The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (59 page)

Night falls as I cook dinner in the hostel kitchen, boiling spaghetti with my scarf doubled around my neck to keep warm. I eat alone at the dining table, twirling the pasta onto a fork and looking out the window into the darkness.

Does Prichard know everything, even the things I haven’t found out yet? Could he have designed it all? Because I don’t know anyone else with the means to have faked all this, even if I can’t imagine a reason why Prichard would do it. Who else would have been a part of the deception—Mireille, Desmarais, Karin, everyone I’ve met in Europe? Did Ashley and Imogen ever exist? Surely it is beyond all notions of luck to have found those letters. Or is the past always there, only waiting for the person who truly wants to find it?

I have to decide tonight. Akureyri has a small airport and if the law firm paid for my travel I could get a flight to Reykjavík and then on to London. Otherwise I could continue east tomorrow and reach the Eastfjords within a few hours. But even if I found more evidence, by then it would be too late to reach London before the estate passes on.

I grab my coat and camera and walk into the town center, following sidewalks among shuttered businesses. I think of the small towns in Picardie, how the shops and cafés were closed but Mireille would describe what they looked like inside. I’d say how cold and lonely these towns were and Mireille would throw her cigarette in the gutter.

This is what you came here for
.
Not the lights of the boulevard Saint-Germain. This is what you wanted.

Is it
?

Everyone gets Paris. But this is just for you and me.

I reach the center of Akureyri, standing in the middle of an empty road. Over the drizzling rain I catch an echo of distant music and I follow the noise to a small bar whose single window is fogged with condensation. I snap a few pictures from the sidewalk, but I don’t go in. On the way back to the hostel the lights are in the eastern sky again, swaying like a band of satin in a breeze, the blue-green now frigid with red, the forms changing faster.

My hostel room is cold and empty. The radiator’s dial is set to zero. If I cranked the plastic knob, the room would be warm in ten minutes. But I don’t turn the knob. I zip into my sleeping bag and switch on my headlamp, lying back with one of Imogen’s letters. Past the corner of the pages I can see a little starlight.

6 June 1924

Camp VI, 26,800 feet

Mount Everest, Tibet

There was neither beginning nor end to the night. The light seemed to have vanished days before. The two climbers are not outside to see the last rays of sunset; they huddle in a tiny Meade tent at Camp VI, a heap of stones laboriously stacked to make a six-foot platform on the steep mountainside. At great cost the expedition established this camp within striking distance of the summit. Two days ago the colonel and Somervell tried to climb the mountain with bottled oxygen. They came within a thousand feet of the summit. Tomorrow morning Ashley and Price make their attempt without the gas.

Price forces down a supper of orange marmalade and condensed milk, stirring the mixture in their cooking pot. Unopened tins of meat lie in the corner of the tent, but the climbers cannot stomach anything but sweets. Price spoons the orange-white mixture past his cracked lips. He passes the pot to Ashley.

—You must eat, Price wheezes.

Ashley looks at the pot, the rim crusted with treacle and condensed milk. He shakes his head.

They light the Meta stove to brew tea, but the boiling point is too
low and after thirty minutes the liquid is lukewarm and faintly golden. They drink it down anyway, but before they have drained their mugs the dregs at the bottom are frozen.

The climbers speak very little. They cocoon under double eiderdowns bags and massage their hands and feet, hoping to rub some semblance of blood and feeling into their flesh. It is time to sleep.

The tent floor is sloped and jagged. Price is wedged in the lower pocket of the tent wall, pushed flush against the snowy canvas. Ashley is above him. Whenever Ashley’s body relaxes he rolls onto the lower climber, collapsing upon Price with indifferent exhaustion. Price jabs his elbow into Ashley’s back. Ashley moans and slowly retreats upward. The cycle continues in grim repetition.

The canvas shrieks and flails in the wind, calming slightly before rising to fever pitch. The sound is deafening, a whole screaming sky. There is a stiff thumping against the tent wall and in his half-delirium Ashley imagines that some creature pounds upon the canvas. Price leans into Ashley and yells.

—It’s ice, Price bellows. Ice blown off some cornice.

The gusts increase. Each volley is worse than the last, the snow permeating the thin flapping canvas. With every blow further powder is loosed from the roof. Ashley lowers himself deep into his sleeping bag, but its collar is frozen stiff with condensation. At times there is a lull in the wind and Ashley fantasizes that it will calm, but the squall always rises again, only gathering toward a tormenting finale.

There is a wrenching and the canvas collapses upon them. A guyline has torn loose, crumpling the tent in the wind. Price presses his body into the icy canvas, using his weight to feebly anchor the shelter. Ashley gropes for his wind suit in the darkness. He must go outside and refasten the line. The frosted tent roof is draped over his face as he feels for the opening of the gabardine jacket, stiff and dusted with snow. It takes him several minutes to pull on the jacket and trousers, Price ballasting the tent all the while. Ashley thinks the tent might be carried off the slope, but in his dim and distant mind the thought is scarcely troubling.

Grasping in the darkness, Ashley claws the ice from his boots and wedges his feet inside. He sucks his breath in horror. The boots are frozen stiff. He tugs the laces into gangly knots, then struggles to unfasten the icy canvas tapes cinching the tent’s flap. He works the ties with cramped white fingers. Finally the flap opens, a jet of snow whirling into the tent. Ashley crawls out into the maelstrom.

The mountainside is howling. The wind shrieks and punches Ashley and he does not rise from all fours, crawling across a slope of icy scree under a purple-black sky. He follows the outline of the thrashing guyline to its source. The line had been rigged to a pair of huge stones weighing hundreds of pounds. The stones have shifted. Ashley clumsily refastens the cord and doubles it back around more stones, stamping his feet as he works with numb fingers. Twice he drops the line and has to fish it from the snow by feeling alone. His toes feel pressed against blocks of ice. The simple task drags on in slow agony.

Ashley knots the line and crawls back to the tent. It takes some time to get inside, for Price has retied the tapes to keep out the snow. At last Ashley ducks into the shelter and collapses onto his sleeping bag, gasping. The cold air sears his lungs.

—Get into that bag, Price yells. You’ll freeze.

Price shakes Ashley and tries to pull the sleeping bag over him, but Ashley does not move. It is ten minutes before Price gets Ashley into the eiderdown.

—How are your hands?

—No feeling at all.

Price kneads at Ashley’s hands for some time, struggling to restore circulation before frostbite sets in. Ashley’s fingers remain numb. Price beats at the flesh desperately and Ashley turns his face in agony, groaning and biting his tongue. He knows that Price’s hands cannot be in much better shape. He does not ask.

It is an hour before they lie still in their bags again. Ashley knows he is too chilled to recover any warmth tonight and they are only going farther up the mountain in the morning. He thinks he does not sleep. The
night passes between fits of delirium and chilling lucidity, his coughing fits marking the only certain intervals. He is so cold that he burrows his face into the soaked flannel lining of his bag, but the thin air suffocates him and he comes out gasping. Ashley turns onto his side and stares at the icy canvas.

The war has been over for four months. Ashley has been in London for three days. He gives his uniforms to his tailor as scrap and buys three new suits, two in flannel and one in Cheviot tweed. After years of being clasped by a stiff tunic and trousers, the garments feel impossibly soft. On a dismal Sunday afternoon, without invitation, he takes a taxi to the house on Cavendish Square and claps the knocker. He announces himself to a maid. The father comes to the door.

—You say you knew my daughter?

—I did know her.

—What was your name again?

—Walsingham. Ashley Walsingham.

—I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of you.

Ashley takes a cardboard folio from his coat pocket. He opens it to reveal the portrait.

—Where did you get that?

—She gave it to me. Look at the inscription on the back.

—That’s quite all right.

The father’s eyes dart around the other houses of the square. He looks back at Ashley.

—You’ll understand our daughter’s absence is hard enough without strangers coming here. I don’t say you’re here to profit from it, but in any case I’m sure there’s nothing I can do for you.

The father shuts the door. Ashley claps the knocker again, but only the maid comes and Ashley quarrels with her pointlessly for several minutes. The maid slams the door. Ashley bangs the knocker again, wondering if he could knock down the door with his shoulder if he ran hard at it. He stands on the porch for another minute, flushed with anger. He returns the picture to his pocket and walks back across the square.

The next week he receives a brief letter from Eleanor suggesting they meet at the Lyon’s Corner House on Coventry Street. Ashley goes to the barber beforehand for a fresh shave. He expects the meeting to be some kind of warning, but when he enters the vast dining room and sees Eleanor stand and wave from the table in the far corner, he knows at once that he was wrong. Eleanor forces a smile as he approaches. She looks on the point of tears. They sit down.

—I’ve ordered tea, Eleanor says distractedly. I don’t suppose you’re hungry, Mr. Walsingham? If you wish something to eat, they’ve quite a menu—

—Tea will be lovely.

—I’ve never been in this Lyon’s before. It’s not so bad, really.

—Not at all.

They fall silent. Ashley watches her across the table and thinks how beautiful she is. She has the same eyes as her sister. The pot of tea arrives and Ashley pours out two cups. He does not drink from his.

—I’m so glad you’re well, Eleanor says. I’ve thought of you often. Of course, Imogen hardly spoke of anything else—

—She’s alive, isn’t she?

—Yes.

—But not in England.

—No.

—Where is she?

Eleanor folds her hands in her lap and looks away.

—I can’t say.

—Then why meet me at all?

—I was at the house when you called. I heard Papa talking to you at the door and it made me sick. I thought you deserved more. I know you do.

—Won’t you tell me where she is?

—That’s not my choice. It’s hers. She’d have told you herself if she wished you to know.

—Then it was her decision to go away. Not your father’s?

—I don’t know, Eleanor sighs. It was Imogen’s decision to stay away.

—But why all the secrecy? Why not simply go abroad like anyone else?

Eleanor takes a sip of tea.

—I suppose she wanted to start over. Perhaps she didn’t want you looking for her. But it wasn’t only you. You know Imogen can’t bear to do things normally. Papa’s tried to get her to come back many times. But she wanted a new life, and we hadn’t any choice but to go along. I can’t tell you everything—

—But you’ve already spoiled the ruse.