Someone handed him a cup of tea; it looked weak, already cooling, but he sipped it anyway. Then she was beside him again.
“Take mine,” she said.
“No, I couldn’t. Thank you.”
“I insist. You’ll need it. For the reporters. Oooooh.” She shivered exaggeratedly and the cap shoulder of her dress slipped down, revealing a sharp angle of bone, the ribbon strap of a silk slip. She pulled it back up and exchanged her cup for his. It was warmer and smelled of whisky and lipstick.
He tried to remember the taste of whisky on Ruth’s lips, of alcohol radiating from her skin in the morning. How would this woman taste?
He turned to face the reporters.
Why. That was what everyone wanted to know. Or at least the ones who had never been on a mountain before. He’d never been able to explain it properly. What was there to explain? It was the aesthetics of the climb, the pull and lure of what lies just over that oh-so-close horizon. It was the pure pleasure of turning a route, a wall, of having your body do exactly what you need it to, when you need it to. But it was more than that, too. There was a supremacy he felt when he stood on a summit. An ascendency.
His limbs were tired and tight. He’d been still for too long. He wanted to climb something. Anything. Or go for a run through the park that was only a couple of blocks north. Maybe no one would miss him. He was exhausted. He wanted to flirt with that blonde. He wanted to sleep.
But why? He had waited for it all evening. Dreaded it.
“Why, Mr. Mallory?” began one. “What exactly is the point of climbing this mountain?”
“It seems like an awful great risk, don’t you think? Is it worth risking your life for?”
“Or the lives of others,” another man cut in.
“How many people have died so far?”
“Mr. Mallory, what exactly do you hope to prove?”
The voices and questions merged together. They were beginning to sound like accusations. He took a long pull from his teacup, wondered if any of the reporters were drinking too.
He wished Ruth was there with him.
The weight of the climb was in his legs, but George had no choice but to continue breaking the new trail. No one else could take over. Sandy, the closest behind him, was too inexperienced, too weak. Besides, they were almost through the glacier, and the pleasure and anxiety of a new route kicked up adrenaline in him, eroded his exhaustion. His body made the decisions for him, carried him around weak spots in the ice and crevasses covered with a rime of snow. George leaned his forehead against the ice wall he was scaling, so cool after the glaring sun reflecting all around him. It melted against his skin, water running down his face. He licked his lips.
He wished there were stone under his bare fingers instead of this ice under his gloves. He dropped all his weight onto his right foot and the toe of his crampon dug into the ice. There was pressure on his ankle, a familiar ache, as he pulled his ice axe from the wall and slammed it back in a few feet higher. Ice chips rained down and melted on his cheeks and lips. He pulled himself up on the axe and pressed his forehead to the ice again. Just a moment, then the next placement.
He could see into the ice, only inches from his face. There was a boulder in the ice in front of him, petrified, frozen in place for a millennium. More, maybe. Sliding slowly down the mountain in the river of ice.
His wrists, his elbows, his shoulders – they ached from the stuttered impact of his axe into ice. How many times had he wielded the axe today? In his lifetime? His fingers were tight and swollen from dehydration. No matter how much he drank, the dry air leeched all the moisture from his breath, his body. There was too much tension in every one of his joints. He exhaled and pulled up again, wrestled himself over the lip of the wall.
His body had forgotten grace.
From the top of the wall he could see the rest of the trail ahead, as clear as a line on the white of the Icefall, leading off the glacier, onto the flank of the mountain. Ruth’s words circled in his head – I really did behave terribly. George dug himself in at the top of the wall and waited to feel the pull of the rope at his waist and in the grip of his hands as Sandy climbed up behind him.
“Why climb Mt. Everest?”
He always wanted to be witty – like James or Vanessa – quick with the perfect retort. But he couldn’t find it. Exhausted, resigned, he exhaled.
There was a furious scribbling and he knew the reporters liked what he’d said, though some of them looked confused by it. There was a knowing nod from Neil, as if what he’d just said was incredibly wise, but he’d forgotten it already. What did they like so much? He still wouldn’t remember when he read his own quote in the New York Times the next day: Because it’s there. Had he really said that?
He was slightly drunk. Well, more than slightly. Throughout the evening, the blonde had continued to materialize and pour more whisky into his tea. His head was foggy, the way it was at altitude. The way it would be at the summit. His body kept itself balanced without his telling it to. He stepped out of the room onto the winter balcony. The wind whipped northward along the skyline to the black rectangle of Central Park. That’s where he wanted to be. He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t too late. He ducked inside to find his host and make his excuses. Early morning, another lecture to prepare for.
“Are you going?” She was beside him again.
He smiled involuntarily and covered the dregs in his teacup. “No more,” he pleaded. And then, “Yes. I need to be on my way. But thank you. For this. Miss …?” He left the question open and waited for her name.
She waited longer, watching him. He waited her out.
“Stella.” Her name was a breath. She extended her hand, her short blonde hair shaking around her jaw. She was so American. “Stella Jones.”
“A Welsh girl? I knew it.” He shouldn’t be flirting. He should go back to his hotel room and write to Ruth. She should have come to New York with him.
“Something like that,” she said.
He followed her to the door.
Out on the street she turned to him. “I want to see you climb. Everyone says that’s the only way to really see the beautiful George Mallory.” She shivered exaggeratedly yet again, and pushed up against him.
Blushing in the city’s darkness, he wondered who “everyone” was. “There isn’t anywhere to climb here.”
“Maybe we’ll find something later.”
She took him to a speakeasy where a jazz band played, dark and smoky in the corner. She danced and bought him a record in brown paper from the saxophone player, introduced him as a hero, a great explorer. With the pressed shellac under his arm, he walked away from the conversation.
Outside the club he thought of Ruth and tried not to. He thought of rules and roles and wondered why he bothered. He thought of who it was they all thought he should be and leaned down to kiss Stella.
She shook her head, her lips brushing past his. “No.”
It surprised him; he’d thought that was the game. He stepped back but said nothing, wondering how he had so badly misread the situation.
She spoke first, stepping into him, her body so close he could feel the heat off her. Her hair was thick with the smell of smoke from the club. “What are the walls of the Waldorf like?”
“Is this a dare?”
He had sobered up a little, spread talcum powder on his palms. They were dry and smooth in the winter air. Stella stood in his overcoat on his balcony at the Waldorf Astoria. She sipped at her tumbler of rum, her scarlet lipstick smearing its rim. All of New York lay below him. He knew it was an optical illusion, but the sheer walls of the building dropping away to the avenue below made it seem as though he was higher than he had ever been on any mountain.
“Yes!” she said, cradling her glass in the crook of her arm and clapping her hands together. The sound snapped in the crisp air. Her accent had thickened through the night, with alcohol and comfort. “A dare!”
He stood on the balustrade where it met t
he wall, and the world fell off to his left. His fingers found the holds in the brickwork the way they always did. He pulled himself up, made his way above the door frame and traversed the width of the balcony. He forgot about his audience, the woman watching him, and felt more at ease than he had since he’d arrived in New York.
The stone felt strong under his fingers. His patent leather shoes scraped against its surface, transferring black to grey stone, leaving traces of him on the building. On the rock.
He descended to the balustrade on the other side of the balcony and thought briefly of the dark emptiness below him. What if he just let go? Why didn’t he?
When he came down, Stella’s arms were immediately around him. Sometime in the evening, she’d told him she knew him. She was a friend of a friend, knew his mother’s sister’s daughter at school. She insisted they had met before when they were young, but he didn’t remember her. He wished he did. He descended and kissed her.
She tasted of tea and whisky. Of America and jazz.
“Is there a Victrola?” he asked. He wanted to dance with her.
He found his way through the billowing gauze of curtains into the room. It was opulent, the blue carpet lush and yielding under his feet, the sinking depths of wingback chairs, the soft expanse of the enormous bed. He would have to leave it the next day. The expedition couldn’t afford for him to stay there another night. They could barely afford one, but appearances had to be kept up. Tomorrow he would move downtown, before leaving the city in two days from Penn Station.
There was a Victrola. He played his new record and air-planed his arms in time to the music.
Stella laughed. “George Mallory, this isn’t you.”
“It is.”
He walked towards her.
“Well, then, I think I like him.”
She was a woman of angles, sharp like ridges. The narrow bones of her hips, the declivity of her collarbone, so different from Ruth’s rounder softness.
They danced to jazz and he wished there was more to drink.
In the morning he would read his name in the newspaper and order room service. That night he led Stella to bed. She was long and thin like the girls he had watched in the speakeasy.
When he kissed her again he thought of other kisses, thought of Ruth and his absences, thought about how she would probably understand this. There was no guilt. That was the story he told himself.
He was almost certain Ruth knew nothing of Stella. He’d written her only once, from the Alpine Club. He still hadn’t opened her letters.
It was early afternoon when they finally arrived at what would be their campsite.
“Camp Two. Just as we left it.”
Well, not exactly. The remains of the old camp – the metal skeleton of the tent, the canvas shredded by wind, by ice, and by rocks that had been hurled at it for the past two years – sat in a drift. There wasn’t much to salvage beyond a forgotten tin of beans and some tent poles. The site had been utterly destroyed. They’d erect a new camp in its place, occasionally tossing aside old bits of equipment, frozen rubbish.
It took them hours to raise the tents. Later, they would build small walls from stones he’d ask the coolies to drag from the edge of the Icefall, which they’d drape with canvas to provide a small measure of protection from the mountain. But for now they’d make do. Odell tasked the coolies with making tea, that interminable chore he avoided at all costs. Everyone moved in slow motion, despite the effort. In the thin air they were all half-drunk.
“It’s cool enough now,” he said, a few hours later, giving Shebbeare directions for leading down most of the coolies. “It’ll be stable. Just stick to the ropes and you’ll find your way back easily enough. It should take you only a fraction of the time going back down.” Shebbeare nodded, a little nervously. “Tell Norton and Somervell to start bringing the oxygen up tomorrow. And give this to Somes.” He handed Shebbeare the notes he’d made on how everyone had fared on the push through the Icefall.
“Yessir.”
George turned back to camp. The rest of them would stay – Sandy, Odell, Noel, a handful of coolies. They’d settle Camp II and finalize the plans for the next camp. By the time Shebbeare returned with Teddy and Somes tomorrow, he’d be on his way up to establish Camp III. Four more camps and then the summit. They had three weeks, maybe a month before the monsoon made landfall on the subcontinent.
George sat on a small box of supplies and watched Odell hover over the coolies as they melted snow for tea and prepared food. Odell would take the first serving, no doubt. He always did.
“Odell,” he called. “Could you check those packs? Make sure everything survived the trek.” When Odell nodded, he looked away. “We all have to do our part,” he added to himself.
Near one of the tents Sandy paced, moving back and forth between crates and tents, stacking and restacking the boxes and packs, digging them into the snow so they wouldn’t slip. He hit at chunks of ice with the head of his ice axe. Sandy burned with nervous energy, and the sight of so much activity churned George’s stomach. He dropped his head so Sandy was out of his sightline. He needed to focus. They would start to move up to Camp III tomorrow, the day after at the latest. He had to sort out what to take, who would carry it.
Moments later Sandy stood over him, looking down.
“What? You should relax, Sandy. Tea will be ready soon. Don’t believe this burst of energy. It’ll disappear soon enough.”
“Come on,” Sandy said. In one hand Sandy held a small palm-sized stone he’d plucked from the edge of the glacier, worn smooth by the ice. In the other, his ice axe. He held them both up, gestured his head back towards the Icefall.
He shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Come on, George. You said exercise was good for the lungs, the head, didn’t you? Besides, it’ll be fun. Odell,” Sandy called, raising his voice, “bring your axe.”
He followed Sandy back onto the ice, to a smooth, flat pond a quarter of a mile deep. In the heat of the afternoon it had been an oven. Now it was cool and blue. Perfect.
Sandy dropped the flat stone to the ice and grabbed the shaft of his axe. He slapped the puck with the blade, sliding it towards George, who stopped it with his foot and then smiled. With his own axe George slid the rock forward, slipping his feet along the ice, skating.
“One of the fellows back at my college,” Sandy called, “travelled to Toronto one winter with his father. He saw these blokes playing this on the harbour there and thought it was a gas. So he tried to teach us. We tried to freeze the courtyard at school with buckets of water. It didn’t work. This seemed the place to give it another go.”
George had been to Toronto, just once. After New York. The place had been unbearably cold. Ruth had laughed at him. “Cold? After Everest?” Yes, he’d told her. Cold. Even after Everest. And grey and dark. The cold there pinned you down. He’d never had any desire to go back, but if he did, maybe he’d have a look at Sandy’s game.
Virgil had grabbed George’s spare axe, and another of the coolies was gripping a broken piece of crate that Sandy had handed him. The ice cooled and snapped around them as they played. Here the sky remained bright long after they could no longer see the sun. George made a false rush at Odell’s goal but was blocked by Noel, who slammed him hard from the left. He lifted his elbow to block the ricochet. The sound of his axe on the rock and ice, Sandy’s short burst of laughter, echoed off the ice walls. Virgil held his net for him, moving slowly, steadily between the rocks they’d placed as goal posts. George moved around behind him, nudged the goal markers in a bit. He felt fit in his body. Odell slapped a shot towards him. He blocked the shot, felt the ache of the hit in his cold-numbed leg, then raised his elbow to check Noel, smiling. This was just playing. Noel smiled back. They were having fun. He didn’t remember having any fun in ’22.
George kept score in his head until they were panting and sweating, too tired to play anymore. It was his win. He wouldn’t tell them that, but he kn
ew it. The game had probably lasted only a few minutes, but it felt as if they had played forever. The air was too thin to support Sandy’s enthusiasm.
“Come on!” Sandy yelled. “One more point? Winner takes all?”
“What’s at stake?”
“The loser melts snow in the morning. Makes the tea.”
They seemed to think about it even as they lay spread-eagled on the ice, their chests heaving.
“Maybe a rematch,” George said. “On the way down.”
His head pounded now. Foolish, this burst of activity. The water they’d have to drink to make up for the dehydration. But everyone was smiling. Even the coolies.
Maybe it was worth it.
“Speaking of tea, we’d better get it on,” Odell said. He turned to lead them back to camp.
“Come on.” Sandy put his arm over George’s shoulders. It was comforting, welcome. “Wasn’t such a bad idea, hey?”
“No,” George said. “It wasn’t. You should keep them coming.”
Sandy was flushed. He smiled and his sunburned lip cracked. George wiped at the small spot of blood.
MAGDALENE
11 O’CLOCK
Cottie opens the door with her arms spread out to sweep around Clare and Berry before she realizes I am with them today instead of Vi. She cocks her head at me and then says loudly, brightly, “Bonjour, mes petites!”
The entry way is a sunny yellow. Everything in Cottie’s home is vivid and boldly coloured – paintings and photographs on every conceivable wall space, flowers rotting in the vases, giving off a sickly overripe scent. Against this backdrop she is a dusty lark, always in tan trousers, a man’s white shirt. “Come in, come in! Entrez!” She ushers us in, scooping John from my arms. Everything about her is welcoming. “I didn’t expect to see you until this evening,” she is saying, while she swings John from side to side and he giggles. “Can I do anything for you?”
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