Price pulled off his boots and tried to fasten the door flap. It was dark now and it took him ten minutes to knot the tapes, grasping with numb fingers in the blackness. He knocked chunks of ice from one of the eiderdown bags and pushed his legs inside. Snow and ice covered Price’s clothing and the lining of the sleeping bag; if his body warmed, the ice would melt and soak him. Ashley’s sleeping bag lay beside him in a frozen heap. Price wondered dimly if Ashley could have made the summit. It seemed impossible in this blizzard.
Price sat up and rummaged in the darkness for matches. He must light the lamp and burn magnesium flares to help Ashley find the tent. He felt a tin of café au lait. A compass. An empty water flask. He gasped and burrowed back into his sleeping bag. He was too cold. He must eat something to gain strength, but he felt no hunger, only terrible thirst. There was no water and he was too weak to melt snow on the stove. Price thought of the coming hours and the agony of sleepless visions, the long ticking nightmare of unquenchable thirst and chills and fatigue. He wondered if he would survive it. The second eiderdown bag lay beside him.
When Ashley returns, he thought, I will give him his bag.
Price wriggled his sleeping bag into Ashley’s and sank toward sleep.
The diary of the head lama of Rongbuk Monastery records that in the third month of the Wood Rat year of the fifteenth rab-byung, a party of thirteen European gentlemen arrived accompanied by a hundred porters and three hundred pack animals. The gentlemen bestowed fine gifts upon the lama. They requested his blessing upon their expedition, which sought to climb the tallest mountain on earth for the fame and honor it would bring them. The lama warned the climbers that his country was a very cold one, and only chaste and pious men could survive in such a harsh domain. Nevertheless the Europeans persevered for weeks at their strange errand, erecting seven tents in succession toward the summit. They used iron pegs and chains and plates to challenge Chomolungma, but still they failed. The Europeans returned to the monastery to request a funeral benediction for a comrade who had died upon the mountain. The lama performed the service with great sincerity, knowing that the dead European’s soul had suffered untold difficulties for the sake of nothing.
Ashley Walsingham’s body has never been found. It is not known whether he died of a fall or if he was benighted on the mountain. There are hundreds of bodies on Mount Everest and they cannot be brought down from their great height. Walsingham did not reach a record elevation, nor did he set foot on untrodden ground. His name is recorded only in the thicker annals of human exploration, and only then as a footnote. Of late these volumes are seldom read and never admired.
It would be decades before men would scale Mount Everest. These men would be a breed apart from the climbers of 1924. They would reach the summit by a different route on a morning of vivid sunshine. They would know the names of their predecessors, but little else of that vanished world, and they would bring to the mountain no magnum bottles of champagne, nor anthologies of poetry or prose, nor stockings or sweaters handknitted and darned, nor scraps of fabric safeguarded through the trenches of Picardie and Ypres. The men who finally climbed Mount Everest would find the mountain less strange than those who had come before, and so it would go on with each generation in turn, until the mystery would shimmer briefly, a last green flash of the setting sun, then cease altogether.
Acknowledgments
Dorian Karchmar, Marysue Rucci, Simone Blaser, Emily Graff, Elizabeth Breeden, Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Andrea DeWerd, Cary Goldstein, Sarah Reidy, Loretta Denner, Jackie Seow, Ruth Lee-Mui, Christopher Lin and the entire team at Simon & Schuster. Raffaella De Angelis, Jason Arthur, Cathryn Summerhayes, John McGhee and Jeff Kleinman.
Marlene Dunlevy, Ryan Bowman, Eric Bain, Ben Urwand, Emily Cohen, Ryan Wilcoxon, Elizabeth Beeby, Adam White, Leslie Henkel, Alice Brett and Catherine Foley. My father and mother; my siblings Brandon, Alyssa and Lucian.
This is a work of fiction, but it owes its existence to the many lives that inspired it. Wilfred Owen, George Leigh Mallory, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon, T. Howard Somervell, J. B. L. Noel, Geoffrey Winthrop Young and F. S. Smythe are among the scores of individuals whose experiences — captured in their letters, memoirs, diaries, poems or other accounts — made me write this book. I hope I can be forgiven for taking certain liberties with historical events and geography, as well as the people and military units mentioned in these pages. Although I have endeavored to be as faithful to the past as possible, fiction ultimately diverges into a world of its own.
Dr. A. M. Kellas’s speech “Notes on the Possibility of Ascending the Loftier Himalaya” is derived from the version printed in The Geographical Journal, vol. 47, no. 6, delivered at the Royal Geographical Society on May 18, 1916. Two excerpts from The Times of London appear in this book: “Everest Victims: Story of a Grand Lama’s Warning,” July 29, 1924, issue, and “The Mount Everest Tragedy: Message from the King,” June 21, 1924, issue; a portion of the latter is extracted as Ashley’s eulogy from the King. J. B. L. Noel’s 1924 film The Epic of Everest, also quoted here, is available from the British Film Institute. The verse that Pritchard recites when he meets Tristan is from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If—”; the online encyclopedia entry for “poste restante,” which Tristan reads with Mireille, is from Wikipedia. The article “Post from the Peak of Everest” appeared in the Daily Chronicle of February 13, 1924. Dr. Hingston’s view of the Rongbuk Valley is based on his chapter “Natural History” in the official expedition narrative, The Fight for Everest, 1924, while the account of the lama’s diary is derived from E. O. Shebbeare’s expedition diary in the Alpine Club archive. I am indebted to Wilfred Owen not only for this book’s title, but for the trigger word “mistletoe,” which he used in his own letters to his mother — a word too perfect for any substitute.
And to all the people who helped a stranger in his travels—
Thank you.
Simon & Schuster Reading Group Guide
The Steady Running of the Hour
Justin Go
About This Guide
This reading group guide for The Steady Running of the Hour includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a conversation with author Justin Go. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your dialogue and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Just after graduating college and at loose ends in San Francisco, Tristan Campbell receives a letter delivered by special courier. It contains the phone number of a Mr. J. F. Prichard of Twyning & Hooper, Solicitors, in London — and news that could change Tristan’s life forever.