The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,92

and I haven’t made a move. My feet are already killing me in the tight shoes.

‘Are you all right?’ Emma calls down.

‘I’m not sure how to start,’ I say, wiping my arm across my forehead to dislodge the sweat.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Look up a bit and you’ll see a little crack. Can you get your fingers into that?’

I grope around to find the crack and push my fingers in, scrabbling for something to grasp.

‘Slide your fingers along. There’s an edge in there you can hook onto.’

A couple of seconds later, I’ve found it.

‘Now, look down and across to your right a bit. There’s a ledge you can put your foot on sideways. Place your other hand flat against the rock, push up on your right foot and pull with your hand in the crack. That’ll get you off the ground and you can look for something else.’

How can she remember all these nuances of the rock? I try to follow her instructions, psyching up with shaking legs, and then I take the first move off the ground. I feel air all around me. I grapple around for another handhold and find one, a reassuring lump near a crack.

‘Did you find that jug?’ Emma calls.

‘What’s a jug?’

‘A big handhold. Did you find it?’

‘I think I’m hanging on to it.’

‘Good.’

As I move slowly up the rock face, I find several solid locations to place my feet and there are plenty of cracks and edges to cling onto. I’m breathing like a windstorm, huffing with each breath. I try not to look down.

‘Make sure you unclip the rope from the clipdraws as you go and pull out all the gear,’ Emma reminds me. ‘I don’t want to have to climb back down to retrieve anything.’

Unclipping and pulling out the equipment is harder than it sounds. On trembling legs, I have to maintain my balance, hold on to rock with my left hand and try to wangle the rope out of the carabiner with my finger and thumb. Then I have to work out how to remove the gear—a camming device or wire with a blocky sinker on the end of it—and hook it into a loop on my harness. After removing the first piece, I feel exhausted.

‘How are you going?’ Emma calls.

‘I think I’m okay,’ I say, hoping I sound more confident than I feel.

‘I’ve got you.’ Emma pulls up on the rope. ‘Do you need a rest?’

‘No,’ I pant. ‘I’ll keep going.’

Still out of sight, Emma gives me instructions and makes helpful suggestions, and I make slow progress up the rock face. She seems to know when to call out and when to leave me alone to work it out myself. Always, I am conscious of the voluminous feel of air and space around me, of the awful drop below me, the headiness of height, my tenuous grip on the rock face.

Eventually, I drag myself over a ledge and there’s Emma, sitting about three metres above me.

‘You’re nearly there.’ Her smile is luminous. ‘How is it?’

‘Great,’ I puff.

‘How did your legs go? Did you get sewing-machine leg?’

I remember one point, when I was partway up the rock with my right leg shaking uncontrollably.

She smiles knowingly. ‘It happens to us all.’

She points out some good footholds and finger cracks for the last moves, and I finally haul myself up onto the rock beside her.

‘Sit down and have a rest,’ she says. ‘It’s beautiful up here.’

I lean back weakly against the rock and look out across the flat expanse of the sea. The beach is a sheltered cove below. I didn’t realise we had gained so much height.

‘Look at the light on the rocks,’ Emma says. ‘I just love all those oranges and reds. Impossible really—such bright colours in nature.’

We sit together a long time, eating the snacks we brought and drinking water. I’ve sweated buckets.

‘I generally prefer to keep my feet on the ground,’ I say.

‘But how do you feel now?’ Emma asks.

I notice the unweighted feeling of my body, the spreading looseness of my mind, the pleasant sensation of cool air on hot sweat.

‘Euphoric.’

‘That’s why it’s fun,’ Emma says. ‘You feel more alive. The hardest part is learning to block out the distance below you. You have to delete it somehow, so that when you look down, you don’t register how far you could fall.’ She catches me shaking my head, and smiles. ‘If you see the height, you’ll get vertigo,’ she says. ‘It paralyses you. And then you can’t climb. All