“I went to Jura,” said Isabel, remembering the visit with Jamie.
Iain nodded. “Lovely island. Chris likes … liked to go there, even recently.”
Isabel noticed the transition from present to past tense and thought that it must be one of the most difficult of all adjustments to make when one loses somebody. Or even when a love affair comes to an end: the present is abolished and at the same time there is no future tense.
“I knew the dangers,” Iain continued. “But I told myself that there were plenty of other much more dangerous sports. So I tried to persuade myself that Chris was level-headed and very cautious and that it was only people who became impatient or sloppy who got into trouble. But that’s not true, is it? Anybody—even the most skilled climber—can make a mistake. Or can simply put his foot in the wrong place and find himself falling into a crevasse. There are hundreds of things that can go wrong without any human error being responsible.”
Isabel waited for him to continue, but he was silent, staring into the small sherry glass that he was now turning in his right hand.
“What exactly happened?” she asked. “He was climbing with John Fraser, wasn’t he?”
Iain nodded. He was still looking down into the sherry glass. “He and John were on Everest. It was his great dream to go there—I suppose every climber’s great dream. They were a day or two away from the summit, just below the final camp, or whatever they call it. They were walking over an ice field and apparently Chris stumbled and fell. John came back for him and they returned to the camp below. He helped Chris all the way—John and the Sherpa did that, taking it in turns to support him. But when he got down to the camp he was delirious and he only lived another couple of hours, apparently. Altitude sickness, complicated by … oh, I forget the exact terms of the medical report.”
Isabel listened, transfixed. In her mind’s eye she saw a high ice field, white in brilliant sun, and two men helping a third across a ladder bridge, below them a cavern of blue ice.
“John Fraser was a real hero,” said Iain. “I gather that there are many climbers these days who wouldn’t even bother to take somebody back—they’d just tuck them up in an ice hole somehow and leave a flag to mark the spot in case they were still alive when they came down again. Can you believe that? Can you really? Is this what we’ve come to?”
Isabel did not answer his question; she was thinking about how wrong her assumptions could be. She was not surprised by her wrongness; she often misunderstood a situation or reached entirely the wrong conclusion.
But then Iain said, “It’s such a pity about the other one, though.”
Isabel became alert. “What other one? Was there somebody else on that expedition who didn’t make it?”
He shook his head. “No, that other climb. The one in Scotland. Up north.”
Isabel spoke quietly. “Another tragedy?”
“Yes,” he said. “Chris told me about it. It happened a few years before they went to Everest.”
She enquired whether Chris had been present, and Iain confirmed that he had. “He didn’t see what happened, but he had a very good idea what took place.”
“Which was?”
“I don’t like to pass on rumours,” he said. “I have no proof. All that I have is hearsay.”
“I shall take that into account,” said Isabel. “Please tell me.”
He looked pained. She had just been immensely generous to him, and here he was, denying her a scrap of information. Well, even if he could not be absolutely sure about it, he could at least pass on what he had heard. “I’ve heard it said that John Fraser cut somebody’s rope,” he said. “He was climbing with a man called Cameron, who had been a friend of Chris’s, although he was a bit older. Cameron slipped, or fell, or whatever, and John Fraser cut his rope in order to save himself.”
He did not say anything more. He looked ashamed, as if he regretted crossing some imaginary line between simple narration and scandal.
“But if it’s a choice between two people,” asked Isabel, “then surely it’s understandable if one prefers oneself. And is there any sense at all in two people rather than one being carried down to their deaths?”
Iain weighed this for a moment. “I am not suggesting that he should not have done it. And I’m not even saying that he
Isabel was silent. Would she have cut another’s rope? How many people could honestly say that they would not? But then what if Jamie were on the other end of the rope? Or Charlie?
“Where did that take place?” she asked.
Iain seemed sunk in thought. “I’m not sure. It was in Glencoe, I think. One of those mountains that loom over you as you drive through the pass. One with a lot of gullies.”
The conversation went on for a short time more before Isabel, looking at her watch, said that she had to go.
“Do you still intend to …” Iain looked towards the painting.
Isabel reached out to take his hand. “Enjoy it,” she said. “It stays exactly where it is. I’ll get Simon Mackintosh to write to you. He’s my lawyer.”
“I know him,” said Iain. “I also knew Aeneas, his father.”
“Well, there you are,” said Isabel. “All arranged.”
“Isn’t Edinburgh marvellous?” he suddenly remarked. “That we can do all this on … trust.”
Isabel smiled. “It works very well,” she said. She wondered, as she left the house, whether that sounded smug. It might, she thought, but on the other hand every city had its way of working; every city, no matter how large, relied on the fact that people would know one another and act well towards their fellow citizens. What was wrong with that? Only those who believed in chaos would want it otherwise; or those who believed that we should have
