The Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

by age, it was her familiar smile nevertheless. “Equivocal,” she said. She had
     taught me the word, like so much else. “Dear Robert, as equivocal as ever.”

3

    T HERE WAS SOME KIND of religious service for Jamie. It was Ruth’s idea, Ruth’s insistence, even though Jamie had not been a churchgoer, hadn’t
     believed in anything as far as I knew. “What alternative is there?” she asked when I protested. “Just a dreadful crematorium
     thing?”
    I rang home and suggested that Eve come, but she declined. “They were your friends,” she said. “Not mine. And look how they
     treated you…”
    The service was held in the local church. The place was full, of course. There were names I knew, a few faces that I recognized,
     all of them hard-edged and weathered, one or two of them bearded. The survivors. One in eight Himalayan climbers fails to
     return; if you are talking about going high, then the statistics get worse: less than half of those who go above seven and
     a half thousand meters survive to tell the tale. Oh, yes, there were as many ghosts at Jamie Matthewson’s funeral as live
     mourners.
    I sat in the front row between Caroline and Ruth. Caroline was in gray silk — the gray of ashes, the gray of slate, a gray that
     set off her still-bright complexion; Ruth wore black, a sharp black linen suit that made her look tough and vulnerable at
     the same time, the kind of trick she was always capable of pulling off. She had no makeup on, and her hair was pulled back
     and gathered up to emphasize the line of her jaw. Her expression was tightly pegged down — like a tent in a storm. Beyond her
     was Dominic Lewis, looking uneasy in something resembling a jacket and tie.
    We sang a hymn, and the rector gave a little address about striving for the heights and seeing the Promised Land from the
     top of the mountain, and things like that. And then it was the turn of others: Carrington to say something about Jim on Everest,
     Jim as the selfless expedition member, the man whom you could rely on for help, or a joke, or a day’s hard slog at altitude
     to set up the top camp; Philips to talk about Jim standing in awe on the summit of K 2 as they watched the sun set and steeled themselves to face the bivouac that would probably (but didn’t) kill them both. There
     was someone else to talk about Jim the businessman, the man who helped the local economy, the Englishman who had found a home
     in Wales; and Dominic Lewis mumbled a poem about Icarus falling from the sky. Auden, I suppose it was. Ruth had asked me to
     add something. I didn’t really want to but I couldn’t refuse, so when all the others were done I made my way up to the lectern.
     Looking out over the congregation, I wondered if they knew who the hell I was.
    “I first knew Jamie when I was about twelve,” I told them, just to put them in the picture. “Later we climbed together. We
     shared a great deal, as one does with a climbing partner: meals, climbs, tents, bivouac bags, jokes, all that kind of thing.
     Occasionally we shared the lead. When he let me.”
    They laughed at that. They were desperate to laugh. I stopped and looked down at them, and I wanted to say other things. I
     wanted to tell them about the first climb ever. I wanted to tell them about winters in Scotland and summers in the Alps. I
     wanted to tell them about Caroline — she looked up at me with a quizzical expression, as though she couldn’t quite recall my
     name — and my own mother who now languished in a nursing home and wondered who I was when I came to visit her. I wanted to speak
     about Jamie’s father. And I wanted to tell them about Ruth. Above all I wanted to tell them about Ruth.
    There was a great silence in the gray church, a cold and expectant silence, almost as though they were waiting for me to tell
     them these things. “Probably we shared more than most,” I said. Ruth was watching with the faintest of Welsh smiles. But I
     didn’t tell them;