The first sleigh-load of skiers arrived whilst I was still unpacking. They were a colourful crowd, sunburned and brightly clad. They thronged the belvedere, lounging in the warm sun, drinking out of tall glasses. They were talking happily in several languages. I watched them, fascinated, as in groups of two or three, or alone, they put on their skis and swooped out of sight down the slalom run to Tre Croci or disappeared into the dark firs, whooping ‘Liberal’ as they took the gentler track back to Cortina. Anna, a half-Italian, half-Austrian waitress, flirted in and out among the tables with trays laden with salami and eggs and ravioli. She had big laughing eyes and there was a quick smile and better service for the men who had no women with them. What a scene for Technicolor! The colours stood out so startlingly against the black and white background.
The novelty of the setting was a spur to my determination to write something that Engles would accept. If I couldn’t write a script here, I knew I should never be able to write one. I was still planning the script in my mind as I went down to join Joe at the bar.
At the bottom of the stairs, I came upon a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who was having a heated argument with Aldo. He had long, very thick-growing hair, strangely shot with.grey. His face was deeply tanned, except where the white of a scar showed against the bulge of his jaw muscles. He was wearing an all-white ski suit with a yellow scarf round his neck. I realised what the trouble was immediately. ‘Have you booked a room here?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This man is either a fool or he has given the room to somebody else and doesn’t want to admit it.’
‘I’ve just had the same trouble,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t want visitors. He just doesn’t. But there are two rooms vacant at the moment. There’s nobody in the one at the top of the stairs, so I should go up and stake your claim.’
‘I will. Many thanks.’ He gave me a lazy smile and took his things up the stairs. Aldo gave a shrug and dropped the corners of his mouth. Then he followed on.
Joe and I spent the remainder of the morning sitting out in the sunshine drinking cognac and discussing the shots Engles would expect. The multi-coloured plumage of the skiers and the babel of tongues that ranged from the tinselled guttural of Austrian to the liquid flood of Italian was a background to our conversation; absorbed, but not remarked in detail. Joe was no longer disgruntled at being perched up here on the cold shoulder of an Alp. He was a cameraman now, interested only in angles and lights and setting. He was an artist who has been given a good subject. And I was doubly preoccupied — I was listening to Joe and at the same time rolling an idea for a script round my mind.
I did not notice her arrive. I don’t know how long she had been there. I just glanced up suddenly and saw her. Her head and shoulders stood out against the white backcloth of a snow-draped fir. For a second I was puzzled. I thought I knew her and yet I could not place her. Then, as I stared, she took off her dark glasses and looked straight at me, dangling them languidly between long slender brown fingers. And then I remembered and dived for my wallet and the photograph Engles had given me.
The likeness was striking. But I wasn’t sure. The photograph was old and faded, and the girl who had signed herself ‘Carla’ had shorter, sleeked-back hair. But the features looked the same. I glanced up again at the woman seated at the table on the other side of the belvedere. Her raven black hair swept up in a great wave above her high forehead and tumbled in a mass to her shoulders. The way she sat and her every movement proclaimed an almost animal consciousness of her body. She wasn’t particularly young, nor was she particularly beautiful. Her mouth, scarlet to match her ski suit, was too wide and full, and there were deep lines at the corners of her eyes. But she was exciting. She was all of a man’s baser thoughts come true. She caught my eye as I compared her with the photograph in my hand. Her glance was an idle caress, speculative and not disinterested, like the gaze of an animal that is bored and is looking for someone to play with.
‘My God, Neil!’ Joe tapped me on the arm. ‘Are you trying to bed that woman down?’
‘Don’t be revolting,’ I said. I “felt slightly embarrassed. Joe was so solidly British in that foreign set-up. ‘Why make a vulgar suggestion like that on a lovely morning?’
‘You were looking at her as though you wanted to eat her,’ he replied. ‘She’s got that little Valdini chap for boyfriend. You want to go steady with these people. Knives, you know. They’re not civilised. He struck me as an ugly little fellow to start an argument with over a girl.’ He was right. The man sitting opposite her was Valdini. He had his back towards us.
‘Don’t be absurd, Joe,’ I said. Then I showed him the photograph, keeping my thumb across the writing. ‘Is that the same girl?’ I asked him.
