way up where the wind has honed the rock to a knife-edge under a coating of green ice. The mountain has a name, though it’s not a very impressive one—it’s called Little Horse, and the river winding round its feet is the Little Horse River. Oddly enough, the ridge is more famous. It’s the highest point known to have been reached by earlier climbers, none of whom found a way across. Some of those who attempted it turned back, some died. Those who turned back named the ridge, and the name they gave it tells you all you need to know about the conditions they found there. They called it Anarchy Ridge.
Our two young men are still a long way short of Anarchy Ridge. They haven’t even crossed the Little Horse River yet, and after that they have to climb up onto the glacier that inches down the shoulder of the mountain, grinding its unseen rocks to gravel. They won’t set up base camp until late tomorrow. It’s as well that the thrill of anticipation is keeping them going. There isn’t much else here to enjoy.
Except one another’s company. Once the climb starts in earnest, there won’t be time to talk—just a terse trading of advice, warnings and swear words until either they succeed or are beaten back. There’ll be time in the tent at night, but by then they won’t have any energy left for conversation. Only if the weather keeps them pinned down will they have both the time and the inclination to socialize.
But now, with all the danger and excitement and challenge still ahead of them, whatever breath the broken ground doesn’t demand of them can be spared for talking. Being young men, their conversation isn’t particularly profound. It revolves around women, and work, and how many pints you can sink before you get that funny tunnel-vision effect, and soccer, and fast cars. The tall one can afford a fast car. The short one can afford a car. Because they’re friends, the short one mocks the tall one for being rich; the tall one does not mock the short one for being comparatively poor. Both are absolutely comfortable with this and show it by the easy nature of their insults.
“Then there was the one with buck teeth,” says the short one. “I mean, what kind of a combination is that—an open-topped car and a girlfriend with buck teeth? Did you polish the flies off them before you kissed her good night?”
“Louise did not have buck teeth,” says the tall one, with dignity and the lilt of an Irish accent. “She had what my mother described as a patrician profile. Also, she had nice manners. She polished the flies off herself.”
“Patrick, your mother could find the silver lining in a week full of wet Wednesdays! Why else…?” He stops himself just in time. There are some insults that even really good friends shouldn’t trade.
Tall Patrick hears what hasn’t been said and laughs it off with a lightness that falls just short of convincing. “Would she marry my father? Because she knew what a devastatingly handsome son he’d give her, of course!”
The other one scowls into the wind, ruing his gauche attempt at humor and admiring Patrick’s deftness in deflecting it. He didn’t mean to hurt his friend but he knows he has, and also that Patrick will neither hold the grudge nor turn it back. He doesn’t envy his companion the family money that funds his share of their expeditions. He certainly doesn’t envy Patrick his family. But he does sometimes, in the privacy of his own head where no one will ever suspect, envy him his education. Not because he has a use for Latin verbs, but because he thinks a better education would have equipped him to deal more graciously with the world, the way Patrick does. He doesn’t underestimate his own strengths, as a climber and as a man—his compact, hardy physique, his endless endurance, and the mental toughness that, indistinguishable from obstinacy, keeps him going long after any reasonable person would have quit. But he wishes there was more about him to like. Everyone likes Patrick. With Patrick, there’s nothing not to like.
He steers the conversation back onto safer ground. “Then there’s the one with pigtails. You know, the one who took up climbing so the two of you would have something in common. Who’d have taken up sheep-shearing or necrophilia if she’d thought it was something you could do together.”
But Patrick doesn’t laugh,