Justin Go - The Steady Running of the Hour

Ashley is asleep on his side. His mouth is open and a shock of hair hangs down his forehead. Price shakes him gently by the shoulder, but Ashley only turns his head on the pillow. Price pulls back the blanket. Ashley curls up toward the wall, fully dressed in plus fours and a thick Shetland.

— Kitted before bed?

Ashley grabs the blanket, his eyes still closed.

— You always come too bloody early.

— So does the sun.

Price fetches his rucksack and the two men meet in the foyer downstairs. The checkered floor is littered with boots and Ashley picks them up one by one, holding the leather soles before his eyes. Save for the nailing pattern they all look the same.

— Damnation. Two left boots. Don’t even know which is mine—

— Probably neither.

Price lights a candle and they grope among the shadows until they find the right boots. Ashley pulls on his Norfolk jacket and Price dons a misshapen hat. They open the front door, a gust of frigid air surging in.

— Coldest part of the night, Price remarks.

He starts up the path at his usual clip, the white stone of the miners’ track bending and rising among brown and green hills. Ashley follows a few paces behind, wrapping his muffler around his neck. They walk along the shore of a narrow lake, the water glowing silver beneath a murky sky. Price glances back at Ashley.

— Who was the last to bed?

— Fraser and Cousin David, I expect. Fraser was still on the rafters when I left.

— Still game for the girdle?

— Of course.

They pass another lake and follow a steeper trail onto the mountain’s broad shoulder. The sun is breaking over the ridge to the east, but the great north cliff ahead remains in shadow. Price walks off the trail and the angle of the hill steepens until they stand on the eastern edge of the thousand-foot cliff, its two peaks and soaring buttress high above them. They mean to traverse the whole face.

— Still a touch of snow, Price remarks.

He uncoils the rope from his shoulder. The dampness has stiffened into frost and he takes his gloves off to smooth the kinks before fastening his waist loop. Ashley ties on and anchors the rope around a jammed boulder, paying out handfuls of slack as Price pulls himself across a crack and lowers himself down a smooth gully, sweeping footholds below him of snow and pebbles with the toe of his boot before resting his weight.

They work quietly, Price moving across a band of milky quartz in fluid, rhythmic movements, calling back only occasionally.

— Goodish hold here. Rather damp—

— Frightfully icy. Stay clear of the lower slab—

— For God’s sake, some slack, Ashley!

Ashley leads the next pitch and they go on alternating, one man belaying as the other edges westward across the cliff. The rock is freezing and the icy patches leach cold water in the sunlight. Both men climb with bare hands, stopping at times to rub blood into their pale fingers.

They rest on a nose of banded quartz and Price lights his pipe. The wind howls on, pulling swift curtains of mist across the spectacle of mountain and valley below. Suddenly the sun flares over Snowdon, sending a narrow beam of light across the peak. Both men let out a little gasp.

— There she goes, Price murmurs. Sometimes I wonder if we aren’t fools, forever chasing foreign peaks when we’ve hills like these. Are you hungry?

Price opens his rucksack. He takes out his pocketknife and spreads anchovy paste over a pair of biscuits.

— What would you call this view, Ashley? Beauty or sorrow?

— Foreboding.

Price hands Ashley a biscuit. — Oughtn’t say that on a climb.

— Sorrow then. With British hills it’s always sorrow.

— Why is that?

Ashley looks down at his boots.

— I don’t know. All the moors and dark rock and clouds. I expect they were made to suit us—

— Or they made us.

Price stands up, buckling his rucksack shut.

— I suppose you might lead this one—

Ashley edges his way along flakes of rock, his face brushing patches of snowy vegetation. The ledge narrows until he has only the toe of his boot on the rock, then a single nail scratching the flaky ledge. He looks down to the slope of jagged scree five hundred feet below, the calm opal waters of the lake. Ashley hooks the rope over a knob of outcropping rock and spiders along westward, Price belaying with his pipe still in his mouth.

Half an hour later they stand below a chimney of smooth rock, four feet across and nearly vertical. A film of water courses down its walls.

— Looks slick, Ashley says.

— It’ll go.

Price steps into the narrow chute, putting his back against one wall and his boots against the other. He pushes upward with his legs and back, his hands touching the walls only for support. Ten minutes later he is on top, belaying the rope over a rock spike.

— Your go.

Ashley moves deep into the chimney and begins his way up, trying to keep his weight on his legs. But the handholds are minuscule, slick ridges smaller than a fingernail.

— You’re too far in, Price calls. Get out to the edge!

Ashley does not listen. He pushes upward, his arms growing tired, his bootnails skating against the wet stone. The chimney steepens until he reaches an outcropping of rock that blocks his way. Price is eight feet above him, holding the rope taut as he peers down at Ashley.

— Foothold to the right.

— Can’t get there.

— Follow the crack! The left is too slick—

Ashley’s left boot searches for the ledge, but he has overreached his right hand and he sinks his weight down on his foot before he notices the pebble on the ledge. His boot skates off and he slides down the chimney, skidding against the stone. Price braces himself and grips the rope, but before it catches Ashley jams his arms and legs hard and stops sliding.

— Are you all right?

Ashley’s elbows burn with pain. He puts his weight on his back and rests for a moment. Then he climbs the chimney on the right as Price instructed. He comes over the lip and looks down at his bloody knuckles, one of the fingernails cracked. His left elbow is skinned and his knees are wet and filthy.

— Technically, I suppose, yours was the better route—

Price shakes his head.

— Bloody fool.

They top out on the western ridge an hour later and descend the skyline quickly, reaching the hotel by mid-afternoon. A group of climbers are smoking pipes on a bench behind the building, its white gables sheathed in the gathering mist.

— Was that you two on the girdle? I say Walsy, were you the one who floundered onto the ridge like a trout?

The other climbers laugh.

— We were coming up the west ridge and saw something flop over the top behind us and go flat on a slab. Like a trout coming out of the water. Hardly moved at all, just gazed up at the sky. I said it must be Walsy—

— I consider myself, Ashley interrupts, more salmon than trout.

Price points to a new Ford touring car parked in front of the hotel, its black enamel paint splattered with mud.

— Someone expected today?

— Only stopping by, the climber says. Chap from the Climbers’ Club and two sisters. What’s the chap’s name?

— Grafton, another climber says.

Price and Ashley enter the hotel. There is an odd silence in the foyer. The litter of boots is neatly arranged in rows now, the climbers sent back indoors by the mist. As they approach the door to the smoking room they hear the piano, a slower piece.

— How queer, Price says. Certainly not in the songbook—

Price pushes the door open but halts in the doorway, raising his right hand in a gesture of silence. Ashley cranes his neck over Price’s shoulder.