Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  ‘Jesus, not more Pakkie crap!’ growled Jim.

  ‘Ah can’t take much more o’ this!’ sighed Rob.

  Wearing an expression of affronted professionalism, Morris muttered to himself about ‘appropriate safety standards’.

  John winced and bit his tongue.

  Supper followed: tagine, dates and dry Moroccan bread. Old women in veils cleared it all up and disappeared down the ladder to their proper place among the animals. Then they all snuggled down to sleep on the cushions. The window shutter was closed and the oil lamp turned off. A seemingly solid blackness enveloped them.

  An Ancient Pagan Rite, or Plain Depravity?

  Almost at once, John began to dream strange and violently coloured dreams. He was part of a traffic island in the middle of Boldonbridge, full of brilliant flowers. All around him was a maelstrom of roaring motor cars and lorries. Indeed he, too, was a motor car. Then he emerged into semi-consciousness. The traffic island and its roaring traffic was inside him… the screeching of the tyres, the frantic revving of the engines as the cars surged away from the traffic lights. Up and down, careering round the corners.

  Then came a ghastly realisation. A massive internal eruption was imminent, at any moment now! It was get out quick before the explosion blasted out of him with appalling consequences. A crazy kaleidoscope of events followed, one after the other, so fast as to be almost simultaneous, a video fast-forwarded at lunatic speed.

  Stagger through the black void, treading on unseen human obstacles. Uproar.

  ‘Gerroff me legs!’

  ‘What the fuck!’

  ‘Mind yersell!’

  Stumble to the ladder. Go crashing down into the soggy straw below. Tangled up with stinking, bleating sheep. Still, by a desperate hair’s breadth, managing to keep the tidal wave at bay. But pressure mounting with every second… Dam creaking… See the door, a jet black rectangle outlined by the dark blue frame of the night sky. Oh God, it’s fucking locked! Bang furiously, ‘Lemme outa here!’ Angry old woman emerges from the blackness. Screeches in some unintelligible lingo. Get on and open the door, you silly old cow! Door finally opened. Out into the night.

  Then suddenly an appalling, irredeemable catastrophe. The dam burst. Out poured the tidal wave. On and on it went. A disgusting brown slurry all down his jeans, onto his trainers, all over the back of his shirt… stinking and repulsive, squalid and utterly degrading. The worst had happened.

  Now what? He couldn’t go back inside like this. He had no spare clothes to change into. He’d given them all to the greedy, grasping, effing, bloody locals on Toubkal. Jim and Rob wouldn’t have done that. No way! Only posh, poofter, soft-as-shit Denby would have been that stupid! Final destruction faced him. Jim and Rob would rip him to pieces, revelling in his degradation; the girls would laugh at him; Steadman would jeer at him. He’d gone back to that nightmare of early childhood: the small boy who’d messed himself in the classroom and dared not tell the teacher and who could only wait in dread for the awful mockery that would come when his classmates found out. The pitiless cruelty with which children attack helpless prey. He sat down on a nearby rock and desperately tried to stop himself crying. Minutes turned into hours.

  Suddenly, Steadman’s angry voice boomed out of the darkness. ‘Who’s there? What’s going on?’

  A torch beam picked him out. Discovery. Final doom! Accusing voice.

  ‘John! What the hell are you doing? Is this another of your little games?’

  He didn’t answer – what could he say?

  ‘Come on back to bed! Can’t have you wandering around at night and causing trouble. There’s been quite enough of that already!’ Had Morris been getting on to him about expedition discipline?

  ‘Can’t!’

  ‘Don’t you “can’t” me, young man! We’ve had more than enough of your oversized ego in the last few days! Move!’

  ‘Can’t! Won’t!’

  ‘Look, do I have to get physical!’

  The tears finally trickled. In his utter degradation it was unconditional surrender.

  ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Bob!’ he spluttered. ‘Give over! If you must know I’ve shat myself, big time. Dunno what to do! I’m so ashamed. So ashamed!’

  He waited for the inevitable crushing sneer. But oddly enough, it didn’t come. Instead, Steadman became gentle and reassuring. Back, indeed, into his former paternal mode.

  ‘I see. Well, you’d better get changed into some clean clothes.’

  ‘Haven’t got any. I gave them all away to the locals on Toubkal. I thought I was being Christian.’

  ‘So, indeed, you were, young man. But don’t worry, I’ll give you some of mine. In the meantime you’d better clean yourself up.’

  ‘How? Where?’

  ‘There’s a stream down there. I’ll help you. Come on, get up.’

  He staggered to his feet and winced in horror as the obscene slurry slithered down his legs and spilled out over his trainers. Taking him by the hand, Steadman led him into a grassy, tree-lined gully where a small stream glimmered in the soft moonlight.

  ‘Come on, don’t be shy. Get these filthy things off.’

  In his state of total dependency – as helpless as a sick child or a bed-ridden old man – he obeyed, appalled at the disgusting mess that was revealed. How illness humiliated you and reduced you to the level of a baby in a pushchair! Had he ever fallen quite so low? No. At least, not since…. well, Greenhill! Starkers, like a baby having its nappy changed.

  Seemingly unconcerned by their sheer awfulness, Steadman put the mephitic objects into the water downstream and rinsed them out. Returning to John, he laid them out on the grass.

  ‘Now you wait here while I get you some clothes. Don’t go wandering.’

  Stark naked, John waited on the grass. As he gazed at the moonlit world around him, blue and mysterious, something began to stir within him. He no longer felt ashamed of his nakedness. A soft wind caressed him, soothing him as if some unseen spirit was wafting gently down from the shadowy immensities of the mountains above him, calm, timeless and infinitely wise. His naked body was not something shameful to be hidden, but a natural part of things. ‘Come with us! Come with us! Let the spirit enter in… Be one of us.’ A deep, quiet thrill welled up with in him. He gloried in his nakedness.

  Steadman returned with a bundle under his arm. ‘Here’s the things. But first, we’d better wash you down. Into the water.’

  In a peaceful daze he obeyed; not something the normal John would have dreamt of ever doing. But here it was… different!

  The cool water soothed him. The thrill increased as Steadman’s sponge moved over his body. A tingling excitement grew. Steadman seemed similarly affected. The sponge caressed the forbidden zone. Not forbidden now, but holy.

  Then it happened, in a wild, ecstatic explosion. The Demon – or was it the Mountain Spirit? – finally entered him, taking over his whole being. A deep, frantic joy, which surpassed all possible joys, wild, anarchic, yet at the same time deeply peaceful. It all happened… Then penetration… Not a violation, but something wholly natural. Meant to happen. A union of souls.

  In passionate embrace they rolled out of the water and onto the grass, kissing each other effusively. He was no longer John Denby, a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, but a primordial spirit, under a glowing midsummer moon in an ancient Thracian forest, dancing with a holy frenzy of a Demon-possessed satyr before Dionysus, the God of Ecstasy. A different and higher being.

  The moment passed. As he dressed himself in Steadman’s spare clothes, he felt a sudden spasm of utter shame and disgust. Flopping round and decidedly ridiculous in the oversized shirt and shorts, he became John Denby, the schoolboy, again.

  ‘We’ll keep this a little secret between ourselves, shall we, John?’ said Steadman. He, too, seemed shamed by what had just happened.

  ‘O
f course! Of course! I’ll never tell!’

  There was a pause as they sat down in the moonlight.

  ‘Please,’ said John after a while, ‘Why were you being so horrible to me recently? I mean what had I done?’

  An awkward silence.

  ‘Well,’ said Steadman after a while, you won’t believe it, but I was testing you.’

  ‘Testing me?’

  ‘Yes, testing you. Have you read the Book of Job?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you should. It’s deep stuff. God has given Job everything: wealth, a good family, the lot. Then, just to make sure that he loves him for his own sake and not just because he’s showered him with goodies, God takes it all away from it and gives him horrible diseases instead. That’s what I did to you. To see if you could still be good when things were going against you. Also, I was protecting you from the others.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, they don’t like you, and if I openly favoured you they would hate you all the more.’

  ‘But why do they keep calling me a poofter? I mean, you haven’t gone and told them about…?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what’s it all about?’

  ‘Look, it’s who you are, not what you are. Even if you were James Bond himself, they’d still call you a poof. Why? Because Geordie males are the toughest and most macho people in the world. You’re not a Geordie. You talk posh. Therefore you can’t possibly be as tough as they are. You are – shall we say – ex officio, a poof whatever you do. Don’t think they respect you for taking them up Toubkal or getting up that cliff on Aksoual. You were better than them and that shamed them. You destroyed their conceptual universe – Dobson again, I’m afraid – and they can never forgive you for that.’

  Another silence.

  Then Steadman continued, ‘Don’t think that I have violated you, John. What we’ve just done has been a religious act, a sort of Holy Communion. The physical expression of a deeply spiritual relationship. You’ve heard of the “disciple that Jesus loved?” Well, in that sort of way you are my disciple. All that I want to achieve, I see in you.’

  A pause.

  ‘You’re homosexual, John,’ continued Steadman in a calm, yet oddly ecstatic voice, ‘and don’t try to deny it. But it’s not a disease. It’s a gift from God to increase your spirituality. Among the North American Indians, homosexuals were regarded as shamans, men with special spiritual gifts denied to other men. And homosexuals aren’t poofters, either. Alexander the Great was homosexual. He and Hephaestion were lovers. In Ancient Greece the Sacred Bands of Thebes were some of the most formidable warriors of all, but many of them were homosexuals. The older men took younger men as lovers, and together they formed couples dedicated to prowess in war. That’s our relationship.’

  Another long pause.

  ‘But, I’m afraid, John,’ he said at length, ‘that this must be our secret. Other people will not understand it. If they found out, they would debase it. So let it be your secret initiation into the highest level of an ancient mystery religion.’

  They embraced and kissed again.

  As they disentangled themselves, Steadman switched to practicality mode. ‘Leave these wet things out to dry. Collect them in the morning. When you meet the others, tell them that you tripped up and fell into the stream on your way to the bog. Rob may have been a chicken on Aksoual, but at least he hasn’t done anything as daft as that. It’ll make him feel a bit better. By the way, take these pills. Double dose. We don’t want any more disasters. I haven’t any more spare clothes to give you. Now come on. Back to bed.’

  Normality Again?

  Back in the house, John was unable to sleep. His mind was a whirling tumult. The whole episode seemed so improbable. Unreal. Out of joint. From another dimension unconnected with his normal existence. In the normality of the darkened room, squeezed up against the gentle snoring heaps of Jim and Rob, the physical reality of what had happened filled him with shame and revulsion. He wanted to erase it from his mind: never happened, never could have happened! Yet that strange spiritual exaltation lingered on, whispering, it seemed, of the unspeakable joys of what one part of him found detestable. Was it an angel or a demon? How on earth was he to know?

  Eventually, he crept out into the night again. After a long time, slowly and majestically, a brilliantly coloured world emerged from the darkness, that seeming miracle of a Biblical-style creation out of nothing. Under the friendly rays of the rising sun the familiar landscape of rolling mountains, valleys and villages took shape. The dark and unreal world of the night gave way to normality. And not just a physical normality either: his relationship with Bob was back to where it had been. Things were on track again.

  Triumph for Some, Revenge for Another

  That day saw a magnificent hike. It was past a brooding lake lurking in a deep rubble-strewn canyon, and then up into a world of towering crags and wild, convoluted rocks. Then came a high, windy pass, a place of stupendous views of an unfolding sprawl of mountain grandeur and distant yellow deserts. And then it was precipitously down into the familiar valley beneath Toubkal, the Ourika Valley it was called.

  It was like being welcomed back by an old friend. It was down past the Neltner Hut on its rocky spur, past the scene of their memorable bivouac, home again into a land of glowing memories. The adventures, the warm comradeship of shared adversity, the improbable Toubkal triumph. ‘Welcome home, young heroes, we all remember you!’

  The old bond between the escaping vagabonds revived. Jim and Rob seemed to melt. The girls became effusive. They were friends again. Steadman was his old self again. Excitedly they all babbled out the tale of their great shared adventure, pointing out all the familiar landmarks. For John it was intoxicating.

  Only Morris was left out. There were no warm memories for him. Only a shamefaced reminder of failure and inadequacy that had to be expunged from his mind. Worse even than that, a guilty secret that must not come out. For the sake of form he had to pretend that he had been there; and also for the sake of his self-esteem and his future career. He knew that the youngsters knew, and he suspected that Steadman also knew. And he’d come to hate Steadman.

  Silently, he prepared his defensive position. Insanitary Berber houses, weird and unsavoury food, youngsters needlessly afflicted with debilitating and degrading stomach problems, a flagrant disregard for elementary safety on the Aksoual Mountain, John Denby’s revelations about getting stuck on a potentially lethal cliff band… it all added up, didn’t it?

  And there was more. There were hints – and more than hints! – of something not quite normal in Denby’s relationship with Steadman. He’d seen the lad going out at night. He’d seen Steadman going out after him. He’d seen Denby returning dressed up in Steadman’s spare clothes. They’d been out in the darkness for a long time. Again, it all added up, didn’t it? And added up to precisely what? There was ‘Madame’s Place’ down in the desert. It was quite obvious what sort of a place that was, wasn’t it? And taking a bunch of youngsters there? And just how did a supposedly holy vicar get to know a woman like Madame? There was plenty of ammunition here. The more Morris thought about it, the stronger his position seemed to become.

  Back Home. All Well?

  So, back to Marrakesh. A final two days of washing dirty clothes and scraping up the last remaining dihrams to buy a few souvenirs in the souk ensued. Then it was off to the airport and onto the plane.

  It was back to Heathrow, through the customs and into the frenetic hullabaloo of the Arrivals’ Hall. Here the expedition finally ended; for the time being, at any rate.

  Before they finally parted, Steadman and Morris went into a seemingly friendly little huddle. A little horse trading, thought John: don’t shop me and I won’t shop you. Then came friendly handshakes with Rob and Jim. Old enmities seemed to have been buried. ‘It were a great expedition, wer
en’t it, lads.’ Jim even allowed the girls to kiss John goodbye. With that, Morris led his group off to the minibus that was waiting for them in the car park outside.

  5

  Aftershocks

  Repercussions and Fallout: Something’s Up

  As Steadman led John and Michael over to meet Dorothy at the previously agreed rendezvous point by the currency exchange desk, John walked on air. He had so much to tell her. He had proved himself worthy of her trust. More than that, he had excelled himself. He was a proven mountaineer, a proven rock climber, a proven leader.

  Certain things, of course, had been carefully expunged from the prepared report, and, more especially from his conscious mind. They didn’t happen, couldn’t have happened, never had happened… at least not in this dimension.

  ‘Mrs Watson!’ boomed Steadman. ‘Here’s your baggage, all home in one piece!’

  Dorothy gave a start as she saw his bearded, sunburned face enclosed in its ragged blue turban.

  ‘Well,’ she eventually replied, eyeing the ragamuffin group with an unexpectedly disapproving air. ‘How was it?’

  ‘Great!’ replied Steadman, flashing a toothy grin. ‘Just great! Your lads were magnificent! They’ve really done you proud. John here is a real mountaineer.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she replied in a coldly measured tone with more than a hint of sarcasm.

  A frost descended. This wasn’t quite the effusive welcome that John had been expecting. Bloody hell! What had got into the old thing now? Not a storm brewing up? You never quite knew with these old trouts, did you?

  ‘Right,’ continued Dorothy in the same measured tones. ‘Let’s go to the car.’

  ‘I’d better be off now,’ said Steadman as she led them through the jostling crowds.

  ‘You’re not coming with us? I thought you were.’

  ‘I was, but I’ve had a last-minute change of plan. I’ve urgent business here in London. I’ll see you later in Boldonbridge.’