Bright Air (2 page)

‘Ah.’ Although the activity of refilling our glasses meant I hadn’t had to meet her eye, I was acutely aware of her watching me closely, as if straining for a false note. I found I couldn’t think of anything more to say.

Finally she spoke. ‘Haven’t you been reading the papers, Josh?’

‘Not much; I’ve made a point of avoiding them for as long as I can. Why?’

‘About Curtis and Owen?’

I shook my head, intrigued, wondering how they might have got into the news. ‘What have they been getting up to?’ I said with a laugh.

She didn’t smile back, but looked down and traced a finger around the base of the glass. ‘A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from Suzi.’

‘Owen’s wife? Oh yes? How are they both? Any more children?
I didn’t keep in touch.’ In fact I hadn’t kept in touch with any of them.

‘I did, with Owen and Curtis. We used to catch up from time to time. They still went climbing together.’

‘Really?’ I gave her a look, which she avoided.

‘Yes. They’d gone to New Zealand for a week. Suzi had just heard that there’d been a bad accident on Mount Cook. Curtis was killed.’

I felt the impact of the words like a physical blow, wiping the stupid smile off my face, pinning me back in my chair. ‘Curtis? Dead?’ An image of him came vividly into my mind, red curls spilling out from under his climbing helmet, a big cheeky grin on his face.

Then I remembered I had noticed a newspaper item, not long after I’d got back: two Australian climbers hurt in the Southern Alps, names withheld. I’d read it with a kind of shiver, thankful that all that was behind me. I must have missed the later reports.

‘… Curtis’s parents.’

‘What? Sorry, Anna, I didn’t catch that.’

‘They were abroad, Curtis’s parents, and they were having trouble tracing them.’

‘What about Owen?’ I felt disoriented, unable to think clearly.

‘Yes, he was very badly hurt. Suzi was hysterical. They wanted her to fly out straight away, but their new baby was sick, and she couldn’t go …’ Another image, Owen beaming through his glasses, a small child perched on his shoulder.

‘Dear God.’

‘You’ve heard nothing of this?’

‘No, no … Go on.’

‘Well, I said I’d go. I caught the next plane to Christchurch,
where the boys had been flown. I made it just in time to be with Owen when he died.’

‘He died? Owen too?’

‘I thought you must have seen it in the news. It was on TV too.’

No wonder she’d been looking at me strangely. ‘God, that’s just terrible, Anna. I can’t believe it.’ I reached out my hand to grip hers. It felt cold.

She nodded sadly, knowing the arithmetic that was going through my head. There had been six of us at university, six friends who went rock climbing together. Now three were dead: Luce first, and now Owen and Curtis.

‘Just three of us left,’ I said. ‘You, me, and … I suppose Damien is okay?’

‘Oh yes. I spoke to him on the phone yesterday.’

I felt dizzy, unable to breathe properly, and suddenly I couldn’t stand it, sitting there talking calmly like that, and jerked abruptly to my feet. ‘I think I need something stronger than wine. Can I get you a brandy, Scotch?’

She shook her head and I headed out across the hall to Mary’s private sitting room, where I took a deep breath and poured myself a whisky from the bottle in her sideboard. The clock on the mantelpiece softly chimed the hour, and I stood for a while staring dumbly at the pattern in the Indian carpet at my feet. I felt physically shaken by the news, yet I didn’t seem to feel anything for them. I tried to picture the two of them, Curtis and Owen, but my brain didn’t respond. Finally I thought of Anna sitting out there alone and I straightened up and opened the door. The judge, his report under his arm, was crossing the hall with Socrates, perhaps bent on a game of hide-and-seek. They looked at me and something seemed to strike the judge. He gave a guarded smile and gestured at the drink in my hand. ‘Just the thing.’

I had the ludicrous idea that he was accusing me of stealing Mary’s Scotch. ‘I’ve had some rather bad news,’ I blurted, and began telling him about Curtis and Owen, and about climbing, and about Lucy too, and I could feel the tears stinging the insides of my eyelids. Then Anna appeared at the door across the hall, and I shut up.

The judge said, ‘My dear chap, of course I read about it. They were close friends of yours, those fellers? I’m so sorry.’

He sensed Anna behind him and turned, and I introduced them. We commiserated for an awkward few moments before I escaped with Anna, leading her out to the terrace, now deserted, where we sat down with a sigh. Across the bay deep shadow was rising like a purple tide so that only the tops of the buildings on the far ridge were glowing in the golden evening light.

I gulped at my drink. ‘Sorry. These past weeks must have been dreadful for you. Have you seen Suzi?’

‘Yes. Her mother has moved in with her. And Curtis’s parents flew back as soon as they got the news. The funerals will be held on Tuesday. I’ll give you the details.’

‘Thanks.’

I tried to remember the last time I’d seen the two of them. It was the night before I left for London, my farewell party. I could remember Curtis, pissed, standing on a table to sing a farewell song, but not much more, for Luce had been there too, and the evening was a blur of booze and guilt.

Anna was very quiet.

‘Is there something else?’ I asked.

Her eyes met mine for a moment, then slid away. It was such an uncharacteristic gesture that I was disconcerted. Anna was sometimes stubborn and over-earnest, but never shifty.

‘Something bad?’

‘Maybe I should leave it for now. You seem pretty shaken up.’

‘No.’ My voice was off-key. ‘No. You’d better tell me. What on earth is it?’

‘It’s about Luce, Josh.’

‘Luce?’

‘Yes.’ She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. The light was fading and the evening air had suddenly lost its warmth. ‘You have to imagine what it was like, when I arrived in Christchurch. I caught a taxi straight to the hospital as soon as we landed. It was dark, and there was a lot of activity outside—TV crews, reporters. At first the staff wouldn’t let me see Owen, but eventually I persuaded them that I was representing his family, who couldn’t get there for a day or two. From their reaction I gathered that that would be too late.

‘It was hard to make him out at first among all the tubes and dressings, just a few pink and purple bits of his face visible. He was so still, eyes shut, as if he was completely absorbed in what the machines were doing to him, pumping, dripping, measuring. The nurse said they were amazed that he’d survived the flight to the hospital, and didn’t expect him to last the night.

‘The room was warm and after a while my attention drifted. I felt exhausted by it all, the journey, the emotion, and the knowledge of how it was going to end. It was almost like a physical thing, like gravity, the drag of death on life.’

Anna hesitated, glancing at me, and I nodded encouragingly.

‘Anyway, I got up and stretched and walked around, and when I glanced at him again I was amazed to see that his eyes were open, looking straight up at me. I spoke to him, told him who I was, and how Suzi would be there to see him soon, and
he listened and seemed to understand. His mouth made a smile and then he said in a whisper,
Tell her I love her
.

‘I wanted to hold his hand or something, but there was nothing of him that I could touch. Tears filled my eyes. He must have registered this because his lips moved again. He said,
No regrets
. You remember how we used to say that?’

‘I remember.’

‘I repeated it back to him, No regrets. They felt pretty hollow now, those stupid words. He closed his eyes and I thought he was gone, but the machines were still pumping away. Then, after a long while, his lids flicked open again and his eyes were wide and bright.
Only one
, he said. I asked him what that was, thinking he’d say something about his children, but instead he said,
Luce
.

‘I wasn’t sure if I’d misheard, and I repeated, Luce?
Yes
, he said.
I thought I saw her on the mountain, just before I fell. Snow dazzle … But what if I do meet her again? What can I say?
I didn’t know how to answer. He gave a sigh and said,
We killed her, you know
.

‘I thought he was getting confused, and I said, No, Owen, it was an accident, like this, the same as you.
No, no
, he said.
That’s what we told everyone, but it wasn’t true
. He was staring straight into my eyes and he seemed quite coherent.
It didn’t happen that way, Anna.
You see, he knew my name, he knew who I was.’

‘He actually said “We killed her”?’ I asked, incredulous. The story made my skin creep, even though I simply couldn’t believe it. I sensed myself edging away from it, something that I really didn’t want to hear.

‘Yes, exactly as I’ve told you. I started to tell him he was wrong, but he just closed his eyes and gave another big sigh and said,
Forgive me, Luce
. He didn’t speak or open his eyes again. At about two in the morning the machines let off an
alarm, and the nurses made me leave. He died soon after.’

We sat in silence for a while. Lights were coming on in the windows across the bay, and I said, feeling how incongruous the words were, ‘I have to switch on the hotel lights, Anna. Hang on, I’ll be back in a minute.’

As I went around the house I thought about what she’d said. It was awful, surely too awful to be taken seriously. Yet Anna clearly did. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to listen to Owen’s words, and then to dwell on them all through the following traumatic days. No, Anna wasn’t now the same girl I’d known as a student. Thinking about the way she’d handled this, I realised how much she’d changed in those four years. There had been no trace of melodrama in her telling of it. She seemed so much more serious, more deliberate—more adult, I supposed.

I returned to the terrace with the bottle of wine and refilled her glass.

‘Who else have you told about this, Anna?’

‘No one. I’ve been wrestling with it for the past ten days, quietly going mad.’

‘I can imagine. You haven’t spoken to Damien, or Marcus?’

She shook her head, but didn’t elaborate. ‘The other day I remembered your aunt saying you were coming back, and I had to come into town today, and I thought, if you were here, I’d mention it to you.’

I thought it odd, not only her not talking to Damien but also not phoning the hotel to make sure I’d be in, as if she were so reluctant to share this that she had left it in the hands of fate.

‘I’m glad you did, Anna. Look, he was delirious, surely. His brain would have been scrambled by the fall—how far did they fall anyway?’

‘About forty metres.’

‘There you are then.’

‘Into snow. No, his brain was about the only bit of him that they didn’t seem too worried about. And he really did sound clear-headed, just for those few minutes.’

‘Doesn’t mean he wasn’t hallucinating. He’d have been stuffed full of drugs, massively traumatised, on the point of death.’

‘I’ve tried to convince myself of that, but you weren’t there, Josh. You didn’t hear the certainty in his voice.’

I decided to try another tack. ‘There was an inquest into Luce’s death, wasn’t there? Did you attend?’

‘Yes, every day.’

‘Was there any suggestion of doubt? Any hint of foul play?’

‘No. But they never found a body, and the rest of the group all told the same story, so there was no reason to doubt it.’

Curtis, Owen and Damien, the three who’d been climbing with Luce, and the organiser of the trip, Marcus Fenn. That was about all I knew of what had happened, that and the place—Lord Howe Island, out in the Pacific, five hundred kilometres off the New South Wales coast. Of the six of us who used to climb together, Anna and I were the missing pair. I wondered if she felt as guilty about that as I did. But then, she had no reason to.

‘It’s preposterous, Anna, to suggest that they would have deliberately done anything to Luce.’

‘I know …’ She shook her head helplessly. ‘How much do you know about her accident?’

‘Not a lot. Mary sent me a newspaper cutting.’

‘I remember she came to the service.’

‘Oh, yes, that’s right. She told me about it, how so many people were there.’ But not me. Not me.

Anna reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a blue plastic folder. She handed it to me. ‘I kept some cuttings.’

‘Ah.’ I stared down at the file but didn’t open it. It only weighed a few grams, but it felt much more, and I understood why she looked so tired.

‘Have a look—not now. Read it and maybe we can talk again.’

‘All right, but I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. I mean, you just have to remember how we all were, Anna. There’s no way …’

We swapped phone numbers and she got to her feet and began to make for the door. I followed, thinking that the hotel felt strangely quiet. It was as if the place were under a spell.

I opened the front door for her, and she turned and gave me a little smile, sad and wistful. ‘I’m sorry, Josh. I had to tell someone.’

‘Oh sure, of course. I’m very glad you did.’ But that wasn’t true.

We walked together across the forecourt of the hotel, what had once been a front garden but was now brick-paved to provide a few parking spaces for guests. Cars hummed past in the street, their headlights on in the fading twilight.

At the pavement she glanced back at the hotel. ‘This is a wonderful place, isn’t it? We all came here once, didn’t we? Your aunt gave us lunch.’

‘Yes, I remember.’ The memory tugged at me, a warm and happy day, and on an impulse, as she turned to go, I added, ‘Look, apart from this business, Anna, we should catch up, have a drink or a meal or something.’

She nodded without much enthusiasm, and I realised that she must have been as reluctant as I to make this contact, to cross that chasm back to the past.

Anna was right, it was a fine old building, though it seemed somewhat forbidding now as I returned to the front door, its upper floor balconies dark like empty eye sockets. Mary had carefully researched its story, and had a summary printed in little pamphlets she gave to guests. She had also had a number of old photographs illustrating its history enlarged and framed and hung along the hall, and I paused over these now as a distraction, hesitating to approach the file that Anna had left for me.