Judgement

by Fergus Bannon

  'Bite a fart!'

  He smiled. 'As long as you're OK.' He turned to go.

  'Hey look, I'm sorry,' One hand was off her hips, palm open. 'I didn't mean to snap at you, but no-' her hand came up as he opened his mouth to speak '-I don't need a hand, thanks all the same.'

  Nodding, he resumed the pilgrimage to the barbecue, more weighty matters on his mind. Twenty or a hundred feet, it didn't matter. One look at that cliff had told him his climbing days were over. As he waited for a steak sandwich he wondered how he was going to get out of it.

  Climbing had been exciting, with a tremendous thrill when you got to the top, sweating and exhausted and suddenly relieved of the fear that had dogged you for hours. Hours during which a single false move could kill you. He had come to suspect that climbers had a very poor short-term memory for everything but the transcendent moments. Some of them actually needed the fear, savouring it to make life so much more precious. Fear made the mundane glorious.

  Having made up his mind, he was suddenly released from his own fear and he vigorously attacked the sandwich when it arrived.

  He was easing his way into a beer when he noticed Ted and Eve watching him. Eve's freckled face broke into a broad grin. She nodded at the beer. 'Now that's what I call preparation. I hadn't realised you took climbing so seriously.'

  Leith reached round to hold the area over his kidneys and arched his back. 'Climb's off. Went for a pee and forget my doctor's orders. I wasn't supposed to lift anything heavy.'

  'Hardy har har,' said Morgan, grimacing and reaching for a can from Leith's six-pack. 'What the hell, it’s been a hard week.'

  Eve looked as surprised as Leith felt. Perhaps Morgan was beginning to slow down: it was about time.

  More cars gathered over the next hour, and soon a small crowd had gathered around the marquee. The Morgans knew a lot of loud and healthy people, and a party atmosphere was developing rapidly. Leith got into a conversation with a rugged blond guy called Bill Stevens he’d met several times before at parties. Both easy-going people, they'd always got on well. Bill wasn't drinking as he said he intended to climb later on.

  'Free?' asked Leith.

  Stevens laughed. He bent one thick leg and a mountain of muscle rose out of his thigh, pushing back the leg of his shorts. 'Too much beef. Fingers can't take the strain of it.'

  His fingers looked plenty strong to Leith. He started to ask about this but Morgan suddenly clapped them both on the shoulder.

  'Heads up, they're starting.'

  They walked over with the rest of the crowd to the centre of the cliff face. Morgan had brought their binoculars from the car in a carryall. As he handed them out he said:

  'Apparently there are five of them. They'll be judged on time and quality of climbing style.' He pointed at the sky, now clear but for a few scattered clouds. 'Weather's okay at the moment, but it could change, which is probably why Carter’s elected to go first. He’s the present champion.'

  Leith looked up the rock face, marvelling. It looked sheer and smooth from here. There were a few widely spaced crevices but these were too small for a climbing boot. How could anybody climb this without pitons, rope and a hammer?

  Suddenly the girl he had talked to earlier ran through the crowd making for the cliff. He couldn't see her face but he recognised the denim shorts and cut-off tee-shirt. She was wearing a pair of thin, low-backed training shoes and a small bag bounced by her side as she ran. He knew this contained the only climbing aid allowed. She ran with a beautiful ease and grace, vaulting over an irregular wall of rock at the end of the pasture in one fluid movement.

  Stevens pointed to her. 'There goes Carter. Get ready for some vertical ballet!'

  Carter reached the rock face and paused briefly to thrust each hand into the bag. They came out covered in white powder, making a sharp contrast with her tan. She placed both hands on the rock and began to climb.

  'What the hell is she holding onto?'

  Stevens shook his head and fingered his sun-bleached moustache. 'Boy, I've seen this a hundred times but it still knocks me out,' he spread his hands out with the fingers curving inward very slightly. 'This is about what she holds onto. Any slight convexity in the rock or any tiny crack she can get a fingernail into. There'll be pits in the limestone but too few to count on. If she can't find anything for her feet she presses them flat against the cliff, bending her feet as far forward at the ankle as she can. By pushing down she gets some friction. The balance of forces is critical, any residue will push her out from the rock.'

  Carter was swarming over the cliff face in a motion that was so smooth it could have been choreographed. Occasionally she would pause for a fraction of a second to consider her next move. Suddenly Leith had a feeling of terrible vertigo: it was as if he was the one on a cliff, looking down to someone crawling on the flat ground below.

  He shook his head to try and clear it. 'When does the men's competition start?'

  Stevens laughed. 'There's only one competition, Bob. Lot of men think there should be one for each sex, though. It’s about the only way they could win. The best climbers in this game aren't sides of beef like me but small, slender types with strong fingers and arms but skinny little legs. Lola's the best in the States but the best in the world are also women, like Destivelle from France.'

  'Why skinny legs?'

  'Because heavy legs can be just dead weight. Watch!'

  Carter had already scaled nearly two hundred feet of cliff and had come to the first overhang. Just above her it supported a tiny ledge before rising in a wall of unbroken rock. The ledge started to broaden four metres to her left. Reaching up she grasped the top of the overhang and swung out so she was hanging by her fingernails, legs well clear of the rock and momentarily useless. She paused for a fraction of a second: then she was swinging hand-to-hand along the ledge.

  Pulling herself up so that her chin cleared the ledge, she checked to make sure she was in the right position. Then she dropped herself back down again.

  Leith was entranced. This was so different from the heavy, cumbersome way he had been taught to climb. Laden down with weighty equipment and hesitating over each move he guessed he would barely have covered a tenth of her climb by now. He watched as she swung up her right leg, hooking the toe of her thin shoe over the lip of the ledge. Expecting her to pull herself over and onto the ledge, he was surprised when she froze in this awkward position. Then her right hand seemed to fall away from the rock.

  There were gasps and startled yelps and Leith's stomach felt suddenly heavy and greasy. But instead of plummeting helplessly through the emptiness, Carter flipped open the flap of the bag and plunged her hand into it. Withdrawing the chalked hand, she grabbed the rock and in one single liquid motion was standing upright on the ledge looking down. She waved.

  'Oh, for fuck's sakes, Lola! You are so bad!' Stevens put a hand to his brow.

  Carter started to jog easily along the short ledge, vaulting confidently over the diagonal trunk of one of the trees. Beyond this, the ledge got narrower until it disappeared into the rock at a point where it fell away noticeably from the vertical for the first time. Stooping and turning so she was facing into the rock, Carter pushed off hard with her right leg, her body arcing through space, and landed spread-eagled onto the steeply sloping and featureless surface. There was another gasp from the crowd.

  'I can't watch much more of this,' said Leith. But he couldn't look away.

  For someone who could scale the vertical, the sloping face was clearly a luxury. Carter went up it almost at walking pace. After another hundred feet the cliff went vertical again, and she slowed down slightly — although maintaining her fluidity of style. Leith whistled softly as he tried to imagine her strength and stamina, and the power in those little hands and arms.

  Carter came to the last overhang, grasping hold of it with both hands. She swung her body back and forward in an increasing arc then pushed herself up and over the ledge like a pole-vaulter clearing the bar. She la
nded upright, facing out and then bent her torso forward in a quick bow.

  The crowd went crazy: and it wasn't until his hands started to sting that he realised he was whooping and clapping as wildly as the rest. Here and there, people with flushed faces were flopping down onto the grass like they’d just climbed the damn thing themselves.

  Leith knew how they felt. His legs were weak and shaky, and his armpits were damp with sweat. Only Carter seemed untired, and now she was jogging easily down the sloping wings of the cliff, jumping from boulder to boulder in her seamless style.

  The crowd clustered round the point where the descending trail reached the meadow and gave Carter a wild ovation when she got to the bottom. She raised both hands above her head and waved and was immediately surrounded by well wishers.

  Stevens grabbed Leith's arm. 'Come on, I'll introduce you.'

  Stevens pushed his way through the crowd, Leith in tow. 'Hey, Lola,' he yelled. She looked up and smiled. The tight, mean little face Leith had seen earlier was now open and serene. She gave Stevens a warm smile.

  People parted to let Stevens through, and as he got to Carter he started to shake his head and smile wryly.

  'I'm sorry, Lola, but you're crazier than the proverbial shithouse rat!'

  Carter laughed and put her arms round his neck, reaching up on tiptoe to give him a gentle kiss. He put his huge hands on her waist and kissed her back. Leith felt a confusing rush of emotions: embarrassment and jealousy coupled with an almost voyeuristic thrill. He felt relieved when Stevens pulled back, firmly but with obvious reluctance.

  He put his hand on Leith's shoulder. 'Lola, I'd like you to meet Bob Leith. It's the first time he's seen you climb but I think he's impressed.'

  Leith had a dazed impression of clear blue eyes, a hint of golden down above an open smile, then a handshake barely below the pain threshold. Before he knew it, he was mumbling: 'I'm sorry. I guess it was really presumptuous to ask if you needed help. I just thought …'

  She shook her head. 'It's ok. It was nice of you to ask.'

  She looked at something over his shoulder. 'The judges want me, I'd better go.' She nodded at Leith and ran a hand across the top of Stevens' arm; then she was moving quickly and easily through the crowd which closed behind her.

  'Wow,' he whispered.

  'Wow is right,' Stevens said, but he wasn't smiling. When Stevens had introduced them Leith had gained a fleeting impression of surrender, or maybe renunciation. But he knew this was wishful thinking, so he steadfastly turned his attention back to the climbing.

  Two more attempted the climb in the morning and two more after lunch. None of them came close to Carter's time. They were all good and very confident, and one of the three men even had the same fluidity of style as Lola, but by the end of the day she had won easily.

  For the rest of the afternoon, people attempted sections of the cliff either singly or in small groups. Only one three-man team tried the full cliff, and that had been with full climbing paraphernalia. Lola's climb made their efforts look clumsy and artificial.

  Later on and fortified by drink, Leith and Morgan tried to free-climb a twelve foot end section of cliff. There was a lot of shouting and cursing and falling. It seemed impossible to get any kind of grip on the limestone, and Eve spent a lot of the time convulsed with laughter. Leith completed the entertainment by making a mess of pitching his tent.

  Darkness fell at six o'clock. By then the party was well underway, with people sitting in groups round a big central fire. Leith luxuriated in its heat, savouring the woodsmoke and relaxing amidst the talk and laughter of the others. Campfires had always given him a feeling of comfort, the primitive ease of huddling in a small circle of heat and light, which protected you from all that lurked beyond.

  Ted and Eve wandered off to talk to friends. Sitting alone and entranced by the sight of the flames licking up into the darkness, he almost missed Lola as she walked by towards the marquees. His heart gave a little lurch, and he felt a flash of the shyness that had plagued his adolescence. But as suddenly as it came it was gone, melted by the warmth of the fire and the people and the drink. He got to his feet and followed.

  'You were brilliant today,' he said when he had gotten her a drink. 'I've never seen anything like it. I used to do some climbing back in college but this … ' he indicated the cliff, a wall of phantom white in the darkness.

  Her smile seemed a little too relaxed and he realised she had been drinking. 'Don't I ever get scared,' she said.

  'I'm sorry?'

  'That's what people always ask me next.' She sat back on a boulder a few feet from the marquee and Leith took a seat beside her.

  'And?'

  'Nope, never. The only scary thing is that it doesn't scare me, if you see what I mean. Even when I make a mistake.' She smiled at his frown. 'And it has sometimes happened.'

  She took a huge gulp of beer then wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. 'Stimulated yes, frightened no. Climbing's as natural to me as walking. Just one of those things, I guess.'

  'You acted a little tense when I first met you.'

  Carter waved a hand dismissively. 'I was just hyping myself up for the competition, but yeah...maybe I do get a little scared before a climb. But not during, and certainly not after.'

  'How long've you been doing it?'

  She leered, then struggled to be serious. 'My folks say I started before I could even walk, but I think they're having me on. Parenthood for them, they say, consisted in trying to get me to come down from the trees.'

  'They must be proud of you.'

  'They don't know I do this. It's better for their peace of mind.'

  She ran her eyes over him: he had changed into shirt and jeans. Slightly embarrassed by the frankness of her stare, he asked:

  'How much training do you put in?'

  She pursed her lips. 'Lots. Mainly on climbing walls. But I do a lot of upper bodywork. Got to!' She smacked a leg. 'Don't bother so much about these. I jog, sure, but only a couple of times a week.'

  'Ever been to Provence?' One of the few things he knew about the sport was that this was regarded as its home.

  'Buoux? Sure! Destivelle, Patissiere, Labrune, Hill, I've seen them all. Remarkable women!'

  'Ever competed yourself?'

  'Not in Provence. I'm good but the sport isn't my life. I'm happy with amateur stuff like this; it's therapy. Everyday cares and worries get put into a cleaner perspective. There's no time for self-doubt, no time for second thoughts. When you're climbing, there are only three things in the universe...'

  'Fear, terror and despair?'

  'No,' she smiled wryly, 'I was going to say rock, gravity and me, but I'm sure you'd consider it pretentious.'

  'Not at all,' he said solemnly. 'Gravity can be a total bastard, you don't have to tell me.'

  'Asshole!' She punched him lightly on the shoulder.

  She went to take another drink but found her paper cup was empty. Reaching across, she tugged his from his hand, shifting her legs quickly to avoid the splash of beer as it came free. She took a sip of the remainder. She looked up into his eyes and smiled again. 'And what does a side of beef like you do for a living? Except hang out, of course.'

  She found this riotously funny, and he realised she was now a lot drunker than he was. Then he wondered if it was more than just that: her spirits looked like they were still soaring from the climb, so much so that he had the impression she might suddenly burst into song at any moment.

  He started to talk because she had asked him a question and because he felt she needed anchoring to some sort of reality. But she had asked The Question. Well rehearsed, he slipped effortlessly into bullshit mode, describing how he collated crop yields for the Department of Agriculture, how he liked working on computers but that what he produced was pretty boring.

  She wasn't much interested, but if she had been he could have gone into considerably more detail. All members of his section had the same cover story and each had carefully specifi
ed roles in the fiction: if Carter had closely questioned Morgan later, there would have been no conflicts with Leith's version.

  As soon as he reasonably could, he turned the spotlight away by asking her what she did for a living. She turned out to be a professional lobbyist for Lawrence and Watts, one of Washington's larger firms. She finished two more beers as she described with relish the fearsome world of influence peddling and the greed and betrayals that were her daily lot.

  'In my job,' she said, her tones made portentous by the alcohol, 'in my job you need total commitment, total assertiveness and a skin as thick as a reactor's.'

  He reached out to stroke the firm flesh of her arm. 'Doesn't feel thick to me.'

  She looked up at him for a few seconds then took his hand and rose, pulling him up after her. 'I've got to check on something,' she said.

  She led him across the meadow until they reached the trees. When he saw where she was taking him his heart started to hammer in his chest. The light from the campfire was faint but his eyes soon adjusted. About ten feet into the trees she stopped and pushed him against the trunk of one of them. He blinked with surprise as she grasped the leather belt of his jeans, pulled it back and freed it, then flipped the button at his waist and pulled down the zip. He sucked his breath in as she pulled down his jeans and briefs and cupped his testicles in one of her night-cold hands.

  She leaned in to him and bit his neck lightly. Then she whispered: 'It isn't true, what I overheard you saying to Bill.'

  His mind wasn't working. He didn't even try to remember, but she was clearly expecting some response.

  'Uh, what?'

  'You know. When I was collecting the trophy. You were standing away to the left. You told him I had more balls than you did. It just isn't true. Check for yourself!'

  Putting one hand round her waist, he brought the other up between her legs, slipping one finger under the leg of her shorts. Crooking the finger he felt the warmth and wetness between her thighs. He leant down and their mouths met in a deep, urgent kiss. He felt the buttons pop from his shirt as she tore it open.