BREAKFAST TIME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 631, 3 August 1951, Page 8

BREAKFAST TIME

by

L.

Cleveland

wriggled the forefinger of his left hand up inside the headpiece of his sleeping bag and edged the flap'a fractidn. of an inich away from: his right eye. This-he opened imperceptibly so that he could just peer through his eyelashes. without anyone knowing he was awake. "They, must be getting hungry by now," he thought. Somebody. would have to get up before long to ‘cook breakfast. A shrewd man would lie low for a while. Urrrgh! It was cold. ‘No door on the old hut. Frost on the tussocks outside. No mattresses on the bunks and the chill coming up through the sacking they were made from, Now the cold was piercing through the opening he had made in the sleeping bag and pricking at the tip of his left ear. The right one. still. comfortably in the lining of his bag, was aching with warmth. They had both- been frostbitten on a climb last winter, were going to’ remind him of it all this one. Getting up was the worst thing about being in the mountains, just as. getting into. the bag with.a hot drink and a biscuit or perhaps a: piece of, cake: seemed the best, he thought. sleepily. How he hated gefting "Up. Alwayswondered at these early morning starts why he bothered coming into the hills. at all. All the wet boots, damp socks, frozen. -gear, lukewarm, _half-digested food, freezing . darkness, blundering around -hours before the sun... But later, sweating ‘on the bere ‘rocks half way up some ridge, or catapulting down the slopes of a fast ski run one felt better. Curious how one’s illusions about mountaineering were somehow never quite lost. "Ah! You're getting old, " he told himself. J woke .up. He E eyed the six-foot Geoff twisted up into the five-and-a-half foot bottom bunk opposite. No fhe-man for a Vroutd fest * feel-_ ing cramped in. that’ li#tlé bunk soon. Hed just got a new cooker, too. Probably wanted to try it out. Or was he playing the same game and keeping quiet? It was no use waiting for young

Sim on the other bunk to get up first. He was one

Of those people WhO Wert ; to bed late, liked a soft mattress, complained about the cold, snored, threw his arms around, had nightmares; but always managed to withdraw into an impenetrable coma round about breakfast time. Geoff groaned. Twice .. . resignedly. "C’mon now fellers. Breakfast time. Wakey, wakey! C’mon outa the sack, Who wants to get breakfast? Hey! Hey! Wake up! Wake up there!" Silence... "Wretches," grumbled Geoff, wriggling his head out of his sleeping bag. He stared round at the two rows of bunks, the packs and skis all over the floor, the pile of boxes jammed in the corner against the two spare sheets of corrugated iron, the dirty old sheet iron stove with its rusty chimnéy leaning out into’ the ‘space where the door should have been, lest night’s dirty plates in a heap by the billy of water that had frozen solid. Then Geoff ‘sat up and Jonathan knew that the crisis was over. He watched Geoff's hand probe under his bunk to reappear with a new shiny brass petrol cooker. One of the light-weight pattern used by high climbers. It built up its own pressure when lit and had to be warmed fo start. Geoff pulled the cooker inside his bag and hugged it in his arms to start the petrol dribbling from the jet. "Now you'll get nothing fancy from me for breakfast! I warn you! I’m no cook-I’ll tell you that now-if anyone else wants to do it," Geoff announced sharply. "Best not to wake up officially yet," Jonathan thought. "Better not answer." HE lay still, thinking about breakfast time and what a hurried, uncomfortable business it always was. Down below in the tiny kitchen in the. suburban house the had escaped from for the "week-end, there would be’ plates "chinking and the peculiar wheezing * sound’ from the kettle. Then the door would be opened to let in the cats. He thought about all the times he had lain in the mountains at this hour

waiting for the billy to boil and the start of the day’s_ responsibilities. Funny how the particular strangling, rushing sound from these petrol burners always reminded him of the _ battalion cooks at work in North Italy. They would thump and swear in their truck about four o’clock, struggling with dixies and ten gallon rosies. Their stoves would start roaring, and great gusts of petrol flame and smoke would blacken the white walls of the houses they always parked against. None of them knew anything about cooking, of course. Perhaps that was why they had to get up so early to manufacture the meal of lukewarm, stewed tea, watery porridge and canned bacon

: on time. Once, he remembered he had cooked ‘breakfast himself in a ruined farmhouse /in the line. They had rather cheekily lit the kitchen stove with scraps of furniture. The bacon was just warming in an old frying pan when the crew of a German Tiger tank saw the smoke and blew what was left of the place to pieces with three shells at close range. .» He had wasted precious time, fiddling with a piece of newspaper, trying to cover the pan from the dust and debris that poured down. Then nobody was hungry afterwards. AYDREAMING again, he realised with a start and looked over to Geoff. The stove was not starting well. Geoff had lit his third match, but the petrol that had been coaxed from the tank just glimmered for a few seconds on the cold metal and went out. Geoff would have to primé the whole thing with some more fuel poured from a tin. Just the right amount or he would risk an explosion. Perhaps he should suggest this to Geoff, but that would give the show away that he -was awake. Geoff swore quietly and came to the same conclusion. He swung the lower part of his sleeping bag over the edge of his bunk and sat upright with his feet alongside the stove on the floor. Then he stretched out and secured a tin of petrol from his pack, unscrewed the top, poured some over the burner of his stove and set a light to it. It burned steadily. "Good," thought Jonathan. "It will get quite warm in here after a while and we can all ease ourselves out of the sacks and get dressed by degrees. That’s the way to get up-slowly, comfortably." He kept on watching Geoff at the controls of the cooker, wishing he could interject some advice, but not daring to. Geof fiddled in the hesisi that were now pouring from the little metal burner, Suddenly the whole thing roared into action-first a six-inch jet of fierce blue flame, then a long spurting arc of

burning petrol that leaped across the wooden floor. "Uh!" said Geoff, pulling his hand away and smothering the flames licking around it with a jersey. They both stared at the little stove now squirting petrol like a fountain. Then Geoff jumped up, grabbed a boot in one hand and knocked the stove along the floor with it, hopping towards the door as he did so, still in his sleeping bag. Three hops and he had the stove safely out in the snowgrass, smothered in an old sack. . "Bravo! Good save!" shouted Jonathan in the excitement forgetting to stay asleep. He jumped out of the bunk and came to the door. They leaned over the cooker. It had a bulge in the circular brass bottom where the pressure had forced the metal to expand, A little metal plug, soldered into its side as a safety valve, was nowhere about. Geoff looked crestfallen, said nothing. "It'll be all right. We'll soon solder it up again in town," said Jonathan "Suppose we'll have to light the big stove now." "One way of getting people out of bed, anyway," grunted Ceoff, HEY both stood at the door of the little wooden hut and looked up the valley to the steep ridge and the skyline. Fresh snow had streaked the black rocks on its crest like the breakers on a reef. The sky behind was clear and even-toned, with the half-lit inky blueness of a gigantic stage backdrop. Below they could just make out their old car parked on the pass where the road cut away like a knife-edge scar down the steep-sided valley to the plains. Their breath steamed on the air and as they inhaled they could scent the musky dryness of the lifeless snowgrass. "She’s a glorious morning. There'll be some good ski-ing today," said Geoff, hopping back inside. "Yes, if I'd known it was so beautiful, I would have got up early and cooked breakfast for sep: ol said Jonathan. briskly. "Could I have my eggs done hard?" asked Sim, suddenly waking up.