The Deadly Space Between (29 page)

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 sleep.’

_{*  *  *}

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.

There was no room inside the cable car to move in any direction. The windows immediately fogged up with our collective breath. Iso leaned against the outside rail as the thing jerked straight upwards, clearing the road in seconds. As we drew closer to the flesh of the mountain I could see the tracks of animals in the wall of snow. Chamois? Or foxes? What creature could negotiate the precipice with such ease? The surface of the upper cliffs, which, from the terrace below, had appeared to be a single massive sheer wall of rock and ice, now developed cracks, ribs, outcrops and overhangs, folds and crevices, all choked with ice. Someone opened the window and the mountain breathed in upon us. The air was dry and cold.

We changed cable cars halfway up. The second stage of the ascent was terrifying.

‘Don’t look down,’ I said.

Far below, Chamonix became an orderly arrangement of shaded boxes, like the internal grid in a computer, squares packed neatly around the black circuits. We suddenly crossed the descending line of shadow and found ourselves in the sun among the snow peaks. Spread out before us, the valleys stretching away into France succeeded one another in a white phalanx of snow folds, one after another, each peak drawn with a chisel against the blue. The black needles hardened into giant spires with sloping snowfields coating their foreheads. We looked out at the distant range, astonished by the dramatic alteration in our perspective. We were suspended in air, thousands of feet up. I turned away to examine the rock.

Then I saw him across the hats and heads of the packed cabin. Roehm was gazing at me steadily. He was dressed as one of the mountaineers. It was broad daylight and full sun. His heavy smooth cheek, his strong face and pale gaze were barely twelve feet away. As the cabin jerked and paused, before bumping up the last stage of the ascent, we stood looking into one another’s eyes. He was wearing a dark red hat with earflaps tied over the top. His black coat was made of thick tweed. I saw hemp ropes coiled about his shoulder. No one else carried those. I tried to take him in at once. I couldn’t. There was too much of him there. He had already occupied too much of me. I gazed into this man’s hooded eyes. Everyone was present on the stage. The curtain had gone up on the action. The play could begin.

But what was my role? My lines? Who was waiting in the wings, following the text, ready to prompt me now? I stood tongue-tied, gazing at the Minotaur, who returned my stare, unhurried, amused. His gaze was slow, obscene.

I formulated a curious sentence in my mind, each word carved and precise as if written on a gravestone.
This man is my father
. And then there it was, engraved on the murky windows behind him. I savoured his dense black presence, at once so enthralling and so monstrous.
This man is my father
. I tried to make sense of the triangle we formed in the crowded cable car. There she stands, gazing out at the far peaks, looking away from us, into infinity. She does not know that he is here, with us. Roehm stands before the sentence I have written on the windows. The sentence remains, fixed, accusatory, but without concrete meaning and suddenly repeating itself without end.
This man, this man
. I felt the colour draining away from my face.