The Fall (17 page)

They walked down the screes and back to the foot of the crag. “I’ve got some lunch for the two of us,” he said.

“Oh, I never thought —”

“You’re my guest. It wasn’t for you to think about things like that.”

“But I invited myself.”

“No you didn’t. I could just as easily have said that I hadn’t any time to spare on teaching a beginner, but I didn’t. So
I invited you, and I’ll provide the picnic lunch.” He unwrapped a packet of sandwiches and handed her one.

“Ham!” she cried. “How on earth did you get
ham?
Oh, this is unfair. You cannot do this.”

He grinned. “I’m well known at the hotel.” There were also two bottles of India Pale Ale. “You do drink beer, don’t you? There
are no glasses, so you can’t be very ladylike.”

“Are you making fun of me?” she asked sharply. She didn’t know why she said it. Perhaps it was because she suddenly thought
how unsuitable this encounter was and wondered what her parents might think if they knew about it: their daughter out for
the day on her own with a man of over thirty — and a conchie at that. Whatever the reason, she said it, and he looked embarrassed.
“Of course not.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap. I just…oh, I don’t know what I just.” And she felt every one of those years
that stood between her age and his, the difference between being a girl and being a woman. She desperately wanted to be a
woman so she would know what to say to him and how exactly to say it. She ate in silence. Maybe the whole day had been spoiled.

Below them a car ran down the road from the head of the pass, almost the only car they had seen. War was returning the mountains
to their primeval desolation. As if to confirm that, an aircraft flew over, the drumbeat of its engines rising and falling,
the sun flashing on its fuselage for a moment. “A Flying Pencil!” she cried.

He looked around. “What?”

“That aeroplane. A Flying Pencil, that’s what they call them. A Dornier. Oh my goodness, it’s the first I’ve seen. A German.”
The aircraft disappeared southward over Crib Goch and Snow-don. Where were the fighters, the Hurricanes and Spitfires? she
wondered.

“How on earth do you know that?”

“What?”

“The name of that aeroplane.”

She smiled apologetically. “I did a course with the Observer Corps. At home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Chester. Near Chester, anyway. A little village. We had someone come round and give a lecture about how we could tell enemy
aircraft and that sort of thing.” The attempt at conversation seemed to die away. He ate his ham sandwich and drank from his
bottle of beer while she contemplated, with fear and something close to excitement, the question that she wanted to ask. Maybe
fear and excitement were almost the same thing anyway: they certainly seemed to be when you were rock climbing — the fear of
slipping, of falling, of swinging off the cliff on the end of the rope, being inseparable from the excitement of moving in
the vertical plane, using holds that you never imagined could support you, making moves that seemed impossible. She took a
breath. “Why are you a conscientious objector?” she asked.

There: it was out in the open now. For better or for worse.

Had he heard? He kept chewing, kept staring out over the green-and-gray valley, almost as though he hadn’t. “Because of the
last time,” he said finally. “The last war, the so-called war to end all wars. I grew up in that. I’ve thought about it a
lot, and I decided that it wasn’t a war between two peoples. It was a war between the governing classes of two countries,
between the politicians. Nothing’s changed.”

“Except for Hitler and the Nazis.”

“They’re just politicians. Nothing more. The German people have never been allowed their say, not under fair conditions.”

“They seem pretty enthusiastic about it all. If you listen to the news.”

He laughed humorlessly “But whose news do you listen to?”

“And if they invade? What then?”

He picked at a tuft of grass. He suddenly no longer seemed the confident mountaineer, the man who could breach precipices
by skill and courage. Rather, he appeared to be confused and anxious. “I don’t know what then. For God’s sake, I don’t have
all the answers anymore than anyone else. But I’ll not fight. I don’t believe in it, and I won’t do it. Wars will cease only
when men stop fighting.” The speech seemed to have upset him. He turned away from her and looked up across the mountainside,
toward the skyline of rocks.

“I respect you for it,” she said. “Don’t think I don’t.”

He laughed. “You don’t have to be polite.”

“I’m not being polite. I mean what I say.”

“But you should say what you mean.”

“I do; that’s the same thing, you know.”

He looked around at her. She saw that his look was something else, not just the look of polite amusement that it might have
been. “Not the same thing a bit,” he said.

A small bubble of laughter lodged somewhere behind her sternum. She waited expectantly for him to continue.

“Why,” he said, smiling, “you might just as well say that ‘I see what I like’ is the same thing as ‘I like what I see.’”

It was as though they had exchanged passwords, recognized each other in the dark. She released the laughter and blushed at
the same time. “But do you?” she asked.

“Do I what?” His gaze was very steady, as if he was examining her blush and trying to judge the reason for it.

“Do you like what you see?”

“Very much,” he said, and turned away again and began to clear up the scraps of litter from their lunch. “Now what do you
want to do next? Are you game for another climb? I’d thought we might try the Spiral Stairs.”

“Fine,” she said. “The Spiral Stairs sound fine.”

So they climbed the Spiral Stairs, which had originally, so Guy explained, been named Sodom, but someone in the Climbers’
Club had objected, and so another title had to be chosen. They laughed at that, at the idea of a stuffy old Blimp objecting
to such a name; it
was
rather rude, she thought, although she was uncertain exactly what it meant. The climb itself was at the left-hand end of
the Columnar Cliffs. It started from the foot of that awful corner, the corner that had never been climbed but might be one
day, and it went out leftward on small holds, out over empty air. Guy shouted to her to be careful, for if she came off there
she’d swing like a pendulum below him.

“Thanks for the warning,” she called back sarcastically. She was beginning to get the measure of him.

“You’ve got a head for these things,” he shouted. “You’re okay.”

“You like what you see, is that it?” Somehow being there on the crag, with the wind blowing around them and the rough rock
beneath her fingers, gave her the courage to say it.

“And I see what I like,” he called back.

They finished the climb up easy slabs to the top of the crag, and as though to greet their triumph, the sun broke through
the clouds and illuminated the litter of scree and the crags of rock. They sat together in the sunshine for a while, and she
knew what she wanted him to do, which was what he had done when she had completed the first climb, which was to put his arm
around her. Just that would have been fine. Nothing more. But he didn’t. He just sat there for a while and then stood up and
said, “Well, perhaps I should be getting you back to your friends.”

“Not especially,” she said. “They’ll be all right by themselves. I left them a note.”

“Still,” he said, and she thought perhaps that he wanted to get rid of her. It wasn’t until they were down at the road and
about to get onto the bike that he asked whether she was interested in doing some more climbing, and she answered that, yes,
of course she was.

“How long are you here?” he asked.

“Tomorrow and Sunday.”

He kick-started the engine. “Tomorrow, then?” he yelled above the noise.

“Tomorrow’s fine.”

He left her on the road, and she walked up the drive to where the youth hostel lay in its small grove of trees. Her friends
weren’t there. They’d gone to the Carneddau, the whaleback mountains on the far side of the valley, and they didn’t get back
until the evening. “Where were you?” they cried when they tramped in and found her there waiting for them. “What’s all this
‘went climbing?’”

“That’s what I did: I went rock climbing.”

“Rock
climbing?”

“With Guy Matthewson. And he’s taking me again tomorrow.”

“Is
he indeed?” said Meg.

They sat down to their meal, laughing and joking, eager to hear about the day’s adventures. In retrospect, it was a poignant
evening. Did they know it at the time? Perhaps they sensed it. Innocence had only a few more weeks to run. Already the boys
had their call-up papers — one was already in uniform. Already the girls had volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
or the Women’s Royal Naval Service or something. The war was about to stir them up in its wanton manner, send two of them
off to die, one of them to be captured, all of them to grow up and into a different world. But for the moment, they sat around
the supper table and talked and laughed as though the future didn’t matter, while Diana regaled them with stories of minute
holds and vertical precipices, and they laughed and joked and quizzed her about Mr. Guy Matthewson. Was she hot on him?

“He’s about fifteen years older than me, for goodness’ sake,” she protested.

“And a conchie,” added Meg.

The barbed comment put Diana on the defensive. “That’s not the point, is it? He’s hardly a coward if he climbs like that.
It’s just what he believes.”

“So what
does
he believe?”

But she didn’t really know.

“He’s a Commie, isn’t he?” Eric said. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

“I’ve no idea. I only met him yesterday, and we spent most of today fifty feet apart on either end of a rope. We didn’t get
to discuss politics. You don’t do that kind of thing on a rock climb.”

“But you must be able to say what he’s
like.
Is he — for God’s sake let’s stop beating about the bush — is he
good-looking?”
It was Meg asking, of course.

“He’s…interesting. Rather austere.”

“God, that’s a bit of a put-down.”

“Can I come with you tomorrow?”

“Go
with
her?” Hilda cried. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Meg, you’d be a
real gooseberry!”

The high-pitched and excited voices, the soon-to-date slang, the ceremony of innocence, soon to be drowned. Within two months,
Diana would be pulling the headless body of a woman from the rubble of a bombed house in Stepney. Within a few months, Eric
would be stumbling through the dark and smoke of a stricken Whitley bomber to grab his parachute pack and throw himself out
into the Arctic night above the city of Duisburg. Within a year, Martin would be posted missing in the North Atlantic; Hilda
would be killed by a flying bomb in 1944 in South London.

“I’m not sure that we should leave you alone with him, Miss Diana Sheridan,” Meg said with a wicked smile. “How do we know
he’s not a rotter?”

Diana laughed at the warning.

T
HE NEXT DAY
the cloud was low, and there was drizzle in the air. Surely they wouldn’t be able to climb. Most of the others set off up
the north ridge of Tryfan, but Meg decided to stay behind. She didn’t feel all that well. Perhaps it was something she had
eaten — that corned beef, maybe.

“Oh, Meg, don’t be such a spoilsport!” Hilda had cried, but Meg could not be persuaded. “I’ll be able to check out this man
of Diana’s,” she said. “We don’t want her falling into the wrong hands, do we?”

So the two of them stood together at the roadside huddled into their anoraks, waiting for Guy Matthewson. He might not even
come, Diana decided. She was surprised, and a little annoyed, to discover how disappointed she was at the thought; she was
also surprised, and a little afraid, to discover how angry she was that Meg was standing there beside her.

But he did come. Of course he did. First there was his bike far in the distance and then the sound of it tearing through the
cold, damp morning. She was amazed that she could ever have doubted him. “Good morning, Miss Sheridan,” he shouted above the
engine noise as he drew up beside the two girls.