“You’ve come of age.”

And, we’ll agree, about time! I went back into the sitting-room, closing the french windows behind me. The table in the centre was still polished as if the ghost of the fat woman had been at work but probably it was only another fat woman. The only paper on it was a menu, lying beside the open bottle of Dôle. I looked at the bottle warily. It was going to be no good Rick finding me knocked out by booze and having the shakes. If I was going to be master, I reasoned, I had to muster every bit of firmness I could find in me. I out-stared the bottle—not as easy as you might think—then went looking for warm clothing. The manager fixed me up with a sweater and an anorak that had been left by visitors. It’s astonishing what the kind of drunken louts who live for après ski will leave behind them. My sweater had TRY ME knitted into the front, like Rick’s OLE ASHCAN. I set off with great care (remembering the way you have to acclimate) to walk the time away before I could reasonably allow myself a drink. Drink does slacken the steel string a bit but, as I’ve said or as you may have inferred, invariably leads to problems. It’s no good relying on experience. Problems get worse with age, not better. If only I had a young head on old shoulders, ha et cetera. I went up along a chilly path from which the snow had only lately receded. It was the one which we had walked together years before and down which Rick had carried me. I should not have recognized it with snow lying all about except for the direction. Most of the scene I had never even glimpsed before because of the fog; but now everything was clear, as outer space. But it’s true the old infirmity which had been called the need to acclimate came over me. I went on slower and slower and stopped. I didn’t look about me much but sat down on a convenient outcrop or jut of rock and waited for my heart and breath to get a bit easier. I found myself listening to the sound of water. It had only one voice, and this was the light, babbling one. I opened my eyes and when I looked down, believe it or not, I recognized the rock I was sitting on and there in front of me was the rail. Come to that, there was the stream. It was different of course, much broader for one thing and coming out of a snow bank from a cave of ice. This cave more or less squeezed the water flat, which was why it only had that top voice.

I looked round. My jaw must have fallen right down to my chest. I couldn’t be mistaken. There, flooded, were those half trunks that had been made into conduits and sunk in the path. The stone was clinching evidence. It was too big to be moved without explosives or gangs and machines. It stuck out of the mountainside and had done so for geological time, I was certain. And yes, of course, the last time we had been there I had heard cowbells in the fog without having the wit to see what it meant. Old Quixote on the wooden horse.