Above All Things

by Tanis Rideout

  He folded the letter away and stood. Bloody Noel. If something had happened, if he had to turn back …

  Odell slipped into the shadow of the overhang, breathing heavily. “It’s been two hours. Another – what? – hour and a half before we’re through?”

  “No need to check up on me, Odell. It’s Noel I’m more concerned about.”

  “He’s right there.” Odell pointed down the ice to where Noel was climbing slowly towards them. “It’s a good route, Mallory. Well done. But we shouldn’t wait on Noel. We’ll be too delayed.”

  “I’ll decide how long we wait,” George said, withdrawing and lighting a cigarette. He inhaled deeply before he answered. “There’s an hour or so. But the next bit will be tricky. We’ll have to belay some of the loads, break new trail.”

  “We should get going then.” Odell bent to pick up his pack from where he’d dropped it, patting Sandy’s shoulder as if to hurry him up.

  “Not yet,” George said and stood to peer down the line to where Noel was now trudging up with Shebbeare and two coolies carrying a camera, a tripod. “I’ll let you know when we’re ready to go.” He took Odell’s canteen, drank deeply from it before taking a long final drag on his cigarette and making for Noel. Odell would just have to wait for him.

  Noel should know better. George truly loved this part of the mountain, but it was changeable and dangerous. The East Rongbuk Glacier was a frozen river that churned and flowed down the slope of the mountain until it finally melted and raged into the Himalayan watershed. It was never the same. Not even day to day, let alone year to year. Here, on the ice, was real climbing. Technical, precise. Noel couldn’t be left to wander through it on his own.

  THE BICKERING MADE Sandy uncomfortable. Not bickering, exactly, but he didn’t quite know what else to call it. It was an intimate sort of squabbling that somehow reminded him of how his mother didn’t quite say what she meant to his father when he came home a bit tight.

  He shifted on his pack as George stalked off to talk to Noel.

  “For chrissake,” George started in, gesturing to Noel’s two porters, to Shebbeare. “They, at least, need to stay on the rope.” Sandy looked away, took a drink from his canteen. Over and over again, Noel had stopped, unroped, set up his camera, and then tried to catch up to them. It was reckless. George had made it clear they shouldn’t dawdle on the ice.

  “It’s all right,” Shebbeare said. “I don’t mind.”

  George turned on Shebbeare. “You may think you’re being useful, but you aren’t. I’m the one in charge here. For a good reason.”

  “I needed the shot, George,” Noel said.

  “I don’t care about your shot. That’s not why we’re here.”

  “You’ll care when you’re headlining the film again in New York,” Noel shot back. “If I remember, you had a pretty good time playing celebrity last year.”

  “You might want to use this,” Odell said, handing Sandy a tube of petroleum jelly. “For your face.”

  “I’m fine,” Sandy said, taking and opening the tube anyway.

  Odell nodded and sat down. “You’re moving well. Not that I’m surprised. But not quite like Spitsbergen, eh?”

  He glanced over at Odell. “No. It really isn’t.” Spitsbergen had been rolling fields of ice and snow. This was more like a vast labyrinth.

  “Because of the extreme temperatures up here,” Odell said. “It melts and freezes so quickly. Day in. Day out. It shapes the ice. Spectacular, really. You sure you’re feeling all right?” Sandy just nodded. “Good. George will likely set a quick pace in the next while. He thinks everyone can move like him. It’s good to push, Sandy, but if you need to slow down, do it. Sometimes George needs to be reined in.”

  “I’ll be fine. I can keep up.”

  “You know what can happen on glaciers. You remember what happened in Spitsbergen. Simon delayed us for hours because he pushed too hard. You want to stay sharp.”

  “I don’t really need the lecture.”

  “Sandy,” Odell began, then paused, inhaled deeply. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just looking out for you.”

  “I know. Thanks.” Sandy stood and shouldered into his pack. It felt heavier than when he’d put it down. His legs were heavy too. Too bad they couldn’t rest just a bit longer. It was pleasant out of the sun, in the cool shadow of the ice. Back out in the full glare, the sun would rip at him. “Looks like George is ready to go,” he said, stepping away from Odell.

  It seemed to take a long time to get moving again, to get the porters back on their feet. Sandy moved down the line, checking the ropes they’d looped around their waists, one to the next, a great length of it paid out in between. The Sherpas were so small he had to bend to check their jumbled knots. This close to them, he caught the scent of soot and grass. Unfamiliar smells amidst all the snow and ice.

  “Odell,” George said, “bring up the rear with Noel, will you? It’ll give you a few more minutes to rest too. Sandy, let’s go.”

  Sandy kicked his crampons into the ice and followed George through the pinnacles rising up all around him. After creeping through a narrow pass, the ice so close he could feel the cool of it on his pained face, he entered into an open-air ballroom. The ice surrounded them. Great towering seracs rose up and encircled a pond of perfectly smooth ice that glinted in the sun.

  He would never be able find his way out of this. Not on his own. Everywhere there were walls and walls of ice, funhouse mirrors that painfully reflected the glaring rays of the sun, even through the dark tint of his goggles. George could be leading him anywhere. As he glanced around, the rope tugged at his waist, drawing him on. There was a fairy magic here. It was changeable, beautiful. It almost returned his breath to him, lightened his load. Almost.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” he’d tell Marjory when he got back. “It’s like your diamonds, all that sparkle and fire captured in something solid.” He’d hold it up for her, the necklace she’d lied to her ex-husband about, telling him she had lost it somewhere because it was one of the few things that she had wanted to keep. “Look at it, Sandy,” she’d pouted, holding it up so it flashed. “Wouldn’t you keep it too?”

  He wouldn’t have. Not then. But now it might conjure a little of the magic of this place in a way she would understand.

  The rope tugged again, so he picked up his pace, feeling the strain in his lungs. It was good, though, to feel his body work. “This is amazing,” he said when he caught up with George, his voice coming in gasps that he tried to hide. “Really. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Before me,” George said, spreading his arms, “nothing but eternal things were made, and this shall last eternally. Dante.”

  “I think I was supposed to study him this term,” Sandy said. “Dante.” His tongue was thick in his mouth, woollen. “Actually, the term’s over by now. Isn’t that strange? How time keeps passing there even while we’re away? Just exams left to sit now. Dick, all the rest, they’ll be graduating. I’ll still have to go back.”

  “You only have one term left, Sandy.”

  Sandy closed his eyes against the vicious sun and opened them to his light dappled room at Oxford. His sister, Evie, was shaking her head at him. “I know that, Evie,” he said, tossing a pair of wool socks at her. “I thought you were here to help me pack.” She tossed the socks back and then dropped onto his neatly made bed. He pulled the corner tight where it had come untucked.

  “But one more term and you’ll be finished. Then you can go off and explore anything you want.”

  “Mum’s already tried that tack. By the time summer rolls around, there will be one less place to explore. Come on, Evie, don’t pretend you wouldn’t go if you could.”

  “Sure, I’d go. But I’m not doing that well in school anyway. It really wouldn’t be a great loss.”

  He ignored her, opened his wardrobe, and pulled out the new windproofs he’d had made for the trip. When they first arrived, he had tried them on, admiring hi
mself in the mirror, striking climbing poses with his ice axe. Since then he had kept them folded neatly in the box they were delivered in.

  “And how does Miss Marjory feel about your going away again for so long,” she asked, reaching for the framed photograph on his desk.

  He dropped the box and took the photo back from Evie. “Actually,” he said, “she thinks it’s a grand idea.”

  “Really, Sandy.” Evie picked up his dropped windproofs and began folding them into neat packages, the material crinkling in her hands. “You can’t keep this up. For goodness sake, poor Dick is devastated. Humiliated. You know he tries to pretend it’s all fine, because he loves you. But imagine what it’s like for him – his best friend and his father’s wife. How could you do that to him? She’s a married woman.”

  “She’s divorced.”

  “Barely. And that doesn’t make it any better.” She’d folded and refolded the pants and jacket. He took them from her, put them into his footlocker. “Are you in love with her?”

  “Jesus, Evie.”

  “It’s probably something you should figure out,” she said. “Here.”

  Sandy squeezed his eyes against the dark shadow George made against the blaze of sky and snow, and glanced around for his sister. She shouldn’t be here. Slowly, he realized, she wasn’t.

  “I just need to sit a minute,” he said as he slumped to the ice. “Just a minute.” George wavered and shimmered in front of him. He’d sort it all out in a minute.

  “You’re dehydrated, Sandy. Drink this.” George was holding out his canteen.

  “I’m fine. You drink it.” He pushed George’s hand away, but George was insistent.

  After Sandy drank, George took the canteen back and then leaned down to haul him up by his armpits. “We need to keep going.”

  “No. I’ll just stay here.”

  “That’s the lassitude talking. You can’t stay here. The water will help. You’ll be fine.” George tugged at the rope. “Come on.”

  He wobbled a moment, then picked up his foot and stumbled on, measuring his own limbs against George’s. The cold water sloshed in his stomach, but it was already leaching into him. His vision sharpened. Foolish. A beginner’s mistake. He should have recognized the signs of dehydration, of glacial lassitude. He could quote them by heart: indifference, lethargy, drifting thoughts, distraction. George shouldn’t have had to tell him.

  Ahead of him George moved like liquid, lazy and easy; there was no panic in his movements, even when the ice seemed to shift under his feet. His own movements were awkward, jerky. His knees too stiff, his legs unsteady. He wished they were back on solid rock.

  The glacier was draining him. At least he hoped it was only the glacier. It couldn’t be the altitude. Not yet. There was still so far to go. But he’d have to tell Somervell. “I need to know everything,” Somes had told him when he and Teddy had seen them off this morning. “How you feel, good or bad, all right? Write it down when you get to Camp Two.” He didn’t want to tell Somes about this.

  The cold from the ice rose up his body in convection currents. Farther ahead there was an echoing boom, followed by the shiver of the ice moving beneath him, as a chunk the size of a house broke away.

  George slowed down and motioned to him. With his hat pulled low over his ears and his dark goggles blocking most of his face, George looked inhuman. Sandy’s reflection in the goggles was warped and bent. The reflected heat and sun illuminated George from below so he appeared to be floating.

  “How are you feeling now?” George asked, and coughed.

  “Parched. I can hear water. Sounds like it’s everywhere.”

  “It is.” George nodded. “It’s all melting, dripping down underneath the glacier. There’s a river under here. Enough to drive you crazy.”

  Sandy thought of breaking off a piece of ice and dropping it in his mouth. The slow, cold drip down his throat, smoothing the edges of his cough. Heaven. It must have shown on his face.

  “You can’t chew on the ice, Sandy. It’s tempting, I know, believe me, but it takes too much energy to melt it. It’s not worth it.”

  I know that, he thought but didn’t say out loud. He swallowed dryly. “We’re almost there, right?”

  “That’s only the half of it. Then we have to get the camp set up or we’ll be sleeping in the snow. We need to unload the coolies and send them back down, at least to Camp One.” George gestured with a mittened hand. The line was fully stretched out below them now. He hadn’t realized how much height they’d gained. The porters were tiny, threading their way between ice spires on glacial roadways, making their way up to where he stood with George.

  “It reminds me of Oxford,” Sandy said. “All the ice. The shapes of the towers.”

  “Reminds me of Manhattan,” George said. “I climbed Manhattan once. Ever been?”

  He shook his head, but George wasn’t looking at him. Maybe if things went well, if there was another film, maybe this time he could go to New York too. He’d love to go to America.

  GEORGE IMAGINED SHAPES in the ice. Outlines and memories.

  The seracs towered over him like the Manhattan skyline – great jutting façades of ice and stone, canyons thrown up around him. He was exhausted and sweltering. They were almost there. He felt as if he were dragging the line behind him up the mountain, up the side of a skyscraper.

  Climbing the side of a building had been easier.

  After the last expedition, he’d been sent to New York to tell stories. In the blue-white spotlight of the film projector, he had narrated Noel’s photographs to raise money for a new expedition by reliving the second expedition on Broadway. Pointing to features in the filmed landscape, he told the audience the colour of the ribbons in the hair of the dzongpen’s wife – red, if he remembered correctly. But the truth didn’t really matter. Not then and there. Not anymore. Remember, you’re there, Mr. Mallory, to give the audience what they want. To tell them a good story. Hinks’s letter on the matter had been explicit.

  He used the words that he knew they wanted to hear: ascent and angles, altitude, scree, degrees of frost, attempts. He tried to conjure up the cold, the desperation – everything the ridiculous poster plastered outside the theatre had promised. When he first saw it he had cringed, though later, when he described it to Ruth, he tried to laugh about the melodramatic image of two figures against a violent blue sky. “One of them – me, I suppose,” he told her, “was saving another man from falling, with just a single hand hold. Ridiculous!”

  When he stumbled in his delivery, he knew he had to be disappointing the audience, and his usual enjoyment of being the centre of attention slipped. But the small group had applauded enthusiastically and swelled to their feet like the tide. When they finished, he walked backstage, threading through the darkness, around the pulleys and flats from the show in rehearsal, past a beach scene, a canal with Italian buildings.

  In England, the Everest lectures had been a rousing success. They’d sold out over and over again, and he was feted at dinners and drinks before and after. He basked in his newfound celebrity, even as Ruth shied away from it, insisted he go alone. “I just can’t do it, George,” she’d said when he asked her to come with him to America. “You’ll be so busy you won’t even notice I’m not there.” This was after George Finch, who had toured with him some in England, had complained loudly about the attention lavished on George and was dropped from all future speaking engagements. None of the others wanted the bother. Noel was happy to let his film speak for him. Teddy and Somes wanted nothing to do with the spotlight. George bathed in it.

  The same could not be said of his experience in the New World.

  George had collapsed into his chair in the star’s dressing room in New York. His name wasn’t on the door. For the first time, he noticed the flowers by the lit mirror, wilting slightly. The heat, he told himself, as he read the card. They weren’t for him. They’d been left there. His face in the mirror looked old.

  “Come on, old c
hap.”

  He tried to smile at the representative from the National Geographic Society, but couldn’t remember his name. Neil? The fake accent grated on his nerves more than it should have done.

  “Time to celebrate.” Neil clapped his hands together emphatically.

  “Yes, of course.”

  At the reception there was an ice sculpture on the table, shaped like a mountain, though not at all like Everest. American ice, moulded and chipped. Misshapen. It looked more like the mountain logo of that film studio than any real summit. No one here was going for accuracy. The room was too warm, the lighting too soft. As Neil ushered him from guest to guest, someone handed him a cup filled with shaved ice, topped with red raspberry syrup. Like blood on snow.

  “Straight from the summit.” A woman’s voice near his ear.

  “The summit of what?” he asked.

  “The mountain over there.”

  There was a slight trace of an accent, carefully covered. She nodded towards the sculpted mountain, at the waiter standing behind it in a sharp tuxedo who shaved ice into glasses. The mountain was melting in the warm room, the edges of it softening, pooling around the bottom. Cigarette smoke wreathed its flanks.

  “Ah.” When they pulled him away for photographs a short while later, he still didn’t know her name.

  “Gentlemen, please?”

  And he thought of Noel taking photographs in other rooms just like this. There were always the official photographs. He handed off his melting red ice and settled into the routine of it: shaking hands or standing between older couples, smiling or serious – morphing into whatever it was they wanted him to be, whatever it was they were looking for. He desperately needed a drink. How did Americans get anything done being so bloody dry? The inevitable round of questions was coming. The hows, the wheres.

  The whys.

  Between the popping of flashbulbs he had looked for her, the woman who had spoken of the summit, craning for her neat blonde bob in the darkened room, electric lights turned low to match the candles. He could hear her mid-Atlantic accent somewhere. It was something between here and home. She had smelled of the city, a little acrid, sharp, but somehow there was also a fading scent of green. From a greenhouse maybe, New York being too cold in February to dream of anything growing.