The road-head was at a hacienda called Alloa, set in an upland grassy valley which could have known little change in the past 300 years. One man owned the entire valley, and though theoretically the feudal system (with the Indians being treated as serfs) had been abolished, in practice the system remained. If the Indians wanted to stay in the valley, they had to work for the landowner on his terms – and these seemed fairly harsh. The homes of the Indians, resembling mouldering hay-stacks, were huts made from bunched grass, without windows, doors or chimneys. Each had a small patch of land for his own crops, and much of his pay was in kind – food and grain. For escape, he could go to the cities, but found little prospect of work, and a life which could be even harsher. At least on the hacienda some measure of security was provided, and the hardship of the life was made bearable by alcohol.
We arrived at the Hacienda Alloa on the second day of one of the many religious feasts which grace the Ecuadorian calendar. In the morning all the peasants went to church – a dark, windowless barn of a place, with none of the gold and glittering ornaments of the churches of Quito – just a stark wooden cross on a battered old table. But the room was packed to bursting, with an overflow standing around the threshold and the walls outside. There was a constant babble of voices, cries of children, as the priest celebrated Mass. At the end of the service they held a procession in two long parallel columns round the field immediately outside the church. One of these columns was formed by the major domo of the hacienda leading the menfolk, whilst his wife led the women in the other. There was something infinitely sad in the stoic, melancholy cast of their features, all of which seemed weakened and debauched by a life of hardship relieved only by alcohol and drugs.
At the end of the procession they all flocked to the village tavern, a bare mud hut and compound, which was soon packed with Indians – men, women and even children, all of whom proceeded to get more drunk than I have ever seen anyone before or since. The scene was Hogarthian – with a soldier lying flat in the gutter, blind to the world, his rifle beside him – a man offering his wife or lover a draught from his half-full bottle of Aqua Diente, in the middle of the street – a mother giving her eighteen-month babe a slug of the fire-water, to stop it crying.
The binge lasted three days, during which time I had no choice but to wait patiently until the porters we had been promised had recovered from their hangovers. When, eventually, they did, we set off on our journey, the first leg on horseback to an outlying ranch about fifteen miles from the foot of the mountain, followed by two days’ march through the long, near-impenetrable grass, to the base of the volcano.
Away from the bottle, our porters proved wonderfully reliable – much stronger and more self-sufficient than our brave little bunch of lads from Macas, who were so much out of their element once in virgin forest. These men had spent their childhood and working lives wandering the sierra, in search of game or stray cattle. Dressed for the part, with broad, heavy felt hats, thick woollen ponchos and well-made boots, they knew how to make effective shelters by cutting the long grass and building little thatched huts – mini-replicas of their own hovels by the hacienda. They never complained of the incessant rain, nor of the heavy loads, nor the hard going through the pathless maze of grass-clad ridges.
Reaching the base of the volcano on the third day, we waited there for another couple of days, and then moved a camp up the side of the mountain, to an altitude of about 15,000 feet, on a shoulder immediately opposite a lava run. It was a strange, rather frightening place. By day the lava blocks, which were pushed down the slope by the remorseless power of the volcano, looked like dull, black coke. But at night these glowed a rich cherry red as they rattled and rumbled down the slope. Every few hours there was an eruption from the main crater. We could not see anything, for the entire summit was wrapped in cloud. We could, however, feel the mountain tremble beneath us, and it was all too easy to imagine a great river of molten lava, poised somewhere out of sight, above us in the clouds, ready to sweep down and envelop us.
We had some trouble persuading the Indians to help carry our tent so high on the volcano, and when they left us there, they had shaken our hands with a fervour which seemed to imply that this was the last time they ever expected to see us. Having lived in the shadow of Sangay all their lives, they had a healthy and perhaps superstitious respect for the mountain. In the two nights and days that Sebastian and I spent high on its flanks, we began to share both their fears and their respect.
And then, at last, I had one clear day. I raced to the summit, tailed by Sebastian, and took my pictures, which had a peculiarly anticlimactic quality. Although the crater was vast, it was filled with a dense steam and you could see nothing – you could only hear a steady hiss from its depth – a hiss which, to my untutored ears, sounded exceptionally sinister. I spent an hour on the brink of that crater, hoping for a clearance – even half-hoping for an eruption – to get some truly spectacular photographs, yet at the same time fearful of my own prospects of survival in such an event.
An hour went by. Nothing happened, and with a sense of relief, feeling I had done my duty, I fled down the slope, back to our camp. Our Indians welcomed us as if we had returned from the halls of the dead, but still I wasn’t happy. I was worried in case I had not succeeded in getting sufficiently dramatic photographs of the volcano. Paradoxically, on the day of our return to its base, the weather once again cleared into a series of perfect, cloudless days, when even the interior of the crater seemed free from steam. I had just persuaded Sebastian – ever loyal and patient – to return with me to the summit for yet another attempt to get the perfect definitive picture of a volcano. We were to go up first thing in the morning, and I was sorting out my gear for what would be our third ascent of the mountain, when an Indian came running into the camp.
The moment I saw him I knew there was something terribly wrong. He had a message addressed to me. I dreaded opening it – fearing something might have happened to Wendy. I had an instant, appalling sense of relief that it was not Wendy – although it was Conrad. He had been killed in an accident. It was like a physical blow, instantaneous, believable and real – dreadful in its finality. I collapsed on to the ground and cried, with the Indians standing silent, sympathetic around me. Sebastian, holding my shoulder, gave me all the sympathy and strength that he could.
I did my best to pull myself together, knowing that I had to get home without delay. The accident had occurred over a week before, and the fact that I learned of the tragedy as soon as I did was entirely due to an old climbing friend, Simon Clark, who was now working in Ecuador. We had met in Quito on our way out, and later he had seen a mention of the accident in The Times. The Daily Telegraph had already cabled to the British Embassy, but there was no way in which they could get the news to me, since they had only a vague idea of our whereabouts. Simon knew even less than them, but immediately made inquiries about our route into Sangay. He drove to the Hacienda Alloa, and would have carried the message in person but for the fact that he had vital business commitments. He sent an Indian with a note to tell me of the tragedy, and I shall always be grateful to him for his efforts. He left a Land-Rover with a driver to take me to Quito, and this must have saved Wendy from several days’ unmitigated hell in our loss, compounded as it was by my own absence on the other side of the earth.
I started back that afternoon, knowing that I could not sleep until I reached home. Our Indians, whose own lives are full of death, held a silent compassion that I shall never forget. We walked through the dusk, and as night fell I looked back at Sangay, that dark conical silhouette, against a star-encrusted sky – a flaming red snake of molten lava coiling down its slopes. Even in my grief I was aware of the intense beauty and peace of the scene. I walked and walked, drugged by fatigue, yet telling myself over and over again that I should never feel and see Conrad again.
They had horses waiting for us at the outlying station and we rode on through the night, over the hairpin path which led to Allo
a, reaching it at dawn. I shook hands with the Indians – their leader, a fine, grizzled old man, crying as he waved his farewell – and we drove on through the dusty little town of Riobamba, past Cotopaxi, snow-capped, conical and pink in the early morning sun, and into Quito. There, I was taken to some friends of Simon who were infinitely kind, and we held to that tight brittle edge of small talk that enables one to keep grief private. Then the plane to New York; long hours of waiting for the connection, longing for Wendy, keeping going till we could hold each other close, worrying about whether she was all right. And Heathrow, Immigration, baggage collection, Customs, then Wendy broke through and we just clung and clung together, isolated from the world in the totality of our grief and love for each other.
Wendy had been staying with Mary Stewart, and Conrad had gone playing with Mary’s four children. At the bottom of the field abutting the garden was a stream. Normally it was little more than a trickle, but there had been a cloudburst. Conrad, ever independent and adventurous, had strayed from the others and must have fallen into the swollen waters. Wendy herself had found him. It was one of those one-in-a-million chances that you can never guard against. Mary’s and countless other children had played by the banks of the stream all their lives, and then, for some unknown reason, by some chance, this had happened.
Now we have two fine children, and time, and the love of our children, has eased our grief, but it will always be with us in a closed quarter of our minds. There will always be the nagging questions; the asking of what Conrad might have done with his life – how he would have developed. He had a rare quality of gentleness tempered with intrepid independence. His was a happy, intense little life, lasting only two-and-a-half years, without any of the sorrows and disillusion that inevitably accompany the joys and challenges of a life which is allowed to follow its complete course.
Wendy had endured a hell that I could never know; for the fact that the news was a week old, that the accident had occurred so far away, meant that I had known only thirty-six hours of solitary grief compared with the long days of Wendy’s suffering. Her parents and a host of wonderful friends had been a tower of strength to her, but neither of us felt whole without the other. Together we could admit our sorrow and Wendy was able to release, slowly, some part of the pain of our loss.
– CHAPTER SIXTEEN –
THE OLD MAN OF HOY
‘Life goes on’ is an over-used, but very true, cliche. Even in the depth of our grief, Wendy and I knew a joy in each other. Desperately, we wanted and needed another child. Wendy quickly became pregnant again and was due to give birth in the early spring of 1968. Various assignments and climbs followed, some close on the heels of our tragedy and my own return from Ecuador.
Some weeks after my return, Tom Patey, always compassionate, phoned to tempt Wendy and me up to the Isle of Hoy in the Orkneys. He made a climb the excuse, but I suspect that as much as anything he intended to get us away from our immediate environment. The bait was the Old May of Hoy. ‘The finest rock pinnacle in the British Isles,’ Tom assured me. ‘It’s three hundred feet high, as slender as Nelson’s Column, sheer on every side, and unclimbed. It’d make a great story.’ I couldn’t resist it, though Wendy decided she would rather stay in Haywards Heath with her parents for the few days I hoped the climb would take.
I caught the sleeper up to Inverness, where Tom met me at the station for the drive to Thurso in the far north of Scotland. It is a wonderful drive, up the eastern seaboard of the Highlands and then over the bleak heathered flats of Caithness, with thunder clouds like Spanish galleons sailing over-head, the hills of Ben Klibreck and even Ben Hope in the far west, etched clear in rain-washed air. Tom was full of legends of the Old May of Hoy — of obscure scandals he was happy to offer my journalistic pen, gathered from some of the colourful characters who lived in self-imposed exile amongst the Western Isles.
The remainder of the team were awaiting us at Thurso: Rusty Baillie, his wife Pat, their baby, a dog and an impressive pile of ropes and ironmongery. Rusty was to be the technical expert, I the photographer and Tom the stage manager of our venture.
In order to reach Hoy, I had to survive a sea-sick voyage to Stromness, well described as the Venice of the North, followed by a shorter, less painful trip in a specially chartered fishing boat to Hoy. A bumpy journey in one of the island’s few cars (and only taxi) then took us to Rackwick Bay, where a collection of single-storeyed crofts clung to a wind-swept shore. The Old Man of Hoy was the other side of the hill that rose in an easy sweep from behind the youth hostel, the former school-house of the dying community. Setting out to view our objective that same evening, we walked over the short, springy turf, while skuas wheeled and dived over us, their great wings and hooked beaks posing a tangible threat.
We came to a bluff, and there in front of us was the top of the Old Man of Hoy, truncated by the cliff top. It was square-cut, obviously slender, and yet gave little idea of just how tall it was until we reached the brow of the cliff, and could look down and across at the most remarkable monolith and summit in the British Isles. It could have been a fairy-tale tower, 450-feet high, with a grassy top that seemed little larger than a billiard-table.
‘Looks bloody loose to me,’ I commented. ‘That sandstone’ll just crumble away as you climb it. The whole issue could come toppling down.’
‘Och, no. Where’s your spirit of adventure? Those are no words from Bonington of the Eiger,’ replied Tom. ‘I can see I’ll have to start amending some of the verses in your song.’
‘That crack should go,’ said Rusty, ever practical. ‘Just the right size for bongs.’
We returned to the youth hostel, where Pat had already prepared the supper, and settled down to a long night of Patey songs, accompanied by malt whisky.
It was eleven the next morning before we were ready to set out, and we scrambled down to the foot of the Old Man. We saw that it was linked to the island by a neck of piled boulders, probably a natural arch which had collapsed hundreds or thousands of years earlier. From its base, the Old Man was slightly daunting, and had, undoubtedly, reached a stage of advanced senile decay. Indeed, it was difficult to understand how it had succeeded in standing against the buffeting of the storms of the Pentland Firth all these years. To the seaward side, a series of pendulous folds of wafer-like sandstone overlapped each other, like a whole series of double chins. No hope there. The landward side offered more scope – here, there was a series of steps leading up to a small ledge, and Tom started up this. Climbing solo, as was his wont, he got to about twenty feet above the ground, and in pulling up on to a seemingly sound step, pulled out a shelf-sized block. He retired to the ground and we made another perambulation round the Old Man – no one keen to commit himself to any one line. I had defined my own position very firmly, having cast myself as the photographer – a role reinforced by the battery of cameras I had slung round my neck.
We returned to the landward side of the Old Man.
‘I think you should go up there,’ I suggested. ‘It’s the only place where you can get started; and I can get some good pictures from the side. It’ll look fantastic!’
Tom, this time armed with a rope, returned to the fray, stepping cautiously up the rickety staircase that led to a platform about eighty feet up. Beyond this, the line seemed to peter out. To the right, facing into land, the pillar leaned into a steady overhang, jutting out at least twenty feet from the wave-washed base. On the seaward side of the corner, the rock was sheer, featureless and repulsively yellow, a sure sign of bad rock. The only hope seemed to be a crack that probed through the overhangs.
‘That’s the line,’ Rusty announced firmly, as he arranged himself in ironmongery, bing-bongs, and all the other appendages of the modern technical climber. Patey regarded these preparations with a philosophical patience, whilst I hovered around, changing lenses and trying out different angles. At last, Rusty, ape-like with his long, strongly muscled arms and crinkly ginger hair, swung on to the platform and lowered h
imself round the corner to get into the overhanging crack. I retired to the cliff side opposite to take pictures, and Tom smoked endless cigarettes, or searched through his rucksack in search of sustenance, preparatory to the long wait.
Tom had little faith in ropes, and no enthusiasm at all for rope management, being a great believer in the old school of climbing which laid down a maxim that the leader should not fall. He relaxed, therefore, noting Rusty’s slow progress and the frequent tap of his peg-hammer, which indicated that he was using artificial aids and was, as a result, most unlikely to fall. They had no verbal communication because of the crash of the sea and were out of sight of each other. From my own perch on the side of the cliff, I had a seagull’s-eye view of both climbers – Rusty spread-eagled over the crack, Tom dreaming in the sun – each in his own little world. The crack was overhanging, its side covered in a fine grit that was like a million ball-bearings. Rusty, emboldened by a slight easing of the angle, and a few rounded holds, moved up without the security of a piton. A foot-hold crumbled, his feet skidded off the rock, his fingers slipped on the powdery surface of the holds and he was left jammed solely by his shoulders in the chimney. Down below, happily oblivious of the drama round the corner, Tom was lighting up a cigarette. Rusty slid back to his last piton, secured the rope and abseiled back down.
The following morning we returned to the fray, thrusting Rusty into the battle once more, so that Tom could day-dream on the belay ledge and I could take my pictures. Rusty took six hours to lead the pitch, clearing away the loose sand, hammering in his bongs, till at last he was standing on a small ledge just above the overhanging chimney. It was time for action – I was going to have to do some climbing.
The Next Horizon Page 26