‘You remember you did not want to let us have rooms here?’ I said to him in Italian. ‘That was because Signor Valdini had instructed you to turn visitors away, wasn’t it?’
He looked helplessly towards the belvedere. He was afraid to answer. But it was clear that I was right. ‘Now importante,’ I said. It looked as though Valdini and the Contessa had planned to close the place down as soon as the purchase had been completed. Why?
I went up to my room and got my things. I typed out my reply to Engles’ cable. It read: Auction sensation. Sold unknown purchaser operating Venice lawyer. Valdini for Carla outbid Mancini two million. Unknown outbid Valdini four million. Blair.
When I got downstairs again the Contessa was alone in the bar. As I made for the door, she suddenly called out,’ Mr Blair!’
I turned. She was leaning against the bar. Her eyes were inviting and her wide mouth was made attractive by a little smile that lifted the corners of it. ‘Come and have a drink with me,’ she suggested. ‘I do not like drinking by myself. Besides, I wish to talk to you. I would like to know more about my photograph.’
I felt ill-at-ease. She was hard and hard women frighten me. Besides, how was I to explain how that photograph came into my possession? ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I have to go down to Cortina.’ My voice sounded cold and unfriendly.
The corners of her mouth drooped in mock disappointment and there was a hint of laughter in her dark eyes. She knocked back her drink and came towards me. Her ski boots made hardly a sound on the bare boards. She could have danced in them. ‘You shall not escape me so easily,’ she said, and with a ripple of laughter, she tucked her slim brown hand under my arm. ‘I too must go back to Cortina. You will not refuse to escort me?’ She did not wait for an answer, but exclaimed, ‘Oh — why are you English so stiff? You do not laugh. You are not gay. You are afraid of women. You are so reserved and so damned dignified.’ She laughed. ‘But you are nice. You have — how shall I say? — an air. And it is nice, your air. Now, you will escort me to Cortina — yes?’ She had her head cocked on one side and there was an impish gleam in her eyes that was quite disturbing. ‘Please do not look so serious, Mr Blair. I will not seduce you on the way down.’ She sighed. ‘Once — yes. But now — one gets old, you know.’ She shrugged her shoulders and walked across to her skis.
‘I am afraid it will be a question of you escorting me, Contessa,’ I apologised as I fixed my skis. ‘It is two years since I did any skiing.’
‘Do not worry,’ she said. ‘It will come back. And Cortina is not a difficult run. You need to do a lot of stemming on the first part. After that it is a straight run. Are you ready?’ She was standing poised on the slope that led into the fir woods.
My feet felt very clumsy. I remembered what Joe had said that morning about his skis feeling like a couple of canoes. That is just what mine felt like. I wished I had not told her that I was going into Cortina. ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ I said, and slithered across the belvedere to the start of the run.
She laid a slim, white-gloved hand on my arm. Her mood changed. ‘I think we are going to become good friends,’ she said. ‘I shall call you Neil. It is such a nice name. And you had better call me — Carla.’ She gave me a quick glance to see that the point had registered and then, with a smile and a flash of sticks, she plunged down into the dark firs. Whilst I was still hesitating on the brink of the run, her cry of ‘liberal’ floated back to me from the woods, telling me that already she had reached the point where the ski track from Monte Cristallo joins the Col da Varda-Cortina run.
I thrust myself forward with my sticks, saw my ski points tilt on to the slope and then I was hurtling through the cold air, my skis biting deeply on the frozen surface of the run. I took it slowly, snow-ploughing on the steeper slopes so that my ankles ached and stemming hard on the bends. The track was not really steep. But to my unaccustomed skis, it seemed precipitous as it wound down through the black trunks of the firs. I had no time to think about the Contessa’s reason for that sudden admission of identity. Brain and muscle were alike concentrated on getting down the run.
Halfway down to the road I found the Contessa waiting for me in a patch of sunlight. She looked a ghostly figure in her white ski suit, which was cream-coloured against the purer white of the snow. I nerved myself for a half-Christi and it came off. I stopped dead beside her in a flurry of ice-crisp snow. A little wobbly it was true, but still I had done it and it takes quite a bit of nerve to try it, if you haven’t been on skis for a long time and aren’t particularly good anyway.
‘Bravo!’ she applauded. She had a cigarette in her mouth and was holding the packet out to me.
