Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [72]
The lower slopes were mostly widths of granite tilted at the angle of the mountainside, level with the heather and cracked like the pavements of a ruined city. Higher up the heather gave way to fine turf, where grasshoppers chirped and flowerets grew with stalks less than an inch high and blossoms hardly bigger than pinheads. Becoming thirsty he found a shallow pool collected from last week’s rain in the hollow of a rock. Stopping to drink he felt rough granite under his lips and warm sour water on the tongue. The mountain steepened into nearly vertical blocks with ledges of turf between. For half an hour he used his hands as much as his feet, squirming and wriggling up crooked funnels, pulling himself over small precipices, then lying flat on his back on a ledge under the shadow of the summit to let the sweat dry out of his damp shirt. At this height he heard noises that had been shut off from him on the moor: a barking dog on one of the farms, a door slamming in the hostel, a lark above a field behind the village, children shouting on the shore and the murmuring sea. He contained two equal sorts of knowledge: the warm lazy knowledge that above on the mountain a blond girl in a white dress waited for him, shy and eager; and the cooler knowledge that this was unlikely and the good of climbing was the exercise and view from the top. There was no conflict between those knowledges, his mind passed easily from one to the other, but when he stood up to begin the last of the climb the thought of the girl was stronger.
He was at the foot of a granite cliff about four times his height with a ledge sloping up it made by a lower stratum projecting beyond the one above. As he climbed his fear of height made the excitement keener. The ledge was decayed and gravelly, each step sent a shower of little lumps rattling and bouncing down into the sky beyond the edge. Gradually it narrowed to a few inches. Thaw pressed his chest against the granite, stood on tiptoe and, reaching up, brought his fingertips within an inch of the top. “Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell,” he muttered sadly, gazing at the dark rock where it cut against a white smudge of cloud. A face suddenly stuck over this edge and looked down at him. It was a small, round, wrinkled almost sexless face, and the shock of it nearly made Thaw lose balance. It took him a moment to recognize Mr. McPhedron, the minister from the village. The minister said, “Are you stuck?”
“No, I can go back.”
“Aye. The right way up is round the other side. But bide there a minute.”
The face was withdrawn and Thaw saw something black and straight with a curled end poke over the edge and slide toward him. It was the handle of an umbrella. Swallowing the fear that slid up his gullet Thaw gripped the handle with his left hand and tugged. It stayed firm. He put the toe of his sandal against a bump in the rock face, gripped the handle tighter, heaved himself at the edge and got an arm across. The arm was grabbed and he was pulled onto the summit. He sat up and said, “Thank you.”
The summit was a rock platform as big as the floor of a room and tilted so that one side was higher than the others. On the highest corner stood a squat concrete pillar like a steep pyramid with the top cut off. With a sad pang he saw