Just Another Mountain Read online

  Those who knew him best would say that Gerry was a good companion with a huge capacity for fun, often making digs but always in friendship. On the mountains his determination and resolve were unstoppable. On one occasion he was on an army mountaineering expedition in northern India, climbing up a vertical rock face, when the loose snow all the way up the ridge gave way. Luckily, he and his climbing partner were firmly attached to the rocks as the avalanche thundered down around them. According to his partner, Gerry was silent and calm during the entire ordeal, and when it was over simply finished the route without a word in response to his partner’s exclamations of relief. He was as hard as nails and gave himself – and others – no quarter. But with my mother and me he was tender and caring. Because of his love of being out in the wild, amid nature, Gerry encouraged my mum to join him on days out.

  Walking hadn’t really been Mum’s thing back in those days. Her older brother, my uncle Jimmy, had told me he’d been surprised when she got together with Gerry as she’d never struck him as an outdoors sort of person. During the summer of 1973, when he had arrived home on a rare visit from university, he spotted two familiar figures making their way to the house. He remembered being amused at the spectacle of his sister, looking distinctly unimpressed, with her dark hair stuck to the sides of her rain-soaked face and clothes sagging under the weight of the water. Gerry strode up the rose-bordered path with a huge grin on his face and called out to my mother, lagging a good fifty yards behind, ‘Hurry up! Come and greet your brother!’ Gerry enthusiastically described what a great time they had had. Uncle Jimmy said Mum looked as though she had never spent a worse day in her life, but gave a bright smile and agreed that it had been ‘great’. My uncle thought the relationship wouldn’t last, but he was proved wrong as my mum developed an enduring love of the outdoors life, and for Gerry.

  Gerry was away a lot for his job with the army, but he would always send my mum a postcard or a tourist guidebook with a scribbled message to let her know he was thinking about her. Two years after they met, he was to be posted to Norway. He asked Mum to go with him; she accepted. But when she announced the plans to Gran and Grandad they put their foot down. I had been born out of wedlock, and despite their approval of Gerry they would not allow Mum to live with him outside of marriage. This caused a big problem between the pair, and for a few weeks they were apart; but finally, on Christmas Day 1974, Gerry took the plunge and asked Mum to be his wife. Everybody was delighted. Predictably unconventional, Mum said she didn’t want an engagement ring, so instead Gerry presented her with a hinged gold bangle engraved with a fine leaf pattern: she loved it and it rarely left her wrist.

  With his posting to Norway coming up at the end of summer, Mum and Gerry planned a short engagement. Their vows were to be taken in the chapel at the Fort in June, a few weeks after he was due to return from a Himalayan expedition to Nuptse with the Army Mountaineering Association. It was a training exercise for the army’s plans to summit Everest the following year and, as one of their strongest climbers, Gerry was a forerunner for the team. He left in mid February and Mum wrote to him at least once a week while they were apart.

  And then, six weeks before the ceremony, it all came to a catastrophic end.

  Though I was only a little child of about two and a half years old, the scene and exchanges are clear in my mind: some things just stick. I was sensitive to my mother’s moods and I had noticed a change. Despite the sunshine of late spring an oppressive darkness made its presence felt, and the silence that had fallen on Inchrye was disquieting. Something was very wrong, I sensed it.

  The morning was bright. The sun reflected off the two-tone small pink squares on the lino of our bedroom floor, the hearth lay empty and the radio sat in obedient silence above it on the mantelpiece. My mum and I stood between the bed and the chest of drawers near the door. I was small and she was so tall.

  ‘When’s Gerry coming back?’ I asked, looking up to her face. She turned away from me.

  ‘He’s not.’ Her tone was cold and unemotional. She walked away, leaving me in the room on my own.

  In those early days we shared a bed. I’d wake up in the night and rest my little leg over the top of hers, but now she would push it off and turn her back to me. I suppose this was really the first time I felt a sense of being shut out. It wasn’t that she didn’t love me. She did. But what I didn’t yet know was that she had become consumed with grief: Gerry was dead.

  I had known nothing about my biological father when I was growing up, so later, when anybody asked about my dad, I told them he was dead. The person I was referring to was Gerry, even though I hadn’t really known anything much about him either. But those people who had asked the question would offer expressions of condolence followed invariably by the question: ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was a mountaineer and he died in a fall,’ I would say – that much was true. That was what I had told my teacher when both Mum and I started at the same school, her as a teacher and me as a pupil, and I had cringed afterwards thinking, Ah no, what if Mrs Miller questions Mum in the staffroom? I hadn’t wanted to cause upset. But if it ever was mentioned, Mum never let on.

  Gerry’s early death had robbed my mother of a husband and me of a father. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked out for them, and he might have turned out not to be a brilliant stepdad, but it was something neither of us had the chance to find out. I’d been told by both my aunt and my grandparents that after Gerry learnt of my roof escapade he had bounced me up and down on his knees and said, ‘I’m going to love and look after this little girl as though she is my very own.’ It was a scene I so often pictured, me with the father I should have had. Instead we had been left with a memory of a much better time when all had seemed ‘perfect’ and everyone happy, an image that perhaps we both idealised.

  At the top of the quartzite scree trail I reached a trig point, a distinctive concrete pillar once used by surveyors, now often invaluable to walkers finding their way. When I looked back, Frank was no longer in view. I could see that a sharp, rocky ridge rose higher on my right, so I realised that the summit was further still. The others were going to take ages, so I thought I’d attempt the file-edged route to the mountain’s top. My stomach fluttered as an unstable rock shifted when I stood on it. Maybe it had been the earlier sight of Liathach that had unnerved me, or maybe it was my lack of experience – I’d never been so high on any mountain, I was alone, it all seemed so precarious, and I suddenly felt vulnerable. Dropping onto my hands and knees, I crawled along until I decided to give up and return to the trig. There was still no sign of Frank, Irina or Roman, but, glad to be back on more stable ground, I bounced off over some rocks and ran along the next bit of ridge, where, finding a spot out of the wind, I sat and waited for them to catch up. Sitting there all alone I felt my insignificance, my own mortality next to the great ages of the rocks around me.

  Frank came into sight. I waved and called out to him, pointing to the path that dropped down. ‘Is this the way?’

  He confirmed that it was so I carried on ahead. I made my way down to the col, the lowest point between the ridges. There was a lot of sandstone and quartzite, indented with curious circular designs, like the mark a pastry-cutter leaves in rolled dough. I was certain I was looking at the fossil of some ancient creature, that this rock held great secrets, and in that moment I felt a definite spiritual presence in nature. Fascinated, I picked up a small piece to carry home. As I held the rock I was aware of that same sense of history that I’d experienced inside the walls of Ryvoan bothy, except the stone I now had in my hand whisked my imagination away on a much grander timescale: a connection to a past from which we all come – and maybe, in a more basic sense, it reminded me that we all come from, and will return to, dust. I felt comforted by that thought and was so absorbed in the moment that I didn’t notice that the others had caught up and now it was I who had been left behind.

  The only way to the floor of the next corrie was to descend an incredibly st
eep and narrow scree gully. Keeping to the right, using the rock wall as a support, I made my way down the stony staircase while Frank, Irina and Roman were slip-sliding their way ahead. The sky above the col was a magnificent gentian blue, which deepened into darker hues as it edged towards outer space; what a great sense of peace I felt deep within right then.

  Below the broken cliffs and beyond the scree gully were irregular-shaped boulders varying in size – picking a way over them felt interminable as I dropped down into the natural amphitheatre; it was truly impressive. Under the surveillance of the almost vertical triple buttresses on my left, their lower halves sandstone and upper sections shining quartzite, it almost felt as if I was trespassing. Then, unexpectedly revealing itself at the foot of the towering rocks was the most beautiful loch I’d ever seen; it was so close. Captivated by its shimmering, iridescent blue waters, I was transfixed.

  While I was lost in thought I found myself squatting at the lochan’s edge, enjoying the sensation of the icy water as it ran through my fingers and swallowed up my hot, sticky hands. That’s when I noticed that the wind had dropped. Stillness: not a sound except for the gentle movement of the loch water as the exit stream found its way over rocks and plunged down the mountainside. I almost didn’t dare breathe, as if doing so would shatter the silence commanded by the council of walls around me. I felt spooked and yet thoroughly enchanted in this peaceful place: these mountains were magical. It had definitely been a struggle to get here, but clearly it was worth it.

  ‘Things in general don’t come easy, and achieving anything worthwhile takes hard work and time,’ I said softly to myself, thinking not just of the trek up here but also how hard I was still finding it to live without my mum. I wondered if that was why she had carried on walking after Gerry had died, if it had been her way of coming to terms with her own grief.

  After Gerry’s death there were reminders of him and what my mother had lost everywhere. Redundant wedding invitations lay stacked in a neat pile on the kitchen table, never to be posted. The service at the Garrison chapel and reception at Cameron Barracks had to be cancelled. The dining room was full of cases of champagne, and the wedding dress that Mum had been in the process of making was spread over the table, along with an embroidery she was sewing to give to Gerry on their wedding day, its words now taking on new meaning: Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life. And then, the most heartbreaking reminder of all – a letter arrived from him, written shortly before he died.

  Camp I – 17,000 feet 24th April

  My Dear Jenny,

  Wonderful to hear from you again – I received your two letters of the 10th and 16th together, to-day. Particularly for the 16th that’s fast going to this remote camp on the glacier. I was interested to hear that the material for your wedding dress has come through – you say it’s lovely but tell me what colour it is and whether it is plain or patterned? The weather with you sounds rather unpleasant – I heard through a fellow member that London also experienced snowfalls over Easter. I’m sure with the clothing you wear to work that you are far worse off than me. We have just experienced another fairly heavy snowfall but the worst aspect of the climate are the very chill winds. To-day the upper air-stream is moving along at 100mph and it’s blowing from Siberia and Tibet.

  You wouldn’t recognise me at present – shaggy, unkempt hair, straggly beard and moustache, peeling nose and split lips – still love me!? Oh, and my teeth haven’t been cleaned for a month: my tent companion tells me I look better than I did! I’m going to have to watch him. Seriously I’m looking anxiously to the day when I can once more set my eyes on you – it doesn’t seem so far away now.

  Our return trip to the UK looks a little unsettled but I’m still fairly confident that I should get back by the end of the first week of June.

  Tell your mum, that instead of going on the Aberdeen trip, to join me here – the altitude and exercise reduces you to a scarecrow in no time despite eating twice the amount you normally do at home!

  Tomorrow I’m off to Camp II at 19,000 feet. It’s a delightful campsite, set on a ridge. The early morning sun soon reaches it and the views are fantastic. However, the day’s work will consist of humping 40lb loads up to 20,000 feet. Needless to say, my love, I miss you very much.

  All my love as ever, Gerry xxx

  On the day my mother should have married Gerry my gran invited a small gathering of close friends for a lavish lunch. The idea was to cheer her daughter up and take her mind off the day. Steaming food was brought to the dining table and laid out so that everyone could serve themselves, while Uncle Jimmy was asked to open a bottle of the champagne that had been destined for the wedding. As he pushed, the cork gave way under pressure of the bubbles inside and unexpectedly flew out from the bottle’s neck and smashed into the chandelier. Droplets of glass shattered into tiny sparkling shards, falling like a shower of diamonds all over the food. Amid gasps, a heavy chair scraped across the wooden floor as Mum withdrew from the table and fled from the room in tears.

  The gloomy atmosphere prevailed within the walls of Inchrye for a long time. Unspeakable grief consumed my mother. She barely uttered a single word for over six months. She wrote poems for no one to read and would disappear on long, solitary walks for hours on end. Nobody could get through to her, not even me. Grandad would go to work with a heavy heart as he worried over his daughter, while Gran attended to mundane rituals of housekeeping and looking after everyone. Like the grown-ups, I got on with each day in my own way, roaming around the house or playing in the garden; but underneath the surface was a different matter. I was insecure, my mum was distant and I was too young to understand why.

  Mum eventually forced herself to get on with her life without Gerry and completed a four-year teacher-training course. There were a few boyfriends over the years and I resented them all – they just weren’t Gerry.

  Then Mum met Frank. He and my uncle David had served in the same regiment since the late 1970s and the pair had frequently come to Inchrye when they were both on leave. Mum’s new career took the two of us to Nairn, and since my grandparents were getting older, and Inchrye was far too large for just the two of them, they sold up and also moved to the town. But instead of going to their bungalow, Frank would come to visit Mum and me in our tiny home.

  In the beginning I didn’t mind – he was just my uncle’s fun friend who always brought me sweets and junk; we used to play cards and he’d let me win his money, I loved hearing his rude jokes and his crazy, infectious laugh. But then I began to notice he was spending more and more time with us and it didn’t take too much longer before I worked out that there was something going on between my mum and him.

  It was 1984 and I was about to enter those hideously awkward years: the teens. The timing was bad, although to be fair he stood little chance of winning me round anyway. There hadn’t been anyone on the scene for a few years, not since Mum’s college days, and I’d been used to having her to myself. I didn’t want this guy muscling in, stealing her affection from me. Up till now I’d accepted that she was busy with school work and I had been content to play quietly with my dolls while she sat doing her planning and marking. I accepted the fact that she had to work and wasn’t bothered that she didn’t give me her full attention, but now here he was, and she was giving him her time. I felt jealous of him and unimportant to her, and I behaved horrifically, making their every attempt at a private life impossible. Neither of them deserved the teenage tantrums, but no matter how vile I was, Frank showed great understanding. He was the one who came into the bedroom I shared with Mum to sit with me when I was sleep-talking – well, he said it was more like sleep-yelling. He could be good-natured, kind and caring. But, being too immature, I took no notice of these qualities.

  I continued to resent his relationship with my mother. In the flat, when Frank and Mum weren’t paying attention, I’d hide his cigarettes one by one: subtle and highly irritating. And when he returned to duty in Northern Ireland I would wiggle the c
onnection from the phone just enough so that it looked like it was still plugged in. Sometimes Mum didn’t notice for days. After a year the strain of a long-distance relationship, coupled with my adolescent outbursts, became too much. I found a letter Frank had sent to Mum, in which he’d written, ‘can’t you see the beauty of her love for you?’ and added that he was prepared to ‘weather the storm’. But Mum called the relationship off.

  My mum never once blamed me, not to my face anyway. And though at the time I was glad Frank was gone and that I had Mum back to myself, I did feel guilty and responsible for their split. It wasn’t good to feel that I had caused Mum such deep misery that she had sacrificed her own happiness for mine.

  After ten years they eventually got back together again. They got married, too, but they were only man and wife for three months before cancer took her life. Their marriage ceremony in the chapel at Fort George was both joyful and sad. At the reception afterwards we toasted what was meant to be one of the happiest days of their lives when Grandad presented Mum with a bottle of champagne – one he had held on to for a long time: it was the very last of those bought to celebrate Mum’s wedding to Gerry twenty-two years earlier, and now, at last, it would be opened. Mum passed me a champagne flute. I raised it to my lips but the lump in my throat made it hard to swallow the fizzy liquid. How could I pretend to be happy when I knew the reason she’d got married was because time was running out? In 1975 it had been her tears falling into the glass, in 1997 the tears were mine.

  The wind suddenly kicked up and ripped through the stillness like the invasion of a school playground at the sound of the three o’clock bell, blowing the water back up the waterfall. Frank, Irina and Roman were still labouring over the boulders, so to kill some time I walked out on the stalkers’ path, pausing to watch three deer, one posed majestically as if for a photograph. When they finally trotted off, I retraced my steps back up to the loch. There they were. I was starting to feel a bit irate at all the delays, but then Frank revealed the surprise.