by Simon Mawer
“And you fall off?”
He laughed again. He was so different today, so relaxed and familiar. “Occasionally. Unlike the White Knight, very occasionally, we hope.”
Diana peered upward. “I can’t see any slab,” she said. “Where is it?”
“Oh, the slab’s a long way up. You can’t see it from here.” He took the rope from her and paid it out onto the ground — what was the term he had used? Flaked. Another of those nautical expressions. He flaked the rope out and handed her the bottom end to tie on. “You remember everything from yesterday?”
“I hope so.” And she did remember, the rabbit coming up through the hole and going around the tree and disappearing back down, and it was absurdly gratifying to be congratulated on getting such a small thing right.
“Now, are you ready?” She was. He nodded approvingly and turned to the rock and began to climb, and watching him make his careful way up in his tattered flannel trousers and patched jacket, Diana thought what a wonderful thing it was to have discovered him, as wonderful as the discovery of climbing itself. After a while he settled on a ledge and called her up, and the thrill of yesterday repeated itself as she climbed toward him — a sensation of detachment, a release from things, from this bloody war that was swirling all around her and pulling her and her friends and the whole world into it: a rendering of all the complexities of life down to this simple problem of progression upward into the unknown.
“How’s it going?” he called.
“Wonderful,” she shouted back. A transport, she thought: that strange, utilitarian word that applied to other things than getting from A to B, something that lifted you out of yourself, carried you into a world of delight. She felt surprised by joy. The words ran through her mind as she climbed. Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind, I turned to share the transport…
She found him waiting for her, up there among the drifts of vapor. Far below them in Cwm Tryfan there were sheep grazing, like lice against the worn fabric of the hillside. This was a real mountain, not an outcrop like the day before. A real mountain, and they mere parasites on the great gray body of it.
“How did you find it?” he asked.
“Wonderful,” she repeated. “Just wonderful.”
They went on up, another pitch or two, Guy going up first, tying on and bringing her up after him on the end of the rope, the whole progress like the movement of a strangely articulated animal, a worm perhaps, or a leech. Hours were telescoped into minutes. There was a dirty blanket of cloud beneath their feet now. Occasionally the wind tore a ragged hole in the pall and allowed a glimpse down onto the scree slopes below the mountain. Otherwise they were alone on the cliff with only the rope between them as they climbed.
“How far up are we?” she asked at one stance, and he paused and thought, as though calculating it all. “About four hundred feet, I’d say.”
“And the slab?”
“Just up ahead there. The next pitch.” He went on up, and as he climbed the words came back, a sonnet she had learned for her Higher School Certificate, when she had intentions to go on to university, intentions that the war had cast aside:
Surprised by joy — impatient as the Wind —
I turned to share the transport — O! with whom
But Thee…
Wordsworth, wasn’t it? What was the rhyme for whom?
“Taking in!” he shouted down.
She let the rope go and watched it snake upward until it snatched tight against her waist. She called up, “That’s me!” just as she had been taught, and as she climbed up to him the memory returned:
with whom
But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb…
Wordsworth writing about his dead daughter. The words brought a sudden chill, and she was relieved to reach Guy once again, grinning and sitting on an ample grass ledge and pulling in the rope as she came up to him. “This,” he announced, as he tied her on, “is your slab.”
She looked up. There was a short wall and then a stretch of canted rock, like a piece of old and battered boilerplate, slanting up to an evil-looking roof of rock, a real overhang, as black and menacing as a frown. It was like being up under the eaves of a great building, a cathedral perhaps, with the gargoyles seen close up, and the leads slick with rain, and no way out.
“But where do we go, for heaven’s sake?”
“Oh, up and rightward,” he said airily. “That’s your Knight’s Move: up and across the slab and out round at the top. It’s quite exposed.”
“I don’t think I want to be exposed.”
He laughed. “Nothing to put your honor at risk.”
How long had they been going? Her watch told her almost four hours; it felt like a few minutes. The ledge was comfortable enough, but beyond its edge the cliffs plunged downward and all she could see were the lower slopes bellying out hundreds of feet below. And above, that horrid black roof blocking their way. For the first time she felt uneasy. “I’m frightened, Guy,” she said.
“No you’re not, not really,” he said, as though he knew her feelings better than she did. “Climbing is a matter of mood. If the sun were shining now, we’d be all sweetness and light. As it is we feel as though we are standing at the portals to Hades. But there’s really nothing to worry about. The slab’s thinnish, but it’ll go with a bit of care. You’ll love it, and the next pitch. Are you ready?”
“Might you fall?”
“My goodness, of course I might fall. And I’d probably hit the ledge with a most frightful thump, and you’d have to pull me back on board. Think you can do that?”
“You’re teasing.”
“I hope so.” He stood and waited for her to take the rope around her back as she had been taught. “My life is in your hands,” he said as he pulled himself up a crack directly above her, and although he had said it in the tone of a joke, she suddenly understood that it was so: if only for a few moments, this man had committed his life to her care. Should he fall it would be she who would have to stop him from bowling over the edge of their platform and going down the cliff, maybe to his death. She felt a surge of affection for him.
He paused at a large rock bollard and looked down on her. The slab lay to his right, tilted slightly, crisscrossed with veins and cracks, twenty-five, thirty feet across. From where Diana stood there was nothing beyond it: a space, a void, the cloudy air. “Straightforward up to here,” he said. “From here you can get a good look at the crux before you commit yourself. Climbing’s brain as well as brawn.” Cautiously, he moved upward and across onto the sloping rock. “Give me a bit more rope,” he called. “Don’t want to pull me off, do you?” He didn’t look down as he spoke. It was almost as though his words were an afterthought, of no real consequence. She paid out a few feet of rope and thought of him slipping, thought of the sudden slither of feet and a dreadful plummet through the air and the rope coming tight around her waist, almost cutting her in two, pulling her against her anchor and almost tearing her from the cliff.
He moved on, two, three moves. She paid out more rope. There was a moment when he paused and a moment when a foot seemed to slip downward at the same speed as he moved up so the sum total was no movement at all; then he’d found a side pull and a couple more footholds, and he was well above her now and seemed to have a good handhold so that when his feet slid a second time he could steady himself. She could hear him grunt with the effort.
“How is it?” she called nervously. He didn’t reply, but made another couple of moves and was suddenly on the very lip of the slab, over on the right, and he could turn back and look down on her.
“Oh, it’s pretty,” he called.
“What is?”
“You are.”
“I’m not interested in silly compliments at a moment like this.”
That mocking laugh. “The slab, then. Pretty greasy. Remember what I told you earlier: the important thing is not to lean into the rock. You’ll want to; you’ll want to hug it to you for comfort, but you mustn
’t. If you lean in, all you do is push your feet out. And that’s not what’s needed because it’ll push them off the holds. I’ll just be around the corner here, but very safe, so don’t worry if you slip. And I’ll be able to hear everything you say…”
She felt a sudden spurt of panic, standing there below the slab, with him at the top and nothing between them but the thin line of rope. “You mean I won’t be able to see you?”
“You’ll be all right. You saw the way I went. Just follow my line.”
“But I won’t see you.”
“It’s all right, Diana. You don’t need to see me. You have your own instincts to follow.” And with that he had disappeared around the corner and a moment later was calling to her that he was tied on, and the rope was hissing through her hands and up the slab. She scrabbled to undo her anchor as the rope came tight. “That’s me!” she called.
“Okay!” He sounded distant, detached, like someone going far away for a long time. “Climb when you’re ready.”
She began. She climbed up easily enough at first, and then paused at the bollard and surveyed the next passage. The rope ran diagonally away from her toward the far corner where Guy had vanished. Surely this was the hardest thing she had done, and yet, so he said, it was not hard. This was merely Very Difficult; but not “hard.” Hard was Severe, or even — whisper it — Very Severe, and she certainly wasn’t ready for anything like that yet.
“How are you doing?” he called.
Up to now there had been holds to grab and steps where you could place your foot, or at least part of your foot: hand and foot, you felt that you were secure. And now there was this stretch of cracked and lined rock without any of those things, just ripples and unevenness, and a thin slick of grease on them. “I’m looking.”
“You don’t climb by looking. Give it a go.”
She felt a small start of anger. “Don’t rush me!”
“I’m not. You just take your time.”
She moved. Her heart was in her mouth. Never had she felt the meaning of the expression so vividly. If not her heart, then something else organic: something thick and pulsating up there in her throat trying to force its way up into her mouth.
His voice came from beyond the edge: “Remember, don’t lean into the rock. Stay in balance on your feet.”
“I don’t need bloody instructions!” she shouted, and heard his distant, infuriating laughter in reply. “Damn him,” she muttered. There were fingerholds. Her fingers hurt on them, taking her weight, taking the load off her feet, which were clumsy and heavy and would surely slip. Don’t lean inwards, she thought; whatever you do, don’t lean inward. She glanced down to check her footholds, and as she looked, the clouds opened up and there was air below her, hundreds of feet of cool, damp air. She knew both fear and elation, those two sensations that were the Janus-faces of climbing. She pulled on her fingers and stepped up, reached out her right boot onto a sloping ledge and eased her weight across onto it. The rope shifted until it was almost tight again, not pulling her, but there like a ready hand. Except that it went up and across in a diagonal, and she felt that if something came unstuck, if one of her feet slipped on this greasy slope, she would swing across the slab and disappear around the edge.
“You’re doing well,” his voice called.
“You don’t know how I’m damn well doing,” she shouted back. “You can’t even see me.”
“But I can feel you. It’s like playing a fish.” The line gave a little twitch so that it tugged gently at her waist. “You see?”
“Let me be.”
“Like a fish. A whiting. ‘Will you walk a little faster? said a whiting to a snail —’”
“For God’s sake, shut up!”
He shut up. She stepped up and across again and discovered the same side pull that he had used, and went on without a skid, with the rope just moving up in front of her, with the edge of the slab coming nearer and the angle easing off slightly so that suddenly she no longer felt uneasy but instead felt confident and relaxed. And as though it were an echo of her mood, the sun shone through a break in the clouds, threw bright light onto the gray rock, and kissed the back of her neck with a moment’s fleeting warmth.
“‘There’s a porpoise close behind us,’” he called out, nearer to hand now, “‘and he’s treading on my tail.’”
She reached the edge, and there he was around the corner taking in the rope as she moved onto his exiguous ledge. He was smiling at her as though he were as proud of her as she was of herself. “And here’s my little porpoise,” he said. She came right up to where he was belayed, and he reached out his right hand and brushed the damp hair from her eyes and there was a moment of sudden, startling intimacy. “Did I make you cross?”
“A bit. I’m sorry I swore.”
“You’re a marvel.”
“Was it all right?”
“You were wonderful.” They stood on that tiny sloping ledge and looked at each other. It was one of those difficult moments when you are afraid to be the first to move your eyes, like playing a childhood game but playing it seriously, playing it as though it really matters. His eyes, she noticed, were an indeterminate green-brown color, paler toward the pupils.
It was he who glanced away first. “You haven’t noticed the view.”
It was only then that she looked around. The cloud base had lifted to discover a great ocean of space below their tiny perch. The glimpse of sunshine had left them and gone chasing across the far hills. She watched it go, picking out a slope of grass, a brown patch of heather, a gray outcrop of rock, lighting on things as if by intention, as if to show her what was of interest. The wind battered at her ears. Everything was below; the whole world was below. “Wonderful,” she said. “Language doesn’t do it justice.”
“Then don’t say anything.”
So they stood there together in silence, and it was natural that his arm was around her shoulders as it had been the day before when she had reached the top of the first climb. What was that called? Flying Buttress. A mere scramble compared with this. And his arm had been around her then.
They reached the top by three o’clock. By that time the cloud had come down again, and the day was suddenly dark. They struggled up onto the twin blocks — Adam and Eve — that mark the summit of the mountain and afterward ate their sandwiches sheltering in the lee of them, but when they set off down the North Ridge back to the valley, their luck deserted them and the rain came down, real rain, hard and cold. Guy pulled a waterproof cape out of his rucksack. “Will this help?”
“But that’s yours.”
“And I’m offering it to you.”
“We’ll share it.”
So they did, and the thing was ridiculous really, for neither of them kept dry and it was almost impossible to descend over the rocky ground together with the cape like a tent over the two of them, and by the time they reached the motorcycle, they were both soaking wet, shivering with cold and laughter.
“What Miss Sheridan needs is a hot bath and a decent afternoon tea,” he said.
“But she’s unlikely to get either.”
“Then get a change of clothes, and I’ll take you to the hotel where you most certainly can get both.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
He wiped the saddle of the bike and climbed astride it. “Why on earth not? Hop on.”
Why on earth not? It was difficult to formulate an answer really. There were many reasons, but they all seemed paltry as she thought of them. He started the engine and maneuvered around to face down the valley toward the youth hostel. “Well, what’s keeping you?”
So she climbed on behind him, and the racket of the engine drowned any answer she may have had.
The hostel was deserted, the rooms silent and cool. She breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God Meg wasn’t there. Even the warden seemed to have gone somewhere. She went to the dormitory to fetch some dry clothes and then scribbled a note and pinned it to the board by the desk.
Meg. Cli
mbed our mountain and safely down. Be back later. Diana
Guy was waiting on the gravel outside, the engine of the bike idling. She ran across and swung her leg over the pillion seat and settled into the familiar position behind him. Gravel skittered out from under the wheel of the bike, and they roared away up to the road. The deed, if it was a deed, was done. Fait accompli. Which she had long thought to be something to do with fate until she had looked it up in the dictionary.
Tea in the lounge of the Royal Hotel, Capel Curig, looking down on the twin lakes of the Dyffryn Valley toward the pall of cloud that covered the mountains. She had bathed in the bathroom just down the corridor from his bedroom and changed into dry clothes, and now they sat in wicker chairs, facing the view. There were other guests. One or two were in uniform, but most were people who had moved out of the suburbs of Manchester or Liverpool in order to avoid the bombing that everyone expected. Conversation was subdued, as though they were all shocked by the enforced move, by the whole damned inconvenient war. The tinkle of teacups provided a percussion accompaniment to tales of reduced services and unobtainable foods.
“What do you do?” she asked him. She knew nothing much about him at all, and now they had shared two days together. Shared and not shared: separated often by a hundred feet of rope, sometimes out of sight of each other, sometimes as close together on a stance as though they were dancing.
He looked awkward. “There’s a family business,” he said. “Shoes. Not very glamorous, I’m afraid.”
“What, the shoes?”
“No, you goose. Having a factory.”
She laughed. It was so easy to laugh. “At least it’s useful. And they’ll want lots of shoes now, won’t they? Boots.”
He shrugged. “That’s a problem, isn’t it? Should the family firm contribute to the war effort if one of the directors refuses to fight?”
She’d quite forgotten about his being a conscientious objector. “Will you resign?”
