The Rendezvous and Other Stories

by Patrick O'Brian

  For a little way there was the likeness of a path, but this vanished after it had led them well out on to the face of Wenallt. The slope grew a few degrees steeper now, and now they crept painfully and slow. It was a cruel slope: a man could hardly keep his feet standing quite still on it.

  From time to time Brown looked down to the distant wood, over the great sheet of white, a sheet that he could now see to be full of boulders that jutted sharply from its surface.

  They were all crawling along with their left hands to the snow, sometimes with their whole bodies pressed to it, all with a strong uneasiness. The real present fear, with no interposing doubts or comforting illusions, did not strike into Brown’s heart until he saw a flat stone that the man in front of him had dislodged go sliding easily down, easily and then faster, throwing snow from it like a ski, and at last crashing into an ugly great black rock far, far down. Just after this the man in front turned left-handed directly up the mountain, going up a gully with the help of his iron-pointed stick: he was aiming for a saddle that led behind the rounded brow of the peak. He did not speak to Brown – he was too much occupied for that – and Brown stood considering. He did not like the look of the way up. He kicked the rounded clogs of rammed snow from his boots; they clogged every few steps in this stuff. He looked forward, and again the cry of hounds raised his heart: the slope was surely easier in front, and indeed he must have come over the worst, and by God there was no going back over that stretch. Below him, a great way down, he saw a figure at the far end of the wood; it was the Master, and he was looking steadfastly up to a point on the other side of the shoulder of Wenallt that was in front of Brown.

  If they have run him in round there, said Brown, I shall be the first up. He looked round before he started forward and saw Gonville spread-eagled in a bad place; another man was holding out his stick for him to grasp, and it was obvious that they were going back. Brown waved; he felt secretly rather pleased. His fear had receded, and although he knew, with his head, that he was in danger, the real starkness of it had gone. I may slip or fall, he said in effect, and that could be fatal – probably would be – but these are things that happen to other people.

  The first ten paces were easy and the next quite plain, but then he saw bad ground ahead and he judged that he must go down a little to get along at all. The huntsman came into sight just below the snow; he was walking with the terriers along the diagonal line the fox had taken. He had been hidden for most of the time by a drop of ground that did not show from above. This confirmed Brown in his plan, and he decided to go down to the good ground and then across to intercept the huntsman’s path as he crossed the far arm of Wenallt. Just at this point the ground went down in steps, still grass-covered: these he negotiated, with his face downward. Below the steps the slope was terrible, but there was no retreat. It had looked just the same, or better, from above. I will go down on my bottom, he said; a little farther down and then across. The immensity of the stretch below him, the snow ending in shale and the far, far trees; the huge sweep sickened him.

  He shuffled down – come, it’s not too bad, he said, but while the words were still in him, and he in an awkward position with his legs stretched out and his weight on his elbows and heels, he began to slip. With a furious, controlled energy he gripped into the grass and earth. It tore away without hesitation. Flat on his back, he went; he went with his arms out and his crooked, tense hands scrabbling for a hold, failing, then pressing fiercely on the sliding snow, stemming, breaking, but impotently and in vain, for he was going faster. Faster: with a terrible certainty the momentum increased: the seconds of controllable speed had passed. It is happening to me, he said: and Now for it, he said, as he passed into a hurtling rush down; but still he hunched his shoulders to protect his head and forced his hands into the snow. The sense of responsibility was gone and with it his fear: he expected one dark blow, a smashing blow and the end, but not without a certain constancy of mind.

  His feet were against a rock, a firm rock. It was all over; and he was still, unmoving and unhurt. He lay for a moment, for some minutes, breathing and looking at the sky. He was wet, soaked through and through; the whole of his back was wet through and the caked snow was forced into his clothes. Was he hurt? No, he was not hurt. His hands were strange to him, but he was not hurt – all whole. He got up, trembling and shaken: he did not think very clearly now, in this strong reaction.

  The trees were a good deal nearer: Brown was halfway down the mountain-face. He could not see the others when he looked up, nor could he be sure of the place where he had started. He looked down, but the huntsman was no longer to be seen.

  He felt that there was a strong necessity to go on, not to stop, not to make anything of it. He thought slowly: perhaps he had been stunned, had been unconscious for a while without knowing it? How otherwise could Emrys have vanished like that?

  He went on a few steps farther down to look from side to side: no man could he see, but there was a neat precipice, only fifteen or twenty feet deep, but sheer, and if he had not fetched up where he did he would have gone over it without any sort of doubt. This shocked him unreasonably and he turned his face to the dark crags above him. How he longed for the rough, strong rocks, firm and true: their steepness was nothing, he said inwardly, for they were reft and fissured and it was like going up a ladder.

  Without thinking any more he started to move up. From where he was the crags seemed continuous right from where the grass ended to the very top, and once the rock was gained it did not look at all difficult to go up over the summit of Wenallt.

  His new way was easier than creeping sideways across the mountain, but it meant going on all fours, and soon the snow had so numbed his battered hands that all the strength left them. They would hardly even open and close, so when he reached the first of the rocks he could not go up. He rested a long while before they recovered, and in a few minutes that he took in climbing the first stretch their strength went again. Again he rested, this time under an overhanging rock where sheep had stood years beyond counting in hard weather. By some freak his sandwiches had escaped being crushed into a mess, and eating them brought Brown back to common things and to a comforting sense of ordinariness – a feeling that had been quite stripped from him for some time before. He was shivering in his soaked clothes, soaked in front now as well as behind, for he had groped upward through deeper snow on his hands and knees; but his courage was fairly well as he came out of the sheep’s place.

  He could see three separate masses of rock above him, and no more: he would be climbing them, he could see, in the right direction – that is, his path would carry him over toward Cwm Dyli, and he reckoned that from the top of the third crag he would see round into the valley on the other side.

  The first crag was steady, exhausting climbing, not difficult, but needing continual strong effort. At the top of it was a stretch of open shale before the foot of the next crag. This was anxious going, very, for the snow was far thicker at this height, and it was not a pretty task to creep over unseen shale pitched at that angle and with that vast amount of world below. Brown set himself to it, and worked up along the edge of the scree, where he knew the bigger stones would be lying under the snow.

  His good fortune brought him up to the top, under the second crag, trembling with the effort. He had to wait for his hands again, and now for the first time, as he squatted out of the way of the little breeze, cramps seized him with force and anguish, so that he grunted aloud. Now his heart began to falter a little, less at the pain and the fear that they might grasp him again when he was crucified on a rock than at the new appearance of the crag above him: rocks that had appeared to be joined when he decided to climb them now had showed themselves to be far apart, separated by stretches of snow that might conceal anything, stretches that tilted shockingly, so that some of them looked almost vertical.

  However, he hoisted himself up the nearest rock, and reached for the next handhold; it was a high, flat rock-face that he was g
oing up now, and he had to walk up it with his feet while he held on with both hands. As he looked down to see whether his right foot was well placed, looking down with his chin in his chest, he saw beyond his foot black rock and snow stretching down forever, then that horrible plane slope, and infinitely far away the trees and the lake. These he saw upside down, and he sickened at the sight. With a convulsive, wasteful effort he struggled to the top and lay there. He knew that he must not look down any more, for his courage was beginning to go, and with it his freedom from the terror of height.

  It was while he was on the third mass of rock, worming himself across a gully to a climbable rock, that he came face to face with a hound. It was Ringwood, obviously coming down from the top. He was followed by others: they looked momentarily at Brown and went on. Even with four legs they found it hard, and one slipped twenty feet and more while Brown watched them. He no longer minded about hounds: all that he wanted, and the huge want filled him to the exclusion of all else, was firm ground, level ground, under his feet and the sky in its right place over his head.

  The topmost piece of the third crag was an ugly, out-leaning breast of rock with a narrow cleft in it. The strength of his hands was gone again, and as he stood wedged in this cleft he thought he was going to fall at last. He did not fall, though he swayed backward; his elbow held, and with his chin ground down to the top of the rock and a chance grip for his knee he came up to the top. Kneeling there, almost sick with the muscular effort, he saw that what he had climbed was a false crest. Beyond and above him stretched three hundred feet of nearly perpendicular rock, interspersed with gullies and patches of shale. A wide tract of flattish ground that led back from the top of the false peak had hidden all this from him as he stood below: even now what he saw as the top might not be the real summit.

  Without allowing himself to formulate anything about this, Brown began to walk across the dead ground. The gesture was very well, but after he had climbed a little way cold despair overtook him. This was worse than the mountain below: the rocks were farther apart, the bare, smooth slopes steeper and wider. It was unclimbable; his strength was almost gone and there was no way down.

  When he came to a platform with a sheltering slab over it Brown stopped. The last phase of climbing had had a nightmarish quality; not daring to look down any more, he had won the last fifty feet at the cost of cruel labour and intense apprehension with each movement. All the time stark, naked fear had been on him, and it was on him now, and he knew that it was a rightful fear.

  For a long time he squatted, inert and unfeeling. A cramp revived him and he noticed that the sun had come round the edge of the mountain. The sky was still the same unclouded perfection of a sky that it had been in the morning. He did not know the time – could not guess it, either. His watch had stopped when he had gone down.

  Now that he was wholly determined not to go on he felt better. He looked down, pressing his back against the firm rock, and he experienced that sense of flying that comes with some kinds of giddiness. This passed, and he surveyed the country below him. He had come a long way: the trees were even more distant. A feeling of utter, desolate remoteness filled him: he seemed quite cut off from the world. But so long as he was no longer going to drive himself up he did not mind very actively: no more fruitless crawling up, with knees and hands slipping and every movement perilous, arduous beyond bearing: to be left alone, that was the thing.

  How kind the weather has been, he said after a great timeless pause; if it had blown hard or snowed some more I should have gone before now. How long would it be? he asked; but made no reply.

  Far, far down, a little above the wood there was Gonville running with the immense strides of a man going downhill; he was crossing from right to left. Brown could recognize him by the yellow waterproof jacket that he was wearing. He ran to the wall at the end of the wood and stood by the gate.

  Brown’s heart went out to him in a kind of envy and a desperate longing to be down there. The thought of shouting came to his mind: on a still day like this he might make himself heard down there. But he dismissed the thought, and in a few moments the whole pack came running fast along the wall toward Gonville; Brown flushed at the sight and stood up to watch them tear along the top of the wood and vanish on his right. By the time he sat down again Gonville had disappeared.

  He relapsed into the same dull, marooned feeling; he repeated that it would not be possible to go down the way he had come up, but he did not care very much. Time dropped slowly on and on, and nothing at all happened: no change, no movement.

  Two ravens flew out above him from Lliwedd over the lake, flying with steady wing-beats whose sound came down to him. The front one was almost silent, but the second bird spoke all the time in a guttural monotone, gaak gaak gaak: occasionally the front bird replied, deeply, gaak. They flew straight away from him in an undeviating line for his home.

  The warmth of the sun was grateful to him: in spite of the sodden coldness of his clothes his spirits rose under it, and presently he was aware of being alive again, with an active mind and his apathy gone.

  When he made his great discovery he felt a fool; he could have blushed for it. Ever since the sun had come round the shoulder of Wenallt it had been melting the snow fast. The snow-line on the horrible slope, his chief dread, had been retreating steadily for a great deal of the time that he had been climbing – had crept up after him. Inexplicably, when he had looked down he had never looked for it nor seen it. But by now the slope was free from snow almost to the foot of the crags. A vast sense of relief, of ignominious anticlimax filled him. Without waiting, he let himself down from his place, he let himself down like a sack and he fell safely. He slid and scrambled recklessly down the shale and it submitted to this. He defied the black rocks now and in minutes he threw away the height that he had won with such pain. Twice he slid deliberately down long stretches of snow, squatting on his two feet; the first time he pulled himself up on a rock on the calculated edge of destruction; the second time he let himself go down the last snow of the horrible slope and did not stop until he was on the clean grass. He kicked the last snow from under his boots and ran down the grassy innocent slope laughing like a boy, down to the thorn trees and down safe and happier than Lazarus to the lovely wood and the lake with the blue sky over them, and in ten minutes the real knowledge of naked fear had left him again.

  The Little Death

  HE HAD NEVER FELT that sense of having been there before so strongly: climbing up the ladder to the platform, he knew perfectly well that the top rungs would be scaly and harsh, and that there would be a box, a dark green box on top of it.

  There was no box.

  He pushed up the trap door at the top and awkwardly, holding the gun in his left hand, clawed up on to the bare rectangle of planks: there was no box. However, the newness of being up there carried his mind directly on, and he looked eagerly about.

  For years he had wanted to see what it would be like from the platform, and it was pleasant to find that the reality surpassed his old expectation. He was among the tree tops, up in the delicate, gently waving part of the trees, and all the branches tended up, reaching towards him. There, to his right, was the sharp white ribbon of the road seen at intervals through the dark pines, and there was the shooting-brake in the gateway: on his left were the ordinary trees of the wood; some, like the birches immediately under him, were shorter than the truncated pine that supported his stand, and these he could see from top to bottom, wonderfully graceful and delicate, although their leaves were going. Most of the trees on the left hand were about the same height as the platform, or a little higher, but here and there a tall beech or one of the noble ashes for which the wood was named rose high above the rest.

  He stepped to the edge of the unrailed platform, and, repressing a first hint of vertigo (the platform was in gentle motion), he looked over the edge to the shadows, where the keeper still stood, the white of his upturned face showing far below: forty feet, or was it sixty? The
se heights were very difficult to judge: at any rate, it was high enough for the man’s face to be small, like an egg, and for his voice to come floating up strangely.

  ‘Mr. Grattan? The horse is under the far side.’

  ‘Under the far side, is it?’ He did not know at all what the keeper meant, but he was not going to show his ignorance: the keeper had already glanced at his gun, an old common, long-barrelled hammer-gun it was, of Belgian make.

  There were two big hooks fixed underneath, and groping under the platform Grattan found a trestle – obviously a thing to sit upon. He pulled it up, and he was setting it square on its feet when the keeper called again, telling him that the pigeons usually came in from the right. Grattan thanked him, and watched him go away: for a few paces he could see the keeper’s feet before his head and behind, fore and aft, a queer, long stride it looked, before he was under the trees and out of sight.

  The trunk of the pine ran up three or four feet above the stand, and it was pleasant to have it for his back as he sat upon the trestle. The sound of the keeper’s going died away, and the returning quiet brought back with it that remoteness that had been with Grattan all day, that feeling of being at one remove from life, or rather from one’s surroundings, so that they look as little real as the back-cloth of a pantomime, and it would not be surprising if they were to sway gently with a bellying wave from behind. It was something remotely like one of the stages of drunkenness when a man seems to stand a little to one side of himself, listening to what he says and watching him, but without a great deal of interest.

  All day it had been with him, but that was not remarkable for it had waited upon him now and then from boyhood, and since he had come home from the war it had been at his elbow most of the time. Nobody knew about it: he had not told anybody, and indeed if he had wanted to he would have found it very difficult to describe what it was, the thing that interposed itself between him and ordinary life, so that with an indifferent eye he saw everything strange, so that sounds and impressions came through to him as if they travelled more slowly: the something that gave him an inner life of far greater reality than that which went on around him at the same time and in which he took part with the rest of him. It was not to be defined, this inner life; it had little to do with conscious thought; it was a kind of awareness and a withdrawal to another plane of existence. And always, from the very first time that he had known it, a boy walking along the tow-path on a summer’s evening in the shadow of the heavy, dusty green of the trees, twenty years ago, always there had been something of anticipation in it. In the last year this had increased, and now, today more than ever, it was a sense of growing, inevitable crisis – something outside himself for which he was waiting. It was something that he awaited calmly, for in this everything was slow and calm, but it was of vast importance and his being was keyed up and up for it.