The Bell A-Star helicopter rattled along the river valley between the fir trees and rocked down to the landing pad beyond the lodges, as neatly as a foot slipping into a shoe. Finch’s eldest brother James stood at the window of the biggest lodge, watching the rotors darkening from a blur to whipping blades and then stopping altogether.
‘They’re back, Kitty,’ he remarked to his wife. She put aside her book, stood up and limped to join him at the window. One of her knees was tightly bandaged. The door of the chopper opened and the pilot jumped down, still wearing his helmet.
‘Ralf was flying.’
The man put out his hand and Finch took it as she emerged, shaking her head and laughing as she landed beside him. A second man wearing flying overalls scrambled out in her wake. He lifted two pairs of skis out of the basket mounted on the fuselage and handed them over in exchange for the pilot’s helmet. Then he climbed back into the machine. Once the couple were out of range the blades whirled into life again and the helicopter lifted and flew away.
Finch and Ralf came towards the lodge. His free arm was round her shoulders and she looked up into his face as they walked, and laughed again.
‘They look very happy,’ Kitty said. She raised her eyebrows smilingly at James.
‘They’re in love, aren’t they?’ James answered.
A minute later the door swept open and Finch and Ralf came in, bringing the outdoors scent of cold air. They were bright-eyed and rosy with the exhilaration of a day’s skiing, and they hopped and held on to each other as they eased off their ski boots and unzipped their outer clothes.
‘Tea’s here,’ James called from beside the log fire.
Finch came straight to Kitty. ‘How’s the knee? Have you been icing it, like I said?’
Kitty had fallen the previous day and twisted a ligament. James had stayed behind to keep her company, and Finch and Ralf had had the day and the helicopter with its pilot and the blue-white slopes of the Monashee mountains all to themselves. Kitty sat down with a little wince and hauled her leg up on to the sofa cushions for Finch to manipulate the swollen knee.
‘With a bag of frozen peas, just like you told me. Twenty minutes at a time. It’s much better.’
‘Good. Mm. I don’t think you’ve torn anything. But it might be worth getting an MRI scan, just the same.’
Ralf Hahn stood at Finch’s shoulder. The heli-ski operation was his and he had built it into a successful business catering for rich skiers from all over the world. He was Austrian, a big weather-beaten blond from Zell am See who had been skiing since he learned to walk. He and Finch had been lovers for nearly two years.
‘You are sure you are all right, Kitty? Frozen peas is all very well. But I can fly you down to the hospital, you know, twenty minutes only …’
Kitty laughed, basking in their concern. ‘What for? We’ve got the best doctor right here.’
‘Where?’ Finch demanded, looking around, protecting real modesty with an assumed version.
James put another log on the fire and they sat down in front of it. There was a basket of fresh-baked bread and three different kinds of cake; Ralf’s chef was well qualified and the lodge food was ambitious.
Finch stretched herself with pleasure and rested her feet in ski socks on the stone hearth. ‘The best moment of the day.’ She sighed.
‘Is that so?’ Ralf teased her.
‘Well, almost,’ she amended after a second. Kitty looked from one face to the other.
When tea was finished Ralf said he must spend an hour in his office. Finch walked between the lodges to his cabin. The light was fading and the fir trees were black cut-outs weighted with swathes of spring snow. The last helicopter, a big twelve-seater, had just brought in a cargo of skiers and their guides. They crossed to their rooms and the main lodge, calling out to each other and to Finch. Yellow lights were showing in the windows of the pretty log buildings.
In Ralf’s rooms Finch undressed and ran a bath. The place was almost as familiar as her own apartment down in Vancouver; she came up here to ski with Ralf as often as she could but this would be her last weekend of the season. In three days’ time she would fly to Kathmandu.
She lay back under the skin of hot water and thought about it, with a knot of nervous anticipation beneath her diaphragm.
She had never been to the Himalaya. Friends and climbers who had seen them warned her that she might be overwhelmed by the scale and the ferocity of the mountains. They were anxious for her, but because they knew her they were hardly surprised that she had chosen to start with Everest itself. For her own part Finch worried less about the climbing and the conditions than about her job as expedition doctor. If she just kept on upwards as far as she could go, she reasoned, that would be good enough. She thought she understood the fine, fascinating balance between barefaced risk and careful calculation that was at the heart of the best mountaineering. And she would never forget the triumph of reaching the top of McKinley, or any of the other peaks she had attempted. She had been expedition doctor on McKinley too and had felt the weight of that keenly, even though the worst emergency she had had to deal with was an abscessed molar. But on Everest they would be higher and further from help, and with less back-up, and the risks were infinitely greater.
If somebody fell. If there was an avalanche. If there was a case of sudden high-altitude cerebral oedema, coma and death … her responsibility to deal with it, quickly and correctly. With the limited medical resources at her disposal.
Finch stared at the silver breath of condensation on the bath taps. She knew that she was a competent doctor. She was interested in high-altitude medicine and had studied it for years. Eighteen months ago she had seen the details of the Mountain People’s expensive Everest expedition and the attached advertisement for an appropriately qualified doctor to accompany them, at a significantly reduced rate. When she flew down to Seattle to be interviewed by the expedition director, who had turned out to be the avuncular, laconic George Heywood, he had asked her in conclusion, ‘D’you think you can do it?’
‘Yes,’ she had answered, truthfully at that moment, meaning both the job and the climb.
‘So do I,’ he agreed.
She had got the job, and her name appeared on the expedition list and the climbing permit beneath those of the guides, Alyn Hood and Ken Kennedy.
Now she looked down at herself with critical attention. Her stomach was flat and taut with sheets of muscle, and her calves and thighs were firm from months of running and tough skiing. She worked out at a climbing gym for four hours every week so her arms and shoulders were strong too. She was fit enough, at least, for whatever lay ahead. She had made sure of that.
And this minute consideration of her body brought her obliquely to the last element of the conundrum: Alyn Hood.
Finch sat up so suddenly that a wave of water washed over the side of the bath. She climbed out quickly and attended to the mopping up, glad to have this focus for her attention. When the job was done she wrapped herself in a towel, wound another around her head, and walked through to the main room to stand by the window and look out into the dusk. She was still standing there, locked into her thoughts, when Ralf came in.
‘You
