Cold, Lone and Still

‘Oh, my dear girl, don’t be morbid!’

‘I might have been able to do something.’

‘Don’t talk so daft. He was dead, frozen, and as stiff as a board, I tell you.’

‘I still think we ought to go to the police.’

‘No. And that’s flat. We hardly knew the chap and it’s no business of ours what’s happened to him. We’ve had all this out before. Heaven knows what sort of scandal we might get ourselves mixed up in, apart from the ghastly business of interviews with the police and being quizzed by reporters and having to appear in court at God knows what inconvenient time. They don’t even hold inquests up here, I believe. It’s straight into the rough stuff if the Procurator Fiscal thinks there’s a case to answer, as in this instance there damn’ well would be.’

‘All right,’ she said reluctantly. ‘You’ve made your point, but I’m not going to say I’m happy about it. That poor man!’

‘Probably only got what he asked for.’

‘I didn’t realise how callous you can be.’

‘That’s not callousness, it’s only common sense. And now snap out of it.’

But, of course, neither of us could do that, and it was a silent and not exactly a compatible pair of love-birds who resumed their journey a couple of days later. However, encouraged by my unusually high-handed victory, I laid down the law again and, to my astonishment, this time she capitulated without a fight.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Let’s take to the main roads and do Ballachulish and on to Fort William, if we can pick up any transport, but heaven knows how the buses run in these parts.’

However, we were in luck. We had not been waiting at the roadside for more than ten minutes before a whacking great car with a man and a woman in it pulled up and the man put his head out. From the size of the vehicle and the fact that it had a left-hand drive, I guessed that the couple were from the States and this proved to be the case. Moreover, they were bound for Ballachulish, so we could not have been more lucky.

Needless to say, we did not mention the dead man, but they were greatly interested when they heard about The Way. The woman asked innumerable questions. I was on tenterhooks in case Hera should give away, after all, the secret of our visit to the ruins and the gruesome discovery I had made there, but she was discretion itself and as the car diminished the distance between Kingshouse and our destination, I became easier in my mind.

The couple were inclined to dismiss the magnificent Grampians as mere foothills compared with their own Rockies, but allowed that, compared with the mountains of Switzerland and Austria, those in the Highlands had ‘atmosphere’. In any case, whatever the views of the couple and however subversive they were, neither Hera nor I was prepared to quarrel with them, for we were much too grateful for the lift to be in any mood to argue with the kindly and voluble Americans. It was not until almost the end of the journey that we discovered that they were really bound for Oban and had come miles out of their way for our sakes. After we had crossed the bridge at Ballachulish, they took us all the way to Fort William.

‘Think nothing of it,’ the driver said. ‘My wife is wild to see Glen Coe where the massacre took place, so we were bound for Ballachulish anyhow. All we need to do is go back-along and then pick up our route south. At Oban I aim to take pictures and then cross the only bridge over the Atlantic. Boy! Will that be something to tell the folks back home!’ He was referring to the bridge which connects the mainland to the little island of Seil on the road from Oban to Easdale. I remembered it well from the coach tour with my parents, for I had been young enough to believe that the coach really was going to cross to America.

The youth hostel at Fort William was about three miles from the town shops, but it was marvellously well situated, as I knew, for the climb up Ben Nevis. It was a Grade One hostel, had one hundred and twenty-eight beds, cooking facilities and a shop, but meals were not provided, so we bought our own food from the hostel store. When we went into the kitchen to cook it, who should be there but Rhoda and Tansy. They had put up at a hotel for three nights and then come on to the hostel. They and we were the only people at the hostel when we arrived. The weather was fine and the other hostellers either had not yet arrived or were out enjoying themselves. I became more and more grateful to the kindly Americans for the welcome lift they had given us from Kingshouse to Fort William, for, if we climbed Ben Nevis on the morrow, it meant at least a seven-hour stint and some rough going, even by the easiest ascent. To have cut out the long miles and overnight stop if we had completed the walk was a marvellous bonus. We crossed the bridge opposite the hostel and looked around us. It was pleasant in the glen, but I had climbed Ben Nevis once before, and I knew that conditions could be very different when we reached the summit. Hera was all eagerness and anticipation, so I warned her that the way up the great (and, to my mind, very ugly) mountain was not only arduous in places, but could be extremely dull.

‘But think of the view from the summit!’ she said.

‘Well enough, so long as the weather holds and the Ben isn’t capped by cloud.’

‘It won’t be. We haven’t come all this way for nothing. If it’s no good tomorrow, we can wait a day, can’t we?’

‘We’re only booked in for tonight and this is a very popular hostel,’ I pointed out.

‘Then we’ll go to a hotel. Why not?’

But she was not to climb Ben Nevis on that holiday, for, because of the most startling and utterly unforeseen circumstance, we were out of that hostel as soon as next morning’s breakfast was over. We lost no time in making for the railway station and in taking the train for Glasgow. We were fleeing, as it were, from a disembodied spirit and terrified, so far as I myself was concerned, not for my life, but for my reason. At about seven o’clock that evening when, taking advantage of the fact that only a few hostellers had drifted in, Hera and I had cooked and eaten our simple supper rather earlier than we really wanted it, a lot of hostellers, all chatting and laughing, came in. Among the crowd were four people we knew. The next moment Hera and I were hailed by Carbridge, Todd and the Minches, all very much alive, although tired, they said, from their climb. To clinch matters, we were joined an hour later by Perth and the students. They had climbed with the others, but had stayed longer on the mountain to add little bits of lava and granite to the collection they had already made at Inchcailloch and along The Way and had despatched to London to avoid having to tote so much heavy material on the rest of their march.

When Carbridge and his companions came in, I heard Hera give a peculiar little cry. As for me, I was so flabbergasted that I could feel my head swimming and I suppose I came as near to fainting as I have ever been in my life. However, it was Carbridge all right and as full of effervescence and bonhomie as ever. He appeared to have forgotten our dispute and my high-handed action at Crianlarich, and soon the ‘old boy, old boy’ stuff began again, and the advice to Hera: ‘My tip, fair one, is to avoid that climb unless you go up by pony.’

Before the footweary but triumphant quartet — Jane’s feet must have responded to my treatment — had gone