CHAPTER 20
As we made our way through the traffic for the road back to the hills, Dad was chatting over his shoulder, eyes still on the road.

“So how was it then? Steph stay sane?”

Alys looked sharply at me, so I let her answer.

“Did you know who else was going to be there, Mr Hiatt?”

He nodded, still without turning.

“You mean her friend Annie, don’t you?”

“Yes. And no, not really. The girl. Shan”

“What did you think of her?”

Alys looked at me, a furrow between her eyes.

“We had a chat, without Enfys there. I’ve had it easy, haven’t I? That’s what you wanted me to see. That and what she was saying about having two mothers; that bit was for both of us”

Dad sounded a little puzzled.

“I thought… I don’t know what you mean about other stuff, but yes, Steph did mention she had two mothers. She said nothing about any other stuff. What was it?”

Alys looked at me, shaking her head as she replied to Dad.

“Not really something I can talk about, Mr Hiatt. Just say that she had a really, really bad few years when she was younger. Same with her boyfriend. Lesson for me in counting my blessings, and then, well, it gets better. One big lesson…”

She took my hand, her palm a little sweaty.

“She showed me that things get better, as long as you have one thing, and that’s friends and family and that, people who care. And then it’s the thing they call paying it forward. Stretching down to help someone up, so if you find someone who doesn’t have the friends and stuff, you just try and be there for them yourself”

Dad suddenly laughed out loud, before apologising.

“Sorry, girls, not laughing at you. It’s simply that hearing you talk like that makes me realise that my daughter actually has some decent skills at reading people. She’s picked a girlfriend who can see clearly what’s important in life”

He gave an evil cackle.

“Our work is done, ha ha! The breakdown of traditional British values is now assured!”

No wonder he got on so well with the Woodruffs.

We dropped Alys off at her place, and then dumped my stuff back at ours before Dad asked if I would mind giving him a hand turning some of the bunkhouse mattresses. Bu the time I got to bed that night, I was drained, and after a late-night chat with Alys, I settled down to the strange feeling of a real bed rather than a sleeping bag on a camping mat. The next day was another one spent catching up on small jobs in the Bunkhouse, as well as downloading all the pictures I had snapped on my phone and little camera. That was another lesson in what happens when you leave your kit with friends, as there were more than a few pictures I not only couldn’t remember taking, but would actually have been impossible for me to do so, as I was in them; as those were mostly of me with Alys, she was equally innocent of the sneakiness. I kicked myself mentally, for I had no excuses. I had already known two of that gang, so the behaviour of the rest of them should have left no surprises.

It was more than just mischief, though, but that Woodruff/Johnson extended family thing again; they didn’t ask permission when they saw something that would be appreciated by another of their in-crowd, and they were absolutely right. I picked one of the nicest ones, zooming in on our faces as we danced together, and mailed it to Enfys before settling down that night.

We still had a few days before the start of the new school year, and once again Dad knew one of the regulars was looking for a climbing partner, so I ended up seeing some less familiar rock. It came as a real shock after so many outings to crags that were nearly at the roadside to find myself with a full hillwalking rig on the long trek round to Craig yr Ysfa, starting with a walk up that horrible CEGB road again before crossing Bwlch Eryl Farchog for the slither down to the base of the crag. I could hear Dad’s voice in my head every step of the way: proper mountaineering route, yadda yadda, teach me what taking a group out is really like, yadda yadda, not just out door gymnastics for once, yadda yadda, and of course he would have been going on and on about the ‘whole of the mountain’ and using English words like ‘holistic’.

A trudge is still a trudge. The crag is nearly a thousand feet high in terms of climbable rock, and the ‘classic’ route is called Amphitheatre Buttress, topping out on the ridgeline that leads to the summit of Carnedd Llewelyn. It certainly wasn’t as accessible as Bus Stop Quarry, and I was sweating buckets by the time we got to the gearing-up spot. Vernon, Dad’s customer, was grinning happily through his beard, so before he could start channelling Dad’s Mountain Wisdom I put hm on the spot.

“You done this one before?”

“Nope!”

Oh.

“How do you want to split it up? You lead, me, or alternate?”

“Well, see how it goes. Might get knackered and need to bivvy the night on a ledge. Long route, this one!”

I caught the twinkle just in time, as he added “I have, but not for ages!”, but I was less settled when I saw his rack, which was as old as the hill itself.

“Are those home-made?”

“No, love. Just well-loved. Can’t find many Whitworth nuts these days, but this stuff was out before Hexentrics, and it’s not failed me yet”

“But… how old’s the tape they’re on? And how’s it fastened?”

“Tape knots, love. Traditional way, that is. Stopped carrying pockets full of pebbles, though; bit too trad, that, even for me”

Arsebollocks, I thought, the only word that seemed adequate. Thank you, Steph and Annie, for the necessary vocabulary in my hour of need. We roped up, I set my ground anchor, pressed at least some runners younger than I was onto Vernon, and he ambled off up the first of a series of slabs. What seemed like a couple of hundred metres later and we were still ambling up easy stuff, Vernon surprising in the economy of his movements. He didn’t place many runners, but they were all bomb-proof, and a couple of them were frankly devious in their arrangement. No camming devices at all, not even a simple Hex, but solid and reassuring in their workmanlike solidity. Another lesson learnt, and another to follow, as he let me lead a polished groove he said was the crux, and I found myself on what seemed like an ordinary walker’s track.

“Is that it? We done the whole thing?”

“Nope. Time for a bit of a rest and a cuppa with it, love. Best bit’s above; this is where we get to sit for a while and just enjoy the place”

He settled his sack carefully onto an outcrop, and I was amused to see him tie it down with a sling.

“Not going all the way back down, love! Had that happen once—never again. You take sugar?”

We sat in the August sun, sipping, both of us perched on our survival bags to keep our backsides dry, the warmth driving out some of the slight chill of the North-facing crag’s shade we had worked our way through on the way up, and Vernon sighed.

“Your Dad tells me you want to do expedition stuff, looking after people in the hills”

“Not quite. Adventure sports science, to be exact”

“Ah, well. They all say that, and what they mean is ‘any excuse to be out on the hill’, or maybe ‘and get paid for it as well’, am I right?”

I couldn’t really deny that, so just grinned, and he nodded again, eyes gazing out over the sweep of Cwm Eigiau.

“This place reminds me of another wild spot, up in Scotland. Place called Glen Etive, and a hill called something Gaelic about oystercatchers. Granite slabs, love. Really committing stuff, almost no runners, and just about enough of a slope to tempt you to climb on friction and hope. Best bit, though, is the run-out between some stances. No gear”

“What happens if you fall off?”

He laughed out loud at that.

“Depends on who you are! Most of us, you leave half your skin behind as you bounce a couple of hundred feet. One lad, though, he just jumps up and runs down as fast as he can”

A pause.

“That’s The Villain for you! I still won’t wear one of his sodding castration rigs though. Bloody Whillans harness, no ta. There’s trad, like I said, and then there’s bloody masochistic”

He looked up to what looked like a spire from our position, and smiled again.

“Anyway, Etive Slabs. Not just stances with no runners between them, but ones more than a rope’s length apart. Need to move together, Alpine style”

I shuddered at the thought, suddenly crystalline in my mind: not just having to accept the risk of holding somebody falling up to ninety metres, but having to untie and follow a leader while he was still short of his stance, neither of you attached to anything except each other…

“Right! How do you fancy doing the last bit Alpine-style, love? Just a ridge, this one. If I fall over the edge, you jump over the other side. How much do you weigh?”

That time, I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

We packed up our sacks once more, and tackled the final section, which brought us out onto the most gorgeous of knife-edge ridges, far sharper than Crib Goch, and following Vernon’s example, I slipped elegantly across the lovely little traverse, or as elegantly as I could with several coils of rope hanging from the crook of my left elbow. It felt like that first time leading Ivy Chimney, the situation so stunning that it was easy to miss how technically easy the moves were. Vernon did lay his coils over a lump of rock as a nod to a belay, but I realised that if I could have mastered his ‘trad’ head game earlier, soloing the entire route wouldn’t have been beyond me in any other way. We sorted our kit and footwear on the walker’s path to the summit of Llewelyn, and once more I caught him looking at me.

“No, love. Not yet. People die that way. Always respect the hill, because if you don’t… Seen the sky over towards the Kitchen?”

Oh. My jacket was in the bottom of my pack, stupidly, but I rapidly repacked, and by the time we were down the zig-zags to the side of Ffynnon Llugwy, the rain had arrived in a wall of fat, warm drops. I thought of how I would have felt if I had been halfway up that thousand feet of climbing, but solo, and filed Vernon’s point away in my ‘lessons learned’ mental notebook.

It sat with me until I mentioned that to Dad as he said goodnight, and he simply said “Look up Jimmy Jewell for an example. Not tonight, though”

I did as he suggested the nest morning, and felt ill. Descending an ‘easy’ route, easy for him, solo, in trainers. One spot of mud was all it had taken.

Another lesson well and truly hammered home. Its importance was highlighted even more a few days later, when I finished locking my bike up once again at school, and Alys and her smile were waiting for me, for I realised fully that I now had responsibilities beyond my own skin.