Far, Far The Mountain Peak

by John Masters

  Do I have to tell you this? You were born to be Earl of Wilcot--but you’re going to be a different Earl, one that you made yourself. You, because you’ve climbed Cader Brith by a hundred different routes, know that the place one gets to by the easy way is not the same as the place one gets to by the hard way--even though they are the same place.

  It hasn’t taken me as long to write this as I had expected. I felt shy, I suppose, at saying things that I have never said to anyone before. But I never trusted anyone before, and, though we are ‘only twenty-eight’ in one sense, in another, we are ‘over twenty-seven.’

  Yours, Peter

  He laid the pen down slowly. The ink was nearly dry already. He crumpled the extra sheet of paper he had placed under his hand to write on--it was the third since he had begun--so that the sweat should not stain the letter to Gerry; and threw it into the waste-paper basket. He felt exhausted, not from the heat but because he had made a great effort. Not for anyone else, he thought savagely, and not again even for Gerry. It was like ripping out his entrails.

  Yet he ought to have gone further--caught a firm hold of his heart and pulled that out too, so that Gerry would perhaps understand something else that would have to be decided this summer in Zermatt. But this he could not do, if only because it would really hurt Gerry. This was where you could talk to only one sort of human being, a woman; and to only one sort of woman, your wife; and to only one sort of wife, the right one, yours, loving wholly, wholly loved. That was what it was about.

  He had to decide, during the coming year, whether he was going to marry Peggy Holcombe or not. If he’d been speaking aloud to someone (inconceivable thought), or even writing to Gerry, he would have had to say: ‘Whether I shall ask Peggy to marry me.’ But to think in such treacly phrases would be the kind of hypocrisy he was fighting against on his own and Gerry’s behalf. Everyone who knew them knew that he had only to ask, and Peggy would say yes. Therefore--should he ask? Or, to be clean and straight and hard, should he marry her?

  She was as handsome a girl as most. She was well born, rich, pleasant-natured; and she loved him. Everybody except Gerry was convinced that he somehow had no alternative but to marry her because he had written to her once a month or so for seven years (but never as a lover or prospective fiancé); because she had waited for him and naively let it be known why she was waiting; and, above all, because his ambition would be greatly served by the marriage.

  By God, he thought, with sudden fierceness, do they know me so little that they imagine I cannot resist having Lady Margaret Holcombe, sister of a future Viceroy, as my wife?

  It would be the obvious, easy, comfortable, and wise thing to do.

  The hair rose along the back of his neck as it had when Gerry suggested the punt race. Was the world going to compel him--or he the world?

  But there were more important considerations. If life was a climb, marriage was another, going on within and yet separate from it. If every married couple was a cordée, did he want Peggy as his partner on that rope? Could she follow where he led? Could she lead?

  He didn’t know, but he doubted it. He doubted it particularly because of the extent of his domination over her. He also dominated Gerry, but a man’s relationship with a woman was different because there were certain areas where the man could not ‘lead’ or ‘do the thing better.’ In these areas a man was physically or spiritually incapable of being more than an equal partner: in the raising of children, for example, and in the physical act of love. Because these areas existed, and were important, his wife must have vision and will and courage equal to his--equal but independent.

  He had really learned this when he first lay with a woman, and every succeeding experience had confirmed it and made it more clear that both his wife and he would be unhappy unless she had the same kind of drive--to seek the unattainable, perhaps, in her own field and way--that he had.

  He needed women. It was fifty years since the I.C.S. had even inferentially countenanced liaisons with native women, except in Burma, and he had lived with scrupulous asceticism when in the Rudwal District. But when away he would frequently send for some dancing-girl-cum-prostitute to attend him; and in Lahore he often slipped away to the old city when he should have been drinking chota pegs in the Pig. He attained a physical release in these affairs, at the cost of a gradually increasing mental tension, because he was always moved to try to put more into the relationship--in this case the mere act of union--than it could in those circumstances contain. He felt, and strove for, an increasing, wild kind of lifting up. He would feel that God was only a little higher, if only he could get there. The union of physical and spiritual ecstasy that animated the most sexual of Hindu temple sculptures became real and present. But on, on, there must be more!

  But he could not go alone, and the girl’s physical companionship was not enough. Once a woman’s large eyes had stared suddenly into his, and she had sobbed: ‘Not here, not here!’

  She was right, although he could not, would not believe that it was not anywhere. But he was almost sure that it could not be with Peggy, because she would be only the mirror of himself, whereas his wife must be an entirely separate person, female as he was male, alight not with the reflection of his purpose but with a female vision of her own that would join his, and thus make the single, greater realization.

  So, although one of the objects of marriage, as stated in the marriage service, was the avoidance of fornication; although this particular purpose was of great importance to him; although Peggy was a woman and could serve as well as any other female--that was not enough, even sexually. He could not be content to rest on a comfortable platform less than halfway up what he knew to be a great mountain. And there were other peaks altogether which this cordée of marriage, and only this, could scale. In marriage too he would go to the summit, and his wife must be able enough and strong enough to lead as well as follow.

  He lit another cheroot, opened another bottle of beer. Perhaps he would fall in love. It was not in human power to control the arrival of circumstances, only to master them when they had arrived. He had not made Meru, or even had any hand in bringing its existence to light--but now it was there, and he was going to conquer it. Who knew but what some woman would be revealed, as suddenly and with as startling an effect--a woman as worthy of every sacrifice, as inspiring, as this Meru which, also, he had never seen? Perhaps she would be married (as, perhaps, other climbers would lay claim to Meru); let her be. To reach her, nothing would stop him, nothing.

  Chapter 8

  ‘It’s Savage, isn’t it?’ The surprised voice was at his ear.

  He turned; his mind raced: Cambridge, King’s--the memory, the face came into view at the same instant.

  ‘Darrell,’ he said.

  The man had a smoking pipe in his fist and looked startled at what he had just said. So he should, Peter thought grimly; he was one of the majority who cordially disliked me at King’s. Now the fellow was letting his expression cool into distant recognition as he tried to retreat from his initial mistake of recognition. Peter had a good mind to exude bonhomie, sit down beside the fool, and relate endless Anglo-Indian stories all the way to Zermatt, not forgetting to make them also unintelligible by the proper use of chota, bara, mofussil, and the rest.

  Secretly he grinned. It would be good fun, but not worth the trouble. He needed the time to go over the maps for the last time before he met Gerry, and to lean out of the window and survey in silence, alone, some of the mountains he had come to make bow their heads to him.

  So, after a brief exchange of platitudes, he turned his back, politely but definitely, and went to one end of the first-class carriage on the little train, while the man entered it at the other end. He caught a half-concealed grin on the face of a foreign climber, probably French, who followed them into the same carriage. Here in Visp it was quite a local custom to gather in appreciative silence and watch a trainload of the English, who had travelled together from London the day before, emerge in sepa
rate, gelid groups on the main line platform, wander over to the narrow gauge, and there, still separate, enter this tiny train for the great Mecca of mountaineers, Zermatt--Edward Whymper’s Zermatt, Zermatt of the Matterhorn.

  Soon the train started, and Peter lit a cheroot and began to study his maps. That took an hour. Then he looked out of the window, missing nothing, until the train neared Zermatt.

  In a few minutes now, if he looked out of the left-hand window he would see the Matterhorn rising slowly out of the near Hohbalmen ridge. Time for the final tidying-up of his thoughts.

  Of the recent past--nothing to waste even a moment over now. The Secretary of State had been carefully cordial, guardedly commendatory. Grandfather was well.

  In two months he was going to meet Peggy. That would have to wait. It was no good planning too far ahead, making up your mind too definitely about situations, especially those that involved people. Otherwise you would be caught helpless by a change in conditions, or in the people.

  So there were only the mountains and Gerry, as he had hoped it would be; as he hoped it would be for many years to come: those two, and, binding them, bound by them, making a single unit of power with them, their work.

  Gerry would be waiting on the platform. There would be something of strangeness in the meeting. They had written faithfully to each other, and they had spent those weeks together in India in the cold weather of ‘05-’06. But, in truth, letters were written as much to conceal as to reveal, especially by himself. Only once, on that ghastly night at the beginning of the hot weather, had he tried to explain not things or facts but himself, and he did not know how well he had succeeded, or whether the letter, successful or otherwise, had had the intended effect on Gerry. From Gerry’s acquiescent reply, probably; but it would be foolish to be too sure. Gerry was malleable, as the finest gold is malleable, but he did have his own standards, and, however foolish or hampering they might be, it was no good pretending they didn’t exist. And then he might have showed the letter, or talked about its content, to Emily.

  She was a different kettle of fish altogether. God help Gerry when he married her. God help all of them, come to that, because that girl was deliberately competing with him, Peter, and would continue to do so. It might be necessary to do something drastic if Gerry did marry her, or perhaps even if he didn’t, to make sure the poor chap wasn’t torn in two between them.

  It would be honest to talk more openly with Gerry. Why hadn’t they ever really talked about women, for one thing? Well, gentlemen didn’t, not even about whores. But he wasn’t a gentleman, by his own definition, because a gentleman was someone who would rather do the wrong thing gracefully than the right thing brutally. Gerry went to tarts occasionally, very secretive and obvious. He was desperately ashamed of himself on these occasions, because he thought he had somehow betrayed his own upbringing, Emily, and the purity of womanhood in general. In fact Gerry’s motive, acknowledged or not, was to take the edge off desire and so prevent himself from harming any of the innocent young ladies who put themselves in his way, and, of course, particularly Emily. Gerry wouldn’t actually seduce a nice girl, whatever or from whomsoever the provocation; but he didn’t know that, because he was a modest man. In Emily’s case he was probably making a mistake, from his own point of view, if he loved the girl. That flawless ivory skin and those cold grey eyes were sheer deception, nature’s protective devices, or he was a damned fool. Perhaps it was the auburn hair. Perhaps it was Gerry’s self-protective instinct that kept him off her. Damn it, this was judging others by himself, which was an idiotic thing to do. Gerry just knew what was right, and lived up to it.

  At Zermatt, Gerry would be waiting on the platform, and he’d be near tears of happiness. Gerry would want to hug him, but would not be able to overcome the training which told him that that was an emotional and ungentlemanly thing to do. Worse, it was un-English. But he would like to hug Gerry because he trusted him, and only him in all the world now; because he had suddenly realized how lonely he would be without him; because Gerry was a bar of most perfect gold; because that ass Darrell back there would be watching with a sneer hidden just behind his face; and because it would be easier, less embarrassing not to--and, oh God, because he loved him as David loved Jonathan--he would hug Gerry.

  Chapter 9

  August 24th, 1909, a brilliant day, one of an endless succession that had followed them throughout the eight weeks. All around the peaks shone in the sun, thrusting up far above that high point where they stood, on the summit of the Obergabelhorn. Peter looked around slowly, feeling as he did when he used to look around his settlement office at the end of each week’s work and recognize each file and volume, and mutter to himself : ‘Done, dealt with, put away, mastered.’

  There was not a single major summit in view that they had not climbed, sometimes--usually--in this blinding clarity of sun and snow and Alpine wind; sometimes with the heavy mist surging around and the weeping rock as slimy as seaweed; sometimes clinging to the mountain while the outraged summit wind shrieked in their ears and the coats beat like snare drums on their backs; once at least in a passionless snowfall, when very large, mysterious snowflakes, wet and solid, drifted like globs of ice cream into their eyes for an hour on the ascent.

  That was when Holz lost his nerve. He was a good teacher, a good guide, but he didn’t have the thing inside. That had made it the second most important moment of the whole expedition, there in the snow, the loom of the Jungfrau above and the strange snow coming, the sky dark under its glutinous whiteness, the mountain vanishing underfoot. Holz said: ‘Heute geht es nicht, Herr Savage.’ Today it won’t go. But it had to go today, because there was the Eiger tomorrow and the Monch the day after, and, above all, the will to be tempered. By God, he, Peter Savage, had been afraid! Fear was outside him and inside him, in all of them, caveman fear, straddling the precipice over the abyss, dark, full of that circling snow, the light dull green and fading.

  ‘It’ll go, Christian,’ he said, and stared into the guide’s eyes, waiting for the hate to burgeon like a spark.

  That was two weeks ago. He’d been watching Christian’s eyes from the beginning because he wasn’t going to have the guide, who was an expert, water down the strong liquor Gerry and he were drinking. They had changed, those eyes, very soon after the party left Zermatt, the deep-set grey of them, guide’s eyes, slowly coming alive as the man behind them began to live--through fear and anger. First, after a dozen arguments, the realization that he could either do what he was told or go home; the anger, growing from the spark, then; the man saying, professional though he was: ‘I’ll show the young devil.’ The next four weeks had been the best, because Christian was a good climber, and they had much to learn from him. He’d gone hard and straight at the mountains till Gerry’s mouth used to tighten each time they got up at two o’clock to light the lanterns, and his face grew thinner than it had ever been, the bones showing and the soft flesh falling away. Twice Peter had fallen when he was last on the rope; once the rope broke and he went two hundred feet down an ice slope; but the glissading practice helped to save him--that and destiny--and he lived. Something hurt in his chest when he got up and began to cut steps back towards the others. But Gerry was as white, as unstable as the pulpy snow that came later on the Jungfrau.

  ‘It’ll go. We’re going up,’ Peter had said that morning on the Jungfrau, and that was when anger turned to hate in Christian’s eyes, and with it was the dull realization that this was no ordinary English-gentleman-Alpine-Club climber; and something else. Not admiration--that there would never be, because, for one thing, the word did not fit. Awe, perhaps.

  So they had stood for a while, Peter looking at Christian Holz and Gerry silent and troubled behind him. Christian Holz was a guide, tough, hardy. He could endure a great deal. But they were going up a little-known, difficult route; the conditions were terrible. They ought to have done what Holz peremptorily advised. They didn’t. Holz had had enough. After a minute’s staring he b
egan to unrope.

  Peter turned to Gerry. ‘It’s not the Jungfrau that matters, Gerry’--so reminding him with no more words of their talk in the steam bathroom at the Monte Rosa. Easy enough there to say, ‘At all costs,’ to talk about hard, high purpose, unbreakable resolve, unflinching determination--but here was where they became reality, and Meru was where they would bear fruit. And here Christian Holz had reached his limit. ‘It is murder,’ he muttered. ‘Murder, murder!’

  They left him, Gerry looking back twice although the snow had already hidden Holz, until Peter said, trying to sound harsh but speaking gently: ‘Even if he won’t come up, he’ll be able to get down.’ Then they went on, and after an appalling half-hour the snow stopped, and the sun shone, and they reached the summit. On their way down they saw no trace of Christian, and in the valley they were told he’d gone--arrived, taken the train to Zermatt, gone. A German climber told them he’d seen Holz waiting on the platform, shaking his head, not in wonder but like a man with palsy; and all he would say was: ‘It won’t go.’