Just Another Mountain Read online

  Feeling lonely and discarded, I went even wilder than I had been in Aberdeen. Craving attention, I went on benders and would sing and dance on tables. I skinny-dipped in the sea under a full moon. I got so drunk I thought I was lost in a jungle, when really I was on the terrace outside my room. Twice in one night I was found asleep and snoring in the middle of the road behind our accommodation block, and I’d wake up in other people’s rooms, wondering how I’d got there. In the dead of night I’d ridden off on my moped, blazing drunk and high on grass, determined to find someone to party with. And in the morning, still under the influence, I rode off to work without realising I was missing the left lens of my sunglasses. I was a danger, and a mindless idiot. Christ, I even called the Mayor of Nicosia the ‘c’ bomb before I did a bunk with one of the diplomats: it was meant to be a laugh.

  The confidence and impulsiveness that drink gave me to go up and talk to strangers made me come across as annoying, and often my ambition to seek comfort ended up as a fleshy encounter. Hungover, I’d hide in my studio space by day, my stomach seizing when people came to tell me what I’d done or whom I’d pissed off.

  I made plenty of excuses to myself for my loose and chaotic behaviour. But every situation I found myself in was of my own making, and I alone was responsible for the fact I was becoming less likeable with each passing day. I’d stretched the limits of the relationship I’d had – and common decency – like a rubber band because I’d lost myself in drink. I didn’t want to be that person. I needed to go back home, promising myself once more I would be better.

  When I returned home from Cyprus, hoping to make another fresh start, it was Mum who helped put me back on track. She let me use one of the smaller rooms in our flat as a studio, and supported me financially until I found work, at first in a bar and then running a local art gallery. I was even getting on well with Frank, who by this time was back on the scene. A relatively harmonious and productive year soon passed. Life had settled.

  It was mid August 1996 and I’d just completed a series of sea and landscape paintings for exhibition at a small London gallery. The next morning, I heard Mum talking on the phone to Gran.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment with the doctor at two o’clock,’ she said.

  Our year of peace had been the calm before the storm.

  After Mum’s appointment with the doctor she was admitted to hospital. At ten-thirty the next morning she called.

  ‘The CT scan revealed a tumour on my brain. It’s small, easily accessible and they’re going to be able to remove it.’ Her words were a dizzying drug flooding my body from head to toe, but I understood what they meant. She had secondary cancer: ultimately, a death sentence.

  ‘I’m coming in with Gran and Grandad, we’ll be there soon. Have you told Frank?’ I asked. After he and my uncle David came out of the army they’d gone into business together. He was away working on a removal job in London and wasn’t due home for two more days.

  ‘No. There’s no point. There isn’t anything he can do, it can wait till he’s back,’ she answered. My grandparents and I arrived at the hospital to see Mum, and each of us kept our feelings in check. ‘I’ve just had a chest X-ray and tomorrow I’m getting a scan on my liver and bones to make sure that no spores have manifested there,’ she said.

  The situation was surreal, like the bad dreams I used to have. Conversation was stilted small talk that none of us had any real interest in, but better that than loaded silence. We all wanted out of there, we had all wanted to wake up from the nightmare.

  Back at my grandparents’ house I took the dog’s lead and stuffed biscuits into my jacket pocket. ‘C’mon, Poppy. Walkies,’ I called. Ears pricking, she got up from her basket and crossed the kitchen, her wagging tail and a lick of my hand indicating she was ready to go. She was a faithful and gentle old girl, a cross between a Labrador and a lurcher. She had been part of our family since she was a pup, rescued from the needle two nights before Remembrance Sunday by my grandad. A myriad of thoughts thumped in my head. Both Poppy and I wanted the freedom of the wide open space offered by the beach: she so that she could chase gulls and I hoping the sea breeze would blow all the upset and pain away. I turned at the kitchen door before I left.

  ‘Do you believe in God, Grandad?’ I asked.

  ‘If only I knew the answer, Sarah pet. It’s something I’ve often asked myself, but I do think all this can’t be here just by chance.’

  My grandad was the smartest man I knew; he could speak a number of languages fluently, and I was always impressed that he could do the Telegraph cryptic crossword puzzle. I thought he had the answers to everything, but he couldn’t tell me this. I decided that if God was there, then I was going to talk to Him more because my mum was not allowed to die.

  The following day the four of us once again sat in the hospital’s day room. ‘The bone and liver scan were clear,’ Mum announced. The news was a small lift. Things seemed even more hopeful when a member of nursing staff popped in to say the chest scan had been clear too – so it came as a shock to discover later that day that the nurse had made a terrible mistake. Three tumours were found on both lungs. ‘Life will never be the same again,’ Mum said quietly.

  Within two weeks of the discovery of Mum’s brain tumour the neurosurgeon had carried out a craniotomy at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. When Mum came round from the anaesthetic she saw me standing at her side, and, breaking into sobs, raised a hand to her eyes. I leant forward and gently kissed her cheek. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered. Though she’d written those words in letters and cards, I couldn’t remember the last time she’d come straight out and said them to me. My heart ached. She had once said that I shouldn’t need to be told I was loved constantly – I should just know. I did know, of course I did, but sometimes I just needed the reassurance of hearing it. I suppose she did not always understand me and neither did I always understand her; it was only when I became a mother myself that I came to realise this is probably often the way with parents and their children.

  Three days later Mum was discharged; however, she still had to face two weeks of radiotherapy. Sickness and lethargy that she knew was caused by the treatment returned. Mostly she just wanted to be by herself.

  I took Poppy for long walks around the river and along the beach, my mind trying to process the inevitable truth that Mum was going to die. Everything seemed back to front: my grieving had already begun yet she was still alive, and any time we had left was destroyed by knowing that she would soon leave me for ever. Standing on a bridge, I felt tears roll off my cheeks. I cried in bed at night too, and voices inside my head would contradict each other. I’m allowed to cry! But you shouldn’t. You should be happy your Mum is still here. You should be enjoying the time you have left. Save your tears till after she’s gone. I don’t want her to go. That’s why I’m crying.

  Dreams were full of images in which my mum was suffering, shrieking in pain, and always I looked on helplessly. Mum’s cancer and its consequences remained dark, amorphous beasts, lingering and unshifting in my mind.

  I’d spent many afternoons painting. It was normally an absorbing activity, but now I couldn’t concentrate. Abandoning my task, I lay on top of my bed crying silently, tears gathering in tickly pools inside my ears. As if she had somehow sensed my distress, Mum came to my room and sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘It looks like you’re suffering more than I am,’ she said as she stroked my hair.

  ‘I love you. I don’t want you to die,’ I blurted selfishly, crying even harder. Her voice soothed me as she told me to let it all out.

  ‘Everyone has to die; it’s the one and only guarantee in life. And when I’m gone of course you will cry. Give yourself a couple of weeks, but then I want you to get on with your life; just keep busy,’ she said.

  Mum always found the right words to say, maybe that’s why she had always seemed old to me. But at forty-three she was only a young woman herself, and I think maybe now she needed me as much as I did her.
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  Like most parents, all I wanted was to provide better everything for my children, but I constantly felt a sense of inadequacy. And I wondered what chance they had of growing up to be happy and secure when their mother was neither of these things. Now on the summit of Ben Wyvis, as the self-flagellation continued, I worried alone, my mind replaying fragments of an old conversation:

  ‘What will I do when you’re not here, Mum, and I have an important decision to make and need your advice?’

  ‘You’ll just have to try and imagine what I would say.’

  I was contemplating the best course of action when out from the thick furls of white mists a lone walker appeared. He was a young lad in his early twenties and without much mountain experience himself; he didn’t have a map or compass, but he did have a GPS. Between us we managed to navigate the rest of the circuitous route together and at quarter past seven in the evening, after nine hours of walking, my boys and I were reunited with the car. The boys greeted our black carriage home with an abundance of kisses to its windows. They were shattered but had been completely oblivious to the dangers we had faced, while I was now flooded with relief at the happy outcome of what had been a fairly scary day: the hill of terror, so aptly named, had taught me my toughest hillwalking lessons to date. Even in summer months the weather on the Scottish hills can be less than hospitable; print outs from my book did not in any acceptable way constitute a map; and, most importantly, I never ever wanted to put my boys in harm’s way again because of my ignorance.

  Yet there was still so much more for me to learn.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Becoming a Woman with a Plan

  Beinn Alligin — The Jewelled Hill, August 2008

  In the couple of months since I had been on Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross with Frank, things at home with Sam had been going increasingly downhill. Drink was the wedge that continued to drive us apart bit by bit. I didn’t look forward to weekends in particular. We argued constantly. I tried various tactics to avoid confrontation, from sneaking off to bed and pretending I was asleep to buying a karaoke machine, but still it felt as though there was no escape from it. Sometimes it went on all night, until it was light outside, and I was so sleep deprived I no longer felt able to function as a normal human being, or as a mother. Thankfully the boys seemed to be unaware of how badly our relationship had deteriorated. But still we remained together. I didn’t want to fail. I didn’t want to lose my husband.

  Adding to life’s daily stresses – my deteriorating marriage, balancing work and children, arranging repairs caused by a leaking roof – nine people now lodged in the flat opposite, and the building’s plumbing system couldn’t cope. Pipes would block and stink us out and our water supply was drawn away by a pump they’d had installed, leaving us with not so much as a droplet in our taps – ironic when they then flooded us.

  I needed to get out on the hills again.

  I decided to return to Wester Ross, this time to climb Beinn Alligin, another one of the Torridonian giants. These mountains form a dramatic landscape, their peaks rising up sheer from the sea. In comparison with its neighbours, Beinn Eighe and the mighty Liathach, Beinn Alligin is the easiest of the Torridon ridge traverses, but it includes a series of three towering rock pinnacles known as the Horns, and covering all of them would involve some exhilarating and airy scrambling.

  Recent weather had been untypical of our rainy Scottish summers and an area of high pressure brought settled weather over the country. After the recent experience on Ben Wyvis with my children, I felt much happier to be venturing out under clearer skies, and I felt more confident having already done this walk a couple of weeks earlier.

  The memory of our long day on Ben Wyvis was too raw for Leon, and though I tried to sell the walk as being ‘only half the distance’ and ‘not as high’, he emphatically declared he was not coming. But Marcus, enthused by the description I’d given of scrambling over the Horns, keenly agreed to accompany me.

  We arrived at the small car park off the road to Diabaig at the back of Torridon House around ten o’clock the next morning. As we tramped across moorland it was much drier underfoot than the squelchy conditions I’d encountered on the walk previously; it had been a clammy day then, with no wind or rain, and views had been obscured by low cloud before the corrie headwall had even been reached.

  What a contrast now as Marcus and I sweated under the heat of the sun, up the steepening path that zigzagged into the corrie. I puffed and panted as I toiled uphill, not talking because I was breathing so hard, but Marcus was a mountain goat, only stopping in his tracks to look at frogs or dragonflies and to stare out a grasshopper with its giant, red eyes. Marcus had his father’s looks, but his inherent gentle nature and placid disposition reminded me so much of my mum. He was turning out to be the best of both his dad and me.

  I had never wanted either of my boys to grow up without a dad, like I had. When I’d got involved with each of their fathers, it was with the expectation that we’d stay together, but neither relationship had worked out. I was grateful that Marcus had a positive rapport with his father. I just wished Leon got to see more of his dad, but at least there was contact from time to time. My natural father had abandoned me completely from the start.

  I did eventually meet him. I don’t really know what I had been expecting, but still the encounter was a let-down.

  It was a Sunday morning in 1989. I was seventeen and still dozing in bed when Mum came into my room.

  ‘Sarah, your father’s here,’ she said. The news came as a complete surprise. Only a week or so earlier I’d asked Mum about my real dad, and she’d asked if I wanted to meet him. I had said I did, but I’d never imagined our first encounter could come about so quickly.

  My emotions were all mixed up. He’d been living nearby all this time, and my mum had clearly had no difficulty in getting hold of him. If it was that easy to have got in touch why is it only now that he is here? Why has he never wanted to see me before now?

  I was angry that he’d abandoned us – run a mile from his responsibilities as soon as he’d got Mum pregnant, back to the wife he’d previously denied existed. But I was also curious about this man. And nervous to finally meet him. I was a little afraid my mum would feel upset that I had brought him back into her life; I didn’t want her to think I was being disloyal – she was the most important person to me, I hoped she knew that.

  With nervous apprehension I got up, pulled on some clothes and went to the living room. There he was, dressed in a grey suit that had a sheen to it, sitting on our sofa; his hair was thick and his beard well groomed and the colour of autumn leaves. His eyes were big and round with long lashes – like mine. The atmosphere was awkward, but he tried to make an effort.

  A few days later he took me to Dingwall, a small town fifteen minutes north of Inverness, where he was opening a new nightclub. We went in his flashy white BMW and had a wander around the club. On its wall was a badly painted mural of singing legends.

  He was all chuffed and asked, ‘What do you think?’ and ‘Do you like the dance floor?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. It was made up of squares that flashed different colours in sync with the music. I liked his car too. But I didn’t want to like him.

  On the third and final time we met he took my mum and me out for dinner and gave me The Lost Boys video. He said he’d like to get a phone installed at our home, so that he could get in touch more easily and get to know me better, but Mum later told me it was so he could arrange to see her. What a prick. I felt hurt and unimportant and more confused than ever. And so I sent him a vicious letter, writing that I hoped he’d be repaid with the same humiliation he’d put my mother through when he’d denied both of us all those years ago. I was so angry, I cut him dead. I never heard from him again.

  I was twenty-three when a call came through to the art college’s office in Cyprus, where I was living at the time. Mum’s voice was clear and unbroken at the end of the line.

  ‘Mike’s dead.’<
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  ‘Who’s Mike?’

  ‘Your dad.’

  ‘Oh . . . Right . . . What happened?’ I asked, as a cocktail of horror, guilt and a tinge of remorse flooded through me like a numbing wave of morphine without the high.

  ‘He died choking on his own vomit. He’d been at a party.’ There was silence down the wires, I had no idea how to respond. Luckily my mother understood. ‘You were never given the chance to develop any feelings of affection for your father,’ she said. ‘It’s only natural you wouldn’t feel the grief.’ She was right: the man had only been my father in the most basic, biological sense – I couldn’t cry or grieve for someone I never really knew. But the news still made me feel strange.

  It was twilight as I made the solitary journey down the single-tracked military road, back to the whitewashed accommodation block and the sanctuary of my single room. Frogs in the valley were in full chorus. Soft pinks, orange and blue hues delicately wrapped themselves across the horizon joining sky and sea, and the remaining warmth of the day seemed to embrace me. As I walked I thought about what Mum had said and conversed silently with myself, batting statements and opinions back and forth like a game of ping-pong.

  It’s true. Mike has been absent my entire life – apart from those encounters when I was seventeen. Yes, and even then that contact had been arranged at your request. I had just wanted to see what a man who could so readily shirk his responsibilities looked like. You already knew the kind of man he was. Actions speak louder than words! But part of me is him and now he is gone. I’ll never have another chance to get to know him. Was that letter I wrote too harsh? Should I not have broken off contact then?

  My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a dreadful sound as old Sol, who lived in an adobe shack behind the block I stayed in, hawked up phlegm. He’d been blinded from years of drinking absinthe, nobody saw much of him, just a shuffling shape in the shadows of his overgrown garden. I closed the door to my room on the world outside. If he had really wanted to know you, no matter how awful the things were that you had written in that letter, he would have kept on trying to win you over. I struggled to shift the guilt I felt. Yet there was nothing to be done about either those words in my letter or the undeniable fact that he was now as dead as a doornail. I would never get to know who that missing part of me was.