Killing Me Softly Read online

  It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Adam followed me everywhere I went. He didn’t accompany me to work every single day, nor was he there to meet me every day. He wasn’t phoning me there all the time. But it happened enough so that I knew that any more of my private investigations would be risky. He was around, and I was sure that there were times when he was near and I didn’t notice. Once or twice, walking along the street, I would look round feeling that I was being watched or that I had glimpsed someone, but I never saw him. But he could still have been there. It didn’t matter anyway. I had the feeling that I knew everything I needed to know. It was all there in my head. I just had to think about it all. I had to get the events straight.

  Greg was going to fly out to the States for a few months and, on the Saturday before he left, a couple of friends arranged a party to give him a send-off. It rained almost the whole day and Adam and I didn’t get out of bed until almost noon. Then Adam suddenly got dressed, briskly, and said he had to go out for a couple of hours. He left me with a cup of tea and a hard kiss on the mouth. I lay in bed and I made myself think about it all – clearly, point by point, as if Adam was a problem I had to solve. All the elements were there, I just needed to get them in the right order. I lay under the duvet, hearing the rain pattering on the roof, the sound of cars accelerating through puddles, and I thought about everything until my head hurt.

  In my mind I was going over and over the events on Chungawat, the storm, the altitude sickness of Greg and Claude Bresson, the extraordinary achievement of Adam in directing the climbers down the Gemini Ridge, the failure of the guiding line and the consequent disastrous wrong turning of the five climbers: Françoise Colet, Pete Papworth, Caroline Frank, Alexis Hartounian and Tomas Benn. Françoise Colet, who had just broken off with Adam, and who had been conducting an affair with Greg.

  Adele Blanchard had broken off with Adam. How would the Adam I knew respond to being left? He would have wanted her to die and she disappeared. Françoise Colet broke off with Adam. He would have wanted her to die and she died on the mountain. That didn’t mean he killed her. If you wanted someone to die and they died, did that mean you bore some responsibility, even if you hadn’t caused it? I went over and over it. What if he didn’t try hard enough to rescue her? But, then, as everybody else said, he had already done more than anybody else could have done in the same circumstances. What if he put her group last on the list of priorities while he saved the lives of other people? Did that make him just a bit responsible for her death and the deaths of the other members of the expedition? But somebody had had to assess priorities. Klaus, for example, couldn’t be blamed for the deaths because he hadn’t been in a condition even to rescue himself, let alone decide the order in which other people were rescued. It was all stupid. Adam couldn’t have known about the storm anyway.

  Yet there was something, like a little itch that is so tiny you can’t even locate it exactly, you can’t decide whether it is on the surface of the skin or somewhere underneath but it won’t let you relax. Maybe there was some technical mountaineering detail, but none of the experts had mentioned anything like that. The only relevant technical detail was that Greg’s fixed line had come loose at the crucial point, but that had affected all the descending groups equally. It was just a matter of chance that it was Françoise’s group who took the wrong route down. Something wouldn’t leave me alone. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about it?

  I gave up. I had a long shower, put on some jeans and one of Adam’s shirts, and made myself a piece of toast. I didn’t have time to eat it because the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting anybody and I certainly didn’t want to see anybody, so at first I didn’t answer. But it rang again – longer this time – and I ran down the stairs.

  A middle-aged woman was standing outside under a large black umbrella. She was quite stout, with short, greying hair, wrinkles around her eyes, and running down from her nose to the corners of her mouth. I thought at once that she looked unhappy. I had never seen her before.

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘Adam Tallis?’ she said. She had a thick accent.

  ‘I’m sorry, he’s not here at the moment.’

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘Not here,’ I repeated, slowly, watching her stricken expression and the slump of her shoulders. ‘Can I help you?’

  She shook her head, then laid her hand on her mackintoshed chest. ‘Ingrid Benn,’ she said. ‘I am the wife of Tomas Benn.’ I had to strain to understand her, and talking seemed to require an immense effort. ‘Sorry, my English not…’ She made a helpless gesture. ‘I want to speak with Adam Tallis.’

  I opened the door wide, then. ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Please come in.’ I took the umbrella from her and closed it, shaking off the drops of water. She stepped inside and I shut the door firmly behind her.

  I remembered now that several weeks ago she had written to Adam and to Greg, asking if she could come and see them to talk about her husband’s death. She sat at the kitchen table, in her smart, sensible suit, with her neat brogues, holding a cup of tea but not drinking it, and gazed at me helplessly, as if I might be able to provide some kind of answer, although like Tomas she spoke almost no English, and I knew no German at all.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘About your husband. I really am sorry.’

  She nodded at me and started to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she didn’t wipe them away but sat patiently, a waterfall of sorrow. There was something rather impressive about her mute, unresisting grief. She put no obstacles in its way but let it flow over her. I handed her a tissue and she held it in her hand as if she didn’t know its function. ‘Why?’ she said eventually. ‘Why? Tommy say…’ She searched for the word then gave up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, very slowly. ‘Adam is not here.’

  It didn’t seem to matter all that much. She took out a cigarette and I fetched a saucer for her and she smoked and cried and talked in fragments of English but also in German. I just sat and looked into her large sad brown eyes, shrugging, nodding. Then gradually she subsided and we sat for a few moments in silence. Had she been to see Greg yet? The image of them together was not appealing. The article on the disaster in Guy magazine was open on the table and Ingrid caught sight of it and pulled it across. She looked at the group photograph of the expedition and she touched the face of her dead husband. She looked at me with the hint of a smile. ‘Tomas,’ she said, almost inaudibly.

  She turned the page and looked at the drawing of the mountain, which showed the arrangement of fixed lines. She started jabbing at it. ‘Tommy say fine, he say. No problem.’

  Then she switched to German again and I was lost, until I heard a familiar word, repeated several times. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Help.’ Ingrid looked puzzled. I sighed. ‘Help,’ I said slowly. ‘Tomas’s last word. Help.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said insistently. ‘Gelb.’

  ‘Help.’

  ‘No, no. Gelb.’ She pointed at the magazine. ‘Rot. Here. Blau. Here. Und gelb.’

  I looked blank. ‘Rot is, er, red, yes? And blau is…’

  ‘Blue.’

  ‘And gelb…’

  She looked around the flat, pointed to a cushion on the sofa.

  ‘Yellow,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yellow.’

  I couldn’t help laughing at the mix-up and Ingrid smiled sadly as well. And then it was as if a dial had been turned in my head; the last number in a combination lock ratcheting into place. The doors swung open. Yellow. Gelb. Yes. He wouldn’t have called out in English as he lay dying, would he? Of course not. Not the man who had hampered the expedition by not knowing a word of English. His last word had been a colour. Why? What had he been trying to say? Outside, the rain fell steadily. Then I smiled again. How could I have been so stupid?

  ‘Please?’ She was staring at me.

  ‘Mrs Benn,’ I said. ‘Ingrid. I am so sorry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think you should go now.’
/>   ‘Go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Adam cannot help.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Go home to your children,’ I said. I had no idea if she had any, but she looked like a mother to me, a bit like my own mother in fact.

  She stood up obediently and gathered her mackintosh.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said again, thrust her umbrella into her hand, and she left.

  Greg was drunk when we arrived. He hugged me a little too boisterously and then hugged Adam as well. It was the same old crowd: Daniel, Deborah, Klaus, other climbers. It struck me that they were like soldiers home on leave, meeting each other at selected refuges because they knew that civilians would never really understand what they had gone through. It was an in-between place and an in-between time, just to be got through until they returned to the real life of extremity and danger. I wondered, not for the first time, what they thought of me. Was I just a folly to them, like one of those mad flings soldiers had on weekend leave in the Second World War?

  The atmosphere was fairly jovial. If Adam looked a little distracted, then maybe that was just my over-sensitivity and he was soon caught up in the conversation. But there was no doubt about Greg: he looked dreadful. He drifted from group to group, but didn’t say very much. He constantly refilled his glass. After a bit I found myself alone with him.

  ‘I don’t feel I really belong,’ I said uneasily.

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Greg. ‘Look. It’s stopped raining. Let me show you Phil and Marjorie’s garden.’

  The party was at the house of an old climbing friend who had given it up after college and gone into the City. While his friends were still vagrants, drifting around the world, raising money here and there, snuffling out sponsorship, Phil had this large beautiful house just off Ladbroke Grove. We walked outside. The grass was damp and I felt my feet getting cold and wet but it was good to be outside. We walked to the low wall at the far end of the garden and looked over at the house on the other side. I turned back. I could see Adam through the window on the first floor in a group of people. Once or twice he glanced at us. Greg and I raised our glasses to him. He raised his own glass back at us.

  ‘I like this,’ I said. ‘I like it when I know that this evening is lighter than yesterday evening and tomorrow evening will be lighter than today.’

  ‘If Adam weren’t standing there looking, I’d feel like kissing you, Alice,’ Greg said. ‘I mean, I feel like kissing you, but if Adam weren’t looking then I would kiss you.’

  ‘Then I’m glad he’s standing there, Greg.’ I said. ‘Look.’ I fluttered my hand in front of his face displaying my wedding ring. ‘Trust, eternal fidelity, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Sorry, I know that.’ Greg looked morose again. ‘You know the Titanic?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ I said, with a thin smile, aware that I was stuck with a very drunk Greg.

  ‘Do you know… ?’ Then he stopped. ‘Do you know that no officer who survived the Titanic ever rose to command a ship?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Bad luck, you see. Bad on the C V. As for the captain, he was lucky that he went down with it. Which is what captains are supposed to do. You know why I’m going to the States?’

  ‘A climb?’

  ‘No, Alice,’ he said, too vigorously. ‘No. I’m going to wind up the company. That’s it. Finito. A line drawn in the sand. I shall be searching for a different line of work. At least Captain Ahab went down with the whale. People under my care died and it was my fault and I’m finished.’

  ‘Greg,’ I said, ‘you’re not. I mean it wasn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  I looked around. Adam was still up there. Mad as it might be, drunk as he was now, I had to tell Greg before he went away. Whatever else I did or didn’t do, I owed this to him. I’d probably never have the chance again. Perhaps I thought, too, that with Greg I would have an ally, that I wouldn’t be so alone if I told him. I had the crazy hope that he would snap out of his drunken, maudlin state and come to my rescue.

  ‘Did you read Klaus’s book?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, raising his glass of vodka.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, stopping him. ‘Don’t drink any more. I want you to concentrate on what I’m saying. You must know that when the missing party on Chungawat were brought down to the camp, one of them was just about alive. Do you remember which one?’

  Greg’s face had an expression of stony gloom. ‘I wasn’t exactly conscious at the time. It was Peter Papworth, wasn’t it? Calling for help, the poor bastard. The help that I failed to give him.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That was Klaus’s mistake. It wasn’t Papworth. It was Tomas Benn.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Greg. ‘We were none of us at our best. Down the hatch.’

  ‘And what was Benn’s principal characteristic?’

  ‘He was a crap climber.’

  ‘No, you told me yourself. He didn’t speak a word of English.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Help. Help. Help. That’s what they heard him say as he was dying, slipping into a coma. A funny time to start speaking English.’

  Greg shrugged. ‘Perhaps he said it in German.’

  ‘The German for help is hilfe. That doesn’t sound very similar.’

  ‘Perhaps it was somebody else.’

  ‘It wasn’t somebody else. The magazine article quotes three different people who reported his final words. Two Americans and an Australian.’

  ‘So why did they report hearing that?’

  ‘They reported it because that’s what they expected him to say. But I don’t think it’s what he said.’

  ‘What do you think he said?’

  I looked around. Adam was still safely inside. I waved at him cheerily.

  ‘I think he said "gelb".’

  ‘ “Gelb”? What the fuck is that?’

  ‘It’s German for yellow.’

  ‘Yellow? Why the fuck would he gave gone on about yellow while he was dying? Was he hallucinating?’

  ‘No. I think he was pondering on the problem that had killed him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The colour of the line that the party had followed down Gemini Ridge. Down the wrong side of Gemini Ridge. A yellow line.’

  Greg started to speak, then stopped. I watched him think slowly about what I’d said.

  ‘But the line down Gemini Ridge was blue. My line. They went down the wrong side of the ridge because the line came out. Because I hadn’t secured it.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I think the top two pegs of your line came out because they were pulled out. And I think that Françoise, Peter, Carrie, Tomas and the other one – what was he called?’

  ‘Alexis,’ muttered Greg.

  ‘They went down the wrong ridge because a line led them there. A yellow line.’

  Greg looked baffled, in pain.

  ‘How could a yellow line get there?’

  ‘Because it was put there to lead them in the wrong direction.’

  ‘But who by?’

  I turned and looked up at the window once more. Adam glanced down at us then looked back at the woman he was talking to.

  ‘It could have been a mistake,’ said Greg.

  ‘It couldn’t have been a mistake,’ I said slowly.

  There was a long, long silence. Several times Greg caught my eye, then looked away. Suddenly he sat down, on the wet soil, against a bush, which sprang back and flicked water over both of us. He was shaking in spasms and sobbing hopelessly.

  ‘Greg,’ I hissed urgently, ‘pull yourself together.’

  He was crying and crying. ‘I can’t. I can’t.’

  I bent down and grabbed him firmly, shook him. ‘Greg, Greg.’ I made him get up. His face was red, tear-stained. ‘You’ve got to help me, Greg. I’ve got nobody. I’m alone.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t. The fucking fucker. I can’t.
Where’s my drink?’

  ‘You dropped it.’

  ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I need a drink.’

  Greg staggered back down the garden and into the house. I waited for a moment, breathing heavily, calming myself. I was hyperventilating. It took a few minutes. Now I must go back inside and be normal. At the moment I stepped into the basement kitchen I heard a terrible crash and then shouting from upstairs, breaking glass. I ran up the stone steps. In the front room there was a mêlée, a scrum on the floor. Furniture had been knocked over, a curtain had been pulled down. There were shouts and screams. At first I couldn’t even make out who was involved, and then I saw Greg being pulled off somebody. It was Adam, clutching his face. I ran forward to him.

  ‘You fucking fucker,’ Greg was shouting. ‘You fucking fucker.’ He ran out of the room like a madman. The front door slammed. He was gone.

  There were expressions of incredulity around the room. I looked at Adam. He had a bad scratch down one cheek. His eye was already swelling. He was looking at me. ‘Oh, Adam,’ I said, and ran forward.

  ‘What was that all about?’ somebody asked. It was Deborah. ‘Alice, you were talking to him. What got into him?’

  I looked around the room at Adam’s friends, colleagues, comrades, all expectant, baffled, enraged by the sudden attack. I shrugged. ‘He was drunk,’ I said. ‘He must have cracked. It all finally got to him.’ I turned back to Adam. ‘Let me clean that up for you, my love.’

  Thirty-six

  It was a swimming-pool like the ones I’d gone to as a child – dank cubicles with green tiles, a straight up-and-down pool with old plasters and small hairballs drifting near the bottom, signs telling you not to run, not to dive, not to smoke and not to pet, tired buntings hanging beneath the unsteady strip-lighting. In the communal changing room, women came in all shapes and sizes. It was like a drawing from a children’s book illustrating human difference: dimpled bottoms and veined, pendulous breasts; gaunt ribcages and bony shoulders. I looked at myself in the tarnished mirror before pulling on my costume, and was again alarmed by how unhealthy I looked. Why hadn’t I noticed before? Then I tugged on my swimming cap and my goggles, tight enough to make my eyeballs bulge. I marched into the pool area. Fifty lengths: that’s what I was going to do.