Touching the Void (22 page)

‘What the hell are you doing? You haven’t a clue where he hid it, and there’re thousands of bloody rocks round here.’

‘Got any better suggestions? You were the one who forgot the hiding place.’

‘We’ll do it systematically. It’s certainly nowhere near the gas store, that’s for sure!’ I walked to an area of large boulders and tried to find one that would jog my memory. They all looked the same to me. I quartered the area until I was satisfied the money wasn’t there, and then moved to another group of boulders. Richard stood quietly to one side grinning knowingly. After an hour’s fruitless searching I stopped and looked at him.

‘Come on then. Don’t just stand there. Help me.’

An hour later we sat morosely by the stove drinking tea. We hadn’t found the money. ‘It’s got to be there somewhere, for Christ’s sake! I know he put it under a small stone near a boulder, and it was no more than ten yards from the dome tent.’

‘As you said, there’re thousands of rocks here.’

Between bouts of argumentative tea-drinking, the search continued without result. At four o’clock the two girls appeared in camp with two of the children. We stopped searching and pretended that we were organising the camp site. They smiled sadly at me, and I found them unnerving. Richard had told them of Joe’s death when he had gone down to arrange the donkeys with Spinoza. The carefree sunny afternoon suddenly seemed to cloud over as I looked at their show of grief. They angered me. What right had they to feel sad? I had been through all that, and didn’t like to be reminded.

Richard made some tea for them as they squatted near the stove looking at me with the same open and unabashed curiosity as they had when we first met. It felt as if they were examining me for signs of strain. I took their silence for pity. The two children stared at me open-mouthed. I wondered if they expected me suddenly to do something spectacular. The elder girl spoke briefly to Richard. I didn’t understand what she said, but saw his face darken with anger.

‘They want to know what we are going to give them!’ He said it incredulously.

‘What?’

‘That’s all. Nothing about Joe. They don’t give a toss!’

The girls were chattering to each other as we spoke, occasionally smiling expectantly at one or other of us. When Norma reached over and began sorting through the cooking utensils I exploded. I jumped up, waving my arms. Norma dropped the frying pan and looked at Gloria in alarm. ‘Go away! Go on! Vayase. Go on. PISS OFF!’

They sat stock-still in bewilderment. They didn’t seem to understand and appeared confused. ‘Come on, Richard. You tell them, and quick, before I hit one of them.’

I spun round and stormed away from the tents. Minutes later I saw the girls helping the children on to their mules, and riding off down the valley. I was shaking with fury when I returned. As darkness fell the first heavy spots of rain pattered on to the tents. We retreated to the dome and cooked the evening meal on gas stoves in the entrance. The rain turned to heavy wet snowflakes, and we zipped the tent closed. Tomorrow the donkeys would arrive and we could leave this place. I felt relieved. At about seven o’clock an eerie sound wailed out from the cloud-filled valley. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Dogs.’

‘Bloody odd-sounding dog!’

‘You’d be surprised. When you were on the mountain I heard the weirdest things at night. Used to scare the tripes out of me.’

We finished a game of gin rummy, blew out the candle and settled down. I thought of the snow falling on the glacier beneath Siula and the hollow ache hurt with a vengeance.

I opened my eyes and flinched at the sharp glare of sunlight.

Tears brimmed and watered my vision. I closed my eyes and made a mental check on myself. Cold and weak. It was still early and the sun had no warmth. Sharp stones pressed through the sodden fabric of my sleeping bag. My neck ached. I had slept with my head crooked over between two rocks. The night had taken forever to pass. There had been little sleep. The hammering falls had severely affected my leg so that spasms of pain kept disturbing me when I dozed off. Once I had howled in agony when cramps in my thigh and calf muscles forced me to twist violently and bend forward to massage the injured leg. When the pain throbbed too insistently for sleep, I had lain shivering on the rocky cleft where I had collapsed and stared at the night sky. Shooting-stars flared in the myriad bands of stars spread across the night. I watched them flare and die without interest. As the hours passed, the feeling that I would never get up overwhelmed me. I lay unmoving on my back, feeling pinned to the rocks, weighed down by a numb weariness and fear until it seemed that the star-spread blackness above me was pushing me relentlessly into the ground. I spent so much of the night wide-eyed, staring at the timeless vista of stars, that time seemed frozen and spoke volumes to me of solitude and loneliness, leaving me with the inescapable thought that I would never move again. I fancied myself lying there for centuries, waiting for a sun that would never rise. I slept in sudden stolen minutes and awoke to the same stars and the same inevitable thoughts. They talked to me without my consent, whispering dreads that I knew were untrue but couldn’t ignore. The voice told me I was too late; time had run out.

Now my head was basked in sunshine while my body lay shadowed by a large boulder on my left. I pulled the draw-cord open with my teeth and tried to shuffle out of the bag and into the sun. Every movement caused flares of pain in my knee. Though I moved only six feet, the effort left me slumped in exhaustion on the screes. I could hardly believe how badly I had deteriorated during the night. Pulling myself along with my arms had become the limit of my strength. I shook my head from side to side, trying to wake myself and drive the lethargy away. It had no effect, and I lay back on the rocks. I had hit some sort of wall. I wasn’t sure whether it was mental or physical but it smothered me in a blanket of weakness and apathy. I wanted to move but couldn’t. Lifting my arm to shield the sun from my eyes required a deliberate struggle. I lay motionless, frightened by my weakness. If I could get water I would have a chance. It would be just one chance. If I didn’t reach camp that day then I would never do so.

Will the camp still be there?

The question sprang to mind for the first time, and with it came the dread feelings I had experienced in the night. Perhaps they had gone. Simon must have been back for two days…more, this was the morning of his third day! There was no reason for him to stay once he had recovered his strength. I sat up suddenly without effort. The thought of being left galvanised me from my lethargy. I must reach camp today. I checked my watch. Eight o’clock. I had ten hours of daylight ahead of me. I hauled myself to my feet, pulling desperately at the boulder, and wavered uncertainly on the verge of collapsing back on to the scree. My head whirled with the sudden change of position, and for a moment I thought I was going to black out. Blood roared in my temples, my legs seemed to liquefy. I hugged the rough rock of the boulder and held on tight. When my balance returned and the roaring eased I straightened up and looked back to where I had come from yesterday. I was disappointed to find that I could still see the top of the ice cliffs in the far distance. Turning towards the lakes I saw that I was a long way above the site of Bomb Alley. All that staggering in the dark had been for nothing. How stupid it had been to forget the watch-keeping yesterday, and how quickly I had lost any idea of time. Bomb Alley had then become a vague aim instead of a carefully planned objective. Without timing each stage I had drifted aimlessly with no sense of urgency. Today it had to be different. I decided that four hours would be enough to reach Bomb Alley. Twelve noon was the deadline, and I intended to break those hours into short stages, each one carefully timed. I searched ahead for the first landmark—a tall pillar of red rock that stood out clearly above the sea of boulders. Half an hour to reach it, and then I would look for another.

I hoisted my sack on to my back and crouched to make the first tentative hop of the day. The moment I jumped I knew I would fall. My arm buckled and I pitched forward. When I tried to stand for another try I couldn’t raise myself on the axe. Once again I hugged the boulder and clawed myself upright. Fifteen minutes later I was still within sight of where I had slept. I swayed unsteadily as I looked back at my progress. At every hop I fell, but it was the attempt at standing that demoralised me. The first fall had been abominably painful and I had lain face-down in the gravel, clenching my teeth, waiting for the pain to subside. It remained with me, burning my knee unbearably as it had never done before.

‘Stop, stop, please stop…’

But it stayed. I stood up despite the pain in an attempt to force it into the background. I could feel my facial muscles screwing up and my mouth pulled into a rictus of protest. I fell again. The pain stayed level. Perhaps the knee was so traumatised that it had gone beyond the normal boundaries of pain. Perhaps it was in my head.

In those fifteen minutes I lost whatever fight was left in me. I felt it ebb out of me with every fall as the chronic burning pain took over. I stood and fell, writhed where I fell, cried and swore, and felt sure in my heart that these were my last spastic efforts before I lay still for good. I let go my grip on the boulder and tried to hop. My foot didn’t leave the ground, and I toppled sideways unable even to protect myself with my arms.

The blow stunned me. For a while pain disappeared as my head swam in sick dizziness half-way between consciousness and oblivion. I had cut my lip on the rock and tasted the blood trickling into my mouth. I lay crumpled on my side between two large boulders. The red pillar stood out from the moraines directly in front of me. I checked my watch. Ten minutes left to reach it. No chance! I closed my eyes and laid my cheek against the cool rocky ground. Through a hazy blur I thought of how far I had to go, and of how far I had come. Part of me cried out to give up and sleep, and accept that I would never reach camp. The voice countered this. I lay still and listened to the argument. I didn’t care about the camp or getting down. It was too far. Yet the irony of collapsing on the moraines after having overcome all those obstacles angered me. The voice won. My mind was set. It had been from the moment I got out of the crevasse.

I would keep moving, keep trying, for want of other choices. After Bomb Alley I would aim for the upper lake, then cross the intervening moraines to the lower lake, contour round the lake to the moraines at its end, and after climbing them descend to camp. At least, I told myself that this would happen. I no longer cared whether it did or not.

I hopped forward to the lip of a hollow, fell, and rolled sideways into it. I heard water splashing over slabs from a long grey distance in my head. My face was wet. The muddy gravel at the base of the water-smooth rock was cold and moist. When I turned to face the sound, I saw a silver sheen of melt-water pouring over the golden rock. I had reached Bomb Alley. It was one o’clock. I was an hour overdue.

A great rounded wall of rock curved above the hollow in which I lay. The floor of the hollow was sodden. A cone of muddy scree was piled at the base of the rock, rising to a stream of water pouring down the slab. The sun shone fully on to the rock, melting the snow above it. With a strength I hadn’t possessed minutes before, I scrambled over to the cone of scree and with one sweep of my axe brushed it aside. I pressed my lips to the thin trickle. It was icy cold. I gasped for breath between frantic sucks at the wet slab. Water splashed over my forehead, running over my closed eyes and off the tip of my nose. I snorted, pig-like, as a gasp for air sucked the water up my nostrils, then I pushed my face back to the rock.

A long time passed before I calmed my assault on the trickle. By then the terrible dry burning in my throat had been soothed, but the thirst remained. With every mouthful I could feel my strength returning. I sat side-on to the rock and my polar trousers sopped up the water from the wet screes. When sense at last prevailed, I scooped a hollow from the debris at the scree cone and watched it fill. Two inches of icy clear water filled the scoop—more than I could take in one mouthful. The hollows refilled before I could bend again for a second drink. I drank until my stomach hurt with the cold weight of water, and then drank more. I bent my face to the pool and slobbered at the water, coughing as grit caught in my throat, and trying to drink at the same time. I heard myself mewling and groaning with the delight and discomfort.

Each time I stopped, thinking I had drunk my fill, an overpowering urge to drink again would come over me. Mud and grit smeared my face and I clawed at the pool, enlarging it with numb, soiled fingers. I drank, rested, and drank again with the panicky obsession that it might suddenly dry up and disappear. Three days and nights without water had maddened me. I couldn’t tear myself away from the rock, and drank with eyes tight-closed and face clenched in unbelieving astonishment. More water than I had ever dared think of, enough to fill the blotting paper feeling within me and turn me away, sodden and sponged, to collapse sated on the floor of the hollow.

I roused myself from the stupor of fluid and looked around. Sounds of water tinkling near me were a comfort. The hollow felt familiar. I had been here with Simon and Richard, and then a second time with Simon. How long ago? Eight days ago! It seemed unbelievable. I remembered the place so well that it seemed only yesterday that we had sat here on our rucksacks, filled with excitement about the climb. A few small stones rattled down the water rock. I ducked away instinctively as they smacked into the screes at the far end of the hollow. The water had wrought an amazing change in me. I felt invigorated. The previous hours of despair were forgotten. The empty soft weakness I had felt since waking had gone. I could feel my fight returning. The wall I had stumbled through that morning had been washed away.

From Bomb Alley I knew that the upper lake was half an hour’s walking, or three hours’ crawling. I decided to try and reach it by four o’clock. I stood up and hopped to the rock for one last drink, then turned and began to leave the hollow. As I reached its far end I saw footprints in the mud. I stopped and stared at them. I recognised the print of Simon’s boots, and the smaller marks of Richard’s trainers. My spirits rose. They were with me. I hopped past.