A Change in Altitude (13 page)

Margaret took a peek down the glacier and realized she couldn’t even see its end. She snapped her head up. She didn’t want to view the slope above her either. Margaret stared straight at the feet of the porter in front of her, watching his every move. When he moved forward, so did she. When he halted, so did she. She assumed Patrick was watching her feet in a similar manner.

The going was slow. The footholds had to be carved or recarved. Each step was a sculpture dependent upon the skills of the guide. Margaret hadn’t before realized how very much they would need to trust the man. One false move on his part, and the entire party might slip off its footholds and wind up clinging to the glacier by a rope with a hold at either end. Margaret found these thoughts nonproductive and began to count instead. She did this often when bored on a walk. It helped to pass the time.
One, two, three, four
—a kind of military beat. Her arms were extended for balance, a clear prerequisite. In a vivid way, each of them held the others’ safety.

It took maybe twenty minutes for the guide to reach the center of the glacier. Margaret knew what lay below her. She took heart from the loose posture of the porter ahead of her. He had done this dozens of times, if not more. If it wasn’t safe, would he have come along?

For him, the traverse was only tedious. She longed to be on the other side, which was becoming more and more desirable with each step.

“What the hell is she doing?” Patrick called out.

Margaret looked up. She saw a flurry of red. The guide raised his voice. Diana seemed to be on a different path just above the rest of them. Her posture, bent forward, showed an impatience with the guide’s slow progress. Margaret realized that Diana had unclipped herself from the guide rope.

“Diana, stop!” Arthur cried. “Get back here!”

The guide shouted. Above them, Diana was carving her own footsteps into the glacier without benefit of ax or rope.

“Diana!” Arthur yelled again.

Margaret watched as Diana dug into the ice with either her instep or the side of her boot, depending on which foot she was trying to secure. Margaret could see that Diana was now above and just forward of the guide, who was trying to keep step with her. The group moved as well. The ice had softened some, so that Diana was able to make a rudimentary shelf with each step.

“Stop her!” Patrick cried. “Someone! Anyone!”

Diana had been impatient to get going. Possibly, the altitude had finally gotten to her and had impaired her judgment. She had her arms out, but Margaret could see that the force of kicking in new steps was producing a counterforce that was pushing her body outward, requiring more balance than had been needed before. As if the sheer volume of his voice alone would make her obey, Arthur pleaded with her.

But, as they all knew, Diana obeyed no one.

Suddenly, Diana was on the ground, knees up, and sliding past the guide. Margaret couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The guide reached forward to catch the white fur of Diana’s hood. She turned and tried to grab hold of his hand. She missed it and tore off a mitten to get at the ice with her fingernails. She hit a bump, which she tried to cling to, but gravity and velocity defeated her. The last Margaret saw of Diana, as she plummeted into the deep ravine, was a patch of red, spiraling out of control toward the bottom.

It was a horror such as Margaret had never imagined.

Arthur fell to his knees, howling Diana’s name. He reached out toward her as if, even as she was sliding fifty, a hundred, two hundred feet away from him, he might still snag her jacket with his hand. When Arthur went down, they all went down—crouching or on their knees. Saartje was the first, after Arthur, to cry out, but her cries quickly became sobs. Margaret said nothing, frozen in place. She couldn’t see Patrick behind her, but the porter in front of her was on high alert. Arthur was losing it, bent toward the ravine, reaching out toward his wife. The guide scooted backward and took hold of him. He had one hand on the collar of Arthur’s jacket, the other on his own pickax, which he sank deep into the ice. Arthur’s cries became guttural, awful to listen to. Margaret bent her head to her knees.

It had happened in the space of an instant. In a few minutes they would have been across the glacier, Diana exulting, no longer impatient, celebrating like the rest of them. They wouldn’t have reached the summit yet, but they’d have conquered the worst the mountain had to offer. Margaret wanted to step in and undo the moment of Diana unclipping herself from the guide rope. Over and over and over, she tried this. Arthur was bellowing and beating the ice. He swayed from side to side in his keening, and their bodies swayed with him. The last porter in the line was dispatched down the mountain to assemble a rescue team. They could hear the guide speaking into his radio. There was a squawk of a reply. The guide summoned the rangers from Top Hut. Then he covered Arthur with his own body, speaking to him in an intimate and calm voice. The guide had but one task—to get Arthur and the rest of them across the ice to safety.

They stayed as they were for what seemed a long time. A minute felt like twenty. Margaret thought of Diana with her dogs and with her children. Of her sudden, dazzling smile. Of the way she had helped Margaret on the Ngong Hills. It was essential now to get Arthur to the other side in one piece. His children needed him. Margaret could not imagine the man’s grief, what lay ahead of him.

She wanted to crawl across the glacier, but they were told to stand. Each of them had to figure out how to rise simultaneously with their feet in awkward positions, all the while maintaining perfect balance. Each of them had to take steps away from the site of the accident. Each of them, including Arthur, had to leave Diana in the ravine. Arthur was crazed with shock and grief, but everybody else understood that safety now was paramount. Though the guide was outwardly calm, Margaret could see his concern. Any rash movement, and they would all be dead. The greatest danger was a deranged Arthur, an Arthur who, in a frenzy to find his wife, might at any minute jump off the ledge made by the footprints. The pickaxes could not withstand the sudden torque of a lurch like that.

The group became eerily quiet. They walked as slowly and as carefully as possible. Though Margaret was not an especially religious woman, she repeated the Lord’s Prayer over and over as a kind of ritualistic chant. If she kept saying it without mistakes, she thought, they would make it to the other side.

It wasn’t until they were ten steps away from solid ground that Patrick, behind her, in a voice that was meant to reach the top of the mountain itself, cried out an unintelligible sound—a summons that echoed off the rocks there and there and there, a sound that scuttled her bones. The cry was meant for Diana and Arthur. Later, Margaret would learn that the rest was meant for Patrick and her.

A
t the far side of the glacier, Arthur unclipped himself. He took off down the mountain, as if he might get ahead of Diana and break her fall. Willem realized the folly of this—one couldn’t get down the mountain on that side of the glacier—and started racing after him, surprising Margaret with his agility and speed. The guide stayed close to both men. Saartje lay prostrate on the ground, and Margaret knelt beside her.

Patrick sat, maybe twenty feet away, knees raised, head in his hands. Margaret knew better than to go to him. Saartje, momentarily coming up for air, turned her head to find Margaret’s face. “Get off me,” she blurted.

Margaret wasn’t on her, but she stood anyway. Willem yelled, “Arthur!” Margaret could hear distant shouting while Willem sought to subdue the grief-deranged husband. When the scuffle was over, the two men sat. Together they stared into the place where Diana had gone. In deference, the guide stood fifteen feet away. Ready for whatever might happen next.

“Could she still be alive?” Margaret asked Patrick.

He didn’t answer. He wouldn’t look at her. He wouldn’t come to where she stood.

Saartje got up and brushed her pants and jacket off.

“You know what Diana and Arthur were arguing about this morning?” she asked Margaret.

Margaret’s skin went hot inside her jacket. She shook her head. (Though she knew, didn’t she?)

“God, why did you even come?” Saartje asked, and walked away.

Margaret had her hands in her pockets as she stared at her feet. She couldn’t look down the mountain. She didn’t want to glance at Patrick, who wouldn’t return her gaze. She avoided the glacier, which they would soon have to recross, an almost unthinkable endeavor. How would Arthur be able to handle that? How would any of them manage? Was there another way around the glacier? The guide would know. Maybe if they went up and over?
Over what?
Margaret wondered, as she surveyed the peaks above them. Would Arthur have the strength to climb farther?

It was as though Diana had disappeared into the earth, to reappear in a hundred years or maybe never. She had gone somewhere none of them could follow. Margaret prayed that Diana had died early in her slide, perhaps whacking her head on the ice, the spiraling Margaret had seen indicating unconsciousness. What Margaret couldn’t bear was the thought of Diana alive and knowing her fate, even for an instant. But, then again, wouldn’t Diana have believed in hope, in rescue, right up until the last minute? Or would she have seen the bottom of the ravine coming at her and panicked, as Margaret imagined people who jumped off buildings did as they saw the earth rushing to meet them? No, Margaret decided then and there. Diana had been struck unconscious early on. Margaret tried to imagine Arthur’s frustration as Diana had slid past him and out of his reach. To want to save her and to have to remain still would have been an excruciating torment.

The cook came around with hot soup. Each of them accepted the broth, but none of them could drink it. After a time, Patrick rose to his feet and walked to where Margaret stood. Neither of them spoke. The words they had in their heads could not be said aloud. Not there. Not in front of others.

Arthur and Willem began the climb back up. Margaret hoped Willem had prepared Arthur for the need to recross the glacier.

As the two drew closer, Arthur’s face stunned Margaret. It wasn’t Arthur. Though the man wore Arthur’s Barbour jacket, he was no one she recognized. He gasped for breath like a fish, and his eyes were so swollen they were nearly shut. Despair, Margaret saw firsthand, rearranged the features.

Saartje went to Arthur and held on to him. He laid his head on her shoulder and scrunched his eyes, but he didn’t sob or cry out. The grief was already beginning to go beyond the tears to a place that had no outlet except to worm its ugly way into the center of his body.

Margaret wished to evaporate. She didn’t want Arthur to have to look up and see her face. Did he blame her, as the others clearly did? Was she responsible for worrying Diana about her husband’s small attentions to her? Had that caused Diana’s anger and her impatience? Or had Margaret caused it by being impossibly slow and making everyone in the climbing party wait? How many hours had been lost to Margaret’s tardiness? Or was it simply the glimpse of the clasped hands when Diana woke that had filled her head with fury?

Margaret wondered how Arthur would have played that scene outside the door. Margaret had been terrified and had reached for his hand? Margaret wouldn’t let go? He was so tired he gave up and just went to sleep? Or might there have been enough lantern light from outside for Diana to have seen the position of the hands, Arthur’s over Margaret’s? Would Diana have added that to the litany of perceived slights that had accrued over time: finding Margaret, a strange woman, drink in hand, in her drawing room one day; watching as Arthur put his hand on Margaret’s shoulder when he got up to get her a whiskey; noting that her husband was staring at Margaret while she was naked on the Ngong Hills (when Willem had had the good sense to turn away); observing the way her husband dropped back to give Margaret a push or the way he had shared his chocolate bar with her just the night before? Had Diana seen that?

Only Willem seemed without accusation. He was preoccupied, as was she, with the image of Arthur losing it on the glacier, yanking the guide rope in such a way as to endanger the safety of the rest of them. Willem would stay near Arthur, Margaret guessed. The guide first, Arthur second, Willem third. Willem would have an ax and would dig it hard into the ice if Arthur wobbled or fell, thus keeping the line steady for the rest of them.

The rangers arrived from Top Hut.

The crossing was made without mishap, though the pace was slow. Each minute on the glacier increased the chance that Arthur might fling himself toward Diana, to the place where he imagined his wife lay. When finally they reached the other side, the guide went ahead. The two rangers led Arthur down the mountain, each occasionally taking an arm. Patrick and Willem followed close behind. They didn’t run; the guide forced them to walk slowly, which seemed nearly impossible on the scree, where one was tempted to sit and slide the entire length of it. (Willem had warned that “a skinned ass” would be the consequence.) The bog was almost as miserable going down as it had been going up. Margaret had developed severe cramps along the way and had to retreat often to the bushes with burning diarrhea. Was this AMS in reverse? Or had the shock unnerved her system, too? She felt sick and shaky and at times not sure that she could take another step. She unpacked the meds and took a teaspoon of Imodium. After she had stumbled a couple of times, she noticed that the cook, whose name she didn’t know
(whose name she didn’t know!),
stood near her in case she fell badly. After the bog, Arthur shook the two rangers off and walked by himself to Park Gate. He seemed to have regained some of his emotional strength and now wanted to mount a rescue mission. Patrick tipped the guide handsomely, but the man wouldn’t take the money.

At the lodge, Arthur was told that there was little hope of rescue, and that they likely would recover only a body. He collapsed into a chair. A half hour later, Arthur was on his feet, throwing his weight around in an unpleasant way—rudely, condescendingly—though one could hardly blame him. He made phone calls: to the police, to a friend of his in Langata, to James. Perhaps he also made one to Adhiambo, who had the children. Arthur faced another sickening task: having to tell the children that their mother was gone.