Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  Money was the problem. ‘I’m down to fourteen hundred and fifty dihrams,’ he said. ‘Has anybody else got any dihrams?’

  Nobody had.

  ‘We’re not rich like you, yer knaa,’ said Rob with just a hint of aggression.

  ‘All right, I suppose I’d better pay. But I’ll have to go easy.’

  Going round the stalls with John struggling at the outer limits of his French, they managed to buy eight honey melons, six loaves of bread and some flat Moroccan stuff which was also called bread, but looked like sheets of cardboard.

  ‘We’d better get some Coke too, it’s going to be pretty hot when we start walking.’

  The price came to 250 dihrams.

  ‘That were pricey,’ sighed Michael. ‘They did yer over them melons.’

  ‘Probably did,’ replied John. ‘But there was nothing I could do about it. Now let’s find a bus to Imlil.’

  That proved easier said than done. A wearisome traipse round the square followed.

  ‘Autobus Imlil?’

  ‘Non! Non! A Marrakesh!’

  ‘Imlil?’

  Dismissive gesture. ‘Non, Fez!’

  And so on for over an hour.

  ‘We seem to be stuck in this dump,’ sighed a hot and sweaty Jim. ‘So what yer gannin’ ter do like, Jonnie lad?’

  What indeed? John began to get desperate. Marooned in this dreary hole? Stranded for the duration? Toubkal slipping away? Achievement evaporating?

  Then he saw a tractor bouncing across the square pulling a large, empty trailer. Frantically he waved, and it stopped. He approached the swarthy and bejeaned young man in the driving seat.

  ‘Allez-vous à Imlil?’

  ‘Peut-etre, si vous voulez?’

  ‘Nous allons à Imlil et nous avons besoin de transport.’

  The man smiled. ‘D’accord! D’accord!’ He signed to them to get into the trailer.

  ‘All aboard, team!’ cried a triumphant John. ‘He’s taking us to Imlil!’

  They clambered into the trailer and with a roar of the engine and amid a cloud of dense, oily exhaust fumes, they lurched off.

  ‘Did you fix a price?’ asked Michael.

  ‘No, he just said he’d take us.’

  ‘Like fuck he will! You’ll get done again, John. And how do yer know he’ll take wor to Imlil? I mean he could be takin’ us anywhere, couldn’t he?’

  ‘God, you are a mingy old git, aren’t you!’ snorted John. ‘Always looking on the black side of everything!’

  At the same time, he had a nagging fear that just possibly Michael could be right. Then what? It was with profound relief that he noticed them pass a signpost with ‘Imlil’ on it in both Arabic and Latin script.

  With mounting excitement he observed the rapidly increasing drama of the landscape as they bounced up a narrow, dusty road. A wooded valley narrowed into a gorge where a babbling river ran between plunging mountainsides, which swept down from beetling crags. Ahead were hints of vast mountains, grander than anything he’d ever seen before; huge piles of twisted and contorted rock. The explorer fantasy grew. He was about to penetrate an unknown mountain range. He was one with Burton, Speke and Livingstone.

  Then Imlil came, a straggle of flat-roofed houses lining a single dusty street and thronged with minibuses and crowds of what were obviously foreign tourists. The explorer fantasy dissolved. No, John Denby, you’re not the first. Others have got here before you.

  The tractor juddered to a halt amid clouds of dust. Mission successful.

  ‘Good on yers, Jonnie lad!’ said Jim. ‘Yer’ve gorrus here, like!’

  They tumbled out of the trailer.

  Doin yers one Minute and Entertainin’ Yers the Next.

  ‘Merci bien, Monsieur,’ said John to the driver, as he shouldered his rucksack and set off up the street with the others.

  ‘Moment! Moment!’ the man cried aggressively. ‘Cent dihrams!’

  ‘Eh? Eh? Cinquante?’ John pulled out a 50 dihram note and handed it to him.

  ‘Non! Non! Cent!

  ‘A hundred? Oh shit!’

  Ruefully he handed it over.

  ‘Cadeau! Bakshish!’ cried the man.

  ‘Mais j’ai vous payee…’

  ‘Je suis pauvre! Une femme! Quatres enfants.’

  The man began to get aggressive and to shout. A small crowd gathered and began to gesture threateningly. In desperation, John opened his rucksack and pulled out a sweater. Grumpily the man took it and drove off.

  Crestfallen, John joined the others. ‘God, he was a crook. He took one hundred dihrams off me and then had the cheek to demand a sweater!’

  ‘Yer didn’t give it him, did yers?’ said Jim. ‘Ah mean yer shoudda told him ter fuck off like!’

  ‘Yeah? And get done over by that crowd? No way!’

  ‘I knew this would happen,’ declared Michael with a hint of triumph. ‘Yer shoudda fixed a price first, like what I said.’

  ‘Well, it’s done now!’ sighed John. ‘And I’m down to twelve hundred dihrams now!’

  ‘Well, what now?’ asked Rob.

  ‘Let’s go to that cafe there and see if we can get some breakfast,’ replied John. ‘If they won’t do us that is!’.’

  They clambered up onto a shaded terrace and sat down at a table. A little bald-headed man with an unshaven chin and luxuriant black moustache greeted them effusively and, before they could say anything, brought them plate-loads of fried eggs, chips and bread.

  ‘Combien l’addition?’ asked a flustered John, desperate to avoid another financial humiliation.

  ‘Rien!’ replied the man bowing, ‘Rien. Vous êtes jeunes et l’hospitalite a la jeunesse est la loi d’Islam.’

  ‘What’s he sayin’?’

  ‘He says it’s the law of Islam to be hospitable to young people and he’s not charging us anything.’

  ‘Eee, that’s ever so kind o’ him!’ said Maureen. ‘They’s not what Brian said they would be, is they?’

  ‘Funny blokes, them Pakkies,’ said Jim. ‘Doin’ yer one minute and entertainin’ yer for nowt the next.’

  Council of War

  Next came a council of war. John produced Steadman’s map of the Toubkal area and spread it out on the table. Confidently he expounded the plan which had been simmering in his mind for the past two days. Like a photograph being developed, it just emerged from his brain.

  ‘We’re here at Imlil. Six thousand feet up. It’ll take a day to get to here, the Neltner Hut, which is at over ten thousand feet. That’s four thousand feet to climb. It’ll be a sweat. The guidebook says the hut’s expensive so we’ll have to bivvy up next to it. It’ll be cold, but it won’t rain. Next day, final assault. To Toubkal. Back here. Next day, down again.’

  He was the leader, the General expounding his plan of campaign to his assembled staff officers. He wallowed in the role. If only Major Allen could see him! If Mekon, if Dolly, if Bob…! Gone was the snivelling little wimp who’d let Kev do him over.

  ‘Agreed!’ said Jim, ‘But what about today? It’s two o’clock already. We’ll not reach that Neltner place. Where’ll we kip like?’

  ‘We’ll have to find a hidey-hole,’ replied John. ‘Somewhere where we can’t be seen.’

  ‘Yeah!’ added Rob, ‘We’re escaped prisoners on the run, ain’t we?’

  ‘You’ve said it!’ added John. ‘We’re like guerrilla fighters in the mountains. We’ll walk along the track there, find a suitable place, doss down and have a brew. At dawn we’ll start for the Neltner Hut.’

  Into a New and Exciting Landscape

  They began to organise their packs. The boys ostentatiously took the heavier items from the girls. Maureen, plump and obviously not very strong, was given the shoulder bag. The melons and the large bottle of Coke caused especially difficult lo
ading problems. To counter the ‘upper class poofter’ burr, John insisted on taking five of the honey melons, which meant that there was no room in his rucksack for some of the extra sweaters, shirts and trousers he’d brought along. After several unsuccessful attempts to wrap them up in one of his bivvy bags and strap them on to the outside of the rucksack, he simply draped them over his shoulders.

  So they set off, stepping out of the shade of the café into the blinding glare of the afternoon sun. The hill that led out of Imlil was brutally steep and soon they were panting and sweating copiously.

  ‘Jesus! Me sack’s bleedin’ heavy!’

  ‘How far have we gotta lug this lot, John? Four thousand fuckin’ feet, did yer say?’

  A brown-robed figure ambled down the hill, leading a donkey laden with baggage.

  ‘We could do with one o’ them donkeys, Jonnie lad!’ said Rob.

  ‘Yeah!’ replied John, ‘But I just haven’t got the dosh. They’d probably do us and we’ll have to have some money for a bus back to Marrakesh.’

  ‘Hadaway man!’ said Jim, ‘Yer could pay if really wanted ter. Yer rich ye!’

  John winced. That stung. They still thought he was a rich poofter who could dole out the dihrams if suitably pressured. All because of his southern accent. Could he never break through the carapace of distrust in which they encased themselves?

  ‘Well,’ he replied defensively, ‘we’ll see about that tomorrow.’

  Luckily the track soon levelled off and the donkey question was postponed; for the moment, anyway.

  All at once they found themselves ambling through a new and exotic landscape. There were green, terraced fields climbing up steep mountainsides to ancient villages of mud brick houses, flat-roofed and stacked up one above another, like old and mellow bricks. Behind them were huge mountains, grey and wrinkled, surging up into a brilliant blue sky. Still and apparently timeless, this was a world which seemed to speak to John – if not to the others – of eternal truths. It reminded him of pictures of the Holy Land that he’d seen in his long-lost Children’s Bible. His spirit soared. Here was exploration, adventure, the challenge of the unknown.

  Guerrilla Fighters in the Mountains

  After about an hour the encroaching mountains on either side of the valley came together, almost like a monstrous vice squeezing out the trees and the level ground between their massive walls. The track turned abruptly to the left and began to zigzag up into a narrow gash. Down to the right, the last remnants of the wood washed up against a tumbled mass of huge boulders.

  ‘Let’s kip down there,’ said Jim. ‘Nobody’ll see us.’

  Crossing a small, dusty field, they stumbled into the wood. Right next to the boulder field they found a patch of green grass, lush and smooth, almost like a pond. Hemmed in by the protecting rocks, it made a perfect den.

  ‘This’ll do! They won’t find us here!’

  Dropping their cumbersome packs, they spread their sleeping bags, the bivvy bag and the blanket on the grass. Jim produced his bottle of meths and the Trangia set. Filling a bowl with Puritabbed water from John and Michael’s water bottles, he brewed up the soup. Then they attacked the bread, which was fresh and filling. The feast ended with them demolishing two of the honey melons.

  The hot sun, the lack of sleep, the hard exercise and the food… all produced a deep drowsiness.

  ‘Time to catch up on a bit of kip!’

  Spreading themselves out on the grass with their rucksacks as pillows, they settled down.

  ‘This is great!’ exclaimed Jim. ‘We’re just like guerrilla fighters!’

  ‘Yeah!’ added Rob. ‘Just like the S.A.S. in the Falkland Islands!’

  ‘Mind, there’s gannin’ ter be a reet stink when we gets back!’ sighed Michael. ‘If we ever does get back, that is!’

  ‘Oh belt up, yer mingy old git!’

  Snuggling down, John felt a warm glow of acceptance: one of the lads at last! Just to reinforce his position, he donated his sleeping bag to Tracy.

  ‘Eeee! Yorra proper gentleman, you!’ she chortled.

  Suddenly she embraced him and kissed him effusively. A whole kaleidoscope of emotions flashed through him. Sheer physical revulsion at the big, slobbery mouth and the cold, wet tongue combined with the animal thrill of close contact with a warm, pulsating body, the child snuggling up to its mother. A cool, detached analysis: kill the shit-stabber thing by being seen to snog a girl. Yes, lay it on double thick, roll her over, squeeze her tits. The message will get round. It can only do you good… unless, horror of horrors, she starts asking you to actually perform! Luckily she didn’t, and they disentangled themselves.

  He then wrapped himself in the thin apology of a blanket that he’d bought in the souk. The brown, organic stain on the bottom left-hand corner soon fulfilled his worst fears. However…!

  Silence fell, but for the low murmur of the nearby stream. For a long time he lay on his back, gazing up at the dome of the sky that peeped through the lattice of leafy branches above him. Slowly the blue deepened and turned purple as the light faded and the shadows of the night crept over the rugged landscape. He felt a sense of contentment, of liberation; the strangeness of the place he was in, the thrill of being on the threshold of great things. Sleep descended quickly.

  The Demon Again

  He began to dream. The Demon possessed him. As usual it was boys. Not Danny Fleetwood this time, but Mark Ramshaw, a dark-haired and elfin little Beaconsfield first year, cavorting round naked. In that wild, glorious exultation which surpassed all possible joys, it happened…

  He opened his eyes to see a friendly blue sky beaming down through the branches above him. The blanket had slipped off him and a sticky wet stain was right down the left leg of his jeans, there for all to see! Oh bloody hell!

  Jim had also woken up. Hw stared at him and his foxy face twisted up into a lascivious leer. ‘Eeeee, Jonnie lad, yer sexy arld basstadd!’

  Discovery! Christ All bloody Mighty, if he knew what I’d really been dreaming about! But turn it to your advantage…

  He grinned back. ‘What do you expect when you’re sleeping next to a bird? Makes a bloke right horny, you know!’

  ‘Aye, yorra reet lad, ye!’

  Ploy’s worked! Acceptance. Bonding. The ‘Dirty Denby’ act pays dividends. Keep it up!

  ‘Hang on a moment. I’d better go down to the stream and wash this out before anybody thinks I’ve pissed myself.’

  Morning

  The others woke up. In the cool of the morning they brewed up the last of the soup on the Trangia and finished off the loaves of bread. Then they attacked two more honey melons.

  ‘That leaves four melons,’ said Jim. ‘We’ll need ter stock up at the next village – Cham – whatever-it-is we’s gannin’ ter flake oot like. There will be a shop there, won’t there, John?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied John. ‘That’s what the guidebook says.’

  ‘Well there bloody well berra be. Else we’s in the shit! Yer’ve got the guidebook, so you lead the way, me bonny lad!’

  Slight threat here! Hope there is a shop at Cham – whatever-it-is!.

  ‘OK. But first we must clear up the bivvy site so that nobody knows we’ve been here. Joe’ll have found the note by now and could have sent the fuzz after us. We’re hunted fugitives in enemy territory. In Combat Survival it says the S.A.S. never leave any traces behind them when they are on active service.’

  The military fantasy went down well and all the rubbish was duly picked up and placed in a black polythene bag, which John stuffed into his already overloaded rucksack.

  Shouldering their packs, they stumbled back to the track. All around them were dark blue mountains, vast and mysterious, their ragged summits brilliantly red in the slanting rays of the rising sun. ‘Come!’ they seemed to say to John, ‘Come with us! Here is where you really belong!’
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  Like Something out of a Children’s Fairy Story

  The track zigzagged a broad and easily graded way up a steep, rocky slope and into a deep gash between huge, plunging mountainsides. John surveyed the brutal anarchy on either side of him: a great sweep of enclosing crags, screes, tumbled boulders and far-off airy summits, harsh, barren and merciless. He felt a twinge of anxiety, amounting almost to panic. These mountains were something new to him: vastly bigger, steeper and more serious than anything he’d ever seen before. More hostile even than Sgurr na Ciche in the remote and rainswept Knoydart. Was there a way up Toubkal? Or would they have to crawl back, defeated and humiliated, to a judgmental I-told-you-so Morris? Quite possible! Was there even a village at Sidi Cham – whatever-it-was? If not, with only four melons between the six of them they were going to have problems. Also, Jim and Rob’s still precarious acceptance of him would turn to rejection; and when that happened, Jim’s fists would go into action.

  But then, topping a rise, they came upon the promised village. John’s spirits leapt. What a place! It was something quite beyond his experience, like something out of a childhood fairy story: a straggle of rough stone shacks, flat-roofed with lumps of turf and squeezed into a narrow defile, seemingly cringing under the massive threat of the soaring mountainsides above them. One small shake and it would all be flattened by the enormous boulders poised precariously above it. Biblical-style robed figures strolling round completed the vision.

  To his profound relief there was a shop: a little cubbyhole of thing piled high with assorted tins. His French went into action and he managed to procure ten tins of tuna fish, four large bottles of Coke, a tin opener and ten tins of some weird Moroccan stuff: stuffed vine leaves or something, but as the label was in Arabic, it could have been anything.

  ‘What the hell’s this?’

  ‘Dunno! But it’s all he’s got so we’ll have to make do with it.’

  The bill was predictably horrendous.

  ‘That’s me down to eight hundred dihrams.’

  Before setting off, John ran round photographing everything, relishing the idea of the illustrated journal he planned to produce. Maybe he could get it published in book form. There was a thought! Eagerly he snapped a bearded and robed exotic walking along the street.