Just Another Mountain Read online

  ‘You’re the first people we’ve seen in five days,’ she said. ‘We’ve been wild-camping. We’ve come from Loch Avon and I’m so looking forward to reaching Glenmore Lodge and civilisation!’

  ‘I hope I’m doing stuff like that when I’m their age,’ I said to Sam, once they were gone and out of earshot.

  ‘Rock on, Granny,’ he laughed, and I did too. But deep down inside, while I did have hopes that I would be adventuring into my twilight years, I didn’t think I’d be doing so with Sam.

  As we continued to ascend Bynack More the winds picked up, blowing across austere and barren windswept plains of muted browns and purples. Taking shelter, we stopped to have lunch behind a huge hunk of granite, where a friendly dog appeared and tried to join us for a piece of quiche. ‘Fuck off!’ I said through my teeth while directing my smile towards its approaching owners.

  Sam petted the animal. ‘Aww. She’s only cranky ’cause she’s hungry. She disnae want your big doggy slavers dripping ower her lunch when you were probably licking your baws ten minutes ago.’ He could be affectionate and funny, and I wished that was how things were between us all the time. Mum had said you only got to really know a person by living with them for a couple of years. After our four years together, I could now say I really knew Sam.

  When we reached the 1,090m summit of Bynack More the wind had strengthened; snot now streamed from my nostrils like horizontally blown, translucent windsocks. I loved the ferocity and felt an affiliation with the wildness: it was like a physical manifestation of what raged through my being.

  Scrambling up over the higgledy-piggledy maze of giant granite tors, I soaked in my surroundings. From here, the north-eastern fringe of the Cairngorms, there was nothing to interrupt the views over Moray. Meall a’ Bhuachaille and its pine-covered lower slopes, which teemed with all kinds of insect and bird life, seemed left far behind. It was a different world up here of rough weathered bedrock: the height and exposure gave it an Arctic climate. It was truly wild and empty, and I could imagine how inhospitable a place winter would make it. As I turned round, the mountain seemed much smaller, dominated suddenly by the massive shoulders of Cairn Gorm, its magnificent corries and big, rounded plateaux beyond. The wind caused a milky haze to lightly veil the views, and Sam created his own fog by puffing on a cigarette as he lay slumped against one of the tors.

  Neither marred my enjoyment. But I didn’t experience that same sense of freedom I’d felt walking on my own or with my mother: I hadn’t been able to fully lose myself in the day because I’d been preoccupied with how to keep Sam happy – as I so often was, I realised. I had married him because I was looking for the security I no longer had from having my own family. But being out on the mountains with him, unable to share the exhilaration and joy of the experience, was helping me gain some clarity on my relationship. My attempt at finding some common ground for us to connect, to save our marriage, was failing. I was going to have to accept that my new-found passion wasn’t ever going to appeal to him. For me our walk on Bynack More marked both the beginning of an enduring love for the mountains and a long and drawn-out end to my marriage to Sam.

  We returned to Glenmore by retracing our steps – painful ones for Sam when his footwear came apart. At first the sole of his boot flapped open, just at the toes, but it wasn’t long before the whole lot gave up and gave way.

  ‘That’s the last hill am ever climbin’, Sayree. Never again.’

  In truth, our relationship had been destined for failure from the beginning.

  With hindsight, I knew the warning signs had been there all along. But at the time I didn’t recognise them and so, a year and a half after my grandfather died, in 2006, Sam and I married. I’d wanted our wedding to take place in the chapel at Fort George where my grandfather, a major in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, had been quartermaster during the 1960s.

  The Fort was at the furthest point north-west of the village, within sight of my childhood home. It had been built in the eighteenth century, after the Jacobite rising of 1745, on a level spit of land jutting out into the Moray Firth, guarding it at its narrowest point. It is an impressive place. The ramparts, more than a kilometre in length, enclose an area the size of five football pitches. Pristine green grassy slopes lead up to projecting bastions and redoubts. Every wall is covered with guns and big black cannons remain fixed in place, pointing out across the water. The barracks are still used by the military, but much of the rest of the site is run by Historic Scotland and is open to the public.

  I loved the Fort. It was steeped in family history. In the museum my grandad’s medals and regimental claymore are part of the exhibit. I’d been christened there; my name is framed in the Cradle Roll on the chapel wall. Mum had once worked behind its great sandstone walls too, at first in the dental clinic and then as verger of the church (not a virgin of the church as I’d mistakenly told people). It was where Mum had been meant to get married to her first love – and was where she did eventually marry Frank.

  I had warm memories of trips to the Fort as well. When I was small Mum would load me onto the back of her bike and off we’d go, her legs doing all the pedalling while I enjoyed the wind in my hair, my little fingers sticky with a melting mini-milk lolly. There were other days when, unnoticed by Gran, I’d steal out of the back garden and range along the squidgy, waterlogged sands of the beach with the intention of visiting Mum at her work. She and I had walked this way a million times when the tide was out, around the base of the Fort’s sloping perimeter walls, me searching for jellyfish and squashing flat the wiggly worm casts while she sang a song to herself.

  It had been an important place for me and for Mum, and I had my heart set on getting married there. Because of my grandfather’s old role as quartermaster, special permission was granted and my wedding ceremony went ahead. We had our wedding photographs taken on the battlements, where as a child I’d run around wild, loose and carefree. But with each picture Sam was becoming more impatient. He wanted to get to the party.

  The reception was held at the Gun Lodge Hotel, back in the village. Also built in the eighteenth century, it had been home and stables for the high-ranking officers at the Fort. It became a hospital for a short while, but after falling into disrepair during the 1960s it was bought up and reopened as a hotel. Mum had worked there too, behind the bar; she’d fetch me home salt and vinegar crisps and a lemonade, and tell me snippets of silly things that some of the customers said or did. Sometimes men who had a fancy for her would give her presents to give to me; once some guy bought a whole tray of plastic gold and silver rings with coloured gems, setting my little-girl eyeballs spiralling in their sockets. But, most of all, I loved hearing Mum’s story about Georgina the ghost who haunted the pub, and I would make her repeat that same tale over and over again. I remembered all these things as I cut the wedding cake with Sam. We danced, we sang, and we drank till it was time to leave.

  Inchrye, our old family home, was only a stone’s throw away from the pub. The house had changed hands several times since my grandad had sold it back in 1984, and now it was being run as a B&B. This was where Sam and I would spend our first night as a married couple. ‘You’re staying at Inchrye? That’s a bit macabre, isn’t it?’ Mum’s older brother Jimmy said as we tripped out into the chilly car park. His words wounded me. These places – the Fort, the Gun Lodge, the house – connected me to my mother and grandparents. Why was it wrong to want to keep those fond memories alive?

  The owners of Inchrye, learning that I had grown up there, gave us a tour of the house the following day. I disguised my broken heart through smiles and nods of approval at the structural changes. Every room had been altered; the old bedroom I’d shared with Mum, where she’d play her Leonard Cohen and Donovan records, was unrecognisable. It wasn’t the home I remembered. My hand glided down the banister and memories filled my head as I walked down the last flight of stairs: I could see my grandad, there at the foot of the staircase, and smell the paraffin from the
heater he’d just lit to take the chill off the cold midwinter air. And then a memory of Gran, smiling at me as she opened the door of the dining room to show me the incredible feast of jellies, cakes and sandwiches she had prepared for my birthday tea, then saying, ‘Well, there it is. You can like it or lump it.’ I smelt cigarette smoke intermingled with the aroma of whisky, and heard the rapid chattering and laughter of my grandparents as they entertained guests in ‘the posh front room’, my mother asking what I was doing up so late but letting me sit up and join in the fun for a while.

  I’d spent countless happy hours playing in the garden on the swing my grandad built, and roaming around after him as he pushed the lawnmower and hoed the soil. I’d pester him for fruit off the trees and he’d always choose me the juiciest plum. But when Sam and I were led outside I found it hard not to cry. The beautiful borders, host to the glorious colours of summer flowers and plants, the lawns, greenhouse, fruit and vegetable patches – everything was gone, replaced by an acre of chipped stones, two wooden sheds, a caravan and an old red telephone box. Every fibre of my body groaned. I wanted everything to go back to how it used to be and, as I ached for my family, I thought my uncle had been right in a way: it had been a mistake to stay at the old house. Deep down, even then, I think I knew it had also been a mistake to get married.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Doomed Champagne and Mountain Magic

  Beinn Eighe — The File Hill, June 2008

  ‘How do you know where you’re going when you’re in a car?’ asked Frank.

  ‘I read road signs,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes, but when you get in your car, how do you know how to get there?’

  ‘Because I never go anywhere that I don’t know how to get to . . . Ohhhh, do you mean have I a road map?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nah, I don’t have a road map.’

  Frank drove for a further ten minutes. ‘Well,’ he said, breaking the silence, ‘here’s the thing now . . . we’ve taken the wrong road.’

  I groaned inwardly. An extra 35 miles had been added to the journey to Torridon and the mystery mountain where Frank was taking us – me, his new wife Irina and her eleven-year-old son Roman. After that last disastrous walk with Sam I had wanted to get out again but didn’t have anyone else I could think of to ask. Then I’d remembered Frank. It had been quite some time since we’d last had contact, but when I asked him if he would come hillwalking he was enthusiastic and said he had a place in mind where we could go. I was happy to leave the details to him – checking the weather, the route, what time we should set off – but I hadn’t thought that he’d bring his new family along too; I was a bit disappointed. Not because I disliked them, but because conversation was virtually impossible. Irina’s English was only marginally better than my Russian. Besides, I had been hoping it would just be Frank and me because I’d wanted to talk about, and remember, Mum.

  Frank was the living connection to my mum. After she had died, we’d clung to each other for a while, bound together because we both loved her. Although in some ways he still felt like an anchor to my past, eventually, like two separate threads coiled around the same reel, we had started to unravel from one another and the distance had seemed to grow between us with each passing year.

  Five months earlier, at the start of January, Frank had remarried. He’d had other love interests since Mum had died, but his getting hitched made everything different. It wasn’t as though I had expected or wanted him to remain faithful to my mother’s memory, but the child in me resented him for being happy and for moving on.

  It was almost midday by the time we arrived at our destination. ‘One of us needs to drive the car about another mile further on, to where we’ll finish the walk,’ Frank said, looking in my direction.

  ‘I suppose that’ll be me then,’ I replied with resignation, but secretly glad that I wouldn’t have to try to communicate with Irina and Roman.

  ‘Good girl,’ he laughed, then added, ‘there should be a small parking area on your right-hand side, you won’t miss it. We’ll wait here.’

  It took me half an hour to ditch the car and make it back to them, and then finally we were on our way. But within twenty minutes of walking we were already stopping for our first rest. Irina was tired, and I was thinking, You’ve got to be kidding – we had just passed a copse of trees and were still on the flat!

  The trail we were on was easy to follow as it wound gently upwards, steepening as it climbed towards a grassy-floored corrie, a glacially scooped-out hollow in the side of the mountain, and since the route was obvious and the weather dry and fine, I carried on ahead of the others even though I didn’t have a map – if I was unsure of where I should be going I knew I could wait for them. Frank was in charge, which made me feel safe, and so, like the giddiness you feel after guzzling a glass of fizz, I was able to freely enjoy the exhilaration of simply being on the mountain. Although I would have preferred his company on this occasion, I enjoyed the solitude. I could hear only the panting of my own breath and each step of my boots as they connected to the ground. The sun was shining and there were no elements to battle. I was able to lose myself in thought instead of concerning myself with – as Frank called them – ‘route logistics’.

  Pausing briefly, I looked behind: my three walking companions were dots almost consumed by the vastness of wild country, and they didn’t seem to be making much progress. I carried on. Ascending the steep corrie headwall was a formidable task – I felt like a spider, using both my feet and hands to grip and clutch at grassy tufts till I made it to the top, where I was confronted by a staggering and intimidating view. Catching my breath, I stood transfixed. My eyes met with the scariest-looking mountain I’d ever seen – a vision of breathtaking beauty, horror and impossible enormity all rolled into one. It was Liathach: a towering fortress with terraced cliffs of sandstone topped with quartzite, otherworldly in appearance and so utterly extraordinary I couldn’t quite take in what I was looking at. It was both real and not real. People have climbed that? Of course I knew people had, I just couldn’t comprehend how when it looked so completely impregnable (yet I too would eventually scale its heights). I stared at that mountain opposite for twenty minutes before Frank appeared over the crest of the headwall.

  ‘At last!’ I exclaimed. He just laughed.

  Mum and Frank had often gone off on short hillwalks or coastal routes, and on occasion I’d go with them. We got used to walking together efficiently; I hadn’t expected to have to wait around for the others to catch up today.

  ‘It was never like this when we were walking with Mum; at least we all kept the same pace,’ I said. ‘Remember that walk we did at Kilmuir on the Black Isle?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said with delight. ‘Right . . . don’t panic, but run! Those cows were seriously chasing us through that field. Didn’t we have to jump over a fence or something?’ Frank said, now laughing hard. The three of us had enjoyed some lovely walks there; goats roamed the coastal cliffs, gulps of cormorants clustered on volcanic rock and huge birds of prey hovered above.

  ‘Wasn’t that the same day you stuck a dead bird on a stick and chased Mum and me?’

  ‘Mmmmm, baby,’ Frank said in one of his funny voices. ‘Mum was cross about that. She liked her birds. She was very upset when we saw that gull trapped on a rock, surrounded by the sea. Didn’t it have a broken wing or something?’

  ‘That’s right, I’d forgotten about that. She was upset because she couldn’t do anything to help it.’

  ‘Yes, Mum was a very special lady,’ he said with affection.

  Irina and Roman continued to make their way up, but now I didn’t mind the extra wait. I was enjoying listening to Frank, who had entered full-blown storytelling mode.

  ‘My best walk with Mum was one we did at Torr Achilty, it was a verrry hot day,’ he said, rolling his ‘r’s, ‘and we drove about half a mile to a quiet area on the River Conon. The river was well hidden from sight by lots of foliage. Mum and I went for
a naked swim.’ After pausing he added, ‘It was quite brave of her.’ Although I didn’t really want to know about Mum stripping off, I did like Frank sharing that story. There was so much I didn’t get to know about her.

  Keen to get moving again, I asked, ‘Which way from here?’

  Frank pointed me towards a scree slope on the right. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you, but I’ll tell you at the end of phase three of the walk,’ he said. There was no point quizzing him about the surprise – he loved his little games – so I playfully rolled my eyes and shook my head. On I went alone, wondering what on earth the surprise was, while he dutifully waited for Irina and Roman.

  We got on now, but I hadn’t always liked Frank. I’d behaved awkwardly when, in my early teens, he’d got together with Mum; actually, I was the original demon-spawned child from hell. Back then I’d seen him as a threat and would constantly try to find faults in him. What an asshole I’d been, and Frank had taken it.

  I think I’d struggled to accept him for the same reason I’d struggled to accept any of my mum’s boyfriends. I couldn’t bear thinking of them as a potential father because none of them came close to being the man who should have filled that role. A man who had shaped my mum’s life, and mine, and whose presence I felt throughout my childhood and beyond. Poor Frank had had some big shoes to fill.

  During the spring of 1973 Mum had got the job as verger in the chapel at the Fort. At this time, among other army units, the Fort contained the Joint Services Mountain Training Centre, to which arrived a young new Chief Instructor, Major Gerry Owens. A bachelor and keen sportsman in his early thirties, he already had a formidable reputation as a Himalayan mountaineer. When he and my mum met, the pair fell deeply in love.

  Without reservation Gerry was well liked by all the family. Gran thought he was dashing; his handsome, angular face was framed by sandy curls, his athletic build was clad in stylish garb, and he was charming. Grandad approved of him too.