Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  ‘Dix dihrams!’ growled the man.

  Obediently he coughed up, consoling himself with the thought that he’d recoup all his expenses when the book was published.

  ‘Done again!’ sighed Michael. ‘Yer jus’ won’t learn, will yer?’

  Donkeys

  They duly set about the problematic task of loading the recent purchases into their already overloaded packs. Finally they attacked the stony track that wound its way out of the village and up the steep slope ahead of them. The sun was now high in the sky and the heat was building up. The heavy rucksack bit deeply into John’s shoulders and he began to feel as if invisible hands were pushing down upon him. But, by getting into a slow rhythm, he made steady progress.

  Soon the two girls were falling behind. Long waits and long rests ensued.

  ‘I canna dee this!’ declared Tracy eventually. ‘I’m knackered, me!’

  ‘Me an’ all!’ echoed a sweating Maureen.

  Quick consultation.

  ‘We canna dee owt in this heat,’ declared Rob. ‘We’ll just flake out!’

  ‘Aye,’ said Jim. ‘We’ll not make Toubkal at this rate, so what’s we gannin’ ter dee, like?’ He looked aggressively at John. ‘You got any ideas?’

  ‘All right,’ replied John, ‘I suppose I’d better try and get a donkey.’ Whatever happened, he was going to get up this mountain! If it meant donkeys, then so be it.

  ‘It’ll be pricey, though,’ he added. ‘But if worst comes to worst, I can always sell my clothes.’

  ‘And walk round in the nuddy then,’ said Jim with a leer. ‘You’d look great on the front page of Gay News, you! Just what the benders want!’

  Barb here? Did Jim suspect what he really was behind that carefully constructed laddish exterior? Back off quickly!

  ‘No, on second thoughts, I’ll not go that far.’

  While the others waited, he hurried back to the village. In the shop he met the man who’d served them.

  ‘Nous avons besoin d’un âne pour transporter notre baggage au Neltner Hut. Combien?’

  The response was immediate, like switching on a light. Two robed figures soon appeared leading two donkeys. ‘Cinquante dihrams chaque.’

  He quickly doled out the 100 dihrams and they set off up the track. Reaching the others, he was greeted like a hero.

  ‘Good on yer, me bonny lad!’

  Both Tracy and Maureen hugged and kissed him. The ego blossomed. John the lad! Dirty Denby with his girlfriends!

  Each girl was hoisted onto a donkey and the rucksacks and bits of extra baggage distributed between them.

  ‘Vous allez à la cabane Neltner?’

  ‘Oui, à sa cote!’

  Progress – at a Price

  They set off, ambling slowly up the stony trail. Without his rucksack pressing down on him, John felt liberated. Set free from gravity, almost floating upwards. A renewed burst of hope!

  The going was surprisingly easy – easier even than Scafell Pike! – and they soon reached the top of the steep lip of the valley. Before them, a broad, rock-strewn trough opened out between towering mountainsides. To their right a huge wall of jagged rock surged upwards, jerking along the skyline like a giant scribble. To their left, bare, rocky peaks reared upwards like gnarled and twisted old tree trunks. Morale rose.

  In a ridiculously short time – scarcely more than three hours – they arrived at the head of the valley. Amid the anarchic swirl of mountains walling it off, there was what seemed like a lake of green grass hemmed in by screes. Above it, perched on a rocky spur, was a small European-style stone building.

  ‘Qui est cela?’

  ‘La cabane Neltner.’

  ‘Vraiment?’

  ‘Oui, vraiment!’

  ‘Team, we’ve made it!’ cried and exultant John. ‘There’s the Neltner Hut! Do you realise we’re over ten thousand feet up?’

  ‘Christ, that were quick!’ said Jim. ‘It’s not even twelve o’clock!’

  ‘Well,’ said John, ‘we’d better make a base camp. We’ll basher up, army style, among those boulders there.’

  ‘“Basher up?”’ said Michael. ‘That’s another of yer army words, ain’t it? Yer never stops playin’ soldiers does yer?’

  ‘Yer knaa,’ he added with a sigh, ‘yers nowt burra greet big kid, ain’t yers?’

  John ignored him and continued his military-style orders. ‘We’ll rest here. Tomorrow morning we’ll make the final assault on Mount Toubkal.’

  The donkeys were duly unloaded, but instead of departing, the two men hung around, looking aggressive.

  ‘Au revoir et merci beaucoup!’ said John, holding out his hand.

  ‘Bakshish! Cadeau!’

  ‘Mais nous avons vous payee!’

  ‘Bakshish! Cadeau!’

  ‘Oh shit! Now they want presents.’

  ‘Don’t listen to them!’ said Michael. ‘You’ll only get done!’

  John turned away and began to walk towards the nearby boulders. The two men followed him, gesticulating angrily. ‘Cadeau! Cadeau!’

  Their threatening manner scared him; that Greenhill feeling which dissolved your bones and reduced you to jelly. There was nothing for it. It was a matter of survival. Reality! He rummaged in his rucksack and pulled out a spare shirt and one of his few remaining spare sweaters.

  The effect was immediate. Warm smiles replaced hostile scowls. He was embraced and kissed effusively, and with friendly waves the two men departed.

  ‘God, you are a reet softy!’ sighed Michael. ‘Them’s just usin’ yers, yer knaa!’

  That stung. ‘Well, Mike, what would you do?’ he retorted angrily. ‘Let them bloody knife us? We’re not in Britain, you know!’

  ‘It’s no different there!’ he replied. ‘Jus’ look at Greenhill Skyerl, like? Remember what that were like?’

  The thrust went home. John did remember what Greenhill was like: only too well! It was a reminder that John, the big, bold lad, could only exist in a very sheltered environment. Beyond its narrow parameters he was a quivering jelly.

  ‘Well, it’s done now, Mike,’ he said. ‘No use crying over spilt milk, as they say. Let’s get on and basher up.’

  They soon found an ideal place, a sort of mini canyon between two large, overhanging rocks. Drowning his humiliation in an orgy of militaristic fantasy, John rushed about creating his best shelter ever. The two bivvy bags they had were stretched between the rocks and secured with stones, they formed a roof. A dry stone wall was constructed, blocking one end of the canyon, and an elaborate doorway was created at the other. Tufts of grass lined the sandy floor. Every stage of the operation was photographed, culminating in a triumphant group picture celebrating its completion. Major Allen would positively eat it all when he saw the photos! They would all go to illustrate the book he was going to write. The lad was back in business.

  ‘We could spend a week in this.’

  ‘Where’s the bog?’

  ‘Broad and beautiful nature,’ replied John, continuing in ‘trained soldier’ mode. ‘Only please bury your produce. Camp hygiene, you know!’

  Snigger, snigger, snigger at the scatology involved.

  The Brotherhood of the Hunted

  A long afternoon of waiting around followed. Lunch involved the exploratory opening of one of the Moroccan tins and the tentative testing of its weird contents, which turned out to be rice wrapped up in oily green leaves.

  ‘Pretty yukky!’ said John. ‘But, well, it’s fuel for tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s that slimy, like,’ replied Jim, ‘that it’ll jus’ gan straight through yers and yer’ll have ter start all over again.’

  Visits to the bog. Crude laddish comparisons. ‘I’m a bit liquid, how about you?’

  ‘Ah shuddup!’ exclaimed Tracy. ‘You lads is ever so coarse! There’s ladies h
ere, yer knaa.’

  Isolated amid the sprawling mountain grandeur, the disparate little group started to bond. Jim’s haughty reserve melted – just a little. He began to reveal something of himself; not much, but just a few little nuggets. His father was a Geordie miner who’d served in the Durham Light Infantry in the war and won the Military Medal. A tough, hard-bitten and fiercely masculine character, he expected his son to be the same as himself, if not better. ‘Proper blokes’ didn’t waste time on ‘the arty-farty academic crap’ that they taught in school: they got proper men’s jobs like going down the pit and joining the army. Jim had to prove he was a hard man like his dad. That was why he’d volunteered for this expedition.

  He eyed John: ‘Yorra funny blerk, you! Ah canna make yers oot like. Yer talk posh, but Mikey here talks Geordie like, so what’s yer deein’ at the same school? Divvent make sense.’

  John gave a severely edited version of his life. His parents had been too busy to look after him as a baby so they’d sent him to live with his grandparents down south; that was why he talked posh: ‘That’s the way they all talk down there.’ But when they’d been killed in a motor accident he’d been sent to Boldonbridge to live with his mum and dad. All true so far! But they’d sent him to Greenhill School.

  ‘Hadaway man!’ snorted Jim. ‘They didn’t! Posh git like ye? Why, they woudda kicked the shite oota yers.’

  (A bit near the bone, this! Too true, they did… and even worse – much worse! But I can’t possibly mention that!)

  ‘Well, they tried, but I hit a teacher and got expelled. No school would have me, so that’s why I ended up at Beaconsfield.’

  ‘You hit a teacher? Hadaway man, yer never did! They chucked yers oot because them lads was kickin’ yer in, more like.’

  ‘No, it’s true.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I’d berra believe yer like. Yer looks reet soft like, but mebbie yer’s hard underneath. Anyway in this place we’s all mates. We gorra be, like.’

  They all shook hands: Tracy, Maureen, Jim, Rob, Michael, all of them. John revelled in it. The final breakthrough. Total unconditional acceptance. The Brotherhood of the Hunted – just as in the Lake District all those years ago.

  ‘You Shouldn’t be Doing This by Yourselves’

  Groups of European hikers passed them. A large French party appeared at the head of a cavalcade of laden donkeys. Seeing the newly constructed shelter, they stopped.

  ‘Êtes-vous Français?’ asked a tall, dark-haired man, intimidatingly professional-looking with his closely cropped hair, sunglasses and immaculate climbing breeches.

  ‘Non,’ answered John. ‘Nous sommes Anglais.’

  ‘Ah, you’re English!’ exclaimed the man, breaking into an excellent and well-pronounced English. ‘So, where are you going?’

  ‘Up Toubkal. Is it difficult?’

  ‘No, it’s easy. Just follow the path up to the hut there,’ the man replied, indicating the way. ‘And then up to those two big boulders, over the stream, and on up into the cirque you can see. But you’re very young, aren’t you?’ he added with a strong hint of suspicion. ‘Where’s your guide? You shouldn’t be doing this by yourselves, you know.’

  Alarm! Momentary panic! Discovery! Quick thinking required.

  ‘We’re on a training exercise. Our teacher’s down at Imlil at the moment. He sent us up here to make the shelter to test us. He’ll be coming along to inspect us this evening.’ (Hope he’s daft enough to swallow this one!)

  ‘I see. Well, goodbye. Bon escalade, as we say in France!’

  The cavalcade flooded past them.

  Profound relief! Narrow escape. Suppose he’d found out that we were alone and escorted us back to Imlil? Just shows how precarious our position is. We’ll have to succeed in climbing Toubkal!

  John looked across the valley and studied the route the man had indicated. Squeezed between two massive and frighteningly steep mountain bastions was an unwieldy avalanche of screes and boulders, pouring down from a big hanging valley in a monstrous flood of brutal rock. It was a kind of gateway leading up to an unexplored beyond. ‘Easy’, the man had said? It certainly didn’t look it! Fear began to nibble away at him… that ‘cloud no bigger than a man’s hand’, but seemingly destined to grow into something frightful.

  The Beyond World

  The long day finally faded into evening. The cool air became colder. It was time for sleep. As the others settled down in the shelter, John went out for a final pee.

  Immediately he was awed by the mountain grandeur that was enfolding before him. The sun was setting. The savage ridge that formed the western boundary of the valley was now a black mass, an imprisoning and threatening wall. Opposite it, on the other side of the valley and ablaze with golden light, was the gateway leading to Toubkal. The massive, enclosing bastions seemed to be almost pulsating, as if the brilliant light had actually breathed life into them, with each tiny wrinkle and knobble was lovingly illuminated, caressed even, by the warm rays of the sinking sun. The avalanche of scree between them glowed a gentle yellow and seemed to have become a staircase, which spoke to him in soft and friendly tones: ‘Come on, John! Come on! See what lies beyond.’

  And what did lie beyond? An easy path leading to the summit as the Frenchman had said? Or unclimbable walls of rock and snow, as Morris seemed to think? Triumph or humiliation?

  As he gazed at the gateway something happened to him. A strange and beautiful exaltation filled him, like that exaltation which had filled him during that midnight Christmas service back in ’81 when he’d heard that carol ‘O come all ye faithful’: ‘Yea, Lord, we greet ye, born this happy morning’. Like that wonderful and comforting exaltation that had filled him during that memorable high summer dawn in the Lake District the following July. He was looking at the gateway to the Beyond World, the place where everything was rational and good, where his perfect gran and granddad were waiting for him, bathed in the glow of… well… God. ‘Come to us, John, we’re waiting for you. Come. But not yet. It’s not time.’

  Tears trickled down his cheeks. For a long time he remained sitting on the rock above the shelter. Slowly, majestically, the light faded. The mountains disappeared into a dense blackness, but the sky still glowed: orange, red and purple, before dissolving into a deep blue. Then in the cold, clear air there emerged a dazzling display of stars; shimmering, subtle, immense. A vision. But a vision of what? Humbleness? Submission? The vision seemed to become a part of him. He seemed to dissolve into Mind. ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.’ Time, his time, was so utterly insignificant. The mountains seemed so fixed and eternal, but their time was equally small and insignificant. They were destined to be ground down to nothing. The stars and the galaxies above him, so seemingly infinite, but they too, destined to fade into nothingness. To be swallowed up in God’s time. ‘We wither and perish like leaves on a tree, but naught changeth thee.’ God’s inexplicable plan. The Mind of God.

  Loud Geordie voice: ‘Howay, Jonnie lad! What’s keepin’ yer? Got the shits or sommat!’

  Jerked back to normality. The contrast between grandeur and squalor. But wasn’t the Crucifixion like that? Repulsive animal degradation: pus, urine, excrement, stink, stark nudity, hideous pain, and jeering raucous yobbery alongside the ultimate in beauty and grandeur? There was a thought for the diary.

  He returned to the shelter and snuggled down beside Tracy, who gave him a long and sensual kiss.

  ‘Try not to get too horny!’ whispered Jim.

  ‘Not possible!’ he replied. ‘Just can’t manage it!’

  Too true! He couldn’t ‘manage it’. But not in the way that Jim thought; or, rather, the way he hoped that Jim thought. Lies, deception, more lies: lying about his real sexual wants – nay, cravings! – lying to Morris, lying to that Frenchman (‘Our teacher’ll … be coming along to inspect us in the evening’), lying to himself in the diary
he was writing (‘Snogged Tracy. God, she was horny!’) Crap, wasn’t it? All crap. His lies were like an octopus weaving its slimy tentacles round him. Could he ever cut free? Maybe, in that Beyond World he thought he’d glimpsed. But how could he possibly tell the others what he’d seen sitting on that rock?

  Grandeur and Banality

  A half sleep followed. A sort of in and out of consciousness, waiting impatiently for a morning that never seemed to come. In the end he could stand it no longer and crawled out into the cool and silent night. The moon had set leaving a velvety blackness, speckled by a glittering immensity of stars. Again he had had that sense of time, of eternity and the inscrutable mind of God.

  Of the mountains there was nothing, just a deep, black nothing. Then came an Act of Creation, as if the old Bible legend really was true after all and the fully developed world had just emerged out of nothing. Slowly – ever so slowly – the blackness above him lightened and became blue. The stars faded and out of the black nothingness below rugged mountains emerged. Boulders and cliffs appeared. The sky became red and then blue. Suddenly the mountain wall to the west blazed up with a fiery red as if it had been set alight. Away at the head of the valley the tangled, snow-streaked peaks burst into a warm orange.

  Stirred by the sheer wonder of the sight, he dashed back to the shelter. ‘Hey guys! You must come and see this!’

  There were a few grunts and wriggling of semi-comatose bodies as he rummaged around in his rucksack and extracted his camera. Scampering outside again, he began an orgy of photography.

  Eventually Jim joined him. ‘What’s happened? What’s up?’

  ‘Just look at those mountains! Have you ever seen anything like that?’

  ‘Is that all?’ snorted Jim. ‘Well, I suppose it is a canny bit pretty, like.’

  With that he returned grumpily to the shelter.

  John felt deflated. Couldn’t Jim see the sheer magnificence of the sight before him? Probably not. Probably he, John Denby, was a freak who saw things that other people didn’t see. Or maybe he was just a nutter. Set alongside that ‘other thing’, he wasn’t exactly normal was he? A depressing thought.