He wanted Somervell to snap back. He was spoiling for a fight. None of this was fair. None of it. They had left him behind to tend camp and to watch Lapkha die. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen.
Somervell was quiet for a few long minutes. “Did you really think it would be easy?”
Of course he hadn’t thought it would be easy, but he hadn’t expected it to be like this. It had all seemed like a great adventure at the beginning. Had it only been two months ago that they had sat in Richards’ back garden in Darjeeling, drinking champagne? It had all seemed like a grand lark. At least then he’d felt that they were all in it together.
“No, of course not,” he said finally, feeling small, petulant.
“If it was easy,” Somes said, “everyone would do it. My dad used to say that to me when I was little. When I said school was too hard. When I lost a race. I hated when he said that.”
He didn’t want Somervell’s platitudes, wasn’t going to let this be easy for him. “If you’d been in camp, Lapkha might still be alive.”
“He very well might be. But then, maybe not.” Somes leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, pinched at the bridge of his nose. Then he turned to stare hard at Sandy. “There’s a price to pay, Sandy, for something like this. An acceptable price. Everyone knows what’s at risk. Everyone shares the rewards. If you were a little older you might understand that a bit better.”
“That’s what this is about? I’m not a bloody child.”
“No,” Somes leaned back, shaking his head, surprised. “No, you’re not. That’s not what I meant. I just meant we had to figure that out for ourselves. Over there. During the war.” Somervell let his words sit for a moment. As if he wanted to say something else but wasn’t sure he should. “We didn’t get an inch of land – not an inch – without paying for it. We’ve all watched men die. Brutally. Unfairly.”
“That was war, Somes. This isn’t.”
“You’re right. It was war. And I’m sorry, Sandy. I’m sorry you were there by yourself. But you handled it well. You should be proud of what you’ve done. But you have to decide for yourself what price is too high. I can’t decide for you. Teddy can’t. George can’t. A lot of people thought the war cost us too much, that maybe this will as well.”
Sandy thought of what his mum had said – too many have already died. “What do you think?”
“I think we do what is required of us. Then. Now.”
Somes put his hand on Sandy’s shoulder to heave himself back to standing, grunting as he did so. “You’ll have to make your own decision. And soon,” he said and started back towards the monastery. “Teddy wants us in the main hall in a half-hour.”
“So that’s what we’ll do then,” Norton was saying when Sandy walked into the narrow room a half-hour later, still not having slept. Norton sat at a long, low table with George, their legs crossed under them. George nodded, gulped at the stew in front of him.
Noel entered from the other end of the room, through the arch of daylight, a backlit shadow, shrinking and solidifying as he entered the room. “Ah, the war council, eh? Well, let’s get it on film, shall we?”
But Noel was too late. It seemed Somes was right, things had already been decided. There was a brief surge of excitement in Sandy’s stomach, a flash of hope that ebbed away as he slipped onto a cushion at the low table, across from George. With the light coming at him sideways, George’s eyes glowed like fevered spheres. Noel instructed a porter to set up his heavy movie camera at one end of the table, then fussed over it, wiping the lens, fogging it with his breath, and then wiping it once more.
Sandy had almost forgotten about the camera. How much had Noel seen from his Eagle’s Nest? Had Noel watched him stumbling around ABC, trying but failing to help Lapkha? What if it looked as though he wasn’t doing anything at all? He remembered that there had been long moments when he’d found himself sitting still in the snow, unable to recall what he was doing or why he needed to be moving. But then he had moved again. What if Noel’s film only showed him sitting there, wandering, useless?
Before he’d been invited to join the expedition, before he’d even gone to Spitsbergen, Sandy had gone with Dick to see Noel’s film of the 1922 attempt. Dick had offered to buy them tickets for one of the lectured showings so that Sandy could hear George speak. “Look,” Dick said, “I know Spitsbergen’s not Everest, but there’s bound to be some similarities, at least. Setting off into the great unknown, wild adventure, and all that.”
“That sounds fantastic, Dick. But you don’t have to do that. We’ll just go to the film.”
“When have you ever refused my generosity?” Dick had cuffed his arm and he’d felt the flush across his face, the perspiration on his lip. Dick always treated. What was Dick’s was Sandy’s. It had been like that since public school. But it didn’t feel right anymore. He kept wondering, God, what would Dick say when he found out about Marjory?
“Well, we can’t go on like that forever, can we? Actually, why don’t you let me treat?” he’d said, though he couldn’t afford it, really.
They sat in the dark theatre and he tried to imagine being that cold. He believed what he saw on the screen. All the camaraderie, the smiling faces of porters. The hope that they’d make it the next time. Now he wondered how much of it Noel had manufactured. Whether those smiling faces might have been from before things went wrong, the hope from before the avalanche.
The rest of them filtered in – Odell, Somervell, Hazard, Shebbeare. Odell came and sat beside him, placing his hand on Sandy’s shoulder as he lowered himself to the table. “All right?” Odell asked.
“Fine, thanks. You?”
Odell nodded and smiled an easy smile. He knew something. He knew what was going to happen. Had Norton already told them who was going?
Norton looked around the table and then at Noel, whose film camera clattered to life and then whirred loudly. Across from him, George put his hands palms down on the table and inhaled deeply as if to focus himself. As if he was preparing for battle. “This is from last week.” Norton held up a small piece of paper. A telegram with a scramble of words on it. “The monsoon hit the continent a week ago,” Norton explained. “It’s on its way.”
The monsoon was their warning bell. The weather would change. There was no way to know for certain how quickly, but it would turn, and they’d have to be down from the high camps before it did. Lower down, when the spring winds swept in, the monsoon brought rain and warm weather – the crops would grow, the rivers might flood. Up here, it meant blizzards, feet of dumped snow. Up here it meant the summit would be impossible.
Norton cleared his throat and started again. “We go back tomorrow. George and I have set the teams. We’ll try one last blast for the summit. Two teams, a day apart. With God on our side, with luck, that’s all it will take. George?”
George’s eyes skimmed over him as he looked around the table. “We’ll go in two teams. Light and fast. Teddy and I talked about who should go. Who was strong, ready. It hasn’t been an easy decision, but this will be the last shot. I’ll be on the first team, of course.” There were nods around the table. Even from Noel, who had moved out from behind the camera. “Teddy and Somes will be the second team.”
George seemed to be finished. He leaned back slightly away from the table then placed his hands back on it as if to push himself off.
“And?” The word was out of his mouth before Sandy could stop it.
“And what?”
“And who is going with you? On the attempt?”
“Oh.” George looked away from him and stood up so he towered over the table. “Odell. Odell and I will take the first assault.”
Norton took over. “Hazard, Shebbeare – you’ll stay below. Sandy, you’ll run the support for both attempts. Start at Four and then move up a day behind us.” Sandy didn’t hear the rest of the conversation.
Slowly, everyone drifted out of the hall, leaving only him and Shebbeare to confer a
bout provisions. Shebbeare flipped through the pages George had handed him. “Most of what we need is already at ABC. We’ll need to send some more fuel. Some more food. And what about the cooker at Five? You said it had broken down?”
“I’ve already repaired it.”
“Ah.” Shebbeare crossed something off the list in front of him. “That’s taken care of then.”
Sandy’s face was hot under his sunburn. He felt like a fool. Like when he had to sit out the Oxford–Cambridge race last year because he’d been away at bloody Spitsbergen with Odell. He’d been in better shape than anyone else on the eight, but he wasn’t allowed to row because of a stupid rule about missed practices. He sat on the sidelines and watched Oxford win, and he was thrilled for his teammates, for his school, but still he ached during the course.
He turned now on Shebbeare. “You’re all right with this? That we’ll just be pack animals for the attempt?”
“Of course. That’s what I was brought on for, Sandy. I know you thought maybe you’d get a crack at it, but I didn’t. I’ve got my job to do. We’re still a part of it.”
“We’re not. We’re being left behind to wait. What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t.” Shebbeare gathered up the rest of the papers from the table. “You should get your things together. Norton wants to get going at first light.” He stopped at the door. “I think we might just do it this time.”
When he was alone again, Sandy thought about what Somes had said. About what price he was willing to pay. What Everest was worth.
If he was on the attempt, he might think it was worth anything, but not this way. This way it wasn’t worth watching another man suffocate, his lungs flooding, his brain expanding until it exploded. Sandy swallowed down the image.
They were going to make the attempt anyway, whether he thought it was worth it or not. But he wouldn’t watch anyone else die. No matter what Somes or George had to say. If his job was to make sure they were safe, that’s what he’d do.
TEA
4 O’CLOCK
There is nothing on the table in the entryway. No afternoon post. No cards. I drop my hat on the empty surface and make my way to the dining room, where Vi is wiping and stacking the unpacked plates. One of the serving bowls has been chipped in the move, but I don’t want to see it. “It’s fine,” I tell her, handing her the flowers to arrange. “It will be fine.” She looks at me as if this is some enormous mistake.
“We’re working hard, Mummy,” Berry greets me as I step out the back door.
“I can see that.”
The three of them are on the veranda, where Edith can keep an eye on them from the kitchen without their being in her way.
“Letters for Daddy!” John yells, some kind of battle cry, before he goes back to work and Berry holds hers up – all wobbly letters, a heart. Some x’s and o’s.
The tip of John’s tongue sticks out between his teeth, his brow furrowed as he tries to draw a picture of himself and his daddy climbing a mountain together. Clare’s is neat, her letters bold and round. “Where will they go this time?”
The atlas is on the floor in George’s study. Before he left, I sat with them and we wrote letters to hide in his cases. “A surprise for Daddy,” I told them. “You know how much you love surprises, right? Well, guess what? So does Daddy.”
Clare folded hers and gave me strict instructions not to look at it. Berry did the same because Clare did.
Together we made our way to the front hall, where crates were piled, waiting to be taken to the train. We made a small expedition, with Clare in the lead. She climbed up to tuck her letter into one of the boxes at the top. Berry found another one that she could slide hers into. John handed me his.
“Will he find them?” Berry asked.
Clare answered. “Of course he will. When he gets to the mountain he’ll unpack everything and it will make him happy.” She climbed down and looked to me for confirmation. “Right, Mummy?”
“Yes. When he gets to the mountain Daddy will be happy.”
I bring the atlas out to the veranda, but I don’t know where to tell them their father is.
Clare takes the book and opens it up, traces the route, around and up, all the way to the mountain. She knows it well now.
“Here.” She taps the map. Mt. Everest.
“Can we take them to post now?” Berry wants to know. What she really wants is to visit the sweets shop next to the post office.
“No,” Clare proclaims. “Now it’s teatime.” She turns to me. “You promised.”
“Of course.” I force the cheer into my voice. “We’ll go to the post office on Monday. Everyone – hats and gloves. Time for tea in the garden!”
We sit under the willow tree in the deep back garden. It is so lush, I’ll write to George later. There are a thousand shades of green, and the tulips and roses are like bright paint splattered against it. Bees tumble from the flowers and the air is soft and cool. If we’re quiet we can hear the little stream burble at the end of it, but of course John and the girls are never quiet. The four of us are at a small table draped with a lace cloth that is folded so its stained edges won’t show. There are scones and jam and milky tea.
Clare officiates at teatime, directs the conversation. Today she is talking about the seaside. About the pier.
“Cottie said that perhaps we should all go to the seaside to distract ourselves from what is at hand.” The words are imperious.
“And what is at hand, Clare?” I ask.
Her brow furrows and she glares at me. I shouldn’t have said it, though it doesn’t matter, as Berry has taken up the refrain. “The seaside! We could have toffee.” She had toffee once and it is what she thinks of whenever any mention is made of the seaside. Not the smell or the roll of waves to the horizon. Only the toffee.
John gets up from the table and wanders a short distance away. Not too far, he wants the treats but doesn’t want to sit. Instead he turns himself in circles faster and faster until he falls over, giggling.
I’ve never understood how you could have been so disappointed when Clare was born. Superfluous, you told Geoffrey. Having a girl was superfluous when so many young men were dying. As though it were her fault. As though we should just breed replacements for the men killed in the trenches. As though they could be replaced.
George wasn’t around for any of their births. Though he promised to be there for John’s, so certain the baby would be a boy after Clare and Berry.
“I’ll be there, Ruth, I swear,” he said as he packed his bags again for the Alps.
My stomach pressed out into the space between us. I refused to help him pack.
“You could just wait. Go with Will after the baby is born. It’s too close. He or she is going to be early.” My voice was a whine. I hated the sound of it.
“He,” George said and then, “Don’t be like this.”
I wanted to ask like what? It didn’t seem strange to me that he should want to be here when his child was born, that I should want him to.
I knew he would miss it. When he left, John was already so heavy in my belly it was as if I could almost taste him waiting to be born, as if he had looked out, through my eyes, to watch George leave.
“He’s on his way,” Marby said two weeks later, sponging my brow, and maybe she meant John or maybe she meant George. As I strained against John, trying to keep him in, trying to push him out, George was on a train travelling from the coast. When he walked in he still smelled of the mountains.
The bedroom reeked of blood, pungent afterbirth, the sea. Marby had wrapped John’s umbilical cord in a tea towel for me to plant under a new tree in the garden. It was wrapped next to the bed and the smell of it made me want to retch, my stomach still sensitive from exhaustion and giving birth.
George breezed in like spring. “It’s a boy!”
It wasn’t a question. Marby must have told him.
John was asleep on my chest, his small head nestled under my chin. He smelled
like me. Like himself, specific and familiar and mine. There was nothing of George on him yet. In that moment he was mine. Only mine. George stared at him, cupped his head in his palm.
“John,” I said.
“John? What about Trafford?”
I knew George had wanted to name a son for his brother. I would have agreed if he’d been there. “John Trafford,” I allowed.
John mewed, opened his eyes and stared up at his father, unseeing, as George took him from me. “John Trafford,” he said, nodding.
In the garden John throws himself at the ground, rolling down the small incline in a tumble of somersaults, and then laughs maniacally. The girls I know I can take care of, raise properly. But John, he needs his father.
Vi steps out onto the porch. “Your dress is hanging, ma’am.”
It’s time then. “Clare, want to come with Mummy to dress?”
She nods as if it’s a solemn duty and leads me by the hand back into the house.
The dressing table is an array of small bottles, combs, brushes. For years, Clare has sat with me while I dress, and each time she removes every cosmetic from the small middle drawer and spreads them all out, lining them up across the silk runner that George brought back after the first expedition. It’s a patchwork of dark purples, shot through with silver and gold threads. Today she does it as if by rote, then rises and wanders around the room until she reaches for the silver frame beside the bed. A photograph of her father and me taken just before he left for France.
“You should try to smile,” George said. “Then I can see your smile every day when I look at it.”
“If you stayed here,” I told him, “you could see this smile every day.” I scrunched up my face into an exaggerated, crazy grin.
“If only. But it’s impossible.”
Except it wasn’t impossible. He hadn’t been conscripted. He had chosen to go. He could have made the choice to stay. I’ve tried to understand why it is that he goes away so often. I tell myself it is a matter of duty, of honour. But duty seems to be different for men than it is for women. Duty is something men step inside and fasten around them, like uniforms. For women, duty is a cloak draped over us, that weighs us down.
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