by Dan Simmons
Jean-Claude, the Deacon, and I are squished thigh to thigh as we sit upright and waiting on the red settee. It’s an uncomfortable piece of furniture—perhaps another invitation not to stay too long. I nervously run my thumb and finger down the sharp crease in my new suit trousers.
Suddenly a door hidden in the library wall opens and Lady Elizabeth Marion Bromley comes through. The three of us almost stumble over one another in our hurry to stand.
Lady Bromley is tall, and her height is emphasized by the fact that she’s dressed all in black, a lacy sort of dress with a high frilly black collar that might have been from the nineteenth century but which looks strangely modern. Her erect posture and poised but seemingly unself-conscious way of walking add to the sense of height and importance. I’d expected to meet an old lady—Lord Percival Bromley was in his thirties when he disappeared on Everest this summer—but Lady Bromley’s hair, swept up in a complicated fashion I’d seen only in magazines, is mostly dark with only the slightest traces of gray at the temples. Her dark eyes are bright and alert and—to my deeper surprise—she comes toward us walking quickly, coming around the table to be closer to us, smiling kindly and evidently sincerely, and with both her hands—elegant, pale, with long pianist’s fingers, not an old woman’s hands in any way—outstretched in greeting.
“Oh, Dickie…Dickie…,” says Lady Bromley, taking the Deacon’s large, calloused hand in both of hers. “It’s so wonderful to see you back here. It seems like just yesterday that your mother was dropping you off here to play with Charles…and, oh, how irritated both of you older boys became at little Percy’s attempts to keep up with you!”
Jean-Claude and I risk a look and silent query to each other. Dickie?!
“It is wonderful to see you, Lady Bromley, but I am so deeply sorry about the circumstances which bring us together again,” says the Deacon.
Lady Bromley nods and looks down for a second as her eyes fill, but she smiles and lifts her head again. “Charles greatly regrets that he cannot greet you himself today—his health is very poor, as you know.”
The Deacon nods sympathetically.
“But you were also wounded during the War,” says Lady Bromley, still holding the Deacon’s hand with one of her hands above his, the other below.
“Mild wounds, long healed,” says the Deacon. “Nothing like the terrible gassing that Charles experienced. My thoughts have gone out to him a thousand times.”
“And your letter of condolence about Percival was beautiful, just beautiful,” Lady Bromley says very softly. “But I am being rude—please, Dickie, introduce me to your friends.”
The introductions and short conversations go smoothly. Lady Bromley speaks in fluent French to J.C., and I pick up enough of it to understand that she is expressing how impressed she is that such a young man should be known as such a fine Chamonix Guide, and Jean-Claude replies with his biggest, brightest grin.
“And Mr. Perry,” she says when it is time to turn to me, taking my clumsily outstretched hand gracefully in hers. A brief touch but somehow electrifying. “Even in my rural isolation, I’ve heard of the Perrys of Boston—a fine family.”
I stammer my thanks. I am from a well-known and fine old family, Boston Brahmins all down to the next-to-last generation, a family history traceable back to the 1630s, family members famous as merchants and Harvard professors, and a few brave ones who distinguished themselves in places like Bunker Hill and Gettysburg.
But alas, the Brahmin Perrys of Boston were now almost broke. Declining wealth had not kept my parents from calling the Harvard-Yale football game only “the Game,” or from doing their modest Christmas shopping downtown at the seven-story S. S. Pierce Company, which had been serving families like ours since 1831. Nor, initially, did our advancing poverty prevent me from experiencing the best private schools, the tennis courts and greens and formal dining areas of the Brookline Country Club (which, of course, we referred to only as “the Country Club,” as if no others existed in the world), and of having my parents pay my way through Harvard—which finally drained the last resources of the family. All so that I could spend every spare minute and all my college summers climbing rocks and mountains with friends, never worrying about the expenses. Even with the inheritance of my aunt’s $1,000 when I turned twenty-one, I never considered giving it to my parents to help them with some of their bills—or mine—but subsidized this year in Europe, climbing in the Alps.
“Please, sit down,” Lady Bromley is saying to us all. She’s moved to the other side of the low table and taken her place in the comfortable-looking high-backed chair. As if on cue, three maids—or servants of some kind—come in through another door with trays carrying a teapot, ancient porcelain cups and saucers, silver spoons, silver containers of sugar and cream, and a five-tiered silver serving dish with small pastries and biscuits on each layer.
One of the servants offers to pour the tea, but Lady Bromley says that she will do it, and she does, inquiring of each of us—except for “Dickie,” who, she remembers, takes his tea with a bit of cream, a bit of lemon, and two sugars—how we take our tea. I answer, idiotically, “Straight, ma’am,” and receive a smile and my saucer and a cup of tea only. I hate tea.
There are a few minutes of small talk, mostly between the Deacon and Lady Bromley, but then she leans forward and says briskly, “Let us discuss your other letter, Dickie. The one I received three weeks after the beautiful condolence card. The one about the three of you going to Everest to look for my Percival.”
The Deacon clears his throat. “Perhaps it was presumptuous, Lady Bromley, but there seem to be so many unanswered questions about Lord Percival’s disappearance that I thought I might offer my services in an attempt to clear up the mystery surrounding that accident or fall or avalanche…or whatever happened.”
“Whatever happened, indeed,” says Lady Bromley, her voice almost harsh. “Do you know, that German gentleman who was the only witness to that so-called ‘avalanche’ that he says carried away Percy and a German porter—that Herr Bruno Sigl—will not even answer my cables and letters? He sent one brutish note stating that he had no more to say on the matter, and he’s maintained that silence, despite the Alpine Club and Mount Everest Committee demanding more details from him.”
“That is not right,” Jean-Claude says quietly. “Families need to know the truth.”
“I am not fully convinced that Percival is dead,” says Lady Bromley. “He might be injured and lost on the mountain, barely surviving, or in some nearby Tibetan village awaiting help.”
Here it is, I think. The insane part of all this that the Deacon wants us to cash in on. I feel a little nauseated and set down my cup and saucer.
“I understand that the chances of that—of my Percy still being alive on the mountain—are very low, gentlemen. I still retain all my faculties. I live in the real world. But without a rescue or retrieval mission to the mountain, how will I ever be able to know for sure? Percival’s young life was so…so private…so complex…I have understood so little about him over the past years. I feel that I should, at the very least, understand the details of his death…or disappearance. Why was he in Tibet at all? Why on Mount Everest? And why with that Austrian man…Mr. Meyer…when he died?”
She stops, and I think of all the reports I’ve heard of young Lord Percival Bromley being a rake, a high-stakes gambler, someone who spent years in Germany and Austria, an endless rambler who rarely came home to England to visit and who stayed in the best suites in the best of Europe’s hotels, and, it was often whispered (although I’d not had the courage to ask the Deacon about it), was a sodomite specializing in German and Austrian brothels for men who like such things. Private, complex—yes, a life filled with such preferences and activities would be private and complex, wouldn’t it?
“Percy was such a wonderful athlete…you must remember that, Dickie.”
“I do,” says the Deacon. “Is it true that Percival was going to row for England in the nineteen twe
nty-eight Olympics?”
Lady Bromley smiles. “At his advanced age—out of his twenties—it sounds ridiculous, does it not? But that was precisely Percy’s plan, to go to the Ninth Olympiad in Amsterdam in four years and row with the British crew. You remember how he excelled at rowing when he was at Oxford. He has—had—kept in superb physical shape and trained with Olympic-class English rowing teams whenever he was here for a visit. He practiced in Holland, France, and Germany as well. But rowing was only one of the sports in which Percy excels…or excelled.”
“What was his climbing experience before going to Everest?” the Deacon asks. “I’d been out of touch with Percival for a long time.”
Lady Bromley smiles and pours more tea for each of us. “More than fifteen years of climbing in the Alps with the best guides and with his cousin,” she says proudly. “Since he was a young boy. All five summits of the Grandes Jurasses, including the highest and true summit—Point Walker, I believe it’s called—from the south side, by the time he was twenty. The Matterhorn, of course. The Piz Badille…”
“From the south?” interrupts the Deacon.
“I’m not sure, Dickie, but I believe so. Also Percy and his guide made a—what is it called—a long sideways travel during a climb?”
“A traverse?” offers Jean-Claude.
“Oui. Merci,” says Lady Bromley. “Percy and his guide had made a traverse of Mont Blanc from the Dôme hut to the Grands Mulets in what he called a summer blizzard. I remember his writing about doing the Grand Combin, whatever it is, in a very short time—he wrote mostly about the view from the summit. I have postcards from him talking about his…traverse, yes, that is the word…of the Finsteraarhorn and successful ascent of the Nesthorn.” She smiles sadly at us. “Through all the years of Percy’s risky sports, including these climbs, I spent many an anxious mother’s hours looking up these hills and peaks on maps in our library.”
“But he never joined the Alpine Club,” says the Deacon. “And he wasn’t an official member of last spring’s Everest expedition with Norton, Mallory, and the others?”
Lady Bromley shakes her head, and once again I admire the complex simplicity of her hair. It makes the tall, perfectly upright woman seem even taller.
“Percival was never much of a joiner of groups,” she says, and there’s a sudden shadow of sadness passing over her face and eyes as she realizes that she’s already speaking of her son in the past tense. “I received a brief note from him in March, posted from his cousin Reggie’s tea plantation near Darjeeling, saying that he might follow along after or with Mr. Mallory’s expedition and walk into Tibet, and then nothing…silence…until the terrible news reports in June.”
“Can you remember the names of any of his alpine guides?” asks the Deacon.
“Oh, yes,” says Lady Bromley, brightening some. “There were three favorites of his who were from Chamonix…”
She gives the names, and Jean-Claude makes a silent whistle with his lips. “Three of the best we have,” he says. “Geniuses on rock, snow, and ice. Great guides and brilliant climbers in their own right.”
“Percival loved them,” says his mother. “Another British man he climbed with frequently in the Alps was also named Percy…Ferrou, Ferray?”
“Percy Farrar?” asks the Deacon.
“Yes, that’s it,” says Lady Bromley, smiling again. “Isn’t it odd how I can remember the names of all of his French and German guides, but not a fellow British subject?”
The Deacon turns to look at J.C. and me. “Percy Farrar would have had sixteen or seventeen years of extreme alpine experience when he was climbing with Percy…with young Lord Percival.” Looking directly at me, he adds, “Farrar later became president of the Alpine Club and was the one who first proposed that George Leigh Mallory be included in that first nineteen twenty-one expedition to Everest.”
“So your son climbed with the best,” Jean-Claude says to Lady Bromley. “Even though he wasn’t invited on the Everest expedition, his climbing abilities could have been formidable.”
“But Percy wasn’t on any of the official rosters of either the Alpine Club or the Everest Committee,” says the Deacon. “Do you happen to know, Lady Bromley, how it was that your son came to be on Everest at almost the same time as Mallory’s climbers?”
Lady Bromley sips the last of her tea and sets the cup on its saucer with a delicate touch. “As I say, I received only that brief note from Percival, written from the Darjeeling plantation in March,” she says patiently. “Evidently Percy met Mallory and the other members of this year’s expedition at his cousin Reggie’s plantation near Darjeeling in the third week of March. My son had just trekked through parts of Asia and arrived unannounced at our tea plantation very near to Darjeeling…the plantation that’s been owned and managed for years now by Percy’s cousin Reggie.
“Cousin Reggie was very helpful in finding Nepalese porters for Mallory’s expedition—Sherpas, they are called—many who have relatives who’ve worked at our plantation for years. The actual leader of the expedition at that time, as you must know, was Brigadier General Charles Bruce…but from what Colonel Norton told me when the others returned to England, General Bruce was in poor health and had to turn back only two weeks after the expedition had left Darjeeling to pass through the Serpo La to Kampa Dzong and Tibet. I understand that Colonel Norton, who was already part of the group, was chosen to replace General Bruce as expedition leader, and then, according to Colonel Norton himself—who was very kind in visiting me—he appointed George Mallory as climbing leader. That’s really all I know of the details of Percival’s last days. He did not camp with the British expedition, nor attempt to climb with them.”
“Did Lord Percival travel alone or with manservants?” asks the Deacon.
“Oh, Percy always preferred to travel alone,” says Lady Bromley. “It made no sense—all that fussing by oneself over wardrobe choices and luggage—but it was his preference, and Colonel Norton says that he camped alone during the five-week trek in to Mount Everest.”
“Never staying with the official party?” asks Jean-Claude with some slight wonderment in his voice. Why would a British lord travel separately from a British expedition?
Lady Bromley shakes her head ever so slightly. “Not according to Colonel Norton’s and the Alpine Club’s report to me. Nor did his cousin Reggie know why Percy was going to Tibet or choosing to travel near the expedition but not with it.”
“What about these Germans?” asks the Deacon. “This Meyer person who is said to have been caught in the same avalanche with Lord Percival. Bruno Sigl, who says he witnessed it from lower down on the mountain. Do you happen to know if Percival knew these gentlemen?”
“Oh, heavens no!” cries Lady Bromley. “I am quite sure he did not. This Meyer seems to be very much a nonperson as far as the Alpine Club and my friends in His Majesty’s Government can make out, and Herr Sigl…well, let us say that he was not the sort of man with whom Percival would have social intercourse.”
The Deacon rubs his brow as if he has a headache. “If Lord Percival was not with the British expedition when Mallory and Irvine were lost, how is it, according to this Bruno Sigl, that he and some unknown German were supposed to have been carried away by an avalanche between Camp Five and Camp Six? Mallory’s Camp Five was a few hundred feet above seven thousand six hundred and twenty-five meters—that’s twenty-five thousand feet, Lady Percival, very high—but Camp Six, their jumping-off point for the summit, was over eight thousand meters—around twenty-six thousand eight hundred feet. Less than three thousand feet below the summit of Everest. The newspapers speculate that Lord Percival was attempting a search for Mallory and Irvine, days after they were declared lost by Norton and the others on the expedition. No one on the expedition saw either Lord Percival or Meyer or this Sigl person during their retreat from the mountain. Can you think of any other explanation for Percival to have been so high on the mountain after Colonel Norton and the others had left the area?�
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“I’m sure I have no idea,” Lady Bromley says. “Unless Percival…my Percy…was making an attempt to climb to the summit of Mount Everest on his own, or with this Austrian climber. It is not an impossibility. Percy was…is…was very ambitious, you know.”
The Deacon only nods at that and glances at me. Norton and the others, after giving up Mallory and Irvine for dead, ended all further summit attempts, not merely out of respect for their lost fellows, but because of fears that the monsoon season had begun in earnest. They retreated from Everest Base Camp in strangely clear weather but feared that the monsoon would catch them any day en route. Certainly even an amateur such as Bromley would not attempt to summit the mountain—or even climb high to hunt for the missing Mallory and Irvine—under the imminent threat of monsoon weather. Being caught high on Everest when the monsoon struck would have been a particularly stupid and useless form of suicide.
The silence stretches until it feels almost uncomfortable. There’s no more tea to drink to distract us, and only Jean-Claude and I have eaten anything. Finally the Deacon speaks.
“Lady Bromley, do you wish the three of us to carry out this…a year after Lord Percival’s disappearance is too late to call it a rescue mission, but it certainly can be a search and recovery mission…this coming spring when climbing becomes possible again at Mount Everest?”
She looks down, and I see white teeth softly biting her full lower lip. “The Everest Committee and the Alpine Club are not planning a nineteen twenty-five expedition, are they, Dickie?”
“No, ma’am,” says the Deacon. “The loss of Mallory and Irvine—and, of course, of your son—has so shaken the Club and Committee that it may be several years before another formal expedition is launched toward Everest. Also, the Tibetan authorities seem angered at the Alpine Club and the Everest Committee for reasons I don’t fully understand. Word is that the Tibetan prime minister and local chieftains might not allow another expedition soon. Yet, of course, both the Alpine Club and Everest Committee consider Mount Everest a British hill and can’t even dream of some other nation climbing it first, but there are rumors in the Alps that the Germans are considering such a bid. Although not, I think, for next summer. Not for nineteen twenty-five. But the three of us could do it.”