The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (7 page)

—There is, however, one serious difficulty in connection with wind, namely, the low temperature sometimes met with. An intensely cold north or northeast wind might drive one down to avoid frostbite of hands and feet.

The operator drops a new slide. Another image of the pyramidal peak. It looms high above its sister mountains, the plume of vapor singing past.

—Mount Everest or Chomo Langmo, again, at twenty-nine thousand one hundred and forty-one feet. As the latter name was obtained by Colonel Bruce and myself from quite different sources, its claims may be worth consideration at a later date. A pass to the northeast of the
mountain, about eighteen thousand five hundred feet high, leading to Kharta near the Arun River, is called Langma La. The mountain may be assailable from the northeast or north.

—While the limited scope of this paper hardly allows the deduction of categorical conclusions, it is highly probable from the data cited that a man in first-rate training, acclimatized to maximum possible altitude, could make the ascent of Mount Everest without adventitious aids, provided that the physical difficulties above twenty-five thousand feet are not prohibitive.

Kellas taps his notes into a neat stack against the lectern. He answers a question from a first lieutenant about the dangers of the sun’s rays at high altitude, then the president comes to the lectern to make a few concluding remarks. As the audience applauds, Price cups his hand over Ashley’s ear.

—Something interesting in the map room?

Ashley watches the two women rise. The short-haired girl dangles a large handbag from her elbow.

—Look here, Ashley says, see those women? Do you know them?

—I know the one on the left. I’ve met her husband, chap beside her. He’s in the Climbers’ Club. Think the wife is an artist. I hope she isn’t an interest of yours.

Ashley shakes his head. —It’s the other one. She’s not an interest, but I’ve seen her before.

—Jeanne d’Arc over there? Her I don’t know. But she’s damned pretty, in spite of the crop. Shall we meet them?

Price takes Ashley over and introduces him to the man in the group, a first lieutenant who shakes Ashley’s hand with a wry smile.

—Charles Grafton. This is my wife and her sister, Miss Soames-Andersson. Only for the Lord’s sake, don’t tell me you fellows are in on this Himalayan business too. Give me Lakeland hills any day of the week, no coolies, no bandobast—

Price and Grafton talk about climbing. Ashley’s eyes meet Eleanor’s and she smiles pleasantly, but her younger sister looks distracted, her
attention straying to the image of the peak on the screen, to the other people talking around them. Ashley holds his cap under his arm and the badge catches Eleanor’s eye.

—I see you’re in the Artists Rifles, Eleanor says. Are you an artist?

—Only a pretender, I’m afraid. I was with the Artists for OTC, but they’re putting me with the another regiment when I go out.

Eleanor steps closer and lowers her voice.

—I hope you’re not going to France.

—On Thursday.

—How frightful. Do be careful.

—I’ll do my duty.

—Of course you will.

There is an awkward pause as the two sisters face Ashley, neither knowing what to say. Price is talking to Charles about the postimpressionists and he draws Eleanor into the conversation so that Ashley and Imogen are left alone. Imogen looks to the side and swings her handbag. She looks at Ashley.

—What did you make of the lecture? You seemed to prefer the map room.

Ashley shrugs. —The slides were rather impressive.

—Aren’t you interested in the Himalaya? You are a climber, aren’t you?

—Of sorts. But if you ask me, the lecture was a lot of bosh. They won’t know anything about climbing at those heights until someone actually does it. There must be some guinea pig. If they mean to climb Everest, that’s four thousand feet above what any man has done before. They haven’t the slightest notion what it would be like. It can’t be studied in a laboratory.

—You’d like to try?

Ashley grins, nodding toward Price. —Hugh would like to try.

—And you wouldn’t?

—I would too, Ashley admits. Though not so badly as Hugh, I expect. Are you interested in alpinism?

—I’m interested in everything. And I do find climbing intriguing, but Charles acts as if it’s the same as playing rugger, a bunch of fellows competing on a mountain. He’ll never tell us anything about it. So when he mentioned there was a lecture on the Himalaya, I insisted he bring us here—

—You wanted to come?

Imogen smiles. —Naturally. Though I can’t say I learned much, except that men always want to try the one thing they oughtn’t to. But everyone already knows that. From the sound of it, these fellows spend so much time worrying how they’ll climb a mountain that they never consider why they do it. Surely there’s more to climbing than just boasting rights? Perhaps you could explain it, Mr. Walsingham?

—I doubt it.

—I’d be grateful if you tried. Tell me, when a fellow climbs a mountain, is it the danger he loves?

Ashley grimaces. —God, no. It’s not so crass as that.

—The adventure then?

—Not at all. It isn’t so vulgar—

—The sport? The competition?

He shakes his head. —Certainly not.

—The mountains then? Or what they hold?

—That’s closer. But it’s not exactly that either.

—Then you don’t know what it is, Imogen hazards. It isn’t something one knows, but something one feels.

Ashley looks at the floor, the ceiling lamps reflecting bright on the waxed floorboards.

—Yes, he agrees. That’s right.

Imogen begins to rummage through her handbag. The slide operator has shut off the projector and is rolling up the long screen. Price is talking to Eleanor and Charles about Cézanne. Imogen takes a tattered handbill from the bag and gives it to Ashley.

—Here it is. I was given three of these on the street today. Imagine it, three people giving one the same handbill. So I thought I ought
to give you one. You see, there’s a splendid matinee tomorrow at the Queen’s Hall. They’re performing Mozart’s twenty-third piano concerto, one of the ones he kept to himself. It’s very lovely. And there are fewer decent concerts every month.

Ashley thanks her and puts the leaflet in his pocket. He is about to speak when Charles announces that the trio is already late for an engagement. They say their good-byes hurriedly. Eleanor gives Ashley a sympathetic smile.

—Do be careful. Do come back safely.

Imogen touches Ashley’s hand as she passes.

—It’s only
au revoir
.

The three of them walk out of the hall. Price and Ashley exchange greetings with a few other members of the Alpine Club, then walk out onto Kensington Gore, pulling their caps on.

—What about a stroll?

They cross the road into Kensington Gardens. Price whistles as they follow a groomed path of soft brown dirt. A four-wheeler coasts past them, the horses snorting imperiously. Price stops whistling.

—And what did you think?

—Strange people. The older sister said she hoped I wasn’t going to France. Can you believe that?

—I can.

Price scratches his cheek. He smiles.

—Strange or not, you fancy that Jeanne d’Arc. Ashley, I never knew you went in for these bohemian types—

—A man can fancy nothing in six days.

—A man can live a lifetime—

—Spare me.

They sit on a bench beside the path. Ashley leans his swagger cane against the bench and stretches his legs. Price shakes his head.

—Grafton. Of all the fellows to see at Kensington Gore. He hasn’t the slightest interest in the Himalaya, and the Climbers’ Club—

—The girl wanted to go. That’s why they came.

Price looks at Ashley.

—The girl?

—She wants to know about alpinism. Grafton won’t tell her anything, so she dragged them all to the lecture. She asked me why a fellow climbs mountains.

—What on earth did you tell her?

—I told her I didn’t know. Do you know?

—Certainly I do.

—Would you care to explain it?

Price grins. —Certainly not.

Fluorescent light floods the Underground carriage. I listen to the recorded woman’s voice announcing each station.
Warren Street. Euston. King’s Cross St. Pancras.
I rise.

Sheets of rain lash Euston Road as I run west, holding a copy of the
Guardian
over my head. The newspaper curls with moisture. Black taxis sail by at twenty miles an hour, measured out in fleets by the switching traffic lights. I walk through a red-brick gatehouse, the sandstone lintel above inscribed
THE BRITISH LIBRARY
. A huge bronze statue of Newton sits in the courtyard, the scientist mining the secrets of the universe by some obscure instrument.

I enter the cavernous building and put my belongings in a locker downstairs. In the admissions office a clerk gives me a number and tells me to wait. When my number comes, I plead my case for several minutes. The clerk grants me a plastic reader’s card with a photograph of myself, my gaze directed slightly off-camera.

The library is much bigger than my university library and I have no idea where to start. So I take brochures from a display and sit before the glass tower of King’s Library, scanning the leaflets quickly. The British
Library is a legal deposit library, which means it has a copy of every book printed in the UK and many printed elsewhere. It holds 150 million items and there are eleven reading rooms at this site, each specializing in a subject.

I begin in the two-level humanities room. Everything is in rows: scholars seated shoulder-to-shoulder, scores of computer terminals, neat queues of patrons waiting to collect their books from the circulation desk. I follow the perimeter of the massive room, scanning the reference works that line the shelves. The National Union Catalog, ten bookcases wide. Huge and ancient leather-bound dictionaries in Latin and French. I pull the 1922 to 1930 supplement of the
Dictionary of National Biography
and look for Walsingham. No entry.

Walking along the shelves, I reach the geographic reference section. At last I find an entry in a volume of the
Encyclopedia of Exploration
.

Walsingham, ASHLEY EDMUND (1895–1924), mountaineer, was born at Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire, 16 April 1895, the only child of Henry Franklin Walsingham (1865–1909), a textile merchant, and his wife, Emily Symons Fitzgerald (1869–1933). Walsingham was educated at Abingdon School, Charterhouse, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1914. He left Cambridge after a single term and took a commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Berkshire Regiment. Posted to the Western Front in August 1916, Walsingham survived two years of dangerous front line service, taking part in both the Somme and Third Ypres actions. In the British attack on Empress Redoubt on 5 November 1916, Walsingham was so badly wounded that his commanding officer mistakenly reported him dead. He was later decorated with the Military Cross for his actions in taking a German trench.

From the age of 16 Walsingham was an avid mountaineer, climbing on rock and ice in the Alps to a high standard. He was demobilized from the army at the age of 23, but the war had left an indelible impression on Walsingham, and his failure to readjust to civil life
made mountaineering ever more important. An inheritance from a wealthy relative in 1913 enabled Walsingham to live without the need to earn his own income. In 1919, Walsingham attempted to return to his studies at Cambridge, but left within a month and spent the summer climbing in the Dolomites. In October, Walsingham sailed to Mombasa to manage a coffee plantation in Kenya, and although the business was profitable, he found it morally distasteful.

In May 1921, Walsingham again returned to the Alps for an admirable season of climbing, but rather than returning to Kenya that autumn, Walsingham sailed to Aden. He travelled the length of the Arabian Peninsula, often on foot, collecting material for a treatise on the ‘lost cities’ of the Arabian Desert. In 1922, Walsingham briefly assisted the excavation at Ur under Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, and later at Kish under Stephen Langdon. However, the majority of Walsingham’s two years in Arabia were spent searching for the so-called ‘Iram of the Pillars’ in the vicinity of the Rub’ al Khali desert. These efforts were hampered by his weak command of Arabic and other Semitic languages, and in April 1923 Walsingham telegraphed Hugh Price,
IRAM VANISHED MEET ST MORITZ JUNE ASHLEY.

Walsingham reached Switzerland by June, and in the following three months he would achieve the most impressive season of any British alpinist to date. In a series of spectacular climbs Walsingham scaled obscure peaks and pioneered new or difficult routes, including a first ascent of Piz Badile by the Badilekante route on 9 July 1923, and a harrowing first ascent of the North Face of the Dent d’Hérens on 2 August 1923. Geoffrey Winthrop Young estimated that among his peers Walsingham was ‘the least naturally gifted, the least graceful; also the most driven, most relentless and most indestructible climber I ever saw on a mountain’.