Bright Air - Barry Maitland [98]
‘So what happened the next day?’
‘Bob took us out to Balls Pyramid as planned, and we climbed up to Gannet Green. I was supposed to lead Luce round to the west flank, out of sight of Curtis and Owen, who were after a colony of petrels they’d spotted on the east. At first she seemed to go along with it, but then I turned to say something to her and she was gone. I scrambled back the way we’d come, and when I looked over the ridge I saw her, climbing down to where the other two were crouching among the melaleuca bushes. I called out, and they looked up and saw her. She started shouting at them … I couldn’t hear what they were saying. There were gulls wheeling and screaming all around us, and the wind was whistling in the rocks. Then Luce suddenly took off, racing up to the ridge, I don’t know why. Curtis was on the radio, to Marcus I assume, and then he and Owen set off after her. I followed, but I couldn’t keep up. Eventually I gave up and just waited until Curtis and Owen came back down. They said they’d lost her.’
‘They didn’t try to hurt her? You’re sure that wasn’t why she ran?’
‘God, no, Josh. Nothing like that.’
We sat in silence for a while.
Disgust, I decided, was what had driven Luce off like that. Disgust with the friends who had so comprehensively deceived her; disgust with the teacher who had opened her eyes to the truth and then perverted it with his corruption and greed; disgust with her species that couldn’t help destroying everything it touched, even on that lonely unspoilt place. And disgust, surely, with the lover who had left her with that little worm in her belly.
‘Please,’ Damien said at last, ‘please don’t make more of this than there is. In the final analysis it was a tragic accident. She stormed off, refused to come back down, and got caught by the weather on a dangerously exposed place.’
I suppose it was what I wanted to hear, the best that could be made of it.
‘Of course, Curtis and Owen were stricken with guilt. That’s why Owen said what he did to Anna.’
‘Yes.’
‘So …’ He leaned forward in his seat, watching me carefully. ‘The note.’
‘It was a poem, of despair,’ I said. But was it really?
‘What, a suicide note?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘At the summit.’
‘You’re kidding! She got to the top? That’s eighteen hundred feet! Well, you know—you climbed it. But there were two of you. How would you describe it?’
‘Tough,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know how she managed it.’ I didn’t mention that she’d abandoned her climbing gear. It had been heroic really, the climb of her life, like Lynn Hill on El Capitan.
I took a swallow of my Scotch. It burned. ‘I’ll speak to Marcus.’
‘Please don’t,’ Damien said quickly. ‘Marcus is a mess right now. You’ve seen him, haven’t you? He can’t tell you anything more. It was a tragic accident, and everyone involved has paid dearly for it.’
Sitting in that beautiful apartment overlooking Circular Quay, sipping a ten-year-old malt, I felt that wasn’t quite the way for Damien to put it. He saw the mistake register on my face and quickly added, ‘Think of Curtis and Owen’s families, for God’s sake. Do you really want to brand those two as murderers? They were your friends.’
‘I know.’
He leaned even closer across the gap towards me, as if wanting to physically bridge the rift between us. ‘I do appreciate you coming here to talk about this, Josh, and letting me explain. We were mates