SOLO

IT was a fine evening in August at a hut high above Chamonix. From within came a hum of. voices and the occasional laugh, as tired climbers cooked their evening meal. On the raised parapet running round the terrace outside a solitary figure was seated, knees drawn up to his chin, thoughtfully smoking a pipe. Puffs of smoke hung motionless in the still air. Behind him, the long glacier and the path running up the moraine at its side were in shadow, but the mountains still glowed golden. Up the path trudged a few late-comers. It was a peaceful scene, to which the contemplative figure formed a foreground. So thought the little group of tourists standing in the doorway. They were spending the night at the hut to witness an alpine sunrise.

"Their faces would be a picture if they knew what I was thinking," said Richard Farral to himself sardonically, as he sat on the wall aware that he was being watched. He was small and wiry, with a fair moustache that stood out startlingly against the ruddy tan of his face. His light gold hair was short and carefully brushed. His breeches and sweater, of continental make, were expensive but unpretentious. He was an unpretentious figure. Studiedly so, some might have said, had he given them the chance to know him well enough. But no one ever had known him well. Not even Will.

Their attention caught, the tourists went on to notice the small, slightly puckered mouth and the light crowsfeet about his eyes, of which he was privately rather proud. He exuded an air of self-sufficiency. This must be a famous guide, they thought with some awe, and turned to the hut warden for confirmation. Farrel heard the question as they went inside. He could imagine the reply: "No. that is M. Farrel, the English climber. It was he who soloed the Eiger Direct last summer. He put up a new route on the Eckpfeiler Buttress only a month ago. The greatest alpinist since Bonatti."

Farrel smiled to himself, a queer satisfied little smile. Yes, it was pleasant to be famous, to see recognition and respect dawn in the warden’s face as he handed in his S.A.C. card, to have a press reporter from Italy or France or Germany, though rarely Britain ("a prophet is not without honour..." he used to reflect), waiting for him after a climb with a drink and a free meal and perhaps the offer of payment for exclusive rights. He had no qualms about any mythical amateur status, though .he refused to earn a living by guiding or instructing. In point of fact he had no need to earn a living. His father had died several years before, leaving him a wealthy man, and now he lived in Switzerland, skiing in the winter, climbing in the summer, and disappearing no-one knew where, in between. Yet he was careful to remain the quiet modest Englishman in his dealings with the press. Yes, it was very pleasant. But really it meant nothing, he reminded himself. There was nothing for him to live for. He was merely filling in time, so to speak. Dutifully almost, he thought back to that day six years ago when Will died...

They had been descending a steep treacherous slope. The snow was soft and soggy in the afternoon sun, and beneath it was ice. They were both tired. When he heard thc frightening shout, he realised he had been expecting it all along. They should have been belaying, he knew. But he had felt confident in himself and, although Will was less experienced and obviously not happy, he had decided, in the arrogance or petulance of his fatigue, that that was so much the worse for Will. Now, as Will slid down towards him, his axe slicing through the snow and scraping uselessly on the ice beneath in his vain efforts to brake, Farral realised it was so much the worse for both of them. There wasn’t a hope of holding Will. He had plenty of time to realise it. Too much perhaps. For as Will’s despairing face rushed past, and he felt his own pick make no impression on the ice, his horror turned to rage. The fool, the fool. what right had he to kill them both. Impulsively he unclipped the karabiner at his waist – thank God he never bothered with screw-gates- – then took out the figure-of-eight. Next instant it was snatched from his hand as the 150-foot rope came tight, and he watched fascinated as one of Will’s crampons caught and he disappeared over the edge of the ice-fall below, somersaulting.

He had spent a further week in the area as he knew would be expected of him, looking after a few formalities, but mostly sitting about wearing an appropriately disconsolate mask. Beneath it he was still angry with Will, angry at being placed in such an equivocal position. It seemed perfectly natural that he should have obeyed the instinct of self-preservation. Will’s death was his own fault. Why should he, Farral, have to die too? Yet he could imagine the outraged reaction in the Alpine Club, in the mountaineering press. It just wasn’t cricket, was it? His anger stemmed from fear lest the body, with rope and tell-tale figure-of-eight attached, should be found to incriminate him. He had never needed friends, but he did need to be accepted and admired. So he appeared convincingly sick at heart when he plodded up to the foot of the ice-fall with the search party They failed to find the body, however, and it became apparent that Will had disappeared for ever down one of the blue chasms of the ice-fall.

As his fear of discovery lessened, he began to feel, not so much remorse as a certain self-regarding melancholy. For he had read Shakespeare and Dostoevsky and he was aware of the ways in which guilt can manifest itself in the human mind, though personally he had always found Iago more comprehensible than Raskolnikov. Gradually he convinced himself that life could have no more meaning for him. He could only court death, or defy it, in the way most open to him. He could even quote to himself:

Of course, in reality, he was giving his life a meaning for the first time. In the past he had shown potential for almost anything he turned his hand to, hut a kind of cynical indifference, a spoilt world-weariness, had marred all his efforts. Always the will had been lacking for real success. In his climbing, he had possessed the technique but not the incentive to climb the hardest routes in the Alps. Now, in the carefully nurtured, if largely unconscious, fiction of his despair, he found that will, and began the series of bold solo climbs that made him famous. He never carried a rope. While he was front-pointing on steep black ice that swept for two thousand feet below him, or climbing loose vertical rock, he was enabled by a sort of unthinking indifference so to concentrate on overcoming that particular obstacle, on reaching the top, on succeeding, that his mind was excluded and he was without fear. When he was not climbing, and his mind maybe began to wonder at these feats, he diverted it to the spectre of Will and the black emptiness which that engendered. And all the time he basked secretly, unknown even to himself probably, in the aura of adulation that surrounded him. His name, disseminated by Eurovision and the Press, became a household word all over Europe. His reputation could hardly increase.

It was a fact of which he was becoming aware. Recently he had begun to feel a restlessness and dissatisfaction he had not known since he wrapped the black mantle of despair so snugly about himself. He could not acknowledge as much to himself. But a vague unease was even then undermining the complacency of that tranquil-seeming figure on the terrace.

Two young Frenchmen approached. Beautiful evening, wasn’t it? It boded well for the morrow, didn’t he think? They chatted for a while. The Frenchmen were deferential. He was quietly affable, slightly condescending, but only slightly. And was he climbing tomorrow? Yes, he was attempting the North Face of Le Doight, he replied in the clipped, rather formal manner he affected even in his not-quite-fluent French. Just a classic he had never done, he explained apologetically. Ah, they were doing the same themselves. Quite a coincidence, wasn’t it, when the face was so rarely climbed. No doubt they would meet – near the bottom, at any rate (the speed with which he climbed was legendary). Farral nodded and raised his eyebrows as much as to say "Perhaps", and they wished him Bonsoir.

He was woken at one o’clock and made his way downstairs in the dark. No other climbers were up yet. A quick cup of coffee and he was picking his way over the moraine to the glacier. There was only the faintest hint of dawn in the sky as he started up the face. It was notorious for stonefall once the sun reached it. He gained height rapidly, the two head-torches that had flickered after him across the glacier, dropping far below.

Nonetheless, he was curiously nervous. For the first time in years he was worrying, disturbed by the ignominy should the Frenchmen overtake him. His reputation would be damaged. Suddenly he realised how much it meant to him, that reputation. Yet he was perched on a pinnacle, able to go no higher, only to fall. And what if he should fall, literally? The thought admitted, the question asked, fear swept over him. His muscles tensed and he lost the relaxed rhythm which was the essence of his speed. Then, as if a charm had been broken, the rock-fall came.

Hitherto he had always been lucky. Of course, there had been narrow escapes. But he had never actually fallen, never been avalanched, never even been hit by stones. Now, with only the briefest rumble of warning, he was in the midst of a storm of rocks and boulders. Something smashed his left shoulder. He nearly fainted and lurched insecurely on his front points. A sudden blow on the wrist caused him involuntarily to let go of his axe. Some seconds later he heard an angry yell from below. Evidently it had hit, or narrowly missed one of the Frenchmen, he did not greatly care which. He was trembling all over, cowering against the ice. When the last stones had whistled past, he made his way, faint with pain and shock, to a little cluster of rocks jutting out of the ice, carefully, laboriously cutting steps with his north-wall hammer. Belaying himself with the same slow attention to detail, he sank down on n little rock platform.

The Frenchmen duly arrived. The stones had missed them, but Farral’s axe had very nearly hit the leader. They shouted indignantly, and when he remained silent, enquired after him anxiously. He did not appear badly hurt, however, and eventually they shrugged their shoulders and left him in peace. Peace was all he wanted, in that hour of recognition. He sat there, seeing with stereoscopic clarity how he had deceived himself. He knew now that he had never felt any guilt for Will’s death. He knew that he had climbed not from despair, but from vanity and pride. And Nemesis had found him finally. That very pride had betrayed him to himself. Fear of failure had reawakened the fear of death which his will, in its blind power, had stifled. He smiled bitterly, seeing in himself all the paradox and awful anagnorisis of the tragic hero. And then he realised that he was neither tragic nor a hero, but something infinitely small and pitiable. The scaffolding which had supported his ego in its total isolation, had been swept away with the stones. Face to face with the reality for the first time in his life, he sang into a dreamy vacuum in which he gazed with detachment on his crushed, throbbing shoulders. The hours passed. He was dimly aware that he ought to move, that his position was unsafe. But his mind could not focus, his limbs seemed no longer his. An effort was needed, but the will was gone. He lay emptied of all emotion or thought, yet warm and somehow content, as if a fatal opiate were at work. Dully, he watched a miniature cascade of water running down the rock beside him, where the ice in a crack had been melted by the sun. The rough granite was almost hot beneath his palms. Drowsily he closed his eyes.

The Frenchmen returned to the hut late in the afternoon and reported that they had last seen the mad Englishman sitting on a ledge in the middle of the face. A new group of tourists were on the terrace. Binoculars turned onto the speck of red that stood out so clearly when they knew where to look. At that moment, as if the gods, in deference to what they assumed would be his wish, had waited for an audience before pulling down the curtain, a massive section of cliff broke away from the upper rock-band, carving a broad swathe down the centre of the face.

When the obliterating dust and snow had cleared, the little red dot was gone. Next day the papers were full of it.