been talking about rugby and how he’d won some best-and-fairest awards, or man-of-the-match awards, whatever, and I asked him how, when he’d already told me that his main job was to pass the ball to other players, to be a link, and he said it was because of his tackling. This was an unusual conversation with Jeremy by the way, cos if there’s one thing he is, it’s modest, but anyway, he managed to get across the idea that he was a pretty good tackier. And he said something about how he had been too scared to tackle properly when he first played rugby, so I asked him, ‘How did you get over that? How did you make yourself not scared?’ And he said he would look at the player and think about how he was going to tackle him, what would be the best way to go about it, and somehow while he was doing that he didn’t get frightened.
I said to him, ‘So you concentrate on technique?’ and he said, ‘Yeah I guess.’
It was the struggle between the mind and the instincts again.
I didn’t hang on the cliff for half an hour having a good think about that conversation with Jeremy. I thought about it for as much time as it took to write two words of it. But the little flicker of memory helped.
I got grim. I used my eyes with more concentration, more focus. I fixed on a crevice, a crack, about four metres to my right. If I could get there I could just about get to Gavin. What happened after that didn’t bear thinking about so I didn’t think about it. I knew now about the soft stones so I avoided those. I concentrated on technique, getting fingers and toes to grip little indentations and bumps. Funny how these tiny freckles, invisible normally, of no interest or importance to any human in the history of this mountain, were now major features for me. As big and important as mountains themselves.
My hands were getting tired and my fingers were forcing themselves into a more open position. Spreading, like I couldn’t control them. Cramping, kind of. I had to keep moving. Halfway to the crevice I got in such a good position that for a moment I could give my left hand time off; my right hand and both my feet were secure, so I stretched my fingers and shook them, trying to make them work better. Even my mind took a few seconds off.
During the war there had been a time when I turned from Ellie into someone or something else. I guess the long and the short of it is that I became a soldier. At first I’d done a lot of blundering around, all the time in danger of being caught or killed or both. I’d thought I was being very professional and clever, but later, when I looked back on those months, I couldn’t believe how we survived. Then one day I changed. I no longer had to think so much about what to do and how to do it. I became part of the environment, as much as a fox or a brown snake or a tawny frogmouth. But I was different to them. I became part of the environment of a war. After that I always moved quickly and quietly. From then on I was always aware — deeply aware — of every sound and smell and tiny movement. I didn’t disturb anything, because I didn’t want to leave any trace of where I’d been. I was cunning and scared and angry and determined and awake. It became second nature.
Sometimes younger kids say they wish they could have done what we did during the war, but with most of them I think, ‘You don’t notice enough, you’re so super-aware of yourself you wouldn’t notice a dozen blokes with rifles coming at you from fifty metres away, let alone a freshly disturbed bit of rotting wood on a track, or a cry of alarm from a magpie who’s been distracted.’
For me, the change happened quite suddenly, I think when we were escaping at maximum speed from the airport we’d trashed, somewhere just after that, when we abandoned the truck and took to the river.
On the cliff face I tried to get back into that way of being. I realised that it was the same as concentrating on technique in this way at least: you are no longer absorbed in yourself. You become part of a greater environment than your own mind and body. As well as thinking about each move and each step and working out how best to place each finger and toe and the whole of my body, I had to earn my right to be on this cliff by melting into it so that no-one would notice that I didn’t belong. If someone was watching us through binoculars they’d be able to say to themselves, ‘There’s a rock and there’s a lizard and there’s a tuft of grass and there’s an ellie and there’s another rock and there’s a little blue wildflower…’
Still lodged into the crack, I considered the possibilities. I have to say there weren’t many. I was so close to Gavin that if I stretched out my arm and he stretched out his I reckon there wouldn’t have been a metre between us. But so what? The little mound he was caught on looked about half the size it had been when I started. Maybe that was the erosion caused by his weight, or maybe I’d had a false impression of it from the top, but I knew one thing — it couldn’t support both of us. It wasn’t going to support him much longer. The thin shower of soil continued steadily, sometimes just a few sandy particles, sometimes a serious trickle. It was like putting a plastic liner in a new dam and having a kangaroo puncture it with its feet when it wandered in for a drink. Only a few little holes, but that was a dam which would never hold water. Drip drip drip.
Gavin continued to be… to be what? I didn’t know. In shock? Waiting bravely and calmly? Had he broken his back and was lying there wondering about the best model wheelchair for kids living on farms? Probably not. He was conscious and he seemed to see me, but as far as I could tell, he was making no movement. That was good, as long as he wasn’t completely paralysed by his fear. His eyes were still fixed on me, though, and still following me, and I had the feeling that he hadn’t taken them off me the whole time I’d been inching towards him.
I was fairly certain that if I got close enough it’d be just like those stories about people drowning. He’d reach out and grab me and not let go and like the mad drowning people who pull their rescuers under he’d pull me off the cliff and we’d fall together, fall forever, and hit the rocks below still locked onto each other.
Without any plan or a sane idea of what to do I spied out a route along the face that would take me below him. I didn’t want to come in above him because if I fell I’d take him too and in the last few seconds of my life I didn’t want that on my conscience. And I didn’t want to come in beside him, for the reason I just said.
I did talk to him, meaningless babble like the songs you sing when you’re guarding a mob of cattle at night, and of course he didn’t hear any of it. But I thought it might calm him a little when he realised I was chatting away like I was on the school bus and sitting next to Homer and in a good mood. ‘Nice day for it… if by some miracle we survive this let’s not do it again, OK… just stay right there my little thrill-seeking friend, don’t be going anywhere now…’
My brief rest was over. I had a bit of strength back in my arms and legs, which had been the general idea of clinging there for those few moments, but my overall condition was weakening. In other words I was getting too tired. So I did a bit of manoeuvring and, with shaking legs, started going straight down the crack. It struck me suddenly that if and when we fell we would drop into Hell, the northern end of it where I’d never been, and how strange was that, to die in the place called Hell that had saved us so many times, that had been our refuge, but now in a final good joke was turning on us to claim the doomed souls that had never understood it properly. Clever Hell, such a smart trick to give comfort and help and then betray us. Much better than just killing us in the first place. How boring for the king of hell would that have been?
Trying to make like a spider, I inched across. I came in under Gavin like I’d wanted. That was good I suppose, except that it meant I’d committed myself to a plan that I really did have in my brain, in my subconscious anyway, but which seemed so stupid and impossible that I couldn’t take it out and look at it, not even for a moment. But there was nothing else to do. Gavin shifted his head slightly and looked down at me. It was the first real movement I’d seen him make since I started. I was pretty sure that his stillness was more than caution: he was frozen by the knowledge that soon he would drop to an awful death.
I braced myself. I had a toe that felt fairly secure, on the bottom curve of a biggish boulder. Nothing else felt secure. My other toe was trying to worm into hard-packed dirt and my fingers were basically on sheer rock. But I would need those anyway, need my arms, so it didn’t matter much. I spoke to Gavin calmly, knowing again that he couldn’t hear but knowing there was a good chance that he would lip-read me.
‘OK, Gav, just wriggle down here to me. I want you on my back.’
CHAPTER 16
There, I’d said it. Said the mad thing. Even the words brought me out in a sweat from every microscopic pore in my skin. You know how you squeeze a sponge and a drop of water appears at every point? Simultaneously? That’s what happened to my body. It didn’t worry me except that I knew my hands were suddenly slippery again, which wasn’t good.
Technique. Concentrate on technique. Your balance, your angle to the cliff, the left toe that’s trying to make a hole for itself. Try not to think about Gavin who actually twitched like he understood. At least half of you devoutly hopes he didn’t understand. That way you could get out of this crazy offer.
