The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [49]
‘I don’t need to be monitored, Stevie darling. I’m quite capable of taking care of my own old bones. I’ve done it for eighty-two years.’
Stevie tried a different line. ‘Well, what if I need you? What if it’s me who needs help and I can’t find you?’ At that, Didi had relented and agreed to carry the phone with her. It was rarely switched on.
However, tonight, after six long rings, Stevie’s grandmother answered, a cautious ‘Yes?’
‘Didi! It’s Stevie. Where are you?’
‘In the mountains, darling. I thought Peter could do with a rest cure, so we left Zurich this morning and now we’re snug in Im Heimeli.’
Didi owned a tiny wooden chalet outside Sils Maria, in the Enga-dine valley. Im Heimeli, the chalet, had an enormous wood-burning stove—a Kachelofen—and goose-down duvets on little wooden bucket-beds. But it had no phone. That was something Stevie loved about it when she was there, but it used to worry her when her grandmother was there alone. If she needed to speak to Didi, Stevie used to have to ring the post office and they would send a man through the snow or the mud or the wildflowers to deliver the message. Her grandmother would then walk to the post office and place a call. Now Didi had the mobile it was a little easier to get in touch.
‘How is Peter coping?’
‘Asleep on the Kachelofen as we speak. He hasn’t moved from there since we arrived.’
Stevie smiled. Being involuntarily hairless, he would be feeling the cold.
‘And how are you, Didi?’
‘Couldn’t be better! Mountain air does wonders for the constitution. I’m going to see if I can persuade Peter to come langlaufing with me around the lake tomorrow morning.’
Stevie laughed. ‘I don’t like your chances!’ The vision of Peter floundering after her grandmother through the snowdrifts as she swooshed past on her ancient cross-country skis was charming. Stevie found she was missing both the lady and the cat terribly. Her grandmother and some gold-tinted memories were everything that she had left of life with her parents.
‘I hope I’m just like you, Didi, when I’m eighty.’
‘Eighty-two, darling. It’s been a good long life—I can’t complain.
Well, there’s only one thing I would change, but then, if I changed that, I might not have you so close to me, so . . .’
‘You mean my mother.’
Of course she did.
Stevie’s mother—Didi’s daughter—Marlise had been Swiss, a beautiful bohemian who smiled at the world and wore bangles on each wrist that tinkled whenever she moved. Stevie’s father, Lockie, was Scottish, a charming, disarming bon vivant, at home everywhere and anywhere, full of curiosity, the life of every party. They travelled the world with great style and flair, collecting rare and beautiful furnishings from all over the globe for their rich and discerning clientele.
Sometimes Stevie went with them. She had memories of sitting on a bathing elephant in Sri Lanka, flying a kite in Rajasthan, monkeys in a Moroccan bazaar. Other times she stayed at home with her grandmother, and her parents had brought something back for her: a Bedouin lamp made of camel skin, a ceramic tiger, a small dragon from Bhutan. These precious objects had made her long for the world. She still had them all.
When Stevie was five years old, she had gone with her parents to Algeria. It was hot—she remembered the heat burning her lips with every breath, scorching her feet through her thin rubber-soled shoes. They were driving through the desert in their jeep, the rush of the wind felt good on her face and she grew sleepy with the jolting of the dirt road and the sound of her parents’ muted chatter.
Little Stevie lay down on the back seat and stared at the empty white sky above. The sun was still high and it hurt her eyes. Her mother pulled an embroidered crimson shawl from her bag