I spy an Alien Urine.” Chetwynd-Pitt smirks at the skinny barmaid and the tall glass of melon-green gloop on her tray. “J’espère que ce sera aussi bon que vos Angel’s Tits.”
“Les boissons de ces messieurs.” Lips thin and unlipsticked, with a “messieurs” that came sheathed in irony. She’s gone already.
Chetwynd-Pitt sniffs. “There goes Miss Charisma 1991.”
The others clink their glasses while I hide one of my gloves behind a pot-plant. “Maybe she just doesn’t think you’re as witty as you think you are,” I tell Chetwynd-Pitt. “How does your Alien Urine taste?”
He sips the pale green gloop. “Exactly like its name.”
THE TOURIST SHOPS in Sainte-Agnès’s town square — ski gear, art galleries, jewelers, chocolatiers — are still open at eleven, the giant Christmas tree’s still bright, and a crêpier, dressed as a gorilla, is doing a brisk trade. Despite the bag of coke Chetwynd-Pitt just scored off Günter, we decide to put off Club Walpurgis until tomorrow night. It’s beginning to snow. “Damn,” I say, turning back. “I left a glove at Le Croc. You guys get Quinn home, I’ll catch you up …”
I hurry back down the alley and get to the bar as a large party of He-Norses and She-Norses leaves. Le Croc has a round window; through it I can see the skinny barmaid preparing a jug of Sangria without being seen. She’s very watchable, like the motionless bass player in a hyperactive rock band. She combines a fuck-you punkishness with a precision about even her smallest actions. Her will would be absolutely unswayable, I sense. As Günter takes the jug away into Le Croc’s interior she turns to look at me so I enter the smoky clamor and make my way between clusters of drinkers to the bar. After she’s wiped the frothy head off a glass of beer with the flat of a knife and handed it to a customer, I’m there with my forgotten glove gambit. “Désolé de vous embêter, mais j’étais installé là-haut”—I point to the Eagle’s Nest, but she doesn’t yet give away whether or not she remembers me—“il y a dix minutes et j’ai oublié mon gant. Est-ce que vous l’auriez trouvé?”
Cool as Ivan Lendl slotting in a lob above an irate hobbit, she reaches down and produces it. “Bizarre, cette manie que les gens comme vous ont d’oublier leurs gants dans les bars.”
Fine, so she’s seen through me. “C’est surtout ce gant; ça lui arrive souvent.” I hold up my glove like a naughty puppet and ask it scoldingly, “Qu’est-ce qu’on dit à la dame?” Her stare kills my joke. “En tout cas, merci. Je m’appelle Hugo. Hugo Lamb. Et si pour vous, ça fait”—shit, what’s “posh” in French? — “chic, eh bien le type qui ne prend que des cocktails s’appelle Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt. Je ne plaisante pas.” Nope, not a flicker. Günter reappears with a tray of empty glasses. “Why do you speak French with Holly, Hugo?”
I look puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“He seemed keen to practice his French,” says the girl, in London English. “And the customer is always right, Günter.”
“Hey, Günter!” An Australian calls over from the bar football. “This bastard machine’s playing funny buggers! I fed it my francs but it’s not giving me the goods.” Günter heads over, Holly loads up the dishwasher, and I work out what’s happened. When she returned my ski on the black run earlier, she used French, but she said nothing when my accent gave me away because if you’re female and working in a ski resort you must get hit on five times a day, and speaking French with Anglophones strengthens the force field. “I just wanted to say thanks for returning my ski earlier.”
“You already did.” Working-class background; unintimidated by rich kids; very good French.
“This is true, but I’d be dying of hypothermia in a lonely Swiss forest if you hadn’t rescued me. Could I buy you dinner?”
“I’m working in a bar while tourists are eating their dinner.”
“Then could I buy you breakfast?”
“By the time you’re having breakfast, I’ll have been mucking out this place for two hours, with two more hours to go.” Holly slams shut the glass-washer. “Then I go skiing. Every minute spoken for. Sorry.”
Patience is the hunter’s ally. “Understood. Anyway, I wouldn’t want your boyfriend to misinterpret my motives.”
She pretends to fiddle with something under the counter. “Won’t your friends be waiting for you?”
Odds of four to one there’s no boyfriend. “I’ll be in town for ten days or so. See you around. Good night, Holly.”
“G’night,” and piss off, add her spooky blue eyes.
December 30
THE BAYING OF THE PARISIAN MOB drains into the drone of a snowplow, and my search through French orphanages for the Cyclops-eyed child ends with Immaculée Constantin in my tiny room at the family Chetwynd-Pitt’s Swiss chalet telling me gravely, You haven’t lived until you’ve sipped Black Wine, Hugo. Then I’m waking up in the very same garret groinally attached to a mystifying dawn horn as big as a cruise missile. A bookshelf, a globe, a Turkish gown hanging from the door, a thick curtain. “This is where we put the scholarship boys,” Chetwynd-Pitt only half joked when I first stayed here. The old pipe lunks and clanks. Dope + Altitude = Screwy Dreams. I lie in my warm womb, thinking about Holly the barmaid. I find I’ve forgotten Mariângela’s face, if not other areas of her anatomy, but Holly’s face I remember in photographic detail. I should have asked Günter for her surname. A little later, the bells of Sainte-Agnès’s church chime eight times. There were bells in my dream. My mouth is as dry as lunar dust and I drink the glass of water on the bedside table, pleased by the sight of the wedge of francs by the lamp — my winnings from last night’s pool session with Chetwynd-Pitt. Ha. He’ll be eager to win the money back, and an eager player is a sloppy player.
I pee in my garret’s minuscule en suite; hold my face in a sinkful of icy water for the count of ten; open the curtains and slatted shutters to let in the retina-drilling white light; hide last night’s winnings under a floorboard I loosened two visits ago; perform a hundred push-ups; put on the Turkish gown and venture down the steep wooden stairs to the first landing, holding the rope banister. Chetwynd-Pitt’s snoring in his room. The lower stairs take me to the sunken lounge, where I find Fitzsimmons and Quinn buried under tumuli of blankets on leather sofas. The VHS player has spat out The Wizard of Oz, but Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is still playing on repeat. Hashish perfumes the air and last night’s embers glow in the fireplace. I tiptoe between two teams of Subbuteo soccer players, crunching crisps into the rug, and feed the fire a big log and crumbs of fire lighter. Tongues of flame lick and lap. A Dutch rifle from the Boer War hangs over the mantelpiece, whereon sits a silver-framed photograph of Chetwynd-Pitt’s father shaking hands with Henry Kissinger in Washington, circa 1984. I’m pouring myself a grapefruit juice in the kitchen when the phone there discreetly trills: “Good morning,” I say cutely. “Lord Chetwynd-Pitt the Younger’s residence.”