by Steve Low
“Why don’t you two go off and climb Mt Cotterel?” The question came from behind me. I had not heard Julia returning from the washhouse and I was feeling rather exposed, holding as I was the photograph with the ragged edge. I half turned to face her, keeping the photograph down low and behind me. “What are you hiding there?” She asked. Her eyes had lowered to where my hideaway hand clutched the photograph and there was an edge to her voice.
“I was wondering who this is?” I asked. “Who is the owner of the white shoe?” I brought the picture into full view. Julia crossed the room and took the photograph out of my hand.
“You know perfectly well who it is,” she said. “You’re not that young – or innocent.”
She was standing up close to me, near enough for me to see the miniature lines of age around her lips. The whites of her eyes were marked by yellow ochre pterygiums and her pupils seemed dilated and alert. My boldness started to evaporate. What was the use in opening an old wound, merely to appease my own curiosity? Therefore I nodded in assent to her assertion, manufactured a wan smile and walked through to the adjoining sunroom. Behind me, I could hear her replacing the photograph onto the liquor cabinet. She followed me through to the sunroom, coming to stand beside me. We both looked out at the tennis court, avoiding direct eye contact. “Why don’t you take Graham back to Mt Cotterel?” she asked again. “You never did make it up there, did you?”
I was bemused by the repeated question. I had come halfway round the world to see both my parents. Spending a few days away alone with Graham and his nineteenth century views wasn’t overly appealing.
She stepped into my line of vision, looked up into my face and smiled. “Since he retired from the hospital, he’s gone down hill a bit. He’s got not enough to do – there’s the golf and a few meetings but . . . he‘s quite difficult to manage.”
I laughed out loud. “Well if that isn’t an understatement!” I ran outstretched fingers into my hair. “He kind of painted himself into a corner with all that devotion to surgery. But now that that is nearly over . . . .”
Julia nodded, as if pleased to have the raw truth confirmed. “Well . . . that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Unfortunately he’s really losing his zest for life. His motivation isn’t good. You’ve seen the state of the garden?”
I frowned and nodded my head. I looked out again at the fraying tennis net, the desiccated lawn, and the ragged summerhouse . . . Graham was losing his grip.
“He’s still as outspoken as ever though.” she said laughing. Her voice went quiet. “But maybe less often.”
I thought about all her years in the company of Graham. How had she managed it? Now that I was an adult myself and had had relationships I could look at my parent’s marriage with some insight. They really were something of a mismatch – her with the sensitivity and the artistic side. And him . . . Well he was the complete opposite.
I considered what she had asked of me – that she wanted me to take him into the mountains. Perhaps, most of all, she needed a break from him. I could well understand that.
I dwelled on the returning memory of the mountain. And in doing so I induced a small thrill. It travelled through me like a poorly suppressed burst of laughter. In my vision I saw a lofty spire, reflected on a shimmering mirror – a broad expanse of lake. Its surface rippled beneath quietly twisting zephyrs of wind. In my mind, I moved closer to the mountain, leaving the lake behind to enter the mouth of a valley. Always the mountain’s peak was centre stage, placed exactly in the middle, between the steep wooded ranges that framed each side. As one travelled up the valley, it curved around to the right, the peak remained centre stage, the axis of the turning point in the leftward range. I saw a figure (myself) up above the bush line, standing amongst knee high snow grass, my gaze fixed on to the hanging rock wall and serrated skyline of the ridge. This lump of inanimate rock – it was still a potent stimulus of feeling. Even after years away in Europe and America . . . after the vertiginous love of women, and after the giddying heights of success. Graham, for all his faults, was capable of assimilating the mountain culture. It was he who had first taken Richard, Isobel and I into the mountains, exposing us to the lure of the remote back country.
Our capitulation to the mountain’s spell happened the first time he took us there (despite our wary reluctance to go). There was the heady roar of the river, the cries of the paradise ducks, and the twilight sun fading silently off austere mountain peaks. Yes, above all, the remote mountain peaks took me by the throat, as if they were not inanimate at all, but something altogether more life-giving – spiritual perhaps. They hung above the valleys in which we walked, forever demanding attention. I absorbed symmetry, asymmetry – repetition. My eye would run up the flanks from the valley floor, up spurs and gullies to scree and snow slopes, to cols and gendarmes, and to the final up-thrust itself, beyond which there was only sky. In minutes, a new angle of light might reveal unseen ridges, a couloir, a chimney, a buttress or bluff. In our valley, the names of peaks rebounded inside my skull – Travers, Cupola, Hopeless, Kehu, Cotterel, Angelus . . . The names seemed exotic, with a potent suggestion of history. I began to read alpine literature veraciously. I saw my future as a mountaineer laid out before me. I visualised the successive ascent of New Zealand peaks - Rolleston, Aspiring, Tutoko, Malte Brun, Tasman and Cook. Beyond that – the world! The Alps, the Andes, the Himalaya! My heart beat with the romance of exploration. Mallory, Shipton, Hillary, and Bonnington. They were my heroes.
Away in the bush, removed from the irritation of ordinary people and their small talk, Graham could take on a more tolerable persona. His jaw would relax and he might hum softly to himself as he led us along a rambling trail. Like an old steam train, his progress was marked by a drifting cloud of pipe-smoke, a soft woody aroma in the fresh mountain air. However, this curious benevolence had its limits. For example, we would never stay in the alpine huts. Huts contained people – ordinary people, people who talked, farted and burped. People who ate with their mouths open, voted labour or hadn’t heard of J.S.Bach. People who might come over and say, ‘How are you?’ With this in mind, he pitched our tents well off the trail, behind a stand of beech, or far out upon a river flat, our voices muffled by the roar of the adjacent river.
This episodic benevolence was a minor boon for Isobel and I. Like a ceasefire at Christmas, a happy go lucky air pervaded our campsites. We were long in experience and we knew that the intolerance would be back in a few days. There was typically a key moment, usually when the back of the journey was broken, when ones thoughts were devolving from the mountain scene that had been, to the urban life to come. His chronic wounds would begin to prickle – to flare and throb. By journey’s end, Graham’s jaw would be set in concrete.
With this background I heard myself agree to Julia’s request. My reverie had softened me for long enough to take on the task. Above all it was the memory of an adrenaline rush, the one that comes with the breach of the bush line. For at that moment, the depth of the valley is revealed below, and above is the unconquered summit, mysterious and majestic against the sky. Graham might be a nuisance, a drawback to be sure – an ideological anachronism. But in my post-success flush, I decided that I might challenge him. I could explain the new ways of thinking, the sixties' revolution, the release of youth from its Victorian chains. And if he were reborn . . . Julia might have her final years in a new realm of tolerance.
Equipped with this creative optimism, I awaited the paternal response to my mother’s shuttle diplomacy. In his depleted state, perhaps Graham would seek the respite offered by the journey – a temporary escape from his blighted existence in retirement. At the dinner table, I could see he was agitated, his face was bloated, top lip pouted. Under the table, he rubbed a knee periodically, and his shoulders jerked with a singular paroxysm.
Eventually he spoke. “So you’d like to get away to the hills,” he said. There was no mention of his personal desires. Rather, his manner suggested it was he who was granting me a favour
. I was to be the benefactor, the son with whom he had little in common. Here was this one thing he might share with me, if only to acknowledge, I was his own flesh and blood. Inwardly, I was busy containing a laugh. Surely it was I, who had offered him the lifeline. After all, his world had collapsed with retirement and he was now struggling for direction. His ego was no longer propped up by that old backbone of medical life.
It was decided to leave for the mountain straight away. All three of us sensed the fragility of delaying the trip too long. Should there be a short wait of a few days, Graham and I might blow up in acrimony.
Therefore on the following day, I drove Julia to a supermarket in the middle of town, in order to buy provisions. Thrust into the streets of my youth, I had queasiness in my gut, an embryonic terror. I was afraid of the past. I was shrinking before the rising memory of my adolescence. We pulled into a spacious car park, onto which backed a plethora of retailers. I stepped out into the sunshine, bizarrely afraid of recognition. I tried to bolster my flagging self esteem by dwelling on my latent success . . . Joanna, the contract, the bulging wallet. In this way, stride for stride with Julia; I made it to the supermarket entry.
“This will do Graham the world of good,” Julia said, as we filled a trolley with produce.
I looked enquiringly at her receding back, as she raced ahead of me up an aisle. “It will do you the world of good,” I said, “having him away.” I hurried to catch up with her. She was brandishing several silver refill packets. She thrust them under my nose for inspection. “Dried potato,” I laughed. “We always had that on our trips when we were kids.”
“Is it horrible?” Julia asked. She had never once ventured out into the back country.
“You’d think so. But no, Isobel and I both loved it.” I saw her face blanch momentarily, followed by a pink flush that rushed to colour her skin. Maybe she had visualised Isobel and I together by the camp fire, sharing out the potato mixture. Her face tightened, her lips assuming a flat line. She abruptly dropped the packets into the wire basket and coursed ahead between stacks of breakfast cereals. I caught up with her as she tried to decide between two types of porridge.
“I can’t remember whether Graham prefers Creamota or Rob-Roy.” she said. She looked at me fleetingly, as if she immediately appreciated the futility of the question.
I shook my head. “It’s got to be Rob Roy don’t you think? He’ll think Creamota is for softies . . .”
She smiled. “You’ve got him taped! You’re from a different generation Gerry. Maybe these days, you don’t stay with a partner who is so over-bearing. But in our day, you were expected to stay and make the best of things. History binds us together – even difficult history.”
I knew this to be true. Isobel had been my informer - there had indeed been ‘difficult history.’ This wasn’t just the fact of being married to a pompous ass. I searched Julia’s face, but her eyes had glazed over. She was turning away to walk towards the cashier. I hurried along behind her. Catching up, I put a hand on her shoulder. “What do you mean, ‘difficult history‘?”
“Let’s not talk about it,” she said, keeping her back to me. “It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.” Her tone was resigned and it left me in no doubt that the continued pursuance of answers would be fruitless. I heaped the groceries onto the counter as the cashier moved to score up the prices on the till. Julia and I stood by silently, hearing the clatter of the keys and the pleasantries of the grocer. With a final flourish, the till rang and the drawer flew open. Remembering my new wealth, I dug into my wallet, emerging with a fist full of dollars. Julia looked at my effort, her mouth ajar. “No, no,” she said. “You don’t need to pay, you‘re my son.”
I shrugged my shoulders, re-housed the money and moved off with the trolley
We were up at five-thirty. Julia had a pot of porridge ready, Rob-Roy as it happened. Graham was bustling about, hunting inside cupboard doors for keys, and emerging from the garden shed with a torch, pocket knives and firelighters. When he sat down with us for breakfast, Julia asked us how many times we had attempted Mt Cotterel. Graham smiled at the memory.
“This will be our fourth,” he said.
“The first time we sort of tried to go straight up this steep rock face,” I said. “But it became too difficult.”
“It became a technical climb,” Graham said. “But we were just foot sloggers. We were technically inept.”
“The second time it rained,” I said, buttering some toast. “We woke up to a red sky.” I looked at Graham. “And you said, ‘red sky in the morning, it’s the shepherds warning.’ And sure enough . . .”
“The third time. . . I don’t recall?”
“It was a repeat of the first. We found a route up through the rock face, right to the ridge. But the ridge is razorback, gendarmes everywhere. It’s damned dangerous. That’s when we figured out the route had to be right round the backside of the mountain. Richard and I went across the low point of the range and saw an approach to the summit from behind. We’d misunderstood the guide book.”
“There is a guidebook?” Julia asked.
“There are about four lines written in an old 1950’s National Park book. Cotterel is not a popular tramper’s mountain. There’s no track up it. Only one or two parties would go there each summer. That’s what makes it kind of special.”
Apart from the gentle cracking sound of toast cooking, silence fell at the table. The rush of enthusiastic dialogue was suddenly almost an embarrassment. The marks of animation in Graham’s face changed to those of returning composure. He rose from the table, excusing himself and left the room. Julia looked at me slightly cross-eyed. “Just for a few minutes . . . the mask slipped” she said. She screwed up her face and shrugged her shoulders.
I knew what she was alluding to. For a minute or two we were a ‘normal’ family. It was as though the exposure to such ordinariness had given Graham an unpleasant shock. He must have felt like he’d jumped out of a plane without a parachute. In the following moments, he had quit the scene abruptly, to seek the shelter of his office.
I thanked Julia for breakfast and went upstairs to fill the top of my backpack. Once I had secured the straps, I took my walkman tape player off the bedside table and clipped it to the belt around my jeans. I presumed that there would be intermittent banter between father and son, but also long periods of communing with nature. I would be able to drift away with my headphones.
I vacillated for thirty seconds or so, but I really only wanted one cassette tape for the trip. The one I chose, I had thrashed to death for twenty years. My hesitation in choice related to a realisation that I had only recently begun to escape from the grip of the Byrdsian sound – since my success in fact. However, I was in a mood to indulge in some nostalgia – to touch base with where it had all began. After all, I had just banked several hundred thousand dollars. U.S dollars! And Notorious Byrd Brothers had been my definitive musical injection. It had been a stimulant – and a tranquilliser! Rendering euphoria and delusions of grandeur – but also hallucination, inertia, catatonia . . .
I clattered downstairs to the front door. Graham frowned when he saw me. From the purple headband containing my flowing hair, to the walkman clipped on my belt, I was the image of everything he didn’t want me to be. “Cotterel, here we come,” I said, hoping to divert attention away from my flower power appearance.
“You’ll be too hot in jeans,” Graham said looking at Julia, as if for support.
“I have to wear jeans,” I lied. “It’s part of my culture.”
Graham expelled some air and lugged his backpack through the open door. The street was still dark, although to the east the sky was lightening fast. He quickly had the Vanguard backed out from the garage and parked right outside the front door. We dumped our packs into the boot. Graham went round to the driver’s door while I ventured to the passenger side. I gave Julia a kiss on a cheek before turning to open the door. I hesitated, reconsidering my farewell. I went back roun
d to envelop her in my arms. It was then that I whispered in her ear, something about Francis Urquhart. I told her that I knew all about him . . . and her.
Even in the semi-darkness I saw the blood pulsing through her face. Her eyes were blazing and her features sharpened. “What do you know?” she asked.
“Isobel told me,” I murmured. I kissed a cheek and broke away for the car, wondering if I had overplayed my hand. Was it necessary to disturb her?
As for Graham, he must have said his goodbyes earlier, since he had already fired up the ignition without saying another word.
We did a U-turn on Nile Street and waved out to Julia in farewell. I watched her out the back window until she was indistinguishable from the grey backdrop. I imagined the racing thoughts going on behind her fine boned face. She would be wary of me, knowing that I harboured knowledge of her secret past.
Well at any rate, she could look forward to three days without Graham’s boom and bluster. That was more than I could claim. I had him sitting only a couple of feet away. We were now on Waimea Road, the main route south out of town. The gun-metal dawn was slowly lifting and a soft mist enclosed the hilltops. To the west, an indistinct moon dipped towards the horizon.
Inside the car, the numbers glowed green on the wooden dash. I stole a look at Graham’s face. The illumination made his cheeks a sickly colour. His gaze was fixed on the road ahead, his jaw clenched. What an unlikely pair, I thought. The redneck and the jingle jangle music man. We came up alongside my old primary school. Standing there, out of season, upon the parched school field, was an old rickety goal post. I was amazed that it was still there. I recalled the days of twenty years before – the endeavour of trying to place kicks between its uprights. And I shrank abruptly before a shot of lucidity – the pale fleshy cheeks of a young boy and the onset of a virulent infection.
Chapter 4