Tall Poppies (40 page)

Blood drained from Elizabeth’s face as she glanced.

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down to the end of the bed. Two feet seemed to poi upwards under the blankets, but she only had sensatk in the right one.

‘A prosthesis,’ the surgeon explained. ‘It’s plasti, attached to your leg with a metal frame, jointed on t[ ball of the foot to simulate as normal a walk as possibl, The best on the market; your father insisted.’

Elizabeth quietly said, ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘You won’t be crippled, Lady Elizabeth. Recovery wi take a while, but you should be able to manage

medium-paced walk eventually.’ There was a deathly silence. ‘I’ll never ski again?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ Jopling’s words were measured, bl his tone was final. ‘No running, no skiing. Apart fro1 possible gentle swimming, no athletic activity of ar kind.’

He pretended not to notice as tears filled Elizabeth’ eyes and trickled silently down her cheeks.

;‘hen she felt she had control of herself she buzzed fc the doctor.

‘I’d like to see Herr Hans Wolf,’ Elizabeth said. The name seemed to shock Jopling. His face crease just a fraction. ‘Herr Wolf was refused permission to se you.’

‘Refused permission? Don’t you know he’s my coach’. ‘Of course, Lady Elizabeth. It was precisely because h was your coach that it was felt he would upset you considering how you received your injury.’

‘Hans had nothing to do with this. Accidents are ris we take every time we strap up.’ She pushed herself up o her elbows and glared at Jopling with fiery eyes. ‘Wh, refused him permission? You?’

‘Not at all, my lady,’ Jopling said hastily. ‘It was Lot,

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Caerhaven. He has control over all the arrangements here.’

I’ll bet he does, Elizabeth thought. ‘OK, Dr Jopling, please call Hans and ask him to come and see me.’

Jopling nodded. ‘I believe Herr Wolf is staying in the city. Despite your father’s ban he refused to leave. He has called to check on your condition every day.’

Elizabeth started to cry, she couldn’t help it. She brushed back the tears. ‘Has anyone else called?’

The doctor spread his hands. ‘Hundreds. The officials, the British team coaches, your teammates, many other competitors, and the media … I have a roomful of flowers waiting for you, now you are recovered.’

Am I. ‘Did … did Mr Jack Taylor ask to see me?’

‘He rang to ask after your condition, and he sent

flowers, but he didn’t request an appointment, no.’ ‘I see,’ llizabeth said dully. ‘Do you want your flowers?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’m in the mood. Give them to other wards.’

‘Certainly, Lady Elizabeth, and I will call Herr Wolf.’ ‘Thank you. Doctor, who won the medals?’

Jopling looked at her with a certain amount of pity. ‘Louise Levier took the gold, Christy Lansch the silver and Heidi Laufen the bronze.’

‘And Jack Taylor tookthe men’s gold?’

‘Of course,’ Jopling said absently as he checked the charts at the foot of her bed. ‘There was never any doubt about that.’

The door opened at three p.m. Elizabeth sat up, hoping to see Hans, but it was her father.

Tony thanked the nurse and waited until she had vanished before closing the door. He walked over to Elizabeth with a vast bunch of blossoms in his arms, and

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laid them on her bedside table. White roses, the roses for mourning.

Elizabeth flopped back on her pillows. She knew disappointment was all over her face but she didn’t have the strength to care.

‘Darling, you look terrible. Are you feeling OK?’ Tve lost my foot, I’m never going to ski again,’ Elizabeth said flatly, ‘and I’ve lost an Olympic crown I had sewn up.’

‘We don’t know if you had it sewn up. There were

more races to come.’

‘I tell you, it was sewn up,’ Elizabeth repeated

‘Well.’ The earl perched himself on the edge of her bed. ‘Never mind about that now. I’ve come to discuss your future. Clearly you’re not going to be skiing, and I gather Mr Taylor is out of the picture.’

‘Who do you gather that from? Your girlfriend?’

‘I don’t have one of those, Elizabeth, but if you’re referring to Nina Roth, she’s been dismissed. For insubtrdination.’ ‘You’re breaking my heart,’ Elizabeth said bitterly. ‘You get good information, though. Jack was never in the picture. So I’ll have to come and work at Dragon.’

‘Yes.’ Tony leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘I’ve thought about that. I have some terrific openings for you.’

He reached into his jacket and handed Elizabeth a sheet of paper. Her eyes flickered quickly across it, then rose disbelievingly back up to his.

‘You have to be joking. Corporate Hospitality, Events Organisation, Promotional Literature - why don’t you just assign me to the typing pool?’

‘Why, can you type?’ Tony asked urbanely.

‘It’s not a joke, Dad!’ Elizabeth shouted. She jerked her leg under the covers. ‘My loot’s made of plastic! I know

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you were angry I did Dragon Gold without your permissionm’

‘Angry? Yes, I was angry. What you fail to understand is that Dragon is my company. Nobody does anything without my approval. Nobody is going to make me look a fool, Elizabeth, you least of all.’

‘I won’t do those two-bit dressmaker jobs.’

‘Then I’ll give you a small allowance, as long as you behave yourself and keep out of the spotlight. Don’t think there’s a third option. There never was.’ Tony’s smile was full of malice. ‘Do you know, I thought of you just yesterday. I was talking to Dean Bradman in the Sydney office, and he told me the most marvellous Australian proverb: you’ve got to cut down the tall poppies. You were a tall poppy, Elizabeth, you and Nina both.’

Elizabetl looked right into his eyes. She couldn’t believe it. She was lying here with her foot shorn away, and this was what he was saying.

Tony held up one hand. ‘Don’t spoil things, Elizabeth. You don’t have the same power to embarrass me now. You’re not quite the national heroine you were. It seems the press are blaming you for reckless skiing, and apparently you were rather disliked by your teammates … nothing official, of course, but that’s what’s leaking, and that’s what they’re printing. One can’t trust the press. And none of them will be too eager to print any muckraking stories about me, considering the source.’

‘You owe me,’ Elizabeth said fiercely. ‘I’m your daughter. Don’t you owe it to my mother?’

The earl sat up as though he’d been stung. He looked at her again, more carefully, a musing expression on his face.

‘You look so like her,’ he said absently, then, ‘Those “

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are my offers, Elizabeth. Take them or leave them. To be honest, I don’t give a damn either way.’

He tapped the paper again.

I’m doing all of this because I owe

fact,

Elizabeth,

your mother.’

Elizabeth had nothing to say. She watched him as he

left the room.

He hates me, she thought. My God, he actually hates

me.

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Hans came by to see her. Despite his stiff manner, he was brokenhearted and it showed. A light had gone out in those clear blue eyes. Elizabeth had sworn she wouldn’t cry but it was no use; Hans Wolf’s grief, contrasting with Tony’s casual cruelty, opened the floodgates.

‘Ach, est ist unm6glich …’ He rattled off a torrent of bitter Schweizerdeutsch, cursing the mountain, the course, the weather, everything. ‘It should have been me. I am an okl man, but—’

‘But you can still ski? No, that’s how it should be. You lived for the snow long before I was born and you’ll live for it till you die. I was careless.’

Hans’s bony hand gripped hers fiercely. ‘Never again do you say that, Elizabeth. Never have I seen you ski that way. You had wings, you were an eagle. You had the gold in your pocket.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Mademoiselle Levier was a dairymaid next to you.’

‘You didn’t say that at the time.’

‘Liebchen, you know your old Hans. I was only being cautious …’

‘Wish I had been,’ Elizabeth soid. She struggled for a brave face in front of him, but despair was squatting over her heart like a toad. Every day she forgot it when she was medicated to sleep, then when she woke up there were a few cruel seconds of not realising before it clicked back in. Her prosthesis was cleverly made and fitted to her ankle, no expense spared, a thick metal cuff covering the join between flesh and plastic. But the basic fact was

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still there. She was a cripple. Right now, her strength was flowing away. Her muscles were softening as she lost her appetite and couldn’t exercise. Her reserves of energy were draining, her heart rate speeding up. But what does it matter, when you’ll never need to be fit ever again?

Memories were torture. The crash, the Veysonnaz run,

she hardly thought about. It was her supreme, immortal confidence. Elizabeth died when she remembered what she’d said to Hans, and worse, to Karen and Kate, and Jack Taylor. All the people she’d fought with. She’d thought that gold was in her pocket like a Swiss franc. Well, her enemies could surely laugh now.

‘Cautious skiers? There is a place for them,’ Hans said stiffly. ‘Teaching the snowplough to Kinder on the

‘ nursery slopes. There has never been a woman skier like

you.’

Elizabeth looked away before the tears started again.

The dreadful thing was, she thought that too. Deep inside, she thought she was the greatest, could have been the female Franz Klammer. But everybody would forget ler now, not right away, but soon. One single World Cup does not a legend make. Louise Levier was the gold medallist, and soon history would be rewritten. Savage took her world title by a hair’s breadth. She lucked out once. She wasn’t that good.

‘Easy, when you have the best coach ever.’ She tried to

be British, brisk and impersonal. ‘Anyway, I came to it so late. I’ve only been skiing for a few years. There are other things that I can do.’

Hans Wolf made a clear effort and agreed with her. Elizabeth smiled wryly; for the old man, life off the slopes was life hardly worth living.

‘What will you do? Work for your father?’

‘I don’t think that’s going to work out. He and I have fallen out. He won’t let me do the kind of work I want.’

‘I see,’ Hans said. He looked at her with a fierce

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protectiveness. He knows where I’m at, Elizabeth thought, he knows I don’t have a degree or any experience outside of Dragon.

‘There are many options for you. I can speak to the Swiss Sports Council. Or the FIS, they will be thrilled to have you market the sport. Not all of Europe reads the British tabloids,’ Hans added, his wrinkled face creasing in disgust. ‘Or Britain - Ronnie knows how bitchy are the lesser girls, and how hard you work. The British authorities can find you a place–’

‘I don’t think so. Thanks, Hans, really, but no.’ She shook her head and Hans watched the hollow shadows under her eyes, the new gauntness in her face. ‘Spend my life publicising slopes I’ll never ski again, writing puff pieces about Karen’s amazing reign as UK champion, or Jack Taylor’s next World Cup?’

‘You have not heard, then? Herr Taylor has retired from the “sport. After this gold. In one year we lose both our brightest hopes.’ Hans bent over and smoothed her coverlet. ‘But what about him, child? I am not so old that I see nothing. You love him, he loves you. He is a rich, powerful young man, he can look after you.’

‘Oh, Hans,’ Elizabeth said, stroking his hand. ‘It’s all over between Jack and me, it has been for ages. He’s got another girlfriend, Holly Ferrell.’

‘The Mdchen who skis like a drill sergeant?’ asked Hans, outraged.

‘And anyway, I’ve had enough of being looked after. I’m going to take care of myself.’

Wolf looked down at his pupil. Under the misery there was something he had not seen in her before. A quiet fury, a cold chip of ice at the heart of her pupils. A

certain foreboding mingled with his pity.

‘You have a plan?’

‘Something to start with,’ Elizabeth said softly. ‘Get on my feet. And get some answers.’

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There were a lot of empty hours in the hospital bed, waiting for reflex tests and anodyne clinic food. Enough time to watch a lot of CNN or read months’ worth of Paris Match. Or to brood.

Monica, Charles and Richard all paid dutiful visits. They weren’t malicious like Tony, they just didn’t care. Which made them and her about even. Ronnie and others asked for appointments but Elizabeth told Jopling to make medical excuses. She wasn’t interested in other people. She was interested in Tony.

Elizabeth started to eat. She did intensive physiotherapy four times a day, against the doctor’s advice. It was hateful, having to stand in between two poles, resting her weight on a foot that wasn’t there. After years of i. instinctive balancing, her body was all out of kilter, every step felt like she was lurching drunkenly. And her foot. It was solid, plastic. She hated it. She thanked God she couldn’t see her stump under the metal casings but she had nightmares about it, a hideous mass of red, nubby tissue at the end of her leg. Even though she was the same from the calves upwards, Elizabeth felt ugly, like her beauty had fled along with her hopes. But the cruellest dreams of all were pretty: soaring down the Hahnenkamm, slicing through the mogul fields in Saas Grund, running barefoot over the clifftops at Caerhaven Castle. All the things she would never do again. Her body was changing too: from lean strength to slim, softer and weaker. It was the fashion model look and she hated it, she felt like a coathanger. But through all the pain and frustration, and the nightmares, Elizabeth never wavered. She ordered a new wardrobe and stuck it on Tony’s account; clothes in smaller sizes and specially made boots and shoes.

She wanted answers. And she wasn’t going to find them behind the walls of the clinic.

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Jopling peered over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles at the young woman sitting in front of his desk. Elizabeth’s hair was washed and styled, newly dyed to a radiant blonde. She was made up in attractive shades of peach and gold, wearing a long Prada dress in moss green, a fitted jacket and chocolate leather boots. From the patient he knew in white hospital wraps to this sophisticated young lady was some transformation.