in Holland Park although I would have been quicker walking, except that in my present frame of mind I wouldn’t have found my way anywhere. I paid the driver and went inside. Only a couple of tables were occupied. In one corner was Adam, with a man and a woman I didn’t recognize. I walked straight up to them. They looked round, startled.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to the others. ‘Adam, could you come outside for a second?’
He looked wary. ‘What?’
‘Just come. It’s very important. I’ll only take a second.’
He shrugged and nodded an apology to the others at the table. I took him by the hand and led him out. As soon as we were out of view of his friends I turned to him and took his face in my hands so that I could look him right in the eyes. ‘I’ve read Klaus’s book,’ I said. His eyes gave a flicker of alarm. ‘I love you, Adam. I love you so much.’
I started to cry and I couldn’t see, but I felt his arms around me.
Fourteen
‘The lady has narrow feet, Mr Tallis.’ He held my foot as if it were a piece of clay, and turned it in his thin hands.
‘Yeah, well, make sure it’s secure around the ankle. She doesn’t want blisters, all right?’
I had never been into this kind of shop before, although I had passed them by and peered into their dim, expensive depths. I wasn’t trying on shoes, I was being measured and fitted for them. My sock – violet and balding – looked shabby in this company.
‘And a high instep.’
‘Yeah, I’d noticed that.’ Adam took hold of my other foot and examined it. I felt like a horse being shod by a blacksmith.
‘What style of walking boot were you thinking of?’
‘Well, since I haven’t’
‘Basic trekking. Quite high, to support her ankle. Light,’ said Adam firmly.
‘Like the one I made for –?’
‘Yes.’
‘Made for who?’ I asked. They both ignored me. I pulled my feet out of their grip and stood up.
‘I need to collect it by next Friday,’ said Adam.
‘That’s our wedding day.’
‘That’s why I need to collect it by then,’ he said, as if it were obvious. ‘Then we can go walking at the weekend.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I’d figured on a two-day honeymoon in bed, with champagne and smoked salmon and hot baths between sex.
Adam looked across at me. ‘I’m doing a demonstration climb in the Lake District that Sunday,’ he said briefly. ‘You can come with me.’
‘Very wifely,’ I said. ‘Do I get a say in all of this?’
‘Come on. We’re in a hurry.’
‘Where are we going now?’
‘I’ll tell you in the car.’
‘What car?’
Adam seemed to exist on a barter system. His flat belonged to a friend. The car that was parked down the road belonged to a climbing acquaintance. Equipment was stashed away in various people’s attics and other places. I didn’t know how he kept track of it. He picked up odd jobs by word of mouth. Almost always they were doing him a favour in order to repay him for something he had done up one mountain or another. Some frostbite he had prevented, some arduous piece of guiding he had carried out, some calmness under duress, some kindness in a storm, some life he happened to have saved.
I was trying now not to think of him as a hero. I didn’t want to be married to a hero. The thought of it frightened me, aroused me, and put a subtle and erotic distance between us. I knew I was looking at him differently since yesterday and reading the book. His body, which I had until twenty-four hours ago thought of as the body that fucked me, had become the body that endured when no one else could. His beauty, which had seduced me, now seemed miraculous. He had staggered through a thin soup of air in a cracking cold, blasted by wind and pain, and yet he seemed unblemished by it. Now that I knew, everything about Adam was charged with his reckless, calm courage. When he looked at me broodingly or touched me, I couldn’t help thinking that I was the object of desire he had to risk himself on and conquer. And I wanted to be conquered; I did. I wanted to be assaulted and won. I liked him to hurt me, and I liked to fight back and then yield. But what about afterwards, when I was mapped and claimed as victory? What would happen to me then? Walking through slushy grey snow to the borrowed car, just six days away from our wedding day, I wondered how I could ever live without Adam’s obsession.
‘Here we are.’
The car was an ancient black Rover with squashy leather seats and a lovely walnut dashboard. It smelt of cigarettes. Adam opened the door for me, then stepped into the driver’s seat as if he owned it. He turned the ignition, then eased into the Saturday-morning traffic.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Just west of Sheffield, the Peak District.’
‘What is this, a magical mystery tour?’
‘To see my father.’
The house was grand, and also rather bleak, in its flat situation, exposed to winds from all sides. It was, I suppose, beautiful in an uncompromising way, but today I was looking for comfort, not austerity. Adam parked to one side of the house beside a series of ramshackle outhouses. Large feathery flakes of snow were falling slowly through the air. I expected a dog to run out barking at us, or an old-fashioned retainer to meet us at the door. But no one greeted us, and I had the uneasy impression that no one was there at all.
‘Is he expecting us?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Does he actually
‘No, that’s why we’re here.’
He walked up to the double front door, gave a perfunctory knock, then opened it.
It was freezing inside, and rather dark. The hall was a chilly square of polished floorboards, with a grandfather clock in the corner. Adam took my elbow and led me into a living room full of aged sofas and armchairs. At the end of the room, a large fireplace looked as if it had been many years since it had seen a fire. I pulled my coat round me. Adam took off his scarf and wrapped it round my neck.
‘We won’t be here long, my sweetheart,’ he said.
The kitchen, with its cold quarry tiles and wooden surfaces, was empty as well, although a crumb-scattered plate and knife lay on the kitchen table. The dining room was one of those rooms used only once a year. There were unused candles on the round, polished table and on the stern mahogany sideboard.
‘Did you grow up here?’ I asked, for I couldn’t imagine children ever playing in this house. Adam nodded, and pointed to a black-and-white photograph on the mantelpiece. A man in uniform, a woman in a frock, and, between them, a child, posed outside the house. They all looked very grave and formal. The parents looked much older than I had expected.
