The Pulse of Danger. Jon Cleary

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      ‘I absolutely adore it when you call me love. It’s such a divine change after da-ahling. In my set everyone—’

      ‘Set? You’re the sort who belongs to a set?’

      ‘Da-ahling, all right then, my crowd. The people I go around with.’ She shook her head, suddenly sober. ‘Somehow I don’t think you’re going to like them.’

      He ignored that and walked to the window to look out at Jungfrau standing out like a mountain of glass against the brilliant sky. A party of four climbers was working its way up the lower slopes of the mountain; that was what he should have done, concentrated on climbing. She lay back on the bed and looked at him, already loving him with a depth of feeling that surprised even herself. ‘Have you ever been in love before?’

      He looked back at her, then at last nodded. ‘Twice. With the same girl.’

      ‘I didn’t say how many times have you made love—’

      ‘I know you didn’t. I fell in love with this girl twice. Once when she was sixteen. Then she went off with another bloke, and I swore off love for life, took the pledge and a double dose of bromide. Then I met her again when she was twenty and by then the bromide had worn off, I fell in love with her again.’

      ‘You were still in love with her—’

      He shook his head. ‘No, it was a new feeling. It can happen. Fall in love all over again, I mean.’

      ‘What was she like? She must have been something special, to make you fall in love with her twice.’

      ‘She was no raving beauty. She had a mouth like an armpit full of loose teeth, and though her eyes weren’t exactly crossed they had designs on each other—’ She threw a pillow at him. He caught it and came and sat back on the bed beside her. ‘Look, love, Aussies have no great reputation as lovers. The only time an Aussie ever compliments a woman, he’s asking for a loan or she’s got a gun at his head. But one thing we do know – never tell your current girl friend what the last one looked like. Always make out she was about as sexy as a porridge doll. One thing a woman can’t stand is to look in a mirror and see another woman’s face there.’

      ‘Who told you that?’

      He grinned. ‘My last girl.’

      ‘I wish Mummy was still alive to meet you. She would have absolutely adored you. But you and Daddy should get on. You have something in common.’

      ‘You mean he has an overdraft, too?’

      She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know about that, da-ahling. No, he really is like you. He’s frightfully interested in flowers. He grows roses.’

      He looked as if he was about to swear, then suddenly he laughed and slapped her on the rump. ‘Love, the last thing I ever want to do is raise bloody roses. I collect plants, not grow them. A lot of botanists do like to grow things, but not me. I’m like the obstetrician who doesn’t like to be surrounded by kids.’

      ‘Oh,’ she said, linking her hands behind his neck, ‘I was hoping we’d have lots of kids. We could start now.’

      Two days later he had introduced her to climbing and she took to it as if she had been born on a mountain. He was an expert climber and had been invited to lead several mountaineering expeditions. But always he had found excuses and in the end he had not been asked to join a climbing team even as a member. He knew he had been branded with a reputation for stand-offishness, a climber who considered himself too good to climb with others. He had let the libel stand because it was better than broadcasting the truth. As time had gone on he had wondered if Eve had ever begun to suspect the truth.

      He feared leadership. All his life, even as a boy at school, he had been big and confident-looking: a born leader, everyone had said. He had been captain of the school cricket and rugger teams in his last year and they had been the most disastrous seasons in the school’s history; but no one had blamed him and instead had commiserated with him on the poor material he had been given. At university he had been elected captain of the rugger team and the only two matches the team had won had been when he was out of action through injury. Again no one had blamed him, but by then he had come to know the truth about himself.

      Still he had been plagued by people wanting to elect him a leader. Or, what was just as bad, wanting to dispute his title to leadership. It never seemed to matter to them that he had never been known to nominate himself for any leader’s job: they took it for granted that he was in the running and began attacking him sometimes even before his name was mentioned. They were invariably small men: the Big Bastard, as he knew he was called, was always fair game for small men. Sometimes he had wished a big man would dispute his title to leader: he couldn’t bring himself to throw a punch or two at the small men, even if they had attacked him in pairs. So he had retreated farther and farther, never committing himself to any expedition larger than this current one, comfortable in the thought that in such circumstances he was not called upon to be responsible for any man’s life. In small groups such as this each man was accountable for himself and indeed resented that it should be otherwise. Leadership of such an expedition often entailed no more than being responsible for the cost and the day-to-day running of the camp.

      But he had regretted missing the opportunity to climb with some of the top mountaineering teams. Hunt had passed him over for the Everest ascent the year before, and his omission from other teams had been conspicuous to those who knew of his ability. He regretted the reputation he had and it worried him. He did not like arrogance in others and it disturbed him to know he was branded with the same sin.

      He had also been worried when Eve had insisted she was going to accompany him on the trip to Ruwenzori, wondering if he would have the patience to tolerate her when he was immersed in his work; but she had proved more help than hindrance, and from then on he had never thought of making a trip without her. Her father had died a year after their marriage, leaving her without any close relatives and a fortune that came from shipping and mining. The first fact had bound her closer to him, the second was a barrier that kept pushing itself between them. He was depressed, weighed down by his wife’s wealth, a form of slavery dreamed of by most men who don’t know the value of their freedom.

      But now, as it so often did, his depression suddenly lifted. Up ahead he saw the gooral working its way along the steep slope above him. Everything else now dropped out of his mind. He stopped, turning slowly as the gooral, still unaware of him, moved with unhurried and uncanny agility among the rocks and trees on the precipitous slope of the hill. It was no use going up there after it: the gooral would stop, look at him curiously, then be gone out of sight while he was still trying to find a foothold on the hillside. He had learned long ago never act like a goat to catch a goat. He would have to be patient, hope that the animal would come down closer within range. He started up the hill, all his concentration focused on the grey moving shape above him, his ears only half-hearing the other sounds here in the gorge: the hissing rumble of the racing river, the soft explosion of a pheasant taking off from a bush close by, the rattle of falling stones disturbed by the gooral as it bounded from one spot to another.

      It worked its way above and past him, began moving back down the gorge towards the camp. He turned and began to follow it, keeping to the track and the cover of the trees. Sometimes it would disappear behind a screen of trees or bushes, and a moment later it would come into view again, still moving down towards the camp. It was lower down the hill now and he could see that it was a male and a big one. Both male and female gooral had horns and often it was difficult to tell which was which. But Marquis had remarkably good eyesight and on this beast he could see the thicker СКАЧАТЬ