by MARY HOCKING
She sat staring down at the packet without moving for so long that he thought he had offended her by his brusqueness. Then he heard her fingers removing the wrapping paper, carefully and without haste, smoothing out each sheet of paper. He would never buy another present as long as he lived, he decided. At last she came to the fan, he felt the slight breeze as she flicked it open and moved it to and fro against her cheek. She was so quiet that he thought that she was embarrassed.
‘It isn’t the one you wanted, is it?’ he said stiffly. ‘It can be changed.’
‘Oh, James!’ In the darkness her voice sounded husky. ‘I’m so pleased I really don’t know what to say.’
She did not, in fact, say much about the fan, but she wrapped it up in the tissue paper in that tender way that some women have of treating presents. He remembered how, when he was a child, his grandmother would sometimes go to the old chest that she kept in her room and bring out the treasures she had stored there still wrapped in the original paper in which they had been given to her. The memory had the effect of making Frangcon seem to belong to his past as well as to the present. He had dinner with her and quite forgot to ask about the arrangements for the trip to the mountains.
Fortunately, he came across Milo early the following day in the bar at the Granada. Milo was sitting at a side-table, not so convivial as usual; he refused a drink when James offered it.
‘Getting in training?’ James asked when he returned with his own drink.
‘You think I need to train to take up the challenge of that young fool?’
His vanity was piqued, the lips curled with exaggerated disdain and the blue eyes protruded angrily. It was a rather absurd performance, James thought, like a ragged cock preening itself.
‘Why should he want to challenge you?’ he asked.
‘To prove himself, perhaps.’
‘But what could he hope to prove?’
‘That he is a better man than I am.’
Milo was hunched over the table; his head sagged forward and James noticed, as Raoul had noticed earlier, the heavy pouches beneath the eyes, the looseness of the flesh around the jaw. He allowed his reaction to Milo’s remark to show on his face before he realized that Milo was watching him. He felt annoyed at being out-manreuvred by a man he was on the point of despising.
‘You’re dramatizing yourself,’ he snapped.
‘I don’t need to. I am dramatic.’
This not very witty repartee restored Milo’s good humour. He leant forward and laughed in James’s face. The gold tooth gleamed; his own teeth were not in such good condition and his breath smelt unpleasant. It was only with difficulty that James refrained from telling him that he should stick to his memories and not attempt to pit himself against a man like Raoul. He was just congratulating himself on his self-control when Milo said:
‘You had better go to bed early tonight. I shan’t want people lagging behind tomorrow.’
He looked quite straight-faced about it and James decided that the remark had been meant seriously. There appeared to be no limits to his vanity.
It did not occur to James until it was too late that it was not very wise to undertake a trip to the mountains with a guide whose reliability was in doubt. From the very beginning the whole affair had seemed to him rather unreal. The attitude of the rest of the party when they met the next morning did nothing to sharpen his sense of urgency. They looked, James thought, rather like a study for a picture entitled ‘The Reluctant Travellers’.
They nearly missed the train because Frangcon had not been ready when Rose called for her. This seemed to have put Frangcon completely out of humour and she was still protesting about being hustled when the train started.
‘I hope we’re not going to . . .’ she began.
Rose cut in sharply, ‘I hope you’re not going to fuss all the time, Frangcon.’
Rose was in an odd mood. Her attitude towards Raoul had changed. The unconscious familiarity of lovers had given place to something awkward, even a little embarrassed. James was reminded of the atmosphere in the Glasgow office after old Mr Scunner had tried to kiss his secretary in the stationery cupboard. Raoul looked out of the window, impassive and remote, while Milo slept most of the way, his mouth hanging open, looking depressingly unlike a mountain guide.
‘Why aren’t you excited?’ James asked Frangcon. ‘This is the sort of thing I would have expected you to be quite ecstatic about.’
Frangcon, who had been hurt by Rose’s sharpness, was in no mood to respond to James’s sardonic tone. She answered almost sullenly:
‘I don’t like being organized.’
‘But is there any particular reason why you’re not happy about this?’ he persisted.
Frangcon hesitated. She had a strong sense of privacy and she hated to be made to reveal anything about herself until she chose to do so. While she tried to overcome her resentment, James thrust again.
‘What is it? Don’t you like walking?’
She looked in his direction but seemed not to see him; then, the withdrawal complete, she turned away and stared out of the window. She would not confide in him now. How obstinate she was! Obstinate to the point of stupidity, he fumed, angry at his own lack of patience. They did not speak to one another again during the journey.
‘What a miserable lot you are!’ Rose exclaimed, looking around the compartment.
‘We shall all behave better when we get there,’ James assured her.
He abandoned his grievance against Frangcon and allowed Rose to lecture him on life in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The whole thing, he decided as Rose passed effortlessly from one banal generalization to another, had a comic opera flavour.
It was only when they descended on to the small wooden platform that the cold air banished at one long clear breath this comfortable illusion. James watched the train disappearing into a tunnel with a vast sense of dismay. It was as though, for the second time, his journey had changed direction. He had been regretful about Seville: now there was the beginning of fear.
‘What are we doing here?’ he asked.
‘This is where we start walking,’ Rose answered.
She struggled into a heavy cardigan which came well down over her thighs while Frangcon, attired in a cotton blouse and skirt, complained of the cold. Raoul stood staring at the high wall of rock that rose so steeply ahead that one had to lean back to get a glimpse of the sky.
‘This is ridiculous!’ James said.
No one took any notice of him, but Frangcon said rather uneasily:
‘Where on earth do we go from here?’
‘Away from earth.’
Milo, amused at his own joke, pointed upwards. Frangcon was not amused and there was an edge to her voice that James had not heard before when she replied:
‘Oh, don’t be so silly! As if we could!’
Milo unfolded a map to show Frangcon. Raoul remained slightly apart, his gaze fixed on the wall of rock as though measuring its inflexibility against his own. This, James realized, was Raoul’s expedition; the rest of the party were no more than bit players in whatever drama it was that Raoul and Milo were enacting. The indignity of it angered him beyond reason. He was reminded that he came of a sensitive race, some of his ancestors would have killed a man who had so offended them.
‘Don’t stand there like a pillar of bloody salt!’
It was Rose’s voice, angry. She and the others had moved towards the end of the platform and were waiting for James to join them.
There was a rough track beyond the platform which twisted round the side of the rock wall and led, so Milo informed them, to a village where they could have coffee and something to eat before they started walking. Milo said that he had known the village years ago and still went back occasionally. He spoke about it in the manner of an absent lord returning to inspect his property.
‘What are our plans?’ James asked Rose as they set off.
‘I told you yesterday.’
‘Yesterday was dif
ferent. I wasn’t here then.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not worried. I just like to know what I’m doing.’
‘We’ll talk about it in the village,’ Milo said. ‘You can see it just ahead, through the cleft in the rocks.’
The village consisted of tall houses with red-tiled sloping roofs and walls washed pale pink. The houses were grouped on either side of a stream and the water ran swiftly over rocks and boulders and sparkled in the sun. This, and the prospect of coffee, so enchanted Frangcon that she regained her good humour.
‘Now, if you had given me a few more minutes I could have found my camera before we left,’ she reproved Rose when Milo left them sitting on a few rickety chairs to the side of the nearest house.
‘You’ll find it hard enough going without a camera to carry,’ Rose answered. She tilted her chair back against the wall and raised her face to the sun. ‘It’s really scorching away from the wind. We shall have a fabulous tan.’
‘We’re just doing a short walk around here and coming back to catch the evening train, are we?’ James demanded.
‘Don’t be so silly, James! There is no evening train.’
‘What!’
‘Have you brought sun-glasses, Frangcon? We’re going to need them or we shall all go sun-blind and poor old Milo will have to carry us down one by one.’
‘He’d love that, wouldn’t he?’
‘But I don’t think he’d make it, he’s in terribly bad form—and he’s old for that kind of thing.’
‘What kind of thing?’
This struck them as very funny, James got up and walked away, Raoul was standing by the stream. There were some children playing there, looking up at him shyly, but he seemed not to notice them. James said to him:
‘I don’t know what your plans are . . .’
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
‘No doubt. I’m not very interested, anyway. But I thought you might like to know mine. I’m staying here with the two girls; we’ll take a stroll, eat our packed food, and spend the night somewhere. You can pick us up in the morning.
He had Raoul’s attention now, but as he had no intention of spoiling the effect by arguing he turned away and walked back to the house where Milo was standing at the door talking to an old man. It seemed to James that the man’s welcome was on the guarded side and he wondered what kind of a memory these people had of Milo. But if the man was uneasy, he was by no means servile and he talked to James pleasantly when they were introduced, speaking with courteous slowness for the sake of the foreigner. When he turned away to see about coffee, Milo informed James:
‘They will do anything for me in these places. I am a legend to them.’
‘That was a theory which the Scottish rebels also held when they took to the heather.’
‘And they were right, weren’t they?’
‘They were seldom betrayed. But I think they were rather mistaken in imagining that they were loved.’
‘Loved!’ Milo rolled his eyes and puffed out his cheeks. ‘They probably weren’t lovable! In all that mist and drizzle they must have been poor creatures, snuffling and wheezing and shivering. I wonder their sneezes didn’t give them away when the troops went after them!’
‘Whereas you were lusty and virile and straight as a mountain pine?’
Milo put his head back and laughed very loudly; then he poked James in the ribs and said, ‘I was lusty and virile, anyway,’ and sauntered towards the river where he squatted down and immediately began to play with the children. James reflected angrily that they were being led on this expedition by a man who was little more than a buffoon.
A woman, very dark, her face prematurely lined, carried a tray to the table where Rose and Frangcon sat. She set down a jug and some rather dark bread without speaking. Frangcon tried her favourite game of demanding the Spanish for the bread, but it did not produce the usual friendly response.
‘Perhaps she only speaks Basque?’ Frangcon suggested to Rose.
‘This isn’t the Basque province.’
‘She just didn’t want to speak,’ James said as he joined them.
‘But what harm have I done her?’
‘Milo is a legend to these people, so he informs me. Perhaps he should have left it that way?’
‘You mean they find him disappointing now that he’s older and a little past it? I think that’s rather beastly.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant. He probably butchered half the population.’
She turned her head towards the stream where Milo was emptying out his pockets, presenting the children with anything that he could find—sweets, a pencil, small coins.
‘He looks harmless enough now.’
‘He’s very silly.’ Rose sounded like a disapproving school teacher. ‘The Spanish children are dreadful beggars; he knows it’s bad to encourage them and yet he does it all the time.’
‘It’s nice to know he has a soft side to him,’ Frangcon murmured.
‘But not so comforting at a time when we have to depend on him as a mountain guide,’ James suggested.
She smiled and leant comfortably back in her chair to get the full benefit of the sun.
‘Don’t worry. We’ve got all day so we shall be able to take things easily. I’m beginning to look forward to it now. I’m always a different person when I’ve had my morning coffee.’
Milo joined them, spreading the map out on the table. Raoul came and stood behind him, leaning over his shoulder.
‘Before you start to tell us about it, Milo, James has something to say.’
James, not one to be shamed into silence, took up the challenge.
‘I’m not a mountaineer. And neither, I imagine, is Rose or Frangcon. It was absurd of me not to have said this before and I apologize. But I think it would be madness for the three of us to embark on this.’
‘Of all the bloody cheek!’ Rose, who regarded herself as the organizer of the expedition, was angry. ‘I’m perfectly well able to look after myself, I assure you. And so is Frangcon.’
‘In that case perhaps she can speak for herself.’
‘She certainly can if I know Frangcon.’
‘You’re all making it sound so arduous,’ Frangcon complained. ‘Can’t we just take things easily and . . .’
‘Mountain climbing is arduous!’ James was almost shouting. By contrast, Milo’s voice was quiet:
‘Who is talking about climbing?’ He picked up his pencil and began to sketch out a route on the map. ‘Do you really imagine that I am going to take you climbing? You must be mad! I have too much respect for the mountains to unleash you on them. We are going for a long walk; it will mean a bit of scrambling about, but it will not, I assure you, involve any real climbing.’
‘I understood we were to climb.’ Raoul’s voice was tight with anger.
Milo smiled blandly. ‘You misunderstood me, I’m afraid.’
‘You mean you have brought us all up here to spend a day walking . . .’ Raoul leant over the map and stabbed at it with his forefinger ‘. . . from here to here? A day for that!’
Milo leant back in his chair. ‘I’m getting old and rather tired.’ He thumped his chest and coughed; no one appreciated the humour of the display. He went on, unperturbed: ‘You should have got a younger man if you wanted to go further.’
Frangcon, peering at the map, was becoming more cheerful.
‘Oh, that’s not too far, is it? It’ll be rather nice, Raoul; nothing but a good day’s ramble.’
A muscle at the side of Raoul’s mouth quivered. Milo folded the map slowly, smiling to himself in a way that was irritatingly superior.
‘Where do we stay the night?’ Frangcon asked him.
‘At Izera. I am well remembered there.’
‘And if we want to go further?’ Raoul enquired.
Milo looked at him, his eyes screwed up as though the light hurt them.
‘I don’t plan to go any further than Izera.’ He said it as thoug
h he had stored, a certain amount of energy which would last him a given distance and no more. ‘But if you want to go on alone that is up to you. Much will depend on how you tackle the first stage of the journey. I remember I once climbed from here to the place where we shall eat our lunch—just above the tree line, on that ridge there—in an hour. Remarkable!’ He shook his head sadly and collected his things together.
James saw Raoul looking at his watch. He will now do the distance in under an hour, he thought wearily, and so it will go on.
‘Whatever made you agree to this?’ he asked Milo as they set out in the rear of the party.
‘It’s a nice way of spending a day.’
‘You don’t think it might be painful?’
‘Painful? Oh, I don’t think so. The mountains don’t change.’
It did not seem to occur to him that he himself might have changed.
The path along which they were walking spiralled upwards very gently with dusty rock on one side and a slope on the other, so thick with trees and shrubs that there was no sense of the land falling away. It was all much softer than James had expected, and here in this twisting, tree-shaded tunnel the gaunt outline of the mountain peaks was hidden; there was only the deep blue of the sky glimpsed between the feathery pines. At first the walk was very pleasant, but gradually the slow, relentless uphill toil began to have its effect on lungs and leg muscles. After an hour, James, who was still labouring in the rear with Milo, said:
‘Is it like this all the way?’
‘No. It gets more interesting later on.’
They completed another agonizing turn of the spiral, then James said:
‘In what way more interesting?’
‘You can see so much more when, there are no trees.’
‘And what is the gradient like?’
‘Steeper in parts. Quite a bit on the level, though. It always seems to me that this is the worst part of the journey—it almost literally breaks your heart.’
James thought about this as he toiled upwards.
‘In fact, not a good thing to rush it—particularly if you have a lot of walking to do afterwards?’
‘Definitely not.’