Mountain Magic Page 3

  “I take it that you’ve brought everything away from the hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is nothing to return for?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good.” He smiled briefly. “Then we can catch the midday train as I planned. And in a few hours you’ll be in Austria.”

  “What if I fail to be of any use to you in your hotel?” she asked, suddenly full of fears. “Apart from learning languages fairly easily I’m not very skilled. When I’m nervous I make mistakes, and sometimes I really do behave stupidly. Mrs. Van Ecker was often right when she accused me of being less of a help than a hindrance to her!”

  Kurt Antoine smiled with a brilliant display of his hard white teeth.

  “Then we’ll have to see to it that you cease behaving stupidly, won’t we?” he said softly. “And if you’re quite incurable we’ll have to send you packing!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A FEW hours later she was in the train with him. They had driven down the mountain to pick up the train, and she had been impressed by the opulence of his long, cream car.

  Like Mrs. Van Ecker, he travelled first-class when making Continental railway journeys. They had lunch in the restaurant-car, and although she had been unable to eat any breakfast Toni found that she consumed an excellent lunch. Perhaps a glass of wine with the meal helped her a little, and the fact that her new employer was not disposed to be talkative helped her still more.

  He had provided her with some magazines before they boarded the train, and she read these steadily throughout the journey. She was quite certain that she knew all the advertisements, and the articles on feminine problems, off by heart by the time they reached Innsbruck, in addition to having read most of the literature.

  Innsbruck is an extremely attractive, old-world town—quite unlike the much more commercialised Swiss towns she had got to know—but it was dark when they arrived, so she was unable to form any opinion of it on first making its acquaintance. She sensed that the mountains were still there in the darkness, looking down on them, and the air was so warm that her heavy topcoat was not needed. Out of the warm darkness the sounds of accordion music reached them, and haunting zither music, and in places of entertainment couples were still dancing.

  They drove straight to an hotel, where Kurt Antoine was obviously well known, and where Toni was provided with a room. She had no idea whether he too remained in the hotel, but he was waiting for her in the vestibule the following morning when she descended after breakfasting in her room.

  He looked impatient as he glanced at her.

  “We have a journey of about thirty miles ahead of us,” he remarked, “so I thought we’d set off at once. I’m anxious to see how things have been going in my absence, and in any case I’ve a lot of business to attend to once we arrive.”

  She had the feeling that he was reproving her for not getting up at the crack of dawn, and for perhaps dawdling over her breakfast.

  “Isn’t it a little late in the season to be starting a new hotel?” she asked, as they drove. He was at the wheel of another car—also cream, but with brilliant scarlet leather upholstery, and a little along the lines of a svelte sports car; and she realised that the other had probably been hired. This was a vehicle with which he seemed familiar, and which he drove superbly, even on hairpin mountain roads.

  “Not really,” he answered, in a detached tone. “We’re hoping for winter sports visitors, and this will give us an opportunity to be in full working order by the time the winter sports season arrives.”

  “I’ve always thought it must be exciting to ski,” she remarked, finding the silence which kept settling between them rather oppressive ... even depressing.

  He shrugged.

  “Skiing started off by being a rich man’s pastime, but now everybody takes it up. You’ll probably find time to get some instruction in between carrying out your duties.”

  Was that a reminder that she was to be attached to the hotel staff, and not mentioned in the visitors’ book?

  She felt as if a chill wind blew round her, although actually there was no wind, and it was a magnificently fine day. They tunnelled through forests of pine and larch, and climbed ever higher up the mountain. The villages they passed through were very like Swiss mountain villages, except that they had a more medieval air about them, and houses and inns were flower-draped, and made her think of Grimm’s fairy-tales.

  On the heights castles were perched, like toy castles painted against a backcloth.

  The Hotel Rosenhorn, when they reached it at last, struck Toni as exceptionally attractive, and already very prosperous. Tables protected by gaily-coloured sun-umbrellas were set out on the terrace that ran along one side of it, and the front verandah seemed full of people lounging or sitting about in deck-chairs. It was the hour for the pre-lunch aperitif, and waiters moved amongst the guests, carrying trays of drinks. There were also one or two attractive waitresses, wearing dirndl skirts and frilly aprons, and Toni thought they must have been selected for their blonde good looks, for they looked like mountain flowers weaving their way along the terrace.

  Kurt Antoine left the car in the forecourt, and hurried Toni up the steps. When she diffidently mentioned her suitcase he said casually that she would find it in her room later on.

  He strode through the vestibule and through a couple of public rooms to his private office, and following in his wake Toni thought how sumptuous were the furnishings of this recent experiment in hotels. The decor was ultra-modern, and there were no anders or alpenhoms adhering to the walls, and no early prints of horse-drawn post-buses finding their way through the passes, while a blizzard raged.

  Antoine’s private office had a thick pile carpet and a handsome walnut desk. On the desk there was a bowl of flowers, beautifully arranged; and there was also a stack of mail waiting to be dealt with.

  Apparently forgetting all about Toni he sat down and proceeded to deal with the mail, sorting it with economical movements of his long brown fingers. Then he remembered her, frowned, ordered her to sit down, and picked up a house-telephone.

  “Is that you, Marianne?” he said, softly, in German. “Can you spare a few minutes to visit me here in my office?”

  Almost immediately there was a light tap on the door, and then it opened and a young woman entered the room. She was wearing a neat, tailored dress that nevertheless could not be mistaken for a uniform, and she was so vitally and exceptionally beautiful that Toni wanted to gasp at first sight of her. Her face was a pure oval, and her skin had a kind of light golden tone to it, and was also, at the moment, delicately flushed. Her eyes were large and softly black, her severely dressed hair was as dense as a blackbird’s plumage, and her mouth was brilliant.

  When she smiled, it was rendered more dangerously attractive by a dimple at one corner of it, and by the whiteness of her little, even teeth.

  “Why, Kurt,” she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up unmistakably at the sight of him, “this is wonderful! I had no idea you were coming back so soon! Why didn’t you telephone and warn us?”

  “Ensure that you weren’t taken at a disadvantage, is that what you mean?” he returned, laughing down into her face and taking both the hands she offered into his own. “From the look of things, however, business is thriving, and we shall have no need to fear the winter. If we can keep going at this pace until October we shall be most fortunate. A couple of months for preparation and reorganisation, and then we shall open again in December!”

  She smiled at him, much as she might have smiled at a small boy whom she wished to humour.

  “But of course,” she replied, in her slightly husky voice. “For us there can be no such thing as failure!” Once more Antoine remembered Toni, and turned and made the necessary introduction.

  “This is Miss Darcy, from England, Marianne. She wants you to find her a job here.”

  “A job ... here?” Marianne slightly wrinkled her perfect nose, and her eyebrows elevated themselves a little. Sh
e extended a somewhat hesitant hand to Toni. “But I do not understand...” Her voice too was very hesitant. Toni could feel her eyes studying her in unconcealed surprise. “You have worked in an hotel before, mademoiselle?”

  Toni admitted that she had never done anything of the kind.

  “Then you have no experience of hotel work whatsoever?”

  Toni shook her head.

  Mademoiselle Marianne Raveaux appealed to Kurt Antoine.

  “But I do not understand,” she said again. “If Mademoiselle—if Miss Darcy—wishes to be employed here, but she has no idea at all of the kind of work we do, what is there that we can possibly offer her?”

  He shrugged.

  “I had thought that you might find her something in the office ... She is quite a good linguist,” he added.

  But Marianne shook her head vigorously.

  “Our office staff is already complete, and there is no vacancy for her there.”

  “Assisting you, perhaps...?”

  Another, equally vigorous, shake of the head.

  “I advertised last week for an assistant housekeeper, and she is entirely satisfactory. There are no vacancies in the dining-room—not at the moment—and I took on three new girls yesterday to wait on the terrace. I do not imagine Miss Darcy would consent to accept kitchen work...?”

  She subjected the English girl to such a comprehensive scrutiny that Toni flushed rather wildly.

  This time it was Kurt who frowned.

  “If that’s the best you can do, Marianne, I shall have to revise my opinion of your cleverness,” he remarked a little sharply.

  She spread her hands in an entirely Continental gesture.

  “But if there are no vacancies...?” Then she appeared to give the matter a considerable amount of thought, and at last she announced: “If Miss Darcy is willing to undertake bedroom work I can fit her in until something more suitable turns up for her.” They were speaking in English, and hers was distinctly accented, her colloquialisms hesitant but engaging. She turned to Toni with her hands still outspread. “It may be for only a few weeks, possibly for only a few days, for sometimes the girls are taken sick, and we have to replace them. And naturally you would have first consideration in such an event ... Although if you are planning to make hotel work a serious career it is a good thing to begin at the bottom.”

  “Just as I did myself,” Kurt reminded Toni, smiling at her in a friendly fashion. “You’ll remember I told you I worked as a waiter?”

  Toni nodded.

  “And our chambermaids wear a most attractive uniform, and one or two of them are girls of quite good family,” Marianne remarked, glancing at Toni as if, having turned up unexpectedly quite out of the blue, she could be anything, from a member of a “quite good family” to one that was very close to the bottom of the social register.

  Toni swallowed. For the first time in her life she felt really out of her depth, at the disposal of strangers who were not merely alien but likely to grow more alien as her acquaintance with them ripened. Mrs. Van Ecker had been a difficult employer, but at least she spoke her own language, and had no hidden depths or slightly sinister possibilities. These two were so full of hidden depths that Toni felt as if she had been caught up on to another planet, and was expected to enter into the enthusiasms of a different species of humanity.

  And despite her huskily attractive voice and air of wishing to be of as much assistance as it was possible for her to be, Marianne Raveaux was a hostile new acquaintance from the outset. Toni was certain of that.

  “I don’t mind what I do,” she said, with absolute sincerity, for all she wanted to do at that moment was have a task of some sort allocated to her, and get away from these two. To get away from their eyes, and their assumption of friendliness.

  Marianne smiled.

  “How very sensible!” she declared.

  And although Kurt Antoine’s eyes narrowed a little as he gazed at Toni—with her heavy topcoat over one arm, and clutching at her handbag with her free hand, she struck him as being extraordinarily forlorn—he also approved of her reasonableness.

  “Begin at the bottom and work up!” he exclaimed, the greenish-golden lights in his eyes dancing mockingly—or so she thought. “But I think you must be allowed to have the rest of the day to yourself. Perhaps even a couple of days... to enable you to accustom yourself to your new surroundings.”

  Marianne said nothing about approving of this, and when she had conducted Toni up in the lift to a faraway room on the top floor—which at least she hadn’t to share with anyone else, she realised thankfully— Marianne said smoothly that, as they really were very short of bedroom staff, perhaps she could find herself a uniform and start work that afternoon.

  Toni had lunch with a few members of the staff, every one of whom appeared to be almost completely exhausted after a hectic few weeks following the opening of the hotel, and had neither the curiosity nor the interest to ask her any questions about herself, or comment on the fact that she was English. The girls had only one idea in their heads when they entered the staff room, and that was to kick off their shoes and take the weight off their feet, and the men found nothing intriguing about the acquisition of a new chambermaid.

  Particularly a shy-eyed girl who was so embarrassed by being thrust amongst them that she forgot she could speak another language apart from English.

  Her uniform was a light sky-blue that made her look very young, and as there was no apron or cap that went with it she had to admit that it hardly branded her with the badge of a servitor. It had a wide white belt, and she wore flat-heeled white sandals, and when her soft brown hair was brushed into a shining cap she was perhaps more attractive at first glance than she had ever been in her shrunken cardigans and much-washed cotton frocks.

  That first afternoon she made beds almost without ceasing. With the assistance of another girl called Heidi she learned how to deal with huge fat eiderdowns that had to be either rolled, or folded like an envelope, and in order to achieve the most satisfactory results a certain dextrous flick of the wrist was necessary. Torsi acquired this dexterity after half an hour, but before that she so exhausted herself struggling with mountains of feathers that the exhaustion lasted until the evening, when she was required to sit in the corridor and answer bells.

  Fortunately there was no one who required anything that it was beyond her to procure—extra towels, soap, a hot milk drink for a child—and at ten o’clock she was allowed to go to bed, and anyone who rang their bell after that either had it ignored (which explained why Mrs. Van Ecker, an ardent ringer of bells, had hers ignored when she tugged at them at the wrong end of the day) or had to ring very hard indeed.

  In the morning, having slept as if she were half dead after her unusual physical exertions, she was aroused by her alarm dock at six, and put in an hour’s Hoovering before being allowed breakfast at seven o’clock. The half-hour interlude permitted for breakfast seemed to pass in a flash, and then she was once more on duty in the corridor.

  Unused to entering people’s bedrooms and seeing them before they were ready to face the day, she felt embarrassed when told to “Come in,” and then was casually ignored as if she was a piece of furniture while carrying out requests that were made to her. One young woman wanted her to smear sun-tan lotion all over her back before going out to sit on the terrace, and another got her to hunt through her luggage for sleeping tablets because she had had a bad night.

  On that first morning the most embarrassing incident was caused by her obedient entry into a room that was occupied by a good-looking fair young man, who was shaving in front of the mirror above the wash-basin. Clad only in his pyjama trousers, and looking splendidly fit and sun-tanned, he didn’t even bother to turn round as he said casually:

  “Bring me some coffee here to my room, will you...?” Then he must have caught sight of her in the mirror, for he turned and one of his fair eyebrows went up comically, and he whistled.

  “Well, well! I haven’t see
n you before, have I?” He spoke in English, and that was the only thing about the interview that caused her heart to lighten. “And what’s your name, little one? Trudi, Hanni, Dorli...?”

  “My name is Toinette,” Toni answered, biting her lip.

  His eyebrow went up still more.

  “That sounds French, but your English is excellent. You wouldn’t happen to be English, by any chance? They don’t employ English girls in places like this.”

  “I am English,” Toni said, very quietly.

  “Well, well!” he exclaimed again. “How often in life can we be surprised?” He wiped his razor blade on a square of tissue, and then walked across to her and surveyed her with open interest. “Of course, you look English, and you’re also very pretty. Has anyone ever told you that before?” He watched the colour stream into her face, and laughed softly. “Of course they have! Quite a number of times, I should say!” He reached for a towel and dabbed at his face, and then made the discovery that he had cut himself very slightly.

  “Would you like to stick a piece of sticking-plaster on for me, Toinette?” he asked, his blue eyes dancing gaily. “There’s a tin of the stuff somewhere about, and if we can only find it—”

  But she backed hastily towards the door.

  “I’ll go and get your coffee,” she said, turning to grasp at the door handle.

  But he caught her by the arm and refused to let her go.

  “Not yet, my sweet! I want to hear a lot more about you, and why you’re here at all! You seem very timid for a young woman accustomed to barging in on impressionable bachelors at this hour of the morning—”

  “I’m not accustomed to it,” she told him, and succeeded in wrenching her arm free. “And I’ve a lot of other things to do apart from fetching your coffee, so I must go!” Luckily they could both hear a couple of bells shrilling discordantly in the corridor, and he shrugged resignedly.