CHAPTER 70
I followed them down, working through Lexie’s revelations. Hywel’s hints about the Roberts rape trial had hit home, especially that little snippet about ‘mother in law’, and I found myself revisiting what had happened to my own lover.

How on Earth had this lot survived, never mind managed to retain their sanity? I thought once more of the blonde woman, Candice, paddling out onto the lake each day, eyes somewhere I never wanted to be, seeing, remembering…

No. Outdoor activity as therapy, mental health positive outcomes et bloody cetera. Find your smile, girl.

I was a little adrift when one of them, the younger man, Jon, wrapped the two women up in a hug. I caught just a little of their conversation, but far more than I would ever need to understand how bad the last year must have been for them. I tried to smile as I asked the obvious question.

“You really have had a shit time, haven’t you?”

The man hugged both of his friends once more, his eyes looking a little damp.

“You could say that. We’re all a bit wound up just now”

He paused, looking at his friends before turning back to me.

“Can I be really silly?”

That intrigued me.

“What particular type of silly did you have in mind?”

“This has all been nice stuff. Gentle climbing, yeah? Nothing really strenuous”

Diane burst out laughing, and I started to relax, just a little. Laughter was good. Laughter could be cathartic. Keep it going. Diane kept pushing.

“Just a bit bloody high, Jonny Boy, like that Geoff said about his Missus!”

Jon shook his head.

“Not what I mean. Look: an easy walk up here, lots of climbing, lots of time to think. Is there anything a bit more energetic, something that would burn some of this angst off?”

If laughter was good, went my thoughts, that could work both ways. I chose my next words carefully.

“I think I can arrange that. Follow me!”

Dad had shown me that part of the slab when he first took me out.

“Nothing high here, love”, he had said, “But what we call problems. There’s even a decent hand jam. This bit is long enough to qualify as a climb, though, and…” he had continued on, explaining how the ‘problem’ actually packed in a usefully high number of techniques.

“I call it Curving Corner, but there’s no way I was first up it. Too obvious a line, this”

Someone, however, on one of the climbing websites, has claimed if. Called it ‘Nerd Corner’. Sod that, as far as I was concerned. It’s a corner, and it curves, and it is an obvious line. Pro head on, Hiatt.

I kept the memory flowing as I spoke to the coppers

“Nothing too high here, but there are a few of what the serious climbers call ‘problems’, ah? This is one of my Dad’s old friends. It’s called Curving Corner...”

I talked them through techniques, including jamming and the layback needed to get into the corner proper, and they were off. Ricky did the safety checks as I set up a belay on the rounded little lump at the top, and we were climbing. Jon was first, then Diane and her husband, and all three opted to take the route back and foot. It was Lexie who opted for the alternative, jamming, and my respect for her went up. If things had been different, I realised, if there had never been an Alys, then…

But there was an Alys, and for that I gave so much thanks to whatever had made that so.

Lexie, naturally, got some gritrash, which Ricky sorted and then explained. What else could the others do but try the same technique? It seemed to spark their competitive streak, which I realised was rather powerful, but they were laughing, and that was so much better than what I had seen when they had arrived.

Job done. They tired, in the end, so it was back down to the bus and the Brenin, Diane and Lexie chatting all the way. I just hoped that their souls could heal as quickly as Lexie’s wounded hand would.

Once we had them settled back at our base, I sat down in the office with a cuppa, Ricky grabbing one of the chairs as Ross did some admin thing or other. The younger man was pensive.

“Enfys?”

“That’s my name”

“Serious, woman. They are seriously messed up, aren’t they?”

I nodded.

“Yup. Watching their backs, mate?”

His nod was all the reassurance I needed.

The weather turned wetter for the next couple of days, so it was hillwalking for me and a few of the crowd, with a bit of time on the dry (ha!) ski slope. Nothing too strenuous for the walks, just an up-and-back on the Pyg Track, the snow at the top almost gone under the warmer rain, and then the Glyders from Cwmffynnon, returning to a pick-up at the base of the Miners’ Track by the Pen y Gwryd. The weather picked up the next day, so we split our climbers and I lost the toss to Ricky. He got to go to the Bus Stop, while I ended up, with the cheerful support of Ross and the Woodruffs, on Hope at Idwal.

By ‘cheerful support’, of course, I mean gloating from Geoff, as the full extent of his lies became apparent to the coppers. Four ropes of two, the huge stances on that route letting us move a lot more quickly than such an arrangement would normally involve.

The climb is about a hundred and forty metres of route, followed by what feels like the same distance again before reaching the start of the descent path, which isn’t actually a path for some distance but rather a downward scramble. Ross took Blake, Steph led Diane, Geoff belayed Jon, probably for extra teasing at the crux, and of course I took Lexie up.

The initial two pitches are usually combined into one, and are pretty straightforward slab climbing. After that, there is a pocketed wall followed a bit later by a hanging corner, and then the final moves onto the belay ledge before the ‘upward descent’. The problem comes between the initial slabs and the pocketed wall, where a tongue of rock leads by parallel cracks to a huge flake. Unfortunately, after over a century of climbing the route, it is extremely polished.

We all got up, probably with some rather tight ropes for a couple of our seconds, and I noticed some seriously critical looks at a grinning Mister Woodruff.

“What? Steph did it to me the first time! It’s traditional climbing, after all, and that is very traditional”

His wife called down from her stance at the base of the corner pitch.

“First ascent was by a woman, anyway, and it was on-sight”

Really? I hadn’t known that, and resolved to look it up when I had time, but right then I was enjoying the final pitch, which is a really, really easy one in the most delightful of positions, giving a wonderful ‘way out there’ feel. To me, it is one of those pitches that either hooks you on climbing for the rest of your life or demonstrates that you have no soul at all.

I may, of course, be a little biased.

The ‘up then down’ descent route brought more snarky comments directed at Geoff, but he simply grinned and made sure he was ready to lend a hand at each tricky bit. Once we were down at the base of the Slabs once more, he looked round the group, shrugged, and asked “What?”, at which his wife slapped his arse before corpsing with laughter.

I think the rest forgave him after the next day, on which Ricky and I took all of the coppers and their driver along the Horseshoe from Pen y Pass, the Woodruffs once again ‘just happening’ to be there in time to join us. My surprise on that trip was that it was the big man, Blake, who wobbled slightly at the start of the narrow bit, and it was one of his colleagues, the scar-faced man, who talked him across.

Teamwork.

We ground up the long ridge to the trig point on Carnedd Ugain, then down to the last slog up next to the railway line for a cuppa in the summit café. I don’t like the start of the Watkin Path, as it is horribly eroded and loose, so I was almost pleased when Ricky led me outside and pointed over towards Moel Hebog, or rather where that hill usually sat.

“That clag’s moving this way, Enfys. Time to bail?”

I watched the clouds for a couple of seconds before agreeing.

“That looks pretty evil to me, Ricky. PYG all the way or Miners’ Path?”

“Oh, get them down to the junction and decide there?”

“Works for me. Time to kick them out of the café, then”

We were a little short of the junction when the rain and wind arrived. I called them into a huddle.

“We need to get down sharpish. Not to the car park so much as to a lower altitude, so we are going down to join the easier path, which is some way below us. Now, this area of hill can be dangerous, as there are trial levels everywhere—big trenches cut into the rock to look for copper ore. Stay together as a group, please; no looking for shortcuts”

I ended up really pleased with their discipline, which I suppose shouldn’t have surprised me. The wind was building steadily, and as we emerged from the end of Cwm Dyli, by Llyn Teyrn, it really caught us, along with an almost Biblical quantity of rain. The path is almost flat there, and well surfaced, but the cloudbase was dropping swiftly. A close thing, and it fitted so well with something Mr Lewis had said years ago: better coming down upright than horizontal.

We piled into the bus for the trip back, windows steamed up and the whole thing rocking in the wind, and once we were back at the Brenin there were queues for showers, and an hour later we gathered in the bar for tea. I had been unsure at that, intending to leave them to their privacy, but Lexie insisted, and I simply sat in a corner, smiled, and tried to work out some of the in-jokes.

We did have the new arrivals Lexie had promised, yet another very big man, along with Lexie’s Lisa. That big man, Barry, was now clearly with the blonde I had been worrying about, and as her team teased her, I was studying her expression, which had changed from that emptiness to a real embarrassment. A drowning woman, resigned to her fate, suddenly finding a lifeline.

That metaphor shook me, for she had spent almost all of her time with us actually away from us, out on the water. Close those thoughts down, Enfys. What left me wobbling in my own way was watching Lexie and Lisa together, for the affection, the love, was so clear, so obvious, and it hit a vulnerable spot in me very, very hard.

I knew who I loved, and I knew absolutely why I loved her, as well as the fact that she loved me. Naturally, as is the way in such things, I couldn’t see why she loved me, but never mind. What struck me then was that old chestnut of ‘not just me’, especially from my viewpoint as ‘the only lesbian in the village’. Yes, I know it takes two in such cases, but Alys was away…

That was another moment of insight, as I realised that I had never been that ‘only lesbian’, precisely because of Alys. How would I have coped without her, considering how hard I was finding it doing exactly that?

Sleep wasn’t easy that night.

I persuaded several of them to go on the zipwire rides the next day, showing them how much fun it was by way of some of my helmet camera footage, along with some Ish had mailed me,, but for some odd reason more than a few didn’t seem to fancy the idea. Strange, that. Clearly, some people lack any sense of adventure.

That week, the club at the Cow was on a Saturday, as they had managed to get Jimmy Kerr for a main act. After a meal, we rode down in the buses, a larger group than I had expected, and I pointed out the usual spots, such as where the speed trap was normally set up and, after a wink to Lexie, the direction of my house. I am sure I heard a sniff from Diane, but Lisa was having to stifle giggles.

Jimmy was waiting in the Cow, doing his usual ‘tweedy old man’ act, but his greetings to Steph’n’Geoff were as genuine as ever. I settled back in one of our reserved seats, a glass of white wine to hand, and simply watched my guests, customers… I just watched my new friends relax in a visible way.

Jimmy was also as entertaining as ever, but to my delight and surprise, some of the coppers did floor spots. Four of them joined Hywel to sing the song I had suggested to that Gog woman’s friends, ‘A Miner’s Life’, which went down a storm, as it always does in the Cow, and my blonde and the woman called Ellen did a cover of one of Mam’s favourite Suzanne Vega songs, ‘Calypso’.

Dil had my harp ready, of course, as Mam had dropped it down the day before, so we finished off the evening with a group performance--- Jimmy and Steph on fiddles, Geoff on octave mandolin and me on my own cherished instrument. The coppers would be away back South, and possibly, probably, back to even more crap, but I was seeing life there at last. I even got a hug and a quiet ‘thank you’ from Lexie’s other half Lisa, and for once, in so many ways, that life seemed to be looking up for them.