The King of the Rainy Country by Nicolas Freeling Page A

to windmill and he hit a tiny hump, lost both legs, and disappeared splendidly into a bank of loose soft stuff left there to make happy landings for the unwary. A knot of boys and girls standing at the top split themselves laughing. He reached Anne-Marie; she had her skis on and as he came panting up she did an about-turn conversion.
    â€˜So you did come. Watch me schuss.’ They both saw the fur hat together. He gripped her sleeve; two more skiers launched themselves gingerly on the piste, leaning carefully forward, keeping their skis flat: she shrieked.
    â€˜Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude.’
    He saw the man at the same second; he had been masked by a fat fellow who had let his skis down, done a neat oblique glide, and dug his edges in a couple of metres further. Jacques Anquetil’s nose!
    Marschal looked only for a second. He saw his wife, and his eye rested for perhaps seven-hundredths of a second (timed by the electronic scoreboard) on Van der Valk. He moved with no hesitation. He put a hand on the fur hat’s back, and launched her on the slope. Letting his skis down the way the fat man had done he started a skid, gathered his batons hanging by the wristloops, and went. With professional ease and speed; it was him all right.
    Anne-Marie, her batons planted, was tucking her hair under her cap, panting.
    â€˜Go on, damn you, go. Catch them up, do anything, stand on your head, but hold on to him. I have to talk to him, I must. Now go, what are you waiting for?’
    Marschal had caught the girl up before the turn, swung well outto give her room, and passed her. She was going very carefully; it was too fast and steep for her but she was ski-ing steadily. Anne-Marie went, with a long tearing sigh of the skis, very fast, holding to the line, leaning right over to keep her balance on the turn.
    And he could not ski! It had been the same ever since he came here … He ran back madly towards the lift, stumbled, skated, and sprawled full length. He ran on muttering furiously, covered in snow, his shoulder hurting.
    One of the mountain ‘dwarfs’ was on the ski-lift; an old man with the thick mountain dialect he could not follow: a puckered, withered, tough little man in a hooded coat too long for him. ‘Have a sturz?’ he chuckled. Van der Valk dusted the snow off himself and cursed silently. His shoulder hurt. A cheer came up in the thin mountain air from the slalom course.
    â€˜We’ll flip those French girls,’ said the old man.
    â€˜Time, fifty-nine eighty-three,’ blatted the loudspeaker, but the name was drowned by the echo.
    â€˜Who for, who for?’ squeaked the old man. ‘That’s fast, that’s very fast.’ Van der Valk stared numbly.
    They had almost reached the bottom when a second bigger cheer went up.
    â€˜Fifty-nine eighty-one, new best time,’ bawled the speaker.
    â€˜Is it one of ours?’ yapped the dwarf, tumbling excitedly off the landing platform.
    â€˜Sure it’s one of ours,’ muttered Van der Valk, limping, his shoulder hurting. ‘What d’you think it is, a Martian?’
    He loped along the beaten path wretchedly, his heart pounding with the altitude. No fur hat, no nose to be seen at the bottom of the piste, no black trousers and sweater, either. Where had the three of them got to? Three hundred metres further the helicopter’s motor coughed and roared. As he looked it tilted clumsily, lifted off, and turned, gaining height: clouds of powder snow flew about wildly in the wind of the rotor. It roared directly over his head; someone had had a sturz.
    He saw Anne-Marie, then, sliding down the last easy slope of the piste. He ran stumbling over to her.
    â€˜Where are they?’ stupidly. ‘How is it I’m ahead of you?’
    â€˜I had a sturz,’ ruefully. ‘A royal one. I looked at the girl instead of the track. Served me right. I flew out at a curve. Lost both skis and all my breath. You had