Under a Pole Star: Richard & Judy Book Club 2017 - the most unforgettable love story of the year

by Stef Penney

  He wishes he could photograph these colours. He tries to describe this sunrise to himself, to fix the memory in his head as he would fix a photograph: nacreous pinks and blues, tender lilacs, soft golds; above the ridge a palest turquoise . . . But words will not do. The colours are elusive, ever-changing, compelling you to look until your eyes water.

  Footsteps crunch the snow nearby. Theodor calls up to him, ‘See, mein Herr, today is not just a morning, no – today is the ur-morning!’ And Jakob grins his agreement.

  Jakob arrived in Zermatt two weeks ago, in the first week of May, and met Professor Theodor Birkel at the Monterosa Hotel. Professor Birkel turned out to be a handsome, saturnine man of forty, with a dark, neat beard and romantic moustache. From their first meeting, he treated Jakob as though, instead of merely exchanging letters and opinions on glaciology, they had known each other intimately for years.

  ‘My dear chap’ – Birkel liked to show off his rococo English – ‘how excessively pleasant it is to see you after so much time and letters!’

  Jakob found himself laughing, and Birkel laughed too. ‘Ha! Do you speak German, my fellow?’

  ‘Ein bisschen,’ said Jakob.

  ‘Capital! Herrlich! Then I can introduce you to my stupid assistant.’

  ‘Delighted to meet you,’ said Jakob, in lower-East Side German, as Birkel dragged forward a blond, youthful giant with a toothy smile, who was hovering, round-shouldered, behind Birkel. His name was Otto Lichti. Birkel dealt him a great blow on the shoulder.

  ‘Otto speaks no English whatsoever – he is a brainless peasant!’

  Jakob gathered from the laughter that Otto was accustomed to this sort of teasing. The youth pumped Jakob by the hand, as though meeting him had been his life-long ambition.

  ‘But the boy knows how to climb; he is a mountain goat, a chamois; he is a marmot! Tomorrow we will show you where we are working, but now, come, we will eat . . .’

  Birkel led them to a restaurant where he knew the landlady, and they were treated like royalty. They sat on the terrace, watching the sunset paint the Rothorn, though its ruddiness was swallowed up early – because behind them was the great dagger of the Matterhorn. It was astonishing: mountains that had only been names and photographs to him, infamous silhouettes, sprang to life, were more breathtaking even than he imagined.

  Birkel outlined the work they would be starting in the morning (‘if, my sir, you are not too fatigued after your journeyings?’), while Otto sat and smiled with his big white teeth. After his fatiguing journeyings, Jakob was moved by this simple, straightforward friendliness.

  The week in Snowdonia with Professor Collee was not quite the success he had hoped for. As they peered at examples of the Caledonian orogeny through curtains of rain, the older man raked through Jakob’s knowledge of the northern Laurentian Shield and, his manner implied, found it a poor storehouse. He had a habit of waiting until Jakob was scrambling over a wet rock, or slithering down a muddy path before springing questions on him: a technique perfected on generations of hapless students. Greenland was irrelevant, he concluded. It added nothing to his theories – and he certainly did not want to hear anything that might detract from his theories. Collee only came to life when describing his own work and its importance. He was an old windbag who had seen better days, but an old windbag who was spending his retirement writing a definitive textbook on the geological history of the world, and he could be helpful to Jakob, if he felt so inclined.

  Jakob had arrived in Wales in high spirits, ready to be charmed by everything, even an irascible old professor, but the weather was atrocious, the sun – and usually the mountains – invisible, and the old man’s querulousness tested his good humour. The farmhouse where they stayed was dark and damp, and the legs of his bed stood in saucers of vinegar – a precaution against what, he didn’t even like to ask. He was tired, he feared he was really getting the cold he had claimed as an excuse, and he missed Flora.

  ‘Young fellows these days – no stamina,’ barked Collee on the last day. ‘When I was your age, I surveyed Connemara, in the rain, for a month. Slept in a tent!’

  The cold duly arrived as his train pulled into Paddington Station. Feeling ill and repulsive, the prospect of seeing Flora again made Jakob nervous. It was a week since their parting in Liverpool; a week in which the solitary bed he had looked forward to had felt increasingly lonely. He longed to see her, but, at the same time, what had taken place between them seemed almost unreal. Could that really have happened?

  .

  Flora came to his hotel, tense and distracted. He feared the worst. But his illness disarmed her; she relaxed when she saw how unwell he was; she even laughed, and apologised for laughing. She ordered him to bed, went out to buy supplies, made him beef tea with brandy in a spirit kettle. He lamented his state of health. She stroked the hair off his forehead.

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I was almost afraid of seeing you, but now I’m not afraid.’

  ‘Why were you afraid?’

  She dropped her eyes. ‘Because, here, I feel more . . . wicked, I suppose. I didn’t know if I could carry on. But when I saw you, I knew I couldn’t not carry on. I feel torn in two . . .’

  ‘Darling, you shouldn’t feel guilty. You know, with a . . . a situation like yours, it’s possible that he wouldn’t mind. It’s not as if you’re depriving him . . .’ He gave in to a timely spasm of coughing, aware this was gimcrack reasoning. In his mind, her husband was an ancient cripple – a barely human figure. He didn’t want to know if this were not the case.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m just glad you’ve come. It’s wonderful to see you.’ Talking made him out of breath.

  ‘Shh. I’m glad I came as well.’

  .

  ‘Would you rather I leave you?’ she asked, when he had finished the tea.

  ‘No. Only if you find me intolerably disgusting. I wouldn’t blame you.’

  Flora shakes her head. ‘No, never.’

  ‘It’s all right. I find myself intolerable, sometimes.’

  She bent and kissed his temple, his cheekbone, his jaw. The skin under his ear. The side of his mouth. Her breath fluttered against his neck.

  ‘I want so much to kiss you, Flora, but I can’t breathe.’

  ‘You don’t have to do anything.’ She spoke close to his ear. ‘I want to get in next to you. Would that be nice, or . . . ?’

  ‘It would be nice.’

  She half turned away as she took off and folded her clothes with self-conscious care. He half watched, telling himself that they weren’t going to make love, but it was impossible not to look; she was uncovering her beautiful body just for him. She looked round and caught his eye, and he smiled in embarrassment, unsure why he was embarrassed. He was urgently excited, despite feeling, a minute earlier, at death’s door.

  Flora got into bed beside him, making the springs complain. It was a railway hotel and the mattress had known better days. Doubtless it had known other irregular liaisons.

  ‘Oh, you’re cold,’ she murmured. She made him take off his underwear, as if they were in Greenland, as if they were Eskimos. She pressed her bare flesh against his, putting her arm around him. He turned his back to her, so that she could curl herself around him and infuse him with her heat.

  ‘Is that all right?’ she whispered. She rubbed his arm and chest, and stroked his goose-bumped flank where it was tucked against her body. ‘Is that better?’

  ‘Much better,’ he said, with a sigh. Her breasts pushed softly against his back, her skin was velvety and hot, felt as necessary as sleep. Something more than warmth flowed into him, below the level of thought. It made him feel safe. He thought of the last night in Siorapaluk, when she slept in a chair behind him, the conviction that she tended him and cherished him, no matter how little he deserved it. He was about to speak of it when she whispered, against his shoulder, ‘Sometimes I think there�
��s something wrong with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘All week, I couldn’t stop thinking about you . . . like this.’

  ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you either. I took you to bed with me every night – my narrow, lumpy, uncomfortable bed. The legs stood in bowls of vinegar. What was that for?’

  ‘Oh, goodness . . . Rats? Cockroaches? I don’t know.’ She brushed her lips over his skin. ‘What did we do there, despite them?’

  ‘Mm . . . everything.’

  ‘Tell me if you want me to stop . . .’

  Her hand went on stroking and caressing, circled nearer his groin – he said nothing – and finally brushed over his stiff and throbbing cock. Although he had resolved not to, told himself he didn’t want to, he turned on to his back, breathing heavily. His body felt as if it were in two distantly related halves: the part near his head, depleted, useless and feverish; his loins, a bursting mass of energy that she took hold of with a delicious purpose. He came with alarming speed and violence, gasping for air, and collapsed into a fit of coughing. She rummaged for a handkerchief and used it to wipe the semen off his belly; she was so tender and fastidious, it made him laugh – and then cough again. She folded the handkerchief, curled herself around him and put her hand on his heaving chest, feeling for his foot with hers.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and laughed at himself. ‘God . . .’

  She laughed too. ‘You’re warmer now.’

  ‘Mm. You’re an angel.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You’re a lovely, warm angel and you’re very kind to me.’

  ‘Kind?’ She sounded almost angry. ‘I am not kind. Kindness is universal.’

  ‘Then I’m glad you’re not kind. But you are an angel, and I’m sorry; I’m a poor sort of lover for you.’

  ‘No. I want no other.’

  Jakob released her hair from its coiled plait and laid it across his chest like a sash. He loved the feel of it: thick and strong: a rope on which you could climb to safety. He wound the ends around his hand.

  ‘I have you,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to let you go.’

  ‘Do I have you too?’

  ‘Yes, you have me. There’s nothing you can do.’

  Her arm tightened around his chest.

  ‘My train doesn’t leave until ten, tomorrow evening. Will you come back?’

  ‘Yes. In the afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll be better then. Promise me you’ll come to Switzerland.’

  Had there been a tiny pause?

  ‘Yes, but you must write once you’re there, and tell me if you still want me to come. You don’t know what it’ll be like; I don’t want to be in your way.’

  ‘Of course I will write. But you couldn’t possibly be in the way.’

  He thought about saying something sentimental. The words were in his head. He cleared his throat in readiness.

  ‘You’ll come back to London on your way home?’

  ‘Yes. But you have to come to Switzerland. I will show you the most beautiful glacier.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  He felt dizzy, and decided the words could wait until tomorrow.

  The next morning he felt no better, and dragged himself to a chemist’s shop, where he confided the gist of his problem to the young man behind the counter (why not? He would never see him again). The chemist tapped the side of his nose and sold him a bottle of tonic wine, swearing it would cure any cold or other malady and marvellously enhance the vital forces, ‘temporarily, you understand’ – this was accompanied by a wink.

  The bottle featured a picture of the Pope, and the results were miraculous. Within half an hour of drinking a couple of glasses, his symptoms had all but vanished, and he felt exultant, brimming with energy and optimism. When Flora arrived, she was astonished (even amused) by the extent of his recovery. Jakob wanted to imprint on her an experience of pleasure that she would be unable to forget, that would wipe away his poor showing of the day before. It started well enough – he buried his face between her thighs and used his tongue to bring her to an unmistakable ecstasy. He revelled in the juices that ran out of her, swallowed what he could, then kissed her with lips still wet so that she tasted her own nectar.

  But when he was inside her, deliciously held in the warm, wet embrace he had been dreaming of, he could not come to the finish, no matter how exquisite the sensations. This was unprecedented. He ended up – not part of his plan – threshing for an unconscionably long time, while his heart raced at unnatural speed, wondering if he were about to have a seizure, or if Flora were starting to hate him. At last, he gave it up as a bad job and rolled off her, panting, the temporary enhancement of his vital forces clearly (with one exception) over.

  ‘Is something wrong? What should I do?’

  She worried it was her fault. Jakob shook his head, which was throbbing again. He was exhausted; his stubborn, aching cock no longer felt part of him, but a separate, possibly malevolent, entity. He was downcast, their last embrace, for who knew how long, spoilt.

  ‘Nothing. I’m sorry; I don’t know . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t matter – not for me. I’m worried about you.’

  ‘It’s all right. It must be the cold . . . or that tonic.’

  She picked up the bottle and read the label. ‘“Vin Mariani, strengthens and stimulates . . .”’ She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Well the Pope swears by it!’

  They looked at each other and started laughing, and then couldn’t stop. She folded him in her arms and kissed him, and told him to stop apologising. The conviction that he had ruined everything abated. Nestled against her warmth, he felt an overwhelming peace. The afternoon was saved, one or other of them continually bubbling up with laughter; one look at the pontiff’s goblin face was enough to send them into fits of undignified silliness. But the clock raced at unnatural speed, the minutes slipped away. They stopped laughing. She had to go home. He had to catch the boat train. When there was no more time, they got up and dressed in silence, without catching each other’s eye. She helped him pack, then tied his muffler carefully around his throat, her eyes unusually large and dark. Dressed, Jakob felt they were both further apart and more bound than ever. They stood in the middle of the room with their arms around each other.

  ‘I hate this – saying goodbye to you,’ he said; the tightness in his throat nothing to do with his cold.

  Her lips by his ear, she murmured, ‘I know. I do too.’

  ‘You’ll come? You must. I can’t be without you now.’

  ‘Yes . . . My beloved.’

  The ticking from the mantelpiece clock was like an impatient hand, tugging insistently at his sleeve – not now . . . not now . . . not now . . .

  But then it was now.

  Chapter 32

  Gornergletscher, 45°58′N 7°48′E

  June–July 1895

  For their first climb, Theodor and Jakob start up the Monte Rosa long before dawn (‘Easy – an Englishwoman has climbed it!’ says Theodor, scornfully). Jakob is entranced by the views unveiling in the waxing light. He has not climbed with such an experienced alpinist before, never attempted such faces, and, anyway, these mountains are different from those he has known: sharper, steeper, dizzier, in air that is, as the sun climbs with them, so warm and full of light that it feels like a tonic wine. By ten o’clock, they have reached the western ridge, and turn to look down at the vast whiteness of the Gornergletscher. Its dirt bands are sharply defined, sinuously graceful and, from up here, perfect – the giant, coiling power of it winding away towards the Dent Blanche, the Obergabelhorn, the still scarcely believable Matterhorn.

  ‘Jakob – over here!’ Theodor calls to him from a hundred yards away. Jakob tramps over, keeping to the exact centre of the precipitous ridge. He finds the height and airiness alarming, but he is all right as long as he
doesn’t look straight down.

  Theodor, careless of the dizzying drop on both sides, takes his friend by the arm and extends his other arm in a lordly sweep. ‘I present you – Italia!’

  To the south, the land falls away in a layered, violet haze. He feels as though he can see for hundreds of miles, over the curvature of the earth: there is Vesuvius . . . Sicily . . . Africa! In every other direction, white peaks and blue shadows dazzle them, stretching away beyond sight. Above, the sky darkens to ultramarine. His chest heaves with the thinness of the air. He takes off his pack and unstraps his camera, grinning with delight.

  .

  To be near their work on the glacier, they live in a mountain hut perched on an alp studded with tiny, gem-like flowers. The three of them sleep on wooden bunks that are little more than shelves. Every morning, a young shepherdess walks up the mountain with a basket of food – milk, cheese, bread, and onions and soft, wizened apples that have been maturing in a cellar since autumn. For the evenings, the girl’s mother makes them meat stews, packed at red heat in a basket stuffed with hay. The girl climbs all the way back up with the heated basket at the end of the day. She doesn’t mind this toil; she has fallen in love with Otto, and his smile grows even bigger. He accompanies her down the mountain after dinner, ‘to protect her from beasts,’ and comes back, surefooted, long after dark. (‘We should not too much envy him,’ says Theodor wistfully, as they watch them go down the path, hand in hand. ‘He insists me, she is a girl devout.’)

  Jakob and Theodor spend evenings in the hut huddled near the stove, reading, writing letters and talking. Despite their short acquaintance, Jakob has come to regard him as a close friend. It is the closest he has felt to a man since Frank died. But Theodor is wiser and more worldly than Frank – different, in fact, to any American Jakob has known. He has been married for fifteen years, and a professor for nine. His wife and children live in Freiburg, where he has the chair in geology. He also has a mistress, who lives handily close to the university. He writes to the two women in rotation. He is very fond of them, he says, but prefers climbing to both. ‘Yes, my friend – just as exhilarating, and mountains do not argue with you, or demand new clothes, or sulk.’