The morning came as a surprise. They’d wanted it so many times during the night, but the rustling, hooting sounds of nature, and its iron grip upon the soil that formed their beds, had disturbed them more profoundly than any urban noise, as they turned over and over on the compacted ground. Now it was here, although deep sleep had come only three or four hours ago. They unzipped the front flaps of their tents, cold dew drops flicking in their faces, and rolled out of their sleeping bags, then hopped across to the outdoor loo, relieved by the light at last.
By 8.30am, an hour after dawn, they had scraped the aluminium pans clean of greasy bacon scraps, and the sun had raised a million beads of sweat on the taut dome tents. They needed to get going now. The four remaining ROX members were due to meet them there at 9am, and they raced to sling their gear back into Dave’s four-by-four.
They might have arrived at a different planet to the one they’d explored yesterday. The great stone scar was already studded with climbers moving up on threads, matchstick figures with brightly coloured matchstick heads, and the pace was bustling and businesslike – no twilight abandon now – queues already forming at the bottom of the routes. The two remaining ROX couples were sitting there already, waving from the giant’s graveyard of madly angled stones. Georgia and Richard, in matching azure fleeces, Simon and Joseph, partners since 1993. Melissa and the others rushed over, trying to remember exactly which climbs, if any, they’d all been on together. More exclamations, air-kisses and wildly intonating small talk, but this time they kept it brief, a ten-minute sufficiency, their social energy from the night before all spent.
Georgia, on her second marriage, felt a pang of surprise to see Jim and Sofia walking up the hill together. They stopped for a moment, twenty meters away, and she watched him adjust the webbing on her rucksack, then lift it from her to carry it himself. A few paces later, he bent down to show her something in the grass. It was never too late, Georgia supposed. People did that, found each other again, put aside the past.
As they got closer, those years seemed drastically to reduce. Sofia still wore her natural look convincingly, and Jim had hardly changed at all. Deeper furrows, darker skin tone and what lean extraneous flesh there’d ever been now permanently trained away.
‘Jim and Sofia,’ she said, as they approached. ‘Fantastic you both made it after all!’ Sofia liked the rhythm as their names sounded together. The placement of vowels in Sofia and Hugo made them awkward to combine.
‘Thought we’d start off with a spot of bouldering,’ announced Richard. ‘Get our climbing legs back before we join the queues.’
‘Sure,’ said Jim, able to lead on both, and always the gentleman, ‘just need a couple of crash pads.’
Dave was nearby. If he’d known Richard better, he’d have made a joke about his conspicuously receding hair and plucked up the courage to recommend climbing with ropes first. But he didn’t.
‘Great idea,’ he said. ‘Sounds good to me.’
‘I’ll get them,’ Sofia volunteered. She’d slept wonderfully and had easily enough energy to go back to the car.
‘It’s fine,’ said Jim, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll only be five minutes.’ Dave threw over the keys and winked. ‘Don’t do anything rash.’
Jim evaluated the boulder nearest to them. A metre and a half high, with easy holds all the way round. He’d seen the effects of industrial falls from heights of fifteen feet or more, but you’d be hard pushed to injure yourself on that.
Bobby and Clara were already taking off their fleeces, but Sofia didn’t have time. This was her moment, her weekend. She would again be the first one up. She swung up easily with her fingers, threading the edge of the rock from hand to hand, spread-eagling with unlikely elegance up the flat face. There was a cheer as she hoisted herself round over the top.
Bobby was up to join her in less than half a minute. Sofia looked around to find a new feather for her cap.
‘Don’t you need spotters or whatever they’re called?’ said Kristian. Angus shook his head. ‘Not on something as titchy as that.’
The boulder behind was thrice the height, shaped like stone-age flint. She ascended the first face using the same technique, scrabbling unsuccessfully with her toes across the surface, dead-hanging for a moment, then kipping just a little to regain her ascent. Then she rearranged her limbs diagonally and, extending a long leg, flipped herself over, like a scarlet rose hip rotating in a spider’s web. Again, they clapped admiringly, appreciatively.
It was addictive, and no one else had even started properly yet. She continued up the slightly convex curve of the next side, gravity holding her body close once she’d hauled herself inside, so that she ended up snugly inclined against the warming rock. She was going to make it. Hand over hand, her red-fleeced figure carried on inching its way up. Then, with a boost from a weatherworn hole that gave her an unexpected foothold, she launched herself, sweating, trembling, dry-mouthed, onto the boulder’s back, pulling herself up by its great spine. She dared herself to stand up, find her balance as she had in Hugo’s office, lifting down the books. Then she was straightening herself completely, up towards the sky.
The sun seemed hotter, she could swear it, even that torso’s length above. She stretched her arms out in V shape, paddling her feet out to maintain a supporting base, and yelled out a joyous, long-lost yell of uninhibited triumph.
There was no trace of alcohol left in her bloodstream now, but she was intoxicated, captivated, transfixed by the light. She closed her eyes and let the mid-morning sun bathe her contented eyelids as she had in the hospital. She knew now that the reason the midday sun was brighter was because it trod a shorter path and that it would only brighten further as the pathway shortened still. This was knowledge, she reflected, trance-like, to herself. Knowledge of the celestial workings of the universe. Knowledge of the scratches scraping down her arm, and the taste of her slightly bloodied lip. Knowledge of the fields and the feelings and the firelight. Experiential knowledge, such as Maalik had. Knowledge that, as Dr Merridew had promised, everything was still all in there, ready to be activated by her resuscitated self.
The time had come.
No more research.
Tomorrow, she would write it, the story of her life.
*
They were still poised in horror, paralysed, the split-second Jim came back.
He stared at the figure, crumpled on its side against the ground, a rosy, purple bruise starting to blush across the head.
He cursed himself.
‘Don’t move her. She’ll need a cervical collar. Angus, phone 999. Keep everyone else well back.’