Cold Wars Read online

  I wondered if being sponsored would mean pressure to perform, but guessed nothing could trump my own motivation. But would it cloud my judgement, making climbing ever more goal oriented? I just had to keep a rational handle on things. Anyway, I was already a safe climber, and the more I climbed the safer I would become.

  Bombing down the hill back into Sheffield, fingers gripping my brakes, I felt exposed without my helmet, thinking it would be just my luck to get killed hitting a pot hole on my bike, especially as I always made a big thing about climbers wearing helmets.

  I often thought of the famous climber who had done many hard routes and climbed Everest, but who fell off a ladder in his bathroom while doing some DIY and broke his neck.

  Death hid in plain view, not just in dark corners.

  I kept on the brakes until a quarter of a mile from home, to the final little downhill before a short climb up to the house. Along two hundred yards of an empty road of terraced houses, the only sign of life was a parking car.

  In a minute I’d be home with the kids. We’d go to the park and get an ice cream to celebrate.

  I dropped into the top of the road and sped down, fingers off the brakes for once, feeling the rush of air through my hair, my stomach feeling weightless. Up ahead I saw the parking car find its spot and stop, the driver’s door opening. I drifted to the other side of the road, accelerating now to get up the final climb.

  I wondered why I’d not been on my bike for so long.

  In the blur as I drew close to the car I saw the rear door open, but knew I had acres of room. I was safe.

  I saw something black jumping inside

  A dog.

  Escaping.

  Frantic.

  In road.

  Can’t avoid.

  No helmet.

  I lay on the floor, unsure where I was, the world spinning in two different directions, a kaleidoscope slowly returning into focus. A blue sky. A terraced street. I couldn’t breathe, but knew from experience I would. Experience born from too many falls from trees as a kid. Not dying, just winded.

  One leg felt very heavy, maybe broken. Unable to lift it, I rolled over and tried to breathe, seeing my shoe was still clipped to its pedal.

  It came back to me what had happened: the dog.

  ‘Are you alright, love?’ said an old woman, coming out of her house, looking just like my grandma, in a pinny, like a ghost, having died when I was kid.

  ‘I’ve hit a dog,’ I said.

  ‘He landed on his head,’ said another voice behind me.

  ‘His head’s really bleeding,’ said another.

  I reached for my head, my fingers trembling, and felt a warm patch of sticky liquid.

  ‘Here love,’ said another woman, the street now apparently bustling with concerned people, ‘put this on your head.’ She gave me some kitchen roll.

  ‘Don’t worry I don’t have Aids,’ I said, blood now everywhere, no doubt attempting to show I wasn’t brain damaged, although this seemed to have the opposite effect. ‘Is the dog okay?’ I asked, unable to turn my neck.

  ‘Don’t worry about the dog,’ another voice said, which didn’t seem like a good sign.

  ‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ someone else chipped in.

  ‘I’m OK really,’ I said, standing up at the thought of having to go in an ambulance. I picked up my bike. ‘I need to get home to my kids.’ I tried to look fine by jumping in the saddle and trying to cycle nonchalantly away. Instead I just stayed on the spot, peddling like a clown, until I realised my chain had snapped.

  ‘I think you should wait love, you were unconscious,’ said the old woman grabbing my arm. ‘Or at least walk.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, wobbling away with a wave. ‘Thanks for the kitchen roll.’

  And that’s all I remember.

  Sometime later I turned up at home covered in blood, telling Jean that I thought I might have had a bike crash involving a dog, but I wasn’t sure. Ella started crying, thinking I was going to die, my appearance instilling a continuing phobia of blood.

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ I said, having not seen myself in a mirror yet to know it couldn’t look much worse.

  ‘You go home Jean,’ I said, trying to sound calm.

  ‘I think I’ll hang on till Mandy gets home,’ she said.

  As I stood there the phone rang and I answered it, then put it down, only to find I had no idea what I’d said or who it was. The phone rang again. ‘Are you okay Andy?’ said a voice down the line. ‘I’ve just had a very strange conversation with you?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’ve just had a bike crash and landed on my head. I may have brain damage’.

  ‘I fell off my bike and landed on my head,’ I tell the doctor as he pokes at my head.

  ‘That looks nasty’ he replies. ‘But it’s not easy to stitch the scalp, so we’ll leave it as it is. How did it happen?’

  ‘I hit a black dog’

  ‘A black dog? I thought black cats crossing your path was unlucky, not black dogs.’

  ‘If it had crossed my path I wouldn’t have been here’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I always wear a helmet, but not today,’ I say, trying to show I take my safety seriously.

  ‘And today a black dog almost crossed your path.’

  ‘Yes, I guess it was synchronicity’

  ‘Indeed,’ he says. He opens a draw and brings out a leaflet – Head Injuries: What You Need To Know. ‘Read this, and if you get any symptoms – acute headache, dizziness, clear fluid in your ears, things like that – then come back in. Okay?’

  I take the leaflet.

  ‘I guess you have a lot of injuries in your line of work?’ he says unexpectedly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I reply, not sure what he was talking about.

  ‘Climbing mountains,’ he says, smiling.

  I can only guess he’s a climber.

  ‘No. I’m very safe,’ I say.

  ‘That’s what they all think.’

  I leave the cubicle with the leaflet. My meeting has lasted no more than a minute. The doctor follows me out into the waiting room, clipboard in hand, happy to cross off another name, no doubt hoping for a lull until the next rush around 2am.

  ‘Watch out for those black dogs Mr Kirkpatrick,’ he calls after me, and then looks round the room. ‘Mr Bardwell?’

  FOUR

  Fitz Roy

  August 2002

  I kissed Mandy and the kids goodbye, eager to get it over with – to be gone. I would be away for less than four weeks, ‘four weeks’ sounding better than ‘a month,’ which to me was only a fraction of Ian’s six or eight-week trips, but for Mandy was too long. Time is relative to the one watching the clock. Waiting for good weather in Patagonia it would drag; on a route time would pass in a flash, the day chased by the night. For Mandy it would be drawn out day by day, a single mother, having to carry the weight of two kids, plus wait for the bad news she always dreaded. I knew it was hard, and the right thing to do would not be to go; to never go anywhere ever again; to put such things aside for sixteen years, which meant forever. It’s easy to say I know how hard it is, but that’s just a lie. If I did, I wouldn’t go, and so deep down I really didn’t care.

  I picked Ella up and gave her a hug, her tiny legs in their woolly tights dangling in space. I was glad she was still too small to know how long I’d be away, but I knew she’d miss me. Another climb had come around for Ian and me, the Devil’s Dihedral on Fitz Roy, Silvo Karo’s legendary challenge. We would be trying it alpine style and in winter. If we succeeded I would indeed be a superman. Just like Karo.

  I caught the bus to the station, carrying a huge rucksack on my back, a bigger kit bag in one hand and a new fancy lightweight rucksack in the other, enduring the usual panic that I’d lost my passport, or forgotten something. I wished Ian were with me on the train, so I could relax. He was trying to finish some work and had decided to get the bus direct to Heathrow in
stead, to give himself more time. When I rang him from the station he said he was still packing.

  The funny thing about Ian was that he said things with such authority that no matter how daft, you’d never question it. And so when he said, ‘I’m getting the later bus, it goes direct to Heathrow, so I’ll get there on time,’ all I could say was ‘Okay.’ He was the same when it came to climbing, saying stuff like: ‘I’m going to solo the North Face of the Eiger, the Matterhorn, then the Jorasses.’ There would be no hint of doubt whatsoever.

  I was utterly convinced Ian was good, because he was utterly convinced.

  I got to London and had the usual battle on the tube, getting stuck in barriers, knocking into people, feeling the burn as I climbed up the stairs into Heathrow. I knew the weight of my gear was substantially more than my twenty-five kilogram limit. To overcome this hurdle we had a plan, one that unfortunately hinged on Ian getting to the airport on time.

  Ian wasn’t where we were supposed to meet, and wasn’t answering his phone. I began to pace up and down, pushing my trolley, wondering what to do. After more ringing I got through. His voice was now edged with panic, and he’d started spreading the blame around, but was still exuding his usual confidence:

  ‘The bloody bus is late getting there, but I’ll get there in time, I’ll see you at the check-in desk.’

  Ian seemed to live on the edge, whatever he did. A few months before he’d planned a trip to Norway on a ferry, sharing a car with four other climbers. It was only when they entered the port, and were asked for their passports, that Ian remembered he didn’t have his. He had to get the train home, find his passport, and fly out instead to meet them. He lived life at breakneck speed, something I put down to his age, and the fact he’d taken up serious climbing later in life. I also wondered if he suspected he’d not be around that long, so wanted to get things done.

  I pushed through the crowds with my trolley, everyone going somewhere, my bags wobbling precariously. Inevitably, my new lightweight rucksack, custom made and sent from China only two days before, fell off the front and jammed under the trolley’s wheels. I leaned forward and impatiently yanked it back on.

  There was a ripping sound, and the sack’s contents spilled out. One half of the rucksack was in my hand, the other jammed under the trolley. ‘So much for lightweight gear,’ I thought, stuffing the remains in a nearby bin, and repacking my gear into two carrier bags.

  People often comment on how laid back I am, and how I don’t get stressed. Yet it’s a simple trick, really – just avoid it. The one thing that can stress me is travelling, mainly because my brain can’t process dates and times well, meaning I often made a hash of it. Travelling with Captain Disaster compounded my underlying anxiety, and I became increasingly frantic as I stood looking at my watch, the check-in queue for our flight to Buenos Aires growing shorter and shorter. I was trying to work out what to do if Ian didn’t get there on time when in the distance I saw him, sweaty and running, looking deranged and out of place in a big duvet jacket and plastic boots.

  Without a greeting we quickly re-sorted our gear and put our baggage plan into action.

  Phase one. Ian held back while I went and checked in the correct weight of bags.

  Phase two. I held back while Ian checked in the correct weight of bags.

  Phase three. We wait a few minutes then each one of us went back again with a hand-luggage bag containing a ton of hardware – karabiners, pegs and so forth – looking panicked. We then explained to the check-in lady that security hadn’t allowed our gear through and we had to put it in the hold. With the flight due to board, she rushed our gear through. Feeling very self-satisfied, we went through security with our real hand luggage, a bag of the correct size, only extra heavy since each one contained a rope.

  ‘Sorry you can’t take that on the flight,’ said the woman at security, looking stern. ‘And the same goes for you,’ she said, as Ian’s bag passed through the scanner.

  ‘It’s only a rope,’ I said, forgetting the golden rule of authority, that it never backs down.

  ‘Why?’ said Ian.

  ‘You could tie up the pilot with it,’ she said, and so, rather embarrassed, and almost out of time, both of us had to run, hot and sweaty, back to check-in, and avoiding the same check-in lady, get a third helping of baggage.

  I really wondered if all the stress was worth it.

  The aircraft banked over Buenos Aires, the city sprawling below, both of us eager to get off after a long flight.

  ‘What does your brother do?’ asked Ian.

  ‘He’s a loadmaster in the RAF,’ I replied, looking down at the grey buildings. ‘He’s on those old Hercules transport planes the RAF bought in the 1960s and have flown every day since.’

  ‘Does he like it?’

  ‘I think being in the military is tough, but he loves his job.’

  As the flaps extended and the plane sank towards the runway, I told Ian a story Robin had told me about flying a celebrity into Kabul, about how she’d freaked out when a few miles out from the airport the whole crew had put on body armour, my brother checking his pistol was loaded, and his assault rifle close by. ‘Why are you doing that?’ asked the celeb.

  ‘In case we crash land,’ he said, matter-of-factly, both the star and her manager’s face draining as he spoke. ‘There are a lot of bad people down there who don’t read Hello! magazine.’

  ‘But the war’s over,’ said the manager. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Only on the news,’ said Robin. ‘Oh, and when we come in we’ll be dropping steeply from high altitude and pulling up at the last minute. And we won’t stop for long, so make sure you can debus as fast as possible.’

  ‘Why?’ said the celeb, her hands now shaking.

  ‘Rockets,’ said Robin, and walked off to check the rest of his passengers.

  Ian laughed at the story. ‘You’d have made a good soldier,’ he said. ‘All that suffering and danger, you’d have loved it.’

  ‘I don’t like ironing,’ I replied, as the wheels kissed the tarmac.

  We got a taxi to our hostel for the night. In the morning we’d be flying early to El Calafate, a small town from where we’d get a bus or taxi to the village of El Chaltén, a hamlet at the base of Fitz Roy. That was if the roads were open.

  The taxi was small and so I sat in the back wedged in beside all our bags, the driver chatting away about the collapse of the Argentine economy. The peso had been linked to the dollar since 1992, meaning Argentina was one of the most expensive places to climb in the world, a crazy state of affairs. It was easy to see the economy didn’t warrant such a fixed rate, as it seemed no one paid tax, and the big companies sent all their profits abroad. The year before things had come to a head and overnight the fixed rate had been abandoned, causing a financial collapse and a run on the banks. People saw their savings tumble to a fraction of their previous value and there was blood on the streets. The Argentines are a proud and noble people. I always got the sense they felt superior to other South Americans, perhaps more European too. That superiority was still there, but now carried a shabbiness with it. It was a shame, but it did mean Argentina was now as cheap as a developing country for hard-up climbers. Instead of eking out your money and going home skint, you could live like kings. Not that we did.

  The taxi driver, like most Buenos Aires taxi drivers, was a veteran of the Falklands War, and told us how he’d been sent from the hot north of Argentina as a conscript to the islands, the Northerners being seen as troublemakers.

  ‘It was a stinking place: no sun, no food, no woman,’ he said shaking his head. ‘And so cold, like stinking Patagonia.’

  ‘Were you captured?’ I asked.

  ‘We were all captured, thank God, but you British were good to us, better than our army.’

  His story reminded me about a guy I’d once known, an ex-Para, as tough as they come. I’d met another Para and asked if he knew him, as the subject of the Falklands War had come up and both of them had
fought there.

  ‘Oh yes, I knew him,’ said the Para. ‘The last time I saw him, he was standing on a pile of corpses firing bullets into them.’

  We got to the hostel, probably named The Tango or something like it, since every hostel in the city has a name based on the theme of the tango: the Argentina Tango; Tango Buenos Aires or Tango Maradona. We paid for a room and carried all our gear in, which seemed like a lot for a lightweight trip, our bags piled up as though we were training for the baggage handler Olympics. Ian was still trying to finish some work for a magazine, so went downstairs to use one of the hostel’s computers to type up his notes. Like me, he always seemed to have his back against the wall in the face of some deadline.

  It was the usual place, full of young Israelis, Spanish and Americans, meant to be seeing the world on gap years, but invariably sat on the Internet all day or talking about how great home was. Most Israelis were fresh from military service, and seemed to be universally disliked in South America. I’d met a lot of Israelis over the years and liked them. Maybe that was because when I lived in London I’d known a lot of South Africans, who also have an arrogance, which tends to rub people up the wrong way. I often wondered if it came from being a besieged country, surrounded by enemies. The only way to cope when you’re the outsider or the pariah is to have a superiority complex. Whatever you talked about it was generally better, longer or cheaper in South Africa or Israel, which generally begged the question: ‘What are you doing here then?’

  Yet I always envied them this confidence, as Brits are by and large bred with an inferiority complex, quick to apologise for everything and be the first to put the boot into all things British.

  I almost got into a fight that first afternoon talking to a group of Americans and Israelis about suicide bombers – a touchy subject – saying that religious fundamentalism had nothing to do with it, that young men and women don’t blow up skyscrapers or cafes because they want to go to paradise, but because life is hell, and they saw violence as the only way to change things, or else seek revenge. ‘If an Israeli plane had bombed my house and killed my children I’d want to die, so why not die by killing Israelis or Americans?’