Up the Down Escalator
Whether it was the altitude or a spiteful universe, this was when the rain began to fall in earnest, the path no longer apparent and replaced with a stream flowing parallel to the beck that splashed and gurgled first on their left, then on their right, as they jumped back and forth to find the easiest route.
But there was no easy route, and with every leap across the stream the weight on his back shoved his face into jagged rock or threatened to topple him over and down, and for the first time he wondered, What’s the point, really, what’s the point of this? No exorcism, no purging or clearing of the head, no sense of achievement. It wasn’t even masochism, which was, he understood, supposed to contain an element of pleasure, just profound misery as the rain fell harder still, so that it felt like someone was trying to hose them from the mountain. No need to ask how Marnie was doing, shouting fuck and shit, fucking shit and shitting fucker, at the water and the rocks. He felt the old panic rise in his chest, a sense of dread, visions of broken bones and bleeding heads, and he told himself, as he might his students, Calm down, break the challenge into smaller tasks, twenty steps then twenty more. But when he squinted through stinging eyes the summit seemed no closer, so that it was like climbing up a down escalator on hands and knees, and now Marnie was directing her fury at him.
‘You LIED to me!’
‘How did I lie, Marnie? I said it was a climb!’
‘I’m crawling on my hands and knees! This is grim, just so, so grim.’
‘Nearly there! Keep going! Not long now!’ But he was ageing with each step, wheezing, gasping, hips and knees complaining, simultaneously soaked in sweat and rain, and dehydrated from cheap bacon, exertion bringing bile into his mouth. Now he, too, was railing against the rocks and water, in milder terms, damn and blast and bugger, but with no less venom.
‘You are such a liar, Bradshaw!’ shouted Marnie.
They were above the cloud line now and would only know the summit when they got there, but even so. ‘Just one more push, I swear,’ he lied.