Above All Things (28 page)

I recoiled away from her, pulled back my hand. All I could think of was George being dead, a thought I usually kept, with effort, from ever quite surfacing. I shook my head at her. “I wouldn’t. Never,” was all I could manage. I won’t be caught unawares again.

The flower stall is in front of me – a sudden blossoming of colour, of perfume. The nodding heads of peonies and gladioli droop in the afternoon sun, funereal and sober.

Now the thought is here again.
What if he doesn’t come back?
It is as sharp and clear as if someone had said it, and I glance around for the source. No one. No one is even looking at me.

What if he doesn’t come back? What if he is already …

I can’t even think the word, and yet I see myself walking up the aisle of Reverend Mallory’s church. The same steps I took when we married, but now I am draped in black taffeta, accepting condolences instead of compliments, congratulations. There are deep-coloured blooms, their heads drooping, on the altar, in the aisles. There are the children. Will and Geoffrey. My sisters and his. His parents, so sad I cannot look at them, the reverend’s face a terrible grimace. I would like to reach out to him, but don’t. Can’t. My limbs are dream heavy. I will not cry. I do not.

I’ve written a eulogy in my head.
He wasn’t mine alone, but he was mine
.

What if people knew I sometimes imagine what would happen if you died?

“Help you with something?”

I shake the thought from my head. There will be no flowers for funerals – instead something that George would appreciate. Something delicate, to remind me of him. Like the bones in his fingers, his wrists.

“Do you have something lighter than this? Not quite so weighty. For a dinner table. Like falling snow?”

The woman glances up at me now, and I see the flicker of recognition. She is tall and bends down some to address me, to peek under my hat. I stare at the ground and see that she wears men’s boots, her skirt short enough to show them. Perhaps they’re more comfortable for standing all day than women’s shoes. Though I doubt they were designed for comfort.

“Of course, Mrs. Mallory. Something for a dinner party. Lilacs, perhaps? Picked fresh this morning.” Clearly she has never thrown a dinner party. The scent of the flowers would overpower the food. Too thick and pungent. I shake my head as she prattles on. “And how is Mr. Mallory? Have you word from him?”

I try to smile indulgently but ignore her questions. I don’t know her name. Have seen her only once, twice maybe. I don’t know what I could possibly tell her. I have no answers.

“No. I don’t think so. Too strong.”

She doesn’t really want to know anyway. Like that horrid woman by the river, like Mrs. MacEwan. Even if I were to explain exactly how I feel, they still wouldn’t understand. They can’t. And what difference could it make to them anyway? But as she shuffles her large boots through the buckets of flowers she is watching me, waiting for some tidbit. A scrounging dog.

“I have,” I finally concede. “But it’s much delayed. They are going strong.”

I don’t tell her that there may be a telegram waiting for me at home and I should hurry. That perhaps Hinks is waiting to bring word in person this evening. No, my response is automatic: I tell her the only thing that people really want to hear – that he is fine. I almost believe it myself.

I don’t want to give her anything that she can use later as gossip. I will not crack here, will not confide. This is who I am to strangers now. Stern and cold. Efficient.

“That’s wonderful.” Her head bobs among the flowers, her long blonde hair stringy across her shoulders. “We’re all of us thinking of him. My youngest boy, Jack, is just excited to bursting with what your husband is doing. Has a scrapbook. Cuts out every mention of George Mallory from the papers. These?”

She holds out a bouquet to me – tiny white flowers, dotted with dark in the middle, purple maybe, but it’s hard to tell. Their scent is light and I can’t stay any longer. “They’re perfect.”

I reach for them, but she begins to wrap them, prattling about her son wanting to climb, that he’s heard some of the fellows climb the buildings at night and that seems a right sight dangerous, don’t I think. She seems to think we are friends. “Perhaps Mr. Mallory could have a chat with him when he gets home.”

She says
when
and I think
if
. I’d like to spit it at her.
If
. If he comes home.

“We do pray for him,” she says and hands me the flowers.

Nodding my head, I hand her the coins. This anger is misplaced, that much is clear. This isn’t her fault. She probably thinks I want her good wishes, her thoughts. It’s supposed to be a great adventure.

As I move off, she says my name to someone nearby, as though she owns me.

“Mrs. George Mallory,” she says, and there is pride and sincerity.

Your name haunts me
.

RONGBUK MONASTERY
16,340 FEET

T
he monastery was a collection of low, fat buildings terraced behind the large chorten, a bulbous tower painted bright red. After almost two months in the wasteland of Everest, the monastery seemed ablaze with sound and colour, its whitewashed walls a harsh contrast with the dun landscape. George noticed his steps falling into sync with the rhythmic chanting that rose from the place, almost operatic after the wash of wind on the mountain’s slopes. Nearby, yaks lowed, and his mouth watered at the sound. There would be raw milk for his tea. At a table. Under a roof. Compared to the frigid cold of the higher slopes the air here was warm, soothing; George imagined drowsing in the late morning sun.

Behind him, at the end of the valley, Everest stood out in sharp relief against the sky. It seemed so innocuous from here. Another peak in a sea of them. The jet stream whipped across the summit, shaping what appeared to be a flag of surrender from the white snow. He knew better than that, though.

Things had fallen spectacularly to pieces. The day before last he’d lain in his tent after returning with Virgil and Lopsang, his body ached in a pulsing rhythm, his blood sludging through his
veins, thick from dehydration and starvation. When had he last eaten? It didn’t matter. Even the thought of food made his throat constrict, his stomach roil. He’d sipped at some water, his teeth aching from the cold. He tongued a back molar, swollen and angry.

Teddy had crawled into the tent. “George?” A weak croak. “I talked to Somes. We need to retreat.”

“We can’t. Not yet.” He wished his own voice sounded stronger, more compelling. “We can still make it.”

“No, we can’t. Not like this. Somes says we can’t stay here any longer.” There was a long pause. “We have to go down.”

At the time he’d assumed Teddy meant down to Base Camp, but he’d meant to take them farther down.

“It’ll do us good,” Teddy said when they had stopped temporarily at Base Camp to gather the rest of the team – Shebbeare, Hazard, Noel. “We need to regroup.”

Regroup. Did Teddy mean that, or was it just a ploy to get them back down and comfortable, ready to quit?

“This place” – Odell’s voice cut into his thoughts – “is more than two thousand years old. Can you believe it, Sandy? They’ve been praying here since long before Christ was born.”

Odell’s obsession with dates, with stones, with the tiny, infinitesimal parts that made up the mountain, that made up time, was grating on George’s last nerve. God, he’d like to punch him. That would keep him quiet for a while, anyway. He shoved his hands into his pockets, inhaled deeply. The air was dense here, wet. It flooded his lungs.

Sandy didn’t answer Odell but pushed on ahead, past him and Somervell, towards the monastery. “How’s he doing, Somes?” George asked.

“Sandy? That porter’s death has really affected him, I think. And probably the altitude. This is all new for him. You and I know what to expect, have a sense of what’s coming. The
unknown can be incredibly troubling. How about you, though?”

“I feel good, now. Best I’ve felt in weeks, to tell the truth.”

“That’s what I thought. I told you, the altitude up there was killing us. It wasn’t a metaphor, George. Seems descending cures most mountain ills and, if I’m right, we’ll likely handle the next crack better.”

At least Somes thought they would have one more attempt at it. But Teddy was a cautious one. He might have decided to put an end to it. And then? He didn’t want to think about that. His legs felt light, quick, as he pushed himself towards the monastery. He could have sprinted down if he wanted to, and part of him did. He hadn’t been indoors in almost eight weeks. Almost as long since he’d properly bathed. The smell coming off him must be disgusting – the filth of seven weeks of sweat. He was looking forward to having a bath, imagined the water cascading down his skin.

As they entered the monastery grounds, monks appeared from under shadowed overhangs to meet them, some wrapped in gold sashes, others wearing elaborate headdresses. He winced at the vibrancy of their clothing, almost lurid against his own bland tweeds and cottons, the browns of them dulled further by dirt. They bowed to one another, the monks in scarlet and saffron, the English in trousers and fedoras, templed fingers raised to their foreheads.

With Shebbeare translating, Teddy conferred with one of the monks, and George withdrew into the shadow of an overhang. He was actually craving a cigarette for the first time in weeks. Leaning against the white wall, he let the smoke fill his lungs.

George watched as Virgil and the rest of the coolies were enveloped by the monks, two of them moving to support Lopsang, whose fingers were swollen and black from frostbite. How had Teddy failed to notice that Lopsang had lost a glove
during the descent? The coolies would ask for a
puja
. They believed the blessing would purify them, cleanse them after the deaths on the mountain. If only absolution were as simple as lighting candles and saying prayers.

In the courtyard, Noel stood beside his tripod, documenting everything, chalking up their failure.

Teddy looked over to him. “Three hours. Then we’ll meet in the main hall. I’ll have food arranged.” Then he turned his attention back to speaking in his faltering Tibetan to one of the more elaborately dressed monks.

It was typical of Teddy. Give them all some time to themselves, some space to think. There was a hand at George’s elbow. He followed the monk into the depths of the monastery.

This was the first time he’d been alone in months.

Naked, George could see where his clothing had demarcated itself on his body in lines of pressure and dirt. He splashed water across his skin, cupped it to his face, watched it darken with dirt in the bowl.

Lying on his pallet, he found the gloom of his cell a relief. Even the reek of scalded butter from spent ceremonial candles, the sharp, acrid tang of dung fires, was appealing, if only because it smelled of something other than rock or snow. His body felt unmoored from the yak-hair pallet beneath him.

There were only two choices. Each of them inevitable.

If Teddy decided to put an end to this bloody thing, they could all go home. He could go back to Ruth, thousands of miles away. Too far away. He wanted her beside him. To wake up in the middle of the night and feel her pressed, naked against him, her breasts against his back, the soft sureness of her. That was all. Just the simplicity of a shared bed, the litany of her day, her desires. Surely that would still be his, even if he returned empty-handed? Maybe Ruth wouldn’t care. Maybe she did just
want him to come home. Hadn’t she said as much the last time he saw her?

He conjured his last image of her – her face pale in the winter cold. She’d kissed him goodbye on the deck of the
California
, and he watched as she walked down the gangplank. But then she stopped, turned, and climbed back towards him. She lifted her gloved palms to his face, cupping it in her hands. There was her perfume – some spring flower – and the scent of the sea already clinging to her. She stared up at him, hard and earnest, the way she did when she needed him to believe her. “I only want you to make it,” she said, measuring every word, “because you want it. If you want it, then I want it. Your heart is mine. Mine is yours. But it really doesn’t matter to me, you know. Just you matter.”

He wanted to believe her. Even then, on the gangplank. But she couldn’t have meant it. Not after everything he’d put her and the children through. “It feels as though we’ve spent more time apart than together, George,” she’d said as they battled about his return to Everest. “That’s not a marriage. I want to be with you. Isn’t that what you said you wanted?” If he came home empty-handed, all the sacrifice would have been for nothing.

“It’s for something greater, Ruth. I promise you. If I do this, then I’ll never have to go away again. We’ll be able to have a real life together. We won’t have to worry.” He’d grasped at her hands, needed her to understand. “I want you to be proud of me. I want the children to be proud.”

“But we already are,” she said, as if she couldn’t understand how he didn’t see that.

If he left now, if they abandoned the summit, what then? Then it would be back to teaching. The day in, day out of it. Ruth had lived for the past five years on the promise that he would reach the summit and then everything would change for them. Disappointing her would break his heart. And Everest
would still be there, between them. The great mass of it and the years it had consumed. For nothing. Only claiming the summit could make things right between them.

The mattress rustled under him as he rolled over. It wasn’t only Ruth who would be disappointed in him.

He could hear his father’s chiding tone already: “Time to put away childish things,” his father would say, as if giving a sermon. “It was about time, a long time ago.” He pictured his father’s shaggy head, shaking at him. “You’ll go back to teaching. That’s an honourable job. Trafford, all those boys, they didn’t die so you could gallivant around the world. We all make sacrifices. This one is yours. Show your boy how to be a man.”