CHAPTER 8
School was ‘back to normal’ on Monday, and more of a crash landing than a bumpy one. The time with Alys had been more than I had dreamt could happen, and the Woodruffs had taken my climbing to similarly exotic heights, but it was now back to the mundane, apart from one important exception: I had my school subjects to select.
We had spent more than a few hours looking at the on-line prospectus from Bangor, and the course I was hoping to join ran for four years, with the third year being what they called a placement. I had, of course, already decided to ask the Brenin if they could help out, but it was the other parts of the course that worried and confused me. While it included the obvious mountain-based skills, it also listed ‘water-based’ competency, camp cooking, and then a whole range of modules such as physiology, and one in particular that jumped out at me: adventure sport as therapy. I understood that in a small way already, for simply leaving the house for somewhere that went up rather more than the roads in Gerlan took my spirits in the same direction, but this looked to be a lot deeper, despite that confusion of directions. It was Dad who noticed me lingering over that one.
“Important idea, that is, love. One day… sod it, cuppa first. Bit heavy, this; easier with full hands”
He busied himself at the kettle, and was shortly back at the table with three steaming mugs, and I noticed Mam reach out for his hand. Dad took a sip, sighed, and began speaking, his voice soft.
“Years and years ago, Enfys, there weren’t so many famous climbers. I mean, everyone knew Joe and The Villain, Chris Bonington and Pete Livesey had been on the telly, and even Zoe Brown had done her bit, but there weren’t that many. Not unless you were a climber yourself. We all read the magazines, like ‘Climber’ and ‘High’, and they’d do articles on all sorts of incredible climbs. You’d see the same names, and sometimes they’d go on the lecture circuit, and you almost felt you knew them, personally. Almost part of the family. Then we had a couple of years… There were a few seasons where things went wrong, like that catastrophe on K2, and people died, and it felt personal, yeah? These people were living our dreams, the lives we were dying for, and that is exactly what had happened.
“There had been another set of deaths, not a really massive loss like on K2, when we lost Al Rouse and Julie Tullis, and Mam and me were out at Stanage, just one of our weekend breaks on the bike, stopping at Eyam Youth Hostel, and there we were at the Popular End. We’d done Froggatt the day before, so it was one of our climb-ourselves-knackered sessions before riding back to Luton, while your Mam tried not to fall asleep on the pillion”
He laughed, ruefully.
“We were both younger and sillier back then, love!. Anyway, there we were at Black Hawk, and we’d just done the variation, with that head-game balance move, and we were going to move on, do some of the stuff around Via Media or the Trinities, when we saw a group by Grotto Slab. Real beginners’ outing, love, all laughing and shrieking when they were lowered off. Just one woman there, though, just sitting, not climbing. Didn’t have that look about her, not the out-for-a-try sort. Wearing training shoes, not rock nor walking boots, so Mam being Mam, she pops along to say hello, and we’ve got three full flasks, so a shame not to share them, and we’re sitting there while the rest of her group are doing top-rope stuff, and first thing, I notice she’s staring off over the Plantation eyes somewhere else. ‘Beautiful here’, she says, and then I realise she’s on the edge of tears”
He took a sip, Mam watching as his own eyes watered, till he was ready to continue.
“Mam and me, we do the obvious, asking if she’s okay, and what it is, is that she’s lost her brother, and he was one of those people I was talking about. Not one of the really big names, but well-known enough to have had a mention in the press, and what she says is, well, she simply wanted to come and see what it was all about. Try and get a focus on what pulled her brother to the hills, what took him to the place that killed him. Then she found out that it was all wrong, her being in the middle of a group out for fun, and she just couldn’t. So Mam, being who she is, she looks down, says ‘What size feet you got, Tracy?’, and they’re of a size, so we get her kitted up, and I take her along to the Twin Cracks, where she does a Mod, then a couple of Diffs, and finally we bring her back to Black Hawk, and Mam takes her up the Chimney. We all sit at the top for a while, the grouse shouting at us, and she’s still looking out over to the West, towards Lose Hill and Castleton, and she says ‘Beautiful’, once again, and ‘Much prettier than Northampton’.
“So Mam says, ‘How did you find the climbing?’, and Tracy gives us a little smile, and says it’s not really for her, but then she follows that with ‘I think I’ve got a bit of an idea what he was feeling. Addictive, isn’t it’, so we both nod, and she says ‘I think I’ll avoid getting hooked, but thanks, you’ve really helped’, and then we are all off home, and, well, we never saw her again”
I found my heart in my mouth.
“You don’t think…”
Mam shook her head.
“No, love. That wasn’t the feeling we got. I really think she found what she was looking for, the ‘why’ of Danny’s death, and to be honest, I felt that she was able to start grieving properly. Healthily, that is. So, yes: adventure as therapy. Not a small thing, that”
We sat for a while in silence, till Dad gave us both a grin.
“I think I like your choice of course, love! Whose turn to cook tonight?”
Alys was suitably distant at school, which I was grateful for, as Ifor and the rest needed no more ammunition handed to them. I still got the smiles and the little jokes, though, and I noticed that she was steadily relaxing in our little girly midday group, although she was not one of those like Nea who seemed to find Mr Potter the Biology teacher to be more than fascinating. She did chip away, though, but without malice.
“Nea?”
“Yeah, Alys?”
“That is indeed my name. I thought you fancied Leigh Halfpenny?”
Nea looked puzzled at the question.
“I do! But he’s, well…”
She dropped her voice, checking for listeners.
“Alys, there are people you can fancy, from the telly and that, and you’ll never see them, not in real life, so you save them up, for, well, you know. Nice thoughts on your own, ah?”
Sali’s jaw dropped.
“Nea Parry! You are unbelievable!”
“Me? Not at all. Anyway, Mr Potter, he’s here. Him I can dream about with my eyes open. You’ll learn”
That, of course, led to more squealing, until Sali looked at Alys, and smiled in a much sadder way.
“Not for you, though, is he? Mr Potter, I mean?”
I kicked the side of her foot, and she pulled it back as best as she could manage.
“I mean, being, you know, must be hard finding a nice boy who, you know…”
Alys nodded, and I was flooded with relief that Sali hadn’t ploughed on with her revelations. My own love offered her own plasterwork to the crack that Sali had nearly opened.
“It is, Sal, it is, but, well… Look, I’m only just getting rid of the old life, old rubbish, WRONG life, yeah? Got a few more important things to get through before I worry about boys and stuff. Anyway, still young, aren’t we? Still time to see what’s coming. I mean…”
She leant forward, doing exactly the same checking-for-listeners as Nea had, before dropping the punchline.
“Ifor Watkins might grow up!”
Once the laughter had died down, she smiled at all of us, but her next words told me who that smile was really intended for.
“I really think there’ll be someone for me, some day. No hurry, aye? Except now, for Geography!”
Subtly, silently, as the other two scurried off to the lesson, she managed to give my hand a squeeze.
I settled on my O-level subjects in the end, and while they included the obvious compulsory ones such as English, Welsh and Maths, I added Biology (despite the stories about Mr Potter), Physics and Chemistry, together with Technology and Computer Science, plus French.
It was Alys who was puzzled at that last addition.
“I can see why the others, what with it being all physiology and tech stuff, but why Frog?”
“Not doing dressmaking, Alys”
She groaned at the dreadful pun.
“Frog as in amphibian and garlicky man in a beret, not ffrog as in dress, and you knew that! Why?”
I shrugged.
“Obvious, really. Lots of stuff to do in the Alps, and there it’s really a choice between French, German and Italian, and this school doesn’t do Italian, and if I do Chemistry, I can’t do German, cause it’s either-or yeah? What about you?”
“Well… not doing Physics or French, but I have got History and Geography. So…”
Her smile made my breath catch.
“So, apart from the last two, we should be together most of the time. Think of me… I’ll be your Mr Potter, if you’ll be mine”
Comments
I’ll be your Mr Potter, if you’ll be mine”
fantastic!
its
certainly a grand view from Stanage up the Hope valley, I'm really missing those hills while i'm down here in Brizzle. For most of my life they were a 30/45 minute ride away (well its a fair chunk of climbing!), its only when you aren't that close that you really appreciate what's on the doorstep.
Enjoying the gentler pace of this thread in your often very gritty (like Stanage!) story world, thanks for sharing it
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Yet again
I have slipped myself into the story, sort of.
Yes, I had a real Biology teacher, really called that name, and really the object of desire of every girl. As this was the early seventies, I should describe this Adonis; ladies, if you feel the vapours approaching, use the fans provided, or perhaps a damp towelette to the forehead. Lilies may be clutched, if available....
He was about 5'8", dark hair to his collar. A Pancho Villa moustache, a suit-style leather jacket with Lapels (the capital letter is necessary). a kipper tie (do they have that term over the pond? A VERY wide tie) in the same paisley pattern as his shirt, which also had Lapels, Lapels that could have worked as lifting surfaces in a high wind.. Flared trousers, heeled Chelsea boots, and he drove an MGB in a sort of burnt orange colour.
Sex on legs!
The woman at Stanage was someone I met by chance. Her brother had died in a well-known disaster that had sent shockwaves through the climbing world, and I will not name him, but I had met him a couple of times out and about. The climbing went much as described, and she really, really put her heart and soul into getting up routes that I considered easy, but that wasn't the important thing. She wanted to experience at least something of her brother's life, but it was already gone.
There is usually a steady breeze over the Edge, as it faces SW at that point, and there are often hang gliders or parapentists skimming the slope. You look down Hope Valley, the plume of steam from the cement works chimney as prominent as the sharp hook of Lose Hill, and behind you the moorland stretches back towards Sheffield. Walkers are regular along both top and bottom of the edge, while red grouse shout "Go back! Go back!" from the heather. We met as strangers, and parted as strangers who had shared more than a little.
I often think back to that day, I was out with the real-life 'Pat', who understood, and simply left us to our grieving, me for a name in the news, and the lady for a brother she had loved but never really understood.
Steph, you've done it again!
Stirring more memories. I and a fellow student were engaged in our (individual, but adjacent areas) geology field-mapping. We had separate accommodation, me in a holiday cottage, he in the Nant Gwynant Youth Hostel, and one morning when we met, he told me of that morning's news that a fellow student (and like me a member of the university mountaineering club) had died on their expedition to the Cuillin. We later discovered that they had completed the climb, were walking (unroped -- the climb was over, after all) along the ridge, when the part of ridge he had just stood on decided that it was time to get detached, and dumped him into Glen Coruisk. Two years later, after my graduation, three of us did what was my final mountaineering trip to sample the significant parts of mountaineering Scotland -- Glencoe, Nevis, three Torridonian ridges, and finally, Skye. Of course we paid our belated final respects at our dead former colleague's grave and to my shame I cannot remember the name of that village on Skye (probably Portree). From then on it was part of my past, which needs things like your writings to bring back to mind.
Even sad days remembered are important.
Dave
Over and done
See the scene in Sweat and Tears where complacency causes an accident...
Ain't It Strange?
If I'm attached to terra firma I have no head for climbing, but I love paragliding and parasailing. Floating is just fine. Yet I don't think I could jump out of a plane!
Never climbed, but interesting
Highest I can remember being was roof of 1 or 2 story building (can't remember which) but even that tiny bit of elevation gave me a different viewpoint to see from. I like reading stories that show me how others see the world; it opens my eyes to other ways to see the world. Thank you for writing this.