The Cruel Peak

by Gil Hogg

  He had hardly talked to Robyn of their plight since she told him. His silence was caused by shock; hers - it seemed - by an acceptance of the fact. Even when they arrived at the lodge at Ruapehu, having travelled in separate vehicles, they didn’t talk. She glanced at him occasionally from a distance. When he was unpacking his clothes on his bunk, she was a few yards away, chatting to a girl in their party. When he went in to lunch with Stuart that day, she came in later and chose another table, but her powerful, emotional, big-eyed stare rested upon him from time to time. He didn’t have the resolve to single her out and embrace her. He supposed he was reluctant because that would be like embracing the situation they were in; it would be a tacit acknowledgment of invisible bonds which threatened to tie him to her.

  For the first few days after Robyn’s phone call to him in Christchurch, he had nursed the bad news like indigestion, without thinking further than the fact. The implications which came to him increasingly were confused. He was looking for a practice - anywhere in the country, North or South Island - where he could make a good living; this prospect, so bright, was cast into shadow.

  The weather changed suddenly. On Sunday, mist closed over Ruapehu and snow began to fall. After breakfast, he moved Stuart’s car down to the Chateau park and walked back. In front of the lodge, a crowd of skiiers was hesitant about venturing on to the slopes in such poor visibility. The chairlift had stopped operating. Three people from the lodge, dressed in blue, had walked out a hundred yards across the snow. Their footprints had been obliterated; they were talking face to face, surrounded by depthless white. Their figures might have been cut from a coloured picture and pasted on a plain white sheet of paper.

  “You’re keeping out of the way,” Robyn said to him, in front of the others.

  Hastily, he suggested they go for a walk together. “It’s no use standing around here.”

  They headed away silently from their friends, Robyn a few yards in front. She set a course between a line of red poles at the side of the lodge which marked the hidden track. They peeped out from the hoods of their anoraks; large flakes settled on their shoulders like epaulettes, each of them in a silent cell.

  As they passed into a clump of trees, he caught Robyn up, pulled her back toward him, and tried to kiss her. His boots slipped. He bore over on her. She thrust her arms back to save herself, dirtying her gloves on an earthen bank. She looked at him disdainfully and then at her gloves. She wiped them across the breast of her anorak leaving a smear.

  “There!” she said, tossing her head, and walking a few steps to lean against a tree trunk. “Is it so terrible, having your life messed up with mine? You look so grim.”

  “There are… problems.”

  “You have problems? Poor you! Do you have any idea how I’m suffering?”

  “Yes, of course…”

  “What a damn misery you are, Tom!”

  She stamped her foot. She shook a branch and showered them with tiny crystals. The white-laden trees swayed around them like a sugar forest.

  He felt another stab of desire. If she was to have his child, he couldn’t help assuming a right to possess her. He grasped her shoulders. She evaded him and sat down on a stone.

  Their knowledge of each other wasn’t exclusively pleasant; they argued a lot. Occasionally, he disliked her, but certain parts of the past had been irrevocably made over to her, and if he parted from her, the memories would lose colour and value. What were they? Their physical intimacies, shared secrets about their lives, shared views about other people close to them, their adventures together, trekking and skiing, and going to parties. It was a hedonistic past, recalled in the belief that it could somehow be woven into a future.

  And there was an element of possession too. Robyn was known amongst their friends to be ‘his’; predatory males were implicitly warned off. He couldn’t help liking this. The knowledge that Robyn could have a future in which he did not appear except as a memory disturbed him. He had little idea that these thoughts might be a feverish confusion brought on by a young’s man’s desire for intimate sex, but he was sure that they did not add up to love. He couldn’t have defined what love was, but he believed his feeling for Robyn couldn’t qualify.

  At that moment, with her sitting disconsolate at his feet, whatever he felt, he ought to have said - as he understood in retrospect - ‘I love you,’ but he couldn’t bring himself to it. It wasn’t that he was averse to lying about his feelings. He didn’t have the will to use the words; they simply wouldn’t come, and he wasn’t aware what a fulcrum for future action they could be in the mind of somebody like Robyn.

  “You know how I feel,” was all he was able to say.

  She shook her head. “No I don’t. I don’t know at all. I love you. That must be obvious. I can’t give any more than I’ve given.”

  He then protested the strength of a feeling which he still did not actually describe as love, and wondered at Robin’s easy use of the word. She had given her body, but it was pleasure for her as much as for him. Now, she appeared to want to regard it as a sacrifice which evidenced love. This galled him, but he sat down beside her, put his arm around her shoulders, and crushed her against him. He declared his complete dedication to her in a low, determined voice, again without using the word ‘love’. She was inert.

  “My bottom’s cold,” she said, standing up, and walked on.

  They came to the bank of a fast stream rushing over blue stones. Snowflakes settled in the flow and were instantly lost. He threw stones at icicles hanging on the opposite bank and sent one or two knifing down into the water.

  He was finally and reluctantly coming to the words which had been passing through his mind. He had kept this statement in reserve. He always intended to use it, but like a new tool, it had to be deployed carefully.

  “Of course we must get married.” He made this sound like an unremarkable accomplished fact.

  “Of course?” she replied quickly, searching his face.

  “We really have no choice.” Again, he imparted a tone of quiet wisdom.

  “Would we have married anyway?” she asked, dully.

  “Certainly!” he said, because it was fruitless to speculate.

  But it wasn’t true that he would marry her if she wasn’t pregnant. Did she understand this? Marriage with Robyn, to him, had never been more than a probability. He enjoyed going to bed with her. He enjoyed having his cock in the Ashton family pudding, but marriage, despite all the material attractions… At the same time, he had to make this gesture, confident that it would right their troubles; yet she was unimpressed.

  To be pragmatic, marriage could be managed without too much difficulty for them and her family. It would involve Ernest swallowing his spittle, but that only pleased Tom; Stuart probably anticipated it.

  He patted her hair. She leaned against him.

  And the material advantages of joining the Ashton clan could not be denied. He wouldn’t have to work his butt off to secure a partnership; he would bring in valuable business to the law practice and the hearts of the partners would soften. He would be the envy of many of his colleagues.

  “I love you, Robyn.”

  He let the words out at last. What would be the point of withholding them if they were to marry? But it was a struggle to speak. He now felt he had made a very important pronouncement.

  She said nothing for a moment, to his chagrin. She seemed to implode. She looked away. “Oh, really?”

  “Of course I love you Robyn, you can’t believe anything else…”

  “Nice of you to offer to marry me,” she said in a hopeless tone, still not acknowledging his supreme commitment of love.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re not crying, are you?”

  He touched her chin, and tried to raise her face toward him. She resisted. Suddenly she snapped her head back. He was looking at those small features, her eyes dry and hot.

  “And do you suppose I want to marry you?” she asked in a ringing voice.

  He
believed he knew the answer to that. She most certainly did want to marry him, but she evidently wanted a declaration of love, proof of love, first. Instead, in this struggle of wills, he had devalued love by the advance proposal of marriage. In a way, this was what he had wanted to do. But it was so absurd. If he was prepared to marry her, why not start with a fervent declaration of love? Bringing love up in the rear, as a consolation prize in what would really be a forced marriage, was simply stupid.

  The sound of voices approaching interrupted them. A man and a woman kicked their way playfully through the thin snow on the track, their faces turned upwards, enjoying the flakes filtering down through the trees. Instead of passing, the couple paused and stood aside politely to make way. He made a friendly remark to them about a great day, but Robyn wandered on restlessly without a word or a glance.

  “Really, Tom, there are times when I hate you,” she said, when he came up to her shoulder. “You don’t love me.You don’t care about love. Marry you? If you think marriage will cure anything, you’re wrong. You assume marriage is the answer. It would be an inextricable botch. Your grand gesture! ‘It’s the thing to do’, you say. ‘We have no choice’. Never mind whether you love me! You smugly think you’ve solved all our problems, and saved me. Fool! My life is already badly enough spoiled by this thing, without twisting it beyond reason with marriage.”

  “Robyn, I thought…”

  “I’m not going to let an ounce of pulp in my belly ruin me! I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to tell anybody about this. Not a single living soul. You understand? Have you told somebody? Have you?”

  “No, no. I wouldn’t tell before I’d discussed it with you. But I thought we might need help, and…”

  “No, not one human being. I won’t suffer the shame. I won’t! I’m not going to let a moment of idiocy between us dictate my life.” She hammered on his chest.

  “It’s more than a momentary thing now. It’s a -” he began indignantly.

  “A child!” she screamed, “A child out of this nonsense! I won’t bow to it. I’m free and I’m going to remain free. I’m not a tearful girl to be saved by a boy play acting as a gentleman. I’ll have a child one day, but before then there are so many things I have to do. I’m not made to live my children’s lives. I want to live my own life first. I want to travel, get experience, and act in some of the most marvellous roles… You can laugh, but I’ll be good. I’ll succeed as an actress, no matter what the competition. I can feel the closeness of success with such certainty. I’ll marry eventually. Perhaps we’ll marry. I’m not going to be tied to you now out of a misbegotten sense of obligation. And I want you to be free too, Tom. I want you to choose your wife because you love her.”

  She was so assured, standing before him in her dirty white anorak, her gloved hands clenched at her sides, her chin jutting up challengingly. He was swept along by her enthusiasm; he almost believed that she had solved their problems, and he was relieved to be out of the gloom of marriage.

  The path led them out of the trees. They parted from the watercourse and went sharply downhill. The stream, now twenty feet above them, fell down a granite face, striking a projecting stone. As they stood below in the spray, he could feel the exasperation of the torrent, beating on the stubborn stone.

  6

  The cloud had cleared. It was the second day of his quest with Stuart for the mountain man. He could look up over eight thousand feet to the peak of Mt Vogel. 6:30am revealed a pink beak of ice gleaming in the sun, leaning into the bitter southwesterly wind, with lower slopes spreading like the wings of a vast gray eagle. That was the simile Stuart Ashton used once in an article in The Mountaineer, but now that Tom looked more closely, from where he was standing, the peak of Mt Vogel looked more like the head of a penis than a bird in flight; a stubby, erect penis with wrinkled testicles flaring out below.

  He slipped off his gloves, rubbed his palms together, and lit a burner with the spark from a lighter. An acrid smell of gas stung his nostrils and mingled with the chill of decay in the air. He held his hands over the burning ring for a few seconds and then poured water from an anti-freeze flask into a pan and placed it over the flame.

  While the water was heating, he closed his eyes and listened. He could hear the trickle of a stream and the hum of the wind. The mountain, seen when the mind was clear after a night’s sleep, was both intimidating and alluring. The prospect of setting foot where only a very few had gone before, and the risk that shadowed every step, still lured him; it lured all climbers. But there was more, admittedly; the distinction of reaching a summit; the knowledge that amongst mountaineers you were one of a small elite band. It wouldn’t be the same if nobody knew you reached the summit of Mt Vogel. The supreme endeavour concealed a lust for celebrity. Ernest Ashton had achieved celebrity.

  He wriggled in the down-padded parka, his skin beginning to warm. He flexed his tingling toes inside his boots, put two tea bags in each plastic mug with powdered milk and sugar, and poured in boiling water. He turned off the burner, replaced his gloves and, with the mugs, headed for the dome tent pitched between boulders encrusted with frost. He kicked at the fabric of the tent, dislodging a shower of powder. “On parade!”

  He placed a mug in the hand which appeared through an opening in the fabric; then, bending double, he unzipped the entrance further and eased himself into the blue light, smelling sweat and last night’s fried steak. He dug the toe of his boot into the sleeping bag in front of him.“I give you Mt Vogel in all its glory!”

  “Shut up, will you?” Stuart growled.

  The temperature inside the tent was below zero. Stuart dragged himself to sit upright, sipping his tea with the sleeping bag drawn up to his armpits. “Didn’t I tell you I don’t take sugar in my tea? I’m not a bloody plumber!”

  “And I’m not your valet. Be thankful.” He leaned over and pulled the flap of the tent open. “Have a glimpse.”

  Stuart crouched lower to get a view through the flap, then wrinkled his nose after a glance. “I’ll get there or die in the attempt!”

  The usually clean-shaven, serious, but not miserable face of Stuart Ashton was beginning to disappear under a brown pelt, emphasising his eyes in their deep sockets.

  “Not this trip, mate,” Tom said. “We locate the mountain man and return.”

  Stuart pulled the map out of his pack, an old map of his father’s. “You see the hut is actually marked, here,” he said.

  “Will the map be accurate now?” He was interested that Stuart was prepared to be open about this reliance on his father.

  “Should be on these lower slopes. Up there, things will have changed in thirty years.”

  The map was one of a set, very large in scale, and embellished with three dimensional strokes. The effect was attractive as well as instructive. “He’s quite an artist, isn’t he?”

  Stuart jeered, “A regular Wainwright. But it’s better than the Survey map and a more detailed one doesn’t exist.”

  Later, for breakfast, they made milk with powder and water and mixed it with muesli; they fried sausages and bread on the primus stove. They ate standing, stamping their boots in the moraine valley, as the mist which had covered the lower valleys lifted to reveal cathedrals of rock.

  Tom washed the pans in the stream after eating, and then splashed his face and cleaned his teeth. When he returned to the camp, Stuart had packed the tent, sleeping bags and other stores. They hoisted their packs. It was nearly 8am. The mountains had the drenched look of a land that had recently heaved itself up out of the sea. They headed up the valley, picking a course over the smaller stones. Their packs were loaded high and Tom found his footing unstable on the scree slopes.

  After two hours of stubborn going, with his head down, sweating, he called Stuart to a halt. He dropped his pack and stripped off his parka. They found a sheltered hollow and brewed tea.

  “I need this,” Tom said. “You’re pushing me, man. We’re not climbing Everest.”

>   Stuart took no notice. He was preoccupied with the route. They were ascending a rocky riverbed with steep walls chiselled out by the weather of centuries. The sparse grass and lichens had faded as they gained height. There were no shepherd’s huts or animal shelters here. They were at the edge of a lonely world of rock, snow and ice. And yet, if he looked more closely at the ground, he could see tiny sprouts of leaves, with equally tiny red and blue wild flowers between the stones.

  They had a short stop after four hours for a lunch of tinned tuna, spread on rye biscuits. After lunch, the occasional chocolate bar followed by a drink of water were sharply pleasurable; the rest was the exertion of climbing or the concentration of descending with their packs wrenching on unstable slopes. They went on until the sun was sinking.

  He began to think that they had missed the valley they sought. The area they wanted was a wide basin above a steep fall in the stream - assuming they were following the right stream. Ernest had clearly marked the map showing an old shepherd’s shelter, but that was thirty-three years ago. Stuart’s enquiries from the local tramping association had revealed that the shelter had actually been rebuilt by trampers in the years subsequent to Ernest’s conquest, and used by them as a shelter. The tramping association had ceased to maintain the hut about a decade ago. It was here that Stuart speculated that the hermit lived, or stayed, when he was in the area, and that seemed to coincide with the information they had from the Swiss climbers via The Mountaineer reporter.

  Soon, they would pass a place where their fathers’ expedition had camped. They climbed a steep rock fall beside the stream and came out on a wide moraine of boulders, smoothed by the water to about the size of a football. Before them was a higher level of fine stones, a bank pushed up on a curve by the force of water. They climbed the bank and instinctively headed for a steep wall buttressed by two flutes of rock about a dozen yards apart; it was a natural shelter. The rock face above presented no hazard of falling stones or ice.