White

‘So what happened?’ Mike asked at last.

Sam caught himself shrugging and tried to stop it. ‘I was fit enough and I felt good on the start. I don’t know. I just couldn’t make it work.’

‘What time did you do?’

‘Not good. Two twenty-eight. I’ve done plenty better than that, beat all the other guys who came in ahead of me – Petersen, Okwezi, Lund. But not on the day it counted.’

Mike went on looking at him, saying nothing.

‘There’s always 2004.’ Sam smiled, thinking within himself: It should be the other way round. You should be saying that to me.

‘You’re twenty-eight, twenty-nine, aren’t you?’

You know how old I am. ‘Long-distance running isn’t a kids’ game, luckily. You can stay in the front rank over long-distance well into your thirties.’

‘I was looking forward to you bringing home that gold.’ Mike nodded to the mantel, as if there were a space there, among the pictures of mountains and bearded men, that was bereaved of his son’s Olympic medal.

‘I’d have been happy enough just to go to Sydney and represent my country. It never was just about winning, Dad,’ Sam said patiently.

‘No.’

The monosyllable was a taunt, expertly flicked, that dug into Sam like the barb of a fish-hook.

It’s the way he is, Sam reminded himself. It’s because he’s bitter about his own life. And he’s entitled to a grouse this time. He would have been proud of me if I’d made it, so it’s understandable that he should feel the opposite way now.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it this time. It was tough for me as well. But I won’t stop running. It means a lot to me.’

‘Keep at it while you still can,’ Mike agreed. ‘You’re lucky.’

Do you want me to say I’m sorry for that, as well? Sam wondered.

Mike had already turned his gaze over his son’s shoulder, back towards the jeering audience on the television. The volume went up again.

Sitting in this house, with its fading wallpaper and the same old sofa and chairs, and the blandishing blue-sky covers of his father’s magazines – he still subscribed to Climber and Outside and the rest – it was hard for Sam to head off the memories. They lined up in the kitchen space and in the closets, and behind the curtains, waiting to ambush him. Where he lived now, up in Seattle with work to do, and Frannie and friends for company and distraction, he could keep out of their way. But not here, not even most of the time. He supposed it was the same for everyone going home. Whether or not you enjoyed your visit depended on the quality of the memories.

They had moved to this house when Sam was six. Before that, Mike and Mary McGrath had lived on the Oregon coast near Newport, but then Mike had started up a rental cabin and backwoods vacation tour business, with a partner, and had brought his family to the little town of Wilding. The business had only survived a year or two, and the partner had made off with most of the liquid assets and none of the burden of debt, but the McGraths had stayed on. They had put money into this house, a couple of miles out of town, and Mary had dug a garden out front and started to make some friends. Sam was in school and seemed happy enough, and in any case Mike was as willing to stay where he was as to move on. He took a job as a transport manager with a logging company. Mike didn’t reckon much on where he lived or what he did for a living, just so long as he could feed and house his wife and child, and get to Yosemite and the Tetons whenever possible, and to plenty of big boulders for climbing when his budget didn’t stretch to proper expeditions.

Other kids had plenty worse things to deal with, Sam knew, but he found the climbing hard.

He went on the camping trips, and while his father solo-climbed he played softball with the other boys and swam in icy streams, and hiked and rode his bike, always in fear of the moment when his father would call him.

‘Come on, Sammy. It’s your turn.’

‘No.’ Trying to climb with his father watching, with the hammering of blood in his ears and the shivering of his joints, and the sipping for breath with the top inch of his lungs because to breathe more deeply might be to dislodge himself from his precarious hold – all of these were too familiar to Sam.

‘Watch me, then.’ Mike sighed.

His movements were so smooth as he climbed, his body seemed like water flowing over the rock. But Sam’s arms wound tight around his knees as he sat watching and his breath came unevenly.

Don’t fall, he prayed. Don’t fall, Dad.

A moment or two later the man reached the crest of the boulder and disappeared, then his broad grinning face looked down over the edge. ‘See? Easy as pie.’

Sam felt his cheeks turning hotter, not from the sun’s brightness. His father was already down-climbing, smooth and steady. And then midway he suddenly stopped.

‘Now what can I do?’ he demanded, flinging the words back over his shoulder into the still air. ‘I’m stuck. Tell me what to do.’

The boy raked the reddish cliff with his eyes, searching the sandstone for a crack or a bulge. There were no ropes, nothing held his father safe except his own fingers or toes and now he was stuck and he would surely fall … he would fall and fall, and he would die.

‘See anything?’ Mike McGrath called more loudly. ‘Any foothold?’

Sam gazed until his eyes burned.

The red rock was flat and hard, and there wasn’t a dimple in it, even to save his father’s life. Terror froze the sunny afternoon and silenced the birdsong, and stretched the moment into an hour.

‘Wait. Maybe if you go that way …’ He rocked up on to his knees, so that he knelt at the rock face, and took tufts of long grass in his clenched fists to hold himself tethered to the earth. There was a little nubbin below where his father’s feet rested.

Too late.

‘I’m falling,’ the man cried suddenly. And as he did so he peeled away from the rock and his body turned once in the air, black, and as helpless as a dropped puppet.

Out of Sam’s mouth a scream forced itself.

Even after Mike had executed a gymnast’s neat backflip and landed upright, knees together and arms at his sides in the exact centre of the old bath towel that he left at the foot of the boulder to keep the soles of his rock shoes from contact with the ground, Sam went on screaming. The sound brought his mother running. He buried himself in her arms.

‘Michael,’ she remonstrated, ‘what are you doing?’

She was holding the boy pressed against her as she spoke and Sam could feel her voice vibrate in the cage of her chest.

‘I didn’t mean to frighten him. I was just showing him it’s safe, for Chrissakes. Sammy, I’m okay. I came off deliberately.’

‘He’s eight years old, Mike.’

‘I want him to know what climbing means.’

Sam McGrath already knew. He knew it was what his father loved. Without knowing how to form the words he understood that Michael cared about him and his mother in his own way, but climbing was what gave everything else a meaning. Every dollar that he had to spare, every possible weekend and any vacation, were devoted to it. That was all. It was so overwhelming that in a way it was perfectly simple. And for himself, Sam also knew that it scared him speechless.

‘Let him alone. He’ll learn when he’s ready.’

There was something here, some tension like a fine wire drawn tight between the two of them that was more uncomfortable even than his own fear, and to discharge it Sam scrambled away from his mother and stood up.

‘It’s okay. I’ll do it now,’ he said.

‘That’s it, fella. You see?’ Michael laughed and the woman frowned.

Once Sam asked his father, ‘You use ropes when I’m climbing with you. Why don’t you use them when you’re on your own? Wouldn’t it be safer?’

He always remembered the answer.

‘It’s not about safety. It’s about purity.’

Mike told him that a climber could make himself as safe as he chose. By knowing what he was doing and where he was going, by calculating and planning. And above all by concentrating.

‘It’s like a problem in math. The rock sets you a problem and you solve it. Ropes and bolts and all the other climbing aids only make muddle and add up to more danger. Real climbing is the same as making love. There’s only the two of you, you and the rock, and naked is best. You’re too young to know anything about that yet.’

Sam felt embarrassed and he mumbled, ‘Most people except you climb with a partner.’

‘I’m waiting for you to grow up. By then I’ll have taught you everything I know. After you’ve been to college and trained to be a lawyer, you’ll be rich enough to go to Alaska and the Himalaya, and climb the big hills, all the places your old daddy’ll never get to see.’

Sam lifted his chin and gazed back at him, containing the defiance that he felt within himself like a stone at the bottom of a cup.

‘Can I get you another?’ Sam asked, nodding across at the coffee pot. He heeled his chair back to its accustomed place and stood up. It wasn’t breaking a connection between them, because there hadn’t been one in the first place. Mike’s attention, apparently, had barely twitched away from the television and now he held out his empty cup without comment.

Sam filled it for him, and began to make preparations for a meal. He had taken a trip into town, and bought a heap of supplies to stock the empty cupboards and the old chest freezer that wheezed in the outhouse. He didn’t think Mike was taking care of himself properly and he wanted to be sure before he left that there was at least food to hand for him, even if he chose not to eat it.

‘Steak and salad okay for you?’

Simple food was what Mike always liked. Sometimes he reminisced about Mary’s chicken pot pie or dumpling stew, and Sam would realise how much he still missed his wife and felt guilty that he didn’t live closer or make the effort to see his father more often.

‘If it’s what you’re making.’

When the food was prepared Sam laid knives and forks on the old yellow laminate table and put the plates out. ‘It’s ready.’

Mike fumbled for his stick, but it still lay where Sam had pushed it aside. The old man gave a grunt of irritation and stretched awkwardly but Sam was there first. He put it into his father’s hand and helped him to his feet, then guided him the few feet to the table.

‘I can manage. How d’you think I get by when you aren’t paying one of your visits, eh?’

‘Sure you can manage. But when I’m here, I like to be able to help you.’

They ate in silence after that, the only sound the clink of their knives and forks, and the wind driving darts of ice against the windows.

‘Not going to be a great night for travelling,’ Mike remarked.

I could stay over, just until tomorrow, Sam thought. But he didn’t want to and the realisation twisted yet another strand of guilt in him. He wanted to get out of here, back to his own place, away from the mute cohorts of their memories.

‘It’ll be fine. I’ve got to get back to work.’

That was another aspect of disappointment. He hadn’t even made it to law school. Sam’s business was computers, designing and managing websites, and it wasn’t an outstandingly successful one.

At least the silence was broken. Mike chewed thoughtfully on his steak, then wiped his mouth. ‘So you reckon that’s it, is it? No chance of a rethink?’

He was talking about the running again.

Sam must have been twelve because Mary was still there, although she had begun to seem sick. Their last summer vacation, then. Sam couldn’t recall exactly where the climb had been, but he remembered every crease and corner of it. There was a narrow chimney and then an awkward overhang. Mike had led the way and he negotiated the underside of the shelf as if it were a mere optical illusion.

‘Climb when you’re ready,’ Sam heard him call from the invisible secure point above it.

The rock waited, bearing down on him. ‘I don’t think I can do this one.’

No answer came, and Sam sighed and began to climb. Even as he was hanging off the first hold, beginning the calculation that would achieve the next, his mind and his will disengaged themselves. It wasn’t simply that he couldn’t do it. It was much more that he had no wish to. At once he down-climbed the short way he had come and called again. He told Mike that he was going down and he wouldn’t be climbing any more that day. He felt a start of rebellious happiness. A moment or two later Mike reappeared on the ledge beside him. The space felt too small to contain them both.

Mike said, ‘Do you want to think about that again?’

It wasn’t a question, but Sam boldly treated it as if it were. ‘Uh, no, thanks. I’ll head back.’

‘I think you should climb it.’

‘I think I should go down.’

‘Do what I tell you, son.’

The rock seemed to press down on their heads.

‘I don’t want to.’

It was self-discipline that restrained Mike. He wouldn’t let anger master him out on the mountain, because anger was a loss of control and loss of control meant danger. Instead, he lowered his son safely to the ground and watched until he was unclipped from the rope. Then he turned and climbed solo up the overhang.

Sam ran the path through the woods. He made himself run faster and faster to contain his shock at what he had done. When he reached the campsite he found Mary sitting tiredly in her chair under the shade of a tree. Mary defended her son against his father. That was the year Sam took up track sports.

‘Not for 2000, I’m afraid.’

The two of them had cleared their plates. The talk show finished and a soup commercial began.

Sam took them to the sink. ‘Would you like some dessert? There’s a pie. Apple.’ A bought one.

‘Sure, if it’s there.’

He brought the helpings to the table and they ate, in silence again. That was how it was. Afterwards he washed up, and dried the cutlery and placed the dish towel – without knowing he did so – in the way that Mary always left it to dry. Mike had never bought a dishwasher.

Only then did Sam allow himself to look at his watch. ‘Time for the airport.’

‘You really going, in this?’

Sam tilted his head, pretending to listen to the wind. He wanted to switch off the TV in case the local weather report came on and closed off his escape route.

‘Oh, it’s not so bad.’ He collected his zipper bag from the bedroom that still had his college sports posters on the walls and made a show of checking for his keys. ‘Do you need anything else, Dad?’ There was food in the cupboard, fuel in storage, current magazines on the chair. Spring would be here soon.

‘Not a thing.’

‘So, I’d better be going. I’ll call you in the morning.’ From the apartment or the office, in Seattle.

‘Sure.’ The old man pinched his nose and rubbed it with the back of his hand. Then he levered himself to his feet and rested his weight on his stick. From opposite directions they reached the door at the same time. Sam looked down on him.

Michael had survived a broken back, but the terrible injury and the years of fighting back from it had robbed his father of height, as well as other things. Sam thought that the way the old man lived now was truly little more than survival. Awareness of his father’s loss depressed him as well as filling him with unwieldy sympathy. It also increased his own sense of being able-bodied and surrounded by opportunity, and still having locked himself into a life that didn’t satisfy him, or offer any immediate chance of improvement. Mike’s estimation of him as a failure only confirmed his own.

‘I’m really sorry about the Trials.’

‘Maybe next time, like you said,’ Mike answered. They made an awkward connection, a little more than a handshake but less than a clasp. Then they stood apart. ‘Thanks for buying all those supplies. I didn’t need them.’

‘Take care of yourself.’

‘You know me.’

Well enough, Sam thought. He hoisted his bag, rested his hand for a moment on Mike’s shoulder, then opened the door and closed it behind him. It was snowing hard now, and the wind rounded it into the creases of steps and walls. Sam drove through Wilding and, at last, on to the freeway. He punched the buttons on the radio, stretched in his seat and headed through the storm for the airport with unconsidered heavy metal crashing in his ears.

*

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the American ticket desk clerk told him. ‘The weather’s closed right in. Maybe in an hour, if it eases.’

‘I’ll wait,’ Sam said, as if he had a choice. From the newsstand he bought a copy of Forbes and from the coffee shop a latte that might take away the taste of his father’s brew. Under the stalled departures board he found a seat and wedged himself between a boy with a snowboard and a woman holding a baby on her lap. He sipped his coffee and watched the refugees from the weather as they pushed in past the barrier of the glass doors. The concourse was filling up, a steady wash of people jostled in front of him and the boy with the snowboard sullenly left it jutting in their path.

Sam had been sitting with the empty styrofoam cup in his hands for perhaps fifteen minutes when he saw her.

The doors parted yet again and a flurry of windborne ice crystals spun across a triangle of the murky concourse floor. A woman blew in in their wake but she wasn’t hunched over to defend herself from the weather like every one of the other arrivals. Her head was back and she was wide-eyed with exhilaration. And she appeared to be wearing nothing but a pair of slender high-heeled shoes and a faded ski parka. Her legs were very long and splashed with muddy sleet.

As well as a small overnight bag, she was negligently carrying a bridal bouquet.

Sam swore, fluently, under his breath. Some fuckwit had already married her.

He followed her with his eyes to the Air Canada desk. She went through the same exchange as he had done, then turned away. Sam was almost on his feet, on his way to intercept her, when he remembered that he didn’t know her. Not yet. Instead, he watched as she bought a cup of coffee and drank it standing, her attention on the departures board. The bouquet lay at her feet, with her bag. There was no bridegroom in sight, no smirking triumphalist ready to propel her away to a honeymoon hotel. She was apparently all alone.

He stood up and placed his coat on his seat, making it the only unoccupied one in sight. He walked between the clumps of travellers until he reached her side. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

Her gaze travelled over his face, level, considering, touched with amusement. ‘There are three pregnant women and several geriatrics standing around here. Why me?’

Jesus, he thought. She’s really something. ‘Good question.’

‘Thanks for the offer, anyway.’ She was smiling. She wasn’t beautiful, her eyes were too wide-set and her jaw too prominent for that. She was better than beautiful; she was intriguing.

‘Where are you heading?’

‘Home to Vancouver. And you?’

‘Uh, yup. Me too.’ Seattle, BC, what did it matter? Tomorrow’s work waiting, Frannie – Sam folded them up and put them all on hold. It was a very long time since he had felt himself do anything so perfectly unconsidered.

‘You live in Vancouver?’

‘Uh, not exactly. Visiting, you know. Looks like we might have a long wait. Maybe until tomorrow.’

‘I’m not giving up hope. I need to get away tonight,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘And I have to make some calls. Nice talking to you.’ She was dismissing him.

‘Sam McGrath.’

Although she hadn’t invited the introduction she nodded politely enough. ‘Finch Buchanan.’

He bent down and picked up the flowers, putting them into her hands. They were some kind of creamy white scented ones, spiked with glossy evergreen. Conventional, in a way that didn’t quite go with her. And her fingers were ringless.

‘Congratulations, by the way. Mrs Buchanan, is it?’

She laughed now, a great uninhibited snort of merriment that showed her teeth and her tongue. Jesus, he thought again.

‘Actually, it was. But I only married him for his money. I shot him on the drive from the reception.’

‘Wise move.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So now you’ll be looking for a replacement?’

One try too many, he realised, as soon as he said it. Finch gave a delicate shrug. The parka crinkled around her and she pulled impatiently at the velcro fastenings to undo it. She wasn’t, unfortunately, naked beneath it. She was wearing a little buttoned-up blue skirt suit that made her look disappointingly like Ally McBeal. She rolled up the parka and stuffed it into her bag.

‘See you.’ She smiled and strolled away towards the bank of payphones at the end of the hall.

As soon as she was busy with her call, Sam went straight to the Air Canada desk and transferred his ticket. After Finch finished her animated conversation she found a place to sit a long way off next to a group of Mexican nuns, took a book out of her bag and immersed herself in it.

Slowly, the snowstorm moved away south-westwards. The Vancouver flight was nearly three hours late departing, but on the other hand it was one of the few that left at all that night. It was full. Sam saw her as soon as he boarded, in a window seat halfway down the main cabin. He strode up the aisle to the as yet miraculously unoccupied seat beside her.

‘What do you know?’ He smiled and settled himself in place. She had the book open on her lap.

‘I know something about the laws of probability,’ she answered coolly and returned to her reading. Sam saw a guy who looked like John Belushi making his way towards them, already frowning. He leaned down and scooped Finch’s flowers from where she had wedged them under the seat in front, and held them on the armrest between them. And he squirmed closer so their heads were almost touching.

‘Is this …?’ Belushi began tetchily.

Sam passed over his boarding card. ‘I’m really sorry. It’s your seat, I know. But look, it’s our wedding night. D’you mind changing so I can sit beside my wife? She’s a nervous flier.’

‘Well, okay,’ the man grunted and pushed onwards.

She didn’t laugh now. She didn’t look alarmed or disconcerted or angry – just severe. She took back the flowers and pushed them under the seat again, kicking them out of the way with the toe of her pretty shoe. ‘What is all this about?’

‘You think I’m a flake, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not. I just wanted to sit here.’

‘Then sit,’ she said crisply. He did as he was told, through the last-minute de-icing and the taxi and the take-off, and the pilot’s announcement that in the wake of the storm severe turbulence was anticipated and they should keep their seat belts fastened. As the plane climbed through the cloud layers it pitched and shuddered, and the engines whined and changed key. Finch suddenly let her book drop and pushed her head back against the seat rest. Sam saw the pallor of her throat.

‘As a matter of fact there was one grain of accidental truth in that load of bullshit.’

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘I’m a lousy flier.’

‘Want to hold my hand?’

‘I want a drink.’

He peered around the seat in front. As far as he could see, the crew were still strapped in. ‘Not yet. Want to talk instead?’

She sighed and closed her eyes. The fuselage creaked and swayed giddily. ‘If you like.’

‘I had my fortune told by an old native Indian woman when I was a tiny boy. I remember to this day, her saying to me, “You are not going to die in an Air Canada 737 somewhere over the western seaboard.” Do you feel sick, by the way?’

‘If I vomit I can deal with it myself, thank you. I am a doctor.’

‘Dr Buchanan. Specialising in put-downs of pushy men and vomit.’

The plane hit a pocket of empty space. It pitched through the vacuum for what seemed like ten seconds before hitting solid air again. A child began screaming and a moan came from an old woman across the aisle. Finch snatched at Sam’s hand and dug her nails in. She had gone white to the lips.