Kitabı oku: «White», sayfa 6

‘I brought him some mineral water.’ Sam smiled. ‘It’s nothing serious, I hope?’

‘This is the doc,’ Adam said.

She was looking at Sam, the total surprise in her face distinctly shaded with irritation.

‘What are you doing here?’ Finch asked coldly.

‘I told you. Bringing the sick man some water.’

‘Do you mind leaving us alone while I examine my patient?’

‘It’s okay. He doesn’t have to go on my account. Do you two know each other?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. Now then, how long ago did the vomiting start?’

‘Twelve hours.’

‘Right.’ Finch took a phial out of her medical bag and shook out a large capsule. ‘I’m going to give you something that should stop it.’

Adam held out his hand and gestured for the bottle of water.

‘Not orally, you’ll vomit it straight up again. It’s a suppository. To be inserted in your rectum. I can do it for you, or you can deal with it yourself, whichever you prefer?’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Good. Try to drink some water over the next few hours, don’t eat anything.’

Even the mention of eating started up another bout of retching. There were dark sweat streaks in Adam’s blond hair. Finch watched him with her fingers resting lightly on his shoulder, then she took the bowl from him and rinsed it in the bathroom.

She’s an angel, Sam thought. If I were ill, would she look after me like this? Put her hand on my shoulder?

‘Okay, Adam. It’s food poisoning. You should start feeling better soon. Try and rest, and I’ll be back to see you at about six. Your friend will stay and keep you company I expect.’ Finch smiled sweetly.

‘Actually, I was hoping …’ Sam tried.

She snapped her bag shut. ‘See you later, Adam. Goodbye … um …’

‘Come on, you know my name.’

Finch was already halfway out of the door.

‘Wait a minute. Look, I’ll be back,’ he called over his shoulder to the wan figure in the bed.

Adam had covered his eyes again with one arm. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he muttered.

Sam ran down the corridor after Finch. Realising that she wasn’t going to shake him off so easily she turned with a flicker of anger and confronted him. ‘Right. So here you are in Kathmandu. What do you want, exactly? I’m busy, I’ve got a job to do.’

‘I want to take you out to dinner. Is that too much to ask?’

‘Did you follow me all the way out here?’

‘Yes. I got here twenty-four hours ago.’

‘Why?’

‘That was how the plane times worked out.’

‘Don’t try to be more of an asshole than you are already. Why did you follow me?’

Sam hesitated. ‘Look, I know it seems flaky. I met you, we talked, I wanted to see you again. But it isn’t as weird as that makes it sound. You talked about Everest and I loved the way it lit you up. My life is at a kind of static point right now, so taking off out of it for a while seemed a good idea and I thought, why not here? I’ve never seen Kathmandu before.’

‘That’s not what you told me.’ She did look faintly mollified now.

‘Why would you have told me where you were staying, if I hadn’t claimed some familiarity with the place?’ Candour, he thought, was probably the best defence.

They were standing in an angle of the main stairway. Rix, Mark Mason and Sandy Jackson came up the stairs from the lobby, and each of them gave Sam a friendly greeting as they passed.

‘Hey doc, how’s the patient?’ Sandy enquired over his shoulder.

‘He’ll live.’ She returned her full attention to Sam. ‘You know everyone.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, sort of. How about tonight?’

Finch sighed. Her hair was tied with what looked like a bootlace and he wanted to slide his finger underneath and hook it off.

‘Listen …’

‘Sam.’

‘Yes. I do remember. Listen carefully, Sam, and save yourself from any more impulses to do with me. One, I am responsible for the health care of a total of twenty people on this expedition. Two, I am here to climb as high as I can go on Everest. I don’t expect to make the summit, necessarily, but I want to do myself justice. I can’t afford it, but I have saved up the money to pay for this. I’ve made a lot of physical and mental preparations. I don’t have room for anything else in my life right now. Nothing.’

She’s saying the same things as those guys last night, Sam thought. Climbers. Peak pervs. Monofocal mountain morons. But even so his longing to untie Finch’s bootlace, to put his fingertip to the corner of her mouth, to hear her voice in his ear, never even wavered. Her steeliness only impressed him and made him want to be with her even more than before. He held up his hands and smiled. ‘It’s only dinner. Two glasses of wine and a curry, dessert optional. It’s not an addition to your workload or an emotional commitment.’

She studied him briefly, working out whether he was threatening or harmless, then put her hand briefly on his arm. ‘No. No thanks, Sam.’

She smiled in a finite way and removed her hand again. Sam was not especially pleased with his way with women, but it did strike him that even in circumstances as unusual as these he had never been turned down with quite such cool certainty. There was more here, he thought, than immediately met the eye.

‘Wait. Do you want to do something genuinely helpful?’ she added.

‘Yes.’

‘Then sit down for a while with Adam Vries. I have to check over my supplies because they’ve just come in from the airport.’

‘I’ll make sure he’s okay.’

‘Thank you.’ She inclined her head and walked away down the stairs. Sam followed her with his eyes, remembering her long legs under the ski parka.

Adam had shifted his position. ‘Huh. I shoved the thing up my butthole. How does she know I’m not going to shit before I puke?’

‘Brilliant medical judgement.’

‘Mh. I wasn’t going to have her sticking her index finger up there.’

‘No. Although, I don’t know …’

Adam managed the ghost of a smile. ‘You too? Forget it. Used to know a brutal med student like that at college. The Fridge, we used to call her.’

‘Is that so?’

Sam settled himself in a chair and rested his feet on another. He could see through a chink between the shutters to the top of a tree and the side walls of some houses. On a balcony level with his sightline an old woman was peeling vegetables over a plastic bowl. A plump baby played at her feet until a young woman, hardly more than a girl, came out and swept him up in her arms. The baby’s thumb plugged into his mouth at once and his head settled on her shoulder. The mother cupped the back of it with her hand, stroking his hair. Sam watched until she had carried the infant inside, then sat for a while with unfocused eyes, wondering what Finch would look like with a baby.

Whatever Adam might think she wasn’t a fridge. Something in her eyes, the turn of her head and hips, made him certain of that. When he looked again he saw that Adam had drifted into a doze. He would have liked to slip away and maybe go out for a beer with Rix and the others, but he was afraid that if he moved he would wake him up. He leaned his head against the chair back and let his own eyes fall shut.

Last night had made him think of his father.

Michael would talk about mountains in the same way, using the very same words. He remembered conversations overheard.

Michael and Mary outside the tent on summer nights when he was supposed to be asleep, and the timbre of his father’s voice in response to Mary’s questions why, and what for – and the always unspoken but equally ever-present words within his own head, danger and falling and dead –

‘I need that reality. If I don’t climb, my grip on reality fades and I feel like nothing exists.’

‘Not me? Or your boy?’

‘Of course. But not in the same way, Mary. Nothing’s the same as the way you feel up there with the rock and space. I’m no good with words, you know that. I can’t explain the need for it, the being more alive than alive. But it’s always there, once you’ve tasted it.’

‘So am I always here, so is Sammy. We don’t want anything to happen to you.’

Sam remembered that he would squirm in his sleeping bag, trying to bury his head, to bring his shoulders up around his ears so that he couldn’t hear any more. But the voices came anyway, as much from within his head as outside it.

Michael would give his warm, reassuring laugh. ‘Nothing will happen. It’s concentration. If you keep your mind on it you don’t make mistakes.’

Sam thought of Michael as he was now, moving painfully around the old house, all alone, with only the television freak shows for company. When I get back, he promised the dim room, I’ll see more of him. Maybe it’s time to move the business a bit closer to home. If there still is a business when I’m through with this caper.

An hour later Adam woke up again. ‘I’ve got a thirst like the desert,’ he whispered.

Sam passed him the water, but held it so that he could only take a sip or two at a time. ‘Otherwise you’ll spew it straight up again.’

‘Thanks, nurse.’ He rubbed his cracked mouth with the back of his hand.

Sam went into the bathroom and found his face-cloth, rinsed it in cool water and handed it to him.

‘Nice. But I’d still rather have the doc to hold my hand.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Is that what all this is about? You should see me when I’m really looking my best.’

‘She told me to keep an eye on you.’

‘Ah. I see.’ Adam lay back again. ‘I appreciate it. I think I may go back to sleep. Don’t need you to watch me any more. Honestly.’

Sam stood up. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

‘Ahuh.’

There was no one to be seen downstairs. Sam hung around for a minute or two, hoping that Finch might appear again, but in the end he gave up. He found a bar a hundred yards from the hotel gates and sat at a rickety iron table under a bamboo awning, keeping watch.

He didn’t have much of an idea about what he was going to do next.

Al was in a taxi on his way in from the airport. He had been to Kathmandu a dozen times before, so did not have much attention to spare for the congested road and the scrubby concrete housing that lined it. He sat motionless in the back of the worn-out Mercedes, his eyes apparently fixed on the grime-marked collar of the driver’s blue shirt.

Karachi had been a last-minute diversion, a visit to an old climbing friend. They had sat for a long time over too many glasses of whisky, not talking very much, merely pursuing their memories in one another’s company. When it was time for Al to leave again Stuart had come to see him off.

‘Drop in and see me on the way back, when you’ve got the big hill in your pocket.’

‘I might just do that.’

Stuart stood watching Al’s back as he moved in the line of veiled women and men in loose shalwar kameez towards the barrier. He stood a full head taller than anyone else, and he looked fit and relaxed. Just before he disappeared Al glanced round and nodded a last goodbye. Stuart lifted his hand and held it up long after Al had gone. They had known each other for many years and had said casual goodbyes before a score of expeditions. That was what happened and this was no different. History made no difference. It was the present and the future tenses that counted for climbers.

As his taxi approached the Buddha’s Garden Al was acknowledging to himself that the stopoff to see Stuart Frost had been a delaying tactic. He hadn’t wanted to get to Kathmandu, to join this group, until the last moment. But now that he was here he focused his mind on what was to be done. It was a job, like any other, as well as a climb.

As he was checking in, with his weather-beaten packs piled beside him, George Heywood came out of the bar. He shook Al’s hand, enclosing it warmly in both of his. George was bald, with a seamed face and sharp grey eyes.

‘Good to see you, Al. Thought you might be going AWOL at the last minute.’

‘Why?’

George laughed. ‘Now I see you I realise I was worrying about nothing. You look good.’

‘Everyone here?’

‘Yup. You’re the last.’

‘Good.’

‘Ken’s in the bar, with Pemba and Mingma. You want to go and change or something, or will you come and join us?’

‘I’ll come,’ Al said.

The three men stood up when they saw Al’s tall frame following George to the table. Pemba Chhotta and Mingma Nawang were the climbing sirdars – experienced Sherpa mountaineers who would be sharing the guiding duties with Al and Ken. They had worked with Al in the past and they showed their liking for him in broad smiles of greeting.

‘Namaste, Alyn,’ Pemba said formally.

Ken was more laconic. He clasped Al’s hand very briefly. ‘Yeah, mate. Here we are.’

‘Ken. I saw Stu in Karachi. Sends you his best.’

Their eyes met briefly. Everyone sat down and George ordered more drinks. There was the business of supplies and logistics and porters and yaks to be discussed, then George briefly described their six clients, mostly for the benefit of the two Sherpas who would act as second guides to Ken and Al. The two Britons had been on Everest the year before, but with a different company who they believed had let them down. Now they had come to George and his US-based Mountain People to make one more attempt. The two Americans were experienced mountaineers too; the Australian was a less well-known quantity but he had been recommended by previous clients.

The Canadian doctor, George explained, had climbed McKinley in a group led by Ed Vansittart. Everyone at the table nodded. Ed had written to him to say that Dr Buchanan was an excellent medic, who really understood the demands of high-altitude climbing. She was in a unique position in the group because she had a staff role, but she was also a client who hoped to reach the summit with the rest of them. Although not highly experienced herself, she was physically strong and as tough-minded as any mountaineer he had ever met. She was also good company, he had added.

‘I think we’re lucky to have her with us,’ George concluded. ‘Al agreed with me.’

‘Seems A-okay to me,’ Ken said.

Al listened impassively to all of this, with the edge of his thumbnail minutely chafing the corner of his mouth.

George was folding up his lists. ‘And Adam Vries is sick.’

Ken clicked his tongue.

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Al.

‘Just a gut thing. A day or two, the doc says. We leave the day after tomorrow, as planned.’

Once the last pieces of equipment and batches of food supplies had been assembled, there was nothing more for the expedition members to do in Kathmandu but enjoy what would almost certainly be their last hot baths and clean sheets for two months.

‘Another beer?’ George asked them all, by way of a conclusion.

Ken had glanced up. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said in a warmer voice than he had used before. The rest of them looked in the same direction.

Finch was hesitating in the doorway. Filling most of the wall behind the little group of climbers was a huge colour photograph. Against a hyper-real blue sky stood the huge bracket ridge and summit of Nuptse. Everest stood to the left, farther back and seeming smaller than its neighbour, and in the foreground was the monstrous spillage of the icefall and the dirty grey rubble of the Khumbu glacier.

George beckoned cheerfully, his head bobbing up to obliterate the South Col. ‘Here’s our doc. Come and join us, Finch.’ She stood at the edge of the group. Ken levered himself out of his wicker chair and offered it, but she only smiled at him. ‘I’ve just been to see Adam again.’

‘And?’

‘It’s a bad bout. But he should be okay to leave as planned.’

‘Finch, this is Pemba, and Mingma.’ She shook hands with each of them. ‘And Alyn Hood.’

Al had risen to his feet. He was much taller than Finch but when their eyes met they seemed on a level.

‘Hello,’ Finch said quietly.

Al said nothing at all. He held on to her hand for one second, then carefully released it. In the confusion of introductions no one else noticed the way that their eyes briefly locked and the flash of acknowledgement that passed between them. No one could have guessed that they knew each other already, or deduced a single episode of their history from the way they moved quietly apart again.

FIVE

The helicopter ride was nothing like flying the trim A-Star with Ralf across the serene silvery expanses of the Canadian mountains. The Asian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Lukla was a pensioned-off ex-Russian machine that lifted off the runway abruptly, without pre-take-off formalities, and juddered over the grey haze of the valley towards the mountains.

Finch sat in her metal seat and tightened the webbing strap across her lap, trying not to think about crashing into the fields beneath them. Her knees were wedged against a mountain of expedition baggage secured under netting that filled the centre of the cabin. She had checked them on board already, but she searched out the barrels in which her medical supplies were packed and kept her eye on them as if they might jump up and roll away. Anything was better than looking out of the porthole behind her head, either at the view down to steep ridges striped with different coloured crops or upwards to the blanket of mist that blotted out the peaks. Bundled up beside her with his chin on his chest was Adam Vries. The noise of the engines made conversation difficult, but she nudged him and raised her eyebrows, you okay?

He nodded wearily. Two days of sickness had left him grey and listless.

The helicopter tilted sharply and changed direction, climbing steadily. Finch closed her eyes and swallowed hard to equalise the pressure in her ears. When she looked up she saw that Sam McGrath was grinning at her from his seat on the other side of the netting. She gave him what she intended as a glare in return. He had seen her abject fear on the bad flight up to Vancouver and she wasn’t pleased to have him watching this fresh ordeal.

She wasn’t quite sure yet how he had insinuated himself, but he was here for the ride and maybe a couple of days’ trekking with the expedition on the walk-in towards Base Camp at the foot of the Everest icefall. She hadn’t seen him for the whole of the last day in Kathmandu and had concluded that after all he had been easy enough to shake off. Her relief at this had, she was certain, been entirely untinged by regret. And then, in this morning’s bleary dawn at the airport, there he was again. Standing joking with Rix and Mark Mason at the check-in for Lukla, towering over the packs of Japanese tourists who were waiting to see if the weather would lift and allow them to embark on sightseeing flights around the Everest massif.

‘What’s he doing here?’ she had murmured to George.

‘They went out on the beer again and Rix and Sandy just asked me if he could come along for part of the walk. All the guys seem to have really taken to him.’ George shrugged. ‘Makes no difference to me, so long as he pays his way. Might even be helpful. He looks in good shape. You know him anyway, don’t you?’

‘No. I just met him once, on a flight into Vancouver.’

‘Coincidence.’

Finch noticed that Sam fitted easily into the group. He wore well-trodden hiking boots and similar clothes to the other men, and he looked just as fit and testosteronically confident. But of course, she remembered, he was an almost-Olympic marathon runner. He was probably stronger than any of them.

‘Good morning,’ he said cheerfully to her. And then, ‘You’re not happy about this, are you?’

‘Is my happiness or otherwise particularly relevant?’

‘Of course it is.’ He had mobile eyebrows and they flattened now in a straight, sincere line. There was a puppyishness about him that irritated her.

She made an effort to sound neutral. ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me if you walk in with the expedition. It’s just a few days’ hiking.’

He smiled at her. ‘I’m looking forward to it. Magnificent scenery, I believe.’

Thin veils of mist blurred the blue view through the portholes and the helicopter rocked through the bumpy air. The mist thinned into streaks, and above and beyond puffed great towers of cumulonimbus. Warm, moist air was sucked up from the valleys to funnel upwards. The weather up here was usually changeable, often threatening, always unpredictable.

She looked along the line of faces. Mingma and Pemba were flanked by two other Sherpas and beyond them was Al. He sat with his head tipped back and his eyes closed, apparently asleep, oblivious to the white-knuckle flight. Two deep lines hooked the corners of his mouth. She glanced away again, afraid that he might suddenly open his eyes and catch her looking at him. At the communal dinner table last night it was he who had been watching her. Under his gaze she felt herself grow self-conscious, thick-fingered with her cutlery. Across Vern Ecker’s shoulder he had asked how she was and if she felt ready for the climb. Yes, she had assured him. She was glad to be here and she was ready for the challenge. The buzz of other people’s conversation swelled between them.

‘Hey Al. Tell Ted about the time you were with Vansittart on Lhotse.’

He had turned away and Finch found herself staring down at her plate, at a mess of congealing food.

The airstrip at the mountain village of Lukla was very short, sloping uphill and terminating abruptly beneath a rocky cliff. As the helicopter descended Finch was pleased at least not to be in a fixed-wing plane. The fringes of the tiny airfield were packed with people and the rough brown backs of yaks.

As they gratefully disembarked Sam said to her, ‘Better than the last flight we were on.’

Al heard him and looked sharply from Sam to Finch. He frowned slightly, apparently noticing Sam for the first time.

The expedition baggage was manhandled into the open air. Another shipment had been flown up the day before and it was waiting, tagged with Mountain People labels, to be loaded on to the waiting yaks. The porters who had come down to meet the flight surged around the barrels and packs, with George and Pemba directing their removal. There was a hubbub of shouting and counter-commands, and a press of people. White-faced, Adam tried to pitch in and establish order. Seeing that she would only compound the confusion, Finch walked slowly away. She sat on a low stone wall and looked up the valley. The slopes of the steep hills were clothed with trees and the heights beyond were shrouded in cloud. The cold air was scented with smoke and yak dung. Lukla was a peppering of whitewashed stone houses skirted by muddy lanes.

Two small children sidled along the wall and stopped in front of her. The older one, a girl, wore a long skirt of printed cotton and dirty pink socks inside very large boots. The headscarf she had tied over her jet-black hair made her look like a miniature old lady. She held very firmly with one hand to the wrist of her much smaller brother. His face was a dirty, beaming mess of dried mucus.

‘Namaste,’ Finch said quietly.

They returned the greeting even more quietly, their mouths just framing the word as they stared at her.

It took almost two hours for the train of porters and yaks to be loaded and ready to leave. The climbers set out at an easy pace, in twos and threes, following a track that slowly unwound away from Lukla. They were already at a significant altitude, almost 3000 metres, and there were good reasons for not moving too fast. Finch stretched her legs to find her stride and flexed her shoulders under the weight of her pack. A pinch of nervous tension tightened in her stomach and eased again as her muscles warmed to their work. The grey-white waters of a glacier-fed river ran in a chasm in the rock and from time to time the path was carried across it on high, swaying bridges made of rope and planks. The loaded yaks plodded over, one or two of them balking until the porters whacked their hindquarters with sticks.

It was pleasant walking on the firm, well-trodden ground. The trees were budding and under their knobby branches lay the thick layers of many seasons’ dead leaves. The air was moist and pleasantly cool. Ahead of her Finch could see Rix’s big grey head and Mark Mason’s close-shaved skull bobbing together. Occasionally Rix gave a noisy hoot of laughter but the note was dampened and swallowed by the crash of water. Finch gazed upwards to see how the rest of the expedition was faring. Ted and Vern, the two efficient Americans, moved quickly and comfortably.

She had been half dreading that Sam McGrath might clamp himself to her side all the way, but after asking politely as they were setting out if she needed any help he had fallen in beside Sandy Jackson. Sandy’s ponytail extended over the top of his pack like a small dead animal. Ken Kennedy was a little way ahead of them with Pemba and George. Al walked alone, seemingly without expending any effort, but still at a loping pace that carried him a steadily increasing distance ahead of the group.

After a while Finch looked round and saw that Adam was way back at the rear of the column, behind Mingma who had been given the job of backmarker. Adam was walking very slowly, with his head down. She sat on a rock at the side of the path, pretending to rest, and waited until he caught up.

‘How are you doing?’

‘So-so,’ he muttered.

She offered her water bottle to him but he shook his head. ‘Had plenty. Anyway you don’t want me spitting germs into it.’

‘Still feeling rough?’

‘Just a bit.’

Finch lifted her pack again and walked on beside him. They passed through two or three settlements, little groups of low stone or whitewashed houses with slate or corrugated roofs. Children ran out to watch them go by and the women nodded their greetings, Namaste, namaste.

In the middle of the second day’s walking they crossed a plank-and-rope bridge suspended hundreds of feet above the gorge. Immediately they left the valley and the river in its cleft of rock, and began to climb in earnest. Looking up, Finch could distinguish the zigzag of a path marking the face of a steep wooded cliff. This was the way to Namche Bazaar, the ancient capital of the Sherpa people. The route was busy with files of trekkers and yak trains, and groups of villagers with heavy baskets supported by bands around their foreheads, heading to the Saturday market in Namche.

It was a long ascent. Finch laboured in the wake of the expedition’s heavily laden yaks, stopping often to rest and to let her breathing steady itself. This was the first serious test of altitude acclimatisation and she felt a warning thumbprint of pain at the front of her skull. The river dwindled in the valley bottom and the path still climbed. It was shady under the overhanging trees, with their moss-festooned branches, and very quiet, and she concentrated on the physical effort and let her mind wander. The pressure in her head gradually eased. Flowering rhododendrons made lakes of pink and yellow in craters of sunlight.

When she looked back she saw Adam turning a bend further down the mountain with Mingma beside him. He was walking more steadily now. No one else had reported any ailments.

Mark Mason had a cough, she had heard it when she woke last night, but when she asked him about it in the morning he had shrugged off her question. ‘Just the filthy air in Kat. I’ll be fine, all the way up here.’

Rix’s exuberance and aggression made his companion seem relatively quiet by comparison, but Finch still saw that there was determination in every line of Mark’s tense posture and in his flat, unemphatic voice.

It was late in the afternoon when the column of climbers and porters wound into the town of Namche, set in a horseshoe on a ledge like an amphitheatre above the steep gorge. The houses and lodges were square, flat-faced with small-paned windows framed in bright-blue and with shallow blue or green roofs. The steep streets were muddy, lined on either side with haphazard shops selling hippy clothing, food and second-hand climbing gear. The altitude was just over 3000 metres and as soon as the sun went down the air grew cold. Finch took off her pack and pulled out a fleece jacket and a hat with ear flaps as she plodded up the steps to the expedition’s guest house. The first arrivals from the expedition were already sprawled on a balcony overlooking the street.

‘Wanna beer?’ Sandy Jackson called down to her in greeting.

‘Tea,’ she shouted back.

Vern Ecker and Sandy made room at the wooden table and a young Sherpani put a glass of black tea in front of her. Finch drank thirstily. From here upwards, they would all aim to drink four litres of liquid a day, to counteract the dehydrating effects of altitude. Mark was coughing again.

‘Everyone okay?’ she asked the group. Al Hood was sitting a little to one side. He had taken off his boots and his feet in thick socks were resting on another chair.

‘Yeah, pretty good. Is Adam here?’ Vern asked. His face was already stubbled with a growth of pepper-and-salt beard.

‘He and Mingma were just behind,’ Finch answered. ‘Should be here any minute.’

Sam came across to the table. He had zipped up a red parka around his chin and he looked eager and bright-eyed. Finch sighed inwardly.

‘Can I join you?’

The other climbers shuffled their seats but on the crowded balcony the only spare chair was under Al’s feet. He shifted them slowly, unwillingly.

‘We haven’t been introduced,’ Sam said, sitting down and smiling at him. ‘I’m Sam McGrath.’

‘Who are you?’ Al asked.

‘Sam McGrath.’

‘I heard your name, Sam. I was asking who you are.’

‘That’s a big question. Who is any man?’

There was a small beat of silence.

Sandy wound his forefinger in his ponytail, fondling it as if it were a pet as he listened to the little exchange with a pucker of a smile.