Reckless

You are not alone in your madness

“Grand isn’t it?”

I knew from the way he approached me, he was going to strike up a conversation. I feign deafness. I came up here to think.

Dad used to be like that. Always favouring everyone with his cheery remarks – like that woman stumbling on the uneven pavement – “Whoops! Careful how you go.” He would roar. “I’m surprised you can walk at all in those heels.” Babies brought out the worst in him. Dad would bend over the pram and prod the fractious infant with his nicotined forefinger. “Whasamatter with you then?”

I am the ten-year old trailing behind, shrinking into the nearby shop doorway. I avoid the appalled faces of the parents as Dad’s well-meaning attempts at baby talk leave another screaming infant in its wake.

I had passed the speaker earlier, on the way up. I reckoned him to be about eighty – shouldn’t have been allowed out of his sheltered accommodation, I thought. Whereas the rest of the hikers on the mountain wore padded clothes, this little chap had shorts. Besides a dark brown anorak and a rucksack, a telescopic stick was his only other concession to the steepness of the path we had climbed.

“I said grand, isn’t it?”

I exhale. He won’t be ignored. “Yeah, great.”

The bright smile fades from his leathery, sun-stained face. His hands rise, palms outward, defensive; “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Up here the wind is an ongoing pillow fight. One moment it rips over the shoulder of the mountain and buffets the back of your head, the next it flushes tears from your eyes. I turn back to the panorama.

“You’re not going to are you?”

I stiffen. “I’m not going to what, precisely?”

He glances past me, to where the puckered granite slopes away, then becomes hidden by the ragged edge.

“It’s just that if you are…you know…well you need to take a run at it.” He jabs towards the precipice with his stick. “Two hundred feet down there’s a ledge. My friends in Capel Curig will curse you for getting lodged on there. You can’t get a helicopter that close, they’d have to abseil.”

It takes a few moments to grasp his meaning. I teeter on the brink of anger at his sheer presumption; but the humour of his remark bursts the bubble in me. “You’re in mountain rescue then?”

He thrusts his hand out. “Used to be. Cyril Gardner’s the name. They pensioned me off two years ago. I still like to make myself useful if I can. And you seemed to be spending a long time up here.”

“I wasn’t thinking of throwing myself off,” I protest truthfully, grasping his hand. His grip makes me wince.

“I know.” His wizened face breaks into a smile. “But that doesn’t stop people sometimes. Besides which,” he glances at his watch. “How long are you planning to stay up here?”

“Thought I’d take in another peak then start down. It took me four hours from Llanberis, so I’d give it two back.”

He grimaces. “Young lad said exactly those words to me in the summer. Half the time to get down a mountain as it took to get up. Darkness overtook him, he walked into a gully and luckily we found him the same night. Last time I saw him he was in spinal traction in Stoke Mandeville.” He waves his hand, encompassing the craggy summit behind us. “Notice something?”

“Not really, I was enjoying the view.”

“Nobody else is up here. Did you check the weather forecast?”

I am conscious of acute embarrassment. “Rain…?”

“Heavy rain by six o’ clock; north-westerly airflow with winds of fifteen to twenty miles per hour. That’s at sea level. Typical Welsh Sunday. Time to kick the boots off and order a pint with a steak and ale pie at the Miner’s Arms in Llanberis. Up here the wind speeds will be three times that and the rain will be hail, possibly even snow and you won’t see ten feet in front of you.” As he speaks he rummages in his knapsack. He fishes out some leggings which he clips to his shorts.

I rise. “Okay, I’ll make a move. Thanks for the warning.” I am regretting my initial rudeness. Left to myself I would have lingered for at least an hour, possibly two, and the weather would have closed in on me, ill-prepared and inexperienced. Clearly this old guy is mountain-savvy. On inspection he appears to be formed from the granite itself, craggy and gaunt. Wiry and tough as the boots he is wearing.

“Hang on,” I say. “What did you mean, ‘that doesn’t stop people sometimes’? Throwing themselves off, I mean.”

He favours me with a curious smile. Then he tugs my elbow.

“Come down here, lad.”

We stand in a niche at the brow of the cliff edge. There is no wind here, and from this lower point I can see the whole curving aspect of the rock face. Carved from the belly of the mountains by glacial ice, it is dark against the late afternoon sunlight. The scale is difficult to appreciate; far below micro-sheep graze the boggy pasture around the cwm. The tortured rock is sheer for about six hundred feet.

“Can you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“No, if I tell you, it’ll plant the idea. Look right over the edge. Can you feel it now?”

Between the toes of my boots and the abyss is six inches of black rock. I glance down.

“It’s quite a way.” I concede.

“No, can you feel it?” He sounds exasperated.

I peer over the lip of the mountain. The air is clear, but a few wisps of grey moisture rise from the surface of the lake. Below, to my right is the ledge that my companion spoke of. It is the only projection of note. I prod a loose rock with my foot. It sails into space. I mentally time its descent: one…two…three… After five seconds it is too small to see.  Far below the water glimmers in the lowering sunlight and a bird-fleck wheels across its surface. A spasm of giddiness erupts from the back of my head; and a voice, calm and lazy. ‘Just one step…’ I feel the colour leaching from my face.

“It’s kind of…” Tempting is what springs to mind. Tempting is the wrong word, though. The rock face arrows away beneath me. “…Persuasive.”

My brain squirms again, a fiercer spasm this time. ‘GO ON!’

The sun catches the rivulets around the old guy’s eyes. “What about compelling?”

I stare at him. He nods slowly.

I thought I was alone in that notion. Nobody normal feels the urge to hurl themselves from this height. To hang momentarily before accelerating, rocks flashing past, to that brutal impact. It wouldn’t take even a full step to accomplish.

How would Kathy react if I told her; ‘Kat, love, I felt the urge to walk off a cliff today. Is that okay?’ What would she say? She would scramble to rationalize. ‘You’re worried what sort of a dad you’ll make. The money if I give up work. It’s a big decision.’ She wouldn’t understand.

But this old man does. He sees cognisance in my eyes. I see unease in his.

“Powerful, isn’t it?” He says, picking up his stick. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait!” I have not moved from the very edge. Here, right now I can assert absolute control over my life, knowing that no one can countermand my decision. Not falling, but flying, for those brief seconds, exulting in the sheer rebellion of my action. It will be my final act of insubordination, flouting the very will to live.

This is no fresh notion. As the headmaster led the prayers during school assembly, the reckless childish id used to whisper its delicious compulsion – to run up to the front and shout ‘Poo!’ at the top of my voice.

All my life I have been conscious of the murmured counsel of that lunatic in my attic. I convinced myself I was alone in my delusion, after all normal people don’t feel the insane urge to destroy themselves without reason. Do they?

“Everybody does to some extent.” Cyril leans against the rock. “Women less so. At least the ones I’ve spoken to. As soon as a woman becomes aware of her ability to carry a living child in her belly, she maternalises her urges. Even if she is not planning to conceive, that ability distracts the self-destructive compulsion. But men…”

I interrupt. “I want to make it clear I had no intention of …”

“I know. But I’ve scraped experienced climbers off mountains in excellent weather conditions. No reason why they’re shattered at the foot of a ravine. No reason I can put on the report.”

“Are you saying every man is a potential suicide?”

“Suicide? No. Suicides usually leave a note, telling the world how they couldn’t cope. But looking at you, I would say you have everything to live for, but you felt it, didn’t you?” He picks up a pebble and flicks it from the ledge. “It’s the flip side of our most urgent creative impulses. To do the unthinkable: to shout abuse at your manager, use violence on those you love. Or even kill a total stranger for no reason other than that you can. Feelings we suppress or even deny…”

“I tell you I had no intention of jumping.” Why do I keep repeating myself?

“I know. But standing where you are, it crossed your mind, didn’t it? For one dizzy moment you considered it. Some people act on that urge. The rest of us flirt with it. I tell you it’s what makes us tick.”

I tell him about the youths who gun their cars up to full speed on the unmade road over the common where I live. They play a deadly game of chicken. Last year two died and three were injured in a head-on collision. He nods.

“You need to use it constructively. We cocoon ourselves against risk, and something in us dies. Part of us wants life mapped out; the other part wants to stride on regardless. Do you know how I met my wife? I saw her on a bus. The moment I laid eyes on her something wild in my head said, ‘you’ve got to speak to that girl’. I’m glad I listened. We’ve been together for fifty-two years this month. It’s what makes some people successful. They harness this crazy energy; thumb their nose at common sense and go on to achieve great things. And talking of great things,” he checks his watch, “I want to be on the outside of a pint this evening. Are you coming?”

As we descend, he talks of his experiences in the Falklands and his years in the Navy. I listen politely. I know this is going to be one of those life-defining moments. I feel a deep sense of gratitude towards this grizzled man. Not just because he has rescued me from my own stupidity, but because he has, in the course of a few minutes, uncluttered my mind and given me space to think freely.

By the time we reach Llanberis, the rain is ripping across the road surface. Refusing his offer of a drink I drop him off at the well-lit door of the Miner’s Arms. Then checking the signal I pull into the lay-by near the lake.

“Kat.” The wind buffets the car. The cloud-shrouded mountain tops have lost interest in me and I in them. “Kat, love, it’s me.”

I wait for the usual exchange of familiarities before I say; “Can you get up here tonight?”

“Of course. Why? What’s the matter?” I have startled her. Good. I can still do that after all this time. I pause for a moment and let the lunatic speak.

“Kat, I’ve changed my mind. Let’s have that baby.”