Above All Things

by Tanis Rideout

  The photograph had been my idea. “We could each have one. One for me to keep, next to our bed. One for you to take with you to France. You can carry it in your pocket. Over your heart.”

  “Ruth, I won’t forget what you look like. It’s emblazoned here and here.” He put his hand to his heart, to his temple. But a small part of me worried that he would forget. Worse, I worried that I would forget him if something were to happen. I needed the physical token of him, like a talisman. As long as I could look at him, he would remain alive.

  We sat for the photograph – him in his new uniform, which even I had to admit made him all the more handsome. We each thought the other looked better.

  “But that’s how it should be,” I said when we received the prints. “I think you’re strikingly handsome, you think I’m pretty. We both think the other one is a fool. Perfect. Just how it should be when you’re in love.”

  Darling, he wrote, I carry the picture in the small notebook in my pocket. It’s always on me, though it’s gotten wet and dirty, it is there.

  And it was easy to believe. When he was invalided home, it came with him, crumpled at the corners, soft. I didn’t ask if he ever pulled it out, just imagined it. When he felt alone. Scared. I needed to keep that.

  “Put it away,” he said, of the photo I kept next to our bed, when he knew he wouldn’t be going back. Not after Trafford’s funeral, after Geoffrey’s leg. “It reminds me of going away and I don’t want to go away anymore.” So I did. I wrapped both of them in some folded paper and put them into a cupboard.

  The first time he went to Everest I pulled the photograph out and placed it back on the nightstand. He didn’t say anything when he saw it.

  I saw his copy scattered amongst the papers on his desk. “Are you taking this?”

  “Of course. I always take it. Whenever I go away. Anywhere.”

  “You don’t. I saw it in the linen drawer. It’s been there for years.”

  “I take it and put it back. Every time.” I imagined him opening the drawer, unwrapping it, then wrapping it back up when he returned.

  “I’ll leave it at the summit. That’s where you deserve to be, at the top of all things,” he said and kissed my forehead. “And I won’t need it anymore after that, I shan’t go anywhere. I’ll stay right here. You won’t need yours either. We’ll get rid of them both.”

  But we didn’t. We just continued to fold them away.

  Clare traces the lines of the photograph. “You look very pretty.”

  I don’t know if she means then or now, but Clare has become an authority on what is pretty. Soon, I think, she’ll be too old for this. How long do little girls watch their mothers dress? Until they’re eleven? Twelve? I’ll have to let Berry come and join us soon, although I love this time alone with Clare. Berry I’ll have for a few more years. I imagine Clare as a young woman, dressing herself to impress someone. I touch Clare’s lips with colour. Her cheeks with rouge. I pin glittering butterflies in her hair.

  “We should have waited to write to Daddy. I would tell him how pretty you look.”

  Her face becomes a raincloud when she mentions you. There is this tug of war as she shifts from anger to protectiveness. Like me. There are moments when she lashes out, is angry that you are not here.

  Like she does sometimes with Will, I think. “Daddy should be here to do it,” she said when Will helped to tie up a swing in the garden. Her anger was sharp with the injustice.

  “Maybe Will can be our daddy now,” Berry said, and Clare turned on her.

  “Don’t be stupid, Berry. We have a daddy.”

  Poor Berry hardly knew you when you returned from Everest the first time. Do you remember how John fussed when you tried to hold him? And your face, when you saw how comfortable they were with Will, asking him to lift them up. It was terrible. There were repercussions none of us had expected.

  Clare, though, has her memories of her father and holds fast to them. The other day she drew a square on a piece of paper. More squares inside it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “Trying to remember.”

  “What are you trying to remember?”

  “You won’t know. Only Daddy knows.” She huffed, then showed me the paper. “It’s Daddy’s magic square. He made it and showed me how all the numbers added up to nine. I couldn’t find the one he made me. I want to make a new one.”

  I left her alone so she wouldn’t see me cry. I could practically see George leaned over her, trying to help her with schoolwork. She was frustrated to tears and he pulled her to his lap, whispered to her, “I’ll show you some magic, Clare.”

  And as I watched he lined up numbers in a square and made her add them up. He held up his fingers for her to count on.

  “Nine!” She gasped and giggled in surprise.

  I didn’t tell her I could show her how it worked. She wouldn’t have wanted that.

  “I’ll ask him when he gets home,” she said. “How many more days?”

  “I don’t know exactly, love. But we shall, very soon.”

  I turn to her now as she examines herself in the mirror. “You look lovely too,” I tell her. “We’ll write Daddy again, don’t worry. We can write him every day if you like.”

  “We don’t need to do that.”

  “No?”

  “He doesn’t write us every day. He’s busy. We’re busy.” It is a simple declaration.

  She is quiet a while, staring at our reflections side by side in the mirror. She is so much like her father, but I doubt she can see that.

  What would she ever do without you? I wonder so much what I would do that sometimes I forget how hurt they must be. But I know she counts the days, marks them off on the calendar she asked for.

  “I think John and Berry miss Daddy,” she says, as if she can read my mind. I try to smile. “They’re sad, I think. And you miss him too, right?”

  “Of course, darling.”

  “So why do you want to look pretty when he’s not here?”

  I don’t know what to say to her. What could I say that she would understand? That it feels good to put on one’s best. But also that it is part of my duty. To behave the way that I am expected to behave. We have roles, all of us, and maybe sometimes that looks like betrayal, but it isn’t. What she wants is for me to mourn so that she doesn’t have to. So that she doesn’t have to be sad that her father is gone. And I will do that for her. Willingly. But not tonight. Tonight I need to feel as though everything will be all right, that everything is how it should be.

  And it is also a kind of armour – the makeup, the dress. One that Clare is already learning. I must be properly armed to get through this evening. To manage with Arthur Hinks. I imagine what he might say to me:

  They are still making the attempt.

  I had word this afternoon, they’re on their way home.

  I’m sorry, but I wanted to tell you this in person.

  I tie a silk scarf around Clare’s pale throat. She cocks her head in the mirror and then takes it off, drops it to the floor.

  “Because it’s a dinner party,” I say, bending to pick it up, and my voice sounds like a sigh. “And Auntie Marby is coming. And Cottie and Eleanor. And they always look so pretty, don’t you think? And Uncle Will.”

  “He isn’t really an uncle. Not like Uncle Trafford was.” She doesn’t remember Trafford, was only a baby when he died. But her grandfather talks about him as though he were still alive.

  “No, he isn’t. But he’s a good friend, almost like a brother to your daddy. And a good friend to me, too. And to you. So we call him Uncle. To make him part of the family.”

  “Oh.”

  “And don’t you like that you’re pretty?”

  She looks in the mirror again. Her eyes are huge with the slight gloss of tears that I ignore. She nods. “Can I come to the dinner party?”

  “No, sweet. You’re too young. Soon enough, though. How about we have a dinner party with Daddy when he comes home
? You and me and Daddy. Just the three of us. We’ll dress our best and use the fine china.”

  “But what if I break it?”

  “It’s only china.”

  She smiles. “Daddy will be sorry he missed this.”

  “I’m sure he’s sorry to miss a lot of things.”

  THE ASSAULT

  27,000 FEET

  No one had yet been this high up on the expedition.

  After a cold night at Camp VI, George had left with Odell just before dawn. If they kept up a good pace, George wagered it would take them ten hours or so to reach the summit and make it back to camp. Ten hours of straight climbing. He’d had longer days in the Alps, but never at this kind of altitude. And the cold here was unbearable. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be caught out here, unmoving, at night. Still, their progress had been slower than he would have liked in the pre-dawn glow. Yesterday, on the way up, Odell had challenged him all the way to VI. He liked being pushed and found himself feeling certain they would make it. Him and Odell. He never thought it would be him with Odell, and now, here they were. Teddy was right about leaving yourself open to other possibilities.

  But this morning Odell was already waning, slowing before the sun had even crested the peaks to the east. Maybe he’d pushed too hard yesterday, trying to prove himself. He stopped after every step, staring at his feet, inhaling three, four breaths for each step upwards. George was at least making two, even three steps before he had to stop and catch his breath.

  “You should wait here,” he finally told Odell.

  “I’m. Fine.” Odell’s voice stuttered. Slow, but vicious, as if he couldn’t believe that he would be left behind. But Odell was an anchor. As long as they were tied together, George couldn’t gain any ground. Odell had to see that. This wasn’t about either one of them. Not anymore. They had to go all out if they were going to succeed. He had to.

  At this rate, the summit and back would take more than the ten hours he’d estimated, much more. “You’re slowing me down. We need to move faster. I can move faster on my own.”

  Odell looked up through the gloom at the glowing snow cone of the summit and slumped to the ground. He tried for a moment to haul himself back up before fumbling with the rope knotted at his waist. “Go,” Odell nodded. “But I’m not turning back.”

  “Fine. But be careful. Go down. If you need to. I’ll meet you back there at the end.” He pointed down towards the smudge of their tent.

  That was forever ago. He’d left Odell just after dawn and pushed on alone. As noon rolled over him, the summit was still so far away. He couldn’t even see it past the mountain’s nearer shoulder. Couldn’t tell anymore how long he’d been climbing, how much farther it was. The guilt of leaving Odell behind buzzed in his head. If Odell got disoriented he might walk right off the mountain, and if he wasn’t moving he would grow colder and colder. He could freeze to death. George imagined climbing back down and finding Odell dead beside the route, frozen solid. He shook the image from his head.

  He groped for his watch, the cold burning the exposed flesh of his wrist. The summit was there. Maybe just over the next rise. He could reach it this time. He trudged towards it. And towards it.

  It was hard to measure the distance. He set markers – an outcropping, a strange dog-shaped rock formation nearer to him – to count it off. Pressed himself to reach it and then allowed himself a quick break, a gulp of water, when he did. Picked another marker and pressed forward again.

  He stepped forward, and again, and again – a dragging rhythm like a slowing Victrola. One step. Followed by another. And then another. Then a sickening lurch in his stomach and he was falling. And the wrenching stop, his right arm over his head, a tearing at his shoulder. He screamed in pain. Above him, his ice axe was caught widthwise across the top of a crevasse. The loop of leather cut into his wrist. He couldn’t breathe against the pain that thudded in his arm. Below him a gape of emptiness.

  He was being held together by his skin, his windproofs. He imagined them ripping, his flesh tearing, and dropping him a mile into the Earth.

  Light came in from the crack above him and to his right. He’d stepped through a cornice of snow masking a fracture in the mountain. He tried not to think. He was hanging between sheer walls of ice and snow that grew deeper, more violet and indigo as they sank down towards the bowels of the mountain, away from the wind and cold and light. If there was a monster on the mountain, it lived down there. His fingers were growing numb with his weight on them. With the cold.

  This was how it could end then, this easily. He wasn’t tied to anything. Not the mountain. Not Odell.

  Odell. He was too far away to help him, even if he could have gathered enough breath to get Odell’s name out through the searing pain in his lungs, his shoulder. He closed his eyes. Breathe. Slow. Steady. Don’t panic. His breath came in ragged gasps, squeezed out by his position. There was nothing but ice and rock around him. Nothing. He dangled over the empty darkness of the mountain and imagined letting go.

  “Hold on,” Ruth said.

  He was hanging from the loggia at the Holt. He’d climbed up to where she was reading in the back garden. “If you don’t kiss me,” he warned, “I’m letting go.”

  “No!” And she giggled. “Please hold on.” Then she leaned over and kissed him.

  He opened his eyes and tightened his grip on the axe.

  He was still clinging to the overhang. He couldn’t find the hold, couldn’t make the leap. “Go for it, George,” Geoffrey was saying. “Or drop down to rest. You can’t stay there.”

  There was a ledge just in front of him. A hold. Big enough for his foot. He kicked his crampons into the ice, putting his weight on the metal spikes. It held. Frozen for a millennium, the ice was solid, didn’t splinter or flake. He fought to dislodge his axe and then threw himself against the wall of ice, its coolness washing over him. He was sweating, though, in the cold, the false warmth of it a relief. After catching his breath some, he swung the axe and dug into the ice, which rained down on him, lifted his right foot to kick in again.

  Hours passed, and the sun crept slowly over the opening of the crevasse, its shaft of light moving faster than he was as he fought to climb free. Ignoring the burning in his muscles, he inched up the ice wall until he surfaced and hauled himself out of the crevasse and back onto the mountain. Exhausted. Terrified.

  The peak was there, its spindrift raced across the sky. He closed his eyes. The dull pulse in his shoulder was warming somehow and his lungs heaved as he swallowed down frigid air that dried his mouth and throat until he was coughing, his body racked with muscle spasms.

  “You can’t stand by, stay here, and just let someone else climb her,” Geoffrey said.

  “What if she just can’t be climbed?”

  Geoffrey didn’t say anything. George huddled himself in a ball. He had to move. One way or the other. It could be done. She could be made to yield.

  He fell back onto the mountain again and cursed upwards into the screaming wind. He couldn’t even hear his own voice. Couldn’t hear Geoffrey.

  But it couldn’t be done now. He was exhausted from freeing himself from the crevasse, and even if he wasn’t he’d lost too much time. If he pressed up, he’d be caught out by nightfall for sure. Even if he made the summit before dark he’d never make it back to camp before the temperature plummeted. The image of Odell’s frozen body came back to him. No, he had to turn back.

  Finally he hauled himself to his feet, swaying before he steadied himself on his ice axe. Then he trudged down the ridge, poking the snow in front of him. Moving down towards Odell, towards the camp.

  He would have to watch someone else try to take her. It would be up to Teddy and Somes now. He turned back to give the assault to the second team, tried not to hope for their failure.

  “IF THEY MAKE it, I’ll be a footnote. After all this. A footnote.” George was slumped over the cup of tea Sandy had brought him, though he still hadn’t tak
en a sip.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, George. Everyone knows what you’ve done on this mountain.”

  “Right. How many men I’ve killed, you mean.”

  George had never spoken to him about the avalanche before. Sandy wasn’t sure what to say to that. George certainly wasn’t responsible for Lapkha’s death. That much was obvious. He was. “There’s enough guilt to go around, it seems.”

  “You don’t realize it now, Sandy, but you’ve got everything in front of you. Everything. This isn’t the end for you.”

  “I don’t think this is the end for you, either.”

  “It is. Either Teddy and Somes will claim the summit and it will be over or we’ll go home and it will be over. And by the time the Committee is ready to make another go of it, I’ll be too old. I’ll have failed too much. It’ll be your turn. You and yours.”

  “You wouldn’t go again?”

  “No. Not like this.”

  George put down his tea and they sat in silence in the tent. It was growing dark. They’d know tomorrow. Sandy couldn’t decide anymore what it was that he wanted. If Norton and Somervell reached the summit, maybe he would just be a footnote, but at least it would be a footnote to success. That had to be better than being a footnote to failure. And there wasn’t any guarantee that he would get the chance to come back, despite what George said. Hinks dismissed climbers all the time. And so far he hadn’t done anything to set himself apart.

  “What would you do differently?” he asked after a while.

  They were both blue shadows in the tent, their skin the pale blue of clean water, their clothes darker, like the depths.

  “Everything.”

  “No. Really, George. What?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I should have just stayed home. Maybe nothing would have made a difference. Maybe setting out earlier or using the oxygen would have.”

  The oxygen. What if it came down to the oxygen?

  “I wanted an attempt with the oxygen. I told Teddy that. But he thought if we just had the one chance it was better to reach the summit without it. That way no one could dispute it. And it would be a greater glory. Of course, no one would call us unsporting. But to hell with sporting. What if it’s the only way?”