Above All Things (5 page)

He’d wanted to go back. Had to. He would have settled for Le Havre if he couldn’t go all the way back to Armentières. But his blasted ankle was too much trouble, the doctors said. You can help in other ways, they told him. So he’d written pamphlets on how to conserve food, fuel, and electricity, instruction manuals for children on how they could help defeat the Hun. While Jack Sanders, Gilbert Bell, and Rupert Brooke had been killed.

His brother’s name was on his lips. In time to the keening, George chanted his brother’s name.

His father had never cried for Trafford. He never cried for any of the men he buried, just sat in his rectory and praised God, and quietly went on doing His bidding. George hated his father for that, for his calm faith that the war was right and just.

Did his father think Everest was worth dying for? Did he even? Already it had cost them so much. Eleven dead so far. Seven in the avalanche. Others to frostbite and malaria, mountain sickness. Maybe there wasn’t any way to measure the value of a life. But wasn’t it important to risk something if you believed in the end goal?

The fires burned lower, bluer, devouring the heavy insides, the bones.

This was all there was. Maybe nothing was worth dying for. It was all foolishness, vain quests, and ambitions of glory – for themselves, for King and Country. But if there was nothing worth dying for, neither could there be anything worth living for.

He recited their names. All of his loved ones. He could go on with the losses.

Except for this, his mind was empty. For once there was no thought of success or failure. Or endings.

He watched until the last fire smouldered out.

He recited Everest.

HIS PONY WAS
a ruddy terror, liable to take off without warning and stop just the same. Sandy kept the reins tight now as he navigated a narrow switchback leading up to the next pass. When the animal veered close to the edge, he squeezed his legs tight against the pony’s round stomach. It skittered forward a few steps, jolting him, before Sandy leaned back hard on the reins again, bringing the pony to a stop. He’d been riding the
animal for almost three weeks, but every time the pony stumbled, his bones shuddered.

Already they had come so far. They had crossed rivers by fords or narrow rope bridges made from twisted vines and branches. Moved up and up onto the windswept Tibetan plateau, past settlements sculpted out of rock faces and the terraced balconies of impenetrable fortresses reaching up, their back walls buried deep within the granite of the mountains. Tomorrow they’d cover the last leg, journeying down through the valley, past Rongbuk Monastery – the last human outpost – and then onto the flanks of Everest herself.

Only a week ago, he’d seen her for the first time. He’d known the sighting would be coming soon; they’d talked about it the evening before at Shekar Dzong, where they’d hired their team of high-altitude porters. But he hadn’t known what to expect when George had challenged him to race up one of the passes.

“I’ll even give you a head start,” George had said as they climbed off their mounts. “I’ll turn the ponies over to Virgil and then catch you up.”

It had taken almost everything Sandy had to beat George, but he’d managed it, reaching the pass in the lead, his lungs aching. If he was this out of breath now, Sandy thought, how would he be once he got on the mountain? Somes was right, the altitude was punishing. But his legs felt strong, fresh. That at least was something.

Still, he didn’t let himself rest. Climbing would only become more difficult the higher they went on Everest. Sandy gave himself a test, like Somervell would; if he could carry the largest stone he could lift to the cairn at the apex of the pass without putting it down, then surely he’d do well on the mountain. The cairn was only twenty feet away. Not far. But in a boat race, twenty feet could mean a vast lead. Here it could mean the difference between the summit or not.

He bent down and heaved a stone to his chest. It was heavier than he expected. He stepped towards the cairn. George would be able to do this. Norton too. And they were practically old men. The rock was what, two stone? Stones suddenly made sense to him. The whole world should be measured in stones. At sea level, he would have found the task effortless, but up here, it had taken him almost five minutes to move the bloody thing. Still, he’d done it. Gasping, he slumped to the base of the cairn and tried to even out his breath.

“Feeling all right?” George was coming up the pass, breathing easily. “George is good at altitude,” Somes had told him during the last round of tests. “He’s part mountain goat. You’ll have to work hard to beat his numbers.”

“Yes. Fine.” His voice wavered more than Sandy would have liked. He cleared his throat, spat. “Fine,” he said again, louder.

“Did you see her?”

“What?”

“Come here.” George led him to the far edge of the pass, where the trail sloped back down the other side. “There,” he said, with a kind of ownership in his voice. “Just to the left. The highest one. That’s it. That’s where we’re going.”

The peak towered over its nearest neighbours. Sandy smiled, his lips cracking where they were dry from the wind and sun. He didn’t care. Why should he? He was going to the highest place on Earth. “It looks like a brute, even from here,” he said.

“It is.”

“We’ll make it up there. This time. Don’t you think?”

He expected George to agree, but instead after a slight pause he said, “My friend Geoffrey taught me to climb, a long time ago.” George laughed slightly, incredulous, as though he was counting the years. “He liked to take me out the day before a climb to study the route. He said it helped to see a mountain
from a distance; then you might know where you were if something went wrong, if you got stuck.”

“Sounds like good advice.”

“He’s a smart man, Geoffrey. Almost like a father to me.” A pause. “Though he’d hate to hear me say that. It would make him feel old.”

“He’s a good climber then?”

“He was. Probably the best of his generation. If Geoffrey had been able to come to Everest in ’22, it would have been climbed already. We wouldn’t even be standing here.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“He can’t climb anymore. He lost his leg in the war, has a wooden one now. Gets about with a cane.”

“I’m sorry.”

George was silent a moment, gazing out towards Everest. “He still comes with me to Wales, and we go out the day before a climb and spot the route together. It’s a good practice.”

“So, which way do we go then?” Sandy asked, his eyes searching the flanks of the mountain, trying to choose a path.

George reached out to trace a route in the air. “We’ll follow that valley to Base Camp – it sits in a shallow bay, surrounded by mountains. From there it’s the longest single stretch. Fourteen miles up shattered slate, crumpled rocks, easy to break an ankle, a limb. And then on to the glacier, the Icefall. We’ll make an interim camp somewhere there – just a depot, an emergency stop-off with a bed, a cookstove, not much. We’ll try not to stay there. Then Advanced Base Camp, more home than Base Camp will be. That’s where we’ll live. Then up and down, up and down to establish the other camps, six in all.”

George stepped behind him, pointing over Sandy’s shoulder so he could follow his finger. “Camp Six, if we could see it, would be just behind that peak there. Just on the lee of the ridge. Almost a day to the summit and back from there. The
others will be spread out below. We won’t see them until we get there. Without them in place, we don’t stand a chance.”

“It looks a clear run along the ridge,” George continued. “That’s the way we’ll likely go.”

Sandy hoped he was part of the
we
George was talking about. “Six camps. Three above the Col, three below?”

“Exactly. The Col. That’s the key.” George was quiet a moment. “Six camps. It’ll take us almost a month to establish them all, to get everything in place. After that they’ll be a day apart. And then the summit.”

Now they were almost at Base Camp. Tomorrow, after more than two months of travel, they would finally arrive at Everest.

At the edge of the trail, Sandy pulled an altimeter from his pocket and then turned in his saddle to look over his shoulder. From here he could see the whole expedition train below him. It was staggering.

The train of Sherpas, yaks, and ponies stretched for almost five miles behind him. Eight Englishmen and nearly two thousand crates of supplies. The manifest was a ridiculous testament: 44 tins of quail in
foie gras
; 120 tins of bully beef; dozens of wrapped squares of flaky chocolate; 9 tins of tobacco; 7 tubes apiece of petroleum jelly, to be smeared on chapped faces, to deflect the sun; 63 working oxygen canisters; 26 tents of varying sizes; a crate of cutlery and tin plates; one case of Montebello champagne; 17 bottles of Macallan whisky, not less than 15 years old. Miles and miles of rope, campbeds, tents, tools, and cooking pots.

The Englishmen: Teddy Norton in command. Somervell, who checked the men daily, deemed them medically fit to continue. Odell, obsessed with stones, always staring at his feet, searching for fossils, or distracted by the chirping clicks of hidden insects. Noel and his armoury of cameras. Hazard with his lists and tables. Shebbeare, who could translate everything
into Hindi and Tibetan, an Englishman who’d never been to England and laughed at everything that was said. George, who was always looking south and west for the mountain. Himself.

A hundred porters, including George’s personal porter, Virgil, and the others who would climb high on the mountain – men and women with children strapped to their breasts, loads to their backs, sure the English were fools.

It was all but insane.

George pulled his own pony around the bend, reined her in next to Sandy.

“Sixteen thousand feet,” Sandy said, handing George his altimeter.

“That’s higher than Mont Blanc, Sandy. Higher than the tallest mountain in bloody Europe. Most climbers never get this high. And we’ve only another thirteen thousand feet to go.”

“Child’s play.”

“Race you,” George said, launching his pony down the steep slope at a mad gallop. Sandy stared after him, at the dust rising in a cloud that drifted upward, was caught by the wind, and swept out over the vast plateau. He dug his heels in, let out a whoop, and followed.

DAWN
5 O’CLOCK

T
here are footsteps climbing the stone stairs outside the door. The shadow of a man through the coloured panes of glass. A pause. Waiting in the gloomy entryway, I hold my breath and the shadow freezes, bent slightly at the waist as if he’s heard me, knows that I’m here. Then he bends out of sight and there’s the clink of glass against glass. Not the post, then. Of course not. It’s too early for the post. I haven’t let myself glance at any of the clocks yet, but now I know. Only five in the morning. The milk delivered like clockwork. If only the postman was as reliable.

The shadow retreats, taking his footsteps with him, down the stairs and the walk, into the road, and I retreat too, back into the house.

How I’d like to hurry this day along. Scoop it up like a poky, whinging child the way I used to do with Clare – drop her in her bed and close the door until she cried herself out. Though bed isn’t much comfort to me. A place to toss and turn and be reminded of how far away sleep is. How far away George is. Though not much longer now. He’ll be home in two months if he turns around today. Perhaps a little more, a little less.

In the study I sit behind his desk. Even though it’s June the
air is cool in here, dressed as I am in only the thin cotton of my nightdress. I keep to the same ritual every night as I do when he is here – washing, undressing, peeling back the bedclothes, folding the heavy quilt down to the foot of the bed, saying goodnight – but sleep doesn’t come. I force myself to lie there in that empty room until I lose count of the strikes of the clock in the hall downstairs and then I let myself get up.

Through the hours before dawn, I keep myself busy. There is enough to do. Boxes are still stacked up throughout the house where they were deposited when they first arrived from Godalming, waiting to be unpacked some seven months later. You’d think there would be a place for everything. This house is larger than the Holt was and yet, whenever I put something in what should be its place, it looks strange there, the object becoming unfamiliar in its new surroundings.

But it has to be done. Before George comes home everything must have its place. I spread my arms out and place my palms on the surface of his desk. No doubt he’ll rearrange everything to his liking when he returns, but I am trying to do my best. The oak weight of the desk is turned so that he can sit here and see past the tiny front garden, over the hedge, and into the street. If I lean forward now, I can make out a glint of light in the window across the way. Someone else up early. Someone else unable to sleep.

There is nothing on the desk except the pile of letters that has come for George since he left almost five months ago. So much has accumulated that it’s starting to cascade away from itself, and I try to tidy it. I sort through it as it arrives, opening the envelopes that look like bills, that look as though they need responses. The others, despite my curiosity, I set here, for him to attend to when he returns. I like the blank space the desk makes in the room. It calms me.