My kids never wanted to go, but once there, they always enjoyed it, ticking off what they always did in order: feeding the ducks; jumping over the stepping stones; having an ice cream, every trip a pilgrimage to the last.
Getting to the park was always the highlight, both because it meant it would soon be time to turn back, and because there was another cafe, a place to get penny sweets – most usually red strings of sugar – like alien seaweed that made them hyper. Because what’s wrong with being hyper once in a while?
The cafe was like the park, well past its best. It needed a new roof, but again this had its own charm. The menu was the roadside cafe variety, everything coming with chips, the man behind the counter looking like an ex-steelworker, only with a pinny on. The other cafe down the hill – the posh one – had once been like this, all chips and tea and eggs and bacon. Then it had been taken over by a young guy with big ideas, something that jarred with the regulars, who just wanted chips and tea and eggs and bacon. I remember being in there the day it reopened and listening to a gruff old man ask for a ‘chip butty,’ something you knew he had bought countless times from this counter, perhaps since he was a kid; something cheap, filling and decadent in a working-class way. The nice man behind the counter, who looked like he’d used the profits from playing in an Indie band to buy the place, scribbled down his order on his pad, then looking back up he asked: ‘Do you want that on ciabatta?’
‘Chu-bloody-what?’ the old man said.
A few weeks before I’d brought Ella and Ewen and a friend’s two kids, Phoebe and Harry, for a long walk through the woods that ringed the city, ending at the park and our favourite rundown cafe. There was a great deal of bribery and distraction involved to get them to keep walking. The highlight was finding we were cornered in a field of cows, the children’s whine of complaint cut short as they contemplated being trampled to death.
I’d taken these two kids out a few times, probably because their mother was separated from their dad and I could remember how little trips away were so important when I was young, even though most of these trips were a disaster.
I’d taken the four of them camping in Scarborough that summer, turning up at a family campsite where everyone else had tents bigger than my house complete with generators and satellite TV. I wondered why people even bothered going camping like that. Why would they bring all their crap with them when camping was about leaving it all behind?
Unfortunately, I was further outclassed when I realised I’d forgotten to bring the outer for the tiny tent I’d hoped to squeeze us into. I’d also forgotten the tent pegs – and the stove. Discovering this they all looked crestfallen, and I was glad Mandy or their mum wasn’t there to tell me how useless I was.
It was the kind of mistake my dad made, the kind of thing I thought he did on purpose to test us. Now I knew it wasn’t a test.
Standing looking at these four kids, I just thought: ‘What would my dad do?’
‘Look kids we can either go home again, or we can make do, but I promise you if we make do you’ll never forget it,’ an observation that could be taken either way since the best and worst memories are equally memorable.
‘Let’s go home,’ they all said, screwing up their faces.
‘Let’s stay, it’ll be great.’
‘No let’s go home.’
‘No let’s stay,’ I said ‘I’ve lost the car keys.’
At last they agreed to stay, tricked by my confidence that things would work out, then watched as I failed to make a flysheet out of bin bags and gaffer tape, then use our cutlery as tent pegs. I cooked on a barbecue improvised from a baking tray I found in my car, last used as a snow shovel, and some scrounged charcoal.
I’d also forgotten to bring a torch – the list of forgotten items was now longer than the gear I’d remembered – but having some candles I made lanterns out of beer cans, peeling a window in the side and tying some string to the ring pulls, before sending them off to explore in the dark, like mini-miners.
‘Cool. Where did you buy that from?’ asked a child from the next tent over.
‘My dad made it,’ said Ella. ‘He climbs mountains.’
Very soon the campsite was full of kids pestering parents sat watching television in deluxe nylon palaces for lanterns just like those belonging to the kids from the bin-bag tent.
That night, with no tent to sleep in, we all just slept in a line under the stars in our sleeping bags, watching real satellites cross the sky beneath a flysheet of stars. It was a night they never forgot.
On our trip to the cafe things also went wrong. As they stood outside salivating at the menu, I realised I’d dropped the ten-pound note I’d brought to pay for it all. In the end we managed to scrape together enough money to buy a bag of stale bread meant for ducks, not children, and fed them that instead, telling them that ‘a chip butty would be nice, but at least you’ve got a story you can tell the rest of your lives, kids.’
In the park, Ella and Ewen liked to be pushed on the swings, going higher and higher, higher than the other kids, beyond the boundary that neurotic parents feared to cross. I always wondered if I was a bad father, and I suppose it’s the curse of the modern parent to fear such things. I’m sure my parents didn’t even think about it; life was for getting through, without worry about such things. As long as you were healthy that’s what mattered – even if you had a few broken arms.
I usually felt surrounded by parents feeding their kids carrot sticks and rice cakes, their children dressed immaculately, while mine always looked well used. I have to admit I didn’t care about such things, feeding my kids what I ate and assuming that scruffy hair or muddy trousers were no bad things.
Flying high on the swings they were always safe. They knew the danger, and the closer they got to the limits, the tighter they hung on. Centrifugal force did the rest. I’d always believed, like my dad, that exposure to some danger is the best way to stay safe. I avoided stair gates and leashes to rein in my children, knowing that one day the stair gate would disappear and the pull of the leash would be gone. Falling down stairs is a right of passage, and anyway, kids are much more bendy and bouncy than we give them credit for.
After the swings came the roundabout, where the aim was to spin it at dizzying, death-defying speed. I always felt a stab of guilt when pushing the roundabout. I’d once ganged up on my school friend Surjit Singh, tying him to a roundabout then started making it go faster and faster. Unable to get off he was forced to hang on for dear life. Unfortunately this wasn’t enough for me, and I grabbed his foot as he sped past and he fell off. With his hands tied to the bars, his body dragging on the ground finally brought the roundabout to a standstill, his trousers ripped and knees bloody.
You’d be forgiven for thinking me a sadistic racist, but most kids have similar tales of torture hidden in their past, moments when they stepped over a boundary and took things too far. Twenty years later, having not seen Surgit since leaving school, I bumped into him in a supermarket while visiting my mum in Hull. There aren’t many Sikhs in Hull, so he was easy to spot, and we swapped the embarrassed pleasantries most people do when faced with their past, seeing in the other’s eyes how much they themselves have changed. Before we said our goodbyes I said sheepishly: ‘Do you remember that thing on the roundabout?’ He replied without a moment’s hesitation: ‘Yes.’ He’d never forgotten it. All I could say was sorry.
With the roundabout’s appeal exhausted, we went over to the slide, standing like an Olympic ski jump, swooping down the hill, its curve flattening out into a long silver runway that ran into the centre of the playground. In the past Ewen had always been down sat on my knee, but it seemed fine for him to go down on his own this time.
The slide cut through deep bushes, giving a real sense of exposure and excitement at the top, the chute dropping away. Even as an adult I’d sometimes grip the sides to slow myself down. Ella went first, with clear instructions to catch Ewen at the bottom. She slid off with a whoop, rocketing down
to the end. Now it was Ewen’s turn. He climbed up the final few steps and shuffled to the edge. That day he was dressed in a shiny one-piece waterproof suit, which allowed me to carry him by the scruff of his neck when crossing the road, the way a dog carries a pup, and also allowed him to get dirty with impunity.
Unfortunately I failed to take into account the lack of friction such a suit would offer until it was too late.
The second he went over the edge, I knew he was going too fast. He shot down like a red bullet, hitting the final straight where he was meant to slow with no apparent change in velocity, barrelling towards Ella, who stood ready to field him. Instead of stopping he rocketed off the end, hitting Ella in the stomach with his feet and knocking her over like a skittle. Ewen flew across the rubber matting and rolled dramatically to a stop.
The whole playground went quiet, all eyes on the two bodies lying on the floor. Mums rose from seats, kids froze on their rides, swings slowed, their grown-up attendants distracted.
Then there was a giggle, followed by a second one, as Ella and Ewen began to laugh. Ewen stood up, performing a drunken wobble. Ella was now laughing hysterically.
‘Who are those children with?’ said a voice below in a clipped and concerned tone, the park seemingly suddenly full of mothers with stern expressions.
‘Come on kids,’ I said, sliding down myself, feeling the disapproving eyes of perfect parents boring into me. ‘Lets go and have some chips.’
SEVEN
Fear
January 2003
East Midlands was busy in a regional airport kind of way. Ian and I were doing the usual hustle to get our heavy bags through check-in without paying an excess baggage charge. Neither of us was as skint as we had been a year ago, so this was now more about pride than necessity.
Mandy had given us a lift that morning for our flight to Geneva at the start of a two-week winter trip to the Alps. Ian wedged in the back between Ella and Ewen’s child seats. Now she and the kids hung around me as I stood in the queue, Ella pulling my rucksack across the floor as we inched forward.
‘I’ll stick it on the trolley, Ella,’ I said, seeing her struggle.
‘It’s okay Dad, I want to help you,’ she said, stubbornly pulling at the shoulder straps.
We sat in the cafe watching the departure times, waiting for the moment to go through, drinking tea and talking, the kids sat on both knees. I’d have preferred to have just gone through and got this over with, only it seemed rude to cut and run after being given a lift. In the past I had wanted to get on with it, partly to begin something I had spent so long thinking about, but also to escape Mandy and the kids, to leave real life behind, put on my Superman costume and fly away.
Now it was different. Leaving the kids made me feel physically sick, as though the moment of leaving was toxic, and the only antidote to stay or to go. It had never been like this before.
Mandy chatted to Ian about his love life, listing her friends to see if she had any she could set him up with, her love matches often working out well. Ian wasn’t interested. I kept introducing him with the words: ‘This is Ian. He’s a bachelor, but he’s not gay,’ which I don’t think he really appreciated.
Mandy liked Ian because he wasn’t the same as ‘most climbers’, by which I assumed she meant he wasn’t judgmental that she wasn’t a climber herself. Climbers, like any mildly obsessed clique, can be dismissive of anyone not part of their group. The same happens with Christians, golfers, and real ale drinkers, even people with kids, all dismissing ever so slightly anyone who isn’t following the one true path.
Ella gave me an unexpectedly fierce hug.
‘What is this for?’ I said, looking down at her hair, face pressed against my chest.
‘Wanted you to know I love you, Dad.’
‘I know you do daft head,’ I said, hugging her back.
‘Dad, how long will you be?’ she asked.
‘Erm,’ I said, trying to work it out, ‘about twenty-two sleeps.’
‘That’s too long,’ she gasped. ‘Why do you have to be away so long?’
‘It takes a long time to climb up a big mountain. It’ll go quickly, don’t you worry.’
I thought back to when I was a kid waiting for my dad, and how long a single day could seem when you knew he would be coming, even a single hour. I would stand on a chair and look out the kitchen window of the flats we lived in, willing his car to appear around the corner, every one that wasn’t his a provocation for disappointment, wanting him with every part of my little being, until I felt ill with want. When I heard people singing songs about being lovesick I knew what it meant – to not have the thing you want more than anything else, heart and soul.
‘I have to go climbing, it’s my job,’ I said looking down at her sad upturned face. She nodded to show she understood. ‘I don’t have a normal job Ella, but that means I’m around much more than a normal dad.’
‘But why do you have to go away so much?’ she said.
I felt irritated, it was like talking to bloody Mandy, and I wondered what she said to the kids when I was away.
‘I don’t go away that much,’ I said, knowing that each trip away was probably remembered like a wound. ‘I’ll get you a nice present when I come back,’ I added, feeling guilty for the offer, imagining that a child could be bought off so easily.
I told myself that kids were easily distracted arch-manipulators, and that as soon as I was gone they’d forget me. I looked up at the TV screen, now wanting to be away, to escape from the grip this child had on my heart.
‘I think we should go through,’ I said, the words awkward and uncomfortable, tickling Ella to get her to let go, only for her to slip down and hug my leg. Ewen copied her.
We walked down the corridor to the security desk and I kissed everyone goodbye, lifting Ella up and giving her a hug. She smelt of shampoo and fabric softener. Of home. I didn’t want to be home, I wanted to be in the mountains. I’d been home too long. And yet it would be so easy to stay, to live a life like that smell.
‘Be good for your mum,’ I said, putting her down and lifting up my rucksack. ‘I’ll ring,’ I said, kissing Mandy, who formed up with the kids, Ewen balanced on her arm, Ella holding her hand, everyone waving, Ewen with wild abandon, Mandy with a forced sense of duty, Ella with sadness.
Passing the desk, I began zigzagging through the maze of tapes funnelling passengers towards the x-ray machines, smiling and waving back, eager to pass beyond the screens so they couldn’t see me anymore, wanting to run, seeing Ella still waving when I ducked behind the screen, free of them at last.
It was time to focus on climbing.
‘Dad!’ Ella screamed. ‘Daddy.’ Her voice was full of tears.
I ran back, zigzagging through the tape again, past confused passengers, until I saw her, straining against Mandy, her face red, crying. I lifted her up and hugged her tight, feeling her little damp cheeks pressing hard against my neck.
‘Don’t go dad,’ she said, her face pressed hard into my chest.
‘I’ll be back soon, I promise.’
‘Don’t go dad,’ she said again.
‘I have to,’ I said.
As the plane lifted off I had the usual feeling of roller coaster weightlessness in my belly, only this time it stayed there the whole flight. All my thoughts were about Ella and if she was okay. I told Ian that she’d be fine five minutes later, and that going to the airport had been a bad idea, wondering if sprinting out of the front door was in fact any better.
‘How does that make you feel?’ asked Ian, no doubt intrigued by what it’s like to be a father.
‘It makes me think that my time is nearly up,’ I said.
We arrived in Chamonix in early January, the valley locked down with serious cold, the wind blowing from the north. No one was climbing, but with both of us unable to ski, the only way for us was up.
We found some floor space in a flat rented by Kenton Cool and his New Zealand girlfriend. I had known Kenton
for a long time without ever feeling comfortable around him, but he’d climbed a lot with Ian and they got on well, which made me think how I felt about Kenton was no fault of his. He, like almost every good climber I knew, was training to become an alpine guide and therefore skiing every day in order to get up to scratch. He was living the dream. I was on holiday. Maybe that’s why I felt the way I did.
I envied Kenton more than Ian, because while Ian’s climbing life was a success, everything else about him always seemed a little chaotic. Kenton seemed to be better at juggling, always having an attractive girlfriend, going on trips, working and having money, and generally enjoying a well-balanced life. He could come across as brash and a little arrogant, but I guessed that was show, and underneath he was as unsure of himself as most other good climbers, a characteristic that fuelled his ambition just as it did mine. He had something to prove, maybe as much to himself as anyone else, and no doubt it was this that helped propel him to the super-guide status he achieved in the years that followed, taking clients up Everest more than half a dozen times. Whatever made Kenton tick it seemed to be working out.
Kenton could always wind me up, pushing my buttons, forever on the attack, probing for any weakness. I guessed it was because he knew he was better than me, and it irked him that I still climbed hard routes and got some credit. People like me are annoying, but our flaws are always visible so it’s easy to shoot us down and restore the balance.
A few winters before we’d gone into the Northern Corries in the Cairngorms, climbing with different partners. Dick Turnbull and I had done White Magic, a much sought-after grade VII mixed route, and one I’d heard Kenton had failed on. We got up it quickly and so had time for a second route, The Message, a classic grade V. Walking down we met Kenton and his partner and told him what we’d been up to. You could hear in his voice that he didn’t believe it was possible for us to have pulled off two hard routes in such a short space of time. It was still daylight. He was silently enraged. Despite being the best climber there that day, he hadn’t climbed the hardest route. Back then we hadn’t been that far apart. Now he was pulling away and because of that I resented him his brash confidence.
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