CHAPTER 52
It was Dad who started the healing process, pulling out a whole collection of anecdotes and references.

“People do silly things, love. They do them everywhere; it’s just that when it’s in the hills, it can get serious. That’s the thing about it: something happens, no warning, and, well. I… Before your Mam and me got together, I used to spend a lot of time in Scotland, with your uncle Mike. We were called out…”

He shook his head.

“We were asked to help with one or… with a few recoveries. One was messy, enough said. Can’t watch folk being silly now without saying something, which usually gets a mouthful back. People don’t like being told”

He stared at the wall for a few seconds, before turning back to me.

“How are you? Really? No silliness, please, love”

I thought for a while, but in the end, there was only one answer I could offer him.

“I don’t know, Dad. It was so much… so soon, yes? I think I’ll be fine. Just might take a little time”

He squeezed me, which helped, as it always did, and I asked myself where I would be without him and Mam. That started me giggling, as it was a given that I wouldn’t ever have existed without them, which in turn led to my Dad asking what was funny, and after another hug, he settled back into our settee, smirking slightly.

“Years ago, love, one early Easter, there was a young man, just starting to get used to winter climbing kit. He had gone up onto the top of the Glyders by way of the Gribin, carrying crampons and an ice-climbing axe he had borrowed from his old sixth form college. Usual thing, the weather, mixed sleet and rain down at the valley, driving snow up at the top. He got to the exit onto the plateau, and there’s the tiniest of cornices just starting to form, so he cuts his way through, crampons on, feeling all mountaineerous as he does so. He’s well-equipped, got food and stuff, little stove just in case, proper cag and overtrousers---”

“Cagtrousers, Dad. Steph calls them cagtrousers”

“Okay… so he does the walk out by Glyder Fach to the Cantilever, comes back by way of Castell y Gwynt, and sits down by the snowman to eat his lunch”

“Snowman?”

“Yup. He wanted to be sure of his return route, so he stopped to build a snowman as a marker. Anyway. Off he goes back down the Gribin, crampons working well, feeling ten feet tall. By the time he’s down the Bochlwyd path, the snow has turned to rain, of course, but those crampons are biting just as well on the wet grass, so he keeps them on until he’s almost back at the Idwal path, where he starts to think he’ll look a bit of a tit walking across grass in them. So, he stops, sits down on a boulder, and takes them off. Two steps down the slope, and his feet slide straight away from him, and he turns an ankle. Has to walk all the way down to the car park, supporting himself on the axe, which is only a short one, technical climbing tool. Ends up looking like an even bigger tit”

I looked up at him from where we were cuddled together.

“I think I’ve heard that one before, Dad. Would you have been that young man, by any chance?”

He grinned.

“Might have been. Might not even have been a man. It is still a good story, and, to be honest, it’s far more typical of what the Rescue deals with than what you’ve just had. Now, are you sure you want to continue with the team?”

I gave that question a few minutes of hard thought, as Dad had turned absolutely serious when he asked it, but there was only one possible answer. I was a climber, always would be unless or until something changed that, and the Rescue would always be the ones to deal with that sort of event. I didn’t know if that woman, Joyce, would ever walk again, given the head injury and that catastrophic damage to her legs, but the only reason she was still breathing was the Rescue. It wasn’t my rescue, in the end, but it remained a debt I needed to pay, simply for being a climber.

“Yes, Dad. No real choice, have I?”

“No, love. And being you, I couldn’t see, didn’t expect, any other answer. Tea?”

I just nodded, and grinned. He knew me so, so well. There was no choice, really: I owed that debt, and my safety net would always be there. For once, the choice was as simple as possible: this was my home, my community. I had obligations.

That Summer continued in its usual way. Neil was up a couple of times, as soppy as ever. Alys and I moved into her bedroom as a default. I went on a number of callouts with the rescue, ranging from a couple who simply got lost on Y Garn, descending towards Nant Peris rather than the Kitchen (How, I asked myself. Can’t you read a compass?), to a man who got his knee well and truly jammed in the polished crack that starts pitch two of Milestone Direct.

That one, I could understand. That crack is a sod. He turned out to be reasonably experienced as a climber, taking his son up a route he had apparently soloed multiple times. That lad couldn’t stop giggling while we extracted his dad by way of a toprope haul. He gleefully reported that the man’s final bit of advice had been “Don’t get your knee stuck in here”.

In the down time, I swept floors and emptied bins, cleaned toilets and restocked toilet roll supplies, and came home each evening to people I loved, and that I knew loved me. There were Team nights out in the Cow, days off when Alys and I walked hand in hand well away from the tourist routes, in places like Cwm Cywion, where she waited while I worked out lines on the huge sweep of slabs there, and other times with the girls, once more at the Cow.

By girls, of course, I actually mean said girls and their men. Colin was as steady as ever, but it was a day in August that we got the big surprise. It was during one of the folk nights, no guest along, so just the usual mix of floor spots. I did my bit with my harp. Illtyd sang, Alys’ Dad played a few tunes, and Elen let us see her left hand.

I collared her in the ladies’ a little while after she had flashed the diamond, and she was absolutely direct in her answers.

“Yes, I know. Wasn’t really the nicest to him, was I? And so much of what he did, it could have been written off as creepy, if it hadn’t been for that time in Tenerife… Enfys?”

“That’s my name”

“He was never a stalker, was he?”

“Not as I saw it. Did you think that?”

She drew a deep breath, watching herself in the mirror.

“He is, was, really worried that he might have come across that way. I was wondering that when we were out there. I know you thought… When he was staring at the waiters, I had to think twice, but, you know? There’s ways that could have gone. He wasn’t saying ‘She isn’t looking my way because’, but ‘That’s why she isn’t looking my way’. Get it?”

I shook my head, utterly confused.

“No. I’m lost with that. Aren’t they the same thing?”

“Ah, not good with words, am I? Try again. They’re the same result, but from different angles. The first one is putting the blame on me, thinking I’m shallow, just watching men’s arses to lech after them”

I snorted out a laugh, needing to find a tissue to wipe my nose.

“You absolutely were leching, though!”

She grinned happily.

“Definitely was! Weren’t you? Oh, you know what I mean. No, in the first one, I meant that he could have been letting his ego take over: what has that waiter got that I haven’t? The second, though, that’s, what I mean is a different thing. It’s… It’s resignation, not indignation. Not jealousy, but regret. I talked to him about it”

“And what did he say?”

“Basically that. That he watched where my eyes went, accepted he stood no chance and decided to stick to being a good mate. That’s the thing, Enfys, that’s what sealed the deal on this ring. What he said, it wasn’t all romance, ah? He said he liked me, not just fancied me”

I must have looked puzzled once more, clearly having a slow day, for she stepped forward to take my hands, a much gentler smile on her face.

“Easy for you two, you and Alys. You’ve always liked each other.. I know it’s not easier, being you know…”

“Her being trans?”

A firm shake of her head.

“No. Not that. The two of you being gay is what I meant. No, look at Sali and Colin. Joined at the hip, they are. What it is, I know I look okay, but the boys, they’ve never got past that, never lifted their eyes from my tits to my face, and that’s Warren. He worked out where he stood with me, at the start, and then, when we went up that mountain, he was there not because I was, though he says he was glad I was there. No, was there because it was something he wanted to do, and it was a bonus doing it with people he liked. Took me a while to understand he wasn’t following my arse up, but walking beside a friend”

“He doesn’t fancy you, then? Physically?”

Elen blushed bright crimson.

“Um, I, well, there’s no doubt that he does, and we will leave it there”

Suddenly, she snorted out a laugh as messy as mine had been, and as she wiped her own face, she took a few deep breaths before explaining.

“What I said about Sali and Colin, Enfys. Joined at the hip. Just, in English, it could have been ‘joined at the chip’, yes?”

“That, girl, was dreadful, even for you!”

“I thank you! A girl does her best, and it is nice to be appreciated. None of what I said is for Warren, though”

“Course not”

We made our way past the crowd at the bar to where Warren was still being teased by half the pub. As I took my seat, I found myself looking at my own lover with all sorts of ideas bubbling up.

No doubts, though. Never a doubt.