Going to the hills of the border country in February to do some walking was not my suggestion. But, even so, there I was with Sinclair, heading for bed and breakfast at The Stars and a strike out for the highest of the hills early next morning. The landscape looked as though it were patchily sprinkled with caster sugar. Darkness was coming on fast. We had booked.

The healthy-looking landlady took us up to our rooms. Mine was small and clean with a window onto the black and white hills we'd come so far to enjoy. There was a little notice on the inside of the door. "Please do not smoke upstairs and not set off the Smoke Alarms. Thank you." I did not smoke. As I finished reading a loud howling began outside. I heard footsteps and Sinclair apologising for his pipe. When I went down he was drinking from a pint pot of orange-coloured tea. "It's OK," he said, "we can use the pool. Down the garden. She'll show us when we've had our tea." The little dining-room was warm and as cosy as my bedroom. I'd forgotten about the pool Sinclair had spotted in the guide. I wasn't too keen on swimming after such a tiresome journey, but I swigged at my pint of tea and murmured approval.

Mrs Fox led us out of the back door and pointed into the cold darkness. "D'you see it?" I followed Sinclair over the long lawn to the single- storey concrete building. The door opened readily and we were straightaway enveloped in mugginess. I was reassured. Chilly swimming was not in my line, nor did I make a virtue of responding to challenge. Unlike Sinclair. The pool was quite large. No-one was in it. Its surface was perfectly calm, emitting thin vapours. I could hear a quiet dribbling and a faint hum from equipment out of sight. "This is great!" cried Sinclair, shedding his clothes to the tiles. The lights over the water were dim and its far end was in shadow. I slowly began to change. "You don't think it's a trap?" I said. Sinclair dragged up his trunks. "Like a James Bond, with a tunnel where she lets the sharks in. Or alligators. No-one would know about us." Sinclair looked at me, unsmiling. I had forgotten he never watched such films. He spun around and took a header into the deep end. By the time I got down the steps he had done a length and a half.

It was lovely to do a bit of breaststroke, a bit of sidestroke, a bit of backstroke, and float in the tropic warmth, looking up at shadowy steel rafters. I imagined palm fronds and drinks in coconut shells and some sort of plangent twangling. I imagined girls slopping sunblock over hot brown thighs. Girls were softly turning over and undoing their top straps. Had it not been for Sinclair, on what must be his sixth length of crawl, I'd have been slumping at home, probably worrying about my troublesome gas fire. I felt quite grateful as I did another casual whirl. There was no sign of sharks or alligators. However, when we got back to the pub there was an attractive young woman in the sitting-room. The landlady's daughter, as in a thirties commercial traveller story. Sinclair immediately went out for a walk and a smoke. I spent a good half hour making her acquaintance. She was nice.

It was extremely cold as we walked towards the hills. More snow had fallen during the night but the ground was still only lightly covered. A strong icy wind was heaping white powder into shallow drifts in hollows and alongside drystone walls. We started uphill and I began to pant. Sinclair was breathing quite normally. We climbed the track to its end and my breathing became more and more difficult as I kept up. The wind blew harder. The words "wind-chill factor" came into my mind. I pulled down the hood of my anorak with its fake fur lining and tightened and knotted its drawstrings. Sinclair, a world-wide walker, was wearing his Peruvian alpaca hat. It was mud-grey and apparently made of thick felt. It had big lengthy earflaps, reminding me of spaniels and certain other dogs. It didn't suit him. It emphasised his long nose. However Sinclair was extremely attached to it, and had even worn it in town when we went to the film The Draughtsman's Contract. His suggestion, although he'd seen it three times before. He said he wanted my reactions, which in the event I largely concealed from him.

The going, now we had left the path, was very steep indeed. Suddenly, as I panted, it occurred to me that I was in the same year of my life as my brother, ten years before, when he died of a coronary from a cloudless sky. Surely I was stupid pushing myself like this in mid-winter with a companion fifteen years younger? Heart trouble comes in families, and though I didn't smoke like my brother and took exercise and didn't eat red meat... And why did I always seem to be trying to make it with younger people? Really, I should sort myself out.

I stopped for a moment to get my breath and check for chest pain. Sinclair had put twenty feet between us before I doggedly started upwards. He had just reached a narrow gulley with a frozen stream at its bottom. As we got higher the gulley walls sheltered us considerably from the wind. My breathing became much easier. Then Sinclair stopped.

"I'm going to light a fire," he said. I gazed at him in amazement. "Here?" "My hands are cold," he said, holding them out. He wasn't wearing gloves. His fingers were putty-coloured and looked stiff. He began awkwardly gathering up dead weeds and grasses from the banks of the frozen stream. I hastened to help him. We made a small heap and he put his lighter to it. He dabbled his fingers among the flames. I went on gathering, adding brown dockstalks and leaves. The colour slowly returned to his fingers. "It's all this slow walking," he said. "I move quicker than this." My fingers were warm in their good gloves and my head was actually sweltering in the hood. Sinclair's long nose was violet and his blue eyes watered. His earflaps hung mournfully down. I felt guilty at not being cold. "I think people should keep themselves fit enough to do the things they want to do," he said in his firmest voice. For a moment I thought he meant himself, but then realized he was criticising me. But this trip had been his idea. And he knew I was older than he was. And he'd said nothing about going too slow. Still, I felt even more guilty, and also partly responsible for his welfare. I was nearly old enough to be his father. But then, I thought, he is a grown-up. "Sod him! He can take his chance. He wasn't showing much concern for me, earlier on, either. And he knows this area, or said he did. And why hasn't he got gloves?"

Sinclair shoved his hands deep into his side pockets and turned without speaking to continue the ascent, staggering slightly. I followed at his heels. After about half an hour we were on top of the hill, the highest in the range. The land stretched far away in black-and-whiteness in every direction until it disappeared in mist. The little town below didn't look three miles off. I thought I could see the sea. After a minute or so I turned towards Sinclair and realised I was alone. He was striding off, almost trotting, towards the far side of the hill and an easy gradient down to the main road. I tried to catch up, but couldn't. By the time I began my own descent he was nearly at the road. I was less than halfway down, stumbling in a sudden flurry of blown snow, when I saw a car stop. Sinclair's huddled figure got in, and it drove off towards the town. I slackened my pace, and strolled down until I reached the road. The walk back to the town was pleasant enough, all things considered.

The shops were open and a fair number of people were on the streets. I looked in a second-hand bookshop. I bought a cheap "Geology and Scenery" as a souvenir. Nearby was a coffee shop in a converted stable. It was packed with redfaced walkers lounging with unzipped anoraks, woolly hats on their knees. I sat for some time with a coffee and ate two big segments of apple pie - Sinclair would correctly say "sectors." Then I sauntered back to The Stars.

As I came into the courtyard Sinclair's car was edging out. He paused before joining the road and wound the window half down. His nose was slightly violet. "I'm going home," he said. "We all make mistakes. I've left you a note. Probably see you at work." There seemed no profit in asking him to wait. There was a perfectly good long-distance bus. I'd manage.

That evening I ate an early dinner at The Stars, waited on by the landlady and her attractive daughter. They were very friendly and the food was good. Afterwards I rested in my room for an hour and then went down to the bar, leaving Sinclair's unopened envelope still on the bedside chair. I didn't particularly want to read it. There was a coal fire at one corner ofthe empty bar. I got a drink and relaxed and thought about the walk and Sinclair and friendship. We'd been work acquaintances for years, yet this had been our first trip together. I usually avoided fellow surveyors. Did I actually like him? I continually deceived myself in all sorts of ways, especially about friendship and its variants. Including love perhaps.

Sinclair would be almost back now, if he hadn't had an accident skidding off the road or into another vehicle. That lousy car of his might well have broken down. As I pondered and drank glasses of red wine the landlady's daughter replaced her mother at the bar. I was still the only customer. "Sorry your friend had to go back in such a rush," she said. I wondered what the family were thinking. I hoped to God they didn't take it to be a lover's tiff. "It was only a work thing, something to clear up at the office, not serious," I said. We then talked in great diversity, but not at all about Sinclair. I mentioned their grand swimming pool. "It's not so much for customers as for ourselves and our friends," she said. "That's why we keep it going in February. My mother and my aunts swim every morning. We love it! In fact, I'll be going for a night-cap dip in about an hour." It seemed plain that I could join her.

A wind had sprung up. She moved neatly before me, surefooted, as we went through icy darkness to the concrete building. She opened the door and we stood in the dark together as the Hawaiian heat amiably enfolded us. After a second or two she touched the switch. She carried her small bundle into a small washroom. I opened another door and changed beside a seething, sweltering boiler. When I got to the pool she was out in the middle in a wine-red swimsuit, waving me in.

From time to time I lay on my back and floated, while she swam gracefully around me in big easy circles. Sometimes she ducked and swam beneath me, surfacing with a dripping smile. I wondered how I could ever have joked about sharks and alligators and about her mother being a murderess. "Though," I thought, "this is like a James Bond adventure. Certainly I'm feeling like James Bond."

Just then the landlady's daughter took a firm grip of my foot and dragged me deep under the warm ripples. We played Great White Shark with enthusiasm until we were utterly out of breath.

When Emma and I eventually strolled back across the lawn to the pub everything was in darkness, except for a single bright light very high up on its back wall. As we drew near I felt that I could believe it was really a star. A gorgeous and quite overwhelming star.