The Students of Barrenmoor Ridge Read online

  ‘Apart from that lot.’

  Liam followed his gaze towards the door. A blast of frigid air on his back announced the arrival of a group of men and women filing into the pub talking loudly and carrying rucksacks. They dumped them in a pile and rubbing their hands or cupping them to catch the warmth of their breath, they jostled to the bar, chatting amiably. Their leader seemed to be the youngest of the group. At least, he was the one appraising the others, saying how ‘Tammy’s brake technique has improved’, and how ‘Julie should have shortened that slack sooner when top-roping Sam. He’s not yet used to the wall.’

  The man, who Liam put as in his early twenties, had dark hair poking from underneath a beanie hat, not unlike Casper’s, and his boyish face was pinched pink on the cheeks. The other members of the group were mainly older, but listened intently to his criticisms between ordering drinks from the unwilling barmaid.

  ‘Climbers,’ Casper said.

  ‘Dur, you think?’ Liam turned back. ‘Got the map?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Want to see where we’re going tomorrow?’

  Casper dug out the crumpled OS Explorer map of that part of the Yorkshire Dales, still folded to the correct place, but now more beaten about from being in his pocket. He spread it on the table, but Liam told him to fold it smaller as the edges were sticking to spilt beer and he had no more tissues. They’d just marked their planned route when their meals arrived, and the map was put to one side.

  The barmaid dropped their plates before them and accepted their polite thanks with something approaching sarcasm, before returning to the bar scowling at the climbing group, some of whom were still waiting to be served.

  The boys had just started on their fish when, without asking, four strangers slid onto the benches, two either side. They glanced at each other, but knowing they were visitors, Liam didn’t make a fuss. Instead, he apologised for taking up a minuscule amount of space and tried to give them more room.

  ‘You’re okay, man,’ one of the party said. ‘Good luck with that.’

  The guy pointed to Liam’s plate and the side order of mushy peas which had been slapped half over his fried fish, soaking he batter.

  ‘Not eaten properly since this morning,’ Liam said. ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Come for the fellwalking have you?’

  The group leader was among the four. His accent was not dissimilar to the woman at the hostel, though not as pronounced, and his demeanour was altogether more affable than the girl behind the bar.

  ‘Yeah,’ Liam said, for some reason toughening up his own accent. ‘A couple of peaks, Ribblehead, only a couple of days.’

  ‘What peaks?’

  ‘Fellborough, Whernside. Maybe another at reasonable altitude if the going’s favourable,’ Casper butted in as if he didn’t want to be left out and was also keen to appear knowledgeable. Like Liam, he must have felt inadequate among this group of locals who undoubtedly knew the area well.

  The four climbers beside them shared glances, but it wasn’t possible to read their thoughts. At first, the leader looked concerned and raised his eyebrows to the woman beside Liam. She shrugged, said, ‘That’s what you’re there for,’ and turned to talk to her other neighbour.

  ‘Keep an eye on the weather,’ the leader said.

  ‘We know what we’re doing.’ Casper again, and this time defensively. Perhaps he didn’t like being told what to do by someone only a couple of years older.

  ‘We have a weather app,’ Liam said, tapping his friend’s foot under the table as a warning. ‘But thanks. You lot from around here?’

  ‘Aye,’ one of the men replied and struck up a conversation with the group leader.

  After another warning glance from Liam to Casper, they ate in silence, listening to the conversation while trying to appear not to.

  Liam learned that the group leader’s name was Gary and that the party had been to an indoor climbing wall. That was hardly surprising, and as most of the conversation was about the sport, he decided they were a group of enthusiastic amateurs being taught by a young professional. He also wondered if he and Casper would have time to try the wall. Neither of them was qualified or experienced enough to do it without an instructor, and they didn’t have the equipment, but if Casper was up for it, it wouldn’t hurt to delay their departure for a couple of hours. He was about to ask the leader if it was possible, when the woman beside him said, ‘How did your husband get on at the Jura?’

  Liam expected to hear the other woman in the group reply, but nearly choked on his chips when Gary spoke.

  ‘John got back a couple of days ago,’ he explained to the group. ‘He was leading one of them holiday tours. It went well.’

  ‘When’s his next book coming out?’

  ‘Give him a chance,’ Gary laughed. ‘We’re still riding on the last one.’

  Casper’s foot was knocking against Liam’s ankle, and he looked up surreptitiously, his pulse quickening. Casper was wide-eyed, but Liam shrugged. Gay guys being married was no big deal, but what he assumed had surprised his friend, was to find one in such a small community, and not only that, but one who was by all accounts a respected climbing instructor. Shaking his head as a signal for Casper to keep quiet, he continued eating in silence.

  For some reason, he wanted to come out there and then. To tell everyone at the table that he was also gay and a climber, to be a part of the friendly chat and technical discussions as if to prove to them that he was as worthy as this guy called Gary, but he pulled himself back. These people didn’t know him, and they would probably have said, ‘So?’ and made him feel foolish. Besides, Casper was to be the one to know first, and this was still not the right moment.

  ‘Talking of husbands,’ Gary said, having downed the last of his pint. ‘Tide, time and John Hamilton wait for no man.’

  ‘Have another?’ someone offered.

  ‘Can’t. We’re not on call, but you never know when you’ll be needed.’ Gary gave Liam a sideways glance as he stood and nodded to their map. ‘Keep an eye on the weather,’ he said. ‘Changes fast ’round here. Call in at the Pot Hole before you set off and leave your route with Julie. Tell her when you’ll be back, and take advantage of her cavers’ breakfast. Be safe, lads.’

  His friends thanked him for the session at the wall, wished him and his husband well, and Gary left the bar with a bulging sack of equipment slung over his shoulder. He also left Liam with a weird mix of emotions. Among them was the hope that when the time came, Casper would accept his news as welcomingly as the locals accepted their leader’s sexuality, but trepidation was also in the mix, and it didn’t just concern his planned announcement. Something in the young man’s tone brought home the seriousness of what they were about to do, and he resolved to monitor his weather app at every opportunity.

  Three

  Gary Taylor had only vague recollections of the first time he entered John’s remote cottage on the Fellborough slopes. He had been semi-conscious and hypothermic at the time, wrapped in Mylar and in the man’s arms, having been dragged from the mountain at night with a dislocated kneecap. Then, the rented, single-story, stone building had been swamped with snow in a February blizzard that lasted for three days, enough time for him to fall in love with the older man who rescued him in more ways than one. Now, as he switched off the ignition and left the comparative warmth of the ancient Land Rover, the cottage windows glowed. John had bought the property, extended it, and together, they had turned what had been little more than a bothy into a home.

  The air smelt of coming rain and the two lads from the Lonsdale flashed briefly through his mind. Amateurs, no more than schoolboys, inappropriately dressed in nylon puffer jackets, they weren’t very much different to how he had been two years ago. Making a mental note to call Julie at the Pot Hole in the morning and ask her to make
sure the boys left a route should they call in, he looked at the sky as he headed towards the cottage. No stars meant cloud cover, and beyond the throw of the lean-to light, the night dissolved into brooding blackness, somewhere in which was the seven-hundred-metre peak, the site of Gary’s near-fatal but fortuitous accident. It could easily have been the site of his grave, and deciding not to wait, he texted Julie before he entered the side door.

  ‘Hi, Honey, I’m homo,’ he called a minute later, kicking the door shut and unzipping his insulated jacket. It was lined with Merino wool, and thanks to the recently installed central heating, he was already sweating by the time he hung it up.

  ‘Bath,’ was his greeting, and he poked his head into the steam-filled bathroom as he passed.

  John was lying among bubbles that covered his wiry, strong frame, a mug in one hand and a book in the other. ‘Getting in?’

  ‘A simple hello will do for now,’ Gary said, entering and bending to kiss his husband.

  ‘Hello. How did it go?’

  ‘Not bad.’ Gary perched on the edge of the bath as John put down his mug. ‘Martin’s shaping up nicely, Tammy’s still death on a rope, no-one fell, and Jonesy got up a V Diff but ain’t yet ready for the overhang.’

  ‘I love it when you talk dirty.’

  Gary fingered John’s dusky-blond hair before bending down for another kiss. ‘Going to make a brew, you want owt?’

  ‘Aye, pet, I’ll ’ave another brew wi’ thee,’ John replied, imitating Gary’s Yorkshire accent with a cheeky grin. ‘I’ll not be long.’

  Gary daubed a handful of suds onto John’s beard. ‘Your accent’s shit,’ he laughed as he left him to it.

  Two years ago, John’s bedroom had resembled a storage tent for an assault on Everest. Hardly surprising as he had recently climbed there and was considering a return. Since Gary had moved in, he’d brought a sense of order to the place, not so much to mark the territory as partly his, but so that he could find things. The cottage now belonged to John, bought with the proceeds from his book and the extra photography work that it led to. With John’s permission, Gary had reorganised not only the bedroom, but the whole house, small though it was, and now the wardrobes housed clothes rather than ropes, and the walls were hung with photographs, not harnesses. As if to prove his acceptance of John’s past, Gary insisted that the one particular blow-up was hung in a prominent place in the bedroom. It showed John with his team, Sally, her husband Miles, and John’s late lover, the Russian climber, Serge Petrov. Taken in 2013 at Ama Dablam, the image was a constant reminder not only of Serge, but the dangers of mountaineering, and it still made Gary tearful to think about when it was taken, because of the loss John had suffered not long after.

  Serge had been killed by an avalanche on Everest, and John carried the pain of his death every day. For Gary, it reminded him of how fickle life was, and that he was the luckiest man alive to have John. One slip-up from either of them when traversing a wall or carrying out a rescue, and that joy, his life’s meaning, could be taken away. It wasn’t macabre. Quite the opposite. Serge smiled down on them, hanging upside down over a fatal drop, a daft grin on his face as if to say, ‘Enjoy it while you have it. You have my blessing.’ At least, that’s what John said the night they hung it in the bedroom, adding it was a good antidote to complacency and a reminder of the dangers of the sport he lived for.

  His dry-climbing clothes exchanged for joggers and a woollen jumper, and his boots left by the back door, Gary shuffled into the sitting room in slippers designed to accommodate thicker socks than he was wearing and passed straight through to the open-plan kitchen.

  Another of his home improvements had been to give the two-way radio a permanent station. Previously, John had left it on the cluttered kitchen table with cables trailing the floor, but Gary—again with permission as he didn’t want John to think he was taking over—had converted a second-hand kitchen cabinet and given the set its own housing in the corner. From there, it was accessible from either space in the L-shaped room, and having rearranged the dining area, it was possible to be on the radio while sitting comfortably in an armchair rather than perched on a hard kitchen stool. They now had internet at the cottage, but the radio was a direct link to the Mountain Rescue Team co-ordinator, the local police sergeant, Betty, and John still used it to chat with her at quiet times as if it was a telephone.

  Where the cottage had once been a place for items discarded willy-nilly because John’s mind was constantly elsewhere, it was now ordered and homely, and the best part about that was that John loved the changes as much as he loved Gary.

  By the time his husband came in from his bath smelling of soap and wrapped in a fleece dressing gown, Gary was on the sofa with his feet up drinking a mug of tea.

  ‘I left the water in,’ John said, returning his own mug to the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll have a shower soon,’ Gary said. ‘Just want to wind down.’

  John joined him, sitting at the other end of the sofa and putting his legs either side of Gary’s. He took the younger guy’s feet, removed his slippers and began massaging his toes. Gary put his tea on the floor and settled in for a few minutes of pampering, his head back and his eyes closed.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said, meaning not only the massage soaking the numbness from his feet, but also his life.

  Before meeting John, he had been homeless, unemployed and surviving a scattered existence as he dodged the temptation to be drawn into Mark Ward’s poor attempts at petty crime. Mark wasn’t exactly a friend, but he had been the only person willing to give Gary a place to stay. In return, Gary was expected to kowtow, cook for the criminal, and be his false alibi whenever a house was burgled or there were rumours of drugs being sold on street corners. Mark wasn’t good at either activity, but the pair got by despite his dodgy deals and bullish ways, and Gary hung with him out of necessity, even though it did his own reputation no good. A reputation which had changed for the better thanks to the thirty-eight-year-old man working his feet with powerful, narrow fingers.

  Dragging his head up, he stared down the length of the sofa. John was watching him with a faint smile on his lips, barely visible through his beard and moustache.

  ‘What?’ Gary asked, a similar smile growing on his.

  ‘You know I’m proud of you, don’t you?’

  ‘Ah, gi’ over, you daft ’apeth.’

  ‘No, I mean it,’ John insisted, pressing a thumb hard into the sole of Gary’s foot and making him groan. ‘Novice to climbing wall instructor in six months. Lowland moorland leader last year, winter instructor this year, and now with the MRT. Gifted, is what you are.’

  ‘Aye, well I haven’t had much else to do meantime, and happen I’m married to the best.’

  ‘Next stage is more and higher altitude,’ John said. ‘If you’re interested.’

  ‘Man, I’d like nothing more. I hate it when you’re away. I’d much rather be there to keep an eye on me reckless old bugger.’

  ‘Less of the old.’

  ‘It’s the old what turns me on.’

  John fell serious, and Gary thought he had gone too far.

  He hadn’t.

  ‘How about Grand Paradiso next June? Paid.’

  Gary sat bolt upright, his feet slipping from John’s hands. ‘That’s France, right?’

  ‘Italy, actually, but there’d be France afterwards. The Domes at Mont Blanc.’

  ‘Are you pulling me plonker?’

  ‘Not until you’ve had a shower.’

  John grabbed Gary’s legs and yanked, pulling them either side of his lap and dragging him down against the sofa arm.

  ‘Go easy, muppet,’ Gary laughed, trying to sit up. John wouldn’t let him, and he gave in. ‘Go on. What’s this being paid all about?’

  The foot massage developed into a leg massage, but Gar
y hardly felt it. His heart was racing as fast as his mind. They’d done plenty of low-level mountaineering in the Lakes and Dales, and done their fair share of winter expeditions, but nothing at any great altitude.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you until it was confirmed,’ John said. ‘But I discussed it with Sally in the Jura. Don’t get too excited. The first two climbs are only in the four and three-thousand-metre range. A couple of days out each, but if you’re up for it, they want us to go onto a couple of Eiger routes straight after. Again, low-level. I’m not risking you on the north face just yet.’

  ‘Yeah, no, I wouldn’t be ready… You mean it?’

  Gary was struggling to shuffle upright, and John gave up the massage. The joy that bounded around Gary’s chest was reflected in his husband’s eyes.

  ‘Hang on.’ John pulled him closer, so Gary ended up lying between his legs, his neck craning to look up. Flipping over onto his back, he snuggled in with John’s arms around him and rested his head back on the man’s shoulder. ‘Settled now?’

  ‘As I’ll ever be. Go on.’

  ‘Right,’ John said, entwining their fingers. ‘As you know, Sally’s done Everest now. That team she wanted me on, the one she was trying to get me to join when you proposed…?’

  ‘When I chucked a ring at you in the Lonsdale, aye.’

  ‘It was much more romantic than that. Anyway, Sal’s asked me to work with her on another series of expeditions. Holidays, I call them. Amateurs and low-experience trekkers on a few peaks around Paradiso and the Domes, then more experienced groups at the Eiger.’

  ‘You leading?’

  ‘And shooting for the company brochure. It’s only a couple of months, but I thought we could go early and try out the routes before the weather gets too warm. You know, get you some higher altitude, cold-weather experience, get a few higher-grade climbs under your belt.’