Thin Air Read online

  He speaks with such hatred that I remind myself that he’s in his sixties, and, if his daughter is to be believed, far from well.

  ‘The south-west face, sir,’ I hazard. ‘Is there a problem with it?’

  ‘—Problem,’ he mutters. He darts a glance at the photograph, then recoils with a shudder. Something flickers across his face: something very like fear.

  Then it’s gone, and he’s in command of himself. ‘What problem could there possibly be,’ he rasps, ‘on the most dangerous mountain in the world? Know the Himalaya, do you? Climbed here before?’

  ‘No, sir. First time in India.’

  ‘Good God in Heaven.’ He gives me a pitying stare that makes me flush.

  I decide to throw caution to the winds and put the question I’m burning to ask. ‘Why did you never write an account of the climb yourself, sir?’

  ‘What the devil gives you the right to ask me that?’ His tone is belligerent, but his glance strays to his desk, and I catch my breath. Can it be that he has written something?

  ‘I’m sorry if I was impertinent,’ I say carefully. ‘But I’m sure you’ll understand why we’re all so fearfully curious. It’s been nearly thirty years, and you’ve never spoken of it, or written—’

  ‘Brother climbing with brother?’ he raps out. ‘Get on with him, do you?’

  The change of subject is so blatant it’s an insult, and it slams the door on further questions.

  ‘We’ve climbed together for years,’ I reply coolly.

  A disbelieving snort. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘I only met them today, we came out by different routes—’

  ‘So why’d you want to climb it?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You heard me, why?’

  ‘Does one need a reason?’

  Surprisingly, he seems to like that. The corners of his mouth turn down in a grim smile. ‘You’re aware that Norton regards it as harder than Everest?’

  ‘Yes, so I’ve read.’

  In the silence that follows, it feels as if the spectres of Norton’s ill-fated companions, Mallory and Irvine, are with us in the room.

  The silence continues. The old man seems to have forgotten about me. He is still clutching his knees and clenching his lantern jaw. ‘It’ll kill you if it can,’ he says between his teeth. ‘Oh yes. You have no idea …’

  Once more, he glances at the photograph – and recoils with that strange, convulsive shudder.

  And now I’m sure of it. He’s frightened. Charles Tennant, one of the toughest mountaineers who ever lived, is frightened of that mountain.

  ‘Hand me that box on the desk,’ he snaps, making me jump.

  ‘Um – which one, sir?’

  ‘The one with the kangling on top.’

  ‘I’m sorry, the what?’

  ‘The trumpet, damnit!’

  Removing the thigh-bone trumpet from the lid, I do as he says. He places the mahogany box on his knees, then covers it with both hands.

  My heart begins to thud. Has he been keeping me here for a reason? Appraising me? Nerving himself to tell me – what?

  Or am I letting fatigue and excitement distort my judgement?

  The silence has become intolerable, and he shows no sign of breaking it.

  I’m still holding the thigh-bone trumpet. Its mouthpiece is blackened silver, its other end studded with grimy turquoise. For something to say, I ask him what it sounds like.

  His head swings round, and he stares up at me with undisguised horror. ‘What?’ he says in a cracked voice. ‘What it – sounds like? What the devil d’you mean by that?’

  Christ, what have I said? The blood is draining from his face, and his lips are turning grey. My idle question seems to have tipped him over the edge.

  He’s rocking back and forth, and his gaze has turned inwards, into the past. ‘Every night,’ he whispers. ‘Every night, do you understand, I see them … my comrades of Kangchenjunga. I see their arms outstretched … I hear their cries for help … Yes … I shall always see them …’

  I’m casting about for water, Scotch, anything. Decanter on a bookshelf: brandy by the smell. I splash some in a tumbler and hold it to his lips, but he thrusts me aside with startling strength.

  ‘Get out!’ he shouts. ‘Get out, and don’t come back!’

  2

  Kits is seething as we share a horse-tonga back to Darjeeling.

  ‘What were you doing, blundering in on Captain Tennant? And why the hell didn’t you fetch me?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have let me,’ I reply. ‘He’s rather – imperious.’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t know, would I, since I’ve never met him, and I’m hardly likely to now! Christ, Stephen, what did you say to him?’

  ‘Nothing. He worked himself into a state, talking about the past. Why didn’t you tell me we’ll be following Lyell’s route?’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d have gathered that by now!’

  How? I want to retort. We only saw each other once before he left for Bombay. I was having a dreadful time with Clare’s people, and he was in a fix because he needed a medic. The question of routes never came up.

  We’re sitting side by side in the tonga, facing backwards. Kits is staring rigidly at the road. His eyes are glassy with rage, and the corners of his mouth are pulled down, like a bulldog’s. He used to do that when we were boys, and he was about to beat me up.

  I’m tempted to tell him that Old Man Tennant thinks he’s an idiot for choosing the south-west face; but I’ve promised myself we won’t fight. Hang it all, we’re grown men.

  The road is a dark, receding tunnel of dripping deodars and creaking bamboo. The rain has held off, but it’s cold, and around us the clouds are dense and ceaselessly moving: a visitation from another world.

  I feel shaken and guilty about the old man, although for the life of me, I can’t think why an idle question about some grubby native curio should have tipped him over the edge.

  I keep seeing Millicent Tennant administering his ‘drops’, and despatching me with a basilisk stare that declared my medical expertise very much de trop. I keep seeing the terror in the old man’s eyes.

  I find that terror profoundly shocking. The idea that a white man – a sahib – should be frightened of a mountain.

  Of course, for any climber, there’s always an element of fear. Fear, desire, awe, respect, even love. But not fear to the exclusion of all else. And Tennant wasn’t deranged. I’m sure of that. So why?

  There’s something else, too. I’ve a nagging suspicion that he has written some kind of account of the expedition.

  Well, that settles it. I shan’t say a word of this to Kits. God knows what he’d do if he found out that I’ve blown our chances of getting hold of it.

  ‘So why are we following Lyell?’ I ask. ‘I can’t say I like the idea, we’ll be constantly reminded of disaster.’

  ‘Why must you always analyse? I hope you’re not going to go in for that on the expedition, the other chaps won’t like it at all!’

  ‘Noted. So why follow Lyell?’

  ‘Because it’s the best route!’

  ‘Is that all there is to it?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I say drily. ‘Following your hero’s footsteps, finishing what he began …’

  ‘Yes, go on, mock. It’s what you do best, isn’t it?’

  I hold up my hands.

  But I know my brother. A couple of years ago, someone came upon Irvine’s ice-axe on Everest’s north-west ridge, and Kits sulked for weeks. Why wasn’t he the one to find it and get the glory? That’s what he’s after now: relics of the Lyell expedition; and a chance to complete what the great man began, by being the first in the world to conquer an eight-thousand-metre peak – with the added lustre of planting the Union Jack on the summit, and beating the bloody Germans.

  I wish I hadn’t let the old man unsettle me. Still, I suppose it’s a lesson. I must remember that what
ever happened to him was nearly thirty years ago. I mustn’t let his fear taint my mountain. I mustn’t let it infect me.

  So in a way, losing my books was a stroke of luck. And I’m damned if I’ll borrow any of Kits’. I shan’t read a word about the Lyell expedition, I don’t want to know what happened to them. It’s in the past. It has nothing to do with us.

  I catch a smell of charcoal and manure, and a distant clamour of dogs: we’re approaching Darjeeling.

  Without turning my head, I say, ‘I hear there’s rather a jolly bazaar. Have you been?’

  Kits snorts. ‘Usual native rubbish. I picked up a few trinkets that’ll amuse Dorothy and the boys.’

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘Harry’s homesick, but he’ll get over it. Ronnie’ll soon be Captain of the First Eleven.’ His lip curls. ‘Chip off the old block. Dorothy’s run off her feet, of course. Village fête, and so on. Busy time on the estate.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Crows fly up with a clatter of wings from something small and dead at the side of the road.

  I say to Kits: ‘I think Clare’s father is going to sue me for breach of promise.’

  He flicks me an irritable glance, then goes back to scowling at the road.

  He always does this. Either we talk about him and his family, or climbing, or we don’t talk at all.

  ‘Did Captain Tennant say anything else about the route?’ he says.

  I hesitate. ‘Only that he doesn’t think we’ll do it.’

  He turns his head. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I asked, but he wouldn’t say.’

  In places, the whitewashed stones marking the roadside are spattered with dark-red blotches that look like blood. I ask Kits what they are and he says it’s pan. At my blank expression, he rolls his eyes. ‘Betel juice! The natives chew it, then spit it out. Good Lord, Stephen, what were you doing all those weeks on the ship? I threw you a lifeline when I asked you to come, don’t you forget it! I’d have thought the least you could do would be to familiarise yourself with where you’re bloody well going!’

  ‘I meant to, but the porters lost my books.’

  ‘Christ, that is so like you!’

  I turn to him. ‘Kits. Pax.’

  He stares moodily ahead, then cuffs me hard on the ear. ‘Sometimes, little brother, you are the absolute end!’

  * * *

  Astonishing what a good dinner and a few whiskies and soda can do for a man. My unease about Charles Tennant has quite worn off, and I’ve smoothed Kits’ ruffled feathers by asking him all about his new billiard room, and how young Ronnie acquitted himself on his first hunt.

  We’ve settled ourselves in the smoking room of the Planters’ Club, and are awaiting our leader, Major Cotterell, who has convened a ‘council of war’. None of us has an earthly what it’s about.

  We’ve drawn our easy chairs close to the fire, and behind us, large palms in brass pots lend a pleasing air of privacy. As I survey my fellow sahibs through a haze of cigar smoke, I feel less like the new boy at school.

  McLellan is a plump young Scot with carroty hair and freckles; I’ll have to keep an eye on him for sunburn. He’s on extended leave from a regiment in the Punjab, and strikes me as the officious type, so he’s well suited to being in charge of porters and supplies. He’s fluent in Nepalese and what he calls ‘bazaar Hindi’, and is the only one of us who’s done any climbing in the Himalaya. He’s also a shade off in the vowels, and seems very eager to fit in.

  I know Garrard slightly from Winchester, where he was Kits’ best friend. He’ll be handling communications: press despatches, photography and weather reports wirelessed from Darjeeling. An atheist, a snob and a parlour Socialist, he’s flamboyantly ugly, with thinning fair hair, brown-ringed eyes set too close together, and an enormous hooked nose. Although clever and bookish, he’s always been devoted to Kits; it’s one of those ill-assorted friendships that simply works. Over dinner, I asked him why he had joined the expedition, and he flushed. ‘Why, because Kits asked. Simple as that.’

  At Winchester, everyone called him ‘Beak’, for obvious reasons, but the three of us have agreed to dispense with nicknames, so as not to exclude the others. Thus Garrard will be Garrard, and I’m no longer ‘Bodge’. Thank God. I’ve hated that ever since Kits made it up on my first day at school.

  Kits, of course, remains Kits. No one’s called him Christopher since he was born. As our best gun, he’ll provide us with game on the trek to the mountain; and since he’s also our finest climber, he’ll give us our best shot at the summit.

  Major Cotterell strides in, and we spring to our feet. He motions us down, then takes up position on the rug in front of the fire.

  ‘Matter of some delicacy,’ he says, frowning as he crams tobacco in his briar pipe. ‘I’ve had a note from Captain Tennant, urging us in the strongest terms not to follow their route up the south-west face.’

  There’s a stunned silence.

  I surprise myself by speaking first. ‘I’m aware that I don’t know as much as the rest of you, but … if we tackled the north face instead, wouldn’t that mean an entirely different route, even to get there?’

  ‘Well of course it would!’ barks McLellan in a tone that makes me blink. ‘I’d have to find whole new teams of coolies and yak-wallahs, it’s simply not on!’

  ‘Why ever does he want us to alter our plans?’ says Garrard, pulling his great beak in a gesture I remember from school.

  ‘He doesn’t say.’ Cotterell turns to me. ‘Did he mention anything to you, Dr Pearce?’

  ‘Only that he didn’t think we’d succeed, sir; not that we shouldn’t try.’

  ‘Is it possible that he’s right?’ muses Garrard. ‘I mean, until now, most chaps have attempted the north face—’

  ‘How can you say that?’ explodes Kits. ‘We’ve been over this a million times, Lyell’s is the best route!’

  Garrard flicks him an apologetic glance. ‘Kits, I was merely wondering. Smythe preferred the north face. And there are those who say that the south-west is unclimbable.’

  ‘Who says?’ retorts Kits.

  ‘Well, Bauer.’

  ‘He’s German,’ sneers Kits. ‘This is our chance to see that an Englishman’s first to the top!’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ says Cotterell. He’s the only one of us old enough to have fought in the War. I’d imagine that for him, beating the Hun is personal.

  ‘They say Bauer’s planning to give it another shot next year,’ adds Kits. ‘Wouldn’t you love to be there, sir, when he learns that we’ve pipped him to the post?’

  Cotterell chuckles. ‘And yet, my boy … Perhaps Captain Tennant is warning us off because he knows from bitter experience that the south-west face can’t be done.’

  ‘Oh, sir—’

  ‘Or perhaps,’ the Major goes on, ‘and I know this sounds the most fearful rot, but perhaps he feels that that route sort of – “belongs” to Lyell? Oughtn’t we at least to consider respecting his wishes?’

  McLellan’s freckled face goes pink. ‘Really, sir, I can’t see why we’re even discussing this, there isn’t time! In seven weeks the Monsoon will turn that mountain into a deathtrap—’

  ‘You mean, more of a deathtrap,’ grins Garrard.

  The Scotsman ignores that. ‘We have to be off it by the end of May, sir, we can’t go in for last-minute changes!’

  This seems unanswerable to me. I’m curious to see what Major Cotterell will decide.

  He is every boy’s ideal of a mountaineer: tall, well-built, with a handsome leonine head silvering at the temples, and grey eyes that a certain type of journalist would call ‘piercing’. At well over forty, he’s the oldest of us by several years, and his military experience makes him admirably suited to the role of expedition leader. But there’s a band of flaky skin at his hairline, and I wonder if he’s a worrier.

  ‘Well,’ he says, stroking his moustache. ‘I want this to be a democratic venture, so I shall call for a show of hand
s.’

  Before I know what’s happened, he and Garrard have voted in favour of changing the route, Kits and McLellan against, and everyone’s looking at me. Hell, I’ve got the casting vote.

  Logs hiss in the hearth, and outside, some night bird utters an alien shriek. If I believed in omens, I’d say it was warning us against following Lyell. Omens or not, I hate the idea. We’d be climbing in dead men’s footsteps.

  However. Kits is glowering at me. I’m only too aware that behind his stolid, Just William features, there’s a streak of ruthlessness a mile wide. You’re here because of me, little brother, so you’d bloody well better back me up.

  There’s something else, too. Something that has nothing to do with Kits. Charles Tennant didn’t think we could do this. I want to prove him wrong.

  ‘Come on, Stephen,’ says Kits between his teeth. ‘What’s it to be?’

  It’s so quiet, you can almost hear the smoke rise.

  I think of that photograph in Tennant’s study: Kangchenjunga, floating in majesty above the clouds.

  ‘I don’t see that we have a choice,’ I say at last. ‘It’s either the south-west face, or we scratch the whole show. So let’s stick to our guns. The south-west face it is.’

  3

  I know that I’m dreaming, but it doesn’t help. I’m holding the snow globe. I’ve just shaken it, and the blizzard is smothering the tiny cottage and the miniature man in the porch.

  I am that man. I am trapped in the white silence – and yet I see myself from outside. Snow up to my thighs, thick flakes clogging eyes and nose and mouth. Now my face is beginning to change. I’m turning into Kits …

  I wake with a jolt. I burrow into my pillow with a groan.

  I am so sick of that bloody dream. Every night for two months. You’d have thought my unconscious mind could come up with something a little less thumpingly obvious. ‘Snow globe’ equals ‘trapped in a life I don’t want’. And that transformation into Kits … I understand, now can we stop?

  Things had been going swimmingly in London: plum job in Harley Street, girlfriend the senior partner’s daughter. Then within a week, I found myself engaged, and Clare’s papa was offering me a junior partnership. I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong, but I couldn’t work out what.