The Red Mitten

by Stuart Montgomery

  And then it seemed to merge with the snow on which they were travelling, blurring the boundary between ground and air.

  Cally had skied in bad conditions in Scotland. She knew it was just a matter of putting her head down and getting through it. Slide one ski forward and then slide the other. Repeat. Count a hundred strides. Repeat. Check that all companions are in close visual contact. Repeat. Eventually they would all get to a safe place where they could congratulate each other for making it through an epic day.

  But on all those previous occasions she had been in a much bigger group, and usually the thing to watch out for was somebody skiing too close to her.

  There was not usually a danger that everyone would ski away from her and leave her on her own.

  Aware that the storm was slowing their pace, she pressed on, maintaining position between Richard and Neep. Occasionally she looked up to see if the sky was clearing but mainly she concentrated on skiing efficiently - letting her skis run whenever she could, but keeping control on the more exposed ground where the wind was now stripping away the new snow and leaving a treacherous icy base. The wind was a nuisance, driving hard snow into her face and pushing her off balance, but generally she felt she was doing alright. The benzo was helping, of course, keeping her calm. She promised herself another as soon as she got to the cabin.

  In the bad visibility the only things that gave any sense of scale or perspective were the canes that marked the route. They loomed out of the mist like a slow procession of wraiths. And even though Cally tried to resist, tried to find something more pleasant to think about, they gradually took her mind back to the canes in the vegetable plot at Crombie and to the bastard, Alec Filshie.

  She had Filshie to thank for getting her into skiing. Two years ago, in the autumn, Neep had told her that his ski club was starting a beginner’s course on the dry slope, and said he could get her a free place. Filshie told her to jump at the chance. “The ski sessions are on Sunday mornings,” he said. “Which is great. Because I’ve got a mate with a van and he doesn’t use it at the weekend. So he’ll let us go in the back of it for a bit of private time. It will be just as if we were married, with our own bedroom.”

  Stupidly, Cally had gone along with it. They had been having sex for ages anyway, and she thought it would be good to be able to spend some time doing it properly, rather than grabbing the usual quickie in a field or up against a wall. She wanted to be with Filshie. He had been strong and gentle at a time when she had been clingy and needy and scared, because of yet another attempt to move her to a mainstream residential home. And he had been so kind to her, giving her clothes and jewellery and alcohol and drugs – not just the benzos that she had already come to love and to need, but speed and cocaine and some stuff called roofy that he would get her to wash down with vodka, saying it made her behave more sexily.

  So she had signed up for the dry slope sessions. The care staff at Crombie had been happy for her to go. They all knew Neep. And they all knew Richard, who also decided to come along to the lessons when he got wind of them. So they believed she would be in safe company.

  And she was in safe company. Right until the moment when the first dry slope session ended, and she said her goodbyes to the skiers and went for the bus back to the unit. Except that it wasn’t a bus that she got into, but Filshie’s friend’s transit van.

  She climbed into the front seat with the two men and right away Filshie handed her a bottle. “Here, have a drink. Relax.” So she swigged at the vodka and coke and then took a drag of the joint that Filshie had rolled for her. It all seemed like a great adventure.

  By the time the van stopped, in a big lay-by on the outskirts of Aberdeen, she was half-drunk – maybe more than half. The vodka seemed to hit her harder than usual, or maybe it was the joint, or maybe it was because of all the hard work on the dry slope. Anyway, Filshie’s friend had smiled at them and said, “I’ll leave you two love-birds to it. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  So then Filshie had leaned across to her and they started to kiss. And very soon things got a lot more serious and Filshie said, “Why don’t you get into the back and take your clothes off. I’ll give you a minute to get ready before I come in.”

  So she went out and climbed into the back, her head reeling from the alcohol and the joint, and then she clambered over a mattress that took up all the floor space.

  By the time the door opened she was completely naked. Even through the drunken haze she could see that it wasn’t Filshie who was standing there, silhouetted against the light.

  It was his friend, the van driver.

  The man climbed in. She said, “No!” Then she said it again, louder. Shouted it. Fended him off with hands and feet.

  He hit her hard in the face with his open hand, several times. And then he was on her, and then in her, and her ability to struggle was gone because of the drink and the drugs and the sheer weight of the man on top of her.

  And it was disgusting. But soon, thank God, he was finished with her.

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” he said. “I needed that.”

  Then he was gone. And then another man opened the door. And then, after he had satisfied himself, a third man opened it.

  None of the men seemed to be put off, even in the slightest, by her unwillingness or by her tears.

  Nor was Filshie concerned when, on the drive back to Crombie, she sobbed uncontrollably.

  Before leaving the lay-by he’d given her a facecloth and a bottle of water and told her to clean herself up. Then he’d allowed her on to the front seat. During the drive he said nothing at all. When they had parked in a street near the unit and were standing outside the van, his voice was cold.

  “Don’t look so upset, Cally. This is just your way of thanking me for all the drugs and the booze. It’s got to be paid for, you know.”

  She had been unable to reply. Her world had been turned upside down. Earlier in the day she had been looking forward to spending time with this boy who had told her he loved her. He had talked about marriage and had even given her a ring. And yes, he had given her drugs – lots of drugs over a long period. But she thought she had already repaid the favour, when she faked panic attacks in supermarkets for him. She had felt bad enough about being an accessory to shoplifting. Now he was turning her into a whore.

  He said, “If you want any more drugs – any more at all – then they will have to be paid for, too.”

  Then he pushed a twenty-pound note and a half-bottle of vodka into her bag, and a little strip of pills.

  “See you next Sunday,” he said coldly, and got into the van.

  She stood a long time in the street, numb. Then she walked stiffly to the unit.

  “How was the skiing?” the duty care-worker asked.

  “It was fine. But I fell a lot and I’ve picked up a few bruises. So I’d like to go and soak in a bath if that’s okay. And I don’t feel like having any dinner.”

  She didn’t go to the ski sessions for the next two weeks. But by then the drugs were long gone and the withdrawal was unbearable. The shakes and the sweats and the shivers; the back-to-back panic attacks in her room; the cravings and the burning acidity in her blood.

  She thought long and hard about going to the care staff or to Anne, or even to Neep.

  But she didn’t go to them. Instead, on the third week she went back to the dry slope. She completed her ski session, and when it was finished she went up to the bus stop and got into the white van and made the short journey to the layby.

  It had been her choice. And she would always hate herself for making it.

  ***

  As the afternoon wore on and the Scots moved slowly over the Norwegian mountains, Cally grew used to recognising her companions by their kit and clothing. Richard was reduced to a yellow jacket and a black rucksack with a little thermometer swinging from it. Neep dwindled to a brown jacket and green rucksack, though each time he fell – and he was falling more and more often – he collected another patch of
white. Cally supposed that to them she would be just a blue jacket and a blue rucksack – not an inspiring colour scheme but the best the club’s bring-and-buy sale had offered.

  On a very windy section they came to a fork in the caned routes. It was the kind of place where a signpost would have been handy, but there wasn’t one. While Richard busied himself with the GPS, Cally took the chance to put on still more kit. The wind tore at her hair as she pulled back her hood and struggled into a balaclava. With her goggles off the fog seemed even thicker and she was glad to put them back on, and glad to get her hood back up to block the biting cold. As she waited for Richard she noticed how the snow was accumulating on the tops of her skis. She wondered how long it would take, if she just continued to stand in the same place, for it to cover her skis completely; and then how much longer to bury her boots.

  She caught Neep looking at his own skis, probably thinking the same thought. He had gone very quiet.

  Richard finished his checks and brought his companions into a huddle. Cally had seen him in situations like this before, on Scottish hills, so his cheery demeanour didn’t surprise her at all.

  Using the corner of the base-plate of his compass as a pointer, he indicated a spot on the map a few grid-squares to the north of Storkvelvbu and said, with a much broader smile than seemed absolutely necessary, “We are at this point here, just over three kilometres from the cabin. Since the storm started we’ve been moving at two kilometres an hour, so we’ll be there in about an hour and a half, which will be just in time for dinner.”

  He continued to flash the broad smile. “All we have to do is keep following the canes.”

  Chapter 13

  When Gunnar Hoveng finally arrived at Tronablikk Mountain Hotel it was late in the afternoon.

  He felt pathetically glad to be there. Since moving back to Oslo he had gotten out of the way of driving on hill roads in winter. Okay, recently he’d been getting back into it, but today he had found it bloody hard work, especially after the weather broke. The surfaces had been treacherous and the windscreen wipers had struggled to cope with the falling snow. The road works after Lillehammer hadn’t helped either, though Gunnar was happy to see that they were getting on so well with the construction. He wondered if one day the locals would even relax their opposition and let the new road extend right along the Espedalen valley. But he doubted it. Some of the folk up here would be happiest if there were no roads at all, just a few dirt tracks on which they could ride on horseback between their potato fields, doffing their hats to sturdy peasants who gratefully hacked at the soil with mattocks.

  Anyway, he had got to the hotel in one piece, even though the difficulties had lasted right to the end and he only just made it up the icy driveway. Thank God he hadn’t bumped the car. Getting a high-end BMW repaired took a lot of money, which he didn’t want to spend. And it took a lot of time, which he couldn’t spare.

  He had known before making the reservation that Tronablikk had new owners. Otherwise he’d have gone somewhere else. It was important not to be recognised. Not yet. He had taken enough chances today as it was. On the phone he had told the hotelier that he didn’t want dinner. Instead he’d stopped at a filling station to buy some sandwiches, and a bottle of soda to add to the whisky that was packed in his suitcase.

  They had put him in a room with log-beamed walls, a cot-style bed and, he estimated, as comprehensive a collection of rustic Weegie shit as you could ever hope to find.

  Who was it - Mark Twain maybe - who had written that there must be a secret factory somewhere that churns out all the tat that ends up in hotels? All the cartwheels and the butter-presses, all the copper pots and the bedpans, all the trolls and the little costumed figures with their fiddles and their flutes. Gunnar had no doubt that if he looked in the information folder he’d find a glossy leaflet describing the place as a secret hotel in a hidden valley where time had stood still. When would Norway finally wake up and leave all this bucolic kitsch behind? This nostalgie de la boue romanticising of an agricultural past that in reality had been hard and unforgiving, and had sent thousands of starving Norwegians across the ocean in search of something better. The idiocy of the earth was how Karl Marx had described farming. He’d got that right, at least.

  The mental ranting proved to Gunnar that he was over-tired. Fatigue seldom sweetened his mood. Maybe he should have taken dinner after all. It didn’t help that on the way from Oslo - all the bloody way from Oslo - he had been building up his anxiety. And it had all been for nothing. He’d expected to get a hard time from Elin. That is, if she would agree to talk to him at all - especially today. But he had wanted to see her anyway. He had known that arriving unannounced had been his only chance. But by the time he got to Vesterheim she was in her office with the police, not to be disturbed. So he had put his card on the desk and left a message for her to call him.

  He checked his watch. That must have been two hours ago, considering the time his side-trip had taken.

  It didn’t really surprise him that Elin hadn’t called. When she had caught him and Theresa in bed in one of the hotel rooms, she had dealt with it in a way that had been very decisive and very, very final. No how-could-you histrionics. No revenge-shag with his brother or his best friend. Just pack your bags and expect a letter from the solicitor. End of.

  He took out the whisky and put it beside the bottle of soda. He poured a glass of soda and drank half of it, then added a splash of whisky before topping up again with soda. He had to go easy.

  He had started on a sandwich when his phone rang. He recognised the number and said, “Elin, thanks for ringing . . .”

  But that was as far as he got before she said, “Gunnar, for the avoidance of doubt, I never want to see your face again or hear your voice. Go back to your waitress.” And then she ended the call.

  He put down the phone and refilled his glass.

  Fair enough. He had tried. And now he would file the attempt under Foolish Notions. Really foolish.

  Lately he had even caught himself thinking that Elin was probably the best thing that had ever happened to him. Sentimental fool. Although he had known there was no prospect of putting things back together, he had allowed himself to hope that he could at least make some kind of amends. Well, now he knew for sure that their relationship was totally gone, wrecked beyond any possibility of salvage.

  And with that realisation there came an unexpected feeling of . . . relief, almost. Certainly not regret. Anyway, who was it who had written that regret is the most futile of emotions?

  Probably Mark Twain, he thought, and a smile came over his face for the first time in the entire day.

  What he had really wanted to do was give Elin a subtle heads-up about what was going to happen, give her a chance to finally make some money from her blessed hotel.

  And she had spurned it.

  But even if she didn’t want to be in the game, he did. And being in the game meant he had an opportunity to make a lot of money.

  In his work in the city he was used to meeting small-cap CEOs who ramped their companies, who multiplied optimistic guesses by rose-tinted estimates and called them forecasts, who did everything conceivable to pump up the price of their shares. But this was different. This was for real and this was big. It had been a while in the making, with a lot of clandestine meetings in Oslo hotels and in roadside cafes by the E6 highway. And now it needed just a couple more days.

  That thought turned his mind to tomorrow’s busy programme. He should go easy with the whisky. He put the bottle in the wardrobe, then got his coat and hat and went out to take his skis from the car and put them in the ski room. It had been good, lately, to get back into skiing. He had once been passionate about it, but working in a ski hotel had put an end to that. Rule number one: don’t make a job out of your hobby.

  Last winter he’d made a few sorties up to the cross-country tracks at Nordmarka, on the outskirts of Oslo, but he hadn’t liked the crowds or the busy tram that clanked its way slowly up f
rom Majorstuen station, stopping at every lamppost on the way.

  Still, the Nordmarka trips had given him a break from Theresa and her increasing unhappiness with life in Oslo, her increasing desire to move back to Poland and buy a hotel in the mountains.

  Chapter 14

  The afternoon was well-advanced when Cally remembered the story of the skier with the string.

  He was, it was said, a British man who came to Norway every winter. He always skied alone and he always stayed on routes marked with canes. His foul-weather strategy depended on a long piece of string. If the visibility grew bad he would stop at a cane and tie one end of the string to it. Then he would ski through the fog toward the next cane, uncoiling his string as he went, and when he reached it he would tie the other end of the string to it. Then he would go back along the string to the first cane. He would untie, and then follow the string back to the second cane, coiling it in as he went. But this time he would continue to the third cane and attach the free end of the string to it. And then he would go back to the second cane, untie his string, and set off for the fourth one . . .

  When she first heard the story, at a ski club meeting, Cally thought it was just one of those modern myths that go round.

  The reason for it coming into her head now, was that they had lost the canes.

  There had been a climb over a rounded hill and then a steep descent on a difficult mix of icy snow and breakable crust. When they came to a stop after the descent, there were no canes.

  Richard brought them together. “Okay, let’s search for them. But if the visibility gets any worse we should all just stop for a moment. It’s important for us not to lose sight of each other.”

  Cally didn’t need to be reminded of that.

  They searched in a methodical way, moving in line abreast and following a compass bearing. They counted strides to keep track of their progress, and when they had gone a set distance in one direction they stopped, sidestepped up the slope, kick-turned through one hundred and eighty degrees, and then did a set distance in the opposite direction. When that brought no success, they climbed higher up the slope and did another sweep. Then another. They worked on the assumption that the canes had veered off at a tangent across the slope while they had continued straight down it.