When Nights Were Cold (30 page)

‘You were shy then, too.'

Oh, this is good. It is good to have Peter here with me.

‘Such old, old memories. Now, Miss Farringdon, I want to know more about Winifred Hooper. Do you have any photographs of her?'

I pass him the box of pictures I have been saving for tonight. Winifred is at the top.

Winifred Hooper. Your body was half-covered in snow when they found it. The men who carried you down were weeping tears through streams of sweat. You were all wrapped up in a blanket, the roundness of your head, like the end of a ninepin, not you now and that was what I couldn't understand. The sky lowered and pressed me into a bubble that bounced and floated silently while, in a different world, people screamed. The horror is fresh. I thought I would never climb again or even see another mountain but, of course, in the end, one has no choice.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Ladies' Alpine Club had moved back to its premises at the Grand Central Hotel after the war. In 1922 the Club had hosted a dinner in honour of the first British Everest expedition and all the members of the expedition attended. Parr said that there were speeches of knights in the Age of Chivalry and it was a most convivial, romantic evening. Everyone hoped and believed that the party would triumph but they did not. Mallory was to make his third attempt the following year.

We sat at a cosy table beneath paintings of mountains and carefully hung ice axes. It seemed wonderful to be a member of the club, to be able to walk in and out as a proper mountaineer, to greet people you knew from expeditions and to make great plans. A portrait of Queen Margherita of Italy, the club's honorary president, hung on the wall and I glanced at her every now and again, as though I could somehow make her aware of me, earn her respect.

Parr's face was sunburnt. Her skin was red and in places beginning to peel and detach itself, like a carpet coming up at the edges. Her hair, now cut into a sharp bob, made her younger, somehow brighter.

‘How are you?' she asked.

‘I have been well. And you?'

‘Yes, the same.'

The waitress placed the tea strainer over my cup and poured. Parr rubbed the skin under her right eye and tiny peelings balled on her cheek.

I smiled. ‘You've been climbing recently.'

‘Mont Blanc. I was in the Alps just weeks ago and the weather was good so we decided to do it. I have a new guide, recommended to me by friends. He's called Heinrich and we get along so well I wouldn't consider anyone else now.' She turned to the waitress, pushed her cup aside. ‘It's too strong. Could you tip this away and bring me another? And we'll have some cake. Now what do you want to do, Farringdon? What was your idea when you wrote to me?'

‘I'm not sure. You see, I may have been indoors too long to be any good now but—'

‘You've certainly put on some weight.'

‘I know. And yet I do want to climb again.' I leaned towards her. ‘I want to do it for Locke and for Hooper and my friend Frank. Well, for all of us.' My voice cracked and my nose felt hot. I grabbed my teacup, took a gulp but it all went wrong and I was coughing and crying at the same time.

‘Farringdon, what on earth is happening to you?'

I pointed at my throat and reached for my napkin.

‘Are you all right?'

I nodded, caught my breath and wiped away the tears.

‘Farringdon, I want to say something. I'm awfully sorry about that business with Hooper and my article.' She leaned forward and her hair swung about her chin, shrinking her face. She looked directly into my eyes. I felt embarrassed. ‘I apologize for writing about it so badly.'

‘I'm afraid that you did but, I must say, it's a relief to hear you say so.'

I found myself gazing at the nose of someone in the doorway. It seemed familiar but then it blurred.

She nodded to herself. ‘I remember telling you once, I'm not good at knowing the best things to say sometimes but I've learned a bit. I was trying too hard to make a name for myself and needed to dispel the idea that we were naive schoolgirls, so when the journal asked me to write something—'

‘Never mind.'

‘But you hope to climb again and that's good because I have a great plan.'

‘I just want to go back to the Alps and say goodbye to Hooper, make my peace with the mountains.'

‘Yes, yes, but you won't say that when you get to the Alps. I'm not thinking of Mont Blanc, of course.'

‘Good, I was thinking of a quick visit to Zermatt and then head for Italy and perhaps the Dolomites—'

I said this because Parr had taken over. I had not actually given much thought to specific peaks. Indeed, the mountains I had in mind belonged to some fantasy range based vaguely on what I had seen and climbed before.

‘If we have time, I suppose, but that's not why we're going.'

‘But I particularly hoped to climb in Italy. I've read that the scenery is beautiful and I've always wanted to visit Italy.' I meant to stand up for myself.

‘No, no. I have something much better.' Parr clapped her hands together in front of her mouth. ‘We're going to climb the Matterhorn.'

I was so surprised that for a moment I could not make any sense of the word.
Matterhorn.

‘We always planned to do it, didn't we? Heinrich and I have been talking about it for some time and when your letter came, it was perfect.'

‘Oh no, Parr. You overestimate my ability. You go up with Heinrich.'

‘But Heinrich won't come with us to the summit. Plenty of women have climbed and traversed the Matterhorn but there has never been a manless ascent, so he'll be our porter as far as the ridge. He'll bivouac with us the night before and then you and I shall make the ascent by ourselves. Heinrich will watch us through his binoculars, if he can. It's a very small piece of mountaineering history, the sort I thought you wanted.'

‘I did, but—'

‘It's more than fifty years since Lucy Walker reached the summit and that was only six years after Whymper. Everyone has been going to the Alps since the war ended and they're taking bigger risks than ever before. There'll be nothing new for us to do soon. Even Everest is about to be taken. Start preparing now and we'll go in June or July. We'll have a few weeks there so you can take in some lower ascents first, find your feet.' Parr tilted her head, scratched her nose and cleared her throat. ‘I'm trying to make amends. Do you see?'

‘I do and I'm more relieved than I can tell you.'

I had an income now from my teaching, as well as the money from the lodgers. It wasn't much, but there was also the possibility of selling the house and moving somewhere smaller when Catherine married.

‘Dig out your equipment, Farringdon, and go walking every day. Up and down the stairs with bricks in your knapsack. Grease your boots and wear them around the place so you don't get blisters.'

‘Parr, wait . . . I might not be ready for Zermatt. The memories—'

‘This tea is much better. I can drink boiled string on the mountains, but in the club it's really another matter. You still have your things?'

‘I do.' I decided to purchase a new axe so that we would not have to mention the old one.

My eye wandered again to the woman in the corner. The sight of her rigid black jacket and graceful posture pulled me back to the corridors at Candlin College, the murmur of young women's voices and sweet floor-polish smell. I took in her silhouette, the sharp nose and drooping eyes.

‘I say, Parr, isn't that Hobson?'

Parr craned her neck, gasped and turned back. ‘I think it is. And those are the Dalton sisters, who are going to climb in the Dolomites this summer. I've met them. Well, that does it. You can't think of going to Italy now. She might be going with them.'

‘We'd never bump into her.'

‘Of course we would. We'd be crossing a glacier and she'd pop up out of a crevasse in her black coat. She'd have us processing up the mountain in a line behind her, ringing a bell and saying grace before cocoa.'

I laughed and bowed my head lest Miss Hobson should see us. ‘I'm still scared of talking to her. Who knew that she was a mountaineer?'

Miss Hobson left without noticing us and Parr waved to the Dalton sisters, Anna and Elizabeth, who were aged between twenty-five and thirty and reminded me a little of Catherine and myself. They resembled each other in appearance – dark hair, long fine-boned faces – but the older one had a distant, mystical quality, as if she might walk off into the broom cupboard and not notice, were her sister not there to watch her. They came and spoke to us for a few minutes and Parr told them our plans. They shook my hand and wished me the best of luck.

I marched up and down the stairs that evening, with a knapsack of coal on my back and my old boots on my feet. Catherine played Telemann fantasias and the music followed me up and down until I was dizzy.

Some mountaineers are peak-baggers and some are wanderers. The great mountaineers fall out, get on each other's nerves, send unsatisfactory companions packing or storm off home themselves. They sometimes give accounts that their fellow climbers will dispute. The truth, like bones in a glacier, may fall out one day or in hundreds of years, or never. Parr and I had no reasons to argue any more. We knew what we wanted and with us we carried the young ambitions of our two friends. Precisely because we knew already what it was to hate each other, we understood that we would be good climbing partners.

Peter sorts the pictures into piles and begins referencing and cross-referencing in a small notebook. He is absorbed in this work that seems to focus on Winifred Hooper. I don't know why he cares so much. What is there to lose if I trust him? I am already a recluse and people who know anything about me assume the worst. I could use him to clear my name. As I watch him write, I wonder why I did not see it sooner. Under the papery layers of the adult Peter, there is the brown-haired boy, around him the gentle glow of the Monte Rosa Hotel lobby.

‘Did you work at the hotel for many years?'

‘No. I left a year or two after the accident and went to work in a bank in Geneva. I saved up enough money to buy a small hotel in the countryside, but I didn't want to return to Zermatt so I moved to France. Accidents happen everywhere, of course, and I have lost guests to the mountains around Chamonix. It's always terrible but, as an adult, I can accept that it is inevitable. I was too young when the first tragedy occurred and it haunts me in a strange way. It has a heaviness that has never lifted.'

Peter writes and writes, sometimes stopping to suck the top of his pen, scratch an arm or leg. I have slept for an hour or so and am refreshed. No dreams about the Matterhorn tonight.

I take a candle from the mantelpiece and light it for Cicely Parr. I place it just beside the globe.

‘What's that for?'

‘Nothing. Just a candle.'

When Catherine comes, I'll make sure that everything is just right so that she will want to stay the night. I'll put silver candlesticks on the piano top and pour glasses of wine, dark as black vanilla orchids. Once we are squiffy we shall begin to forget the years.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

We got along well in Zermatt. That is not to say that we spoke very much to each other beyond simple conversations about what we needed to do, but that we walked together without much need for words. We had a comfortable familiarity and required nothing more. We stayed at the Riffelalp Hotel, in pine forests high above the village, so were away from the Monte Rosa Hotel and people who might remember us. When we went into Zermatt and had to pass the old hotel, we fell quiet or found some interesting new topic to distract us. The Breithorn was visible on clear days, but the sight was not as painful as I had feared it would be. The peak was white and pretty. I could imagine Hooper wandering up there by herself, listening for ice cracking in the night and descending to lower ground where forests might keep her warm and safe.

We walked and climbed with pleasure. It was hard work for my legs, at the beginning, and I often stopped, halfway up a hill, to lean against a tree and catch my breath. On the lower slopes, tiny purple butterflies like parma violets danced around us. We saw ibex, nutcrackers and all kinds of pink and lilac flowers. I noticed dark purple, almost black flowers that I did not remember from before and Parr told me that they were black vanilla orchids. I picked one to press and take for my mother's grave.

Heinrich met us on the second or third day and took us on the higher ascents. I was concerned that I was not fit enough for these, but I pretended otherwise and simply continued to put one foot in front of the other, no matter how sore or heavy they felt, and I progressed. We traversed the Monte Rosa and I smiled almost all the way. A proper mountain, with several peaks, and the second highest in the Alps. I could now call myself an Alpinist, surely. My arms and legs had not forgotten how to do it. Indeed, it seemed as though the memory was held entirely within my limbs and I was stronger than ever. Each time the sun came out or a fresh gust of breeze caught me, I wanted to laugh. I ached, of course, after the first few days, but it passed or I stopped noticing.

Heinrich was a calm, quiet man of twenty-seven from Zermatt. He was quite tall, slim with sandy hair and freckles. His leather hat would slip over his eye as he walked and he would flick it up with his thumb and forefinger. He had a cheerful, joking manner, especially at the beginnings and ends of the day when he was garrulous with plans and observations. During the middle part of the day, he liked to walk quietly and speak only when instruction was needed. He had climbed all over the Alps and in North and South America. He claimed that he was descended from famous guides, many of whom had made historic ascents and some who had died on the mountains. He and Parr walked side by side as we set out each day and returned, sharing Alpine gossip, sometimes teasing each other. No, I am wrong. Parr did not know how to tease. Heinrich teased Parr, and she enjoyed it, is what I should say.