‘Did Alison know about you and Chris?’
‘Not for quite a while. Chris got a job on Skye and I used to go and climb there and guide during the holidays. Alison didn’t realise I was sleeping with Chris while I was there. Sometimes Chris came to Glasgow, when Alison was away... In the end I told Alison I wanted a divorce. And why. She was appalled. I don’t know what hurt her most - my betrayal or her best friend’s.’ He looks at me with a sardonic smile. ‘It’s a shame you never met her, Rose - you’d have had a lot to talk about.’
He reaches up to a bookshelf and pulls down a photo album, flips it open without looking and hands it to me. A photo taken in what looks like Shona’s sitting room shows Calum with a tall young woman, dark, pale and blue-eyed like him. They could pass for brother and sister were it not for the look of mutual adoration. Festooned with coloured streamers, they raise champagne glasses to each other. They look so happy, it hurts. I close the album carefully.
‘That was taken in 1997 at our engagement party... People here were ecstatic. I’d come home to teach in the local school and we planned to set up an outdoor activity centre here. We’d bought a big house with a byre we were going to convert into a bunkhouse. We were to be married here and wee Eilidh was to be bridesmaid... As we were already living together we decided we wouldn’t have a honeymoon. We wanted to go climbing abroad one last time before ploughing all our earnings into the business. So we did. We went climbing one last time...’
‘Where?’
‘The Eiger.’
I wince automatically, thinking of the death toll exacted by that particular bastard of a mountain. Calum sees my reaction and nods. ‘Aye. Not the wisest of choices... and it was mine. But when the accident happened we were on our way down. It had been a hard climb but the descent should have been relatively easy... We had bad luck with the weather. We were tired... Too tired. And dehydrated. That impairs your judgement and your performance. That’s all I can say in my defence... We were descending on a lee slope and it was loaded with windslab. I knew there was a level of avalanche risk, but we needed to get down in a hurry. The weather was getting worse and I was worried about Chris who was already showing signs of hypothermia. I led out across the snow, roped up to Chris and it seemed okay. She started to traverse the slope, then there was a sound like a crack... then a great hissing noise... and we were travelling down the mountainside caught up in an avalanche. I used my ice-axes to brake and when I finally came to a standstill I thought I was little worse than winded, but when I tried to move, I realised I’d cracked a rib. I’d also broken three fingers on one hand. But I was alive... I didn’t know where Chris was but I could feel her whole weight on my harness, so I knew she hadn’t been buried in the avalanche, she must be hanging somewhere... I didn’t move to begin with, just hung on to the axes and waited for her to take her own weight. But she didn’t... I called out but she didn’t answer. That was when I started to think there was maybe a dead body on the other end of the rope...
‘I was getting very cold waiting, so I tried to move to a more secure position but as soon as I pulled out an axe I was dragged down the slope by Chris’ weight. I dug in again and waited some more. The light was fading and we were running out of time. It was hours since we’d eaten or drunk anything - another of my bad judgements. I slithered down the slope, braking with my axes, until I got to the ledge. At some point in my descent Chris started screaming. She’d regained consciousness, I suppose. I remember feeling this great rush of relief that she was alive... That was before I realised just how bad it was.’
Calum puts his head in his hands and threads shaking fingers through his hair, scraping it back from his forehead. ‘Rose, I can’t do this... Please - don’t make me.’
I say nothing, but lay a hand gently on the back of his neck, curving it round the base of his skull. He sits upright suddenly and turns towards me. I am shocked at how tired and gaunt he looks, wonder how long it is since he really slept. He looks at me silently for what feels like a long time, then looks away and continues in a monotone.
‘She was suspended in the air at the end of fifty feet of rope. She’d broken both her ankles. She’d have done that when she went over the edge. The rope was too long - another bad judgement. She’d have been flung over the edge during the avalanche. When she got to the end of her rope, she’d have swung back like a pendulum until she slammed into the mountainside. And she’d have taken the impact with her feet - it was that or die - and she’d have broken both her ankles... She’d also lost a glove in the avalanche. She now had a useless frostbitten hand... In other words, she was completely fucked.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I cannot find any words. Anything other than silence and stillness feels obscenely inappropriate. I watch Calum with my insides aching.
He gives a kind of hopeless shrug and continues. ‘She couldn’t climb back up. I couldn’t haul her up... I tried, but I was in a pretty bad way. I was getting weak and sleepy with the cold... I tried to set up a snow anchor using an axe but I had only one good hand and the snow was soft, just avalanched powder. And snow was falling so fast, I was getting buried. I knew that even if I managed to get her up onto the ledge she wouldn’t be able to climb down, I’d have to lower her down the mountain... in the dark... in a blizzard... with a broken hand and a cracked rib. I knew there was nothing I could do to save her. We were both going to die and she was going to die first, but I wanted her to die knowing I was there, that I was trying to save her.’
‘Did you tell Chris you were injured?’
‘No. I knew she’d panic even more. I kept trying to get her up, but I just couldn’t do it. Eventually I told her to drop all the hardware from her harness, then I told her to drop her rucksack. She knew then... just how bad things were. You don’t dump your gear if you think you’re going to survive. She asked me if I was injured... I told her. She cracked then and started sobbing. I tried to calm her down... I don’t know what I said. There was nothing I could say... Then she tried to get something out of her rucksack. She was trying to reach inside the top of her rucksack with her good hand, the one that wasn’t frozen. She wanted her knife...’
Calum grinds the heels of his hands into his wet eyes. I want to touch him, hold him, but know if I do, he will stop talking; I know too that he shouldn’t.
‘I lost it then. I started yelling at her, screaming, telling her not to give up, that I’d get her up somehow. But it was almost dark, we were facing a night on the mountain. She knew my only chance of survival was if she cut me free... But she couldn’t find her knife. Or maybe she got it out, then dropped it, I don’t know. She didn’t say anything more... I kept yelling down to her but there was no answer. Maybe she lost consciousness again... I dug a kind of snow-hole for myself and sat and waited to die.’ He shakes his head slowly. ‘I still don’t know how I didn’t...
‘When the sun came up there was no movement on the end of the rope. No sound. I knew she couldn’t have survived a night out in the open. I steeled myself to look over the edge, to look down at her body...’ He swallows several times. ‘She’d taken down her hood... Removed her balaclava. She’d thrown away her other glove... Her face and hands were frozen. Black... She’d done that so I’d know that she was dead, so I would cut the rope. Save myself. So I did... She fell five hundred feet. Then her body hit some rocks and bounced... then she disappeared into a crevasse... I set off down the mountainside and was found half-dead by another party of climbers.’ He reaches for the bottle, pours himself another whisky and drinks it straight down. ‘I should have died with her.’
‘You nearly did, Calum. But that isn’t what she wanted. Her death was tragic and pointless - why make it two?’
‘So that she wouldn’t have to die alone.’
‘Chris didn’t die alone. You stayed with her till the end and she knew that. She knew right up until the moment she died that you were there, attached to her by a rope. She knew when she died that you loved her.’
He turns his head slowly and looks at me, puzzled almost, as if I have said something he hadn’t thought of, something that has never occurred to him in all his nightmare reconstructions of the accident. For a fleeting moment he looks pitifully grateful, then his face darkens and his hollow eyes are pleading with me.
‘What should I have done, Rose? Tell her parents she died very slowly of hypothermia, in pain, alone, terrified, dangling on the end of a rope? That when she died, I cut the rope and dumped her body, so that I could get down the mountain and save my own life? Should I have told them that? Because whatever I told Christina’s parents is what I had to tell everybody - our climbing mates, Shona, the bairns... There could be only one story and I didn’t know how to face Chris’ parents with the truth. I couldn’t see any point in telling the truth, causing them even more pain. But maybe that was just me protecting myself.’
‘You did all you could. Nobody could have done any more. And some people would have done less.’
‘But I lied. I’ve lied for years. To everyone.’
‘You had your reasons. Good reasons. No one has been harmed by the lie. Except you, Calum.’
‘What would you have wanted, Rose? Megan and I told you the truth about Gavin’s death, but we didn’t need to. You could have gone on for years, you could have died not knowing what happened to him. But now you do, are you glad you know? Does it help to know how messy a death Gavin died?’
‘No, of course it doesn’t, it’s horrible. I’m glad I know that he’s dead, that it’s... all over, but I’m not glad to know how he died. I can’t bear to think of him lying smashed on a rock, in dreadful pain, probably knowing he was going to die. I wish I didn’t know all that... But I don’t think you or Megan were wrong to tell me.’
His face twists into a derisive smile. ‘But you think I was right to lie about Chris.’
‘Yes, I do. It’s different for me. What was it you said to me once, about your climbing friends who’d died?... “They knew the score.” I knew the score, Calum. I’m of that world. I know about the types of injury, the accidents, the mistakes, the appalling bad luck. Chris’ parents probably didn’t. I spent all the years I lived with Gavin trying to prepare myself mentally for his death. But no parent expects to bury their child.’
‘They didn’t even get to bury her.’
I want to scream for having chosen the wrong words. Instead I take hold of his hand. One of us is shaking. I think it’s Calum. ‘You did the right thing. The kindest thing.’
‘Kind to whom? Me?’
‘To her parents, her family. And they were the ones who mattered. If you were the only witness to what happened then you had a choice about telling the truth. You didn’t have a choice about Gavin. He was rescued by a team. Dave survived. I could always have found out what happened to Gavin. You couldn’t have lied to me... But I rather wish you had.’ I stroke his unresponsive hand. ‘I think we both need some coffee, don’t you? Will you drink some if I make it?’ Eventually he nods. ‘Good. I’ll be right back...’
~
I wait for the kettle to boil and stare at a scruffy pin-board decorated with dog-eared postcards and fading photographs, some of Calum, some of his family, but most of climbers and mountains. In all the photos men and women are laughing. They are young, fit and happy. I wonder how many of the people pictured on the board are still alive. My eye rests on a photo of Christina taken at the foot of an alpine mountain. I recognise the unmistakeable outline of the Eiger and wonder with a shudder if this was the last photo Calum ever took of her.
I make two mugs of strong coffee and return to Calum who hasn’t moved. He sits slumped on the sofa, staring at his clasped hands. I hand him a mug and he takes it without speaking.
‘Chris is why you drink, isn’t she?’
‘One of the reasons.’
‘Does it help?’
‘Aye... But not in the way you might think. It doesn’t help me forget. It doesn’t even really dull the pain. But drinking to excess generates a fair amount of self-disgust, not to mention quite a few debilitating hangovers, all of which allows me to simultaneously despise and pity myself.’ He sips his coffee. ‘And it’s easier for my family and friends to think that wee Calum has a drink problem rather than a life problem - or should that be death problem? Drinking’s the norm here. It’s manly, it’s Highland. Grieving isn’t.’
‘Does anything dull the pain?’
‘Writing... sometimes.’ He looks at me wearily. ‘And you, Rose. You dull the pain. You’re the only thing I’ve ever found that is bigger, stronger than all the fucking grief and guilt... Just being with you. You colonise my brain, like a new poem when it’s taking root. I can’t stop thinking about you, talking to you in my head, wondering what you’re going to say next, do next.’ His eyes wander over my body, then he looks away, into his coffee mug. ‘And I can’t stop thinking about making love to you... It wasn’t so bad before we slept together, but now... now I think about you, your body, all the time.’ He looks back at me and holds my eyes for a moment. A muscle flickers at the corner of his mouth and his lips thin into a tense, hard line. When I can bear the silence no longer I lay a hand gently on his forearm, but he pulls away from me and stands abruptly. He walks over to the window and stares out into the darkness in the direction of my house.
‘One of us has to go, Rose and I’m quite happy for it to be me. I want a nice, quiet, dead life - just like yours - living inside my whisky-addled head. My family loves me and I love them - hell, that ought to be enough! I’ve lived without sex for years. It should get easier, I reckon, now I’m forty...’ He turns and looks back at me, his head on one side. ‘Does it get easier, Rose? You should know. Do you have any tips, any words of encouragement? Will you not extol the virtues of the celibate life you’re so keen to pursue?’
‘I’m a fake, Calum and you know it. That’s why you’re taunting me now. As you so rightly pointed out the night we didn’t quite make love, I wanted you from the moment I first met you.’
‘In Shona’s kitchen.’ He smiles then. The transformation of his face takes my breath away, as well as the last remnants of my resolution. ‘You hardly even looked at me.’
‘I didn’t need to. I knew.’
‘I tried to get you talking.’
‘I know. You cracked some very funny jokes at poor Shona’s expense and I kept laughing at them. I remember it felt... unfamiliar. As if I was using muscles in my face that I hadn’t used for a long time. You don’t laugh much when you live alone.’
‘I was just showing off, like a big kid, trying to make you laugh. You have such a beautiful face when you’re happy, Rose. You’re so alive.’
‘Probably because I’ve had so much to do with death. You’re the same. Even when you’re stupid with drink, being with you is like being on one of my highs, like breathing pure oxygen. All your words, your ideas, all the laughter... I was actually rather hoping you’d be crap in bed so that I could walk away disillusioned. But no such luck.’
Calum folds his arms across his chest. ‘Och, you women are awfu’ hard to please. There was me thinking I had to outshine himself, when what you really wanted from me was impotence.’
‘Like hell I did.’
His crooked smile dies, his lips part and I sense his breathing change. As his chest rises and falls, I see the pale ridge of scar, remember the other scars and I am on my feet, moving towards him.
His hands shoot out to ward me off. ‘You’re going to have to leave, Rose. Go home now.’
‘Calum—’
‘Rose, don’t do this to me! Not again! I’ve told you what you wanted to know, now go. If you don’t, I’ll kiss you - and the look in your eye tells me you’re not about to fight me off. I’ll not be used like that! Look, this may sound weird coming from a man—’ He looks down at his crotch and sighs, exasperated. ‘Especially one with a semi-permanent hard-on. But I don’t want sex, I want love. And that’s all I’m offering. Take it or leave it.’
I st
and in front of him, within arm’s reach. On a precipice. ‘You really think you love me, Calum?’
‘Aye... Heart, body and soul.’
‘I don’t know if I love you.’
He shrugs. ‘It’s enough for me that you might.’
‘You’ll settle for so little?’
‘You want me. You need me. I think maybe you do love me, you just won’t admit it. You won’t let me look after you.’
‘What makes you think you can?’
‘I understand just being alive isn’t enough for you. Gavin just wanted to keep you alive, didn’t he? He wanted you to take the drugs, stop working so hard, stop doing the things that sent you into over-drive. Am I right?’ I nod. ‘I don’t think he understood about your work, about your senses, the way you perceive the world. God knows, he should have done. He was a climber and prepared to risk his life on a regular basis in order to live life on his own terms, but I don’t think he realised that you were the same, that mere existence wasn’t enough... Maybe he loved you too much to take risks with your life.’
‘Are you saying you don’t love me as much as Gavin did?’
‘Maybe - who knows? I’m saying I love you enough to let you do things your way. And if you fall, I’ll catch you. If you break, I’ll stick you back together again.’
‘All the King’s horses and all the King’s men?’
‘Aye. And I’ll be around, Rose, I’ll be there all the time. When you’re working, I’ll ring you up from school and remind you to take your medication. I won’t go away for weeks and months at a time. You’ll know where I am and it will never be far away. Things will be... steady. And that will be good for you.’
Emotional Geology Page 23