think we have about fifteen minutes of light before it’s going to be pointless.’
They consumed the entire quarter of an hour, using Luc’s small powerful LED torches to make up for the lack of natural light. There were good sightlines above them. To explore the rock face underneath, Luc would periodically drop to his belly and shine the light over the edge, sweeping the surface with the beam of his torch. Aside from the normal stratigraphy and fissures there was nothing remotely suggestive of a cave opening above them or below.
Now it was simply too dark to continue. They were on a broad enough shelf to camp for the night so they didn’t have to backtrack – which was just as well since both of them were hungry and tired.
Hugo crumpled and set his rump down hard on his pack. ‘So, where’s dinner?’
‘Coming up. You won’t be disappointed.’
In short order Luc produced an excellent meal on his portable gas stove: peppered fillet steaks and pan-fried potatoes, crusty bread, some creamy local chevre and a bottle of decent Cahors, which he reckoned was worth the weight he carried all day.
They ate and drank into the evening. The moonless sky slipped through the darkening shades of grey until it became a virtually sightless black. Perched on the ledge they seemed alone on the edge of the universe. That, and the full-bodied wine, moved their conversation to a melancholy place and Hugo, tucked into his sleeping bag for warmth, was soon morosely lamenting his life.
‘How many men do you know,’ he asked, ‘who’ve been married to two women but divorced three times? When Martine and I got married again, I have to say, it was a moment of temporary insanity. And do you know what? I was rewarded for those three months of madness with another assault on my wallet. Her lawyer’s better than mine but mine is my cousin, Alain, so I’m stuck.’
‘Are you seeing anyone now?’ Luc asked.
‘There’s a banker named Adele who’s as cold as frozen peas, an artist named Laurentine who’s bipolar, I think, and…’
‘And who?’
Hugo sighed. ‘I’m also seeing Martine again.’
‘Unbelievable!’ Luc half-shouted. ‘You’re a certified idiot.’
‘I know, I know…’ Hugo’s voice drifted off into the night and he finished his wine then poured some more into his aluminium cup. ‘What about you? Are you prouder of your record?’
Luc rolled out his foam mattress and laid his sleeping bag over it. ‘No, sir, I’m not proud. One girl, one night, maybe two, that’s been my history. I’m not wired for relationships.’
‘You and what’s her name, that American girl, definitely were a couple a few years ago.’
‘Sara.’
‘What happened?’
Luc slithered into his sleeping bag. ‘She was different. It’s a sad story.’
‘You left her?’
‘On the contrary. She dumped me, but I deserved it. I was stupid.’
‘So you’re stupid, I’m an idiot, and both of us are sleeping on a ledge one step away from an abyss, which pretty much confirms our intelligence.’ He zipped up his bag and declared, ‘I’m going to sleep now and put myself out of my misery. If I’m not here in the morning, I went for a leak and forgot where I was.’
In a remarkably short time, Hugo was snoring and Luc was on his own, trying to pick out a star or a planet through cloud cover and wine-induced mistiness.
In time, his eyes fluttered closed, or so he thought, because he was aware of swift black shapes moving above him, perhaps an incipient dream. But there was something familiar about the wild unpredictable zigzags, the jet-plane speed, and then it came to him in one sobering thought: bats.
He hurriedly unzipped his sleeping bag, grabbed his torch and aimed the beam overhead. Dozens of bats were darting around the cliffs.
He trained the light on the rocks and waited.
Then, a bat flew straight into the cliff and disappeared. Then another. And another.
There was a cave up there.
Luc woke Hugo and steadied the man as he struggled to get oriented and upright. As he stepped out of his sleeping bag Hugo was sputtering, ‘what? what?’ in total disorientation.
‘I think I’ve found it. I’m going up. I can’t wait till the morning. I need you to keep an eye on me, that’s all. If I get in trouble, get help, but I won’t get in trouble.’
‘You’re mad,’ Hugo finally said.
‘At least partially,’ Luc agreed. ‘Shine the torch there. It doesn’t look too bad.’
‘Christ, Luc. Wait till tomorrow.’
‘Not a chance.’
He directed Hugo where to aim his torch and found a good handhold to start the ascent. The distinct strata of the rock face formed a staircase of sorts and he never really felt in imminent danger, but still he took it slowly, aware that night-climbing and wine were not an ideal combination.
In a few minutes he was at the spot where he thought the bats were disappearing, although he wasn’t positive. There was nothing resembling a cave mouth or shelter in sight. He had a good enough purchase on the cliff that he was able to remove his own torch from his jacket pocket for a closer inspection. Just then, a bat flew out of the cliff and zoomed past his ear. Startled, he paused for a moment to catch his breath and make sure his foot hold hadn’t slipped.
There was a crack in the rock face. No more than a few centimetres wide. After he transferred the torch to his left fist he was able to slide his right hand into the crack until his fingers disappeared to the knuckles. He pulled down and felt a wobble. On closer inspection the wobble was coming from a flat rock wedged in the wall. In an instant it dawned on him. He was staring at a dry wall of flat stones installed in the cliff face, so artfully crafted that it simulated the natural strata.
He wiggled the stone out with some effort and when it came free he carefully placed it on its side on a narrow shelf, calling down to Hugo in warning to step aside in case it fell, for it was deadly enough, the size of a coffee-table book. The next several rocks came out more easily but he ran out of places to balance them so he started pushing them back into the widening opening instead. Before long he was looking at a hole large enough to ram his body through.
‘I’m going in,’ he called down.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Hugo pleaded.
‘Nothing’s going to stop me,’ Luc defiantly replied before reaching over and wedging his head and shoulders into the gap.
From the ledge below, Hugo watched as Luc’s shoulders disappeared, then his torso and finally his legs. He called up, ‘Are you all right?’
Luc heard him but didn’t answer.
He was inside the mouth of the cave crawling on all fours until he realised the vault was capacious enough to stand upright. He shone his torch ahead then swung it from side to side.
He felt his knees weaken and he almost lost balance.
Blood was rushing in his ears.
There was the sibilant fluttering of a bat colony.
Then he heard his own cracking voice rasp, ‘Oh my God!’
SIX
Luc was aware of motion.
He felt surrounded, in the middle of a pack, a stampede.
It was at once suffocating and disorientating, compounded by the way he was hyperkinetically moving his torch, bouncing angles of light off the tawny walls and stalactites in an effort to take it all in, flitting from image to image, creating a stroboscopic jumble in the black confines of the cave.
