Far, Far The Mountain Peak

by John Masters

  All my love,

  Your husband Peter

  MERU EXPEDITION

  C/O P.O.

  RUDWAL, PUNJAB

  May 6th, 1921

  My dear Peggy,

  We are resting two days here at Parasia. Your Harry is very fit--as we all are, except the Count, who has sunburned the end of his nose. Harry has gained the confidence of all the men except Billy, who is very brilliant, fiery, and very young. I think our first day above 20,000 feet will show young Mr Barnes that Harry has forgotten more about climbing than he has yet learned. He was quite noticeably subdued--a miracle for him!--when Harry and I did a rather spectacular traverse of a wet cliff to rescue a clumsy ass of a porter who had slipped and would not leave his insecure perch in case he lost his load--the porters’ rum!

  Give Emily my love--

  Peter

  PARASIA

  May 8th, 1921

  Darling,

  The post orderly is waiting, the tent has been taken down over my head, the wind is blowing. We are off in twenty minutes, and I love you.

  Peter

  Chapter 39

  The expedition arrived at the old site of Juniper Camp late in the afternoon of May 16. There were many traces that men had been here before, notably the rock in which Gerry and he had scratched their initials on their first reconnaissance in 1911. At the time he had thought the action a foolish concession to Gerry’s sentimentality, and even Gerry had had doubts on aesthetic grounds; but they had done it, and the dry air of the Parasian plateau had preserved the hard edges and pale scratches as though it were yesterday that they had stood together and turned the rock into a monument: ‘P.S.--W.,’ it said, but gave no date.

  It was a reassuring sight, as were the gleaming tin cans left by somebody from the 1913 or Harry’s 1914 attempt, a piece of torn canvas anchored under a stone, a worn-out pair of Rudwali sandals--human debris which would have annoyed him if encountered in London or even on the top of Cader Brith; but here, in a place that was wild and lonely, yet not ‘dedicated,’ they were positive enhancements to natural beauty.

  There was a lurid sunset that evening. The sky lay in horizontal bands of garish colour across the pale desert, and the great southern or Gendarme Ridge of Meru swept down black against the colours out of a feathery sky somewhere unimaginably higher above. The porters were in the best of humour; the climbers had loosened up on the long trek; nothing serious had gone wrong, nor had anyone suffered more than a stomach ache and one case, among the porters, of something which Robin Granger diagnosed as pink-eye.

  In spite of all his care, Peter had not been able to prevent the expedition from reaching an unwieldy size. Apart from a large caravan of Rudwali horse-copers from the Northern Tehsils, whose ponies had carried the bulk of the stores up to this point, they had a small band of Rudwali porters and six men from an obscure valley in north-eastern Nepal. These last were called Sherpas and were reputed to be excellent climbers, with the ability to carry heavy loads and the willingness to learn techniques of climbing that would enable them to carry the loads on ground which untrained men, however strong, could not have passed.

  The Sherpas were likely to play an important role because, if the expedition had to commit its main effort to the southeast ridge, it would again have to surmount the Needles. Given reasonable luck with the weather, Peter felt confident that they could ‘prepare’ the Needles--with pegs, fixed ropes, and even rope ladders (they had brought several with them)--so that climbers could get over them without much difficulty. But his experience in 1913, reinforced by Harry’s in 1914, made it clear that if they were to achieve success by that route they must put three camps, not two, on the south-east ridge, and must also establish another camp above the Needles, from which the climbers would make their attempts on the summit..

  It would therefore be necessary for tentage and stores of all kinds, sufficient for at least four men for three days, to be carried over the Needles. He felt certain that the Rudwalis from the Northern Tehsils could not do this. They were sure-footed and strong of back, but at heart they were essentially shepherds, and he had never encountered among them any ‘desire’ for mountains in general or for Meru in particular. They regarded mountains as fearsome enemies to be left alone, not as friends, still less as playgrounds, battlefields, or jousting lists. (All these latter attitudes were represented among the climbers). The head Sherpa was a small, gloomy man called Garakay.

  The heavy work below the snow line and on the easier stretches just above it would be done by the band of foot-Rudwalis, under their leader, who was a brother of the headman of Harkamu. The pony-Rudwalis were going to stay at Juniper as long as the expedition was on the mountain, and Peter had no doubt that they would organize some fine carousals, quarrels, and fights to while away the time.

  Finally, they had a young Indian medical graduate from Rudwal City who had volunteered to come along and help Granger; and, in immediate charge of the details of discipline and administration, Subadar Tilakbir Lama from the 13th Gurkhas’ depot at Manali. Peter would have liked to have Harkabir again, but his ashes lay in a plot of earth behind Neuve Chapelle.

  The Joint Committee of the societies sponsoring the expedition had done them well in the matter of food, and though Peter personally ate chupattis most of the time no delicacy seemed to be lacking that could tempt their appetites when altitude or weakness made them lose the desire to eat. He thought privately that the climbers would find strawberry jam and condensed milk, or some similar revolting mixture, what they would most like to have once they got above 20,000 feet.

  The summit of Meru hung alone in the sky, pink and black in a shimmering night, when they gathered in the big dining tent to discuss their farther progress. Nine of them were seated there when the talk began--the seven climbers; Zaman Khan, the young doctor; and Tilakbir. The last-named spoke no English, but Peter explained things to him when necessary, and he made notes; he was a great note-taker, of the slow, pencil-licking type.

  Peter had already decided what would probably have to be done, and amply discussed it with the rest of them, but everything depended on the weather and it would not have been wise to make firm decisions before arrival at Juniper. But now they were there, and the lone tree after which the spot was named stood just behind the tent, and the tinkle of the thinly running stream made sweet music to his ears after the long trek across the immense sweep of Parasia. (He had seen two spotted fork-tails in that stream just after his arrival, but the bustle had frightened them away.)

  Peter now confirmed what had been tentatively arranged. On the eighteenth they would split into three parties, each accompanied by two Sherpas. George Norris and himself would reconnoitre the south-east ridge; Oscar Hutton and the Count would move round the mountain to the west and try the north face. (Aloysius Roggevin de Heurteville was too much of a mouthful for anyone, and since his prep-school days he’d always been known as the Count.) Harry Walsh and young Billy Barnes would move round the mountain to the east and try the Great Chimney Glacier, and, if they could surmount that, the Great Chimney itself. Robin Granger would stay at Juniper. Peter set May 28 as the day by which they should all meet again here.

  Barnes could not quite hide a small tightening of the lips when he heard that he was to go with Harry, but he did not say anything aloud. He was an extremely energetic blond young man, twenty years of age, about six foot three, beautifully built, hard as nails and seemingly possessed of a stamina which didn’t usually come to men until they were a few years older. Peter had wondered that the Committee included anyone so young, but after he had seen Barnes on the road--and scrambling up cliffs every evening, just for exercise, when the rest of them were glad to lie about and drink tea in the tents--he saw that the Admiral had known what he was about. Barnes’s hero-worship was distressing, for it was based on an admiration of actions which, although they had perhaps been inevitable, Peter no longer thought of with pride. Also, Barnes was too ready to despise Harry Walsh, not so much fo
r that unhinged moment which had caused the furore but because he knew that Harry had been Peter’s bitter enemy after the 1913 expedition.

  The rest of the climbers had maintained a cordial neutrality towards Harry until they had had the opportunity to see what kind of man he was. By the time they reached Juniper they not only accepted but admired and respected him. Nevertheless, Peter thought he had detected a deep-lying layer of distrust and he wondered once, while ruminating on his problems late at night in the tent he shared with Oscar Hutton, why grown and experienced men, all of whom had fought through the war with great gallantry, should keep even this deep, almost completely hidden layer of reserve against a man whose only lapse had been caused by circumstances and strains that they could understand better than any other men on earth. It did not take him long to appreciate that though such men can understand a man’s lapse they are too tough-minded, too honest with themselves, to pretend it has not happened. They had no blame for Harry, but they were mountaineers and they had been soldiers; they had simply recorded, deep down: ‘Harry Walsh can crack.’ When you expect to spend several hours or days with a man on a rope under extreme strain, in places where any failing might cause instant calamity--and not only for you two--this is a piece of knowledge that it is folly to wipe out of your mind.

  Barnes probably thought he had been paired with Harry in order that he should show up Harry’s caution. What Harry thought, Peter did not know, for Harry kept a reserve with him. In fact Peter’s reason for sending the two of them on the Great Chimney reconnaissance was only that he thought they would make an excellent pair--Harry’s wisdom, technical skill, and experience complementing Barnes’s fire and sheer strength. He was willing to stake his own life or anyone else’s on his conviction that Harry would not crack again, and he hoped that a week of ‘big’ climbing would give young Billy, at least, the same faith.

  Harry seemed to be in excellent shape both physically and psychologically. His manner was quiet, but that was natural to him; he avoided no one and sought no one; he didn’t shrink and he didn’t push. Peter had had no intimate talk with him but he felt sure that the Joint Committee’s acceptance of him, even at his own urging, had begun to show Harry that the outside world--particularly that part of it whose opinion he valued--had forgotten or brushed aside memories which still occupied so large and gloomy a part of his mind. The attitude of the other climbers had further reassured him, and the complete normality of his return to Rudwal had finally convinced him.

  That left Harry with only the more fearsome enemy, the most persistent that any man can possess--himself. He knew the world had forgotten, or understood, or forgiven. Now it was only he who had not forgotten, did not understand, and could not forgive. At the same time, and because of this, Harry seemed to be reappraising his sense of values. He had taken it for granted, like most of their generation, that an unobtrusive, well-balanced, but unfailing physical courage was the highest single quality any man could have, and the only one a gentleman must have. The war had reinforced that ingrained belief until it, along with the courage itself, was a part of his nature. Now the thought faced him that if what he believed was true, he was of no value; but the world assured him that he was, and his own common sense and revived self-pride concurred. Therefore it must be the ideals that he had lived by that were wrong. But they couldn’t be, for they were laws of nature. . . . These were the premises he was debating with himself, and since in this area logic is illogical unless it is personal, no one else could help him.

  As for himself, Peter had almost forgotten, in the choral joys of rediscovering himself, his wife, his children, his work, and the mountains, that he had been such a controversial figure in other times. It was brought home to him, though, as soon as he had his first meetings with the expedition. He was made aware--not by words, for the men were much too well-mannered, but by his own new sensitivity--that Hutton, Norris, and Granger had distinct reservations about him. He suspected that the Admiral had had to do a lot of persuading before those three would agree to join any expedition led by him. The Count voiced his nonchalant nil admirari appreciation of some of Peter’s pre-war feats in Switzerland, and Barnes was a hero- worshipper. Peter had not made any attempts to alter this state of affairs either at the time or, as a deliberate act, at any time; but he felt, as they rode on day by day through the inner chains of the Himalaya, over the passes, and finally across the Parasian plateau, that the three ‘hostiles’ had modified their opinions, or at least put aside their hostility until such time as he should live up to his evil reputation.

  The members got on well with one another, except for the antipathy between Barnes and Walsh, and that was one-sided. Oscar Hutton was thirty-five, and a schoolmaster; he’d joined up in the London Scottish in 1914, won a D.C.M. in ‘15, been commissioned, and fought the rest of the war in Palestine. He was a short, strong man with a battered face and a passion for cricket which bordered on the monomaniacal and would have been far over the border if he hadn’t occasionally allowed Vergil to creep into the boundary of his small talk. Robin Granger was a country doctor from Sussex, tall, thin, bespectacled; he had got his V.C. at Cambrai rescuing wounded men under fire; he spoke seldom and then usually of gardening. The Count was a scion of a penniless family of landed gentry in Durham, and wild as a hawk; Peter suspected that only the war had saved him from being sent down from Oxford; his talk, which was ceaseless and covered every subject under the sun, indicated that he knew more about wine, women, and song than an ordinary young man could possibly have learned in the few pre-war adult years available to him; he was an enthusiastic cynic, about five foot ten, slender to the point of thinness, and nothing like as volatile as he pretended; Peter was sure that he had walked into his scrapes with his eyes open. George Norris was a thickset man of five foot nine, quiet, almost taciturn; an R.F.C. pilot during the war; he’d lost his wife the year before, and Peter thought he might tend to treat the mountain as though he could somehow wreak vengeance on it for his misery. Robin, the Count, and Billy Barnes were bachelors, but Robin had a fiancée, a young woman whose picture showed that she intended to put the scatterbrained fellow’s practice in order in double-quick time.

  There had been some publicity to the effect that the objects of the expedition were scientific as well as mountaineering, possibly to give the solicitation of various sorts of aid an aura of respectability, possibly as a sop to the guilt complex often suffered by learned men when they set out to enjoy themselves. At all events Oscar Hutton had equipped himself with a large book on geology, a small hammer, and a smaller fund of enthusiasm for knocking chips out of the rocks that they passed. The Count held charge of a battery of anemometers, rain gauges, barometers, and wet-and dry-bulb thermometers. His readings were not as accurate as they might have been. He put the anemometer in the lee of any available cliff because, he said, the sight of the damned thing spinning madly round and round in the perpetual Parasian gales made him dizzy. Also, he had found towards the end of the march that some of the porters regularly urinated in the rain gauge. Norris supervised the workings of a wireless set actually operated by two Survey of India havildars.

  As for Peter himself, he was the expedition’s expert on bird and animal life. He was supposed to shoot and skin the rarer birds for the British Museum, but his aim with the light rifle was deliberately bad and with the special collector’s gun even worse. He had, however, taken some good photographs, collected and pressed two hundred different flowers, and recorded forty-four species of birds, three of them never before reported in Parasia, and one probably a new variety of the Desert Wheatear.

  Now it was time to try and sleep. He had not been going to sleep easily on this journey. Sometimes Oscar heard him turning over in his sleeping-bag, or was awake when he scrambled out at two in the morning, and asked him whether he was all right or urged him to take an aspirin. Oscar thought he was wrestling with various plans in his mind and worrying over his responsibilities; but he was not. He found it hard to go to sl
eep because it required of him a definite act of sacrifice to give up the joys of waking realization. As long as he got enough sleep to keep his full strength of mind and body, he was not willing to make the sacrifice. He could not bring himself to clear his mind of its wonders: the understanding of what Emily was, had been, and would become; the meaning of love, total love--there it was now, flowing through his being like a river of gold, carrying him forward on its flood; the sheer animal beauty of this world--the aloneness of the birds that flew with large wings, slow-beating, across the immense plains; the wild ass wheeling at the rim of the salt lake; the mountain called Meru, which he could not think of as an inhuman block of stone and ice but as a part of their endeavours, for it stood beside the golden river, just as it had towered over the slow-traversed and painful desert.

  He had started to call this south-east ridge on which Norris and he would start work the day after tomorrow, the old route--the Wilcot Ridge of Meru. Billy Barnes took up the name with enthusiasm and went further, to suggest that the mountain itself be renamed Mount Wilcot. The others pointed out to him that it was against Survey of India policy to name a mountain after a person. The local name was always applied; or if there was none--which was often the case in really wild areas--then a name was made up in the local language. Only two great Himalayan mountains had been named after people, Everest and Godwin Austen--both of whom had been Surveyors-General of India--and the latter mountain was increasingly being spoken of as K2.

  But it was time to take the velvet curtain in both hands and draw it firmly across his mind for the night, that he might sleep. Hutton had a tendency to snore, but he did it in a harmonious key--B flat, Peter thought, and he liked it. Emily was not above snoring occasionally, but hers was a kind of sighing whistle, and he liked that too. It proved again that she was human. There would be little magic in her character if her superb qualities had been, so to speak, gifted to her instead of achieved by her, just as there would be little joy in contemplating her when she was dressed and perfumed and moving like a young queen about their house if he could not also think of her in unashamed, earthy lust. There was a wide range in human experience, as wide as from the Ganges, with its muddy stream and its bloated, bobbing corpses, to the summit of that mountain whose soaring peak and silver banner he could see through the crack of the tent-flap.