14
From: AdenD@horizon.comSubject:
Here is the news in English
Tom:
My apologies for the delay in replying to your mail. I could at this
point offer a number of excuses, but to be frank it’s been a rather crowded few
days. You and Jake may like to know that Gerry is here. He took a plane out of
Seattle one night when things all got a bit much, and Luath and Flynn met him
at the Texas airport. He, Ash and Luath are currently staying with us. Gerry
has some minor chronic gallstone concerns for which Ash explained they have
booked surgery shortly in Seattle. We’re assured this is routine minor surgery,
minimally invasive, and should result in Gerry being far more comfortable.
Sincerely
D
Subject: Re: Here is the news in English
Thanks for the news on Gerry. Jake’s response included a whole lot of what? and how? and he’s gone to ring Paul. I’ve
accused him of only wanting in on the gossip but he says it makes a change from
camp gossip.
I was glad of your email and any news that didn’t involve ice. We’ve had a bloody nasty few days. We went up to camp two as planned, made good time, no problems and were settling into our tents when an Australian team radioed down from camp three to say one of their team had fallen, and above camp one if they say someone’s ‘fallen’ they mean the climber was last seen plunging down several hundred feet of ice face. The ice might as well be granite, if you’ve bounced down several hundred vertical feet of it at high speed you’re not likely to get up again. The guy hadn’t clipped in to the safety line, he was probably in early stage hypoxia as it was the first time he’d been that high and no one was near enough to see he was in trouble, he lost his balance and was gone. We went out to take a look around and Jake found him. I’ve seen quite a few human remains in various states in my time, but this poor bastard was smashed, and I hope he was dead long before he came to a stop. There was a quick debate by radio with the Australian team about what they wanted to do, it’s not easy getting a body down from anywhere above base camp and a lot of risk for everyone involved in trying. The agreement was we left him where he was for his team to make a decision. Most bodies here are interred by being lowered into the nearest deep crevasse, it’s the best you can do. On the other hand, I’ve seen a certain amount of people up here not wanting to go anywhere near someone dead or dying, it’s too immediate a reality to deal with.
We went back down to camp two and started to settle in again, and then
Jake started sounding slurred and had a bad headache, all the signs of cerebral
oedema, which scared the living hell out of me. I was livid with the Australian
team that after climbing all day to our own carefully planned limits we’d had
to go out to spend more energy at more altitude, and get stressed and upset
which raises the risk from mountain sickness. Totally irrational, the poor
bastard didn’t mean to fall and there was nothing his team could have done.
It’s a constant balancing act up here between what you can safely plan to do,
taking into account your own limits, and what you can then give beyond those
limits for someone else who unexpectedly needs help or gets into trouble,
without you putting yourself and your own team in danger. It was dark by this
point, Jake absolutely refused to let me short rope him, and it’s not easy to
have a row at altitude where there’s hardly any bloody oxygen. It took us over
four hours in bad weather to walk down to base camp to the team doctor, who
stuffed him full of fluids and painkillers and she and I sat most of the rest
of the night in her tent watching Jake sleep until we were both convinced we
didn’t need to descend any lower. I swear, we talked about this for weeks
before we came out here, and it’s not like we haven’t been used to doing high
chance things together for years, but up here I’m wary all the time for myself
and you’d have to be insane not to be, but I’m even more scared for Jake while
I’m watching him take all the same calculated risks I’m taking and its 24 hours
a day, constant, taking those risks and escalating them. I don’t want to quit,
but I don’t do great under stress either, so all in all it’s a joy to hear that
there are still normal people out there doing normal things, and that other
people are having a lousy time as well as me.
T
~ * ~
“Dale…
said something about a child following him around.” Tom said a whole lot
later.
It
was pitch dark outside, a clear night and so cold he was watching the
condensation of their breath crystallise into delicate ice on any surface it
touched. Even tears turned to ice up here. There was a curious sense of – peace
left in him, aided by the physical exhaustion of the day’s climbing. Of no
secrets left and the burden of them released, leaving him empty and feeling
slightly drunk. Of being open and sensitive in a way that was almost
overwhelming, even the most ordinary things. The press of Jake’s body against
his in the sleeping bag they were zipped into. The Day-Glo orange of the tent,
the familiar bits of their kit by the door. The utter silence of the ice
outside. In base camp it was never completely silent, the ice fall groaned and
creaked and cracked and rumbled frequently and people came and went with their
boots crunching on the shale. The music could be heard in the distance until
late from compounds holding parties trying to keep warm. Up here – people up
here were tired. Extremely tired. They got to their tents and they rested.
Hard. And when the temperature went down they zipped in and burrowed into
sleeping bags to try to stay bearably warm and you might as well have been the
only tent on the mountain, hours of hard climbing away from civilisation. You
heard nothing. You saw nothing. Isolated tents in an isolated, tiny village of
canvas, half way up to the roof of the world.
“Stuck
in that moment, hating him and hating everything… I think he must have been
very small when whatever it was happened. He said he was looking with intention
at trapped moments of time, those memories, how they were still affecting him.
They were the root of why he found it…….” he trailed off, not sure how to put
it into words. Jake waited, his back solidly to the wall of the tent which
shielded out some of the cold that radiated through it, one arm behind his
head, the other competently folded around Tom around his shoulders where it
gave most warmth as he lay on Jake’s chest, huddled particularly close tonight.
Although if you’re honest – you might
stalk around the place looking confident and tough but you spend a hell of a
lot of time clutching him just like this when there’s no one else to see.
That
thought in himself would have usually made him force himself to let go, ashamed
and angry with himself and determined to do better. Although the determination
never lasted very long. He felt that exact pull now; the impulse to shut down,
close up, the well of anger – and for the first time saw it from the outside
for what it was.
Because that’s too needy. Too demanding.
Pathetic. Who wants to be around that? Be a man.
Whose voice is that?
Mine. Saying what – probably – I thought
my father would have wanted me to say. Did I ever really hear him say any of
that? It means ‘I don’t like myself’. It means ‘I know I’ll eventually bore you
to tears of hanging around me’.
Fear.
That
was not possible to say. Tom took a breath instead, trying to choose his words
carefully, aware that the impulse to slide down into that angry, dark, grim
wallow that usually would have swallowed him whole without his noticing - was there. But somewhat palely there, and he
felt stood apart from it. It felt different. The ability to look at it and
choose – was different. It took some careful breathing but he could feel the
choice.
“…
He said it was ironic he and I both wanted relationships so based on
communication. Honesty. When we both suck at it.”
“Suck?”
Jake sounded amused.
“I’m
lousy at it. I know what he means. He gets the necessity, he’s committed, he
wants to do it, he works on learning how.”
“I
heard you give him some pretty good advice over the summer.” Jake said mildly.
Tom gave a rather bitter snort.
“Oh
I can talk the talk no problem. Academically I could lecture in it. Being A
Better Brat. Undergrads sign up here. Just don’t ask me – or rather you I
suppose – what the hell it looks like when I’m actually doing it in my own life
rather than telling someone else objectively what they should do.”
“You
and I do just fine. If I needed you to do something differently you’d be the
first to know.” Jake said definitively. “I don’t.”
“Only
because you compensate for me all the time.” Tom fumbled a hand out in the dark
to find his face, pulled it over to find his mouth and kissed him. “You’re way
too nice and way too sympathetic-”
“Yeah
if you had your way you wouldn’t stop until you were in chains in some dungeon
somewhere.” Jake dug his fingers into Tom’s ribs until he squirmed. “Still
feeling too guilty to enjoy it either, which is why you should never be allowed
to get your way under any circumstances. You do not need to do anything differently for me or because of me because we
are fine the way we are and I’ll make very sure we stay fine, I have got that
one covered. If you want to, that’s a
very different matter. If you want to, then whatever you want to explore or try
I’m with you all the way. But I’m equally cool with hanging out with Lucifer
slash Cain, slash anyone else dark and evil you feel romantically personified
by until the end of time if that’s what you’re up for, that’s the guy I fell in
love with.”
“You
are a lousy Top!” Tom shook his head,
somewhere between deeply touched and exasperated. “You are supposed to be
exhorting character building, moral development, the pursuit of excellence and
all kinds of stuff good little brats are supposed to get on with, you are not supposed to encourage me to be dark
and twisted if I want to.”
“Why
not?” Jake said practically. “It sounds good to me? You need sleep,
sunshine.”
“So
do you.”
“Yeah,
but I’ve got you to repress first.”
“You’re
not going to get any watery tarts lobbing swords at you up here, I promise you.”
Tom shifted over onto his back to let Jake get more comfortable in the position
he usually slept in. “Yetis possibly.”
He
felt as much as heard Jake laugh. A deep, rich sound even with the strain the
cold air was taking on his throat.
“Yeah.
Settle down or it’s the vache. I’ve warned you.”
Tom
smiled, watching the roof of the tent above them with its faintly sparkling ice
coating.
“Although
we’re lying on a sea bed. There’s fossils of marine life in the rocks here,
I’ve seen pictures. This was all under the Tethys sea once, there were
prehistoric monsters cruising here before the Indian shelf smashed into
Cimmeria and ploughed the ground up thousands of feet into the sky.”
And
froze it. Gliding plesiosaurs, placodonts and pistosaurids once passed over
this surface before it sedimented into rock, built of once-living bone and
earth. From low depths witnessing warm ocean giants to be thrown to a height
towering above the world, to be encased in shimmering ice. This was a strange
place and had been so for millions of years.
“So
watery tarts are not all that implausible.” he amended. “If one does hand you a
sword she’s probably legit.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Neither
of them slept much. Shortly after 4.30am they got up in the freezing, cramped
cold of the tent, moving with care to avoid knocking the canvas and showering
everything with crystalised ice which would then melt and make everything wet,
melted enough ice to drink and force a few spoonfuls of hot oatmeal down,
kitted up again and the five of them zipped up their tents and walked out
together into the icy dark, leaving camp two behind them to start up the Lhotse
face. Tom was pulling his boots on with fingers that still hadn’t properly
warmed up when he felt something crunch under his foot and investigated the
inside of the boot more thoroughly. Jake was outside the tent, crampons on,
rigging the ropes a little more securely to ensure the tent was still there
when they came back. The crunching sound turned out to be a scrap of paper with
Jake’s writing across it.
I love you.
Soppy bugger. He’d taken to
doing this. In the last few days Tom had found several messages, some
schmaltzier than others, hidden in the most unlikely of places so that he kept
stumbling across them. He sat looking at this one for some seconds with his
eyes stinging before he shoved it deep into the depths of his snow suit and
finished putting his boot on.
The
first stretch out of camp two was a bugger of scree and loose rock that camp
two sat on, which was hard to walk on in the dark, took time as it rolled and
shifted under your feet like walking on a steep shingle beach, and sapped
energy from your legs as you floundered over it. Beyond that was a walk over a
snowfield so gentle it might have been the nursery slopes of some ski resort if
you didn’t have to constantly check your path for snow bridges that would give
way as soon as you stepped on them. And that last section of the Cwm led to the
towering blue ice wall of the 5000 foot Lhotse Face. From there it was a long,
slow climb directly upwards, much of it on near vertical faces, ladders and
ropes and ice cliffs, and they planned to be several hours up it this morning
before the sun was full up and embarked on its daily job of making the mountain
less stable after the deep freeze of the night. They would ascend nearly 3000
feet today, an abrupt and vigorous increase in height over a relatively short
distance when up to now the gradient had risen gradually.
They
paused at the Bergschrund crevasse, the thirty foot wide crack in the mountain
where the Cwm ended and the Lhotse face began. It was like standing on the edge
of a canyon. Tom thought of it as another of her posterns, the crossing into
the deeper, private and demanding realms of her lands.
We
may not see her armies,
we
may not see her king
Her
fortress is a faithful heart,
her
pride is suffering…
Ladders
were roped together, balanced over the distance where as you walked, you saw
the bottomless, mighty wall of the other side of the canyon disappearing down
into the dark; textured layers of ice that dwarfed you. The majesty of it was
as powerful as the heart thudding long and lonely walk over that ladder in your
crampons, with nothing to hold on to but the two ropes you slid through your
hands. Watching Jake make that walk again to follow him made Tom’s heart thud
in his throat and dried his mouth more than the cold air did, watching his
every step intently with dread until he reached the other side. It was far
worse watching Jake do it than doing it himself.
And
then for grinding hours, they climbed. Concentration here was crucial; the
Lhotse Face had been responsible for so many deaths on Everest, and every step
had to be planned considered and placed with care with less and less breath in
your lungs and less oxygen in your muscles to do so. With every metre of
altitude you gained, your blood lost a little more oxygen to travel around your
body, leaving you drained, weaker, foggy brained and starved of calories,
dehydrated. And just as the ice chips they dislodged tumbled down the face
behind them, there was always the risk of falling rocks here, rolling down from
above and smashing into unwary climbers. They were about a third of the way on
the ropes up the Face towards camp three and daylight was starting to cast
across the ice when the radio crackled and a woman’s South African accent
emerged from the static.
“Mountain
Eagles. Jake, are you there?”
Jake
lifted the radio on his harness, pausing for a moment on the ropes and his
crampons dug into the ice, and checking the teeth of his jumar were gripping
before he leaned back.
“Shem,
what can I do for you?”
“Sorry
to bother you. I’ve got an urgent family call for you on the Sat phone? Paul.
He says he needs to talk to you both.”
“Go
ahead.” Jake looked down to Tom who was climbing behind him, raising his
eyebrows as the radio hissed. Paul’s voice was unmistakeable.
“Jake?
Everyone’s fine, don’t panic. I need some help.”
“I’m
up a rope in Nepal at about ….” Jake glanced down the sheer slide of the Lhotse
face dropping away beneath them in the early light of dawn. “Six thousand, five
hundred metres. Sure, what can I do for you? What time is it there? Aren’t you
heading to bed yet?”
“Dale
is headed out on a lone camp, I’ve got a few things to do.” Paul sounded quite
cheerful about it. “You know how we do this for clients? We ask for letters
from their family for them to take up.”
And
Jake’s ranch lot would call without hesitation to every member of their family,
despite whether or not they were up a mountain at the time. The distance made
no odds to any of them. Tom, who had watched similar calls come to Jake and
seen his involvement and attachment to what many men would have seen as mundane
domestic stuff through the letters that somehow managed to reach them and
always kept on arriving wherever Jake was in the world, saw illumination and
warmth come into to Jake’s face and he nodded understanding, shifting his
position carefully on the rope. “Yep. We’re nowhere near email and right now we
need to think what we’re doing, can you call back in – say four hours? We can
dictate something to you then from both of us. Sorry about the time
difference.” Tom heard Paul laugh over the radio.
“Don’t
worry, I’m going to be up all night anyway. Talk to you later.” Jake let the
radio go and carried on climbing.
“Lone
camp?” Tom said behind him.
“I’ve
seen them do it with clients.” Jake’s sentences were slightly punctuated with
his need to breathe and climb at the same time. “They spend 48 hours out
camping by themselves on the ranch. Space to do some thinking outside, let the
quiet and the open air work on them. So either they or Dale have decided it
would be good for him. They usually ask the client’s family to send letters for
him to read while he’s there. Share what’s best about their relationships,
challenge whatever is a problem in the relationship that needs fixing, if
necessary the terms on which the relationship can continue. They’ve had clients
who have taken some pretty tough letters out there with them. I don’t think
Dale’s got anything to worry about.”
No,
Dale would state any issues he needed to address in his relationships himself,
first and far more strictly than any of them could: that wasn’t the kind of
challenge he really needed at all. What he needed was exactly the kind of
approach Jake would take. Tom flushed slightly under his face protector,
reaching for another hand hold and thinking of himself last night.
No, I won’t, I can’t.
It’s ok. It’s all right, I think we can
do this.
No
barking, no reproach. When Jake talked like that, it was possible to believe
they could do absolutely anything.
Dorje
was not far above them. Tom suspected he had been hanging back on purpose,
keeping a watchful eye out for them although he climbed with the lightness,
speed and strength that was typical of so many of the Sherpa men, and he could
have been well ahead of them if he’d wanted to be. He smiled at them as they
caught him up, nodding from beneath his red and yellow wool knitted hat above
his black down suit, moving at a steady pace that matched theirs.
“Is
a beautiful day. She very beautiful on day like this.”
She
was. Majestic and gigantic, like something sprung from the writings of Jules
Verne. Another world, a silent and carved one.
“Such beauty is reserved for distant,
dangerous places, and nature has good reason for exacting her own special
sacrifices for witnessing them.” Jake left off quoting long enough to
switch onto the next rope, but Tom recognised the author. Jake had been born in
Byrd’s own neighbourhood, great grandson of his contemporaries; another man
born with wild blood and an adventurer’s heart.
“A stirring dwarf we do allowance give
Before a sleeping giant.” Tom said in return, waiting for Jake to move on
before he transferred his own rope. Jake gave him a quick grin, glancing down
over his shoulder to meet his eyes.
“Art thou afeared? Be not afeared. The
isle is full of noises…”
“Like
avalanches. Yeah. Get on with it.” Tom switched onto the next rope and followed
him.
“Sometimes a thousand twangling
instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices…” Jake paused to
shift his grip and dig his crampon in deeper before he took the large step up
and across to the next handhold.
“This
your spirits, Tom?” Dorje asked. He sounded gently intrigued by this, a very
old game of theirs. Tom climbed the last few feet up the wall onto the slightly
easier ground of a walkable slope, catching his breath.
“Just
stories. Not the demons and angels I was telling you about.”
“What
are angels?”
There
were demons and spirits of all kinds of good in Sherpa beliefs, but not angels
as other faiths knew them.
“Spirits.
Messengers, holy guardians. Where I grew up there were pictures of them.
Especially the archangels, the highest form of angel. They were my favourites.
They were in a set of windows on one side, coloured glass.”
Which
he knew and could remember as acutely as if he were still sitting on the stone
ledge across the aisle, tucked into the alcove, watching the daylight shine
through the faces in coloured shafts to pool on the flagstones below.
“They’re
too often pictured as wet looking individuals with Aussie beach curls and soppy
expressions.” he said more curtly. “Lot of rubbish. On our windows they were
far more like the texts. More realistic. Most of them men. Tall. Strongly
built, strong faces. Wings like swords or shields. Or eagles. Wings as large
and tall as they were.”
He
saw Dorje’s eyes as he grasped that and understood it as he understood it in
himself. Gentle eyes in steady faces; warrior built men with wisdom and love in
them, in the way they stood, in the way they looked down into the body of the
cathedral, in the set of their shoulders and the grasp of their hands, but not
in any sentimental sense of the word. There was nothing soft or mawkish about
these beings. They were holding swords and it was clear they would have no
difficulty in seeing any bullshit for precisely what it was.
“There
are seven of the archangels.” Tom paused for a moment to stretch his back and
glance down the way they had come. The ice face soared away below them. “The
highest and holiest of messengers, the right hands. Every one of them has
different interests and values according to their own way, they’re recorded in
the old texts as being distinctly different personalities.”
“And
who are they?” Dorje asked with interest. Jake was listening too; Tom could see
his attention as they climbed.
“Gabriel….he
stands for integrity, the power to hold onto your convictions, especially when
you’re alone. Commitment. Steadfastness. In the Christian sacred texts he’s
most often the messenger of God, sent to mortals with the ability to talk
without terrifying. Be not afraid.
Samael… his values are for fairness, constant mindfulness and care of others
and your surroundings in terms of your self control, your self discipline.
Ramiel…. She stands for her love of people and the values of friendship: trust,
empathy, care and warmth for every being, whether they’re a stranger or not.
Azrael….he stands for the patience to create stability, to resolve conflict and
injustice peacefully and patiently, with forgiveness, to avoid hostility.”
The
names were deeply familiar. Soothing. These were the stories, the people and
faces that went back to his earliest years, he’d known them as well as the
animals entering the ark in the east window and the characters in the nativity
in the stone relief on the side of some ancient Bishop’s tomb, the names and
the faces built into his world. This
seemed an extremely apt place to be naming and reflecting on them, speaking
them aloud like the daily repetition of the ancient Latin prayers and chants in
the sanctity of the cathedral at home where people’s little lives came and went
but the words went on unchanged in other voices. This was an unearthly place,
an ancient and a sacred one. A place fit for angels.
Again
he remembered standing with his father looking at the gold leafed pages in one
of the huge books in the great cathedral vault with his father’s voice
explaining the names, the values, the words and their meanings, things penned
and illustrated by hand centuries before and kept safe among the priceless gold
chalices and the jewelled sceptres and the other oldest, most precious secrets
the cathedral guarded through time.
“Uriel
– His values are for honesty, commitment to morality. Resistance to distraction
in following your commitments and promises. And Raphael stands for healing, the
will to take up the ugly, the tedious, the boring jobs with sacrifice and no
obvious or glamorous reward, particularly towards those you don’t agree with or
particularly see as deserving-”
He’s probably working overtime for the
Pink Peril.
There
was a shout from above and several more rocks bounced down the face, thankfully
some way from them.
“The
values are much the same.” Tom went on as they continued to climb again. “Same
ideas. Just given to different names. They were messengers. Guardians. Soldiers
when necessary. Once there was an eighth, Lucifer, who led a rebellion against
the status quo in Heaven and battled the others, and he and his followers were
cast down to Tartarus, a sealed depths. The fallen angels.”
Jake
glanced back and met his eyes directly, smiling but giving him a very definite
shake of the head.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Everyone
went on more or less compulsory bed rest in camp three. With the ground too
steep to leave the tent without being roped up, once they got there and took
their boots off, they were restricted to the four walls of canvas until they
stepped out to climb on in the morning. Dorje shared Bill and Spitz’s tent
again. Tom suspected that either Bill had tipped him off that he and Jake
fidgeted like all hell or had invited him in order to give them a break; Bill
was tactful like that. However he and Spitz were the most tired of the group on
reaching the camp.
“All
that climbing and you two are still bloody hyperactive.” Bill said sourly when
Jake brought him a sack of the ice chips he and Tom had just hacked to keep
them going through the night. He and Spitz were sprawled directly across the
floor of their tent while Dorje was sitting placidly lighting the stoves. “And
too bloody chirpy, go away. Some of us are knackered.”
They
were all knackered. It just worked out in different ways. Arms throbbing, legs
on fire with muscles threatening to cramp, Tom dumped stuff to the sides of the
tent, managed to stretch out from end to end of it and did a sharp, brisk set
of push ups, forcing his calves to loosen out and stretch and his biceps to
work the extensors as well as the flexors he’d been overusing all day, and his
spine to remember it was supposed to work in alignment. It bloody hurt to begin
with, but he and Jake had been in athletics training since before adolescence
and it involved developing a different relationship with pain. It was something
you worked with, something you managed strategically, and you picked up a lot of
tricks of the trade on the way. Jake was crouching in the open doorway of the
tent, elbows on his knees, sunglasses pushed to the top of his head, just
watching him with an expression in his eyes that made Tom snort as he stopped
and knelt up to shake his wrists out.
“Not
a chance, forget it. Go and roll in the snow.”
“Taken
Ibuprofen?”
“Yes.
Double dose.” Tom leaned over to take one of Jake’s crampons as he took it off,
turning it over to check the blades. There were a couple of practical hours of
sharpening their blunted crampons and ice axes, checking their kit and then
reading in the icy afternoon daylight of the open doorway of their tent,
watching the extraordinary view before them. And as the afternoon faded away
they sat shoulder to shoulder watching the sun go down on Everest. The golden
light fading slowly from the ice as the shadows grew longer, looking down from
their freezing eagles’ perch down the massive ice wall below, silent because it
was too remarkable a sight for words. Tom had sat in some spectacular places
around the planet with Jake and seen no few sunsets but this one – this was
something else. And then as the temperature started to plummet, the breeze
began to get noisy, to rattle the tents and send snow flurrying up from the
ground like dust and the world outside began to freeze solid, they zipped up
the tent, shut out the worst of the cold, and Tom felt his stomach clench.
He
wasn’t entirely sure why and he was aware he was doing it more for the look of
the thing rather than with any real purpose but while Jake lay down to read
again, Tom unpacked his rucksack, checked it again and re packed it, aware that
Jake was whistling Santa Claus is Coming To Town half under his breath,
probably subconsciously.
He’s
making a list, he’s checking it twice…
It
was a fair and sensible thing to do, no one headed up to the summit without
knowing their kit was straight and everything was there, but Tom knew it was a
little too thoroughly done to be quite convincing, particularly since they had
already done it once together about an hour ago. After which he fidgeted with
the harness for a few minutes, making some unnecessary adjustments to the strap
length. And then with a sinking feeling he couldn’t quite control, he found
himself making a direct, impulsive attempt at crawling to and unzipping the
tent door.
It
was getting far too cold and windy to have the tent open. More to the point, on
the Lhotse Face where stepping out of the tent unprepared could mean an
immediate descent of 3000 feet in about eight seconds, it was not a smart move.
It had been a lethal move for no few climbers in this camp, and Jake had left
their boots and crampons directly in front of the tent entrance as he had last
time at camp three, blocking their way to make absolutely sure neither of them
could absently or half asleep take a step out there without thinking. Before he
got half way there Jake signalled in one jerk of his thumb to get away from it
right now.
His
signals were pretty unmistakeable if you knew him. Tom paused where he was,
looking at him for a few seconds with his heart thumping and no real idea what
he was doing, but his voice was to his own ears very soft and quietly
persistent and coming from somewhere else entirely than him.
“It
isn’t even dark yet-”
He’d
seen Riley argue plenty of times; Flynn and the others usually warned.
Explained. Jake didn’t, and it was just as well he didn’t as Tom had played Sea
Lawyer to several other men who had very kindly tried, driving them to
distraction and making him unfairly and hotly frustrated with them. This, with
Jake, was the equivalent of leaning over to the red button marked ‘do not push’ and punching it.
Jake
sat up in one smooth movement like a jaguar dropping down off a branch, Tom’s
arm got taken in one clean swipe to pull him over and mouth drying rapidly and
stomach dropping like a stone, Tom found himself kneeling while Jake, looking
genially calm about it, all too efficiently peeled him straight out of his down
suit, dropped it to one side and turned Tom over his lap. Panting on the low
oxygen and sweating despite the biting cold in the tent, Tom felt his fleece
pants and underwear stripped straight down, Jake’s arm fold around his waist
and grasp his hip to keep him steady and his palm landed in a very rapid flurry
of loud, crisp spanks that rained all over his bare backside. As cold as he
was, it felt extremely sharp; getting
oneself spanked when this cold was a seriously bad idea at any time, it was
something Tom knew academically from experience but rarely remembered until it
was too late. He squirmed; he couldn’t help it; the ouching and yelping and
whining that burst out was undignified and equally involuntary, he had no
choice about that either, and there was definitely a little kicking involved. It
didn’t last long – the downpour was maybe thirty seconds at most – but Jake
meant business and his backside was smarting fiercely and radiating heat and
his eyes were wet when Jake paused and to Tom’s alarm instead of helping him
dress, stripped him of the rest of everything he wore, down to the skin which
was no joke in this tent where their breath was steaming brightly in front of
them, and unzipped the sleeping bag.
“In.”
Tom
moved fast from his lap. The inside of the bag was freezing. Jake knelt up to
strip off his own down suit, undressing to his fleece layers beneath, and slid
into the sleeping bag with Tom, zipping it up around them both before he lay
back to lean against his rucksack and pick up his book once more. Brat sorted.
Problem over with.
Feeling
extremely, wholeheartedly sorted and unable to prevent himself sliding a hand
down to rub some of the intense sting out of his backside which gave far too
much away to Jake about how it felt and how much of an impression it had made,
Tom turned over against him for warmth which, from Jake’s body heat, rapidly
combined with his and within a few minutes had raised the sleeping bag interior
to a comfortable temperature. It did not make being stark naked feel any less
exposed or tangible, it felt rather like having been peeled and it made the
touch of Jake’s body head to foot against his bare skin feel much more
penetrating. He’d wanted Jake’s definite action. Except that Jake tended to be
a whole lot more definite than he was prepared for. He wouldn’t use the martinet
up here; that was probably hyper cautious actually but Jake did as Jake
decided, and Tom was extremely glad he hadn’t reached for that horrific cream,
he didn’t feel up to handling that at all tonight, but that had been…. Bloody definite.
This
was not what book heroes did the
night before they went to slay the dragon or find the grail or whatever it was
they were questing about. They knelt in chapels and got their mind on the job.
Cleared their consciences, sharpened their focus on their intent, their purity
of heart. They did not struggle with the impulse to jump all over the last
nerve of a boyfriend who had no reservations whatsoever about applying his hand
to your butt, they did not end up naked and feeling extremely pathetically
clingy in sleeping bags, it was ridiculous.
What exactly do I think I’m doing?
The
stove, with its small, struggling flame heating the ice chips in the pan, cast
its clean light through the tent like a candle.
“What’s
the worst thing I’ve ever done with you?” he found himself blurting out to
Jake. Jake thought for a moment, marking his place in his book with one
hand.
“Bought
tickets for that God-awful performance of A
Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum in Cyprus by the British am
dram society….. where most of the cast was over fifty and huge elderly women in
togas were playing the courtesans and the guy playing Miles Gloriosus was about
five foot two, eight stone wringing wet and singing about his mighty
chest-”
“You
didn’t sit, you paced around at the back and kept laughing in the wrong
places.” Tom poked him with an elbow. “I’m serious.”
“So
am I, I should have spanked you for that.”
“The
worst.”
“Worst
meaning what?”
“Oh
come on.”
“What
do you mean by worst? The most upset I’ve seen you get? The most trouble you’ve
gotten into?”
Tom
sighed hard, exasperated as Jake would never be easily manoeuvred anywhere. “A
list. You know a normal couple would come up with a list in seconds?”
“What
fun is normal? You mean what I’ve been most bothered about, don’t you?” He said
it with gentle precision that made Tom wince.
“…It’s
not like I think you keep a score sheet -”
“I
can’t think of it in those terms, you’ve never ‘done’ anything.”
“Oh
for God’s sake Jake, I’m a bloody disaster area, you’ve been straightening me
out for years.”
“That’s
not what it’s like. Is it? It’s not what you tell Dale he’s doing.”
“It
isn’t what he’s doing.”
Jake
rolled over to lay on his stomach, propping his head on his hand above Tom
where he could see his face. “Why not admit it’s exactly what we’re doing? With all the romance you’re
capable of, with all the thought and feeling you’re capable of, with all the
meaning and purpose that matters to you? Because we are, I’m qualified to know
this. I happen to know exactly how fantastic knocking around with you is. I
don’t plan on doing anything else the rest of my life.”
The
proper response would have been to mutter something about soppy bastard; Tom didn’t manage it, but Jake pulled him the rest
of the way into his arms and lay down to hold him.
“I
think it was swimming the harbour at Dover.” Tom said eventually, not very
steadily. “That was probably the worst.”
“In
what way the worst?” Jake said quietly. “The one you feel worst about right
now? Because I remember that as my mistake leaving you alone without seeing you
were too stressed out to handle it.”
“Balls,
you never signed any agreement to be psychic, it was my responsibility to tell
you. You’d have stayed if I’d asked you-”
“You
wouldn’t have wanted me there,”
“I
would. I always want you there.”
“Yeah,
I know. And in that state you try your hardest not to admit it and get rid of
me because otherwise you’d weaken and let me see.” Jake finished gently. “I
know you. I know how it works. And you couldn’t have told me. Then. Now… I
think it would be different. It takes time to learn to communicate, any couple
have to figure it out between themselves.”
“Dale
gets this you know. They talk about not withholding, he just gets it and sets
out not to do it, it’s something they can talk about.”
“Why
don’t you say what you actually mean?”
“I
wish I was strong enough to do that. I know why they value it, I agree, I agree
completely, I don’t do that with you and I should.”
“But
it’s supposed to involve bloody torturous negotiations and explanation and
reasoning, and all the rest of the crap?” Jake smiled at him, quoting something
Tom had said to him awkwardly, a long time ago in a garden in Cairo. “It’s not
going to make any difference, we both know perfectly well. Do you want help?
Without all the supposed bloody torturous negotiations?”
He
was smiling. Tom remembered it as a fearful, defensive declaration – the most
romantic he’d been capable of at the time:
I’m a grown up. I do not need looking
after. I do not need sorting out or fixing. I make my own decisions and I’m an
awkward, bloody minded cynic so it’s a waste of anyone’s time trying anyway. I
don’t buy into the fairytale crap and this isn’t being swayed by jet lag or the
place or anything else –
He’d
never fooled Jake for a moment. And he’d always known it.
The
wind rattled the tent skin and the little flame of the stove flickered on.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It
wasn’t long after that Shem radioed up to say Phoenix had stayed another day at
camp one, too tired to want to face the ice fall yet and having too good a time
socialising with the Canadians. Pemba and Lobsang were staying in the camp with
him, and she wasn’t concerned, but if he wasn’t feeling fit enough in the
morning she’d climb up to camp one herself and take a look at him. And she had
Paul on the phone again. Jake took the
phone first and Tom listened in silence to the quick and very kind letter that
Jake dictated, lying beside him with his eyes on the view beyond. Until now
they had been climbing in a canyon. From here, the top was all too visible
above them. The weather was sharp and clear and holding, it was perfect
climbing conditions. Dream climbing conditions, almost too good to be true.
“…
I knew Philip,” Jake said calmly beside him to the phone, “and I knew David,
they would have loved you and been very proud of you. I know too how happy you
make the others and they are people I love, and I know how much my partner
values your letters and mails. I thank you very much for that Dale, it makes
you an important person to me too and I’m very glad you found your way to us.
With love, Jake. Got all that? I’ll hand you over to Tom.”
He
handed the phone across to Tom. Who cleared his throat, sitting up to take a
grip on himself. He’d been thinking all day about this. There was no time or
place better to say these things to someone who would- truly understand them.
Exactly as he did, on the other side of the world. If he could only find the courage.
“Hi
love,” Paul’s voice said warmly over the phone. “If you wouldn’t mind giving me
a couple of lines I know it would mean a lot to Dale; checking for your mails
has been one of the few things he’s been interested in over the last few weeks,
he’s really appreciated them.”
“Is
he ok?”
“He’s
had a rough time.” Paul sounded gentle. “He’s doing ok, but it hasn’t been easy
for him. I admit I’m not keen on him being away from me for a couple of days or
him being alone, but it’s important to him. I know he’s shared some of what
he’s working through with you. He wants time to think and prepare himself, this
is a formal commitment he’s making to us. That matters a lot to Dale, he needs
to do things fully and consciously and in an organised way, the gesture is
important.”
Dale
was so absolutely right. These pilgrimages – they were huge acts of sacrifice,
of purpose, the ceremony was deeply important. The act of purification was
deeply important. These gestures were known to man as far back as recorded
history went, in every culture.
Jake
was laying on his back, against his side where Tom could feel him. Tom drew a
deep breath.
“Ok.
I’m going to try, these things never come out too well for me.”
“Honey,
it’s you he likes, not your flowing prose, I promise.” Paul said lightly. “Just
a ‘hi Dale, I’m thinking of you’ would matter a lot to him right now.”
“Dale.”
Tom shut his eyes, trying to think. “… I’m glad you’re going on the camp. I
agree with you. Being somewhere alone and wild lets you think clearly. I’m glad
you found the Fisher King story
useful. It’s one I’ve thought about for years, it makes a lot of sense to me.
I’ve been sitting in that castle for about twenty years trying to pull up the
courage to ask the question.”
Jake’s
hand came down over his shoulder, purposefully, and Tom reached for it, gripped
it hard, watching Jake’s fingers wind through his.
“…Did
you know about Plato’s Devine Design? ‘There
is a place that you are to fill and no one else can fill." It just
takes both the guts and the insight to look for it. Something else you might
find interesting given what Paul’s telling us: did you know the night before a
man was knighted he traditionally spent a night alone in a ten hour vigil in a
holy place? Prayed, meditated and prepared himself to make that lifetime sacred
commitment to the principles he was vowing to serve, until the morning when his
sponsor presented him with his shield and sword and he swore his oath of
allegiance. I’m not surprised that’s what you feel drawn to do. I’ve done a little
of it myself in the last few days, our Sherpas see this as a supremely
spiritual place that is earned, not an entitlement. I’m dictating this to Paul
over the satellite phone and the reception’s bloody awful so I need to keep it
quick. We’re at camp three today. Tonight we’ll go up to camp four, sleep the
rest of the day and in the early hours we’re making our summit bid. We’re both
in high places tonight and both preparing ourselves to be worthy…” He
hesitated, knowing what he wanted to say, and finally said out loud, “…Ex
animo. Tom.”
There
was a moment of long pause where Tom felt his stomach knot with anxiety that
either Paul had decided he was a complete and utter twit, or that the line had
been broken.
Then
finally Paul said very softly, “I’ve got it. Thank you honey. Thank you both
very much. You be careful, we’re all thinking of you and we’re wishing you a
good, safe day tomorrow. Please let us know as soon as you’re safe?”
“We
will.” Jake took the radio gently from Tom. “Love to everyone. Goodnight Paul,
get some sleep.”
He
stuffed the radio out of reach and put a hand up to run a finger down Tom’s
cheek, his eyes very soft in a way that went right through Tom’s heart and into
his guts.
“You
are so beautiful. You know that?”
Copyright Rolf and Ranger 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment