Above All Things (43 page)

The post rattles through the front door and I force myself to step into the hallway. The envelopes are scattered on the floor. So many of them. I scoop them up and pile them onto the side table without a glance. Edith is at my elbow. “Sorry, mum. I was just on my way to get that.” She takes up the post and carries it away. She has done this since that first night. As if she could intercept worse news.

It was June and the children had already had their tea. I’d had a cold supper and stood reading Cottie’s invitation to join her in the country. Her and Owen and the children.
I know you said you’d think about it when I saw you at dinner, but I want you to know the invitation is sincere. We would love to be with you
. Maybe we would go after all. It would be good, a change of routine, a distraction. The mail could be forwarded, Hinks given the address to find me with any immediate news.

I remember every one of those thoughts, the words in Cottie’s letter.

The doorbell sounding was a surprise. Then Edith’s voice. Vi was upstairs with the children. The deeper tenor of a man speaking. Hushed, low. The both of them. Cold crawled across my skin in the warm room.

In bed the previous two nights, I’d lain half awake, half dreaming. I imagined George was in bed beside me, his body long on the white of the sheet, arms stretched above his head, his face turned away.

Beside me George was heavy, motionless. So heavy my body rolled towards his, and I wanted to hold myself against him, feel him against the length of me. But he was so cold, I held back, only touched him with my hand. The cold seeped into my skin, up my arm, discolouring it. When I pulled back, there was the snap of cracking ice.

In the hallway the door closed and I exhaled, though I hadn’t known I was holding my breath. Then footsteps came towards me, quick and shuffling. Quicker than if Edith was returning to the dishes. In my head I urged her past the parlour, back to the kitchen.
Go past. Go past
.

She was standing in the doorway, looking everywhere but at me, her lips pressed tight.

“What is it?” I was sitting. Hadn’t I been standing by the window? Hadn’t I been thinking about joining Cottie in the country? Her note was still in my hand.

Edith motioned to the door.

“What is it?”

She waved her hand again. “The door, mum.”

There was a man, just inside the door. A small man, young, in an old suit, the black of it faded at the elbow, the cloth rubbed bare. The collar was worn. He turned his hat in his hands. Flipped it. Flip. Flip. Flip. I didn’t know him.

“Can I help you?”

“Mrs. Mallory? Mrs. George Mallory?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Vincent Hamilton. From the
Times
?” It was a question, as though he was unsure of his name, or perhaps he expected I would recognize him.

The dream swam in my head again and I shook it away. He just wanted to know something, I told myself, some detail about George. Something silly he hoped to make a story from – what George ate for breakfast before a climb. Did he have a lucky hat? I had nothing to say to him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hamilton,” I said, surprised at how calm my voice sounded as I reached past him to the door to usher him out. I could smell cigarettes on him. Stale. “I’m sorry you’ve come all this way, and Edith should have told you I don’t wish to speak to reporters. You’ve wasted your time, I’m afraid.”

He stopped flipping his hat, stared at his feet. His hair was thinning on top, unfortunate in someone so young. When he glanced back up, his face was pale and he backed towards the door.

“Oh. Ah … I see.”

He was reaching for the handle, preparing to leave, but I could tell there was something. I held the door shut and drew closer to him. Below the smell of cigarettes there was coffee. Alcohol, maybe. And something else. Sweat and fear. Mine or his? He was still stuttering.

“You haven’t, um, haven’t heard. I’m sorry. They assured me. At the paper. Said the Committee had told you. I didn’t want to come anyway. We would never … I wouldn’t have come … But it will be in the paper tomorrow. They said we could print it. And I was only sent here to ask about it. But you were supposed to know. We only … I mean the paper only wanted to know if you had something to say.” He wasn’t making sense.

“About what?” My voice sounded as far away as I wanted to be. Wherever George was.

“About your husband? About Mr. Mallory?”

“I already told you, I have nothing to say.”

“But he’s dead.” The word exploded out of him.

And everything stopped. Just for a beat. The world was a tiny pinpoint of light and a cold wind in my mind, like a scraping away, a scraping clean. My lungs hurt, my ribs pressed against them. I couldn’t breathe. There was a strange huffing sound. Uneven. It was me.

Staring at the door now, two months later, at the sunlight coming through squares of coloured glass, I feel it wash over me again.

He calmed then, in the face of my panic. “We received this today. This afternoon.” He held out a piece of paper. A telegram. The onion-skin paper of it in my hands. Words typed in black
letters.
MALLORY IRVINE NOVE REMAINDER ALCEDO
. Above it something written in pencil. The word
killed
.

Killed.

“They died, ma’am. George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. Did you know him too, ma’am? I’m sorry. They were making an attempt. I’m sorry.”

He kept saying he was sorry. As if it were his fault. As if it would help.

He asked, was I all right? Was there someone he could fetch for me? Then he remembered himself – was there anything I’d like to say? for the papers? for the people?

The clock chimes. I count. Ten. Eleven.

Eleven already. Colonel Norton and Mr. Odell will be arriving soon. In the sitting room a small round table has been set for three, near the window. Edith has put out the good lace tablecloth George sent me from Belgium during the war. The good china. The silver polished so brightly it gleams in the shafts of sunlight. Edith has been baking. She has made sandwiches on fresh bread. Everything we can offer. I have set aside a bottle of wine. There is ice, should they want something stronger than tea. Whisky. They may need it. I might.

Upstairs, I check myself in the mirror, make sure I appear put together. Calm. I don’t want them to think I’m a woman who is about to break down, though that’s how I feel. As though I might break apart, might shatter. I pinch my cheeks, push back my hair. My face looks pale against the black collar. Then I sit on the edge of the bed and wait for the sound of the bell.

I will have to pack up this room soon. Send the clothes, the photographs, to my father’s and set them up there. He’s offered to buy new furniture, and for the children I have agreed. For me, I want to take this bed.

We talked about this happening. George and I. Right here.

It was after the fights had ended. He was packing but I’d refused to help him, only half teasing that I wouldn’t make it easier for him to leave.

“What happens if …” I couldn’t say it. I took a pair of his wool socks and hid them under my pillow.

“If what?”

“If something happens? If you don’t come back?”

I’d never said it before. We’d never talked about it, all through the war, or the first trips to Everest. I tried not to even think about it. Why did I say it then? Did my saying it make it happen?

“George?” He stopped then and focused on me. I didn’t want to cry. “I mean it. I want to know. What if you don’t come back? How do I go on?”

“You’ll take care of the children. You’ll be sad. And then less so. Maybe you’ll remarry. You’ll carry on. But don’t worry, Mouse. Everything will be fine.”

“Will it?”

“Yes.”

It rises up like this. Not the grief; the grief is always there. As I described it to Geoffrey,
I feel numbed and quite unable to realize, there is only just pain. It has only just happened and one has to go through with it
. No, the pain doesn’t scare me.

It is the other things. I can’t remember when I last told him I loved him. I should have said it on the gangplank. I must have. I would have. But what if I didn’t?

I try to conjure him now.

“George?”

But there’s no answer.

Two months later I am still piecing the story together. From letters and telegrams. From the eulogizing newspapers. In every way that I dreaded.

At 7:45, a half-hour after the reporter from the
Times
had left, the telegram from Hinks arrived. Edith was sitting with me in the front room and jolted when the doorbell rang again. We’d been silent for so long. She had made tea, sat with me, tried to stifle her own cries. “Do you want me to fetch the children?” she’d asked.

“No. Let them have one more quiet night. I’ll tell them in the morning.”

She peeked at me and went to the door. I couldn’t cry. I wouldn’t. If I cried, it might be more real. As it was, when the door rang, I thought,
at last, they’re going to say it was all a mistake
.

Edith came in with the other telegram.

MRS MALLORY HERSCHEL HOUSE CAMBRIDGE

COMMITTEE DEEPLY REGRET RECEIVE BAD NEWS EVEREST EXPEDITION TODAY NORTON CABLES YOUR HUSBAND AND IRVINE KILLED LAST CLIMB REMAINDER RETURNED SAFE PRESIDENT AND COMMITTEE OFFER YOU AND FAMILY HEARTFELT SYMPATHY HAVE TELEGRAPHED GEORGES FATHER

HINKS

I told the children the next morning. Vi brought them to me in our room. In my room.

“Come sit,” I said. And patted the bedclothes next to me. John scrambled up quickly, followed by Berry. Clare came slowly, perched on the edge. “Come closer, Clare. Please?” She curled her feet under her and sat at the foot of the bed, cross-legged. I barely knew how to begin. “There is some bad news, I’m afraid.”

They were silent, the three of them. Still, as they never are. Clare’s face creased. “What is it, Mummy?”

“Come sit by me.” I scooped John onto my lap, Berry to one side, and Clare conceded, crawled to me, leaned against my side. They hemmed me in, held me up.

What were the words?
An accident? Killed –
like in the telegram?
Disappeared?
What did any of them mean?

“You know,” I began, “that what your daddy is doing is very dangerous.”

“Climbing the mountain?” Berry asked.

“Yes. The mountain.”

“But Daddy’s brave and strong,” Clare said. “You said so.”

John sucked his thumb, stared from his sister to me.

“Yes.”

“Good.” Clare tried to get down.

“Not yet, pet.” I pulled her back to me. She went stiff, like dead weight. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t help.

“Something’s happened,” I said. But that felt like a lie. What had happened? Some man had come to our door and said words. A telegram had arrived. Why should those things be believed? It was only just words on a piece of paper. From day to day nothing has changed, just the knowing. The plummeting in my stomach tells me things aren’t the same. The constant ache in my bones.

And for just the briefest moment there was a flare of anger, like an electric current, in my stomach. That this is what I have to do. That I have to tell my children this.

Beside me Clare huffed, impatient, not wanting to hear.

“Daddy’s had an … an accident.”

“Is he hurt?” Berry asked. “Who will kiss him better?”

“No, he isn’t hurt. Not anymore.” That is something, at least. “But he won’t be coming home.”

“Shall we visit him in hospital?”

I won’t say the word. “No, love. He’s been … lost.”

Clare’s eyes bore into me. “You said he’d be all right. You promised.” She began to cry.

Berry reached over to her. “It’s all right. Maybe we can find him.”

——

Edith shows the two men in. I haven’t seen them in almost seven months. They are both thin, drawn. The skin of their faces stretches tight across their cheekbones, across their set jaws. The colonel’s lips are turned down, Odell’s tight together.

“Colonel Norton. Mr. Odell. How good of you to come.” I stand and they cross the room towards me.

“Please, Ruth. Call me Teddy.” His hands are light on my shoulders and he leans forward to kiss my cheek. He steps away and Odell reaches forward to do the same.

Last week I wrote to Geoffrey:
You share George with me, the pain and the joy. I never owned him, I never wanted to. We all had our own parts of him. My part was tenderer and nearer than anyone else’s but it was only my part
. And now these men can claim part of you too. They are the last men to have seen you alive. Aside from the boy. His parents are grieving, of course, and I have sent them my condolences. Odell and Norton will no doubt visit them the same way, if they haven’t already. Maybe there is a sweetheart somewhere weeping for him. Someone who thought she might marry him.

“There’s tea.” I gesture at the table. Everything in its place. “But perhaps you might like something stronger? I know it’s early, but at a time like this it’s best not to stand on ceremony, I think. Don’t you? My father always says whisky – Irish in times of sorrow, Scotch in times of joy.”

They both nod, standing still. I gesture at the seats and step to the drinks cart. Pour three glasses. When I turn, they are still standing. I sit so they will.

“I trust your voyage wasn’t too taxing?” My mouth remembers what to say, how to be polite. There are routines for a reason, scripts that we follow, roles we slide ourselves into. I hand them stiff tumblers of whisky.

“No, it was fine. Just fine.”

Norton begins to tell me how sorry he is, and I watch his
mouth move. The condolences have come like a torrent. From all over. All the people who loved him. The strangers who followed every detail. There have been reams of headlines in the newspapers. Most recently someone got hold of the telegram the King had sent to me, to the Irvines too, I suppose:
They will ever be remembered as fine examples of mountaineers, ready to risk their lives for their companions and to face dangers on behalf of science and discovery
. They are proclaimed as victors and warriors, described as
compassionate, brotherly and the pure in heart
. No doubt it is true, but not because of Everest. Hinks is planning a memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The bishop will give the address. The prime minister will attend.