All Dressed Up

by Lucy Hepburn

  “Simon!” she yelled.

  He didn’t hear her.

  “Slow down!”

  Suddenly there was a sickening, ripping sound, as Pascal called out, “Arrête!”

  Molly looked around again in horror. The stretcher had broken free from the skidoo and, as though powered by its own motor, was slithering uncontrollably off to the right. In the wrong direction.

  Chapter Ten

  Hours until wedding: 29

  Kilometers to wedding: 429

  “Simon! Stop!” she yelled in his ear.

  She didn’t dare remove her arms from around his middle to tap him on the shoulder. Another terrified glance showed the stretcher picking up speed, hurtling off down the slope towards the valley floor far below.

  “Simon!”

  She tried to squeeze him more tightly with her arms, jerking them up and down his middle, to no avail. She even thought about head-butting his back with her helmet.

  Pascal was shouting too but it was hopeless. Then Molly had an idea. Moving her arms as little as possible, she pulled her left glove off with her right hand and snaked it up beneath his jumper and T-shirt, her freezing fingers making icy contact with his warm, taut skin.

  “Aargh!” The skidoo veered off to one side as Simon slowed it down and steered it to a bumpy halt. “Are you crazy?” he fumed. “This is no time for pranks—you could have had us killed!”

  “Look! Down there!” Molly jabbed her finger downward to where the stretcher was still bumping its way down the slope. Down there the snow seemed to be thinner still, patches of rocks were visible but more importantly the stretcher, still moving, was completely out of control and heading for the stream at the bottom.

  “Shit!” Simon gunned the engine again. “Hang on people, we’re going off-road!” Simon revved the engine and they started off, at full throttle.

  “Slow down!” Molly shouted, suddenly petrified.

  Simon ignored her as he executed a steep turn and headed off to the right, bumping over the mound of roadside verge and off down the valley side in pursuit of the runaway stretcher.

  “Look out!” Pascal shrieked as Simon swerved to avoid tree after tree.

  Molly’s heart was thundering as she held on for dear life. How could he have been so careless? The idiot! And now he was going to get them all killed!

  The stretcher was still ahead of them, though it had snagged on a branch and was jerking down a not-so-steep part of the hill. Simon meanwhile had picked the steepest route to the bottom to try and intercept it before it plunged into the stream, which now that they were closer, Molly realized was not a stream at all but a fast, angry river.

  “Slower!” Pascal shrieked.

  “Simon, look out!”

  Another boulder, another daring maneuver by Simon tilted the skidoo onto one ski and made Molly shut her eyes and bury her head, helmet and all, between his shoulder blades. This ride was no longer fun.

  The skidoo continued its steep downhill course. Molly heard Simon curse loudly then his body leaned sharply to the right as though he was falling off. She forced herself to open her eyes.

  Simon had caught up with the stretcher and was leaning daringly out to try to slow it with his free hand.

  “Careful!” she shouted.

  Like a stuntman, he leaned even further out and made a lunge for the stretcher. Molly pulled as hard as she could to help keep him aboard.

  Flailing wildly, he made brief contact, snatching at the back of the stretcher whilst holding on to the skidoo’s handlebar for dear life with his other hand. Molly kept pulling doing her best to steady him and Pascal, behind her, was hanging on extra tightly.

  But the momentum was too great, and the stretcher slid from Simon’s grasp. He had succeeded in diverting it away from the direction of the river, but it quickly found an icy patch of hillside and overtook them again, hurtling on toward the bottom of the valley.

  And the skidoo, without Simon’s hand on the throttle, stuttered and slowed to a halt.

  Breathless, Molly pulled off her helmet. The two men did the same. The stretcher made it to below the tree line and began to move even faster, sailing down through a sweeping meadow of patchy snow and grass, making straight for a large wooden barn which stood in the distance, its double doors yawning wide open.

  “I don’t believe this,” Molly gasped, watching aghast through her fingers.

  As though choreographed by a silent comedy movie, Molly, Simon, and Pascal could only watch as the stretcher, skidding on and on, disappeared from sight into the darkness of the barn.

  The ground beneath the snow was muddy and soft. “We’ll have to go on foot from here,” Simon said. “I’m scared the skidoo will get bogged down if I try to drive it across this stuff.”

  They ran to the barn as fast as they could, which wasn’t very fast because of the steep slope and rocky obstacles.

  “I dread to think what we’re going to find in there,” Molly said as they approached the doors. “The dress has probably been impaled on some lethal farm implement, or eaten by pigs, or some brood of chickens have made it their next…”

  Pascal cupped his hand to his ear. “Listen! Is that what I think it is?”

  A hollow, clanging noise was coming from within.

  “Cow bells,” Simon declared before looking solemnly at Molly. “How very Swiss.”

  Sure enough when they finally stumbled up to the door of the barn and peered into the gloom they were greeted by the sight of the rear ends of a small herd of caramel-colored cows, clustered around the stretcher, tails twitching, showing great interest. The cows had formed a tight circle around the stretcher and were eagerly nuzzling, sniffing, and bumping it with their twitching, wet, drippy noses. The bells around their necks swung to and fro, amiably clanging, adding to the noises made by the animals themselves—it was as though they were chattering to one another about the strange new toy in their midst.

  Molly was aghast. The floor of the barn was thick with mud, dirty straw, and cow dung, and the stretcher seemed to have been brought to a halt by surfing deeply into the thick of it.

  “Nooo!” she gasped. “Somebody do something!”

  “I have allergies,” Pascal stuttered. “There is no way I can go in there. They may bite me. And this coat…it is cashmere…”

  The animals were growing bolder, jostling to get closer to the stretcher. Molly could hardly bear to look as they began to nudge it from side to side, one of them butting it with its head.

  “We’ve got to get in there,” she said.

  “I’m not sure about cows,” Simon admitted. “Can you blow a whistle or something, to get them to shift?”

  “Sure, if you want to cause a stampede…or whatever it is angry cows do,” Molly replied.

  “Got a better idea?” Simon rounded on her. “You’re from Yorkshire, it’s all cows up there isn’t…”

  “My suitcase!” Pascal wailed. “Somebody do something!”

  Three of the bolder cows had organized themselves into a lifting crew and were lined up on one side of the stretcher, seemingly determined to overturn it into the muck of the barn floor. Pascal’s suitcase, larger than the other bags, had slid to one side and its base was already smeared with mud and cow dung.

  And on top of everything, Caitlin’s dress, in its once-white zipped bag, looked like it was going with it.

  Molly and Simon surged forward at the same moment. Despite her country upbringing Molly had never been this close to a cow without being separated from it by a fence. She knew that cattle could kick; she also knew that they were unpredictable especially if they were panicked, but then, so was she. And she had to rescue the dress. Or die in the attempt.

  “Easy, ladies,” Simon crooned as he squelched through the muck toward them, arms outstretched. “Move your fat bottoms.”

  “Charmer,” Molly muttered. “Come on girls, game over,” she sang sweetly, “that’s a couture Cheval
ier you’re messing with…”

  Steam rose gently from the animals’ flanks as they ignored them and carried on with their new game. Molly spotted a pitchfork propped up against the wall, grabbed it, and continued her advance.

  Simon looked anxiously at her. “You going to stab them all to death? Steak on a fork, anyone?”

  “Funny,” Molly snarled. “Keep moving.”

  “The dress will be ruined!” Pascal wailed then gestured to his suitcase. “Et ma valise!” Pascal screeched from the doorway, making several of the cows jerk their heads round in alarm. “The suede, it will stain with the drool of the cows! And what of the dress? Cow drool on couture? This will never, how you say, catch on in Paris! Disaster!”

  “Not helpful Pascal!” Molly called back.

  She managed to trudge around the herd so that she was standing on the other side of the stretcher from the three cows who were trying to overturn it. Now all she had to do was wriggle between two of them, approach the stretcher, push the aggressors back, and Simon could dive in and pull the stretcher free. Easy…

  Simon seemed to pick up on her strategy. He crouched down gingerly behind the rear ends of two other cows, as close as he could get to the back of the stretcher.

  “Okay, I’m going in.” She began to walk forward, talking softly. “Excuse me, I’m just going to come between you two, if you don’t mind…” Another step, and she was level with the animals’ flanks. “Now I know your English probably isn’t great, but you should know that I don’t want to hurt you…”

  “It’s going over!” Simon called out.

  Molly looked down. The three troublesome cows had their noses underneath the stretcher and were busy levering it onto its side. The dress inched closer and closer to the thick, smelly sludge on the floor.

  “Go! Go!” Molly shouted, rushing up to the stretcher and lifting the pitchfork so that she held it horizontally at shoulder height. “Get back! All of you!”

  With snorts of complaint and angry jangling of the bells around their necks the cows began to wheel round and head for the exit. Molly ducked to avoid their strong heads as they spun outwards, while Simon lunged for the stretcher just a fraction of a second before it flopped over onto its side.

  “Give me a hand!” he cried.

  Pascal had to flatten himself against the door to get out of the way as the cows stampeded outside.

  “Careful!” Molly gasped as Simon lost his footing and stumbled, planting a mucky hand on top of the dress cover to steady himself. “No! You’ll ruin it!”

  “Oh, I will, will I?”

  The cows were gone. The only noise was the receding clang of cow bells and the thunder of hooves as the animals put as much distance between themselves and the interlopers as possible.

  “Would you have preferred if I’d gone face down in cow shit?”

  Molly looked mournfully down at the muck-smeared dress cover. Please please please be waterproof, she thought.

  “Honestly?” she made a face. “Yes.”

  They glared at one another, breathing heavily. Molly fought down a powerful urge to start yelling at him—how on earth had things come to this? Simon waved a hand over the dress cover. “It’ll clean off.”

  “How do you know there aren’t any rips? Or that it hasn’t stained all the way through? Goodness knows what could have seeped through the zip!”

  He put his hands on his hips. “Well, thanks for asking, but I’m fine. Nearly took a hoof to the head rescuing that thing but—”

  “You have no idea what this means to me!”

  “It’s a dress, Molly! A bloody dress,” he shouted. “If something as basic as a dress means so much to you then you need to question your values.”

  “What did you just say?” Molly’s mouth fell open.

  Robbed of words through the sheer shock of Simon’s cruelty, Molly turned away so he couldn’t see her face, which was growing crimson with fury.

  “Okay, that was harsh…” he said with a wince.

  “Damn right!” She didn’t turn around. Her voice was quavering.

  From the doorway, Pascal cleared his throat. “I would come in and help pull it out,” he said apologetically, “but I very much think that my overcoat would not appreciate the experience.”

  Molly glowered at him. “Of course, Pascal, you stay safe over there,” she replied, her voice loaded with sarcasm.

  Pascal took the hint. “Oh, very well.” And with an expression of utmost distaste, he began to tiptoe into the mucky barn.

  “Careful,” Molly called out as she watched him struggle but too late.

  “Ooft!” Pascal’s hand-tooled loafers with their smooth soles were no match for the thick mud, and with a very cartoon-sound-effect splat, he slipped and landed on his bottom in a large cowpat.

  Molly gasped but was too far away to help.

  “Mon Dieu!” he wailed, slithering to his feet. He looked like he was about to cry. “Look at me! No, do not look at me!”

  “Sorry, mate,” Simon called over, though Molly could see he was disguising a grin. “Bit slippy in here, isn’t it?”

  To Molly’s annoyance, he seemed to have forgotten that he was in the middle of an argument with her. Just when she knew she’d been holding the moral high ground, too.

  “Right,” Simon went on, turning back to the stretcher, “let’s do this, shall we?”

  Molly watched him crouch down and begin to drag the stretcher free from its muddy berth in the middle of the barn. It was obviously a struggle but gradually, inch by inch, it began to move.

  “A little help would be nice,” he muttered.

  Sulkily, Molly squelched over to help. Heaving the front end out of the muck, the ski runners were quickly freed, and they managed to push the stretcher back out of the barn and back onto the churned-up snow outside.

  Spattered with mud, cow dung, and shards of straw, it was a sorry sight. Molly stood, fists clenched, waiting for Simon’s apology for not fixing the stretcher on properly.

  The angry silence was punctuated by Pascal squelching awkwardly from foot to foot, trying to rub the worst of the muck from his bottom with clumps of dry straw, and the faint clanging of the cow bells, by now far away on the other side of the field.

  Finally, Simon spoke. “Let’s get it back over to the skidoo. Hopefully there’s no harm done.”

  “There’s bound to be harm done!” Molly exploded. “Don’t you realize how important this is? Tell him, Pascal! Just look at the state of it! My sister’s wedding dress! Her wedding is tomorrow.” She was squaring up to Simon. “You’re not taking this seriously at all, are you?” She gestured wildly at the dress carrier. “Just because this doesn’t mean anything to you, you think it’s okay to treat it like crap—to treat us all like crap!”

  She saw that she’d scored a direct hit with that one. Simon looked away silent, but his face was filled with hurt.

  “I think we must go,” Pascal said quietly. “It does no good to fight.”

  Back at the skidoo, Molly watched as Simon and Pascal reattached the stretcher. Simon seemed to be ignoring her. Well, that was fine.

  Simon showed Pascal a piece of torn webbing from the stretcher. “Sheared,” he said, “must have been sliced off by a rock. Made the whole thing come away.”

  “You can’t have fastened it properly,” Molly couldn’t resist muttering. “And you were going too fast. How could you be so stupid?”

  Simon was perfectly still for a moment. Then he straightened up and walked over to her. “Perhaps,” he said, his voice low. “Who knows? I’m afraid this is not something I do every day. I just want to get to Venice. Same as you. And this is the only way we’re going to manage it this side of next week. So, shall we get moving? It’s not far.”

  Molly didn’t look up at him. Eventually, she forced out just one word: “Fine.”

  It was difficult to keep up a constant level of anger once they were on the skidoo when Moll
y’s body was once again clamped so close against Simon’s. But Molly did her best. She’d tried to sit right at the back, but Pascal refused. Well, if Simon wanted to be so pig-headed and careless then he could go hang! He didn’t seem to grasp how important the dress was, both in terms of Caitlin’s future happiness and its sheer worth—thousands of euros worth of haute couture nearly ruined in a cowshed because he probably didn’t bother tying it onto the stretcher properly…

  To think, only a couple of hours ago, she’d thought she quite fancied him. How quickly things can change.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hours until wedding: 28

  Kilometers to wedding: 406

  The snow petered out to just a few centimeters as the skidoo bumped down the last of the slope and entered Varzo, which turned out to be a picturesque small Alpine town nestled on the valley floor. Molly didn’t like to think what would have happened if the snow had run out altogether—would they have had to drag the machine into the town? Strange, how just a short time ago the problem had been too much snow, and now it looked like it might be too little…

  They seemed to be attracting enough attention as it was. Molly wasn’t surprised. How ridiculous must they look? Two grown men with a small woman sandwiched between them, bumping into town on a skidoo designed for only two people, towing a stretcher laden with cow-dung splattered luggage…

  We must be making the locals’ day, Molly thought, grimacing beneath her helmet as she saw people even pull out camera phones to snap them as they passed.

  It seemed unbelievable to Molly that there could be such a huge shift in the weather within such a small geographical area. She looked back—the Pass was shrouded with thick snow clouds, the mountains dazzling white and majestic, like in a brochure for the best ski holiday ever. Whereas here in town there was just a sprinkling of white powder and above their heads; the sky was startlingly blue. But then again, if she looked the other way, fresh black clouds were rolling in from the east as well. No wonder the airport up at Sion had called a halt to flights when conditions were as unpredictable as these.