She saw her grandmother eyeing the flowers again. “Actually, Eve, I think we could. It’s time we made a start.”
“Okay then,” she said evenly, keeping the surprise out of her voice. She knew her grandmother was capricious enough to change her mind in five minutes’ time and pretend that Eve had misheard her. She went over to the window to open the curtains and let what little light there was into the room. “How about you finish your lunch and I’ll get my notebook?”
Editors had stalked her grandmother for years, petitioning to publish her memoirs, for, frail as she might appear now, she was once an Amazon of the climbing world, bagging summits with apparent ease, a better athlete than most men. In the 1950s and ’60s she, and a small handful of women like her, had pushed the boundaries of possibility with every peak they climbed, putting paid to the notion that women were the weaker sex when it came to endurance and strength of mind. They had paved the way for a generation of noted British climbers and made it possible for women anywhere to believe in their own strength and ability.
Though she’d stopped expedition climbing in her early fifties, her grandmother had been in demand as a motivational speaker and tour leader ever since, and even now there were several invitations awaiting her return to health. It was hard to reconcile this frail old lady with a woman who had once been at the pinnacle of physical fitness, though the fire in her eyes still burned bright.
“I think it’s time I got out of this damned bed too,” said her grandmother, finishing her tea and holding out the tray, with its plate now bearing only a few crumbs, to Eve.
“Are you sure? The doctor said not to rush things.”
“Pfft. What does he know? Let me be the judge of my own body. I’ve been in more pain than I am now and survived it.”
“Tough as old boots hey, Grams?” Eve smiled. “There’s a fire in the living room, so just let me get a few things sorted for you and we can work in there.”
Her grandmother could be stubborn—Eve had inherited the same streak of obstinacy—and so Eve was quietly pleased that she was getting up of her own accord. Six weeks was too long to spend in bed, even if you were a shade under ninety. Grams would normally have chafed against being bedridden, but Eve was aware that this accident had scared her more than she was prepared to admit. It scared Eve too. Her Grams had been more of a mother to her than her own mum, taking her and her brother every holiday, often collecting them from boarding school at the end of term. Grams’s home was as much Eve’s, and she’d only left when she went to live in halls of residence at university. She would be completely untethered if she lost her.
* * *
The accident had been the smallest of things. Apparently, Grams had been on her way out to the local shops when she’d skidded on the tiled floor and come crashing down. She’d lain there, stranded, for nearly twenty-four hours before her cleaner, Agata, arrived. “I might need a bit of a hand,” Grams had apparently said quite calmly, when the Polish girl had found her sprawled by the stairs the next morning. “I can’t seem to get up.” Agata had acted quickly, covering her with a blanket and calling for an ambulance. Grams had broken her hip and several ribs, and the paramedics who came and took her away chided her for not possessing an alarm button. “Living on your own, you really should have one,” one of them had insisted. When Eve visited her in the hospital, her Grams recounted this, as if to imply that he was being ridiculous. “A seniors’ medical alert pendant? Really? He obviously had no idea who he was talking to,” she’d said dismissively.
Eve had gone out the next day and bought one.
* * *
After Eve helped her grandmother into a dressing gown, she held her arm out. Grams put her swollen-knuckled, liver-spotted hand on it, levered herself off the edge of the bed, and together they made halting progress out of the bedroom and along the corridor. Eve knew she must mind this reliance on someone else very much, but she uttered not one word of complaint, made not even a groan.
When they reached the front living room, she settled her grandmother on the sofa and stoked the fire, then took a seat on the chair opposite and turned the page of a brand-new notebook she’d bought in anticipation of this moment. She reached for the dictaphone that lay on the table next to her and switched it on. She planned to record her grandmother’s memories and transcribe them later. The notebook was for any questions that might arise as she spoke.
Grams cleared her throat and launched straight in. “I suppose I was an accidental mountaineer, for I never really intended it. Women in those days didn’t dream of abandoning their families to go in pursuit of their own goals.” She paused. “But it was the making of me really. I see that now. I had to do what was needed in order to survive, to put one foot in front of the other and just keep going.”
Eve had always known there was a core of steel running through her grandmother but the hairs rose on the back of her neck at the determination in her grandmother’s voice.
“Pen y Fan. As you well know, it’s the highest peak in South Wales, a shade under nine hundred meters, little more than a hill really. You remember we went there one October, you must have been about eleven or twelve—shocking day it was, thought the wind might blow you all the way to England. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, your grandfather suggested it, though I still for the life of me have no idea why. It was the first time we’d ever walked anywhere. We left your mother and uncle—they were still little—with my parents for the weekend and joined a group from the local hiking and climbing club.” She paused, thinking. “That’s right, someone your father knew from work was a member, so that’s how we came to be there. Anyway, it was a glorious day and the view down the valley and across to Bristol was spectacular. The sky seemed almost close enough to touch. We went on several walks that weekend and I learned to read a compass, and more important how to keep on going even when I thought I couldn’t take another step. Who would have thought that would be the catalyst, the start of it?”
Eve glanced up from her notebook at her grandmother, who was looking at her as if daring her to deny the last statement. Eve had never heard her grandmother talk about her early climbing days before, but there was something about the tone of her voice as she said it, the cloud that passed fleetingly across her eyes, that told Eve that Grams wasn’t speaking the entire truth, that the hiking trip to Wales wasn’t really where it had all begun. She wondered what it was that she wasn’t telling her.
Chapter Six
St. Mary’s, Spring 2018
The sharp cries of seagulls tore at the morning peace. Almost exactly a month after she had left the balmy South Pacific, Rachel found herself sitting at a quayside café in Penzance, wrapping her hand around a mug of weak coffee and guarding a muffin from the marauding gulls that hovered overhead. The Scillonian III, her final transport, was waiting, its white bulk looming over the stone quay.
Living in tropical heat for so long had reduced Rachel’s ability to cope with temperatures any less than twenty-five degrees Celsius, and in London it had been close to freezing. Even with her new thick woolen sweater, socks, leather boots, and a down jacket firmly zipped up to her chin, she had shivered her way about her errands. Snow had begun to fall as she left, thick flurries that muffled the sounds of the city, blurring its hard edges. Radio announcers warned people to stay indoors, not to venture out unless absolutely necessary.