Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
their window the dancers were streaming out of the hotel and lights glimmered on the snow. Julia and Josh lay quite still in one another’s arms, almost shy now, faintly awed by what they had created between them.
‘Thank you,’ Josh said gravely.
Julia was so happy that she wanted to laugh. The feathers from the white coverlet tickled her throat and suddenly she was shaking with it. Josh laughed too, rolling her over and over in the mounds of the mattress and kissing her face and her neck and her breasts. They clung together and Julia rested her head on his chest.
‘I didn’t think it would be like that,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t think it would be so … important. I love you, Josh.’ Her eyes shone and her face was suddenly wet with tears. Josh stroked her hair. He was looking at the navy-blue square of the window, and he didn’t see her face.
There was snow outside the window, and he remembered the race. The Inferno medal was still pinned to his ski-jumper. Josh grinned in the darkness. Julia was in his bed, with her long legs wound round him and the fresh apple-scent of her skin caught in the feather folds. He had enjoyed making love to Julia more than anyone else he could remember. Her pleasure, the surprising strength of it, had made his own much keener. Josh felt himself harden again at the thought of it.
He turned and buried his face in her hair.
‘I love you too,’ Josh said.
Later, Julia asked him, ‘No Frau Uberl’s?’
Drowsily Josh said, ‘Nope. No Frau Uberl’s. I guess I’m popular enough tonight for even Tuffy Brockway to turn a blind eye to immorality. So you see, honey, ski-racing does have its uses after all.’
In the morning, Julia woke up first. She lay looking at the duck-egg-blue sky and thinking, this is being happy. Here and now. If I could take hold of this moment, and keep it …
Josh stirred beside her, and groaned. He opened his eyes and saw Julia leaning over him. Her dark hair brushed his face.
‘I told you I wouldn’t be able to move.’
Julia lifted the covers and inspected his bruises.
‘Hmm. Looks nasty. But you don’t seem to be too badly damaged elsewhere.’
‘That’s luck.’
Julia grinned. Then she lifted her hips and gently slid her body over his.
‘Would you like me to move for you?’
‘Yes, please,’ Josh said.
It was long past breakfast-time at Frau Uberl’s when Julia skidded back through the snow to the chalet. The hem of Mattie’s dress was bunched up under her coat, but Julia felt that her evening slippers were painfully conspicuous to the ski-booted crowds. She reached the gate of the chalet and slipped in through the front door and up the stairs. In her room all four beds looked identically slept in, and Frau Uberl’s maid was polishing the floor under Felicity’s. Julia shot her a dazzling smile, grabbed her ski-clothes, and fled to the bathroom to change. Sophia was hovering there, white-faced after her evening of champagne and army officers. They eyed each other, and then Julia held out her hand.
None of them was like Mattie, but Josh was right. They were nice, friendly girls.
‘Thanks,’ Julia said.
Sophia nodded and weakly shook hands. ‘We guessed you wouldn’t be in. We rolled in your bed and told the Frau you’d gone out early to the slopes. She looked so pleased that you were getting keen at last, it was quite touching.’ Sophia peered at her, but she was clearly feeling too ill to be envious. ‘What about you? Are you all right?’
‘Never better.’
Sophia shuddered and gripped the edge of the basin. ‘Wish I could say the same.’
Julia patted her back. ‘What you need is Mattie Banner’s patent hangover cure. I’ll get you a glass.’
Innocent in her ski-clothes, Julia ran downstairs to the girls’ sitting room. A tray of drinks was kept on the sideboard for them to offer to their visitors, and Julia had seen a bottle of vodka lurking behind the sherry. She sloshed tomato juice on top of a generous slug of it and bore the glass into the kitchen. Assuring Frau Uberl that the English often resorted to it when they required a really nourishing snack after violent exercise, she added a beaten egg. Under Felix’s tutelage, Mattie insisted on celery salt for her own concoction. There was nothing of the kind in Frau Uberl’s cupboard so Julia put in a liberal dash of Tabasco sauce and carried the result up to Sophia.
She put the glass into her shaking hand.
‘Here you are. It’s kill or cure, actually.’
Sophia gulped it down. ‘Oh, God.’
In Sophia’s case it was cure. Fifteen minutes later the girls were in a café, facing each other over mugs of hot chocolate.
‘So you stayed the night with Josh?’ Sophia narrowed her eyes against her cigarette smoke, a woman of the world.
Julia nodded. It was snug in the café, and missing Mattie to confide in, she blurted out, ‘It was the first time.’
Sophia stared at her, unable to keep hold of her veneer of knowingness. ‘What was it like?’
Julia remembered asking Mattie, in the same words, on top of the bus from Euston Station. It was all right, Mattie had said. Only that. Because of the dreadful-sounding man she had chosen? Oh, Mattie, Julia thought. And then she looked over the rim of her cup into Sophia’s prominent pale-blue eyes.
‘It was wonderful,’ she said, with perfect honesty.
After that, Julia found that she enjoyed Wengen as much as Josh had promised her she would. With the Inferno safely behind him he was free to ski with her, and under Josh’s instruction Julia blossomed. It was as if something profound had happened to her body. Her knees flexed of their own accord, and her rigid spine melted. Her skis were no longer flat, heavy boards that tangled and crossed and wilfully tripped her up. They grew sharp edges that hissed delightfully through the snow and even, one magical afternoon, carried her all the way down the hated nursery slope in a series of elegant arcs.
‘Hey.’ Josh caught her cheeks between his gloved hands. ‘You can do it.’
Julia beamed back at him. ‘You’re right. I can do it.’
In that successful instant she had caught a glimpse, at last, of what they were all so mad about.
Josh took her on the little train, on upwards from Wengen to Kleine Scheidegg, right under the blue and grey pyramid of the Eiger. With Josh’s broad, blue shoulders reassuringly just ahead of her, she skied all the way down again.
‘You can ski,’ he told her. ‘You may not make a flier, but you can damn well ski.’
Julia was so glowingly proud of herself, and so pretty, that he wanted to undo her ridiculous parka and make love to her there and then on the icy piste that led down into Inner Wengen.
There were no more nights in the Swann Hotel, but there were afternoons as the skiers crossed through the snow under their window, calling to one another, and the white light faded gently to blue and then to grey as soft as the duck feathers that escaped from their covers.
Their evenings were noisy with music and skiing jokes and the giggly company of Belinda and the others.
‘We didn’t like you much, to start with,’ Sophia confided as they downed another glühwein. ‘We thought you were, you know …
‘Non-sku? Like Sandy Mackintosh?’ Julia asked innocently.
Sophia blushed and giggled. ‘But you’re good fun. And you’ve got guts, as well. That’s what counts.’
Julia widened her eyes. ‘Guts? Is that really it?’ But there was no point in teasing Sophia, because she was never aware of it. ‘I thought you were