He recalled the manual’s next instruction: Find out if anything is broken. He wiggled the fingers and thumb of his right hand; he’d still got five. His left hand was very cold, but at least there was some movement there too. He stretched his right leg, and tentatively raised it off the ground. He had one leg. He raised his left leg—two. He placed his hands by his side and pushed himself up slowly, very slowly. His fingers were beginning to freeze. He looked for his gloves; they were nowhere to be seen. He must have lost them during his fall.
The cave was lined with ridges of ice protruding from every side, making several natural ladders to the roof; but were they safe? He crawled across the soft snow to the far side of his prison, and kicked at the ice with the toe of his hobnailed boot. It made no impression. The ice had taken a hundred years, perhaps even longer, to grow to that thickness, and wasn’t going to be budged easily. George became a little more confident, but kept reminding himself to abide by the rules, not to hurry, and not to take any unnecessary risks. He spent some time trying to work out which rungs of the ladder he should mount. It looked as if the best route was on the far side of the cave, so he crawled back on his hands and knees and grabbed at the bottom rung. He prayed. When you’re in danger, you need to believe there is a God.
He placed a foot tentatively on a ridge of ice a few inches above the ground, then gripped another above it with his bare fingers, now numb with cold, and pulled himself slowly up. He risked placing his full weight on the lower ridge, because if it broke off, he would only have a short fall into the soft snow. It didn’t, which gave him the confidence to climb onto the next rung of his Jacob’s ladder, and find out if he was about to join the angels or his fellow humans.
He was about halfway up, feeling more confident with each move, when a piece of ice broke off in his hand. His feet immediately slithered off the ice below, leaving him dangling by one hand, some thirty feet above the floor. George began to sweat in a crevasse that must have been minus forty degrees. He swung slowly backward and forward, certain that the Gods above him had simply decided to extend his life by a few minutes, and at any moment the ice he was clinging to would shear off. Then one foot found a toehold, followed by the other. He held his breath, the fingers of his right hand almost glued to the ice above him. His strength was beginning to ebb away. He took some time before selecting the next rung of the ladder. Just three more, and he would be able to push himself through the chink of light. He picked the next rung carefully, and then the next, and at last he was able to punch a fist through the little crack above him. He would have cheered, but he couldn’t waste the time, as the last rays of sunlight were fast disappearing behind the highest peak.
George pushed his head through the hole, and looked tentatively to his left and right. He didn’t need a manual to tell him it made sense to clear the snow around him if he was to have any chance of finding a rock or a hard place.
He swept away with his bare hands until he uncovered a slab of rock that had recently been covered by the avalanche. Gathering all the strength he possessed, he hauled himself out of the hole and clung on to the edge of the rock. He didn’t hang around but, like a crab, scurried across its surface, fearful that he might slide back down the icy rock and return to the bottom of the crevasse.
That was when he heard a voice singing “Waltzing Matilda.” No prizes for guessing who the soloist was. George continued his painful advance across the snow until the source of the voice took shape. Finch was sitting bolt upright repeating the chorus again and again. He clearly didn’t know the second verse.
“Is that you, George?” Finch cried out as he peered through the falling snow.
It was the first time Finch had ever called him by his Christian name. “Yes, it is!” George shouted as he crawled up to his side. “Are you all right?”
“I’m just fine,” said Finch. “Apart from a broken leg, and the fact that the toes of my left foot are beginning to freeze up. I must have lost a boot somewhere along the way. What about you?”
“Never better, old chap,” said George.
“Bloody English,” said Finch. “If we’re to have any chance of getting out of here, you’ll need to find my torch.”
“Where do I start looking?”
“The last time I saw it, it was some way up the mountain.”
George set off, like a toddler, on his hands and knees. He was beginning to despair until he spotted a black object resting in the snow a few yards ahead of him. He cheered. He cursed. It was only Finch’s missing boot. He struggled on until he was able to cheer again when he saw the handle of the torch sticking out of the snow. He grabbed at it, and prayed once more before flicking the switch. A beam of light glowed in the dusk. “Thank God,” he murmured, and returned down the mountain to where Finch was lying.
No sooner had George reached him than they both heard the moan. “That must be Young,” said Finch. “Better go and see if you can help. But for God’s sake turn off that torch until the sun’s completely disappeared. If Odell spotted the avalanche from the hotel, a rescue party should be on their way by now, but they won’t reach us for hours.”
George switched off the torch and began to crawl in the direction of the moan, but it was some time before he came across a body lying motionless in the snow, the right leg buckled under the left thigh.
“Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda …”
George quickly cleared the snow around Young’s mouth, but made no attempt to move him.
“Hold on, old friend,” he whispered in his ear. “Somervell and Herford should be on their way by now. They’re certain to be with us soon.” He only wished he believed his own words. He took Young’s hand and began to rub, trying to get some circulation back, all the time having to brush away the falling snow.
“Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda …”
Odell ran out of the front door of the hotel and onto the driveway. He immediately began to turn the wheel of the ancient klaxon which produced a deafening screeching sound that would alert Somervell and Herford to the danger.
When the sun finally disappeared behind the highest peak, George placed the torch firmly in the snow, facing down the mountain. He switched it on and a beam of light flickered, but how long would it last?
“Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, who’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda with me? And he sang as he…”
There was nothing in the safety manual about what to do about an Australian singing out of tune, thought George as he rested his head in the snow and began to drift off to sleep. Not a bad way to die.
“You’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me …”
When George woke he couldn’t be sure where he was, how he’d got there, or how long he’d been there. Then he saw a nurse. He slept.
When he woke again, Somervell was standing by the side of his bed. He gave George a warm smile. “Welcome back,” he said.
“How long have I been away?”
“Two or three days, give or take. But the doctors are confident they’ll have you back on your feet within a week.”
“And Finch?”
“He’s got one leg in plaster, but he’s eating a hearty breakfast and still singing “Waltzing Matilda” to any nurse who cares to listen.”
“What about Young?” George asked, fearing the worst.
“He’s still unconscious, suffering from hypothermia and a broken arm. The medical chaps are doing everything they can to patch him up, and if they do manage to save his life, he’ll have you to thank.”
“Me?” said George.
“If it hadn’t been for your torch, we would never have found you.”
“It wasn’t my torch,” said George. “It was Finch’s.”
George slept.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TUESDAY, JULY 9TH, 1907
“ONCE YOU’VE STARED death in the face, nothing is ever the same again,” said Young. “It places you apart from other m
en.”
George poured his guest a cup of tea.
“I wanted to see you, Mallory, to make sure it wasn’t that dreadful experience that has caused you to stop climbing.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” said George. “There’s a far better reason. My tutor has warned me that I won’t be considered for a doctorate unless I get a first.”
“And what are your chances of that, old fellow?”
“It seems I’m a borderline case. I can’t allow myself not to succeed simply because I didn’t work hard enough.”
“Understandable,” said Young. “But all work and no play…”
“I’d rather be a dull success than a bright failure,” retorted George.
“But once your exams are over, Mallory, will you consider joining me in the Alps next summer?”
“I certainly will,” said George, smiling. “If there’s one thing I fear even more than failing to get a first, it’s the thought of Finch standing on the peaks of higher and higher mountains singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’.”
“He’s just had his degree results,” said Young.
“And…?”
Guy was astonished by the amount of work George put in as his finals approached. He didn’t take even a day off during the spring vacation to visit Pen-y-Pass or Cornwall, let alone the Alps. His only companions were kings, dictators, and potentates, and his only excursions were to battlefields in far-off lands as he studied night and day right up until the morning of the exams.
After five days of continual writing, and eleven different papers, George still couldn’t be sure how well he’d done. Only the very clever and the very stupid ever are. Once he’d handed in his final paper, he emerged from the examination room and stepped out into the sunlight to find Guy sitting on the steps of Schools waiting to greet him, a bottle of champagne in one hand, two glasses in the other. George sat down beside him and smiled.
“Don’t ask,” he said, as Guy began to remove the wire from around the cork.
For the next ten days a period of limbo followed as the examinees waited for the examiners to tell them the class of degree they had been awarded, and with it, what future had been determined for them.
However much Mr. Benson tried to reassure his pupil that it had been a close-run thing, the fact was that George Leigh Mallory had been awarded a second-class honors degree, and therefore would not be returning to Magdalene College in the Michaelmas term to work on a doctorate. And it didn’t help when the senior tutor added, “When you know you’re beaten, give in gracefully.”
Despite an invitation from Geoffrey Young to spend a month with him in the Alps that summer, George packed his bags and took the next train back to Birkenhead. If you had asked him, he would have described the next four weeks as a period of reflection, although the word his father continually used was denial, while his mother, in the privacy of the bedroom, described her son’s uncharacteristic behavior as sulking.
“He’s not a child any more,” she said. “He must make up his mind what he’s going to do with the rest of his life.”
Despite his wife’s remonstrations, it was another week before the Reverend Mallory got round to tackling head-on the subject of his son’s future.
“I’m weighing up my options,” George told him, “though I’d like to be an author. In fact, I’ve already begun work on a book on Boswell.”
“Possibly illuminating, but unlikely to be remunerative,” replied his father. “I assume you have no desire to live in a garret and survive on bread and water.” George was unable to disagree. “Have you thought about applying for a commission in the army? You’d make a damn fine soldier.”
“I’ve never been very good at obeying authority,” George replied.
“Have you considered taking up Holy Orders?”
“No, because I fear there’s an insurmountable obstacle.”
“And what might that be?”
“I don’t believe in God,” said George simply.
“That hasn’t prevented some of my most distinguished colleagues from taking the cloth,” said his father.
George laughed. “You’re such an old cynic, Papa.”
The Reverend Mallory ignored his son’s comment. “Perhaps you should consider politics, my boy. I’m sure you could find a constituency that would be delighted to have you as its MP.”
“It might help if I knew which party I supported,” said George. “And in any case, while MPs remain unpaid politics is nothing more than a rich man’s hobby.”
“Not unlike mountaineering,” suggested his father, raising an eyebrow.
“True,” admitted George. “So I’ll have to find a profession, which will provide me with sufficient income to allow me to pursue my hobby.”
“Then it’s settled,” said the Reverend Mallory. “You’ll have to be a schoolmaster.”
Although George hadn’t offered any opinion on his father’s last suggestion, the moment he returned to his room he sat down and wrote to his former housemaster inquiring if there were any openings at Winchester for a history beak. Mr. Irving replied within the week. The college, he informed George, was still considering applications for a classics master, but had recently filled the position of junior history tutor. George was already regretting his month of reflection. However, Mr. Irving continued, I hear on the grapevine that Charterhouse is looking for a history master, and should you think of applying for the post, I would be only too happy to act as a referee.
Ten days later George traveled down to Surrey for an interview with the headmaster of Charterhouse, the Reverend Gerald Rendall. Mr. Irving had warned George that almost anything would seem an anticlimax after Winchester and Cambridge, but George was pleasantly surprised by how much he enjoyed his visit. He was both delighted and relieved when the headmaster invited him to join the staff ahead of three other applicants.
What George could not have foretold, when he wrote back to the Reverend Rendall accepting the appointment, was that it would not be the school but one of the governors who would alter the course of his life.
1910
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I WOULD NEED two first-class climbers to join me for the final assault,” Geoffrey Young replied.
“Do you have anyone in mind?” asked the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society.
“Yes,” said Young firmly, not wishing to divulge their names.
“Then perhaps you’d better have a word with both of them,” said Hinks. “And in the strictest confidence, because unless the Dalai Lama gives his blessing, we won’t even be allowed to cross the border into Tibet.”
“I’ll write to both of them this evening,” said Young.
“Nothing in writing would be my advice,” said the secretary. Young nodded. “And I also need you to do me a small favor. When Captain Scott…”
One of the problems George faced during his first few weeks at Charterhouse was that if he wasn’t wearing his mortar board and gown, he was often mistaken for one of the boys.
He enjoyed his first year at the school far more than he’d expected, even if the lower fifth was populated by a group of monsters determined to disrupt his lessons. However, when those same boys returned for their final year in the sixth form, to George’s surprise several of them were entirely reformed characters, all their energies directed toward securing a place at the university of their choice. George was happy to spend countless hours helping them to achieve that objective.
However, when his father inquired during the summer vacation what had given him the most satisfaction, he mentioned coaching the Colts football eleven in the winter and the under-fourteen hockey team during the spring, but, most of all, taking a group of boys hill walking in the summer.
“And just occasionally,” he said, “one comes across an exceptional boy, who displays real talent and curiosity, and is certain to make his name in the world.”
“And have you met such a paragon?” his father inquired.
“Yes,” replied Georg
e, without further elucidation.
On a warm summer evening, George traveled to London by train and made his way on foot to No. 23 Savile Row in Mayfair to join Geoffrey Young for dinner. A porter accompanied him to the members’ bar, where George found his host chatting to a group of elderly climbers who were repeating tall stories about even taller mountains. When Young spotted his guest entering the room, he broke away and guided George toward the dining room with the words, “I fear a bar stool is the highest thing that lot can climb nowadays.”
While they enjoyed a meal of brown Windsor soup and steak and kidney pie followed by vanilla ice cream, Young took George through the program he had planned for their forthcoming trip to the Alps. But George had a feeling that his host had something more important on his mind, as he had already written to him setting out in great detail which new climbs they would be attempting that summer. It wasn’t until they retired to the library for coffee and brandy that George discovered the real purpose behind Young’s invitation.
“Mallory,” said Young once they had settled in the far corner of the room, “I wondered if you’d care to join me as my guest at the RGS next Thursday evening, when Captain Scott will be addressing the Society on his forthcoming expedition to the South Pole.”
George nearly spilled his coffee, he was so excited by the prospect of hearing the intrepid explorer talk about his Voyage of Discovery, not least because he’d recently read in The Times that every ticket had been taken up within hours of the Society announcing the speaker for its annual memorial lecture.
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