“What do you think?” George asked.
“About what?”
“About what I wrote.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. At lunch he could barely look at me and flushed when he did. His hands fluttered across the table, picking up utensils, putting them down, turning the water glass in his hand to see the blower’s signature.
“You’ll have to refresh my memory.”
“I already spoke with your father.”
“Yes, you did. You had a rather extensive conversation about rope. I was there.”
“You’re going to make me ask properly then?”
“I’m going to make you ask something.”
“Ruth Turner. Will you marry me?”
He offered me a small, plain ring, nothing like Marby’s had been. I touched the hair that still fell over his collar.
“You’ll get a haircut first?”
“If that’s what it will take.”
“Then yes. I will.”
——
Ahead of me, near the altar, is a small memorial to the members of the church who died in the war, a wreath, draped with purple and black. The flowers are wilting, need to be replaced. The number of flowers England goes through for all her lost sons must be staggering. Gardens full of them. There are flowers for Trafford, I’m sure, at Mobberley. I’m glad there is no need of them for George.
“We all have to do our bit.” That’s what he told me before he went to France. But he didn’t have to. He volunteered, begged them to take him, even after he’d been refused three times. You’re a teacher, he was told. Crucial to the war effort. But he couldn’t abide that.
“I can’t stand by. Everyone’s over there. Geoffrey, Trafford. Robert. Dear God, Ruth, boys I taught are over there fighting. I have to go too.” It was as though he was afraid of missing out on some kind of adventure. “I can’t just stay here. Safe. With you.”
The with you sounded like an indictment. When he was finally accepted, George brought home champagne to drink to the future. To victory. I sipped at mine and hoped the whole war would be over before he got to France. Too many times I have drunk champagne at his departures. I hate the taste of champagne.
This time he said, “I can’t imagine coming down defeated.” I tried not to parse that sentence – the ways it could be interpreted.
The quiet of the church is calming. The traffic outside is muffled and far away. I am in a tiny, perfect fortress. A fortress for faith, for comfort. How many people have prayed here in eight hundred years? And so many of them are dead now. Forgotten. I know that George believes if he succeeds he won’t be forgotten. It’s a way to stave off death, grasp some immortality. He believes it’s a way to make things right – with Trafford and Geoffrey. With his father. A way to establish a new life for all of us. Maybe he’s right, but for what it’s worth, these sacrifices don’t add up to much of a life.
In the alley beside the church there’s a sign: The Occupiers give notice that they will take Proceedings against all Persons committing a Nuisance in these entries.
I laughed the first time I saw it. We’d only just moved to Cambridge and George was showing me the town. The day was damp and cold, we leaned close together. We’d go to the pub, he said, to get warm. But not yet.
“What kind of nuisance should we commit?” I asked.
“We could drink and curse.”
“No. Too simple. University stuff, really.”
I leaned back against the wall, under the sign. I wanted him pressed against me. He was close. Everything else seemed so far away. The calls across the Cam, the drip, drip, drip of rain. I pulled down my hat and looked up at him from under it as he leaned against the opposite wall. Our feet crossed each other, and our bodies made a vee.
“We could fall asleep. They’d have to step over us.” He gestured down the carriageway.
“I think we can do better than that.”
“What did you have in mind?”
I pushed off from the wall and fell against him. I kissed him hard.
“That’s not a nuisance,” he said when I finally pulled back.
“To them it might be.”
“Let’s make a nuisance of ourselves all around town then, shall we?”
I nodded, kissed him again. We made a joke of it on the way home, stopped in doorways and alleys, alcoves and narrow passages. We kissed everywhere, getting sillier and sillier.
“Like the Eskimos, this time,” I said. And he rubbed his cold nose against mine.
“Like the French,” I said, and he kissed me long and hard and deep.
When we reached our new doorway, I said, “Like it’s the first and last time you’ll ever get the chance to.”
The Saturday market is a chaos of sound and I plunge headlong into it, drowning myself in the noise, the swell of people all around me: students, wives, kitchen maids, and cooks. They are a tidal pull, brushing against my arms, legs, and back. This anonymous touch is somehow soothing, as if I’ve become a part of something, a churning life that surges on regardless of wars, disasters, and deaths. It won’t be stopped. I am bumped and jostled, I knock into someone and don’t apologize. The bell at King’s tolls two. The children will be home by now and I promised Clare a tea party. I should hurry.
For an instant the crowd parts in front of me and I see the man from this morning in his grey fedora, his grey flannel suit. This time he looks at me, and then the crowd closes in again. Surely he is a reporter. I duck between two stalls, make my way to the northeast corner of the market, where I know there is a flower stand.
The man looked just the same as the reporters who met us when George and I got off the train at St. Pancras Station – the crush of their bodies against us, the smell of sweat and cheap booze had repulsed me. Then the accusations thrown at George. I glance over my shoulder again, but don’t see him. Maybe I’m being foolish again. I’ll buy the flowers and go home.
Of course it’s not just reporters I need to watch for.
“Mrs. Mallory.” The woman had approached me outside of St. Mary’s. I was just leaving the service, the children clustered around me. “I’m Dorothy MacEwan. We haven’t met,” she said, waving away my response. The long feather on her hat bounced as she talked, a fleeting shadow over her face. She was a large woman, broad, packed into a corseted, high-necked dress. Severe. I felt small in front of her. But I remembered myself and tilted my head up. I wouldn’t judge. I was new to town and could use more acquaintances.
“Pleased to meet you.”
“May we speak?” She looked down at the children around me.
“Clare.” I dug for a coin. “Take your brother and sister. You can share one sticky bun. One.” I held my finger up for emphasis. Clare nodded seriously and led the other two off.
Mrs. MacEwan took me by the arm, began to promenade me in front of the church. I felt as though I was being displayed. “I wonder if you would consider coming to talk to the small women’s salon that I host?” she asked.
I began to protest that I had nothing to say, but she cut me off.
“You see, they, all of them, lost their husbands in the war. There’s about eight of them, and we gather and talk and I try to make them see how they can be strong, move past their grief.” She didn’t wait for a response from me, and I pictured another eight women as severe as Mrs. MacEwan. “I thought you, of all women, must surely be able to provide them some advice. Your husband is so far away, you must sometimes feel as though he’s dead. And yet you carry on, and your strength is a shining example for your children. It could be for these women too.”
“Mrs. MacEwan, my husband is not dead.”
“Oh no, I know. It just must seem that way sometimes. And you’re so brave. You could tell them how to be like that.”
I recoiled away from her, pulled back my hand. All I could think of was George being dead, a thought I usually kept, with effort, from ever quite surfacing. I shook my head at her. “I wouldn’t. Never,” was all I coul
d manage. I won’t be caught unawares again.
The flower stall is in front of me – a sudden blossoming of colour, of perfume. The nodding heads of peonies and gladioli droop in the afternoon sun, funereal and sober.
Now the thought is here again. What if he doesn’t come back? It is as sharp and clear as if someone had said it, and I glance around for the source. No one. No one is even looking at me.
What if he doesn’t come back? What if he is already …
I can’t even think the word, and yet I see myself walking up the aisle of Reverend Mallory’s church. The same steps I took when we married, but now I am draped in black taffeta, accepting condolences instead of compliments, congratulations. There are deep-coloured blooms, their heads drooping, on the altar, in the aisles. There are the children. Will and Geoffrey. My sisters and his. His parents, so sad I cannot look at them, the reverend’s face a terrible grimace. I would like to reach out to him, but don’t. Can’t. My limbs are dream heavy. I will not cry. I do not.
I’ve written a eulogy in my head. He wasn’t mine alone, but he was mine.
What if people knew I sometimes imagine what would happen if you died?
“Help you with something?”
I shake the thought from my head. There will be no flowers for funerals – instead something that George would appreciate. Something delicate, to remind me of him. Like the bones in his fingers, his wrists.
“Do you have something lighter than this? Not quite so weighty. For a dinner table. Like falling snow?”
The woman glances up at me now, and I see the flicker of recognition. She is tall and bends down some to address me, to peek under my hat. I stare at the ground and see that she wears men’s boots, her skirt short enough to show them. Perhaps they’re more comfortable for standing all day than women’s shoes. Though I doubt they were designed for comfort.
“Of course, Mrs. Mallory. Something for a dinner party. Lilacs, perhaps? Picked fresh this morning.” Clearly she has never thrown a dinner party. The scent of the flowers would overpower the food. Too thick and pungent. I shake my head as she prattles on. “And how is Mr. Mallory? Have you word from him?”
I try to smile indulgently but ignore her questions. I don’t know her name. Have seen her only once, twice maybe. I don’t know what I could possibly tell her. I have no answers.
“No. I don’t think so. Too strong.”
She doesn’t really want to know anyway. Like that horrid woman by the river, like Mrs. MacEwan. Even if I were to explain exactly how I feel, they still wouldn’t understand. They can’t. And what difference could it make to them anyway? But as she shuffles her large boots through the buckets of flowers she is watching me, waiting for some tidbit. A scrounging dog.
“I have,” I finally concede. “But it’s much delayed. They are going strong.”
I don’t tell her that there may be a telegram waiting for me at home and I should hurry. That perhaps Hinks is waiting to bring word in person this evening. No, my response is automatic: I tell her the only thing that people really want to hear – that he is fine. I almost believe it myself.
I don’t want to give her anything that she can use later as gossip. I will not crack here, will not confide. This is who I am to strangers now. Stern and cold. Efficient.
“That’s wonderful.” Her head bobs among the flowers, her long blonde hair stringy across her shoulders. “We’re all of us thinking of him. My youngest boy, Jack, is just excited to bursting with what your husband is doing. Has a scrapbook. Cuts out every mention of George Mallory from the papers. These?”
She holds out a bouquet to me – tiny white flowers, dotted with dark in the middle, purple maybe, but it’s hard to tell. Their scent is light and I can’t stay any longer. “They’re perfect.”
I reach for them, but she begins to wrap them, prattling about her son wanting to climb, that he’s heard some of the fellows climb the buildings at night and that seems a right sight dangerous, don’t I think. She seems to think we are friends. “Perhaps Mr. Mallory could have a chat with him when he gets home.”
She says when and I think if. I’d like to spit it at her. If. If he comes home.
“We do pray for him,” she says and hands me the flowers.
Nodding my head, I hand her the coins. This anger is misplaced, that much is clear. This isn’t her fault. She probably thinks I want her good wishes, her thoughts. It’s supposed to be a great adventure.
As I move off, she says my name to someone nearby, as though she owns me.
“Mrs. George Mallory,” she says, and there is pride and sincerity.
Your name haunts me.
RONGBUK MONASTERY
16,340 FEET
The monastery was a collection of low, fat buildings terraced behind the large chorten, a bulbous tower painted bright red. After almost two months in the wasteland of Everest, the monastery seemed ablaze with sound and colour, its whitewashed walls a harsh contrast with the dun landscape. George noticed his steps falling into sync with the rhythmic chanting that rose from the place, almost operatic after the wash of wind on the mountain’s slopes. Nearby, yaks lowed, and his mouth watered at the sound. There would be raw milk for his tea. At a table. Under a roof. Compared to the frigid cold of the higher slopes the air here was warm, soothing; George imagined drowsing in the late morning sun.
Behind him, at the end of the valley, Everest stood out in sharp relief against the sky. It seemed so innocuous from here. Another peak in a sea of them. The jet stream whipped across the summit, shaping what appeared to be a flag of surrender from the white snow. He knew better than that, though.
Things had fallen spectacularly to pieces. The day before last he’d lain in his tent after returning with Virgil and Lopsang, his body ached in a pulsing rhythm, his blood sludging through his veins, thick from dehydration and starvation. When had he last eaten? It didn’t matter. Even the thought of food made his throat constrict, his stomach roil. He’d sipped at some water, his teeth aching from the cold. He tongued a back molar, swollen and angry.
Teddy had crawled into the tent. “George?” A weak croak. “I talked to Somes. We need to retreat.”
“We can’t. Not yet.” He wished his own voice sounded stronger, more compelling. “We can still make it.”
“No, we can’t. Not like this. Somes says we can’t stay here any longer.” There was a long pause. “We have to go down.”
At the time he’d assumed Teddy meant down to Base Camp, but he’d meant to take them farther down.
“It’ll do us good,” Teddy said when they had stopped temporarily at Base Camp to gather the rest of the team – Shebbeare, Hazard, Noel. “We need to regroup.”
Regroup. Did Teddy mean that, or was it just a ploy to get them back down and comfortable, ready to quit?
“This place” – Odell’s voice cut into his thoughts – “is more than two thousand years old. Can you believe it, Sandy? They’ve been praying here since long before Christ was born.”
Odell’s obsession with dates, with stones, with the tiny, infinitesimal parts that made up the mountain, that made up time, was grating on George’s last nerve. God, he’d like to punch him. That would keep him quiet for a while, anyway. He shoved his hands into his pockets, inhaled deeply. The air was dense here, wet. It flooded his lungs.
Sandy didn’t answer Odell but pushed on ahead, past him and Somervell, towards the monastery. “How’s he doing, Somes?” George asked.
“Sandy? That porter’s death has really affected him, I think. And probably the altitude. This is all new for him. You and I know what to expect, have a sense of what’s coming. The unknown can be incredibly troubling. How about you, though?”
“I feel good, now. Best I’ve felt in weeks, to tell the truth.”
“That’s what I thought. I told you, the altitude up there was killing us. It wasn’t a metaphor, George. Seems descending cures most mountain ills and, if I’m right, we’ll likely handle the next crack better.”
> At least Somes thought they would have one more attempt at it. But Teddy was a cautious one. He might have decided to put an end to it. And then? He didn’t want to think about that. His legs felt light, quick, as he pushed himself towards the monastery. He could have sprinted down if he wanted to, and part of him did. He hadn’t been indoors in almost eight weeks. Almost as long since he’d properly bathed. The smell coming off him must be disgusting – the filth of seven weeks of sweat. He was looking forward to having a bath, imagined the water cascading down his skin.
As they entered the monastery grounds, monks appeared from under shadowed overhangs to meet them, some wrapped in gold sashes, others wearing elaborate headdresses. He winced at the vibrancy of their clothing, almost lurid against his own bland tweeds and cottons, the browns of them dulled further by dirt. They bowed to one another, the monks in scarlet and saffron, the English in trousers and fedoras, templed fingers raised to their foreheads.
With Shebbeare translating, Teddy conferred with one of the monks, and George withdrew into the shadow of an overhang. He was actually craving a cigarette for the first time in weeks. Leaning against the white wall, he let the smoke fill his lungs.
George watched as Virgil and the rest of the coolies were enveloped by the monks, two of them moving to support Lopsang, whose fingers were swollen and black from frostbite. How had Teddy failed to notice that Lopsang had lost a glove during the descent? The coolies would ask for a puja. They believed the blessing would purify them, cleanse them after the deaths on the mountain. If only absolution were as simple as lighting candles and saying prayers.
In the courtyard, Noel stood beside his tripod, documenting everything, chalking up their failure.
Teddy looked over to him. “Three hours. Then we’ll meet in the main hall. I’ll have food arranged.” Then he turned his attention back to speaking in his faltering Tibetan to one of the more elaborately dressed monks.
It was typical of Teddy. Give them all some time to themselves, some space to think. There was a hand at George’s elbow. He followed the monk into the depths of the monastery.
Above All Things Page 21
