Bright Air by Barry Maitland Read Free Book Online

stainless-steel table rolling and folding the dough, rolling and folding, to make that special flaky pastry which is so accurately depicted at gigantic scale on the roof, and of Mum in the kitchen nearby preparing her special rich beef recipes for which she was known to every truckie and rep on the highway. Just before she died, Mum passed on those recipes to Pam, the help they’d taken on when Mum first fell ill, and in due course Dad sealed the business partnership by marrying her. It all seemed very straightforward and admirable to me. And yet, the first time any of my new friends at university askedme what my parents did, I fudged it, mumbling something about hospitality and tourism, and later mentioning the Potts Point hotel as if it was theirs, rather than my Aunt Mary’s.
    The third conclusion came to me as soon as I looked up
Yosemite climbing
on Google. It seemed the DNB was climbers’ shorthand for the Direct Northern Buttress of Yosemite’s Cathedral Rocks, a six-hundred-metre granite cliff described bluntly as ‘hard, with some scary loose flake in the middle’. The pictures looked absolutely terrifying to me, even without the scary loose flake. I decided that Anna had been exaggerating in order to frighten me off. Of course they hadn’t climbed
that
.
    So I turned up at the climbing wall the following Wednesday evening and Luce seemed pleased to see me, in an underplayed, almost shy sort of way that I stored away for future contemplation. She introduced me to some of their friends, including Damien, Curtis and Owen, then to the club secretary, who gave me a questionnaire to fill in and signed me up. Anna pretty much ignored me.
    It didn’t take long for me to realise that I was seriously out of my league. Apart from my lack of recent practice, my gear was all wrong, my thick-soled shoes clumsy and my shorts hampering my movements. As I struggled painfully up the easiest routes I watched the rest of them racing up ahead of me. The only good thing was that, clambering to keep up, struggling not to look like a total idiot, I didn’t have time to worry about my fear of heights, which had been a recurring problem on the school climbing camps.
    After a while I collapsed, humiliated, on a bench. My arms and fingers had lost all strength and I was soaked in sweat. Luce came and sat beside me, looking as if she’d used up no energy at all.
    ‘Sorry,’ I panted. ‘Really am out of practice.’
    ‘Don’t worry, it’s often like that after a gap.’
    ‘But you’re absolutely brilliant.’ I couldn’t hide my astonishment. The others were good, but she made them look ponderous. Smooth and balletic in her movements, she had seemed weightless. ‘Did you really climb the DNB?’
    She laughed. ‘Didn’t you believe us?’
    ‘It’s just … that’s pretty advanced, isn’t it? Maybe I should stick to statistics. I’ve brought those course notes, if you’re interested.’
    She studied me. ‘But you won’t give up, will you? I mean, I wouldn’t mind some help with STAT 303, but this is …’ she looked up at the people hanging in space above us, ‘… it’s what I do.’
    ‘Right,’ I said, still waiting for the feeling to come back into my fingers. ‘No, no, of course I won’t give up. I’ll bring my proper gear next time. These shoes are hopeless.’
    Later, in the changing room, I overheard a snatch of conversation from two blokes in the next aisle. One said, ‘… won’t see him again.’ I caught the words ‘bloody hopeless’ in the reply, and they both laughed. When they left I saw that it was Owen and Curtis.

5
    A week after our meeting at Sammy’s Bar, Damien gave me a ring. He asked where I was living, and when I told him he said he’d call in at the hotel that evening after work for a chat.
    He looked more composed that evening, in his expensive suit. I led him through to the bar and got us both a beer. He slipped off his jacket and dropped into an armchair.
    ‘Sorry I was so