CHAPTER 28
The tops were drifted with white, as far down as the Heather Terrace on Tryfan, the sunrise pinking everything and almost dazzling in reflection from the eastern faces. Kim had the smug look that all newcomers to a place exhibit when they find someone even newer to gloat over.

“What you think, Nell? Good, or what?"

“Where’d the snow come from? It was raining last night!”

Kim pointed upwards.

“That’s over three thousand feet high, up there, three and a half over the road. Where’re we going, Deb?”

“Depends on how Nell feels about going uphill so far. See what Pat says, as well. Morning, love!”

Pat was crawling out of her tent, grin in place and spreading as she saw the weather.

“You’ll be wondering where to go, am I right?”

Kim just grinned back and nodded.

“Right, snow on the tops. That means that we need to think of conditions. No scrambling, cause the holds will be filled with soggy stuff, so it’s walking time. An out and back, I think. Fancy the hut, Deb? Foel Grach?”

There was just an edge to her voice as she made the suggestion, so I went with her choice, and after our usual solid breakfast, we crossed the main A5 to the gate for the CEGB access road. Pat had produced four items I had heard of, but never actually used, from the boot of her car.

“Borrowed these from my climbing club, girls. We might get a chance for some practice higher up”

Ice axes, with long enough shafts to act as walking sticks. Nell looked slightly worried, but Pat just smiled in reassurance.

“These have a special use, but we need somewhere to practise with them. Got your camera, Debbie?”

“Yup!”

“Onwards and upwards, then”

That walk is a slog for a little way, up a stupidly steep tarmac road, but it then leads past a little lake before climbing a zig-zag track to a saddle. I remember ed it from my first times out with Pat, and on arrival at the narrow little saddle, she used her axe to scrape snow from the huge holds on the little rock step before leading us up the huge sweep of hillside with its parallel grooves, the snow getting steadily deeper, with no sign at all of anyone’s passage before our own. Nell seemed to be coping well with the effort, and on arrival at the summit she was lost in wonder, her gasping breath stopped in her throat, just for a second.

Kim was so smug that I thought she would burst.

“What did I tell you, Nell? Isn’t this the absolute fucking best! Um, sorry, Pat”

We sat in the little dry-stone wind shelter, sharing out our flasks of tea, before Pat led the way down and along the ridge to Foel Grach and its little shelter, Pat’s posture worrying me. Snow was piled against the door, but we scraped enough way with our axes to allow the door to be pulled open. I left the two girls to explore the narrow little space, taking Pat’s arm and tugging her a little way from the hut.

“You OK, love?”

She turned a flat gaze on me, then quirked an odd smile.

“We are a pair, aren’t we? I’m sorry, love. You know what my memories are from this place, don’t you?”

Someone shitting where you made love… No. Not the right thing to say, ever.

“Your man. Am I right?”

“You are. It would have been his birthday in a fortnight, so I was going to… I want to say sorry, Deb. I was getting selfish, resenting you being here, the girls… I had planned, you know, a sort of wake, memorial, I don’t know. Just me, and him, up here… What happened to your face, Deb?”

“Kim’s Dad’s fist”

“Ah. I take it he is no longer a worry”

I stared at her, wondering what she knew, and how, and she smiled back, gently.

“I know you, love. Don’t need to know details; I will just assume you sorted it. Now, the new girl is the same as Kim, isn’t she?”

“Yeah”

“And her father? No, I didn’t get that feeling. How many times has she tried to leave it all, Deb? Don’t look surprised; she’s not the only one. Little secret for you, my love: sometimes, when the old ghosts are calling, you need a focus. I wasn’t intending to come back down from here today. Leave it there, OK? You’ve just handed me a couple of reasons to think again. So let’s get these two back to the other side of the peak, where the snow’s smoother. Oh; one more question: your insurance on that van. Is it fully comprehensive? Lets you drive someone else’s vehicle?”

“Yeah, it has to be”

“Then, as the folk club is on tonight, could we go, and could I go with you driving in my car so I can get really pissed? Just this once?”

There was just too much to take in, to process, arriving in one shitty, stinking lump, like that turd we had found so many years ago, so I held her tight until we heard the voices of the younger pair, and Pat found her smile again.

“Right, over to the other side of the top peak again, and we will explore the delights of poly-bagging and self-arrest!”

Three hours later, we were stumbling down the CEGB road once more, cameras full of memories and legs drained of strength. ‘Self-arrest’ had involved a way of digging in the ice axes into the snow to stop a slide. ‘Poly-bagging’ was just silly, as Pat brought out an orange survival bag in heavy-duty polythene, pulled the front up over her knees and told the rest of us to sit behind, whereupon it acted as a sledge, a toboggan, and we slid down the new snow before rushing back up to try it again, right up to the point where Kim got there too late, so simply spiked the bag with her ice axe, leaving three of us to tumble off the front and carry out our first ‘live’ self-arrests.

Tired, happy, life rediscovered along with the reasons to continue it, or at least I hoped so. I drove them down to Bethesda, Kim giving me an odd look as I took the keys and the driver’s seat, but she was easily distracted by the pie and chips we picked up in the village, eating them in the car as the windows steamed up.

The folk club didn’t have a guest that night, so it was just floor spots, as they called them. I wasn’t complaining, as they were enjoyable enough, but I was watching Nell, as the music was certainly not in fitting with her tape collection, as well as Pat, who was certainly doing her best to justify my taking on of driving duties. My own memories were there with hers, so many of them involving Carl, and I really, really felt for her, right up until the barman, an older man, spoke to me.

“You’re a friend of Pat’s, aren’t you?”

“Very much so. Why?”

“She’s pissed. She never gets pissed. That time of year again?”

“If you think what I think you mean, yes”

The Mn nodded.

“He was a lovely man, ah? You doing the driving tonight?”

“Yes”

“Good woman. Now, I have stopped serving her vodka, but she’s still buying it. She’s getting water. End of the night, I’ll hand you the money back”

“Eh?”

“I have to take her money, or she’ll spot the switch. I don’t want to rip off a friend, though”

I thought for a second, then asked an obvious question.

“You got a charity box?”

“Cymdeithas [lots of Welsh words]”

“Eh?”

“Snowdonia National Park Society. Esme Firbank’s lot”

“You OK sticking it in there?”

“You sure? Lot of money, what she’s been, well, what she thinks she’s been drinking”

“Is it something she’d approve of? Pat, not Esme whoever?”

“Oh god aye. Life member, is Pat. Anyway, got a favour to ask”

“And?”

“Well, I recognise you, and the girl with the longer hair, ah? You’ve been here before?”

“We have. Kim loved it, You had some act on, from Manchester, I think”

“Yeah… How’s the other girl enjoying it?”

“I’ll ask her. Why am I now suspicious of what you want to ask?”

He looked away, which was something that always worried me, before pointing over to a darker corner of the pub.

“Got a lad over there, comes down here regular. From somewhere down south and west, from his accent, ah? Camps at Gwern y Gof Isaf, Big Willy’s they call it. Always plays a great spot, always gets absolutely pissed as a rat. I know Pat always camps at Gwern y Gof Uchaf, and he hitches down, fuck knows how he gets back. Just, there’s snow tonight, bit cold. If you could see your way to getting him at least as far as Emlyn’s, it would let me sleep better. The lad’s OK, nice enough, ah? Bloody good musician, always welcome, just a miserable fucker when he’s had a beer or ten. I just don’t want to read about anyone dead of exposure a couple of miles from here”

Obs. Dad, Mam, they would have given the same answer I did.

“Let him know closer to last orders, then. If he’s a miserable sod. I could do without that till I really need to speak to him”

“Thanks, love. Take this the right way, but I trust Pat, and if she trusts you, well, you catch my drift. Put your purse away for this round, ah?”

Pat was floating by now, which left me to watch the two girls, who were really animated, Nell in particular.

“How you doing, love?”

She grinned back.

“My legs feel awful, Debbie, but this is, I don’t know. This is real music, yeah? You can see what people put into it? I mean, it’s not like Mahler, or Sibelius, but it’s from the heart, isn’t it?”

“Yup. First time I came across it was Dad singing…”

Shit. What was that all about? I wrestled down the sudden surge of emotion, recognising how much Pat’s distress had triggered me, smiled at Nell and pointed to the MC, who was jabbering something in Welsh before waving on the miserable ginger-haired bastard from the Bryn Tyrch.

“[Welsh Welsh] Steve Jones!”

He was clearly wobbling a little, but when he put the bow to the fiddle he was carrying, I was captivated. I know nothing at all about violin technique, but I didn’t need to: he was absolutely superb. I caught Nell sitting with her mouth open as he did something remarkable, and when he finished, despite the roar of acclaim, he simply wandered back over to his corner table and continued drinking.

Needless to say, he was our ‘charity case’ from the landlord. He squeezed into the back with the girls as Pat snored in the front, and the only word he said, as he climbed out by his camps site, was “Thanks”

I am sure I caught the glitter of tears in his eyes as he shut the car door.