by John Masters
She caught Peter’s arm and took him aside. The others fell back to respect their privacy. ‘What happened?’ she asked urgently.
‘They cheered us,’ Peter said.
‘They--cheered!’ She gasped. ‘Oh, Peter! How wonderful! They were cheering you.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘we were all together--Harry, Rodney, myself, and Adam. They meant to be silent, I’m sure, even to boo--but we were all together, so they cheered us.’
‘How did Harry take it? Did he think it was just for your sakes, the rest of you?’
‘No. It ‘wasn’t like that. I don’t know how you could tell, but you could. I think that if the cheers were for anybody in particular, they were for Harry.’
After a time she said: ‘Aren’t Indians extraordinary!’
‘It isn’t because they were Indians,’ he said. ‘It’s because they were people. What happened to them was exactly what happened to Harry, and they knew it. Something broke.’ They were hovering nearby now--one after the other, hands shaking her own, faces smiling, in tears, carefully composed. ‘We’ll be back,’ she said over and over again. ‘Good-bye, goodbye, good-bye.’
Peter was in the compartment, kissing Elizabeth, holding Gerry’s hand, teasing Rodney. She followed him in. He took her gently in his arms, and the children fell quiet, watching with concern and instinctive understanding. There was nothing more to say and no words to say it with. Good-bye meant the beginning of a new journey. As his lips touched hers she felt their separate persons, bodies and souls, fuse with an annihilating flash into a single being. He left her, but alone she could not stand and sank on to the seat. The train started, but she could not go to the door and wave.
She sat, wanting to smile, crying steadily, until Rodney said: ‘Don’t cry, Mummy. It makes you look like Aunty Peggy.’ Then she dried her eyes. Harry and Peggy were next door, and what had been begun must be finished.
Chapter 38
LETTERS FROM INDIA
D.C.’S CAMP
RUDWAL, PUNJAB
November 26th, 1920
Dear Admiral,
Thank you for your letter of October 31st which has just reached me. This letter will confirm the cablegram I sent off this morning, and which read as follows: HONOURED TO ACCEPT LEADERSHIP OF JOINT ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY--ALPINE CLUB EXPEDITION TO MERU 1921 SUBJECT TO EXIGENCIES OF SERVICE HERE STOP WRITING SAVAGE.
The last sentence of my cable refers to the state of emergency caused by the September earthquake. The city is rising from its ashes more quickly than I would have believed possible even a month ago, and only some new and unforeseeable emergency should prevent me being able to get away by next April. I may say, in confidence, that H.E. the Lieutenant-Governor of the province told me last week that he would send me on leave next hot weather whether I wanted to go or not; but of course any serious situation in our recovery operations here would compel me to stay.
I will certainly be in a position to supervise the transport and other administrative arrangements at this end, but presume your Joint Committee will act as executive and buying agent for stores and equipment that must be brought from England. In a day or two I will prepare and send to you a detailed list of requirements for your consideration.
As to the membership of the expedition, I am of course out of touch with the new generation of mountaineers and will be happy to accept your judgement and selections. However, my own experience in Parasia suggests that the number of climbers should be kept to a minimum, as each extra man adds a disproportionately unwieldy tail to the expedition. When the approach march is so long and presents so many problems of its own, this is a decisive factor. I suggest that the maximum number should be seven, including a ‘climbing’ doctor. Personally, I would prefer four, including myself and the doctor, plus a deputy leader who can climb or take charge of administrative matters as the leader thinks best. The selection of this deputy leader is a matter of great importance and I am sure you will agree that no English mountaineer is better suited for the post than Harry Walsh.
I would like, in closing, to express again my gratitude to you and the Joint Committee for your generosity in selecting me. Much has happened since we met briefly in Zermatt in ‘09, little of it conducive to faith in me as leader of such an expedition. I will do my best to justify your trust, and whether or not we succeed in climbing Meru I hope we will write a story there which will make an example for generations to come, and not only to mountaineers.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Savage
To: Admiral Sir Alexander Ingraham, K.C.B., D.S.O.,
Chairman, Joint Committee, Meru, 1921,
1 Kensington Gore, London
D.C.’S CAMP
RUDWAL, PUNJAB
December 22nd, 1920
Dear Admiral,
Your cablegram of December 20th reached me this morning, and I replied as follows: YOUR LIST OF MEMBERS OF EXPEDITION AGREED EXCEPT FOR OMISSION OF WALSH AS DEPUTY LEADER STOP HAVE WRITTEN HIM TODAY URGING HIM TO ACCEPT STOP IF ANY MEMBER UNWILLING TO ACCEPT HIM THIS CAPACITY MUST INSIST THAT MEMBER BE DROPPED STOP ALTERNATIVELY HAPPY TO OFFER OWN RESIGNATION TO BE USED AT YOUR DISCRETION IF THIS WILL RESOLVE IMPASSE LETTER FOLLOWS SAVAGE.
I am sure the above is self-explanatory, but would like to emphasize that I cannot under any circumstances accept leadership of this expedition if Harry Walsh is omitted (unless he is physically incapable or finally determined to refuse to come). The ascent of Meru will indeed be the greatest feat yet recorded in the annals of mountaineering; and it is true, as you point out, that the selection of Walsh as deputy leader will, at least at first, make for dissensions and conflicts within the party and so lessen our chances for a successful attempt. But I have come to believe that the spirit of mountaineering and the spirit of the mountains lie in what we do for each other and in what we give to the mountains (in the way of sacrifice, appreciation, and controlled passion) rather than in what we do on the mountains. We will do a fine thing to climb Meru; we will do a finer by far if, through our attempt, Harry Walsh is reinstated in his proper place in the world that he values--and, more important still, in his own eyes.
The other members will of course have heard of his tragedy here, and will perhaps have seen the picture, but once we are launched on the expedition I am sure they will forget all that and see only that we, and Meru, can do something for Harry that no one and nothing else can do. I have confidence in my ability to achieve this object at least.
I realize you cannot tell the Joint Committee that its painfully collected funds are in effect to be used for this purpose, with the ascent of Meru a secondary consideration (except that a determined effort on the mountain is an inherent part of the other), yet I am sure that you and every other real mountaineer, alive or dead, will agree that Harry Walsh, or any man, is more important than a new ‘first,’ and that mountaineering can have no higher purpose than to raise a human being’s capacities for feeling and giving.
I realize also that the recent announcement in the press that I am to lead the expedition will make it difficult for me to be replaced without awkward explanations. I cannot pretend I am sorry, as I am sure that what I am doing is good and right, and I welcome every circumstance that will help to ensure my--our--success. However, I do mean exactly what I said in my cablegram--that my resignation is in your hands, to do with as you think best.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Savage
Cablegram sent December 22, 1920, to Harry Walsh, 43 Ives Street, London W, England:
ADMIRAL INGRAHAM CABLES THAT YOU HAVE REFUSED OFFER OF PLACE AS DEPUTY LEADER MERU EXPEDITION 1921 STOP I HAVE PLACED MY OWN RESIGNATION IN HIS HANDS TO BE MADE EFFECTIVE IF YOUR DECISION FINAL STOP PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS IS NOT TO EXERT PRESSURE ON YOU BUT BECAUSE I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO MERU WITHOUT YOU STOP WOULD PREFER COME HOME ON LEAVE TO FAMILY AND SUGGEST WE MIGHT ALL SPEND SUMMER ZERMATT STOP IF ANYTHING ELSE BUT LACK OF DESIRE IMPELLING YOU REFUSE INVITATION I AFFECTIONATELY INVITE YOU TO REMEMBE
R OUR LAST WALK TOGETHER
PETER
D.C.’S CAMP
RUDWAL, PUNJAB
Christmas Day, 1920
Dear Harry,
A brief note to follow up my cablegram of the 22nd--cables aren’t the best place to say things one feels deeply.
First, I want to add to more personal reasons the fact that I will need your experience on the expedition. Of the five other climbers (the committee turned down my suggestion that it be kept very small) only Hutton, who is thirty-five, has ever seen or climbed in the Himalaya, and his experience is limited to one season in Garhwal, where conditions are quite different from Parasia. Of the rest, Robin Granger, the doctor, is the oldest, at twenty-nine, and though I am sure they are all good, even superb climbers, they must lack judgement--where can they have learned it during the war? The leader cannot be in two places at once, and I must have a deputy whose judgement I can rely on entirely, and in whom the rest of the expedition have or will soon learn to have the same implicit faith.
Finally, I have a long memory, and it is full of bright experiences and wonderful things seen and done on the mountains. The true wonder of much that I saw did not come to me till recently--but I owe it all to a night in June eighteen years ago when Gerry and I watched you come down from King’s Chapel. If I go to Meru next year I am going to take one of Gerry’s old ice-axes that I have here, and I hope that you and I can leave it on the summit, to remind us at least, and the world perhaps, that we three have made a strange web of our lives-- and, I think, in the end, a good one. This may sound foolish to some, but I don’t think it will to you, who have known Gerry and myself for so long.
At all events, though Meru will be climbed eventually, it will not be climbed by me unless you are with us next year, because I do not want to go alone (on Meru, there can only be two companions I can recognize, and one is dead); and because I shall not go again to that mountain.
Please cable me.
Yours,
Peter
D.C.’S BUNGALOW,
RUDWAL, PUNJAB
January 14th, 1921
My darling,
Yes, I heard a few days before the New Year’s Honours were published that I was going to get a C. It’s no use grumbling because it’s only a C.I.E. They do that so that they can give you a C.S.I. later. If they give you the higher one first, they can never give you the lower. Such are the laws of the Most Holy Secretariat, on Whom be Praise, in Ordered Files. The Lieutenant-Governor--sorry, he’s a full-blown Governor now--sounded out Adam Khan about an O.B.E., but he refused. Baber got an M.B.E., which ought to give him a certain cachet at Sandhurst. You may not have seen that Smythe got a King’s Police Medal--well deserved.
Harry is coming on the expedition--his cable reached me today. I presume you will see it in The Times before this reaches you. I had the devil of a fight with the Joint Committee and Harry himself before it was done, but the Admiral supported me behind the scenes (before the war I know he used to hold up Harry as a model of everything a mountaineer should be, and so had an interest besides his natural generosity in having his judgement vindicated) and we got it done. I lay awake a good deal at night wondering whether I was doing right--there was something about the business reminiscent of Gerry, a forcing of events, or at least of a person’s character, that was not happy to remember. But I cannot feel that I am doing wrong, or that any wrong will result this time. I do not think Harry would have accepted, though, if you had not been able to gain Peggy’s trust again, and enlist her help. I am sure you have not forgotten to remind Peg that mountaineering on Meru cannot be divorced from physical danger, and that in gaining some spiritual end we may injure or lose our physical beings--to be a little less high-flown, in the process of putting a sparkle in our eyes we may break our bloody necks.
H.E. has told me that I will be approached again, next year, about a post in the Secretariat. I have told him there is little chance that I shall accept. With care we can manage on my pay, and I do not want to leave Rudwal, even to become Commissioner, which is also a possibility within a couple of years. H.E. grumbled that the days of the patriarch who spent forty-nine years in one district and left a legend, or at the least a hundred new culverts, were over, and that I would be under increasing pressure to ‘broaden my outlook’ for the good of the service, etc. I told him I thought I would be able to resist the pressure; and so I will as long as I know you love Rudwal as much as I do and will be coming back to me to share it all, including the bed-bugs I found in our bed last night. Heaven knows where they came from, but I have given Ghulam a piece of your mind.
H.E. also threatened to move me to another district if I didn’t co-operate with their schemes to promote me, but his heart was not in it. He knows as well as I do that at this period above all, when the reforms are beginning to move forward and the Secretary of State has at last solved the problem of why we are in India at all (viz.: to get out), India needs from us not brains but understanding. Privately H.E. agreed with me that even a bad collector who stays a long time in one place will do more good than a series of brilliant collectors who stay for so short a time that they are practically tourists.
Rodney will have to stay at home when you come out in ‘22, darling. I know it’s cruel for all of us, but there is no better alternative. For one thing I think we now need each other more than he needs either of us. Do you think Harry and Peggy can act as his ‘parents’ while you are out here?
Few nights go by without my dreaming of you, fewer still without my cursing myself for a selfish fool not to give up Meru and come to England next summer--but if I did that I think you would send me out again as soon as I arrived, and that is one reason why I love you so much. Some of my night-time dreams of you are very frustrating (I caught myself licking my lips over the female shape of a blowsy bazaar harridan the other day) but you are also at my side during all the sunlight hours, and sitting opposite me at the breakfast table (making the same face at Sharif’s unspeakable coffee), and riding at my side when I go out on tour. In point of fact I do not ride, but walk or run, carrying a heavy pack. I feel a considerable fool, but it is as well to remind myself by these painful means that I am 40 years of age and Meru is 27,141 feet high!
Good night, darling, and sleep well.
Your loving husband, Peter
D.C.’S BUNGALOW
RUDWAL, PUNJAB
April 16th, 1921
My darling,
Harry arrived a couple of days ago, very much on his guard, because of course the membership of the expedition has been known for some time, and I think he expected Harnarayan to have organized another and more cold-hearted protest group--but there was no one at the station except myself and Adam Khan, Adam just out of prison from the six weeks I sentenced him to in February (for sedition).
Granger, Norris, de Heurteville, and Barnes were with him, leaving only Hutton to be accounted for. He’s on his way with some stuff they had difficulty with at Bombay. My relief--it is Greene, as I thought it would be--has been here for a week, and we ought to be able to get away on the 23rd as planned. Young Barnes has pointed out that that is St George’s Day and the anniversary of Zeebrugge, implying that we also will make a most high and gallant endeavour for the sake of Merrie England. I suppose that is true enough but I do not feel that patriotism is or ought to be the driving force behind this expedition. I reminded Barnes that April 23rd was also Shakespeare’s birthday. Barnes is only 20 and feels, I think, that he must show on Meru what he would have done for England in the war if he had been old enough. He was out in France for three months, as a matter of fact, but his colonel wouldn’t send him to the front.
Their collective attitude to Harry is non-committal, as far as I can judge. They respect him for the hours of instruction and discussion he had with them on the boat coming cut, but they are waiting to see what happens when we face the big moments. I am rather depressed to find that Barnes and the Count (de Heurteville) have been hero-worshippers of mine since th
e first attempt in 1913, when they were in their teens. They hint that I was let down by my fellow climbers that time, and that now I am going to lead them to the top, come hell or high water, at all costs. This attitude to my exploits of those days is quite new, and is due to the war, I imagine--but it will lead to some loss of confidence in me from the moment I make the first decision actuated by caution or mountaineering tradition rather than by sheer will-power. Well, all it means really is that they will have to learn to be mountaineers rather than climbers, as I have had to do, and forget the image of me that they have been preserving in ignorance of all that has happened since they were schoolboys.
I am very glad you could take young Rodney to see Grandfather several times before he died. If there is any further help you need in dealing with the will, don’t forget that you can count on help from Charlie Harrison at Lloyd’s.
I fear the Old Captain will not last long now. Somebody--probably Harnarayan, who has the vivid sentimentality of the true revolutionary--is sure to say that his and Grandfather’s deaths are symbolic of the end of the era they lived and thought in, but it is not so: I prefer to think of facts rather than symbols, and their era did in fact bleed to death, in Flanders and also, somehow, in the Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar, and Adam and I are in the saddle now and Baber and young Rodney getting ready to take over--so they had nothing more to live for, and so one has died and the other will shortly join him.
But do not let Rodney forget him. Keep a picture in his room--that portrait my step-grandmother painted of him as he looked just after the Mutiny.
Now everything seems to be done and cleared away, and there is only Meru in front of me--us, all of us. In the past I might have thought of it as a challenge, as an enemy, or just as a beautiful mountain, but now I see it as an opportunity, and I am not afraid that I shall fail to take it.
