When I look carefully, more of the landslide becomes obvious. I use the binoculars, one-handed, scanning all I can of the earth and rocks that have fallen, both where the debris has been caught by little ledges on the way down, and where it’s hit or been washed down onto the rock platform at the base of the cliff. I can hear a buzzard mewling somewhere above my head and feel a faint breeze flowing upwards out of the quarry, cold and damp. It moves my hair about, blowing it over my forehead. I remember the feeling of Hol running her fingers through my hair last night, and shiver without warning.
One or two of the ledges down there have been around long enough for a few small plants to have taken root, though they look pretty lean and scraggy. Their dark greens, browns and beiges are about the only interruption to the slate-grey bedrock. A crude shape of brown twigs on one ledge halfway down might be an old birds’ nest. I inspect the rest of the ledges carefully, and the base of the cliff that runs beneath our garden wall.
I leave the edge, unloop the rope and throw it over my shoulder again, then start to sidle along the wall with my back to the stonework, looking down towards the exposed jumble of boulders, clods and turf marking the new edge.
I’m breathing fairly quickly, and my heart is hammering away like it was last night when I thought I might finally be going to get laid, because although the slope of crumpled ground looks stable in its new slumped configuration, what the hell do I know? It might be poised to slip again as soon as the first idiot comes lumbering along, disturbing things (this would be me).
I crab my way along the wall until I get to the bit just below where I was balancing on top earlier, where the strip of remaining grass is only just wide enough to take my boots.
The thick tree root protruding from the slip feels reassuringly solid. I tie the rope to it near where it’s thickest and first emerges from beneath the wall. I tie the other end round my chest, keeping this part loose to pass the rest of the rope bundle through and slinging it over my shoulder again, then I tighten up the knot in front of me, settling the rope under my armpits. I’m good with knots; it’s my mountaineering technique that is doubtless rubbish. Still, the rope seems to pay out okay and if I do fall it should tighten up and stop me. I think I’ll keep a really good grip on the rope anyway, just to be sure.
Tromping backwards through the mud and earth, roots and stones to the edge is pretty unpleasant; my boots sink in up to the ankle. I’m leaving a really obvious trail, too. Just before I get to the lip, the ground gives way beneath my feet and I go down with an ‘Oof!’ I can do nothing about, landing partly on my knees on a thin covering of muck right on the edge, and partly on my elbows in thicker earth, as I pull tight on the rope. My feet must be hanging over the edge. I can hear stones and lumps of soil clattering and thudding down the cliff just beneath my shins.
‘Uh-huh,’ I say to myself, and haul hard on the rope as I pull myself back up. I risk a glance down. It looks more sheer from this angle. Not encouraging.
I stand right on the lip, pay out a little more rope until I’m leaning out over the drop, then – with a dust-dry mouth and a heart spasming so hard and fast it’s making my vision pulse like a faulty strip light – I start down the cliff.
We did this kind of thing once on an adventure day with the school, though I seem to recall there was more than just one rope involved: lots of ropes, they had, and a variety of shiny and very colourful carabiners of anodised aluminium, plus buckles and harnesses and safety helmets and other highly reassuring bits of patently over-engineered climbing paraphernalia.
‘If I die a virgin, Hol,’ I whisper to myself (it’s always a sign I’m nervous when I talk to myself), ‘I hope you have the good grace to weep at my funeral.’
Mostly I’m terrified of the tree root turning out to be not actually attached to anything else after all, and getting pulled out of the earth by my own weight, sending me plummeting to the rock below. But losing my footing and thudding into the cliff face, my insides constricted by a mis-tied knot overtightening round my chest, is something to consider as well. I’m starting to re-evaluate my sticking-to-one-hundred-kilos weight-management policy.
‘A little late, admittedly,’ I mutter to myself, walking slowly down the cliff backwards, trying to pay out rope at just the right rate to keep me at an angle that makes this frankly bizarre mode of travel possible.
My phone goes. ‘Aww …’ I hear myself say, exasperated. It’s Guy’s ringtone. He’ll just persist if I don’t answer. The rope’s wrapped round my right hand so I have to use the wrong hand to dig awkwardly around in my gilet pocket for the phone. I nearly drop it, but manage to catch it against my chest, then bring it up to my left ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Where the fuck are you?’
‘I went for a walk,’ I tell him. Technically, this is true.
‘Well, get your arse back here. I need getting up.’
‘I’ll be maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Can you manage till then?’
‘No, I bloody can’t, but I’ll just bloody have to, won’t I? I can smell some bugger making toast, too, and it’s fucking tormenting. I’ll struggle out of bed myself, or shout for somebody. Just you enjoy your morning constitutional, young sir.’
‘Aww, Dad,’ I begin, but he rings off.
I put the phone into a more convenient pocket.
I lose my footing once, trying to swing out to one side to investigate a particular ledge. I pendulum in and thump against the cliff wall, twisting slightly to the left as I go, so that when I hit I have to absorb the blow on my right shoulder. The binoculars clatter.
‘Shit,’ I say. At least the rope hasn’t strangled my chest. I push back out, get my legs to the right angle on the second attempt and resume the position, then collect myself – let my hammering heart slow down a bit, for a start – and then pay out a little more rope and swing to the side, bounce-walking along the cliff face. The rope, stretched tight over the lip of cliff above, dislodges a little earth and a pebble or two as I go, spraying and rattling down to one side.
The interesting stuff on the ledge I was trying to reach proves to be a few weathered, sun-bleached bones; they’re those of a sheep, maybe a lamb. I let myself further down the cliff.
I get centred under where the landslip happened, watching the edge above for any boulders deciding to fall on top of me. My arms and legs are aching and the rope is digging painfully into my back and the sides of my upper ribs. I think I need to ascend soon.
I look down again, then bring the binoculars up with my left hand. This is enough to destabilise me once more; one foot, then the other, skids downwards off the rock as I lose grip. I thump into the rock a second time, the binoculars whacking into my chest.
‘Fuck!’ I say. I don’t like to swear, so I must be upset.
I pause for a moment, sort of kneeling against the cliff face. My shoulders and ribs are really hurting now. I take one last look with the binoculars, at a ledge near the bottom of the cliff. The extra distance means I have to adjust the focus, while keeping hold of the rope means I have to do this one-handed, which is not easy.
More white straight lines, sticking out of the fallen earth of the landslip, on the last ledge before the stone roadway beneath. Maybe bleached bones, maybe not. The twisted, grey-brown branches of a stunted bush get in the way.
‘Hmm,’ I say to myself. I rest the binoculars against my chest and push away from the rock, then start walking upwards, pulling on the rope to keep the angle right. This is harder and more strenuous than it sounds. It was definitely easier on the school adventure-day outing to the climbing wall. I suspect the harness they used – it went under the groin as well as round the shoulders, like you were a parachutist or something – meant we were properly balanced somehow, whereas my cobbled-together arrangement makes the whole business more awkward, difficult and, for that matter, painful. I’m trailing great long dangling loops of untidy rope now, too, because, clearly, my gathering-it-over-my-shoulder regime has proved lax. Thi
s can’t be great; what if it gets snagged on something further down?
It takes a lot of muttered cursing before I get to the lip of the cliff. Even there I lose my footing as I try to step up the very last bit and impact with the stone and clodded ground again, getting a mouthful of earth in the process. I spit and splutter as I hang there, nearly gagging. My back and upper chest feel like they’re on fire. My hands are right on the cliff edge, sunk in soft soil and small stones. I kick out, heave and haul, and my legs flail like a cartoon character trying to run through thin air, but, at last, I get all of me over the edge and kneeling in the muck a couple of metres in front of the wall where the rope is tied.
‘Oh. Hello, Kit.’
I nearly fall back into the quarry. I stare at the top of the wall, where Haze is looking down at me, just his head and one hand holding a roll-up visible. ‘You all right there, mate?’ He takes a drag, exhales a cloud of grey-blue smoke.
‘Ah!’ I say, breathing hard, still shaken. I stagger to my feet, plough forward through the soft ground, trying to untie the knot over my chest. ‘Yeah! Fine!’ I tell him, stumbling back to the relative safety of the base of the wall.
‘Looks like there’s been an avalanche or something, doesn’t it?’ Haze says from above as I lean back, exhausted, against the stonework, shaking, breathing hard and picking ineffectually at the now very tight, hard knot over my chest.
‘Uh-huh,’ I say.
‘You do a lot of climbing, then?’
‘No,’ I say, half shouting. ‘Not really.’
‘They let you go climbing in the quarry, do they?’
‘Well, you know,’ I say, still trying to get my breath back. ‘It being a Sunday. Nobody about. Not much activity, these days anyway.’
‘Ah. Right. Anyway, it’s all exercise, isn’t it?’
‘Yup.’
‘Yeah …’ I can hear him pulling on the cigarette, then it goes arcing over my head, falling into the quarry. ‘I’ve got the kettle on,’ he tells me. ‘Going to jump back down now. Oh; you need a hand getting back over or anything?’
‘No. No, I’m fine.’
‘Splendido. I’ll get a brew going. Milk and two sugars, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’ The knot is just starting to loosen. ‘Milk and two. Please.’
No point keeping a low profile now; I climb over the wall where I’m standing – it’s not easy, I’m trembling so much, muscles aching – and tramp back to the garage to dump the rope and binoculars, then leave my boots at the back door and brush off what mud I can from my clothes before entering the porch.
‘What the fuck have you been doing?’ Guy asks, sat at the head of the kitchen table in the old army greatcoat he uses as a dressing gown. Ali is sitting across the angle from him, looking submerged in her fluffy white robe. She just stares at me. There are big circles under her eyes.
‘I fell,’ I tell Guy, and head for the hall.
‘Tea’s on the table!’ Haze calls from the sink as I leave. He’s wearing a different T-shirt. Carter, it says, in dramatic black and white.
‘Back in a min,’ I tell him as I go for yet another shower.
But there’s a queue, because everybody seems to be getting up at the same time. Paul’s standing outside the bathroom with a towel over his arm.
‘Hey, Kit,’ he says, voice croaky. His hair’s dishevelled.
I shower in Guy’s en suite instead. He doesn’t like me doing this, but too bad. I even leave some grit in one corner of the shower tray, rather than rinse it carefully away as I normally would, just to make it clear I’ve been here.
‘Yeah, that’ll show him, Kit,’ I tell myself.
But then, as I’m towelling down outside the shower, I start to feel foolish and petty, so I reach into the shower and hose away the little V of grey dirt after all, until it’s all spotless again.
‘Much better,’ I mutter.
‘You fuckers! You might have fucking woken me up! Kit! Why didn’t you get me back up?’
‘You were sound asleep,’ I tell him.
‘You could have woken me!’
‘You’d already taken your sleeping pills; you’d have been too groggy to move.’
‘Well, let’s think what plant-based chemical substance is world-renowned for making people feel wide fucking awake, almost instantly, shall we? Oh, wait a fucking minute. I know!’
‘Dad, the last time you took coke you nearly had a heart attack,’ I remind him.
‘My heart, Kit. My fucking heart, not yours. My heart, my life, my choice.’
He’s wearing his ancient, faded red North 99 baseball cap today instead of the woolly hat that looks like a tea cosy. Maybe because there’s a hint of sun in the sky. He puts one hand up to the brim and for a moment it looks like he’s actually going to tear the cap off and throw it onto the table in disgust, but he doesn’t.
‘Stop biting the kid’s ear,’ Hol tells him. ‘We just didn’t want to risk you dying on us. At least Kit was thinking of your best interests; the rest of us were just scared about explaining ourselves to the cops when they turned up in A&E while the medics were drawing the bloods that would prove you’d OD’d on the devil’s dandruff.’ She smiles at Guy. ‘You need to elevate your guns a bit, love. Pick on those of us not quite at point-blank range.’
‘That was a movie,’ Haze says, nodding.
‘Talking about heart attacks,’ Ali says quietly to Rob. I think maybe she taps his leg with hers, under the table.
‘What?’ Pris says to Haze.
Rob drinks from his coffee mug, looks up from his iPad at Ali. ‘Now what?’
‘Point Blank.’
‘How many cups have you had?’ Ali says.
‘That with John Cusack?’ Paul asks, sounding sleepy.
Rob redirects his gaze from Ali to Paul. ‘That was Grosse Pointe Blank,’ he tells him, going back to his iPad. ‘This was late sixties; John Boorman, Lee Marvin.’
‘I make it three,’ Ali says to Rob, who doesn’t look up. ‘You just don’t usually drink this much. You know what it can do to your heart.’
‘Never saw it,’ Pris says.
Rob frowns at something on the iPad.
‘Thank fuck,’ Guy is saying to Hol, ‘I have friends prepared to go to such lengths to protect me in my final months and make sure I don’t over-enjoy myself, or peg out before my properly constituted … allotment of pain, misery and humiliation.’
Ali releases a long sigh.
‘You’re welcome,’ Hol mutters, munching her toast and reading her magazine.
‘So. You two were up late,’ Ali says quietly. Nobody seems sure who she’s talking about at first, though she’s looking at Hol as she says this. Then she looks at me. Uh-oh.
‘Hmm?’ Hol is saying.
‘Just, I saw you sidling quietly out of Kit’s room, late on; very late on, last night. When I was going for a pee.’
Hol snorts, going back to her magazine. ‘Yeah. We’re secret lovers.’ She nods sideways at Guy. ‘I’m collecting the set.’ She pauses, looks up at Guy. ‘Your dad; he’s not still alive, is he?’
‘No, but we could dig him the fuck up,’ Guy says. ‘Would that be acceptable?’
‘I was watching Kit play his game,’ Hol tells Ali, with a small smile on her lips. ‘Being a big bulgy hero and taking up arms against a sea of scary monsters. It was surprisingly interesting.’ She nods, frowns. ‘Almost worryingly interesting.’ She gazes at a point just above Ali’s head, fingers drumming on the table. ‘I may be even more of a geek than I was already worried about.’ She shrugs, goes back to her magazine.
‘Okay,’ Ali says, though she somehow sounds like she’s only pretending to accept this. She turns her face to me. ‘Kit, are you blushing?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I tell her, suddenly angry at her. ‘Am I?’ I ask Paul, who is sitting looking sorry for himself and cradling a large mug of tea. The round of toast on the plate in front of him is untouched.
‘Hmm?’ Paul says. I don
’t think he’s been listening.
Hol is looking at me, elbow on table, chin on hand. ‘Dunno. Are you blushing, Kit? Have you reason to? Should I be flattered? Vaguely disturbed?’
‘Well, now I’m blushing,’ I tell them, grinning.
‘Hmm,’ Ali says, but just drinks her tea.
‘You got a girlfriend yet, Kit?’ Haze asks.
‘No,’ I tell him.
‘Who’d fucking have him?’ Guy says, glaring at me.
‘Guy!’ Pris says. She looks at me. ‘He’s just jealous, Kit,’ she tells me. ‘You’re cuter than he is; way cuter.’
‘Yeah, maybe now, just,’ Guy mutters.
‘Thank you very much, ma’am,’ I say quietly, head down.
‘The trick,’ Haze says, ‘is just to get out there and not be afraid to get the occasional knock-back.’
Hol looks at Haze. ‘“Occasional”?’ she says.
‘I agree with m’learned friend,’ Paul says quietly, pushing his plate of toast to one side and gently lowering his head to lay it on the table. ‘Put yourself about a bit, Kit,’ he tells me.
‘Do you not want that toast, then?’ Haze is saying.
‘… We sure as hell did,’ Rob mutters.
For a moment there’s silence in the kitchen, and nobody meets anybody else’s gaze.
For a few moments, actually.
I think it’s a sex tape.
‘Right,’ Ali says, ‘if we’re going to do this properly we need a programme.’
‘Jeez, here we go,’ Rob says, rubbing a hand over his shiny scalp.
Ali looks at him. ‘We only have so much time, and so many able-bodied searchers.’
‘Oh, ta,’ Guy mutters.
‘Don’t sweat it, Guy,’ Paul says quietly, his head still lying on the table. ‘She may have been referring to me.’ He sighs loudly. ‘Don’t feel very able-bodied right now.’
‘Yeah,’ Hol says. ‘We may not all be at our best here.’
‘I’ll draw up a doc,’ Ali says, reaching for her iPad. ‘Assign us roles and areas of study.’