‘You’re a good skier. I’m a good skier.’
‘Why don’t we just try to walk out again? Follow the mountain road. It’s much simpler.’
‘Yes, we could do that. But—and it’s a big but—you said yourself it’s a four- or five-hour hike. We’ve left it too late after what just happened—we’d end up walking in darkness again. If we’re going to hike out of here we’ll have to stay another night in the hotel and head off first thing in the morning. Or we grab some skis, get up the mountain, and from the top we could be down to that village at sixteen hundred metres in what, twenty minutes?’
‘Twenty minutes? Not a chance.’
‘Half an hour tops to drop down that sort of distance on skis. No more. Half an hour, Jake.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not happy about it. Do you think we have enough daylight left?’
‘We will if we stop yakking and set off right way. Do you really want to spend another night here?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s go for it then.’
‘Look at you. You really think it’s that easy, don’t you?’
Zoe dusted her hands together, to show him how easy it would be.
5
They pushed open the door to a ski store and set about choosing themselves a good set of skis apiece from the rack. They told each other that they would return the skis eventually, and that no one would blame them for ‘borrowing’ skis, given the circumstances, though Jake joked about the growing size of their theoretical bill.
‘I’ve always wanted some of these,’ Zoe said. ‘Flame orange. Top spec.’
‘You would. You want new boots?’
‘Sure. What about these?’
‘Rack your skis up here, then, and sling me one of your boots.’
While Jake adjusted the ski bindings, Zoe poked around the shop. The owners had left in a hurry. A CD player was still switched on and there was a half-empty mug of coffee. Someone had even left a wallet under the counter. She opened it. It contained credit cards and a wad of banknotes.
She waved it at Jake. ‘Look.’
‘Just put it back.’
‘I am putting it back. Did you think I was going to steal it?’
‘I’m just saying, leave everything exactly as is. Except what we absolutely have to take.’
‘Like I might do different?’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Well, don’t “just say”. It’s not like I was about to skim a few Euros from some bloke’s wallet. Heck.’ She put the wallet back where she found it, and then for good measure hid it under a pair of old ski gloves that were lying on the counter. ‘They left really fast. I mean really, really fast.’
‘That’s what worries me. Here, these are done. Grab yourself a pair of fancy poles and we’re away.’
They trudged through the snow carrying their new skis on their shoulders until they reached the church at the top of the hill. The streets hadn’t been cleared of snow since the evacuation, so it was an easy thing to step into their bindings and slip straight down the main road, gliding through the village to the chairlifts on the south-facing slopes. Then they had to walk for a hundred metres or so to reach the lift station.
The station was utterly silent and muffled under the recent fall of snow. Even now, though the snowstorm had long subsided, a few tiny flakes still fell around them, feathering the old layers of snow covering the roof of the station shed. Jake stepped out of his bindings and pushed at the station door.
The door was stuck, frozen. He put his shoulder to it and it flew open. The air inside was still warm, as if the heating had been left running. A couple of dull green and red lights shone from a grubby console by the smeared window, alongside a shallow bank of switches. Someone had left a pack of cigarettes and a plastic lighter on the console desk.
‘Do you know how to do it?’ Zoe asked.
‘It looks pretty much like the drag-lift equipment.
There was a nice big fat button there but I don’t see one here.’
Jake went out of the station and entered the pine shed where the giant wheels and steel cables gleamed with black grease. He stared at the immobile row of sullen chairs waiting to move through the half-light on their endless loop. As he skirted the machinery he saw what he was looking for: a row of buttons and a huge emergency stop switch. He pushed the buttons hopefully but without result. When one of the buttons triggered the sound of an engine powering up and an immediate clatter of moving parts, he startled himself. The chairlift didn’t move, however. The engine hummed loud in his ears as he looked for a way to send the chairs on their journey up the mountain. He saw a brake that was holding them back, and released it. Then he discovered a lever that cranked the giant overhead wheel. When the wheel began to move, so did the chairs.
Zoe had come out of the operator’s cabin and was getting back into her skis. He wanted her to wait for the chairs to complete a full loop, so that they could be certain they were safe. She was less patient. Then he suggested that they take different chairs.
‘Why would we do that?’
‘Because,’ he said calmly, ‘if the lift stops and there’s a healthy interval between us, at least one of us might be able to get down and do something to help the other. Whereas if we’re both stuck up there, swinging in the wind, there’s nothing we can do.’
‘I don’t see the logic. I mean, if we both happen to get off at the end just as the lift stops, then we’re in a better position than if one is safely off and one is stuck up in the air.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘No more ridiculous than your idea. It’s just random luck. Random together or random separate. We’re still subject to randomness. I’d rather we face that random together.’
There and then, in the deserted ski village, with the chairlift engine whistling over their heads and the empty, icy, snow-covered chairs proceeding up the snowy mountain one by one, they had an argument about randomness.
‘After everything that’s happened to us, I’d rather we climbed in the same chair,’ Zoe said. ‘For fuck’s sake, I can’t believe we’re arguing about this!’
Jake sighed and shuffled along to form up with his skis. They stood side by side waiting for the next sixman chair to come around, and as soon as it bunted the backs of their knees they dropped into position. Jake reached for the safety bar and pulled it down.
They ascended the slope in silence.
It was a long chairlift, and secretly both were wondering what they would do exactly if the chair did stop. For much of the journey they were fifteen metres off the ground. The cable mechanism thrummed steadily and the wind manufactured ghost-like whistles and moans around the pylons at regular intervals. The returning chairs on the other side of the pylons, having been exposed on the mountainside without service, were piled with snow and hung with ice; grim dark chariots, it seemed to Zoe, returning after depositing their cargoes in a place of death.
As they made their ascent, below them the build-up of snow on the branch of a pine would reach its limit and trigger a sudden spray of snow. Other than that there was no movement anywhere.
‘So quiet,’ Zoe said, if only to resist the baleful murmur of the wind in the pylons.
The chair juddered as it approached the penultimate pylon and tilted into its descent. Jake lifted back the safety bar. They shuffled their bottoms in the chair, readying their skis to glide off at the lift terminal. When they did so they hit deep snow and came to an abrupt stop. Normally the dismount point was packed and maintained by lift operators.
‘The piste is going to be deep,’ Jake said.
‘We’ll take it steady. Are you going to shut off the lift?’