Читать книгу White - Rosie Thomas - Страница 6

So many weddings, Finch Buchanan thought.

Weddings under awnings in summer gardens. Weddings in Toronto or New York, out on the coast, in white-walled Presbyterian churches, in flower-decorated homes or smart hotels. One at a ski lodge up in the Cariboo mountains and another at sunset on a Caribbean beach. Long-planned or recklessly impromptu, wherever or however they happened they all seemed the same and this one was no different. Except more so.

This time it was her dearest friend Finch was watching, standing beside an urn of white lilies and stephanotis, and shape-changing from Suzy Shepherd into Mrs Jeffery Sutton of Medford, Oregon. Suzy was about the last of their group to be married, except for Finch herself.

The bride was wearing an ivory satin Donna Karan suit and the groom had been coaxed into navy-blue Armani. As bridesmaid, Finch was wearing a little suit too, hyacinth-blue, of a cut that made her stand with her ankles together and her hands meekly clasped.

I’m too old to be got up as a fucking bridesmaid, she was thinking.

Suzy and Finch were both thirty-two years old. They had been room-mates in their first year at med school at the University of British Columbia and they had gone all the way through training together. Now Suzy was in paediatrics and had moved down to Oregon to be with Jeff, while Finch had stayed on in Vancouver as a medical practitioner. They called each other often, and e-mailed gossip and jokes and medical titbits almost every day, and they met whenever they could. But still Finch missed her friend and ally, and Suzy’s marriage could only move her a further step out of reach.

They were exchanging rings. Watching and blinking away embarrassing tears, Finch was in no doubt that the two of them were happy. They were woozy with it, as dopey as a pair of Suzy’s neonates after a six-ounce feed. Finch didn’t feel envious, exactly; what she did feel was faintly baffled. She had never worked out the secret of connubiality herself. There had been men, of course there had. Both short-term and longer. But lately, not that many.

The short civil ceremony was over. Suzy and Jeff walked arm in arm between the rows of their beaming friends and out under an awning. Beyond it the March rain was ribbed with sleet. A photographer busied around with his Nikon.

After she had kissed her mother and her aunts and her new in-laws, Suzy opened an umbrella to exclude the rest of the audience and whispered to Finch, ‘Jesus, did you see that? I did it. I married someone.’

‘You married Jeff.’

‘Yeah. I love him.’

‘I know you do.’

Suzy laughed, showing the gap between her top front teeth. She didn’t come from orthodontically obsessive stock, which was one of the reasons why Finch had loved her right from the start – for her difference from and indifference to everything Finch herself was accustomed to and thought she valued. The first time they met, Suzy marched into their room on campus, dropped a duffel bag and an armful of supermarket carriers, and eyed the matching luggage and K2 ski bags that two of Finch’s three older brothers had carried up the stairs for her.

‘I suppose you’re some Vancouver princess?’

‘You can suppose whatever you like.’

‘Well, I’m po’ white trash. My mom lives in a rented two-room and I haven’t seen my dad for twelve years.’

It was true. And it was also true that Suzy was by far the cleverest student in their year.

She twirled her umbrella now, sending icy droplets centrifugally spinning. ‘Shit, I’m a married woman. You better lead me straight to the drink, help me get over the shock,’ Mrs Jeffery Sutton said.

The reception was in a new restaurant and bar that had been designed and fitted by Jeff’s company. ‘Like it?’ he asked Finch.

There were snug booths and wood floors and tricksy mirrors and halogen lighting. It wasn’t original but it was well done.

‘Very much,’ Finch said.

‘Well, I guess you don’t need me to introduce you to people,’ Jeff said. His silk tie was already loosened and his top button undone.

‘No.’ Finch smiled. Most of Suzy’s friends who had travelled to Oregon were hers too. ‘Go on, enjoy the party.’

She slid into the nearest booth with her glass of French champagne and found that Taylor Buckaby and his wife were already sitting there. Taylor had dated Suzy for a while, in the very early days, but in the end he had settled for the secretary to the Dean of Faculty who was a svelte blonde. She was a plump blonde now, but otherwise nothing had changed. Taylor was an orthopaedic surgeon. Finch could imagine just how happy he would be among his bone saws and glinting titanium joints.

‘Hello, Taylor, Maddie.’

‘Ah, Finch. Hello there.’

They chatted for a while, about friends and work and the Buckabys’ children.

‘No plans to settle down yourself, Finch?’ Maddie asked.

‘No, none.’

‘Finch goes in for bigger challenges than a husband and kids,’ Taylor explained jovially, puffing out his already rounded cheeks. ‘Last year she went up to Alaska and climbed McKinley.’

Maddie focused her pale-blue eyes. She looked as if she was used to putting away plenty of champagne, or whatever else might be going.

‘Why?’

There were a couple of beats of silence while Finch considered her answer. It was not quite the first time she had heard the question, it was just unusual to encounter such dazed incredulity in the asking. She remembered the temperatures on the mountain of forty below, and the avalanching ice, and the risk of cerebral or pulmonary oedema, and the blade-thin ridge that ran up from 16,000 feet with a drop of 2000 feet on either side of it.

‘Uh …’

She also remembered the easy comradeship and the gallows humour of the group of climbers she had done it with – only by the West Buttress route, ‘The Butt’, nothing fancy. Most sharply of all she recalled the hit of euphoria that had wiped everything else from her mind as she hauled herself to the summit.

‘Because I thought I would enjoy it,’ she said equably. ‘And I did.’

Maddie blinked and ran her tongue over her lipstick. ‘Each to her own, I guess.’

The dancing was starting up. Jeff and Suzy began by spinning slow circles in each other’s arms, to cheers and clapping. Finch sat with the Buckabys for five more minutes, so as not to look as if she wanted to get away from them, then eased herself out of the booth. She ate some sushi from the buffet and had a half-dozen more conversations with people she was pleased to see. After that she danced with Jeff, until Jeff’s father cut in on them. Jim Sutton was a spry seventy-year-old with hands like snow shovels and a seamed brown face from a lifetime’s work in the construction industry. Jeff and Suzy shared the distinction of having travelled a long way from their backgrounds without feeling the need to shake off any of the ties.

Jim did an enthusiastic lindy-hop that left Finch panting for breath. ‘You’re too much for me,’ she protested.

‘C’mon, doc. Gimme one more.’

Finch could see that it was past 6 p.m. and she had a plane to catch. Dennis Frame, her medical partner, was covering her busy clinics for her and she had already taken three days off.

‘Next time.’ She grinned. ‘If I’m lucky.’

She went in search of Suzy and found her in one of the back booths. She had dribbled what looked like mayo down one Donna lapel and seemed set in for a serious night.

‘Hey, you got out of Jim’s clutches with one leap.’

‘Baby, I’ve got to go.’

Suzy frowned. ‘It’s so early. Don’t miss my party.’ It was a routine protest, however. As soon as she had promised to come to the wedding, Finch had warned her that she couldn’t stay long afterwards because she had to work the next day. And Suzy knew of old how exasperatingly rigid her friend could be about time and her professional responsibilities. They were different, but they understood each other and their friendship had rarely faltered.

Finch said, ‘I know, I know. But I’ve got clinics tomorrow, remember? For Dennis’s sake I can’t take too many more days off before the expedition.’

Suzy launched herself out of the booth and locked her arms around her friend. Her face turned serious at the last word.

‘Listen. I want you to take care. I want you to be safe and to come back down from there in one piece. Who’ll be Sutton Junior’s godmother, if you’re not around?’

‘Suze. You’re not?’

Suzy winked. ‘Not quite yet. But I’m planning on it.’

‘Well. That’s great. And I’ll be fine. I’m only the expedition doctor, remember, dosing the d and v, not one of the summit glory boys.’

‘Okay, just so long as you remember that. C’mon, I’ll see you off.’

They weaved their way in and out of the crowd. Suzy stopped short and peeled away towards the bar. ‘Hey, almost forgot.’

She leaned over behind the counter, exposing the tops of her tanned thighs. Jeff caught her and ran his hands over her hips until Suzy straightened up with what she had been searching for grasped in one hand. ‘Later,’ she admonished him. And she held out her bridal bouquet and stuffed it firmly into Finch’s arms.

‘Not me,’ Finch protested. ‘Find someone more deserving. Someone eager for a husband.’

‘There is no one else, kid. You are the last remaining authentic unmarried woman. Pretty soon they’re going to slap a heritage order on you.’

‘You just want me to join the club. You want me to get married because you’ve gone and done it.’

Suzy smiled, a lovely hazy smile of pure happiness and contentment. ‘Sure I do.’

‘Forget it, pal.’

They eased their way through the crowd to the door. The party was hotting up, in the way that weddings could do.

‘Finch has got to fly home up to Vancouver tonight,’ Suzy explained to the last group.

‘Weather’s turned pretty nasty,’ one of Jim Sutton’s cronies observed.

‘Finch has seen worse,’ Suzy said proudly.

Finch put her arm around her. ‘Go on, go back to your guests. I’ll call you. Have a great honeymoon.’

The newlyweds were going to the Caribbean. Suzy liked beaches.

They kissed each other.

‘Remember what I said. About coming back.’

‘I will,’ Finch promised. ‘Be happy, Mrs Sutton.’

‘I will,’ she echoed. ‘Thanks for being here, Finch. And for everything else, all the times we’ve had. I love you, you know? Plus you were a ripper bridesmaid.’

‘I wouldn’t have missed it. I love you too.’

She blew a last kiss from the doorway. As soon as she stepped outside, the cold and wind hit Finch like an axe blow. She ducked her head and teetered on high heels to the parking lot where she had left the rental car. The moment she was inside it, with the radio tuned in to some rock station and the heater beginning to do its work, Finch pushed her head hard back against the seat rest and let out a yodel of relief.

One more wedding.

She put her foot down and hightailed it for the airport until a twitch from the rear wheels gave warning of how icy the road was. She slowed at once and watched for the glow of tail lamps ahead of her.

At the airport she nosed the car into one of the Alamo slots and dropped the keys and the paperwork into the box at the closed booth at the end of the lot. The wind had strengthened and there were airborne needles of ice in it. Her thin coat over the pale-blue suit was no protection and there was a long hike to the doors of the departure hall. She dropped her bag and crouched to rummage inside it. From the bottom she pulled out her Gore-tex ski parka and pulled it on with a grunt of relief. She’d brought it with her on her three-day trip to Oregon thinking there might be a chance of some hiking, if not cross-country skiing. As it turned out there had been no time at all, but at least the faithful Patagonia was good for something now. Insulated from her hood to the middle of her thighs, Finch put her head back and marched through the wind. She carried her bag hitched over one shoulder and from the other fist trailed Suzy’s wedding bouquet. She had almost left it in the car, but had decided that she could hardly abandon her best friend’s flowers to wither on the passenger seat of a rented Nova.

Inside the sliding doors the warmth was a blessing but the concourse was packed. One glance at the departures board told her the worst and the clerk at the Air Canada desk confirmed it.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, the airport’s closed. No flights until the weather eases. Tomorrow morning, I’d say.’

Sam McGrath was out running. It was more than a habit, this daily pushing himself through the barriers of disinclination and fatigue to achieve a rhythm and finally the synchrony of muscle and breath and mind that made it all worthwhile. It was a mainstay of his existence. Sometimes, in the blacker moments, he feared it was the only one.

He was skirting the shores of a little lake, and there was ice crusting the dead reeds along the margins and skinning the deeper water. The track wound between trees and bushes with their spring buds blackened by the return of winter; the dirt underfoot was greasy with earlier sleet but Sam knew the route so well that his pace never slackened. He was warm, now, and going at full stretch, his steady breathing making clouds in the bitter air and his footfalls pounding a drumbeat in his head.

He liked this solitude. Mostly his daily running was hemmed in by the city and there were always people within sight.

His father used to bring him fishing for brook trout down here, Sam remembered. Once they had camped somewhere back up in the trees in the old green tent and had fried their catch over a smoky fire. He would have been about ten years old. It must have been some holiday weekend when Michael hadn’t swung it to go climbing.

Memories shivered and stirred in his head.

He was eight years old and standing with his father at the foot of a cliff. The face stretched up so high over Sam’s head that it blotted out the sun. He reached up his hands, palms flat and raised, and rested them against the sandstone. Mike had ceremoniously dusted them with chalk. Particles of grit scraped minutely against his skin. Slowly, tasting nausea in the back of his throat, he lifted his eyes and searched for holds. Then he bent one knee and pressed the tip and side of his sneaker into a crack.

Up.

His fingers bent and hooked. The crevices were too tiny, but still he forced himself to entrust his weight to them. Sweat burst through the skim of chalk dust.

Up.

The grass, sweet and sappy, was a long way beneath him. The rock was close to his face and the air behind and below hummed and expanded, and played tricks with gravity. One minute he was a feather, hardly anchored to the boulder, the next a sack of soaking clothes, too heavy to hold up.

Up one more foothold.

He couldn’t look up or down.

‘Sammy, you’re fine. I’m here to catch you.’

He couldn’t work out if his father’s hands were huge, a great cradle waiting for him, or a tiny cup that he would smash under his weight. He hung on for a moment longer, desperation knocking inside him, then his legs liquefied and his fingers slid from their holds.

He was falling through space. There was a white flash of relief, resignation, before his father’s arms caught him and lifted him at once in a great flourish of triumph and strength and pride, and then they were both laughing in delight, and Michael swung his son through a loop of blue infinity before setting his two feet back on the ground again. He kissed him on the nape of his neck, under the wet curl of his hair.

‘That’s my boy. You’ll climb the Cap before you’re twenty, just like your old man. And then some.’

Sam let him tug his ear and pummel his shoulder, after the kiss, but he knew that he wouldn’t do what his father expected. Wouldn’t, couldn’t, whatever the Cap might be.

Twenty years later, he made himself concentrate on the length of his stride and keeping his breathing even. Running was good for that, always. You could go for miles, lost in your thoughts and memories, if that was what you wanted. And if you didn’t want to think you could edit everything else out of your mind, everything except legs and lungs, and the way ahead.

The track brought him to the tip of the lake, then rose steeply through a belt of Douglas firs to meet the blacktop where it followed the crest of the ridge. With his head up and his breathing still steady even after the hill climb, Sam ran easily along the roadside. One pick-up truck came by, travelling in the opposite direction, but there was no other traffic. It was less than two miles to the turning to his father’s house.

The McGrath place lay back from the road, hunched up against the black trees as if it would disappear among them if it could. The white paint on the window frames was faded to grey and it was peeling in places, and the curtains at three of the four windows were drawn tight, with that dead look of never being opened whatever the time of day. Mike McGrath’s old station wagon stood on a patch of scrubby ground, with Sam’s rental car beside it. Sam had slowed to a walk as soon as he reached the mailbox on its splintered post and the cold wind immediately skewered between his ribs. The sleet had started up again. Sam pulled up the hood of his fleece jacket and skirted the two cars on his way to the door.

His mother used to grow flowers just here. Cosmos and marigolds and goldenrod, he remembered. She loved bright colours. In spite of the cold he loitered deliberately where the margin of her garden used to be, thinking of the way she used to come out here on summer evenings to snap off the heads of fading blooms or pull up tufty clumps of grass from between the clods of earth. The house faced west and the sun would still be colouring the front of it when the woods behind had turned dark.

Sam took one deeper breath. He couldn’t linger out here, he told himself. He would have to go in now and tell him.

He pushed open the front door, putting his shoulder to it because damp had warped it and given it a tendency to stick.

Mike was sitting in his chair, watching daytime TV. There was a pot of coffee on the stove and an unwrapped loaf of pre-sliced bread spilling like a soft pack of cards on the counter. Sam pushed back his hood again as his father looked up at him.

‘Good one?’ the old man asked, without much interest.

‘Yeah. I went along past the Bowmans’ place and round the lake.’

‘Quite a way, then.’

‘Not bad. It’s cold out there.’

‘Coffee’s made.’

‘Thanks.’

Sam poured himself a cup and drank a couple of mouthfuls, remembering not to wince at the taste.

‘Do you want to watch this?’ he asked pointedly. The yammering faces of some talk show filled the screen with stories of outrage, attended by resentment and rancour. Although it was appropriate enough, he thought. There was always disappointment here, in this house. A rich deposit of it, seamed with the ore of anger. So why not on the box as well? Maybe it was why Mike liked all these programmes. He felt at home with them.

‘I thought maybe we could talk,’ Sam added.

He moved his father’s stick from beside his chair so that he could pull his own seat closer, partly blocking out the TV screen. The result was that they sat almost knee to knee. Sam could have reached and taken Mike’s hand between his own, but he didn’t. They had never gone in for touching, not since Sam was a little boy.

Mike’s response was to aim the remote and lower the volume by a couple of decibels. Then he turned to look his son in the face.

‘I didn’t qualify,’ Sam said.

There were two, three beats of silence.

Mike rubbed the corner of his mouth with a horny thumb. ‘Huh?’

‘I ran in Pittsburgh last week. It was the 2000 Trials.’

Sam had been training for the City of Pittsburgh Marathon ever since the USA Track & Field international competition committee had announced that the Olympic men’s marathon team would once again be decided, as it had been for more than thirty years, by a single race. And for Sam it had been one of those days when the running machine had kept stalling and finally quit. He didn’t suffer many of them, but when the machinery did let him down it was usually to do with the weight of expectation binding and snagging. His father’s expectations, specifically. Sam was fully aware of the dynamic between them, but awareness didn’t change it or diminish the effects. Even now.

‘I didn’t know.’

The old man’s face didn’t give much away. He just went on looking at Sam, waiting for him to explain himself.

It was so characteristic, Sam thought, that he wouldn’t have known or found out about the run in advance even though his son was a contender for the US Olympic team. Mike lived a life that was defined by his own ever-narrowing interests. He watched TV, he read a little, mostly outdoors magazines, he saw a neighbour once in a while and drank a beer.

But it was equally characteristic, Sam acknowledged, that he hadn’t told his father about Pittsburgh. He had qualified for the Trials by running a time better than two hours twenty in a national championship race and he had called Mike immediately afterwards to tell him so.

‘That’s pretty good,’ had been the entire response.

In adulthood, Sam had trained himself not to resent or rise to his father’s lack of enthusiasm. It’s the way he is, he reasoned. He wanted me to do one thing and I did another.

But even so, this time Mike had seemed particularly grudging. And so he had not told him anything more about the big race beforehand, or called him with the bad news once it was over. Instead, he had waited a week and then come down to visit the old man. He had played various versions of this scene in his head, giving Mike lines to express commiseration, or encouragement for next time, or plain sympathy – but the most cheerless scenario had been closest to reality. Mike was neither surprised nor sympathetic, he was just disappointed. As he had been plenty of times before. The pattern was set now.

‘So what happened?’ Mike asked at last.

Sam caught himself shrugging and tried to stop it. ‘I was fit enough and I felt good on the start. I don’t know. I just couldn’t make it work.’

‘What time did you do?’

‘Not good. Two twenty-eight. I’ve done plenty better than that, beat all the other guys who came in ahead of me – Petersen, Okwezi, Lund. But not on the day it counted.’

Mike went on looking at him, saying nothing.

‘There’s always 2004.’ Sam smiled, thinking within himself: It should be the other way round. You should be saying that to me.

‘You’re twenty-eight, twenty-nine, aren’t you?’

You know how old I am. ‘Long-distance running isn’t a kids’ game, luckily. You can stay in the front rank over long-distance well into your thirties.’

‘I was looking forward to you bringing home that gold.’ Mike nodded to the mantel, as if there were a space there, among the pictures of mountains and bearded men, that was bereaved of his son’s Olympic medal.

‘I’d have been happy enough just to go to Sydney and represent my country. It never was just about winning, Dad,’ Sam said patiently.

‘No.’

The monosyllable was a taunt, expertly flicked, that dug into Sam like the barb of a fish-hook.

It’s the way he is, Sam reminded himself. It’s because he’s bitter about his own life. And he’s entitled to a grouse this time. He would have been proud of me if I’d made it, so it’s understandable that he should feel the opposite way now.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it this time. It was tough for me as well. But I won’t stop running. It means a lot to me.’

‘Keep at it while you still can,’ Mike agreed. ‘You’re lucky.’

Do you want me to say I’m sorry for that, as well? Sam wondered.

Mike had already turned his gaze over his son’s shoulder, back towards the jeering audience on the television. The volume went up again.

Sitting in this house, with its fading wallpaper and the same old sofa and chairs, and the blandishing blue-sky covers of his father’s magazines – he still subscribed to Climber and Outside and the rest – it was hard for Sam to head off the memories. They lined up in the kitchen space and in the closets, and behind the curtains, waiting to ambush him. Where he lived now, up in Seattle with work to do, and Frannie and friends for company and distraction, he could keep out of their way. But not here, not even most of the time. He supposed it was the same for everyone going home. Whether or not you enjoyed your visit depended on the quality of the memories.

They had moved to this house when Sam was six. Before that, Mike and Mary McGrath had lived on the Oregon coast near Newport, but then Mike had started up a rental cabin and backwoods vacation tour business, with a partner, and had brought his family to the little town of Wilding. The business had only survived a year or two, and the partner had made off with most of the liquid assets and none of the burden of debt, but the McGraths had stayed on. They had put money into this house, a couple of miles out of town, and Mary had dug a garden out front and started to make some friends. Sam was in school and seemed happy enough, and in any case Mike was as willing to stay where he was as to move on. He took a job as a transport manager with a logging company. Mike didn’t reckon much on where he lived or what he did for a living, just so long as he could feed and house his wife and child, and get to Yosemite and the Tetons whenever possible, and to plenty of big boulders for climbing when his budget didn’t stretch to proper expeditions.

Other kids had plenty worse things to deal with, Sam knew, but he found the climbing hard.

He went on the camping trips, and while his father solo-climbed he played softball with the other boys and swam in icy streams, and hiked and rode his bike, always in fear of the moment when his father would call him.

‘Come on, Sammy. It’s your turn.’

‘No.’ Trying to climb with his father watching, with the hammering of blood in his ears and the shivering of his joints, and the sipping for breath with the top inch of his lungs because to breathe more deeply might be to dislodge himself from his precarious hold – all of these were too familiar to Sam.

‘Watch me, then.’ Mike sighed.

His movements were so smooth as he climbed, his body seemed like water flowing over the rock. But Sam’s arms wound tight around his knees as he sat watching and his breath came unevenly.

Don’t fall, he prayed. Don’t fall, Dad.

A moment or two later the man reached the crest of the boulder and disappeared, then his broad grinning face looked down over the edge. ‘See? Easy as pie.’

Sam felt his cheeks turning hotter, not from the sun’s brightness. His father was already down-climbing, smooth and steady. And then midway he suddenly stopped.

‘Now what can I do?’ he demanded, flinging the words back over his shoulder into the still air. ‘I’m stuck. Tell me what to do.’

The boy raked the reddish cliff with his eyes, searching the sandstone for a crack or a bulge. There were no ropes, nothing held his father safe except his own fingers or toes and now he was stuck and he would surely fall … he would fall and fall, and he would die.

‘See anything?’ Mike McGrath called more loudly. ‘Any foothold?’

Sam gazed until his eyes burned.

The red rock was flat and hard, and there wasn’t a dimple in it, even to save his father’s life. Terror froze the sunny afternoon and silenced the birdsong, and stretched the moment into an hour.

‘Wait. Maybe if you go that way …’ He rocked up on to his knees, so that he knelt at the rock face, and took tufts of long grass in his clenched fists to hold himself tethered to the earth. There was a little nubbin below where his father’s feet rested.

Too late.

‘I’m falling,’ the man cried suddenly. And as he did so he peeled away from the rock and his body turned once in the air, black, and as helpless as a dropped puppet.

Out of Sam’s mouth a scream forced itself.

Even after Mike had executed a gymnast’s neat backflip and landed upright, knees together and arms at his sides in the exact centre of the old bath towel that he left at the foot of the boulder to keep the soles of his rock shoes from contact with the ground, Sam went on screaming. The sound brought his mother running. He buried himself in her arms.

‘Michael,’ she remonstrated, ‘what are you doing?’

She was holding the boy pressed against her as she spoke and Sam could feel her voice vibrate in the cage of her chest.

‘I didn’t mean to frighten him. I was just showing him it’s safe, for Chrissakes. Sammy, I’m okay. I came off deliberately.’

‘He’s eight years old, Mike.’

‘I want him to know what climbing means.’

Sam McGrath already knew. He knew it was what his father loved. Without knowing how to form the words he understood that Michael cared about him and his mother in his own way, but climbing was what gave everything else a meaning. Every dollar that he had to spare, every possible weekend and any vacation, were devoted to it. That was all. It was so overwhelming that in a way it was perfectly simple. And for himself, Sam also knew that it scared him speechless.

‘Let him alone. He’ll learn when he’s ready.’

There was something here, some tension like a fine wire drawn tight between the two of them that was more uncomfortable even than his own fear, and to discharge it Sam scrambled away from his mother and stood up.

‘It’s okay. I’ll do it now,’ he said.

‘That’s it, fella. You see?’ Michael laughed and the woman frowned.

Once Sam asked his father, ‘You use ropes when I’m climbing with you. Why don’t you use them when you’re on your own? Wouldn’t it be safer?’

He always remembered the answer.

‘It’s not about safety. It’s about purity.’

Mike told him that a climber could make himself as safe as he chose. By knowing what he was doing and where he was going, by calculating and planning. And above all by concentrating.

‘It’s like a problem in math. The rock sets you a problem and you solve it. Ropes and bolts and all the other climbing aids only make muddle and add up to more danger. Real climbing is the same as making love. There’s only the two of you, you and the rock, and naked is best. You’re too young to know anything about that yet.’

Sam felt embarrassed and he mumbled, ‘Most people except you climb with a partner.’

‘I’m waiting for you to grow up. By then I’ll have taught you everything I know. After you’ve been to college and trained to be a lawyer, you’ll be rich enough to go to Alaska and the Himalaya, and climb the big hills, all the places your old daddy’ll never get to see.’

Sam lifted his chin and gazed back at him, containing the defiance that he felt within himself like a stone at the bottom of a cup.

‘Can I get you another?’ Sam asked, nodding across at the coffee pot. He heeled his chair back to its accustomed place and stood up. It wasn’t breaking a connection between them, because there hadn’t been one in the first place. Mike’s attention, apparently, had barely twitched away from the television and now he held out his empty cup without comment.

Sam filled it for him, and began to make preparations for a meal. He had taken a trip into town, and bought a heap of supplies to stock the empty cupboards and the old chest freezer that wheezed in the outhouse. He didn’t think Mike was taking care of himself properly and he wanted to be sure before he left that there was at least food to hand for him, even if he chose not to eat it.

‘Steak and salad okay for you?’

Simple food was what Mike always liked. Sometimes he reminisced about Mary’s chicken pot pie or dumpling stew, and Sam would realise how much he still missed his wife and felt guilty that he didn’t live closer or make the effort to see his father more often.

‘If it’s what you’re making.’

When the food was prepared Sam laid knives and forks on the old yellow laminate table and put the plates out. ‘It’s ready.’

Mike fumbled for his stick, but it still lay where Sam had pushed it aside. The old man gave a grunt of irritation and stretched awkwardly but Sam was there first. He put it into his father’s hand and helped him to his feet, then guided him the few feet to the table.

‘I can manage. How d’you think I get by when you aren’t paying one of your visits, eh?’

‘Sure you can manage. But when I’m here, I like to be able to help you.’

They ate in silence after that, the only sound the clink of their knives and forks, and the wind driving darts of ice against the windows.

‘Not going to be a great night for travelling,’ Mike remarked.

I could stay over, just until tomorrow, Sam thought. But he didn’t want to and the realisation twisted yet another strand of guilt in him. He wanted to get out of here, back to his own place, away from the mute cohorts of their memories.

‘It’ll be fine. I’ve got to get back to work.’

That was another aspect of disappointment. He hadn’t even made it to law school. Sam’s business was computers, designing and managing websites, and it wasn’t an outstandingly successful one.

At least the silence was broken. Mike chewed thoughtfully on his steak, then wiped his mouth. ‘So you reckon that’s it, is it? No chance of a rethink?’

He was talking about the running again.

Sam must have been twelve because Mary was still there, although she had begun to seem sick. Their last summer vacation, then. Sam couldn’t recall exactly where the climb had been, but he remembered every crease and corner of it. There was a narrow chimney and then an awkward overhang. Mike had led the way and he negotiated the underside of the shelf as if it were a mere optical illusion.

‘Climb when you’re ready,’ Sam heard him call from the invisible secure point above it.

The rock waited, bearing down on him. ‘I don’t think I can do this one.’

No answer came, and Sam sighed and began to climb. Even as he was hanging off the first hold, beginning the calculation that would achieve the next, his mind and his will disengaged themselves. It wasn’t simply that he couldn’t do it. It was much more that he had no wish to. At once he down-climbed the short way he had come and called again. He told Mike that he was going down and he wouldn’t be climbing any more that day. He felt a start of rebellious happiness. A moment or two later Mike reappeared on the ledge beside him. The space felt too small to contain them both.

Mike said, ‘Do you want to think about that again?’

It wasn’t a question, but Sam boldly treated it as if it were. ‘Uh, no, thanks. I’ll head back.’

‘I think you should climb it.’

‘I think I should go down.’

‘Do what I tell you, son.’

The rock seemed to press down on their heads.

‘I don’t want to.’

It was self-discipline that restrained Mike. He wouldn’t let anger master him out on the mountain, because anger was a loss of control and loss of control meant danger. Instead, he lowered his son safely to the ground and watched until he was unclipped from the rope. Then he turned and climbed solo up the overhang.

Sam ran the path through the woods. He made himself run faster and faster to contain his shock at what he had done. When he reached the campsite he found Mary sitting tiredly in her chair under the shade of a tree. Mary defended her son against his father. That was the year Sam took up track sports.

‘Not for 2000, I’m afraid.’

The two of them had cleared their plates. The talk show finished and a soup commercial began.

Sam took them to the sink. ‘Would you like some dessert? There’s a pie. Apple.’ A bought one.

‘Sure, if it’s there.’

He brought the helpings to the table and they ate, in silence again. That was how it was. Afterwards he washed up, and dried the cutlery and placed the dish towel – without knowing he did so – in the way that Mary always left it to dry. Mike had never bought a dishwasher.

Only then did Sam allow himself to look at his watch. ‘Time for the airport.’

‘You really going, in this?’

Sam tilted his head, pretending to listen to the wind. He wanted to switch off the TV in case the local weather report came on and closed off his escape route.

‘Oh, it’s not so bad.’ He collected his zipper bag from the bedroom that still had his college sports posters on the walls and made a show of checking for his keys. ‘Do you need anything else, Dad?’ There was food in the cupboard, fuel in storage, current magazines on the chair. Spring would be here soon.

‘Not a thing.’

‘So, I’d better be going. I’ll call you in the morning.’ From the apartment or the office, in Seattle.

‘Sure.’ The old man pinched his nose and rubbed it with the back of his hand. Then he levered himself to his feet and rested his weight on his stick. From opposite directions they reached the door at the same time. Sam looked down on him.

Michael had survived a broken back, but the terrible injury and the years of fighting back from it had robbed his father of height, as well as other things. Sam thought that the way the old man lived now was truly little more than survival. Awareness of his father’s loss depressed him as well as filling him with unwieldy sympathy. It also increased his own sense of being able-bodied and surrounded by opportunity, and still having locked himself into a life that didn’t satisfy him, or offer any immediate chance of improvement. Mike’s estimation of him as a failure only confirmed his own.

‘I’m really sorry about the Trials.’

‘Maybe next time, like you said,’ Mike answered. They made an awkward connection, a little more than a handshake but less than a clasp. Then they stood apart. ‘Thanks for buying all those supplies. I didn’t need them.’

‘Take care of yourself.’

‘You know me.’

Well enough, Sam thought. He hoisted his bag, rested his hand for a moment on Mike’s shoulder, then opened the door and closed it behind him. It was snowing hard now, and the wind rounded it into the creases of steps and walls. Sam drove through Wilding and, at last, on to the freeway. He punched the buttons on the radio, stretched in his seat and headed through the storm for the airport with unconsidered heavy metal crashing in his ears.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the American ticket desk clerk told him. ‘The weather’s closed right in. Maybe in an hour, if it eases.’

‘I’ll wait,’ Sam said, as if he had a choice. From the newsstand he bought a copy of Forbes and from the coffee shop a latte that might take away the taste of his father’s brew. Under the stalled departures board he found a seat and wedged himself between a boy with a snowboard and a woman holding a baby on her lap. He sipped his coffee and watched the refugees from the weather as they pushed in past the barrier of the glass doors. The concourse was filling up, a steady wash of people jostled in front of him and the boy with the snowboard sullenly left it jutting in their path.

Sam had been sitting with the empty styrofoam cup in his hands for perhaps fifteen minutes when he saw her.

The doors parted yet again and a flurry of windborne ice crystals spun across a triangle of the murky concourse floor. A woman blew in in their wake but she wasn’t hunched over to defend herself from the weather like every one of the other arrivals. Her head was back and she was wide-eyed with exhilaration. And she appeared to be wearing nothing but a pair of slender high-heeled shoes and a faded ski parka. Her legs were very long and splashed with muddy sleet.

As well as a small overnight bag, she was negligently carrying a bridal bouquet.

Sam swore, fluently, under his breath. Some fuckwit had already married her.

He followed her with his eyes to the Air Canada desk. She went through the same exchange as he had done, then turned away. Sam was almost on his feet, on his way to intercept her, when he remembered that he didn’t know her. Not yet. Instead, he watched as she bought a cup of coffee and drank it standing, her attention on the departures board. The bouquet lay at her feet, with her bag. There was no bridegroom in sight, no smirking triumphalist ready to propel her away to a honeymoon hotel. She was apparently all alone.

He stood up and placed his coat on his seat, making it the only unoccupied one in sight. He walked between the clumps of travellers until he reached her side. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

Her gaze travelled over his face, level, considering, touched with amusement. ‘There are three pregnant women and several geriatrics standing around here. Why me?’

Jesus, he thought. She’s really something. ‘Good question.’

‘Thanks for the offer, anyway.’ She was smiling. She wasn’t beautiful, her eyes were too wide-set and her jaw too prominent for that. She was better than beautiful; she was intriguing.

‘Where are you heading?’

‘Home to Vancouver. And you?’

‘Uh, yup. Me too.’ Seattle, BC, what did it matter? Tomorrow’s work waiting, Frannie – Sam folded them up and put them all on hold. It was a very long time since he had felt himself do anything so perfectly unconsidered.

‘You live in Vancouver?’

‘Uh, not exactly. Visiting, you know. Looks like we might have a long wait. Maybe until tomorrow.’

‘I’m not giving up hope. I need to get away tonight,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘And I have to make some calls. Nice talking to you.’ She was dismissing him.

‘Sam McGrath.’

Although she hadn’t invited the introduction she nodded politely enough. ‘Finch Buchanan.’

He bent down and picked up the flowers, putting them into her hands. They were some kind of creamy white scented ones, spiked with glossy evergreen. Conventional, in a way that didn’t quite go with her. And her fingers were ringless.

‘Congratulations, by the way. Mrs Buchanan, is it?’

She laughed now, a great uninhibited snort of merriment that showed her teeth and her tongue. Jesus, he thought again.

‘Actually, it was. But I only married him for his money. I shot him on the drive from the reception.’

‘Wise move.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So now you’ll be looking for a replacement?’

One try too many, he realised, as soon as he said it. Finch gave a delicate shrug. The parka crinkled around her and she pulled impatiently at the velcro fastenings to undo it. She wasn’t, unfortunately, naked beneath it. She was wearing a little buttoned-up blue skirt suit that made her look disappointingly like Ally McBeal. She rolled up the parka and stuffed it into her bag.

‘See you.’ She smiled and strolled away towards the bank of payphones at the end of the hall.

As soon as she was busy with her call, Sam went straight to the Air Canada desk and transferred his ticket. After Finch finished her animated conversation she found a place to sit a long way off next to a group of Mexican nuns, took a book out of her bag and immersed herself in it.

Slowly, the snowstorm moved away south-westwards. The Vancouver flight was nearly three hours late departing, but on the other hand it was one of the few that left at all that night. It was full. Sam saw her as soon as he boarded, in a window seat halfway down the main cabin. He strode up the aisle to the as yet miraculously unoccupied seat beside her.

‘What do you know?’ He smiled and settled himself in place. She had the book open on her lap.

‘I know something about the laws of probability,’ she answered coolly and returned to her reading. Sam saw a guy who looked like John Belushi making his way towards them, already frowning. He leaned down and scooped Finch’s flowers from where she had wedged them under the seat in front, and held them on the armrest between them. And he squirmed closer so their heads were almost touching.

‘Is this …?’ Belushi began tetchily.

Sam passed over his boarding card. ‘I’m really sorry. It’s your seat, I know. But look, it’s our wedding night. D’you mind changing so I can sit beside my wife? She’s a nervous flier.’

‘Well, okay,’ the man grunted and pushed onwards.

She didn’t laugh now. She didn’t look alarmed or disconcerted or angry – just severe. She took back the flowers and pushed them under the seat again, kicking them out of the way with the toe of her pretty shoe. ‘What is all this about?’

‘You think I’m a flake, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not. I just wanted to sit here.’

‘Then sit,’ she said crisply. He did as he was told, through the last-minute de-icing and the taxi and the take-off, and the pilot’s announcement that in the wake of the storm severe turbulence was anticipated and they should keep their seat belts fastened. As the plane climbed through the cloud layers it pitched and shuddered, and the engines whined and changed key. Finch suddenly let her book drop and pushed her head back against the seat rest. Sam saw the pallor of her throat.

‘As a matter of fact there was one grain of accidental truth in that load of bullshit.’

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘I’m a lousy flier.’

‘Want to hold my hand?’

‘I want a drink.’

He peered around the seat in front. As far as he could see, the crew were still strapped in. ‘Not yet. Want to talk instead?’

She sighed and closed her eyes. The fuselage creaked and swayed giddily. ‘If you like.’

‘I had my fortune told by an old native Indian woman when I was a tiny boy. I remember to this day, her saying to me, “You are not going to die in an Air Canada 737 somewhere over the western seaboard.” Do you feel sick, by the way?’

‘If I vomit I can deal with it myself, thank you. I am a doctor.’

‘Dr Buchanan. Specialising in put-downs of pushy men and vomit.’

The plane hit a pocket of empty space. It pitched through the vacuum for what seemed like ten seconds before hitting solid air again. A child began screaming and a moan came from an old woman across the aisle. Finch snatched at Sam’s hand and dug her nails in. She had gone white to the lips.

‘It’s okay,’ he soothed her. Her hand was clammy; he rubbed the skin on the back of it gently with his thumb. ‘It’s just storm turbulence. Nothing’s going to happen to us. You’re safe.’ He reached to the seat pocket and laid the paper bag on her lap, just in case, on top of the book. He noticed now that it was Touching the Void, a classic account of a climbing catastrophe and its aftermath.

He nodded pleasantly at it. ‘I read that. Quite a story.’

She rolled her head. ‘I think I’d rather be down a crevasse than up here.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Look. Don’t expect me to be polite and kind. Just talk to me. Tell me about yourself, if you like.’

‘An invitation no male could refuse. Where should I begin?’

He told her about why he had been visiting his father and about running, and his work and its problems, trying to make it twice as interesting as it really was. He avoided mentioning Frannie, although once or twice he caught himself saying we and he knew she had registered it. The plane’s bucking and shuddering gradually eased, and in-flight service began. By the time he was putting a large vodka and tomato juice into her hand, Finch’s colour had improved. She drank half the measure down straight.

‘Thanks again.’

‘Steady.’

She had let go of his hand minutes ago. Now she picked up Joe Simpson’s book again. ‘I think I’ll read some more of this.’

It wasn’t until they had begun their descent into Vancouver that he broke in on her once more. ‘You know all about me, I don’t know anything about you. Is that a fair arrangement, do you think?’

She smiled briefly. ‘I shouldn’t think so. What do you want to know?’

In response to a series of direct questions he learned that she had been in Oregon for her best friend’s wedding. She practised in the city with a partner, she had four brothers all older than she was, her father was an architect he had vaguely heard of and her mother was a mother. She lived alone in a city apartment. And yes, she was seeing someone at the moment. Although she flashed a warning glance at him just for asking.

They had landed and were taxiing towards the stand when he put the final, inevitable, schlocky question he couldn’t think of any way around. ‘Can I call you some time? Maybe we could have dinner.’

Finch sighed. She had gathered up the flowers again and they made her look as if she was headed for the altar. ‘I don’t think so, Sam.’

‘Why not? I’m harmless, maybe even quite amusing. What have you got to lose?’

‘Nothing.’ They were stationary at last. Raindrops glittered on the window beyond her shoulder. ‘I’m not going to be here. I’m going away for a while.’

‘When?’ he asked grimly. Somehow he would see her again, whatever it might take.

‘In a couple of weeks. And I’m really busy before then, getting ready for it.’

‘Where?’

She hesitated. Then a so-what smile crimped the corners of her mouth. ‘Out to Nepal. Kathmandu. Then on to Everest. I’m joining an expedition to climb it. Medical officer.’

‘You’re a climber. You don’t just read about it? That’s extraordinary.’ Shaking his head, he reached out mentally to all the curtains of denial with which he had shrouded his adolescence and pulled them down with one breezy sentence. ‘Because I climb too. Mad about it, ever since I was a kid.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you said you were a marathon runner. A failed Olympic one.’

‘That too. Where will you be staying in Kathmandu?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’ve been there. Some of the hotels are pretty dire, in my experience. Just want to be sure you’ve picked a decent one.’

In fact, he had never been further west than Hong Kong. He tried hard to remember anything he had ever read about the Nepali capital. Ancient. It was really ancient and seriously polluted. Would that do?

Finch sighed. ‘It’s the Buddha’s Garden. I’m not planning to change it. And that information is of no conceivable use to you.’

The forward doors were open. The passengers ahead of them had shuffled their way out and Finch was already on her feet, bending her head under the overhead lockers.

‘All information has value,’ Sam said. ‘Let me help you with your bag. Or at least carry your bouquet for you.’

‘I can manage.’

They were in the chilly corridors. She was slipping away from him, but it didn’t matter. He could deal with that.

Immigration was about to separate them. Sam was still counting himself lucky that he had had his passport on him.

‘Goodbye,’ Finch said seriously. ‘Someone’s here to meet me, or I’d offer you a lift. Thanks for your company.’

‘So long, Finch.’

Then she was gone. Sam was left alone in the arrivals hall at Vancouver airport at one in the morning, with his car and his girlfriend and his stalled life waiting for him in Seattle. From the taxi line, John Belushi was glaring reproachfully at him.