Coronation Everest (16 page)

Before I could go to sleep, though, I had a job to do. Leaning over in my sleeping-bag with infinite discomfort, for my legs were as stiff as ramrods and patches of sunburn on various parts of my body made movement very painful, I extracted my typewriter from a pile of clothing and propped it on my knees to write a message. This was that brief dispatch of victory I had dreamed about through the months. Oh Mr. Tiwari at Namche and Mr. Summerhayes at Katmandu! Oh you watchful radio men in Whitehall! Oh telephone operators, typists and sub-editors, readers, listeners, statesmen, generals, Presidents, Kings, Queens and Archbishops! I have a message for you!

Now then, let me see. Pull out the crumpled paper code; turn up the flickering hurricane lamp, it’s getting dark in here; paper in the typewriter, don’t bother with a carbon; prop up your legs with an old kit-bag stuffed with sweaters and socks; choose your words with a dirty broken-nailed finger; and here goes!

Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop awaiting improvement

Which being interpreted would mean:

Summit of Everest reached on May 29 by Hillary and Tenzing.

I checked it for accuracy. Everything was right. I checked it again. Everything was still right. I took it out of the typewriter and began to fold it up to place it in its envelopes: but as I did so, I thought the words over, and
recalled the wonder and delight of the occasion, and remembered that dear old Sherpa who had greeted us with his lantern, an hour or two before, when we had fallen out of the icefall.

All well!
I added to the bottom of my message.

‘Take this envelope to the Indians at Namche!’ I said at daybreak to the runner, a lanky young man with a long face, notably fast and reliable. ‘Go by yourself, be swift and silent! Talk to nobody on the way! Hand it to the Indian sahib, and then run on to Chaunrikharka. All right? Good-bye then, and good luck! Mind you are both swift and silent!’

I watched him leave the camp, and wave his farewell from the distant ridge, and disappear down the glacier. One more task I must do that morning, before I followed him with all possible speed, to meet him on the other side of Namche and make sure that all had gone well. If the Indians declined to send the message, I must go and see them myself and try to persuade them: but I would rather avoid the village, in case they asked me awkward questions about the nature of my message, or the reason for my departure from the mountain. And first I must send a message by the normal route, over the hills to Katmundu. If the radio failed me, the news would still reach London in a week, as I had promised John in the Western Cwm.

I hammered it out on my typewriter in the morning sunshine, from the notes I had scribbled at Camp IV the day before. It all came quickly and easily, so fresh and vivid was the experience, so glittering the news, and so excited was I by what I had seen. Yesterday, high in the Cwm, this excitement had been blunted a little by the altitude;
today, though my body was aching still, it all came flooding over me with a new stimulation. I banged it out fast, only occasionally delayed when the wind caught a sheet of paper and sent it flying helter-skelter across the moraine, chased by a few laughing Sherpas, frying-pans in hand. Soon it was finished, and sealing it thoroughly in three envelopes, I gave it to the last of my runners. All the others were out, somewhere in the mountains between Everest and Katmandu; but I had saved the best of them for these last dispatches.

They bowed, shook hands, plunged the dispatches into their cloaks, and left. I would meet them on the road back to the capital, when they were returning to Sola Khumbu, their job finished; but I knew them well and trusted them, and I paid them the whole of their fee in advance, together with that handsome bonus reserved for those who did it in six days. Sure enough, they performed their promise exactly, and I next saw them (only to say good-bye) on a misty grassy ridge half-way to Katmandu.

Base Camp was almost deserted. There were only Westmacott, a few Sherpas and I. Some of the other climbers might get down there that evening: the rest, conscientiously packing up some gear in the Cwm, would return the next day. I packed my various bags, threw away the rubbish, and distributed my loads among the Sherpas. The treasure chests were much lighter now, and I had lost a few of my possessions: but I had acquired a minute pair of Tibetan boots, made at Namche for my elder son and sent to me as a gift from Roberts, who had commissioned them on his way south. For the rest, my goods, like myself, were a great deal shabbier, more tattered, dirtier and more threadbare than they had been when I set out with such lively confidence from Katmandu.

I had an early lunch (boiled potatoes, chocolate, cheese and lemonade) shook hands with Mike, hoisted my rucksack on my back, and left the camp. I planned to reach Lobuje that night, and to continue the next day into the valley of the Dudh Khosi, south of Namche. In the old days this was four or five days’ march, but it was important to me to get to the other side of Namche as quickly as possible – the runner would probably hand my message to the Indians on the following morning. So we marched off down the glacier at good speed. I looked back once, not to see Everest again, but only to wave good-bye to Westmacott, still sitting in his wide hat on a packing-case in the camp, reading
The Times
. Very soon the mountain was behind us, and we were threading our way through the dozens of streams, pools and waterfalls that now, under the impact of summer, watered the moraine. I walked in a semi-daze, numbed by excitement and exertion, thinking dimly and pleasantly of far-away places.

We passed Lake Camp without a halt. Its sheet of water was still grey and forbidding, and there were a few piles of burnt sticks and ashes which showed where the hardy Sherpas had sheltered from the blizzard all those weeks before. Sonam, marching beside me, touched my shoulder and pointed behind us to the distant ridge, on the flank of Pumori, where we had sat and eaten our snow sandwiches and gazed in wonder into the Western Cwm. If we climbed there again, I thought, there would still be nothing to see on Everest; the flags on the summit would be indistinguishable, if they were not already blown down by the wind, and only the eye of faith could see John’s little crucifix in the snow. Sonam smiled gently and, for no particular reason, reached out as we walked and shook my hand.

So we came to Lobuje, a green and pleasant place. A little stream ran beside the yak-herd’s hut we slept in, and the grass outside was speckled with flowers. There were signs of recent occupation inside, for during the expedition most of the climbers had come down here, at one time or another, for a rest; and here Tom Stobart, wheezing and panting in the darkness of the hut, had weathered his attack of pneumonia. Evening fell soon after we reached the place, and we sat late around the fire eating potatoes and talking about
yetis
. By now, with the messages away, I had told all that faithful little company about the ascent of Everest, and we drank our
chang
as a libation.

I woke early next morning, and, putting in train a cup of tea and some breakfast, strolled off into a neighbouring rock gully which would have led me, had I the time or the inclination to follow it, into the neighbouring valley of the Chola Khola. It was one of those still, oppressive, grey, sinister Snowmen gullies, and I did not go far along it. No Snowmen were in sight; but when I climbed upon a little rock platform beside it, I saw away up the glacier, coming down from Everest, a solitary figure. My heart bounded. Could it be that some wretched Sherpa had sold his soul to the Press, had hastened down from the Western Cwm, and was now heading for Namche with the news? The scoundrel! Gripping my ice-axe firmly, like an irascible colonel about to deal with trespassers, I stumped heavily down the gully again, oblivious of any watching
yetis
. My goodness, I thought, whoever he is, he’s making good time. He can certainly move! And as I watched the approaching figure I realized that this was no ordinary Sherpa, moving so swiftly and gracefully down the valley, swinging and buoyant, like some unspoilt mountain creature. A wide-brimmed hat! High reindeer boots! A smile
that illuminated the glacier! An outstretched hand of greeting! Tenzing!

‘Good gracious me, Tenzing! Haven’t you walked far enough? Where in heaven’s name are you off to now, like a bat out of hell?’

He took off his big hat, smiling still, and sat down upon a rock, while my excited Sherpas crowded round. He was going to the neighbouring village of Thamey, he said, to see his aged mother, who lived there. I was astonished at his freshness and strength. He looked rather older, I thought, than the day I had met him first, down the hill at Thyangboche; rather thinner, certainly; perhaps a little more assured, as if he had some inkling of things to come; but he was as lively and springy as ever, though only two days before he had hauled himself with such appalling labour to the top of the world.

He was going to rest and wash, and then traverse a neighbouring ridge towards his village. We had breakfast together, and I asked him if, as a souvenir of our meeting there, he had a photograph that he would sign for me. He pulled from his wallet a snapshot of himself with a number of little Tibetan terriers. ‘Given me by the Dalai Lama,’ he explained with pride, ‘when I was in Lhasa with Professor Piccardi.’ Taking a pen from his pocket, he slowly wrote his signature (the only word he could write) across the bottom of it and handed it to me with a self-deprecatory grin. The last I saw of him at Lobuje, he had stripped his lean lithe body to the waist, and was soaping himself with water from a tin basin. It looked a chilly operation.

Out of the snow peaks we passed, and into the damp green alpine valley of Phalong Karpo. By now, I thought, my runner had presented my message to Mr. Tiwari, and if all went well it should go to Katmandu by the afternoon
transmission. But who could tell what happened on the way? Had he been intercepted by unscrupulous rivals? Had he let me down, and found the ex-nuns of Thyangboche, or the
chang
of Namche, so enticing that he had long ago lost that precious dispatch? Had Mr. Tiwari rebuffed him? Or seen, with a quick flash of his policeman’s eye, that the dispatch was not what it seemed to be?

Well, there were always the other runners, striding ahead of us on the road to Katmandu. That beguiling capital was now seething with rumours about Everest. Wild and wonderful reports were appearing in the Press, and half the world believed that brief mendacious message, telling of the failure of the assault, which had reached us so impertinently at the moment of reunion. So I had my moments of anxiety as I hastened through the static yaks. At Base Camp I knew nobody had preceded me down the mountain. Now there were three men ahead of me carrying in their pockets the news of success. Only one thing comforted me, as I thought of the pleasant social encounters they might undergo in the course of the journey: not one of them knew what he was carrying!

The monks greeted us kindly at Thyangboche, and we rested for a moment on a low stone wall outside the monastery. Many were the friendly and keenly inquisitive divines and Sherpas who crowded around us there, with many a sharp insidious question. My Sherpas, thoroughly aware of the need for secrecy, just for a few more days, almost overdid the thing in their exaggerated expressions of conspiracy, their faces contorted with silence, their eyes twinkling, their fingers held to their lips, their cheeks bursting with suppressed laughter and information. We passed on our way intact.

A very good thing we did, for only a short way out of Thyangboche, on the track to Namche Bazar, I ran slap-bang into Peter Jackson, on his way home to the derelict villa he had rented from the monks. As we saw each other, in the dappled shade of the juniper trees, we both stopped dead in our tracks.

‘Well, well,’ said Jackson.

‘Ho, hum!’ said I.

‘Here you are then,’ said Jackson.

‘More or less,’ said I.

‘Weather’s very pleasant, don’t you think?’

‘Not too bad.’

‘Are you – er – leaving the mountain now?’

‘Oh I’ve been up there so long, you know, I feel the need for a rest. It’ll be nice to get down in the green again for a bit.’

‘Hmm. Things going all right?’

‘Not too badly.’

‘Everybody all right?’

‘More or less.’

‘It’d be a pity if they didn’t climb it this time.’

‘A shame, a great shame. Still, there’s always the French.’

‘Well,’ said Jackson.

‘Ho ha!’ said I.

And with a shake of the hand and a twisted smile at each other we parted, he to climb the hill to Thyangboche, I to continue my journey towards the valley. I hoped, in this brief and enigmatic exchange, to give him some vague impression that the expedition was not going too well, without actually telling him any fibs; in fact, he told me afterwards, I was not successful. My guarded reference to the French, I flattered myself, would imply that Hunt’s expedition was at least preparing to leave the
mountain to next year’s challengers: but I forgot that if all these pre-monsoon assaults failed, there would certainly be another British attempt in the autumn. Jackson spotted this discrepancy in my innuendoes at once, and as he wandered back to his monastery fostered a niggling nebulous suspicion that Everest had been climbed.

But hey ho! I was past him safely; he still had no radio; and he would not hear the news, unless it spread from Tenzing’s village, for another day or two. Soon we approached the grassy ridge that stood above Namche Bazar. A few men and women stood about there, doing obscure things with bits of wool, and four or five children ran about and made faces at us. I was afraid that news of our passing would be taken down to the village, or that some sharp eyes in upstairs windows would see my little caravan as it skirted the place. There was a long expanse of green open to view from the village, and this we crossed at the double, our bags and rucksacks swaying and bumping, my odd paraphernalia rattling, the older Sherpas wheezing heavily. Nobody emerged to intercept us, and soon we were moving through thick woods to the east of Namche and scrambling down a steep leafy slope to the Dudh Khosi, cool and creamy between the trees.