‘Sorry, I know that.’ Greg looked morose again. ‘You know the Titanic?’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ I said, with a thin smile, aware that I was stuck with a very drunk Greg.
‘Do you know… ?’ Then he stopped. ‘Do you know that no officer who survived the Titanic ever rose to command a ship?’
‘No, I didn’t know that.’
‘Bad luck, you see. Bad on the C V. As for the captain, he was lucky that he went down with it. Which is what captains are supposed to do. You know why I’m going to the States?’
‘A climb?’
‘No, Alice,’ he said, too vigorously. ‘No. I’m going to wind up the company. That’s it. Finito. A line drawn in the sand. I shall be searching for a different line of work. At least Captain Ahab went down with the whale. People under my care died and it was my fault and I’m finished.’
‘Greg,’ I said, ‘you’re not. I mean it wasn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
I looked around. Adam was still up there. Mad as it might be, drunk as he was now, I had to tell Greg before he went away. Whatever else I did or didn’t do, I owed this to him. I’d probably never have the chance again. Perhaps I thought, too, that with Greg I would have an ally, that I wouldn’t be so alone if I told him. I had the crazy hope that he would snap out of his drunken, maudlin state and come to my rescue.
‘Did you read Klaus’s book?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said, raising his glass of vodka.
‘Don’t,’ I said, stopping him. ‘Don’t drink any more. I want you to concentrate on what I’m saying. You must know that when the missing party on Chungawat were brought down to the camp, one of them was just about alive. Do you remember which one?’
Greg’s face had an expression of stony gloom. ‘I wasn’t exactly conscious at the time. It was Peter Papworth, wasn’t it? Calling for help, the poor bastard. The help that I failed to give him.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That was Klaus’s mistake. It wasn’t Papworth. It was Tomas Benn.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Greg. ‘We were none of us at our best. Down the hatch.’
‘And what was Benn’s principal characteristic?’
‘He was a crap climber.’
‘No, you told me yourself. He didn’t speak a word of English.’
‘So?’
‘Help. Help. Help. That’s what they heard him say as he was dying, slipping into a coma. A funny time to start speaking English.’
Greg shrugged. ‘Perhaps he said it in German.’
‘The German for help is hilfe. That doesn’t sound very similar.’
‘Perhaps it was somebody else.’
‘It wasn’t somebody else. The magazine article quotes three different people who reported his final words. Two Americans and an Australian.’
‘So why did they report hearing that?’
‘They reported it because that’s what they expected him to say. But I don’t think it’s what he said.’
‘What do you think he said?’
I looked around. Adam was still safely inside. I waved at him cheerily.
‘I think he said "gelb".’
‘ “Gelb”? What the fuck is that?’
‘It’s German for yellow.’
‘Yellow? Why the fuck would he gave gone on about yellow while he was dying? Was he hallucinating?’
‘No. I think he was pondering on the problem that had killed him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The colour of the line that the party had followed down Gemini Ridge. Down the wrong side of Gemini Ridge. A yellow line.’
Greg started to speak, then stopped. I watched him think slowly about what I’d said.
‘But the line down Gemini Ridge was blue. My line. They went down the wrong side of the ridge because the line came out. Because I hadn’t secured it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think the top two pegs of your line came out because they were pulled out. And I think that Françoise, Peter, Carrie, Tomas and the other one – what was he called?’
‘Alexis,’ muttered Greg.
‘They went down the wrong ridge because a line led them there. A yellow line.’
Greg looked baffled, in pain.
‘How could a yellow line get there?’
‘Because it was put there to lead them in the wrong direction.’
‘But who by?’
I turned and looked up at the window once more. Adam glanced down at us then looked back at the woman he was talking to.
‘It could have been a mistake,’ said Greg.
‘It couldn’t have been a mistake,’ I said slowly.
There was a long, long silence. Several times Greg caught my eye, then looked away. Suddenly he sat down, on the wet soil, against a bush, which sprang back and flicked water over both of us. He was shaking in spasms and sobbing hopelessly.
‘Greg,’ I hissed urgently, ‘pull yourself together.’
He was crying and crying. ‘I can’t. I can’t.’
I bent down and grabbed him firmly, shook him. ‘Greg, Greg.’ I made him get up. His face was red, tear-stained. ‘You’ve got to help me, Greg. I’ve got nobody. I’m alone.’
‘I can’t. I can’t. The fucking fucker. I can’t. Where’s my drink?’
‘You dropped it.’
‘I need a drink.’
‘No.’
‘I need a drink.’
Greg staggered back down the garden and into the house. I waited for a moment, breathing heavily, calming myself. I was hyperventilating. It took a few minutes. Now I must go back inside and be normal. At the moment I stepped into the basement kitchen I heard a terrible crash and then shouting from upstairs, breaking glass. I ran up the stone steps. In the front room there was a mêlée, a scrum on the floor. Furniture had been knocked over, a curtain had been pulled down. There were shouts and screams. At first I couldn’t even make out who was involved, and then I saw Greg being pulled off somebody. It was Adam, clutching his face. I ran forward to him.
‘You fucking fucker,’ Greg was shouting. ‘You fucking fucker.’ He ran out of the room like a madman. The front door slammed. He was gone.
There were expressions of incredulity around the room. I looked at Adam. He had a bad scratch down one cheek. His eye was already swelling. He was looking at me. ‘Oh, Adam,’ I said, and ran forward.
‘What was that all about?’ somebody asked. It was Deborah. ‘Alice, you were talking to him. What got into him?’
I looked around the room at Adam’s friends, colleagues, comrades, all expectant, baffled, enraged by the sudden attack. I shrugged. ‘He was drunk,’ I said. ‘He must have cracked. It all finally got to him.’ I turned back to Adam. ‘Let me clean that up for you, my love.’
Thirty-six
It was a swimming-pool like the ones I’d gone to as a child – dank cubicles with green tiles, a straight up-and-down pool with old plasters and small hairballs drifting near the bottom, signs telling you not to run, not to dive, not to smoke and not to pet, tired buntings hanging beneath the unsteady strip-lighting. In the communal changing room, women came in all shapes and sizes. It was like a drawing from a children’s book illustrating human difference: dimpled bottoms and veined, pendulous breasts; gaunt ribcages and bony shoulders. I looked at myself in the tarnished mirror before pulling on my costume, and was again alarmed by how unhealthy I looked. Why hadn’t I noticed before? Then I tugged on my swimming cap and my goggles, tight enough to make my eyeballs bulge. I marched into the pool area. Fifty lengths: that’s what I was going to do.