CHAPTER 13
In the end, we had it at ours, because it was closer to the Bunkhouse, and there was a club booked in for the whole week and a bit of the holidays. It meant a little bit extra work for us, but the group did their own decorations, and actually did quite a decent clean-up job afterwards, although they could have done a better effort at separating the recycling. The thought was there, though.

The run-up to the holiday itself was fun, in its own way. The Woodruffs were down for a few days, which meant a mass visit to the folk club, and for once they chose to stay at the Bunkhouse rather than camp. I collared Steph about that choice, and she grinned.

“Long story, Enfys, but first you need to know… Nope. Start from scratch. We saw the weather forecast, and it is snow above two thousand feet. That means sludge anywhere below that, and I really didn’t fancy four days in a mud-bath, nor trying to dry out damp boots in a tent. Also gives us a chance to have a few beers without needing anyone to drive”

I went to speak, and she just held up a hand.

“Nope, not even your Dad, love. Now, a few years ago… You won’t remember any of this, but before I brought Geoff here the first time, he asked if I had ever tried climbing”

I burst out laughing, as I knew how well she exceeded her husband’s ability, good as he was, and she grinned back.

“Yup! We were still learning things about each other back then, still dropping clangers now and again”

Her gaze went a little distant, a smile settling into place for a moment, then she was back with me.

“If not too soppy a subject, he is the first man, the first person I have ever loved, been in love with, I mean, and I hop the last. Not being morbid, Enfys; just, well, can’t see a life without him, not now. Lesson for you and Alys, I suppose, in that you will still be discovering stuff for years, so see that as a fun feature rather than a challenge, okay? Anyway, Christmas”

Once again, there was a little flicker in her expression, followed by a smile.

“Never did Christmas before we met, girl. I would usually just work through, do overtime on all the holidays, yeah? Different with him, and he comes with his relatives, our family, aye? These days, I work what I have to, and they will be at our place for the week. We fit the Christmas stuff around my shifts, so we do it around my work, instead of me working to blot it out. We’ll have a full house when we get home, and there are a load of other friends to see, and, and, and”

She turned a far more serious look on me.

“That is where Alys will be now, love. She’s luckier than I was, in some ways, because she is starting everything a lot younger than I did, and, well… Oh, she knows who she is, which way she needs to smile, and I didn’t have a clue till I met Geoff and his family. I don’t mean she has it easy, but I almost feel jealous… No. Not fair. Now, we have a few ideas, Geoff and me, and they aren’t about rock!”

She left it there, teasingly, and I almost forgot what she had said, as we were being handed a shedload of homework before the holidays, and there was the obligatory trip to the Cow. Alys’ parents drove my harp down that morning, so that we wouldn’t have to lug it on foot, Mr Harries keeping it in the stock room overnight so none of us would have to lug it back that evening. Before that, I had mentioned to Mr Lewis what Steph had told me, and he grinned.

“That’ll mean Banana Gully, and maybe Clogwyn y Geifr or Cwm Cneifion, then. Hang on here while I pop to the store room. What size feet?”

“Um, five”

“Hang on, then”

He was back in a few minutes carrying a cardboard box and a couple of canvas sacks, his grin wider than ever.

“Best conditions in ages, Enfys! You will either love it or hate it”

“What, Sir?”

“If I am right, they are taking you up a snow and ice route. This little lot are some flexible crampons, and a matched axe and hammer. Got a helmet?”

“Of course!”

“Then get some ski goggles or similar to go with it, and make sure you take a head torch and a survival bag. Short days, Enfys”

How stupid was I? Steph had rambled on about the snow above two thousand feet, and the tops were already caked in the stuff, and she had made it plain it didn’t involve rock.

“Duh!”

“Never mind, Enfys. I know what you are going to do at college, so this should be really useful. Just relax and enjoy it, but it will feel very precarious at first. Take your time”

I found out what he meant when the Woodruffs led me up the Idwal path before cutting off to the right for the clamber up to Cwm Clyd and the start of a route that broadened my conception of mountaineering more than anything I had done that far, because it involved nothing at all relating to rock. We spent a little while practising self-arrest on the shallower slopes before we started up the open groove of Banana Gully. Steph’n’Geoff put me in the middle of a rope of three, and we climbed it in a way she called ‘moving together’, simply climbing steadily by kicking steps, thrusting axe shafts deep into the snow, until we were under the small cornice that had formed at the top, where Steph set up the oddest belay I had ever seen, using a number of flat metal plates she called ‘dead men’.

“You’ll like this, Enfys: they made some smaller ones, so of course they decided to call them ‘dead boys’, and then someone just HAD to make a size in between, and those are called ‘dead youths’. Now, this is the lesson for this bit: I am going to cut through the cornice. It might let go, and that can mean avalanche. You and him are tied on, so if I get swept off, no worries. I just get snow everywhere!”

In the end, while some large chunks did drop on and past her, there was nothing too extreme, and we were soon on the summit of Y Garn sharing flasks of tea and Mars bars, which were so cold I thought I would break a tooth on them. Down to the fence and over the ladder styles to Llyn y Cwn, where the wind had pushed the skin of ice to one side as it formed, so that it looked like the skin on a rice pudding, folded into wrinkles on the lee side. We hit the shelf that took us down to the side of the Kitchen, and that was where things took off exponentially.

There were frozen waterfalls. Steph had metal things she walloped into the ice. We climbed on crampon points and ice picks. Up said frozen cascades.

It was only afterwards, as we sat in my own kitchen, boots filled with torn newspaper and mugs of hot chocolate in our hands, when I managed to put it into perspective.

The ice was like the slate: the basics of climbing remained the same, and it was just the concept of a ‘hold’ that had to be learned once more. Steph listened to me chatter on about that in my teenaged way, then smiled.

“Two things, love: first, there are things called mixed routes, where you will have rock as well as ice, and need to learn how to use the holds in crampons. The other…”

She looked over to my parents, and Dad winced.

“Mick Fowler?”

“Yup!”

Dad shook his head,

“No, not me. I like my holds to stay in place. To be honest, I like them to actually bloody exist in the first place! You thinking of Hastings or Dover, Steph?”

“Bloody neither of them!”

Dad turned to me, still wincing.

“Mud cliffs near Hastings, Enfys. Bloody white cliffs of Dover. Climbed using ice tools. This one here has just confirmed she isn’t quite as barking as I thought!”

Geoff snorted.

“Yeah, as far as climbing is concerned, I’ll agree, but there’s always her fiddle-playing!”

Happy days.

We finally arrived at Christmas Day itself, and I was so nervous it was all I could do to set the table. Mam had pushed the boat out, somehow finding a goose rather than a turkey, and my nerves were kept in check as I was delegated to the job of preparing and cooking several of the vegetables, but that could only work until everything was boiling or roasting away, and I was left to face the presence of Alys.

She had her hair loose over the shoulders of the simplest of cobalt-blue shift dresses, and simple it may have been, but it was gorgeous in that simplicity, almost as lovely as the smile that crowned it. I wanted…

I was heading for fifteen years old. I had all sorts of theoretical knowledge about intimacy, I was up to speed with our biology lessons, I had heard far too much playground gossip around ‘lezzers’, but none of that entered my mind.

She stood before me, she smiled, and I was complete.