Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  ‘Well done, John, that was most informative,’ beamed the Bishop.

  John stood up and gave a little bow.

  ‘I do think our maestro deserves a glass of Cointreau,’ added Ackroyd, with just the hint of an evil grin. ‘Don’t you agree, Mrs Watson?’

  Dorothy didn’t agree, buy felt duty bound to oblige.

  John winced as he sipped the ferocious liquid. He was in paradise. The Bishop didn’t usually give compliments, so he must have given a really professional show. It was his first serious encounter with alcohol and he had the blissful feeling of floating up into the stratosphere in a balloon. On and up. Leave frowsy old frump Dolly behind.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Now then,’ said the Bishop looking earnest, ‘There’re one or two things I need to know for the article I’m writing about youth activities in Boldonbridge. That ascent of Toubkal. Where was Mr Morris? Why wasn’t he in any of your photographs?’

  An unexpected bolt out of the blue! A sudden drop in the temperature. John fumbled for something to say – and coherent thought wasn’t easy when you were squiffy.

  ‘Well… Well, er… Well, he just didn’t want to be photographed.’

  ‘Didn’t want to be photographed?’ replied the Bishop, twitching his huge eyebrows. ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit odd, Ackroyd? Up and coming PE teacher? I’d have thought that a photo of himself on top of Toubkal was just what he needed for his CV.’

  Uncomfortable pause.

  With a big benign smile the Bishop continued, ‘I’ve been talking to Mr Morris. I have to say that he doesn’t seem to know a thing about the route up Toubkal. Not a blind thing! A bit strange for a fellow who claims to have led you lot up to the top, isn’t it?’

  Another strained pause.

  Sip of Cointreau. Continuation of benign smile. ‘I don’t think you have been telling me the whole truth, young man.’

  Sinking feeling. The balloon plummeting down from the stratosphere. Panicky look round the room: no help anywhere. Cornered.

  ‘Mr Morris wasn’t there at all, was he? You’re covering up for him, aren’t you?’

  ‘No! No! No! He was there, honest!’

  ‘That’s not what your friend Tracy told me, last week.’

  Helpless stare.

  ‘Shall I tell you what really happened? You got bored hanging round in Marrakesh while Bob Steadman was away in Rabat, didn’t you? You’d been beaten up by Kevin Bartlett, hadn’t you? He set you crying, according to your friend Jim, who witnessed it.’

  ‘No! No! No! That’s a lie!’

  ‘But he did steal all your money and travellers cheques, didn’t he? And there was absolutely nothing you could do about it, was there?’

  ‘John!’ cried Dorothy, as the mounting fury finally burst out of her. ‘You never told me about any of this!’

  ‘But I wasn’t a little kid who had to go running to the teacher, was I?’ replied a red-faced John. ‘I could handle it myself! Anyway, I didn’t start fucking crying!’

  ‘Mind your language, young man!’ Dorothy’s exasperation was getting the better of her.

  The Bishop signalled to her to be quiet and continued with an ominous Cheshire Cat grin. ‘All right, I’ll believe that bit. But “little kid” was what it was all about, wasn’t it?’

  Embarrassed silence. The stratospheric balloon was hitting the ground now.

  ‘Not very nice being mugged,’ purred the Bishop. ‘Bad for the tough guy image. Needed a bit of compensation, didn’t you? Had to prove yourself by climbing the highest mountain in North Africa. But Mr Morris refused to take you. So you hatched a little plot with your mates and went off on your own without permission, didn’t you?’

  John stared at the floor and avoided eye contact.

  ‘Yes,’ he finally mumbled in a barely audible whisper.

  Dorothy’s worst fears seemed to being realised. The lying, deceitful young toad! Her pent-up rage exploded. ‘John! That was thoroughly deceitful of you! If I had known…!’

  John looked up and confronted her. An outburst of teenage temper.

  ‘But it wasn’t only me! Jim and Rob were in it, too! So was Michael! I mean, we couldn’t have just sat around in Marrakesh, could we? We’d come to climb mountains, we’d have looked right bloody dicks if we’d just sat around doing nothing.’

  Dorothy was about to reply when the Bishop signalled her to stop.

  ‘But why didn’t you tell Mrs Watson about it?’

  ‘Couldn’t! Me and the lads had made an agreement with Mr Morris. I mean, he was a good bloke really. He wanted to come, but Dobson had told him to stay in Marrakesh. Dobson was always bullying him something wicked. We said he’d come with us to make him feel better. I mean, he couldn’t tell that lot back home that he’d lost control of us, could he? He’d get sacked as a teacher.’

  Silence. All eyes were on the floundering John.

  ‘I mean I felt sorry for him!’

  Desperate plea. ‘I was trying to be Christian!’

  Ackroyd spoke up. ‘But wouldn’t it have been better if you’d told Mrs Watson the truth?’ Legalistic pause. ‘After all,’ he continued, ‘You’d nothing to be ashamed of. Getting up Toubkal on your own like that, coping with a strange country and having to do everything in a foreign language. It was a splendid effort which showed real spirit. Surely you agree, Mrs Watson?’

  Dorothy nodded silently, but was not fully reassured. There could be worse revelations to come. Much worse!

  ‘And, what’s more,’ continued Ackroyd, in his smooth, patronising-the-stupid-client voice, ‘you saved the credibility of the expedition. The Youth Outreach people would have looked rather foolish if, after spending all that money, nobody had climbed a mountain. And your concern for Mr Morris is most commendable. Very mature, in fact.’

  Some relief. With his battered ego partially restored, John clutched at a straw.

  ‘Will I get a D. of E. Gold Medal for it?’

  ‘We might think about that,’ replied Ackroyd.

  For John this meant a firm ‘Yes’. For a practiced lawyer, however, it meant almost certainly ‘No’.

  The two men smiled knowingly at each other while Dorothy’s X-ray eyes bored into her wayward protégé. She sensed that there was something else in the pipeline – and it wasn’t going to be very nice, either.

  ‘One other point,’ said the Bishop quietly. Threateningly, thought John, not unlike Giles when he was about to go ballistic. ‘About you and Bob Steadman.’

  Oh, God! Not that, please!

  ‘That business at Am – whatever-it-was-called.’

  Not crashing onto the ground now, but sinking into it. Blood draining from his face. He actually felt it happening. How much do these people know? Had Bob gone and spilled the beans? Gone all soppy and repentant? That’d be why he’d buggered off to fucking Paraguay…

  ‘What were you doing in the middle of the night, walking around in Bob Steadman’s clothes? A bit strange, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I… I wasn’t! I never!’

  ‘That’s not what your mate Jim says. He told me that he saw you.’

  There was a pause while the Bishop’s large, ugly face twisted up into a hungry grimace, not unlike a grizzly bear eyeing a succulent salmon it had just caught.

  ‘You weren’t tarting around, were you?’ he eventually said. ‘Flashing your charms in the hope that Bob might be a little susceptible?’

  Silence.

  Dorothy gritted her teeth. This was the bit she’d been dreading. Another ‘homosexual accident’. Rumours had been circulating among the senior boys about the ‘dirty vicar bumming little Arab boys and having to do a runner’. She’d dismissed this as low-grade teenage smut. But maybe there was some truth in it after all. Not ‘bumming’ little Arab boys, however, but the British boy sitting in front
of her! This was going to take some explaining away when the school inspectors arrived! The squalid, deceiving young…!

  Her X-ray eyes glowing with deadly radiation, she broke the silence with a hard, headmistress voice. ‘Tell the truth, John. And I mean the truth!’

  John squirmed and said nothing. What could he say? He’d have to tell the truth… but not the whole truth. No way! That would amount to a form of suicide.

  ‘Well,’ he eventually spluttered, ‘It’s, well, a bit embarrassing.’ Back to being a squalid little shit-pants again! Could he never grow out of it?

  ‘The truth, John.’

  He felt his blood starting to flow in the opposite direction this time, not downwards and out of his face, but upwards and into it. He blushed bright red.

  ‘Well I had the gut rot. Everybody got it. Not just me. I was… er… caught short in the middle of the night.’

  The Bishop grinned, baring his teeth and looking, this time, like an oversized piranha fish. ‘But that was no reason for dressing up in somebody else’s clothes.’

  Pause. You’ve no choice. You’ll have to admit it. Come on, get it over with.

  Eventually a red-faced splutter. ‘Well, if you must know, I shat myself. Big time. Couldn’t help it. It just poured out. Bob had to give me some spare clothes while mine were washed and dried.’

  Pause.

  ‘I mean, I could have walked round in the nuddy, could I? That would have been tarting around!’

  ‘But where were your spare clothes?’

  ‘Hadn’t got any.’

  A burst of hostile radiation from Dorothy. ‘John that’s not true! I gave you plenty!’

  Desperate plea. ‘But I’d given them all away. To pay for the donkeys on Toubkal! For the girls. They wouldn’t have got there without donkeys to carry their rucksacks, and to carry them, too.’

  ‘But couldn’t any of the others have helped out?’ said the Bishop. ‘I mean, what about Jim and Rob? Why only you?’

  ‘Well they said I was a rich git and that they had no money.’

  ‘And you believed them, did you? You let them bully you into giving all your things away?’

  Worse and worse! Not just a dirty little shit-pants, but a pathetic little wimp as well!

  He wriggled and squirmed for a moment and then said in a frantic, pleading voice, ‘I thought I was being Christian! That’s why I gave them away. The Arabs were poor. They hadn’t got anything. I was trying to be Christian!’

  Only very partially true, this. In reality, you had them lifted off you and there was sod all you could have done about it! But, well… gild the lily, as they say.

  ‘Perhaps you were, John,’ said Dorothy guardedly. ‘Perhaps you were. I’ll believe you this once.’ At least she’d been spared the dreaded ‘homosexual accident’. That was a big relief… but what else was lurking in the pipeline?

  ‘So you have been taking my wife’s words to heart, have you?’ purred the Bishop. ‘Nothing improper about that. Quite commendable in fact! But, oh dear, you do seem to be afflicted with these “downstairs problems”, don’t you? Just like two years ago, isn’t it?’

  John winced. Same old Bishop, this! Always had to pick on this sort of thing. Always had to make you feel small and pathetic!

  He let out an angry retort. ‘But I’m not the only one! After all, David Livingstone died of it!’

  ‘Yes,’ smiled the Bishop. ‘You’re in distinguished company, I’ll grant you that.’

  A ripple of laughter followed. The tension seemed to ease a bit. But he was not out of the woods yet; there was more to come.

  ‘One final thing,’ said Ackroyd, beaming indulgently. ‘You’re a wired-up young man. Streetwise. You’ll know things I don’t know.’

  That’s more like it, thought a bruised John. At least he appreciates me, which is more than you can say for Dolly or that great caveman of a Bishop!

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve got a young client who’s in deep trouble with drugs. It’s not something I know much about. He keeps on talking about things like ‘acid’ and ‘coke’. Maybe you could help me out?’

  John, of course, hadn’t a clue. The world of drugs was a blank, an empty space on his map, a ‘terra incognito’ perceived, if at all, as an evil emanation from the nether regions of the Greenhill world. But, well, none of these bullying old Neanderthals knew anything about it either. So here was his chance to restore a bit of street cred to his battered ego. Just invent! Use your imagination! They’ll swallow it!

  For a full five minutes he gabbled away. The audience nodded gravely, obviously profoundly impressed by his profound worldly knowledge. So easy to take people like this for a ride! And good fun, too!

  The flood eventually dried up.

  ‘Anything else you want to know?’

  ‘No,’ replied Ackroyd with the barest hint of a grin, ‘you’ve told me all I want to know.’

  Another silence followed as the two men looked knowingly at one another.

  Floating on his sea of alcohol, John’s inhibitions were relaxed and his awareness intensified. Slowly, the penny began to drop. Things weren’t quite what they seemed to be. Something he didn’t know about was going on.

  ‘What the fuck’s all this in aid of?’ he eventually blurted out in a slurred voice. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’

  ‘I think we’d better tell him, Ackroyd,’ said the Bishop, flashing his toothy, piranha-style grin.

  ‘Here, read this, young man.’

  He handed him the official letter from the Youth Outreach Committee.

  John read it. Again he had that awful Greenhill feeling of utter helplessness. Enhanced by his alcoholic haze, it was an actual physical sensation of falling into a bottomless pit. He could almost hear the blood draining away from his face, like bathwater gurgling down the plughole.

  ‘But… But…’ he gasped. ‘This is all lies. I never!’

  The appropriate words wouldn’t come.

  ‘Don’t worry, we know that,’ purred Ackroyd in his smooth, cultivated voice. ‘You’ve just proved that you weren’t involved in drug dealing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You know absolutely nothing about drugs. You don’t even know the difference between hash and coke. You’ve never seen heroin, have you?’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You’ve just talked a load of rubbish, haven’t you? You made it all up, didn’t you? You thought we’d be impressed. Well, we were impressed, but not quite in the way you thought we’d be.’

  Awful deflation. Not a lad. Just a silly kid who’d shot his mouth!

  ‘But, don’t worry,’ added Ackroyd, slipping into his patronising-the-client voice, ‘you’re off the hook. Exonerated. And, what’s more, we’ve got all the evidence we need on tape.’

  ‘God! If I’d known you were taping me…’

  ‘Normal intelligence practice, old thing!’ chortled the Bishop with an ugly leer.

  ‘And when we get that report from the Embassy at Rabat – which better come pretty soon or I’ll have to twist arms in influential places! – you’ll be untouchable,’ he added. ‘Innocent as a newborn babe, in fact. Not a bad metaphor under the circs, is it, Ackroyd, old man?’

  A drained Dorothy heaved a deep sigh of relief. ‘Well, that’s something achieved, anyway!’

  Yet another awkward silence.

  ‘Come on, laddie!’ Ackroyd eventually said to John. ‘Don’t look like that about it! You’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Quite the opposite! You did very well in Morocco; better, perhaps, than the expedition – if you can call it that! – deserved. Mrs Watson, he’s a real credit to you.’

  ‘One last thing,’ added the Bishop. ‘Just watch your mouth, young man. One day somebody might go and believe you. And, whatever you do, don’t even think of trying to compete with the like
s of Kevin Bartlett in the macho stakes. You’re just not in their league. Keep away from them.’

  By now, John was drifting helplessly on the heaving ocean of alcohol, which was wildly enhancing the ups and downs of the emotional roller coaster he was riding. He was fast losing control. To his embarrassed horror, he suddenly started to cry like a little boy.

  How are the Mighty Fallen

  The guests left. Dorothy returned to the living room. Seeing a woebegone John slumped on the settee, she lost control of herself and tumbled right into Emotional Woman mode. Decent honourable youth, desperately trying to do what was right, but, through no fault of his own, tangled up in a mesh of juvenile criminals and rampaging adult egos! Horribly wronged! And how she, too, had wronged him by believing his traducers! Oh the remorse! Oh the deep sense of inadequacy! She was so unworthy of such a treasure!

  She sat down and hugged him.

  ‘Oh John!’ she cooed, ‘I’m so sorry! You’re so good! I’m so proud of you!’

  John writhed. To his utter dismay he began to cry again. Christ, he couldn’t bloody help it! It just happened. It was like shitting yourself when you had the squitters. The utter shame of it!

  Dorothy loved it. He was no longer the defiant teenager, but had gone back to being the vulnerable little boy who needed her. It was just like that night in Scotland four years ago when he’d crept into her tent crying because he’d had a nightmare and wet himself. Things were back to where she liked them.

  ‘Come on, dear,’ she said, ‘I think you’d better go to bed. You’ve had a difficult evening, darling, and you’ve drunk rather too much.’

  (‘Dear’! ‘Darling’! Ugh!)

  In the full flood of Mother Hen mode she led him slowly to his bedroom. Without bothering to undress, he collapsed in a heap onto the bed. For a time he lay there while the whole room seemed to heave up and down as if he were on a ship in a hurricane.

  Suddenly he threw up all over the eiderdown and the carpet. The final humiliation. Couldn’t even hold a little booze! How were the mighty fallen!

  A Lad Again

  On Monday morning, however, John became a lad again. It was back to school, back to being the brilliant young scholar and the dashing condottiere whose deeds of derring-do in the Army Cadet Force and in the mountains of Morocco made him a hero; at least, among the Beaconsfield juniors. The humiliations of Saturday evening were consigned to oblivion. Stuffed into another dimension where they could do no harm.