Flash fiction: Strange Places

Strange places. High places.

It was after six and the winter daylight had gone. I dropped the others and drove home. The pavements had that clear, sharp look that heralds a frost. I was happy, but weary; I’d left the house at half-past five, for we’d wanted to use every minute of the short day.

Mike Robbins

At home I left the car in the drive. I did not empty the boot of gear, but I'd do it first thing in the morning. My Great-Uncle Geoff said always to take care of it well. Every rope, he said; every karabiner; any one could save you or kill you and it’s not by chance.  

“You taken your boots off?” That was Mum, from the kitchen.

“Yes, I left them in the garage.” I often did, so I kept a pair of slippers there. “I could murder a tea.”

“I’m making one for Uncle Geoff,” she said. “He’ll be awake soon. You can take it up. He’ll want to know about your day.”

He often did. He would lie there in bed listening, smiling; now and then he would ask about the rock faces, or how technical it had been, or how my new boots were breaking in. But he didn’t say much. He never did. Even when I was very young. Mum says he did when he was younger. “Quite chatty he was really, they say. Then he went all quiet,” she said once. “When he came back from the climb – you know, the big one. Not that I remember much. I was only ten. It was on the telly and everything. We all went to the Palace with him for the medal. But he never did say much after he came home.”

I took the tray with my mug and Great-Uncle George’s and went up to his room. The bedside light was on and cast a soft light on the pictures on the dresser. The newspaper shot taken at London Airport, with the sleek BOAC VC10 in the background. The headline: ASCENT OF K3! PLUCKY BRITISH TEAM TAME KILLER MOUNTAIN AT LAST. The picture with the Queen, both looking so young; I suppose she herself was still in her 30s.

I pushed the door open with a soft touch, but he opened his eyes as I came in. His eyes look large now, his face is so much thinner. Mum frets that he’ll soon need care she can’t provide. I think he knows that. But he’s all right with it.

He smiled. “A good day? Where did you go, son?”

“Grey Crags,” I said.

“I learned to climb on Grey Crags,” he said. “That was nearly 70 years ago, you know.”

I did know. He often said it.

“It was a long day,” I told him. ”But a good one. Sharp and clear, very calm, a bit of colour in the sky today. Went with Gordon and Dave and Ella. We were talking on the way back, about going to the Dolomites this summer. Ella really fancies it.”

“Good,” he said. “Get out there and stretch yourself a bit.”

“But I know what I want to do,” I went on, then hesitated for a moment. I’d never said this before. “Uncle Geoff, I think I want to go to the Karakoram. Like you.”

He looked at me for several seconds; he seemed to be thinking, then:

Mike Robbins

“Strange places,” he said. “High places. The sky is different, you know. The air is thin but you know that. But the sky…. And there is a presence there. You feel it. It is beyond understanding. But you feel it. Especially at dusk. The sky turns a darker blue and the peaks are this white crystal against it and you know you are being watched by something. Someone.”

My mum called up the stairs. ”Did you want to watch the Milwall game? Your Dad’s just turning it on.”

“If we beat Millwall we’ll be in the playoffs,” I said. “So it’s a big day.”

Uncle Geoff seemed to snap out of his reverie. “Get down there then.”

I turned through the door but I heard him mumble something. “What?” I asked.

“Lonely.” He looked at me across the pillow and for a moment I thought he wanted me to stay, but he went on: “That’s what you’ll feel. If you go up there. Into the thin high air. You’ll feel its presence and you’ll come down and you’ll need to go back and one day when you get older you will understand that it is the last time, that you won’t go up there again, and you will miss it. An you’ll feel lonely for the rest of your life.”

I didn’t know what to say to this.

He closed his eyes. “Go on then,” he said, but now he was smiling a little. “Bugger off and watch Millwall. Someone has to.”

I chuckled and went downstairs. I wish I’d sat with him longer now. We lost to Millwall anyway. I mean, who loses to Millwall. And then he died in the night. First I knew of it, I was listening to Radio Five Live and just thinking about getting up, then I heard this sort of strangled cry and a crash as Mum dropped his breakfast tray. “He must have died in his sleep because he looked quite peaceful,” she said later. “But dead.”

Ella and I are thinking now. The Karakoram. Or the Khumbu Glacier. We want to go high. I wonder if we’ll go quiet when we do.

More flash fiction:

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
On human geography

Hiraeth
A yearning... 

A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different

Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.