Far, Far The Mountain Peak

by John Masters

  Peter Savage did not dance very well. That was just what he had said. She said: ‘Do you think Gerry will go out to India too?’

  He looked full at her again; and she thought that though perhaps he kept no secrets, there were secret parts of his mind, where ideas and thoughts whirled and grew, and that she had touched one of them.

  He said: ‘No. He might be happier if he did, though.’

  ‘And it would be nice for you too, wouldn’t it?’ she said.

  He said: ‘Not for a long time. He’d have to start by working in politics here for several years, and when he went out he’d go to a Presidency. I shall go to the Punjab. A non-regulation province is the best if you’re in the Indian Civil. We wouldn’t see much of each other, and we wouldn’t be able to help each other for years.’

  Ah, she thought--help each other. You mean, Gerry can help you. Things are beginning to be a little clearer. Over Peter’s shoulder she saw Gerry duck into the ballroom from a far passage and hurry towards Mally and her father on the dais. Then he slowed his pace to a carefree stroll, and then, as they turned, Peter saw him and said: ‘Gerry’s signalling us. He’s going to let the cat out of the bag.’ Suddenly he smiled, his face crinkling and his bright eyes flashing. ‘He’s an ass. Let’s go and help him squeeze the most out of the great moment. Someone’s probably painting the Founder’s statue green.’

  They gathered in a group in the corner, and the music had stopped. Now what would Peggy do? She was waiting in the middle of the floor, looking frantic. The band struck up again. Mr Bennett had no alternative but to ask her to continue the dance. Mally said: ‘Someone has bribed the band, I see. Gerry, if you don’t tell me what’s happening I shall burst.’

  Gerry looked around cautiously and lowered his voice. ‘I’m allowed to tell you now because he’s up and probably starting down. Someone’s climbing the Chapel.’

  ‘The Chapel!’ Mally gasped. ‘He’ll kill himself! Gerry, this is dreadful! Do you mean to tell me that Peggy is unwittingly---‘

  Emily thought of the soaring wall of stone, and her head swam. She had been a climber and mountaineer since she was eight, but this was different. What was there to hold on to? How could a man possibly get up there?

  ‘By George, I’d like to see that,’ her father said. ‘I was looking at it before the dancing began and wondering, as a matter of fact, whether it would be possible. Who is it?’

  Gerry said proudly: ‘Harry Walsh. He’ll be the most famous man in the University tomorrow.’

  Her father said: ‘By God, you’re right! If he should finish up as prime minister, this will still seem the greatest moment of his life--unless he finds and climbs a new mountain.’

  Emily glanced at Peter Savage. His expression had narrowed and become almost as tautly concentrated in listening as when he had stood poised for the start of the race.

  Gerry said: ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about it, Peter, but I’d promised not to---‘

  Peter Savage interrupted. ‘I want to see him coming down.’ He had been put out--jealous, perhaps--because Gerry had held the secret from him; now that was past and done with, and his voice was urgent but not excited.

  Gerry said: ‘We’d better wait a bit. We might attract attention, and then---‘

  Peter said: ‘Walsh is a senior member. What can they do to him? We can stroll out without being noticed. Are you coming, Mr Fenton?’

  ‘Yes, certainly, I’d like to--but won’t the others in the party get into trouble if they’re caught? Some of them must be undergraduates.’

  ‘They’ll be rusticated,’ Peter said coldly. ‘But if they’re caught it won’t be any fault of ours. I’m going.’

  He walked away, and Emily thought no one would suspect he was in a hurry, but actually he was moving very fast.

  Gerry said doubtfully: ‘I don’t suppose we can do any harm now.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ Mally said. ‘I have to keep an eye on Peggy. And I don’t want to see it.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Joan Gordon with a shudder.

  ‘Then we can sit out with Mrs Fenton,’ Adam Khan said. Emily followed Gerry out of the hall, with her father at her heels. As soon as they were out on the lawn Gerry muttered: ‘Round the far side of Gibbs. They’re on the north-west pinnacle, north face.’

  They passed the great west door of the Chapel, and then, in the darkness under the wall, with high railings to the side and the loom of blank-windowed buildings beyond, and all the sound of the ball deadened by the bulk of Gibbs and of the Chapel itself, she saw the shimmer of white shirt fronts, and a voice muttered: ‘Manningford? Keep close in under the wall. How’s that girl doing with Bennett?’

  ‘He’s safe for a few minutes. She’s my sister. Where is he?’

  From beside them Peter Savage’s low voice answered: ‘There.’

  She craned back and saw, sixty feet up, a darker shape against the shadows of the turret. Staring hard, with her heart beating and her eyes aching, she soon made the climber out more clearly, for age had weathered the stone to grey-white, and the stars were bright. He was wedged into the vertical shaft between the end of the north wall and the turret that stood out from the north-west corner. He had his back against the wall and his feet against a projection, only a few inches wide, that marked the first angle of the turret. A lightning conductor ran down in the angle beside him, and he had one hand on it as he came on down, ‘chimneying.’ She had done that herself for a few feet in the beginning of the North Crack on Cader Brith: you held yourself in place by pressing your back against one surface and your feet against the other; you went up by pushing down and back with the palms of your hands on the surface behind you, and by straightening your knees; when your arms were stretched and your knees straight, you moved one foot as high as it would go on the opposite wall, then moved the other up to it; then repeated the whole process; coming down, you did the same in the reverse order. You never had less than three points of support, even without a hand-hold, and Harry Walsh was keeping himself from falling sideways by a light grip on the lightning conductor--but here, at night, the walls of the Chapel falling like stone curtains to the ground and the surge of the organ shaking the whole mighty fabric as the Music Scholar inside played his farewell to Cambridge. . . . She clutched convulsively at Gerry’s hand and heard herself whispering: ‘He’s been to the top! To the top of the pinnacle!’

  Now she saw that they had put a small ladder against the wall, reaching up the first twenty feet to the point where the ‘chimney’ began. Peter Savage had forced a little forward and stood among the men at the foot of the ladder, but he did not touch it.

  An undergraduate hurried up and muttered: ‘Bennett’s getting suspicious. He’s heading this way.’

  A voice from the ladder said: ‘Wilson, go and stop him. Be drunk, hit him. Anything.’

  ‘I’m going to fail anyway,’ a languid voice answered. ‘I’ll look after him.’

  Harry Walsh had almost reached the ladder now, his movements as smooth and effortless as Gerry’s with the punt pole. He was dressed in light-coloured trousers, a dark wool jersey, and tennis shoes. The white shoes looked like small animals finding their own way down the stone cliff, seeming to have nothing to do with the dim face above.

  The feet stepped on to the ladder, and Gerry muttered: ‘Done it!’

  Emily let out her breath in a long, hissing sigh, for her chest hurt. Harry Walsh jumped the last six feet and sprang lightly erect. A shower of whispered jubilant congratulations fell on him, and a dozen hands reached out for his.

  ‘Well done, Walsh!’ her father cried, bursting forward to grab his hand.

  ‘Thanks, sir. I tried seven times when I was an undergraduate, but---Well, we’ve done it. Thanks, everyone.’

  ‘Bennett! Run!’

  ‘See you in the marquee at supper. Half an hour!’ Walsh cried, and then she was alone with her father, for Gerry and the other young men had disappeared, taking their ladder with them.

 
They walked slowly back past the west door. Then she noticed that Peter Savage wasn’t with them. Looking back, she saw him standing away from the Chapel, staring up at the western pinnacles and the garland of stars around them. The organ thundered on, and a faint medieval luminosity stained the glass windows.

  Peter Savage turned and came towards them with quick strides. Mr Bennett passed, frowning, going in the opposite direction. Her father said: ‘One fellow climbing the outside of the Chapel and another playing a Bach fugue inside. That’s Cambridge for you.’

  Peter Savage shot him a quick look. ‘They’re compatible, sir. Are we going to supper now?’

  Her father pulled out his watch and examined it carefully. ‘I believe so. Gerry should be getting a table for us, if he is free yet.’ He chuckled happily.

  They found the huge marquee only half full, and all the party except Gerry waiting for them. ‘Here’s our table,’ Adam Khan said. Seemingly oblivious of their existence, Peter Savage stood frowning down at the gleaming white cloth while they took their seats.

  ‘Champagne,’ he said suddenly. ‘We need champagne!’

  ‘Coming, coming!’ Gerry cried cheerfully from behind him. ‘And the chicken and lobster. And, in a few minutes, the hero of the hour.’ He sat down, and waiters opened magnums of champagne and set plates of cold food before them.

  Emily began to eat ravenously. Then she remembered and pecked daintily, hungrily, at the lobster. Peter Savage said: ‘Why do people climb--mountains or chapels?’ His knife and fork lay beside his untouched plate.

  There was a silence. Her father cleared his throat; Gerry said: ‘Er’; she herself wondered how one would begin to explain.

  Peter said impatiently: ‘But you’re all climbers. You must know why you climb. Gerry, why do you climb?’ A sharp smile robbed the question of offence, but left no doubt that a sensible answer was expected, quickly.

  Gerry swallowed his food hurriedly and said: ‘Fresh air-- exercise--wonderful views. Dash it, Peter, it’s wonderful. You’d know if you climbed yourself.’

  Her father said: ‘An element of teamwork, Savage. Some danger--that’s important. I can’t see a man devoting himself to lawn tennis.’’ He poured a heavy scorn into the last words. Peter said: ‘Don’t you climb to get to the top?’

  Again there was silence. At last her father said: ‘Well, one does one’s best to get to the top, of course, but that’s not the important thing. Not the most important, at least.’

  ‘Would you all have been so pleased and excited if Walsh had failed, sir? He’s going to be famous, you said. The most famous man in Cambridge. But that’s only because he got to the top. He’s failed seven times, he said. They didn’t make him famous--and he didn’t find whatever he found this time.’

  The silence was longer and deeper. There was something awfully wrong in what he was saying, but Emily couldn’t for the life of her find words to explain what it was. Nor, apparently, could anyone else.

  At length Peter Savage said: ‘Let’s drink to Harry Walsh.’ He took up his glass.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ the men muttered, and Gerry said: ‘We’ll toast him again when he comes in. Harry Walsh!’

  They drank, and for a few minutes the conversation became general and insubstantial. Then Peter Savage, opposite Emily, leaned across to Gerry and said: ‘Gerry, I’m going to give up cricket.’

  Gerry swallowed his wine the wrong way, gasped, spluttered, and finally managed to get out: ‘You can’t do that! You’re going to get a Blue! After that, a county cap.’

  ‘What county?’ Peter said harshly. ‘Rudwal? No, I’m giving it up. There’s no summit to it, and nothing you can make or find for yourself. It’s a game, that’s all. Cricket doesn’t affect the man himself, and through him his work and his whole life. Climbing would. Or small-boat sailing, or big-game shooting, perhaps. What do you need to become a good climber?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ Gerry said almost nervously. ‘Keep reasonably fit. Train your nerve and eye a bit. Learn a few techniques with the rope and ice-axe and so on. But---‘

  ‘To get to the top, always, of any mountain,’ Peter insisted. ‘Where no one knows the dangers and no one’s ever been before? You need more than that, don’t you? Surely it’s a question of will?’

  Her father, who had turned to listen, said seriously: ‘To a certain extent, Savage. Of course any climber must have the will to go on when he’s tired, but it’s got to be balanced by something else, just as his legs have to be balanced and controlled by his head. Take that Chapel climb, now. Walsh is one of our good young mountaineers. I’ve heard about him, and the experts are predicting that if he develops the way he’s been going he could become our best in a few years. He’s strong, and courageous--and he has a wise head on his shoulders. I doubted that when I heard about the Chapel, but when I saw him on it I had to agree that there’s nothing foolhardy about it. Remember, he’s turned back seven times for one reason or another. We can’t doubt he had the will. But something else, something more important, was in control.’

  Peter Savage suddenly relaxed the intensity of his expression. With a quick smile of great charm he lifted his glass once more. ‘Gerry--we’ll drink to Walsh again in a moment. But he is not going to be the greatest mountaineer of his time. We are.’

  ‘What?’ Gerry cried. ‘You mean you--we are going to take up climbing seriously?’

  Peter nodded. ‘Yes. And now I’ll tell you where we’re going to go in July.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Adam Khan groaned cheerfully. ‘I am a plainsman, Peter.’

  Gerry said: ‘Zermatt? Chamonix? Peter, you can’t---‘

  Peter said: ‘As we’re going to the top, we must start at the bottom. We’re going to Llyn Gared--if Mrs Fenton will have us.

  ‘Oh!’ Peggy cried, and a radiant smile transformed her healthy face to beauty.

  ‘Delighted. Of course,’ Mally murmured politely; but Emily could see that she was not wholly delighted. Gerry’s face was alive with happiness, and he had jumped to his feet and grabbed Peter’s hand across the table; but Emily felt a slow, thin knife pricking at the skin of the back of her neck.

  Chapter 4

  They paused for a breather when they reached the top of the hill, and Emily turned to look back into the valley where her father’s house stood. Llyn Gared was big and grey, its rough stone weathered by three centuries of Welsh rain so that the surface seemed smooth, and caught the light, and shone like a house of gold in the sun, and of silver in the moon, but in the days of mist the house was itself a thing of mist, pierced with the darkness of windows, streaming water. From here the dark firs on the east side half hid it, but the thin sun winked at them through the branches, and smoke curled from many chimneys.

  Beyond, the pasture lands of the home farm filled the valley beside the winding stream, and there to the west, between low headlands, the sea swept back and forth against a sandy shore.

  It had promised a fine day when Jennie had brought Emily her early-morning tea, but when they left the house clouds were edging over the shoulder of Cader Brith. Here at the head of the valley the mist hung just above their heads and the road was shiny with moisture. The sun could only gild the droplets of water hanging from each blade of grass, and Cader Brith had disappeared.

  His pipe lit and drawing well, her father started off again with his long, easy strides. ‘I think it’s going to clear,’ he said, ‘but it looks as though we’ll have to wait an hour or two before we can tackle the South Crack, Gerry.’

  Gerry nodded. ‘We’d better not count on starting until after lunch.’

  ‘I hope we can get it in. This is going to be your last day on the hills for some time, isn’t it? Real climbing, I mean. I suppose you’ll be pottering about with your friend Savage after that.’

  ‘Potter! You don’t know him, Uncle G.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ her father said seriously. ‘He’s rather a cocksure young man, isn’t he? You’d better keep a tight rein on him when you get him
on the mountain--if he hasn’t changed his mind. A bit slapdash I should call him, eh?’

  Peggy said: ‘Oh, no, Uncle G.!’ Emily turned and raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. Peggy fell silent, blushing hard.

  Emily’s father said drily: ‘I take it you think Mr Savage has no faults? Well, we shall see. What’s to become of Khan? He doesn’t seem to be interested in mountain-climbing.’

  ‘He’ll come along with us,’ Gerry said. ‘He’ll be happy wherever he is, as long as he can talk to Peter about India.’

  ‘Oh,’ her father said, and added some time afterwards: ‘Good.’ And, some time later again: ‘Is your father well? You had a letter this morning, didn’t you?’

  ‘He’s all right,’ Gerry said indifferently, and fell silent. Emily thought again, with the same familiar but always new pang, what it must be like to have no mother, and a father who had washed his hands of people and the pains and loves they involve. She still remembered Gerry’s expression once, many years ago, when he and Peggy came back to Llyn Gared after a visit to the big town house in Berkeley Square, and he told her that his father had been too busy writing a letter to see them off at the door.

  Gerry shook off the mood that mention of his father always imposed on him. ‘Uncle G.,’ he said cheerfully, ‘are we going to Zermatt next summer?’

  ‘I hope so,’ her father answered. ‘Do you think you’ll be ready to tackle the Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn by then, Emily?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Peggy and I, guideless.’

  They all laughed, for this was an old family joke. The usual way up the Matterhorn was via the Hornli Ridge, which fell north-eastward from the summit into Zermatt. But the first time she had seen the mountain, as a child of eight, she had insisted that the Hornli Ridge looked too steep and that when she went up she would use the Zmutt ridge, which fell northwestward to the Zmutt glacier and the Schonbiihl Hut. She had learned soon enough that the Zmutt ridge, which had no artificial aids or fixed ropes, was, in that virgin state, considerably the more difficult of the two. The Zmutt ridge was, in fact, attempted by few men and none but the most expert women, and then with the best guides; but it had remained in her mind as one of those stars, sparkling brighter as increased knowledge set them ever farther from the possibility of attainment, which beckoned to her from above her comfortable world. Most of these dream-constellations had nothing to do with mountains or mountaineering. For a year now she had longed to inhabit, however briefly, the soul of the mysterious veiled lady who always accompanied the Archduke Paul to Zermatt--but not to the mountains. Since she was ten she had longed to lead a revolution and hang people from lamp-posts, in some good cause. At fifteen it had suddenly flashed into her mind, while eating a breakfast kipper, that there existed people who heard more in music and poetry, and saw more in paintings, than other people did, and that these extra-feeling people somehow achieved great unhappiness and lived disordered lives thereby--yet she longed to go with them, at whatever cost, just as she would go up the Zmutt ridge and risk the fall, the accident, even death, to discover what it was that beckoned her so strongly to the attempt.