9
Tom
read the mail several times from start to finish, aware his mouth was dry and
his heart was starting to thud exactly as it had in the ice fall the night he
climbed down with Jake with altitude sickness. Then too fast for accuracy and
with several impatient stops to correct his typing he shot the message into the
machine and hit send.
Subject:
Re: Well just to cheer you up
Dale, what’s
happening with Flynn and the others? How are they handling this? Are you able
to let them handle it?
Tom
And I’m a bloody hypocrite because in
your position I wouldn’t. I know what you should do, I know they need to know
and deal with this for you and that is what will work for both of us, always.
But…
The
instincts were strong to grab Jake, show him the mail and have him get the
satellite phone and call Flynn right now, whatever the hell time it was in
Wyoming; to deal with the risk fast because if Dale was managing to conceal
this in the way Tom knew he himself would be doing in Dale’s position, Flynn
needed to be tipped off immediately. In brat terms this was a major SOS. Huge.
And
yet Dale had confided in him… and Tom couldn’t bring himself to betray that
loyalty until he knew more and had more of an idea of how unsafe Dale really
was. In their weird and wonderful world there were so many different kinds of
safety aside from the basic physical, and so few people would understand how.
Dale
said it. He said it. Plainly. To a
relative stranger. He didn’t understand it, which he admitted freely, but he
tried to, and Tom sat for a moment more in front of the laptop in the
communications tent, torn between respect and a great deal of concern, and a
whole lot of other searing emotion he couldn’t put a name to which filled his
throat so tight that swallowing was difficult. His hands were shaking on the
keyboard. He had only a moment more and he knew it; Jake was barely letting him
out of his sight, he had gone to the mess tent to collect breakfast for them
both. It was another rest day, life here swung between major feats of exertion
and the several days your body needed to recover from it. The clients were
going to be flat out after yesterday’s climb. Somehow he shut the laptop down
and by the time Jake appeared with a dish in his hands, the screen, thank God,
was safely blanking.
“Any
mail?” Jake offered him the dish as Tom got up. Lentil stew and rice; it was
one of the staple dishes the Sherpa cook made for his own men, quite a number
of them were extremely good cooks and spent the winter working in the tea
houses in the area as well as on the smallholdings and farms their families
ran. The cook had been delighted that Tom and Jake had defected entirely to his
home cooking and not the high carb American diet he was producing for the
clients, and what he made was excellent and far more to both of their tastes
being simple, spicy and fresh food that was much better digested and suited to
the altitude and the physical work here.
“Just
Dale.” Tom walked with him back towards their tent, the stew in his hand and
the smell of it today was turning his stomach. And we’re not sharing details until I hear back from him.
“I’ll
ring again in a day or two and see if they’ve got Gerry down off the ceiling
yet.” Jake helped himself over Tom’s shoulder to a piece of unidentified
vegetable with his fingers, tossed it up and caught it in his mouth as he walked.
“He’s going to be much better there than
sweating it out in Seattle.” Tom said abruptly. Jake looked across at him,
eyebrow raised. Tom grimaced at him.
“Yeah
don’t give me that look, it’s not like I don’t get it.”
Jake
took his arm, turning him round, and Tom shoved him off.
“What?”
“Looking
to see who had a gun in your back.”
“You’re
not funny.”
They
sprawled out and ate on the roll mat in the doorway of their tent in the
growing sun and heat of the morning. Or Jake ate, and Tom tried to. After which
Jake leaned over to his rucksack and to Tom’s dismay pulled out the martinet.
“Let’s
get the morning chill out session sorted.”
Arguing
didn’t help or delay things much at all; Jake just got his hand and less pulled
than just towed, gently but with the subtlety of a Sherman tank until Tom ended
up going where he wanted. He was developing a technique with the damned thing
that made Tom hate it with a passion, all eight strands of it, and it wasn’t
the same at all as the kind of spanking he associated with being in trouble. It
didn’t draw tears, it didn’t come with the same kind of emotional catharsis he
associated with those times, it just made him bloody wriggle like an eel and
yelp and make the kind of fuss he cringed to think about, and it did cause a
catharsis all right. Just a different one. Of having to let everything else go
because he couldn’t do all of that and this, he couldn’t feel that and this. It
meant being right here, immediately now, because it wasn’t just the damn
martinet it was Jake, right there, in his... face, kind of, and insisting in a
very Jake way of him letting his grip slip on the tension and breathing and
this morning – yeah this morning, however much he hated to admit it, he bloody
needed it.
In
those moments there was nothing at all but Jake. As if there was no one else at
all in base camp, or in Nepal. The rest of the world went right away, even Dale
and that bloody mail and the several tons of rusty iron apparently occupying
his chest, and it was like all that weight being shifted off him willing or
not. It was very difficult while laying pants down across his lap afterwards,
just about trying to breathe instead of gasp with his backside feeling like it
had hosted a nest of bees, to care about anything much except whatever Jake was
thinking, what he might do next, the solid pressure of his thighs, the warmth
of his hand and the sound of his breathing; nothing else mattered next to that.
Eventually
Jake’s hand ran over his lower back, patting mildly.
“Think
that’ll hold you for a few hours?”
“You
total sod.” Tom said to the roll mat without very much conviction, and when he
could find the breath. “This is ridiculous, you can’t do this every bloody
day.”
“Watch
me.” Jake said cheerfully, helping him up. Which was a shock because Jake never
sounded serious about anything and never threatened idly. They lay side by
side, Tom sprawled face down beside Jake and watching the tranquility of the
mountains in the distance. They were faced away from the rest of base camp: the
bustle and woolly hats and sunglasses and bright jackets that made it look like
a mall in a ski resort. Eventually Jake put out a lazy hand to rummage through
the crate of books, pulling up titles to find one he hadn’t read yet.
“Want
one of these?”
Tom
shook his head. He was clinging to the feeling of subdued peacefulness, of
wanting to be as close to Jake as possible with all his strength and to not
think. At all. It was pure cowardice and yet he clung on. Jake stretched out
again beside him on his side, close enough that he pressed the whole length of
Tom, one heavy arm draped over his hip and his head above Tom’s like a human
shield. “What do you want to read right now?”
“Faust.”
Tom said it without thinking. The longing had been on his mind a few days.
“Paradise Lost. The Morte D’Arthur.”
“Angels
and demons and quests.” Jake mused, running a hand slowly up and down his hip. “I love those who yearn for the impossible.”
His
rich voice made the most mundane of quotes into something magical. Musical,
something you could hear afresh and reflect on for hours.
“We must always change, renew,
rejuvenate ourselves, lest we harden.” Tom quoted automatically from the same
author as it rose to his mind. Jake, head leaning on his hand, quirked an
eyebrow at him.
“Are
you feeling hardened?”
There
was an almighty crash that happened almost the instant Jake spoke; like a train
wreck taking place a few hundred feet away. Tom was on his feet a split second
later, aware that Jake, who had been behind him, was now half a step in front
of him, his shoulder full in front of Tom’s and blocking him. There was nothing
visible near base camp. Just about four hundred people in the camp frozen to
the spot, looking towards the icefall.
“It
wasn’t in the fall.” Jake listened carefully to the echoes dying away. “That
was Nuptse.”
No
one would be affected by it then. They were used to the thundering and crashes
and sudden cracks the glacier made, particularly at night; they were a steady
backdrop sound track to base camp. But the big ones were shocking.
Dorje
was on his knees some way off by the edge of the mess tent, re fixing the
screws that held the tent to the ice. All the tents needed re setting every
couple of days as the glacier moved under them; Tom had re done theirs
yesterday evening. He had paused to listen to the crash and as it died away, he
glanced back to Tom and smiled.
“Big
fall. Avalanche. Someone sing too loud again.”
There
had been in the rumours passing around base camp yesterday, that a group from
the Taiwanese expedition had been enjoying singing vigorously in the ice fall
to warm themselves while they took a few moments’ break, until a more
experienced climber pointed out to them the extreme unwisdom of it.
John,
Bart and Max had emerged from the mess tent looking more interested than
concerned, and Bart had a camera in hand. Jake went across to them, he’d never
leave anyone even potentially anxious or in danger of wandering closer for a
better look, and Tom followed, pausing by Dorje to take the rope and brace it
for him while Dorje fixed the ice screw.
“Other
expedition Sherpas talk about you.” Dorje told him, checking the screw and
moving on to the next. “The climber you cut out of ice. They say quiet man, not
say much but do much. Look like this at other climbers,” He pulled a grim
expression which was so odd on his usually cheerful face that Tom smiled in
spite of himself, “And they get out of way and be quiet. They happy you did
work right with them. Respect for mountain. Respect for people. I say you eat
our food, you climb ok, you might make good Sherpa one day.”
Tom
snorted, a brief laugh that was as much surprise as amusement. Dorje was
unusual for a Sherpa man around here, there were a number of things Tom
observed that to him said a great deal. The other Sherpa in their expedition
liked Dorje, he was welcome among them, and Tom had heard them call him ‘Ang
Dorje’ among themselves; the ‘Ang’ part used in Sherpa names was often a
diminutive; it meant ‘small one’ or ‘beloved’, a pet name from the people and
community in which he had grown up. But Dorje slept alone in his own tent
unlike any of the others, and they accepted that. He acted more alone than the
other Sherpa ever did who were a close knit group used to close social and
working bonds, and his sense of humour – it was gentle, but it was extremely
acute and it spoke to Tom of a number of things that set this man slightly
apart in his community in the way that only another who’d experienced being
apart in that way would recognise.
“You
were a monk.” Tom said to him abruptly, hoping it wasn’t rude to ask but unable
not to. Dorje glanced up and smiled at him, a relaxed and easy smile that
didn’t fit with the power with which his hands were bolting the ice screws
down. He was short, but the thin, wiry muscle in his shoulders and trunk Tom
could only envy.
“Yes.”
“Do
you know of any tales of here, the spirits on the mountain?”
Dorje
nodded, fixing another rope. “My grandparents told me many. When they were
young the Lama in their village say never go to mountains. Spirits and demons
in mountains, you go there and not come back. Very bad. But when I young in
monastery, I learn the Sherpa people very long ago walked from their homeland
to look for Shangri La, and they stop here. Hard land, but they stop here.
Spirits, yes. Not demons. Are there spirits in your stories Tom?”
Angels
and Demons, oh yes, aplenty. Jake was heading back towards them and Tom didn’t
answer; Jake had soaked himself in the same literature Tom loved and he picked
up too fast on hints through even the most obscure quotes; he’d already given
Jake uncomfortably too much information.
You hypocrite, you’re telling Dale to do
one thing while doing another. You know damn well what you’d advise yourself to
do. His stomach clenched like a fist at the thought.
He
spent time that morning discreetly checking and re checking the email inbox on
the laptop while Jake read. Or at least he thought it was discreet. When, to
his relief the mail finally hit the box, Jake looked with him and turned over
to see the screen.
“This
is the one you’ve been waiting for?”
Damnit.
Tom
read with him, scanning the lines rapidly and with concern.
From:
AdenD@horizon.com
Subject:
Re: Re: Well just to cheer you up
>>What’s
happening with Flynn and the others? How are they handling this?
Flynn tends to
make the world very small and straightforward when things are rough. It’s like
being able to find the stillness to think about ‘right now’ instead of
‘everything’. There’s so much conviction in his ‘I’m the only thing you need to
be paying attention to’ attitude that I find myself believing him. Paul is Paul
only more so, he’s been amazing. Riley calls this standard brat stuff and is
completely unstressed about it – to quote him, my work scares him; this is
normal. Jasper is also very unfreaked by it. This kind of thing figures pretty
strongly in his philosophy, it’s something you have a responsibility to do and
it’s good, it’s not something to worry about. I’m stunned at how patient
they’re being with this mess. It doesn’t matter. They tell me that over and
over again, it doesn’t matter, not to stress about it, it’s all a part of
getting where we want to go. In their perspective the occasional disasters are
just hiccups, nothing more significant. Gerry says the same thing, that in mid
disaster he’s always convinced this time the world is ending and he finds
himself avoiding Ash’s conviction that no it isn’t, this is fine, this is just
a problem we can plan for and deal with. It’s that ability to keep your eyes on
the big picture, not get lost in the moment. I do that all too easily.
Gerry has joined
Riley in agreeing mine is the total reversal of their experience of being
stressed out or in trouble, they both swear their chores quadruple if they’re
grounded. I use any kind of activity or distraction to zone out and get further
away, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to break the habit of. Flynn and the
others work in a similar way with clients, starting them out in a very small
structured routine and enlarging it gradually. There’s a sort of pyramid of
functionality, starting with eating well, sleeping well and being able to be
calm, and working upwards, in line with criteria for being allowed to leave the
house, leave the yard, work with someone, work alone, etc. A few times I’ve
reached the absolute bottom of the pyramid and been sent to bed for a few hours
to calm down, which also helps me keep in mind that calming myself down is
something I have to actively focus on and accept help with if I want more rope.
Watching the client and joining in monitoring his level of functionality has
given me a clearer understanding of my own experience of it. I never would have
tried reducing stimulation or deliberately managing my stress in this way when
I was at work or put any effort into figuring out why I felt and why, I just
used more and more distraction to block it out, sublimated it, and I can see
now why bad became worse. I don’t ever remember anyone teaching me ‘this is how
to calm yourself down’. ‘This is how to figure out what your problem is and
deal with it when you’re in a state’. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention on
the day in school they taught everyone else.
I suspect Gerry
is also on what Riley refers to as ‘a tight leash’, but is looking calmer and
more relaxed than he was when he first arrived, certainly he’s smiling far
more. I can see things being kept very deliberately calm in the house right
now, there’s a team effort going on. Ash is working Gerry hard, they’ve been
out with Flynn and Riley every day, and Ri is getting worked just as hard from
what he says, and from the chores he and Flynn are dealing with before he comes
in for dinner. Luath is going out with them too, and I suspect he’s pushing
himself as much as Ash is pushing Gerry, and the same way Jasper pushes the
client. Exercise, organisation, things to do, and tired enough to be relaxed
and to sleep well: it’s a plan I know. There was something in one of Flynn’s
papers on neurological regulation, sensory organisation and activation of the
frontal lobe via exercise and physical tasks, I need to get his papers out and
re read them more thoroughly. I distinctly remember thinking when I first came
to the ranch that they had hit on an extremely useful excuse for a free source
of labour.
>>Are you
able to let them handle it?
Yes. They’re
making it as easy as possible, we’re talking more about it than is at all
comfortable, and now of course they’re taking no crap about it either, which
was the aim but sometimes is easier to cope with than others. Breakfast time
didn’t go too well a couple of days ago and Paul and Flynn both walked with me
out as far as the pasture and out of earshot of the house, where I tried to
explain some of it, which didn’t go well, and Paul as soon as he got the gist,
went straight to what I actually meant. Try standing in a wet pasture in the
rain at seven am in the morning, politely stammering out that it’s somewhat
discomfiting having a crisis in front of witnesses with Paul interpreting by
yelling at the top of his voice with dramatic emphasis. It’s difficult to stay
stressed once someone’s made you laugh like that, and hard to feel like an
idiot when Paul’s cheerfully acting a far bigger one. The morning did get
better.
How are you
handling anything with Jake when you’re under canvas and around other people
all the time? That’s pure curiosity and an extremely personal question, I don’t
expect an answer, and Riley has said before that you and Jake are often with or
around teams of people you’re guiding, so this is probably something you’re
very used to. I’m not sure on reflection how I would cope being anywhere with
the others where they weren’t free to react as they usually do. I rely on it
too much, especially at times when I’m not very together. But then this is
still fairly new to me, and I live in a household where there’s no time or
activity off limits. No one’s worried about what the client hears or sees
unless things get fully physical, as he’s participating in the same standards
and values, just in a different role and to a different degree to me and to
Riley.
Where are you on
the mountain? I know a climb up to camp three was next on the schedule.
Thinking of you
Dale.
He does it. It scares the hell out of
him but he does it anyway. He’s barely known for a year what this even is, and
he’s light years ahead of me now. I do none of this. I won’t even try. Even
here, I won’t try. Not really.
The
shame was so powerful it was choking. And yet other parts of what Dale so
honestly explained grabbed him by the throat with emotions too peculiar to
name.
“He’s
telling you a lot, isn’t he?” Jake said mildly as he finished reading. Tom
didn’t answer for a moment, struggling to take his eyes off paragraph four
since it was gripping him with a really horrible kind of morbid fascination in
amongst all the rest of the turmoil.
“Yeah.
If you ever, ever dare even try
that…”
“What,
shouting with you in pastures?” Jake gave him a brief, affectionate grin. “You
look like you’re finding it far too interesting a thought. Are you happy he’s
ok or do you want me to phone Flynn?”
“I
wouldn’t drop him in it like that.”
“You
would if you thought he was in trouble.” Jake leaned his chin on Tom’s shoulder
to read through again, his hand slipping companionably into Tom’s hip pocket.
“It sounds to me like they’re well aware of what’s going on.”
Tom
dug an acute elbow into his ribs as Jake’s hand wandered. “Stop it.”
“I
wasn’t built to be celibate.”
“Me
either. Get off.” Tom rolled over and lay on his back next to him, shoulder
hard against Jake’s. Jake propped his head on his hand, looking down at him.
His St George’s medal hung a little way out from the hollow of his throat, a
tiny wrought silver thing that Tom knew very well from daily sight of it. There
was nothing more fitting that Jake could be wearing. Shaggy faced, scruffy, his
golden hair on end, against the backdrop of the cold, bright morning and the
sharp colour of the tent skin he was beautiful. A shining man, vibrantly alive
in every inch of his skin as he was in everything he did, from pitching a tent
to climbing a rope to reading a book, to that lazy, sweet smile of his he was
directing down into Tom’s eyes right now. A golden man. Tom put a hand out to
roughly ruffle his hair.
“Find
something to do, you’re only reading my mail because you’re bored.”
“So
we’re here, celibate, eating lentils, freezing our balls off, what are we
supposed to do all day?”
“Read.
Meditate.” Tom grabbed the nearest book from the crate and whapped him fairly
gently over the head with it. “Improve your filthy mind. This isn’t supposed to
be easy.”
Jake
laughed but grabbed the book before he got whapped again. “Hike with me down to
Tengboche.”
“That’s
bloody miles.”
“So?”
Tom
looked at him, for a moment seriously torn. Jake gave him a smile that bordered
on the wicked, raising his eyebrows. Tom shook his head and sat up, grabbing to
collect his sleeping bag.
“Rest
days are supposed to be about resting. Climbing this mountain is supposed to be
about concentration, preparation, not heading down into the valley every five
minutes because you need a shag.”
“I’m
not complicated.” Jake got lazily to his feet, starting to pack his rucksack.
“I’ll tell Bill we’re off.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It
was a two-day hike down to Tengboche. The trail down was getting busier with
expeditions and yak trains heading up the valley with equipment towards base
camp as they came down, and they spent two days walking with the increased
speed of the increasingly acclimatised, down through the barren, bare and harsh
landscape to spend the night at the spot where they’d slept last time, and then
in the morning down further through the valley. Past the Mani prayer stones,
through the villages and their small shrines, and into the deeper valley which
now, a few weeks after they’d last been here, had its hill slopes alive with
blossoming rhododendrons everywhere, their large, exotic blooms of all colours
everywhere you looked. With the rich air over two thousand feet lower than base
camp, the softer light away from the glare of the ice, the heat of the day and
the beauty of the flowers and hills, it was like walking into Immanuel’s Land
from another story that Tom had known deeply from his childhood and onward.
“And
when thou comest there,” he said half to himself, “From there thou mayest see the gates of the Celestial City.”
Jake
glanced across to him and smiled; looking with him back up the trail they had
come down. Everest and Lhotse dominated the skyline here in the distance. The
white mountains, the gates of Celestial City.
They
went up into the hills by the monastery and there they dropped their rucksacks
and sat down together on the rough grass with the clear view down across the
carved red and white buildings on the plateau, the whitewashed stupas and the
prayer flags that fluttered in the wind. Tom propped his elbows on his knees,
losing awareness of aching legs as he watched the tiny figures of tourists and
the red robes of the monks in the courtyards among the buildings. It was a
panorama from the gods. About five pm when the light was well softened and it
grew quiet, and the moving figures of people among the buildings grew few and
far between, Jake got up and brushed his now very well worn pants off.
“Coming?”
They
must have looked like a couple of tramps. The tourists had left, seeking the
warmth of the teahouses in the village. Twilight was starting to draw in and
the temperature plummet as the sun went, and Tom paused by the carved gateway,
looking at the two brightly painted statues of dragons snarling outward into
the valley, one on either side. A monk was walking unhurriedly towards them,
keys in his hand. Jake made a slight bow to him, smiling. Tom had never yet
seen many people resist that smile, mostly because it was, like Jake himself,
honestly warm and glad to meet them, and the monk returned it, looking from him
to Tom. Then without a word he gestured a hand welcoming them past him into the
yard, and he walked away.
He
had obviously been about to lock up. It was a gesture of kindness, a
willingness to be inconvenienced, and its simplicity was touching. Tom walked
in silence through the grey stone paved courtyards, the steep stone steps and
walkways, past the buildings, the stupas, pausing before the shrines. So
different from the ancient painted altars in the little chapels of the
cathedral where he had grown up, but in the same bright colours. Different
figures and faces, but still a place that held a kernel, a steady burning
memory of years of people’s hopes, faith, questions, requests, the reliquary
for centuries of faith and human feeling. Like there, the peace retained and
soaked deep within the stone was tangible. There was no one else here now. Only
the one monk lived in the courtyard to keep the keys, no meditations or
teaching went on in the dimly lit rooms of bright red, blues, greens and golds
on the pillars and walls with the polished wood floors and blue and green
vaulted ceilings, but from the courtyard the sky began to turn a soft red as
the sun sank and clouds drifted like smoke before the mountains. The red
painted windows with their tiny, ornate lattices let in the growing dark and
the empty rooms held the stillness that Tom knew from the cathedral he had
spent his childhood in. Careful to walk clockwise around each sacred object, he
stood for a moment before a mighty prayer wheel, turning it softly with one
hand. In Kathmandu there were prayer wheels set against the walls turned daily
by the locals as they passed them by. Faith was built into the very walls where
these people lived, it was tangible and peaceful and beautiful here in this
open place on the roof of the world.
Om mani padme hum, the mantra was
written on paper that was placed within these wheels so turning them was to
repeat the mantra with its purifying energy. The speech of enlightenment with
meaning built into each syllable. From what Tom understood from the sterility
of books, it didn’t translate well into English and he knew his comprehension
of this was superficial to put it mildly, but the six syllables were meant to
touch and purify the six realms of suffering. The energy of the mantra was said
to transform the six negative emotions of pride, jealousy, desire, ignorance,
greed and anger, to clear the disturbing emotions from the mind that led to
negative force and suffering. Om for pride and ego, ma for jealousy, ni for
passion, pad for ignorance and prejudice, me for greed and possessiveness, hum
for aggression and hatred, The same thoughts, just by different names to the
ones he’d grown up with on another continent to here, in another ancient city.
Samael,
of mindfulness. Azrael, of stability. Ramiel, of trust. Uriel, of honesty.
Gabriel, of integrity. Raphael, the angel of the courage to undertake tasks
that were tedious, difficult and unglamorous, with sacrifice involved. Michael…
Tom
swallowed on that thought and looked around for Jake. He was standing before a
shrine, tall and chiseled even in the windcheater and fleece he wore, leaner
than he had been a month ago and more weather beaten in the face, his golden
hair flying in the wind although he took no notice of it. One of them light,
one of them dark. Day and night. Sunshine and shadow. It was so extreme a
difference when they stood side by side that it was almost silly. His hand was
still resting on the prayer wheel. Tom spun it again, slowly, watching it turn
with the mountains in view through the gaps in the wood, thinking of Dale on
the other side of the world, near other mountains, with so much more strength
than he had. And the crushing weight of the dragon on his own back, even here
in the respite of the silence in the valley around him. And even if he barely
understood it, he found himself reaching for what very little he did know in
desperation. In supplication.
Anger. My sin is anger, I name it and
please, I let this anger go. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I will not
carry it with me any longer, I will not let it hurt Jake or what we came to do
here, I will not let it weaken me, or take it up onto your mountain or take
anything negative into your holy places. Om mani padme hum. I know what I come
to do here, and I let this go.
~~ ~ ~ ~
The
glorious weather in the valley turned as we reached Gorak Shep on the return
hike back up the glacier. They say it rarely snows at base camp, as it’s too
cold. However, we hit base camp late afternoon with the sky a dark grey and
strong wind blasting light snow into our faces, and most of the mountains above
camp had disappeared under thick cloud which gave away the weather conditions
up high. Bill, Spitz, Dorje, Max, Shem and Bart were huddled together around
the radio in the communications tent and Max was pulling up some slowly moving
multi coloured weather picture on the open laptop.
“There’s
two teams stuck up at camp three.” Bill said soberly when he saw us. “The first
summit attempt was planned for the day after tomorrow, but they haven’t been
able to get up to camp four, they’re pinned down where they are and it’s pretty
bad there.”
Tom
glanced at the screen, looked sideways at Bill’s face and I saw his face
shutter as he unclipped the harness of his rucksack, freezing up again where
for the last thirty six hours alone with me I’d seen it be more mobile and him,
and known he’d felt some peace. Shem tried to catch his eye and give him a
smile, without success; he wasn’t looking. I hoped she wasn’t going to try
mothering him. I’ve seen both men and women try mothering Tom; something about
him just pulls that out of some people and it never goes well. I dumped my
rucksack by the door and came to lean on the back of Max’s deckchair, looking
over his shoulder at the screen.
“How
is it lower down?”
Max
sat back to let me see. “They’re saying it’s blowing hard at camp two but not
the blasts they’re getting higher up. Camp one isn’t too bad. This came out of
nowhere, the weather forecasts were ok last night and the guys at camp three
said the wind just hit up there like a bomb in the early hours.”
“Looks
like they’ll be waiting a few more days to make their summit attempt.” Bart commented.
He was leaning on Max’s other side, these two were becoming like Laurel and
Hardy. Wherever you found one you found the other, they were both easy going
and upbeat guys who were openly enjoying themselves being here and it was
visible even in their concern now. “They’ll be bored to death killing time up
there.”
Bill
shook his head. “They don’t have a few days. It’s bloody thin air up at camp
three; you’re weakening every hour you spend up there. If they sit at that
altitude for long they’ll run out of supplies and the energy and strength to
climb any higher. That was what happened to my team here a few years ago, we
couldn’t get up above camp three on our attempt, the weather didn’t break in
time and we had to come back down.”
Max
looked both impressed and concerned. We’d been saying this kind of thing to him
and all the clients regularly since they got here, but most people take in
information in small pieces, processing slowly as experience builds up. What
looks at first like a manageable big picture turns into a nightmare when you
start trying to take in all the details.
“And
you didn’t make another attempt?” Bart asked him.
Bill
shook his head. “We were financed for supplies, food and oxygen for one
attempt, and that was big money. Not many teams can cover coming back down to
base camp for a decent rest, re supply, then head back up again, even if their
permit allows it. It all hangs on the weather.”
He
didn’t mention what it was like for a group of a group of army men to give up
on their objective when they’re guys who don’t quit easily, admit their own
fitness deteriorating when their fitness is a matter of fierce pride, and come
home without the summit attempt being mad. I knew the whole story and dropped a
hand on Bill’s shoulder as he passed, and got a brief smile from him. He loved
having a team of men to organise here, a base in need of a quartermaster and
active things to do, this was what he excelled at and, better still, from my
point of view he was thoroughly enjoying himself doing it while accepting Tom
and my need to vanish down the valley, up to camp two, hike up and down the
plateau, move all the tents and dig them in better…
“It’s
like having a bloody golden retriever with you around the place,” he’d said to
me more than once in the last few years. “Running laps around you, covering
three times the distance everyone else does, diving into any body of water it
passes, and just when you’re knackered and you want a sit down and a beer, it
brings you a bloody Frisbee.”
He
was balding slightly on top, his breath was steaming in front of him, he looked
enlivened rather than cold, and he’d get far more fun out of organisation here
than he would have done kicking around base camp in the mad world of swinging from
frantic, hard activity to waiting and killing time if we’d had the small
private expedition we’d planned.
“How
are you feeling?” Shem said to me quietly enough not to attract client
attention. I smiled at her, going to grab our rucksacks. Tom was still by the
door. Silent; he goes into statue mode when he doesn’t want to talk and is
keeping several arms’ lengths between him and anyone else in the vicinity.
Fencing length. I realised it once, watching him standing talking to someone.
He chose a length that a few centuries back would have been a comfortable one
for his sword to meet someone else’s in the middle.
“Great
thanks. A few days hanging around in high oxygen and I’d never know it
happened.”
“Good.
I still want to check you over before you go up again.”
Judging
by Tom’s hard look at me, he’d be insisting too. He’d done some fairly thorough
physicals on me while we were down in the valley, with a little more groping
than most doctors went in for, but a very nice bedside manner.
Our
tent was where we’d left it, although someone had re fixed the screws and
ropes. Probably Dorje; he kept a special eye on Tom. I think he’d noticed who
checked the screws and ropes on the tents in the early hours, or who checked on
the insulation of the clients’ tents, made sure the water supply ran clear and
the hose didn’t freeze up, jobs the Sherpa men just as quietly did themselves
for all of us. The wind was getting higher as we stripped off boots and jackets
and crawled into the tent. We rarely shut the flaps and zipped up during the
day, but I zipped it tight behind us to keep the warmth in and the dust and
snow being blasted off the glacier by the wind. For a moment we edged around
each other on our knees, sorting things out, putting things back in the tiny
space of the tent. Tom is actually ferociously tidy. Neither of us like
clutter, we tend to have the bare minimum anyway in terms of possessions other
than books, but Tom keeps any living space we’re using in rigid order. He can
organise equipment with precise detail no matter how complicated, it’s because
to him that’s interesting; interesting enough to grab his whole attention by
the balls and give him the focus he needs. With things he doesn’t care that
much about… he’s never said it, but I wonder if there aren’t many mundane
things he might find difficult to do if he didn’t discipline himself so
strongly to get on with it, sharply, efficiently and as if he’s doing it under
threat of death. He shaves like that. He dresses like that. We’re both
all-or-nothing kind of people with only two speed settings on our dials, like
the British Royal Green Jackets regiment. ‘Stop’ and ‘full speed ahead’.
I
collected him gently by the scruff of the neck and lifted him away from putting
our boots tidily, dropping him like a kitten on his stomach on the thickest
part of the mat and sleeping bags that protected him from the ice below. And
lay down beside him to prop myself on one elbow, the other arm heavily across
his lower back to keep him there. Not that he was doing a lot of moving; he was
glancing back at me with distinct apprehension and a lot of attention, which
was just what I was aiming for. While we were down in the valley we’d been
occupied most of the day with hiking – and the fast, hard stuff we both loved –
punctuated with finding somewhere very quiet and very out of the way at night
to spend our private hours very much involved in our other favourite activity.
We’d had the option of finding a tea house or lodge in the villages, the
shelter of a warmish room to sleep in, hot food and showers but we’d both
preferred to be in as wild and isolated a place as possible to be in the open
air together, largely sleeping only during the necessary breaks. Going for days
up here where it was not possible for much more than a chaste kiss or embrace,
we were both starved by the time we found somewhere private for a few hours.
As
a result, the best we managed was a strip wash in a stream somewhere around
Tengboche, and that had felt like deep luxury, we’d washed in many worse places
than a clear if icy mountain stream. But we’d had plenty of physical outlets of
the kind that drains Tom down, like a high blood race horse needs draining down
daily to stay sane.
I’d
realised this early, in the very first days before we bolted together to Cairo.
Tom misses nothing. That was easily said; many men are sharp eyed and with
sharp memories, you meet plenty of them in any kind of military or police job
and I’d known a few in my time. In quite a different way, Tom wasn’t able to
miss stuff. We had casually been drinking coffee together somewhere in a
courtyard square, he had been scribbling at some job application for which he
had no pen and glared at me when I provided him with one from my pocket. His
black hair was wild, it was always wild, his shirt was clean but somehow looked
as if he’d slept in it, his jaw was as sharp as a knife, angled like his nose
and the straight line of his brow, and it looked like a wolf sat across the
table from me. Lean and edged and watching the world from the sides of his eyes
in the daylight. We’d first met at night; it was much more his element.
I’d
glanced up at an odd sound across the square and he’d seen me look and muttered
without stopping scrawling rapidly on the form for a job he didn’t want and any
excuse he could find to keep me at arm’s length across the table, but not
actually going away.
“It’s
the kid in the red sweatshirt with the plastic whistle.”
“Where?”
I looked around the square. He still didn’t look up.
“Four
tables to the left, 2 o clock. With the woman with the black hair and the denim
jacket and the kid in the buggy.”
He
was right. I swirled my coffee in my hand, which always made me think of
Philip’s tone of weary amusement,
Jacob, would you be kind enough to drink
that rather than play with it please?
“What
made you notice them?”
He
shrugged, still scrawling and sounding irritable because I was sitting here
talking and not taking the heavy hints and going away. He was on to a lost
cause with that plan.
“They
were in the queue when you got the coffee.”
He’d
been on the other side of the square, pretending that he wasn’t watching me.
Interested, I sat back in my chair and sipped Americano.
“Who
else was in the queue then?”
He
listed them. Shortly, without looking up. No particular observations, but a
basic description of their face, the clothes, the colours. Where they were
sitting now. The faces of the three youngsters serving behind the coffee bar. A
lot of the coffee brands and prices listed on the notice board. It wasn’t
exact, he didn’t have perfect recall, he remembered bits, and it wasn’t with
Sherlock Holmes deductions – a man I’d always felt would have benefitted from
Watson spending a few weeks on the ranch and acquiring a good paddle. It was
just normal noticing in highly compacted amounts, like a zip file. Things he’d
seen and heard in the space of a minute or two of immersion in a situation
where I’d noticed the freckles on the nose of the boy who served me coffee and
perhaps a few hazy recollections of the man who stood in front of me in the
queue and most of the rest had passed me back.
With
observation, I realised this happened to him all the time. It wasn’t a
superpower, he wasn’t aware particularly that he perceived things differently
to anyone else. But, if we walked through a market together, I would notice a
few stalls other than ones I bought things at, a few items, a few people. He in
the same space of time while walking would notice most of the stalls, details
of what was on them, prices he’d seen and heard as he walked by, details of
people who’d been around us, what their conversations had been about, what they
had been wearing. Multiple amounts of information would have flooded his brain
and registered itself there, more than into mine in the same space of time.
Once he told me wearily that it was like a jug of water being poured into his
head. All at once, whether he was ready or not, whether he was full or not;
here it came in a relentless flow.
“Think
of it like buses, Jake.” Mr Hauser had said to me years ago when he sat with me
to review the findings of the school report. “One city has one bus service.
Regulated, timed, the buses come and go to the schedule. This is like the bus
services from three cities all being sent to work in one city together. Buses
are arriving and leaving and whizzing around, groups of them are turning up
together, they’re all over the place.”
Tom’s
bus service worked a different route to mine, but I understood it. Noisy, busy,
crowded, social, it could get overwhelming to him and I’d see him shut down.
Overload. He’d get too full and the whites of his eyes would start to show and
he’d struggle to contain it and his head would race until sleep wasn’t just
difficult, it was impossible which knocked the sensory overstimulation higher
still and he reached a sense of panic and the need to get away. Danger Will
Robinson, Danger. The only thing that worked when we hit that point was to be
completely alone somewhere outside, mostly in silence, preferably somewhere
high, help him physically get decompressed and wait it out. But he was like me
too in that if he was somewhere that grabbed his mind, somewhere interesting,
doing something interesting, actively demanding enough to keep his body drained
and organised. he was fine.
Climbing
around here: that ticked all the boxes. On those days I could see his motor
running on high, he loved it. Laying around base camp resting? We both get the
concept of just Being, in open space somewhere wild. Tom is three parts wolf
and can lay for hours in the grass against me just looking at the world around
him, aware and resting, part of that peace if we’re alone in it. But base camp
isn’t peaceful and you’re never really alone. He would have found it hard going
anyway as time went on, although he’d been determined it would be fine. Which
meant grabbing his mind and keeping it somewhere interesting and focused and
strongly enough that he could concentrate on that and not on the whirling
cocktail being mixed in his head. I know my guy and his buttons, and I wanted
them good and pressed right now before he had time to start building up another
charge.
When
I really want him to concentrate I usually put him face down beside me instead
of just laying beside me to rest. It’s a ritual he gets at the gut level that
really matters to Tom, it makes him feel contained without being trapped, and
it takes mental effort from him, which helps. He usually gets more and better
quality rest in those hours – and sometimes when things are rough, like just
now, I make him do it for hours, for one hell of a lot of his time – more than
he ever does at night, I think because it makes him stop his mind running.
Mental rest as much as physical. I never pushed him about sleep, he’d had
decades of people stressing him out about sleep and he got stressed enough
about it all by himself. Rest, yeah I’d see he rested. Properly. Sleep? We
weren’t flapping about that. If I got him de stressed enough then he slept,
when he wasn’t thinking about it or trying to; he’d slept a good half of the
night out in the valley at Tengboche. Right now though, being put down beside
me wasn’t enough by itself to pull his mind together, it wasn’t strong enough
to compete with everything else flooded in there.
I
ran my hand up his spine to the back of his head and ran my fingers lightly
through his hair. Combing. Stroking from the crown of his head to the nape of
his neck. The shiver was instant, it was almost a physical shake like a dog
trying to get water off its coat. Sex, yes. Any time. With enthusiasm, even if
it’s under a grouchy shell. That kind of touch makes a lot of sense to Tom.
Being petted? Uhm. Under protest. Largely. Unless it’s really dark and he’s
really upset and he’s mostly hoping neither of us are paying attention. Today
that was tough. I slowly lifted my hand to the crown of his head again,
stroking my fingers gently through his hair, stroking his scalp, and this time
he half rolled over to fend me off. I swatted him soundly. For a moment dark
blue eyes glared at me, intense and shocked and questioning. I put him right
back on his stomach and went back to stroking his hair. Not lightly enough to
be annoying, but gently. Soothingly, with all the care I could put into it. I
swear I could see minute squirming all over from head to foot like bits of him
were trying to inch away. I swatted him again. Hard; I never kidded about this
kind of thing. Shoulders hunched now. Outrage. His head was turned into his
arms, he was radiating protest. Another hard swat, and hastily, the protest
tuned down a bit and the shoulders dropped out of any obvious demonstration of
Sod Off. I went on stroking. Not a word. Relaxed, breathing, unhurried. He
picks that kind of thing up by osmosis too; Tom usually knows my mood before I
do. I had all his attention all right.
It
was about ten minutes of him silently radiating of what he thought of this
before I saw the spikiness start to leave his shoulders. He lay flatter
somehow, as though his body let itself go against the ground next to me and
melted, and inch by inch his head relaxed forward, until he was breathing
softly. Limp. His face was slightly turned towards mine and his eyes were half
unfocused which he only ever does when he really lets go, looking at nothing in
particular. I leaned down to drop a quiet, firm kiss against the top of his
head and went on stroking.
Angels and demons and deities, oh my.
He’d
been quiet since the hour we spent at Tengboche monastery, but not his
shut-down kind of quiet like a wolf frozen on the hill, stood still to avoid
being seen. Tom absorbs culture like he does languages; the amount he drinks in
from what’s going on around him translates almost immediately into him just
knowing bits and pieces wherever we are, and he’s as attuned to atmosphere and
the feel of a place as he is to any piece of fiction or poetry or historical
fact he’s absorbed. We’re both romanticists; put us in Cairo and we’re
breathing a whole lot of Howard Carter mixed up with Elizabeth Peters, Agatha
Christie, the known records of Seti the first and random bits of Exodus. Stick
us in Italy and we’ll be quoting EM Forster to each other alongside heads full
of Angelo, St Paul, Julius Caesar and Lindsey Davis, and half the time what one
of us starts quoting the other one will finish because we both soak ourselves
in the same books and poets and legends. Everest was a quest we’d been talking
about for years, something we’d always wanted to do, and this was a holy place
to the people who lived here. It was not just a mountain to physically get up,
it was a real and genuine quest. A pilgrimage in the sense that Tom had taught
me about of pilgrimage of old, with Chaucer among others, barefoot through the
streets and on knees through the stone steps of the cathedral. A challenge of
body, heart and mind in a sacred place. Tom would not miss one single nuance of
that at gut level, he feels all of it.
While
we were in England – the one time we went there together – I went early one
morning to a cathedral. Not ‘his’ cathedral, just one of them. I went alone, I
knew he wouldn’t come with me; in the end that turned out to be something of a
mistake. Tom went out while I was gone and swam the harbour wall at Dover which
is one of the toughest wild water swimming challenges in Europe, not to mention
the need to play chicken with cruise ships and cross channel ferries. But in
that hour alone I walked through the stone arch and gateway into the cathedral
close, what was left of the shell of the abbey with its outer wall and houses
and outbuildings that had stood here centuries before. The green grass close in
the middle was immaculately manicured and several statues and memorials were in
the garden there. The grace and favour houses around the perimeter were built
on the foundations of much older abbey buildings, quiet and old and picturesque
houses that spoke of their age, occupied by quiet and mostly elderly people
closely attached to the church. The large house stood behind the railings with
extensive gardens, the Bishop’s ‘palace’, by the cathedral itself. Mighty and
peaceful and radiating its stolid atmosphere over the city with its ancient
stone. It had been the beating heart of the city for over a thousand years and
was in no hurry, time moved more slowly within those walls. Towering above
everything, it stood sheltered in a small, private enclave of those medieval
stone walls and the gates that were locked at night. The cloisters still stood
immaculate beyond the body of the church where once monks had worked and
walked. The small private chapels were occupied, the services and bells took
place among the tourists, and the walls and floors were lined with names,
dates, Latin inscriptions, the tombs and casts of knights, lords, ladies and
church leaders laying on top of them, their faces clear to see with their
names. The threadbare, greyed and spider thin Union Jack flags hung from the
walls with the faintest ghost of red, white and blue still distinguishable, the
British colours carried into battle by battalions several centuries ago,
carried by men on the battlefield and preserved here to honour those men whose
names lined plaques on the walls. The music, the ceremonies, the rituals and the
language, the living history of a thousand years. Tom had grown up in this. He
had been bred and grown in a sanctuary like this one, he’d been fed by words
like these and stones and history and beauty and the stories all around him
that were woven into every square foot of ground, and it was a part of his
bones. I could see him everywhere. I knew the feel of the place because I knew
him. When he haunted a city at night or went to climb a hill or be alone in a
forest in the dark – I thought this was some of what he was searching to feel.
The peaceful silence of this mighty place where memory and hope walked. Where
centuries of hush and people passing with their hearts and minds open had
soaked into the stone.
This
place here in the Himalayas called to every inch of my Tom in the same way. An
open skied church, but a church of a kind all the same. A place where mundanity
lifted away and where the wildest of myths lived untouched, unsullied, alive in
nothing but faith to the people who lived here. The monastery had been the best
place I could think of where he’d find some real, tangible evidence of that
peace and focus to physically hold on to.
“This place is Tartarus.” He said after
a while, mostly mumbling it to the ground rather than directly to me in the
rough-end-of-Sussex accent he’s hung on to despite all his years out of
England.
The
ruins at the bottom of the world. The prison of the Titans far below Olympus’s
slopes. Yes, I could see it.
“The
place of the fallen angels.” Tom said after a moment more, while I reflected on
that.
The ruined grey rock, the complete lack of
life other than the moving, living Titan of ice and stone, the gloomy, storm
wracked lower shell of the crucible of the cosmos. The place where human life
was sustained only with great effort for short periods, beneath suddenly
turning weather, where a few mortals fought our way quietly up the slopes
towards the sun and the pinnacle, inching toward Olympus on our knees.
“And
there, all in their order, are the sources and ends of earth and misty
Tartarus… And this marvel is awful even to the deathless gods.”
I
said, reflecting on a poem we both knew. “
Are
you feeling particularly fallen then?”
He snorted, a faint laugh as he was currently
too relaxed to find the energy to do more. “Always.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I
found the mail in his outbox that evening when I checked the weather on laptop
on my way past the communications tent. He wasn’t with me.
Subject:
Oh for God’s sake change the subject line occasionally
>> with
Paul yelling at the top of his voice with dramatic emphasis
... are you
serious?! How do you stand still in front of that? Jake wouldn’t dare, I’d
change my name and emigrate. The whole thought of it makes me want to go for a
long, long walk. Argh. In Inja’s sunny clime where I used to spend my time,
etcetera etcetera, and you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ‘im that’s got it.
We’re still in
base camp. I made Jake take a few days rest to be sure he’d got over the
altitude sickness, and the weather turned and it’s been rough high up for the
last 24 hours. There are two teams at camp three right now, and according to
the radio they’ve dug in and not been able to move. It’s proving to be a
changeable year, with unpredictable weather slots. The trouble with that is
that as soon as there is a clear slot identified, a lot of teams will grab it
and try to go up together, and some of the teams are large and very slow
moving. The next plan we need to make is an expedition to camp 3, which will be
the longest expedition so far, and after that we’ll take a few rest days in
base camp and get ready for the final expedition to camp 4 and the summit attempt.
How we handle
stuff up here and in public. I’m not a lines or essays or corners sort of
person, I never have been. There aren’t that many corners in your average
jungle. There was a certain amount of thought on my part early on that I
probably should pull myself together and/or be made to do it, but Jake’s
useless at stressing about anything and just said it wasn’t for us. We live
pretty unmaterial lives too, so there isn’t much that can be withdrawn. I don’t
deal well with limited space, and it isn’t usually about issues that can wait,
so it is almost always physical. We’d most usually use a paddle, but we tried
out a few things for the times when discretion’s the better part of valour and
settled on some martinet thing Jake had as part of his Mounties kit for dusting
dress uniform, which is allegedly French traditional although I’ve told him it
looks downright kinky to me. It is practically silent and it hasn’t drawn
attention, and here most people are more interested in trying to sleep or get
warm than care what anyone else is doing in their tents, and while it’s
probably something that Gerry et al would frown on, we’ve worked on the
principle of what people don’t know won’t upset them.
What’s the
significance of activating the frontal lobe? Regulation? If exercise does it,
we ought to be regulated to the nth degree up here but no one’s looking that
regulated to me. Possibly cold and low oxygen undoes the effect somewhat. The
household sounds under a tight regime right now, which I admit sounds quite
interesting. How is the train robbery investigation going?
Look after
yourself,
Tom
Oh my boy.
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