Tall Poppies (6 page)

The smile was replaced by a frown, but five minutes later Nina was back out on the sidewalk with a brown envelope in her hand. It contained $6z7; all she had in the world.

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‘Six thirty! Six thirty, mesdemoiselles.’

Elizabeth could hear the maid coming along the dormitory corridor, tapping on doors to wake up the young ladies. There was nothing so vulgar as an electric bell at the Henri Dufor, but if you were more than ten minutes late to the dining room, you’d miss breakfast.

‘Six thirty, my lady,’ the maid announced, opening Elizabeth’s door a fraction.

“Merci, Claudette,’ Elizabeth said, quickly swinging her

bare feet out from under the eiderdown duvet before its cosy warmth could tempt her back to sleep. The beds were heavy, old-fashioned things carved from solid oak, ˘˘ith pretty Alpine flowers painted on the headboards, made up freshly each morning with crisp linen sheets. Elizabeth loved her bed and collapsed into it at night without a second thought. Yet it wasn’t difficult to get up

in the mornings, she had so much to look forward to. ‘There’s been a new snowfall.’

Penny Foster, her roommate and the only daughter of

a property tycoon, was standing at the window looking up at the Alps. Saas-Fe was ringed with a massive horseshoe of mountains, great stretches of shadows and brilliant white velvet bisecting each other. Green pastures full of tiny flowers lay at their feet in the summer, and the chalet school was perched low down on one of these, east of the main village. Elizabeth padded across the polished wooden floor and craned her neck past the apple-green shutters. Penny was right: even in the dark of early

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morning she could see a fresh blanket of white covering the upper meadows.

‘Terrific!’ she grinned. ‘More skiing. I can do a run straight back to the village.’

‘Is that all you ever think about?’ Penny sniffed, pushing a lock of red-gold hair out of her eyes. Where Elizabeth had a strong, athletic body, Penny was slim and constantly worrying about her weight. She had a pair of the latest electric scales by her bed and weighed herself morning and night. She’d been taught to ski by the school instructors but preferred the ballroom dancing classes, as exercise made her even hungrier. Elizabeth thought Penny was neurotic. Penny resented Elizabeth’s energy and the way she ate mountains of food without ever getting plump, but she was also in awe of her roommate’s daring. Elizabeth Savage had a wild reputation, in school and the village as well; a natural on the slopes, within months she was taking on the local hotshots, Swiss boys who had started skiing when they started walking. Elizabeth ski’d with ferocious passion, ignoring all the school rules about forbidden areas. Saas-Fe had practically year-round snow, and even after the tourists departed, admiring locals noticed Elizabeth’s graceful young body in its snug lilac suit twist sharply down a mogul field or bomb down a black run, crouching into the trajectory like a brightly coloured bullet. Penny heard the other girls gossiping about Elizabeth’s nickname in the village, ‘Coup de Foudre’, the thunderbolt. She was sure it was no accident that the phrase also meant ‘love at first sight’.

Six months of Switzerland had changed Elizabeth dramatically. Her curves had become high and tight, her legs powerful. Her glossy hair had grown longer and thicker and the mountain sun had highlighted it with rich streaks of gold, the colour of warm honey. Away from Tony’s constant disapproval, the sullen rebellion had’

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disappeared. There was a fresh flush to her complexion and a dancing light in her green eyes. Elizabeth would never be model-thin like Penny, but she didn’t seem to care. She practically glowed with health, and looking at her standing there in her white cotton nightgown, breathing in the cold morning air, Penny felt another stab of envy.

‘Come on, we’ve only got twenty minutes,’ Penny said, and the two of them scrambled into the school uniform: ivory shirt, fitted navy blazer and skirt and knee-high black socks and shoes. Elizabeth caught her hair back in a ponytail, Penny spritzed herself with Miss Dior, and they rushed out into the corridor to join the other girls. The dining room was laid out with long tables and ‘ hand-carved, high-backed chairs, its windows looking out towards the pastureland and the dark, scented pine forests beneath. Herds of belled cattle were already grazing, .and below them the girls could see the lights of Saas Grund. After the first week, though, nobody paid attention to the view, as all the young ladies were c)nstantly gossiping about boyfriends or rock stars. Penny’s wardrobe door was covered with pictures of T Rex and The Who; it was another weird thing about Elizabeth that she seemed totally unmoved by pin-ups, and had her wardrobe tacked up with ads - a pregnant man encouraging men to think about condoms, ‘Go to Work on an Egg’, ‘Guinness Is Good for You’.

Elizabeth rushed towards the buffet and loaded her plate: newly baked bread, warm croissants, a bowl of steaming hot chocolate and some fresh apricots. Penny took a small helping of cornflakes and a cup of black coffee and they sat down.

‘Hey, Elizabeth, something to interest you,’ Vanessa Chadwick announced. Vanessa was a shipping heiress, a willowy blonde and a prefect, who obeyed school rules and found the Savage girl rather shocking.

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Elizabeth grunted. ‘I doubt that.’

Mornings at the Ecole Henri Dufor were spent practising music, dancing or deportment and then attending ‘lectures’. These were supposed to broaden the mind but normally sent Elizabeth to sleep; Mademoiselle Char main, the French mistress, would blather on about Marie Antoinette, or Herr Flagen, the history tutor, would drone on about the Confederation in his dense Schweizerdeutsch accent. Occasionally they were treated to outside guests with links to the school. These ranged from the Mayor of Zermatt to some pupil’s filmstar mother. The girls still talked about the visit Yves Saint Laurent had once made.

Vanessa sighed at this sad lack of school spirit. ‘His name is Herr Hans Wolf. He helped organise the Winter Olympics here last year.’

‘Not Hans Wolf the skier?’

Vanessa flicked back her shiny blonde hair and consulted her lecture notes. ‘He coached the Swiss ski team, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Yes, but he was a skier long before that.’ Elizabeth tore off a piece of croissant and dipped it in her chocolate, eyes sparkling. ‘Back in the twenties, when people used wooden skis they tied on to their boots.’

‘That don’t sound too safe,’ remarked Chantal Miller, an American banker’s daughter.

‘It wasn’t. It was incredibly dangerous. Hans Wolf set

five downhill records that way during his career.’ ‘I’ll never hear the end of this,’ Penny sighed. ‘How long is he staying?’ ‘Just to give the lecture.’

The others started chatting about the Robert Redford film showing down in the village, but Elizabeth ate her breakfast silently. Her head was miles away in a world without safety nets, padding or crevasse warnings,

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imagining a young Hans Wolf tearing down a mountainside on a pair of shaped planks, lashed to his feet with hempen rope. She found she was almost blushing with excitement. Perhaps she could talk to him after the lecture, ask him what it had been like. Maybe he would let her watch the Swiss team train …

After breakfast the girls cleared away their plates and trooped into the music room for piano practice. Elizabeth was dreadful as usual but smiled engagingly at Madame Lyon; she wanted some new ski-boots and that meant Dad had to receive good reports. She plunked awkwardly at the keys, one eye on her watch, longing for nine o’clock. As soon as they were dismissed - all the girls bobbing a curtsy to the old lady - Elizabeth rushed down ‘ the corridor to the lecture hall to bag herself the best seat. The room filled slowly with laconic, overprivileged teenagers, and Herr Geller, the headmaster, peered in to check that his flock was settled. He noticed Penny Foster and Elizabeth Savage sitting centre front and raised an eyebrow; most unlike Lady Elizabeth to take an active illterest in anything.

Still, he was pleased to see it. It had been a great coup for the Ecole to land the daughter of Lord Caerhaven - titles always looked good in the pupil register - and in many ways, her ladyship had proved ideal. The earl had written him a frank letter before Elizabeth was admitted, explaining that she was a wilful girl and likely to cause trouble; on no account was she to be given business education, maths lessons or allowed to have marketing journals delivered. He wanted a young lady and not a tomboy to return from the Alps. Geller had called Elizabeth to him when she arrived and explained her father’s prohibitions, expecting a storm; instead, all he got was a nod and a shrug of the shoulders.

Elizabeth had resigned herself to the inevitable. She knew the dream would have to be postponed. She. wasn’t

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going to work in Dragon, and if she was ever going to escape her parents’ clutches, that meant money. Tony had it and she didn’t. For the moment, it was better to play along, let the family think she’d given in. She should be studying for her A-levels, but instead she was stuck in this relic from the past, learning cordon bleu cookery, flower-arranging and ballroom dancing. Whenever she heard Penny talk about her brother at Oxford, or Chantal’s at Wharton, or Th6rse Lecoute’s cousins at the Sorbonne, she felt a tight knot of anger in her stomach; no university for her - Dad only wanted her qualified for the Mrs degree. Enthusiasm was asking too much, but Elizabeth dutifully stuck roses in jars and waltzed to the ‘Blue Danube’. At the end of her first term her report said, ‘Modest and well behaved,’ and gave her average marks for everything.

Tony Zloubled her allowance.

Besides, Elizabeth was enjoying herself. She thought she would loathe Switzerland, but within a week she was in love - the soaring, white-capped mountains, green Alpine slopes covered with Eidelweiss and grazing cattle, the belled goats and clear mountain air. She adored Swiss food, thick black bread and Kaise, cuttlefish soups, fondues and Kirschtorte, or cherry tart. There was spicy Gliihwein and perfect chocolate, and the village of Saas F6e was enchanting, with its narrow, winding cobbled streets and gabled shops.

Elizabeth made friends easily despite her reckless streak; some girls disapproved violently, but others secretly admired her. Elizabeth tried hard to sort out the real friends from the crowd of nouveaux riches who sucked up in the hope of an introduction to her brothers. She never trusted Vanessa since the morning she caught her doodling ‘Lady Holwyn’ all over her art history file.

Good behaviour and a large allowance meant she was allowed to join the termly school trip to Zurich. Penriy

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and Chantal dived into the expensive hotel shops packed with Herm/s scarves and Louis Vuitton luggage, but Elizabeth liked to stare at the towering banks, with their mirrored walls and discreet brass plaques. Businessmen in dark suits and Cutler & Gross sunglasses strode past and the news stands were full of financial journals in every conceivable language. Zurich had none of the commercial buzz of London or New York, but its sober atmosphere was impressive. Elizabeth felt she was breathing money. Finance, secrecy and power practically bled from the paving-stones. She would sit in a roadside car6, sipping a glass of schnapps, and think slowly about what she was going to do about Dragon. That company was her birthright, and she wouldn’t let it go.

She turned the problem over and over in her mind - in class, in her bedroom, in the village. One day, Elizabeth promised herself. One day.

Meanwhile, she toed the line. It was easy enough to turn up for classes, and it was necessary. Then she had her first skiing lesson, and her life was transformed.

‘Alone on the black runs from Felskinn and Langfliih, slicing down the glittering, pearl-white tracks, her blood racing, she felt more alive than she had ever believed possible. Elizabeth had two years of finishing school and from now on she looked forward to every second.

She heard the other girls rise to their feet in a rustle of lambswool and cotton as Herr Geller and his guest entered the room. Hans Wolf marched rapidly up to the lectern amidst the polite applause, with the air of a man who wants to get something over quickly. His long stride and erect back were in strange contrast to his wiry white hair and the deep wrinkles scoring his face. Elizabeth knew he was seventy-six, but he looked fiftyl That’s what a lifetime on the slopes will do for you, she thought, thrilled.

Sighing, Hans Wolf regarded his bored, b.eautiful

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audience for a second. Then he reached into his jacket pocket, fished out some crumpled notes and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, slid them up his nose and started to read. What a waste of a morning. He resented having to do this; the young prodigy, Franz Klammer, was racing down the Lauberhorn right now and Wolf had hoped to be there, checking him out. But a banker from Geneva with a daughter at the school had asked him for this favour, and since the banker made a breathtakingly large contribution to Swiss athletics last year, Wolf reluctantly agreed. Money, after all, was sacred.

He rattled on in a dry monotone about the Olympic ideal and the healing powers of sport, occasionally glancing up at the bored faces in front of him. Most of them were examining their manicures, or staring at him with glazed eyes, except for one girl in the centre front. She was “a pretty, healthy-looking child with bright green eyes and a dusting of freckles around the nose. Wolf galloped through his clichts at a rate of knots. He paused for breath and noticed the same girl looking at him as if spellbound, leaning forward on the edge of her seat. Disconcerted, the old man gave her a brief smile, lost his place, found it again and ploughed on to the end. Then he sat down, mopping his brow, and wondered how soon he could get out of here without being rude.

Herr Geller was on his feet. “I’m sure we’re all most grateful to Herr Wolf for that fascinating talk.’ Dutiful applause. ‘Now, mesdemoiselles, do you have any questions for our distinguished guest?’