A sense of balance
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section7mfuA sense of balance
Illya can climb anything. (Specially for mrua7, who asked for more Cambridge stories)
“Where did you learn to climb?” enquired Napoleon.
“Cambridge, of course,” came the slightly breathless answer.
“I thought Cambridge was flat.”
“It is, mostly, but the buildings aren’t.”
Napoleon shaded his eyes as he looked up at his partner, perched on a window sill above, apparently unperturbed by the height and precariousness of his situation. He wondered if Illya had ever learned to float on a rising current of air – it might be a useful attribute occasionally.
“OK, I’m coming down. Look out.” And he slid hand over hand down the rope, alighting delicately beside Napoleon. “Let’s get out of here.”
They ran round the corner of the building, just in time to avoid the cascade of glass and brickwork that exploded from the window of the room where Illya had left explosives. Keeping back, they heard a roar of anger and alarm, and the sound of running feet.
“Waste of good sisal rope, but it should keep them busy, for a while,” said Illya. “Now, let’s get that kid.”
It was always a dull business writing up a mission – it lacked the adrenaline rush that formed the chief addiction of the special agent. Illya, however, (unlike Napoleon) tended to have it straight in his mind before setting his fingers to the typewriter. It was he, therefore, who often completed his side of things long before his partner managed to think up a first paragraph.
“Let’s go and have lunch somewhere,” said Napoleon, throwing down his pen – unlike Illya, he wrote in long-hand rather than using the typewriter, and handed it to one of the secretaries to type up (Illya refused to do it for him, saying he couldn’t decipher Napoleon’s scrawl).
“Who’s paying?”
Napoleon sighed. Parsimonious Russian.
“All right, it’s on me.” Then he had a thought. “And you can tell me about how you learned to climb.”
“Deal.”
“Napoleon, I’ve seen you climbing buildings.”
“Yes, but using strategically placed ladders. I never learned to shin up a rope – down one, yes – nor a drainpipe either. But I’ve never seen you at a loss,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of the most perfect steak in New York. “I mean, you got out of the well those Nazarone girls threw you down. And you’ve climbed up and down drainpipes, silos, railroad cars, and I don’t know what, all over. How did you learn to do it?”
“It’s just training; particularly for upper body strength – and I suppose not being afraid of heights helps if you’re climbing a high building.”
“So, did Cambridge allow it? It seems unlikely.”
“Of course not. You had to avoid getting caught and being sent down. It’s called night-climbing. Students do it a lot just for fun, but of course college gates are locked at night, so if you want to get back after curfew, you have to climb in, and that might mean scaling quite a high wall.”
“Don’t some have railings around them?”
“Some, but a lot of those have revolving spikes – not many young men like to risk losing their paternity potential. Though some tried, more-or-less successfully.”
Napoleon winced theatrically.
“No, you had to learn how to choose the right drainpipe, or the best chimney…”
“Chimney?”
“A small gap between two walls – like in mountaineering, where you have your back against one wall, and your feet against the other and you walk up, using your back, knees and hands. There are quite a few good ones – there is a well-known one on King’s chapel, which is blocked now I believe – but you had to be very careful with drainpipes.”
For once, the subject of Illya’s exposition didn’t send Napoleon to sleep. It sounded terrifying.
“Drainpipes have to be secure; fixed at regular intervals; and there has to be room behind them for your fingers. There are some on the front of Caius…”
“Keys have drainpipes?”
“Gonville and Caius College – it’s spelled like the Latin C.A.I.U.S., but pronounced Keys because that was the English name of the second founder. The college is called that for short.”
Just another thing to trip over in British life… you had to know how to pronounce the names, or you were marked out as Not One of Us.
“OK, drainpipes on keys?”
“They would be a perfect forty-foot climb to the roof, if you could only get your fingers behind them.”
Then there were the ones that could come away from the wall, just as you got so far up; and the occasionally crumbling stonework that you needed for support. And there was the matter of the kind of clothes you should wear. Not rough tweed jackets – the fabric could snag on rough soot-ingrained stone; not shorts – rough stone wasn’t good for skin; rubber-soled shoes were essential, especially if the night became damp, though bare feet were best if that happened; definitely not boots – the mantra was “do no damage”.
“Of course, some wanted to put something up there to show they’d done it, or went up specially to put a hat or a chamber pot on a pinnacle – a bit juvenile, and very expensive for the colleges to remove; they have to hire steeplejacks.”
“You didn’t do that, then?”
“We knew we’d got up there, no-one else needed to know.”
“Like where? And you said we?”
“You should always climb with someone, it’s only sense. I used to go with a friend. We once did the pinnacles of King’s chapel. That’s a climb! A hundred and sixty feet, all four.”
“And you did that?”
“Yes. It’s quite hard.”
“Did anyone ever get stuck and lose their nerve?”
Illya looked down at his plate. “Sometimes. Usually they got over it and went on. Sometimes they needed rescuing.”
“Was it you that got stuck, or you that did the rescuing?”
“I didn’t get stuck.”
“Come on, Illya. What happened?”
“Nothing much. But I nearly got caught.”
****************It was a fine night. Illya had stayed late and the college gates were already shut. His friend in Caius was happy for him to sleep on his floor – he could hide under the bed in the morning if the bedmaker came in; she didn’t often clean under there. But Illya knew the route down the south face of the college into Senate House Passage. That would mean he could nip down there, round the Old Library, and get into the grounds of King’s from the gate next to Clare. His friend cautioned against it – it was a known route among the night-climbers, and by now also among the proctors and bulldogs. Best to wait till midnight or one o’clock when the streets were deserted.
Being young, immortal, and keen to test his memory of the climb, Illya decided he would do it anyway.
As midnight struck, he said goodbye and stepped out onto the leads just by what was known as Senate House Leap – the seven-foot gap between Caius and the roof of the Senate House. At the end, there was a tricky traverse to negotiate to get to the top of a bay window over the south entrance gate. From there it was a delicate matter of letting yourself down via narrow decorative ledges, the head of the statue of some celebrated former member of the college, various quite wide window ledges, a window with a cross bar, and finally a drop (a rather long drop) from the arch over the gate to the pavement below. Tonight, however, he met a night-climber in a funk.
The boy was stuck on the top of the bay window, as if paralysed, unable to make the traverse to the left, and equally unable to go back down the face of the college. Illya made the dangerous traverse, round the decorative finial, and joined him.
It’s a bad idea to whisper, half way up a building at night; it sounds nefarious and draws unwelcome attention. You must keep a low but normal voice. “Why are you on your own?” he said. “You shouldn’t climb alone.”
“I thought I could do it,” the youth muttered. “… you’re alone.”
“You’ll have to make up your mind to go one way or the other. Which way do you want?”
“I can’t do it.”
“Of course you can. This isn’t your first time, I take it?”
“No.”
“Well, you know you can do it, then. Think about standing on top of a ladder with only the wall to hold onto.”
“I suppose so… Are you foreign?”
“What has that to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” the boy said sulkily.
“Right. Well, stand up – face the wall. Don’t look down, stupid!”
The boy stood up facing the wall. “Now, feel the stone. It’s rough, gritty. You can feel it under your hand, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Concentrate on that. Now, move your left foot onto the ledge. Keep your hand gently touching the wall – it’s just for balance.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. Move it along and lift your right foot onto the ledge. You’re quite safe. Balance on your toes, don’t try to cling to the wall. Move to the left, one foot at a time. There’s the bit that sticks out, now. You’ll have to get onto the ... That’s it.”
The boy responded to this irritable commentary with a stiffened upper lip, and made the traverse successfully, arriving safely on the leads of the roof.
Illya called softly, “If you bang on the next window, you can tell him I sent you to spend the night there.”
He was about to let himself down from the top of the bay, when a window in the tower above opened and a head poked out.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing out there? What’s all the row about?”
It was a don. Damnation. He could only be polite and tell the truth.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I was just helping someone who was stuck.”
“Good lord, man. I thought it was a trumpeting herd of elephants. Which way are you going now?”
“Down to the gate, sir.”
“Need a rope? …No? Don’t push outwards on whatshisname’s head – downwards is best.” And he shut the window with a snap.
The rest of the descent was as straightforward as these climbs usually are – not very easy, and not very safe – but he made it to the ground, breaking neither his own nor the statue’s neck, and, having not so much as sprained his ankle, set off at a run, down Senate House Passage. The rest, by comparison was simple – even negotiating the sharp revolving spikes of the railings by the side gate. That was just a matter of weight distribution, a good sense of balance and sheer dumb luck.
“And that – don, d’you call him? – just let you go?”
“Yes, a College Fellow – a tutor; he’d obviously been up and down that route himself as a student. He was just annoyed about being disturbed.”
==========================================================================Notes
Night climbing, or “buildering” has become commonplace on modern high-rise buildings round the world. In Cambridge, it started in the 1890s, and continues, despite CCTV and motion sensors.
I’m indebted to The night climbers of Cambridge by Whipplesnaith (aka Noel Symington), 1937, for the details of night-climbs, the helpfulness of dons, and the photographs. There’s a version online.
Funk in English usage means paralysing fear, sometimes with the connotation of cowardice.
The proctors ensure good order and discipline in the university. The bulldogs are the Cambridge University Constabulary.
Bedmaker: called “bedders” by the young gentlemen and other academics (“scouts” at Oxford), but, more politely, “bedmakers” by their colleagues. They clean the students’ and Fellows’ rooms.
Illya can climb anything. (Specially for mrua7, who asked for more Cambridge stories)
“Where did you learn to climb?” enquired Napoleon.
“Cambridge, of course,” came the slightly breathless answer.
“I thought Cambridge was flat.”
“It is, mostly, but the buildings aren’t.”
Napoleon shaded his eyes as he looked up at his partner, perched on a window sill above, apparently unperturbed by the height and precariousness of his situation. He wondered if Illya had ever learned to float on a rising current of air – it might be a useful attribute occasionally.
“OK, I’m coming down. Look out.” And he slid hand over hand down the rope, alighting delicately beside Napoleon. “Let’s get out of here.”
They ran round the corner of the building, just in time to avoid the cascade of glass and brickwork that exploded from the window of the room where Illya had left explosives. Keeping back, they heard a roar of anger and alarm, and the sound of running feet.
“Waste of good sisal rope, but it should keep them busy, for a while,” said Illya. “Now, let’s get that kid.”
****************
The hostage was restored to her family, and the two agents returned to their headquarters to report.It was always a dull business writing up a mission – it lacked the adrenaline rush that formed the chief addiction of the special agent. Illya, however, (unlike Napoleon) tended to have it straight in his mind before setting his fingers to the typewriter. It was he, therefore, who often completed his side of things long before his partner managed to think up a first paragraph.
“Let’s go and have lunch somewhere,” said Napoleon, throwing down his pen – unlike Illya, he wrote in long-hand rather than using the typewriter, and handed it to one of the secretaries to type up (Illya refused to do it for him, saying he couldn’t decipher Napoleon’s scrawl).
“Who’s paying?”
Napoleon sighed. Parsimonious Russian.
“All right, it’s on me.” Then he had a thought. “And you can tell me about how you learned to climb.”
“Deal.”
******************
“Napoleon, I’ve seen you climbing buildings.”
“Yes, but using strategically placed ladders. I never learned to shin up a rope – down one, yes – nor a drainpipe either. But I’ve never seen you at a loss,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of the most perfect steak in New York. “I mean, you got out of the well those Nazarone girls threw you down. And you’ve climbed up and down drainpipes, silos, railroad cars, and I don’t know what, all over. How did you learn to do it?”
“It’s just training; particularly for upper body strength – and I suppose not being afraid of heights helps if you’re climbing a high building.”
“So, did Cambridge allow it? It seems unlikely.”
“Of course not. You had to avoid getting caught and being sent down. It’s called night-climbing. Students do it a lot just for fun, but of course college gates are locked at night, so if you want to get back after curfew, you have to climb in, and that might mean scaling quite a high wall.”
“Don’t some have railings around them?”
“Some, but a lot of those have revolving spikes – not many young men like to risk losing their paternity potential. Though some tried, more-or-less successfully.”
Napoleon winced theatrically.
“No, you had to learn how to choose the right drainpipe, or the best chimney…”
“Chimney?”
“A small gap between two walls – like in mountaineering, where you have your back against one wall, and your feet against the other and you walk up, using your back, knees and hands. There are quite a few good ones – there is a well-known one on King’s chapel, which is blocked now I believe – but you had to be very careful with drainpipes.”
For once, the subject of Illya’s exposition didn’t send Napoleon to sleep. It sounded terrifying.
“Drainpipes have to be secure; fixed at regular intervals; and there has to be room behind them for your fingers. There are some on the front of Caius…”
“Keys have drainpipes?”
“Gonville and Caius College – it’s spelled like the Latin C.A.I.U.S., but pronounced Keys because that was the English name of the second founder. The college is called that for short.”
Just another thing to trip over in British life… you had to know how to pronounce the names, or you were marked out as Not One of Us.
“OK, drainpipes on keys?”
“They would be a perfect forty-foot climb to the roof, if you could only get your fingers behind them.”
Then there were the ones that could come away from the wall, just as you got so far up; and the occasionally crumbling stonework that you needed for support. And there was the matter of the kind of clothes you should wear. Not rough tweed jackets – the fabric could snag on rough soot-ingrained stone; not shorts – rough stone wasn’t good for skin; rubber-soled shoes were essential, especially if the night became damp, though bare feet were best if that happened; definitely not boots – the mantra was “do no damage”.
“Of course, some wanted to put something up there to show they’d done it, or went up specially to put a hat or a chamber pot on a pinnacle – a bit juvenile, and very expensive for the colleges to remove; they have to hire steeplejacks.”
“You didn’t do that, then?”
“We knew we’d got up there, no-one else needed to know.”
“Like where? And you said we?”
“You should always climb with someone, it’s only sense. I used to go with a friend. We once did the pinnacles of King’s chapel. That’s a climb! A hundred and sixty feet, all four.”
“And you did that?”
“Yes. It’s quite hard.”
“Did anyone ever get stuck and lose their nerve?”
Illya looked down at his plate. “Sometimes. Usually they got over it and went on. Sometimes they needed rescuing.”
“Was it you that got stuck, or you that did the rescuing?”
“I didn’t get stuck.”
“Come on, Illya. What happened?”
“Nothing much. But I nearly got caught.”
****************
Being young, immortal, and keen to test his memory of the climb, Illya decided he would do it anyway.
As midnight struck, he said goodbye and stepped out onto the leads just by what was known as Senate House Leap – the seven-foot gap between Caius and the roof of the Senate House. At the end, there was a tricky traverse to negotiate to get to the top of a bay window over the south entrance gate. From there it was a delicate matter of letting yourself down via narrow decorative ledges, the head of the statue of some celebrated former member of the college, various quite wide window ledges, a window with a cross bar, and finally a drop (a rather long drop) from the arch over the gate to the pavement below. Tonight, however, he met a night-climber in a funk.
The boy was stuck on the top of the bay window, as if paralysed, unable to make the traverse to the left, and equally unable to go back down the face of the college. Illya made the dangerous traverse, round the decorative finial, and joined him.
It’s a bad idea to whisper, half way up a building at night; it sounds nefarious and draws unwelcome attention. You must keep a low but normal voice. “Why are you on your own?” he said. “You shouldn’t climb alone.”
“I thought I could do it,” the youth muttered. “… you’re alone.”
“You’ll have to make up your mind to go one way or the other. Which way do you want?”
“I can’t do it.”
“Of course you can. This isn’t your first time, I take it?”
“No.”
“Well, you know you can do it, then. Think about standing on top of a ladder with only the wall to hold onto.”
“I suppose so… Are you foreign?”
“What has that to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” the boy said sulkily.
“Right. Well, stand up – face the wall. Don’t look down, stupid!”
The boy stood up facing the wall. “Now, feel the stone. It’s rough, gritty. You can feel it under your hand, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Concentrate on that. Now, move your left foot onto the ledge. Keep your hand gently touching the wall – it’s just for balance.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. Move it along and lift your right foot onto the ledge. You’re quite safe. Balance on your toes, don’t try to cling to the wall. Move to the left, one foot at a time. There’s the bit that sticks out, now. You’ll have to get onto the ... That’s it.”
The boy responded to this irritable commentary with a stiffened upper lip, and made the traverse successfully, arriving safely on the leads of the roof.
Illya called softly, “If you bang on the next window, you can tell him I sent you to spend the night there.”
He was about to let himself down from the top of the bay, when a window in the tower above opened and a head poked out.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing out there? What’s all the row about?”
It was a don. Damnation. He could only be polite and tell the truth.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I was just helping someone who was stuck.”
“Good lord, man. I thought it was a trumpeting herd of elephants. Which way are you going now?”
“Down to the gate, sir.”
“Need a rope? …No? Don’t push outwards on whatshisname’s head – downwards is best.” And he shut the window with a snap.
The rest of the descent was as straightforward as these climbs usually are – not very easy, and not very safe – but he made it to the ground, breaking neither his own nor the statue’s neck, and, having not so much as sprained his ankle, set off at a run, down Senate House Passage. The rest, by comparison was simple – even negotiating the sharp revolving spikes of the railings by the side gate. That was just a matter of weight distribution, a good sense of balance and sheer dumb luck.
************************
Napoleon’s palms were damp just thinking about it.“And that – don, d’you call him? – just let you go?”
“Yes, a College Fellow – a tutor; he’d obviously been up and down that route himself as a student. He was just annoyed about being disturbed.”
==========================================================================
Night climbing, or “buildering” has become commonplace on modern high-rise buildings round the world. In Cambridge, it started in the 1890s, and continues, despite CCTV and motion sensors.
I’m indebted to The night climbers of Cambridge by Whipplesnaith (aka Noel Symington), 1937, for the details of night-climbs, the helpfulness of dons, and the photographs. There’s a version online.
Funk in English usage means paralysing fear, sometimes with the connotation of cowardice.
The proctors ensure good order and discipline in the university. The bulldogs are the Cambridge University Constabulary.
Bedmaker: called “bedders” by the young gentlemen and other academics (“scouts” at Oxford), but, more politely, “bedmakers” by their colleagues. They clean the students’ and Fellows’ rooms.
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no subject
Date: 2017-09-19 02:54 pm (UTC)Well done!
no subject
Date: 2017-09-19 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-19 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-19 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-22 06:20 pm (UTC)I am full of admiration for both you and Illya. Writing that narrative seems nearly as harrowing as the actual climb. Thanks for the adventure.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-22 08:40 pm (UTC)