When Nights Were Cold (32 page)

‘Heinrich. Is he still alive?'

‘Yes, still guiding people up and over the Matterhorn. He has climbed it some hundreds of times now.'

‘He must have courage.'

‘He knows nothing else. All he can do is climb the Matterhorn, and sometimes the other peaks nearby. It would take courage for him to get on a train and spend a day or two in Geneva. I have interviewed him, of course.'

I recall the attitude of the newspapers.

‘What annoyed me –' I wag my finger at him – ‘was the suggestion that I kept going, even after she fell. I could have got to the summit if I'd wanted to by then, but I didn't. I really didn't. And Heinrich saw through his binoculars that I didn't. He never spoke up for me.'

‘A couple of women did reach the summit without any men or guides a few years ago. 1932, I think.'

‘It took that long? And the South Pole? Have they got there?'

‘None, that I know of.'

‘Ah, well it won't be me now.'

‘My commiserations. Let's return to Cicely Parr. Heinrich didn't see how she could have fallen so far from the position she was in. Even if she had slipped, she would have landed just a foot or two below but she did not. She swung right out before falling down.'

I agreed. ‘To have gone right off the edge like that, she must have been pushed.'

‘But nobody else was there.'

‘No.'

‘You were the first climbers up that morning.'

‘That's the funny thing.' I sip my brandy.

‘Who pushed her?'

‘Not I. I've always thought it was Locke or Hooper. It could have been both.'

‘They were dead.'

‘Yes, that's why they did it, you see.' It is confusing to me as well but I can't find a way to explain. ‘All I can say is that I never felt like a murderer.'

‘And yet a murderer is what I think you are.' There are tears in his eyes. He does not want this to be true.

I shake my head. ‘No.'

He scrawls words and words into his little notebook, blinking and grimacing. When the page is full, he looks at me.

‘I have to write the truth.'

‘Write what you want. It's your book. Now that I look at you clearly, I'm not even sure that you're the hotel boy. I think you fooled me. Well, you have no evidence for anything I'm saying, not that I would bother to sue you.'

‘I shall take that risk.'

I wake again and he has gone. It takes me a few seconds to decide that he must have been a dream, some projection from my own mind, a few seconds more to see that he was not. There are two glasses on the table, a radium glow of brandy at the bottom of each. Is it possible that I poured myself two glasses of brandy? There are my neat piles of photographs and letters, nothing of his. Even if he was real, was he the boy from the Monte Rosa Hotel or some London hack putting on a German accent to fool me into talking? Tucked beneath one glass is a yellowing postcard and I don't think it is mine. There is a picture of a pretty mountain chalet. On the back it says,
White Mountain Hotel, Chamonix
and gives an address. There is no message
.

It is an invitation, perhaps, but I shall never return to the Alps.

Parr is still in Zermatt, in the cold earth of the cemetery, one notch in the rows of fallen mountaineers.

It is enough.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘Miss Farringdon, your post.' Mabel pushes the letter under my nose. She pads away to the scullery and I hear the sink filling up for washing. Three days have passed and I have had no contact from Peter or from Catherine.

‘Is this all?' A couple of bills and an invitation to a neighbour's music evening. I put them in the fire. ‘Is there nothing from Catherine?'

‘It could be her mind has gone. She was already a bit that way.'

‘Yes, yes.'

And. But. I want to see her but am rejected. It hurts in my chest. I am quite winded. I sit for a while, watch the sparrows peck at the crumbs in the garden. Catherine is not coming. She has had my letter by now but she is not coming. I am here alone and she will not come. Mabel sloshes and splashes for half an hour or more. When she has finished with the washing, she is off to the shops and still I cannot move.

Voices curl in from the street, two women – Mabel is one of them – making a sweet, excited music. Mrs Tickell, I expect, has a new recipe for coconut rocks or has found a piece of lace that matches her bonnet perfectly and the world is overjoyed.

‘Miss Farringdon, you have visitors.'

‘Tell them to go away.'

‘Come and see.'

Catherine is on the doorstep. It is Catherine as a girl of about fifteen, auburn hair pulled back into a wiry plait, swaying shyly in a Girl Guide uniform. She smiles. How strange. I grab the door frame and stare at this creature. And there's an older woman behind her. I am confused for a moment and then everything switches around and I see clearly. Catherine is inside the body of the older woman, snugly covered by layers of fat and skin. The girl is an entirely new person, a daughter, I presume. Catherine's face is weighed down by plump cheeks that hang over the edge of her jaw bone like icing sliding off a cake. Seams of grey run through her neatly set hair. She wears a cream pullover and a tweed skirt, brown lace-up shoes. She smiles, nervously, as though she is a little afraid of me. A muscle beneath her right eye twitches.

‘We got your letter,' she says. ‘You haven't changed.'

‘Neither have you.'

‘Well.' We laugh and embrace.

The girl is squinting up at me from under her hair, as though she knows it's not polite to stare but can't help it.

‘Georgina, this is your Aunt Grace.'

I shake the girl's hand. ‘Hello, Georgina.'

‘How d'you do.' The girl seems less like Catherine now that they are both properly in focus. She has a summer's dusting of freckles over an upturned nose. She is a sweet, pretty piglet of a girl.

‘I never knew,' I say to Catherine. I'm not sure if it's an accusation or an apology. I want to laugh. Something good came out of Dr Sowerby.

‘The mountain business. Cicely Parr. George thought it best. We both did. But when I got your letter I realized that I'd made a terrible mistake.' She touches her hair, pulls a strand of it over her ear and tugs nervously. ‘And here we are.'

I nod. Catherine's face is wet with tears, and mine is too.

‘We're at a hotel in town, just for a couple of days.' She sniffs, laughs at herself. ‘I wasn't sure if you had a telephone—'

‘I don't. You must come in. I've – I've had the piano tuned.'

Catherine shakes her head, puts up a hand. ‘I won't go in that house again, thank you, but we'd love you to come to our hotel for lunch. We have tickets for a concert at the Royal Albert Hall this evening, if you'd like to join us. I bought one extra, just in case, but you don't have to decide now . . .' Her voice trails.

‘Thank you. Catherine – ?'

‘Yes?'

‘I did kill Cicely Parr, you know.'

Peter will be typing, slowly, in a room in his hotel in Chamonix. The truth is out, and I do not care. I will stay in touch with him, whatever he chooses to write. He is my only connection to the Alps now and that is something strong, enough to last until one of us dies.

Catherine squints up at the sky, shields her eyes with her hand.

‘I'm sure you had your reasons. Isn't it a pleasant day? Georgie loves London, don't you, Georgie?'

We both look to the place where Georgie was standing but she is not there. No, of course she is not. I would have known if Catherine had a daughter. Georgie cannot be, but Catherine is here at least.

‘Catherine. Will you stay in London?'

‘Oh,no.' She frowns at me.‘I live in Edinburgh. I wouldn't dream of staying here.'

And she has gone too. I am in my chair once again. I have been almost asleep, half-dreaming, I think, and yet they seemed real to me just now, Catherine and her funny daughter.

‘Mabel? Are you out there?'

She calls from the hall. ‘What is it?'

‘Who was here just now?'

Mabel bustles into the room, half-in and half-out of her coat.

‘Nobody that I saw. I was just talking to the Tickells and then I brought the shopping in. I've got my WI meeting now but I'll be back later to do your tea.'

She gets both sleeves on and tugs the coat across her chest.

‘Mabel, does Catherine have a daughter? You would have heard from your sister, wouldn't you?'

Her lips press together, turn down at the corners. ‘I never heard of any daughter.'

‘You don't think that Catherine might be dead?'

The question surprises her. ‘Goodness. Well, I think they ought to have told you if she was.'

I nod. ‘That's true.'

‘What are you thinking, Miss Farringdon?'

‘Mabel, I want you to go down into the cellar and find my old mountain boots, my ropes. Bring them upstairs. My axe. I want that first.'

‘You are not being sensible. What would you want with an axe?'

‘I want to see it again. I need to grip it for a while, have it in my hands. I need it now.'

Mabel shakes her head, puts up a hand as though to stop me jumping at her when, in fact, I am sitting here calm as can be.

‘It's my afternoon off. I'll have a look this evening, if you're still in this funny mood. Or you could go down there yourself.' She tosses the suggestion over her shoulder, leaves.

‘Yes, Mabel. You are quite right. I shall go down there myself.' She is setting me a test, I'm sure.

Chapter Thirty

The light bulb still works. There's a smell of old books and tea chests and a tang of damp dog. Spiders have made a mesh of the ceiling and blurred the walls almost out of existence. All those years ago I locked the trapdoor, buried my things in the cold vault. I stole away and curled up in my den. There is the axe. It really is, the new one that I bought. It leans against the wall, furry with dust, heavy, but – yes – its edge is still sharp. I could cut a good step or two with this. And there, my beautiful boots, and my compass. My insides loosen as my old friends crowd into the room with me. I sit on the stool, pull on the boots. I sneeze three times and cough. The boots are big but with thick socks they'll be right. They need a good clean. Here in the drawer is Shackleton's glove. It's in fine condition, even if he is long buried in South Georgia. I'll take it too.

Shackleton wrote of the fourth presence, some invisible force or being that followed him on his long march with Worsley and Crean across mountain and glacier in South Georgia to rescue at the whaling station. I once imagined that it was Hooper's spirit, following them, continuing the Society's work. She became our fourth presence, after all. Then it seemed to be me, the ghost, the last of the four. Now I think that it was all of us, all who once dreamed it and knew that we must be there too, in some important but un-physical way.

An old blanket catches my eye from the chest in the corner, a pouch of grey and black bulging from under the lid. I drag it to me and drape it over my knees, hold my breath until the dust settles. My sister is not coming.

Hours have passed and I am shivering. I could sit down here until I freeze, let frost be my skin and let icicles hang from my chin, let glaciers creep through London and crush my house. It is how I have lived these fifteen years. I could pull down the trapdoor and wait.

I rub the frayed edge of the blanket. I don't think it belongs to me. I think it might have been Parr's and I must have carried it home. But the blanket makes me remember a night on a mountain, when I fell and thought that I was dying, a night so cold it seemed to burn.

And I survived it.

I stand, take a step in my old boots, and then another. I lean on my axe. I can smell fresh snow. Catherine may be dead or alive but I won't find out by staying here. I shall go to Edinburgh. Then, with my sister or alone, I'll head for the Highlands and climb. One day, after that, I shall think about Peter and the hotel near Chamonix. It is all fresh, uncharted territory.

Mind your boots, said somebody who liked to give advice, and keep them well greased. I am for the mountains again.

Slowly up the mucky steps to the hall, I leave the chill of the cellar. It is warm up here. I spit on the compass, rub it over my cardigan sleeve, get myself pointing north. Here is the way to my sister and the future. Mabel has gone to her meeting, Miss Cankleton is at the post office and Mr Blunt is at the bank. I have the house to myself. I leave my things at the front door, keeping the boots on, and enter the drawing room.

There is something I must do before I leave.

I light a fire of all my papers and photographs, just in front of the hearth on the carpet. They catch quickly and make a cheerful blaze. With the fire tongs, I spread the burning items around the room and on the mantelpiece.

They will not be enough so I reach for a scrolled map that is burning at one end and I make it my torch. It may be the Antarctic for all I know, or the whole of Europe. I hold it high above my head as I clamber over the settee to the window, jump to the floor. These legs have spring in them still. I catch the bottom of the curtains with my flame. I fall to my knees, coughing. I am shivering with heat and sweating with cold.

Whips of black and yellow flay the window pane. The pelmet tilts, crashes to the floor. It lights the rug, crackles and spits. I push the globe into the burning silks and wood so that the whole world may be ablaze, and I rise to my feet.

Great God, this is an awful place indeed. I back into the doorway, gaze through dark smoke to the portrait over the mantelpiece, but I can no longer see his face. Soon the frame will start to burn. Goodbye, Father
.
I am going out. I may be some . . . No.