The Silent Land

2

The Hotel Varka nestled at the foot of the mountain, some distance from the centre of the village of Saint-Bernard-en-Haut but close to the nursery slopes. It boasted ‘doorstep’ skiing, which was true if shuffling along the flat valley floor for a couple of hundred metres can be considered skiing. The hotel offered four-star service, two bars (one with piano), a restaurant, a spa with sauna, ski shuttle and Wi-Fi Internet. It was more expensive than the Bennetts could normally afford, but this was a special holiday. They hadn’t been skiing for a few years—and it was on the ski slopes at Chamonix that they’d originally met and fallen in love—so they’d rewarded themselves with this upgraded vacation.

With no respect for the notion of special holidays, the avalanche with its ferocious white teeth had snapped at their heels on only their second day.

The reception of the hotel was entered through electronically operated glass doors that hummed at their approach and opened with painful slowness. The lobby itself was dominated by a giant and perhaps overstated Christmas tree. It was beautifully illuminated by delicate blue lights, twinkling amid the branches like hovering sprites. Zoe and Jake made straight for the reception desk, wanting to let someone know about their ordeal, but for the moment the desk was deserted. They turned instead to the lift and rode it up the third floor, where they had their room.

Zoe immediately ran a hot bath and while it was filling she stripped off her ski gear. Jake collapsed on the bed, his arms flung back. Zoe kneeled beside him in her thermal underwear.

‘You okay?’

‘I am, actually,’ he said. ‘I feel okay.’

‘We’ll have to get some eye-drops. You look like a bloody zombie. We should get you checked out.’

‘I don’t need checking out. You’re blood-shot and you’re the one who got buried. You need checking out to make sure you’re not whatsit. Traumatised.’

‘What are they going to do? Give me counselling? Hold my hand? I’m fine, I don’t need checking out. Some snow fell on me and I crawled out. End of story. What about you?’

‘I feel fine. The only thing different is I feel ridiculously horny. Feel this.’

‘Get off. Let me have my bath first.’

‘Do you think it’s like when people feel horny at funerals? Do you think it’s the swish of the scythe? Makes you want to rut? Come here, ma biche.’

‘Get off me, I’m chilled to the bone, Jake. You must be, too. Let me get in the bath first.’

Jake snatched up the phone. ‘I’m going to tell some fucker what happened.’

‘What do you think they’re going to do? Don’t you dare get a doctor for me! Come on, get in the bath with me. I don’t want no doctor shining lights in my eyes. Come on. Afterwards you can do what you want to me.’

So Jake stripped off his ski gear and squeezed into the hot bath along with Zoe, groaning and sighing. They sat face to face in the steam, hugging each other’s knees, letting the heat penetrate and dissolve the chill in their bones.

They sat in silence. With his head resting on Zoe’s knee, Jake seemed to drift off to sleep. At last the water started to cool around them so she shifted him, got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around her. Thinking that maybe she really should at least report their escape to someone, Zoe called reception. The phone rang and rang, but no one picked up. She dried herself and pulled some clothes on, left Jake to soak and went back down in the lift.

The reception was still deserted. There was an old-fashioned bell on the desk, the kind you had to slap with the palm of your hand, but on this occasion it summoned no one. She leaned over the desk and peered into the office behind the reception, and though all was in order, no one was there. She felt slightly queasy.

Her first instincts had been to get warm and to look after Jake, forgetting that her own ordeal had been worse than his. Although he too had been picked up by the avalanche and deposited on the slopes, he’d not been buried alive. Images from the ordeal were starting to return to her mind for the second time since Jake had dug her out of the snow. Her hands were trembling. She got back into the lift and returned to their room.

Jake had gone back to sleep in the bath. She stood in the doorway looking at him and he seemed to sense her presence. He opened his eyes.

‘There’s no one there.’

‘Where?’

‘Downstairs. I just went downstairs. There’s no one there.’

‘Well, the hotel is usually dead at this time, isn’t it? All the guests are out.’

‘What about the staff?’

‘Probably off on a cigarette break.’

She looked doubtful. ‘But they’re not, are they?’

‘Who aren’t what?’

‘The guests. They’re not all out, are they? The slopes are closed.’

‘Well, maybe the avalanche was worse than we thought it was. Maybe everyone is up on the mountain. Helping.’

‘Do you think so? Do you think it was a really bad one?’

‘It was bad enough for us. I mean, I’ve no idea. Maybe we just got caught in a tiny wing of the main avalanche. What can we do?’ He stepped out of the bath and reached for a towel. ‘All we can do is wait until they come back.’

She went through to the bedroom and sat on the bed, twisting her fingers.

Jake appeared wrapped in his towel, his pink skin still steaming slightly from the warmth of the bath. ‘There must be a rule,’ he said, ‘that says a man shouldn’t find his wife so dirty-sexy. Especially after a near-death experience.’

He whipped the towel off and upended her on the bed, lifting her legs in the air. She shrieked, and when he launched himself on top of her she fought back. He winced.

‘My ribs.’

‘Serves you right.’

‘We nearly died! We nearly died. I want to be all over you. Like that avalanche.’

‘Come here.’

‘I’m getting hungry. Where’s that steak, dripping with blood? To hell with the prices, let’s rustle up some room service.’ He studied the menu. ‘What do you want ordering?’

‘Rare steak, yes. Red wine. Anything that’s bad for you.’

He dialled the number for room service. There was no answer, so he dialled the reception desk. No one picked up. ‘Odd.’

‘I told you, there’s no one there. You don’t listen.

He hung on to the phone a while longer. Then with a gentle click he laid the receiver back on its cradle. ‘Let’s get dressed. We can get something at the restaurant.’

On their way to the restaurant, Zoe got an attack of the giggles. She put her hand over her mouth but a pig-snort came out. Jake stopped in the corridor and looked at her, but the quizzical expression on his face only made her worse. Maybe it was hysteria after the close encounter with death, but something made Zoe want to laugh now. Not smile, or giggle, but laugh. The urge to laugh at nothing was uncontrollable.

There was an uninspiring abstract print on the wall near the lift and this made her want to laugh. The silly musical chime of the lift arriving on the third floor made her want to laugh, too. There was something absurd about these vapid decorations that stood in vivid contrast to where she’d just been, upended in the snow. The mirrors in the lift made her want to laugh. The notice about the weight capacity of the lift; the strip of carpet on the floor; the alarm button. It all seemed so ridiculous she wanted to guffaw.

‘What?’ said Jake. ‘What?’

She slammed herself back against the mirror in the lift and howled, convulsing, holding her ribs.

‘No, I’m glad you find it all so amusing,’ said Jake. ‘I do too. Sort of. We nearly died. That’s hugely entertaining. You’re cracked.’

Almost to shut her up he pressed her against the wall of the lift and put his tongue inside her mouth. She felt her own convulsions discharging through Jake, like a power source. She felt him hard against her. They’d only just fucked and he wanted her again. She wanted him again, too.

The lift reached the reception and the doors opened. Zoe pushed him off her, flicked her hair and composed herself before stepping out of the lift.

She needn’t have bothered. There was still nobody there.

They crossed to the reception desk. Jake hit the bell. ‘Shop!’ he shouted, mugging at her.

‘Let’s try the restaurant.’

They passed the neat but vacant concierge’s desk of blond wood and walked through to the hotel restaurant. The dining room was habitually quiet during the daytime, with most of the guests eating there in the evening only, but one or two tables were usually occupied.

Not today.

The lights were up everywhere, but all the tables were empty. A sign at the entrance to the dining room directed guests to wait to be seated by the maître d’, but there was no maître d’, and there were no waiters. The restaurant was set perfectly for business: crisp linen table cloths and napkins, heavy crystal wine glasses, silver cutlery, all spotlessly presented. Faint muzak piped overhead.

Jake stood with his hands on his hips. He turned back and forth and then headed towards the kitchens. He stepped through the swing doors, and Zoe followed.

There was no kitchen staff. The clean stainless-steel work surfaces were primed with freshly chopped vegetables and cuts of red meat, all as if ready to be prepared for lunch. On the far side of the kitchen an industrial-sized stainless-steel dishwasher had been loaded with dirty breakfast plates and dishes. Jake opened the door of a giant freezer cabinet and was hit by a blast of cold air. After a quick glance inside he closed the door.

Zoe touched him on the forearm. ‘Do you think we should leave?’

‘Leave?’

‘Leave the hotel.’

‘Why would we do that?’

‘Here’s what I think. This hotel lies at the foot of the avalanche slope. It lies right in the path of the snow. After this morning’s avalanche they’ve evacuated everyone. Look around you: it’s been cleared in five minutes flat. I think we’re in danger here. I think we’d better go.’

Jake blinked. ‘Christ. Okay, let’s get our coats. We’ll walk into the village.’

‘And let’s just pray it doesn’t come down on our heads right now.’

‘You pray if you like. I’d rather just fret.’

‘Oh shut up.’

So they left the hotel and walked into the village of Saint-Bernard. Normally there was a shuttle service: a minibus running regularly on the half-hour covered the distance in six or seven minutes. Walking took about thirty.

The road was silent. It was still snowing. The light had changed and the snow on the ground had an eerie blue-grey tint. Any footprints or tracks had been almost covered by fresh, soft, feathery snow.

On the previous evening they had made their way from the hotel into town on foot. It had been a memorable walk. The snowy path was lined with spruce and fir trees exhaling a sappy perfume, and the way was illuminated, at one-hundred-metre intervals, by the soft orange glow of graceful wrought-iron lamp posts. They’d been passed en route by an enormous black horse pulling a sledge carrying a couple of happy but bashful tourists. Steam rose from the great horse’s flanks and plumes of vapour billowed from its nostrils as it trotted through the thick snow. The couple in the sledge had waved shyly.

But today the route seemed dangerous. They walked briskly, not talking, both straining their ears for the sounds of the mountain. Because there were warning sounds. A distant crump, way up high, like a single round of gunfire. A creaking. A kind of groan, like a great weight shifting on the mountain itself. A breeze that became a sigh through the snow itself. All could be premonitions of sliding snow.

They said nothing to each other, but Zoe took Jake’s hand, and they quickened their pace. The crunch and squeak of their snow boots was no comfort. Even those small sounds seemed like an affront to the mountain, the squeak of a mouse to an elephant. A challenge.

‘Can you feel the pressure?’ Zoe said. ‘In the air? It’s like I can feel the weight of the snow on the mountain.’

‘You’re imagining it. Just keep walking.’

‘I’m not imagining it. The air is thick. Like something is going to happen.’

‘Nothing is going to happen.’

‘So why have they evacuated the hotel, arsehole?’

‘Precaution. It would be bloody bad luck, wouldn’t it, to survive one avalanche and then get caught in another?’

‘Yeah. Bloody bad luck happens.’

‘Not today it won’t.’

‘You’re going to protect me, Jake?’

‘With my bare hands.’

Then from above them came the unmistakable groan, the sound of snow sliding, like a folding of great sheets of metal.

Zoe stopped in her tracks. ‘Oh God!’

‘It’s okay. Come on, keep moving. It’s just the snow shifting.’

‘Oh really? That’s what I’m afraid of—the snow damn well shifting! Snow shifting is called an avalanche, isn’t it?’

‘Shh! Talk quietly. What I mean is that the snow does it all the time. That’s why they have snowploughs on the pistes. Because the snow shifts and banks. It doesn’t mean it’s coming down right now.’

‘Yeah? You know about these things? You’re a veterinary surgeon. How come you’re an expert in shifting snow? You’re just bullshitting.’

‘That’s right, I’m bullshitting.’

‘Why? Why are you bullshitting?’

He stopped and turned to her. ‘It’s what I do when I get frightened, okay? I bullshit. It’s an effective way of making things seem better. There, are you happy now you’ve seen through me? Can we carry on walking now that my failure as a human being has been exposed? Well?’

The snow on the mountain slope groaned again overhead. There was a further inexplicable sound like great fishing nets cast into the sea. She slipped her arm inside his and they hiked on into the village under the soft orange glow of the lamps.

There was no one on the streets. A number of cars were parked near the centre of the village, but they were all topped with a flat cake-like layer of snow from the day’s precipitation. The village was spooky-quiet. They came upon another small hotel, called the Petit la Creu. Snow had drifted against the foot of the entrance door.

They pushed their way in, the heavy draught excluders on the bottom of the door dragging against the floor. The reception was warm, almost stifling. Lights were blazing everywhere but the reception was deserted. Exactly like their own hotel.

‘Do you think the whole village has been evacuated?’ asked Zoe.

‘Have you got that girl’s number?’

‘What girl?’

‘That dozy girl.’ ‘What dozy girl?’

‘The rep. The company rep. The one who was on the bus from the airport. The one who couldn’t stop smiling. Didn’t she flip you a card with her number?’

Zoe unzipped her handbag and took out her purse. She sorted through her plastic credit cards and club cards to find the rep’s business card. ‘I don’t have it. You must have it.’

‘I don’t have it. She gave it you.’

‘She didn’t give it me. I haven’t got it. I remember at the time she had a twinkle in her eye when she handed it to you. So you must have it.’

‘What twinkle?’

‘You had it!’

‘All right! Keep your hair on!’ Jake unbuttoned his jacket, unzipped his inner breast pocket and took out his wallet. There among his credit cards he found the holiday company business card with the rep’s mobile phone number.

‘I told you you had it. You fancy her.’

‘Yep, I like a woman who smiles. They’re rare in these parts.’

‘Give it me.’

‘Anyway, what kind of a name is Elfinda?’ she said.

‘Maybe she’s an elf.’

‘Elfinda the twinkling elf, apparently.’

‘You embarrassed us.’

When Elfinda the rep had offered her card she had asked for Jake’s number in return. It was routine, should the company need to contact them about trips and events. Zoe, tired of all the twinkling in the air,had leaned across and shoved, instead, her own card into the startled rep’s hands.

‘Embarrassed us? I should have kicked her skinny arse.’

Zoe reached across the reception desk and picked up the telephone. There was a strong dialling tone. She tapped out the numbers printed on the card. The phone rang and she crossed her legs as she waited for someone to pick up.

The phone rang for a long time before it finally rang off.

‘No one there?’

‘No one there. Elf or otherwise.’

‘There’s a police station in the village, behind the supermarket. We should go there anyway. See what’s happening.’

They left the Petit la Creu and trudged through the village, past the pretty church with its slender tower, taking a right-hand turn down a side street towards the supermarket and the police station. They passed no one. Neither was there any activity in any of the shops. Some of the stores were illuminated, some were not. The lights were all on in the supermarket, but there were no people, neither customers nor staff, to be seen through the windows.

A four-wheel-drive police vehicle with snow chains on its tyres was parked in the yard. The police station itself was a small, unprepossessing concrete building almost hiding behind the supermarket. They pushed open the heavy glass and steel door, and then opened a second door onto a small space furnished with a white melamine reception desk and three moulded plastic chairs.

Jake shouted loudly. This time he didn’t call Shop!

Zoe stepped behind the melamine counter, to a door behind it plastered with posters and notices. She tapped on the door, and when no one answered she pushed it open. There was a cramped office equipped with a couple of desks, PCs, a printer, a bank of filing cabinets, a coffee machine. The red light on the coffee machine was switched on, and half a pot of coffee was still warming. There was an anteroom visible with a coat rack and a police coat hanging on a peg.

‘Hello!’

They sat at the police desks for half an hour, hands dug into their coat pockets, trying to figure out what to do.

‘Okay,’ Jake said. ‘The entire village has been evacuated. Why? Avalanche risk. That’s the explanation. Sometimes these avalanches—big avalanches, not the kind we got caught in this morning—can take out an entire village like this. Happened near Chamonix a few years ago and pushed over twenty chalets. And all this snow falling has increased the risk. So everyone’s gone.’

‘How come they just left us?’

‘Maybe they thought we were killed in the avalanche this morning.’

‘Wouldn’t there be rescue teams?’

‘Look, I don’t know. All I know is the place has been evacuated, and we need to get out of here and pretty quick.’

‘Right. How?’ Zoe said.

‘That’s the… that’s just it. We can walk. We could get some skis from a store and try to make it further down the mountain. But I don’t much fancy that, given what we know, and given what happened this morning.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Or we can drive. Which means we just take one of these cars parked in the village. Drive slow, so it doesn’t trigger anything.’

‘Right. We’ll do that.’

‘Right.’

‘Let’s go then.’

‘So what are we waiting for, Zoe?’

‘I don’t know. I’m scared.’

‘Scared? There’s nowt to be scared about, you big girl’s blouse. Nowt at all. Actually I’m scared, too. Never mind all that. Look, we’ve got to find a car with keys still in the ignition.’

‘Right. Couldn’t we—’

‘Couldn’t we what? Hot-wire a car like they do in the movies?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know how to do it?’

‘You’re the technical one. You’re the man.’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you something for nothing, fuckwit of a wife. I don’t know how to hot-wire a car. As you correctly pointed out I’m a vet, I work with dogs and white mice and budgerigars and in all my training and experience as a vet, for some reason I’ve never been called upon to hot-wire a car. To save our bacon. Until now.’

‘Don’t get exercised with me.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing for nothing. See how they do it in the movies? They just rip out some wires from under the dashboard and stick ’em together and the car coughs into life? A car mechanic told me that’s all bollocks. It doesn’t work like that any more. He said if you do that the most likely thing that’ll happen is you’ll give yourself an electric shock.’

‘So we won’t do that.’

‘And he was a car mechanic. A proper car mechanic.’

‘So, as you said, we go and look for a car that still has the keys in it. And then we drive out. With the engine sort of muffled.’

‘You’re a sarcastic bitch, you know that?’

‘It’s why you married me. You love it.’

But before leaving the police station they tried, once more, the telephone number of Elfinda the smiling holiday rep. Just as with their earlier attempt, the phone rang off before anyone answered.

Outside, and with the snow falling more heavily around them now, they went from car to car, trying the drivers’ doors, looking for one that would open. They tried perhaps fifty or sixty vehicles and did find doors open on four of them; but none had the keys inside.

The snow came down heavier still, and with it an oyster-coloured mist. They were starting to feel both cold and tired.

‘I’ve just thought of something,’ Jake said.

‘What?’

‘Back at the police station—there was a police car. Maybe the keys are in the office.’

‘What, steal a police car? Don’t even think about it.’

‘But the situation is somewhat exceptional, surely?’

Zoe knitted her eyebrows but followed him back down the hill to the police station. There they found the keys to the police car, hanging on a hook by the door.

‘Are you sure it’s okay to just… take it?’

‘No.’

The police car fired into life first time, kicking out a lot of diesel smoke. They had to scrape snow from the windshield and de-ice the glass. Jake steered the car out of the police yard and onto the street. He honked the horn a few times; he was expecting a hand on his collar at any moment, and if the police did return to see their car being stolen he wanted to be able to say that he had hardly been stealthy about the operation.

He drove slowly past the supermarket, unused to the weight of the 4WD vehicle. In order to leave the village the way they had come in from the airport, they would have to drive past their hotel. Zoe wanted to stop and gather their things; Jake didn’t because the snow was coming down even heavier now, and the blanket of mist was getting thicker by the moment. Visibility was already less than twenty metres.

‘We need our passports, hon, and there are things I don’t want to leave. Come on, Jake. Two minutes.’

‘If we end up dead because of these two minutes, I’ll kill you.’

‘Fair enough.’

They pulled up outside the deserted hotel. Jake left the engine running, exhaust smoke billowing in the freezing air, as they got out. They rode the lift up to the third floor in silence, where their arrival was heralded by a tiny ping. Once in the room they opened their suitcases on the bed, flung everything in without care and clicked them shut. Then they took the suitcases down and out to the car, stowing them on the rear seat.

Jake growled. The mist had thickened. It was still oyster-grey and he fancied that it had an iridescent sheen where the electric light was caught and refracted: at another time, beautiful. The snow hadn’t abated either. It fell like thick, soft goose-feathers: the kind of snow that would have delighted any skier, but right now it was the last thing they wanted.

Visibility had dropped to about ten metres. He could only vaguely discern the shape of the buildings across the road from the hotel. What’s more, it was already late afternoon. Even without the snow the daylight was beginning to fade. Prospects for driving were not good. He would need to get a move on if they were to reach anywhere useful before the daylight winked out; and yet Jake felt the crushing potential of triggering the big avalanche if he drove faster than a crawl.

They set off at a cautious pace. Giant flakes of snow landed on the windscreen as the car made it’s laborious way along the mountain road. Then he bumped something in the road.

‘What was that?’

‘Don’t know. I think I hit the kerbstone.’

‘Keep away from the kerbstone. Drive in the middle of the road.’

‘Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that! Thanks for that well-considered advice. Driving in the middle of the road is exactly what I’m trying to do.’

But pretty soon he bumped a kerbstone again. It was impossible. He complained that he couldn’t see a thing now in the fading light. They talked about turning around but decided they had to press on. Half a kilometre or so further along the road, the car bumped, jolted and shuddered. They had driven clean off the road.

Jake jammed on the brakes. The car skidded and juddered to a halt. Leaving the engine still running, he got out of the car, but with the ground invisible under his feet he dropped a few centimetres and turned his ankle.

‘Careful as you get out!’ he shouted to Zoe.

She stepped out of the car and came round to join him. The front wheel on the driver’s side was hanging in free space. The other three wheels were fixed on rocky, snowy terrain. Jake looked down. He had no way of knowing if the drop under the driver’s-side wheel was one metre or a hundred. The misty whiteness of not knowing flashed through him like a blade.

‘Can we reverse out?’ Zoe asked.

‘Maybe we could, but I don’t want to drive any further in this fog.’

‘What? We have to go, Jake!’

He pointed to the car’s dangling wheel. ‘Got any idea what’s under there? I don’t. We can’t drive. I remember when we came here on the bus: most of the mountain road drops clean away on one side. There’s no barrier to keep you on the road, Zoe! It’s straight over the edge.’

‘Then we have to walk.’

‘Okay. We can walk.’

Zoe knew Jake well enough to hear an unspoken but in his sentences. ‘But…’ she filled in for him.

‘But here’s what I think. We’ll be walking into the night and into sub-zero temperatures. We could probably stay on the road, if we’re careful. But it’s twenty kilometres to the next village. We haven’t eaten anything all day and I’m already fucking freezing. In addition to the risk of dying of exposure on the mountain, we have the serious threat of an avalanche sweeping us off the road. Now, I know the hotel isn’t safe. But it’s a massive concrete building, and being inside there has got be safer than being out here.’

‘Jesus!’

‘You know I’m right.’

‘Are we going to drive back?’

He looked at the overhanging wheel. ‘No. I reckon we check this out in the morning, when the snow has stopped and we can see what we’re looking at. We didn’t get far. We could be back at the hotel in twenty minutes. Half an hour tops. ’

She didn’t argue. He switched off the engine got out and opened the back of the car. They stuffed a few essentials into a small bag and abandoned the rest before walking back in the direction of the hotel.

‘Some holiday this is turning out to be,’ Jake said.

‘Some holiday.’

‘I can just about see my hand in front of my face. No, that’s not true. I can see your face. It’s glowing.’

‘Believe it or not I’m sweating.’

And she could see his face, too, gleaming dimly in the falling snow and the grey, darkening mist; as if his skin were illuminated from behind. His skin was like parchment in this light, she decided, holy parchment, and his glittering blue eyes and his nut-brown eyebrows and the hint of crimson of his lips were like a monk’s illustrations on a sacred manuscript.

‘What you looking at?’

‘You. I love you.’

He laughed. ‘How can you think of that at a time like this? I married a loon who drags me into avalanches.’

‘This situation is loony, and all I can see is your lovely face, and I’m glad I can see it. I’m really, really glad.’

‘Come on. Hold my hand. Let’s get back to that hotel.’