Bright Air

by Barry Maitland

  We bounced and pitched across the South Pacific for what seemed an age, unable to make out any sign of the great rock in the darkness. I was beginning to think we’d gone way past it when the first grey light crept out of the east, enough to make out the form of the enormous stack, towering out of the water directly in front of us. I slowed to a stop, and as the sky lightened and the swell lifted us up I was able to make out the low rocks to our right, in particular the one they called the Wheatsheaf, on account of its profile. I turned away from them, towards the east, and began a slow circling of Balls Pyramid as the sun’s first rays clipped its peak and began a golden striptease down its flank.

  ‘Awesome,’ Anna muttered. She looked washed out, but gave me an encouraging smile. ‘What do you reckon?’

  We had circled around to the dark west side, into the space between the Pyramid and the Wheatsheaf, and it seemed to me that the only possible landing areas were at the southern end of the rock, where the south ridge plunged down into the sea. This was the end where Gannet Green was located, and there was a rock shelf at the tip where, if we managed to get onto it, we might organise ourselves for a climb. I steered back to the place on the calmer leeward side, holding the boat twenty metres or so offshore, and explained to Anna what I thought we should do. She nodded, face tight, clearly not happy about the idea of jumping into that dark heaving swell. I set about uncoiling our rope and sealing the backpacks inside the plastic bin liners we’d brought. I stripped down to my swimmers, wishing I had a wetsuit, put my clothes in another plastic bag and tied the two ends of the rope securely around my waist. At the last minute I decided to make up a fourth bag, transferring into it half of our food and water, the first aid kit, some of our clothes and a blanket we’d brought. That way I reckoned we’d increase our chances of arriving on the other side with at least some of our gear. Risk management, you see.

  ‘Your helmet,’ she said. ‘Put your helmet on.’

  We’d brought our hard hats with our other climbing gear, and she opened one of the bags and fished it out. Looking at the waves crashing against the rocky sides to the platform I thought it good advice, and wished I had knee and elbow pads too. I fixed the strap of my helmet and turned to say goodbye, and was startled when she grabbed me and planted a salty kiss on my mouth. ‘Take care,’ she said, in a tone that suggested these might be our last words.

  ‘Yeah, no worries,’ I muttered and jumped in.

  The thought of sharks is a great accelerant in the water, I’ve found, and despite the heavy swell I crossed those twenty metres faster than in any pool. The sea was rising and falling half a dozen metres against the rocks, and it seemed to me I should try to time my approach so that it lifted me up to the top, where I’d have to grab the rock and clamber out of harm’s way before the wave rose again to suck me back down. That was the theory. The first time I tried it I was just too late, and the crest of the wave crashed back on top of me as I tried to clutch at solid matter, tipping me backwards and tangling me in the rope. I had to swim back out, clear the rope, then try again. This time it worked; I reached high up to a ledge as the wave peaked, and hauled myself up the rock face. In a few seconds I was lying panting and shivering on the platform, waving at Anna.

  When I’d recovered, I loosened the rope from my waist and tied its two ends together, so that we now had a rope loop from boat to shore. Anna tied the first bag to the rope and I began to pull it across the gap. By the third load we were getting into the rhythm, hauling away like old sea hands. The fourth and final bag went over the side and came bobbing towards me. But then it began to feel heavier than the others, dipping deep under the waves as if maybe it was leaking and filling with water. I dragged on the rope as hard as I could until I saw the bag’s dark form in the water below me, then a wave crashed over it and the rope went abruptly slack, almost toppling me back onto the rock. I hauled it in, the fourth bag gone.

  There was nothing I could do. We worked the knot in the rope back to Anna, and she unfastened it and tied one end to the boat, while I pulled the other ashore and secured it around a jutting rock.

  ‘Okay!’ I shouted. She stood for a moment in the bow of the pitching boat, in her swimsuit and helmet, then threw herself into the sea. I lost sight of her for one minute, then another, and was beginning to panic when her head broke through a wave and she came soaring in towards me on its crest. It slammed her against the rock, but she managed to perform a remarkably athletic recovery, scrambling up to my waiting hand.

  When she was safe we stood for a moment, laughing with relief, then stared up at the spine of rock rising above us. Our teeth were chattering, we were bruised and scraped, but we’d made it. ‘That’s the main thing,’ I yelled. ‘We’re over safe and sound.’ In the euphoria of that moment we forgot about the boat, now being swept around the point on the end of its line. I got a sharp reminder when the taut rope suddenly caught my leg and yanked me against the rock. I yelped, pulled my leg free and turned around, just in time to see the boat disappear behind an outcrop. We ran to the edge of the platform and looked down. It had vanished. We pulled on the rope, which now ran directly into the waves beneath us, and hauled out a good length before it suddenly jerked tight. We tugged and heaved, but couldn’t free it. In disbelief we gazed down at the empty foaming water, then at each other. Carmel’s boat had sunk, crushed against the rock beneath our feet. I dropped to my knees, refusing to accept that this had really happened. Didn’t boats have flotation panels or something? Behind me I heard Anna moan through the sound of the crashing waves, ‘Oh my God!’ I slumped back on the cold rock and we stared at each other, our euphoria at getting there in one piece abruptly gone.

  Finally the freezing wind forced us into action. Severely chastened, we pulled on our clothes and began to get ourselves organised. My climbing shoes felt stiff and old, like me. It was a long time since Frenchmans Cap, longer still since I’d broken them in on the climbing wall. I stared up at that intimidating ridge rearing high above us against the morning sky and felt an overwhelming sense of dismay. Technically it didn’t look as hard as Frenchmans Cap, with plenty of cracks and ledges on the fractured and eroded surface, but this was completely unknown territory. With our backpacks and climbing belts firmly strapped, Anna led the first pitch. We climbed slowly and carefully, not wanting to take risks with no help available, and my legs and arms were soon aching. Along the way we found hammered into the rock several ancient bolts that looked old enough to have been placed by the first climbers forty years before.

  I led the final pitch that took us onto Gannet Green, a steep unstable-looking slope with scattered patches of wind-scoured grass, and I made my way across to a stunted clump of melaleuca shrubs and collapsed against the rock face with a groan. Anna had more energy, and began to explore the shelf. She returned after twenty minutes, shaking her head. There was no sign that Luce or the others had been there.

  ‘What now?’

  I said. ‘Do you think they’ll come looking for us today?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. They’re not likely to notice we’ve gone.’ That had been our intention, after all. We couldn’t see Lord Howe from this end of the Pyramid, but there had been no sign of a boat all morning. My throat felt parched and I reached into my pack to check our diminished supplies. We had one small bottle of water each. With the loss of that fourth bag, our food store, scrounged from the kitchen as we were leaving, was now just as inadequate—a few crackers, a lump of cheese and an apple. The adrenaline and lack of sleep were getting to me, and I felt dazed.

  Anna was scanning the ridge above our heads, and she suddenly frowned, pointing. ‘What’s that?’

  I eased stiffly to my feet and looked. Something glinted in the sun. ‘No idea.’

  ‘I’ll take a look.’ She scrambled up the broken rock, sending small fragments skittering down behind her. All around, seabirds squealed in protest at our intrusion.

  ‘Come and see,’ she called over her shoulder.

  I groaned
as my legs flexed to push me up. Every muscle ached. I was definitely not fit. When I reached her she pointed to a stainless steel ring-bolt embedded in the rock. It looked very recent, different from the rusted mild steel aids we’d noted on the way up. You could see the lip of the epoxy resin that had been used to glue it in place.

  ‘It’s theirs, isn’t it?’ She was looking up the rock face. ‘They must have gone further. Come on.’

  ‘Do you think we should?’ I looked behind me. The water already looked far below.

  ‘Not much point hanging around here.’ She sounded like my old gym teacher, annoyingly positive. She was holding up a lot better than I was. ‘Might as well use the time we’ve got,’ she went on. ‘If we were picked up now we’d have achieved nothing anyway.’

  We found another ring-bolt further up the ridge, then nothing more, and I just concentrated on each new step. We were giddyingly high now, with wide views across the ocean, though Lord Howe was still masked by the bulk of the peaks ahead. Huge numbers of birds wheeled and dived around us, filling the air with their forlorn cries. At one point we spotted a fishing boat some distance off to the north-east, but too far to try to attract its attention. As the afternoon wore on my pace became slower and slower. I had to keep stopping to rest my swollen fingers and aching knees, and my movements had become clumsy with fatigue. Finally I looked up and saw Winklestein’s Steeple towering impossibly high above us. I called up to Anna, waiting at the top of the next pitch, that I was buggered and couldn’t go on.

  ‘There’s a sort of cave up here, Josh. Just get this far and we can rest.’

  I struggled up, inch by inch, until I could make out the dark hollow beneath a jutting overhang. I heaved myself over the lip and lay there groaning on the ledge, while Anna crawled in past me and fixed a couple of anchor wedges to tie us in. The cave was deep and broad enough for us to lie down, its floor covered with rubble, which Anna began to clear away. Then she stopped and muttered, ‘Oh God.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I turned to look and saw a piece of webbing in her hand. She tugged it clear of the stones and I saw that it was the strap of a climbing harness, and with it came a cluster of climbing aids—wedges and snaplink carabiners. Anna handed them to me, and I held the webbing up to the light. It was a faded red, just like Luce’s. Anna had crawled deeper into the recess, and now she pulled out a coil of nylon rope and a helmet. We stared at each other.

  ‘Well,’ Anna said slowly, ‘she didn’t jump or get pushed, or she’d still have been wearing this stuff.’

  I nodded. Even when sleeping she’d have kept the harness on to attach herself to an anchor. ‘She must have gone on free solo,’ I said.

  There are various styles of rock climbing. The one that I was most familiar with is what is called aid climbing, in which you use bolts already in the rock or the gear you carry to support you and help you climb. An alternative is free climbing, in which climbers use only their bodies to progress up the rock, but still carry ropes and passive protection to save them if they fall. But there is another style, called free soloing, in which they go up without any hardware at all. It is the purest form of climbing, and some would say the most sublime. It is certainly the most dangerous, for if the climber slips there is nothing to save them. I watched Luce free soloing once, my body rigid with anxiety the whole time, expecting her to drop at any moment. Afterwards she spoke of a sense of liberation, and of confronting her destiny. I thought it was utter madness.

  The thing about free solo climbing is that it’s so dangerous it should only be done on routes the climber knows and that are well within their capabilities. This place was completely alien territory. Luce couldn’t have had any idea what lay ahead. Without back-up or equipment, she could have found herself trapped in impossible situations, forced into hair-raising manoeuvres without any form of support. I felt my skin crawl, imagining it.

  ‘Why would she do such a crazy thing?’ For both of us, drained and almost defeated by the effort of getting this far, it seemed incomprehensible. Unable to come to terms with it, we turned away and busied ourselves with our meagre supplies.

  We had what passed for a meal with barely a mouthful of water. We were on the east side of the ridge, watching the long evening shadow of the Pyramid stretch out across the green water three hundred metres below us. There was a nor’-easterly breeze that was becoming fresher by the minute, and we had no blanket or sleeping bags.

  ‘It’s going to be cold,’ I said and we squeezed closer together. ‘They’ll come looking for us in the morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, nodding her head firmly, but we both knew that wasn’t likely. The Kelsos would probably assume we just wanted a bit of privacy, and with Carmel away her boat might not be missed for weeks.

  The shadow spread out across the ocean and finally faded into a darkening void. In the gloaming we tried to make our little cave more comfortable, sweeping debris aside, and in the process disturbed some brown centipedes that scuttled away into the far recesses. I knew that every living thing on Balls Pyramid, as on Lord Howe, had arrived either by floating through the air or on the sea, and I wondered how these little creatures had found their way to such a remote corner and how they survived. Now fate had placed them and us on the same small ledge of rock. Later, in the dark, as Anna and I clung together against the cold, we discovered they had distinct ideas about sharing their patch with us, as they attacked us with vicious bites. Soon we were scratching miserably at painful swellings on our wrists and ankles. Despite my exhaustion, it was a long time before I drifted off into a fitful sleep.

  20

  We were wakened by the first glow of the sun directly in front of us. Anna jerked out a leg and kicked me on the knee.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, and we disentangled ourselves and sat up, yawning and scratching, to watch the golden disc rise free of the horizon into a hazy sky. The wind had died away and only the occasional seabird disturbed the silence.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I asked.

  ‘All right, considering. How about you?’

  I shrugged. ‘Stiff, sore.’

  ‘A bit of exercise’ll fix that. Let’s see your hands.’ She peered at them; the previous day’s swelling had reduced and she said they’d do. I found myself admiring her sturdiness; the dogged persistence that had irritated me yesterday now seemed rather admirable. I smiled at her and she said, ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘We have to go on, you know—to the top if necessary.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘This isn’t too difficult, just bloody hard work. Luce could have climbed it in her sleep. I was wondering if it was about speed, leaving her gear behind. She’d have been able to move much faster.’

  ‘True.’ But what would have been the point in that? It seemed more likely to me that she’d just stopped caring about safety.

  I thought about that a good deal as I led the way off the centipedes’ ledge. My muscles were stiff and aching in strange places, my hands thick and clumsy and sore. I began traversing the flank of Winklestein’s twin spires, making for the horizontal Cheval Ridge beyond. The height, three hundred and fifty metres of sheer cliff below us, worried me, and I was being very careful about where I looked and what I allowed my mind to think. But at least there were plenty of cracks and bumps and other reasonable hand- and footholds on the weathered basalt, and I was making cautious progress until I came to a slab of smooth rock with no purchase on it at all. There was a promising crack on the far side, and I thought I could just reach it at maximum stretch. I tried, extending myself as far as possible, but couldn’t quite make it, and suddenly found myself flattened against a smooth rock face with only my right hand and foot properly engaged, a position I couldn’t hold for long. Terrified of developing sewing machine leg, I forced myself to spring the few centimetres across to the crack, in which I safely jammed my left fingers and toes. But now I saw that there was another smooth stretch ahead, and that I was
in the same unstable position as before, with nothing for my right hand and foot to cling to. I was further from protection now, and vividly remembered those anchors pulling out on Frenchmans Cap. Heart pounding, I knew I only had a moment to get out of this, but couldn’t see how. Then a memory came into my mind, of a manoeuvre I’d seen Luce perform on that same climb in Tasmania. It was called a barn door, and involved turning your back to the rock face and swinging out, as if on a hinge, to grab whatever lay beyond with your free hand and foot. I could hardly believe it when I saw Luce do it, and knew I’d never have the nerve to try if I gave it any thought. So I didn’t think, I just swung, flinging my right arm and leg desperately out into space and around to slam against the rock.

  My fingertips and toes found something there, some minimal grip, though barely enough to support any weight. But the other problem was that, in twisting myself over, my rope had wrapped itself around my neck. I was now lying flat across a near-vertical surface, in danger of sliding off at any moment. If my anchors held I’d be strangled, if not I’d plunge three hundred and fifty metres into the drink.