A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (2 page)

I wrote to Hugh. Like an echo in a quarry his reply came back, voicing my own thoughts.

I don’t think either of you quite realize what this country is like. The Nuristanis have only recently been converted to Islam; women are less than the dust.
There are no facilities for female tourists.
I refer you to
The Imperial Gazetteer of India,
volume on Afghanistan, page 70, line 37
et seq.
This is somewhat out of date but the situation must be substantially the same today.

I found the book in a creepy transept of the London Library.

‘What does it say?’ asked Wanda. ‘Read it.’

‘“There are several villages in Kafiristan which are places of refuge, where slayers of their fellow tribesmen reside permanently!”’

‘It says “fellow tribesmen” and I thought you were going to Nuristan. This says Kafiristan.’

‘Don’t quibble. It was called Kafiristan until 1895. It goes on; listen to this: “Kafir women are practically slaves, being to all intents and purposes bought and sold as household commodities.”’

‘I’m practically a slave, married to you.’

‘“The young women are mostly immoral. There is little or no ceremony about a Kafir marriage. If a man becomes enamoured of a girl, he sends a friend to her father to ask her price. If the price is agreed upon the man immediately proceeds to the girl’s house, where a goat is sacrificed and then they are considered to be married. The dead are disposed of in a peculiar manner.”’

‘Apart from the goat, it sounds like a London season. Besides he admits it’s all out of date. I’m coming as far as I jolly well can.’

‘What about the children?’

‘The children can stay with my mother in Trieste.’

I was heavily involved on all fronts: with mountaineering outfitters, who oddly enough never fathomed the depths of my ignorance; possibly because they couldn’t conceive of anyone acquiring such a collection of equipment without knowing how to use it: with the Consuls of six countries, and with a Bulgarian with whom I formed an indissoluble entente in a pub off Queen’s Gate. He was a real prototype Bulgarian with a big moustache and lots of black hair.

‘Have a pint of Worthington, Mr Kolarov.’

‘I
SHALL
like it.’ He threw his head back and it was gone.

‘You like it?’

‘Not strong enough. I shall have a cognac, then I shall have a Worthington, then perhaps another cognac, then perhaps I shall be more gay.’

More soberly with the Foreign Office, who had to obtain permission from the Ambassador at Kabul for Hugh to visit Afghanistan. I was interviewed by a representative of the Asian
Desk in the sombre room full of hair sofas and broken umbrellas reserved for persons like myself, intruders from the outside world without credentials. We faced each other across a large mahogany table. Like all such encounters it was not a success.

‘We have sent the Ambassador a long cable.’

‘But that was a month ago.’

‘It is not as simple as you think.’ Without undue subtlety he managed to convey that I never thought at all. ‘You can hardly blame
us
if you leave a request of this kind until the last moment, besides, there is nothing to stop you going to Afghanistan, the cable only refers to Carless.’

‘Grr.’

With the Autumn Collection. It was now the second week in May. I was leaving in a fortnight. To add to my troubles I now received a letter from Hugh. It was extremely alarming. I read it to Hyde-Clarke.

‘These three climbs will certainly be a good second-class mountaineering achievement. But we shall almost certainly need with us an experienced climber.’

‘I thought you said he was an experienced climber.’

‘So I did. Do listen!

‘“What about Adam Arnold Brown who is now in India as a head of a public school at Begumpet?”‘ Here Hyde-Clarke chuckled.

‘He was head of the Outward Bound Mountaineering School in Eskdale, and has done a good deal of Alpine climbing. He and I were at Trinity Hall together. I have sent him a cable asking him to join us in Kabul by air for a five-week assault on three 20,000 feet peaks but he may be on leave. His address in London is
V/C (WRATH) W.C.
1.’

‘Very appropriate, but what a terrifying cable to receive.’

‘That’s only the beginning. Listen to this.

‘It is just possible that he may not be able to come. In which case we must try elsewhere. In my opinion the companion we need should not only have climbing ability and leadership but round out our party’s versatility by bringing different qualities, adding them to ours.’

‘It sounds like the formula for some deadly gas.’

‘Will you listen! This isn’t funny to me.

‘Perhaps he would be a Welsh miner, or a biologist, or a young Scots doctor. Someone from quite another background, bringing another point of view …’

‘For the first time,’ said Hyde-Clarke, ‘I’m beginning to be just a little bit jealous. I’d love to listen to you all lying on top of one another in one of those inadequate little tents, seeing one another’s points of view.’

‘Why don’t you come too? I don’t see why Hugh should be the only one to invite his friends.

‘All proper expeditions seem to have a faithful administrative officer, who toils through the night to get everyone and everything off from London on time and then is forgotten.’

‘I like the part about being forgotten.’

‘I know how busy you must be but couldn’t you find one?’

‘With a ginger moustache and a foul pipe …’

‘Captain Foulenough?’

‘Why don’t you write to Beachcomber?’

We pursued this fantasy happily for some time.

‘“Have you approached the Everest Foundation? They are there to assist small parties such as ours.”’

‘Not quite like yours, I should have thought,’ said Hyde-Clarke. ‘I should try the Oxford Group. Ring up Brown’s Hotel.’

I received only one more letter before Hugh left Rio.

If you want to take a Folboat you could make the passage down the Kabul River from Jalalabad, through the frontier gorge in Mahsud Territory, just north of the Khyber, past Peshawar and Nowshera to Attock where the waters of the Kabul and Indus rivers flow together through a magnificent defile. There on the cliffs Jelal ud Din, the young ruler of Bokhara and Samarqand, made a last stand against the Mongol hordes and, having lost the day, galloped his horse over the cliffs, which as far as I can remember are 150 feet high, swam the river, went to Delhi and carved out another kingdom.

When Hugh arrived from New York ten days later I went to meet him at London Airport. Sitting in those sheds on the north side which still, twelve years after the war, gave the incoming traveller the feeling that he was entering a beleaguered fortress, I wondered what surprises he had in store for me.

His first words after we had greeted one another were to ask if there was any news from Arnold Brown.

‘Not a thing.’

‘That’s bad,’ he said.

‘It’s not so disastrous. After all, you have done some climbing. I’ll soon pick it up. We’ll just have to be careful.’

He looked pale. I put it down to the journey. Then he said: ‘You know I’ve never done any
real
climbing.’

It took me some time to assimilate this.

‘But all that stuff about the mountain. You and Dreesen …’

‘Well, that was more or less a reconnaissance.’

‘But all this gear. How did you know what to order?’

‘I’ve been doing a lot of reading.’

‘But you said you had porters.’

‘Not porters – drivers. It’s not like the Himalayas. There aren’t any “tigers” in Afghanistan. No one knows anything about mountaineering.’

There was a long silence as we drove down the Great West Road.

‘Perhaps we should postpone it for a year,’ he said.

‘Ha-ha. I’ve just given up my job!’

Hugh stuck out his jaw. Normally a determined-looking man, the effect was almost overwhelming.

‘There’s nothing for it,’ he said. ‘We must have some lessons.’

Wanda and I were leaving England for Istanbul on 1 June. Hugh and I had just four days to learn about climbing.

The following night after some brisk telephoning we left for Wales to learn about climbing, in the brand new station wagon Hugh had ordered by post from South America. He had gone to Brighton to fetch it. Painted in light tropical colours it had proved to be rather conspicuous in Hammersmith. Soon it had been covered with swarms of little boys and girls whose mothers stood with folded arms silently regarding it.

We had removed all the furniture from the drawing-room to make room for the equipment and stores. Our three-piece suite was standing in the garden under a tarpaulin. The drawing-room looked like the quartermaster’s store of some clandestine force. It was obvious that Hugh was deeply impressed.

‘How long have you been living like this?’

‘Ever since we can remember. It’s not all here yet. There’s still the food.’

‘What food?’ He looked quite alarmed.

‘Six cases of Army ration, compo. in fibre boxes. It’s arriving tomorrow.’

‘We can always leave it in England. I don’t know about you
but food doesn’t interest me. We can always live off the country.’

I remembered von Dückelmann, that hardy Austrian forester without an ounce of spare flesh on him, who had lost twelve pounds in a fortnight in Nuristan.

‘Whatever else we leave behind it won’t be the food.’

‘Well, I suppose we can always give it away.’ He sounded almost shocked, as if for the first time he had detected in me a grave moral defect. It was an historic moment.

With unconcealed joy my wife watched us load some of the mountaineering equipment into the machine.

‘We’d better not take all of it,’ said Hugh. ‘They might wonder why we’ve got so much stuff if we don’t know how to use it.’

Over the last weeks the same thought had occurred to me constantly.

‘What about the tent?’

The tent had arrived that morning. It had been described to me by the makers as being suitable for what they called ‘the final assault’. With its sewn-in ground-sheet, special flaps so that it could be weighed down with boulders, it convinced me, more than any other single item of equipment, that we were going, as the books have it, ‘high’. It had been specially constructed for the curious climatic conditions we were likely to encounter in the Hindu Kush.

‘I shouldn’t take
that
, if I were you,’ said my wife with sinister emphasis. ‘The children tried to put it up in the garden after lunch. Whoever made it forgot to make holes for the poles.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. You know it’s got those poles shaped like a V, that you slip into a sort of pocket in the material. Well, they haven’t made any pockets, so you can’t put it up.’

‘It’s lucky you found out. We should have looked pretty silly on Mir Samir.’

‘You’re going to look pretty silly at any rate. I shouldn’t be
surprised if they’ve done the same thing to your sleeping-bags.’

‘Have you telephoned the makers?’

‘That’s no use. If you send it back to them, you’ll never see it again. I’ve sent for the little woman who makes my dresses. She’s coming tomorrow morning.’

We continued to discuss what we should take to Wales.

‘I should take your Folboat,’ said Hugh. ‘There’s bound to be a lake near the inn. It will be a good chance of testing it
BEFORE YOU PASS THROUGH THE GORGES
. The current is tremendously swift.’

I had never had any intention of being either drowned or ritually mutilated in Mahsud Territory. I told him that I hadn’t got a Folboat.

‘I was almost certain I wrote to you about getting a Folboat. It’s a pity. There’s not much time now.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘there isn’t.’

It was nearly midnight when we left London. Our destination was an inn situated in the wilds of Caernarvonshire. Hugh had telephoned the proprietor and explained to him the peculiar state of ignorance in which we found ourselves. It was useless to dissemble: Hugh had told him everything. He was not only an experienced mountaineer, but was also the head of the mountain rescue service. It is to his eternal credit that he agreed to help us rather than tell us, as a more conventional man might have done, that his rooms were all booked.

We arrived at six o’clock the following morning, having driven all night, but already a spiral of smoke was issuing from a chimney at the back of the premises.

The first thing that confronted us when we entered the hotel was a door on the left. On it was written
EVEREST ROOM
. Inside it was a facsimile of an Alpine hut, done out in pine wood, with massive benches round the walls. On every side was evidence of
the presence of the great ones of the mountain world. Their belongings in the shape of ropes, rucksacks, favourite jackets and boots were everywhere, ready for the off. It was not a museum. It was more like the Royal Enclosure. Sir John and Sir Edmund might appear at any moment. They were probably on the premises.

‘Whatever else we do I don’t think we shall spend much time in the
Everest Room
,’ said Hugh, as we reverently closed the door. ‘For the first time I’m beginning to feel that we really do know damn all.’

‘
EXACTLY
.’

At this moment we were confronted by a remarkably healthy-looking girl.

‘Most people have had breakfast but it’s still going on,’ she said.

The only other occupant of the breakfast room was a compact man of about forty-five, who was eating his way through the sort of breakfast I hadn’t been able to stomach for ten years. He was wearing a magnificent sweater that was the product of peasant industry. He was obviously a climber. With an hysterical attempt at humour, like soldiers before an attack, we tried to turn him into a figure of fun, speaking in whispers. This proved difficult, as he wasn’t at all comic, just plainly competent.

‘He looks desperately healthy.’ (His face was the colour of old furniture.)

‘Everyone looks healthy here, except us.’

‘I don’t think it’s real tan.’

‘Perhaps he’s making a film about mountain rescue.’

‘How very appropriate.’

‘Perhaps he’ll let us stand-in, as corpses.’

After breakfast the proprietor introduced us to the mystery man. We immediately felt ashamed of ourselves.

‘This is Dr Richardson,’ he said. ‘He’s very kindly agreed to take you out and teach you the rudiments of climbing.’

‘Have you ever done any?’ asked the Doctor.

It seemed no time to bring up my scrambles in the Dolomites, nor even Hugh’s adventures at the base of Mir Samir.

‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘neither of us knows the first thing about it.’

We had arrived at seven; by nine o’clock we were back in the station wagon, this time bound for the north face of the mountain called Tryfan.

‘Stop here,’ said the Doctor. Hugh parked the car by a milestone that read ‘Bangor X Miles’. Rearing up above the road was a formidable-looking chunk of rock, the
Milestone Buttress
.

‘That’s what you’re going to climb,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s got practically everything you need at this stage.’

It seemed impossible. In a daze we followed him over a rough wall and into the bracken. A flock of mountain sheep watched us go, making noises that sounded suspiciously like laughter.

Finally we reached the foot of it. Close-to it didn’t seem so formidable. The whole face was scarred by the nailed boots of countless climbers.

‘This thing is like a by-pass,’ said the Doctor. ‘Later in the season you’d have to queue up to climb it. We’re lucky to have it to ourselves.’

‘If there’s one thing we don’t need it’s an audience.’

‘First of all you’ve got to learn about the rope. Without a rope climbing is suicide. It’s the only thing that justifies it. Chris told me what you’re planning to do. If anything happens on that mountain, it may not get into the papers, and at least no one else will have to risk their necks to get you off if anything goes wrong. If I thought that you were the sort of people who would take risks, I wouldn’t have come with you today.’

He showed us how to rope ourselves together, using the proper knots; the bowline for the leader and the end man; the butterfly noose, a beautifully symmetrical knot, for the middleman; how
to hold it and how to coil it so that it would pay out without snarling up, and how to belay.

‘You never move without a proper belay. I start to climb and I go on until I reach a knob of rock on to which I can belay. I take a
karabiner
’ (he produced one of the D-shaped steel rings with a spring-loaded clip) ‘and attach a sling to the loop of rope round my waist. Then all I have to do is to put the sling over the knob of rock, and pass the rope under one shoulder and over the other. If possible, you brace your feet against a solid block. Like that you can take the really big strain if the next man comes off.

‘When the second man reaches the leader, the leader unclips the
karabiner
with the sling on it, and the second man attaches it to
his
waist. He’s now belayed. The second man gives his own sling to the leader who goes on to the next pitch. Like this.’

‘What I don’t see,’ I whispered to Hugh, ‘is what happens if the leader falls on the first pitch. According to this he’s done for.’

‘The leader just mustn’t fall off.’

‘Remind me to let you be leader.’

The Doctor now showed what I thought was a misplaced trust in us. He sent us to the top of a little cliff, not more than twenty feet high, with a battered-looking holly tree growing on it. ‘I want you to pretend that you’re the leader,’ he said to Hugh. ‘I want you to belay yourself with a sling and a
karabiner
to the holly tree. On the way up I am going to fall off backwards and I shan’t tell you when I’m going to do it. You’ve got to hold me.’ He began to climb.

He reached the top and was just about to step over the edge when, without warning, he launched himself backwards into space. And then the promised miracle happened, for the rope was taut and Hugh was holding him, not by the belay but simply with the rope passed under one shoulder and over the other. There was no strain on the sling round Hugh’s waist at all, his body was like
a spring. I was very impressed – for the first time I began to understand the trust that climbers must be able to have in one another.

‘Now it’s your turn,’ said the Doctor.

It was like a memorable day in 1939 when I fell backwards off the fore upper topsail yard of a four-masted barque, only this time I expected Hugh to save me. And he did. Elated we practised this new game for some time until the Doctor looked at his watch. It was 11.30.

‘We’d better get on to the rock. We wouldn’t normally but there’s so little time and you seem to be catching on to the roping part. Let’s go. We’ll take the
Ordinary Route.
You may think it isn’t much but don’t go just bald-headed at it. I’m going to lead. It’s about two hundred feet altogether. We start in this chimney.’ He indicated an inadequate-looking cleft in the rock face.

It seemed too small to contain a human being at all but the Doctor vanished into it easily enough. Like me, he was wearing nailed boots, not the new-fangled ones with rubber vibram soles. I could hear them screeching on the rock as he scrabbled for a foothold. There was a lot of grunting and groaning then he vanished from sight.

Hugh went next. It was easier for him as he was very slim.

Then it was my turn. Like a boa-constrictor swallowing a live chicken, I wriggled up it, with hideous wear and tear to my knees, until I emerged on a boulder slope.

‘Now we begin,’ said the Doctor.

‘What was that, if it wasn’t the beginning?’

‘The start. This is the beginning.’

‘How very confusing.’

The worst part was what he called ‘Over the garden wall’, which entailed swinging round a projection, hanging over a void and then traversing along a ledge into a cave.

‘I wish he’d wear rubbers,’ I said to Hugh, as the Doctor vanished over the wall with a terrible screeching of tricounis. ‘It’s not the climbing I object to, it’s the noise.’

There was still a twenty-foot chimney with a tree in it up which we fought our way and, at last, we lay on the top panting and admiring the view which was breathtaking. I was very impressed and proud. It wasn’t much but I had done my first climb.

‘What do you call this?’ Hugh said, warily. ‘Easy, difficult or something in between?’

‘Moderate.’

‘How do they go? I’ve forgotten.’

‘Easy, moderate, difficult, very difficult, severe, very severe, exceptionally severe, and excessively severe.’