We reached Oslo in two days, nudging in under the shrouds of cloud spreading a thin fine rain upon toast-faced Norwegians and palefaces alike. It was the first rain for a month. Burning up to Romsdal on the bike, I found my cagoule was promiscuous in the rain, but Lindy, at the back of me, kept dry and fed me on chocolate and made me hum with her big hugs. I couldn’t lean on her as I could my cold companion of other years who pulled on my neck: my rain-slimed haul bag, my meticulous Humpty Dumpty. She was continually delighted at new waterfalls; her oohs flew to my ears and near the end of the journey, my goggles crying with rain, I raised a soggy arm at the alp of cloud shearing up a white mile.

“That’s the wall,” I roared. She grinned, her hand on my arm, and yelled about the coming bend.

Where am I? I’m cold. Thin mists shift past, touching me. Where is she? She must have got out of the bag. I shake my head out, struggling to look. There is another near me, raw-red in the white air. Hugh! A dream. I’m not on the Romsdalhorn. That was a week ago. Lindy isn’t here. This is the wall.

So. Three nights. Almost a thousand feet. Our second ledge, Lucky’s. Seven pitches and a paper-dry cag. Hugh’s still in the bag, sleeping the sleep of the just, sound as a fetus, on his first wall. During the past three years I had, in three summers and a spring, snailed the mile-long approach scree 23 times, and 20 times I came back. Not this time. The North European Wall. The Mourning Wall. The Rurt Wall. (Realized Ultimate Reality Troll). The Lord of the Walls. The Drummond Route. (If we said nothing they’d call it this). The Royal Wall. Naw, what has Robbins ever done for you? You’ll never level with him.

On our first cralk up to the wall—the scree is so steep that it’s like trying to ski uphill—we had climbed the first slabs, 200 feet or so, gritty, nasty, wobbling to extreme. There had been the snow pitch, cricket size, and the jokes about forgetting the ice axes, using skyhooks and etriers as we had no crampons and the ice was marble. Then the schrund and my little leap; it was all fun. After three trips we’d brimmed the hauls and I’d climbed the third, a squirrelly free up a great crooked slab, funneling to an upside-down squeeze chimney that made me squeak. Then we went down, Lindy, who’d come up to watch, and I, slowly, like two old people, while Hugh flew off to the river where he swam among the salmon; the fishermen had all gone home. We just promised us a swim when it was all over.

Returning, two days later, Hugh went first and the hauls went after, quite a while after. His first haul; his first artyfishyl; first hamovac; first air jumar (barring one from a tree in Mexico). Hugh was, slowly, going up the wall. So it was noon when I set out on the fourth pitch.

And it was 7:00 in the evening when Hugh’s jumars gritted their teeth to follow. What passed in those seven hours is unforgettable: my mouth, sock-hot; my larnyx strangling for spit; a fine trembling as of a thin wind trembling through me. It began with a layback of 20 feet, wonderful but for the iron stone around my neck—it was a struggle, favorite uncle, was it not? Then the footholds faded away and I muttered on nuts under this thin roof until the only way up was up.

There was a crack, not a crack crack, but a line, a cra...; the start of a crack say. At any rate the bolts were in the haul bag and this was the third pitch of the N.A. Wall as far as I was concerned. My rurps curled up when I banged their heads and refused to sit still. After five fingernail knifeblades I got out my hook and sat on that, about as secure as the last angel to make it onto that pin head. Then I struck dirt. Now dirt is O.K. if you can get dug in. I began and ended with a knifeblade which dangled sillily from my waist, and I was glad that it was not me that was holding the rope, for after four hours and 40 feet I might have been caught napping. But Hugh wasn’t and as it was I only went 15 feet, for the hook stuck and though it trembled it snapped not, O Dolt.

So then I had to free that bit, but after that it eased some. Nuts hammered in the dirt and at long last a ding dong bong. Hotheaded I’d reached a ledge, feeling a bit sorry for myself. “No Ledges” we called it and it all hung out. There we had a pantomime in hammocks by headtorch which was really not in the least bit funny. Hugh, as chattery as a parrot, floated above me in his one-point. He even said he was comfortable and had the cheek to take a shit. By a battery son-et-lumière I watched his anus like an angry eye; no voyeur but it might look my way. However, he missed me, my arms full of ropes like some deeply confused spider.

“Ed! Come on, it’s light.” Oh, God, awake already. “Look at the sun.” Why don’t you go back to sleep? “Unh uh.” There and then I decided that if he was unable to lead the next pitch, then that was it. I’d led every pitch so far (didn’t you want to?) and it was unthinkable that I’d lead all of them. Not bloody likely. I’d make that clear. I tortoised out. What are you smiling at? Rather him than me. I’ve had about bloody five minutes bloody sleep. “Right, coming.”

It was strange to be there, sitting up in the hammock, feet stirring in the air over the side, opening the haul, fingers weaseling in the cold stuff bags, tramp-thankful for food in the hand. Eating quietly we heard the whip-crack of breaking ice in the gloomy cwm below and I’d yell “hello” with a dervish fervor (wake up, Drummond, grow up, you can’t go back). The echoes yodeled and I’d say to Hugh, “He’s there.” “Who?” he’d ask. “That bloke,” I’d tell him. “Listen.” And I’d do it again and we’d both cackle like kids with a homemade phone.

By 7 a.m. I was ready to belay him. I wasn’t laughing now. One more pitch and there would be no retreat. I moled into the cold rope bag, my arms up to my elbows, fingers fiddling for the iron sling. I had a krab, empty, ready on the belay to receive it. My fingers curled in the sling; I moved my arm gracefully, slowly (I was cold), to clip it into the krab before passing it up to him. If I drop the iron sling we’ll have to go back down. From the end of my arm my little family of fingers waved at me. And it went, there, no, once, twice, there, oh, down, out, there, and under and into the heart of the icefield, clinking like lost money.

I couldn’t believe it. Hugh was silent. I kept saying I was sorry. I didn’t mean it. Not this time. (How do you know?) I couldn’t believe it. Hugh said nothing. “I’ve done it now.” Instantly, “How long will it take you to get back up?” He’s got you now.

I got back by noon, gasping. I’d come down to earth. A 600- foot abseil, my figure of eight sizzling my spits at it, and then a free jumar all the way back. I was furious. “Right, belay on.”

His pitch was perfect after a bit. Dirty at first, then a cool, clean fist-lock crack. Iron out in the air like a bunch of weapons, he groped at the sky like something falling. All around a sea- sheer swell of wall, untouchable. Him the one sign of life.

Then the rain came. A dot in the eye. I heave for my cagoule, one eye on Hugh, an invisible drizzle blackening the rock. New noises fizz in. Twitters of water and Hugh is yelling for his cagoule, but I point out the time and that he’s leaking already. Well, for a couple of hours I kept pushing boiled sweets in my mouth and Hugh kept on moaning and kept on. After 150 feet he had to stop and pin himself to the wall.

Early evening. There he hung, wringing himself like fresh washing. Thank God he had no cagoule, or we would both have been up there for the night, him perched above, if not on, my head like a great wet heron. The waterfalls would weep all night. “Why wait for Godot?” I yelled up. He said, “Eh?” so I said, “Come on down, let’s piss off.”

We stripped the ropes off the hauls, tied the lot together and down we went, happy as nuns in a car. A slalom down the scree and back before dark. Back in the camp hut we listened with Lindy, gladly, to the rain hissing outside while we kissed at a smug mug of tea and drooled on the food to come. That night I slept like a child.

Eight days later, well pickled, we humped up the boulderfields in epileptic sunshowers, snagged at by cold-cutting winds. The days were getting shorter.

The bergschrund had rotted back and we had to go down inside the mouth. Our ropes were 20 feet up the slabs, strung taut to a peg. I manteled up on this mica jug, massaging off the dust, feeling sick with this white pit under me, 30 feet deep, rocks in its dark, lurking.

When I had the end of the rope I dangled a bong on and looped it to him. Three times I threw and three times I missed; each time the bong tolled dolefully. “Hey, our funeral knell,” I yelled, but he wasn’t impressed.

Two and a half jumehours later Hugh brooded on the haul eggs, sucking the sacred sweet, as I botched up the freeasy and awkwaid of the next pitch. When I warbled down about the ledge I’d found, he said he’d kiss me, but on arrival he didn’t hold me to the threat. In fact, the first thing that he said was that the next pitch looked a bit steep for him and ordered me to do it. But since it was dark I could wait until tomorrow. Under the tubetent, scarfed in cigar smoke, we crept to sleep like refugees.

Pitch seven took me all the next day. It is 156 feet long; our ropes were 150 feet long, at a stretch. That last six feet to the belay cracks see me lying flat on my face on the ledge, hammering like front-crawling. Hugh climbed up from his end, pulling the haul bags (one at a time, and there were three, each weighing over 50 pounds) onto his shoulder and then weightlifting them up so that I could get them through the pulley. Hugh studied Law at university.

So. Three nights. Almost a thousand feet. Lucky’s ledge is no longer important. A stab of butter, a jab of honey; the pumpernickel crumbling among your fingers, a steamy cense of tea, packing your bags, hurrying as a jostle of cumulus smudges out the sun and the stove starts to fizz the drizzle.

As I remember we made three pitches that day in a rain as insidious as gas. For two or three seconds, suddenly the valley would come like an answer, and we would stumble into conversation, then numb up, sullen with wet clothes and cold, clubbed feet. In the downpouring darkness I jumed up to Hugh, squatting on blocks, owl aloof. While he belayed me I hand- traversed down to a ledge on his left, where I backheeled and rubbled away for over half an hour, making the bed. We couldn’t find pin placements for the tube tent, so we hung our bivi bags from the rope and crept into their red, wet dark.

Sneaking out the next day at noon like shell-less tortoises, we both emptied a gallon of fresh water from our bags, as I realized that it might be better to have the opening at the front rather than at the top of the bag. A point that had escaped me as I tried out the bag on the floor in front of the fire at home. Sneer not. Wasn’t the first Whillans Box a plastic mac and a pram? The Drummond Cot would have its night in time. Well, we strung the tube tent as an awning, lit the stove, and wrung our pulpy feet out, sitting in the cloud, machine-gunned by water drops from the great roofs that crashed out over 200 feet wide, a thousand feet above our heads. We wriggled a little in the tent, slowly gulping lumpy salami, a bit stunned, stuttering with cold.

At about 4:00 we took the hood off our heads and saw the valley for the first time in 20 hours: the curve of the railway line, the thin black line of the road, pastures of grass, the glitter of the river, the big stacks of corn like yellow firs. The red tractor a slow blood drop. Then we heard yells, names, my name, and saw a spot of orange jump at the toe of the scree. It was Lindy calling, calling, and I called for my favorite team: “LindyLindyLindyLindy,” and the wall called with me. Hugh even asked if I was going out that night.

Morning. The fifth day. Cornflower blue skies, fiord-cold in the shade, and above us brooded a huge wing of white granite, its edge a thin black slab about as long and steep as the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. I had seen this from the scree. We go that way.

Two skyhooks raised me off the rubble, and dash, wobbling, for 10 feet without protection—a necessary enema after the 30-hour sit-in. Then I’m staring at a poor flare where I belt a nut. Little chains of sweat trickle down my back. I’m struggling to free climb and Hugh’s not even looking. Jerkily I straggle to a ledge, not a word of wonder escaping his lips as I braille for holds and shake onto this ledge with a flurry of boots. With time against us I was doing all the leading. Hugh sat still on his stone throne while I squirmed about, greasing my palms with myself. Still, a cat may look, and he was the one rock, the one unshakable, all the way there and back.

Abseiling down in the dying day, the bergschrund breaking its wave beneath my feet 1,500 feet below in the cold ammonia air, I saw the tube tent was a rush of bright flesh, raw on the ledge, and Hugh, his back bent, peering, was a black bird feeding at it. After a soup supper, watched by the smouldery eye of Hugh’s cigar, I blew my harmonica, and brought tears of laughter to our eyes. We were doing O.K. Hugh even said he liked to hear me play.

Two days later we were barely 300 feet higher, and what I could see was not pretty. It looked as though, during the night, someone had pumped Hugh’s foot up. His skin transparent as tracing paper, the foot was a mallet of flesh, the toes tiny buds: thalidomide. I didn’t want to say too much. Perhaps the strain of his jumaring had done it, or the rotting wet when we were at Lucky’s taking the waters. It was early yet; we had a long way to go. He said he just needed to rest it.

The ledge was lovely and I was glad to linger there. We spread ourselves around, Hugh blowing gently on his foot while I had a bath. A snip of cotton for a flannel, lint for a towel, and a nip of antiseptic to give me spit a bit of bite. With behindsight I don’t recommend the antiseptic neat, my dears. Let me tell you it wasn’t a red face I had. The funny thing was it didn’t hurt at the time I dadded it, lovingly, my back turned while I blinked over the drop; but the day after, well, as they say, there hangs a tale.

A week later, his feet out like two heady cheeses in the dim pink light of the tent, Hugh has the mirror. He’s checking on the stranger—the first time in 12 days, squeezing his pimples, humming some Neil Young song. For four days we’ve been in and out of this womb tube, harassed each time we go outside by the web of stuff bags breeding at the hole end. They are our other stomachs. We feel in them for our pots, our pottage, and our porter (although the porter is water since we’ve finished the orange). Cosmetics ended, we turn to draughts, drawing a board on the white insulating pad and inventing a set of signs for pieces and moves. So we pass an hour: doze, shift, fidget, sleep, talk, warn, fart, groan or cackle, plan, doze and watch the light dissolve like a dye in the darkness. Snuggled together we are pre-eminently grateful that there is another here at the end of the day. We don’t talk about failing and I hardly think about it now—we’ve been here so long it’s a way of life. The pendulum’s done now and the only sign I’m waiting for is a weather one. The valley in my mind is out of sight.

In raggy mists we moved quickly, leaving our hauls on the bivouac ledge. Hugh, some deflated astronaut, swam slowly up on jumars as though someone had taken the gravity away. Breezes whiffed up my cuffs and my icy cagoule etherized the back of my neck. After those two pitches I froglegged left, my numb hands bungling on the flat holds, to reach a little ledge from where I would go down to pendulum. After each pitch I was getting a bit desperate with the cold and I’d can-can to keep warm. Hugh, only 40 feet away, was a white ghastly shadow.

Below us, Norway was at war. A volcanic pit of bursting water; the cwm boomed, a vat of slashed air. Stones howled around us and avalanching crashes trembled the wall. And me. Nothing could be seen in the gassing mist. No pendulum today.

Going back to our home, Hugh passed out into the cloud first, using the haul lines as a back rope to the bivouac ledge, which would otherwise have been impossible to return to because of the overhanging wall. When I got down he’d a brew ready which lit a fire, briefly, inside me. My thanks that it wasn’t snowing just about made it.

During the night it snowed.

In the morning it was still falling, so we rolled over; better sleep on it. In the fitful sleep of that day I had my dream! The editor of Mountain had arrived at the foot of the scree and, with a foghorn or some kind of voice, had managed to wake me, telling me that he had come all the way from England to let me know what a great job I was doing for British rock climbing (he never mentioned Hugh), and also how we were contributing to better Anglo-Norwegian political relations.

By the time I awoke he was gone but Hugh hadn’t; he was just vanishing down the hole at the other end. My watch told 4 a.m. The night had gone. I oozed out of my pit to find lard-pale Hugh with the blue black foot, sitting stinking in a skinful of sun. For half an hour we wallowed, exposing ourselves to the warm air. New creatures we were, able, if not to fly, at least to jumar, up there. And up there, today, I had to swing for it.

I try, flying, at 30 feet below Hugh, then 50 feet, then 80 feet, then at over 100 feet and I’m a bit too low so I jumar up to about 95. “Ed Leadlegs,” I tell him but only the wind hears me. I’m getting a bit tired; Hugh has given up asking me how I’m doing and he is just hanging, staring, his pipe alight—the wind brings a tang of it to me. No doubt he’s thinking of his girl in Mexico.

The white wall is so steep here that I can barely keep hold of it when I crab myself right for the big swing. But my first swings wing me out into space away from the wall and I have to pirouette to miss smashing my back. This is ridiculous. Like a spider at puberty I toil but spin not. It’s after 2 p.m. Lindy will be here soon.

When I’ve fingernailed back as far right as I can (and this time I manage about four feet more) I’m nearly 80 feet away from the groove that I’m trying to reach.

I’m off, the white rushing past; out, out, away from the wall, way past the groove, out—I tread air, the valley at my feet. Hugh moons down, he’s yelling something—can’t hear a word he’s saying—rushing, coming back, crashing in, wall falling on top of me, I kick, jab, bounce my boot, bounce out, floating, an easy trapeze. Then the unknown groove is running into my open arms and I strike at a flake and stick. Fingers leeching its crack.

I hung a nut in (my jumars attaching me to the rope are pulling me up), then I get an et and stand in it. The nut stays put. Jumars down. Now put a knife under that block. The press of the block keeps it in as I weigh in on it. Out flips the nut. Whoops. I know I’m going to get there. I can’t see Hugh but I know he’s there. A tiny nut like a coin in a slot. Watch me. The knifeblade tinkles out. Thank you. The nut gleams a gold tooth at me. There you go. To climb is to know the universe is All Right. Then I clink a good pin in at a stretch. Can’t get the nut now (it’s still there). And then I’m in the groove, appalled at the sheer, clean walls around and below me, baying for breath, my heart chopping through my chest.

We have lost a hundred feet, but gained a narrow track of cracks that will, I believe, lead to the Arch Roof, the huge, square-cut overhang that from the valley looks like an old press photo of the Loch Ness Monster. I saw a crack in 1970 through binoculars going out through the top of his head. “Loch Ness Monster sighted on Troll Wall.” I’d out-yeti Whillans yet. Just before dark Hugh lands and goes on ahead to order dinner; we’re eating out at the Traveler’s Tube tonight, a farewell meal. The pendulum being done, our time was going and so must we.

But it snowed for two days.

On the 13th day the sun rubbed shoulders with us again, and Hugh jumared up at a snail sprint. He found that the yellow perlon he was on had rubbed through to half its core, so he tied that out with an overhand before I came up at a slow rush. Halfway up I worked loose a huge detached flake which had hung a hundred feet above our tent; it took me five minutes so we had no need to worry. We watch it bounce, bomb-bursting down to the cwm, and the walls applaud.

The crack above the pendulum’s end was a nice smile for standard angles except where a ladder of loose flakes is propped. Bloody visions slump at the belay below me. Silence. Care. The hauls zoom out well clear.

The next two pitches, up a bulging, near-blind groove, were ecstasy. I had to free climb. The hooks were only for luck, and I was quick in the blue fields. Above, suddenly, two swifts flashed past, thuds of white. “That’s us,” I yelled to myself. Lindy may not have been here, but there she was. I could hear her, naming my name, and I flew slowly up. Four fine pitches of ledgeless pleasure that day. In the dark Hugh jumared up to the Arch, me guiding his feet with my head torch.

But that night the sky shone no stars. Packs of black cloud massed. Not enough food to eat. A sweet or two. No cigar. And too late to fish for hammocks. All night, four hours, I squirmed in my seat sling. I speculated on recommending to the makers that they rename it the Iron Maiden, but it was too suitable an epitaph to laugh about. My hip is still numb from damaged nerves.

Came the morning and I was thrashed. The sun did not exist. The roof over my head was a weight on my mind. Suddenly, over Vengetind the weather mountain, clouds boiled, whipping and exploding in avalanching chaos. Over Lillejfel, a low shoulder on the other side of the valley cauldron, a dinosaur mass of white cloud was rat-arrowing toward us. We could hardly run away; we were so cold and hungry we could hardly move.

I was scared as I moved out under the Arch, a clown without props. All these things were real, there were no nets here, only dear patient Hugh blowing on his fingers.

No man walks on air was all my thought as I melted out of sight, upside down for four feet, my haul line dissolving in the mist. I couldn’t feel that I was connected to anything solid. Fly sized, I mimed away under three giant inverted steps, lips. Not a single foothold, not a toehold in a hundred feet. Just over the final lip, in a single strand of crack, I pinned myself to a wall of water and started to land the hauls.

They must have seen me coming. I couldn’t believe it. Raindrops ripped into me, making me wince. The cold rose an octave, catapulting hail into my face. The wind thrummed a hundred longbow cords. I could hardly see through my chinese eyes. Only while I hauled could I stop shaking. My fingers, cut deeply at the tips, were almost helpless. People at upstairs windows watching a road accident in the street below. My feet were dying. My silent white hands.

Hugh came up for air, grinning. He’d had no idea down there. Up here he had the thing itself. Murdering, washing out more than ears. I led off, hardly knowing where, except that we couldn’t stay there. I could only just open my carabiners with two hands. Sleet had settled thickly on the bunches of tie-offs. Both of us were really worried. Hugh cried up after an hour that he was getting frostbite. What could I say? I had to find a place for the night.

If you ever go there and have it the way we did, you’ll know why we called it The Altar. I remember the rush in the drowning dark to hand the tent, the moss churning to slush beneath our feet. Back to back, our backs to the wall, we slumped on three feet of ledge for three days. We had nothing to drink for the first two of those days; our haul bags were jammed below us and we were diseased with fatigue. Lice trickles of wet get everywhere.

I remember Hugh drinking the brown water that had collected in his boots, instantly vomiting it out, and me silently mouthing the gluey water from my helmet. You didn’t miss much, Hugh. He shared his food with me, some cheese and dates and a bag of sweets: rare fruits. After a day he had to piss and used quadrupled poly bags which I politely declined to use: I had no need. A day later my proud bladder was bursting. But sitting, propped in a wet bed of underwear, I was impotent. For over two hours I strained and grunted in scholastic passion. Hugh said it was trench penis. A sort of success went to my head, however, or rather onto and into my sleeping bag. After that I felt like some great baby, trapped in his wet cot, the air sickly with urine, and sleep would not come.

To get more room, both of us, we later confessed when there were witnesses present, developed strategies of delay while we shuffled the status quo. “Could you sit forward a minute?” Or, “Would you hold this for me?” At times I’d get Hugh to tuck my insulating pads around me to bluff off the cold stone. It was deeply satisfying to have someone do that. Grizzly, bristly Hugh: what a mother.

We wondered if this could continue for more than a week. But we didn’t wonder what would happen if it did. We never talked about not finishing. (We were just over a thousand feet below the summit). It was no longer a new route to us. It was not possible to consider anything else as real. There were no echoes from the valley. There was no valley. There was no one to call your name. No wall now; unhappy little solipsists, we had only each other.

We began to get ratty, like children locked in a bedroom. An elbow scuffled against a back once or twice as we humped back to stop the slow slide off the ledge. A ton of silence rested on us like a public monument, for hours on end. I felt that this was all sterile. I ate food, wore out my clothes, used up my warmth, but earned nothing, made nothing. The art was chrysalising into artifice. A grubby routine, trying not to die. Millions have the disease and know it not. My sleep a continual dream of hammering: banging in pins, clipping in, moving up, then back down, banging, banging, taking them out. A bit like having fleas. Searching for an ultimate belay. Unable to stop: the Holy Nail. My Dad, my dad, why hast thou forsaken me? At times I was pretty far gone.

But it wasn’t all self-pity. We talked about the plight of the Trolls and could clearly see a long bony hairy arm poking under the tent, handing us a teeming pan of hot troll tea, and although nothing appeared in our anaesthetic dark, the idea lit a brief candle.

Three days later we were released.

Lindy yelled us out. A giant marigold sun beamed at us. Everywhere up here—and we could see hundreds of miles— was white, perfect, appalling. Across the river I could clearly make out scores of tourists, a distant litter of color in one of the camping fields opposite the wall. Cars flashed their headlamps and horns bugled as we struggled into view and flagged them with our tent.

Then, quickly, the charging roar of an avalanche. I flattened to the wall. And then I spotted it, a helicopter, gunning in a stone’s throw from the wall, a military green with yellow emblems. A gun poked from the window. “Hugh, they’re going to shoot us,” then, tearing his head up he saw it: an arm waving. We waved arms, heads, legs; danced, jigged, yelled, while they circled in and away like something from another world. Later we learned that it was Norwegian television, but we fluttered no blushes on the wall. The spell of our selves was broken.

Five hours later, after a long lovely 130 feet of aid, intricate and out in space, I was on the final summit walls, the last roofs wiped with light, 700 feet above me.

All that night, while a white moon sailed over our shoulders, we perched on our haul bags and cut off the blood to our already damaged feet, too exhausted to know. Sharing our last cigar while the nerves in our feet were suffocating to death, we shone in our hunger and smiled a while.

As soon as I put my weight on my foot in the new dawn I knew I’d had it. Hugh’s foot was an unspeakable image, and I had to tell him when his heel was grounded inside his boot. He could hardly have his laces tied at all and I was terrified that one of his boots might drop off.

All that day the feeling was of having my boots being filled with boiling water that would trickle in between my toes and flood my soles. Then a sensation of shards of glass being wriggled into the balls of my feet. And upon each of my feet a dentist was at work, pulling my nails and slowly filling my toes. Then nothing but a rat-tatting heart when I stopped climbing. I would tremble like water in a faint breeze. I knew it was hypothermia. We had had no food for three days. Maybe it was two.

All the last day we called, a little hysterically I think, for someone on the summit; they were coming to meet us. Sitting 15 feet below the top, with Hugh whimpering up on jumars, I heard whispers ... “Keep quiet ... wait until he comes over the top.”

There was no one there. Only, thank God, the sun. It seemed right in a way to meet only each other there. At the summit cairn Hugh sucked on his pipe while my tongue nippled at a crushed sweet that he had found in his pocket. We dozed warm as new cakes, in a high white world, above impenetrable clouds which had shut out the valley all day. We were terribly glad to be there. After midnight we collapsed into a coma of sleep, half a mile down in the boulderfield.

We met them the next morning, quite near the road; it must have been about half past eight. They were coming up to meet us. Lindy flew up the hill to hug me forever. I was Odysseus, with a small o, I was Ed, come back for the first time. Hugh grinned in his pain when I told the Norwegian journalists that his real name was Peer Gynt, and that he was an artist like Van Gogh, but that he had given a foot for the wall, instead of an ear to his girl.

On our last hobble, he had, before we met the others, found himself dreaming of the walks he used to have with his dad, as a child, into the park to feed the ducks, and of the delights of playing marbles (we were both pocketing stones and rare bits from the summit on down). When we arrived in Andalsnes with our friends, I saw the apples burning on the boughs, glowy drops of gold and red (the green gargoyle buds, the little knuckle apples, had lit while we were gone); and the postbox in its red skirt shouted to me as we turned the corner into town. Bodil washed Hugh’s feet, sent for her doctor, and everyone in our house was alive and well. Only the Troll Wall gave me black looks, over the hill and far away at last. Black iceberg under eye- blue skies.

As we arrived back in England my feet were as irrefutable as war wounds. I was on my back for a month, and I had the cuttings from the Norwegian press, as precious as visas. But nowhere to get to.