Above All Things

by Tanis Rideout

  “No point in going then, really, is there?” He pretended to sulk. “I don’t know how you could have figured it out.”

  Because he rubs at his collarbone under his shirt or tugs at his cufflinks when he tries to keep a secret. When he lies, he runs his hand backwards through his hair and then smooths it all forward again. I try not to see that. I tried not to see it whenever he talked about Everest, when he came home from New York. He was hiding something; how much he had enjoyed himself.

  But I also know when he is telling the truth. Every time he says he loves me it’s there, in a certain angle of his chin, a glance.

  Our history is encoded in these kinds of looks, in a Morse code of touches, short and long, each with its own rhythm and meaning. There is a legend to mine that he holds and I have his. I am unbreakable to anyone else. At least I hope I am. I don’t want to learn someone else’s language.

  But it means, too, that I can read between these lines, where Hinks, where Geoffrey, where even Will cannot. I can see it there – your hope. But also the desperation. The need. The fear of not finishing it. Of not being capable of it. Of letting all of us down.

  You will try again and again. And you’ll keep going back. I can read the future there.

  “It’s all right, Ruth.” Marby is beside me, taking the letter from my hand, putting her arms around me. My body shakes against hers. But I’m not crying. I won’t. That isn’t what’s done. We all have our duty to attend to. The men drift away to stand by the empty fireplace. My sister coos at me as if I’m a child.

  “I’m sure we’ll have news soon,” she says.

  The evening has taken on the feel of pitch – black and slow. Heavy. My body feels that way. Exhausted, although I won’t sleep. I think back to this morning, sitting on the floor of your study, the sun against the leaded window. It seems so long ago.

  ——

  Hinks leaves first.

  He promises, if he has any word, he will send it on immediately, and I think he means it. At least right now. I do not make any promises in return. He doesn’t ask for one.

  Marby and the Major follow suit, then Geoffrey and Eleanor. They make apologies. Or rather, Marby does; they’ve an early start in the morning. I don’t ask where they are off to.

  Just the three of us now. Cottie, Will, myself. George used to be all we had in common. That’s not the case anymore. There are the children, the small moments we share with one another.

  “I can stay,” Cottie suggests.

  “No. That isn’t necessary.”

  “I know that. But I can.”

  I shake my head.

  “Or better, you could come with me. I’m meeting Owen in the country for a few days. Why don’t you come? You and the children. A little escape.”

  I imagine the mail arriving, dropped into the letterbox. The delay of having it sent on, another day at least.

  “I couldn’t possibly,” I say.

  Cottie nods, doesn’t push. “You’ll send word?”

  “As soon as I hear anything,” I assure her.

  “Take care of her, Will?” Cottie rises. Will nods to her, walks her to the door.

  “Be right back.”

  I nod.

  When he returns I tell him, “Millie always used to wish the three of us had a brother. Someone to take care of us. I think she felt more lost than Marby and I did when Mum died. She told me if we’d had one, she imagined he’d be like you.”

  “Do you want another?” Will asks, moving towards the drinks cart.

  “God, yes.”

  I’m glad he’s staying. I don’t want to be alone. The jittery feeling from this morning is creeping back into my veins and there is another night to get through. Maybe Marby’s right and there will be word soon.

  The whisky burns and my head swims and we sit in the room together.

  “What’s that?” Will points at the box I covered earlier with the tablecloth, and I stifle a giggle. I’m so tired.

  “A box. Too heavy for any of us to lift. I had to make do.”

  “Shall I move it?”

  “No, Will, just leave it. George can take care of it when he comes home.” The night outside is closing in on the house, on the town. A half a world away it must be getting close to dawn. I wonder what you see – the view from the tent of the whole world lit up below you.

  “George told me this is what it feels like.” I hold out the glass, watch the liquid glint and wink in the light. “At altitude. As if you’ve had a couple of stiff whiskys. A bit slow, a bit off. It can be hard to make the right decision.”

  “Good thing we don’t have to decide anything,” Will says.

  “Not yet.”

  We sit, quiet. It seems like a long time. My glass is empty.

  “They are right of course, Will,” I say eventually.

  “About what?” His voice is far away. Sleepy.

  “The letter. It is weeks old. Everything has already been decided and there’s nothing we can do to change it. We both know that. Maybe George made it. Maybe not.”

  I stop speaking. Will is silent. How to tell him what I’m thinking? That this is the last moment before things change. That after this, nothing will stay the same. I’m waiting to find out what the rest of my life will be like, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Things have already been set in motion. It’s already been decided. I say what I can’t help thinking.

  “Maybe George is already dead.”

  I expect Will to protest. I want him to. I want him to say something comforting, but he doesn’t.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  “That I’d know? Somehow. I have to believe that. I have to believe that if anything happened to George I would know about it. I’d know it. In my head. Or in my body. I’d feel it. His absence. His stopping. I don’t feel anything. Nothing at all. So he can’t be.”

  All I can feel is Will beside me. He kisses my temple. His lips are warm.

  When he leaves, he promises he’ll come tomorrow. “For the afternoon post,” he says.

  Though I know I will not sleep, I wash my face, tie back my hair, pull on my nightdress. Before I climb into bed I turn down the heavy quilt and fold it in thirds at the bottom, slip the letter I read aloud earlier back under your pillow.

  I hope that I will dream about you.

  In the morning I will get up again and the floor will be cold.

  I will get dressed and listen for the drop of the post.

  I will write to my father and to your mother.

  I will work in the garden while the children play.

  In the morning I will already be waiting to climb back into bed. The end of each day means you are another day gone, another day closer to home.

  I close my eyes and lie still in the darkness. Outside there is the sound of crickets, the heavy scent of the garden, the soft clicking of a clock nearby.

  Perhaps tomorrow there will be word. Tonight hope will have to be enough.

  THE FINAL PUSH

  God, it was cold.

  George tucked his hands into the relative warmth of his armpits, but still he convulsed in tremors. He bit his tongue against the shaking, the frigid temperature, and stamped his feet in ice-stiffened boots. He was going to shatter, his frozen limbs fracturing into shards that would be blown away by the steam-engine wind. They needed to move. Not moving was killing them.

  As he stepped away from the tent, the mountain swam behind a swirl of wind-driven snow. The sun was already rising ahead of him. They should have been off already, but the oxygen apparatus on one of the canisters had clogged up and Sandy had done a quick, miraculous fix. They had what they needed now.

  Next to him, Sandy shrugged into his pack, his hands shaking and his face pale, almost blue in the morning light. In the thin air his lips were slack and purpled.

  “Are you ready?” George asked.

  Sandy didn’t respond, gaped blankly at him, not hearing.

  “Sandy? Are you ready?” He clasped his han
ds to the back of Sandy’s neck, forced him to meet his gaze.

  “Are you ready?” Ruth had asked. On Ruth’s tongue the words sounded like an accusation.

  They stood together in the empty hallway, only her small suitcase at his feet. Will would carry it home for her. Their train left in an hour. She pulled gloves onto her hands, moved to wrap her muffler around her neck. He stepped closer and did it for her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, stared over his shoulder at the door.

  What was it that she wanted to hear? An apology? There was nothing he could say that would change his leaving her.

  The house was silent around them. The weight of it an exhale. Empty. The children were with Cottie. She’d come and taken them just after breakfast. When she left, Cottie had kissed both his cheeks. “Come back soon?” It had been a question and a plea. She blinked back tears. He ignored them.

  He hadn’t wanted the children to be home when he left. He wanted them to be the ones who walked out the door, to feel as if they were leaving him, not the other way around.

  “It only makes you feel better,” Ruth said when he’d first suggested it. “They still know you’re leaving them. John will come home and wander the house calling for you.”

  “It’s the last time,” he said.

  Ruth shrugged her shoulders, drew her lips into the tight smile she used to hold back tears.

  Before Cottie took them away, he held all three of them – John, Berry, Clare. They filled his arms, squirming. He’d had to go searching for Berry when it was time for her to go. She’d been hiding in the airing cupboard.

  “You found me,” she said, disappointed, when he opened the door.

  “I did.”

  “I didn’t want you to find me.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you didn’t find me you wouldn’t leave.”

  “I’ll be back before you even know it. And we’ll have tea with some sponge cakes and clotted cream. Just you and me, eat them all up.”

  When he lifted her to him, she was heavier than he remembered. He hadn’t carried her in a long time. She wouldn’t let go when he knelt to put her down, her small arms clasped round his neck. The other two clambered onto him too. He held the three of them until John wriggled away, demanded to be let go.

  “Come on then, you monsters.” Cottie’s voice was low and she held out her hands to the three of them. John went quickly, followed by Berry. But Clare held fast to him. She smelled like fresh laundry.

  He kissed the top of her head. “Go on. Set a brave example for your sister,” he told her. She straightened her shoulders and walked out without glancing back.

  “Are you ready?” Ruth’s eyes were recriminating.

  He pulled her to him with her scarf, kissed her, and then backed her towards the door, pressing her body with his. He handed her her hat, her coat, dressing her. A reverse seduction.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Sandy again, now. “We’re a bit late. But if we set a good pace we can still make the ridge shortly after eight.”

  Sandy nodded silently. He closed the clasp on Sandy’s oxygen mask, watched him pull in deep breaths and relax a little into the flow of the gas once he opened the valve.

  As George sealed his own mask into place, he felt a moment of panic. The pressure on his cheek bones, the rubber smell of the tubes, gave him a quick flash of trenches and creeping gas. He flailed over his shoulders to turn the valve until Sandy reached past and turned it for him. George could feel the oxygen seep into him and spread out from his lungs to his limbs, into his brain, calming him.

  Encased in the mask, the ragged rhythm of his breathing, he turned in the direction of the summit. He was utterly alone now, cut off even from Sandy, except for the length of rope between them. Just the mountain in front of him, the route to the top, an imagined line that led up and up.

  His nerves jittered, kept him warm, so he set a good pace. He was going to make it this time. In ten hours, twelve, it would all be over.

  The morning was bright and clear. Colder than he would have liked, but at least there was no snow. Even the wind seemed to have eased. Despite the late start, he couldn’t have asked for a better day to climb. Confidence and adrenaline bubbled through him, energizing his limbs. As he climbed, the movement and oxygen spread a little warmth outward from his lungs to the rest of his body. He’d made the right choice, the oxygen was working. The cold fist around his heart relaxed as he found a rhythm, as his body awoke. His limbs loosened.

  As they made their way quickly up into the Yellow Band, the wind picked up and screamed down at them from the summit. But it was still clear. The plume of snow off the peak spread across the solid blueness of the sky, which was darker here. At this height, night existed almost perpetually, just beyond the thin veil of atmosphere. There were stars winking above him. He squinted at them, amazed, leaning into the pressing of the wind. Even if they hadn’t been silenced by their masks, they’d have been unable to speak. Still, he pointed upwards and then swept his arm out to indicate the peaks around them, beneath them. He wanted Sandy to take it all in. These vistas, this sweep of the world, above everything – this was what it was for. He swelled with elation.

  He looked up to measure their progress. The ridge was still far away, but they were making good time, even with the wind pushing down on them. The bloody wind. Like climbing with someone on his shoulders. Once they reached the ridge, the wind would be even worse.

  “Wind will kill you,” Virgil told him. “It steal breath from you. From lungs.” Virgil thumped his own chest, leaned over and pounded George’s, then waved his hands in the swirling wind. “Careful or wind take your breath.” It was another one of Virgil’s stories. “A baby left outside –” Virgil held his hand over his own mouth and nose.

  “Smother,” George supplied. “Suffocate.”

  Virgil nodded. “Before it die of cold.”

  The wind buffeted him, tried to throw him off the mountain. The wind was the perfect weapon.

  He leaned bodily into it and tried to catch his breath.

  HIGH IN THE Yellow Band, Sandy set his feet in George’s footsteps and shuffled forward. When they set out from the tent, anxiety and adrenaline had fuelled him.

  Now, though, the work of the climb had set into his limbs. In rowing, the start was the easy part – the jump ahead fuelled by nerves. Where the weaker teams fell apart was giving in to the false burst of energy and then flagging when the monotonous pain of the race set in. They gave up too soon. He wasn’t ready to concede yet, not even close. But he was feeling the climb. The hobnails on his boots skittered on the broken yellow rock, like broken roof tiles, someone had said.

  When had that been? Sandy tried to remember. He’d been warm and hopeful. At home. Odell sat on the settee across from Sandy’s mum, the tea things between them steaming in the air.

  “All of it might have been at the bottom of the sea,” Odell was saying as he sipped his tea. “Millions of years of petrified seabeds, and who knows what all. There are probably fossils, maybe of massive sea creatures that we’ve never even seen.”

  “Mr. Odell,” his mum interjected, “we appreciate what it is you’re trying to do for Sandy. But he needs to finish his studies. That should be his first priority. He’s too young. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I understand your reluctance, Mrs. Irvine, Mr. Irvine.” Odell set down his tea.

  His mum had used the good china and they were sitting in the front room, not in the kitchen, where everyday visitors such as Mrs. Walker, the widow next door, were entertained. Sandy had known his mum would be resistant, but he’d hoped Odell could smooth the way.

  “But surely Sandy proved himself in Spitsbergen. The expedition needs a man like him. The Empire needs men like him.”

  “Mr. Odell, the Empire used up all the men like him.” Her voice was quiet, and he could hear Odell shift on the stuffed settee.

  He wished they’d stop referring to him in the third person. It made him feel as though he wasn’t
even there, a ghost.

  “The college said I could go, Mum. I’ll only miss one term. Maybe a bit of another one. I’ll make it up. I’ll still get my first.”

  “And think of the opportunities,” Odell said. “He’ll see the world. Adventure. Discipline. Leadership. When he comes back, he’ll be in demand for lectures, for future expeditions. We’re a proud nation of explorers, Mrs. Irvine. You know that.”

  “And what if something happens to him? Can you promise me he’ll come back? Safe and whole?”

  “I can promise I’ll do my best. After all, I’ve already brought him back to you once before.”

  When Sandy returned to the sitting room after seeing Odell out, his mother was piling the tea things on the tray. The tray shook in her hands as she lifted it, the teacups rattling. She stopped in the doorway and spoke without turning around to look at him. “I don’t think you should go. I don’t want you to. That’s all I’ll say. You’ll make your own choice, but I don’t want you to go. It won’t be on me.”

  But now, now she’d be so proud. He hadn’t just come to Everest, he was going to the top of it.

  Sandy bent down and picked up a handful of crumbling stone. He’d find the fossils Odell had been hoping for. The stones in his hands slipped through his gloved fingers, bounced off the mountain, fractured, and disappeared. There were no fossils. Not here. Odell was wrong. The mountain had been here forever.

  There were tugs at his waist, sharp and staccato. He grasped the rope and turned up the slope to where George stood forty feet above him. The rope played out between the two of them. George motioned at him, waving him up the slope. He started to move again.

  He should check the time. They’d set checkpoints yesterday – the ridge by eight. The Second Step by noon. The summit by three. Setting one foot in front of the other, he followed George’s narrow diagonal path. The world dropped away to his right, and he stretched his left arm out so his hand grazed the face of the mountain rising up beside him. He placed each foot carefully, feeling the slip of the hobnails. It would take only one misstep and he would be hurtling down the slope, turtled on the oxygen pack. We could race, he thought, laughing, all the way to the bottom. Maybe they could just descend that way. Be back in no time at all. He’d have to tell George that. He’d think it was funny.