White

‘I want to go … to Nepal. Maybe to see Everest.’

She gazed at him. ‘Oh, of course. When?’

‘Now. I suppose.’

Fran shook her head. There were red marks like thumbprints on each cheekbone. ‘Why?’

Because I need to get away from here? Because my work isn’t satisfying and because I can’t run as fast as I want to, and because you and I don’t make each other happy? Because I’ve just been to see my father and we can’t talk to each other, and I know I have disappointed him? Or just because I saw a woman at an airport and thought, I want her?

Sam mumbled, ‘I can’t tell you why. I want to go because I had the idea.’ This was cowardly. But would the truth be kinder?

There were tears in Frannie’s eyes but she stood up and turned away. She rinsed her breakfast plate, an angry plume of water splashing up from the sink. ‘You always do what you want.’

He was surprised at that. Sam generally felt that he spent his life approximately conforming to what other people wanted – clients, friends, Frannie. Maybe as an ineffectual compensation for not doing it for Michael. He had been feeling ineffectual for too long. ‘Do I?’

‘Yes.’ She began to shout at him. ‘You keep it quiet, but you do. And you evade everything you don’t want to do. You’re never full on. It’s like you’re always looking out of the window at some view the rest of us can’t see. I hate it.’

‘I’m sorry, Fran.’ His inability to please her was just part of the scratchy disorder that his life had become. He was profoundly tired of it, he knew that much. His resolve hardened.

She flung some cutlery into the sink. ‘What happens if I’m not here when you come back?’

Their eyes met.

‘I will have to deal with that when it happens.’

There was a silence. Through the wall hummed their neighbour’s choice of morning radio programme.

Fran jerked away from the sink. ‘I’ve got to get to school. We’ll have to talk later.’

‘It isn’t a whim,’ he said quietly.

‘I don’t care what it is,’ Frannie shouted.

After she had gone Sam walked to his desk. His jacket was creased on the back of his chair, where he had shrugged it off last night. He picked it up and absently smoothed the lapels.

He had to get to work too, to a meeting with a travel agent who wanted a website to sell last-minute budget ski packages.

Go, Sam advised himself. Maybe the reasons for it were shaky, but he couldn’t come up with a single one against going.

Four

‘You coming?’ Adam Vries asked Finch.

A group of seven men were standing outside the dining-room of the Buddha’s Garden Hotel. In their plaid shirts, combat pants and cheery slogan T-shirts they might have been any group of tourists, although a closer inspection would have revealed that they seemed noticeably fitter than the average. They had just eaten an excellent dinner and they had the rosy, expansive look of people intent on enjoying themselves for much of the rest of the night.

‘Yeah, come on. We’re going to Rumdoodle.’

‘What the hell’s that?’ Finch grinned.

‘She’s a newcomer, isn’t she?’ a big, grizzled man teased in a broad Yorkshire accent. His name was Hugh Rix; the front of his T-shirt proclaimed ‘Rix Trucking. Here Today, There Tomorrow’.

‘Bar,’ Ken Kennedy said briefly. He was in his early forties, short but broad-built. His colourless hair was shaved close to his scalp and his rolled shirtsleeve showed a scorpion tattoo on his left bicep.

‘Uh, I don’t think so,’ Finch demurred. ‘I’m going to sleep. In a bed. While I still have the chance.’

‘Coward.’

‘Leave her be, Rix. She’ll be seeing more than enough of you before the trip ends,’ Ken said.

‘Night,’ they all said to her and in a solid phalanx moved towards the door. Of the ten-strong Western contingent that made up the Mountain People expedition, George Heywood had eaten a quick dinner and gone off to a meeting with the climbing Sherpas and Alyn Hood had not yet arrived. The word was that he had taken a two-day stopover in Karachi.

Finch went upstairs to her small single room and switched on her PowerBook to send an e-mail to Suzy.

Hey, married woman.

Good honeymoon?

Here I am. Flights not too bad, hotel plain but reasonably clean (as my mother would say). Dinner tonight with the rest of the group except lead guide who isn’t here yet. They’re okay!!! George Heywood I already met, Adam Vries is communications manager, pretty face (but your type, not mine), poses a bit. Ken Kennedy’s the second guide, acts tough, sports a tattoo, probably has a heart of gold. Clients are Hugh Rix and Mark Mason, both Brits, know each other from back home. Rix (as he calls himself) is the self-made-man type, probably won’t stand any nonsense unless he’s generating it. Mark is quieter and more sensitive, although not by a long way. There’s a longhair Aussie rock jock named Sandy Jackson and two determined Americans, Vern Ecker and Ted Koplicki, who were here last year and turned back from Camp Four. Now they’ve all gone out for a beer.

For me, bed. If I can sleep, with excitement.

I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world, or be doing anything different. You know that. Give Big J a kiss from me xxx

Before she climbed into bed, Finch stood at her window. She opened the shutter and looked out over the trees of the garden and a carved statue of the Buddha to a corner of the busy street just visible beyond the gate. The traffic rolled and hooted through the haze of pollution. Kathmandu lay in a hollow ringed by high hills, and the smoke and exhaust fumes hung in the air like a grey veil. As she stood absently watching, a man walked in the darkness across the grass and through the gate into the roadway. He lifted his hand to a bicycle rickshaw man hopefully lingering near the hotel entrance and hopped into the hooded seat. The old man stood up on the pedals, his lean legs tensing with the effort, and the rickshaw trundled away. Finch stood for a moment longer, resting her shoulder against the window frame and breathing in the scent of woodsmoke and joss and curry that drifted up to her. Then she pulled the shutter to and finished her preparations for bed.

It was surprisingly snug in the rickshaw seat, with the hood framing the view of haphazard streets and ancient wooden houses leaning out over the cobbles. Piles of rotting debris carelessly swept into the angles of walls gave out a pungent vegetable smell. Sam leaned forward to the driver. ‘Very far?’

A triangle of brown face briefly presented itself over the hunched shoulder. ‘No, sir. Near enough.’

Sam had landed at Kathmandu six hours earlier. He had found himself an acceptable hotel close to the Buddha’s Garden, changed his clothes, eaten a meal that he didn’t taste and couldn’t remember, and shaved and showered with close attention. The unfamiliar feeling in his gut was nothing to do with the soupy dal bhaat he had eaten – it was anticipation. It was a very long time since anything in his life had given him the same sensation. Even running didn’t do it for him any more. He had tried to summon it up before he competed at Pittsburgh and had failed. There was a part of himself that warned the rest that it had been a long way to travel from Seattle to catch up with a woman he had spent barely five hours with. But Sam told himself that in any case it wasn’t just to do with Finch. He was in Kathmandu, he was doing something other than withering away at home.

When he finally reached Finch’s hotel the obliging receptionist told him that yes, Miss Buchanan was resident there. But he believed that all the climbers had gone out – just gone, sir, five minutes only – to a bar in the Thamel district.

Armed with the name and directions, Sam set out again. The quickest way through the steaming traffic looked as though it might be this bicycle-propelled pram. He sat even further forward on the sagging seat, as if he could urge the driver to pedal faster. His eyes were gritty with travel and he blinked at the waves of people and cars with a yawn trapped in the back of his throat. Maybe he should have gone to bed and waited until tomorrow to find her. But the thought of being so close, and the fear that she would somehow disappear into the mountains before he could reach her, was too much for him.

At last the old man sank back on his saddle and the rickshaw wavered to a halt. They had come to a doorway wedged in a row of open-fronted shops, where multicoloured T-shirts and cotton trousers hung like flags overhead, and a press of wandering shoppers threaded through narrow alleyways. There was a thick smell of spicy food, and patchouli and marijuana. Two dogs lay asleep on a littered doorstep.

The bar was up a flight of wooden stairs. Sam found a big room, noisy with muzzily amplified music and loud talk. Most of the customers were very young Westerners with the suntans, bleached hair and ripped shorts of backpackers, although there were a few Thais and Japanese among them. He edged his way through the babble of American, British and indeterminate accents to the bar, and positioned himself in front of it. He searched the crowd with his eyes, looking for her.

Finch wasn’t there. Within a minute he knew it for certain but he still examined each of the groups more carefully and drank some weak beer while he waited in case she had gone outside for five minutes. It took him much less than five minutes to identify the group of Everest mountaineers. They were older than most of the other drinkers and were gathered in a tight group around two rickety little tables. One of them had a goatee and wore his long hair tied back in a lank ponytail, another had an effete blond fringe, the rest had brutally short crops. They all had worked-out, hard-looking rather than muscular physiques. The look was familiar enough to Sam: for years he had seen men with similar bodies high on the pillars in Yosemite, or drinking beers with his father and exchanging the arcane details of routes and lines and remote peaks.

There was an empty chair at the far side of their group, next to the blond man. Sam strolled casually across the room and hesitated beside it. ‘Mind if I take this?’

‘Sure. Help yourself.’

He sat down, carefully placing his drink on the table. He relaxed for a minute, gazing into the room with unfocused eyes and letting their conversation drift around him.

‘The man’s an asshole. Forget the hills. I wouldn’t go as far as the Bronx with him leading …’

‘… into a heap of shit. So I say to the guy, this place is a latrine …’

‘A brand new camera, a Nikon AX.’

‘I’m ready for it. But if I don’t make it this year I’ll be back. And I’ll keep on coming back until I do make it.’

‘You’ll do it, man. George Heywood’s put thirty-five clients up there already. Why not you? And Al Hood’s a fine leader.’

‘He’s never climbed it.’

‘He’s climbed every other fucker in the known world.’

Meditatively, Sam drained his glass. These men were going to be Finch’s companions for two months. ‘You heading up for some climbing?’ he asked the blond in a friendly voice.

‘Yeah, man.’

‘What’re you planning?’

‘The big one. Everest.’

Sam gave a soundless, admiring whistle. ‘Is that right? I envy you. You all going?’

‘It’s a commercial expedition. Six clients, or five if you don’t count the chick medic. Two guides, Ken here and another guy. The boss is out here this trip as Base Camp manager. He’s climbed the hill twice himself. I work for the company, supplies and communications manager, but I’m kind of hoping to get a shot at the summit. Have to see how things pan out, though.’

‘Ahuh. Sounds good.’

‘You climbing? My name’s Adam Vries, by the way.’

‘Sam McGrath. Not this time,’ Sam said cautiously. He didn’t want to exclude himself from the company that included Finch.

‘Pity. Want some of this?’ He held up a jug of beer and Sam nudged his glass across. Adam filled it up for him.

‘Thanks. So, where’re you from?’

Adam named a little town in Connecticut but said that he spent most of his teenage years in Geneva. Under the careful pressure of Sam’s questions he hitched his boot on the rung of a chair, locked his hands behind his head and talked about climbing in the Alps. His fine, slightly girlish features lit up with passion as he reminisced about the big faces of the Eiger and Mont Blanc, and Sam found his initial antipathy melting away. Even though he had dismissed Finch as the chick medic, this was a nice guy. For a climber, he was an exceptionally nice guy.

In turn, Adam extracted from Sam the details of his own mountain history. He shook his head disparagingly. ‘Man, that’s tough. But you can still climb, can’t you? Without your old man, I mean.’

‘I suppose I could.’

He had merged into the group now. The two British expedition members had introduced themselves as Mark Mason and Hugh Rix – ‘Just call me Rix,’ the blunt-faced man insisted – and Ken Kennedy stretched out a hand and shook Sam’s. His grip was like a juice presser.

The jug of beer was filled and refilled, and the level of noise and laughter rose.

‘What are you doing in Kathmandu?’ Rix demanded in his loud voice.

‘Just travelling. Taking a break from the world.’

‘Sounds like a waste of good climbing time to me.’

Sam laughed. ‘Could be. Do you reckon you’re going to get to the top?’ With Finch to treat your frostnip and your constipation, and monitor you for oedema on the way, you bullet-headed bastard?

Rix leaned forward. He was red-faced with beer and the drink made his Yorkshire accent even more pronounced. He put his big, meaty hands flat on the table. ‘Listen up. I know what people say. The old brigade of professional climbers who had bugger all in their back pockets and that mountain in their dreams, who clawed their way to the summit or died in the doing. I know they say the South Col route is a yak track and that any fat fucker with fifty grand to spare can get himself hauled up there if he can be bothered to go to the gym twice a week for a couple of months beforehand. They claim that Everest’s been turned into an adventure playground for software salesmen by the commercial companies dragging along anyone who can pay the money.

‘And that may well be true, mate. All I know is that I’ve dreamed of standing on that peak since I was a snotty kid at home in Halifax. I’ve climbed Makalu and Cho Oyu and Aconcagua, and enough peaks in the Alps, and I’m still as hungry for Everest as I was when I was a lad. I was out here this time last year and I got turned back by the weather at 25,000 feet. But I’ve made my money and this is the way I choose to spend it, and no bugger’s going to stop me. I’ll climb the hill. It’s not a question for me.’

‘No,’ Sam said thoughtfully.

Adam was three-quarters drunk now. He propped his blond head against the wall. ‘Rix’s right. I know it. I know that feeling. Ever since I started, from the first climb, it’s what I’ve existed to do. It’s been the focus of my life. Every time I reach the summit of a new mountain I know no one can take that away from me. It’s concrete. Like, there it is. Mine. And you know’ – he waved his hand along the group around the two tables – ‘there’s this family. If you’re some Yank kid lost in a Swiss school where you can’t even talk to the class losers let alone the cool kids, and your old man’s always travelling and your mom goes shopping, you can go climbing and you find people who’ll be with you. You’re in the mountains and you’re not lonely any more. It’s …’ His head rolled and his eyes drifted shut. ‘Hey, I am wasted … it’s everything you need in the world.’

There was a small silence, then Adam’s eyes snapped open again. ‘You know what I’m saying, man. You climb yourself.’

Seven pairs of eyes looked at the newcomer.

‘Yes,’ Sam said.

Much later, by the time the bar was closing, everyone except Ken Kennedy was drunk. ‘Come on, the lot of you. Get to your beds,’ he ordered.

Adam and Sam made their way unsteadily down the stairs together, Adam’s arm looped over Sam’s shoulder.

When the thick-scented air hit them they staggered a little and Adam coughed with laughter. ‘Need a scotch to settle my gut after all that beer. You coming back to the hotel for one more?’

Even with his head spinning, and his ears and tongue clogged with the dull wadding of jet lag, Sam was just able to work out that it wouldn’t be clever to present himself at the Buddha’s Garden in this condition and risk bumping into Finch.

‘Nope. But I’ll come by tomorrow and see you.’

‘Don’t make it too early,’ Adam groaned.

It was past noon when he strolled back through the leafy garden. The strong sunlight laid wedges of indigo-blue shadow under the trees. Sam had slept for ten hours, then dressed in a clean white shirt and pressed chinos. He was not going anywhere or doing anything else until he had tracked down Finch Buchanan and made her promise to have dinner with him.

In the lobby Ken Kennedy was sitting under a ceiling fan with a balding man Sam didn’t recognise. They were frowning over a sheaf of papers and Sam passed by without interrupting them. The desk clerk gave Sam Adam’s room number and pointed to the stairs. Sam ran up two shallow flights and found the number he was looking for. He knocked on the door and was greeted by a wordless mumble that he took as an invitation to come in.

Adam was lying on a disordered bed, naked except for a pair of shorts. One limp arm hung over the mattress edge, the other shaded his eyes from the dim light filtering through the closed shutters. ‘Uh, it’s you.’

‘What’s up?’

‘God knows. I’ve never puked or shat so much in my life. Can’t just be the beer.’

‘That’s rough. Can I get you anything?’

‘How about a gun to put to my head? Jesus.’

Adam hauled himself half upright and vomited a couple of greenish mouthfuls into an enamel basin. Sam grimaced and tried to look in the other direction while Adam spat and then sank back on the pillow. ‘You could go down to the bar and get me a couple of bottles of water. Room service doesn’t do much in this place.’

‘Sure,’ Sam said.

It took ten minutes to locate a barman, pay for the mineral water and make his way back to Adam’s room. This time he opened the door without bothering to knock.

Finch was standing with her back to him, staring at her watch and holding Adam’s wrist loosely in her hand. After another five seconds she finished counting and turned her head to see the intruder. She was wearing a sleeveless khaki body-warmer with pockets and a white T-shirt with the Mountain People’s logo on the front. She looked less tense and therefore younger than she had done on the Vancouver flight.

‘I brought him some mineral water.’ Sam smiled. ‘It’s nothing serious, I hope?’

‘This is the doc,’ Adam said.

She was looking at Sam, the total surprise in her face distinctly shaded with irritation.

‘What are you doing here?’ Finch asked coldly.

‘I told you. Bringing the sick man some water.’

‘Do you mind leaving us alone while I examine my patient?’

‘It’s okay. He doesn’t have to go on my account. Do you two know each other?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. Now then, how long ago did the vomiting start?’

‘Twelve hours.’

‘Right.’ Finch took a phial out of her medical bag and shook out a large capsule. ‘I’m going to give you something that should stop it.’

Adam held out his hand and gestured for the bottle of water.

‘Not orally, you’ll vomit it straight up again. It’s a suppository. To be inserted in your rectum. I can do it for you, or you can deal with it yourself, whichever you prefer?’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Good. Try to drink some water over the next few hours, don’t eat anything.’

Even the mention of eating started up another bout of retching. There were dark sweat streaks in Adam’s blond hair. Finch watched him with her fingers resting lightly on his shoulder, then she took the bowl from him and rinsed it in the bathroom.

She’s an angel, Sam thought. If I were ill, would she look after me like this? Put her hand on my shoulder?

‘Okay, Adam. It’s food poisoning. You should start feeling better soon. Try and rest, and I’ll be back to see you at about six. Your friend will stay and keep you company I expect.’ Finch smiled sweetly.

‘Actually, I was hoping …’ Sam tried.

She snapped her bag shut. ‘See you later, Adam. Goodbye … um …’

‘Come on, you know my name.’

Finch was already halfway out of the door.

‘Wait a minute. Look, I’ll be back,’ he called over his shoulder to the wan figure in the bed.

Adam had covered his eyes again with one arm. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he muttered.

Sam ran down the corridor after Finch. Realising that she wasn’t going to shake him off so easily she turned with a flicker of anger and confronted him. ‘Right. So here you are in Kathmandu. What do you want, exactly? I’m busy, I’ve got a job to do.’

‘I want to take you out to dinner. Is that too much to ask?’

‘Did you follow me all the way out here?’

‘Yes. I got here twenty-four hours ago.’

‘Why?’

‘That was how the plane times worked out.’

‘Don’t try to be more of an asshole than you are already. Why did you follow me?’

Sam hesitated. ‘Look, I know it seems flaky. I met you, we talked, I wanted to see you again. But it isn’t as weird as that makes it sound. You talked about Everest and I loved the way it lit you up. My life is at a kind of static point right now, so taking off out of it for a while seemed a good idea and I thought, why not here? I’ve never seen Kathmandu before.’

‘That’s not what you told me.’ She did look faintly mollified now.

‘Why would you have told me where you were staying, if I hadn’t claimed some familiarity with the place?’ Candour, he thought, was probably the best defence.

They were standing in an angle of the main stairway. Rix, Mark Mason and Sandy Jackson came up the stairs from the lobby, and each of them gave Sam a friendly greeting as they passed.

‘Hey doc, how’s the patient?’ Sandy enquired over his shoulder.

‘He’ll live.’ She returned her full attention to Sam. ‘You know everyone.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, sort of. How about tonight?’

Finch sighed. Her hair was tied with what looked like a bootlace and he wanted to slide his finger underneath and hook it off.

‘Listen …’

‘Sam.’

‘Yes. I do remember. Listen carefully, Sam, and save yourself from any more impulses to do with me. One, I am responsible for the health care of a total of twenty people on this expedition. Two, I am here to climb as high as I can go on Everest. I don’t expect to make the summit, necessarily, but I want to do myself justice. I can’t afford it, but I have saved up the money to pay for this. I’ve made a lot of physical and mental preparations. I don’t have room for anything else in my life right now. Nothing.’

She’s saying the same things as those guys last night, Sam thought. Climbers. Peak pervs. Monofocal mountain morons. But even so his longing to untie Finch’s bootlace, to put his fingertip to the corner of her mouth, to hear her voice in his ear, never even wavered. Her steeliness only impressed him and made him want to be with her even more than before. He held up his hands and smiled. ‘It’s only dinner. Two glasses of wine and a curry, dessert optional. It’s not an addition to your workload or an emotional commitment.’

She studied him briefly, working out whether he was threatening or harmless, then put her hand briefly on his arm. ‘No. No thanks, Sam.’

She smiled in a finite way and removed her hand again. Sam was not especially pleased with his way with women, but it did strike him that even in circumstances as unusual as these he had never been turned down with quite such cool certainty. There was more here, he thought, than immediately met the eye.