– BETWEEN THE LINES –

Under Stanage, a Sunday in late September, 1985. The air is kaleidoscopic with flies, sifted from the long, rain-bent grass, by sudden sunlight and a combing wind. Through the car window the ash trees are flocks of hummingbird-green leaves; leaving. A white butterfly totters past, Icarus for a day.

I’m sitting in the back of the VW camper with my shirt off; the Californian tan gone, a paleface again. For more than a year – after being pulled off the North America Wall – across the States, through Europe – Italy, Yugoslavia, France, I’ve been driving, looking for you all whom I left ten years ago.

Parked here for seven days and nights now. On a quick trip to Manchester and Accrington, in a chance conversation I heard about the extermination of the trout from the rivers by acid rain: ‘Though no one says anything,’ he said, ‘we just fish from big holes in the ground they keep stocked up.’ And, sitting here. I’ve seen you through the windscreen in canary-yellow and goldfish-orange anoraks and cagoules – and so many more of you! – drifting across the edge in all weathers; schools of climbers and hikers and flocks of hang-gliders drawn to the long purple trench, a breakwater against the swollen Pennines. Though you didn’t know I was here, watching and writing.

Last Tuesday I wandered up, with my boots dangling from one hand and an empty chalk bag from the other, to that wing of grit I clung to, uplifted, twelve years ago. Some of you were there. A little embarrassed to ask, nevertheless, you gave me a handful. I floated up, fingers white-feathering the edge of the arête, to all appearances unruffled.

‘How long have you been back?’ one of you asked, which made me feel less stiff. Though later, when I was working on that boulder problem I hadn’t done in over a decade, I wished you’d have waved, or called that you were leaving. For I’d noticed one of you come around the corner to see what I was up to. I watched you too for a while as you walked away down the track. You didn’t look back; you were looking where you were going.

Like the two quartz pebbles, not so much as blinking when I scratched my way up the face without them. And it was then, as I strolled back past, that I looked up. And realised: Well. Maybe. I went up a ways, a bit of caterpillary nonchalance – but the thoughts started pecking so I crept back to the van.

Perhaps if you’d have been there watching I would have done it. You could have given me a spot. I wouldn’t have had to ask even, I mean you’d have just understood that, well, I needed … Wouldn’t you?

I couldn’t have said that ten years ago. I felt it every time though that I leafed through climbing magazines in the States, always hoping to find that you’d not forgotten. I hadn’t ever been able to bring myself to tell you how much you’ve always meant. I just hoped or something that you’d see that I couldn’t simply go on climbing and say nothing.

I’m not complaining. The strange thing is that whenever we’ve met, you’ve always been really nice; polite. Of course I did notice the funny looks you’d give each other while I expounded, especially if I had my beret on, the one with the butterfly that looks as if it’s just come out of my ear. And you haven’t forgotten a thing! Only the other day Caroline asked me if I still ate dates. Which made me remember that perhaps my fingers were a bit stickier after I’d munched that block I hauled up in my socks in 1967 – for the only chalk we had back then was treacly experience – and maybe that was why I chattered that the ragged crack would go free. We talked on for a while, about the children and running marathons – we both wept at the end of our one and only – and soon, both relaxed. I had a second cup of coffee and looked around. There were several photos of Nick up in the house. One, of him looking ou