Above All Things

by Tanis Rideout

  “Could you keep him for me for a few hours?” I bob my head at John in her arms. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course. Some time for yourself. That I understand.” She says it as if we’re conspiring and then turns to Clare and Berry. “What do you say, girls? We’ll teach John the colours en français.” A few hours on my own – away from the house, from Vi and Edith. From everything. The luxury of it washes over me.

  The two of them nod. “Then we’ll need some paints and papers.” Cottie’s arms sweep out in a wild gesture, the wood bangles at her wrist knock against each other. “You know where they are. Go find them.” They scamper out of the room, towards the kitchen. John toddles after them. Doors bang.

  We listen a long moment, waiting for a crash, a wail. When there’s no emergency, I carry on, apologizing. “No, it isn’t that. It’s just Edith and Vi are busy with the dinner party and there are things to take care of before everyone arrives. It’s easier without –”

  Cottie cuts me off. “Ruth, there’s nothing wrong with needing an hour or two – or two months! – to yourself. But you’ll have tea first? It won’t take a minute.”

  I walk to the mantelpiece. The clock is ticking close to eleven.

  “No, please don’t bother. I won’t stay long.” Cottie’s hands are at her short, frizzy hair, trying to smooth it down. If the Reverend Mallory thinks me strange, what must he think of Cottie, whose husband and children are away in London so she can live her “bachelor’s life” here, as she calls it, writing and thinking.

  “But I haven’t seen you in an age. You look well.”

  “Thank you, but there are the errands to run and it feels like forever since I’ve been out in the world. I’ve been staying close to home. It’s easier.” The words pour out of me like water. “It’s just, if word comes, I want to be there. And so many people ask about him. But I can’t take it today, sitting there waiting for the post.” I collapse to the sofa, laugh a little. “I sound ridiculous.”

  “Of course not. It must feel as if everyone is after you. After him. Impossible to talk about anything normal.”

  “Precisely! Look at us, even now, talking about George and his being away. Sometimes I just don’t want to hear his name anymore.” There is a long beat as we both try to find something else to fill the conversation. “I knew I was in love with George when I wanted to say his name over and over again. It gave me a thrill in my stomach just to hear it, to taste it.”

  “I remember that feeling. Even if it’s a name like George – not a beautiful name that.”

  I smile despite myself. “No. But I would make up excuses to say it.” I laugh, embarrassed at the memory. “ ‘By George, Papa!’ I used to say. So silly.”

  “No. It isn’t. And it isn’t silly to want a break from it.”

  “Thank you, Cottie.”

  In the back of the house the children are making noise, opening cupboards. Clare’s voice imperious over everything.

  “I have had a letter,” Cottie says. “I’m sure it’s nothing compared to yours. But would you like to read it?”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Of course not! Just give me …” She is already up and crossing the entry into her study. Through the open door there are piles of books, scraps of paper everywhere. Cottie rifles through them, searching.

  I picture my letters, gathered together under George’s pillow, raising it up from the bed.

  “Ah!” There is a triumphant sound and she pulls pages out, others fluttering to the floor. I am a crow, gathering scraps of news about George wherever I can, all of them outdated, irrelevant. None of it tells me about how he is right now, only how he was three weeks ago, a month ago. I count weeks, days, hours. I’ve become an expert at time. First how long he has been gone, then how long until he returns. But this leaves everything open. In this moment, every possible ending is open to us. He has climbed the summit. He is coming home victorious.

  Cottie folds the pages sloppily back into the envelope and hands it to me. There it is – his handwriting. The Mt. Everest Committee crest on the reverse, a small sketch of a mountain in blue ink.

  “May I?” I hold up my handbag. “I’ll give it back to you this evening?”

  “Certainly. Take it with you. Take your time.”

  When I stand, she gives me a quick hug.

  “Thank you,” I say, though I’m not sure if she hears me. “Vi will come for the children. At the usual time. Thank you,” I say again, louder this time.

  “I haven’t done anything. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Outside I take the letter from my bag and lift it to my face, hoping for some trace of him, but there’s nothing. If anything, it smells now of Cottie’s home, of ashtrays left full for too long, of ink maybe. Still, I tuck it inside the top of my blouse, in under my slip, so its corners dig against my skin.

  The early June light is watery still, but the lawns and the foliage are blushing green. Even the grey buildings of Cambridge sprout green moss on their shady sides, which makes them verdant, soft. Walking towards the town centre, I feel a sense of ease. The children are taken care of, I have errands to occupy my hours – a nightgown for Clare, flowers for the table. A letter to read. There is peace in the choice of solitude.

  In the narrow streets, fellows stream by on their bicycles and I imagine George here, in his dark, flowing robe, his long, floppy hair. Is this the life he imagined? Am I?

  I think of Cottie with her short hair, her trousers. Her ambitions. Even the way she smokes is glamorous. The way she stays so long away from her children, her husband – so she can write. I wonder if I could live like that, be so driven by my own desires and interests, the way George is with his mountains, that I would send the children, my husband away. There is something to admire, I think, in that kind of commitment.

  Like so many of my friends, Cottie was George’s friend first. At first, I was intimidated by Cottie, jealous even, though I hate to admit it, even now, even to myself. But she had climbed with George for years and she, more than me, had once seemed the right girl for him – bold and adventurous. Foolish to imagine ever feeling that way now.

  I didn’t meet Cottie until after our wedding. At dinner. At the Woolfs’.

  “They’ll love you,” he’d told me, to calm my nerves. “They’ll love you because I love you.”

  He kissed me hard against the Woolfs’ front door, his hand under my coat, against my breast, until the maid answered.

  I hoped he would be right – but what an audience! Virginia and Leonard; Maynard Keynes; Cottie and her diplomat husband, Owen; James Strachey; Lytton Strachey with whoever his lover was at the time. Aside from family dinners, it was our first invitation as a married couple. Our wedding had been tiny, intimate – family and just a few close friends.

  I changed three times before George recommended a dress that his sister, Avie, had given me, cut in loose lines that somehow showed my body underneath. “I can imagine you naked when you wear that dress,” he said.

  Cottie was kindest to me from the start. She leaned across the loud table, the sleeve of her blouse dipping into her plate, and said, “We were so sad to hear about your honeymoon.”

  “Yes, a shame to have one’s romance derailed by war.” James sounded bored by the whole thing.

  “It must have been dreadful, really. Porlock, did you say?” Virginia looked at me. It wasn’t the honeymoon we’d hoped for. There had been talk of the Alps, but then the war broke out. Still, it was a week for just the two of us and that was enough for me. We camped in a canvas tent on the beach with the sigh and rush of waves on the shore, burbling over fist-sized stones. We brought lots of blankets and piled them under us. We stayed in the tent for days. Eating, talking, reading, making love. We only left to splash into the water, in the rain, wet before we’d even entered it. We were damp for days but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was he was there to reach for me, to be reached for.

  “Yes,” George said. “Porlock.
And no, not at all.”

  I felt a glow radiate down my body and thought of every place he had touched me. We’d lain head to feet, leaning on elbows, on each other. I examined him, crawled over him, drawing lines across shadows of bone, scars, bruises.

  “It’s not the honeymoon I planned,” he had apologized to me at the time. Climbing up to his face, I kissed him.

  “It wasn’t a bore at all,” George told the table. “It was all too much excitement, really. We were arrested for being spies.”

  He didn’t look at me, but his hand under the table scrunched up my dress so that he could touch the bare skin at the top of my stockings. I couldn’t look at him.

  “You weren’t,” said Lytton, incredulous. They all were. But there was much talk of spies then. The street signs had been removed from the coastline all the way to London to foil foreign agents. It wasn’t impossible that people camping on a beach might be viewed with suspicion.

  “We were in the tent, reading. It was pouring rain. Not only didn’t we get a honeymoon on the continent, but we were rained on the entire time. We were keeping each other warm, reading together, and there was a scratching at the canvas flap. Ruth looked at me. We hadn’t heard anyone calling. We hadn’t even seen anyone else for days. I reached over and untied the flap and there was a soldier crouched at our tent – wet from head to toe. He smelled of wet wool. I thought maybe he wanted to come in out of the rain and I’d already started to lean back out of the way. Then I noticed his gun, pointed at us, but only just. ‘Papers,’ he sputtered. ‘I need to see your papers.’ ”

  In George’s story we were stunned, laughed at the absurdity of it. At the dinner table I shifted in my seat, reached for George’s hand under the table as Maynard poured me more wine, which I drank deeply. I squeezed his fingers as hard as I could. He didn’t even flinch. Didn’t blink. Just went on. “We handed him our identification. Our new marriage certificate, which Ruth had tucked into the book she was reading. What was it, darling? The book?”

  He squeezed my hand as he said my name.

  I was meant to conspire with him. To lie. I was flattered and taken aback. The books I had taken with us went right out of my head. I was worried I’d pick the wrong one. Everyone would laugh at me. Glancing around the table, though, I realized they all believed him. They had no reason not to.

  “That one by Whymper,” I said, finally. I gulped at the wine. “About the disasters in Switzerland. You recommended it. What was the title? I can see it in my head. Small book with etchings. Men falling. Oh!” I grasped at the title. “Scramble Amongst the Alps.”

  “Of course.” His smile was dazzling. “It practically gave you nightmares. You tried to forbid me from climbing anymore.” He wrinkled his nose at me, the same way he had when we had met, in the drawing room, overlooking the canals in Venice. Us against the world. And there was a thrill to that.

  “I’d never forbid you from climbing, though,” I corrected. “I know how much it means to you.”

  There was an approving nod from Cottie, a smirk from James and Lytton.

  George continued with his story. How the soldier demanded we go with him, in the rain, and took us to a small stone building overlooking the sea. The waves hammered at the bottom of it, and we were certain the whole cliff would collapse. When they asked if we were spies, George said of course not. Still, we stayed overnight, but at least it was dry. “In the morning they sent us home,” he said. “Told us to honeymoon elsewhere.” There was appreciative laughter around the table. I felt a flutter of excited nerves at the ruse, but at the same time a swell of embarrassment that I had to be apologized for.

  As I gaze in a shop window, I catch my reflection and wonder, not for the first time, if George would rather have married the girl in the story. And what if he had? Even here there is another me, reflected back, darker and wavering.

  In the glass behind me, a man in a grey flannel suit walks by, a fedora pulled low over his eyes, and my heart skips. I glance quickly over my shoulder towards him, but he has moved off down the street without even looking at me. Still, I step into the shop, to be sure.

  I thought he might have been a reporter, not likely from the Times, but the Standard maybe, or the Post. They send notes. There had been one this morning, asking questions, wanting information. I don’t answer them, and they’ve never come in person, but I’ve been wary after what happened at St. Pancras Station, when the press descended on us after the last expedition.

  I finger the bolts of cloth on the large wooden table, try to find something suitable, and inexpensive, for a nightdress for Clare. My heart is still racing, but it’s slowing now in the cool of the shop. This, too, I could do without – the scrutiny of it all, the constant demands.

  “Can I help, Mrs. Mallory?”

  “I think this one, please.” I hold up the length of cotton and the shopkeeper nods, takes it from me to cut it.

  “Would you like us to make it up for you? Or will you be sewing it yourself?”

  The light comes in sharply through the store windows, cleaving the floor in two, so that the back half of the room is still dark and cool, while the front is too hot. I step into the shadow so I don’t have to squint at the shopkeeper. She’s an old woman. And a much better sewer than me. I am about to ask her to make up a simple nightdress, when I realize I haven’t measured Clare and she has clearly grown. Foolish. Well, so be it. Clare will have a nightdress made by me, uneven hems and all. At least it will be thriftier.

  “I’ll take it as it is, thank you.”

  I should have Clare try on her new dresses again. I had two made up in this very shop for her birthday and she may well be near outgrowing them already the way she has sprouted up. If that’s the case I’ll need to have a photograph taken soon so George can see what it was her daddy gave her for her birthday last month.

  I had wanted to make her birthday special.

  “What would you like to do today, birthday girl?” I had asked her when she finished her breakfast. “After school, of course.”

  “Do I have to go?”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Berry doesn’t. John doesn’t.”

  “Berry and John aren’t big like you.”

  “Will Daddy be home for my birthday?”

  “No, pet, you know that.” I had his letter for her. I wanted to wait until the end of the day. “But he did send something.” Her face blossomed, she became a different child. “But you’ll have to read it here. You can’t take it with you to school.”

  She took it to the window and opened it carefully, trying to pull back the flap without ripping it. Her face was a bold smile. “What does he say?” I asked.

  “That the wind tried to carry his hugs and kisses away and the letter ended up in a stream.” Then, when it was time for her to go, she handed it back to me. “Keep it somewhere safe for me.”

  Later, Will arrived with the dresses I had had made. “These came,” he whispered to Clare, “straight from Everest.”

  “They’ve got Cambridge Milliners on them.”

  “Yes, well, that was the only box your daddy had, wasn’t it?”

  She looked dubious. She’s too old for these sorts of tricks, but Berry and John aren’t and they wanted to see what had come from Everest.

  “Do coolie girls look like us, then?” Berry asked when she saw Clare’s very ordinary dresses.

  “What a strange sort of question that is,” Will answered. “Let’s have pudding!”

  Thank goodness for Will.

  The shop woman is wrapping the cotton. Perhaps I should have gotten something nicer. Something prettier. But it is only a nightgown. And if all goes well then perhaps we can afford shop-made nighties for both the girls and Berry won’t have to wear her sister’s hand-me-downs.

  “Can you send the package to my home? It’s only that I have more errands.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Mallory.”

  Outside the pavements are warming under the midday sun and the bells
of the colleges all begin to sound. The narrow promenade echoes with them.

  It was Will, of course, who suggested the dinner a couple of weeks ago. He’d been by just after the post was delivered. He thinks I don’t notice his timing, but I do. He wants to be there should bad news arrive, but also wants to have news from George. I don’t mind either way. There had been no letter and so we wandered in the back garden, me bending to pull a weed now and again or to check on a fresh pea shoot, Will following after me. The garden was a surprise, seeing what had been planted before we’d moved in come to bloom.

  “The Woods have invited me to dinner on Thursday. Why don’t you come with me?” he asked.

  “I haven’t even been introduced to the Woods. It isn’t appropriate.”

  “Nonsense. They’d love to have you.”

  “What you mean is they’d love to quiz me about George.” I leaned over the just-blooming tulips, their red heads vivid against all the lush green.

  “No. I didn’t …” Will tugged at the leaves of one of the rose bushes. I lightly slapped his hand away.

  “It’s all right, Will. I know you didn’t mean it like that. But they” – I gestured over the garden wall, at all of Cambridge, all of England – “do.”

  “Still, it would be good for you to get out.”

  “I’m fine.” I stepped away from him, deeper into the garden. “We’re fine.”

  “Then what say we have a dinner party here?”

  I thought about the mess in the house – boxes still piled in corners, the drapes mismatched while I decide on a colour. I shook my head. “The place is a mess.”

  “It’ll be a good reason to get everything cleared away. And what we don’t, we’ll put into George’s study. No one needs to go in there. And you’ll just invite the people you like. Your sisters. Me?” He cocked his head in a question.

  “Of course.” I tried not to smile.