“He doesn’t,” George said, after I’d met his father and mother for the first time.
“Oh, but he does. I can see it. He peers at me as though I’m some strange, exotic animal. Part of him is entranced, part of him appalled. He likes my father’s money but loathes my father’s politics.”
“You mean your father’s habits.”
“Yes, fine then, his habits. I think your father is terrified he’ll find me naked some Sunday morning in his sacristy. I’d never do that. One’s parents being naturist is enough to purify any child.”
I did try to make him like me, though. I thought if the reverend and his son were able to reconcile their differences it might make things easier for me. Now he seizes on me as a means to steer George towards a more conventional life. That the reverend doesn’t like it is the one small pleasure that I take in George’s being away.
I drop the post on the side table and go to sit in the window. Unless a telegram comes, there will be no more news until late this afternoon. Six long hours.
Below me the garden is a lush green; the grass will have to be trimmed soon. From here I don’t see individual blades but a swirling carpet in shifting tones. As I watch, the lawn darkens, like sea grass, and the air above it too. Just a cloud moving in, but there is the plunging in my stomach, a flash of déjà vu.
It was the week before George left, and I was waiting for him to return from his run.
Some days it feels as if all I do is wait.
That particular day was grey and the rain on the window blurred the world beyond. George should have been home by then. He had promised to go to church with me. In the sitting room, I stood at the window, staring at the cascade of rain so I wouldn’t see his presence everywhere. The house was cluttered with his belongings – mine and the children’s still in so many boxes, but George’s possessions were everywhere. Maps and books and lengths of rope to be carefully measured.
On the floor at my foot was an envelope with his scrawl: Blue socks, letters, book, metal flask, Burberry. I lifted my head so it was out of my sightline.
The rain slipping down the window pulled my eyelids downwards with it. The night before George hadn’t slept and so neither did I, jostled awake by his ongoing arrivals and departures. When I came down for breakfast, he was already gone.
I dressed and waited by the window. My hands were cold. And then there was a scraping against stone, a tapping at the window. My name. “Ruth.”
He was pressed against the window, clinging, like a drowned cat, to the sill. Everything was wet.
“Don’t let go,” I cried and opened the window out, carefully, as he shuffled aside. He pulled himself up so his waist was even with mine outside the window. “Get in here. You’ll catch your death.”
“Kiss me first.”
“You haven’t done this for a long time.” And I shook my head, leaned back out of the rain, but couldn’t help smiling.
“Kiss me,” he insisted again. His face was wet from rain, from sweat. He hauled himself in the window and grabbed me, water dripping onto the carpet, onto my dress.
“I’ll have to change.”
“Then you’ll have to change.” We were warm and damp where our bodies met. He pulled me to his lap on the floor. “Do you remember how I used to do that, Mouse?”
“Of course, when we were first married. You would climb the wall beneath the loggia at the Holt and pounce on me.” I didn’t say how much I missed it. “When you come back, don’t ever use the door again.” I kissed him and stood. “To church then.”
He was sheepish. “I’m sorry, Mouse. You’ll have to go without me. I have so much to do.” He gestured around the room. “The truck is coming tomorrow. I’ll make it up to you. Go every Sunday when I get back.” He kissed me again.
Did he want me to stay with him? I wanted to ask, but it was as if he read my mind. “Go on. You’ll be late.”
“They’re ready, ma’am.” Vi stands in the sitting room door with the children.
I’ve been staring at the book on my lap, the words swimming on the page. If I was asked I’d never be able to say what I’ve been reading, though I’ve been turning the pages.
I put it down and look at the three of them, lined up, waiting for inspection. “Go get your shoes on,” I say. “Your hats.”
I close the book without marking my page. It doesn’t matter anyway. The last page is missing.
Each time George has left, he has ripped out the last page from the book I am reading. Has done since our very first separation – when he left me in Venice to go climbing with Will.
“What are you reading?” he asked, leaning over the back of the sofa. He smelled of soap.
“Henry James. The Aspern Papers.”
“Is it good?”
“You don’t know it?” I was surprised.
When he shook his head, I handed it to him for his inspection. He stood up, leaving the soap smell lingering. “I can lend it to you when I’m done.” He turned right to the last page. “No,” I cried. “Stop, you’ll ruin it!”
I meant the ending. Instead, he folded the page carefully against itself and then ripped it out. I said nothing, only watched.
“I’ll keep this,” he said and slipped the page into his pocket. “And you’ll never know how it ends unless you agree to see me again. I’ll keep it with me and the next time you see me you can have it back.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe. But it’s also the way it is.”
Since then he’s taken a page with him every time he’s left. To France, to the Alps. Even to Everest and New York. Whatever book I am reading, no matter how close I am to finishing. I pace out the rest of the pages, reading slowly, timing the end with George’s return.
This time he almost didn’t take the page. In the hotel room, as I packed, I realized it was still there.
“You forgot this,” I said and ripped the page myself. It wasn’t as neat as when George ripped it; words were left hanging in the book.
He took it, folded it in his journal, kissed my forehead.
When he comes back I will find it hidden, somewhere, on him. Tucked into a pocket, the waistband of his trousers as I undress him.
“We’re ready, maman!” Berry’s voice, impatient, from the entry.
“Shhh.” Vi’s tone is scolding.
I go to them; they are neat and clean, the mess of breakfast washed away. Their faces are damp at their hairlines, their jaws.
“Shall we be off, then? We’ve a busy day.”
“To Aunt Cottie’s?”
“Yes.”
“Oui, maman.”
Clare turns to leave, with Berry shadowing her. John reaches to me and I lift the solid weight of him. “Lay the table while we’re gone please, Vi. I may be a while.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I take up my own hat and gloves from the hall table and quickly inspect the three of them. You won’t believe how big they’ve grown, I’ll write. My own reflection in the mirror is presentable. I step with the children into the bright day.
ICEFALL
19,325 FEET
“Gentlemen, please?”
Noel stood outside the mess tent, his arm around his camera on its tripod, a massive mahogany and brass contraption, weighing better than a stone. Sandy had been learning to calculate the weight of everything at a glance. “Don’t carry anything up you can live without,” George had told him. “Every ounce will try and drag you back down again.” It seemed true enough. The summit was still a long way from here.
“Over here, gentlemen,” Noel called again. “Please?”
“Have you noticed,” George had pointed out to him on the trek, “that Noel always speaks in questions?”
Since then Sandy hadn’t been able to help but hear it, and Noel’s persistent questions grated on him. It would be a relief when Noel no longer shared a camp with them. They wouldn’t have to worry anymore about being filmed, being photographed, of always being asked to
pose and do it one more time. For the camera.
This though, the official photo, this Sandy didn’t mind, really. This would be in the papers. In the history books. If they made it. He wished he felt more like smiling.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the boy, but he hoped that by moving up the mountain he’d be able to put the death behind him. The others seemed to have done so already. No one mentioned the drowning, and now, only a day later, they were back to teasing and joking with one another. Somes had sat next to George in the pre-dawn dark and asked him about his sleep, about the route up. It was as if nothing had happened between them. The porters were quieter than usual, but they were lining up to compare the loads they would soon shoulder through the glacier and stamping their feet against the cold. They were ready, too. Now, the only thing that remained to be done was to pose for the expedition photograph, but Noel had insisted they wait for more light. Sandy just wanted to move up the mountain. To get on with the bloody thing.
Noel’s camera bellows were cracking in the dry air, even though he slathered them with petroleum jelly throughout the day. The arid cold was taking its toll on everything. Sandy’s own face was parched and scabbed and hurt constantly, as if the skin was being flayed from his skull. Noel pulled off his fingerless gloves, expanded and collapsed the bellows, loosening the folds. He exhaled loudly, showily, and his breath fogged the lens.
The others were milling about – Odell, Shebbeare, Hazard – the early morning light setting them in sharp relief against the grey of Base Camp. As Noel tossed his arm over the camera again, in an almost intimate gesture, and peered into the glass eye of the lens, the men arranged themselves in some sort of composition they remembered from school photographs – a tableau of rangy lines, one seated in front, one standing behind, deciding how they wanted to be seen, to be remembered. Shoulders were pressed back, chins jutted out.
“Come on,” Norton waved to him and George. “Let’s get this done.”
George sighed, then dropped the rope he’d been uncoiling and recoiling and moved off to join the others, Sandy trailing after him.
Odell gestured to the space beside him, but Sandy stopped and stood next to George, behind Shebbeare. George turned to him and reached over to straighten his scarf, pushing it down under his chin. It hurt like hell, the wool brushing against his face, but Sandy forced a smile. George nodded, squinted his eyes a little at him, then lifted his foot and set it on Shebbeare’s shoulder.
“We all know you want the summit, George,” Odell said from down the line, “but you don’t have to climb over our dead bodies.” No one laughed.
All around them were tin plates of half-eaten food, teacups balanced precariously on rocks. But Noel would frame it perfectly. Sandy pressed his own shoulders back.
“Really, Mallory?” Noel asked. “Like that?”
George tensed beside him and he tried to hide his smile. “Take the bloody photo, Noel. I’ve things to do.”
“We’ve this to do.” Norton’s voice was quiet from the other side of George.
George didn’t shift. They looked a fine lot, though. Strong. Well kitted out. Ready to take on the mountain.
“Right,” Noel gave in, walking around behind the camera. “This way gentlemen, please? And a one, two?” The shutter opened; he could see the fanning eye of it, imagined the silver of the chemicals. They waited long seconds, standing still in the sun and wind. When Noel dropped his hand to indicate the shutter’s closing, Shebbeare shrugged George’s foot from his shoulder.
Stepping away, George spoke over his shoulder. “Ten minutes and we’re out.” Then he bent to retrieve the coil of rope and walked off alone.
EVEN WITH THE early start, the sun was over the near peaks by the time they reached the glacier, washing the landscape in pinks and golds. George had settled into the rhythm of the climb, the crunch of his crampons cutting into the ice. He could see the route in his head and on the ice in front of him, like lines on a map, the ropes paid out behind him.
Sandy came next, then the coolies with their loads, followed by Odell, Shebbeare, and Noel with that bloody camera. “You’ll have to keep up, Noel,” he’d told him as he checked the ropes earlier. “I won’t wait for you.”
“Don’t worry about me, Mallory.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about.” There were too many risks on the glacier to stop or slow for more than a few minutes. Despite the cold temperatures, this high up the sun was merciless, scorching the atmosphere that was too thin to provide any protection. They had to be through the ice before the full heat of the sun was upon it. This part of the mountain was alive: the glacier lay in wait for them. And even at this relatively low altitude there were risks.
“The first time, we had no idea what to expect,” he told Sandy during the trek. They’d been sitting next to one of the glacial rivers in the foothills, drying after a brisk swim. The air was warm after the shock of the roaring water. “We were pushing up the ice. We didn’t know what we were doing, where it was going. And then one of the coolies just stopped and screamed.”
“One of the porters?”
“Young fellow. Virgil’s nephew, I think he was. It was a shock. We don’t expect the altitude to get to them, but it does. Impossible to say who and when it will strike. When I could get the lad to speak again, he said it was like an ice pick in his head. We all had headaches. The one consistency on Everest, the headaches. Like a rotten hangover. I thought he might just be lazy, didn’t want to do the work. But he couldn’t go any higher up. Every step, he said, was an agony.”
“But he was all right?”
“He had to go back down to Base Camp, and then on back home. Longstaff said later it was a haemorrhage. If he’d gone any higher he would have died. Might even have died if he’d stayed at that height. We weren’t even that high up.”
The rope pulled at George’s waist. The ice carried sounds up to him – the gasping breaths behind him sounding close in the narrow passes of ice.
And now a faster sound, the quick crunch of footsteps coming even closer. He turned to see Sandy dashing towards him, more a hurried walk than a run. With their short breath, running was impossible. What was Sandy doing? Had he missed something? Quickly, he tallied the coolies who trudged monotonously upwards, heads bowed.
Sandy dropped to his knees on the smooth ice, gliding along it until he reached George. Then he dug in one toe, pivoted and stopped, smiling up at him. Sandy was gasping, flushed. All raw exuberance. “The ice has certainly gotten to you.” George reached out and cuffed Sandy lightly on the back of his head. “All right,” he said more loudly, the ice carrying his voice, “we’ll rest here a minute.”
“How on earth did you find your way through this?” Sandy asked, amazed, his voice a raspy breath. Sandy stood, and George felt his breath warm his face briefly, leaving his skin cooler than it was before. He shrugged out of his pack and sat down on it, in the shadow of an overhang. It was true – there was no obvious trail to follow, no exit; they were hemmed in by ice walls.
“The ice shows you, if you know how to read it. It’s like following a slow river.”
“Very slow.” Sandy laughed, crouching down beside him. Then he pulled his hat low over his own face and rummaged through his rucksack for his canteen.
For the most part the coolies coming up seemed strong, despite the massive loads on their backs. None of them wore crampons – there weren’t enough to go around and that slowed them some – but all in all he was pleased. A short break would refresh them. Keep them from getting frustrated, from dropping their loads or refusing to go on. Keeping them focused was important. A single misstep could send someone stumbling into a crevasse, pulling everyone on the rope down with him.
“How are we doing for time?” Sandy asked, taking a long drink from his canteen.
Somewhere the steady drop of meltwater was a ticking clock.
“Not bad.” He checked his watch – half-ten – though the hour meant less than how hot the su
n was, beating down on them through the thin atmosphere. “But we’ll have to keep pushing. It’s getting warm. And once that happens the ice starts to melt, to shift. That’s the real danger.”
“I really didn’t think I’d have to worry about getting too warm on Everest.”
The coolies were beginning to reach them now. They said nothing to him, but murmured to each other and dropped their loads. It would take some work to get them going again.
To a man, though, the coolies looked good. None of them was the worse for wear, just slow. They always needed to be pushed. Unmotivated, he thought. They had nothing at stake. They’d get paid so long as they finished the expedition. If they quit early their pay would be docked. One of the female porters opened her red coat to breastfeed the child strapped to her chest. He turned away, avoiding the sight of the swollen, drooping flesh, the blackberry-coloured aureole so exotic and blatant.
He pulled out Ruth’s recent letter, delivered last night. He’d been parcelling out reading it, wanting to make it last. What I want you to know, darling, almost more than anything, is that I am appalled, I really did behave terribly in the months before you went. I should like to be able to go back and do them over again and have nothing but support for you. But it is so terribly difficult, despite all my best intentions.
He stopped there and turned to his own half-written letter. If he tried hard enough, he could almost imagine that this was a kind of conversation they were having, as they did at the end of the day, lying in bed together. No, he wrote, I’ve been terribly selfish and you completely justified. It was a terrible tug, you know that. But in less than a month’s time I shall, with all luck, be on my way back to you, and you already trumpeting my success. It’s closer than you think, love. He paused, gazing out over the gathered coolies, the Icefall below him. “Where’s Noel?” he asked.
Above All Things Page 9