‘Take your knickers off.’
‘No. Stop this.’
‘Why Gloucester, I wonder?’
‘I never went there, Adam. Mike went there a few days ago – maybe it was Wednesday – to visit some warehouse space. Maybe it’s his ticket. But why does it matter?’
‘Why was it in your pocket, then?’
‘Fuck knows. Look, if you don’t believe me, ring him up and ask him. Go on. I’ll dictate the number to you.’
I glared at him defiantly. I knew Mike was away for the weekend anyway.
‘We’ll forget about Mike and Gloucester, then, shall we?’
‘I’d already forgotten it,’ I said.
He pushed me to the floor and knelt over me. He looked as if he were about to cry and I held my arms out to him. When he struck me with his belt, the buckle biting into my flesh, it didn’t even hurt very much. Nor the second time. Was this the spiral my GP had warned me of?
‘I love you so very much, Alice,’ he groaned, afterwards.
‘You’ve no idea how very much I love you. Don’t ever let me down. I wouldn’t be able to bear it.’
I put off the meal, saying to everyone I called that I had flu. It was true that I felt so exhausted it was like being ill. We ate the chicken I had bought in bed and went to sleep early, locked in each other’s arms.
Twenty-four
A temporary hero and celebrity, Adam began to get communications from the world outside, relayed from the newspapers and publishers to which they’d been sent. People wrote to him as they might have written to Dr Livingstone or Lawrence of Arabia, complicated theories and grievances outlined over a dozen pages in minuscule handwriting and unusual colours of ink. There were adoring letters from young girls that made me smile, and become a little worried. There was a letter from the widow of Tomas Benn – who had died on the mountain – but it was in German, and Adam didn’t bother to translate it for me. ‘She wants to see me,’ he said, wearily, tossing the letter on to the pile.
‘What does she want?’ I asked.
‘To talk,’ he said curtly. ‘To hear that her husband was a hero.’
‘Are you going to see her?’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t help her. Tommy Benn was a rich man out of his class, that’s all.’
Then there were people who wanted to go on expeditions. And there were people with projects, ideas, obsessions, fantasies and a great deal of hot air. Adam ignored most of them. Once or twice he was lured out for a drink and I would join him in some bar in central London being talked at by a magazine editor or a bright-eyed researcher.
One day there was another unpromising approach, a foreign accent on a bad line early on a rainy Tuesday morning. I picked up the phone and was discouraging. I handed the receiver across the bed to Adam who was downright rude. But the caller persisted and Adam agreed to meet him.
‘So?’ I asked Adam, when he slouched in late one evening and took a beer from the fridge.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, banging the bottle open in his macho way on the edge of the table. He looked puzzled, almost stunned.
‘What was it about?’
‘A man in a suit who works for a German TV company. Knows a bit about climbing. He says they want to do a documentary about a climb. They’d like me to lead it. Any time I want, anywhere in the world, with whoever I want, the more challenging the better and they’ll organize finance.’
‘That sounds amazing. Isn’t that perfect?’
‘There must be a catch. There must be something wrong with the plan, but I haven’t worked out what it is yet.’
‘What about Daniel? I thought you were going with him next year.’
‘Fuck Daniel. That was just for the money. I just can’t believe it’s for real.’
Apparently it was for real. There were more drinks, then meetings. One evening, late at night when we were a bit drunk, Adam told me what he would like to do. He would like to go up Everest and not even attempt to get to the top: just clear the mountain of all the shit, bits of tent and frayed line, empty oxygen bottles, litter, even some of the dead bodies that were still up there, crammed into their last useless shelters. I thought it was beautiful and I coaxed him into scrawling the idea on a piece of paper, which I then typed into a presentable form. The TV company said yes to everything. It would make a great film. It had mountains and ecology.
It was wonderful, I felt wonderful. Adam had been like a boiling pot, spluttering and splattering on the stove, and it was as if he had suddenly been turned down to a more manageable simmer. Adam’s life was climbing and me, and for a couple of months it had been almost entirely me, and I had begun to wonder if I would get worn out, literally worn out, by the intensity of his attention. I loved Adam, I adored Adam, I lusted after Adam, but it was a relief now sometimes to lie in bed, sipping wine while he talked of the number of people he should take, when he should go, and I contributed nothing. I just nodded and enjoyed his enthusiasm. It was nice, just nice but nothing transcendent, and that was good too but I was careful not to say that to Adam.
For my part, I was also, gradually, becoming calmer about Adam’s past. The whole Michelle thing was now part of the landscape, the sort of thing we all get involved with when we’re young in one way or another. And Michelle had her baby and her husband now. She didn’t need my help. His previous girlfriends, the long-term ones, didn’t really mean much more to me than, say, the mountains he had summitted. If, when I was talking to Klaus or Deborah or Daniel or another of his older climbing friends, a mention of one of them came up I wouldn’t pay particular attention. But obviously you are interested in everything to do with the person you are in love with and to say nothing at all would have been an affectation. So I picked up information about them here and there and began to form a picture of them in my mind, to consider them in chronological order.
One evening we were back at Deborah’s Soho flat, but as guests this time. Daniel was going to be there. I had suggested that Daniel could go along on the Everest expedition. Adam was generally about as likely to take my advice on the subject of mountaineering as he was that of the doorknob of our bedroom, but on this occasion he looked reflective rather than dismissive. For most of the evening, he and Daniel were deep in conversation leaving Deborah and me to talk by ourselves.
It was a simple meal, just ravioli bought from across the street, salad from round the corner, and bottles of Italian red wine poured into dangerously large glasses. After we had finished the meal, Deborah took one of the bottles from the table and we went and sat on the floor in front of the open fire. She topped up my glass yet again. I didn’t feel exactly drunk, but I felt that my edges had gone fuzzy and as if there was a soft mattress between me and the floor. Deborah stretched out.
‘I sometimes feel there are ghosts in this flat,’ she said, with a smile.
‘You mean, people who used to live here?’ I said.
She laughed. ‘No, I mean you and Adam. This was where it all started.’
I supposed that the colour of my cheeks would be camouflaged by the fire and the wine. ‘I hope we tidied up properly,’ was all I could manage.
She lit a cigarette and reached across to the table for an ashtray. She lay back down on the floor. ‘You’re good for Adam,’ she said.
‘Am I? I sometimes worry that I’m not enough of a part of his world.’
‘That’s what I mean.’
I looked across at the table. Adam and Daniel were drawing diagrams and even talking about spreadsheets.