The Ice Soldier

by Paul Watkins

  “But I am one,” said Stanley. “Otherwise I would be going on this crazy expedition my uncle planned out for us.”

  I cleared my throat. “You aren’t a coward,” I told him, “because you are going on it. And so am I.”

  He looked at me for a long time. It was the way you would look at a stranger. “What?” he asked eventually.

  “You heard me,” I said.

  “Would you mind telling me why?” His forehead was creased with confusion.

  “Because your uncle loved you, even if he pretended that he didn’t. And you loved him too, no matter how much you might try to deny it. And if you honestly do love Helen Paradise, you’ll do it for her. And I hate to say this, but you’re bloody well going to do it for me as well.”

  He looked at me with his chin stuck out defiantly. “You bastard,” he said. “You rotten bastard.”

  “You can call me whatever you like, but you’ll do this for your uncle, and for Helen and for me because we’re the only people on earth who haven’t given up on you!”

  At first, Stanley made no reply. He got up and, with an expressionless face, walked across the room and lowered himself into a chair by the window. It was the one where I marked student papers on Sunday evenings, and I never sat in it at any other time. The tired old cushions sighed as Stanley settled into them. Then he smiled at some private joke playing out inside his head.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  He wafted his hand dismissively in the air. “All those years,” he muttered.

  “All what years?”

  “The years my uncle spent trying to get me to take up mountaineering again. And just when I thought he was finally through pestering me, he comes back from the grave and wins his little battle after all!”

  “So you’ll come?”

  He shrugged carelessly, as if none of this mattered to him. But his eyes gave him away. His gaze roamed around the room, and he appeared to be looking for an escape route. “Doesn’t seem as if I have much choice, does it?”

  “Think of it,” I told him, “as one last piece of Nitty Gritty.”

  He coughed out a sarcastic laugh. “I always was the Nitty Gritty Man,” he said. Then suddenly he breathed in, slapped his knees, and stood up. “Right,” he announced loudly. “Let’s go!”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear you say that,” I told him, rising to my feet. “But we can’t just leave. There’s a lot of preparation to be done first.”

  He laughed. “Not to the Alps, silly! To meet Helen for dinner. We’re going to that Greek place Sugden talked about.”

  “The one where they serve testicles?”

  “Exactly.” He threw me my coat.

  “What better meal,” I said, “to celebrate the official disbanding of the Society of Former Mountaineers?”

  We were halfway out the door when something occurred to me. “I’ll have to meet you there,” I told him. “I’ve got something I have to do first.”

  “Don’t be too late.” Then he shook a finger in my face. “And I haven’t said I’ll go. Not yet. I’m still thinking about it.”

  I smiled and pushed him gently out the door.

  When Stanley had left, I put the Webley in the pocket of my coat. Then I went out to the street and caught a bus to Waterloo Bridge.

  It was evening.

  I walked out to the middle of the bridge.

  People walked past on their way home from work. None of them saw as I drew the gun from my pocket and let it slip from my hand into the dark and swirling water.

  I thought of the Webley sliding down into the blackness, and the silent blossoming of silt as it landed in the mud. I thought of the battle-axes of the Vikings and the swords of Roman legionnaires, who had survived their wars in this country but found that they could not endure the peace that followed. So they had thrown away their weapons, rather than turn the blades upon themselves. And somewhere down there, too, was Stanley’s polished badge, which had been, in its way, no less of a burden than those tools of war which lay around it in their tombs of mud.

  FOR SOME REASON, the Feast of the Gods had been removed from the menu at the Greek restaurant.

  “A shortage of testicles,” suggested Stanley.

  I was relieved to make do with a meal of stuffed peppers and avgolemono sauce.

  We did not speak of making the trip.

  All through the meal, I kept my eye on Stanley, trying to read his thoughts in case my attempt to persuade him had not worked after all.

  But his expression gave nothing away.

  After the plates had been cleared, we sat back with little glasses of ouzo.

  Stanley drank his quickly, wincing at the fire it ignited in his belly. Then he announced that he was going to find the manager and sort out whether or not Sugden really had eaten those testicles.

  “You’re obsessed,” I told him.

  He winked at me and wandered off.

  “I think it’s marvelous,” said Helen, “what you and Stanley are doing for his uncle.”

  “What’s that?” I asked cautiously.

  She sat back. Her hand slid away. “Going to the Alps, silly!”

  “Oh,” I said. “So we are going.”

  She looked confused. “Well, Stanley seems to think you are. He told me all about it before you got here.”

  I nodded. “He hadn’t been exactly clear about it when we talked.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Helen, sipping at the ouzo, “I think it’s very grand.”

  “Why don’t you come with us?” I asked. It seemed like a good idea.

  She smiled and shook her head. “I’d love to, but I can’t.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  She turned the little ouzo glass around in circles. “Because I never was a member of the Society of Former Mountaineers.”

  “But that was just a thing we called ourselves! It didn’t exist.”

  “It did exist,” she said, “and in many ways it was more important than that other club you both belong to.”

  I saw what she was saying.

  “And you’ve got to undo what it was,” she continued, “each of you for your own reasons. It’s a pity, really.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. That you won’t be going to the Himalayas.”

  I gritted my teeth and nodded.

  She started to laugh.

  “What is it?” I asked nervously, knowing this must be at my expense.

  Now she laughed even harder. “I knew you weren’t actually going.”

  “You did?” My voice rose almost to a squeak. “But how?”

  “Carton told me. He said I ought not to judge Stanley too harshly.”

  “Well, I wish you had let me in on the joke a little earlier.”

  “I wanted to see how you’d get out of it.” She pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh again.

  “Getting out of it was Stanley’s job,” I told her, “seeing as he got us into it.”

  “I suppose I should be angry,” said Helen, “but I’m not.”

  “Because you know, as I do, that Stanley said the stuff about the Himalayas because he wanted you to like him. And I happen to know that he likes you very much. In fact, he’s completely mad about you. You’re why he’s going to the Alps.”

  “Me and the inheritance.”

  “No,” I said. “He wants his inheritance all right, but not enough to climb this mountain. The reason he’s going is you.”

  She turned her head to one side and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “I suppose I was afraid of that.”

  “Why be afraid of it?” I asked, thinking that she looked more beautiful than ever.

  For a moment, she seemed lost in thought. Then she turned to face me again, and her eyes burned into my head. “What if he gets hurt? Or you?”

  “I have my own reasons, for going.”

  “Well, I hope they are good reasons,” said Helen, “and I hope you’ve got a lot of luck stored away someplace, because
you’re both going to need it.”

  THAT NIGHT, I put in a call to Webb. I told him it was settled. We would go.

  It was quiet for a long time on the other end.

  I thought we had been disconnected. “Are you still there?” I asked. “Dr. Webb?”

  “This comes as a surprise.” Webb’s voice returned, his heavy breaths reaching me through the static like the rumble of breaking waves. “I had been led to believe you’d be turning down the offer. And Stanley, too, for that matter.”

  “On the contrary,” I told him. “Stanley and I will be leaving as soon as we can. I’ll need to draw funds. A few hundred pounds to start with. We’ll need to get some gear together and book passage to the Alps.”

  “Of course. Whatever you need. I’ll have three hundred sent over tomorrow.” He held his hand partway over the receiver and coughed. “The funeral reception is the day after tomorrow at the Climbers’ Club. I assume you will be there.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you really think it can be done?” asked Webb. “The climb, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “The press will have to be told. There’s no way to keep this quiet. Very soon, I expect, the whole world will be watching what you do.”

  “I think that Carton would have wanted it that way.”

  “I’d heard that you would never climb again.” Webb’s voice merged with the static so that the static itself seemed to be speaking. “What made you change your mind?”

  “Something Carton told me long ago. I just didn’t understand it until now.”

  “What was it?” he asked. “What did he tell you?”

  “He said I should hold fast to the dreams of my youth.”

  He repeated the words I had just said. And then he added, “I understand.”

  “You do?” Somehow I doubted it. He didn’t seem the type to understand.

  “Words like that,” said Webb. “They carry the weight of the world as lightly as a feather.”

  Then I knew that I’d been wrong. He understood after all.

  By sunset the following day, just as Webb had predicted, Stanley and I and the news of Carton’s last request were on the front page of every paper in the country.

  THE COFFIN LAY ON a long table in the middle of the Climbers’ Club. Its sides were bare metal which had been polished in a series of swirls. The top had been welded shut, with brass handles bolted to its sides. The coffin was beautiful in its simplicity, and stood out against the darkly complex Persian rugs, the sleek fur of the trophy heads, and the otherworldly shaping of their horns.

  It also clashed with the somberly dressed crowd which had gathered to pay tribute to Carton before he began his final journey to the mountains.

  A chamber orchestra set up behind a barricade of shifted furniture played Albinoni’s “Adagio” and Pachelbel’s “Canon.”

  So many people had showed up that it became necessary to usher them in a dozen at a time. They filed past the coffin, laid flowers on it, touched it, ran their fingers along its sides, kissed it. Some people cried. Most just stared, with the same glazed and strangely hungry look that Carton had drawn from them in his lectures.

  I thought of what he had said about the show being over. But it wasn’t. Even in death, he had managed not to disappoint his thousands of admirers.

  Outside, through the open doors of the club, hundreds of people milled about in the street. The press was there, photographing anyone who seemed particularly overwhelmed as they emerged from the building.

  Helen and I were sitting on the stairs, at that place where the big Chinese vase bristled with Zulu spears. There was nowhere else for us to sit, so we looked through the banister railing at the tweed caps and cloche hats of the people who filed through the room.

  I was glad Helen was there. I felt comfortable around her. She was one of the few people I knew who understood firsthand the mountains that stood behind the legend of Henry Carton. It was what set her apart from the crowd down below, and bonded her to Stanley and to me.

  With as much dignity as possible, Stanley led the mourners past the coffin and made sure, with polite taps on shoulders or kind words whispered in ears, that no one dawdled longer than was necessary.

  Over the past few days, he had taken on the role of spokesman for our expedition. Each day, there were meetings with journalists, and I saw a little of his uncle’s showmanship in the way Stanley avoided the topic of his inheritance and the rancor which had existed between them for so long. In fact, Stanley had nothing bad to say about his uncle, which was a first in my experience.

  The interviews were held at the Montague, up on the second floor, where there was a space too grandly named the Banquet Room. On the walls hung colored drawings of people foxhunting. The pictures were supposed to show the progression of the hunt: the Scent, the View-Hallo, the Chase, and so on. Stanley installed himself at one end of the table and received a seeming endless series of journalists. Barber ran an irregular shuttle service of tea from the kitchen to the private dining room. The journalists scribbled furiously in their notepads, while Stanley paced the room, bounced his fist off the table, or seesawed on the back legs of his chair. He never seemed to tire.

  In between classes, I usually managed to attend a couple of interviews each day. When asked, I chipped in the odd bit of Alpine geography or explained the difference between a piton and a crampon, but otherwise I minded my own business. I couldn’t stand it for long in that little room, eyes drawn repeatedly and annoyingly to those red-jacketed foxhunting men, forever frozen in midair over a fallen tree or toasting one another with wine their lips would never touch. I always found reasons to be moving on.

  Several times, I ended up having lunch with Helen down in the main dining room. She was concerned, as I was, about the technical aspects of the journey. There was the ice field of the Dragon’s Tongue to be crossed beforehand. There, the danger of avalanche or of crevasses hidden below thin crusts of snow was enough to deter most mountaineers from ever reaching Carton’s Rock. Once the climb began, even with no extraordinary gear to carry, all indications were that it would be a difficult ascent. But with the coffin as well, and what appeared in Helen’s photographs to be several unavoidable vertical rock walls, we were not sure it could be done.

  In the wake of the recent disaster in Patagonia, talk of climbing was everywhere. Not for the first time, the dangers of mountaineering, and the point of mountaineering at all, was brought into question. Editorials railed against what they saw as a needless loss of life while one engaged in a pursuit which had no purpose except to tempt fate.

  Despite this, the Carton Expedition, as it was now being called, was finding in the public eye some measure of redemption for the corpses left in Patagonia. We were not climbing a mountain as much as we were honoring the dead. For that, risks were worth taking.

  In the space of one week, Stanley evolved from the service-dodging bon vivant of the Montague Club, the co-president of the now defunct Society of Former Mountaineers, and the unemployed and unemployable slack-chinned wasteful spender of his father’s hard-earned money to an almost saintly figure of personal sacrifice, familial love, and, the press was quick to point out, the love of Helen Paradise as well. Stanley had turned into an actual hero, a fact which he seemed both anxious to prove and just as eager to deny. These denials only made him more popular, as he had known they would.

  I, on the other hand, had been cast as something of a silent partner. I was the former mountaineer, invalided out of the sport by the war, returning to the Alps to help out an old friend. Without complaint, I settled into this supporting role, rather than insist upon the facts. The alternate reality had been so quickly manufactured by the press that it seemed almost easier to be swept along by its half-truths than to remember the real reasons for my going.

  The image they had created for Stanley was almost as heroic as that of his uncle. The two of them were, in a way, closer than they had ever been before. Hen
ry Carton had become, in death, the father figure that he’d always wished he’d been for Stanley. And Stanley became the thing he had so stubbornly refused to be, which was, if such a thing were possible now, his uncle’s pride and joy.

  The only interruption to the smooth running of that afternoon occurred at the arrival of a little man whose antique-looking clothes and large black hat gave him a dwarfish, supernatural look. I could see nothing of his eyes, but his lips were bloodlessly thin and his nose was long and rounded at the end. Ignoring the orderly line which filed past the coffin, the man stood in the middle of the room and began waving a walking stick above his head.

  “Henry Carton is a fraud and a scoundrel!” shouted the little man.

  A gasp went up from the line of waiting people.

  “Do you mind?” asked Stanley, his voice hoarse with sudden anger.

  “You’ve all been cheated!” yelled the man. “The whole thing is a swindle!”

  “What is?” demanded Stanley.

  With a flick of his wrist, the man brought his walking stick level with Stanley’s chest and kept it there as if aiming the barrel of a gun. “Your uncle thinks he has fooled the whole world. But he hasn’t fooled me!”

  “Who the hell are you?” asked Stanley.

  “My name is Joseph Pringle!”

  There was a sound almost like growling from the people in the line.

  Pringle heard this, and he turned on them. “You can all just pack it in! You don’t know anything. If you did, you wouldn’t be here kowtowing to this man. And you!” He swung his stick to where I sat with Helen on the stairs. “You ought to have the sense to leave this fool where he is lying now, instead of risking your life for the sake of this blackguard’s reputation!”

  I had never heard anyone use the word blackguard seriously before.

  The whole room stood in shock.

  The press crowded into the doorway.

  Pringle looked around, snorting in his breaths like a bull before it charges. “I tell you all now,” he shouted, “that this journey will never take place!” Then he let out a shrill birdlike cry and, with one sweep of his cane, cleared the flowers from the top of the coffin.