by Stan Arnold
There was something slightly odd about the photograph, in that it was slightly over-exposed, as though there was additional rather bright lighting. Certainly, Mrs Hathaway hadn't noticed at the time, but when you’re rescuing an idiot, at night, in a Force 9 Atlantic gale, and you’re being attacked by a 20-foot great white, you tend not to take much notice of how well the scene is lit.
Mick and Jim were anxious to know the contents of Daring Dooz Challenge Three, mainly from the point of view of self-preservation, although it had occurred to them, that if anything serious happened to Mrs Hathaway, they could be stuck among the deadly flora and fauna of wherever they were, for ever. There was Zac’s boat. Perhaps they could get a team of ladies to drag it to the riverbank and repair it? But neither of them fancied their chances. Two miles, and they reckoned their designer tropical kit would be floating off to the South Atlantic leaving a whole load of satisfied piranhas in its wake.
Mrs Hathaway opened the letter, which was titled Daring Dooz Challenge Three - the Tightrope Walk of Death. Immediately, Mick and Jim re-visualised Zac’s semi-submerged, badly burned boat as the equivalent of a Cunard liner. But Mrs Hathaway was delighted.
‘Oh lovely,’ she cried. ‘I’ve never walked a tightrope before.’
‘Ah, but do you have a manual?’ asked Jim.
‘Of course!’
‘Shit!’
*
Unfortunately for Mick and Jim, the training tightrope Mrs Hathaway set up worked very well. She used some of Zac’s remaining armoured cable stretched between two trees in the clearing. The cable was only a few feet off the ground, but, as she explained, she was reading the manual as she went along, so she was bound to fall off a few times, and didn't want to hurt herself.
During her second day’s training, Mick and Jim had slipped away with Hamish to check the waterfall. Reading the Daring Dooz letter in detail, it appeared Giles’ flying minions had taken aerial photographs and spotted, not only the waterfall, but some sort of rope stretched across the waterfall’s edge.
Hamish explained. Apparently, some months ago, one of the village kids had fallen in upstream and been swept along to almost certain death. It was Hamish who managed to hang over the waterfall drop, hold out a branch to the terrified child, and haul him to the bank.
Zac came up with the idea of running an armoured cable across the top of the falls, so if anyone fell in, they could grab the cable at the last second, then go hand over hand to the bank. And so, last month, Zac had fixed this contribution to village health and safety firmly in place.
The trouble was, the village kids felt they could now dive in and swim full pelt towards the waterfall edge, knowing they could have lots of fun grabbing the cable at the last second, and hauling themselves to safety.
So the villagers agreed that the upper reaches of the waterfall were placed out of bounds to the under tens. And everyone, apart from the under tens, was happy.
Mick, Jim and Hamish sat on some boulders near, but not too near, the edge of the waterfall. The roar was deafening. The volume of water, immense. And the drop, terrifying. Clouds of spray billowed into the air, full of little rainbows and flashes of reflected sunlight, while down below, the water smashed relentlessly into an unpleasant assortment of jagged rocks.
‘This is not the place to bring your only pilot for a day trip,’ said Mick.
Jim didn't like the word trip, it conjured up images of a future when their designer tropicals would wear out and they’d be running round wearing loincloths and going on hunting expeditions in all that nasty green stuff.
‘Just one point, my dear Hamish,’ said Mick. ‘That cable must be four feet above the water – it’s got to be too high for a kid to reach.’
‘Two reasons,’ said Hamish. ‘One: thessa ridge just afore yer waterfall edge, so yon wee bairns can stand up to grab the cable. And Two: Zac was a lecky man, endev story, so this is pure mince!’
Mick and Jim had no idea what pure mince meant. But they understood.
On the way back, using sign language and grunts, Mick got Hamish to expand on his description of the cable arrangements in proper English. A rough translation indicated that he thought the whole thing was a rickety piece of old shite.
*
When they got back to the village, Mrs Hathaway had just learned to do her first complete back summersault on the low-slung cable.
Mick and Jim were treated to a joyous demonstration of her newly acquired skills.
‘Fuck,’ whispered Jim. ‘Who’s going to tell her?’
They both looked at Hamish and smiled.
And Hamish, in all innocence, smiled back.
Chapter 57
For the next half hour, Hamish sat with Mrs Hathaway and explained that walking the cable over the waterfall would be madness, impossible, idiotic and completely suicidal.
When he had finished, she took to heart his advice that the challenge would be easy, safe, impressive and in short, a piece of cake.
Mick and Jim only became aware of this communication failure when she showed them her design for the box in which cameraman Mick could be suspended below the cable.
‘It hangs on ropes attached to little wheels, which run on top of the cable. We’ll fix a rope to the box, and James can stand on the opposite bank and haul you across. You’ll go first, Michael, looking back at me. The box will be level with the edge of the waterfall, but you’ll get an interesting angle looking up - I believe Giles might like that sort of thing. And if you need more shots, like long-shots from the bank, I’m sure I can walk across several times, without the box.’
The first rule was to agree.
‘What a fabulous idea,’ said Mick. Then through gritted teeth. ‘When Steven Spielberg gets to hear of you, you’ll have a job for life.’
‘Who?’
Second rule: Move smoothly on to casting doubt.
‘But, you have to consider that a shot from a box below the cable, would give us exposure problems.’
Mrs Hathaway looked worried.
‘Light exposure problems.’
She relaxed.
‘The sky is so bright, the camera will be looking up, and you’ll be in silhouette. It could be anyone.’
‘But you could use an on-camera, dimmable LED fill-in light, you know, like a 70 watt Bescor or Vidpro,’ said Mrs Hathaway, confidently. ‘I’m sure I noticed one when you were packing away your video things at St Bernards.’
Mick made a mental note to find whatever video manual she was reading. Then, to guarantee her access to this information was completely cut off, made a promise to stuff it as far as possible up his own arse.
Third rule: Agree, but make it sound too complicated.
‘Of course,’ said Mick. ‘Silly old Micky-poos! Although I’m sure that the exponential relationship between the key light and fill light in lux, or foot-candles in old money, added to the variability of the f-stop light intensity ratios…’
‘But, surely, Michael, you could use a simple, collapsible reflector to fill in. A 42-inch would be fine.’
Yes, thought Mick. I’ll be squeezed in some festering tea chest dangling over a 150-foot drop, holding a 40,000 quid camera - and of course, I’d love to operate a collapsible reflector with my teeth. Perhaps you’d like me to play the banjo with my feet while I’m at it.
Fourth and final rule: Use the Health and Safety gambit.
‘Tallulah,’ said Mick, choking slightly, ‘I don't want to die.’
‘Of course you don't,’ said Mrs Hathaway, and with a comforting smile, she placed her arm around Mick’s sobbing shoulders.
‘Hamish has just given me his personal guarantee that everything will be fine.’
Although he had just flopped wearily over the end of his tether, Mick had to admire the woman. So confident. So assured of success. So completely invincible. And she hadn't even seen the fucking waterfall yet.
*
Jim, meanwhile, had slipped away to start work on the box. This unusual
level of industry was powered by the knowledge that he wouldn't be the one dangling over the drop. The sooner he got it finished, the less likely the mad, but lovely, old bint would come up with an idea that involved the sound man hanging upside down in the waterfall, with fifty gallons of primeval swamp run-off a minute powering its way up his nostrils.
He found lots of odds and sods in Zac’s leftovers, and soon had a workable Mick-mobile. The rope he would pull from the opposite bank would run around a pulley attached to the box. He thought the pulley idea was pretty neat, although this was a thought he would come to regret, bitterly.
An hour later, he gave Mick and Mrs Hathaway a surprise viewing of the box.
Mrs Hathaway took one look and said, ‘How lovely.’
Mick’s punch missed.
*
Violence was never Mick’s strong point. He couldn't hand it out, and he certainly couldn't take it. So, after a few harsh words, Mick and Jim decided to accompany Mrs Hathaway to inspect the waterfall.
When they arrived, the torrent was more thunderous than ever, the cable looked less secure than ever, and Mick and Jim looked more terrified than ever.
Mrs Hathaway surveyed the scene.
‘James. Michael. I simply can't see what the fuss is about. It’ll all be over in a few minutes.’
Mick was about to say that that was what worried him, but the look in her eyes told him he’d have a more positive result if he stuck his head under the business end of a steam hammer.
*
As Mick walked back to the village, his brain was boiling with murderous thoughts, which swirled around other images, such as crashing onto jagged rocks, trying to work out how to fly the Catalina back home, sleeping in a tent with only frozen sausages to talk to, and having to do hours of research into bloody Ealing comedies to keep Charlie Sumkins’ attack dogs at bay.
When they arrived back, he left the others and walked round the long house, where he bumped into Hamish.
They sat down on a log and Mick poured out two tots of Glenfiddich Urban Alternative from his silver hip flask, then poured out his misgivings about the shoot the next day. The box, the useless pulley system, the drop, the jagged rocks, the fill-in reflector, the dodgy cable with even dodgier fittings, plus the fact that, if Mrs Hathaway fell, they’d have no way of getting back to their friends.
‘Aye that’s reet tough,’ said Hamish, ‘but I hae to sae they’re the least of your worries.’
Chapter 58
‘Shaggin’ caimans!’ cried Mick his voice rising so high, the rest his next sentence could only be heard by the village dogs and a panther that was wandering around the jungle’s edge looking for lunch.
‘What the fuck do caimans want to shag for? And why tomorrow? Is every Tuesday shagathon day?’
Hamish unsuccessfully tried to calm Mick down by carefully repeating the nightmarish information.
He told him how the caiman breeding season - which only happened every two or three years - was due to start tonight, the night of the full moon, and that it would go on for a month. It involved male caimans coming down the tributary to mate with females gathered at the bottom of the waterfall. So, from time to time, caimans would arrive at the waterfall and launch themselves over the drop to the females waiting below.
‘So,’ said Mick, ‘let me get this straight. While we’re Daring fucking Doozing about on a wire 150-feet above a reptilian orgy, randy, 1000lb, man-eating crocs will be whistling past our heads every couple of seconds.
‘Aye! That’s aboot it.’
*
That evening, on the pretext of being terribly interested in flying, Mick borrowed the Catalina pilot’s manual from Mrs Hathaway. As he knew all along, it was mind-bogglingly complicated. And so, after 20 minutes, with his mind suitably boggled, he fell into a fitful, restless, twitching state. A state that an idiot, prone to wild exaggeration, might, on a day when he’d forgot his medication, call sleep.
On the other hand, Mrs Hathaway and Jim were busy.
Jim put in a quick satellite call to Charlie Sumkins to discuss the finer points of The Love Lottery starring David Niven.
Mrs Hathaway called Giles who was deliriously happy about the worldwide attention being received by the video of her rescuing Aubrey in the Atlantic, and it had over 20 million hits on YouTube, and Daring Dooz readership, worldwide, was up by 50 per cent.
He was also hyper-delirious about the notes, stills and footage Mrs Hathaway had emailed over from the Catalina flight.
‘What the hell was going on?
‘No idea. We just went into the fog tunnel then out - 3,000 miles in 15 minutes.’
‘But the stills and footage are incredible,’ said Giles.
‘And it fits with all the Bermuda Triangle/UFO-type stuff we’ve added to the magazine - but this was real!
‘Well,’ said Mrs Hathaway, who was rather uncomfortable with praise, ‘Challenge Three is all ready for tomorrow.’
‘How dangerous is it?’ asked Giles. ‘I’ve only seen the aerial photographs.’
‘Oh, quite dangerous, I believe. Mick says if I fall off, I’ll be pulverised on the rocks.’
‘Great!’
Mrs Hathaway didn't quite see it like that, and ignored his enthusiasm.
‘But I won't be falling off. I’ve done two days’ practice, including forward flips and back summersaults. And before you ask, I will be wearing the t-shirt and leather shorts with the thigh straps.’
‘With the knife?’
‘With the knife.’
Giles made a final request.
‘Yes, I will put my hair in a long plait, if you insist.’
Much to her annoyance, the £2million still exerted an influence.
Finally, she made a quick call to Aubrey, to blow him a goodnight kiss. The call didn't go according to her very short script. Aubrey rambled on for over 10 minutes about how he was playing bass guitar, and was practicing second inversion, diminished triads, adding the fifths below the root, and that Roberto had invited him to play with his band, as a warm up act at the Golden Legover.
‘Doesn't that break your bail conditions?’ she said, getting straight to the point. She knew the score, but wasn’t going to let Aubrey off the hook that easily.
‘Oh, er, no,’ stuttered Aubrey, ‘they got a special permit fing sort of signed by the, er, top man.’
‘Alright then,’ she said, and blew him his kiss.
She switched off the sat phone.
Aubrey might be a lying little toad, but he was her lying little toad. And anyway, it was nice to talk to the love of your life, particularly, as there was a full moon. And particularly if, tomorrow, you were planning to tightrope walk across a rickety piece of old shite over a 150-foot drop. It could be the last kiss you would ever blow to anyone.
Chapter 59
The morning was bright and fresh and, thankfully, there was no wind at all. From the far side of the waterfall, Jim had a clear view of Mrs Hathaway and Mick as they struggled to locate the Mick-mobile’s wheels on top of the armoured cable. He was treated to snippets of Mick’s impressive range of expletives, but otherwise all he could hear was the relentless thunder as thousands of tons of black water plunged relentlessly into the abyss.
Eventually, Mrs Hathaway gave a thumbs-up sign, then picked up a bow and fired over an arrow attached to a fine nylon line - another find from Zac’s treasure trove.
Jim hauled in the line, which was attached to the rope he would use to pull the Mick-mobile.
So far so good, and not one plunging croc.
Mick lowered his bulky form into his box - effectively an old red vulcanised fibre crate - bottom first. It swayed, but seemed relatively stable. He made himself comfortable, and checked his camera in its waterproof housing.
‘Action!’ he shouted.
Although it was impossible to hear him above the roar of the water, they all sensed that this was it. Jim started to pull gently on the rope, Mrs Hathaway put her foot on the cable, Mick pr
essed record, and they were off.
Apart from the fact that his heart was pounding against his rib cage, his blood pressure had gone off the dial, his palms were sweating and he had peed his pants slightly when he first stepped into the box, Mick was fine.
He noticed the faint spray coming up from below had layered itself onto Mrs Hathaway’s sun-tanned thighs. He mused on how those thighs might be the last thing he ever saw on earth if Albert the Overweight Alligator decided to freefall into his box at forty miles an hour. He also mused on how, after years of training and award-winning productions, he was now filming dangerous soft porn for millions of saddos who wouldn't lift a finger to save Mrs Hathaway, especially if it meant leaving the security of their sticky little bedsits.
His muse only lasted a second, because now they were a yard into the walk, and his ‘They Win. You Lose.’ professionalism kicked in. He had to admit Mrs Hathaway look great as a supercharged Lara Croft. She moved confidently, head held high, arms outstretched. Even Jim did his bit by pulling the box across in as smoothly as possible, given the circumstances.
At one point, there was a huge flash of sheet lightning out of a clear blue sky, and Mick thought they were in for a tropical downpour, but thankfully, it passed.
In no time at all, they’d reached the half way mark. Mick felt it was going well, and was looking forward to a mega shot of Glenfiddich Urban Alternative as soon as he reached the opposite bank.
It’s strange how it only takes a second, or a direct hit from 12-foot of a rapidly travelling, sexually excited reptile, to change a general feeling of well being.
Albert took the hit in his stride. 65 million years ago, his ancestors had survived the impact of a 6-mile-wide boulder traveling a 20 miles a second. So, hitting an industrial process container stuffed with a fat bloke his videocamera and 42 inch collapsible reflector was, really, a non-event.
