‘It’s snowing again. We don’t want to leave it too late. We’re going to have to hike for maybe four hours before we get to the next village. It’s snowing heavily and with all this snow coming down, all the time we’re here the avalanche risk increases. So please get your sweet, shiny arse out of that bed.’
‘That cheap champagne went to my head,’ she said, dragging herself off to the shower.
He’d brought up a breakfast of toast and rolls, and cheese and salami. He’d packed a rucksack. While she slept he’d been out and found the rucksack, a torch and a magnetic compass in a store.
Before they left she made him sit and tilt back his head while she applied eye-drops. ‘You still look like a zombie. Red then blue then black. Like an archery target.’
‘That’s not an archery target.’
‘Oh shut up. Now you do me.’
They were out on the road by seven-thirty that morning. The snow had thickened. The clouds overhead were like buckled steel and though the flakes were light they were falling in thick profusion. A fine mist came along with it.
They followed the road. Pretty soon they passed the police car with its wheel dangling over the precipice. The snow had made a thick crust on the windscreen and on the bonnet. Jake stopped and looked at the vehicle wistfully. The mist was thickening and Zoe told him not to even think about it.
The road climbed steeply. After another half an hour of ascending the mountain road the snow-mist became impenetrable. It had that same oyster-grey quality,with traces of iridescence where the light played. They walked on steadily, but couldn’t see where they were going.
Jake stepped off the road and turned his ankle.
‘I don’t like it,’ Zoe said. ‘We’re walking blind.’
‘It’s okay. I’m okay. We just follow the tarmac.’
‘I can’t even see the tarmac. Or feel it underneath me.’
Jake took his compass out of his bag. He squatted down and placed it on his knee. ‘That’s north and we want to go west. This is okay. Let’s press on.’
There was confidence in his voice, but Zoe neither shared it nor trusted it. He was made of different stuff from her. He’d had an upbringing that had taught him to simulate confidence when he didn’t feel it in his bones, and she knew the difference. She had been taught to trust her instincts, and to be guided by them. She thought that her way got it right or wrong just as much as his way.
They took it slowly, holding hands, sometimes following the outer curve of the road. The road twisted wildly, a serpentine track winding around and across the mountain, and they followed it almost blind, reduced to a shuffling pace. Then Zoe must have put a foot off the road because her boot went through snow up to her thigh.
‘This scares me, Jake. It scares me. I feel like we could easily walk off the road. Why don’t we take shelter for half an hour? See if the mist lifts a little?’
‘It’s not going to lift.’
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘This is in for the day. You can see that. If we hunker down we’ll just get cold. We have to press on.’
So they did. And after another ten minutes there came a gust of wind that for a tantalising moment revealed the road parting in opposite directions. Then the image of the parting in the road was instantly swallowed up by the thick mist. The snow came down harder.
Jake squatted in the road again and took out his compass.
‘What’s this?’
Zoe squatted beside him, peering at the compass. The needle was circling the compass, hunting.
‘You haven’t got it level. Put it down flat.’
Jake cleared some snow from the road with his ski gauntlet and placed the compass down on the snow. The needle continued to hunt, moving steadily clockwise across the face of the compass. Then it stopped. Almost immediately it resumed its hunting, now moving anticlockwise.
‘What does that mean?’ Zoe said.
Jake didn’t answer.
She grabbed it; shook it; put it down on the snow again. The needle continued to hunt for its magnetic home, without coming to rest.
‘It’s fucked.’
‘It was working fine when I picked it up,’ Jake said. ‘It was working fine.’
‘Right.’
‘It was. It was working fine.’
‘Nevertheless.’ ‘Nevertheless? What does that mean? Nevertheless?’
‘It means we’re turning back.’
‘Like hell!’
‘Jake, we’ve been walking for what, an hour? We haven’t gone more than a kilometre or two. If you think we’re going to get anywhere in this you’re stupid. I’m not carrying on in this. And as you say, we can’t stay here.’
She turned from him and began to retrace her steps. Within seconds they couldn’t see each other. After a moment he started yelling after her.
‘I’m just here!’ she shouted.
He loomed out of the mist and grabbed her coat. ‘Don’t do that, Zoe!’
‘Don’t do what?’
‘Don’t just walk off like that! We have to stay together. You don’t seem to realise that I could lose you in this. It could happen in seconds! This is the mountain and there’s no one around! No one! This isn’t a walk to the shops!’
‘Okay.’
‘You have to respect the mountain.’
‘I said okay, didn’t I?’
They stood in the billowing snow, their noses perhaps fifteen centimetres apart but barely making out the expression on the other’s face. In the mist, each appeared to the other like a faded and fading grey photograph.
‘We’re going back,’ said Zoe.
4
‘Damn thing is working fine now.’ Back in their hotel room, Jake sat at the table, playing with the magnetic compass. Each time he moved it, the needle wobbled and returned to train its pointer towards magnetic north.
Zoe gazed out of the window, in a kind of trance. ‘It’s clearing. A little.’
‘I can’t explain that. Why is it working fine now?’
Zoe wanted him to stop talking about the compass. Her point was that to follow the dial of even an accurate compass, you had to be able to see where you were going.
‘It’s like there’s a conspiracy,’ Jake said, ‘to keep us here. Look at that: bastard thing’s working perfectly.’
Zoe leapt up. ‘Look at this shithole of a room! Where’s the maid when you need one? Come on—help me clean up a bit.’
‘Why? We’re not staying.’
‘We might have to, for another night at least.’
He checked the window. ‘You said yourself it’s clearing. And even if we have to stay we could just use another room.’
‘You do what you want. I’m cleaning up.’
Zoe began to stack their used dishes on the trays they’d bought up from the kitchen. She scraped plates into the bin and pointedly set the empty plates and dishes on a tray in the middle of the table, where Jake’s compass
