Killing Me Softly

‘Adam cannot help.’

‘But…’

‘Go home to your children,’ I said. I had no idea if she had any, but she looked like a mother to me, a bit like my own mother in fact.

She stood up obediently and gathered her mackintosh.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said again, thrust her umbrella into her hand, and she left.

Greg was drunk when we arrived. He hugged me a little too boisterously and then hugged Adam as well. It was the same old crowd: Daniel, Deborah, Klaus, other climbers. It struck me that they were like soldiers home on leave, meeting each other at selected refuges because they knew that civilians would never really understand what they had gone through. It was an in-between place and an in-between time, just to be got through until they returned to the real life of extremity and danger. I wondered, not for the first time, what they thought of me. Was I just a folly to them, like one of those mad flings soldiers had on weekend leave in the Second World War?

The atmosphere was fairly jovial. If Adam looked a little distracted, then maybe that was just my over- sensitivity and he was soon caught up in the conversation. But there was no doubt about Greg: he looked dreadful. He drifted from group to group, but didn’t say very much. He constantly refilled his glass. After a bit I found myself alone with him.

‘I don’t feel I really belong,’ I said uneasily.

‘Nor do I,’ said Greg. ‘Look. It’s stopped raining. Let me show you Phil and Marjorie’s garden.’

The party was at the house of an old climbing friend who had given it up after college and gone into the City. While his friends were still vagrants, drifting around the world, raising money here and there, snuffling out sponsorship, Phil had this large beautiful house just off Ladbroke Grove. We walked outside. The grass was damp and I felt my feet getting cold and wet but it was good to be outside. We walked to the low wall at the far end of the garden and looked over at the house on the other side. I turned back. I could see Adam through the window on the first floor in a group of people. Once or twice he glanced at us. Greg and I raised our glasses to him. He raised his own glass back at us.

‘I like this,’ I said. ‘I like it when I know that this evening is lighter than yesterday evening and tomorrow evening will be lighter than today.’

‘If Adam weren’t standing there looking, I’d feel like kissing you, Alice,’ Greg said. ‘I mean, I feel like kissing you, but if Adam weren’t looking then I would kiss you.’

‘Then I’m glad he’s standing there, Greg.’ I said. ‘Look.’ I fluttered my hand in front of his face displaying my wedding ring. ‘Trust, eternal fidelity, that sort of thing.’

‘Sorry, I know that.’ Greg looked morose again. ‘You know the Titanic?’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ I said, with a thin smile, aware that I was stuck with a very drunk Greg.

‘Do you know… ?’ Then he stopped. ‘Do you know that no officer who survived the Titanic ever rose to command a ship?’

‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘Bad luck, you see. Bad on the C V. As for the captain, he was lucky that he went down with it. Which is what captains are supposed to do. You know why I’m going to the States?’

‘A climb?’

‘No, Alice,’ he said, too vigorously. ‘No. I’m going to wind up the company. That’s it. Finito. A line drawn in the sand. I shall be searching for a different line of work. At least Captain Ahab went down with the whale. People under my care died and it was my fault and I’m finished.’

‘Greg,’ I said, ‘you’re not. I mean it wasn’t.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

I looked around. Adam was still up there. Mad as it might be, drunk as he was now, I had to tell Greg before he went away. Whatever else I did or didn’t do, I owed this to him. I’d probably never have the chance again. Perhaps I thought, too, that with Greg I would have an ally, that I wouldn’t be so alone if I told him. I had the crazy hope that he would snap out of his drunken, maudlin state and come to my rescue.

‘Did you read Klaus’s book?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, raising his glass of vodka.

‘Don’t,’ I said, stopping him. ‘Don’t drink any more. I want you to concentrate on what I’m saying. You must know that when the missing party on Chungawat were brought down to the camp, one of them was just about alive. Do you remember which one?’

Greg’s face had an expression of stony gloom. ‘I wasn’t exactly conscious at the time. It was Peter Papworth, wasn’t it? Calling for help, the poor bastard. The help that I failed to give him.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That was Klaus’s mistake. It wasn’t Papworth. It was Tomas Benn.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Greg. ‘We were none of us at our best. Down the hatch.’

‘And what was Benn’s principal characteristic?’

‘He was a crap climber.’

‘No, you told me yourself. He didn’t speak a word of English.’

‘So?’

‘Help. Help. Help. That’s what they heard him say as he was dying, slipping into a coma. A funny time to start speaking English.’

Greg shrugged. ‘Perhaps he said it in German.’

‘The German for help is hilfe. That doesn’t sound very similar.’

‘Perhaps it was somebody else.’

‘It wasn’t somebody else. The magazine article quotes three different people who reported his final words. Two Americans and an Australian.’

‘So why did they report hearing that?’

‘They reported it because that’s what they expected him to say. But I don’t think it’s what he said.’

‘What do you think he said?’

I looked around. Adam was still safely inside. I waved at him cheerily.

‘I think he said 'gelb'.’

‘ “Gelb”? What the fuck is that?’

‘It’s German for yellow.’

‘Yellow? Why the fuck would he gave gone on about yellow while he was dying? Was he hallucinating?’

‘No. I think he was pondering on the problem that had killed him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The colour of the line that the party had followed down Gemini Ridge. Down the wrong side of Gemini Ridge. A yellow line.’

Greg started to speak, then stopped. I watched him think slowly about what I’d said.

‘But the line down Gemini Ridge was blue. My line. They went down the wrong side of the ridge because the line came out. Because I hadn’t secured it.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think the top two pegs of your line came out because they were pulled out. And I think that Francoise, Peter, Carrie, Tomas and the other one – what was he called?’

‘Alexis,’ muttered Greg.

‘They went down the wrong ridge because a line led them there. A yellow line.’

Greg looked baffled, in pain.

‘How could a yellow line get there?’

‘Because it was put there to lead them in the wrong direction.’

‘But who by?’

I turned and looked up at the window once more. Adam glanced down at us then looked back at the woman he was talking to.

‘It could have been a mistake,’ said Greg.

‘It couldn’t have been a mistake,’ I said slowly.

There was a long, long silence. Several times Greg caught my eye, then looked away. Suddenly he sat down, on the wet soil, against a bush, which sprang back and flicked water over both of us. He was shaking in spasms and