A Heart Bent Out of Shape (23 page)

twenty-seven

When Hadley woke she felt every point
of her body
touching his, the ridge of his anklebone, the curve of his back, her nose pressed to the lobe of his ear. They hadn’t made it to the bed the night before; instead they had fallen asleep twined on the sofa, blankets caught around their waists. Despite the warmth of Joel she felt chilly; the fire in the grate had long ago fallen to ash. She carefully untangled herself, pushing her lips together for silence. She found his sweater on the floor and pulled it on, then padded barefoot to the kitchen where she found coffee and fresh milk. She set a pot on the stove and went over to the window, drawing the curtain aside. Outside it was a white, white world, and the sun was already climbing in the pale blue sky. Traces of wispy cloud clung to the tops of trees. She could see as far as she ever had, across hurtling mountainside, undulating snowfields, grey-white peaks and cloaks of forest.

She felt his hands on her shoulders and she turned to him. Joel’s hair stood on end and when he spoke his voice was still groggy with sleep.

‘When you woke up this morning, and found yourself here, what did you think?’ he said.

‘What do you want to know?’ she smiled. ‘Yes, I’m grateful to you for whisking me away. No, I don’t regret it for an instant. And yes, I’d really like it if you wrote my American Lit essay for me later, as I was kind of distracted over the holidays. I kept thinking about this man, you see.’

He hung his head and gave a gruff laugh.

‘No. I mean,’ he said, squeezing her shoulders, ‘was it like I said it would be? Did you open your eyes and think of something else? Like I said, that time in my office?’

‘Oh, that.’

Hadley turned her head to the window. Outside the sun threw blue shadows on the snow. Winter-coated pines stood in gossiping clusters. She watched the drip of an icicle hanging from the roof, its sharp point translucent. Everything had an unreal quality. From where she sat, so long as she carried on looking out of the window, there was nothing to place them in the world they knew. She turned back to Joel.

‘I meant,’ he said, ‘did you think about Kristina?’

‘I know what you meant,’ she said quietly.

‘And?’

‘And . . . I know that it will get better. It already has, Joel, so much better. I’m just not . . . there yet. But don’t worry. Never worry.’

He reached out and took her hand. She wore a single ring on her finger, a tiny star set in a silver band. He took it between his fingers and lightly turned it.

‘Will you tell me?’ he said. ‘The day when you wake up and think of something else? Toast. Coffee. Those stupid, necessary things I talked about. Will you promise to let me know when that happens?’

She closed her hand around his and told him
yes
.

Joel took Hadley on to the slopes, her feet pinched by hired boots, her calves at first protesting as she floundered around. She surprised herself by taking to skiing more readily than she’d thought. She liked how the slightest action, a bending of the knee, a leaning of her weight, could alter something, drive her faster or sharpen her turn. Joel watched her, leaning on his poles, his hair licked back by the breeze. In his ski suit he looked like something from an old picture postcard, nut-brown and racy.

‘Kristina was going to teach me to ski, you know,’ she said, as they stood catching their breath at the bottom of a run. ‘I’ll bet she was brilliant at it.’

‘I remember you saying that,’ he said.

‘Skiing, I mean, I’ll bet she was brilliant at skiing. She might have been a really bad teacher. I can’t imagine her standing around waiting for me, like you do. She’d have wanted to ski off. Jumping over things, probably. She was more daring than me.’

‘You’re plenty daring,’ he said.

‘I don’t know if I am.’

‘You’re here with me, aren’t you?’ he said.

She went to lean in to him and slipped, her skis moving in different directions. She ended up in a heap in the snow, collapsed in laughter, her poles criss-crossed. He joined in, reaching out his hand for her. The mountains caught their peals of laughter and returned them, over and over.

Back on her feet, her skis in position, Hadley whipped him a smile.

‘Try and catch me,’ she shouted.

She pushed off, her knees bent, and the speed soon took her. The wind drew tears from her eyes and her lips formed a boundless grin. She heard the hiss of Joel’s skis behind her but he never overtook. Her skis wobbled, her poles pointed, she let slip a cry, but she stayed upright, she kept moving, and the mountain kept coming. At the bottom, he pretended she’d beaten him.

‘You don’t need to fake it,’ she said, red-cheeked and jubilant. ‘I don’t even care. That was amazing. It felt like flying.’

‘You’ve got it,’ said Joel, ‘you don’t need my help any more. You’re expert.’

Hadley took off her skis and brushed the snow from them.

‘Shall we go up again?’ she said.

In the cocoon of the lift, as it swung up over the mountain with the slopes rolling beneath, Hadley pushed her goggles up on top of her head.

‘Joel, without you, I’d never have come here.’

‘You’d have made it out eventually,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, ‘you gave me this. You gave me all of this.’

Their days in the Alps were full of the kind of startling natural beauty that Hadley knew would stay inscribed on her memory, moments that she was already beginning to miss before they were quite gone. The powder-soft light at sunset, the salmon tint to the snow as they walked back to the cabin. The spindly deciduous trees on the lower slopes, imposters in the thick evergreen forests, and the way that in the chill mornings each tiny shoot was painted with ice, like pointing fingers. And she knew she’d remember the taste of water from the tap in the cabin, as crisp-cut as diamonds. She’d drink great gulps of it in the middle of the night, while behind her Joel rolled towards sleep, his spent form lying still beneath the sheets.

Disruptive thoughts intruded only sometimes. Walking back through the village once they passed a group of young Swiss men, newly arrived for the weekend. Hadley watched as they stood around their gleaming cars, pulling on their ski boots, their hair already sun-slicked. Their number-plates were marked
GE
for Geneva. She strained to catch the sprinkle of their chatter, searching faces for one more pallid, more haunted than the rest. Jacques was everywhere and nowhere, which was as hopeless a thought as the driver being everywhere and nowhere. Untraceable people haunted her, and no good could possibly come of that. She was grateful, then, for the solid reality of Joel. She told him this, and he smiled,
I’m glad I’m good for something
, he said.

Joel seemed different in the mountains. In Lausanne he had been tightly coiled and somehow bristling, popping on his toes like a boxer. Here, his movements took on a more languorous air, and he never once looked over his shoulder or pulled his hat low over his eyes. Lausanne sprawled somewhere far below them, packed with all-seeing people, the likes of Caroline Dubois and the crowd at Les Ormes, its wet streets marked with lines that couldn’t be crossed, and Hugo Bézier, with his sharp edges and insinuations. It was as though the pair of them had taken flight, and the world they’d left behind spun somewhere far beneath them.

Joel was different in other ways too. One day on the slopes Hadley grew tired and took a spot on a sunny terrace while he carried on skiing. She cupped a hot chocolate in her hands and looked down over the mountain as he went on without her. He was easy to spot, not by his red suit but by his crouched stance, his whipping speed, the flurries of snow that were thrown up in his wake. She saw him cut across the piste and jump the low rope on to the untamed side of the mountain. To her it looked like nothing but a steep field of rocks, all craggy slopes with scrawny, wind-beaten fir trees clinging to the ledges. Just the narrowest chutes of snow ran between. She watched him barrel into a drop; there was nothing but grey-black stone in front of him, not even a dusting of snow. Her hand went to her mouth and her drink spilt in the saucer as she saw him suddenly take off and fly through the air. If he was falling he was doing it gracefully, but wasn’t that how everyone looked as they plummeted? A sudden serenity, an abandonment of struggle, as the ground rushed ever closer. Joel held a tuck position, and at the last moment, just as he looked certain to crash-land on the rocks below, he flung out his arms and his poles pointed to the sky. He seemed to be tipping forward, and Hadley could only watch with a gasp. Then he was out of it, and shooting on down the mountain, a flash of red between the rock and the snow. He’d found the smallest strip of powder and had taken it perfectly and now he was skiing faster than ever before. He disappeared from sight. He might as well have dropped off the ends of the earth.

She waited for him and he didn’t come. She ordered another hot chocolate and it went cold before she had finished it. As the afternoon sun disappeared behind the peaks a fiercer cold swept the mountainside. She took the sheepskin blanket that was thrown over the arm of her chair and wrapped it over her knees. She was the only one left on the restaurant terrace. She kept her eyes on the slopes, looking for the flash of his red ski suit, turning expectantly whenever she heard the clatter of boots behind her. In the end she paid her bill and rode one of the last lifts back down to the village. She looked for him everywhere as the small compartment swung on its rope. Her eyes combed the steeply wooded hillsides, the piles of rocks, the ravines that scarred the snow’s smooth face. As the last straggles of skiers headed for the village she walked in the other direction, back towards their cabin. Her feet ached in their stiff boots, her skis were cumbersome to carry, and she was cold from sitting still for so long. Fear pushed her faster, and by the time she kicked the snow from her feet at the door and fumbled with the key her heart was pounding. She let herself in. The cabin was in the shade of a clutch of pines and without the lamps it was dark.

‘Joel?’ she said, even though she knew he wasn’t there.

The bathroom door opened, and she let out a small cry. Her fear was replaced by anger.

‘Where did you go? I thought something had happened, I was frightened.’

He stood in the gloom. He had pulled his ski suit to his waist and his chest was bare, a towel wrapped round his shoulders. He still wore his boots, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark she noticed the trail of melting snow from the front door. She went to him, her hands raised.

‘Joel, what were you thinking?’

‘Careful,’ he said. He flicked the light switch on and she gasped. The side of his face was streaked black and red with half-drying blood. His shoulder bloomed with a giant bruise.

‘Joel, oh my God.’

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he said.

‘How did it happen? I watched you jump from those rocks but you landed. I saw you land.’

‘That was the easy part,’ he said. ‘It was just a misjudgement, that’s all. I got too close to a damn tree.’

‘Why didn’t you just stay on the piste? Why did you have to go off? Honestly, I was watching you and it looked like you had a death-wish. Here,’ she touched his cheek gingerly and he winced, ‘let me help. What can I do?’

‘It looks worse than it is,’ he said again. ‘It’s my own fault; I got it wrong, that’s all. I’m sorry you had to wait so long, Hadley. I tried but I couldn’t ski back to where you were. I just came down.’

‘I didn’t know what’d happened but I knew something must have. I just had that feeling.’

‘Hadley, I’m fine. Come on, kiss me. Just on the side of my mouth.’

‘Joel,’ she laid her hands gently on his shoulders and saw him flinch. ‘I’m hurting you.’

‘You’re not,’ he said, ‘you’re the best thing. I feel better already.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Nothing. Some drinks, maybe. One apiece.’

‘Do you need a hospital?’

‘Definitely not. It’s nothing, really. I just got a little banged up, that’s all. You can’t avoid it in the mountains.’

He walked into the bedroom with laboured steps, then sat down on the edge of the bed and began to pull off his boots. Hadley poured two whiskies and carried them through, her fingers leaving prints on the cold glass. She handed him one and watched him drink it quickly down. He exhaled slowly. He set the glass aside and grinned half-heartedly.

‘You know, there is a way that you can make me feel better, Hadley.’

‘Oh, come on,’ she said. Then, ‘What, really?’

‘Really.’

She stood before him and he laid his hands on her hips. He pulled her gently towards him.

‘Just lie here with me,’ he said, ‘put your head on my chest, and I’ll tuck my arm around you. That’s all I want, nothing else.’

That night they watched the fire until the small hours. First Hadley had coaxed Joel from his ski suit. Then they’d bathed, and she’d run her hands over his bruised shoulder, dabbed carefully at his cheek, and he had closed his eyes, gritting his teeth as the water ran in his cuts. Afterwards his fingers traced a pattern over the curve of her back and she imagined what he was drawing: two looping love hearts, or a bird in flight. Every now and again he would clasp her to him as be bent forward to toss another log on the fire. As they settled back they breathed in the wood smoke. Hadley rolled over and kissed him; she tasted burning pine in his hair and skin. They saw the shadows their bodies made together on the rolling wooden walls of the cabin: Hadley slim as a child, Joel ox-strong and square shouldered and not hurt at all.

Afterwards, he went back to drawing shapes on her skin. ‘There’s so much you don’t know about me,’ he said.

Hadley sighed and shifted. The fire crackled as the flames guzzled the dust-dry logs.

‘And there’s so much you don’t know about me,’ she said back.

‘You?’ he said. ‘You’re bright white. You’re the kind of girl a man looks at and sees the worst of himself looking back. No one’s good enough for you, Hadley. Least of all me.’

‘Lies,’ she said, lazily, ‘all lies.’

Joel bent and kissed her head. His lips stayed pressed into her hair. When he spoke his words went all the way through her.