CHAPTER 6
Carolyn was resting in Luton Vale, not that far from my old place. When I had first decided to move, I had spent hours trying to work out how I could take her with me, to let her follow me to a new home, away from the shithole we had shared, but as I had no idea as to where I would go, that idea had quickly fallen.

It had been lust at first sight, at least as far as I was concerned, for the idea of anyone lusting after myself had always been, in my view, profoundly risible. I had been shopping in my usual supermarket when I had been ambushed with a crushing hug from Audrey, the girlfriend of Alan, one of my occasional climbing partners. Auds had been as cheeky as ever.

“Hiya, Mike! What you got in your trolleys? I mean, trolley?”

“Leave my trolleys out of it, woman! What are you doing here, anyway? You live the other side of Chapel Street--- didn’t the defences hold out?”

“Well, I had a sneaksy sneaksiness to get me through them. This is Caro; she lives in Telscombe Way”

That was less than half a mile from my own front door back then.

“Hiya Caro!”

She wasn’t a big girl, perhaps 5’3 or so, blonde, glasses, but she had as cheeky a grin as Audrey, and I could see how well they fitted together in terms of their sense of humour. We had swapped predictable jokes, many with equally predictable double meanings, and I thought no more of the meeting for at least an hour after we had parted.

There had been something about her, something that had grabbed me by the hindbrain. As I lay in bed that night, I had found myself musing on odd things such as the shape of her nose and the dimple in her left cheek when she smiled…

The next meeting started with a knock on my front door as I ironed my work shirts. It was, of course, Audrey, with Carolyn in tow. All I had on was a dressing gown, and I found myself in the very odd position of continuing to iron as Auds prattled on about the next climbing trip Alan and I had planned, while Carolyn simply sat and listened. Auds had been oddly insistent as they left.

“You down the Nickel Bag on Friday, Mike? We got a pool match, could do with some support?”

“Don’t know, love”

“We need the support, mate!”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

“That better be a ‘yes’, mate! Anyway, bus is due. See you Friday!”

All through this, Carolyn had said sod all. I spent another night thinking of that dimple, and to no surprise on the part of anyone, I was down at the Bag for the pool match. It was an odd one, in that the pub left the juke box running as the match progressed, and both women were dropping coins and selecting tracks after my arrival.

Caro, as I was already thinking of her, picked two tracks several times, tunes by Led Zep and Cyndi Lauper, and they ended up as two of my favourite songs ever: ‘No Quarter’ and ‘True Colours’.

She was wearing stretch ski trousers combined with slingback stiletto shoes, a loose blouse held away from her chest by the nipples of her breasts and…

I found myself rewinding the whole thing, as my hindbrain continued to react to the way the fabric of her trousers stretched across her bum as she bent over the pool table, and while a small part of my sensible mind was saying ‘She’s doing it for your benefit, Mike’, the rest of my brain was simply going ‘Phwooar!’.

There was a Hawkwind gig at the Queensway Hall in a week: what else could I do but ask her out?

She turned up in loose jeans and trainers, and when my eyebrows lifted, remembering taut fabric and heels, she just grinned and made a comment about planted hooks and comfort.

I was lost from that moment on. We made our way into the hall, settling against the edge of the stage, and as I did my best to relax with a woman who was most definitely getting under my skin, the young man next to me started to bullshit about how well he knew the band. A band I knew well enough to go drinking with, for fuck’s sake.

As he prattled on, a familiar figure appeared on stage to fiddle with some cables, a mass of dark curls falling around his face. I called out a ‘Hiya!’, and as he turned towards me, his face broke into a broad grin.

“Hiya, mate!”

“What’s the plan tonight?”

“Ah, the usual. Loads of stuff to sell the new album, then a shitload of standards. You coming back after? I can leave word on the door if you want?”

“Ah, be good. Got a friend with me, so it’ll be up to her, if you don’t mind”

“Course not, Mike. Option will be there. See you in a bit, either way”

As he disappeared backstage, my Hawkwind-expert new friend asked me whether it had been one of the roadies. I put on my best ‘puzzled’ face.

“I thought you knew all the band? That was Harvey, the bass and keyboards player”

His face fell.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you knew the band?”

His face jerked once more.

“Did he just invite you backstage?”

I answered “Yup, as usual”, before turning away from and ignoring him from then on. Caro was sniggering.

“Thought you were a nice guy”

I leant closer to her.

“I think I am”

She slipped a hand around my back to squeeze my bum.

“That wasn’t a complaint, Mike”

I spent the gig itself with my arms braced against the stage as she danced in their shelter, my new friend having drifted away along the stage, We did end up backstage with the band, and yes, my memories of that were subject to some interruption

What I do remember so, so well is that Caro and I woke up together, and that was the start of the best part of my life, ever.

It was an odd relationship to start with, at least to conventional sensitivities, as we didn’t move in together for a long time. I quickly realised that she was far deeper than the tight trousers and heels had suggested, and then that I was going to take a very, very long time to get to know her properly, if I ever would. I rarely saw her dressed up that way again, for starters, and her logic in keeping separate addresses was flawless.

“We’ve each got our own habits, Mike. Be far easier to knock the sharp edges off if we have breathing room. Like ships, yeah? Sea room. Anyway, how else could I find the time to work my way through the first team at Stockwood Park?”

That was one thing I had learned almost immediately, and cherished deeply: she could never stay serious for long, and a joke would follow almost every statement that could lay claim to any level of gravity.

Unlike Audrey, she was never a climber, but would still come along on club nights at the local wall, which is where I first met Penny, and then Keith. Pen was one of a number of women who would turn up each week, work quietly away at some problem or other, and chat together between bouts of effort. Auds wasn’t exactly part of the little circle, but she always had a smile for them, whereas once Caro started coming along, she fitted in like a missing piece to a jigsaw.

That was another of her talents, for she was never part of the climbing discussions, and made it very clear that she knew absolutely nothing about it worth sharing, she was a hillwalker of the most old-fashioned and solitary kind. Her vice was in gear purchases, particularly tents, and each time we went anywhere near an outdoor equipment shop, she would stop at the entrance, smile at me, and pass me her purse, ‘just in case’.

If a new one-woman tent came out promising a few ounces less in weight than the one she was already using, her bank balance was likely to take a hit. Where Imelda Marcos had rooms filled with shoes, Caro’s flat held ripstop nylon structures, and those conversations with the other women were about such things as the merits of the new carbon fibre versus aluminium alloy.

I had started my climbing ‘career’ in the days of flared jeans and loon pants, and the climbing magazines back then had been filled with pictures of male climbers in unfeasibly tight-thighed denim, the flares rolled up to just below the knee. I still ask myself how on Earth they had ever managed to get off the ground in such clothing, but that all changed when Pete Livesey came onto the scene and introduced the concepts of athleticism rather than simple talent, and fitness rather than just turning up at the crag. Running gear back then involved the tiniest of nylon short-shorts, followed shortly thereafter by Lycra leggings, and of course that became a trend followed by climbers at all levels, just as chalk had become ubiquitous, even on gritstone.

Keith’s first visit to the club involved some decently efficient technical moves performed in the shortest and tightest pair of running shorts I had ever seen, and as he pinch-gripped his way up the two edges that formed our ‘chimney’, I found Caro standing beside me.

“How the hell does he get into those, never mind out of them?”

I looked at her, a little puzzled as to which way her mind was going, still a little uncertain as to how strong my claim was on her, and she reached across to squeeze my backside.

“No, not thinking that, love. Got my bear’s bum right here. Going to have it bare later, if you play your cards right, and I’ve bribed the dealer. No: look at that mouth on Penny. Is she actually bloody drooling?”

Another grin from her.

“That is a very fine bum indeed, but I have two that are much nicer, and they are both mine, all mine, mwahahaha!”

“Two?”

“Don’t pretend my arse wasn’t the first thing you looked at, Mike!”

I shook my head, smiling at her.

“It wasn’t, actually. It was that dimple when you grin, so there”

“Okay, then my arse was the second thing!”

I had to laugh at that.

“Guilty!”

She gave mine another squeeze, turning a much more serious face to me.

“Let’s agree one thing, love: no piss-taking around Penny. She’s been a bit down, a bit solo, more than a bit lonely. I heard you with him earlier, before he got changed”

“Yeah. He’s just started at my place; don’t really know him yet, didn’t realise he was a crag rat”

“Well then, you have an excuse to sit with him for a pint afterwards, and I will see if I can work with Auds to get Penny at the same table”

Another squeeze of my backside, and she turned to walk over to the women’s group.

“Oh, Mike?”

“Yes?”

“That wasn’t a slip. That was my cards on the table. If…”

For the first time, I saw her confidence cracking.

“One deal I haven’t stacked, that one. Not putting pressure on you, just letting you know”

I just nodded at her, as my heart tried to burst out of my chest.

“Not a problem. You set those hooks into Penny, and I’ll do what I can with Keith. You just make sure you grab us all a table, love”