Climbers by M. John Harrison

Author:M. John Harrison [Harrison, M. John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Orion Books

THIRTEEN

Keeping Hold

I kept a record, or at any rate a list, of the climbs I was doing, in an old-fashioned foolscap account book with black covers and a spine of discoloured red cloth. Its pages were yellow and grubby at the edges and I had mended it repeatedly with Sellotape which was itself now yellowed and cracked. Each climb was entered in red ink, with the date and a few coded details – a small black cross, for instance, meant that I had taken a fall while leading; an asterisk that I had been forced to climb back down the pitch for a rest before continuing; and so on. I would record only climbs I had never done before, and only those above a certain grade of difficulty, according to whether I was leading, seconding or soloing.

A record of this type contains and scaffolds the whole climbing experience: most climbers keep one. They will add in details of the weather that day; who they were climbing with; and perhaps footage, so that they can tell you at the drop of a hat how far they climbed in a particular year or on a particular holiday. If they climb habitually at the harder – the Extreme – grades, they count ‘E points’ and total them up at the end of the season. Some write a proper journal. Normal’s was a box of colour transparencies. Mick stuck postcards in his, or drew a little cartoon figure of himself which looked a bit like a duck in friction boots. Out of its mouth would come a speech bubble saying, ‘Oh fuck, no holds!’ or, ‘A crock of shit in every pocket.’

You come home with stiff hands on an evening in early autumn and, after you have made a cup of instant coffee, sit by the electric fire dividing pages into columns with a pencil and a ruler, looking up grades in guidebooks, translating from metres to feet. Experience is not quantifiable in these terms: that much is evident. Outside it has begun to rain or a frost is setting in, and all you have done by the time you put your pen down is add another inch or two to a list the only purpose of which is the satisfaction you feel in making it. Despite that, though, when you close your eyes you can still see one of those blackened, polyp-like gritstone flakes which sound so fragile and undependable when you tap them. You can feel your fingers curl round it, preparatory to committing your whole weight there.

‘What’s this one like?’ someone calls softly from the ground.

‘All right, if you’re a contortionist.’

‘Is it any good, that flake?’

You laugh.

‘It’s like a Jacob’s Cream Cracker up here. Best watch the rope.’

In addition to keeping his log book, Bob Almanac saved the plastic tubs in which soft ice cream is sold. He would wash them carefully in warm water, then steam off the bright paper labels. Afterwards he used them as sandwich boxes. He kept his first aid kit in one.

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