Touching the Void (23 page)

The moraines ahead of me were less chaotic. The mass of huge boulders tossed at random over the upper reaches gave way to smaller stones spread in a carpet between occasional erratic boulders. They shifted and slipped under my axe. I fell, but not against boulders, and now I could stand with less effort. The water had revived me but the sun, burning mercilessly from a clear sky, sapped my concentration. I found myself drifting dazedly in and out of sleep, waking with a jerk, and sitting up from the fall, shaking the sleep from my head.

The patterns happened of their own accord. I gave them no thought. They were as natural as walking. The voice still urged me on but without the insistent commanding tone of yesterday. Now it seemed to suggest that I might as well get on with it for want of anything else to do. I found it easier to ignore it and slump on the ground in a sleepy daydream. Yeah, sure, I’ll move, but I’ll rest a little longer first…and the voice would fade into a background of hazy dreams. Conversations from the past, in voices I recognised immediately, competing with incessant tunes and mental pictures of remembered places, drifted in and out of my mind like a crazy disjointed Sixties film. I swayed drunkenly on every rock large enough to lean against and let the sleep whisk me away from the endless landscape of dull dirty rocks.

Only my watch kept me in touch with the day. The hours passed unnoticed. I remembered the minutes of each dreamy rest and no more. When I fell on to my leg, the pain flared and I cried or groaned until it faded, then dreamed. It felt so normal to hurt that I was no longer surprised by the torment which ambushed me with every fall. Sometimes I wondered dully why it didn’t hurt when I had fallen heavily. I asked myself endless questions, none of which I answered; but not once did I question what was happening. Muttered arguments jolted me awake, and I wondered who I had been talking to; many times I looked behind me to see who they were, but they were never there. I hobbled down a path I knew instinctively. I paid no heed to the landscape around me. The ground I covered was forgotten the minute I had passed it. Behind me lay a hazy memory of falls and boulders jumbled into a timeless idea of what I had so far done. Ahead lay more of the same. At three o’clock I reached a point where the rocks funnelled into a steep gully. It cut down deeply, bearing a muddy yellow clay. A stream twisted along its base. This was the end of the moraines proper. I knew that the gully ran all the way to the lake, widening as it descended until it cut a flat clay-based path out from the snout of the moraines. I couldn’t hop down it, so I sat with my legs in front of me and shuffled down the clay. The walls of the gully rose high above me and boulders hung over the sides in precarious balance. It was shadowed and cool in there. Occasionally I lay on my back and looked at the gully walls framing the sky above me and muttered vaguely remembered songs. The water seeped through my clothes, and when I sat up I felt it trickle down my back and soak into my sodden trousers. If I felt like it, I rolled on to my side and sucked noisily at the filthy water running down the gully bed. Mostly I shuffled down lost in a different world. I stared ahead at the gradually widening yellow gully and peopled it with other figures shuffling along its bed. I imagined an exodus of cripples taking this yellow path to the sea, then thought of food, and the vision disintegrated. Every now and then I saw a boot print and wondered idly whose it was, until I remembered Simon and Richard at Bomb Alley and knew for certain that they followed close behind me. I smiled, happy at the thought of company and help if I needed it. They would come if I called, but I wasn’t going to call. They hung back out of sight, but I knew they weren’t far behind. They’re embarrassed by my condition, I told myself, and felt ashamed. All that water had made me want to pee but I hadn’t managed to remove my clothing in time. I was sure they would understand. So I went on until the bubble abruptly burst and their comforting presence vanished.

I stopped dead, shocked at my sudden return to reality, feeling scared. Before long another song played through the fear and, looking ahead, I saw the sunshine glimmering off the surface of the lake. I grinned at the sight and increased my speed.

‘Four o’clock and all’s well,’ I shouted at the lake, and laughed foolishly.

A flat gravel plain ran out from the gully, forming a crescent-shaped beach at the lakeside. I tried to stand now that I had no downward pull to help me shuffle. When I stood shakily on one foot the lake swam before my eyes and blood pounded from my head. I hit the gravel with a sickening crash and heard, as if from a long way off, a cry of pain. I tried again, but fell before I could stand. My leg had gone to jelly.

At first I decided it was because I had been shuffling for so long, then I realised that I was too weak to hop any more. I grimaced at the fiery wet rush of urine flooding down my thigh, and when it stopped and began to cool I tried once again to stand. The best I could manage was an arthritic bentover crouch, with the axe shaft wobbling under my weight. I swung my bad leg forward and seemed to topple over for no reason. I hadn’t the strength even to stand still. I resorted to a forward bellycrawl.

The water of the lake was astonishingly clear. Coppered green shadows glinted in its depths. Ice cliffs on the far shore overhung the water in hulking dirty grey mounds. A waterfall splashed noisily over the ice, and an occasional breeze ruffled the water so that it seemed to dance dappled silver and green reflections towards me. I lay on my chest with my head hanging over the small rocky drop to the water in front of me. I had slept, woken to stare at the lake, and slept again. The sun dried the gully water from my trousers. There was a warm stench of urine which drifted around me on the light airs. One hour I had slept, and now I looked across the lake wondering whether I should try standing again.

The lake stretched towards base camp in a long narrow ribbon. In the distance I could see where a jumble of moraines cut the lake in half. I knew that beyond those moraines the second smaller circular lake pooled against the dam of moraines above the tents. Except for the short passage through the moraines the ground was generally flat. The beach-like gravel extended to the moraine dam, and beyond the dam it was all downhill. It would be easy ground over which to hop, if only I could stand. It would be much faster to hop. If I reached the top of the dam before dark I would be able to look down on the tents—if they were still there. They might hear me if I shouted, and rush up to me. If they had left…

I looked back at the water. If they had gone, what then? The prospect terrified me. I knew the answer only too well. I couldn’t believe that they would have left. It seemed inconceivable after my efforts. Nothing could be that cruel? Surely I had left such malevolence behind when I had climbed down the ice cliffs and passed the door to the mountains? A part of me hesitated, paralysing any thought of moving. I didn’t want to get there before dark. It would destroy me if I saw that the tents had gone.

The voice said, ‘Don’t be a fool, hurry on; two hours’ light left:

I stared into the lake, caught between too many fears, unable to act. When I stood up it seemed that I lifted a heavy weight with me, an almost solid feeling of dread that had crept through me, and I despaired of going any further. I managed two hops before falling heavily. I crawled forward on my stomach. My foot dragged over the gravel, jolting my knee. I sat up, faced the way I had come, and shuffled along backwards, as I had done on the glacier. I moved towards the second lake at a desperately slow pace, but I didn’t stop, and gradually I could see that I was getting there. I followed the edge of the lake and the soft lapping sounds of the water murmured continuously as I drifted back into dreamland. I remembered a time of falling, plunging snow-bound down a mountain, and heard the same soft murmur of waves on a shingle beach. I had thought myself dying then, and now the same lapping melody pursued my shuffling progress.

The lake had seemed far longer than it was, and an hour later I had crossed the dividing moraines and started along the bank of the second lake. I recognised the place where I had attempted to fish for trout, and stopped to look ahead at the dam of moraines. It had taken me fifteen minutes to walk to camp from here. I tried to guess how long it would take me to crawl, and became hopelessly confused when I realised it had been a brisk hour’s walk from camp to Bomb Alley. It had taken me five hours to descend to the second lake. I found it impossible to grasp how slowly I was moving. Yet, as I looked at the dam, I felt sure I could reach it before dark. I had one hour left. The sun had been blotted out by a rolling blanket of cumulus clouds coming from the east. They looked dark and swollen as they packed into the valley walls. It was going to storm. I reached the moraine dam just as the first drops of rain spattered down. The wind had increased and gusted cold blasts of ice-cooled air across the lake. I shivered.

The wall of the dam was comprised of compacted mud and gravel. I remembered that I had slipped and fallen when climbing it before. A few rocks jutted out from the mud, which was tilted at an angle of 450. At its head, a jagged crown of loose boulders was outlined against lowering storm clouds. Snowflakes whipped past me mixed into the rain. The temperature was dropping rapidly. I used my axe on the mud as if it were ice, reaching up and hacking the pick into the wall and then hauling myself up with my arms. I kicked my boot into the slope with little effect. I scraped my boot across the slope until it lodged accidentally on a small edge of stone jutting from the mud. Another swing of the axe and I had to repeat the whole precarious process while my injured leg hung uselessly beneath me. The higher I climbed, the more nervous I became. I thought it was because I was scared of falling and having to begin again, but it went deeper than that. The dark dread of what I might find at the top was becoming unbearable. It had been with me from the very beginning. In the crevasse it had been overshadowed by terror, on the glacier by loneliness, but once past all the dangers it had mushroomed into a consuming hollowness. Something huge and bloated wallowed in my chest, squeezing my throat and emptying my guts. My nerves jumped and twisted, and every thought in my head was focused on the possibility of finding myself abandoned, not just for a second time, but for good.

At the top of the mud slope I crawled between a jumble of rocks until I had reached the highest point of the moraines. I pulled myself upright and leant against a large boulder. There was nothing to be seen. Clouds filled the valley below and snow flurries eddied back and forth in the wind. If the tents were there I couldn’t see them. It was almost dark. I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted:

‘SIIIMMMOONNNN!’

It echoed off the clouds, and the wind whipped it away. I screamed a high-pitched howl at the clouds and heard an eerie echo from the gathering darkness. Had they heard me? Would they come? I slumped down by the boulder, sheltering from the wind, and waited. The cold ate through me as darkness quickly swamped the clouds from view. I listened intently for the answering call, knowing it would never come, and when I could sit still no longer for the shivering I shuffled away from the boulder. There was a long descent of grass and cactus-covered hillside ahead. I had considered getting my sleeping bag out and resting the night on the moraines but the voice said, ‘Don’t, and I agreed. It was too cold. To sleep now would be to never wake up. I huddled my shoulders against the wind and, facing forward, shuffled down the hillside.

Hours of darkness drifted by and I lost all sense of place and time. I shuffled in short inching slides, peering round at the surrounding darkness in confusion. The idea that I was descending to the tents had long since evaporated. I had no conception of what I was doing, and knew only that I must keep moving. The wind-blown snow spattered my face in icy gusts. It would wake me from deep timeless sleeps and force the crawl to begin again. Occasionally I glanced at my watch, switching the light on and squinting at the clock face. Nine o’clock, eleven o’clock, the night stretched on, and the five hours’ crawling from the moraine dam meant nothing. I vaguely knew it should have taken me only ten minutes to reach the camp. Five hours could have been ten minutes. I no longer understood.

When sharp cactus spines sliced into my thighs I would stop and explore the ground beneath me, quite incapable of understanding what had pierced me. The night blanketed everything from sight, and I slipped into a delirium of muttered words and distorted ideas of where I was and what I was doing. Was I still on the glacier? Better be careful, I thought, the crevasses are bad at the end. And where have all the rocks gone? It was good not to feel thirsty, but I wished I knew where I was…

Tears In the Night

Almost without noticing it I had entered a wide area of rocks and river gravels. Moraines again? I was unsure. The steep descent of grass and cactus had disorientated me. When I turned to look behind me, a dark sinuous line was just visible on the white snow-covered hillside. There was no snow on the rocks. Which rocks were these? I fumbled in the rucksack until I found my head-torch. A dull yellow glow flared briefly when I turned it on. I shone it round in a circle and saw grey tumbled rocks. I was sitting in a huge barren field of them, quite unable to choose which way to crawl. The torch beam died quickly. I discarded it and moved forward into the darkness with my head whirling in confusion. I tried to think clearly, sweeping away the medley of mad thoughts for brief snatches of reality. The river bed! That was where I was, though the realisation didn’t help, for I slept immediately and woke later unable to remember it. The notion that I was on the river bed flitted through my mind but I failed to grasp it again and insisted on returning to wilder ideas. The river bed was half a mile wide, strewn with rocks and pocked with pools of icy melt-water. Somewhere out in the darkness lay the river. I couldn’t hear it for the storm winds. The tents were snuggled on its far bank, but where was I? Was I moving towards the centre or curving back towards the moraine dam? Does anyone care? I kept shuffling along, bumping my feet up against rocks, moaning at the spasms of pain, muttering questions to the darkness and hearing only the sibilant rush of stormy wind in answer. The voice had left me hours ago. I was glad not to be bothered by its interruptions.