Above All Things (25 page)

Teddy moved beside him, jarring him so that his kidney and bladder stabbed. He needed to piss. Outside he’d have to stand in the frigid dark and fumble himself out of his trousers. He tried to put it off, think of something else. Damn.

He put down his canteen and hauled himself from the tent. Protecting himself as much as possible from the constant wind, he turned to urinate. The wind had died down some since they’d arrived but still chugged across the camp. The sky was beginning to lighten, the blowing snow off the ridge haloed the mountain. Please give us a few good hours.

When he returned to the tent, Teddy was swearing.

“What is it?” he asked, even before he was inside. Had Virgil been injured more seriously than he’d thought? Had they forgotten something? Anything could derail the attempt. They were balancing so precariously.

“The water. The. God. Damned. Bloody. Water.” Teddy spat each word in a gasp.

Teddy’s sleeping bag was wet through. His puttees. George just stared at the spreading stain. “What happened?”

“You left the goddamned canteen open.”

“What?”

“It was open, spilled everywhere.”

“You’ll have to dry.” His voice was mechanical, didn’t sound like his at all. “We’ll have to melt more. We can still try.”

Teddy wasn’t looking at him. “We’ll never get away in time.” Virgil bent to the cooker, coaxing it to life. Lopsang was tightening his boots.

“We could go. With what we have. You could wear Virgil’s –”

“We’ll finish this and head down,” Teddy said. It sounded like an order. “It’ll be up to Somes and Odell now.” There was a long, empty pause. Teddy’s disappointment was palpable. “You shouldn’t have left it open, George.”

“You shouldn’t have knocked it over!”

The air was brightening around the tent, the sun already too high for a serious attempt. They’d never make it back down before nightfall. Teddy was right.

It was over. Before it had even begun.

“At least the camp is established,” Teddy said. “They’ll have an easier time of it. Probably for the best.”

“How could it possibly be for the best?”

“We’ll go down. If Somes and Odell don’t make it, we’ll be rested for another shot. It’s not over, George.”

He nodded. Somes and Odell would have their chance. His chance. Maybe they’d make it, but he had his doubts. Odell didn’t have the drive for the top. He wouldn’t push and Somes would play it safe – the danger of knowing too well the risks. But George wouldn’t be counted out yet. It was still early. There would still be the window of good weather, before the full force of the monsoon was upon them in a week, maybe more. They still had time before the weather closed in, cut them off from the mountain. He’d go down. Wait. Regroup. He’d have his chance yet.

They met on the ridge. Somervell and Odell were well below where they should have been. Still, they were surprised to see George and Teddy with their coolies heading down when they should have been pressing up. The sun had come up clear and hot and Teddy suggested a rest. He’d been moving slowly. Neither of them had mentioned frostbite, but George wondered about it now. Teddy’s puttees had almost dried but the wet in
them had frozen and stiffened around his legs. His trousers underneath had to be the same. The cold might have already begun to seep into his skin. The six of them sat, for a long hour, breathing heavily on the leeside of the ridge, their back to the mountain as it dropped away recklessly beneath their feet. George grabbed a chunk of frozen snow and threw it down the mountain.

What would it be like to fall, he wondered. He’d seen others fall, but he’d never fallen himself. Well, almost never. He’d fallen only the one time. With Geoffrey.

How many times had Geoffrey told him – rest when you can, not when you’re tired. “You can’t rest on an overhang, no matter how tired you are,” Geoffrey said, correcting him from below on an easy climb. “Your legs will hold you up all day. Your arms, though, they’ll let you down. You have to climb with your legs.”

And George had forgotten that. No, he hadn’t forgotten. He’d been uncertain about a move on one of the pinnacles up to the summit of the Nesthorn, and he’d clung to the overhang for too long. Below him the rock face dropped away, to Geoffrey twenty feet below, and then another hundred feet to where they’d camped the night before.

His arms were so heavy, the blood draining down them, into his shoulders, leaving his hands tingling and cold.

He knew what he had to do. He had to pull his leg up to his chest, press his foot into the rock wall, and leap to the next overhang, a little more than an arm’s length above him. It was a move he’d made dozens of times before. Hundreds. But he didn’t know this face. Didn’t know the overhang.

On the belay below him, Geoffrey called up, “Go for it, George, or drop down to rest. You can’t stay there.” The rope and Geoffrey’s hold were the only things that would save George if he fell.

He’d been hanging for too long, but finally he launched himself at the thin shelf just out of reach. His dead arms flailed at the overhang, his fingers clawing at rock, dirt, air – and then he was falling.

He didn’t yell or scream. Just plummeted past the rock face, past the blur of Geoffrey. The rock looked smooth, a soft fabric. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to land. And then the pain as the rope tightened around him. The constriction at his ribs, the burning skin on his chest as the rope pulled taut. The sound, like a popped paper bag as the air was squeezed out of him. But the rope held. He remained suspended, his body arced out over empty space, the rock face swinging nearer to him, then away.

He turned himself on the rope. He needed to get to the wall, take the weight off Geoffrey, who might be straining to hold them both to the mountain.

He reached for a fist-sized hold. His arms felt like his own again. He should have made the leap. It was a good hold. Shouldn’t have waited. He pulled himself to the wall, pressed himself to the rock, and breathed against the easing in his ribs. After a few minutes he climbed back up to Geoffrey.

It was the only time he’d ever fallen. And it was because he’d doubted himself. He couldn’t imagine falling again.

“George and I will head down to the Col,” Teddy was saying to Somes, “and wait for you there.”

“Leave your men at Five,” Somervell said, gesturing to Virgil and Lopsang. “Just in case.”

Teddy nodded.

George looked over at Virgil before insisting, “I’ll stay with them.”
The coolies are children where mountain dangers are concerned
, he had written to Ruth after the avalanche.
And they do so much for us
. He didn’t want to leave them alone on the mountain.

“No,” Somes answered. “Not enough fuel. You’ll end up using it all before we get back down.”

George nodded. Somes was right. There wasn’t another choice. They all climbed to their feet, stamping them to return feeling to their frigid toes. “Good luck.” They shook hands and then George watched intently as they climbed upwards. He watched until he felt a hand on his arm.

“Come on,” Teddy said. “It’s theirs for now.”

They were moving strongly. Maybe they would make the summit. He wished them well and then turned his back.

After leaving Virgil and Lopsang dug in at Camp V, they waited out the next day at IV, at the top of the Col, scanning the upper slopes until the weather came up. George hoped the weather was staying low on the mountain, that it might be clearer farther up. They tried to play at cards. Tried to read. He thought about letters he should be writing – to Ruth, Geoffrey – but he could say nothing reassuring to them now. George pictured Somes and Odell’s climb – their slog upwards – across the ridge, or dropping down into the couloir, the gorge that ran up the face of the mountain. They might have done it already.

Sandy kept quiet, kept to himself. He seemed drawn, the raw flesh of his windburned skin angry against his paleness. The previous night, Sandy had described Lapkha’s death to him.

“It was terrible,” Sandy said. “I’m glad I wasn’t there when he died. Shebbeare said he choked and then gulped at the air, as if he couldn’t get any into his lungs, but he kept trying and trying.” Sandy’s voice was remote, as if he was trying to puzzle something out, thinking aloud. “Then he just stopped. That was it.”

“I’m sorry, Sandy.”

“Maybe if I’d been quicker. There might have been something more I could have done.”

“There wasn’t. You’re not a doctor. I wouldn’t have known any better either. It wasn’t your fault.” He hated the sound of the platitudes, wished he could think of something better to say.

Ruth would have known what to say. She always managed to say the right thing. When Trafford was killed, she held him while he sobbed. “You can’t look for fair, George,” she said to him. “Not here. Not in this war. The regular rules don’t apply. Trafford’s death will never be fair.”

“It’s a different world up here,” he told Sandy. “The regular rules don’t apply. We have to be responsible for ourselves. All of us. There’s no rescue, not up here. We’re barely surviving. That’s what no one back home seems to understand.”

George hoped Virgil and Lopsang were all right up at Camp V. He should have sent them down and stayed there himself in case Odell and Somes needed assistance. But that wasn’t his role. He needed to rest, to regroup in case they didn’t make it, in case there was still a chance at the summit. Virgil would be all right. Virgil knew the mountain.

“But that can’t be right,” Sandy said. “We’re responsible for each other. I should have done something. I just didn’t know what.”

“That’s the point. There was nothing to be done. Lapkha should have told someone or gone back down.”

“Or maybe someone should have noticed he wasn’t fit to be here.”

Now, as he dealt another hand of cards, he tried to catch Sandy’s eye, tried to think of something reassuring to say. The wind howled down the ridge, the tent flapped. “Do you hear something?” George asked.

“How could you?” Teddy answered.

They turned back to their cards, played for cigarettes that they would share anyway.

“No. There it is.”

A yell on the wind. Like the
yeti
the Tibetans claimed lived on the mountain, cloaked by the weather as it stalked them, tried to eat them alive.

He reached for his boots and climbed out into the wind and snow. It felt as if the mountain was punishing them this year. The previous years hadn’t been like this, bad day after bad day. In the lee of the tent, he crouched down and cupped his mittened hand to his ear. The wind screamed like some monstrous thing bearing down on him. Maybe it was nothing. Somervell and Odell should be well above the storm, pushing forward.

But it was there again. He moved towards it, wading through snow and wind that cut sideways, pushing him off track.

So as not to lose his bearings and wander in circles or into a crevasse, he noted the tents directly behind him. If Odell and Somervell were coming down something had gone wrong. Or what if it was only one of them – the others lost in the white-out, or simply disappeared off the face of the mountain?

Then they were there – their soft, dark outlines mere smudges in the snow. “Somes?” His voice cracked in his throat. A failing yell came back to him. Squinting, George made out two figures – Odell and Somervell. Virgil and Lopsang must be following close behind.

When he reached Somervell and Odell, he pulled their arms around his shoulders, one on each side, and tried to take some of their weight. By the time he’d turned them around his own footprints had almost disappeared, but he was able to make out the faintest trace.

“Where are the coolies?” Teddy asked back in the tent before George had a chance to.

“I’ll go back for them,” George said, peeling off his mittens and breathing into his cold hands. “Just give me a minute.”

“Have something to warm you up some before you head out again,” Teddy said.

“They need it more.” He gestured to Somes and Odell, who were shivering uncontrollably, snow clinging to their beards and eyebrows.

“What happened?” Teddy asked them, handing them mugs.

“Just couldn’t get up there,” Somes said through clenched teeth. “I turned us back before we even got to Six. Couldn’t feel my toes, couldn’t think. After we left you the wind just sliced down at us. We spent the night at Five and could barely get out this morning.”

George climbed back out to search for Virgil and Lopsang and swept his arms through the white blurs of snow. No sound. Nothing. It felt as though hours were ticking by.

“Maybe they turned back,” Odell said when he returned to the tent. Odell looked comfortable now. Warm. The tea had returned some colour to his face, but he still rubbed at his feet.

“Turned back?” Teddy repeated. “To Five?”

“But there’s not enough fuel at Five.” He could hear the fear in Sandy’s voice, gauging the possibility of yet another death. “They won’t be able to melt water. Warm anything to eat. They’ll freeze to death without fuel.”

Odell and Somervell were silent.

George wasn’t. “You were supposed to bring them down, Somes.” The anger swelled through him, hot under his skin. “You don’t descend in front of the coolies. They’re our responsibility. How do you know they turned back? Maybe they fell. Maybe they’re injured. How could you just leave them out there?”

“You don’t know what it’s like out there right now,” Somervell said. “It’s just dumb luck that we got back alive.”

“Besides, you’re one to talk, George,” Odell muttered. “After last time.”

“But that was an accident –” Sandy began.

“That’s enough.” Teddy’s voice was calm, even. “We all know what it’s like out there. And tossing blame around will have to wait. There’ll be plenty of time for that after we get them back down.”

“Now?” Sandy asked. “I’ll go.”

“No.” Teddy was firm. “We’d never make it up there now. We wouldn’t be able to see a thing. And as Somes said, they’re lucky to have made it back alive. We have to believe the best right now. They’re at Camp Five. They’ll use what little supplies are there. They’ll be fine. George, you and I will go at first light and get the porters. And then we go down. All of us. We can’t keep pushing like this.”