Bright Air - Barry Maitland [23]
I grinned and got up. ‘Sure, Marcus.’
After that the evening went just fine, and when it was over Luce and I walked back to her place while the others got a lift in Marcus’s old Jaguar, which he was able to drive with his good leg. I asked Luce what had happened to him, and she confirmed that he had been the sixth member of their climbing group in California, fifteen months before, and that it had been on that trip that he had taken the fall that had shattered his left leg, just a month or so after Hutchence hanged himself, hence the references.
‘What happened?’
She shrugged. ‘He just tried to push himself that little bit too far. He was a really good climber, and he’d have been able to make the move without any problem ten years earlier, but I think he was trying to prove something to himself, or to us, and got taught a nasty lesson. It was a terrible thing when it happened, right at the end of our trip. We had to climb up to him and bring him down. He was in shocking pain. He was in hospital in San Francisco for a week before they could fly him back, and then in Royal North Shore for another six weeks.’
We walked on for a while, and then she said, ‘What did you think of Marcus?’
‘I don’t know … You all seemed rather overawed by him.’
‘He’s become more sombre since the accident, more angry. He used to be great fun. But he’s brilliant, Josh, the most inspiring person I’ve ever met. Look, I’ll show you.’
We had reached the door of the flat she shared with Anna, and she took me inside, where Anna was setting up an ironing board.
‘We were talking about Marcus,’ Luce explained to her. ‘I want to show Josh the Oslo tape.’
‘Fine.’ Anna turned to me. ‘We were debating in the car whether you made that up about The Fall. Marcus said no, but the others thought you were.’
‘What about you?’
She narrowed her eyes at me. ‘I think you told the truth. I can usually tell when people are lying.’
‘Clever you.’
Luce found the tape she wanted and we sat together on the sofa as the picture came on. The scene was a stage with a lectern, large letters on the wall behind proclaiming OSLO ECOSOPHY SYMPOSIUM. A lone figure took his place behind the microphone to some scattered applause. I recognised a younger Marcus, vigorous, bright-eyed. His speech was in English, but I can’t remember much of what he actually said, and what I can remember—something about the ancient Greek word for house, oikos, being the root for economy (stewardship of the household), ecology (knowledge of the household) and ecosophy (wisdom of the household)—didn’t sound very exciting. But his presentation was inspiring, riveting in fact, as became apparent from the murmurs of approval from the unseen audience, gradually building to bursts of spontaneous clapping that punctuated his impassioned speech. The end was greeted with a huge wave of applause, and a second, rather elderly figure came striding onto the stage and grasped Marcus in a hug.
‘That’s Arne Naess,’ Luce said, in a tone that suggested Moses himself had appeared.
‘Who?’
‘Arne Naess—you must have heard of him.’
‘Sorry.’
Anna made a sort of clucking noise behind me, accompanied by a hiss of steam from her iron. ‘He’s just about the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, that’s all. He invented deep ecology.’
I hadn’t heard of that, either.
Luce said, ‘He’s also a great climber. The day after this he took Marcus onto the Troll Wall at Romsdalen. That is awesome.’
‘Looks a bit old for that.’
Anna butted in again. ‘His nephew, also called Arne Naess, led the first Norwegian Everest expedition. He’s married to Diana Ross.’
I turned and stared at her. ‘Now you are having me on.’
She shrugged, poker-faced, enjoying herself, and went on with her ironing.
When I left the flat I lingered with Luce on the doorstep, giving her a kiss, and was gratified by the response. Suddenly she was interested in me again, really interested it seemed, and I wondered if there was some quirk of wiring in her brain linking climbing and sex. I said, as