Christmas in the Snow

by Karen Swan

  He looked back at her, disbelief slackening his muscles. ‘Anya said all that?’

  Isobel paused, a look of regret on her features, and Allegra knew that she felt it too: caught between histories that had been lived out long before either of their first breaths.

  Allegra looked back at the old man, who seemed to be withering under every word that told him he’d been forgotten, killed off, dispossessed . . . ‘If we’d known you were still alive . . .’ she began, but she ran out of words, not quite sure what to say next – for what would they have done? Visited? Stayed with the man Anya had left? Reunited the father with his adult child?

  She watched as he lifted his head, stretching his neck like a dog, so that the skin stretched tight against his frame once more. Was he, like her, trying to make the tears drop back too? Was this something they shared? A small genetic quirk that carried over the generations, even through sixty years’ isolation from one another?

  ‘Why did she leave here?’ Her words were careful. ‘Here’, not ‘you’. Without accusation, without judgement . . .

  The words tiptoed across the space between them, trying to build a bridge that spanned those lost years, reconnecting them all again. Only answers could heal the rift, and there was still time – just.

  Lars rocked gently in the chair, his eyes far away, his mind in a distant land, and for a long time, he didn’t even try to speak.

  ‘She was jealous,’ he said finally. ‘Valentina was the love of my life; there was no hiding it. I could not! She was the kind of woman who breaks a man with her beauty, her passions. She was strong, not of her time, and certainly she did not belong to the farming life. Every man wanted her, the richest, the strongest, the married . . .’ His eyes lit up faintly as the reflected flames leaped higher. ‘Why she ever chose me . . . She was dazzling. No dress was beautiful until she wore it, no joke was funny till she laughed at it.’ He looked back at Allegra with the eyes of a young man. ‘Are you loved like that?’

  She swallowed. How many people were? ‘No.’

  ‘That surprises me. You are beautiful like her and clever too, I can tell.’

  She smiled weakly, not sure what to say, embarrassed that all his attention was on her. Did Isobel see that he looked at her and saw ghosts?

  ‘Women like you don’t know the power you have over men. I was a – how would you say? – vigorous man in my youth. Handsome, strong, ambitious. I knew I had to excel for her, be even more than what I was born to be. And I tried. I wanted to be the man she deserved. But when she died, my world was broken, as well as my heart.’ He shook his head, his fingers blanched as he clawed the armrests. ‘Poor, sweet Giulia. I was no father to her. I could not feed myself, could not eat . . . so when Anya moved in to help . . .’ He fell quiet, drawing his lips together like a threaded purse. ‘It seemed logical after a while that we should marry. She and Giulia were close, and, well . . . Valentina had always teased me about Anya’s infatuation with me . . . I couldn’t love her in the way that I had Valentina, but I thought we could be happy enough.’ He shrugged again, a helpless gesture. ‘I was wrong. She didn’t want to live her life as second best.’

  ‘That’s why she took your daughter?’ Isobel said, accusation in every word, as though the fault was his.

  He looked at her. ‘Yes.’

  Isobel’s mouth dropped open. She hadn’t expected him to concur. ‘How could you just let her get away with it?’

  ‘Because it was the best thing for Giulia.’

  ‘To be raised on a lie?’ Her voice was growing shrill, a sure sign that she was on the way to losing it.

  ‘To be raised by a woman who loved her. Farming is a hard life. I spent most of the year out of the town, on the pastures with the herd. How could I do that alone with a child? It was my livelihood, the only way I knew to make money to survive.’

  ‘But how could you survive losing the woman you loved and your child?’

  He didn’t reply, but picked up his coffee with hands that trembled slightly, and Allegra discreetly put her hand on Isobel’s arm – a plea for caution.

  But to no avail.

  ‘Well, you’re obviously not a farmer now,’ Isobel said drily, gesturing to the decorous chalet.

  ‘No, that is true. When the tourism began, I sold the farm and developed some properties. Even became town mayor for a while.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And I know what you are thinking – I had money by then, yes, but it was too late. Even if I had known where Anya and Giulia were living, I had no way of knowing whether Anya had remarried, had children . . . I would be a stranger to my own child. All I could be certain of was that Giulia was safe with her. Anya loved her as much as any real mother loves her child.’

  They were all quiet, only the crackle of the fire between them.

  ‘She never remarried,’ Allegra said quietly, trying to mitigate her sister’s harsh scorn. In protecting their grandmother, Isobel was attacking him. Couldn’t she see he had clearly suffered enough? The man looked broken by their news. ‘And she did love our mother, very much. They were extremely close.’

  A spark flew from the fire, landing on the granite hearth, and he watched as it sizzled, twisted and extinguished before them, but Allegra couldn’t take her eyes from him: the poor man who had become rich, the loved man who had been forgotten, the father who had ended up alone. What had their grandmother done?

  She sat forward slightly on the seat, clasping her hands around her half-full cup. ‘I’ve spoken to Father Merete. He’s agreed to conduct a private memorial for Valentina on Thursday.’ Isobel gave a small gasp beside her, but Allegra just kept her eyes on him. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Isobel whispered furiously.

  ‘He’s Valentina’s widower. He deserves to be there.’ Allegra kept her voice to as low a murmur as she could manage.

  ‘And Granny’s too, remember. He married them both, or have you forgotten that?’

  ‘You heard him. He was trying to build another family for Mum.’

  Isobel rolled her eyes and sat back furiously in the cushions, making her feelings perfectly plain.

  Allegra turned back to Lars with an embarrassed smile. ‘Please.’

  He looked back at her with reddened eyes, gratitude on his face. ‘It is the goodbye I have both dreaded and longed for . . . Thank you, I will be there.’

  Allegra smiled, feeling something inside her strengthen. They had been right to come here – Isobel would see that when she had had time to cool off. ‘We should go,’ she murmured, setting her cup down on the tray and smoothing non-existent wrinkles from her trousers.

  Isobel followed with impolite haste.

  ‘Wait.’ He beckoned Allegra over to him, taking her hand in his – which were marbled hot and cold – and looking up at her gratefully. ‘Will you come back tomorrow? We can talk some more. There is so much still to be said. I am an old and lonely man. I want to know my family before I die.’

  ‘Of course we’ll come,’ she smiled, making sure to include Isobel in the invitation. ‘This time tomorrow?’

  He released her hand with a satisfied sigh, falling back in the chair as though a cushion that had propped him up had been suddenly whipped away.

  The nurse appeared at the door. Had she been listening in? Her timing was too perfect.

  Allegra and Isobel followed her out to the front door, collecting their jackets from the pegs and shrugging them on in silence as Bettina held the lift doors open. Allegra stepped in after Isobel, turning and staring back into the hall with a growing giddy delight. She watched as the doors closed on the expensive portrait of a woman who, with every new fact, seemed to be explaining Allegra to herself. She had always been the black sheep in the family – too dark, too stubborn, too proud, too awkward compared to her mother and sister’s fair-haired sensitivity and easy smiles. She’d never had a feel for those softer social skills that came so easily to Isobel. She’d never had a knack for making people laugh or holding a room as she tol
d a story. Allegra dealt only in logic, black-and-white facts, mathematical reasoning, abstract concepts with immutable rules. To Allegra, something was either right or wrong, good or bad, and even as a thirteen-year-old girl she’d known, standing on the grass, that her father wasn’t supposed to be having a picnic with that family.

  She had often wondered how different things might have been if it had been Isobel, and not her, in the park that day when she saw them all together for the first time and realized the truth. Would Isobel have been able to make him stay? Certainly, she’d always thought so. He had chosen the wrong daughter to save them. But at last she had found her people. If she was her grandmother’s image, she was also her grandfather’s pupil. The parallels between them were obvious: like her, Lars had achieved great success; like her, Lars had endured devastating personal loss; like her, Lars needed a family again. Isobel had her own, her mother had her past, but Allegra was every bit as alone as the old man in a chalet who had been written out of their history because of a broken heart.

  They stepped back out into the snow, both casting around the elegant entrance with new eyes. A goat farmer? A care home? Ha! Isobel’s shoulders were stiff, but Allegra had to bite back a smile as they walked briskly towards the street. Finally, her own ambition was understood. For the first time in her life, finally she made sense.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘We need a drink,’ Allegra said, catching up with Isobel. She had been walking a half-stride ahead the whole way up the side street.

  ‘No. I just want to go home.’

  ‘Even more reason why we need a drink. Come on. There’s a pub just over there,’ she said, pointing to the Brown Cow and bullishly leading Isobel by the arm.

  It was falling dark now. Their back-to-back ‘meetings’ had eaten through the afternoon, and the snow glowed with a blue tint as the sky lit up in an ultraviolet haze.

  They pushed through the doors and Allegra quickly ordered some génépy as Isobel grabbed a leather sofa by the windows overlooking the street.

  ‘Well . . . cheers,’ Allegra said, holding up her glass.

  Isobel stared at her moodily. ‘What on earth is there to celebrate?’

  ‘We’re not celebrating. We’re just having a drink. It’s what people do, isn’t it?’ Allegra said, quickly taking a sip.

  Isobel scowled. ‘You are totally celebrating.’

  Allegra sighed. ‘Well, it’s not every day you meet your only grandfather. You can’t deny it’s . . . exciting.’

  ‘Oh, I can and I will!’ Isobel said huffily. ‘How dare he say all those things about Granny when she isn’t here to defend herself!’

  ‘But he didn’t say anything bad about her. In fact, I thought he was very measured. It sounds like he was a wreck after Valentina died and he obviously genuinely believed Mum was better off with her – whatever it may have cost him.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Legs! You honestly buy that?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Allegra protested. ‘Iz, the simple fact is, Granny did take off with her sister’s child and she kept that fact a secret all her life. Now, I know she loved Mum as much as we do, but her silence is damning, however you look at it. I think Lars’s account of things is very . . . generous under the circumstances.’

  ‘You’re just riding high because he clearly preferred you. You look like Valentina, and I look like Granny, and if you ask me, it seems his affections for them have transferred to us.’

  ‘That is ridiculous. I am simply trying to find some sort of positive from all of this. We can’t change what happened. It’s nothing to do with either one of us. But, Iz’ – she twisted position on the chair so that their legs were angled together – ‘we’ve met Mum’s dad! Imagine telling her that. Imagine telling her that he’s still alive.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Isobel said crossly. ‘Just imagine telling her that. Barry would have a stroke coping with the fallout.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘No. None of this is. We’ve spent all afternoon being bombarded with one bombshell after another and I feel like someone’s just beaten me up.’ She slumped further down the seat. ‘I knew it was a bad idea.’

  Allegra dropped her head back on the sofa, feeling her temporary euphoria ebb away. It was too exhausting staying positive. Besides, Isobel was right – telling their mother about Lars came with as many, if not more risks attached as telling her about Valentina. She threw her arm over her head and closed her eyes, wishing they hadn’t come here, wishing they were back in the apartment and she was running a hot, foamy bath.

  Isobel glanced across at her, biting her lip anxiously. ‘Gah, I’m sorry, Legs! Ignore me. I’m being a bitch!’ Isobel winced, remorsefully laying her head on her sister’s shoulder. ‘I’m not as resilient as you. I never cope well with change.’

  ‘No, you’re right.’ Allegra sighed after a while. ‘I’m the one getting carried away with fantasy scenarios that can never happen. I guess I’m just so desperate for something to go right for a change . . . It’s been a bad couple of weeks, that’s all.’

  Isobel rested her chin on Allegra’s shoulder, looking up at her guiltily. ‘Come on, let’s have another drink. We should get wasted.’

  Allegra looked at her sister from the corner of her eye. ‘That’s always your answer.’

  ‘I know – because it works,’ Isobel said with a wink, getting up and heading towards the bar.

  Allegra watched her go, hoping it was true what they said about hair of the dog. She’d never tried it herself – ordinarily she never did ‘drunk’, much less two nights on the trot – but she was thirty-one years old and this was a new first for her.

  A commotion outside travelled to her ear and she rolled her head to the side to look out of the window. A herd of people – lots of whom were children and all of whom were dressed in full kit with skis over their shoulders – were following after a Father Christmas figure who was walking with a brisk, distinctly athletic gait and had clearly been padded out with pillows. He too had skis over one shoulder, and over the other, a filled hessian sack.

  She glanced at her watch. Seven thirty. The last lifts had closed three hours ago . . .

  Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, Iz! Stop!’

  Isobel turned round, clearly mid-flow with the barman, as Allegra wove her way past the other drinkers towards her, both their jackets in her hands.

  ‘Iz, there’s night skiing on Klein Matterhorn,’ Allegra grinned as she pushed her arms through her ski jacket and handed Isobel hers. ‘Come on! They’ve got a Father Christmas leading everyone down. We always said we’d do it, but we never have.’

  ‘But . . .’ Isobel looked at the barman, who was holding a bottle mid-air. ‘Hold that thought! We’ll be back later.’

  And with a laugh, the two of them burst through the doors like a gale.

  Blue snow, purple shadows, a sky cut from jet paper that had been pierced with pinpricks as silvery light from faraway worlds shone through the holes. As the glittering lights of the town receded behind them, somewhere in the darkness, owls hunted in the silence, the gondola’s bubble-shaped shadow passing over tightly tucked blankets of virgin snow, the larches and conifers looking sugar-sifted, their fronds drooping like moustaches.

  At the top, the scene wasn’t so unadulterated. There were at least a hundred people up there, half of them under ten and jostling to have their photo taken with Father Christmas while their parents enjoyed a quick glass of Glüwein before their night ski. A St Bernard was lying on a rug, too, placidly keeping his muzzle to the ground as children leaned against him and tried to rattle the beer barrel on his collar.

  Allegra and Isobel gave them all a wide berth. Isobel wasn’t ‘on duty’ tonight and she instantly began shaking her arms out and doing side bends to warm up.

  They took the first run slowly, slicing through the crisp night air with relaxed ease to find their ski legs again and judge the effect of the génépy on them. But on the second and third, they started to speed up, Isobel
making Allegra laugh as she did all the tricks she’d mastered so easily as a child – skiing crouched down on her ankles, skiing backwards, making a jump out of every bump, positioning her poles like antlers on her helmet . . .

  Allegra felt free again, up here – free from the split loyalties between her new family and old, which was beginning to threaten to divide her and Iz; free from the anxiety about when Pierre would make his next move.

  ‘D’you know, I think we might squeeze in two more runs before they close the lifts. You’re a lot faster than you used to be.’ Isobel joshed her lightly as they relaxed momentarily in the bubble on the way back up.

  ‘Gee, thanks. High praise indeed.’ Allegra rolled her eyes, just as the doors slid open and they got up again, pulling their skis from the racks. ‘Did it ever occur to you that I could take you now? We’re not kids any more. I’ve skied more times than you’ve made Ferds hot dinners.’

  ‘That’s actually not saying much,’ Isobel laughed. ‘I only weaned him a few months ago.’

  Allegra laughed too, clipping her skis on and pulling her goggles down off her helmet.

  It had quietened down now that Father Christmas had led the children back onto the slope, and even the St Bernard was on his way back to his kennel in town. The temperatures were plummeting beneath the clear skies and the snow was quickly becoming icy.

  ‘Come on, then. Let’s race.’ Allegra arched an eyebrow at her sister.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Why not? It’s good visibility, and the runs are almost empty. It’s as good a time as any.’

  ‘You’re just saying that because you’ve had a bit of Dutch courage,’ Isobel grinned. ‘Go on, then. Do you want a head start?’

  ‘Bitch,’ Allegra couldn’t help but laugh as they positioned themselves level. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Born ready.’

  They pushed off, both coiled tight with competitive energy as they carved the snow with elongated S-bends, neither one wanting to lose time to turns, to take off the pace. Isobel was bent forward in a racing position, her body low, poles horizontal, but Allegra had been right – years of regular skiing had brought her almost level pegging with her naturally gifted sister, and as the angle of the slope steepened and they headed into the trees, she began to pull ahead.