The Deadly Space Between by Patricia Duncker Read Free Book Online Page A

first successful ascent of Mont Blanc. Jacques Balmat, mountaineer and crystal-hunter, Michel-Gabriel Paccard, native of Chamonix and the region’s first physician together with Gustave Roehm decided to find a route to the summit of Mont Blanc. On the afternoon of 7th August 1786, they departed from La Prieuré in the valley, bivouacked between two rocks at the top of the Montagne de la Côte and began their attempt on the summit at 4 am the next day. Their progress crossing the glacier was followed by telescope. Dr Paccard lost his hat on top of the Rochers Rouge. They attacked the final slope at 6.12 pm and reached the summit at 6.23. They took some measurements and began the descent at 6.57 pm. Gustave Roehm was lost in one of the crevasses on the Grand Plateau. His body was never recovered. Balmat returned to La Prieuré the following day leading Paccard, who was snowblind, by the hand.
Roehm’s research on glaciology and his development with his friend Horace-Bénédict de Saussure of such measuring instruments as the hair hygrometer had considerable influence on Alpine exploration in the period.
 
F URTHER R EADING : Roehm, Gustave, Alpine Plants: Their Varieties and Habitats . Abridged and translated by Katherine Holroyd, Cambridge University Press, 1977 (Original Edition, 1782, 2 vols)
     
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    It’s not worth it. Nazis, film directors and a man lost in ice. Who is this man she calls Roehm?
     
    *  *  *
     
    I climbed back into bed, fully clothed and alarmingly aroused. Why? The search had yielded nothing. I was no closer to finding out who Roehm was. I lay flat on my stomach until the heat had passed away. I was forced to do the one thing I found difficult. I was forced to wait.
     
    *  *  *
    I monitored every phone call that came in and went out of the house. This was easy to do. The phone had an illuminated green panel, which gave the last number that had called. But the days came and went. He never rang. Luce was constantly in touch, full of her latest, greatest coup. Her textile designs had been chosen, more or less en masse, by an Anglo-French maison de coûture , Lewis and Gautrin. The deal was through. The entire spring collection would be awash with her colours. The show was being presented, first in Paris, then in London and finally in New York. We were all going to be millionaires. I heard my mother laughing in the hallway, then moving away as she fiddled in the studio, cradling the phone on her shoulder.
    Roehm did not ring. Neither her nor me.
    On Thursday she was late back. I had cooked dinner for both of us and eaten mine. I didn’t get up when she came into the sitting room, where I was sunk into the sofa, eating crisps and watching mindless murders on the television.
    ‘Hello, darling. Mmmmm, gross. Crisps.’ She swallowed a handful and sat down on my right leg.
    ‘Get off. You’re crushing me.’
    ‘Sorry.’ She watched the car chase and the shoot-out. Her right breast hung across my line of vision, cutting off half the screen.
    ‘Move. I can’t see.’
    ‘Aren’t we irritable?’
    She pushed me over and lay down beside me. She smelt of turps and linseed oil, but not of cigarettes. I put my arm around her, longing to touch her breast. I had never touched a woman’s breast. Now that she was with Roehm it was easier to look at her simply as a woman and not as my mother. I did some sums, lying there with her in my arms. I was eighteen. She was thirty-three. It was as if the gap between us had suddenly, dramatically narrowed. She took another handful of crisps and stuffed them into her mouth. I leaned over and kissed her ear.
    ‘My sweet love, am I forgiven for missing supper?’
    I laid my head on her shoulder and watched her right nipple, swollen and rising beneath the wool. Then the phone rang. She rolled onto the floor, scattering crisps, and sauntered into the hall. It was eleven twenty on Thursday night. She came back into the room, her eyes