The Angel in the Stone

By RL Mckinney

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GLENCOE, 1991

‘S he climbs with me,” Finn said. They were in the Clachaig Inn and more than a bit drunk after a day on the Buachaille Etive Mòr. The noise around them had risen on a tide of beer and whisky: the singer was belting out Corries songs, people were laughing and shouting at each other to be heard over him, and the heat was like an enormous, muffling duvet around them.

Calum hadn’t really been sure he’d heard Finn right. An angel made of stone. He had to be taking the piss. Finn was at the peak of one of his up phases, buzzing with manic energy and speaking in a single unpunctuated stream that shifted subject without reason or warning. His craic was magnanimous and people who didn’t know where it came from were drawn to him like midges to an over-bright lamp. Calum’s university mate Andy was sitting on Finn’s other side, and other climbers had gravitated around their table as the night progressed. His reputation was already preceding him.

Finn was nineteen and had been climbing for just over a year. Calum had suggested it, as a way of levering him out of the house during one of his depressions. To say he took to it naturally was something of an understatement; he moved up the rock like Spider-man. He was a perfect climber: long and lean, with oversized hands and a pathological lack of fear.

Looking back now, it was easy enough to see it for what it was, but back then it was thrilling and more than a little contagious. Finn made them all better climbers, pushed them up harder routes, challenged them to stretch beyond what they thought themselves capable of. And when he climbed, all you could really do was tilt your head back and watch. Almost immediately after taking up climbing, Finn emerged from the blackness of his depression and into a jubilant, if surreal, celebration of life.

Late into a wild night, long after last orders, he told them about his guardian angel. “She’s in the stone,” he said. “Actually in it. She moves through the stone beside me.”

“What, like a ghost or something?” Andy asked. His voice was like tyres on gravel. He’d smoked a joint earlier and was prone to any kind of freaky rock jock bullshit.

“Nah.” Finn closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the bench, and his hands rose into the air in front of him, fingers illustrating the way they gripped the tiniest of holds. “I mean… the rock is alive, my friend. She is the rock… they’re one and the same. That’s how I know I’m safe. I won’t die.” He laughed. “Not climbing.” ■