‘I mean, why didn’t you call from Nepal? Or write me a letter? Or, for that matter, an e-mail?’
He shrugged. ‘For a while I didn’t really have much to say to anyone. I guess you heard what happened?’
‘It made the Chronicle,’ she said. ‘But it didn’t say much more than was on the wire. The report just said that Didier was killed in an avalanche and that you had survived.’ She hugged him again and then pulled him into the hallway.
‘Not just Didier,’ he said. ‘There were five Sherpas killed as well.’
‘God, how terrible for you.’
‘That’s what it was — terrible.’
‘I’m glad you’re all right. Jack,’ she said, closing the door.
She led him into her living room, pushed him onto a large, deep sofa, and then fetched him a drink. His favourite — the Macallan.
‘When did you get back?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Yesterday? And you waited all this time to come and see me?’
‘Actually, it was more like last night. Late last night. And I was beat.’
Jack drained his glass and took a long look at her. She was even better-looking than he had remembered. Her legs were tanned and very shapely. These she crossed as she sat down opposite him on a hard little chair.
‘There’s no one on the scene?’ he said. ‘I mean tonight.’
‘Not tonight, no.’
‘Good. Mind if I get myself a refill?’
‘Help yourself.’
He stood up, wandered over to the drink tray, where he poured himself a larger malt, and then returned to a different position on the sofa, one that seemed to offer a better vantage point from which to enjoy a view of her legs.
‘What, no one at all? I can’t believe that. C’mon, it’s seven or eight months since I saw you last. There must have been someone.’
‘I didn’t say there hadn’t been.’
‘Now I’m getting jealous.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Who, for instance?’
Swift shrugged negligently.
‘If one is discreet — very discreet — there are always the students.’
‘You’re bullshitting me.’
‘Maybe,’ she said and uncrossed her legs, allowing him a brief glimpse of her thighs before tugging at the hem of her skirt.
‘Anyone can see that you’ve been celibate while you’ve been in Nepal,’ she said. ‘Cut it out, will you. Jack? Sharon Stone I am not.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he grinned. ‘Just fooling around.’
‘Don’t. By the way, what’s in the box?’
‘A present.’
‘For me?’
‘Maybe.’
Swift wriggled with excitement.
‘What is it? Something I’ll like?’
Jack shook his head. He knew her too well to tell her about the fossil in the box. He was looking forward to dinner — the first really good dinner he would have eaten in months — to her undivided attention. He had no intention of eating alone while Swift stayed in her laboratory and played Richard Leakey with the skull he had discovered in the Machhapuchhare bergschrund.
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ he said. ‘But dinner first, okay?’
‘Well,’ he said when they finished the dinner she made. ‘That was almost worth the wait. Best damn dinner I’ve eaten in months.’
‘Is the food so bad in Nepal?’ Swift asked.
‘Usually it’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘But because we were a lightweight team and the feasible payloads were critically small, we had to make do with a lot of the same food all the time. Mostly we relied on lightweight assault rations. When we were at base camps the food was better. Buffalo meat. Eggs, dal, goat, and rice. But even then — well, let’s just say it’s the kind of food where only a brave man farts.’
Swift pulled a face.
‘I still can’t understand why you do it,’ she said, ‘why you go climbing at all. What do you get out of it? Some kind of cheap thrill, I guess.’
‘It’s hardly cheap,’ he objected. ‘Considering what can happen. Considering what did happen.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.’
‘No problem. Disapproval sounds flattering coming from you. Swift. Like maybe you actually care what happens to me.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea? Seriously though. Jack. Why do you do it?’
‘Why do I leave home and go see all the wonders of the world? I might just as easily ask you why you stay here in this off-the-wall little city.’
‘I go places,’ she said, bridling. ‘Field trips. Fossil hunting. Last year I went to East Africa. But with you, it’s not just travel, is it? You go there to risk your life. Jack, you’re like a grown man with a new motorcycle. You’re forty, for God’s sake.’
‘You make forty sound old.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time you settled down?’
‘I guess I never found a reason to, yet. Are you making me an offer?’
‘No, of course I’m not,’ she laughed.
‘Then I don’t think it’s time I settled down at all.’
‘So, it’s all my fault, is it?’
‘Sure it is.’
‘You bastard,’ she said, punching him playfully on the shoulder. ‘Maybe you like to climb because of the ape in you?’ she suggested.
‘Maybe. But to answer your question properly, I climb mountains because it’s a passion with a capital P. Suffering, defeat, justice. There’s something almost religious about it. Like your own personal Oberammergau.’ He laughed out loud. ‘Jesus, can you believe the crap I’m coming out with tonight? I’ve had too much to drink.’
But Swift felt he had let something slip that wasn’t just the result of alcohol. Something rare and very personal.
‘No, I really want to know.’
Pausing for a moment. Jack took a deep breath and then spoke again.
‘The Sherpas believe that the Himalayas are holy. The mountains aren’t just named after local heroes or after a supposed similarity with some kind of animal. They mean something religious. For instance, Chomo Lungma, the Tibetan name for Everest, means Land of the Goddess, Mother of the Earth. And Annapurna means Goddess of Bountiful Harvests. These people believe that the mountains are sacred and there are some peaks they actually consider to be inviolable — that it would be blasphemous to climb them. Well, this is how it is for me. The fact of the matter is, I almost believe that myself. You see, it’s the very blasphemy of it, the confrontation with God, the thrown-down challenge to Him that makes me want to do it. To keep doing it. Even to climb the ones I’m not supposed to climb.
‘Maybe, I don’t know... maybe there’s some Freudian explanation for all of that...’ He laughed again. ‘Jesus, stop me, for Pete’s sake. I’m just full of shit tonight. I must sound like I’m back at Oxford.’
‘You never sounded like that when you were at Oxford,’ said Swift. ‘You were very practical and American and you made a secret of your intellectual abilities. You were bright without being pretentious. That was what attracted me.’
He and Swift had always shared an understanding about sex: If there was nobody else on the scene, they slept together. Still, it was best to take nothing for granted. If he could only get her into bed before she saw the fossil.
Swift made coffee and carried it into the lounge on a brass-bound Indian tray Jack had brought her after climbing Dunagiri, a seven-thousand-metre high mountain, in northern India. That had been his first Himalayan peak. Didier’s too. They had climbed it in preparation for their ascent of Changabang the following year. Jack realized with a sense of shock that it was exactly ten years since that. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was getting too old to go mountaineering.
After a long silence Swift leaned across the sofa and touched his cheek with the back of her heavily ringed hand.