Free Above All Things by Tanis Rideout Page B

the skin hadn’t had a chance to recover. His bottom lip was swollen and blistered. He ran his tongue over its pulpy tenderness. He’d left his hat in his tent. He could go back and get it, but Odell was still standing nearby, reviewing his own list of duties.
    The work tent was sagging and pathetic. As he watched, another porter approached it and scratched at the flap beforepulling it open. He put something on the floor and then backed out. No doubt something else to add to the bloody list. The number of things that got broken, damaged, or lost at Base Camp was staggering. And with someone always carrying another broken thing in, it was impossible to get anything done.
    At home, no one ever bothered him in his workshop. If the door from the garden was closed, that was all there was to it. It had been that way since he was eleven, when his father let him start using the workshop on his own. They had painted STAY OUT on a sheet of wood that they banged to the door. For some reason they all respected the sign – his parents, his brother and sister, even Dick, the few times he’d come to visit.
    As Sandy rounded the corner of Noel’s work tent, he stumbled into Hazard, who was wrestling with a large mound of canvas. “Sorry,” Hazard said, looking up at him. “Noel wanted this for something. Says the tent’s not dark enough for developing. Maybe you could give me a hand?”
    God, he just wanted a minute alone. “Just on my way to the latrines. Then more repairs. Your campbed’s next on the list.” He stalked off in the direction of the latrines before Hazard had a chance to say anything else. If there was solitude to be had anywhere, it was there. They all gave one another a wide berth when using the privies.
    As he approached the latrines, the smell wafted towards him and he almost turned back. Calling them latrines was being generous. Imagine, a shallow hole behind a low wall of piled stones. That it’s cool here is the only thing that keeps the stench down. An open pit used by nearly a hundred men … The ancients had it better than this! It seemed a safe enough thing to write to Dick about. Latrines couldn’t have less to do with Marjory. And he certainly wasn’t going to share this with her. Sandy dropped his pants, the cold air shrivelling him, then squatted, peering over the wall.
    Base Camp was crowded, a small city of tents. A hundredporters, lowing yaks. Not at all what he’d imagined. He’d pictured a vast emptiness, the luxury of being alone in the middle of nowhere.
    “Oh, it will all be so glamorous,” Marjory had said from the clawfoot bathtub, her hand dangling over the edge. He lit her cigarette and put it in her outstretched fingers. “Exotic,” she said, with a puff of smoke.
    “No, that’s you. Glamorous and exotic.”
    “You’re such a charmer.” She splashed at him. “But really. Think of the food and the spices. They say India is so dark and secret. And you’re going farther than anyone else has. Nothing around you but the wilds and local men to carry your champagne and caviar.” She kneeled in the tub, leaned over to kiss him where he sat on the floor. She tasted of nicotine. “I wish I could go. What an escape from all this.”
    He hauled up his trousers. It was an escape, of sorts. At least here he didn’t have to think about what to do about Marjory or Dick. It really was just them and the mountain. He didn’t have time to think of anything else. Or at least that’s what he told himself. He promised himself he’d straighten matters out with both of them when he got home.
    He had thought things would be simpler on the mountain, but relationships were strained. He understood how it happened in these extreme circumstances. In Spitsbergen, after only three days on the glacier with Odell and Simon, he’d grown sick to death of them. Of Odell’s instructing and Simon’s ongoing optimism. You can imagine , he’d written to Marjory at the time, how such close contact can