The piano downstairs went on well past midnight and even when it ceased he still could hear the voices. He knew who was talking and could half-follow the conversation, occasionally broken by thumps and bursts of laughter, until finally it softened to whispers and Price fell asleep. His dream started almost at once. He walked into his father’s house in Cheshire, but he had his climbing boots on and the hobnails scratched against the floorboards. In the dining room he found the whole family at the table, his parents and brother and even his sister Beryl who had been gone these six years. His mother was in a gown and his father in white tie, but Price was wearing his heaviest alpine clothes, his jacket and felt hat dusted with snow. They told him to sit for dinner, but Price looked at Beryl and she opened her mouth to speak. Then he woke.
Price dresses without lighting the lamp, winding puttees over his calves in the dark. He wants to keep his pupils wide for the ridge. He feels the rope strung up between the posts at the foot of the bed. The flax is still damp. Price coils it and throws it over his shoulder, stepping quietly down the hallway in stockinged feet into the bedroom next door.
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.
A large group has arranged itself around the upright piano. Climbers sit cross-legged on the floor, a few reclining, others sucking on glowing pipes. The aroma of cheap shag tobacco hangs low. A row of spectators is seated on chairs at the back, among these a few women. Ashley sees only the back of the piano player. A cream blouse, a long dark skirt. Her hands are fair. A silver band is around her wrist.
Ashley and Price stay in the door frame, watching. The piece returns to its theme again, a churning cascade of notes. The music slows, then ceases. The girl lifts her hands from the keys. There is cheering and applause.
— Encore, encore!
The girl swivels on the piano bench, startled by this enthusiasm. She is slender and her dark hair is tied up. There are faint freckles beneath her blue eyes.
— It wasn’t anything, she says.
— Marvelous, Price calls. Encore!
The girl smiles and bows her head a little. She flips through the songbook, but her two companions stand up, another dark-haired woman and a man in a motoring duster. The room goes on applauding as the girl stands and makes a shy bow. Clapping on, Price leans toward Ashley.
— She shan’t forget this hotel.
The girl and her companions walk out amid cheers. A young man with a pipe in his mouth pulls out the piano bench, starting a lively tune whose lyrics were worked out last night. The audience joins in the chorus. Price clasps Ashley on the shoulder.
— Look here Ashley, I’m only trying to set you on the right course. Plenty of climbers start as fire-eaters, forever biting what they aren’t fit to swallow. I daresay I’ve been as guilty as any fellow. But you must learn to profit from another man’s experience, otherwise you’re courting disaster. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are. I told you the safe route, and you went flailing over some mad path that dropped you.
— I caught myself—
— Barely. A true alpinist doesn’t depend on chance.
Price lifts his hand from Ashley’s shoulder.
— I’ve a question for you, Ashley. Which do you suppose takes a man furthest in life — talent, judgment or persistence?
Ashley considers.
— I’d say the salmon possesses all three. And after infinite labor comes to die in the same place he started.
— Be serious.
— Then I don’t know. Which is it?
Price takes the rope from Ashley and throws the coil over his shoulder. He starts toward the stairs, shaking his head.
— Which, indeed.