As John Weldon drifted in and out of consciousness in the hospital in Kathmandu, he had strange dreams, which centred on the diary he had taken from the dead climber. This was the first thing he asked for when he came round, and an obliging orderly soon returned with a cardboard box containing all his personal possessions. Only the climber's identification tag and a few trivial items had been retrieved from the pocket of his kagoul but the rest of his possessions, including his rucksack and the diary it contained, had been lost.
As for his own state, a doctor explained that his body, weakened by the effects of altitude, had succumbed to an acute liver infection, which had nearly killed him. He had collapsed by the road near Benkar and had been helicoptered out. For the time being, there was no question of his returning to work at the consulate, and an indefinite home-leave had already been arranged. He received this information apathetically and stared down an emaciated arm to the tag held in a yellow hand. As the monsoon season began, life dripped imperceptibly back through a plastic tube.
* * * * *
He had worked hard to acclimatise himself to Nepal, this being his first assistant consular posting. Within the Civil Service, he was a high flyer, not through any particular ambition, but because he was good with languages and even better with people. He was a good listener; people liked to ascribe to him the best of motives and were willing to include him in their thoughts and plans. His twenty four years described an upward arc which had finally deposited him here on the roof of the world.
The city of Kathmandu he had initially found chaotic, polluted and surprisingly large. For some reason, he had in mind a charming alpine village with temples rather than a sprawling city. But gradually his spirit had acquiesced in that compelling and flexible mixture of Buddhism and Hinduism typical of the region. When he was not busy with tourist crises of various kinds, he found himself taking an interest in the eternal round of seasonal festivals that seemed to delineate the life of the city. The older diplomats tended to stick to the compound, affecting weariness for all things Nepalese, but to John Kathmandu was an experience to be savoured rather than shunned. The Sanskrit of his degree in oriental studies and classics had proved a useful foundation for Nepali, which he sought every opportunity to practise, and now he began to tinker with the more difficult tonal Sino-Tibetan languages.
The Everest expedition was completely unforeseen and started when he was called upon to help a party of UK and South African climbers sort out their documentation. There was a problem with the climbing permit, the terms and conditions of which were constantly changing in accord with some inscrutable market forces. He was recruited to find a way through the indolent bureaucracy that squatted over such affairs. With his knowledge of the uneven psychological terrain, he was able to resolve the matter efficiently. During the delay, he found that he had been missing contact with people of his own age and culture, and when one of the party fell prey to amoebic dysentery, he volunteered to fill the empty place. The understanding was that a summit attempt would depend on his proving himself at altitude. In a guided ascent, where decisions about the route and the pace are made on your behalf, it is overall fitness and an ability to adapt to the thinner air which makes the difference between success and failure. It was an opportunity that would never come again, and a novel way of spending the month's leave he had coming, trekking up country to the Khumbu region, which he had not yet visited.
There are distinct advantages in making a spring ascent. In the window of opportunity between the winter season and the monsoon, about six weeks in April and May, there are fewer trekkers and climbers on the route. Also, in the alpine region, which opens up after about 11,000 feet, the meadows, and then the open grasslands are ablaze with blue poppies, gentians and Himalayan edelweiss. You have time to enjoy it too, this trek upwards through meadows and densely wooded gorges thundering with fresh melt-water, because the acclimatisation process cannot be hurried, and several days must be spent in relative idleness. When the distant white peaks loomed into sight, he found himself gripped by an inarticulate feeling akin to romantic infatuation, a desire to conquer and possess . As they approached the final significant settlement at Gurmaboche, he fell into serious conversation with Kurt, the expedition leader and guide on many ascents. With a charming Austrian cynicism, Kurt went through every member of the party listing their sponsors: The South African Times had an exclusive on Harry Hill, the first heart transplant patient to attempt an ascent; the two doctors were funded by Hertford University to research the physiology of oxygen deprivation; someone else was being paid by Peak Footware to road-test a new boot; one member had been bribed with an astronomical sum to run a revolutionary fibre-optic cable from base camp to summit. The list went on.
"People climb for different reasons," he concluded. "My father, for example climbed in these mountains for the glory of his idol, Adolph Hitler. The British once climbed to affirm their idea of empire. Today, commercial sponsorship is a motive, and these people lack any kind of ideal. They are full of ambition but they have no love and little respect for the mountain."
"As a diplomat," John whispered," I feel professionally obliged not to repeat this to anyone."
Kurt laughed. "The Germans climb because they think they can do it more efficiently than anyone else. The Americans are over-competitive by nature which makes them ungracious. The Chinese believe the mountain belongs to them and are inclined to make false claims. The Japanese like to copy everyone else but do it very efficiently."
"And the English?" asked John, unwilling to be excluded from this magnificent sweep of stereotypes.
"Gifted amateurs," said Kurt. "Often the most talented climbers but disorganised and romantic."
"And what about you?"
"Me? When I was young, I never had to ask myself the question. But now I know why - in a couple of years I will be able to retire on the proceeds from these expeditions."
At Guramboche, the sirdarr, or head Sherpa, arranged the customary meeting with the lama at the Buddhist gompa. By this time, John was inured to the opportunism and cynicism of the Kathmandu Valley, but he was curious to know how the Buddhists of the Sherpa region viewed the business of mountaineering. Initially, his question was answered in the dark and draughty inner sanctum of the temple, where the presiding reincarnation of an ancient guru, cross-legged in the room filled with incense and the reek of burning butter, dispensed white prayer scarves to the company. Allegedly, they would keep the spirit of Sagarmatha happy. It seemed like standard tourist stuff.
On leaving, John summoned up his summoned up his most flowery, formal Nepali, a move that gained him an immediate recall from the old monk. Picking his way through a linguistic minefield to find the correct register, he wanted to know how it was possible to find merit in the pointless bravado of mountaineering. Recognising a fledgling philosopher, the old man was happy to answer the question: the basic position had not changed in fifty years since the previous lama had expressed bewilderment at the activity. However, it was possible to adopt a broader attitude of compassion towards those who were seeking an illusory goal and try to sow some seeds of enlightenment. It was also possible to accept that the western spiritual quest took a different form, which might be in some ways compatible with the path of enlightenment. And then, disarmingly, he had to admit that after the contributions of certain Hollywood stars, climbers and trekkers had become the gompa's main source of income. Respectfully, he gave them advice, and respectfully they listened and then ignored him. That was the way of things. It allowed him to travel abroad to meet the celebrities whose images he kept in a well-thumbed Boots photo album. He showed John a picture of himself with Richard Gere and then, strangely, Liberace. As he and the tiny lama grinned at the camera, the deceased pianist, swathed in gold lame and dripping gaudy jewellery assumed the aspect of one of the sacred cows that commonly bring the traffic to a halt in Kathmandu.
"And what do you expect to find on the mountain?" was the lama's parting question.
John did not know.
"Many escape to the mountains because they fear death," the old monk suggested. " What you seek and what you fear is an illusion. One step up - one step down is the way of the physical world. But if you have good heart, you need not fear anything.."
Base Camp was an inhospitable, rocky field beneath the Khumbu icefall. In terms of unsightliness, the detritus of countless expeditions was run a close second only by the signs prohibiting litter. Here, the tensions of the western world were thrown into high relief. For a few days, low level bickering between members of the party, all in their own way achievers back home, blossomed into full scale arguments and rivalries. The tension between the need for co-operation and the desire for dominance typified the ugly dynamic of the climbers' world. He had seen it before on Civil Service training courses. Everyone wanted to go to the top, but the guides had to make it clear that this could only happen if conditions were absolutely right.
To make things worse, internal dissent was matched by a serious dispute with a group of American climbers about clashing dates for a summit attempt. This was potentially dangerous: only two years before, sixteen climbers had perished in a traffic jam close to the summit. Both sides were intractable and things got worse when it emerged that the Americans had exerted diplomatic pressure to block the other permit. Their corporate sponsors, a petrochemical company who had developed a new synthetic fibre, had friends in high places.
The coming ascent might be a journey into geographical heaven, but would almost certainly involve a descent into psychological hell. After a few attempts at diplomacy between increasingly alien and stupid expedition members, John decided to stay well out of it and hung onto the memory of the lama and his characteristically Buddhist offering of cliché and wisdom. But when the business of climbing started in earnest, crawling back and forth across the famous icefall with ladders and ropes, his mind emptied of these distractions. He had his hands full with the technical difficulties of climbing and the exhaustion brought on by altitude. * * * * * It was a clear October day when he drove from the motorway into the bowl of hills that surround the centre of Sheffield. Slate Street was still there, but its inhabitants were long gone. Now, where houses had once been, including Tom Stannup's, was a straggling car-park and a set of new industrial units. An attendant emerged from a hut and asked if he could help.
"Looking for Slate Street," said John. "Looks like I've found it. I'm looking for someone who lived here many years ago."
"That would be a few years," said the attendant with a sigh. "Folks moved out of here in the eighties to make way for progress. Who's your friend?"
"Tommy Stannup."
The man was intrigued.
"The climber? You're looking for Tommy Stannup? But you can't have known him. I mean, you're far too young. Are you doing a programme or something?"
"Did you know him?"
"Not personally, but anyone of my age would remember him. Best rock climber of his generation. Died on Everest."
"No, I'm looking for relatives. I know what happened to Tommy."
"Well, in that case, you're the only one that does." He gave John a long look halfway between suspicion and admiration." Your best hope is the phone book or the electoral register."
As John descended the long steep hill into the village of Hathersage, the late morning sun turned the millstone grit outcrops on his right a surreal orange, and to his left, the land fell away into a misty autumnal infinity. He pulled up outside a neat stone cottage on the outskirts of the village, where a woman in late middle age was attending to a low hedge of Michaelmas daisies. There was still time to turn back - all he had to do was start up the engine and drive on. Why should he make it his business to stir up the placid waters of an old grief?
Veronica Stannup was Tommy's sister-in-law.
"Well, well," she said as she pulled off her gardening gloves. "Who would have thought it after all these years? I'd ask you in but Wilf's inside - that's Tommy's dad. I'm not sure how he'll take it."
She opened the door and shouted inside: "Dad, I'm just popping out. You'll be all right for a bit, won't you?" There was a mumbled response.
"He's never really accepted the fact that Tommy's gone," she said as they strolled across to the Robin Hood for an early lunch. "Now he's suffering from dementia and some days he doesn't know whether he's coming or going."
At the pub, John gave Veronica an account of as much of the diary as he could remember and despairingly described the loss of the rucksack. In turn, Veronica filled him in on some of the background. 1953 and the first ascent of Everest: Tommy was five and Wilf started taking him on the tram to the moors around Totley where they played at being Hillary and Tenzing. It is difficult to remember nowadays how this event had stirred the national imagination at the dawn of the new Elizabethan age. As the boy grew up, the firm millstone of North Derbyshire proved a perfect training ground for the young climber. It was an escape from the depressing back street, up into the clear air of the Peak District, away from the pre-1960 smog and stifling ugliness of the city. But it became more than that; the very first time he let Tommy loose on the modest crags near The Toad's Mouth, he was amazed to see him tackling chimneys and overhangs like a veteran. The ability was natural and undeniable. Wilf had idolised his son and, in climbing, imagined a future for him free from the grind of industrial Sheffield. Tommy's climbing career thrived in the late sixties and he developed new techniques that made him something of a star. Today, he would have been called a rock athlete and have attracted lucrative sponsorship, but in those days it was very much an amateur pastime. After several famous alpine climbs, including the first winter ascent of the north face of the Kinderhorn, he earned a place on the 1970 National Geographical expedition to Everest. He had simply disappeared one day a few thousand feet from the summit. That was all she knew.
"So what do we tell the old man?" asked John.
"I suppose he'll have to know. On the other hand, he may not want to. Play it by ear."
Wilf sat in the small conservatory overlooking the valley, a shawl over his bony, frail shoulders. The sunlight from the valley was reflected in his watery grey eyes.
"This is John, Dad. He has news about Tommy."
The old man half turned his head towards the visitor.
"Oh, yes," he said," and did he say when he was coming home? Where is he anyway?"
"Nepal," said John, entering into Wilf's fictional frame. "I saw him a few months ago."
"And how as he?"
"He'll be staying out there. He was thinking of you all back home."
Wilf gave him a look of mournful resignation.
"So you saw him?"
"Yes."
"Alive?"
John looked to Veronica for support and she nodded ambiguously.
The old man looked again out over the fields of Derbyshire into an indeterminate distance which might have been the past. "He's gone, isn't he?"
"Yes."
"He's still up there on the mountain?"
"Yes." The old man thought a moment: "But he didn't fall?"
"No. It may have been exposure or exhaustion. He may have suffered a stroke. He just sat down and didn't get up again." "I knew it. Tommy never fell off anything."
There was a pause while Wilf temporarily sank back into a reverie. John had a look round the room which was a kind of shrine to Tommy - pictures of Tommy as a boy and a youth peering optimistically into an unknown future, and then group pictures of later expeditions. Eventually, he fixed on a large group photo dating from the 1930s. Wilf stirred and registered his interest.
"Aye, that's me and a few pals. Up on Kinder Scout. You'd be too young to remember, but back in those days we had to fight for the right to wander in these hills. We fought the landowners and we won, but not without a few arrests first. Those people were on the first mass trespass. All gone now, of course. Tommy too"
For Wilf, the right to climb was the right to freedom and escape from industrial squalor; in this attainment of freedom, no money had changed hands, but in a way he could not have foreseen, the personal price he paid was high. By the universal law of Karma, death and idealism were joined as partners in the same cosmic dance. We may strive to climb and conquer, but nature merely craves equilibrium.
Veronica motioned him out of the room.
"I'm sorry, " said Veronica as she walked him to his car.. "That must have been difficult for you. We'll tell him the rest when the time is right - if it ever is. Thank you for your trouble."
On the way to the car, John remembered something and handed her the old identification tag. "I'm sorry that's all there was," he said, which was almost true. On the way home, somewhere near Matlock, he had to stop the car and walk around for a bit while some unfinished emotional business was resolved. * * * * * He got as far as Camp Two and positively knew this was a far as he would ever get. He had never seriously contemplated a summit attempt, and now the extreme weariness brought on by altitude, and the headaches, from which he increasingly suffered, worried him. He began to fear the strokes that affect even young and fit men at this altitude. After the second foray to Camp Two, he announced to Kurt that he was finished and would make his own way down to Camp One. The weather was gloriously clear and looked set; the path was easily negotiated, really no more than a walk, although at this altitude, even descending was always more than a walk. As he set off, there was an immediate psychological lift, and soon the difference of a two thousand feet dispelled his headache and made his breathing easier.
A thousand vertical feet above Camp One, he stopped to check his position and looked back towards the tiny brightly coloured tents of his companions. Some way above, he could just make out a string of black dots embarking on the next stage of the climb. Here the landscape is utterly barren, fields of brilliant snow among the vast expanse of grey rubble. In this environment, anything out of the ordinary is easily spotted and away to his right, at a distance of two hundred yards, he caught sight of something white, but not the white of snow. Despite his weariness, curiosity got the better of him and he started carefully treading crab like across the rocky slope. It took him about a quarter of an hour to reach his goal, constantly checking his bearings against familiar landmarks.
There are scores of bodies on Everest, perhaps as many as three hundred. Many have been there for years. At this altitude, with the cold dry air and the lack of any form of scavenger, a body can lie undisturbed and fairly well preserved indefinitely. John knew this, and he also knew that it was impossible to do anything except perhaps pause for a moment and consider the grim reminder of our own mortality. Experienced climbers were hardened to it and just slogged on, preoccupied with their own aching limbs, and driven by their immediate goal. But it was still a shock to John to realise, as he neared his objective, that the white he had seen was the exposed shin of a climber, thinned down to a grotesque ivory stick by age.
The corpse had been there some considerable time. The faded red jacket predated the current fabric technology, and the boots were of leather. The most unusual thing was the posture of the corpse, not prone, as might be expected, but sitting, propped up against a rock with the sunken eye sockets peering west towards the setting sun. It was as though he had sat down to admire the view and never got up again. It was a good view, at least. There was a backpack filled with the usual gear - items of clothing, food and a small Primus stove- but no camera. John plucked up the courage to investigate the pockets and managed to extract a diary, the paper worn thin and fragile by age and extreme cold. Around the neck he found the customary identification tag which came away easily in his hand.
Before returning to the path, he removed his white prayer scarf and placed it round the neck of the climber. Then he sat down for a few minutes to share the view with -- he looked down at the identification tag--Thomas Stannup, 52 Slate Street, Sheffield, U.K. The view was magnificent, right across to a bed of clouds to the south and west, but the sudden disappearance of the sun behind a western spur of the mountain reminded him that it was time to go. On the way back to the path, breathing hard in the painfully thin air, he found himself wanting to pray, but found that the words didn't come. Here death was too blank and enigmatic, devoid of any human context.
Back at Camp One, he had plenty of time to scour the pencil written entries in the diary for clues as to Tommy's fate. He was a good writer and methodical in his style, although the handwriting, neat and small on the trek out from Kathmandu, became increasingly difficult under the rigours of cold, exhaustion and cramped tent conditions. From the early entries an optimistic picture of the expedition emerged and it was clear that Tommy was one of the four climbers marked out for a summit attempt. The one cloud on the horizon was a mild virus that he had picked up before leaving Kathmandu. At first he was hopeful that it would clear up, but as time passed, it appeared that he continued to feel the side effects. He had got as far as the South Col and had to turn back, descending alone in relative safety down the difficult sections, which were all roped. The last entry, headed Camp Two 25th May, was written in a chaotic hand that suggested exhaustion - certainly lack of co-ordination. It was a long entry and seemed at times to be addressed to an unidentified second person.
"You can't imagine the feeling of fatigue experienced leading on a thousand foot ice-face, hacking one step at a time and hardly having enough energy to haul your own body up, let alone cut the next step. I've been leading most days and perhaps that's what has taken it out of me. The scene is unimaginable. The violet sky above, the greens and blues reflected from the ice face, and a view over your shoulder that stretches a thousand miles. But you have no time for all this because you're climbing, not sight-seeing. What is more, the physical discomfort of oxygen deprivation is so distracting that you cannot take anything in but one step after another. Every time you pause, the effort in starting again is greater, so you avoid stopping at all if you are sensible.
Having descended three thousand feet, I am feeling much better, but the after-effects of the virus are still noticeable. Tomorrow I have a full day to descend to Camp One and I may even stop on the way to take in the view! I need a rest. This morning it was agony to get out of my sleeping bag, and if it weren't for Chris, I think I'd still be there now. I have become so used to looking up- perhaps all my life has been like this. I remember you telling me when I was a kid and hesitating on a climb, "Look up! Look up, Tommy! You're going up -not down!" It's time to look down for a change and think of you all at home. But even from this height, I won't be able to see that far!"
On the trek home, the rest of the party were in high spirits, flushed with their summit success. Everyone was happy, including, presumably, The Peak Boot Company and The South African Times. Kurt was the only one who noticed that John was looking distracted and tried his best to talk him through his puzzling discovery. Behind his old-world cynicism was a kindness profounder than anything he had found in his Anglo-Saxon companions. They talked it through, and later he remembered Kurt's opinion that philosophy could extend to grief and a sense of loss, but not to death itself. For John, the sense of helplessness was inescapable, curiously potent in the death of a stranger.
Near to Benkar, where the road begins to narrow above a deep river gorge, John began to feel an acute pain in his side. Feeling groggy and nauseous, he was taking his rucksack off to rest when he slipped and fell on some wet stones. The bag, with all its contents, tumbled five hundred feet into the oblivion of rushing waters below, now swollen by the first monsoon rains.