Read Online The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Simon Mawer - Free Book Online

with a curious, sideways glance, as though trying to remember. Then his eyes lit up. ‘You are Anne-Marie!
La belle
Anne-Marie who would not go dancing with me.
Mais qu’est-ce que vous faites là
?’
    ‘Is it any of your business?’
    He laughed. He looked quite different from the half-drunk youth who had tried to take her dancing. Younger, certainly, but dark and thoughtful. ‘She is very surprising, our Anne-Marie. I didn’t expect to see her here. I only expect to see sheep in this shitty part of the world, not beautiful women. And not London girls who suddenly show they are, in fact, French. You fooled me, you know. I never guessed you were French until when you walked away.
Emmerdeur
, you called me.’
    ‘You were.’
    ‘It was my last evening before coming here.’
    ‘And mine.’
    ‘We should have spent it together.’
    ‘You should have been sober.’
    The captain looked over his shoulder, suddenly alerted to the language that was being spoken. ‘Are these women
French
?
Estce que vous êtes françaises?
’
    The group stumbled to a halt. There was a further interrogation. What were two French women doing here? The faint suspicion arose in the officer’s mind that he was being made to look a fool. ‘Are you people from Meoble?’ he demanded.
    Marian smiled, as though it was a moment of revelation. ‘Meoble Hotel, that’s the place. That’s where we’re staying. Not really a hotel, more a work camp.’
    ‘Look, are you taking the mickey?’
    ‘Well, I wasn’t going to tell you straight away, was I? It’s all secret. I wasn’t going to go blabbing to any Tom, Dick or Harry we bump into on a mountainside.’
    The officer regarded her with something approaching fury. ‘Iam
not
any Tom, Dick or Harry. I’m an experienced alpine climber. I’ve climbed on Everest with F. S. Smythe. I’ve trekked up to the foot of Kanchenjunga. And I don’t expect lip from a young girl out on a hiking trip. So you two come with me and we’ll see what’s going on.’
    He turned and stormed off down the hillside with the rest of his group following on the broken slope, slipping and sliding at the steeper bits, herding the two girls among them. Benoît was still beside her. He tried to keep his voice low so that the captain wouldn’t hear. ‘So you
are
in training.’ He shook his head in amazement. And admiration. ‘What a
casse-cou
you are! Where are you from?’
    ‘Geneva.’
    ‘Ah,
une Genevoise
. I can hear it in your accent.’
    ‘My father was an official of the League of Nations.’
    ‘Posh!’
    ‘He’s not posh. He’s just an ordinary man. He’s my father.’
    ‘And is the posh girl enjoying the course?’
    ‘I told you, we’re not posh.’ But she admitted that she was enjoying it, in a masochistic kind of way. It was like a glorified expedition with her Uncle Jacques, who used to take her climbing in the Alps.
    ‘Except for the weather?’
    ‘Except for the weather.’ They laughed. You had to laugh at the weather. The only alternative was to cry, and there was no point in doing that as no one would notice the tears. ‘We’ve canoed across the lake,’ he told her, and then corrected himself with elaborate sarcasm: ‘
Loch
. They get very excited if you call it a lake. And now we’ve been racing up to the top. It’s some kind of competition. They love competitions, these British. Apparently there’s a league table, like the football. I think that’s what they think of the war – it’s a competition, and whoever wins gets the Ashes. You’ve heard of the Ashes?’
    ‘Of course I’ve heard of the Ashes.’
    ‘Who would fight for ashes? Only the English.’
    He was based at a place called Swordland, on the other side of the loch. Swordland seemed magical and fantastic, like something to do with the Knights of the Round Table. ‘How strange that we should meet like this,’ she said. But was it strange? So much seemed strange nowadays that all concepts of strangeness were