The Beckoning Silence (3 page)

‘Oh no,’ Tat looked genuinely surprised. ‘I was thinking about this morning, about
Alea Jacta Est.
’

‘Really?’ I said warily.

‘Well, you were right about the conditions. We started too late and it was obviously deteriorating. Once the sun hit the top we were in trouble. Now if we get up really early, say five o’clock … five-thirty …’

‘Five-thirty?’ I was aghast. ‘This is a holiday, Tat …’

‘Well, OK, six then. We’ll grab a quick coffee for breakfast and we should be on the first pitch by seven …’

‘You want to try it again?’ I asked, taken aback.

‘It’ll be freezing hard at that time.’

‘That’s as may be but the ice conditions on the first pitch won’t change. It will still be cruddy sugar ice and the screws will be non-existent.’

‘One,’ Tat said. ‘You had one on the first pitch.’

‘That wouldn’t have held a falling fruit fly and you damn well know it.’

He grinned and nodded agreement. ‘Well, yes, that’s true, but you could lead that pitch again. You climbed it well, I thought. A bit slow, mind …’

‘A bit slow?’ I protested. ‘Of course I was bloody slow. It was falling apart.’

‘Yeah, but you never looked like falling did you? You were solid.’

‘Maybe not,’ I conceded, flattered by his praise.

‘You could do it again, no problem.’

‘But it’s a virtual solo without those screws,’ I complained. ‘And there’s no way it’s grade V. We’ve done stacks of climbs that hard, even harder, and that thing today was desperate. Grade VI more like and bloody serious, crap gear, crap ice …’

‘Yeah, but what a line,’ Tat enthused and pointed at the open guide-book. ‘Look at that couloir cutting through the top rock wall. It looks brilliant, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, it does actually,’ I agreed. ‘Rather like a Scottish line, isn’t it? And I’ll bet we can get good protection in those rock walls.’

‘Exactly, so it’s only that short bit that’s stopping us. We can do it.’ His enthusiasm was infectious and I could feel myself becoming intrigued and excited. Tat was an excellent persuader and he was right. It had been a disappointment to have retreated. We had a score to settle.

‘You’ve been on it now,’ Tat continued, sensing that I was weakening. ‘You know the score. You’ll be ready for it.’

‘Yeah, and I’ve been on those bloody tied-off knife blades.’

‘That’s what I’ve been thinking about,’ Tat leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘You see, I was above the roof and trying to put gear in underneath it. I was off balance and I couldn’t really see what I was doing. Tomorrow I’ll put the gear in before I commit myself to the corner, then it’s just a few moves and we’ll be up.’

‘Or off,’ I murmured. ‘I’m not sure, Tat. I really didn’t like it today.’

‘At seven o’clock it will be freezing hard. Totally different ball game. Come on, what do you think?’

‘OK, but on one condition,’ I said reluctantly. ‘If you can’t get good protection, and I mean good fall-proof gear, then we back off. No questions asked?’

‘All right, if you insist.’

I smiled and nodded assent.

Tat looked delighted and leaned over to give me one of his trademark hugs. He stood up looking excited and energised. There was no trace of the depressed, silent figure which had trudged gloomily down to the car. ‘Six o’clock start, then?’ he asked, just to check I wasn’t going to back out.

‘Yeah,’ I said glumly.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up.’

‘I thought you might.’

It was cold and the route was silent. There was no meltwater running under the ice. Tat had been right about the first pitch and although I climbed cautiously I dispatched the rope length in about half the time. I quickly climbed over the snow-ice sections, not wanting to waste time looking for protection. I began to feel confident that maybe Tat’s plan for an early start was all that we had needed to succeed.

As I neared the belay on the two knife-blade pitons, however, my new-found enthusiasm waned. I clipped into the pitons, arranged my feet on the cramped, frozen turf and stared gloomily at the corner. It looked desperate. Even in the freezing conditions the shattered sections of thin water ice looked fragile. I glanced at the pitons again, hoping they might not look as bad as they had the day before. If anything, they were worse.

As I took in the ropes and Tat climbed rapidly towards me I tried to work out how on earth I had managed to convince myself that this would be any different from the day before, less than fifteen hours earlier. I had walked away from the climb glad to be alive and now I was back here in exactly the same position.
You must be bloody mad! Nothing has changed. You’re belayed to the same two wobbly pitons again, the ice is still crap, and now Tat is working himself into a veritable lather of excitement. What on earth were you thinking?

‘Not bad, is it?’ Tat said cheerfully as he reached the belay. ‘Told you it would be right.’ I gaped at him in amazement. ‘Right, let’s get on while it’s still cold,’ he added quickly.

‘Listen, Tat.’ I was going to tell him that I wanted to go down.

‘Here, hand me those screws.’

I passed the bandolier to him. ‘I was thinking …’

‘Have you got the pegs?’

I searched on my harness, unclipped the pegs and passed them to him.

‘This belay still won’t hold anything,’ I said. ‘You know that?’

‘Yes, yes, I’ll get something in, don’t worry.’

‘I am bloody worried!’

‘Right, watch me, kid,’ Tat said and he bridged across the corner before I could protest further. My heart sank. My stomach felt empty and ached.
That’s because it is bloody empty. We didn’t have any breakfast because this idiot wants to kill us again,
I thought as I watched Tat fiddling with wires and pitons under the roof.
Don’t let him move if he can’t find good gear, not an inch.

It took forty-five long minutes of experimentation before Tat managed to lodge a tiny wired metal wedge, little more than a match-head thick, into the crack below the roof.

‘OK, watch me.’

‘Is that any good?’ I asked, hurriedly.

‘Sort of,’ Tat said, as he carefully placed his left axe pick against a tiny edge of rock. There was a slick patina of ice shining on the surface of the smooth compact limestone.

‘Will it hold?’ I said anxiously, as he lifted himself up level with the roof.

‘Maybe,’ he grunted, and that was it. I could do nothing. It was clear that he was committed to the corner. His crampons scratched against the rock as he sought to place them on tiny irregularities. His right arm reached up high and he tapped the axe gently against the ice. I heard the distinct sound of metal on stone. He tried again, swinging blind.

‘Further right,’ I said. ‘There’s a weep of thicker ice a foot to the right.’ He grunted acknowledgement and swung again. The pick held. His right crampons clawed up the corner seeking purchase. One front-point lodged in a nick cutting into the rock. He weighted the point and I stared at it intently, willing it to hold.

There was a clicking metallic sound and I watched in frozen dread as the tiny wired metal wedge detached from the crack and slid down the rope on its karabiner to fetch up against my hand. Horrified, I stared at it and then at Tat spread-eagled across the corner. I knew he couldn’t reverse the moves and I knew he didn’t know that his only piece of protection had just fallen out. I kept silent and braced myself nervously against the pressure of the ropes holding me to the insecure grip of two tied-off knife blades.

Tat raised himself with steady care until both his arms were locked at the elbows, hands gripping the axe handles as they pressed against his chest. I watched as he bridged his left boot out to the side, searching for thicker ice. He kicked gently and the points bit into half an inch of brittle water ice glued to the wall. For a long contemplative moment he hung there, sensing his points of contact, trying to assess whether they would hold and then he un-weighted the left axe from its tenuous purchase with the rocky edge. I held my breath as he slowly raised the axe to his full arm length. I could see that it was almost in reach of a smear of thicker, stronger-looking water ice.
Come on, Tat, get it, get it,
I urged, as he strained to reach a little higher.

As he swung the pick against the ice and I saw it bite solidly, there was a harsh scraping sound and the clattering rush of falling ice as his left foot shot into space. I winced, tensing as he swung away from the wall like an opening door. He teetered off balance, hanging grimly onto the left axe that he had just placed. Then, very carefully, he began to haul up on his left arm. His left boot swung back, scratched against the rock, found purchase with another sheet of loosely bonded ice and held.

I was scarcely breathing, weak with the shock of seeing Tat almost fall. I felt sick as the realisation that I was about to be ripped off the stance flashed through my mind. I wondered whether I could survive such a fall. Would the snow cone at the foot of the wall cushion the impact? I almost laughed at my desperation. Tasting the bile in my throat I wondered whether I would vomit and felt relieved to have missed out on breakfast.

Tat was breathing hard with the effort of trying to remain balanced and maintain a constant, even pressure on his ice picks. There was nothing I could do to help and I felt too paralysed with anxiety even to think of saying something encouraging. All I could think to say was ‘
Don’t fall off
’, an inanity that I guessed Tat could do without.

I watched as he detached the right axe and lifted it up to a point just above the placement of his left pick. As he was about to swing I spoke as calmly as I could.

‘It’s too close to your left axe, Tat,’ I said. ‘It’ll shatter the ice. You’ll be off instantly.’

He hesitated then replaced the pick carefully into its original position. I watched as he glanced at the front-points on his right boot. One inside point remained on a tiny edge of ice. He lifted his foot and with careful precision placed the same point in a thin crack one foot higher up the corner. He twisted his boot heel out to the left, increasing the torque so that the point bit securely into the crack. I heard the rock crunching under the pressure of the steel point. Straightening his right leg gave him enough height to stretch his right axe well above his left axe placement and he chopped it with firm confidence. The pick buried itself in solid water ice.

‘Yes!’ he said triumphantly. His feet scrabbled for purchase as he pulled up and planted the left axe high and to the left in even thicker ice. The danger was over. The route was in the bag. I was going to live a little longer.

I exhaled and shook my head. Unclipping the wire chock from the ropes with unsteady hands I felt a tremor of anger. I had just made the most stupid judgement call of my life. Nothing had been different from the day before but I had still let it happen. No runners, no belay and bad ice. Why? The answer was obvious. I hadn’t wanted to back down a second time in front of Tat. Not wanting to appear weak or frightened, I had risked everything to save face. That was not how decisions should be made and I knew I was a fool.

I was torn between anger and joy. I felt happy for Tat. He had got what he wanted and I admired all the skill and nerve and poise he had just displayed under immense pressure. Now that he had succeeded, he could reasonably argue that it was a good decision.

It wasn’t and I was angry with myself for saying nothing. It had put me in an invidious position and I had had to stand there and watch while the rest of my life was determined by the shaky adhesion of a few millimetres of frail, melting ice and the dubious friction of a tiny point of metal scratching against a flake of rock. In the past I might have felt that this was what it was all about. This was where you defined yourself, balanced tenuously between life and death. As I stood shakily on a fragile ledge of frozen vegetation all my justifications for climbing seemed suddenly meaningless.

It had been nothing more than a gamble. And for what? The right to say we had climbed a grade V ice route in a dangerously unstable condition. We could justifiably claim that it was grade VI, even grade VII. Technically we had both climbed harder routes but never at such risk. Accidents happen because we are all fallible. We make mistakes, we misjudge conditions, we overreach ourselves, but after all the years of accidents and deaths and mountains climbed, we should at least have learned when to back off. It wasn’t as if the situation suddenly engulfed us and we had no choice but to deal with it. We knew everything was wrong and yet we came back, ignored our intuition, and did it anyway.

It wasn’t worth our lives. The whole notion of ‘Deep Play’ – the gambling theory of extreme risk-taking when the gambler stands to lose far more than he could ever possibly win – may well be an apt description of some levels of climbing, but playing the game in reality now seemed a conceited and ridiculous enterprise.

However, when I reached Tat’s stance it was difficult not to be infected by his bubbling enthusiasm and pleasure.

‘Hiya, kid,’ Tat smiled and gave me a vigorous one-armed hug that nearly knocked me off the stance. I grabbed at the belay slings to steady myself.

‘Good lead, bloody good lead,’ I said.

‘It was thin.’

‘The wire fell out,’ I said bluntly.

‘Thought it might,’ Tat nodded cheerfully.

‘I thought you were off, you know?’

‘It was close,’ he agreed. ‘But the placements felt good. You climbed it pretty fast.’

‘Two pints of adrenalin helps,’ I retorted. ‘As does having a rope above you. I don’t think we should have done that. We nearly died.’ I looked hard at Tat and he was suddenly serious.

‘Maybe.’ He seemed defensive, as if recognising that we had gone too far.

‘I thought you were tired of risks. You said dying wasn’t worth it.’

‘Never has been.’ Then he shrugged and couldn’t suppress the grin. ‘But we’re not dead and we have done it, so what’s the problem, eh? Come on, let’s do the rest of it.’ He handed me the wires, pitons and ice screws, impatient to get on. ‘Up and to the left and then it curves round into that narrow rocky gully.’ He pointed across a short ice flow leading into an obvious rocky gash.