Justin Go - The Steady Running of the Hour

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.