A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Then Pamela was gone, soon to be followed by Hugh.

After what seemed an eternity it was Judith’s turn. I had her belayed but at this stage it wasn’t much use: I remembered the Doctor’s warning. ‘The leader must not fall off.’ Then she vanished. I continued to pay out the rope. There was a long interval and I heard her shout very distantly to come on and the rope tautened.

It was impossible to get on to the rock without getting at least one foot wet.

Very slowly I worked my way out to the corner of the Sepulchre. As I edged round it into what seemed to be empty space I came on to the part with good exposure, the part that always gave Pamela a thrill. Below me was a huge drop to the rocks and as I came round the wind blew my hair into my eyes.

Two more pitches and we were on the top. I felt a tremendous exaltation. Sitting there on a boulder was a man in a bowler hat and white collar smoking a pipe.

‘Early closing in Caernarvon,’ Judith said.

‘He looks like an undertaker to me.’

‘We shall have to hurry, it’s Pamela’s day to serve tea.’ We went down a wide gully, then raced down the scree to the car. The others were waiting for us. The girls were pleased, so were we. Only the man with the bowler hat weighed on my mind. I asked Hugh if he had seen him.

‘Which man? We didn’t see a man.’

‘Now you’re making me feel like one of those school-teachers at Versailles.’

‘We saw the other party, but we didn’t see a man in a bowler hat.’

As we were leaving for London, Judith gave me a little pamphlet costing sixpence. It showed, with the aid of pictures, the right and wrong ways of climbing a mountain.

‘We haven’t been able to teach you anything about snow and ice,’ she said, ‘but this shows you how to do it. If you find anything on the journey out with snow on it, I should climb it if you get the chance.’

‘I wish we were coming with you,’ she added, ‘to keep you out of trouble.’

‘So do we,’ we said, and we really meant it. Everyone turned out to say goodbye. It was very heart-warming.

‘You know that elderly gentleman who lent you a pair of climbing boots,’ Hugh said, as we drove through the evening sunshine towards Capel Curig.

‘You mean Mr Bartrum?’

‘Did you know he’s a member of the Alpine Club? He’s written a letter about us to the Everest Foundation. He showed it to me.’

I asked him what it said.

‘He wrote, “I have formed a high opinion of the character and determination of Carless and Newby and suggest that they should be given a grant towards the cost of their expedition to the Hindu Kush.”’

CHAPTER FOUR Pera Palace (#ulink_a90cfd54-1820-512c-bfef-18ffe01da585)

Eleven days later I arrived with Wanda in Istanbul. As we drove along the last long stretch of road, lurching into the potholes, the Sea of Marmara appeared before us, green and windswept, deserted except for a solitary caique beating up towards the Bosphorus under a big press of sail. Our spirits rose at the thought of seeing Istanbul when the sun was setting, but when we reached the outskirts it was already quite dark. We had planned to enter the city by the Golden Gate on the seaward side, for it sounded romantic and appropriate and we had been stoking ourselves all the way across Europe with the thought of it, not knowing that for several hundred years the gate had been sealed up. Instead we found ourselves on an interminable by-pass lined with luminous advertisements for banks and razor blades. Of the wall constructed by Theodosius there was no sign. It was a fitting end to an uncomfortable journey.

We left the car in the courtyard of the old Embassy and changed our money with one of the gatekeepers. We asked him where we should stay.

‘Star Oteli, clean Oteli, cheap Oteli, good Oteli, Oteli of my brodder.’

‘Is it far?’

‘Not so far; take taxi, always taxi. Bad place, at night bad menses and girlses.’

‘Order a taxi.’

He uttered some strange cries. As if by magic a taxi appeared. It was driven by a huge brute with a shaven head; sitting next to him was another smaller man. They were a sinister pair.

‘What’s the other one for?’

‘He is not for anything. He is brodder.’

‘They don’t look like brothers.’

‘He is brodder by other woman.’

With a roar the taxi shot forward. After fifty yards it stopped and the brother opened the door.

‘Star Oteli.’

With sinking hearts we followed him up a nearly vertical flight of stairs to the reception desk. I prayed that the hotel would be full but it wasn’t. We set off down a long brilliantly lit passage, the brother of the gatekeeper leading and the brother of the taxi man bringing up the rear to cut off our retreat. The doors on either side were open, and we could see into the rooms. The occupants all seemed to be men who were lying on their beds fully clothed, gazing at the ceiling. Everywhere, like a miasma, was the unforgettable grave-smell of Oriental plumbing.

‘Room with bed for two,’ said the proprietor, flinging open a door at the extreme end. He contrived to invest it with an air of extreme indelicacy, which in no way prepared us for the reality.

It was a nightmare room, the room of a drug fiend perhaps. It was illuminated by a forty-watt bulb and looked out on a black wall with something slimy growing on it. The bed was a fearful thing, almost perfectly concave. Underneath it was a pair of old cloth-topped boots. The sheets were almost clean but on them there was the unmistakable impress of a human form and they were still warm. In the corner there was a washbasin with one long red hair in it and a tap which leaked. Somewhere nearby a fun-fair was testing its loud-hailing apparatus, warming up for a night of revelry. The smell of the room was the same as the corridor outside with some indefinable additions.

After the discomforts of the road it was too much. In deep gloom we got back into the taxi. The driver was grinning.

‘Pera Palace!’

As we plunged down the hill through the cavern-like streets, skidding on the tramlines, the brothers screwed their heads round and carried on a tiresome conversation with their backs to the engine.

‘Pera very good.’

Never had a city affected me with such an overpowering sense of melancholy.

‘No.’

‘Very good Istanbul.’

‘Very good taxi.’ We were heading straight for a tram that was groaning its way up the hill but passed it safely on the wrong side of the road.

I asked if anyone was ever killed. ‘Many, many, every day.’

‘How many?’

‘Two million.’

At the Pera Palace we took a large room. Originally it must have had a splendid view of the Golden Horn, now there was a large building in the way. We sent our clothes to the laundry and went to bed.

There had been no news of Hugh at the Embassy, but before sinking into a coma of fatigue, we both uttered a prayer that he would be delayed.