Bright Air - Barry Maitland [72]
I went to sit with Anna at the back, plastered with sun cream, as we bounced across the choppy sea, circling out towards the south. I felt a bit mean, for all she wanted was to get back onto dry land, but that couldn’t be helped. As our angle of view slowly shifted we saw that from its flank Balls Pyramid resembled a tall triangular sail, while from end-on it appeared to be a slender spire; so thin in fact that in one place the wind had punched a hole clean through. This ragged tooth was all that was left of a huge volcanic crater rim, and beneath the waves it continued down to the ocean floor, two thousand metres beneath us.
The sea wasn’t too rough, and once he’d resigned himself to taking us out there, Bob became determined to prove just how inaccessible it was. To begin with, there were the tips of lesser peaks around it, barely breaking the surface, that made it dangerous to approach. Then there was the impossibility of making a landing, there being nowhere a boat could safely moor against the vertical sides. And finally, the thing was too exposed, too sheer, its rock too eroded and crumbly, to safely climb.
‘So it’s never been climbed?’ I asked, thinking that would make it even more irresistible to Luce and her friends.
‘It was climbed in the 1960s,’ Bob conceded, ‘and once or twice since, but it’s so dangerous that it’s banned now. It’s a bird reserve.’
We watched vast flocks of gulls floating in the air around its high flanks, and I said, ‘Luce would have loved this place, Bob. Did you ever bring her out here?’
He ducked his head away as a wave hit us, and adjusted his steering. ‘Nah. She saw it all right, though, from South Head. Couldn’t very well miss it, could she?’
I thought he was lying. As I took pictures he pointed out some of the features that the first climbers had christened along the steep ridge that ran up to the summit from the south—the twin spires of Winklestein’s Steeple, the Black Tower and the Cheval Ridge, so named because it was so narrow, with sheer drops on either side, that it had to be traversed as if sitting on a horse, with a leg down each side. I felt sure he’d told Luce the same story.
We could also clearly see the huge breakers crashing against its base.
‘So how did they get ashore?’
‘Their boat stood off while one of them jumped in and swam to the rock with a line, then pulled their gear and the others over. But there are sharks, huge sharks, and the waves and currents are bad around here, mate, real bad. Chances are you’d be swept away or bashed against the rocks before you could get out of the water.’
I could see the difficulties all too clearly, but as we turned back towards Lord Howe I was even more convinced that Luce had stood on that thing. Why was I so sure? There was the map reference in her diary, of course, but it was more than that—I’d felt her presence there. That sounds absurdly fanciful, like Owen seeing her on the mountain before he fell, and Marcus on his terrace, and as we grew further and further away from the Pyramid I tried to convince myself to be rational. But each time I glanced back at it, glowing solitary in the morning sun, the sensation came back, creeping up my spine.
The wind picked up as we approached Lord Howe, the waves got bigger, and Anna was sick again. Then we were running up the eastern side of the island, Bob pointing out the landmarks among the cliffs and rocky bays. For Anna’s sake, and having spent an extra couple of hours on the detour to the south, we agreed to forgo the fishing, and Bob circled the Admiralty Islands, showing us the wave-cut tunnel through the middle of Roach Island. Seabirds swooped around us, dazzlingly blue, and it was only when they climbed away that we realised they were pure white, coloured by the light reflected off the blue waters. We followed the line of the northern cliffs and circled around North Head to approach a northern passage through the reef. Ahead of us we could see people on the jetty.
We clambered ashore, unsteady, and thanked Bob. I asked how much we owed him,