The way it came out it sounded less like a form of exoneration than a further example of his misjudgement.
‘I wish you’d talk to Adam about all this,’ I said desperately.
‘Why should I talk to him, Alice? What would he tell me?’
I thought for a moment, trying to get it clear in my mind. ‘He would tell you,’ I said finally, ‘that it’s a different world up there about eight thousand metres and it is wrong to moralize about what happened.’
‘The problem,’ Greg said, almost in bafflement, ‘is that I don’t agree with that. I know that…’ He stopped for a moment. ‘I know that Adam feels it’s something different up there, different from everything else. But I think you
‘What do you mean?’
He sighed and looked around to see if anybody was eavesdropping on our conversation. Fortunately they weren’t. He took a sip of his drink, then another sip. I was drinking white wine, he was drinking whisky.
‘Do I have to punish myself all over again? Maybe it was irresponsible of me to take relatively inexperienced climbers up Chungawat. I thought I was properly prepared.’ He looked hard at me, with a new steeliness in his gaze. ‘Maybe I still do. I got sick on the mountain, really sick, and I had to be half dragged down to base camp. It was a very bad storm, one of the worst I’ve ever seen in May. But I thought I had created a system of fixed lines and support, using the porters and the professional guides, that was foolproof.’ We looked at each other and then I saw his face relax until he just looked very, very sad. ‘But – you will say, or people will say – five people died. And then it seems… well, inappropriate to start making protests about whether this rope gave way or that fastening or that pole and whether my mind was on other things.’ He gave a little shrug.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about that sort of technical stuff.’
‘No,’ Greg said. ‘People don’t.’
‘But I know about emotions, the aftermath. It was terrible for everybody else too. I’ve read Klaus’s book. He feels bad that he was so powerless up there. And Adam. He’s still tortured because he failed to save his girlfriend, Francoise.’
‘Ex-girlfriend,’ said Greg distantly. He didn’t seem consoled. Suddenly a young woman came up to us.
‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m Kate from Klaus’s publishers.’
There was a pause while Greg and I looked at each other, conspirators suddenly.
‘My name is Alice,’ I said.
‘I’m Greg.’
The woman’s face lit up in recognition.
‘Oh, you were…’
Then she stopped in confusion and went red.
‘It was terribly embarrassing,’ I said. ‘There was this black hole of a pause. Obviously Greg couldn’t break in and finish her sentence identifying himself as the one who was to blame for the whole disaster and I didn’t think it was for me to step in and help her out. So she just went redder and redder and then drifted away. It was… oh, that’s cold.’
Adam had pulled the duvet off me.
‘What did you talk to Greg about?’
As he spoke he began to arrange my limbs and turn me around as if I were a mannequin.
‘Careful. I felt I had to meet somebody who was so important in your life. And I wanted to tell him how badly you felt about all the coverage.’ I tried to twist myself around to look Adam in the face. ‘Do you mind?’
I felt his hands on the back of my head, then he seized my hair tightly and pushed my face really hard into the mattress. I couldn’t help crying out.
‘Yeah, I do mind. It’s nothing to do with you. What do you know about it?’ I had tears in my eyes. I tried to twist around but Adam was holding me down on the bed with an elbow and a knee and running his fingers over my body at the same time. ‘Your body is so inexhaustibly lovely,’ he said tenderly, his lips brushing against my ear. ‘I am completely in love with every bit of it and I am in love with you.’
‘Yes,’ I groaned.
‘But,’ and now his tone hardened but it was still little more than a whisper, ‘I don’t want you interfering in things that have nothing to do with you because it makes me very angry. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t really understand at all. I don’t agree.’
‘Alice, Alice,’ he said reproachfully, running his fingers from my hair down my spine, ‘we’re not interested in each other’s worlds, each other’s past life. All that matters is us here, in this bed.’
Suddenly, I flinched. ‘Ow, that hurts,’ I cried.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait, all you have to do is relax.’ ‘No, no, I can’t,’ I said, twisting around, but he pushed me back down so that I could hardly breathe. ‘Relax and trust me,’ he said, ‘trust me.’ Suddenly there was this jolt of pain right through my body, like a flash of light that I could see as well as feel, and it ran through me and through me and wouldn’t stop and I heard a scream that seemed to come from somewhere else and it was me.
My GP, Caroline Vaughan, is only about four or five years older than I am and when I see her, usually just about a prescription or a vaccination, I always feel we are the sort of people who would be friends if we had met under other circumstances. Which made it a bit awkward on this occasion. I’d rung and pleaded with her to give me an emergency appointment on my way to work. Yes, it was essential. No, I couldn’t wait until tomorrow. The internal examination was agonizing and I lay on the table biting my knuckles to stop myself crying out. Caroline had been chatting with me and then she fell silent. After a while she took off her gloves and I felt her warm fingers on the top of my back. She told me I could get dressed and I heard the sound of her washing her hands. When I came back out from behind the screen she was sitting at her desk writing notes. She looked up. ‘Can you sit down?’
‘Just about.’
‘I’m surprised.’ Her expression was serious, almost sombre. ‘You won’t be surprised to learn that you have an acute anal fissure.’
I tried to look at Caroline with a composed expression as if this were just flu. ‘So what happens?’
‘It will probably heal by itself but you should eat plenty of fruit and fibre over the next week or so to avoid damaging it any more. I’m going to prescribe a mild laxative as well.’
‘Is that it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It hurts so much.’
Caroline thought for a moment and then wrote something more on her prescription. ‘This is for an anaesthetic gel which should be a help. Come and see me next week. If it hasn’t healed then we’ll need to consider anal dilatation.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Don’t worry. It’s a simple procedure but it has to be done under general anaesthetic.’
‘God.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘Right.’
She put her pen down and handed me the prescriptions. ‘Alice, I’m not going to give you some moral lecture. But, for God’s sake, treat your body with respect.’
I nodded. I couldn’t think of what to say.
‘You’ve got bruises on your inner thigh area,’ she continued. ‘On your buttocks, on your back and even on the left side of your neck.’
‘You’ll have noticed I’m wearing a high-collared shirt.’
‘Is there anything you want to talk about with me?’
‘It looks worse than it is, Caroline. I’ve just got married. We got carried away.’
‘I suppose I should offer my congratulations,’ said Caroline, but she didn’t smile when she said it.
I stood up to go, wincing. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Alice.’
‘Yes.’
‘Violent sex –’
