Snowfall Page 2

  After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and read the rest of the stone. It was very simple, just his full name and the dates of his birth and death.

  MATTHEW OLSEN DANBY.

  Olsen – I hadn’t known that was his name. A family name, perhaps? Possibly his mother had been an Olsen before her marriage. Matt had mentioned her once or twice, a bridge-playing widow who lived in Houston, Texas, but on the whole he’d said very little about his family. We’d had too much else to talk about. It seemed strange, though, to see his name in full, here, for the first and only time.

  I glanced at the dates, and blinked, and looked again to make sure of what I saw. Mental arithmetic is not my strong point, but this was a simple calculation. When he was killed, Matt had been a few months short of forty.

  I double-checked, surprised and puzzled. Yes, there was no doubt about it. It wasn’t that he’d ever lied to me about his age – I knew that he was in his thirties, and he’d once mentioned something about a ten-year gap between us. But in fact, it had been nearer fifteen.

  Well … a little masculine vanity, perhaps? It hardly mattered. I had loved Matt for what I knew of him, not for such inessential details as these.

  But, seeing them, I felt doubly bereft. As I stood, forlorn, in the snow beside his grave, I began to feel almost as though I had given my love to a stranger.

  Chapter Two

  I don’t know how long I stood there in the snow, with the sharp air stinging my cheeks, looking at the headstone of the man I had loved so well and – apparently – had known so little. When I finally raised my head, the blue shadows on the snow had crept closer, and the lights were on in all the houses of the village. Far below, in the valley, a glow rose from Innsbruck; and all around, scattered far and near, some so high that I might have been confusing them with stars, twinkled pin-points of light from distant Alpine villages and isolated mountain inns.

  It was quiet, apart from the voices of some late skiers straggling past on their way down from the mountain. I could hear the hiss of their skis on the snow, the clatter as they hit a patch of ice just by the cemetery gateway. And then I noticed that one of them, a man in a bright blue anorak and a red woollen ski cap, had stopped and was standing in the gateway looking at me.

  I hesitated for a moment, then began my intended walk towards the gateway. He seemed to recollect himself, muttered the Austrian greeting ‘Grüss Gott’, and then slid on his way.

  I walked up to the village, picking my steps carefully in boots that were too elegant to have been much use in the snow at home in Berwickshire, let alone here in the Alps. I felt lost, out of place. I had seen Matt’s grave, and all I wanted now was to turn and go home; the prospect of spending eight days alone in Kirchwald was intolerable.

  And all the more so, I recalled despondently, because of my holiday companions. There had been only two other passengers in the hotel mini-bus, and as soon as I saw them I remembered having noticed them on the aircraft, entirely engrossed in each other despite the fact that she, poor girl, had a streaming cold. They had sat so close in the mini-bus, their glances were so loving, their clothes so new, that the specks of confetti on the collar of the man’s coat had merely confirmed my suspicions. That was all I needed, I thought wretchedly – to spend eight days in a very small hotel with an English honeymoon couple.

  Apparently the husband had been to Innsbruck before. Throughout the short road journey up to Kirchwald he had tried to encourage his flagging bride with a description of the wonders she would have seen if the visibility had been better. And she, obviously feeling unwell, was trying so hard to be bright and enthusiastic for his sake that I felt an immediate sympathy with her. I would have behaved in just the same way, however terrible I felt, if Matt had brought me here …

  I walked up the village street, turned the corner into the small square which was dominated by a church with an onion spire, and found the Gasthof Alte Post. It was exactly as Matt had described it: an old three-storeyed building with overhanging carved eaves, wooden balconies, spread shutters at the windows from which yellow light was spilling on to the snow, and frescoes painted on the white plaster of the façade. I stood for a moment looking at it, breathing in cold air flavoured with wood smoke, pungent Austrian tobacco, the wetness of trodden snow and a spicy hint of goulash. This was the place where Matt had always stayed on his trips to Austria, the second home he had been eager to show me.

  The thought helped me to shake off some of the alienation I had felt at the cemetery. Matt had loved me, and it was foolish to allow myself to be depressed by the discrepancy between the hints he had dropped about his age, and the dates on the stone. The fact was, Matt had been vain – I’d seen him, more than once when he thought I wasn’t looking, anxiously studying his hairline in his shaving mirror to check whether it was receding, or whether there were any grey hairs. As if I’d have cared.

  He had told me that the Alte Post was run by the Hammerl family. I entered the stone-flagged hallway – damp with melted snow from the guests’ boots – and saw the driver of the mini-bus. He was a slim, blond, good-looking weather-burned man in ski pants and sweater, who had introduced himself at Innsbruck station as Toni, the son of our host. He spoke good English with an engagingly soft Austrian accent, and was now talking to the feminine half of the honeymoon couple. Her husband was nowhere in sight. She gave me a shy, cold-congested smile as I came in, and Toni Hammerl took me to the reception desk and introduced me to his mother.

  Like her son, Frau Hammerl was blonde and blue-eyed, though if she had once had his figure she had long since lost it. Her hair, which she wore drawn up into a bun, was liberally streaked with grey, and her skin was criss-crossed with faint lines, but she had a fresh, well-scrubbed, wholesome look. Her English was slow and uncertain, but there was no doubt about the sincerity of her welcome. She beamed at me and shook my hand vigorously, assuring me that she and her family would do all they could to make my stay enjoyable. No wonder, I thought, that Matt had felt at home here.

  I took the registration form she gave me, and began to fill it in. As I did so, the front door was pushed open and the new husband came in at a run, clutching a small package.

  ‘How are you, darling?’ he asked his wife anxiously, as though they had been apart for hours. ‘Sorry I’ve been so long – the shop was busy. I think this is good stuff, though, I’m sure it will help.’

  His wife dabbed her swollen nose, and gasped her thanks.

  ‘It’s really this young lady we should thank,’ he said, giving me a cordial nod of acknowledgement. He had a quick, light, nervy voice. ‘I mightn’t have thought of getting the mixture if she hadn’t stopped off to go to the Apotheke.’

  I remembered the excuse I had given for stopping the mini-bus. I hadn’t felt able, at the time, to say that I wanted to visit the cemetery, and there was certainly no point in trying to tell them about it now. I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable by feeling that they had to be sorry for me.

  And so I responded with nothing more than a friendly smile. Immediately, he thrust out his hand. ‘About time we introduced ourselves, isn’t it? I’m Phil Sloan. This is Rosemary – My Wife.’

  It was less of an introduction than a public announcement, an assertion of joy and pride that, in his view, clearly deserved to be heralded by trumpets. Rosemary gave him an adoring glance, and blushed. We exchanged a few pleasantries about the journey, and then Toni Hammerl picked up their luggage and preceded them up the stairs.

  By the time Toni returned, I had completed my registration. Frau Hammerl handed back my passport, commiserating with me on the depressed state of the pound sterling and assuring me that English-speaking visitors had always been welcome in her house, and always would be. I was about to tell her that I had come to the Alte Post because a friend had often stayed here, when an elderly man of considerable size with a magnificent set of white Emperor Franz-Josef whiskers came trundling down the corridor.

  Frau Hammerl introduced him as her hu
sband, Otto. My host enveloped my hand, briefly but completely, in his huge fist, roared at me incomprehensibly, and disappeared with surprising speed into one of the rooms that led off the hall.

  The room I had booked was not in the Alte Post itself, but in the hotel annexe. Toni picked up my suitcase and led the way out of the main door and round to a narrow alley that sloped down between the side of the hotel and the walls of the church. ‘Take care,’ he said. ‘If you are not wearing ski boots you will find this path very slippery.’

  I was glad of his warning. The soles of my fashion boots were smooth, and it would have been all too easy to skid on the well-trodden snow. I picked my way after him as gingerly as a bather on a shingle beach, concentrating so hard on where I was putting my feet that I almost jumped with surprise when a large drop of near-freezing water plopped on my forehead. Looking up, I saw that it must have dripped from an icicle; a ragged fringe of them – some thin and round as sharpening steels, some as heavily grotesque as limestone stalactites, all glittering in the light from the side windows of the hotel – hung from the balcony above my head.

  I made it to the end of the alley without the indignity of a fall, and found that the annexe was a newish house – though built in traditional Alpine style – in the street behind the church. As Toni preceded me up the stairs, he apologized for the incomprehensibility of his father’s greeting. ‘He doesn’t speak a word of English, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No reason why he should,’ I said. ‘I do know a little German, but I’m afraid it isn’t good enough to understand what he said.’

  ‘He was bidding you welcome, much as my mother did. I doubt if he will speak to you again before you go – he’s shy with foreign visitors. And especially if they’re young and attractive women …’

  Toni Hammerl paused at the top of the stairs, outside the open door of a single room, watching me with the air of a man who is not in the least shy in female company. His smile was nicely calculated, offering an invitation without being offensive. It was obvious that he subscribed to the belief that unattached girls go to Austria as much for the instructors as for the ski-ing.

  I had been going to tell him my reason for coming to Kirchwald, but his smile put me off. I didn’t want to expose myself either to pursuit or to well-meant sympathy by revealing the extent of my aloneness. Better to let him think that I was as cold as my heart now permanently felt.

  ‘Is this my room?’ I asked distantly. ‘Thank you – I’ll carry my own luggage in.’

  He looked surprised, but retreated immediately. He was still smiling, but this time he had the look of a man who imagines he has been given a challenge, and relishes it.

  The bedrooms in the annexe were entirely modern, but in the Alte Post itself the main room on the ground floor was an agreeably old-fashioned Gäststube, with smoke-darkened panelled walls, a heavily beamed ceiling and a huge tiled stove throwing out heat from one corner. It seemed to be principally a meeting and drinking place for local men, but when I made my appearance for supper Frau Hammerl showed me to an alcove where a few tables were reserved for resident guests.

  The Sloans were already there, finishing a meal, though as I passed their table I could see that Rosemary had left most of her food uneaten. I sat at a table on the opposite side of the alcove. We exchanged nods and smiles, and then I opened the guidebook I had brought, and pretended to read.

  There was no-one else in the alcove, and I was uncomfortably aware of the presence of the honeymoon couple. The noise made by some card players on the far side of the room would have made it impossible for me to overhear the Sloans’ conversation, but in fact they were not talking; and this made my isolation even more unbearable. I read the same paragraph in the guidebook over and over again, forcing my eyes to concentrate on the print regardless of its meaning. I could not bear to catch more than that one glimpse of Phil and Rosemary Sloan, clasping hands across the table and wordlessly communicating their love.

  I contemplated rushing back to my room. The ache in my chest bore no relation to hunger, and my throat felt too constricted to allow me to swallow food. But just then two noisy young French couples occupied a table between me and the Sloans, a girl came to take my order, and I began to relax a little. It was only then that I realized that I had been clenching my hands so tightly that my nails had made half-moon imprints on my palms.

  Now that there were others in the alcove, I felt able to look again at the Sloans without so much self-pity. They were not particularly young: both in their thirties, with Rosemary possibly the elder, though her cold had so spoiled her face that it was hardly fair to judge. She was tall and thin, with fine, straight, light brown hair, large eyes and a slightly receding chin. Phil was much darker, with wavy hair that was beginning to thin at the front, and a half-hearted moustache. No one would call them a handsome couple, or look at them twice.

  But that, I mused, is what made their mutual adoration even more touching. Love is not, thank goodness, the prerogative of the young and beautiful. Love is what Phil and Rosemary had found in each other, and I was glad that they had found it. In a strange way, I felt older than they were – more experienced, sadder, more remote from love.

  A blonde, blue-eyed girl – almost certainly a Hammerl – set in front of me a plate piled high with schnitzel and fried potato. There was a side plate of salad, but I boggled at the size of the main dish; an ideal meal for someone who had put in an exhausting day on the ski slopes, perhaps, but far more and far richer than I could cope with. I was eyeing it apprehensively when a shadow fell across my plate; a man in a bright blue anorak was standing by my table, holding a red woollen ski cap in his hands.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said diffidently, ‘but aren’t you the girl who was down at the cemetery late this afternoon? We spoke, if you remember.’

  I recalled a man staring at me, then muttering, ‘Grüss Gott’ and ski-ing on. I had assumed that he was Austrian; I certainly couldn’t recognize this man with the untidy red-gold hair, but there was no reason for me to disbelieve him.

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said politely, without pretending to an enthusiasm I didn’t feel.

  ‘I’m sorry I stared, but I saw you were looking at Matt Danby’s grave and I thought that perhaps you were his girl-friend. So I’ve been searching the hotels for you. I knew Matt, you see – we sometimes climbed together. My name’s Stephen Marsh.’

  He held out a large hand, and I clutched it. ‘Kate Paterson,’ I said eagerly. I had never met any of Matt’s friends, and I longed to talk about him. ‘Do sit down, please!’

  He looked at my untouched plate. ‘I don’t want to interrupt your supper.’

  I shook my head. ‘I really can’t face it – I was just wondering how I could abandon it without offending the Hammerls. I don’t suppose – ?’

  I looked him over. He was a large young man with pleasant brown eyes and blunt features, and a frame that could accommodate a plateful of schnitzel and fried potato with no trouble at all. ‘Not if you’ve already eaten, of course,’ I said, ‘but after all this food is included in my package deal – and with Austrian prices being what they are, and the sterling exchange rate what it is …’

  ‘It would be a great pity to waste it,’ he agreed, zipping himself out of his jacket. ‘Thank you very much! Tell you what, I’ll order some rolls and cheese – could you eat that? And beer? Or wine, or coffee?’

  Within a few minutes we were sharing a meal and talking as though we had known each other for years. Stephen explained that he was a botanist, who had craftily opted to write his doctor’s dissertation on Alpine flora so that he could come to the university of Innsbruck and spend all his spare time climbing or ski-ing.

  ‘And that’s how you met Matt?’ I asked. ‘I’m afraid that I don’t recall that he ever mentioned your name.’

  ‘I’m not surprised – we hardly knew each other except as climbers, and we didn’t actually climb together more than two or three times. But there’s a great camaraderie among climbers
. I’d heard that this American was very good on rock, so I made a point of meeting him; and when you’re up there on an overhang, clinging to crevices with your fingernails and boot studs, with the wind trying to tear you off, the man on the other end of the rope is your brother. I have good reason to remember Matt with gratitude. He was a fine climber, and I was shocked when I heard that he’d been killed on the Nockspitze. I didn’t even know that he was in the Tyrol at the time.’

  ‘It was only a short visit,’ I said sadly, remembering. ‘He had just come back from a business conference in the United States, and he stopped over in London for twenty-four hours before taking some papers on to Austria. But whenever he came here, he tried to make time to climb or to ski. He loved it – he loved the mountains.’

  ‘Yes –’ Stephen put his hand gently on my arm, conveying sympathy with his touch as well as his eyes and his voice. ‘I’m sorry, Kate.’

  I nodded an acknowledgement, and he took away his hand. I had begun to feel very warm, with the heat of the stove and the coffee and the increasing number of people in the room, and so I slipped off my heavy woollen jacket. As I did so, I saw Stephen glance at the pendant I wore over my light sweater. He looked again, and frowned.

  ‘Something wrong?’ I asked.

  He hesitated. ‘I don’t want to be presumptuous – but isn’t that the disc that Matt used to wear when he was climbing?’

  I touched it with love. It was not a decorative pendant – simply a brass disc inscribed with the name of Matt’s American university rock climbing club, suspended from a leather thong which had become supple from contact with his skin. He had told me that he always wore it when he went climbing. He was wearing it when he returned from a longish Austrian trip a few weeks before his death; and still wearing it that same night. In the morning he had taken it from his neck and put it round my own, and now I wore it always.