Switzerland. I find Switzerland most appealing between the ages of fifty-two and seventy-one. Much younger than that, and the clean air, healthy living, reserved manners and somewhat bland cooking puts me off. Any older and all of the above become a depressing contrast to my decaying body and imminent demise. However, between the ages of fifty-two and seventy-one, especially if I’m feeling hearty for my age, Switzerland is indeed a very pleasant place to retire to, complete with bracing breezes, clear pools and occasionally stunning scenery to walk beneath or between and very, very rarely, over.
Vincent had a car waiting for us at the airport.
“You hired this yourself?”
“Harry, I’m not entirely dependent on you to look after things, you know.”
“I know,” I replied. “Philosophically speaking, that is.”
He scowled and smiled all at once, and got into the driving seat.
We drove up, and round, and then up a little further, and then round a little further, and then, to my incredible irritation, down a lot and up again. Navigation on the tight hairpin roads that wind through mountains has always frustrated me. Eventually we began climbing higher than we’d climbed before, until the trees turned to sharp-needled pines, and frost began to glimmer in the sweep of the headlights. I looked down sheer drops into valleys sprinkled with lights, and then up at a sky bursting with stars, and blurted, “Bloody hell, where are we going? I’m not dressed for skiing.”
“You’ll see! Good grief, if I’d known you’d complain this much, I’d have left you back at the airport.”
It was nearly one in the morning when we reached our destination, a chalet with a slanting wooden roof and lights already on behind the wide glass windows. There wasn’t snow on the ground, but it crackled with frost as I got out of the car, and my breath puffed in the air. A woman waved from the top balcony of the chalet as Vincent slammed the car door shut, then vanished inside to greet us. Vincent scurried with a familiar step down the narrow cobbled path to a side door, which was unlocked, and gestured me in.
The air inside was wonderfully warm, tinted with woodsmoke from an open fire. The woman appeared at the top of some stairs, apparently bursting with joy.
“Mr Rankis! It’s so good to see you again!”
She hugged him, he hugged her, and I briefly wondered if there was something more to their relationship than just affection. Then, “You must be Harry, such a pleasure, such a pleasure.” Her accent was German Swiss, her age perhaps thirty. She hurried us into the living room, where indeed a fat fire roared in the grate, and sat us down to a meal of cold meats, hot potato and warm wine. I was too tired and hungry to interrogate my hosts, and when Vincent finally declared with a slap on his knees, “Right! Busy day tomorrow!” I only put in a token grumble and went straight to bed.
I woke the following morning with a start.
He was standing, fully dressed for the cold, at the end of my bed, just staring at me.
I didn’t know how long he’d been there, watching me. He had a pair of gloves dangling down from his sleeves, sewn on with a long piece of string, like a mother might sew her child’s gloves together, but there was no sign of dampness on his trousers or boots, no indication he’d been outside. For a long while he just looked at me, until, shuffling upright, I stammered, “Vincent? W-what is it?”
For a second I thought he was going to say something else.
Then, with a half-shake of his head and a little shuffle to the door, he replied, not looking at me, “Time to get up, Harry. Busy, busy day.”
I got up and didn’t bother with a shower.
The world outside was blue-grey with a gentle frost. The air bit hard, promising snow. The woman waved from the balcony as we climbed back into Vincent’s little car, and then we drove up again, through thinning pine trees and jutting rock, the heater in the car on at full blast, neither of us saying a word.