White

Because by settling for them, and no more, you chose an ordinary life.

She was fearful of what might lie ahead of her out in Nepal. But she also tasted the fear with the savour of anticipation.

Kitty rolled her head against the pine walls of the tub. ‘Poor Ralf. Was he devastated?’

Finch considered. On the whole Ralf didn’t go in for devastation. ‘No.’

‘But he does love you, you know.’

‘Yes.’

Finch had been in love only once in her life and it was not with Ralf.

‘How does your knee feel?’

‘Don’t evade the issue with doctoring.’

‘I wouldn’t dream.’

Kitty laughed and reached out to touch Finch on the arm. ‘We all want you to be happy.’ All of us, the Buchanan clan.

‘I am happy,’ Finch said softly.

After Kitty had clambered out of the tub she sat for a few minutes alone, looking up and searching for the stars through the drifting curtain of steam.

The next afternoon Ralf flew the three of them in the helicopter down to Kamloops for their return flight to Vancouver. He walked with Finch to the departure gate, and when the flight was boarding James and Kitty tactfully went on ahead.

‘You know where I am.’

Finch hesitated, ashamed to find that at this last minute she was tempted to retract everything she had said in exchange for the promise of comfort and security. Ralf was large and strong and, in retrospect, reassuring. She squeezed down hard on the impulse. ‘Of course I do.’

He kissed her – not on the mouth but on the cheek, as affectionately as if he were James. ‘And call me, when you can.’

‘Of course I will.’

It was finished, both of them knew it.

Isn’t this what you wanted? Finch’s interior voice enquired impatiently.

He stood back to let her walk away. She turned round once to look at him, lifted her hand, then marched forward.

She took her seat in front of Kitty and James. Kitty made a small sad face, turning down the corners of her mouth, and James nodded calmly. The place next to Finch was empty and as the little plane climbed and disconcertingly rocked through the layers of cloud she thought about the man who had made himself her neighbour on the way up from Oregon. My wife is a nervous flier, he had said presumptuously. She had forgotten his name.

Breathing as evenly as she could, Finch rested her head against the seat back. This time the day after tomorrow she would be airborne again. All her expedition kit was double-checked, packed, labelled, waiting in her tidy apartment. The medical supplies she had ordered with George Heywood’s authorisation were already with the main body of expedition stores in Kathmandu. There remained only two more days and dinner with her family to negotiate.

‘Everything looks fine,’ Finch told her last patient of the day, as she peeled off her gloves. They chatted while the woman dressed and agreed that they would continue with the hormone replacement therapy for a further twelve months. A routine consultation, at the end of a routine afternoon surgery. At the door, the woman asked her, ‘When will you be back?’

‘Three months, give or take.’ Finch smiled. The knot under her diaphragm was so tight now that it threatened to impede her breathing. ‘Anything you need in that time, Dr Frame will be here to look after you, of course.’

‘Good luck,’ her patient said and Finch thanked her warmly.

She went to the bathroom and took a quick shower, then changed into a dark-blue dress with a deep V-front. She put on earrings and made up her face. It was time for her farewell dinner with the family. Marcus and Tanya would be there as well as James and Kitty, and to complete the party Caleb and Jessica were flying all the way up from San Diego where Caleb was working on a film about mother whales.

Finch locked up the surgery and drove herself to the North Vancouver shore, to the house in which Angus and Clare Buchanan had brought up their children. She parked her Honda in the driveway behind Marcus’s Lexus and let herself in through the back door. There was no front door, as such. The long, low, two-storey house had been designed for his family by Angus himself. The bedrooms and bathrooms and Angus’s study were on the lower level, and a dramatic open stairway led to the upper floor. Almost the whole of this space was taken up by one huge room with a wall of glass looking over a rocky inlet and southwards across a great sweep of water and sky towards Victoria. This early evening the room seemed to melt into an expanse of filmy cloud and sea spray.

Finch’s parents and James and Marcus and their wives were sitting with their drinks in an encampment of modern furniture near the middle of the room. Angus and Clare collected primitive art, and their native American figure carvings and huge painted masks from Papua New Guinea seemed to diminish the living occupants of the room. When Finch was small, the mask faces regularly appeared in her dreams.

‘Darling,’ Clare said in delight. ‘How pretty you look. Doesn’t she, Angus?’

It had always been her way to insist on her daughter’s prettiness. While she was still young enough to be docile, Clare had dressed her in floral blouses and tucked pinafores until Finch had clamoured for dungarees and plaid shirts like her brothers’.

‘But you were my only girl, darling, after three huge boys,’ Clare always protested to her recriminatory adolescent daughter. ‘Can you blame me for being mad for you in pink ribbons?’

There was never any blaming Clare for anything. She had been a devoted and loyal mother, a serious cook and gardener, a recreational painter and an assiduous PR for her husband’s business. She was small-boned and porcelain-skinned, and utterly intractable.

‘She does,’ her husband agreed. He kissed Finch on the top of her head. ‘Hello, Bunny.’ He always called her Bunny.

Bunny Wunnikins, Suzy would have mouthed, jabbing two fingers towards the back of her throat and rolling her eyes in disgust. Jesus, your family is just too much.

Angus was very tall and, in his early seventies, still handsome. His sons all resembled him. Finch had inherited her mother’s dark colouring, but not her petite build. She moved round, now, to her brothers and their wives and kissed them all, and took the glass of Chardonnay her father poured for her.

‘Good luck to you and God bless,’ Angus started to toast her, but Clare cut in.

‘Oh darling, wait until Caleb and Jessica get here for the speech, won’t you? I so want everything to be right tonight. It’s the last time we’ll all be together for … for …’ Her eyes went misty.

Suzy would have groaned – fucking speeches. We all love you so much. Christ! And Finch would have answered: It’s okay for you. You’re from a broken home.

Aloud, she said, ‘I’m going to be away – doing something I really want – for three months, tops. There’s no need to be sad about it, you know.’

Tanya pulled down the hem of her skirt to cover more of her legs. Everyone heard Caleb arriving and slamming the downstairs door.

‘Here they are.’

‘How wonderful it is to have all the family together.’

‘Let me get the glasses.’

‘So, Finch-bird. All ready for the off?’

The youngest brother and his wife appeared, straight from the airport. Their six-year-old was with Jessica’s sister and Jessica carried the sleepy two-year-old in her arms. Jessica was the best-looking of the three wives. She had worked as a catwalk model in her twenties and before motherhood she had had a brief film career, now on hold, as she put it.

‘Here at last.’

‘Sorry we’re late, guys. Stacked, would you believe? Hi, Mommy. You look great.’

‘Can I make him up a little drink, Clare? If I read him a story he might just settle. He wouldn’t sleep on the flight, or I’d let him stay up with his gran …’

‘Give me a kiss. There.’

‘Do you want to put him down here, with his head on this cushion, darling? Or straight into bed downstairs? Hello, sweet. Are you Granny’s boy?’

They’ve made the effort to come tonight, to give me a send-off, Finch reflected. It’s important for us, the way that birthdays and Christmases are in this family. It isn’t their fault that I would rather have slipped away quietly and held the reunion after I’ve done something worth remarking on instead of just having talked too much about it in advance.

On the other side of the sofa arrangement Angus had launched into his speech. ‘… and so God bless you, Finch, and keep you safe,’ he determinedly finished.

Everybody else made a show of raising their glasses and murmuring appropriately.

‘Wish I was going.’ Caleb grinned.

Caleb, the closest to her who now lived the furthest away, had always been her favourite brother. She put her arm round him and pulled gently at his hair. ‘You go to enough exotic places. It’s definitely my turn.’

Later, loosened up by the wine, they sat down to eat. The limed oak table made another small island in the big space. There was Scandinavian cutlery, and Italian glassware and French china, and outside the lights strung along the shoreline fractured the dark space of wind and water. As a little girl, Finch had always felt the stark contrast between the order and luxury within and the wilderness just inches beyond the glass. It had never felt like a comfortable house, for all its comforts. She was also aware that none of the others felt the same as she did. They all loved the family home. Marcus had even built himself one not dissimilar, a little further up the coast.

Over the compote of winter fruits, Marcus wondered what the next family celebration would be. ‘When shall we nine all meet again?’ he said jovially.

‘Finch’s engagement party, I hope,’ Clare said.

Finch put down her spoon. It made a clatter that she hadn’t intended. ‘Oh, please.’

‘I can wish to see my one girl safely married to a man who will make her happy, can’t I?’

From a glance at their faces, Finch realised that Kitty had told Clare about her turning down Ralf. And Clare was smiling to mask her disappointment, but couldn’t resist an oblique mention of it. The conversation at the opposite end of the table faded away and everyone listened uneasily.

‘It isn’t what I want,’ Finch snapped.

In the silence that followed she could have kicked herself for her touchiness, tonight of all nights. She should just have smiled and let it pass.

Suzy would have advised: Say nothing, you dope. It’s way easier. Don’t you ever learn?

Caleb put his hand over his sister’s. ‘Hey. Lighten up.’

Finch collected herself. ‘I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry. I know what you want for me and why you want it. I’m so pleased that we’re all together tonight. And seeing you all … maybe it makes me feel I should be settling down.’

There was a little chorus of disbelief. After she qualified Finch had worked for a year in Asia and had travelled like a nomad. And once she had come back to live in Vancouver there had been the regular mountaineering expeditions. Except for Clare, they accepted that that was the way Finch lived.

Angus said, ‘We all liked Ralf, you know. We’d have been glad if you had chosen him, but as you didn’t – well, that’s fine too.’

From down the table Kitty silently signalled her apology to Finch for unleashing all this.

‘You’ve got plenty of time, darling,’ Clare said. ‘You go and climb Everest …’

‘I’m not going all the way. I’m only supporting the serious mountaineers.’

‘Do you think we believe that?’ Caleb laughed.

‘… and then come home. And after that, maybe you’ll be ready.’

Suzy: For the serious business of life.

And Finch thought she heard her friend saying that straight.

Maybe, she silently rejoined. Maybe I can only find that out by going.

There was, after all, some buried instinct stirring in her, making her dream at the deepest level of something that the rest of her life appeared to deny. If there had not been, then she would not have chosen to join this expedition, this particular one of so many.

‘Who is taking you to the airport tomorrow?’ Angus was asking. ‘Your mother and I would like to, you know that.’

‘Dennis is,’ Finch said firmly. ‘We will have some last-minute things to settle. Patients, management, bits of business.’

Dennis Frame was Finch’s medical partner. She had known him since high school and after Suzy he was her closest friend.

‘I was, in fact, the very last child in the world to be named Dennis,’ he said, but he refused to answer to Den or Denny. He was tolerant, slightly introspective, and gay. Finch greatly admired him. With the help of two other physicians, he would look after Finch’s patients in her absence.

The evening was coming to an end. Caleb’s and Jessy’s son had slept through the dinner but now he had woken up and was starting to cry. Tanya said she had an early start in the morning and James was flying to Toronto. They moved from their seats and crossed the spaces of the room to embrace and exchange the shorthand assurances of families. Write. Phone. All the news. Mail me.

This was Finch’s matrix. She felt restricted by it when it was tight around her, like tonight, but she knew when she stood back she would see the firm knitted strands of it and value it in theory.

All eight of them came out to the driveway to wave her off. The air smelled of rain and salt.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Will you forgive me?’ Kitty whispered.

‘I’m pleased you did. It saved me having to bring it up.’

Each of the boys hugged her and warned her to be careful. Their concern made her feel like the little girl again, trying to demonstrate that she could run as far and jump as high as they could.

Tanya and Jessica kissed her, wishing her luck in clear incomprehension of why she would want to go at all.

Clare and Angus took her hands and wrapped her in their arms, and tried not to repeat all the things they had said already.

At last, Finch climbed into her car. Her family stood solid against the yellow lights of the house, waving her off. She drove back to the city, to the apartment that already seemed unaired and deserted. There were a few books, some cushions and candles that had mostly been given to her as presents, but otherwise the rooms were almost featureless, as if she were just staying a night or two on her way to somewhere else. Finch didn’t want to copy the grand architectural effects of her parents’ home, and if she had given her own taste free rein she would probably have cosied her rooms with knitted afghans and pot plants and patchwork quilts. She left them altogether unadorned for simplicity’s sake.

It was after midnight. She stepped past the neat pyramid of her expedition baggage and stopped with her back to the hallway. Her shoulders drooped and she pushed out her clenched fists in a long cat-stretch of relief and abandonment. The boats were burned, completely incinerated, and she was actually going.

She had a job to do, a team to fit in with and the biggest challenge of her life waiting to be met. Now that it was happening she felt relieved and ready for it. What would come, would come. She clicked off the lights and went into her bedroom.

Sam sat at his computer in his apartment in Seattle. It was late, gone midnight, and the enclosing pool of light from his desk lamp and the broad darkness beyond it heightened his sense of isolation. From beyond the window he could just hear the city night sounds – a distant police or ambulance siren and the steady beat of rain. A humdrum March evening, seeming to contain his whole life in its lustreless boundaries.

He tapped the keys and gave a sniff of satisfaction as the links led him to the site he was searching for. He tapped again and leaned back to wait for the information to download. The teeming other-world of netborne data no longer fascinated him as it had once done. And as he stared at the screen he asked himself bleakly, what does interest you, truly and deeply? Name one thing. Was it this he was searching the Net for?

An hour ago Frannie had come to look in on him, standing in the doorway in her kimono with her fingers knitted around a cup of herbal tea. ‘Are you coming to bed?’

He had glanced at her over the monitor. ‘Not yet.’

She had shrugged and drifted away.

The website home page was titled ‘The Mountain People’, the logo outlined against a snow peak and a blazing blue sky. Quite well designed, he noted automatically, and clicked on one of the options, ‘Everest and Himalaya’. And there, within a minute, it was. Details of the imminent Everest expedition. Sam scrolled more impatiently now. There were pictures of previous years’ teams, smiling faces and Sherpas in padded jackets. Then individual mugshots of the expedition director and his Base Camp manager, and two tough-looking men posing on mountains with racks of climbing hardware cinched round their waists and ice axes in their hands. This year’s guides, he noted, accompanied by impressive accounts of their previous experience that he didn’t bother to read.

Here. Here was what he was searching for.

Dr Finch Buchanan, medical officer and climber.

Her picture had been taken against a plain blue background, not some conquered peak. She was wearing a white shirt that showed a V of suntanned throat and she was looking slightly aside from the camera, straight-faced and pensive. She was thirty-two, an expert skier and regular mountaineer. She had trained at UBC, worked in Baluchistan for UNESCO, now lived in Vancouver where she was a general medical practitioner. Previous experience included ascents of Aconcagua in Argentina and McKinley, where she had also been medical officer. In the course of her climbing career she had developed a strong interest in high-altitude medicine.

That was all. Sam read and reread the brief details, as if the extra attention might extract some more subtle and satisfying information. He even touched the tip of his finger to the screen, to the strands of dark hair, but encountered only the glass, faintly gritty with dust. The dates of the trip blinked at him, with the invitation to follow the progress of the climb over the following weeks via daily reports and regular updates from Base Camp. She must already be on her way to Nepal, Sam calculated.

There had been a total of perhaps five hours from the moment she had blown with the storm into one airport, then disappeared into the press of another. He had been thinking about her for another fifty. Sam swivelled in his chair, eyeing the over-familiar clutter on his desk and trying to reason why. Not just because of the way she looked, or her cool manner, or the glimpse of her vulnerability in her fear of flying, although all of these had played their part. It was more that there had been a sense of purpose about her. He saw it and envied it. She looked through him to a bigger view and the vista put light in her face and tightened the strings that held her body together. The effect wasn’t just to do with sex, although it was also the sexiest encounter he had ever had with a total stranger.

Sam sighed. Everything about Finch Buchanan was the opposite of the way he felt about himself. His life seemed to have narrowed and lost its force, and finally dried out like a stream in a drought. Work yawned around him with its diminishing satisfactions. His father was disappointed in him and vice versa. The energy and effort he had put into competitive running now seemed futile. And the woman he shared his life with was asleep in another room, separate from him, and he couldn’t even make himself care properly about that.

I wish I were going to Everest too, he thought.

The wildness of the idea even made him smile.

And then it was so unthinkable that he let himself think about it.

The climbing he had done as a child with Michael had frightened him. He knew his father had pushed him too hard; the terror still sometimes surfaced in his dreams. And yet this woman did it and it – or something related to it – gave her a force field that sucked him towards her. He was drawn closer and now the fear had transferred from himself to Finch. Even before she vanished at Vancouver airport, even as he sat down beside her on the plane, he had known he would find her again. He had imagined that he would wait until she came back, then track her down in Vancouver. But the aridity of his life made a sudden desert flower of an idea swell and burst into iridescent colour in his mind. He didn’t have to wait for her to come back. He had been prescient enough to ask where she was staying.

He could go out there.

Maybe just by being close enough inside her orbit he could make sure that she was safe.

Ever the optimist, McGrath, he thought. The woman’s a serious mountaineer and you flunked out of it at the age of fourteen. And you still imagine you can look after her? She’ll just think you’re some weird stalker.

He’d have to deal with that. Optimism was good; it was too long since he had felt it about anything. Seize the moment.

Sam sat for a few more minutes in front of his screen, reading the rest of the Mountain People’s seductive sell.

When he slipped into their bedroom he found to his surprise that Frannie was still awake, propped up on her side of the bed reading a gardening book. The angle of a fire escape outside a city apartment wasn’t enough growing space for her. She wanted a house and a garden for her plants, and Sam couldn’t blame her for that. He sat down beside her on the edge of the bed and she lowered the book to look at him.

‘Working?’

‘Yeah.’ He undid the laces of his sneakers and eased them off his feet, then unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt. Frannie lay back, watching him, waiting for him to climb in beside her. They had lived together for three years, and the sediment of their joint existence was spread around them on the shelves and in the drawers. A blanket from Mexico, their last holiday together, covered the bed. There were invitations in their joint names on the dresser. Even in the fluff of pocket linings and trouser turn-ups there would be the forensic evidence of their inter-related lives: sand from walks on the beach; dust from cinemas; carpet fibres from the homes of their shared friends. The extent of their separation within this unit was too apparent to Sam.

‘Switch the light off,’ Frannie murmured as he lay down. She turned on her side to face him and her breath warmed his face as she slid closer. ‘Mm?’

Sam lay still, contemplating the redoubt of betrayal.

‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered.

He lifted his weighty hand and rested it on the naked curve of her hip where the T-shirt she wore in bed had ridden up.

‘I don’t know,’ he lied. Could you say, I feel trapped by this life, I don’t want to stay here, you deserve a man who will treat you better than I do? How did you do that, instead of making love like he proceeded to do now, with a flare of guilty optimism battened down inside you?

Afterwards Frannie fell asleep with her back curved against his belly and Sam lay awake, thinking out how he would make the next moves and trying to plan the gentlest words he could use to tell her.

Frannie was a teacher and always woke up early to prepare properly for the day at school. When her alarm went off at 6.50 a.m. she got out of bed at once, and padded around between bed and bathroom while Sam lay with the covers hiding his head. He heard her taking a shower, rummaging for clothes, peering in the mirror while she applied a slick of mascara. When she went into the kitchen to make coffee he sat up abruptly and followed her.

‘Toast?’ she asked, with a knife slicing the air. They didn’t usually have breakfast together. Evenings were their time, when they drank wine and talked and collaborated over the cooking. Or used to.

‘Just coffee.’

He sat at the table, looking into the cup. ‘Fran. I want to go away for a bit.’

As soon as the words were out he knew she had been anticipating, probably fearing them. The tension of it had been in the air between them. Her face creased now and her mouth drew in sharply. ‘Where to?’