Thin Air Read online

  I don’t think I’ll go any further. I’m pretty sure there’s solid ice beneath me, but today we passed a good many cornices, their wind-blown snow cresting like enormous waves over thin air. Walk too far on one of those, and it might break, and send you hurtling into oblivion.

  As I stare down the slope, that thought has a horrible fascination. If I fell …

  When Kits and I were boys, we used to pester Aunt Ruth for the story of the Matterhorn disaster. We never tired of hearing it, and being bloodthirsty little brutes, we wanted details. Whymper’s four companions had been roped together when they fell four thousand feet: striking the cliffs, then falling, then striking again. The impact stripped them naked and dismembered them. One man was identified only by his boot. Another by a rosary embedded in his jaw.

  The sun dips behind the western peaks, and in the blink of an eye, the light on the snow has died. While my back was turned, clouds have closed in, and the tents are gone. Careful, Stephen. Head in the wrong direction now, and you’re in trouble.

  Very deliberately, I turn around one hundred and eighty degrees, and head for where I think the tents are.

  Bit of a relief when they loom out of the fog. It certainly puts that business yesterday into perspective. Down at the lake, I scared myself silly. That makes me feel heartily ashamed. I saw a rock that resembled a man’s head. Why did I let that put me in a funk?

  The sheer reality of this mountain has done away with such nonsense. Charles Tennant was right to quote the Lepcha name for it: ‘the Big Stone’. That’s all Kangchenjunga is. But he wasn’t right to be frightened of it. It might possess a semblance of animation, because of the wind, and the crack of canvas, and the distant rumble of an avalanche on the Saddle – but that’s all it is, a semblance. There is no life up here. And no menace, either. The Sherpas are wrong. This mountain has no spirit, no sentience and no intent. It’s not trying to kill us. It simply is.

  Perhaps that’s what we find frightening. Being on a mountain forces us to confront the vast, unsentient reality that’s always present behind our own busy little human world, which we tuck around ourselves like a counterpane, to keep out the cold. No wonder that when we trespass into the mountains, we create phantoms. They’re easier to bear than all this lifelessness.

  Something nudges my thigh. It’s Cedric, gazing up at me with warm, uncomprehending brown eyes.

  Clumsily, with my mittened hand, I rub his ears. Time to go inside and get warm.

  I’ve had enough immensity for one day.

  11

  Cocoa was ready by the time Cedric and I piled into Garrard and Kits’ tent, and dinner was steaming on the second Primus. A tight squeeze, but at five degrees below, it felt positively balmy, a comforting fug of damp wool, paraffin, unwashed male and dog. The hiss of the Primuses was loud, and everyone was coughing; up here, sore throats are practically de rigueur.

  No one was hungry – one isn’t at altitude – but we forced down porridge with dried apricots, plum jam and shortbread. Meat didn’t appeal, only sweet things, although Cedric snuffled up a tin of sausages.

  In the lurid yellow glow we looked like tramps: black fingernails, matted hair and beards, leathery brown faces. After we’d eaten, we sat in exhausted silence, melting more snow and filling vacuum flasks for early-morning tea. Then Cotterell and I returned to our tent.

  At altitude, everything takes ages. The smallest task looms large. I’ve just spent half an hour unlacing my gaiters and taking off my boots. Thank Heavens I had the side opening of my sleeping bags sewn up; it’s much easier simply wriggling inside. Cotterell is still fumbling with the buttons on his, and from the adjacent tent, I can hear Garrard and Kits’ noisy zip-fasteners, punctuated by swearing and coughs. The Sherpas’ tent is silent as the grave; not even the sound of Nima’s flute.

  I lie with Cedric sprawled across my feet like a large, shaggy rug. He’s a distraction from Cotterell, who occasionally stops breathing for an alarmingly long time. I’m doing it too. It’s a minor symptom of mountain sickness called Cheyne–Stokes respiration. It’s unpleasant having to struggle for breath, and even more unsettling when one hears someone else doing it.

  Clicking on my electric torch, I check on Cotterell. Fast asleep, no bluish tinge around the lips. I switch off the torch, and darkness presses on my face like a hand.

  Difficulty falling asleep is another minor symptom. I keep drifting off, only to be woken by palpitations. Even turning over makes my heart pound. We’re at just under twenty thousand feet. Nearly nine thousand to go.

  Buck up, Stephen, old man. Europeans can do this. Norton reached twenty-eight thousand on Everest. And last year that fellow with the monocle flew over the summit, and lived to tell the tale – and to make a rather too relentlessly cheery film.

  I’ve pulled the drawstrings of my sleeping bags taut, with only my nose poking out. I used to hate that, but not any more. Snuggled inside two eiderdown sleeping bags, wearing my Shetland balaclava and my sheepskin motoring cap with the ear flaps tied under my chin, I’m practically deaf – and that’s fine. I don’t want to hear Cotterell’s breath cutting off. I don’t want to be aware of the immensity outside.

  * * *

  ‘Our goal for today,’ Cotterell said at breakfast, ‘is to climb past the top of the Buttress, cross the Icefall, and establish Camp Two above the Crag.’

  Crossing the Icefall was exhausting. All morning we struggled through shadowy defiles and up rope ladders strung from pinnacles, until at last we emerged on to a vast, flat expanse of glaring snow at least half a mile wide. We were desperate for a rest, but we couldn’t stop, for fear of avalanches.

  Kits has just spotted an easy route to the Crag. He says it’s scarcely an hour’s climb. I’m relieved when I realise that this is the first time I’ve thought about the Crag since breakfast.

  We’ve sent the Sherpas ahead, to cut steps on the final stretch, and we four sahibs are bringing up the rear, to do a spot of climbing on our own. Although one can’t really call it climbing; we’re simply following steps up an ice ridge the height of a ten-storey building, and the highway is marked with scarlet flags on bamboo poles. But we need them, as the weather’s closing in.

  Kits is leading, then Garrard, then me, and finally Cotterell. We’re roped but not belayed, because as Kits says, ‘Running upstairs doesn’t merit it.’

  Not quite running. The rasp of my breath is loud in my ears, and my ice-axe sends brittle shards skittering down the slope with that peculiar, shivering echo that always sounds slightly sinister. It’s hypnotic, watching them spin and shatter on the Buttress a thousand feet below.

  Much nearer, I hear Cotterell coughing, and the click of Cedric’s claws. God knows how far that hound imagines he can follow us. Once we reach Camp Two, I’ll have to send him back to Base, probably strapped in a Sherpa’s basket, to prevent an escape.

  The ridge is narrow, and on my right, that sudden drop to the Buttress keeps appearing and disappearing in the fog. Above me, Garrard and Kits are also doing a vanishing act. It’s hard to tell them apart, both in their grey Grenfell cloth climbing suits with long tapes trailing from their hoods. They look scarcely human, their faces white with Penaten, their snow glasses turning them into blank-eyed ghouls.

  Well, it would be hard to tell them apart, if it wasn’t for Kits’ inimitable style. It’s been a few years since I climbed with him, and I’d forgotten just how good he is. He’s a different man on a mountain. Gone is that puppyish boisterousness which at thirty-seven is beginning to seem a tad forced. He’s utterly focused, and he has that indefinable sixth sense which climbers call ‘mountain feel’. He moves differently, too, with a fluid, cat-like grace that Cotterell says reminds him of Mallory. I wouldn’t know, I never had the luck to see Mallory climb. But watching Kits now, I feel an unexpected surge of family pride.

  ‘It’s not the way he moves that makes him such an amazing mountaineer,’ Garrard told me quietly, after breakfast. ‘It’s the fact that you know, y
ou absolutely know, that he’ll never let you down.’

  He spoke with startling fervour, and I cast him a curious glance. His straggly blond beard only made his great beak stand out the more, and there was a glitter in his close-set eyes that made me wonder if his feelings for Kits mightn’t run deeper than friendship. If that’s true, I’m sorry for him. And I wonder if Kits knows.

  Above me, Garrard seems to have drifted off course. It looks as if he’s on the wrong side of the flags; although in this fog it’s hard to be sure.

  I’m squinting up at him when the snow beneath his right boot gives way with a crump, and takes him over the edge. He falls without a sound. No time to think. I drive in my ice-axe with all my strength, twist the rope around it to make a belay, and throw myself on the axe. A crack somewhere below, I hope to God that’s Cotterell jamming in his axe. Another above, is that Kits digging in?

  The wait can’t be more than a second, but it feels like hours. Then my axe gives a shuddering jolt as it takes Garrard’s full weight – and holds.

  All this happens in an instant. There’s a long, startled silence. The glassy clatter of falling ice. Then Garrard is clawing his way back. ‘Sorry, chaps! Sorry!’

  I’m becoming aware that my ice-axe has given me a painful bruise in the abdomen, and that Cotterell has climbed up and is clapping me on the back. ‘Good show, Dr Pearce, jolly good show!’ Now the three of us are grinning and pawing each other with relief, and Cedric is barking and trying to lick the Penaten off our faces.

  ‘What’s going on down there?’ shouts Kits, just visible through the fog. ‘I heard a crack—’

  ‘Missed my step!’ yells Garrard. ‘Bit of a near thing!’

  ‘Christ, Beak, are you all right?’ Kits’ face is sharp with concern, and Garrard flushes with pleasure. ‘Fine! Feel like a bloody fool!’

  Kits breaks into a grin. ‘Bloody fool is right! Next time, watch where you’re going!’

  ‘I know, I’m an idiot! If it wasn’t for Stephen, we’d have had it!’

  Kits’ grin freezes. ‘Well done, Stephen.’ Do I imagine that forced note? Surely he can’t be jealous?

  Before we set off again, I give Garrard a quick checking-over. The rope has given him some burns and a badly bruised midriff (he’s lucky it didn’t break his ribs), and he’s rather more shaken than he cares to admit.

  We all are. It happened so fast, and it only took one small mistake. It always does. We know that, we’ve heard the stories: the dropped mitten, the piton inadvertently hammered into rotten ice … But it’s different when it happens to you. It makes you realise as never before that on a mountain, what matters is your fellow climbers.

  Except that’s not true, what’s even more important is blind chance. If the rope between Garrard and Kits hadn’t happened to be considerably longer than that between me and Garrard, his fall would have pulled Kits off the mountain, too. Then either the rope would have snapped under the weight of two men, or my ice-axe would have given way, and we’d all have been finished.

  Everyone is relieved to have reached Camp Two. Despite our plans, it’s on the same site as Lyell’s – in other words, right under the Crag. We’ve arrived too late in the day to camp above it; and Kits’ objections to the site, which were so strong down on the grave knoll, have melted away. That’s probably because Cotterell thinks the Crag, which is a good hundred feet high, will provide shelter from avalanches; and whatever Cotterell says is good enough for Kits.

  I’m too exhausted to care. Garrard’s ‘near thing’ has put all that into perspective. Whatever I saw down at Base feels a hundred years ago. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the fellows I’m with, and the knowledge that if I have a near thing, I can count on them – as they can count on me.

  Camp Two is even windier than Camp One, and unpleasantly cramped, with only a couple of yards in front of the tents before a sudden drop to the Buttress. To my left, as I stand facing camp, the end of the Crag overhangs that zigzag crevasse I spotted from the knoll. Luckily, though, we didn’t have to cross it on our way here, but found a way around.

  How strange to be on such a narrow ledge, surrounded by all this space. At times, the clouds close in and I can’t see a thing, and that’s alarming, as I can still sense the emptiness around. Then the clouds rip apart and suddenly there’s that horrifying drop, and above me the no less horrifying heights. The shifts between seeing and not seeing are so abrupt, so silent … It’s disorientating.

  Lobsang and the other Sherpas have headed back down the highway to Camp One, but Tenrit, Cherma, Angdawa, Dorjit, Pasang and the indefatigable Nima are huddled in their tent, heating tsampa on their Primus. These people amaze me. Apart from a few bumps and bruises, they’re fighting fit.

  It’s my turn and Cotterell’s to play host in our tent, and we dine on fairly disgusting pemmican soup with powdered egg, Mint Cake and tapioca pudding laced with treacle and lime pickle (that’s my idea, for Vitamin C). We wash it down with Cotterell’s special brew: bulls-eyes dissolved in Horlick’s ‘Malted Milk’. It’s perfect for dunking Digestive biscuits, and fast becoming a favourite. God knows what it’s doing to our teeth.

  We’re still a bit overwrought after Garrard’s mishap, and all talking at once.

  ‘If the weather holds, we should be able to make the Great Shelf in two or three days …’

  ‘Cedric, out of the way …’

  ‘Frankly, I’d prefer to do without bottled oxygen, I don’t think it’s playing fair. And those masks make one feel so frightfully cut off …’

  ‘Yes, but it helped them on Everest—’

  ‘Well, Bauer thinks it’s weakening.’

  ‘He’s German,’ says Kits, ‘they think everything’s weakening.’ That makes everyone laugh.

  ‘What do you think, Dr Pearce?’ asks Cotterell.

  I smile. ‘Afraid I’m with Bauer. I wouldn’t want to rely on it. Although I’d keep a few canisters for a bracer at night.’

  After that, we veer off into the hoary old question of why one climbs. Cotterell mentions McLellan and his God. Garrard pulls his beak in embarrassment and mumbles something about John Ruskin and beauty. I say that I like the sheer pointlessness of it: the pure endeavour for endeavour’s sake.

  Kits rolls his eyes at me in affectionate exasperation, which isn’t affectionate at all. ‘For Heaven’s sake, Bodge, it’s a mountain! Why can’t you simply climb it, and to hell with why?’

  ‘But Kits, that’s exactly what I mean.’

  He flushes. ‘Well I don’t think it does to talk about these things. One ought simply to work it out for oneself, and keep quiet!’

  Garrard shoots me a wry glance, and Cotterell smoothes things over by doling out the last of the biscuits.

  Kits is miffed because Garrard’s near thing has brought me into the fold. He’d rather keep me on the outside of the cosy little coterie he’s formed with Garrard and Cotterell. It makes me wonder what he said about me before I joined them in Darjeeling.

  The talk has turned stilted, so I start checking everyone’s pulse. Unsurprisingly, given that we’re at just under twenty-two thousand feet, we’re all rather feeling it. Garrard has a touch of sciatica, Kits’ right hand is frost-nipped, and Cotterell has taken a chill in the kidneys; although he won’t admit it, he’s clearly feeling grim. He swears by his asthma cigarettes and a red flannel body belt that saw him through the trenches, but I’ll need to keep an eye on him – tactfully, as he’s sensitive about his age.

  Once the others have returned to their tent, and he’s in his sleeping bag, I improvise a hot-water bottle with spare rubber tubing from the oxygen apparatus. He says it’s grand and he’s feeling better already, but I’m not convinced.

  I’m lying on my side, facing him, with Cedric between me and the icy tent wall. The wind is flinging snow at the tent; it sounds like gravel, and there’s that never-ending bang of canvas. I’m exhausted, but too excited to sleep.

  I’m beginning to realise that I haven’t run
away from my life, I’ve found it. Studying medicine is the one thing I’ve ever done that has had nothing to do with Kits; but until now, I’ve never understood how much that means. And this is real doctoring: a million miles from pressing the plump hands of Knightsbridge matrons.

  There’s so much I want to learn, too. Why do Sherpas tolerate altitude better than Europeans? Do they adapt, or is it inherited? Why shouldn’t I be the one to find out?

  Besides, I like these people, and they could do with a good doctor. In the foothills, we passed several villages full of friendly, filthy peasants. I came across lots of inflamed eyes and chest infections, and I did what I could with those supplies I could spare, but there’s so much more I could do.

  When all this is over, why shouldn’t I stay on in India, or Nepal or Sikkim?

  * * *

  I’m awake in an instant. Something’s wrong. A sound woke me, but now it’s stopped. I’ve no idea what it was, only that I’m afraid. I’m huddled on my side with my knees drawn up to my chest. My scalp is crawling, my breathing fast and shallow. Why? What does my body know that I don’t?

  Around me, camp is silent and still. No wind, no snores from the other tents. It wasn’t a nightmare that woke me, or an avalanche; I can’t hear the rumble of débris. And I am truly awake: I can feel my fingernails digging into my palms, and the bristles of my beard as I bite my lower lip. I’m cold, so cold. A few inches in front of me, I make out Cotterell’s heaving bulk, but there’s no Cedric at my back, just freezing canvas bulging inwards with the weight of snow.

  All this flashes through my mind in a heartbeat as I stare into the dark, too frightened to move.

  Dimly, by contrast, I make out the canvas sucking in and out, and the grey snow driving past the celluloid window in the front flap at my feet. It comes to me in an icy wash of terror that I can’t hear any of it. No wind, no snapping canvas, no gravelly snow, not even Cotterell breathing. Only my own panicky breath. Reality has sucked back like a tide, leaving me trapped behind a wall of silence.