The Ice Soldier

by Paul Watkins

  “He knows a great deal about what’s going on in the mountaineering world these days,” she continued.

  “Yes. I think he follows things pretty closely in the various publications.” I was staring at the pattern of the red, black, and green Berber carpet on the floor, chewing the inside of my cheek.

  “But there’s the practical side, too,” she added. “The trip you and he have planned, for example.”

  I looked up from the carpet and stared at her. It was as if she had leaned across the little coffee table, whose surface was strewn with old club bulletins, and slapped me in the face. “The trip,” I said. I did not say it as a question. I just pronounced the words.

  “Yes. The one to the Himalayas. It sounds fascinating.”

  “The Himalayas,” I said, remembering the way Stanley had made me promise to say nice things about him. He must have known this would come up. That was why he had not mentioned me to her earlier. I wondered what other lies he had told.

  “I’ve always wanted to go there,” she said dreamily.

  In that moment, a blinding madness took hold of me. I had not been lonely before, but now I was terribly lonely. I wanted, with a few well-chosen words, to ruin this business with Stanley and Helen, so I could have my own chance of happiness with her. It did not matter that Stanley and I had been friends most of our lives. Nor did it matter that he had trusted me to speak well of him to this woman whom he loved. Nor did I care that this would mean the end of our friendship. I did not even care if things might not amount to anything between me and Helen Paradise. All I wanted was a chance.

  She was looking right at me, smiling with what I felt sure was some kind of expectation. I wondered, Can she know what I am thinking? How can she not know? But does she want the same thing? Does she understand the risk?

  “I … ,” I said.

  “Yes?” she asked. Those bright blue eyes. The half smile on her lips.

  The words that I wanted to say to her hung trembling in the air around me, shuddering with the nervous energy of hummingbirds. But I could not speak them, because I was not sure what she was thinking.

  I glanced down at my plate and sighed.

  When I looked up again, her face had changed. The hard-staring focus had drifted from her gaze. She was still smiling, but now it was a different kind of smile.

  Then I was certain she had known my thoughts. And too late I understood the meaning of that stare.

  Now all that remained for us was to pretend that nothing had happened.

  The madness slowly faded, like sand trickling away through a sieve.

  I began to see clearly again. Whatever possibilities had existed between me and Helen Paradise would have been ruined if I’d buried Stanley now. Maybe not at first. But I would not be able to forgive myself and gradually that would eat away at whatever happiness I’d gained by my betrayal. The two things could not have balanced out.

  I thought about the gamble Stanley had taken by lying. For a person like Stanley, the ridicule of a lie being discovered would normally have outweighed any benefits of telling it. This time, in his desperation, he had risked everything. Stanley had done what I’d been too afraid to do. He really did love her.

  Then I felt as sorry for Stanley as I did for Miss Paradise, because I was beginning to think that perhaps she loved him, too. “You’re fond of Stanley, aren’t you?” I asked.

  She was about to speak, but at that moment the waiter appeared and informed us quietly that the club was closing for the day.

  We collected our coats and walked out into the street.

  It occurred to me that if I hurried, I might still reach the bookstalls down in Ladbroke Grove before they shut. I could almost feel the texture of the old books’ spines as I traced my fingertips across their backs.

  Helen shook my hand. “I’m sure we’ll see more of each other,” she said.

  As I jumped aboard the bus, a fine rain had begun to fall. Through the blurred glass, I watched the bright lights of shop windows flickering past. I wished I could have told her that everything would be all right. That she and Stan really were meant for each other. But it wouldn’t have helped. Neither my silence nor my words would keep the lie in check. Sooner or later it would come out. It was inevitable. What happened after that was in the hands of the gods, who were, even now, dismantling the flimsy scaffold of my own life.

  I DIDN’T HEAR FROM STANLEY during the week that followed. The next Friday, I begged off going to the Montague for our usual Forgiving of the World. It seemed only a matter of time before things fell apart between Stanley and Miss Paradise, and I did not want to be there when it happened.

  On Saturday, instead of spending the evening reading in my room, I stayed up all night with Higgins and Houseman, drinking whiskey out of pewter tumblers and eating stale biscuits from a slightly rusty tin. When the biscuits were gone, Higgins produced a box of cigars the size of bulrushes. For the rest of the evening we puffed on these and played blackjack with Swan Vesta matches for bets. Sometime after midnight, Higgins and Houseman got into an argument about whether the much publicized Schuman Plan for pooling the coal and steel resources of western Europe was a good idea. When they began cursing each other in Swahili, I took the opportunity to stagger home to my flat.

  On Sunday morning, despite being slightly the worse for wear, I resolved to find Stanley and discover what had happened. If nothing else, I wanted to reassure him that I’d done nothing to hasten the breakup I felt sure had already come.

  Knowing that Stanley wouldn’t roll out of bed before eleven o’clock, and still with several hours to go before then, I strolled down to the newsagents and bought my usual three papers. The newsagent was asleep with his head on the counter, so I left the money on the register.

  Following my normal Sunday ritual, I stopped at Mrs. Reave’s Tea Shop. It was the only place open on a Sunday morning. As usual at this hour, I was her only customer.

  “Tea and two slices, Mr. Bromley,” said Mrs. Reave, removing a heavy tea mug from the shelf and setting it down beside a steaming pot of tea. She was not asking me what I would have. She was telling me, and her voice had the finality of a judge passing sentence.

  Mrs. Reave was small and bony. Her face was pinched, with a thin slit of a mouth lipsticked bloody red. She kept her hair tied in a bun so severe that it pulled her face into the likeness of someone walking into a hurricane wind. She had few good words to say about anyone or anything, but she did make a good cup of tea. Her world revolved around the making and pouring of hundreds of cupfuls a day, and the endless manufacturing of toast, served always in sets of two slices. On these slices, she swiped huge gobs of half-melted butter and delivered them to a clientele which covered many ranks of London society. Tramps with clothing so dirty it looked like gunmetal sat beside silver-buttoned policemen, who in turn sat beside more or less gainfully employed people like me. Here, there was no room for more than passing comments, as Mrs. Reave did not like people who dawdled. To show she meant business, there were no decorations in the tea shop. The walls were bare except for a large chalkboard, on which the menu had been written. In addition to tea and toast, it offered beans (spelled “beens”), sausages, broiled tomatoes (spelled “tomartoes”), and the dauntingly vague special of “fish.”

  Holding a mug of tea and a plate of toast, Mrs. Reave slid towards me on the worn-down soles of her shaggy slippers. It looked as if she had trampled two small rabbits to death and was now using them to polish the floor. “Hear what happened to those chaps up in the mountains, then?” she asked, clunking the mug down in front of me.

  “No, I haven’t,” I replied. “What mountains?”

  She nodded at my newspapers. “It’s all in there.”

  I snatched up one of the papers. There, splashed across the front page, alongside news that Seoul had fallen to the Communists and the American air force was bombing North Korean troops, was an announcement that Sugden’s team had returned early from Patagonia, having lost two men in
an avalanche.

  According to the report, on the morning of June 20, two members of the expedition, named Bertram Culshaw and Arthur Dalvey, left their camp at the base of El Cajon, making for their second camp halfway up the mountain. From there, they planned to proceed to a third camp, and from there to reach the summit on the following day. By the time they reached the second camp, it was June 22. On the following day, the two men were spotted from the base camp, heading up towards camp three. Later that day, a blizzard set in, and nothing more was heard from the two men. Three days later, the base-camp team, which included Sugden, began a search-and-rescue mission and arrived at camp three after an all-day climb. They found the tent belonging to Dalvey and Culshaw and continued on towards the summit, but with the blizzard still blowing, and no sign of the men, the rescue team was forced to turn back and make its way down to a lower camp. A second search was launched when the blizzard cleared two days later, in the hopes that Dalvey and Culshaw might have reached one of the lower camps, but there was still no trace of the men. The team was forced to accept the fact that no one could have survived out in the open at that altitude. There was some speculation as to whether the two men might have reached the summit, but the papers said that it was “beyond doubt” that they had perished.

  The King had sent a message to the families of Dalvey and Culshaw, which the papers also printed. “They will ever be remembered,” it said, “as fine examples of mountaineers, ready to risk their lives for their companions and to face dangers on behalf of science and discovery.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Reave as she slid the toast expertly across the table, “if you ask me, they shouldn’t have been up there in the first place. What were they after, anyway? There’s nothing there but snow, at least as far as I can gather.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Reave,” I said, hoping she would leave me in peace to read the other papers.

  “Right about what?” Her brittle hands fastened on her hips.

  I sighed. “About whatever point you are trying to make.”

  She eyed me suspiciously, tilting her head to the side and back again in a gesture that reminded me of a parrot. “It’s just daft is all,” she said. “You’d be the first to agree, wouldn’t you, Mr. Bromley? You’re a nice sensible chap. Got yourself a steady job teaching those toff kids. Don’t go running around taking unnecessary risks. Isn’t that right, Mr. Bromley? We all took enough risks in the war. Even those of us who stayed at home. The war made life cheap. Now we got to make it precious once again.”

  “Well said, Mrs. Reave,” I told her. And this time I meant it.

  “Don’t you think,” she continued, “that those two blokes would rather be sitting here beside you having a nice cup of my tea instead of being frozen solid on some mountain in Parsimonia?”

  “I think it’s Patagonia, Mrs. Reave.”

  “Doesn’t much matter where it is if they’re dead, does it?” With that, she retreated behind her barricade of cups and saucers and began furiously sweeping the floor with a worn-out broom. A moment later, she stopped and looked out at the street. “Quiet today,” she muttered, as much to herself as to me. “Even for a Sunday.”

  After saying good-bye to Mrs. Reave, I headed out into the street. There, I stopped and looked around. A sadness filled the damp and dreary street. I could feel it, in the same way I could sense the approach of rain. It was as if the great life of the city itself, made up of all the millions of lives within its boundaries, had sighed at the deaths of those two men. And suddenly London looked a little more run-down, the bricks a little dirtier, the rooftops of the houses bowed like the backs of tired horses.

  Just then, I noticed a man sitting on my doorstep. It took me a second to recognize that the man was Stanley. He sat hunched over, staring at the pavement, the end of a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. I realized he must have come to tell me about his breakup with Helen. “It’s over then,” I called to him as I crossed the street.

  Stanley glanced up, bleary-eyed. His hair stuck up in tufts. He looked like an owl knocked out of its nest. “If that’s the way you want to put it,” he replied, flicking his cigarette into the gutter.

  “She told me everything,” I said, as my thoughts returned to normal. “I don’t blame you, Stan. I might have done the same thing in your shoes.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “About you and Helen,” I said uncertainly.

  Stanley shook his head. “It’s my uncle.”

  “Carton? What about him?”

  “William, he is dead.”

  A picture appeared in my head of Carton kneeling in the alleyway, the handkerchief placed carefully beneath his knee. “What happened?” I stammered.

  “I got a call from our family doctor. Apparently my uncle called him and told him to come by, but when the doctor got there, it was already too late.”

  “I’m awfully sorry, Stan” was all I managed to say. “His lungs must have given out.”

  Stan glared at me through bloodshot eyes. “I feel like a murderer,” he said.

  “That’s ridiculous!” I spluttered.

  He shook his head slowly. “You told me something was wrong with him. I should have listened to you. Instead of that, I just passed it off as business as usual.”

  “You were right, though, Stan,” I explained. “He was like that all the time. Coughing and spluttering. You said so yourself. I didn’t know what I was talking about.” I would have said anything to make him feel better.

  Stanley pulled his coat around him as if there were a cold wind blowing. “Poor old Uncle Henry,” he muttered.

  “Look,” I said. “I’ll cook us up something to eat. Afterwards we can go down to your uncle’s club to see if there’s anything we can do to help. That’s better than sitting around doing nothing.”

  He nodded and rose wearily to his feet.

  I FRIED EGGS AND BACON and spread marmalade on toast, all of which Stanley ate in thankless, brooding silence. When at last he shoved his plate away, I sat down at the opposite end of the table. “Better?” I asked.

  “Much better, thank you.” He reached across to the pot of marmalade, fetched his teaspoon from the saucer, and began to eat the marmalade by itself. “So she told you everything, did she?” he asked without looking up.

  “Well, the stuff about our upcoming trip to the Himalayas, anyway.”

  He managed a weak smile.

  “You know,” I said, “I don’t think you needed to tell her all that.”

  He wagged the teaspoon at me. “Of course I bloody did!” Now that the topic had changed to Helen Paradise, Stanley recovered some of his energy. “I had a pretty good idea what she’d think of me if I told her I’d quit climbing.”

  “How the hell are you going to get out of it?”

  “With your help of course!” He got up from the table and began to pace the room, still waving the spoon. “All you have to do is back me up when I tell her the plan fell through on account of my uncle’s death. If we both say it, then she’ll have to believe us.”

  “You shouldn’t ask me to do a thing like that.”

  He clicked his tongue. “If you thought you might be falling in love with somebody, wouldn’t you resort to anything to keep them in your life?”

  I shrugged uncomfortably, because I did not know.

  “Oh, but why am I asking you?” he snapped. “You’ve kept the world at arm’s length for so long that you probably have no idea what I’m talking about.” With that, he flopped onto my couch, placed a cushion over his face, and fell asleep so quickly that he didn’t even hear me tell him to bugger off.

  Stanley slept all morning and halfway through the afternoon, while I tried reading the papers. Mostly, however, I thought of what he had said about me keeping the world at arm’s length and wondered if it was going to be like this forever.

  Late in the afternoon, I was just getting ready to wake Stanley, so that we could go over to the Climbers’ Club
before it closed, when the bell rang downstairs.

  I went down, opened the door, and found a tall, elderly man waiting in the street. His white hair was combed straight back on his head and he wore a suit made of heavy reddish-brown wool. The toe caps of his black shoes were spit-polished and he was carrying a small brown briefcase, on which the brass latch was also polished. “I’m Dr. Webb,” he said.

  “I didn’t call for a doctor,” I told him.

  “I’m actually looking for Stanley.” Dr. Webb cleared his throat. “I was told he might be here.”

  “Oh. Yes, he is.” I stepped aside. “I beg your pardon.”

  “You’re William Bromley, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Sorry to barge in on you like this. I expect you know what it’s about.”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “How is Stanley taking the news?” asked Dr. Webb. “Doing all right, is he?”

  “More or less, but he’s asleep at the moment.”

  Dr. Webb stopped. “Do you suppose I should come back later?” he said without turning around.

  “I think it would depend on what you have to tell him.”

  He thought about this for a moment. The fingers of his left hand drummed on the banister. “I’ll wake him,” he said quietly.

  Stanley was already awake when we walked in. He sat upright on the couch, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” I told him.

  Through bleary eyes, he blinked at the man. “Dr. Webb!” he exclaimed, and rose to his feet.

  The two of them shook hands.

  “Dr. Webb is the Carton family physician,” Stanley told me, “although given that I am the only one left, I hope he has found other means of drawing income.”