Top of the Hill, page 22
“No.”
“No matter. You never use it at more than ten feet if you want it to be effective. At ten feet it’s almost impossible to miss.”
The idea of using a pistol at ten feet did not make Heggener’s offer of a place to live any more attractive, but Michael felt that it was impossible to refuse. He had been tested by Cully for speed and endurance on the hill and now he was being tested, he felt, for cowardice.
“I’ll move in when you tell me it’s ready,” Michael said, without hesitation.
“I’m sure you’ll be happy there. And it will be convenient when you want to play a game of backgammon. I assure you, aside from the backgammon, we will not interfere with your life.” Suddenly, Heggener stopped and began to cough. It was a racking, nerve-rasping sound. There was a bench in a little clearing off the road and
Heggener sank onto it and, with a handkerchief to his mouth, continued coughing. Slowly, the seizure ended. Heggener looked at the handkerchief. “No blood,” he said calmly. “The season is beginning well.” With the aid of his cane, he pushed himself to his feet. “Shall we continue?”
Michael wanted to take his arm so the man could lean on it, but knew that Heggener would resent it. They walked, not briskly now, the last few hundred yards to the hotel.
As they neared the front steps, they heard the sound of a piano from within. “My friend,” Michael said. “He’s a professional. If there’s a piano anywhere, he’ll find it.”
Heggener cocked his head appreciatively, listening. “Schubert. He plays very well.”
“Poor bastard. He got into a ruckus in New York in the bar he was playing at and the police came in and they found out he didn’t have a work permit in America and the boss fired him and he can’t work in New York anymore.”
“What times we live in,” Heggener said sadly. “You have to have the permission of the government to play the piano.”
They went into the hotel together. At the bottom of the staircase, Heggener said, “Thank you for a most pleasant promenade.” He smiled wryly. “I, as usual, talked too much. My social opportunities have been limited recently. Until tomorrow morning, if the sun shines . . .” He climbed the stairs with effort.
Michael went down the flight of steps to the bar, which was located in the basement. Antoine was bent over the piano, playing intently, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip, his sad, dark eyes squinting against the smoke. He was wearing baggy green ski pants and a sweater that was at least three sizes too large for him, of an indeterminate color that looked as though it had been lying out on the seashore, with the tide running over it at regular intervals. On his feet he had a pair of low, laced leather ski boots that Michael had seen on no hill for fifteen years.
“Antoine,” Michael said, loudly enough to be heard above the music.
Antoine stopped playing and bounded up and embraced Michael, without losing his cigarette.
“Mon vieux,” he said, “you look like a god.”
“You look like a horse’s ass,” Michael said. “Where did you get those clothes?”
“I have had many splendid days racing down the Alps in these clothes,” Antoine said with dignity, “and I am attached to them. I made a very good impression with them at the ski school office.” “What were you doing at the ski school office?” Michael asked suspiciously.
“I took one look at this town and decided I was going to remain. To remain, I reasoned, would take money. So I went down to the ski school . . .”
“Was the boss there, a big man named Cully?”
“No. Only a charming young girl. I explained to her that I was French and that I was an expert instructor, registered with the French Federation and a friend of yours and did they need any instructors.”
“You didn’t,” Michael said disbelievingly.
“I did.” '
“Do you know how to ski at all?”
“Do not be cynical, mon ami,” Antoine looked hurt. “I have played the piano at Megeve, at Courchevel, at Val d’lsere, stations that would make a place like this look like a retreat for rheumatic pensioners.”
“Playing the piano is one thing,” Michael said. “Skiing is another.”
“That reminds me,” Antoine said. “This piano is definitely out of tune. I would bring up the subject to the management if I were you.” “Can you really ski?”
“That is beside the point at the moment. The charming girl said they get many Canadians here who like to be taught in French, especially children. I said I am a specialist in children, patient and wise. Beginners, I said, especially beginners. They won’t be able to tell the difference.”
“The first time they see you in those baggy pants and laced boots, they’ll bust a gut laughing and then they’ll come after me with a club.” '
“If necessary,” Antoine said resignedly, “I will outfit myself in the absurd regalia you seem to find comme il faut. As for the skiing, that is where my good friend Michael will come in.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“There is no need to start immediately,” Antoine said. “The charming girl explained that to me. The crowd doesn’t start coming here until the Christmas holidays. Between then and now, my good friend Mike is going to take me to a secluded place, away from prying eyes, myself dressed d la mode de Green Hollow, and will brush up my style and instruct me in just how one teaches children and grown-ups, if that is unavoidable, who have never been on skis before, so that if anyone puts me to the test and they happen to find any fault with my pedagogy, I can merely say, ‘That is the new French technique.’ ”
Michael couldn’t keep from laughing. “You know, Antoine,” he said, “you might just get away with it. I’ll fit you out after lunch and then we’ll go behind the hotel, there’s a little slope there, and we’ll see what we’ll see. Remember, a mountain is not a piano. You can’t improvise while you’re falling off into space.”
“I am convinced that with you as my teacher, everything will be possible,” Antoine said. “I am young.” Then he qualified that with a shrug. “Young enough. I have a sense of rhythm. I do not mind the cold. I actually have skied from time to time. I have watched good people, the best in the world. As a musician, for example, there is nothing original in the way I play, but I am an accomplished mimic. I can play in the style of Arthur Rubinstein, Fats Waller, Joplin. After a few lessons with you I’m sure I’ll have your style, if not your speed and reputation. I am sublimely confident. And I have the nerve of a burglar. And . . he said, pathetically, “I need the money. Mon Dieu, do I need the money. And I have to make it someplace where the Immigration isn’t poking its nose into corners. In New York I had the feeling they were circling around me, like Indians around the covered wagons in Western movies. Mike,” he said, with absolute seriousness, “I love it in the States, I love this country. I can’t go back to Paris. . . . I’ve tried everything in Paris and I’ve failed.”
“Okay,” Michael said, touched, but still reluctant. “We’ll give it a try. I don’t guarantee results. I’ll finance you till Christmas.”
“I knew I could depend upon you,” Antoine cried and bounced down to the piano stool and hit three resounding triumphant major chords.
“Ah, shut up. I’m going upstairs to take a shower and change for lunch. By the way, where’s Susan? Sleeping off the ride last night?” “Not a bit of it,” Antoine said. “She is a woman of demonic energy. She’s skiing. She couldn’t wait.”
“How is she?”
Antoine sighed. “Elusive.”
“I thought you told me you were just friends.”
“She may think that,” Antoine said darkly. “I am more demented about her than ever. She is a glorious and infuriating woman. I am not like you. One look and here is the key to my room. Ah, there are those that have it, like you, and the ones who do not have it, like me. And the ones that have it think nothing of it and the ones that don’t think of nothing else.”
“Will she be back for lunch?” Michael asked, refusing to engage in this particular philosophic discussion with Antoine.
“Who knows?” Antoine said. “She never tells me her plans.”
“Well, if she comes back,” Michael said, “we’ll have lunch together. The food here is very good.”
“I will never leave here.”
“We’ll see about that,” Michael said and started upstairs as Antoine swung the stool around and began to improvise on the sad theme of “Send In the Clowns.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Michael was drying himself off after the shower when there was a knock on his door. Still dripping, he threw on a terry cloth bathrobe and opened the door. Eva was standing there, looking businesslike in a plain skirt and sweater. “May I come in?” she said.
“I’m not exactly dressed to receive company,” Michael said, using the towel on his wet hair.
“It won’t take long.” She came into the room and Michael closed the door behind him, feeling guilty, as he had the first time she had come to his room, that the room was messed up. His ski clothes were strewn all over the place, with one sock on the bed and the other on the floor.
Eva faced him, unsmiling. “You’re doing something unforgivable,” she said.
“What are you talking about, Eva?” Having one sock on the bed and one on the floor might be careless, but it could hardly be called unforgivable.
“Tempting my husband to believe he could ski again.”
“If he can walk the way he did . . .” Michael began.
“You ought to see him now,” she said accusingly. “He’s stretched out on the bed as pale as a sheet gasping for breath.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. I forbid you to mention the subject again.”
“Eva . . Michael said. “Nobody forbids me anything. Not even you.”
“You’ll kill him,” she said flatly.
“I doubt it. In any case, he’s a grown, highly intelligent man and he knows how he feels better than either you or I and it’s up to him to make decisions that concern him. I happen to think that a little easy skiing will help him, if not physically then at least psychically.” “Up to now,” Eva said sardonically, “you have successfully hidden the fact that you have a degree in psychiatry. You’ve talked to him twice and you think you know him. I’ve been married to him for twelve years and I assure you, you don’t. You talk about a little easy skiing. That’s because of your ignorance. He does nothing easily and never has. At his age he isn’t going to change. Are you going to tell him that you’ve thought about it and he’d best listen to the doctors and his wife or . . . ?”
“Listen,” Michael broke in. “Maybe I was wrong to suggest it, but now that he’s got the idea, he’s going to ski, whether he does it with me or with somebody else. I may not know him as well as you, but I have the impression that when he makes up his mind . .
“Foolish man,” she said, not speaking of her husband. “Fool. And I thought, after what’s happened between us you would feel you owe me something, not much, but something.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Michael said, angry now, “and I don’t owe you anything.”
“I’ll remember that,” Eva said wamingly.
There was a soft rap on the door. “You have company. We’ll discuss this some other time,” Eva said.
Michael went over to the door, leaving Eva standing rigidly in the middle of the room. He opened the door and saw Susan Hartley standing there, in ski clothes, her hair blown from her morning on the mountain.
“Hi, lover,” she said and kissed Michael before she saw Eva Heggener behind him. “Oh.”
“That’s all right,” Eva said. “I was just leaving. I hope you had an enjoyable morning on the slopes.” She had transformed herself in the flick of an eye to the mistress of the establishment, but her voice was cold. “That’s a pretty outfit you’re wearing.” Susan was in an all white ski suit. “The color becomes you.” The manner in which she said it made it plain that she did not think that the color became Susan at all. “I’ll leave you two now. I’m sure you have many things to talk about.”
She marched stiffly out of the room. Michael closed the door behind her gently.
“Did I interrupt anything?” Susan asked.
“A medical discussion,” Michael said. “Nothing.”
Susan looked around the room. “What a nice room. Fireplace and all.” She stretched luxuriously. “What a shining morning. I feel like a new woman already. Can you see it?”
“The white flower of the hillside.”
“Approve?”
“Unreservedly.”
“The beautiful lady didn’t. Approve I mean.” She made a little grimace.
“Don’t jump to conclusions.”
“I sensed an aura of . . . ownership.” Susan looked obliquely at him, half-smiling.
“Her husband owns the hotel,” Michael said stiffly.
“I know that. That isn’t what I sensed. I sensed romance.”
“You’d sense romance in an ad for surgical trusses. The lady is not romantic. I’m her hired help. I’m her ski guide.”
“There is guidance and guidance.” Susan laughed good-naturedly. “I’m waiting for something.”
“We’re having lunch in a little while.”
“That’s not what I’m waiting for.” She approached him, playing at being extravagantly coquettish and batting her eyelashes. She had her sports, Susan, skiing outdoors and flirting within.
“I kissed you at the door,” Michael said.
“Like a brother,” Susan said, close to him. “Not good enough. I came miles and miles through the night, through sleet and snow . . .” She held out her arms.
He embraced her, kissed her lightly on the mouth, uneasily conscious that he was naked under the robe, broke away. “That good enough?”
“Fair,” Susan said. “Anyway, better. Are you going to invite me to sit down?”
“By all means make yourself at home.”
She flopped into a chair. “My legs are spaghetti. It’s terrible how you age from the end of one ski season to the beginning of the next.” “Susan,” Michael said, standing over her, “I have to talk to you. Seriously.”
Susan sighed with mock despair. “I prefer it when men talk to me frivolously.”
Michael ignored this. “It was my understanding that you and Antoine are just friends.”
“That’s everybody’s understanding. What else is new?”
“He just told me he was demented about you.”
“Demented. He’s just trying out his English vocabulary.”
“He wasn’t trying out anything,” Michael said. “He was sending me a message.”
Susan shrugged. “Let him put it in a bottle and send it out to sea. I’m not demented about him.”
“When I decoded the message,” Michael said, “do you know what I heard?”
“I’m not particularly interested.” Susan yawned.
“I heard, ‘I love her,’ ” Michael persisted. “ ‘Please don’t do anything that will prevent her from loving me.’ ”
“I got a message today, too,” Susan said. “Just now. In this very room. The message was from the mistress of the house: ‘Mr. Michael Storrs is bespoke. Hands off.’ ”
“Nonsense,” Michael said.
“I never heard a man say ‘Nonsense’ less convincingly. Haven’t you realized yet you’re catnip to the ladies?” Susan said lightly. “Or have you become so blase about your beauty and charm that you don’t even notice when the net’s out for you?”
“I won’t argue with you. You’d better go. I’ve got to dress for lunch.”
She sank deeper into her chair and lit a cigarette. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve seen men dress before.”
“I’m sure you have, but...”
There was a loud knock on the door.
“You have quite a busy social life in the morning, don’t you?” Susan said, grinning up at him. “Are you sure you don’t need a secretary?”
Michael went to open the door, pulling the robe tightly around him. Antoine was standing there, holding a bottle of champagne and two glasses. Michael noted the champagne with displeasure. When he had said that he was going to finance Antoine until Christmas he hadn’t thought it was going to include champagne in the mornings.
Antoine stepped gaily into the room, then stopped abruptly when he saw Susan. “Oh,” he said, “back so soon? I thought we’d have a little reunion celebration, Mike. I see I’m missing a glass.” He started back toward the door. “I’ll go get another one . . .”
“No need,” Michael said. “There’s a glass in the bathroom.”
He heard Antoine say accusingly, “Susan, you said you wouldn’t be back until dark. What’re you doing here?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Susan said airily. “I was learning how to make parallel turns.”
“Yeah,” Antoine said, wretchedly. He was trying to open the bottle of champagne without success when Michael came out of the bathroom carrying a tumbler. “Here,” he said, taking the bottle out of Antoine’s hands. “Let me have that.” He opened the bottle easily, the cork popping and the foam fizzing over.
“His strength is as the strength of ten,” Susan said mockingly, standing, “because his heart is pure.”
Michael poured for the three of them and lifted his glass. “To deep snow and sunny days,” he said. Then he looked squarely at Susan. “And to messages,” he added.
