I gave up. I had a long shower, put on some jeans and one of Adam’s shirts, and made myself a piece of toast. I didn’t have time to eat it because the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anybody and I certainly didn’t want to see anybody, so at first I didn’t answer. But it rang again – longer this time – and I ran down the stairs.
A middle-aged woman was standing outside under a large black umbrella. She was quite stout, with short, greying hair, wrinkles around her eyes, and running down from her nose to the corners of her mouth. I thought at once that she looked unhappy. I had never seen her before.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Adam Tallis?’ she said. She had a thick accent.
‘I’m sorry, he’s not here at the moment.’
She looked puzzled.
‘Not here,’ I repeated, slowly, watching her stricken expression and the slump of her shoulders. ‘Can I help you?’
She shook her head, then laid her hand on her mackintoshed chest. ‘Ingrid Benn,’ she said. ‘I am the wife of Tomas Benn.’ I had to strain to understand her, and talking seemed to require an immense effort. ‘Sorry, my English not…’ She made a helpless gesture. ‘I want to speak with Adam Tallis.’
I opened the door wide, then. ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Please come in.’ I took the umbrella from her and closed it, shaking off the drops of water. She stepped inside and I shut the door firmly behind her.
I remembered now that several weeks ago she had written to Adam and to Greg, asking if she could come and see them to talk about her husband’s death. She sat at the kitchen table, in her smart, sensible suit, with her neat brogues, holding a cup of tea but not drinking it, and gazed at me helplessly, as if I might be able to provide some kind of answer, although like Tomas she spoke almost no English, and I knew no German at all.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘About your husband. I really am sorry.’
She nodded at me and started to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she didn’t wipe them away but sat patiently, a waterfall of sorrow. There was something rather impressive about her mute, unresisting grief. She put no obstacles in its way but let it flow over her. I handed her a tissue and she held it in her hand as if she didn’t know its function. ‘Why?’ she said eventually. ‘Why? Tommy say…’ She searched for the word then gave up.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, very slowly. ‘Adam is not here.’
It didn’t seem to matter all that much. She took out a cigarette and I fetched a saucer for her and she smoked and cried and talked in fragments of English but also in German. I just sat and looked into her large sad brown eyes, shrugging, nodding. Then gradually she subsided and we sat for a few moments in silence. Had she been to see Greg yet? The image of them together was not appealing. The article on the disaster in Guy magazine was open on the table and Ingrid caught sight of it and pulled it across. She looked at the group photograph of the expedition and she touched the face of her dead husband. She looked at me with the hint of a smile. ‘Tomas,’ she said, almost inaudibly.
She turned the page and looked at the drawing of the mountain, which showed the arrangement of fixed lines. She started jabbing at it. ‘Tommy say fine, he say. No problem.’
Then she switched to German again and I was lost, until I heard a familiar word, repeated several times. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Help.’ Ingrid looked puzzled. I sighed. ‘Help,’ I said slowly. ‘Tomas’s last word. Help.’
‘No, no,’ she said insistently. ‘Gelb.’
‘Help.’
‘No, no. Gelb.’ She pointed at the magazine. ‘Rot. Here. Blau. Here. Und gelb.’
I looked blank. ‘Rot is, er, red, yes? And blau is…’
‘Blue.’
‘And gelb…’
She looked around the flat, pointed to a cushion on the sofa.
‘Yellow,’ I said.
‘Yes, yellow.’
I couldn’t help laughing at the mix-up and Ingrid smiled sadly as well. And then it was as if a dial had been turned in my head; the last number in a combination lock ratcheting into place. The doors swung open. Yellow. Gelb. Yes. He wouldn’t have called out in English as he lay dying, would he? Of course not. Not the man who had hampered the expedition by not knowing a word of English. His last word had been a colour. Why? What had he been trying to say? Outside, the rain fell steadily. Then I smiled again. How could I have been so stupid?
‘Please?’ She was staring at me.
‘Mrs Benn,’ I said. ‘Ingrid. I am so sorry.’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you should go now.’
‘Go?’
‘Yes.’
‘But…’
‘Adam cannot help.’
‘But…’
‘Go home to your children,’ I said. I had no idea if she had any, but she looked like a mother to me, a bit like my own mother in fact.
She stood up obediently and gathered her mackintosh.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said again, thrust her umbrella into her hand, and she left.
Greg was drunk when we arrived. He hugged me a little too boisterously and then hugged Adam as well. It was the same old crowd: Daniel, Deborah, Klaus, other climbers. It struck me that they were like soldiers home on leave, meeting each other at selected refuges because they knew that civilians would never really understand what they had gone through. It was an in-between place and an in-between time, just to be got through until they returned to the real life of extremity and danger. I wondered, not for the first time, what they thought of me. Was I just a folly to them, like one of those mad flings soldiers had on weekend leave in the Second World War?
The atmosphere was fairly jovial. If Adam looked a little distracted, then maybe that was just my over-sensitivity and he was soon caught up in the conversation. But there was no doubt about Greg: he looked dreadful. He drifted from group to group, but didn’t say very much. He constantly refilled his glass. After a bit I found myself alone with him.
‘I don’t feel I really belong,’ I said uneasily.
‘Nor do I,’ said Greg. ‘Look. It’s stopped raining. Let me show you Phil and Marjorie’s garden.’
The party was at the house of an old climbing friend who had given it up after college and gone into the City. While his friends were still vagrants, drifting around the world, raising money here and there, snuffling out sponsorship, Phil had this large beautiful house just off Ladbroke Grove. We walked outside. The grass was damp and I felt my feet getting cold and wet but it was good to be outside. We walked to the low wall at the far end of the garden and looked over at the house on the other side. I turned back. I could see Adam through the window on the first floor in a group of people. Once or twice he glanced at us. Greg and I raised our glasses to him. He raised his own glass back at us.
‘I like this,’ I said. ‘I like it when I know that this evening is lighter than yesterday evening and tomorrow evening will be lighter than today.’
‘If Adam weren’t standing there looking, I’d feel like kissing you, Alice,’ Greg said. ‘I mean, I feel like kissing you, but if Adam weren’t looking then I would kiss you.’
‘Then I’m glad he’s standing there, Greg.’ I said. ‘Look.’ I fluttered my hand in front of his face displaying my wedding ring. ‘Trust, eternal fidelity, that sort of thing.’