L'Affaire (3 page)

‘Oh?’ said Amy. She had not heard of the Venns.

‘Quite surprised to see them here. I’m travelling with the Mawleskys. Prince de Mawlesky. Over there. Did you meet them?’ He nodded discreetly toward a small couple standing at the drinks table, each of the pair with shining dyed black hair. Amy hadn’t met them, but they had been pointed out – people had not failed to mention the hotel’s small store of princes and barons. They had for Amy a sort of stagy unreality, making her think of
Masterpiece Theatre
. But of course these people weren’t actors, they actually existed. Somehow there was a warming satisfaction to being in the same place as titled people, the better to verify the existence of European history, the reality of alternative social structures, the arbitrariness of being
an American at all, when but for the discontent of some ancestor you might have been speaking French this minute, or Romanian or Dutch.

She herself might have been speaking Dutch; some of her ancestors were Dutch, back in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, though who knew what had been mixed in since. Her family had no tradition of remembering Europe at all, but in her Palo Alto set, European ancestors were somewhat unfashionable, and the idea of finding your European roots had been attacked as incorrect Euro-centricity, and worship of a passé civilization of wicked colonialists; but she was interested in finding out about them. She hoped to combat the national failing of being too uninterested in history, though part of her agreed – why dwell on history when it couldn’t change anything?

It would be interesting to meet a prince, she decided, but what would you say to him?

‘Where did you ski today?’ she asked Mr Crumley.

‘Ski?
Moi?
I don’t ski, dear, but I have a taste for the snow, a feeling for the magic mountain, for the health-giving properties of mountain air.’

She wondered if he were ill. The idea cast him in a romantic light, a poet in the Alps for his health. He looked quite sound, if elderly. She wondered if he drank, which she had observed all English people to do quite a bit, at least the ones who came to Palo Alto. Robin Crumley swooshed two champagnes off a passing waiter’s tray and handed one to her.

‘And you, a Yank obviously, what brings you here?’

‘Well – the skiing.’

‘How tiresome, it means you’ll be away all day and
you won’t have lunch with me. However, some night you must join the Mawleskys and me for dinner. So hard about the Venns. Still, they are alive, if barely, and that’s something. Of course, heaven knows for how long. Buried alive, always a fate for which I have had a particular dread. Skiing is for fools, really.’

3

Kip Canby, another of the guests, also American, an attractive, open-faced boy of fourteen, had not been paying attention to the snow or sky. He felt himself in a spot, having to deal with his nephew Harry, a baby aged eighteen months, while Harry’s mother and father were skiing. Kip had no skills as a baby-sitter. He was thinking a nice hotel like the Croix St Bernard should have some toys, a playpen, whatever would be needed for a kid, but there was nothing. Of course, he hadn’t asked.

The others had not come in yet. He’d volunteered to baby-sit because he was conscious of his brother-in-law Adrian’s generosity bringing him along on this trip. Now, four o’clock, Adrian and Kerry weren’t back, and little Harry was crying and bored. Kip bobbled him around on his knee and said things like ‘Now, now, buddy,’ and ‘This is the way the farmer rides’ to no avail. Eventually he put on his Walkman and ignored Harry’s whines, but as the afternoon dragged along, he was obliged to address the matter of a bottle for Harry and some cereal for Harry, and eventually, changing Harry. Ick.

At four forty-five, Adrian and Kerry still hadn’t come back. Kerry was his sister, Adrian her elderly husband, surprisingly spry for someone his age – he was still on the slopes, and evidently had fathered Harry. Kip found Adrian self-involved and demanding, like many old
persons, but Adrian was nice to him, and Kip was sensible of that.

Kip’s own room, damp from the shower steam, now smelled like dirty Pampers and talcum powder. Adrian and Kerry had a suite for themselves and the baby, but Kip had felt uncomfortable there, their stuff all around, and had thought Harry could crawl around in his room while he read or something. He called their room yet again. He had no special apprehensions, was puzzled more than worried. As the light fell outside the window, and the snowdrifts turned a gray-blue, his room darkened.

Later he put on his Walkman again and took Harry out into the corridors. Harry had only recently learned to walk, and occasionally doddered into the walls or sat down with a plop, so that the back of his coverall was sopping from where the carpets were wet with the snow off people’s shoes and boots. Kip found it hard to walk as slowly as Harry. People smiled at this nice boy Kip, for being in charge of a little tot.

They dawdled up and down the green-carpeted corridors of the lobby floor. Harry raced, fell, giggled with mad baby merriment. Outside the cardroom, Kip saw that Christian Jaffe, the chef’s son, who managed the front desk, was following them, tentatively, wearing a grave expression, the expression of an adult who was facing the need to discipline you. He saw that Christian Jaffe was probably only a little older than he, maybe nineteen. Behind Christian was one of the daughters, the plain one, hands clasped at her waist. Kip knew something was wrong, and that it involved him and Harry. He picked up Harry and waited.

‘Monsieur Canby, there has been some bad news,’ Christian said. ‘I suggest we go upstairs. Come up to the office.’

Kip obeyed, not asking what the bad news was, not wanting to hear it yet. He had a crawl of apprehension in his stomach. It must have to do with Kerry and Adrian. The daughter reached out her arms to take Harry, and without words they moved up the stairs, past the pool table and coffee lounge, into the small room behind the front desk. The daughter saw Kip installed in a chair, then left, carrying Harry.

‘This is very bad news,’ Christian said. He sat down and faced Kip. ‘Mr and Mrs Venn have been taken in an avalanche. We were just telephoned.’

‘Taken?’

‘Swept away. Excuse me, my English.’

Kip heard this without grasping it. Taken or swept? ‘But I just saw them. They were going to have lunch, they were just there on La Grange,’ a simple run down to a cluster of houses at the bottom of the western slopes. Well, a couple of hours ago.

We never know where an avalanche or other act of God might capriciously, or purposefully, strike us, said Christian Jaffe’s look.

‘Are they dead? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No, no!’ cried Jaffe, happy to be able to adjust the bad news upward. ‘They are still alive, thanks, God, but their condition is not so good. A helicopter is coming to take them to the hospital in Moutiers. Has done so.’

Now Kip felt his face getting red with relief, Kerry not dead. He realized that he’d been expecting bad news all
afternoon, dread resonating with the distant echo of dynamite along the snowy ridges. But broken legs had been more in his mind. ‘Where?’ he asked, as if it mattered.

‘They didn’t explain. They found them a few hours ago, but we weren’t notified because the rescuers had no idea what hotel they were staying in. They – we always advise avalanche detection devices when people are skiing
hors piste,
but – but they weren’t skiing
hors piste
, they were quite low down, I only heard that they weren’t
hors piste
.’ A quaver of concern suggested anxiety about the liability issues.

‘But will they be okay?’

‘They – I gather the condition of Monsieur Venn is – grave. They were buried in snow for an unknown length of time, many minutes, an hour.’

Kip’s eyes stung. This was bad. He didn’t know how to feel or react. He felt the weirdness of Adrian and Kerry buried like corpses in the snow. Was it really them? Should he go and look at them? His stomach turned – he bet that they wanted him to identify Adrian and Kerry. He sat, jammed with thoughts and amazement. At least Kerry wasn’t dead.

‘I guess I should go to the hospital,’ he said finally. ‘If that’s where they are.’

‘Yes, I thought you would want that. We’ll try to make it down to Moutiers. My sister will look after the child.’ Christian, evidently having ready a recitation of what they were prepared to do to help, some lesson learned in hotel school about service, concern, humanity.

In the car, Kip asked Christian Jaffe over and over to tell him the story, exploring the phrases for additional
information, but Jaffe knew no more than had been told. Dug out of the snow, Adrian more dead, Kerry more alive, some delay in notifying the hotel because at first there had been no way of telling where they were staying.

‘But they found a ski to go on, with the rental number, only one ski, but they could trace it.’

The hospital was small, a nineteenth-century building that might have been a school, or one of the sanitoria where the tuberculous came in the old days. A couple of people sat in the hallway on folding chairs. On the wall a large three-dimensional map of the region. At the far end of the corridor, through an open door, Kip could see lights and hear electronic beeps, intensive care noises familiar from television and from when their mother had died.

With Christian Jaffe, he approached and paused in the doorway. A figure nearest them, mounded in wraps, could be Kerry. Another machine sighed in the corner under another mound of dark blankets. They entered. There were no doctors, just a couple of nurses pottering with the tubes and watching the monitors. It seemed the consultations were over, the measures implemented, the accident victims were now absorbed into the routine of the nighttime shift. No one stopped them coming closer.

The nearer figure was Kerry. Kip stared and stared at her closed eyes as if to warm them awake with his mounting hot panic. He felt some obstacle to grasping this, a thick, shocked feeling. He could not believe her eyes wouldn’t open, conspiratorially, when she realized it was him looking down at her. But she was like a stone,
machines wheezing around her. The other mound must be Adrian.

Maybe he shouldn’t look at her. People hate it when you look at them asleep. There were several nurses, coming in and out, looking at him, but no doctor talked to him. Kip wondered what he should do, perhaps sit there beside her into the night? But the nurse urged him out after only a few moments.

Christian Jaffe, smoking in the corridor, pulled up his collar, and with a motion of his head meant to include Kip, moved toward the exit at the end. He looked anxious to start back. ‘The late seating will be beginning, I ought to be there,’ he said. ‘The guests will have heard by now of the accident.’ Such news introduced collective excitement and anxiety, with the resulting increase in food-related complaints, and wines sent back, and general querulousness.

Kip wondered where the doctor was, and why no one had talked to him, the brother. He looked around for the doctor or someone to talk to. He didn’t speak French.

‘She’s not going to die or anything?’ he asked Christian Jaffe. ‘Could you ask how she is?’

Jaffe spoke to the nurse just coming out. ‘
Non, non,’
the woman said. Kip understood that much, though not the rest.

‘She says she is in a stable coma, but she is still very cold.’ This sounded contradictory to Kip, but what did he know? He guessed she meant Kerry was not going to die and that there was no point in sitting there. A doctor stepped into the hall and shook hands with Jaffe. Turning to Kip, he said in English, ‘Monsieur Venn is not good.
His brain shows very little activity. But he is very cold, and so it is too soon to say. Madame Venn is much younger, and also was the first to be rescued, and there we have more hope.’

Kip’s stomach unknotted with relief. Kerry okay. He didn’t really care about Adrian. Christian Jaffe spoke again to the doctor.

‘Madame Venn is your sister?’ the doctor asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then you perhaps know who will be the appropriate person to make the decision – uh – decisions – in the case of Monsieur Venn? A member of his direct family?’ Kip had no idea, and it only came to him later in the car what the Decision might be. But Kerry would get better and be able to make the Decision for herself.

In the car, the questions in Kip’s mind, as numerous as the snowflakes that hurled themselves against the windshield, almost cancelled themselves out, leaving an anxious blankness, a passive resignation as cold as a field of snow. Kip saw that the person in charge was him, Kip, there was no one else, but that didn’t mean he knew what to do. With their parents dead, he and Kerry only had one relative, an uncle in Barstow, California. She also had Adrian and Harry, but he, Kip, only had Kerry, though now he had responsibility for Harry, who would probably cry all night. What would they do? He looked at Christian Jaffe, grimly driving up the narrow winding road against the increasing snowfall and the dark, and he knew he would have to decide himself what to do.

Presently Jaffe spoke: If there were people who should be notified, if they needed to be present, the hotel could
accommodate them, or arrange it. ‘Their own doctors, perhaps, or their lawyer.’ But of course Kip didn’t know who those functionaries might be. Christian Jaffe suggested he look through Adrian’s papers. Kip said he would; but he knew he would feel funny about it.

4

Maida Vale, London, W9. A pleasant first-floor flat in a large Regency house with white columns in front, overlooking an oval garden common to the rear. Large comfortable chairs in loose beige covers, the sofa faintly tea-stained on the arms, magazines and books stacked around in disorderly but readerly fashion, a small bronze sculpture, the potted plants of ornamental pepper and African violet neat in the window, a stereo, a BBC voice announcing the shipping forecasts, an indolent spotted cat, a slight rattling of the panes as the weather worsened. An English scene of mingled elegance and penury.

Cruciferous cooking smells. Posy and Rupert are having dinner with their mother Pamela, as they try to do every so often since Pam has been alone, not that she demands it, she is plenty busy. Gammon, sprouts, cauliflower, and mash, the smelliest dinner in Pam’s repertory, theirs by request as it took them firmly and comfortably back to childhood, before the family trouble. They always asked for it, there being nowhere in London, now so foody, where you could get such nursery dishes. Pamela herself was foody and cooked out of Prue Leith and the
River Café Cookbook
, but in their childhood had only known how to boil things, and had had ideas about what was appropriate for children.