The Abominable

by Dan Simmons

  I won’t admit to blushing again, but I do look away until I regain my composure.

  “What was the book?” asks Reggie. I realize that J.C. is waiting for me to answer.

  “Oh, the Robert Bridges anthology of English verse, The Spirit of Man,” I say quickly. “I’d heard that George Leigh Mallory had read aloud from it to his tent mates here at Camp Four and thought it might be…appropriate…if…,” I trail off.

  Reggie nods. “I understand why Mr. Deacon tossed the book off the Col.”

  I look at J.C., but he looks as confused as I feel. Has the Deacon gone a bit mad because of the altitude? Are we supposed to believe that he’s still angry at Mallory—or jealous of him? Nothing seems to make sense.

  Then Reggie asks something that takes me from the realm of the surreal directly to the impossible.

  “Have either of you seen your friend Richard Davis Deacon naked?” she asks in a calm voice.

  Jean-Claude and I look at each other again, but neither of us can muster more of an answer than a headshake toward her.

  “I didn’t think so,” she says. “I have.”

  My God, she and the Deacon have been lovers since we met her in Darjeeling, I think. All the irritable banter has been a smokescreen.

  J.C. somehow manages to ask the important question. Perhaps it’s easier for a Frenchman. “May I ask when have you seen him naked, my lady?”

  Reggie smiles. “The first night you were all at my Darjeeling plantation. But it’s not what you’re thinking. I had Pasang deliberately drug Mr. Deacon’s brandy with a draught of morphine so that he’d sleep deeply. Pasang and I then examined his body using only candles for light. Luckily, in warmer climes, your Mr. Deacon sleeps in the nude. It was nothing personal, you understand. Purely a medical necessity.”

  Now, there’s absolutely nothing to say to this, so I don’t. It’s not only crazy but outrageous. Nothing personal? What could be more personal than someone drugging you to inspect you while you’re naked? I find myself wondering if she and Pasang inspected all of us that night—I remember sleeping deeply. But why would she?

  Neither J.C. nor I ask that question aloud, but Reggie answers it.

  “Did either of you know Mr. Deacon before the War?”

  We shake our heads.

  “Did either of you know him during the years immediately after the War?”

  Again we signify we did not. Sometimes I forget that Jean-Claude met and began climbing with the Deacon just two months before I did.

  Reggie sighs. “Captain R. D. Deacon was cited in no fewer than fourteen official despatches during the War,” she says softly. “Do you get the full import of that information?”

  “That Ree-shard is very brave?” J.C. says tentatively.

  Reggie smiles. “Amidst all that carnage and bravery,” she says, “to be singled out for praise in four or five despatches is extraordinary. To be mentioned in seven or eight is usually associated only with those so courageous that they invariably died in battle. Captain Deacon—he refused multiple attempts to promote him to major or colonel, you know—was in the thick of the battle at Mons, when they inserted the British Expeditionary Forces into the hole in the front at the First Battle of the Marne, at Ypres—which many British soldiers pronounced ‘Yippers’—at Loos in the Battle of Artois in nineteen fifteen, at the Somme in February nineteen sixteen when the British lost fifty-eight thousand men before breakfast the first day, in the crater at the Battle of Messines, and finally in some of the worst fighting at both Passchendaele in nineteen seventeen and the Second Battle of the Marne in nineteen eighteen.”

  “How do you know all this?” I ask.

  “My late cousin Charles was one source,” says Reggie. “Cousin Percival was an even better source.”

  “I thought that Percival—young Bromley—hadn’t fought in the War,” says Jean-Claude.

  “Percival did not fight in the War,” says Reggie. “At least not as a soldier in uniform in the way Captain Deacon and my cousin Charles did. But Percival’s contacts in the government and the War Department were…let us say…extensive.”

  “But your cousin Percy was dead by the time you knew that Ree-shard was coming on this mission,” persists J.C.

  “Oui,” says Reggie. “But dropping Percival’s name opened certain doors…or I should say file drawers…for me in the last few months.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, the protest more than audible in my tone. “How on earth does the Deacon’s admirable war record justify you and Pasang drugging him and looking at him naked as he slept?”

  “I had already made arrangements for this spring’s expedition to find Percival’s remains,” Reggie says. “I had three alpine guides—Swiss—lined up to come back here to the mountain with me. When I heard that you and Jean-Claude were coming with Mr. Deacon—who saw his chance to use my aunt Elizabeth’s wealth to fund you all—and that you’d actually landed at Calcutta, I had to know if Mr. Deacon was physically fit.”

  “Of course he is,” I say, not even trying to hide the indignation I feel. “You’ve seen him trek and climb. He’s almost certainly the strongest of us all.”

  Reggie shrugs slightly, but not enough to show apology or regret. “I knew from Cousin Charles—and the classified War Department records Charles’s and Percival’s contacts had got for me—that Captain Deacon was wounded no fewer than twelve times. At no time did he allow himself to be invalided home to England the way, say, George Mallory did. Mallory was a second lieutenant in the Fortieth Siege Battery at the Somme—he served all of his time at the Front in an artillery unit behind the front lines, as such—and while he saw men killed near him, Second Lieutenant Mallory was never posted directly at the Front for any length of time the way Richard Deacon was in the infantry. Mallory was invalided out and back to England for surgery—it was an old ankle injury which occurred before the War, the result, I believe, of a fall while rock scrambling in a quarry. He was invalided out of France on eight April nineteen seventeen, the day before the Battle of Arras, in which forty thousand British soldiers died. And the battle in which Captain Deacon was wounded for the fifth time. George Mallory—who had friends on high, no pun intended—spent most of the rest of the War in England, both recuperating and working in training units. He was still on convalescent leave when he felt well enough to go climbing at Pen-y-Pas in Wales with friends. Mallory was ordered back to his artillery battalion in time for the terrible Battle of Passchendaele, but he missed arriving there on time due to another injury in England—this time damage to his foot and thumb when he had an accident with his motorcycle in Winchester. You might say, if such things were possible to say, that Second Lieutenant George Mallory had an easy war.

  “Captain Deacon, on the other hand, kept returning to the Front in spite of his injuries. He never allowed himself to be invalided back to England. As far as I know, he never returned to England during the entire War—very, very unusual for an officer. It was only a day’s travel from the Front to London or home, and officers took advantage of almost every leave to make that trip. As for the despatches and wounds, I was also aware that, at least twice, Captain Deacon had been directly exposed to mustard gas.”

  “His lungs are fine,” I say. “His eyes are fine.”

  “Ahh,” says Jean-Claude as if he finally comprehends something.

  Reggie shakes her head. “You don’t understand, Jake. Mustard gas not only attacks the eyes and lungs and mucous membranes in a person but—as it did with poor Cousin Charles—when it’s spattered directly upon one’s body, the yellow powder of the gas eats directly into flesh and muscle in a wound that will never heal. Sufferers from mustard gas contact have bleeding, suppurating wounds that have to be re-dressed every day of their lives. My dear cousin Charles suffered from precisely such suppurating wounds. Do either of you remember the name John de Vere Hazard?”

  “Hazard was on last year’s expedition,” says Jean-Claude. “He’s the fellow who left four Sherpas behin
d here on the North Col in a storm—a storm like this one—and made Mallory, Somervell, and the others risk their lives going up from Camp Three to get them down.”

  Reggie nods. “Mr. Hazard received the Military Cross during the War. A very serious decoration for exemplary service and for receiving wounds in the line of duty. Mr. Deacon won it four times during the War. Mr. Hazard came on the Everest expedition last year with his wounds—especially bad were the ones caused by contact with solid mustard gas, but he also had shrapnel in his back and wounds from machine gun fire in his thigh and hips. Hazard’s wounds opened while he was climbing here. Beneath his wool and cotton, the poor man was bleeding constantly. When he was most needed, he was most incapacitated.”

  “How can you know all this?” I say again.

  “My cousins Charles and Percy had many contacts,” says Reggie. “I’ve also had a long history of exchanging letters with Colonel Teddy Norton, whom you met last autumn at the Royal Geographical Society digs.”

  “So,” says J.C., “you felt that you had to…vet, I believe is the legal language in English…vet Richard Deacon by having Dr. Pasang look at his wounds while the Deacon slept under the influence of morphine at your plantation?”

  “Yes,” says Reggie. There’s no defiance in her tone, but still no sound of shame, either.

  “What did you find?” asks Jean-Claude.

  I turn to shoot a harsh glance at J.C.

  “Scar tissue in more than a dozen places, as you might imagine,” replies Reggie. “Some muscle in his left calf missing due to a machine gun wound there. At least three sets of scars on his torso where shrapnel or bullets passed all the way through Captain Deacon, obviously not striking any vital blood vessels or organs. Naked, your Captain Richard Davis Deacon’s scars, front and back, look like a spider has been weaving white webs in his flesh.”

  “That took one hell of a lot of cheek to spy on him like that,” I say, my voice as harsh as I can make it while still speaking to a lady.

  Reggie nods. “It did. It was an almost unforgivable violation of Mr. Deacon’s privacy. But I had to know. The three Swiss alpine guides I’d contacted to help me in the retrieval of Percival’s body had already set sail from Europe, and I had to cable them in Colombo if I was going to cancel their participation and climb here with the three of you instead.”

  “Did Ree-shard pass your muster?” J.C. doesn’t sound angry, only a little bemused. I doubt if he’d use the same tone if it had been him whom Reggie had been peering at naked. Or, on second thought, perhaps he would.

  “He did,” says Reggie. “But Pasang informs me that due to the placement and severity of some of the old wounds, your Mr. Deacon must be in constant pain.”

  “So what?” I say. “A lot of world-class alpinists climb through pain.”

  “Probably not this much pain,” replies Reggie. “And I regret that I lied to all of you about my dear cousin Charles succumbing to his wounds while you were in transit to India. In truth, he took his own life. According to my aunt Elizabeth—Lady Bromley—after more than seven years of bravely tolerating his wounds, he simply could no longer bear the pain. He used his service revolver.”

  This silences us for several long minutes.

  “Just out of curiosity,” Jean-Claude says at last, “would you tell us again the names of the three Swiss guides you’d hired?”

  Reggie names them again and Jean-Claude whistles, eyes wide with awe or respect. “I am surprised, Lady Bromley-Montfort, that you turned them back and have come with us.”

  Reggie smiles. “I paid the three Swiss guides a fee for their time, sent them a generous cheque when they turned back from Colombo, but you three were already being paid by my aunt. And my aunt receives her income from the plantation in Darjeeling which I’ve run since I was fourteen years old. Going ahead with you three—and Pasang and the Tiger Sherpas—seemed like the most economical thing to do. But I had to know about Mr. Deacon’s wounds…whether his body was up to this climb or not. He’s thirty-seven years old, you know.”

  “George Mallory was thirty-seven when he disappeared last year,” I say idiotically. No one responds.

  Jean-Claude shrugs his upper body out of the cocoon of his sleeping bag. He has to free his hands. He cannot talk earnestly without the use of his hands.

  “But, Madame, you asked us if we had known Ree-shard Deacon in the years right after the War. Is that period somehow relevant to your concerns about our friend’s leadership?”

  “Do you have any knowledge of Mr. Deacon’s actions right after the War?” asks Reggie.

  “Only that he came to the Swiss and French Alps and spent most of his time climbing,” says J.C.

  Reggie nods. “Mr. Deacon’s mother died some years before the War. His father died of a heart attack in nineteen seventeen. Mr. Deacon had an older brother, Gerald, but he was killed as an RAF pilot in early nineteen eighteen. That left Richard Davis Deacon not only in total possession of his two huge estates—Brambles, the larger home, makes my aunt Elizabeth’s Bromley House look like a shack in comparison—but also an earl, a peer of the realm, and a member of the House of Lords.”

  “Earl Deacon?” I say.

  Reggie laughs. “I love Americans. No, Mr. Deacon is, despite his objections, the ninth Earl of Watersbury.” She pronounces it in that slurry British way…Watrsbreee.

  “Despite his objections?” says J.C., his palms upward now.

  “Mr. Deacon cannot legally renounce his hereditary title,” says Reggie. “But he refuses to answer to it, has given away most of his estates, and will not take his seat in the House of Lords.”

  “I didn’t know that someone would not want to be an earl,” I say. “Nor that he has to be, even if he doesn’t want to be.”

  “Neither do many people in the United Kingdom,” says Reggie. “In the meantime, in nineteen eighteen, from France, I believe, Mr. Deacon donated his two estates and twenty-nine thousand acres and the estates’ revenues to the Crown. He suggested they turn his nine-hundred-year-old primary home, Brambles, into a convalescent home. He never returned to it after the war. He has a small income—I believe derived from royalties coming in now and then from novels or poetry he wrote under various noms de plume before the War—and he’s stayed in the Alps almost constantly since nineteen eighteen.”

  “Are you saying that Richard Davis Deacon is nuts?” I ask her.

  Reggie looks straight at me, and those ultramarine eyes are narrowed. “Nothing of the sort,” she says sharply. “I am trying to explain why your friend took your book of poetry and threw it over the ice cliff.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “Mr. Deacon knows that in September nineteen fourteen, when war with Germany was barely under way, the newly created—and top-secret—War Propaganda Bureau had a secret meeting with some of England’s top writers and poets at Wellington House, Buckingham Gate. Thomas Hardy was there, as was Mr. H. G. Wells…”

  “War of the Worlds!” I cry.

  Reggie nods and goes on. “Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield—the Catholic writer—G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle…G. M. Trevelyan, J. M. Barrie…”

  “Peter Pan!” cries J.C.

  “Evidently Mr. Deacon was a well enough respected poet that he was also invited,” she says softly. “Along with his poet friend Robert Bridges. All they were asked to do during the War—even the relatively younger men such as Mr. Deacon—was to be exempted from the military call-up and to use their literary talents for the war effort. Primarily in keeping the British public’s morale up and never…never…allowing them to know how terrible the actual fighting might turn out to be.”

  “But the Deacon enlisted instead,” says Jean-Claude, his fingers now folded together as if in prayer.

  “Yes,” says Reggie. “But his poet friend Robert Bridges stayed behind and didn’t write another word of his own poetry throughout the War. Instead, Bridges edited an anthology of inspiring English verse—the very Spirit of Man that George M
allory read from twice here at Camp Four and which you tried to read from this evening, Jake.”

  I’m confused. “But it’s all good English verse,” I say. “Classic stuff. There’s even one of the Deacon’s early poems in it.”

  “And no mention whatsoever of war,” says Reggie.

  “That’s correct,” I say. “A lot of topics but no English verse about war. And…”

  Suddenly I stop. I think I’m beginning to understand.

  “The newspapers were part of the propaganda effort,” says Reggie. “Of course they had to be, hadn’t they? Casualty lists had to be published there, but the real war was never described in its terrible detail…not once. All newspapers were willing subjects of the Propaganda Bureau. My cousin Charles wrote me in nineteen seventeen that Lloyd George had told C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian that, and I think I quote correctly, ‘if the people really knew’—he meant what the slaughter in France and Belgium was really like—‘if the people really knew, the War would be stopped tomorrow.’”

  My voice, when I try to speak, is slow and cautious, as if my words were threading their way through a crevasse field. “So The Spirit of Man…was part…of the Propaganda Bureau’s…effort to keep the War going no matter what the cost in lives.”

  Reggie says nothing and doesn’t even nod, but I can see that she’s proud of me for catching up to things. I’m not used to being the slow pupil in the class, but I pride myself on being smart enough to know if and when I am.

  Jean-Claude looks troubled. “Reggie—Lady Bromley-Montfort,” he says just loudly enough to be heard over the noise of the wind rattling the tent walls, “you must have another reason for telling us this incredibly personal information about Ree-shard.”

  “I do,” says Reggie. “I know how eager all three of you are to use my aunt’s money to get a chance to climb Mount Everest. But you see, I’m not totally convinced that dear Mr. Richard Davis Deacon wants to return from the mountain.”