CHAPTER 31
When you are a small child, Summer lasts forever, and for me it was almost like that.

As Karen was a kept woman, and the holiday was sort of Tom’s job, they stayed on, but the rest had jobs to go back to. All except Sally, of course, who shared the same schedule as me. Brian had off-season training to coordinate, Roger and Simon had a life in London.

Tessa, working for her cousin, was also off, and I had a surprise when she appeared at the car, with her bags, still in a cotton dress. She caught my raised eyebrows, and smiled, a little sadly.

“It’s time, Stevie. Time I grew up and stopped being frightened, and how can it go wrong with these two to look after me?”

I gave her a hug, and then each of the boys, and then I did the hardest thing I had done since my escape, which, oddly, was also the easiest as soon as I started, and I kissed two men. Not on the lips, not sexually, but on the cheek, and out of love, for I loved those two. All they had done for me had been for nothing other than simple humanity and generosity of spirit, just as Sid had done when he took a timid little reader under his wing. I mean, I owed these two my life, along with the little family around me. Why should it be hard to give them just a small show of affection?

Simon blushed. Roger just hugged me harder. Tessa made a point of kissing me on the lips, and after the initial shock I realised her aim: this was a woman kissing a man, her way of giving two fingers to the way our bodies were screwed up. I made my own point of kissing her back, just to make my understanding clear to her.

Roger and Simon gave Nana a hug each, thanking her for her generosity and getting a very direct remark about how any bill had been paid in full.

“Aye, that’s my price canoodling with your cousin!”

Then they were off, Brian running Sid back in the Jag and the other three heading for the M6 by the scenic route over the passes and down Langdale. The holiday wasn’t over, for shortly both Iain and my girl would be back from their own family trips, and the plan was for them to join us for the week before school started again. I was determined that I would make the most of this time, for once we started the new year I would be worked tremendously hard at trying to gain the A-levels I would need for college. This was my last bit of free time for a year. And then, the day before my brother and Em joined me, Brian rang to say that the adoption papers were there. Finally, as much as Boot remained my spiritual home, the place that I felt most kinship with, finally I would have an official home.

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Tanned and gorgeous, she nearly took me off my feet with a diving hug and a kiss that left my nipples standing to attention, Iain just as tanned and smugly grinning at the two of us. Her parents had dropped her off at Kieran and Audrey’s for Iain’s new parents to drive them both up here, and I got a whole series of hugs from all of them, the two adults looking proud of their new son. He looked good, and I was beginning to see my father in him, which sort of balanced my unwanted resemblance to our mother. I had had all sorts of ideas about his return, which had included climbing, at which I was an expert now. Nana said no, emphatically, so I went to Roger.

“No. You have no idea yet of what it involves. You will get yourselves killed. Go scrambling with him, with Ada, that’ll let him see what it’s about and keep you out of too much trouble”

Well, he was off line with that one, for the trouble came two days later, with a knock on the door as we were about to settle down for tea. It was Arthur.

“Ada, is that Tom lad still here?”

“Aye, Arthur, what do tha want him for?”

“Ah, lass, there’s been a fall up in the upper dale, lad’s quite poorly, we need someone who can get up and bring him out. There’s been another one off Napes, and they’ve got the helicopter. We need some strong lads to get a stretcher up and down off the crag to where he can be treated”

“Tom’ll go, and me and the lad’ll go on ahead, aye?”

Arthur grinned. “I was hoping tha’d say that. lass. I’ll take a pack up for thee and Stevie”

He was off, as Tom started getting into his boots and Sal and Karen busied themselves with food and drink for us all. As I was about to change, Nana said “Tek them fancy rubbers of thine. We might need them.”

Several Landrovers had been brought round, and we were driven up as far past Taw House as we could get before being dropped off on foot. As Tom and the other lads loaded themselves up with the bulky rescue kit, Nana muttered “Remember thy breathing” and set off at a steady lope.

It was a warm Summer’s evening, and I quickly started to sweat as she led the way up the zigzag to the higher path past Silverybield. I felt good, the work done on the track and with Nana that Summer bringing me back towards where I had been so many years before, and I centred myself on the rhythm of my breathing, which was easier after the first steepness, and remembered her words. Look to the ground, don’t look at the heights ahead, let your arrival surprise you.

I was back in that race so many lifetimes ago, and it was just the one lap this time, but t was a long one. We panted on, my pack full of medical kit and primus slapping against my back so that I had to haul the straps that bit tighter as the sweat pooled in the small of my back and erupted from under my breasts. A fox took off from in front of us, stopping to see what we were doing once it had made safety room, and meadow pipits shot from the ground only to parachute back down. The only sound apart from that of our feet and panting breath was the ‘kronk’ of a solitary raven.

We took a pause under the splash of Cam Spout, and Nana had her little telescope out, scanning the great lump of rock that was our destination.

“Aye, Stevie, tha’re going to need those French shoes. He’s caught up on the big ledge there.”

We trotted off again, and some time later we were under the crag, where a man sat on a rock holding an obviously broken arm. He was from somewhere down South, from his accent.

“Thank god! Dick got down OK then? Is the helicopter coming?”

“Nay, lad, there’s been another accident. The lads are on their way, though. Where’s thy friend?”

“Up near the Waiting Room, I haven’t heard anything from him for a while…”

It was one of those really, really stupid accidents. They had got up Bower’s Route, as a rope of three, and Dick had set up the camera on some cable release thing to take the three of them, and Alan had stepped just that bit too far back. The two of them had then tried to reach him from the Chimneys,, but Tony, our man, had fallen badly. Dick was the one who had stumbled into the Inn nearly dead from the run down. Nana looked at Tony.

“Right, lad, tha’ve still got thy gear about thee? Ropes and slings and aal? Off with the harness, son”

She turned to me. “It’s more than a rope can do to get down from there, so we are going to climb that chimney and then I am going to let thee down to that chap so he has a hand to hold if nothing else. If tha can, tie him onto the ledge. Sharp now, he’s been there at least two hours”

She was picking through his kit, and spotted a figure of eight, as Simon called it.

Tony was staring at her. “You sure you know what to do with this stuff?”

She gave him a hard stare, and I caught that mutter again, backwards with a lamb, and we were off. Her grace on the rock was amazing, and I did my best to copy her style, such economy of effort that I was profoundly jealous. This was another side to Nana, one I had only glimpsed on Broad Stand.

The chimney was a bloody sight harder than it looked, but just about within my capabilities. I mean, I got to the top, so it must have been, my French rubbers helped, and then I watched Nana set up a complicated arrangement I later learned was called a direct belay. She had me get into Tony’s harness and tied the rope to me, then clipped it through the descendeur.

“Steve, this is important, reet? Do not hang on the rope with thy hands. Lean backwards, legs wide apart and walk down the crag. I‘ll let thy pack down to thee after, but tha’ll take down some gear to tie the poor bugger on.”

I stepped backwards towards the edge, the rope tight, and she tersely nodded and I stepped out.

There was a huge depth of fresh air under my backside, and I quailed for a bit, but then Alan moaned, and I thought, “sod it” and walked down the rock until I was at the ledge. Following Nana’s very detailed instructions, I tied his harness to some nuts I wedged in the rock, then secured myself the same way.

Alan looked at me, obviously in great pain, muttered “Angel…” and passed out.

“BOTH ON BELAY!”

“AYE AYE!!”

I untied the main rope, with a little fear. Were my belays sound? That was when i understood exactly why Nana and the boys had been so completely against my going climbing without them.

“TAKE IN!”

“TAKING IN!”

The rope slithered off up the cliff, and a minute later I heard “BELOW!” and two packs came sliding down to the ledge. There was nothing I could really do with Alan apart from cover him, but he was soon awake again.

“My friends….”

“Both fine. Rescue is on its way. Just stay comfy and we’ll soon have you down.”

I gave him a few sips of tea after I got the stove going, and watched the sun start to sink over the flank of Sca Fell. It was some time later when I heard the first yell.

“Ada! How is he?”

“Ask Stevie!”

I shouted down. “Cut face, but he had a helmet. I think spinal injury”

Slowly, slowly the lads worked their way up and around the flanks of our buttress until they could join Nana above me, and then I saw the silhouette of two men as they walked a stretcher down towards us. It was now heading towards sunset, and once beside me they nodded in recognition and salute and sent me walking back up on a man-hauled pulley system. Tom was there waiting.

“The helicopter’s on its way back, they’ll take us off from here. Well done, Stevie”

Twenty minutes later there was the whup-whup of the rotors as the RAF came round the flank of the mountain, and then the winchman was taking first the stretcher and then our little party, before landing on the valley floor to pick up Tony, and off to Carlisle hospital, and I only started to shake after we got down.

Alan died en route.