When Nights Were Cold (31 page)

‘Miss Parr does not smile when she climbs. It uses muscular energy and is terribly inefficient.'

She laughed despite herself.

‘Aha. The smile makes her blush and the blush warms up her face. It is a heating system. Now I understand.'

Parr shook her head, still smiling, and walked on.

Heinrich let Parr lead some of the climbs so that we would be confident on our own. He watched closely as she cut steps, tied on and off the rope, navigated on treacherous terrain, all of which she could do well. Parr demonstrated her skills with patience, never showing the irritation of her younger self. I had much still to learn but I worked hard and kept a good pace. Parr was pleased and we would both remark on what a good team we were, just the two of us with our guide.

‘What do you think, Heinrich?' I asked at the end of our second week. ‘The Matterhorn is not appearing any smaller, or less deathly, no matter how much I practise.'

Heinrich wrinkled his face and gazed at the sky. ‘Just depends on the weather now. Don't worry, the peak looks steeper from down here.'

‘Not so much so, I hope. I want it to be difficult after all.'

‘It will be hard, but not impossible. We need to spend more time on your rock-climbing skills and then you should rest for a day or two.'

Heinrich planned to be the first to scale the Matterhorn's north face. It looked to me like certain death, a dark wall of rock and snow rising from the Zmutt Valley, but Heinrich would go out in all weathers to study the shape and angle on each part of the ascent, possible routes, the way it looked in every kind of weather.

‘It's the last Alpine problem,' he told me. ‘And when we solve it, there'll be another last Alpine problem
.
And my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be worrying about another yet Alpine problem.'

I liked to sit by a window in the hotel and draw the outline of the Matterhorn from memory, then turn my head to compare. It was easy enough to sketch an outline that was recognizable, immediately, as the Matterhorn, but I never got the proportions right so that my version was always too thin, too wide or too steep at the top.

I knew that Frank would be proud. Frank would have loved the Alps and would have wanted to climb high. We would have bivouacked in a Mummery tent and curled into each other for warmth. On a high, flat rock, we would dangle our legs, share bread and see the clouds change shape and colour.

Come down
,
O maid
,
from yonder mountain height
, whispered Frank, and I smiled.

Still, I was here with Parr and this was quite a different experience. We made our plan and discussed it with Heinrich. Parr and I would climb to the hut, spend the night there and start our ascent in the earliest hours before, we hoped, most other climbers. We wanted the mountain to be ours that day and told Heinrich not to oversleep but to get up soon after us and have his binoculars ready. We would wave our hats when we reached the summit so that he would be sure to see us. The weather forecast was good.

The incident was in all the newspapers, of course. They compared it with the Whymper tragedy, though it was not the same at all, and they recounted both in detail. It was of particular interest that I had now been involved in two fatal accidents on the Alps. I began to separate from my name as I saw Grace Farringdon became a heroic, tragic character, pictured in all her garb with the mountains behind her – rather striking and beautiful, I might say – and I stayed mostly indoors. It took weeks to locate Cicely Parr's body. They found her in the shadow of a rock, badly ripped and torn, a doll thrown from a window. Her skull was smashed to pieces.

The inquest declared her death an accident. There was no evidence to suggest otherwise. But rumours crept about the place as rumours will. Anonymous members of the Alpine Club and Ladies' Alpine Club suggested that perhaps there was more to this business than I had claimed. The rumour must have originated with Heinrich, who had been declaring his love for the enigmatic Cicely Parr in bars and hotels throughout Switzerland.

Then Parr's maid found a diary in which our arguments were detailed: Parr's inaccurate journal article, the deaths of Locke and Frank and my fragile state of mind, the silly incident with the ice axe, even her resentment towards Locke and me when we were foolish students and she knew that we laughed behind her back. It was published in some low-level newspaper.

Letters came, called me a self-serving mad mountaineer, a coward and a murderer. I burned the lot, shut the curtains and stayed indoors. I wrote to Heinrich.
Please speak up and defend my innocence or make a public accusation that I can answer.
I heard that he was rather vocal around Zermatt. He had been watching through his binoculars and, although he could not be sure, there was certainly physical contact between Parr and me just before she fell. Anyone from the various mountaineering clubs of Europe would have understood his insinuations. I kicked my mountaineering equipment into the cellar, bolted the trapdoor. Catherine had married and moved out. She and George were living above his surgery, preparing for his retirement and their move to Edinburgh.

Then one day I let a man into the house. I thought he wanted to rent a room and I told him too much about myself. He was a reporter, of course, and all of it – my father, my sister with her piano and her dolls, even our unfortunate neighbour Margaret Mott, though she had nothing to do with anything – came out of me and went into print. Dr Sowerby could not bear the scandal, or my influence on Catherine, so retired early and took Catherine straight to Scotland. Their parting gift to me was money.

‘This will pay for Mabel to come for as long as you want her. I know she'll look after you. Keep the house, Grace. It's yours to sell or keep. I don't want to know how Parr died. If you did kill her, I can't say that I would blame you, but it's very difficult for George.'

‘Catherine—'

‘He feels some guilt because he had the opportunity to get treatment for you all those years ago. He thinks he should have insisted when you came back. He's very sorry.'

She put on her hat, fixed a pin firmly into the side, and left. The front door gave a whisper of a sigh as it shut and I lay on the floor with a cushion over my head for the rest of the day.

I am very drowsy. Why did Catherine cut herself off from me because of an accident? Of all people, she should have stayed. It must have been something else, but what? Even allowing for George and his pig-headed stupidity, she has been cruel.

I am near the summit and can see it. One mitten has come off and I have lost it. My hand is numb, fingers bent like talons. I stagger and slide over rocks and ice, sometimes turning on my ankle, catching my foot between stones, falling flat onto my hands. The pain sears my skin. I must find help.

We left the hut, lit the lantern and set off along the Hörnli ridge. The peak glistened with crisp snow and the air smelled of pine and salt and the dirty, fertile scent of night. We did not speak until we reached the point where the mountain curves upwards and the climb steepens. Then we talked about our previous trip, Locke, Hooper and the accident. I asked Parr whether or not she ever felt guilty.

Parr seemed surprised. ‘Do you imagine that, after losing my own parents in a mountaineering accident, I would have put our lives at risk?'

‘But we were too hard on her.'

‘What else could we have done? We were on our descent. If we had stopped for long, she would have got frostbite. I never understood why Locke became so angry with me.'

I nodded. ‘You didn't use a rope. You had it but you took it off – or never put it on – and then Hooper fell.'

Parr said nothing for some time. We climbed over rocks and more rocks, some of which were rotten and crumbled to the touch, sent stone showers down the slope. ‘I chose not to use the rope.'

‘It might have saved her.'

‘Or killed us both.'

‘I understand that what happened to your parents – '

‘ – had nothing to do with my decision.'

I did not like Parr's tone, kept my own voice steady. ‘You were stronger and a more experienced mountaineer. Or what is the point of carrying ropes?'

‘Some people want to fail. Ropes are a safeguard but when a person wants to fail – even if he doesn't realize it – he is bound to fail whatever you do.'

‘I don't understand you.'

‘Hooper saw herself as a sweet, harmless girl and she delighted in being weak. She always said that she didn't want to come with us and then insisted on coming. I expected her to change, but she never did. We always had to stop for her, the little child. By the time we were coming down, I couldn't stand it.'

‘She had mountain sickness. It was real.' I saw Hooper on her knees vomiting into the snow. ‘But you weren't prepared to take any kind of risk.'

‘She just set off, stumbling along, without waiting for me to uncoil the rope. I could have stopped her but I just thought, if she is going to be so stupid and expect me to take responsibility, let her see what will happen. I wanted to make her fend for herself. I didn't really expect her to fall, but I must say,' muttered Parr, ‘I wasn't altogether unsatisfied when she did.'

And out there, in the blue sky above the Breithorn, Hooper's spirit roamed, lonely, wronged and unavenged.

‘As you like, Parr.'

We climbed further and higher, moving to steep, rocky ground, using our hands, feet, knees as we went. The sky was clear and other peaks began to seem smaller as new mountains rose in the far distance.

Parr reached high for a hold in the rock. She shrieked as part of it gave way and pulled more rocks with it. They tumbled towards us, bigger than cricket balls. I ducked but one struck me above the eye and bounced off. We threw ourselves into the snow and put our hands over our heads until the torrent subsided.

Parr hauled herself to her feet. ‘Someone is angry with us.'

Yes. Hooper was angry. Locke was angry. I touched my face with my unmittened hand. I was bleeding.

‘Farringdon, you'll not mind if I'm the first on the summit.'

First on the summit. She had brought me to the mountains as a student and I would be for ever in her debt. I had not thought of getting there first or, for that matter, second. The point was that we were making the first manless, guideless ascent together. No, for me the point was not even that.
I
was climbing the mountain and it was my first ascent of the Matterhorn no matter how we made it, but how dare she assume the right to be first? Locke had used words to describe Parr – callous, treacherous – and I had always denied it. I had insisted, again and again, that there was more to Parr, but Locke was right. Parr did not care. There was nothing more to her at all. The mystery of Parr was quite the opposite. There was something missing. She had no conscience, no heart.

‘Perhaps I do mind.' I put my handkerchief to my forehead and blood soaked through to my fingers. The wound pulsed and ached.

‘We might get there together but the first foot must be mine. Don't pull too tight. I'm going to do this quickly. What's wrong? It's just a bash on the forehead. You're not upset about Hooper again, are you? Teddy might have died in the war and left her a miserable widow, for all we know. I let her fall. So what?'

When asked to give evidence, Heinrich said that he saw us both through his binoculars, working up quickly and with ease. Then we stopped for some reason and Parr – Heinrich could not believe that this had happened – just tumbled off. In the controversy that followed, there was a suggestion that I had cut the rope and pushed Parr out of the way so that I might reach the summit alone and claim the first female solo ascent. An insulting, outrageous accusation. I don't know what happened to the rope. It must have been cut by rocks. I never reached the summit. I never did. Parr fell and, once it had happened, I turned back. I never reached my own Pole. I was very close – oh,
so
close indeed – and I could have done it but I did not. I went for help instead.

Peter stands over me with the brandy bottle, tops up my glass, pours another for himself.

‘I thought you were working, Peter. You made me jump.'

I swish the brandy very slowly around the bottom of the glass. It glows and sends filaments of heat up to my eyes. It is beautiful.

‘So did you push Cicely Parr?' Peter steps back, sits down with his drink, stretches out his legs and crosses one ankle over the other. ‘You can tell me the truth.'

‘Goodness, it was a long time ago.'

‘People think you did.'

‘I don't believe the truth will ever be known.'

‘But you must know.'

‘For which publication are you writing, Peter?'

‘I'm writing a book.' He leans back, rests his elbows on the chair arms, then enunciates carefully,
‘Bodies in the Ice: Mysterious Mountain Deaths.
It all began with a tragedy, you see. A friend of mine disappeared into mist on the Jungfrau and never came back but, though we searched for days, we couldn't find his body. I decided to write about it and, when I mentioned this to the mountain guides, they came and told me every manner of story. You know, broken ropes, ghosts, wild animals and chewed-up bodies. Some true, some clearly invented, and others where one really could not be sure.'

‘Oh dear.'

‘More and more I found myself thinking of Cicely Parr. Miss Farringdon, I cannot leave here without knowing the truth.'

‘Do you know the mountain guides in Zermatt?'

Peter pauses, smiles. ‘I knew some of them, when I worked there. It's a small place.'