COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1972 by Brian Ball
All rights reserved.
*
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
CHAPTER 1
Jerry Howard knew he’d been the worst kind of fool when he saw the first black clouds screaming in from the northwest to blot out the High Peak.
In what was left of the pale spring sunlight, he could see the sheep alongside the Hagthorpe village road calling to their zany lambs as they made for cover.
“Oh, Christ,” he said, looking up. He was in deep trouble. There was the face of Devil’s Peak leering at him, as if it knew that he was stuck, with the top of Toller Edge above seven or eight handholds away. It might as well have been in Outer Mongolia or Bangkok or in the Snug at the Furnaceman’s Arms, which was where he wished himself now, instead of waiting with freezing hands for the courage to move up the vertical corner in the rock face.
M. Severe, the handbook had called the climb, which was named after someone called Scragg—Scragg’s Corner. Half an hour before Jerry had grinned to himself, made sure that his small rucksack was firmly in place on his back, and begun the ninety-foot ascent. Only fools climbed alone, of course, but this wasn’t a real test of skill.
Anyway, who else could find time on a Friday at the end of the Easter vacation to go with him? Only Debbie, and she’d gone in a rage the week before, back to South Shields and the trawler captain who’d been waiting three months for her to get over what he called the Bearded Wonder. So Jerry had come out on his own. Well, so he’d done a small climb. Why not? You had to balance the thrill of doing the corner crack alone against the dangers—and he had done this particular climb three or four times before, so where was the danger? It wasn’t until he was within twenty feet of the top that he’d found his fingers slipping on the gritstone and realised that there had been a sudden drop in the temperature.
It was seeing newly broken gritstone where there should have been a jug of rock that frightened him into looking round. Someone had done the unthinkable. Some vandal had come up Scragg’s Corner and taken a hammer to the one handhold vital to the climb.
“Mad bastard!” Jerry exclaimed, aghast when he looked up to see why his icy fingers hadn’t found the four-inch projection.
Who could have done it!
Some maniacal yob out with his mates after shooting up the daft sheep? A climber? But climbers wouldn’t! It was totally unthinkable!
Jerry tried again and his fingers slid over wet, cold, smooth rock. And then he looked all about him with a sickening sense of danger. He had no top rope. No rope at all, in fact. He couldn’t be hauled ignominiously to the top of Toller’s Edge to be laughed at by his fellow-climbers. There weren’t any. Nor could he go down a rope which he might have fixed to the rock himself. He’d been a fool. And it was getting so cold that his face stung abominably and his right hand jumped with frozen fatigue. He looked down, careful to keep both feet evenly balanced, left on a solid ledge, the other on a bit of rock that was no more than a slippery protuberance about the size and shape of a slice of orange. Below, the sunlight was dying. Last year’s bracken had been trampled by the sheep in places, though it still lay thickly in a brown carpet. A tanker’s air-brakes squealed on the narrow road at the turn for Hagthorpe.
Then Jerry sensed rather than saw the blackness that was looming over the High Peak. He did look then. Snow-clouds were roaring like banshees over the roof of England.
Snow!
The wind got up, adding an urgency to the sheep’s calls. Jerry looked all about the Edge in case someone should have come out for a walk, or some party of climbers he hadn’t noticed before were about. No one. Even the youngest of the kids who lived just below the broad bald masses of the Peak knew what the black clouds meant and would have turned for home double quick. A car ground its way along the Hagthorpe road, its driver intent on getting to his destination.
The first snowflake drifted to settle in Jerry’s dark beard as the sunlight was extinguished. He looked over his left shoulder towards Sheffield, where at the edge of the cloud belt there was still dazzling sunshine.
He shuddered as another snowflake landed on his nose and gently dissolved. He knew he could not stay still for much longer. Go down? He’d never make it. He was committed now. Below was a jumbled mass of rock eroded from the cliff-face. Not much more than sixty feet. Say seventy. Enough to break every bone in his body on the jagged edge of the harsh boulders. He called out above the wind:
“Help! On the Edge! Can’t move!”
The wind filled his mouth as he roared, and the chill of it bit into a top filling of white metal. He shut his mouth quickly and thought of the unfairness of it all.
It was lonely in the bed-sitter without Debbie’s sing-song tones, so he had packed a pound of cheese and a small Hovis, stolen a couple of cans of beer from Andy and Anne’s flat—knowing that they would have helped themselves just as freely from his—and set off to think out how he was to cajole another year’s grant from his local education authority. That, and to do a spot of scrambling. Not climbing, he had told himself. Only fools climbed alone. And they didn’t do it for long. Hagthorpe Cemetery held a couple at least.
Again the wind licked at his white metal filling. Snowflakes danced towards him, thrown there by some freak of wind from the High Peak. Above, the clouds were now solidly black.
The rock was getting more and more slippery as the snow began to settle in cracks and fissures, on tiny ledges and even on the vertical face itself until it was blown away over the top of Toller Edge twenty feet above. Twenty feet!
He reached out his right hand again and felt the raw new stone. A black rage filled him. Who could have been so cold-bloodedly murderous as to destroy the route up the corner? Jerry was so annoyed that he almost lost his balance. His left hand was an ice talon in the crack just above his head; it slipped, and a knee tremor shook his lower body, so that the right foot almost went. He exerted all his power of concentration to control the shaking. He held his balance. Just.
He examined the stone above his head. Right hand should have taken part of the body weight for long enough and given leverage for the long leg movement on to another of those tiny blips like the one his right foot rested on now. Then fairly easy holds and up to the top. A large whisky, a laugh at his luck and back to Sheffield. Jerry blinked as snow fell into his upturned face. There was no way up.
It couldn’t be done. He needed another foot of height—eighteen inches, more like—to get his right foot on to the next hold. He looked at his left foot and saw that it was covered in fine snow. Bigger flakes began to fall.
The Peak was experiencing almost the complete range of English weather in one day.
Jerry turned, looked up again, and the small weight of the rucksack tugged at his shoulders. It came to him at that moment that he might have a chance.
If only he could balance like some bloody circus performer—for even a few seconds! Simply getting the frozen rucksack off his back with one hand was enough for the moment. As for getting the bloody beer cans into position beneath his left foot—well, that was best not thought of. Even then, they might not give him the extra height he must have.
“They’ve got to!” Jerry muttered to the rock face.
He wriggled with his shoulders and arms until the rucksack was hanging over his right shoulder. The beer cans clanked. How tall were they? Seven inches? Eight? Enough height, but it would take the talents of the Sheffield Monkey Man to be sure of getting them just right! He worked the stiff leather straps free and reached for one of the cold tins. Long Life it said on the label.
He had to catch the can between the good ledge on which his left boot rested and his leg, hold it in position, and locate the other beer can. Then that had to go on