Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 6
LET IT BE
'One, two, three, four, Alex at the cottage door,
Five, six, seven, eight, picking cherries off a plate.'
Alex's favourite nursery rhyme
'When was this picture taken?' I asked Jean MacIntyre, Alex's mother. I wanted to
hear the story behind it. We were sat at Jean's polished pine kitchen table on a
cold December day a couple of years after Alex was killed. I had come to pay my
respects, as I did now and again. Since the last time we'd met, Jean had made a
pilgrimage to Annapurna base camp with Alex's girlfriend, Sarah Richard, and his
friend, Terry Mooney. I wanted to know more about how she felt and about Alex's
early days and I told her as much. I thought maybe one day I'd write a book about
Alex.
The picture she was holding showed her as a younger woman kneeling with
Alex's proud and slightly overweight father, Hamish. She was smiling. Alex's sister,
Libby, kneels between them, her expression coy but happy, her dark hair in a per-
fect ponytail. They are in the garden of the family home, tucked away in a leafy
corner of Letchmore Heath in Hertfordshire. The garden is lovely and like the
house has an individuality that separates it from the more modern, suburban
houses nearby. At their feet is a small mound of ropes, ice axes, pitons, ice screws,
stuff sacks and all the other paraphernalia of an impending climbing trip.
'Now, looking at Libby, I would say 1978?' She hesitated. 'No, that can't be right.
Alex's father died in 1976 so I'd say 1975. That's it. He was sorting all his gear to go
out to Chamonix for the summer. He ran into the house and called us out, so we
followed him. “Stand there and I'll take a photograph,” he told us, so we did.'
His family and his climbing gear: the two things most precious to Alex. It made
perfect sense to me.
Jean covered the table with memorabilia and filled the room with laughter, re-
calling the delight she felt bringing up Alex. There was a stack of scrapbooks and
photo albums of Alex's early years and we went through the lot.
