Chapter 25
“I simply must have some toast for my eggy-weggy!” our young lawyer chalet guest demanded from the breakfast table, her hair and makeup done as if attending an important client meeting, rather than a day’s snowboarding.
“I’m sorry, but we only have melba toast,” I explained from the open-plan kitchen.
An unsatisfactory answer, Miss Eggy-weggy pushed her case in a high-pitched slightly hysterical tone, “But I simply must!”
Elbows on the table, she rested her chin in her hands framing her tilted face, widening her eyes and battering her eyelashes like some weird doll, staring at me waiting for a response.
“We never serve toast,” I said.
With thirteen other guests, Miss Eggy-weggy sat at the boardroom-style breakfast table and Ellie listened from the breakfast bar, refreshing the cereals and milk. The fourteen friends had booked Chalet Anemone in Les Deux Alpes for six nights, skiing or snowboarding for the next six days.
Each morning, like this morning, guests ate breakfast together.
All guests but Miss Eggy-weggy were happily eating freshly-baked pain au chocolat, croissants, jam, yoghurt and cereal, along with the morning’s hot option: a boiled egg served with melba toast.
Miss Eggy-weggy refused to give up. Staring hard at me like a child she demanded, “I want toast!”
The room fell silent. I remember her bleached blonde hair. She was in her mid-twenties. She wore light blue ski pants and a white jacket.
“We never serve toast,” I countered across the breakfast bar. “We don’t have a toaster or sliced bread.”
“But don’t you understand?” her shrill voice raised an octave. “I simply must have some toast with my eggy-weggy!”
This was a three-star chalet – not that a three-star rating should determine the inclusion of toast on a breakfast menu, but in my mind, three stars determined the incongruous difference between who Miss Eggy-weggy thought she was, and who she actually was. In Miss Eggy-weggy’s mind’s eye, she was staying at a five-star chalet with sauna, hot tub and trained chef. But in reality, she was at a three-star chalet suffering the indignity of a boiled egg on melba toast.
“Can’t you just put some bread under the grill,” she suggested, pursing her lips and cocking her head to the side, giving optimal impression of something I couldn’t determine.
I looked at the oven, not in consideration of her suggestion, but thinking how I might defuse the situation.
Unreasonable requests don’t respond well to reasonable answers.
Luckily I was baking a cake for afternoon tea and told her. But this wasn’t enough. Miss Eggy-weggy had to check for evidence. She stood from the breakfast table, pushed her way around the other guests and entered the kitchen to peer into the oven.
“Can’t you just put it in there next to the cake?”
She wasn’t going to give up. But neither was I. This bitch wasn’t having toast.
“No, because the cake is on a timer,” I explained, my heart pumping and adrenaline circulating.
Her friends watched in silence. Ellie dropped one last corn flake into a bowl and turned to me. This wasn’t going to end well.
“But you’ve only just put the cake in.”
“The cake uses bake not grill,” I said sarcastically as if she were stupid. “Toast is grilled.”
Miss Eggy-weggy went to reach for the oven door so I stepped sideways, standing between her and the oven.
A metre from me, she glared.
Maybe one of her friends felt sorry for me or didn’t consider Miss Eggy-weggy a friend, because someone told her to forget about it.
Overruled, Miss Eggy-weggy gave up, dramatically holding her head high as if prancing around a dog-show arena and returned to her seat to discuss more important things, because Miss Eggy-weggy and her closest cohorts weren’t as concerned with the snow conditions as they were the location of each day’s boozy lunch.
“Where should we go for our boozy lunch?” they would ask each other.
A boozy lunch immediately entered Ellie and my lexicons to be overused for the duration of the ski season.
On the mountain at the end of a run, Ellie or I would turn to the other and ask, “Is it time for our boozy lunch, darling?” overemphasising the darling in our best affected snobbish British accent.
From a chair lift, we might spot a mountain café or restaurant and suggest, with a nose held high and a casual flick of a limp wrist in a café’s general direction, “Today we’ll stop there for our boozy lunch darling. Wah wah sweetie. Let’s cruise the blues.”
The blues referred to a ski run’s difficulty level: the easiest were green followed by blue, red, black then black diamond.
Before France, we weren’t big drinkers, just weekend binge drinkers. Ellie and I naïvely thought a snow season meant skiing, getting fit and being healthy. Turned out, a snow season meant drinking and skiing, activities not mutually exclusive.
On our one day off per week, drinks could start early, meaning a boozy lunch. Otherwise on workdays we waited until after a ski, and drank while cooking and serving guests.
Once, after finishing a boozy picnic lunch with friends on the mountain where we ate chocolate-dipped strawberries, cheese and baguettes, and drank champagne, I absentmindedly neglected to kick the powder from my ski boot before clicking into my binding and, with alcohol-induced bravery, skied faster than usual, showing off and careening down the mountain through a beginners’ area. Realising I couldn’t turn properly, looking down to realise my mistake – my boot wasn’t fully clipped into my binding – my only option was to purposely crash. I lifted my foot, watched the ski peel away to the side and while skiing on one ski and giggling, dug my free foot into the snow. I tumbled, burping champagne and rolling in the snow.
Working a ski season meant for five months we serviced a chalet, cooked three course dinners, served breakfast, baked afternoon tea, ordered food, kept guests happy and skied. Ellie and I lived in private accommodation on the bottom floor of the three-storey chalet, and guests stayed on the second and third floors.
Each morning, around 6am, we woke to a soft cushh cushh sound of boots pushing steps into fresh powder outside our bedroom window. It was the baker delivering fresh baguettes and a boule to our windowsill.
Each morning we took turns getting up to collect the bread and make our way around the chalet up the external steps to the second floor to switch on the oven and bake the croissants or pain au chocolat for breakfast. After breakfast at around 9am, guests left for the day and I prepared the evening meal and baked afternoon tea. Ellie serviced the chalet.
Finished by 10am, we were never far behind our guests, then skied back to our chalet around 4pm to turn on the oven and go downstairs for a shower and to start our first beer.
Dry food and frozens were ordered by fax, but fruit and vegetables were a phone call and a challenge.
Unlike England, learning French in New Zealand schools is not compulsory.
My French went as far as saying English words in a French accent. Ellie had all but forgotten her high school French, retaining, “My name is Ellie and I come from Halstead, New Zealand. I am thirteen years old.”
Add a mumbling New Zealand accent with oddly pronounced nasal E’s, short whiney A’s and grunting O’s, and you have poorly spoken French and a beautiful language ruined.
Ellie’s comparative fluency meant she made the weekly phone calls to the fruit and vegetables shop.
Each week was an identical phone call. A woman expecting a two-way conversation answered the phone. “Bonjour,” she would say, followed by words we didn’t understand and on realising it was the girl from Chalet Anemone who struggled to order a red cabbage, Mrs Patient Fruit-and-Vegetables-Shop Lady would fall silent waiting for Ellie to launch into her practised phrases.
“Bonjour, je voudrais passe une commander pour le chalet Anémone Les Deux Alpes.”
I would like to make an order for Chalet Anemone in Les Deux Alpes.
“Ouiiiiiiiii,” came the reply from Mrs Patient Fruit-and-Vegetables-Shop Lady as if speaking to a small child.
“Un kilo de bananes.”
“Ouiiiiiiiii.”
“Deux kilos de pommes de terre.”
“Ouiiiiiiii.”
“Chou rouge.”
“Ouiiiiiiii.”
“Champignons. Deux kilos.”
“Ouiiiiii.”
Until Ellie said, “C’est tout.”
That’s all.
“Merci.”
Mrs Patient Fruit-and-Vegetables-Shop Lady would not ask questions; having twice attempted, the response was “je ne comprend pas.” Instead, she kept things simple and finished with a slow “Merci. Au revoir.” Listening in, I could hear her smiling.
Surprisingly, what Ellie thought she ordered, arrived. Not once did we receive one-hundred kilograms of mushrooms or mysterious unidentifiable vegetables.
Thinking we should mix with the locals, one morning we waved the fruit and vegetables delivery guy in for freshly baked cookies. Sitting at the table, smiling and eager to relate, we attempted to speak French and he attempted English. His English was as good as our French: terrible.
Over the time it takes to eat two cookies, the three of us smiled goofily and used international sign language for “These cookies are delicious.” We had nothing else to talk about. I imagined the series of actions I would have to perform and the ordeal I would have to endure to ask how long it takes to complete his deliveries and does anyone else give him cookies, so I stuck to “These cookies are delicious,” pointing to the cookies and patting my stomach while eating and smiling.
Miss Eggy-weggy’s group and one other booked the whole chalet but mostly couples and family groups booked one or two of the six rooms for a communal chalet holiday.
At the beginning of the week groups were strangers but after the first dinner and €2.99 bottles of Vin de Table house wine, everyone was friends. The cheap wine flowed and the judgemental questions began and the pecking order was established.
“Where have you skied?” guests would ask each other. “What ability are you? What equipment do you use?” Ellie and I weren’t exempt from the predictable barrage of questions.
“No, we are from New Zealand not Australia. Yes, we will be staying in France until the end of the season and will return to England on our working holiday visas. Yes, we know each other from New Zealand, we have been lovers for years and will share the story of our romance if everyone would like to gather around.”
No. We didn’t tell guests we were a couple, it was easier not to. Naturally some people knew but it was best to stay evasive. We had gay guests like “Uncle Steve” and John and John the pilots and even in a time of preaching tolerance, attitudes of some guests towards others was clear.
“Are you a novice?” Mrs Lamb Socks asked.
A guest in her mid-to-late sixties on holiday with her husband, Mrs Lamb Socks proceeded to name-drop ski resorts in a tone suggesting these were the only places worth skiing. Chamonix, Tignes, Zermatt, St Moritz. She had skied them all.
I imagined Mrs Lamb Socks a pro skier and that she and Mr Lamb Socks would spend their first day at Les Deux Alpes then head to Le Grave, a perilous extreme off-piste unmarked unpatrolled area where only advanced-to-expert skiers dare to go with a guide. Le Grave was known to claim lives. Crevasses had to be jumped. Avalanche was a constant risk.
One afternoon on the mountain, Ellie and I came across Mr and Mrs Lamb Socks. He was a proficient mogul skier and she was skiing snow-plough.
Mrs Lamb Socks left me her lamb socks, which sounds disgusting, but gifting the high quality wool socks with lamb pictures knitted into each sock was a gesture of gratitude.
Guests were like this, showing appreciation through a shared gift or cash tips and cards. It was well known ski season staff were poorly paid.
After a few weeks, we figured out how to get the gift we wanted.
We had grown fond of a chocolatier in the village. For a few weeks we dropped hints about chocolate and the chocolate arrived.
Low on cash, we talked about how one four-star chalet got big cash tips because they were four-star and how we were three-star but worked just as hard.
The cash came.
When leaving, some guests invited you to their homes. One wrote Ellie a reference – for some reason I did not get one. John and John the pilots invited us to stay, presenting us a raunchy postcard of two ladies in the snow slapping a man’s bottom, with their number and address. Another, who we will forever fondly refer to as Uncle Steve, asked what we would like to do in the resort. We said paragliding. We wanted to be strapped to the front of a paragliding instructor and ski off the side of the mountain to paraglide the peaks.
With the grandiosity afforded to a large and wealthy man, Uncle Steve stood from his lounge chair, strolled across the chalet, opened his wallet and presented each of us with a one-hundred euro note.
Thanks Uncle Steve!
We skied off the side of the mountain strapped to an instructor.
Both in their late forties, Megan and Charlie managed a chalet in the same area. In England, Charlie had worked as a bank manager and Megan as a personal assistant.
A few years before, the stress of corporate life took its toll on Charlie and he had a heart attack. No kids, a freehold house and a cat named Cat meant lives with flexibility; Megan and Charlie quit their jobs, sent Cat to relatives, locked the house, and spent the winter managing a chalet in France.
At first, Megan and Charlie received few tips, mistakenly answering guests’ interrogations honestly, saying Charlie had been a bank manager. Realising honesty was not the best policy, Megan and Charlie revised their work history and gave sadder, more somber and desperate on-the-bread-line responses.
“Back home,” Charlie would say, head hung low, “We work casual jobs. Whatever work we can get.”
“That is,” Megan would interrupt, “If we can find work.”
Tips improved.
Further boosting Megan and Charlie’s tips was an evening out for pizza. Charlie bit into a slice and an un-pitted olive removed a front tooth. With poor dentistry, a sad story and a mountain-man’s beard, tips further increased.
Charlie helped Megan in the chalet and was the company’s maintenance man. He drove around the chalets eating biscuits and cake and drinking tea, and fixing things like the benchtop laminate I lifted off after putting a boiling pot directly onto the benchtop.
Guests arrived and departed on Saturdays, known as Changeover Day.
Every Saturday morning around 9am, dressed in snow pants and company jackets, Ellie and I stood outside the chalet waving goodbye to our guests departing on the transfer bus for Grenoble Airport.
With the bus having barely disappeared from sight, we would rush into the empty chalet, throw open the actual French doors to the balcony and see what alcohol leftovers we had for our little daytime change-over-day soirée with Megan and Charlie.
The chalet’s balcony was also the beer fridge. When guests arrived, we gave a little welcome speech instructing, amongst other information, guests to store their beer on the deck because there wasn’t enough room in the fridge. Essentially, we said, outside was a fridge.
After guests left, their alcohol leftovers were our pickings. We often got Heineken and Kronenbourg.
On Changeover Day we had between 9am and 5pm to prepare for the next groups. For Ellie and me it was a race to get the job done as quickly as possible so we could relax on the deck with Megan and Charlie. Company policy was we couldn’t ski on Changeover Day, so we opted to drink instead.
Sometimes incoming guests’ flights were delayed or the bus into the resort slowed due to snow so no one arrived until after 9pm. By that time, we had almost cleared the deck and were feeling good. The sun had already dipped in the sky so we drank on our balcony wrapped in alcohol-warmth waiting to spot the buses’ lights coming up the hill into resort. Luckily our chalets were the last drop-offs, giving us time to clean up and Megan and Charlie time to meander back to their chalet. Once guests arrived, all we had to do was greet them and help drag their suitcases through the snow and up the stairs to their rooms, finishing by telling them what time to meet for breakfast. If they suspected we were drunk, we were only perpetuating the resort-worker stereotype, maintaining their expectations.
The longer we lived in the resort with no news to tell me which international conflict to care about or what I should fear, the more disconnected we became from the non-resort world and the less we cared.
No internet access or television in the chalet meant using the internet in a café and it was expensive, so we rarely bothered. Guests didn’t share news from back in the world; they were on holiday and more interested in what time the lifts opened and daily weather forecast, and really, so were we.
I realised our level of isolation when, one evening in an Irish pub in the French resort, news from England beamed across a television made in China while American music played in the background.
The tiny television hung in the corner near the ceiling above the bar. English text ran across the screen’s bottom over pictures of a space shuttle. Space Shuttle Columbia had disintegrated during re-entry killing seven astronauts – I hadn’t even heard about Columbia. Guns N’ Roses lyrics blasted across the sound system, “Now and then when I see her face, she takes me away to that special place,” and drunk tourists danced and drank Guinness. Had we been living in England or New Zealand we would have heard this news via every media channel for weeks. Instead, circumstances rendered it a passing sentiment like the Guns N’ Roses lyrics in the mind of a drunk. I liked this life. Outside of resort carried on with or without me caring, and that made me relax. I could choose to make things important and contribute to the world, or I could ski all day. And at this point in my life, I wanted to ski. Feeling I was allowed this period in my life because I was young, I sang along to Sweet Child of Mine in my excellent Axl Rose impersonation and thought I sounded pretty good.
Of eighteen weeks of approximately two hundred and fifty guests, only two weeks were hard work: Miss Eggy-weggy’s group and our very first group – twenty to twenty-five-year-olds who drank too much Vin de Table and one of whom left a surprise vomit in his wardrobe for Ellie.
Bad guests were never really a problem because they would leave and were British so culturally programmed not to complain. Anything we neglected to do or did poorly was reported back to us after the fact – like not preparing mulled wine when each group expected it once a week.
The weeks passed and we loved working in France. Then the snow started to melt. It was time to return to England for spring and the last six months of our working holiday visa.