Above All Things (23 page)

“I said terrible things. Called him selfish. And cruel. There are so many things I need to take back. Worse than that, there are so many things I wish I’d said. I’d done.”

I lean against the window; the cool glass is soothing against my forehead. I want this day to end. All these days, until he comes home.

“Did you know he’d asked me to go to America with him? He so desperately wanted me to go. Over and over in his letters he writes how he wishes he could share with me everything he sees; that’s the regret. ‘Come with me to New York,’ he said. ‘It’ll be our adventure.’ ”

“Why didn’t you?”

I want to tell Will I should have, because that’s the truth. I did want to go, I should have gone, and yet I couldn’t. I wanted to punish him for leaving again. I couldn’t just go with him and be there when he wanted me to be, then disappear when he didn’t.

“A million reasons, and no good one. The children had already had one parent gone for so long, it didn’t seem fair to leave them with none. And because I would have been extraneous. All those people crowing for a bit of him, for his attention. I didn’t want to compete with it. None of it seemed appealing, the parties where I’d stand off to the side, the dinners talking about how wonderfully proud I must feel. And frankly, because I wanted George on my own terms for a while. Not someone else’s.”

“That’s all right, Ruth. George understands that, I do. We all do. Besides, there will be time enough for that.”

“But what if there
isn’t
?” Will doesn’t understand. It would have been so easy for me to go with George, and yet I chose to stay here, without him. “What if he doesn’t know how much I love him? I should have told him how sorry I was for all the
arguing. For not going. For not being supportive. There are so many things I want to tell him.

“I’m sick to death of saving up things to share with him. The stupid little things like the mouse I found in the wardrobe, or that Berry has taught John to stand on his head. Things too small and stupid to share in letters, where everything should be important. But you build a life together by sharing the insignificant things, the things you don’t bother telling anyone else. George and I don’t have those anymore. It can’t be done in letters over days and weeks and months apart. It just can’t.”

It is Will who has these things now. He’s the one I tell these things to. Maybe that’s what George wanted – a way to ease his guilt, his responsibility. And so he gave me Will. Or maybe that’s just more foolishness.

“He will come back, Ruth.”

I turn on him. “And what if he does, Will? And what if he isn’t done with it yet?” My voice is an ugly sneer. Every word, every sound is a betrayal. “Then what? It will keep eating at him and it will blind him. It’s what happened last time. It’s humiliating, to come second to a mountain. Don’t I deserve that kind of loyalty?”

I collapse back onto the sofa and Will’s arms are around me.

“George loves you. More than anything. You know that. That’s why you wait for him. Why you save up those things to tell him.”

“I know part of him belongs to the mountain, just as there’s a part that belongs to Geoffrey, to you. I used to content myself with knowing there was a part of him that was just mine alone. But it’s not enough. Not anymore.”

What I want to do is tell Will I won’t wait. That I’ve waited long enough. That it’s too much to have your life swept away from you, your choices made for you. It’s gone on long enough. I’d like to make him recoil, to shock him out of his insistence about who I’m supposed to be. I want him to see me. Who I
actually am. Maybe I’m not an artist like him or Cottie – but I have my own needs and desires. Once I thought I might have my own adventures. Once I thought maybe I’d go to America on my own. But I was young and even more foolish then.

Leaning against Will is like falling, being pushed from a ledge. Hovering. Waiting. His clavicle is hard against my cheekbone, his hands clasp mine. Just below his chin is a spot that he missed when he was shaving. A tiny scrape of stubble, tender near his pulse.

“I’m a horrible wife. A horrid person.”

“No.” His lips move near my temple and the touch radiates across my skin.

“Has George ever told you that story about our honeymoon? The one about our being arrested?” I pull back slightly from Will, can feel my temple cool where his breath warmed me. “It isn’t true. It never happened. None of it. He made up that other version of me. I’ve always wondered if he preferred her. She seemed braver than me, bolder.”

“It’s what he does, Ruth. We all know that. George tells us stories. And all of us are better in his stories.”

“But I’m only me.”

“I know. And he knows. And we both love you for it.”

I can feel his breath on my skin, his lips. I want to feel them on my cheek. On my closed eyelids. For a moment I imagine staying here with Will. A life with Will. Going with him to look for his birds.

I stand. “I should go. I still have flowers to pick out. And the children will be back soon. But you’ll come early this evening, yes? You promised.”

“I’ll be there.” He stands too, more slowly than me, as if hoping I’ll change my mind.

I gather my handbag and Will follows me down the stairs. At the door he blocks my way, steps close to me. He smells of
tea. For a brief flash I imagine what it would be like if he leaned down and kissed me. Imagine the taste of him. What would I do? What would change? Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. Once, things could have been so different. I try to envision another life, another me. And what I would have done. Will has smaller ambitions. He would come home every evening at the end of the day, smelling of paper and ink, and tell me about the report he’d compiled for his politician father. And I would tell him, every day, of the ordinary little things that made me smile or frown, that aren’t worth noting in a letter.

I rise up slightly on my toes and there is a rush of relief when he kisses my cheek. But it’s just another reminder that George isn’t here to kiss me. It will be weeks still before he reaches for me, before it is his lips I rise up to meet. The thought is a sharp pain behind my ribs.

When I was small I imagined love as something safe, something without sharp edges, only the sweeping, enveloping curves of romance and happiness. But it isn’t. Not now anyway. There are edges and they cut.

THE NORTH COL
23,200 FEET

S
andy crawled out of the tent at Advanced Base Camp in a quick, clumsy manoeuvre that made his head pound against his skull. For days now, any movement had increased its tempo, as if the throbbing was connected to his pulse, thudding harder every time he exerted himself doing something as simple as climbing out of the tent. He stood as still as possible, hoping the ache would subside, and finally felt the pain well up and crest, then break, and ease. Even with the discomfort receding, the world continued to swim around him. Snow came at him almost sideways in fat, heavy flakes. Everything was softened and furred, so different from the storm that had kept them pinned down at Advanced Base Camp almost two weeks ago. Still, a bad day for climbing. It was bitingly cold. Already the tip of his nose stung. He rubbed at it, then tugged at his hat, the pain in his head rising up to meet it, bringing a wave of nausea too. Swallowing the queasiness down, he turned in the direction of what he hoped was the North Col. On a clear day he could see all the way up the ridge, watch the climbers, microscopic figures, moving up or down, for hours. Today, aside from the tent behind him, he could see
no recognizable landmarks through the heavy curtain of snow.

Without the anchoring of the tent it would be impossible to tell where he was, impossible to tell in what direction safety lay. Maybe Wilson hadn’t chosen to sit there and die after all. Maybe he couldn’t find his tent only a hundred feet away, through the snow and his own blinding headache. Sandy squinted in the direction he thought George and the others had taken the previous day. The snow had long erased all trace of them.

George hadn’t even had the decency to tell him himself when they’d made the decision. It was Somervell who had climbed into the tent, pulling in a wedge of frigid air with him. Feeling ill, Sandy had bedded down right after dinner, not wanting to move or even think. Somes pulled out his stethoscope and made him sit up. He swallowed against the rising bile. It had to be bile, he hadn’t been able to eat much at dinner.

“God. Not now. Please, Somes.”

“It’s no use if I just check everyone when they’re feeling good, Sandy. But you do look seedy.”

The stethoscope was cold and his heart contracted against the bite of it.

He tried to slow his breathing. His heart. Everything came in thin, shallow gasps. Looking at his watch, Somes murmured something Sandy couldn’t make out.

“Am I not doing well?”

“No, Sandy, you’re doing fine. All of us feel terrible.” He could hear the truth of the statement in Somervell’s voice: it was raw, hoarse, hard to hear over the continual white noise of the mountain. “Can you do these for me?” Somes handed him a sheet of maths problems. He’d seen them before. Where had he seen them before? Somewhere warm, but he’d been out of breath then too. Out of breath, but feeling strong, clear headed.

Of course. In Bombay, in Darjeeling, and on the trek too; he’d found the problems easy then, but here at ABC the
numbers swam on the page. He narrowed his eyes to focus on them, willing them to stay still, and slowly worked them out. He had the sense they were the same problems from before, but he couldn’t remember the answers he had come up with so easily then. When he completed the test, he handed the sheet to Somervell, who wrote Sandy’s name and the camp number on it, then folded it away without checking it. Then he turned back to Sandy.

“We’re going tomorrow,” Somes said.

A surge of adrenaline cut through his thrumming head, his lethargy, and fluttered in his stomach. “When? Who?”

“Two teams. Teddy and George,” Somes said. “And me with Odell.”

He waited for Somervell to say his name, to tell him who he’d be climbing with. It took a minute before he realized Somes wasn’t going to say anything more. “Is it because of the tests? Did I do something wrong?”

“We need you to run support,” Somervell said, avoiding the question. “Come up a day or two behind us. Make sure that Camp Four, on the Col, is ready for us when we come down. Or that you’re ready to push up if something goes wrong. If things get dicey.” Somes paused a moment and then added, as if in consolation, “It’s an important role, Sandy.” Somes coughed into his palm, winced, then looked into his hand before wiping it on his pants.

He didn’t want to be consoled. What had been the point of all this if he wasn’t even going to get a shot at the summit? Now there would be only the painful monotony of the mountain. Melt snow. Steep tea. Fill canteens. Climb out through the waves of nausea into the snow to relieve himself and check on the others. None of it mattered. They were going on without him. “I should be going. I’m as strong as the rest of you.”

“We’ll be taking Virgil and Lopsang. You’ll follow with
whoever else you can rouse. There should be at least two porters that are in good enough shape to go higher. I’ll check them tonight. Let you know who to count on. Probably not that fellow Lapkha, he was flagging last trip up. He and everyone else should go back to Base Camp with Shebbeare. Hazard will tell them what to do from there. But we need to get people down if we can. We’ve been up here too long. That storm didn’t do us any favours. If this doesn’t work –”

Somervell coughed and grimaced some more, took a long, slow sip from his canteen and then crawled into his sleeping bag, rolling onto his side to ease his cough. “If this attempt doesn’t work, we’ll have to go back down. All of us. We can’t stay at this altitude much longer. We’re falling apart.”

That had been two days ago. Now it was just him and Shebbeare and a half-dozen porters. It wouldn’t be easy to rouse the porters and get them moving. Not in this blowing snow. If he could crawl back into his own sleeping bag and lie there, he would. But he had to go up. And Shebbeare had to go down. There weren’t enough supplies left at Camp III for them all to stay. And most of what remained he’d have to take with him to restock Camp IV for the climbers’ return. There was no margin for error. He had to get everyone moving.

When Sandy climbed into the tent, Shebbeare was staring at the porter. What was his name? That should be one of Somervell’s bloody tests: name the porters at altitude. He was the smallest man on the team, but strong. He’d pushed up to the high camps as often as any of the others had. More than Sandy had.

Lapkha. Lapkha Sherpa. That was it.

“I don’t know what to do.” Shebbeare’s voice was thin, distant. He had to force himself to focus on Shebbeare’s words, leaning in closer to hear what he was saying. “I don’t know,” Shebbeare gasped, forcing dry air over drier vocal cords. “I don’t
know what’s wrong with him.” Shebbeare hadn’t taken his eyes off Lapkha, and for the first time Sandy turned to him too. Lapkha’s lips smacked against each other, dried white spittle gathering in the cracked skin. His tongue lolled out to lick them, thick and slow. But it was his eyes that were terrible.

Lapkha’s eyes bulged like balloons out past his browbone, forcing his lids open. When he tried to blink, his eyelids only closed partway. He looked possessed.

“Jesus.” Sandy recoiled, closing his own eyes and then opening them again. Lapkha’s eyes continued to bulge at him. “What do we do?” He struggled to sound calm. Tried to feel it in his roiling stomach.

Lapkha muttered something, his voice a low, gurgled sound in his throat. Sandy reached out and touched Lapkha’s hand, hushing him, trying to calm him as he might a trapped animal. Lapkha stared past him, straining to blink, to pull his eyes back into his head.

Shebbeare said nothing and Sandy wanted to shake him. Why wasn’t he helping? As he tried to consider their options there was a sharp ice pick of pain in his own head. He winced against it and remembered George telling him about the young porter. Virgil’s nephew, was it? About how his brain had haemorrhaged, bleeding out into his skull. “It’s the pressure, maybe,” Sandy said. Lapkha’s brain was probably swelling, pressing out against his skull, out into the thin air of the mountain. “I don’t know. It’s just a guess.” Getting the porter down, George had said, was what had saved his life. “Shebbeare, you’ll have to get him down to Base Camp.”