The Loner, page 43
Susan shook her head sadly. “I don’t care what you say: he’s still a twit!” she said.
This remark incensed Fiona’s simmering anger. “And you Sue, aren’t you an idiot too?” she asked sharply.
“What do you mean?”
“You and Bob – that’s what I mean. I’ve known few men as nice as Bob; neither have you – and you love him!”
“That’s not true, Fiona.”
“Isn’t it though? You can see it in your eyes – the way you look at him when he’s not watching. You pretend to ignore him and look bored, but it’s no good, Sue – you don’t deceive me; secretly you hang on every word that comes from his lips. Don’t tell me you don’t: I know you do.”
Susan looked away from her friend and blushed. “I’m too young to be in love,” she said slowly.
“So you’re afraid of being in love. Let’s face it, Sue, you ran away from him the first time you saw him, and you’ve been running ever since! It’s no good; it just won’t do.”
“Life is too good, Fiona, to get shackled to a man now.”
“So now you’d rather walk home unescorted through the middle of the slums – than risk being too close to Bob!”
“No! No! No! Oh do shut up, Fiona,” Susan cried. Then she calmed down, and added coolly. “Perhaps you’re right, Fiona. Perhaps I am very fond of him – but it would never work. I like my freedom too much. There’s only one thing for it. I must never see him again.”
CHAPTER 30
Rope Walker
“I had thought to have let in some of all
professions that go the primrose way to the’ everlasting bonfire”
Porter from Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’
Mark examined Mr. Smart’s room, while Mr. Smart made up his notes. The hypnotist sat opposite him on the other side of an old oak desk. Behind Mark, by the door, there was a stand for hats and raincoats. There was a couch at the other side of the room. It seemed to be a long time before Mr. Smart spoke.
“So you’re dissatisfied with Dr. Fortune, and want to see if I can help you better?” he said at last.
Mark nodded. He had taken a long time in replying to the hypnotist’s questions.
“So what you’re telling me is that you have been extraordinarily lucky; you’ve fallen in with very good company – an excellent group of young people – but they are not quite friends, and that worries you?”
Mark nodded again. “I’m on their periphery,” he said.
“Um… you have this trouble with caving ladders; you have difficulties in relating to people; you still have a terrible unreasoning fear which undermines your self-confidence; you’re not sure how secure you are in your job, and you’re anxiously awaiting your examination results.”
“That’s right. The exams were so hard, and I was competing with students from the top universities,” Mark said.
“And behind all this, there is the one thing you will not admit to yourself...?”
This startled Mark and took him by surprise. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“There’s a girl you really fancy, isn’t there?”
“What? Fiona? But she’s only a friend. She’s got a boy friend, anyway. She couldn’t possibly be interested in me.” Mark gabbled these words quickly, blushing bright red.
“Urm...” Mr. Smart paused again. “I wonder if you’d have got into all of this frightening and frenetic personal development activity, if you hadn’t met her...” he reflected softly.
Mark made no comment.
“So with all these difficulties, you’re well wound up, Mark. It’s hardly surprising Dr. Fortune has prescribed drugs, is it? Don’t you think you need to calm down a bit?”
“But I’m too young to end up on drugs,” Mark said. “I’ve come to you to find out if there is another way.”
Mr. Smart hesitated. “I’m not a magician,” he said. “I can’t promise anything, but I might be able to help.”
“Please!”
“One thing I cannot do is hypnotise you into doing things you can’t do now. That’s what they do on the stage. I am not a theatre performer, Mark – and no amount of that kind of hypnotism can be effective for very long, in any event.”
“So, how can you help me?”
“I can give you a course of analytic hypnotherapy. What this means is, I can put you in a kind of trance which is between being asleep and being awake. We can then look deep into your unconscious mind, and look for the causes of your irrational fears, and help you to relax. I will not be able to make you do anything you cannot do now. I will not be able to give you the skills you need for climbing pot-holing ladders, for example – but, with a bit of luck, I may be able to take away your fears……”
“You mean my fear of heights?”
“I mean all your irrational fears, Mark,” he replied as he showed Mark to the couch. “You never know, perhaps you’ll get your girl, after all!”
The next evening found Bob working hard at Buchanan Street – not at his studies, but with a single long length of thick nylon tape. He was tying knots in this, and turning it into a complex series of loops. He was using a tape measure to help him.
At last it was finished. He walked into the Common Room, and was glad to see Mark sitting there reading a paperback thriller. He held the article he had been making in one hand, and a number of krabs, linked together like a chain, in the other.
“I’ve made this for you, Mark,” he said eyeing his handywork proudly.
Mark looked at it dubiously. “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s your SRT harness – the original product of Bob Smith – patent pending! Now try it on.”
Bob helped Mark into the harness. His legs went into loops, which had been made to measure, while another loop went round his back. Instead of using a buckle, Bob pulled back the gate of one of the krabs, and used it to fasten the waist loops.
“There, how does it feel?” he asked.
“Tight.”
“Good!”
“What do you mean: ‘good’?” Mark asked, with a grimace, followed by a faint smile.
“If you’d felt comfortable, I’d have known it was too loose!” Bob stood back and examined the harness carefully. “Mm! That should do,” he said with evident satisfaction, after making a few slight adjustments. “Now try this.”
He produced another length of tape, which had both ends tied together. He twisted this into the shape of a figure of eight. The crossed part went behind Mark’s back, and the two loops were for his arms. The two loops were fastened together with another krab across his chest, while a third was used to connect the first krab to the main harness.
“This is your chest harness, Mark,” Bob explained, checking the figure of eight to make sure it was the right fit.
“Yes, but how does it work?”
“I’ve got some rope and some gear, Mark. Shall we go into your bedroom, and try it out?”
Mark agreed, and Bob fetched his gear from his bedroom. He opened the window of Mark’s room, and pushed a heavy iron bar through. He supported it by trapping the end under the heavy frame of Mark’s old iron bed.
The residents of Buchanan Street had learnt to tolerate the unexpected ways of the students. But even they were surprised to see a strange iron bar suddenly protrude from an upstairs window, like an offensive weapon, with a rope dangling from its end onto the street below. Curious housewives peered inquisitively through the lace curtains of their windows. What would the students get up to next? Surely not a public execution!
Not long afterwards, they saw Mark climb out of the window, on the rope, while his friend leaned out and issued instructions. They saw Mark put both feet against the wall, like Batman, and manoeuvre the rope, until it rested securely in a groove at the end of the iron bar, and hung perpendicularly from that point. A moment later, he was seen to lower himself slowly down to the ground.
Bob was waiting for him. “That’s fine, Mark,” he said warmly, as Mark opened the gate of the middle karabiner, and took off a simple metal figure of eight descending device.
“Yes, but how do I go up?”
“It’s dead easy,” Bob said, using words which were most likely to encourage a novice. “You use these. ” He held out a pair of metal devices, each with a single moveable cam. “We call these jammers,” he continued. “Their technical name is ascenders. See this cam with rough metal grooves in it? You put rope through here, and the grooves on the cam trap the rope. The Jammer slides up rope easily, but when pulled downwards, the cam traps rope against the frame and locks firmly in place. See?”
“But how do you keep moving upwards?”
“You just use both jammers, Mark; the one mounted on your harness – you take off the middle krab, and put the Jammer on instead – the second jammer, higher up, carries these foot loops.” He produced another length of tape, with loops for Mark’s feet. “Climbing is just a matter of standing up and sitting down, with your arms used to lift upper jammer, and help you stay upright.”
Mark looked very worried. “Suppose something goes wrong with the chest jammer? Do you have a lifeline?”
“You don’t use lifelines for SRT.”
“Then you’re dead if the chest jammer fails.’
“No. What we do is use a short length of rope – we call it a cow’s tail – to link foot jammer with the harness. If chest harness fails, foot jammer will hold you.”
Mark still looked far from happy.
“Shall I go up and show you, Mark?”
Mark agreed. Bob put the jammers on the rope, and fastened them with karabiners to his foot loops and chest harness. He took a few steps upwards, and stopped in mid-air. He took his hands off the foot-jammer, and hung limply.
“This is what I want you to see,” he said. “You see! I can take my arms off the rope, and rest as long as I want. You can’t do that on a ladder.”
He climbed to the iron bar, braced his legs on the wall, and climbed in through the window.
A few minutes later, Mark followed him, and took a few hesitant steps upwards.
“How does it feel?” Bob called from above.
Mark took his arms off the rope, and relaxed, as he dangled freely above the pavement. “Just great!” he said, with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm for heights. He found getting over the bar and through the window rather awkward, but was smiling when the climb was complete.
“Well, do you reckon you’ll be able to do that ninety foot pitch now?” Bob asked.
Mark smiled, and replied confidently. “I’m sure I can. Can I have another go?”
So they repeated the exercise.
The peace of the evening was suddenly disturbed. There was the excited barking of a dog, and the exhilarated cries of children. The big Alsatian dog, who behaved as though he was the leader of the local gang of school children, came bounding into Buchanan Street, followed by the rest of his pack of shrieking infants.
Mark was half way up the rope, when he saw what was happening. If the behaviour of the students had often mystified the indigenous inhabitants of Buchanan Street, the sight of an airborne youth positively alarmed the dog; he at once took up an aggressive pose at the bottom of the rope, leaping growling and snapping madly, as if at a kite, or a bird, which was just out of reach. This worried Mark, as he wondered if he ought to come down or go up; but as he could only go up, he climbed back through the window in unseemly haste.
The children turned to Bob, who was watching Mark from the bottom of the rope.
“Wot youz doin’, mistuh?” one asked.
Then they all wanted the answer to the same question. Bob held his arms out in a gesture which begged them all to keep quiet.
“We’re climbing this rope,” he said casually, as the din subsided, and as if this was a familiar activity for the neighbourhood.
“’Ow d’youz do it mistuh?” they all wanted to know.
So Bob did his best to explain how the prussickers worked. This took some doing, as they all kept interrupting him, and he was not sure if they were any the wiser after he had repeated his explanation for the fifth time.
It was not long before one lively child decided to ask the inevitable question. “Can I ‘ave a go?’
The others were not to be outdone, and they all begged for a turn too.
“Er – well...” Bob hesitated.
“Please!” they all chorused.
Bob would have liked to refuse, but when he saw their eager appealing little faces, his resolution melted.
“Oh, all right then,” he said at last, masking his reluctance. “Wait a moment.”
He disappeared into the house, and came out with smaller length of tape, which he proceeded to knot into a very simple harness.
“Right, who’s first? Don’t all shout at once!”
But they did. He chose one of the older ones, and fastened the harness on him. He helped the child climb up to the level of his own eyes, and then unfastened the jammer, and brought the boy back to earth,
“There now! How’s that? Mark, don’t just stand there gawping like a lost sheep! Lend a hand, will you!”
So, several of the residents of the houses on the other side of the road spent the rest of the evening peering secretly from behind their lace curtains, watching the strange spectacle of the two students giving their six and seven year old children climbing lessons. It was better than television!
“Well, I never expected to find a cave so close to the road!” Pablo, Bob and Mark had arrived at the entrance of Eastwater Swallet. They had crossed no more than one field, and Pablo’s car was still in sight.
Pablo, who was in the lead, agreed. “That’s right,” he said cheerfully. “There’s no need to hike for miles across the steep and barren fell in Mendip – you just cross a farmer’s field, and you’re still fresh when you go underground.”
They entered the cave, each carrying a rope and his own personal SRT gear. They followed a wire that led downwards between boulders: the entrance was a heap of huge buried stones.
“Is this the moving boulder choke, Bob? It looks stable enough to me,” Pablo remarked, as he slid between boulders.
“It does now Pablo but the book says that the whole lot shifted a few years ago, and the entrance was blocked. It took a while to re-open it. It’s the kind of place to treat with respect. Mark!” he called softly, as Mark dislodged a stone. “Be careful; we don’t want the whole lot to fall in!”
Mark apologised as another loose stone dropped heavily and loudly between larger blocks, and landed somewhere unseen with a cataclysmic bang and an echo which reverberated around the unsteady boulders. They carried on following the wire with more than the usual degree of caution.
The wire ended, and they emerged from the hazardous choke. A short climb and a traverse led to a leaning passage, with a more familiar atmosphere. Bob murmured something about this being the beginning of the Primrose Path.
It was a gently sloping straight passage, which followed a fault in the rock. The walls leaned at an angle of about forty-five degrees, in conformity with the general inclination of limestone rock beds in the Somerset Mendip hills. The going was awkward at first, as it was impossible to stand upright, and too spacious to justify crawling. So they had to crouch and stoop, twisting their bodies into strange positions to keep a steady pace.
The passage descended by short steps, along what was once an impressive clean washed cascade, but was now abandoned, and coated with a liquid brown mud.
It was Mark who asked the obvious question: “Why’s it called the, Primrose Path?”
“It’s a quote from Shakespeare,” Bob replied: “‘The Primrose Path to the Everlasting Bonfire’ ”
Mark laughed. “Where’s the everlasting bonfire then?” he asked.
“Don’t laugh too soon,” Bob replied. “It’s not so far, and you’ll know it when you get there.”
There was mud everywhere. The rock walls were coated with it. There was mud in the roof – mud in the ancient stream bed, slimy and slippery mud. It all added to their difficulties – until Pablo had an idea.
“Whoopee!” he cried all of a sudden. Then he leapt onto the lower of the two slanting walls, and tobogganed down the smooth muddy slope, using his wet-suit as a kind of sled. The others followed.
It was like being in their second childhood: “Whee! What fun! Better than snow at Christmas!”
The cave, which was supposed to be one of the hardest, instantly became a play cave – a game, rather than serious business. They shot along the remainder of the long straight passage, like children in a playground, down a seemingly unending series of slides. It was so easy...
All too soon the Primrose Path came to an abrupt end.
“Where do we go now?” Mark asked.
“The Everlasting Bonfire!” joked Pablo.
“What do you mean?”
Pablo pointed downwards: “That’s what I mean; it’s the squeeze,” he said gravely.
Mark looked down. It was not so much a hole in the floor at the end of the passage, as a continuation of the downward slope of the limestone bedding into the darkness of the opening below. It looked like an inclined bedding plane crawl. Mark shone his light down it. One’s sense of perspective underground can be deceptive.
“It doesn’t look like a squeeze to me,” he said confidently.
There was no rejoinder. Pablo and Bob just eyed Mark with suspicion. Bob studied the floor of the passage above the opening.
“Mm...” he mused, picking up a heavy iron object.” I wonder what this is.”
It was an iron bar about three feet long, with a well-worn knotted rope coiled neatly, and attached to it at one end.
“Looks like a crow bar, Bob,” Pablo remarked dismissively. “Perhaps there’s a dig down here.” He dropped the snaked rope he was carrying on the floor, and added: “I’ll go first. Pass the tackle through to me when I’m through the squeeze. The pitches are close together; so I’ll rig them all. Mark, you can follow me.”
Pablo disappeared down the hole. He slid down quickly and easily – but then Pablo was very thin and wiry. His light was soon seen searching for belay points for the rope. They passed the tackle through to him.
