When Nights Were Cold

by Susanna Jones

  Yet I worried about Locke and Hooper in their ice cave. They might freeze in the night or suffocate. I put my head out, let my eyes adjust to the dark. Snow was heaped up just where they had made their camp. I pulled myself from the shelter, tied my bootlaces and stood.

  The night was too big, too angry. I managed only a few paces. I called out their names but there was no reply. Silhouettes of mountain peaks grew grey in the moonlight and they began to haunt me, as though ghosts had entered and possessed them.

  Ice cracked like gunshot. I turned, lost my footing and glissaded some fifteen feet down the mountainside, with no axe to halt my fall. I landed on a soft ledge and lay still until I was sure that I had not broken any bones. The drop was too steep for me to attempt to climb back up in the dark. I wanted to cry, but I shook my head and ordered myself to stay calm. This was how men gave up and died. I dug myself a ledge in the snow and tried to keep sheltered for what was left of the night. The wind raced over me, berating me for my stupidity. I was at the edge of the world and felt as though I could be blown up to the stars or into the centre of the Earth. All I could do, and all I had to do, was survive till daylight.

  Voices muttered, nagged and wailed in my head all night, the voices of my family and friends and some I recognized but could not place. I had fitful rests, floating on water and occasionally dipping under its surface but never deep or for long. Sometimes the cold felt like a kind of fire, burning at my skin, my bones. When a thin light washed over me, I lifted my head to see the sky bubbling and grey, like a vast sea. A new voice called.

  ‘Farringdon?’

  Parr was somewhere above me. I pulled myself to my knees. My body was convulsed with cold and it took time to stand. I could see the tips of my hair and eyelashes, white with rime. I tried to call out but began to cough. It hurt my ribs and throat but I could not stop. Parr called out again and I saw her boots in the snow.

  Parr’s cheeks and nose were blotted with pink patches. Her lips were cracked and bled when she spoke. When I reached her she took my arm and led me to the white mound where Locke and Hooper lay.

  ‘I don’t want to see,’ murmured Parr. I shoved her out of the way and began kicking at the snow.

  They were curled up together in their white nest. Their faces had no colour. Locke’s hand was balled into a fist against her cheek. I knelt beside her, my dearest friend with her lovers and her bright green dresses, her room of flowers and her funny, ridiculous play set in the future. I had brought her to my world, without even understanding it myself, and what for?

  I dusted snow from her face.

  ‘Leonora.’

  Locke opened an eye, screwed up her face. She and Hooper were rigid with cold but they were alive. We helped them to their feet, hardly able to speak. Parr crouched in the shelter, made a fire from our last few bits of charcoal and some rhododendron twigs she had carried. We drank lukewarm tea made from melted snow and winced as the heat hit our fingers and lips. We gnawed on frozen bread and cheese. I rubbed my feet again and again, making sure that I could feel every bit of them. I let the tea fill my mouth and warm my throat and I watched Cicely Parr. She was staring into the fire, muttering something I could not hear.

  The sky turned blue and the landscape that had confused us in the blizzard became clear and bright with mountain peaks piling up to the sky, like giant cakes of coconut and cream. We were a long way from our route and would have to cross a glacier pitted with deep crevasses. Our limbs and joints were stiff, at first, and we could not walk but sat rubbing our arms and legs to warm them. When we saw distant clouds forming, we gathered our things and set off, all on one rope.

  The glacier was steep and each step sent pain through our thighs as we tried to dig in and keep our balance.

  ‘Will you be all right, Hooper?’ Locke asked.

  She nodded. ‘I think so. Don’t go too fast. My head is very sore indeed.’

  Hooper turned her back, crouched down and rested her cheek on her hand. I sighed. We wanted her to hurry so that we could get her safely to the hotel. She slumped forward onto her knees and threw up into the snow. She coughed and sobbed as we stood waiting, not looking now, not speaking. Locke and I fiddled with the rope and Parr pretended to examine a small stone as Hooper was sick again, this time with loud, painful retches. I wondered how we would manage if the only way to get her down was to carry her. It would not be possible, surely, but we would have to try.

  Eventually her breathing calmed. She sighed, shivered and wiped her face with both hands.

  ‘Much better now,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘No, no,’ we said. ‘You mustn’t be sorry.’

  She stood, stretched her legs a little, took some hearty breaths and we set off.

  Locke and I went first. We spoke about the night and how frightened we had been. Locke was behind me and talked loudly so that I would not have to turn.

  ‘I knew we’d be all right,’ she called. ‘But it was such a long night.’

  ‘I thought it wouldn’t end.’

  ‘You were brave to try and find us by yourself.’

  ‘Foolish, perhaps.’

  ‘No. A good friend.’

  It became impossible to make our way around the many crevasses and so we moved from the ice to an exposed area of rock where, though there was a steep drop, it would be easier to move. We decided that it would be safer to go in pairs. Locke and I roped up together. We didn’t pay much attention to the others but we assumed that they were roped up too. Hooper was, after all, moving slowly and needed support; Parr was the best person to look after her and the most experienced with ropes. Even so, we could have looked back just once. It would have been the correct thing to do. Locke and I were making our way along the edge, a few feet ahead of Parr and Hooper. We could hear their boots and their breaths. We moved as quickly as we dared, desperate not to be here any more but trying to be careful with our steps. The rope was like an arm around my waist, tender and protective. Each time it tugged, I was warmed and comforted by the knowledge of Locke’s presence, her weight as counterbalance.

  But the other rope was still a floppy coil across Parr’s shoulders, tied to nobody. When Hooper lost her balance and slipped, there was nothing to hold her. We heard a shriek and turned to see Hooper stumble backwards to the edge of the rocks, arms swivelling. The moment seemed to last as long as my whole life and yet there were not five seconds for me to run and save my friend. Locke was close to me. I felt the rope loosen. The sky seemed to grow wider, bluer. I remember Parr clutching her face with both hands, red-nosed, claw-fingered. I had one foot on a stone that rocked and wobbled, but I did not move because I was already too late. Hooper rolled off the edge and plummeted. I saw her knapsack as it turned in the air, smashed against rocks and bounced downhill out of sight.

  The church bells rang and people crossed themselves in the street. A small party of guides set out from Zermatt to find Hooper because we had not been able to see where she had landed. The hotel boy stood alert and pale behind the desk. I remember him staring at all the people coming and going with news. He gave us a frightened smile as we passed and later brought us cups of golden génépi to calm us. I think he must have stood in the doorway for some time, wanting to help us but not knowing what to do. I have a memory of his shadow at the door, finally leaving. The Matterhorn, hidden the previous day but now bold and clear, resembled the head of an old man, puffing balls of cloud from his pipe as though nothing had happened. I pulled the shutters over my window and banged my head against them, shouting and pleading for Hooper to come back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I took some bread and jam to my room, wrapped a blanket around my feet and sat at the writing desk. My pen hovered over the paper as I tried to think what I should say. A blob of jam fell on the first sheet so I screwed it up and tried another. I began to imagine all the letters I might write. Dear Mr Shackleton. No, but I was not interested in the Antarctic for now. I had been home for only a few days
. I needed time to think about the South Pole and whether or not I still cared about it.

  Another sheet. Dear Parr, but I heard Locke’s voice from her bedroom at the Monte Rosa accusing Parr of causing the accident. Locke was flat on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She said that Parr had not wanted to rope up with Hooper. She knew that Hooper would slow her down or make her fall, so she never intended to use the rope. I told Locke that this was too harsh. There had been no time to think, nor for Parr to do any such thing. She had forgotten to use the rope. If anything, the fault was with Locke and me for setting off without checking that the others were ready, but Locke raged through the night and the next day, sobbing with her pillow over her face. I thought that Locke exaggerated Parr’s guilt through grief – we must all share the blame – but her anger had affected me too and now I felt strangely towards Parr. I didn’t write to her.

  Dearest Locke . . . but what could I write to my friend? She thought that I was a fool and Parr a murderer.

  Dear Miss Hobson, my pen wrote. Yes, Miss Hobson would surely help. A job must be first. At the funeral Miss Hobson had been sympathetic to us all and had not seemed upset by the inadvertent burst of publicity we had given Candlin College. I continued the letter and enquired as to whether or not the teaching position in Bedford had been filled. A boarding school in another part of the country seemed just the place for me now. I could spend the holidays with Catherine and Mother but find some other kind of life for myself away from home. Parents and teachers would have read about the accident, but I could work hard and make them forget it. I put my letter on the hall table for Sarah to post.

  ‘Grace, is that you down there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I shouted up the stairs. ‘What is it, Mother?’

  ‘Would you come and make me comfortable?’

  Mother was propped up on her pillows, like an old-lady doll in her lacy bonnet, sipping pale tea.

  ‘The damp gets into my bones. It’s miserable.’ She clamped her lips together, sighed through her nose.

  ‘Would you like more blankets?’

  ‘They won’t make any difference, just weigh me down. At least I have you back now. I trust you’re staying this time. Not that I even know who you are any more.’ She looked at me with reproach and a touch of suspicion. ‘That dreadful girl who took you all up the mountain. It goes over and over in my mind and I don’t understand why you went with her. I always thought she was your friend and had a nice family who would be good to you, but she could have killed you as well. What a monstrous sort of person she must be. It’s terrible to grow up an orphan, even a rich one, but her aunt and uncle might have shown her a better way.’

  ‘They’re climbers too. I’ve told you that it wasn’t Parr’s fault and I don’t blame her. I’m staying with you now, yes, until I decide what to do next.’

  ‘What do you mean, do next? Is your life a game of gin poker?’

  My mother shifted her legs. Tea sloshed onto the eiderdown.

  ‘No, but I must have something to do with myself.’ I reached out. ‘Let me dry that.’

  ‘Never mind. It’ll dry by itself but my pillows keep slipping down. Would you put them up again?’

  She leaned forward and the knobbles of her spine showed through her nightdress. I plumped up her pillows and set them behind her. She wriggled and huffed.

  ‘To be racing up mountains when we have been wearing black and remembering your father, and I have been so ill. It’s extraordinary that we had no idea. You are certainly clever.’

  Cleverness in our house was always an accusation, not a compliment.

  The sky had cleared. Next door’s three boys kicked a large ball along the street and their mother called out. Don’t come back inside till it starts raining again.

  ‘Despite everything, it’s pleasant,’ Mother said, eventually, ‘to have you here.’ She shut her eyes and sighed again. A loose eyelash quivered and fell to her cheek.

  ‘You must have been lonely since Father died.’

  ‘Listen.’ Her whisper seemed to scrape the sides of her mouth. ‘The house is so quiet. It’s strange.’ The garden sparrows made a faint descant to the voices of the boys playing. Mother shook her head, changed her tone. ‘Did you see edelweiss on the mountains?’

  ‘Yes, a few. And much prettier flowers too.’

  ‘A lot of saxifrage, I expect, and gentians. I like those colours, purples and mauves. I always wanted to see the Alps, though not to climb them, of course.’

  ‘You’d have to go up to see edelweiss. They don’t grow on lower slopes.’

  Hooper’s family must have all her sketches now. I wished that I had just one of them to keep.

  ‘No, well, you could have picked one for me then.’

  I perched on the mattress edge. The room was beginning to look shabby. The wallpaper had once been the colour of bluebells but now it was faded and soot-stained, a clouding sky. At the ceiling, it peeled off and curled away, as though the house were still growing, and outgrowing everything my parents had put in it.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, was it, Grace? You would have saved her if you could. You’re a brave girl.’

  ‘I hope I would have tried if it had been possible, but she was behind me when she slipped.’

  And Hooper began to fall before my eyes, turning over and over, a tiny version no bigger than my fingertip, tumbling through the air of Mother’s bedroom, past the mantelpiece and towards the empty grate, and when my fingers reached out, sunlight caught her and she vanished. I blinked.

  ‘Mother, why don’t your friends visit?’

  ‘I don’t invite them. The neighbours despise me for being a widow.’ She twisted her neck and screwed up her face in pain. ‘I despise myself.’

  I took her hand and stroked her fingers with the tip of my thumb.

  ‘But they must understand that misfortune is nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘If my son – if Freddie had lived. Oh, it would all have been different. He’d be out working somewhere in London, bringing food to the table, making sure that we’re all right.’

  ‘But we are all right, aren’t we?’

  ‘Your father’s investments haven’t turned out well.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A large sum of money has disappeared altogether. Mr Kenny always told him to invest in the railways and I thought he had, but it seems he didn’t. We shan’t starve but we shall have to be careful. Mrs Horton has gone so we just have Sarah now.’

  ‘I’ll find a job.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m ill, Grace. I need a daughter to look after me and Catherine won’t do any more. I’m sorry about it but you’ll see what she’s like when you’ve been here longer. She just sleeps and sulks like a little girl. She’s hopeless.’

  ‘Perhaps she needs more interests outside the house.’

  ‘Try if you like but she hasn’t got any friends, as far as I can see. She has no ability to make any either.’ Mother passed her teacup to me and I placed it on the bedside table.

  ‘I thought I would go away, to teach.’

  She shook her head, slid down in the bed and pulled the eiderdown up to her chin.

  ‘You can’t leave us now. You’ll see how much we need you, and how lucky you are to have this safe, warm home and a forgiving family.’ The bedsprings squawked as she rolled away from me and disappeared under the eiderdown.

  Hooper’s death had been in the newspapers, along with sensational and inaccurate accounts of the four foolish girls attempting to climb in the Alps and, inevitably, meeting disaster. I tried not to mind about the newspapers since what mattered was to give an account to Hooper’s family and to Teddy, but it was painful to be criticized as though we had never seen a mountain or snow before. Our attempt to climb without a guide seemed to have sent the journalists apoplectic, as though they were all experts now. Women and men criticized us. They ignored the great climbs of Lily Bristow, Gertrude Bell, Annie Smith Peck, Fanny Bullock Workman, Mrs LeBlond, Lucy
Walker and all the regular members of the Ladies’ Alpine Club. One kind journalist pointed out that any mountaineer – even the most experienced of men – could be unfortunate enough to slip and fall and I was grateful to him. On the whole we were pitied, not blamed – it was the fault of universities and feminists for putting the idea into our heads, that such a thing might be done – but they were wrong in every way. We knew what we were doing but we were also, between us, to blame for Hooper’s death.

  The funeral was muted and confused, as though no one could understand how a quiet, feminine and sensible girl, who was embroidering pillowcases for her marriage, had ended up in a mountaineering accident. In my pew I dreamed up miraculous scenes where it was all a mistake and Hooper had not died. I remembered my argument with Parr about needing to rest but now I insisted that Hooper be allowed to stop, and so she survived. Locke, Parr and I stood together and sang ‘Abide with Me’ in feeble voices. We avoided each other before and afterwards. It was agony to be three when we should have been four.

  I left Mother to sleep. Catherine was waiting on the stairs. Her nightgown hung absolutely still. She had been listening. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, followed me into the drawing room, shut the door and held the handle behind her with both hands.

  ‘Grace, you mustn’t think of leaving. I need you to stay here with me. Do you promise?’

  ‘Well – I can’t promise. I’ll stay for a while, a few weeks, until I have a job, but then I shall probably leave.’

  ‘But you can’t find work if it means moving away. You see, I won’t be here much longer so you will have to take my place.’