Games People Play

by Voss, Louise

  ‘I’m Robin. Nice to meet you. So what qualifies one to coach others in life? Your own success at it?’

  Pompous ass, I thought, whilst simultaneously being amazed that he hadn’t fallen over backwards with delight at meeting a real tennis player. But it was a reasonable question, if rather bluntly put. I thought bitterly of the rudderless morass of indecision which was currently my life: two failed relationships; a daughter I rarely saw and found it hard to open up to when I did; one career I’d disliked and another I hadn’t even started (and to which I was, now that I thought about it, eminently unsuited); not to mention an inability even to decide on something as fundamental as which continent I ought to live on.

  ‘Not really,’ I replied shortly, wishing that he had talked to Rachel about her tennis after all. The minibus swept wide around a corner, and I clutched the back of his seat, narrowly avoiding grabbing his hand in the process. ‘I have good interpersonal skills, and can empathize with others’ problems.’ I wondered if this was an accurate description. ‘Although that’s probably more true when I’m not tired, starving, and jetlagged,’I conceded, earning the first real smile from Robin. Actually, I felt rather embarrassed to be discussing my nascent career, when it was still so vague. I hoped Rachel was too lost in thought to be listening – it made me sound like such a lame-ass failure and I really didn’t want her to think of me that way. I changed the subject.

  ‘I’m not looking forward to the drive back down this mountain,’ I said, as the minibus hurtled around another hairpin bend. ‘It’s bad enough coming up it.’

  Rachel turned then, and laughed. ‘Mum, you didn’t think we were driving back, did you? We’re skiing down.’ She gestured towards the wide, glassy ski slope to our right. It was mid-afternoon, and dusk was already beginning to soften and blur the edges of the mountains. ‘I heard the manager say so. It’s to let everybody get a run in before dinner. Why else do you think they told us to change into our ski gear?’

  I sat bolt upright, clutching the cold metal bar of Robin’s seat back.

  ‘What? I can’t do that! I’ve only had three lessons on a dry ski slope! I can’t ski down a whole mountain yet!’ Fear and exhaustion gripped me in a dual embrace of foreboding.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be fine,’ said Robin dismissively. ‘It’s a blue run most of the way, I believe, except for one section that’s red.’

  Blue …red …in America, the easy runs were green. No, I couldn’t do this.

  I sank back in my seat. It was true that the information about the holiday and the resort had stated, in quite big print, ‘Not suitable for beginners’, but I’d assumed that surely I’d be able to pay for some tuition when I got here, and I’d brushed aside my qualms that I wouldn’t be proficient enough, mostly because it was the only group holiday that had any vacancies left, and I hadn’t wanted Rachel to feel that I was holding her back. I’d wing it, I had decided, thinking that I was being brave and spontaneous. I had good balance and co-ordination, I was quite fit, and my dry ski slope lessons had gone very smoothly. How hard could it be?

  But the Kansas City dry ski slope had been about fifty metres long, not the several thousand that we’d been steadily climbing up alongside for the past twenty minutes. Stray skiers were whizzing down at the sort of velocity that indicated they’d been fired out of a cannon rather than being propelled by their own body weight.

  None of the rest of the group seemed unduly worried about the ordeal facing us, which struck me as odd too. I mean, weren’t you supposed to warm up before hurtling down a mountain? They too had all come off planes and endured the long coach ride from the airport, with no rest or sustenance offered on arrival at the hotel, just this ignominious bundling into an ancient minibus. Yet they were all laughing and chatting tentatively to one another, the way you do when you meet a group of strangers with whom you’ll be spending the next seven days. I was glad I had Rachel with me for company.

  Across the aisle from Robin was a younger man whom I had initially spotted at Verona airport and identified as part of our group from his luggage tags.

  Although he looked in his early thirties, he had a helmet of iron grey hair with an arrow-straight side parting, the kind of hair-do favoured by retired army colonels. I thought that he must have some weird medical condition too, since he wore a rucksack with a clear plastic tube protruding from the top flap, which wound round to the front of his chest, and around the end of which was taped a piece of kitchen towel. Rachel later told me that this was merely a source of delivering water ‘camelback’ for the thirsty skier.

  He saw me looking at him, and smiled, displaying far too many teeth all jostling for space, like piglets sucking at their mother’s teats. ‘Typical,’ he said, thrusting a long leg out in front of me. He was wearing salopettes and Jesus sandals over his ski socks. ‘I forgot to bring my callus-remover, and I just know the boots are going to make them worse.’

  I smiled back at him, I hoped in a sympathetic way; although I suspected it probably came out more as incredulity than sympathy. As opening gambits went, this wasn’t exactly gusset-dampening. The only other guy within my range of vision was a follicly-challenged Italian professor of philosophy, who had BO I could smell from three seats back, clearly not helped by the tight Lycra ski gear he wore. I could tell it was unlikely that either Rachel or I would be getting it on with any new men this week, unless there were some handsome waiters at the hotel. Still, at that moment, I was more concerned with how I was going to get down the damn mountain. Knowing my luck, I’d break my leg on the first attempt at a run, then Rachel would have her vacation ruined too, having to fly me home …I should never have pretended that I was anything other than a beginner.

  Rachel caught my anxiety. ‘You’ll be fine, Mum,’ she said, giving my arm a squeeze. ‘I’ll stay with you, don’t worry. We can just take it really slowly.’

  I laughed hollowly; it was my turn to feel tears smarting in my eyes. I looked away furiously. There was no way I wanted Rachel to see me cry. I missed Billy then, desperately and overwhelmingly. He’d never have done anything as daft as go skiing. Our holidays had always involved lots of lying around turquoise pools, Billy getting high, me sleeping and reading. It had often bored me stupid, though, now that I came to think of it. Wasn’t that why I was here? I didn’t have to endure those holidays any more. I could do whatever the hell I wanted. Let Eva get bored and sunburned. I was going skiing. Although I’d have preferred to go skiing tomorrow. Not now. Not right down the mountain with no practice.

  It struck me, not for the first time, how nebulous and unpredictable a beast my own self-confidence was. Had I always been like this? Wavering between certainty and doubt, bravery and cowardice? I wished I could be more like Rachel: she just went for it and worried about the consequences afterwards. I think she got that from her father.

  ‘It’s going to be dark soon,’ I said, trying not to sound too chicken.

  ‘That’s why they hurried us,’ Robin replied, not assuaging my fears at all.

  We arrived at a cluster of buildings: bars, ski shops, gift emporia; and the minibus came to a sudden halt next to several large dumpsters.

  ‘This must be the resort,’ said Rachel doubtfully. ‘It’s very small, isn’t it? We should have gone to Courchevel or somewhere.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not exactly au fait with European ski resorts. It was cheap. Maybe this is why.’

  ‘I’m not criticizing you, Mum,’ she replied, in what could only be described as a critical tone of voice.

  We all queued up to be fitted with our boots and skis, and I thought: How strange to be standing on this icy path in Italy with Rachel and a bunch of strangers, like we were all waiting for a bus. Around this time, I ought to have been waking up in Lawrence with Billy’s arms wrapped around my back and his breath warming my neck, wondering what to wear for work, or if there was time to make love and have a shower, or whether I’d have to head straight for the shower.

  I’d thought we
were fine, living out our futures together, taking the rough with the smooth, the mundane with the exciting. But it couldn’t have been fine, could it? Eva had broken us up, therefore there must have been something seriously wrong with our relationship. How could I not have noticed what it was?

  ‘Cheer up,’ said the man in the shop, a hairy blond Australian, when I got to the head of the queue. He handed me a pair of boots in my size, but so ludicrously large and heavy I could barely lift them, then added, predictably, ‘It might never happen.’

  I made a face at him as I shoved my feet hard into the plastic casing, and allowed him to haul them shut. I felt as though I had concrete blocks on my feet – and that was before I’d even been given the skis.

  Eventually we were all kitted out, and waddling in an ungainly manner back along the road towards the piste. My skis clanked together in my arms in an unwieldy fashion, and I felt sick with nerves. I couldn’t even carry the damn things properly, let alone ski on them.

  ‘Hold them like this, Mum,’ Rachel instructed, showing me how to clip them together and carry them on my shoulder with my hand wrapped around their tips. When we reached the slope, the group dropped their skis on the snow and stamped on them to fasten them. Then they set off, flying away like chicks out of a nest, laughing and whooping. Their skill varied – Camelback Man just leaned over as if he was about to do a pike dive, and stayed in that position, shooting down the mountain immobile and lethal in his trajectory. Even I could tell that wasn’t a technique recommended in any ski school.

  Pretty soon only Robin, Rachel and I were left. I was teetering on the edge of my fear as if it were a knife blade on which I was trying to balance. I’d managed to attach the skis to my feet, and scissor my legs back and forth on the spot, but the idea of actually going anywhere on them was too frightening.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ Rachel said kindly.

  The piste looked so steep. Dusk had long ago swallowed up the rest of the group. Robin was trying to be chivalrous but I could tell he was getting impatient, shifting from foot to foot.

  ‘Go, really, please,’ I said, mortified. ‘And you, Rach, I’ll be fine.’

  Rachel laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. I’m not leaving you to come down on your own.’

  At that moment I saw the minibus, empty now save for its driver and a couple of crates full of our outdoor shoes, executing a reckless three-point turn, skidding around the icy road as if demonstrating an ice dance. The driver had a cigarette hanging from his mouth and was eating popcorn out of a large bag whilst talking out of the open window to one of the men in the ski-hire shop, but he could’ve been driving blindfolded for all I cared: the prospect of a lift down the mountain with him was still more appealing than the thought of skiing in the ever-encroaching darkness.

  I stuck out my arm and yelled at him, like I was hailing a cab on Fifth Avenue, and he screeched to a halt by my right ski. Popcorn scattered across the dashboard as he leaned over and opened the passenger door for me.

  ‘I don’t want to hold you both up any more,’ I said decisively to the others. ‘I’m getting a lift back with him.’

  Robin’s look of relief was transparent. ‘OK, see you later. Shall we go then, um, Rachel?’

  ‘I feel like such a failure,’ I said in an aside to Rachel, tears stinging my eyes again. At least now I could pretend they were due to the icy wind, but I don’t think Rachel was fooled.

  ‘Mum, so what if you’re not as confident a skier as the rest of us? Who cares?’ She kissed my cheek, her lips bloodless and cold. ‘Look, I’d better shoot, if you’re sure. See you back at the hotel.’

  I watched her and Robin launch themselves off with their poles, skating their legs wide in order to build up momentum, and then they were away, already vanishing in the half-light. Robin was a decent skier, but Rachel was effortless, with a smooth, hip-swaying rhythm of parallel turns which instantly assuaged my fears about her safety. She looked totally in control. I’d never seen her ski before, except in photographs. It was another part of her life I’d completely missed out on. Once more I got the feeling of a baby bird flying the nest – but my Rachel had flown long ago. I felt utterly depressed.

  ‘Let’s go!’ called the minibus driver cheerfully in a German accent, flicking his cigarette butt out of the window. I managed, with difficulty, to release my skis and manouevre them into the back of the minibus, encumbered by the huge rigid ski boots, and slide clumsily into the front seat next to him.

  ‘You did not want to ski?’

  ‘No,’ I said dully. ‘I was afraid. I am not an experienced skier. In fact, I’m a total beginner.’

  He turned and smiled at me, popcorn crumbs on his chin which I itched for him to dash away. He had thick sandy hair and eyebrows, and an interesting mouth. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed him on the way up.

  ‘And it is getting dark,’ he said consolingly. ‘What is your name? I’m Karl.’

  ‘Susie,’ I replied, feeling marginally better. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘You’re not Italian,’ I said, cringing at the inanity of the comment. ‘Do you live here permanently?’

  ‘No, not permanently,’ he said, taking a sharp bend so fast that I was thrown against his side. I looked for a seatbelt, but there didn’t appear to be one. The feeling of uneasy trepidation this induced in me was not a new one, I realized. It was the same feeling I’d been living with ever since I’d seen Billy and Eva holding hands in the deli.

  ‘My sister is married to Paolo, who owns the hotel. I help them out sometimes. But my main business is wine importing, in Germany and Italy mostly, sometimes England. And a little bit of selling magnets, you know, for health, also.’

  Living in Lawrence, I did know what he meant. I was already au fait with the notion of utilizing magnetic forces to aid recovery after muscle damage. My friend Audrey was a great believer in it. She suffered from arthritis, and was always festooned with various different sized magnets which she swore alleviated the pain. I used to joke that if I didn’t hear from her for a while, I’d have to come and check that she wasn’t stuck to her refrigerator door.

  ‘My friend uses magnets a lot for arthritis,’ I said. ‘She has a magnetic mattress on her bed.’

  ‘Ja, ja, very good,’ he said, nodding vigorously.

  ‘Could I have some of your popcorn, please?’ I asked as we hurtled round the next bend and the open packet skittered across the bench front seat, scattering more of its contents.

  ‘Sure, help yourself.’

  I took a large handful and stuffed it into my mouth.

  ‘I’m absolutely starving,’ I said. ‘It’s another reason I didn’t want to ski. I’ve been travelling for almost twenty-four hours, and I’ve got no energy left.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. I too cannot do anything when I don’t eat.’

  He smiled at me again, and I decided I liked him very much. Too young for me, though. I wondered if he was single. He’d make a lovely boyfriend for Rachel.

  ‘Do you stay at the hotel too?’ I blurted.

  ‘Ja, I live there for now.’

  Right, I thought. Let Operation Matchmake commence. It was about time I did something for my daughter.

  In the end, I was very grateful that I hadn’t skied down. When Karl dropped me off, it was so dark that the headlights of his minibus illuminated my way into the hotel. Most of the group were already back, but a few stragglers were still clunking up the road from the bottom of the ski slope, silent and chilled-looking. I felt anxious when I didn’t see Rachel among them.

  ‘It’s so dark,’ I heard a middle-aged woman say, over and over, as she went into the boot room by the hotel’s front door. The woman was wearing a pink ski suit, with greasy blonde hair pulled back with pink hair-clips, and the tip of her nose was exactly the same shade of pink, as if it was an additional accessory. ‘They made us ski in the dark.’

  No one spoke to me as they passed me, padding upstairs in their socke
d feet. I felt excluded, that I’d missed out on the bonding which had taken place as they felt their collective way down the ski slope. But judging from the look of shock on most of their faces, I was still glad I hadn’t succumbed to peer pressure. I never had been particularly good at being part of groups. I preferred one on one. And so what if I didn’t make any new friends this week? I had so much catching up to do with Rachel, I didn’t need anybody else.

  At that moment, Karl staggered through the hotel door, weighed down by the box of shoes for which most people had given up waiting. He beamed at me as if he’d known me forever and was genuinely pleased to see me and, whilst I was still worried about Rachel, something inside me thawed a little. He was nice. It was good to know that there were genuine, decent men out there…

  Although Billy was a genuine, decent man, so perhaps there was no hope for me. He had let me down so spectacularly that I felt I’d never trust anyone else as long as I lived. It would have been much better, I thought, if I’d always suspected Billy of a spot of illicit flirting; perhaps erotic text messages or the occasional one-night stand. Then I wouldn’t have been so surprised. I would have expected nothing less of him; known that he could never be mine forever.

  ‘Mum!’

  Thank goodness, I thought, snapping out of it. There she was, skis over her right shoulder, bursting through the doors pink-cheeked and exhilarated. Robin came in behind her, unsubtly admiring her backside as he manouevred his own skis through into the boot room.

  The boot room reminded me of school changing rooms: chilly concrete floor, faintly foot-scented, with damp slatted benches and high pegs.

  ‘Hi, honey,’ I said to Rachel, grabbing her round the waist for a hug as she passed me. ‘I was just starting to get worried about you.’

  ‘Oh, you do surprise me, Mother. What’s to be worried about? Skiing in pitch dark on an icy run with no one else around is nothing to be worried about…’