My room looked down the slope of the mountainside towards the town. The mountains across the valley were the colour of the moon. The room was large: the sort of space hotels tend to call a mini suite. It had antique furniture, two balconies, a bigger bed than usual, and a bathroom with a separate shower stall. Flowers, chocolates and newspapers had been delivered, and a half-bottle of champagne. You become very sensitised to the minutiae of Business perks and privileges over the years, and the precise level of luxury that greets you at Château d'Oex is entirely the most accurate guide to how you're doing within your current status in the hierarchy.
This was up to Level Two standards. The champagne was only a half-bottle but, then, I was by myself and it doesn't do to encourage one's guests to get too sozzled before dinner. And it was vintage; big plus. The phone rang and the general manager of the château welcomed me and apologised for not being able to greet me in person. I assured him everything was fine and to my taste.
I took Dulsung's little artificial flower and stuck it in a glass on the bedside table. It looked tiny and forlorn there, even cheap. What if the staff threw it out? I picked it up and put it back on my jacket, in the button-hole, but it didn't look right there either, so I stuck it inside, bending the stalk through the button-hole in the single internal pocket so that it was secure.
Dinner was promptly at eight in the main dining room; there were maybe a hundred or so staffers. I gossiped with the best of them, before, during and after. The château is, usually, the place to find out what's going on in the Business. Mostly people wanted to find out what was going on in Thulahn from me. The quality of the questions they asked indicated the accuracy of the rumours they'd heard, and corresponded pretty accurately to their level in the company.
Had I just come back from Fenua Ua? (No.) Was there some back-up deal being arranged in Thulahn in case Fenua Ua went belly-up at the last moment? (I couldn't say.) Was I going to be president of Fenua Ua? (Unlikely.) Was the deal done yet or not? (I really couldn't say.) Had the Prince really proposed to me? (Yes.) Had I accepted? (No.) So I answered a lot of questions, but I was able to ask a lot in return, and people were happier than they might have been otherwise to share all they knew or felt about a whole host of subjects. At the end of that evening, even if only for a short time, I probably knew as much about the Business as a whole as anybody did, regardless of level. Madame Tchassot, who kept a house in the grounds, was present at the meal and after it; the only Level One. We talked for a few minutes over brandy in the drawing room and she seemed quite friendly. She would be spending the next few days at her own place, near Lucerne.
'Adrian tells me you're meeting him tomorrow, Kathryn.'
'That's right. I wanted to talk to him.' I smiled. 'He seems very proud of his new car. 355, I think he said. Sounds nice.'
She smiled thinly. 'Red is not his colour, but he insisted.'
'Well, it is a Ferrari. I think it's almost compulsory.'
'You are meeting for lunch?'
'Yes, in a place near the Grimsel Pass. He recommended it.'
She looked uncertain. 'You will take good care of him, yes?'
'Of course,' I said. What was she talking about? She was staring intently at her glass. She didn't think I had any designs on his tumid butt, did she?
'Thank you. He is…important to me. Very dear.'
'Of course, I understand. I'll try to make sure he leaves me in one piece.' I laughed lightly. 'Why? He's not a bad driver, is he? I was thinking of asking for a drive in the Ferrari.'
'No, no, he is a perfectly fine driver, I think.'
'Well, that's a relief.' I raised my glass. 'To careful drivers.'
'Indeed.'
In my dream, I was in a great house in the mountains. There was bright moonlight and starlight, but the stars were wrong and I remember thinking I must be in New Zealand. The great house was built on a vast rumpled landscape of spired and crevassed ice tipped between two mountain ranges. It didn't seem in the least strange to me that the building had been constructed on a glacier, though the whole place creaked and trembled as it moved with the rest of our immediate landscape down the vast slow river of ice. With each rumble and creak beneath us, a host of diamond chandeliers tinkled, mirrors flexed and distorted, and cracks appeared in the ceilings and walls, sprinkling white dust. White-overalled servants rushed to repair the fissures, clattering up ladders and shinning up skinny poles to slap fresh plaster across the faults, raining white damp dots. This happened a lot. We held umbrellas above us as we walked through the huge, echoing rooms. Marble statues were real people who had stood too long in one place under the drizzle of plaster.
Teams of yaks moved through constantly branching tunnels in the ice beneath us, only surfacing at the great house, where their smiling, round-faced minders thanked us for soup and their beds in the many tents scattered across the icy scenery.
A masked man I knew not to trust was doing a complicated trick with cups and hats and my little netsuke monkey, shifting them around the table while people placed bets and laughed. The masked man's mouth was visible and he was missing lots of teeth, but they weren't really missing at alclass="underline" some had been blacked out as though he was an actor.
I woke up, wondering where I was again. Thulahn? Not cold enough. But, then, I'd been moved to a more hotel-like room. But still not Thulahn. I remembered the smell of the Heavenly Luck Tea House. Yorkshire? No. London? No, Château d'Oex. Ah yes. Nice room. Valley view. Alone. Nobody here. I felt groggily across the bed. No, no one here. Monkey gone. This monkey's gone to heaven — wasn't that a Pixies' song? Dulsung. Why hadn't she been in my dream? And who's this 'we' anyway, white man? Na, nothing. Sleep again.
There was time to kill at the Grimsel Pass. I sat in the 7-series waiting for Poudenhaut, reading the Herald Tribune. The phone rang and it was, at last, Stephen.
'Kathryn? Hi. Sorry for the delay. Daniella was running a serious temperature and Emma was away at one of her friend's so I had to do the hospital thing. She's okay now but, well, hence the delay.'
'That's all right. It's good to hear you.'
'What was it you wanted to talk about? Nothing too urgent, I hope.'
'Hold on.' I got out of the car, only just beating Happy Hans, my white-haired chauffeur, to the draw: he had his cap on, he was out of his door and reaching for the outside handle of my door while I was still pushing. He drew the door fully open as I got out into the chill air of the early afternoon. The car park was gravel, uneven. I nodded to Hans and let him put my coat over my shoulders before I walked off, heading away from the quaintly painted old wooden inn and the other cars and coaches.
'Kathryn?'
I stopped at the low wall, looking down the valley at the road winding into Italy.
'Still here, Stephen,' I said. 'Listen, what I have to tell you is pretty bad news.'
'Oh, yeah?' He sounded only a little wary at first. 'What? How bad?'
I took a deep breath. The air was cold; I could feel its raw, numbing touch in my nostrils and at the back of my throat and could sense it filling my lungs. 'It's about Emma.'
I told him. He was silent, mostly. I told him all of it: about the DVD, Hazleton's involvement, the dates and places and the obligation that Hazleton expected of me. He was so quiet. I wondered if perhaps none of this was coming as a great shock at all. Maybe, I thought, they had an open relationship that he'd never wanted to tell me about in case it encouraged me. Maybe Hazleton had been upset that I'd told him I'd made my mind up but that I wasn't going to tell him what my decision was yet, and he had told Stephen.