Above All Things (26 page)

The next morning Sandy continued to press his case to Teddy. “I haven’t been pushed yet. You all have.”

Teddy was dumping stuff out of his pack, trying to decide what he’d take. A length of rope. Some small rations. Nothing else. Every ounce would count. George did the same.

“No,” Teddy said to Sandy. “You don’t have the experience. If you got into trouble up there, it would be one more person for us to deal with. George and I know what to expect.”

“Then let me go too. Why not the three of us?”

“Sandy,” George said, “Teddy and I are going. That’s all there is to it.”

“But if they’re hurt, if they can’t walk, you’ll need an extra hand.”

Teddy’s voice rose, “I am
not
putting anyone else at risk.”

“What if something has happened?” Sandy said, his tone dropping. “Will that be it?”

“No,” Teddy said. “We’re not done yet. We’ll still get our shot.”

George tried to agree with Teddy, but the summit seemed farther away than ever.

“We’ll have to restock the camps,” Sandy said.

Somervell stepped in. “We’ll worry about that later. Hazard and Shebbeare will already have loads prepared down below.”

George loaded his canteen inside his jumper, against his chest, to keep it warm. On the ridge there would be thirty degrees of frost.

“We keep moving,” he said to Teddy just before they set out. “No slowing. Not for anything. If we keep moving we’ll stay warm enough.” Teddy knew that. They both did, but he needed to say it out loud. “Stay in the lee of the ridge, but not too far down.” Too far down and the new snow might give under them, send them careering down the mountain face. “Light and fast,” he said.

They pressed up against the wind, trading the lead, stopping only to peer up the ridge, hoping to see the coolies coming down. Not that he expected they would. Not in this. They’d be near frozen already, without food or fuel for nine hours.

“It’s all suffering,” he remembered telling Ruth in a weaker moment. “That’s all there is to climbing mountains. Suffering. You only need to be better at it than everyone else.”

“You think you’d be the best by now,” she said. She might have been joking. He chose to take it that way.

“I am.” He pulled her to him then. “I suffer for you every day.” He thought of her hands on him, how they were always cold. The wind cut through his ill-named windproofs.

When he’d heard his new gear had arrived from London, he couldn’t wait to get home and open the packages. It was like Christmas morning. The windproofs, the silk puttees, the new boots: he wanted to pull them all out of their packaging, turn them in his hands, though he knew they’d have to be packed right back up and sent off to the shipyards. When he’d walked in and seen the empty boxes he was furious. He knew it was juvenile, but they were his – and his to unpack. He was about to walk out of the house when Ruth called to him from up the stairs.

“George, darling?” she teased, in a tone he loved but wasn’t in the mood for. He stood at the bottom of the stairs like a pouting child.

“What is it?” He heard a loud
clomp
, like a heavy footstep.

“Come upstairs, please, darling.”

He knew he should humour her, he owed her that. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to climb the stairs.

He didn’t want to climb.

He stopped on the ridge. Ahead of him, Teddy tugged on the rope. He stepped up again.

“Please?” Her voice again. A question, doubting. He climbed the steps. She was at the top of them, peeking around the door of their room. “Come here.” Then she backed away, sounding heavy, fumbling.

He stepped into their room, dull and grey in the damp of fall. She was dressed head to toe in his expedition gear. Her tiny hands invisible in his gloves, her eyes hidden behind his goggles, below his hat. His windproofs sagged over too-big boots.

“What do you think?” Her voice was muffled through the wool of his scarf. She turned, laughing, her feet shuffling on the wood floor. His anger, his petulance evaporated. She was perfect, playing the fool in his clothes.

“I’ll pack you in my trunk,” he said. “You could almost pass for one of the Sherpas.”

“I thought I’d keep them. Wear them to market. It gets cold enough here.”

“I need them.”

“Then you’ll have to come get them.”

They climbed above the storm, George in the lead, the snow tossing below them like foaming surf. They couldn’t be far from where it had happened. The avalanche. Instinctively George stopped, stomped down on the new snow. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. He watched Teddy, below him, surface out of the storm and then turned to see the camp a short way above them. It looked deserted.

He dropped to the snow, leaned back against the angle of the
mountain. They couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t be. If they were dead it would be all over. And this time the papers would be right when they printed his name beside the names of the dead. This would be unforgivable.

“Almost there, Teddy.”

“They’ll be fine, George.” Teddy paused a moment beside him. “They’re sitting there waiting for us. We’ll get them down. And then we’ll see about the mountain. Still plenty of time to be bloody heroes.”

Teddy patted his shoulder roughly, then plodded past him towards the tent. He stood slowly and followed.

They found them cowering in the back of the tent. Virgil sat up as George climbed in. “Sahib Mallory.”

“Virgil,” he said, pulling the cold tea from under his jumper before he even had his gloves off. “How are you?” Coughing, he collapsed into the tent. God, he was tired. If only they could rest here, just for one night. But the camp couldn’t support them. And Somes was right, they’d been up here at these altitudes too long.

“Me, good. Lopsang, not good. He not make it down yesterday.” Virgil’s voice was creaky, dry.

“Neither did you.”

“I come back with Lopsang.”

“We need to get down. Now. You’re both dehydrated. When did you last eat? Drink?” He gestured at the canteen.

“Yesterday. Maybe before.”

Teddy was examining Lopsang. “We need to get him down.” The coolie was muttering, his head lolling back as Teddy tried to haul him to a sitting position. When Teddy let go, Lopsang slumped back into the sleeping bag. They’d have to drag him down.

“We need to hydrate them first.”

“Lopsang,” Virgil was saying, ripping a piece of pemmican with his teeth, “not go down. You must make him to go down.”

He wished it was that easy. This might be a rescue, but the Sherpas would still have to get themselves down the mountain. He and Teddy were little more than moral support. Bullies.

“We’ll have to short-rope him,” Teddy said, forcing Lopsang to drink.

Outside the tent Lopsang was able to stand, but he wavered on his feet. The weather below them had blown clear, the route lay crisp before them. George tied a rope from himself to Lopsang and from Lopsang to Teddy. A short line, only ten feet between each of them.

“I’ll go first,” he said and moved off, feeling resistance, then a grudging movement. Behind him Teddy stood still until his own rope to Lopsang was taut between them, then he followed them down, holding the coolie up.

They worked their way back to Camp IV in this way, inching down the mountain, forcing Lopsang down from the front. It was laborious. Lopsang stumbled, fell in the snow, and George would pull on the rope like a pack animal while Teddy arrested his fall from behind. Ahead of him George kept an eye on Virgil, who plodded down mechanically. At least they would get the coolies back down. He tried to feel the success of that.

“SHOULDN’T WE GO
look?” Sandy asked Somervell. He’d already spent most of the day staring up the ridge, blinking away spots in his eyes that he thought might be the others returning.

Dusk was creeping up the mountain. They’d seen no sign of torches, no light from the higher camp. At least the sky and mountain were bright with the moon. But the temperature had
already dropped, and now it was too cold to stand still, keeping watch for them. But unlike him, they were moving. They had to be, Sandy thought. That might be enough to keep them warm.

“No,” Somes said. “There are too many people already in danger. You heard what Teddy said. He isn’t putting anyone else at risk. And we don’t know if they’re even on their way back down. No. We stay here. At least until morning. If they’re not back by then, we’ll go look for them.”

Sandy didn’t want to wait. What if they were injured, or sick from the altitude? Lapkha’s bulging eyes rose again in his mind and an anger with it. “Maybe you should have gone,” he said to Somes.

“Teddy made the call.”

“But you’re the doctor. You’re the one who’s supposed to make sure we’re all all right. If you’d been here, maybe Lapkha wouldn’t have died.”

Somervell inhaled deeply. “I can’t be everywhere, Sandy.” His voice was calm. “I can’t be climbing and waiting behind. Right now, all we can do is wait. Hope for the best. Pray, maybe.”

Sandy wasn’t much for praying. When he was a child, he would lie in bed when his parents had gone out to the pub. He’d wait for them to come home, convinced something
nefarious
had happened to them. That was the word he’d thought. He’d read it somewhere. Some
Boy’s Own
or the like. He didn’t know exactly what it meant then, but he knew it was bad. It meant someone had tried to hurt them. He would make promises in his head to try to keep them safe. If he could keep his eyes closed until he counted to 100, 500, 1000, they would be home by the time he finished. He usually fell asleep before he reached the end, but if they still weren’t home, he picked a larger number and started again.

He closed his eyes now, murmured under his breath. He knew it was foolish. Still, he continued counting in his head.

“Hallo?” The sound of someone out there, far away. He waited and heard it again. Somes heard it too. “Come on,” he said and climbed from the tent, handing Sandy a canteen. “Come on.”

The dark was pressing in on them now and Sandy lit a lamp so George and Norton would be able to see it, follow the smudge of light.

The air outside felt as though it might snap. Sharp and fragile, edged like crystal. When he inhaled, it cut into his nostrils, his lungs. The moonlight was cold on the mountain, iced blue. Sandy slogged through the snow after Somervell, the snow filtering into his mislaced boots, melting against his skin and cooling fast. His feet would freeze in his boots. The cold in his brain hurt. He pressed forward.

Then he saw them. “There,” he said, squinting, and pointed past Somervell. The group was a huddled mass, stumbling slowly towards them.

George’s face was pale and white, frostbite beginning to settle in. Sandy brushed at his own face. The scabbed skin hurt. The pain reassured him. Behind George, Lopsang hung on the rope between him and Norton, kept up only by the tension on the rope.

“What happened?” Somes asked.

George didn’t speak, just waved over his shoulder at Lopsang, and fumbled at the rope at his waist. Sandy stopped him, handed him the canteen and leaned in to untie the short rope. As he did, George collapsed to the snow.

Somervell cut the rope between Norton and Lopsang and took the weight of the porter on his shoulder. Sandy tried not to look too closely at Lopsang as Somervell urged him past him. He couldn’t be as bad as Lapkha, he was still on his feet.

“Sandy, get them to the tent,” Somes said.

He nodded and moved to support Norton before he collapsed too. If they both dropped to the ground he’d never get
them moving again. Norton leaned on him and Sandy almost fell as he bent to pull on George’s coat. “Come on, George. Just a little way.”

Virgil trudged past them, not looking at him or at George, still on the ground. As he passed by, George heaved himself up and stumbled after him, ahead of Sandy, who was dragging Norton’s weight.

They were back. And safe. Though only just barely. He wondered if the expedition was over, if Teddy would send them all home. They would know more when they got lower down, had a chance to regroup. For the first time, Sandy considered just what the chances were of his getting home safe.

MARKET
2 O’CLOCK

T
hese medieval alleyways curve and wander every which way, and I follow this one past Trinity College with its sunlit rectangle of green out front, past All Saints Passage and its tiny shaded square of gardens and dirty paths around the squat trees. On my right are the windows of shops, people moving behind the displays of oxford-cloth shirts or books or sweets. To my left are the fortressed walls of Trinity and St. John’s, each with its own chapel, the stained glass catching the sunlight. The market is behind me, but I need a few minutes. I want to sit, quiet and alone. I had thought, on leaving Will’s, to go to St. Mary’s, but there I might run into people I know, at the very least Reverend Winterson, who would insist on being a source of comfort. Instead my feet lead me back towards Bridge Street, to the Round Church.

I’ve adored it since the first day George and I came across it as we walked about the town. It sits squat on its corner, where it has been for eight hundred years. Eight hundred. So long for something to stand steadfast as it has. The stone, brown-grey like the feathers of a dusty sparrow, describes a curve perfect for open arms.