The Fall (18 page)

“Good morning, Mr. Matthewson,” she replied formally. Bantering.
Arch,
her mother would have said.

He pushed his goggles up onto his forehead. They had made red marks around his eyes. “And who’s your friend? Will you introduce
me?”

“Margaret York,” Meg said quickly. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Margaret York? It sounds like someone out of the Wars of the Roses.” He grinned as they shook hands, and Diana felt a small,
treacherous throb of jealousy, as though that smile and the shaking of hands implied some sort of complicity between the two
of them. “What are we planning to do?” Diana asked.

“Is your friend coming with us?”

“Meg’s not well,” Diana said quickly. “The others have gone on, but Meg wasn’t feeling up to it.”

“I’m not that bad —”

He looked disappointed. “But it’d be a bit tricky with a rope of three,” he said. “The weather’s not up to much, and I was
planning a pretty long route. Maybe some other time?” He smiled. It was quite disarming, his smile. Meg had no option but
to smile back.

“Maybe,” she agreed.

Guy looked at Diana. “So is Miss Sheridan ready?”

Yes, she was ready. She climbed on behind him and grabbed his rucksack just as she had done the day before. The sensation
of jealousy dissolved. She felt almost sorry for Meg, standing there alone in the mean morning. “See you later,” she called,
and Meg waved a hand and tried a smile and shouted back, “Bye, bye, darling. Be good.”

“Hold tight!” Guy called, and they accelerated away along the lakeside. The steep rocks of Tryfan’s north ridge drew nearer.
The others were somewhere up there, stumping up toward the top. Perhaps they’d catch sight of them. “I thought we’d stick
nearer to home this time,” he shouted, and drew the bike to a halt just where the rocks of Tryfan reached the valley floor,
where there was a milestone at the roadside marking the tenth mile. Ten miles from where? She looked up the steep slopes of
the mountain, where the ridge rose up toward the clouds. Her eyes followed the skyline and then moved down through the rakes
of grass and heather and scree. There was a line of tiny figures trudging up among the boulders, like soldiers setting off
to the front. “There they are!” she cried, pointing. She counted six. Two of them paused and looked around. She waved, and
one of them — was it Hilda? — waved back.

“I hope your friends know what they are doing up there in the mist,” Guy said.

“They’ve done a lot of walking.”

“Margaret’s a pretty girl,” he said, apropos of nothing.

“That’s what everyone says.”

“Is it? I’m sorry to seem just one of the pack.”

What did he mean by that? They climbed over the drystone wall that bordered the road and set off up the beaten path toward
the rocks. Guy climbed quickly, with a long, easy gait. He had climbed in the Alps, climbed in the Himalaya, been up to twenty-six
thousand feet. Beside that, the Welsh mountains must be mere hills. Diana was thrilled to be in his presence, let alone to
be actually setting out on a climb with him,
another
climb. He was almost — she hardly dared express the thought to herself — a friend. And Meg was back at the youth hostel.

The path steepened and began to thread its way upward through the rocks, around to the east side of the mountain where the
major climbs were. He looked at her as she scrambled after him. His expression suggested that her opinion might mean something.
“I thought we might give Grooved Arête a try. It’s on the East Face, and it’ll take us right up to the summit. What do you
think?”

“You’re the leader.”

“It’s a real mountaineering route, that’s the thing. We couldn’t have managed it safely with a rope of three and certainly
not with a total novice like your friend Meg. Are you up to it? There’s a good breeze, which should keep it dry, and I don’t
think the weather’s going to get any worse. I say we give it a go. Grooved Arête is tricky in the damp but not desperate.
Except for the slab.”

“What slab?” she asked anxiously.

He smiled. He was teasing her and she knew it: delighted in it, in fact. He had changed from the day before: she felt that
he had allowed her through his outer defenses into some kind of familiarity. “Ah,” he said, “the slab.”

“What slab?” The slab became the great threat as they clambered up through the chaos of rocks that formed the lower part of
the mountain; a threat and a joke, like something she had both laughed and trembled at when she was a child, a ghoul or a
ghost in a story or something. They gained height, over great boulders that were jumbled together as though thrown down in
a heap by a petulant child. There were short steps to climb, and he watched her with attention at these points, almost as
if he were an examiner and she some kind of student. “You’re doing all right,” he said. “You’ve a good sense of balance.”

“I insist you tell me about the slab,” she said as she caught up with him. They had reached an angled terrace that ran along
under the base of the main cliffs. Guy had halted where someone had scratched the letters
GA
on the rock. The cliff rose directly upward from here, like the wall of a gothic cathedral, fluted and ribbed. You expected
gargoyles and groins and Quasimodo skulking around the misty heights above. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t do it.”

He laughed as though he understood that it was an empty threat. “It’s called the Knight’s Move.”

“That sounds like something from
Alice
.”
'

He agreed. “It’s a very
Looking-Glass
business, climbing. You climb up in order to go back down, and very often you have to run as fast as you can merely to stay
in the same place. You’ll see soon enough. The slab is a sort of angled checkerboard, if you’ve got a bit of imagination.
And to climb it you move up a bit and then sideways, just like the White Knight.”

“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…”