At that moment Luc decided they wouldn’t be turning back.
He knew Hugo would complain bitterly, but it didn’t matter. They were going to be camping tonight. If there wasn’t a good spot further on, they could always come back and sleep under the protection of this ancient tree.
Hugo did complain.
It was certainly a tree, he agreed, but he thought it was an article of extreme faith that it was the tree. He was sceptical to the point of being obnoxious. Finally Luc told him flatly that he was carrying on and if Hugo wanted, he could go back, take the Land Rover and find a hotel.
Hugo had no appetite for either course of action. He groused equally about sleeping rough and finding his way back to the car on his own. In the end he gave in and meekly followed Luc along the new ledge in search of, as he put it ‘mythical waterfalls and unicorns.’
They were running out of daylight. The temperature was dropping and the sky had turned a dusky, rose-like pink. Hugo, resigned to spending an uncomfortable night under the stars, demanded a break for his aching shoulders. They stopped on a secure shelf and guzzled water. Then Hugo unzipped his fly and urinated over the edge. ‘There’s your waterfall,’ he said without a trace of humour.
Luc had his rucksack off too. He leaned back and rested his head against the cliff, about to make a schoolboy comment in reply, when instead he said, ‘Hey!’ He felt the dampness on his scalp. He wheeled around and laid both hands on the rocks. They were wet. Stepping back as far as he could without going over the edge, he looked up and pointed at a wide dark stripe. ‘Look! It goes all the way up. It’s our waterfall!’
Hugo looked up too, unimpressed. ‘If that’s a waterfall, I’m the Pope.’
‘It’s been a dry summer. After a rainy spring, I’ll bet it turns into a proper waterfall. Come on before we lose the light. If there’s a second one, I’ll buy dinner.’
They walked into the fading light for the better part of another hour. Now, instead of looking, Luc constantly touched the rock face to feel for moisture.
Dusk was overtaking them. Luc was about to call a halt when they both heard it at the same time: a trickle, like a running tap. A few paces ahead, the rocks were soaking wet and water was seeping onto the ledge, puddling and flowing down towards the river. It was more a water dribble than a waterfall, but as far as Luc was concerned they were on the right track. Even Hugo perked up and agreed to push on until the sun completely set.
Luc pulled out the map one more time and pointed to the two waterfalls and the X that marked the cave. ‘If this part of the map is to scale then the cave is nearby, but it’s impossible to know if it’s below us or above us. I think we have about fifteen minutes of light before it’s going to be pointless.’
They consumed the entire quarter of an hour, using Luc’s small powerful LED torches to make up for the lack of natural light. There were good sightlines above them. To explore the rock face underneath, Luc would periodically drop to his belly and shine the light over the edge, sweeping the surface with the beam of his torch. Aside from the normal stratigraphy and fissures there was nothing remotely suggestive of a cave opening above them or below.
Now it was simply too dark to continue. They were on a broad enough shelf to camp for the night so they didn’t have to backtrack – which was just as well since both of them were hungry and tired.
Hugo crumpled and set his rump down hard on his pack. ‘So, where’s dinner?’
‘Coming up. You won’t be disappointed.’
In short order Luc produced an excellent meal on his portable gas stove: peppered fillet steaks and pan-fried potatoes, crusty bread, some creamy local chèvre and a bottle of decent Cahors, which he reckoned was worth the weight he carried all day.
They ate and drank into the evening. The moonless sky slipped through the darkening shades of grey until it became a virtually sightless black. Perched on the ledge they seemed alone on the edge of the universe. That, and the full-bodied wine, moved their conversation to a melancholy place and Hugo, tucked into his sleeping bag for warmth, was soon morosely lamenting his life.
‘How many men do you know,’ he asked, ‘who’ve been married to two women but divorced three times? When Martine and I got married again, I have to say, it was a moment of temporary insanity. And do you know what? I was rewarded for those three months of madness with another assault on my wallet. Her lawyer’s better than mine but mine is my cousin, Alain, so I’m stuck.’
‘Are you seeing anyone now?’ Luc asked.
‘There’s a banker named Adele who’s as cold as frozen peas, an artist named Laurentine who’s bipolar, I think, and…’
‘And who?’
Hugo sighed. ‘I’m also seeing Martine again.’
‘Unbelievable!’ Luc half-shouted. ‘You’re a certified idiot.’
‘I know, I know…’ Hugo’s voice drifted off into the night and he finished his wine then poured some more into his aluminium cup. ‘What about you? Are you prouder of your record?’
Luc rolled out his foam mattress and laid his sleeping bag over it. ‘No, sir, I’m not proud. One girl, one night, maybe two, that’s been my history. I’m not wired for relationships.’
‘You and what’s her name, that American girl, definitely were a couple a few years ago.’
‘Sara.’
‘What happened?’
Luc slithered into his sleeping bag. ‘She was different. It’s a sad story.’
‘You left her?’
‘On the contrary. She dumped me, but I deserved it. I was stupid.’
‘So you’re stupid, I’m an idiot, and both of us are sleeping on a ledge one step away from an abyss, which pretty much confirms our intelligence.’ He zipped up his bag and declared, ‘I’m going to sleep now and put myself out of my misery. If I’m not here in the morning, I went for a leak and forgot where I was.’
In a remarkably short time, Hugo was snoring and Luc was on his own, trying to pick out a star or a planet through cloud cover and wine-induced mistiness.
In time, his eyes fluttered closed, or so he thought, because he was aware of swift black shapes moving above him, perhaps an incipient dream. But there was something familiar about the wild unpredictable zigzags, the jet-plane speed, and then it came to him in one sobering thought: bats.
He hurriedly unzipped his sleeping bag, grabbed his torch and aimed the beam overhead. Dozens of bats were darting around the cliffs.
He trained the light on the rocks and waited.
Then, a bat flew straight into the cliff and disappeared. Then another. And another.
There was a cave up there.
Luc woke Hugo and steadied the man as he struggled to get oriented and upright. As he stepped out of his sleeping bag Hugo was sputtering, ‘what? what?’ in total disorientation.
‘I think I’ve found it. I’m going up. I can’t wait till the morning. I need you to keep an eye on me, that’s all. If I get in trouble, get help, but I won’t get in trouble.’
‘You’re mad,’ Hugo finally said.
‘At least partially,’ Luc agreed. ‘Shine the torch there. It doesn’t look too bad.’
‘Christ, Luc. Wait till tomorrow.’
‘Not a chance.’
He directed Hugo where to aim his torch and found a good handhold to start the ascent. The distinct strata of the rock face formed a staircase of sorts and he never really felt in imminent danger, but still he took it slowly, aware that night-climbing and wine were not an ideal combination.
In a few minutes he was at the spot where he thought the bats were disappearing, although he wasn’t positive. There was nothing resembling a cave mouth or shelter in sight. He had a good enough purchase on the cliff that he was able to remove his own torch from his jacket pocket for a closer inspection. Just then, a bat flew out of the cliff and zoomed past his ear. Startled, he paused for a moment to catch his breath and make sure his foot hold hadn’t slipped.