When Nights Were Cold (18 page)

‘Come on, Farringdon, you're slowing us. Chop chop,' called Parr when, once or twice, I paused to wonder at our progress or take in the changing views.

On longer days, we hired a porter to carry our equipment and food. His name was Ulrich and he was a quiet but friendly man from Zermatt, who helped when we needed him and stood back when we did not. When we stopped for lunch or tea he would unload food from his pack and tell us of his ascents, pointing out a peak or col with a piece of cheese or the wine flask. One day Locke begged him to tell us his most terrible mountain experience. We were sheltering from rain under overhanging rocks and Locke wanted a story to pass the time. Ulrich crossed himself and walked out into the rain muttering.

‘What?' Locke mouthed at us.

‘You shouldn't ask him that while we're actually on a mountain,' Parr whispered. ‘It's awfully bad luck.'

We took a day's rest in Zermatt, wrote in our diaries, read a little and napped. That evening, after bathing our feet and wrapping them in cotton wool, we retired to the lounge and sat around our favourite table in the corner to discuss the final few days of our trip.

‘Shall we meet Alberto tomorrow?' I asked Parr. I was impatient to climb higher.

‘I have not hired him after all. We shan't need him.'

‘Is that all, then?' Locke cried. An elderly couple at the fireplace turned and stared. We moved our chairs closer together. ‘Are you saying that we have finished with climbing?'

‘No, that is not what I'm saying.'

I could see that Parr had some clever plan. She seemed rather smug about it. ‘Oh, God. You're not thinking of taking us up the Matterhorn? We're not ready for it. We don't have the skills.' I thought perhaps that the guide had refused and so Parr, certain that she knew better, had dismissed him.

‘No, no, of course not. Don't be so foolish. I'm surprised at you, Farringdon. Now look here, I'll tell you the plan.' Parr placed her hands on the table, leaned in. ‘I thought we would make a guideless ascent of the Breithorn. It's high but relatively easy from the south-west slope. We'll climb up to the Gandegg Hut tomorrow and sleep there to get an early start. If we're quick about it, we can perhaps also climb Pollux. It's very near.'

‘You've climbed the Breithorn before?'

‘Oh yes. We shan't have any problems. If you all like it, we could still do a guided ascent of another peak before we go home, perhaps the Bishorn or one of the Monte Rosa summits.'

I was ready to go and pack my rucksack, but Locke and Hooper looked miserable.

‘It will not be so hard, really not much more than what we have already done,' Parr continued. ‘We won't have Ulrich either, of course, so we'll have to carry everything ourselves.'

Locke rubbed a sore spot on her heel and winced. ‘You shouldn't have decided without asking us. It isn't fair when we are all affected. I say we hire the guide.'

‘It's too late, I'm afraid. He's taken an engagement with another client.'

‘Parr—'

‘I didn't want a lot of squabbling and discussion—'

Locke clapped her hand to her forehead. ‘You are beyond belief.'

Parr looked at me for help. ‘Well, I knew that I was right and I made the decision accordingly.'

‘The question is,' I said, ‘are we really able to do this on our own and, if we are, do we want to? And can't we at least have a porter?'

‘No. I mean it to be just us.'

‘Then we certainly don't want to do it. I've had enough,' said Hooper. She left the lounge and hurried down the corridor to her room. We all followed her and crowded in the doorway.

Hooper pressed the bell for service. ‘Where's that boy? I'm going home.'

‘Please don't.'

‘I don't know what to do if something goes wrong. I shan't go without a guide.'

‘But I'll be the guide,' said Parr. ‘And you just have to do as I tell you. I can do as well as Alberto.'

‘You are like some army captain, Parr,' said Locke. ‘Why do you think we should all fall in behind you? You should know us better than that.'

I went to the window. My legs were heavy and the tips of my toes were numb from striking against the ends of my boots, but I knew I had more climbing in me. The sky was dark and thick with cloud.

‘We can manage without the guide since we have Parr.' I opened the window and let the cold air touch my face. ‘That's the point of the Society.' I turned to my friends. ‘Isn't it?'

Locke nodded. ‘All right. But Parr, you cannot do this to us again. You must not.'

The boy arrived at the door and waited as Hooper dithered and sighed. He stood in the corridor leaning on one foot and then the other, too shy to look at us directly. When Hooper went to him, he seemed to blush as though he knew that he had entered an awkward scene. She looked at each one of us but we said nothing. Then she smiled at the boy.

‘Thank you but I don't need anything after all.' She came to join me at the window. ‘I don't want to be the only one who doesn't climb.'

I took her hand, pressed her fingers. ‘It's the right thing. It would be no good at all without you.'

It was no trivial thing to take all our supplies on our backs. How would we manage if we had insufficient food, or could not carry all our equipment? We laid our belongings out on the floor of the hotel room and chose only what we needed. There would be enough food and no more, just a small amount of fuel for fire, a metal box of matches. Guideless climbing was rare in those days, especially for women, but I did not know this. Hooper wrote a letter and placed it on her dressing table.

‘You must all do the same. Don't look like that, Farringdon. If you die, it won't be a secret any longer.'

‘We're not going to die, Hooper.'

‘Even great mountaineers have accidents.'

Hooper's quiet voice and serious expression moved me. I wrote a letter to Catherine. There was so much I should have said to her. When I was a child and she gave recitals, I always sat on the front row and turned to scan the audience as she played, delighted and proud when I saw their smiles. I wanted to say this to her, and much more, but when I walked out and left her with Mother, I believed that I had given up my right to be loved by her. How could I begin to apologize for being in Switzerland and not telling her anything about it?

I scratched a few unsatisfactory sentences on my sheet, tucked it into the envelope, placed it on my dressing table. The letters informed our loved ones that we had died knowing all the risks we faced and that we loved them and were sorry for the pain we caused, but that we had done it for the greater good of womankind and it was better to have tried and failed than to have stayed at home embroidering tablecloths. Locke addressed her letter to her parents and Geoffrey, and Parr's was addressed to her aunt and uncle in Wales. She grumbled that this was unnecessary and would put a curse on the adventure.
And it's only the Breithorn,
she said, but she wrote her letter nevertheless and placed it on her bedside table.

Hooper remained the reluctant mountaineer.

‘If any of us falls ill or if the weather looks bad, can we turn back? There's no shame in turning back, is there?'

‘None at all,' said Locke.

‘But don't speak as though you were already defeated,' said Parr. ‘You'll pull us all back.'

We made an Alpine start from the hut, setting off at half past two in the morning, sleepy and stiff. Each step was heavy, clumsy, to begin with, and our breath was laboured and loud. Hooper held the lantern.

We slipped our skirts off – Hooper too – and buried them in a dry cave-like opening between rocks at the glacier's edge. They would be extra weight to carry and our knapsacks were heavy enough.

There was a little light in the sky as we climbed higher, but the world was still colourless. We crunched up the glacier towards the Breithorn and Klein Matterhorn. The sun rose and disappeared behind clouds. We met climbers coming from the Theodul Pass. A group of seven or eight young French-speaking men were working on different parts of the ice, practising their mountain skills. The place began to resemble an eerie mine or quarry. The men moved silently with ropes and axes, climbing an ice wall, lowering themselves into dips and crevasses.

As we climbed a steep slope of snow, the glacier fell away from us, curving down beneath the black moraine. Above us, dark, vertical gashes in the snow seemed to jump around, stretch and shrink under our gaze.

A party of four British men was sometimes ahead of us and sometimes behind. We spoke to them, but we didn't want to join them and, though we welcomed their friendliness, they would keep trying to help. This had not happened when we had had the porter. We had to ensure that we were particularly efficient whenever they looked our way and, sometimes, look ahead or behind us as though just waiting for our guide to return or catch us up. Eventually we invented an imaginary guide. His name was Bernard and he was always just around a corner, a little further up or down the mountain, so that we could call out for him and assure the men that we were safe.

We had not climbed with such heavy packs before and our pace was slower than usual. I found that the weight of the rucksack pushed my shoulders forward and made it hard to draw deep breaths. We changed from one rope to two as we moved from glacier to rock. I was roped up with Hooper, and Locke with Parr. Parr and I led. In a careless moment, Locke slipped on loose rock but she leaned back quickly and did not fall. Parr shouted at her and after that we all placed our feet more firmly. Wind seared our cheeks and made tears run down our faces, but we kept a steady pace. It was hard to move quickly at this altitude and we paused sometimes to catch our breath. My panting was so desperate and loud that I sounded like a child with whooping cough. I counted my breaths in and out as I walked, trying to keep steady and relaxed as we began our slow ascent of the Breithorn.

The sun had risen without my noticing it and, as we approached the summit, we could see for miles. To our left, the mountain dropped sharply away. Far below were the rocks and glaciers we had seen from our viewing point at the Gornergrat. We reached the crest and stopped. Mist rolled over us then hung like a curtain. It would lift in one place to reveal shocking and beautiful views, then fall and rise somewhere else to whole new worlds. We could see far beyond the peaks of the Pennine Alps to Mont Blanc, the Dolomites.

Hooper complained of a headache. We looked at her but said nothing. She waited, perhaps hoping that one of us would suggest turning back but we did not. It seemed too soon to have a headache and no good reason to stop.

‘Never mind. It will pass,' she said.

‘It will get better when we go down.'

We were so high now. It had taken us longer than Parr had predicted and so we decided not to attempt to go on to Pollux but traverse further along the Breithorn. We marched at the same pace, though Parr was at the front and pulling to go faster. Clouds gathered and the wind blew harder. We dropped down a little from the ridge and clambered over rocks and snow. The wind tried to whip us off the mountainside and we leaned forwards, fighting to keep on. I watched one foot and then the other, heard the bright crunch as they sank into snow, and forced my legs to keep going.

We had been walking for hours and were tired. Sometimes my limbs seemed made of liquid and I could not see how I was controlling them. I began to imagine that I had no legs and that I was climbing only with my mind.

We reached the second summit but could not see as far now that the mist had lowered. The snow was softening and becoming slippery underfoot. Hooper crouched on the ground and wept. I put my hand on her shoulder.

‘My head. I must go down now.'

‘It's mountain sickness.' Parr kicked at the snow, irritated and impatient.

‘I know. And I want to go down.'

‘I used to get it when I was a girl,' said Parr. ‘And you can't do anything but wait until you've adjusted to the altitude.'

I suggested descending immediately and returning to Zermatt rather than traverse further. If we left it too late, we would be sliding around on slush and might have to spend the night in a bivouac. Locke offered to go down with Hooper so that Parr and I could go on but it was a pointless suggestion. We only had one map and, if the weather or Hooper's condition worsened, they might be in danger.

‘We had better all go down,' I said. ‘We've done a good job, so let's get back safely.'

‘Rot.' Parr blew her nose, stamped her feet to warm them. ‘We've time to get further. We'll find a sheltered spot, have a rest and some water.'

There was a speckling of snow in the air and we proceeded slowly. Hooper's whole body twisted and swayed from the effort of each step. We found shelter under rocks and took time to melt snow for tea and eat some biscuits.

The snowfall thickened. Our footsteps were soon covered and I pulled out my compass to get a bearing.

‘Farringdon, who is the leader here?' Parr sounded tired.

‘We're losing visibility. I want to know the way so we can get down safely.'

Hooper shivered. The wind whipped her shoulders. She buckled, almost fell to the ground under the weight of her pack. Locke took Hooper's arm and led her around to keep her warm. I grabbed Hooper's knapsack, took some of her load for myself and she did not protest. We climbed and slipped over snow and rocks, trying to keep a reasonable pace but not wanting to leave Hooper struggling.

The sky now covered the tops of peaks, I was not at all sure which of the mountains around us was which and, before long, we could hardly make out the path we had taken. We were in a sort of dip or col but possibly not the one we had intended to come down. Parr insisted that she knew the way, though I could not see how.

My father had taught me that it was always a mistake to trust one's instinct rather than the points of the compass. But Parr was our leader. Men must not question the orders of the captain, so the captain has to be right when he is wrong. And Parr had never made a mistake with navigation. She was far more experienced than I. This was not the time for mutiny and I decided that I had misread the compass or there was some sort of disruption of the magnetic field. I was now roped up with Parr, and Locke with Hooper.