‘Jake! Anyone! Help!’
She continued to saw away with her pole, trying to widen the narrow shaft to suck in some air, some sunshine, some life. But the effort exhausted her. When she stopped sawing all she could hear was her own ventilating lungs, a scratchy, underwater sound. Now her arm was cramping badly. She tried to ease it, but the ski pole twisted and the plastic basket at the end of it only dragged snow down into the aperture she’d made, closing off the pencil beam of light all over again.
She hung immobile, trying to steady her breathing, but she felt the pocket of air warming and thinning all over again. She felt dizzy. She felt her breathing drop through the gears and then a terrible surrender passed over her as she felt her consciousness shutting down.
Dimly from somewhere she heard a faint sound, like that of fingers sifting flour in a bowl. It was far off. Then it became a scratching, nearer.
And then she heard him.
‘Zoe! I’m here! I’m here!’
‘Oh God oh God oh God oh God!’
‘I’m here. It’s all right.’
She couldn’t see him, but his voice was like light through a stained-glass window in a cathedral. She could feel him digging frantically around her boot. She could hear his panting and gasps of exertion
‘It’s no good, I’m going to have to get someone!’ she heard him shout.
‘No, Jake! Dig me out! Dig me out now! Don’t leave! Don’t!’
There was silence.
‘Okay. I’m digging you out.’
‘Work on one side.’
‘What?’
‘One side!’
‘I can’t hear you. I’m digging you out.’
It took Jake an hour to dig Zoe free of the snow. No one came by. First he dug her right leg free and then cleared a deep shaft down to her head, so that she was out of danger of suffocation even if she still couldn’t move. Then at last he freed her arm and she was able to help him.
He barely had the strength to hoist her out of the snow-hole when she was clear. But together they got her out.
On their knees, they hugged for a long time; almost hugging the life out of each other.
‘Look at your eyes!’ she said. ‘They’re completely bloodshot!’
‘The snow walloped me in the face.’ He looked up and down the slope. ‘When you want the piste to be teeming with people there’s not a bastard in sight. Do you want to wait here while I go get someone?’
‘I don’t want to be left here, Jake.’
‘Can you ski down?’
‘No, I lost my skis. They’re somewhere under the snow.’
‘Mine too. We’ll have to walk down to the next lift station. I’m frozen. I need to move to get warm. Are you up to it?’
‘I feel okay. Really. Maybe it’s the adrenalin, but I feel okay. Come on, let’s go.’
They put their arms around each other and, trudging along the edge of the slope, they made slow progress down the mountain. Alive. Alive.
With light snow still falling around them it took maybe three-quarters of an hour of struggling through the deep snow in their heavy ski boots before they saw the overhead cables of a drag lift, with an intermediate station cabin about three hundred metres down the slope. The drag lift had been stopped. Neither was there any sign of activity on the slopes above or below them.
Zoe was shivering. Jake talked, mostly just to distract her. He told her that the trees had saved him. He’d been thrown against a slender pine and had flung his arms around it, swimming up its trunk as the snow deepened under him. Zoe grinned at him and nodded as he chattered about their escape. She recognised that he was in a state of shock. She knew that when they reached the drag-lift cabin the operator would radio for first-aiders and they would soon be whisked off the mountain.
But when they reached the cabin, it was empty. Through the smeared glass they could see one red and two green electronic lights shining under a row of switches on a console. The engines to turn the drag had been powered down. The glass door to the cabin stood very slightly ajar and heat was coming from inside. Jake pushed open the door.
‘Come on, darlin’ girl. We need to get you warm.’
‘You think they shut down the mountain?’
‘Likely. They maybe saw the avalanche and sent everyone down. Let’s just sit here a while until you get some warmth back in your body.’
There was a seat with torn leather upholstery, and Zoe slumped into it. Jake had a quick look around the cabin.
‘Hey!’ She’d found a hip flask on the desk by the console.
‘Gimme that!’ Jake grabbed it, twisted open the cap and took a slug from the flask.
‘Don’t snatch! What’s in it?’
‘Dunno. It’s fuck-awful. Have some.’
Zoe sniffed it, and took a slug herself. ‘They won’t mind. Look—here’s some chocolate. I’m gonna munch it. Want some?’
‘Naw, just give me the flask.’
There was a ski coat hanging behind the door with a rolled-up newspaper in the pocket. Two wide shovels and a snow brush leaned against one wall of the cabin. Though the engines were powered down, the glowing lights suggested the machinery all seemed to be switched on. An old-style walkie-talkie radio receiver hung from a peg. Jake took it down and flicked the switches. He got the sound of static but nothing else. He tried speaking into it a few times, but was only rewarded by more static. There was not much else in the grimy cabin, but at least it was warm. Outside the snow had started to come down heavier. They decided to sit and wait until someone came.
Jake took another swig from the hip flask, wincing. ‘That was close,’ he said. ‘Close.’
‘Very close. Too close.’
‘We were lucky to walk away.’
Zoe looked at her husband and said, ‘You know what? We’re just a snowflake on God’s eyelash. That’s all we are.’
‘What? If you’re getting God just because you survived an avalanche I’m divorcing you on religious grounds.’
‘Can I have another hug?’
‘Come here. Have two. Have three. You can have all the bloody hugs you want.’
An hour later, still no one had turned up at the cabin. They finished what was in the hip flask and polished off the chocolate. They tried the walkie-talkie again but heard only the same static on the airwaves. Jake started flicking switches on the console, and with a great rumble and whistle of turbines, the engines powered up and the big wheel overhead started turning.
‘Shut it down!’ Zoe shouted.
‘Why?’
‘I dunno! Just shut it down! You don’t know what you’re doing!’
Jake shut the machinery down. ‘Come on, we’re going to have to walk all the way down the mountain.’
‘Are you up to it?’
‘I don’t want to sit around here any more.’
They zipped up their coats and pulled on their hats and their gauntlets, and prepared to trudge down the mountain. Then Zoe noticed a set of skis leaning outside the cabin.
