‘It seems he can’t lose.’ I did not attempt to hide my anger.
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing. I just hate this place. It’s like being in hell. The croupiers look like undertakers.’
‘OK. We’ll go,’ said Isobel.
* * *
We awoke to the clear winter day. The Mont Blanc tunnel was still shut after the fire, years before, but the pass above Martigny was kept open into France. It was too cold to snow. We formed a plan of sorts. Françoise had given us the chalet in January and was not coming back down from Paris until Easter. We rang the neighbour who did the cleaning and told her that we were coming back. She didn’t pose any questions at all, she simply reassured us that she would turn the central heating on and make up the beds. We had secured a refuge. Iso decided that the best thing to do was to hide out in Chamonix for a week or so, then ring Luce again. She was calmer, in charge again. There was no sign of the police. Obscurely I was still expecting to be arrested. Isobel knew that this was impossible. I could not fathom what she knew. But she never suspected that I might have seen Roehm.
I felt more secure in the daylight world. It seemed oddly unsurprising that Roehm should have appeared in the casino. He moved in the night. I was not afraid of him, we were too intimately bound to one another for me to fear him, but I was afraid of what he might do. His motives and his movements were inscrutable, unknowable. I could not even guess at them. But it was as if I was taking up a role in a script that was already written. All I had to do, even if I could never grasp Roehm’s part in the script, was discover the point we had reached in the story. The son could kill the father, but the father could never raise a hand against his son. My mother was, obscurely, no longer part of the geometrical figure. She had been written out of the plot. I watched her with tenderness, but from a terrible distance. I had lost all my need to touch her. It was as if her body were a lush field I had already crossed, and now she lay, fallow and abandoned, miles and miles behind me.
Iso had not obviously changed. But she was thinner, fragile. I watched her blonde head jerking sideways as she changed lanes, yanking on the gears. She was running away from the man whom she had once loved, but no longer did, dragging me with her. I was unwillingly clutching her spindle wrist, looking back.
The Renault’s engine stammered and gasped in second gear as we inched up the crawler lanes, around the hairpin bends. We scrabbled on the recent grit, strewn across the frosty asphalt. When the road ceased to be dual carriageway we collected long trails of irate motorists behind us. I stopped looking at the serpent made of cars and gazed up at the mountains.
The Alps above loomed like a gigantic granite castle, turrets, ramparts, parapets and pinnacles. The sky at midday was solid and sharpened, ice-axe cold. Even the melting streams on the steep road were half-hearted. Where the earth lay in shadow the ice remained, shining, immobile. I gazed at the high rock faces and their uneven surfaces of cracks, ribs and ridges. As my eyes traversed the cliffs I saw two tiny red dots, impossibly attached to the rock face, overhanging a grim vertiginous drop. They moved, centimetre by centimetre, across and then up. I shaded my gaze and fixed them in my sights, like a sniper. For almost twenty minutes as we too crawled up the lower snow slopes of the mountains I could see the climbers, high above us, executing a series of terrifying shifts and steps in slow motion, like dancers suspended over nothingness. Then we turned into the last bend; a gigantic spur of golden granite swept clear of snow by the wind hid them from view.
I remembered what Roehm had told me about the mountains. The mountains are the most beautiful pure space I have ever known. The ice fields, snow, sheer rock, the avalanches and the storms, they bring you face to face with your own limits. You are stripped of all pettiness. The mountain reduces you to simplicity. That’s a very liberating thing. I brooded on the mountaineers. They were as obsessive and concentrated as gamblers. Chamonix was filled with them in summer. They were rarer birds in winter, but could still be spotted, roped together, plodding across the glaciers or clanking on the tiles in the post office. I had seen them close up in January. We had been sitting next to a gaggle of mountaineers in one of the cafes. They were drinking sugary tea, surrounded by heaps of material, layers of discarded clothes, nylon ropes, ice axes, crampons, drying out on the floor, and apparently talking in tongues. They discussed nothing but the weather, the climbs they had mastered, the rock faces they intended to assault. They smelt musty and wet. Their fingers were like steel claws. They were all men.
Luce had scooped the chocolate off her cappuccino and sneered at their bulky thighs and shoulders.
‘Don’t eavesdrop, Toby. And don’t stare. It only encourages them.’
We stalked out of the cafe. She turned to me and growled, ‘If you have any mountaineering ambitions, you can forget them at once. I will not have you scaling sheer cliffs with a lot of macho psychopaths.’
I had been bemused by the strength of her reactions, but now, upon reflection, gazing at the untouchable purity of the mountains, the desire to embrace them did not seem irrational or mad. We descended through the snow walls of the valley of Vallorcine towards Argentière. The chalets were hooded in snow with long ice spikes suspended from the roofs. Many of the houses were shut up. I looked out for the smoking chimneys and dirty gritted driveways. But the valleys were largely deserted. The French vacances de ski were over. There was a lull in the holiday market. It was low season.
All the other cars had snow tyres. Ours were almost bald. Iso drove perilously close to the centre of the road where there was no ice and the fresh sand gave her worn tyres some grip. This was safe enough when we could see a long way ahead, but terrifying on the bends. There was little traffic crossing into France. I rubbed a clear patch in our smoky windows and looked out down the long drops of fresh snow, spattered with outcrops of rock, and random clumps of dark pine. The world had been redrawn with elegance and lucidity, reduced to single elements, ice, rock, pine, snow. High up, I watched the buzzards circling. Their wingspan was huge, unnatural. They turned and turned, riding the thermals in the upper air.
The light sky was fading, becoming paler in the milky afternoon and only the highest peaks were still lit by late sun when we trundled round the last bends into Chamonix. We paused at the Spa. I stood guard over the car while Iso rushed round the shelves. The very normality of what we were doing, buying supper, along with everybody else, was enough to reassure me. The yellow buses were still running, the green cable cars, packed with skiers, were descending from La Flegère, the chalet shutters were open, and the house was warm. Everything seemed stable, familiar; we were on safe ground. We lit the fire, filled up the kettle, turned on the television and sat down in our remote cocoon, to smile at one another.
We spent the first day spread across the sofas, lazy as successful crooks who had pulled off a daring robbery and could now afford to chill out, counting the loot. The temperature rose and it began to snow. We felt comfortable and secure. I built up the fire and made us herb teas sweetened with honey. The snow curtained the windows and increased the silence. I found one of Luce’s discarded novels, which she had abandoned seven weeks before. Behold, Thou Shalt Find Me . . . The title continued inside after three suggestive dots . . . Even on the Roof of the World. This was an American production, produced by Christian Vision Books. The cover said it all: two young men, roped together with snaky coils, exhausted and gasping on a snow cliff. They were both reaching out towards a bright light just in front of them on a mountain peak. It was aimed at twelve- to sixteen-year-olds. The author was Bill Tyler III, Ph.D. I read the back.
Simon Peters has one overriding ambition, even as a boy, to climb Everest, the world’s highest mountain. Everything else comes second, his Mom and Dad, his pals at school, even Candy, the girl he takes out to the Drive-In Diner, Then he meets Jeremy, who runs the local mountaineering club, and the chance to scramble up something more than boulders seems within his grasp . . .
&nbs
p; Will satisfied ambition bring him happiness?
What is the longing that drives him on?
Will Simon ever question his motives, his vision, or himself?
I settled down to read. I remembered the mountaineers I had seen traversing the granite cleft and wolfed down the book in the spirit of research. The setting was supposedly contemporary, but the references to diners, high-school prom queens, dilemmas about who to invite to the hop and Bill Haley made the entire scenario seem dated and alien. Simon was banal, blonde and driven by a mad desire to ascend summits, an inexplicable lust for conquest which appeared to come from nowhere. Jeremy was his roommate at college, and together they swarmed up every fearsome mountain that Utah had to offer, attracted the notice of a world-class mountaineer who just so happened to abseil past them as they were performing a spectacular feat of hare-brained courage, and eventually managed to attach themselves to an Everest expedition. It was stretching credulity to the limit to suggest that they would ever have been allowed out of base camp.
‘Iso, can just anyone go up Everest?’
She was reading back issues of Hello! magazine.
‘Yup. There are queues waiting to be hauled up to the summit. They take parties of people who’ve only ever climbed Hampstead Heath, charge them thousands, feed them oxygen out of bottles and supply them with Andrex. There’s a route over the peaks in Nepal that’s called the Andrex Trail, where you pick your way through human turds and soft paper, smeared with shit. What on earth are you reading?’
‘One of Luce’s religious novels.’
‘Luce is mad.’
But the book became utterly gripping as soon as the initiates confronted their magic mountain. Everest did not apparently present any insuperable technical difficulties to an experienced climber who was used to ice. There were more difficult climbs just above us in the long range of Alpine peaks, some of which were legendary, like the Eiger and the Matterhorn. What was unique about Everest was the altitude. The highest altitude at which people can live and work is 16,000 feet. The level of oxygen in the air is half that at sea level. Above 16,000 feet the blood can no longer compensate for the reduced level of oxygen. Above 26,000 feet you are entering the death zone. Here in the white waste the process of physical degeneration sets in. The brain struggles to control the affliction known as hypoxia. No one can survive for long in these altitudes. You will inevitably die. You begin to die. What fascinated me were the psychic consequences of this lack of oxygen. Climbers began to hallucinate. They saw dead comrades climbing alongside them, they held intense conversations with people who weren’t there. They saw things.
The inevitable freak storm enveloped Everest. Cut off from their team, one of whom hurtled past them, swept away by an avalanche, and unable to reach Camp III, my heroes faced a night on the savage mountain without oxygen. They dug out a shelter in the snow drifts. As they tried to keep themselves awake all night, for if you fall asleep you lose consciousness and never come round again, they both became aware of a third climber sharing their ice cave. He offered to lead them down the mountain. They followed this strange figure, who had knowledge and authority, but seemed insufficiently equipped to risk such fierce extremes of temperature and the angry wind. The unknown climber talked to them constantly, encouraging them, brushing fresh snow from the ladder fixed on one of the ascents. He secured their climbing harnesses, eased them over the sloping rocks, which hung like smooth, downward-pointing tiles. He appeared to be both ahead of them and beside them as they plodded through thick snow on the South Col. No harm would come to them. His breath warmed their hands and faces. He did not carry oxygen cylinders. He wore neither goggles nor mask. They would never forget his voice.
When they finally fell into the tents of the despairing research scientists, sitting hopelessly by the radio at advanced base, they discovered that they were the only ones of the original team of six to have returned from the summit. The mysterious third climber who had sought them out in their ice cave as they struggled against sleep had, of course, vanished. Their survival was a miracle. They were changed men.
Suddenly they no longer congratulated themselves on their prowess and achievements. At a stroke they learned humility, modesty and the Fear of the Lord. There were no prizes for guessing who it was that had stepped out of the storm upon Everest.
I recounted this unlikely ending to Isobel who read three pages and then slammed down the book.
‘What about the other four climbers who were plucked off the rock face or froze to death on lost ledges?’ she demanded. ‘Weren’t they good enough to be saved? Did Jesus wipe them out just for fun?’
‘I don’t think Bill Tyler’s got that far in his Handbook of Theology.’
‘Fucking bullshit,’ muttered Isobel.
* * *
I thought that she was regaining her feistiness, confidence and good spirits, but she woke in the night and shook me awake.
‘Toby! Toby! There’s something outside.’
Bleary with sleep, I opened the shutters and gazed out across trackless snow and frozen shrubs. The night was clear. I could see nothing, nothing whatever in the biting white cold. Far above us the long march of the Midi needles glowered in the white night. There was nothing there.
‘It’s OK. You’re just jumpy. Do you want me to make you a drink?’
But she shrank back down beneath the duvet, grizzling a little, like a fretful child. The tension was too much for her. I lay awake, wondering at the tale she had told me. I decided then that we had to find Roehm. If he wasn’t going to report us to the police for attempted murder, or at the very least assault, then maybe we should turn ourselves in. We had to settle things with him and escape from this permanent net of fear. My mother had said that the encounter with Roehm at the Bodensee had been violent and painful, but had an ironic consequence. It had spelt one simple, precious thing, which, all her life, had been denied, freedom. She had escaped the claustrophobic bigotry of my grandparents. She had crash-landed in a secure and wealthy home. She had found Luce. She had not been abandoned. She had never had to struggle. She had been paid for, supported and loved. My mother’s life as a painter had been made possible. She had not buried her talent in the sand. She had used her gift. And the biggest, richest sale of her paintings had been to a single collector, the man who had set her free: Roehm.
The timing of his return had been uncanny. He arrived precisely at the moment when she was ready for him, the moment when she was successful, strong and confident. But how had he persuaded her to accept him? Had it made any difference to her that he was the father of her son? She had never actually spoken the words: This man is your father. She had simply led me to believe that it was so. He came when she had the courage and the fearlessness to walk straight back into his sinister embrace. What had she wanted from him? Or, for this was the puzzle which returned to me, what had been the nature of the pact between them?
She had let Roehm take her back into his arms. I did not judge my mother for doing this very foolish thing.
I watched over her, thin, cowering and fearful, beneath layers of duvet and blankets. There was a fairy-tale pattern to her tale. She was a child who had made three wishes. Her wishes had been fulfilled. What was the unspoken part of the contract? I have something to give you. And you have something to give me. She had given Roehm a son. He had waited eighteen years and then returned when I had come of age.
I shook her gently. Her shoulder stuck out like a snow crag, sheer, steep, white. We slept with the night light on. She was only dozing.
‘You never told her, did you?’
‘Who?’
‘Luce.’
‘Told her what?’
‘About the Bodensee. About Roehm.’
Iso shook her head, her eyes smeared with sleep. But her voice was still sharp.
‘No, of course not. And neither will you. Oh, for Christ’s sake, Toby, we’ve already had one fright. Shut off the light. We’re torturing ourselves needlessly. Go to slee
p.’
* * *
On the morning of the second day her old obsessions returned. We mustn’t separate. We have to find other people. Crowds. We’re only safe in crowds. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I’d seen him. But had I done so I would also have had to tell her that I had not fled, but that I flung myself after him. I would have had to tell her that I wanted nothing more than to confront him, and to insist upon my right to be acknowledged. I wanted him to give me my birthright, or whatever it was that lay in his power to give.
The anticyclone d’hiver was upon us, -14ºC at eight o’clock. The air was thick and still with frost. The front steps were equipped with rutted rubber treads like a Michelin tyre, but they were silk-smooth with ice and treacherous. We clung to the rails as we descended. The cars in the road lay like rigid dinosaurs, pickled in frost. We breathed slowly, for the whole world had solidified into cold. The unyielding, chilled air made us light-headed as we slithered to the bus stop. The snow on the roads congealed into dirty blocks, but whatever escaped the traffic sparkled, crisp, fresh, last night’s snow frozen hard to the earlier layers, as yet untouched by the sun. Tramping past us on the sidewalks, the coloured ranks of snowboarders were buoyant with celebration. There was fresh powder, hors piste. We were surrounded by fanatical conversations. Iso was encouraged by the huge queue waiting to ascend the Aiguille du Midi.
‘That’s a tourist thing to do. It’s what everybody does. Let’s do that.’
There were gangs of skiers planning to descend the Vallée Blanche and a band of mountaineers equipped for overnight survival on the glaciers. The weather was perfect; clear, white, still. Yesterday’s snow was dense and solid, the surface flaking into tiny crystals. A delicate crust clung to my gloves. We sat, encircled by stamping excited people, who were gazing up at the descending green cabin, almost invisible against the dark sweep of pines on the lower slopes. The machinery creaked and groaned. Although she had at first been glad to get out of the house Iso was restless with unease. She gazed at each face in turn as if daring Roehm to reveal himself. Her fur cap shaded her eyes, but when she took off her dark glasses I saw the shadows and the lines beneath. She was anxious, strained. She too was waiting.
The Deadly Space Between Page 21