The Abominable: A Novel

Chapter 2

So there at the center of the most beautiful 9,400 acres in the world resides a permanently broken heart and an eternally damaged mind.

T he car ride from London to the Bromley estate in Lincolnshire takes us about two hours, including a lunch stop in Sandy since we are running ahead of schedule and don’t want to arrive early, but by mid-afternoon, still a few minutes ahead of schedule, we’ve reached Stamford Junction. We are only a couple of miles from our destination, and I admit to feeling nervous almost to the point of nausea, although I’ve never been carsick before—especially not in an open touring car on a beautiful summer day with pleasant breezes smelling of farm fields and forest, astounding scenery on all sides, and a perfectly cloudless blue sky above.

A sign names Stamford Junction “Carpenter’s Lodge” in the usual British way of obfuscating everything, and we turn left down a narrow lane. A ten-foot-high solid masonry wall blocks the view on our left for all of these last two miles.

“What’s the wall for?” I ask the Deacon, who is driving.

“It encloses a small part of the Bromley estate,” says the older climber around his pipe stem. “That’s the famous Bromley Deer Park on the other side of the wall, and Lady Bromley doesn’t want her deer—tame as they are—jumping out and getting hurt.”

“Or allow the poachers to get in all that easily, I imagine,” says Jean-Claude.

The Deacon nods.

“How big is the Bromley estate?” I ask from the backseat.

“Well, let me think,” says the Deacon. “I seem to remember that the previous marquess, the late Lord Bromley, set aside about eight thousand acres for farmland—most of it usually fallow and used for hunting—about nine hundred acres of woodland, pristine forest going back to Queen Elizabeth. And I think only about five hundred acres for the deer park, gardens, and grounds, all tended year-round by a small army of foresters and gardeners.”

“Almost ten thousand acres of estate,” I say stupidly, turning to stare at the high wall as if I might suddenly be able to see through it.

“Almost,” agrees the Deacon. “In truth, it’s much larger than the ninety-four hundred acres here. The village of Stamford we passed through back there officially belongs to the Bromley estate—as did all the people living in it and in the other hundred and forty–some residences around Stamford and edges of the estate—and there are several dozen commercial properties, in and beyond Stamford, that Lady Bromley still owns and administers as part of the estate. When they said lord of the manor in the old days, they meant it.”

I try to imagine this. I’ve seen huge patches of privately owned land, of course. On my summer climbing trips during my years at Harvard, I’d headed out west to climb in the Rockies, and some of the ranches the train passed through probably approached or surpassed half a million acres—perhaps a million. Someone out there told me that while a cow needed a little less than an acre to graze on happily back in my home state of Massachusetts, the same cow would require more than forty acres just to stay alive in the high plains of eastern Colorado or Wyoming. Most of the huge ranches out there grew sagebrush, rabbit brush, and a few old cottonwood trees along the creeks—if the land had any creeks. Most of it did not. The Bromley estate, according to the Deacon, has 900 acres of ancient woodland used for…what? Hunting, probably. Strolling in. Shade for the tame deer when they get tired of hanging around the sunny parts of their dedicated park area.

The wall curves away to the south, we drive a bit further and turn left down a narrow and rather rutted road, and then suddenly we are passing under an ancient archway into the estate. There is a large gravel approach here—no estate house or gardens or anything of interest visible all the way to the green, hilly horizon—and the Deacon parks our touring car in the shade and leads us to a carriage, complete with mustachioed driver and two white horses, waiting near a narrow asphalted road winding away into the green depths of the estate. The carriage is so ornately bedecked with badges and doodads along the sides and back that it looks as if it might have been designed for Queen Victoria’s coronation parade.

The driver hops down and opens the topless carriage’s door for us. He looks old enough that he, too, might have taken part in Queen Victoria’s parade. I admire his long, pure-white twin mustaches, which make him look a bit like a very tall, very thin walrus.

“Welcome back, Master Richard,” the old man says to the Deacon as he shuts the door. “If I may be allowed to say so, sir, you look very fit indeed.”

“Thank you, Benson,” says the Deacon. “You do as well. I’m delighted that you’re still livery master.”

“Oh, only in charge of the entrance carriage now, Master Richard.” The old man spryly hops up to his place in front and takes the reins and whip in hand.

As we roll out onto the lane, the sound of the carriage wheels—iron, not rubber—on the asphalt surface and the clop-clop of the huge horses’ hooves make it probable that anything we say in a normal tone of voice won’t be heard by Mr. Benson. Still, we speak with heads leaning close and just above a whisper.

Jean-Claude: “Master Richard? You’ve been here before, mon ami.”

“I was ten years old the last time I was here,” says the Deacon. “And spanked by one of the butlers for punching young Lord Percival on his prominent snout. He cheated in some game we were playing.”

I keep turning my head, trying to take in as much as I can of the perfectly mowed and manicured hills, trees, bushes—a lake of some acres sends light flashes toward us as the wind ruffles it into low waves—while far off to the south I believe I can see the beginning of formal gardens and the hint of a tall building on the horizon. But it’s far too broad and expansive to be a single building—even for Bromley House—so it must be a village of sorts.

“You were—are—a social equal to the Bromleys?” I whisper. It’s a rude question, but I ask it out of surprise and slight shock. The Deacon had insisted that I go to his tailor at Savile Row to get a bespoke suit for this meeting—I’ve never owned one that fit so well or felt so good on me—and he insisted on paying for it, but I had been certain from the months together in Europe that the Deacon had no great reservoir of funds to fall back on. Now I’m wondering if the next 9,000-acre estate beyond Stamford is called Deacon House.

The Deacon shakes his head, puts away his pipe, and smiles ruefully. “My family has an old name and no money left for its final disappointment of a scion…me. It’s not legal now to surrender one’s hereditary title, but if it were, I would do so in a heartbeat. As it is, I have attempted to avoid all use of and reference to it since I returned from the War. But way back in another century, I occasionally came here to play with Charles Bromley, who was about my age, and his younger brother Percy—who had no real friends or playmates for reasons you’ll discover soon enough. That all ended on the day I punched Percival in the nose. After that, Charles came to visit me instead.”

I knew that the Deacon had been born in the same year as George Leigh Mallory—1886—but because of his still-dark hair and superb physical condition, surpassing (as I believe I’ve mentioned) both Jean-Claude’s and mine in most aspects of climbing, ice and snow work, and stamina, I never really thought of Richard Davis Deacon having lived fourteen years of his life in the previous century…fifteen years under Queen Victoria!

We clop onward.

“Do all visitors park their cars at the gate and take carriages to the house?” J.C. loudly asks Benson, the driver.

“Oh, no, sir,” replies the old man without turning his head in our direction. “When there is a party or reception at Bromley House or Bromley Park—although there are precious few of those these days, the Lord knows—chauffeured guests may ride in their motorcars directly to the house. The same applies to our most esteemed visitors, including the former queens and His current Majesty.”

“King George the Fifth has visited Bromley House?” I say, hearing the awestruck provincial quality and American twang in my own voice.

“Oh, yes, sir,” Benson says brightly, tapping the slower of the two white horses on the rump with a light touch of the whip.

All I knew about the current British king was that he’d changed his family name from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more English-sounding House of Windsor during the Great War, in an effort to renounce all his close connections to Germany. Still, the Kaiser had been George V’s cousin, and it was said that they’d been affectionate. They certainly looked very much alike. If they had swapped medals and uniforms on one of their many visits to see each other, I almost believe each could have ruled the other’s kingdom without anyone noticing.

I’d once asked the Deacon about the current king and all he said was, “I’m afraid he divides his time between shooting animals and sticking stamps in albums, Jacob old boy. If George—His Majesty—has a third passion or ability, we, his loyal and loving subjects, have yet to learn about it.”

“Has other British royalty visited Bromley House?” asks Jean-Claude in a voice loud enough for Benson, our driver, to hear.

“Oh, my, yes,” says the driver, glancing back over his black-liveried shoulder this time. “Almost every royal has visited and stayed at Bromley House since construction of the home began in fifteen fifty-seven, the year before Elizabeth came to the throne. Queen Elizabeth had apartments here which have never been used by guests other than royal. The so-called George Rooms were used as a vacation suite by Queen Victoria for several months in eighteen forty-four—and she returned to them many times. It is said that Her Majesty especially enjoyed the ceilings painted by Antonio Verrio.”

We clop along in relative silence for another minute.

“Yes, many of our kings and queens and Princes of Wales and other royals have enjoyed parties, overnight stays, and long vacations at Bromley House,” adds Benson. “But in recent years the royal visits have dropped off. Lord Bromley—the fourth marquess, you know—died ten years ago, and His current Majesty may have more pressing things to do than visit widows…if you don’t mind me saying so, sir.”

“Isn’t there an older son still living, big brother to the Percy Bromley who disappeared on Everest?” I whisper to the Deacon. “The fifth Marquess of Lexeter?”

“Yes. Charles. I know him well. He was gassed during the War, was invalided out but never really recovered. He’s been virtually a prisoner in his room and attended to by nurses for some years now. Everyone had been suspecting that the end was near for Charles and that Percy would take up the mantle as the sixth Marquess of Lexeter sometime later this year.”

“How, gassed?” whispers Jean-Claude. “Where in the British Army does one put a Lord?”

“Charles was an army major and had survived much of the worst fighting, but in the last year of the War, he and other important personages from government and the army were part of a Red Cross delegation, visiting forward positions to make a report to the agency,” the Deacon says quietly. “A three-hour cease-fire had been arranged between the British section of the Front there and the Germans, but something went wrong and there was an artillery barrage almost on their positions…mustard gas. And most of the delegation’s members had forgone carrying gas masks with them. It did not matter for Charles, since his worst wounds weren’t in his lungs but were the result of actual mustard powder from the shells spilling onto his flesh. Some wounds, you see—especially being exposed to mustard gas powder—literally never heal. They must be dressed anew every day and the pain never ceases.”

“Damned boches,” hisses Jean-Claude. “Never to be trusted.”

The Deacon smiles grimly. “They were British artillery firing. English mustard gas that fell a bit short. Someone didn’t get the cease-fire notice.” Then, after a short interval filled only by the sound of the carriage wheels and the clop of the huge horses’ hooves, the Deacon adds, “Actually, it was the artillery unit that George Leigh Mallory was in charge of that killed half a dozen Red Cross important personages and turned poor Charles Bromley into an invalid, but I’ve heard that Mallory wasn’t there at the time…was back in Blighty nursing his own wound or illness of some sort.”

The Deacon, more loudly: “Benson, could you tell us about the door for the royals on the west side?”

Ahead of us I catch a glimpse of formal gardens, perfectly manicured fields and low hills, and many spires and steeples rising above the horizon. Far too many spires and steeples for a house; too many for a mere village. It is as if we’re approaching a city amidst all this perfect greenery.

“Certainly, Master Richard,” says the driver. The long white mustaches are twitching slightly—I can see that even from the rear as he drives—perhaps because he’s smiling.

“Arrivals for Queen Elizabeth since the sixteenth century, Queen Victoria, King George the Fifth, and others were always arranged for late afternoon or very early evening—if convenient for the royals, of course, sirs—since, you see, the hundreds of windows there on the west side were specifically designed to capture the sunset. The glass was actually treated in some way, I believe. They would all glow gold, as if there were a bright fire behind every one of those many windows, you might say, sirs. Very warm and welcoming to His or Her Majesty, even on a winter’s eve. And in the center of the west wall of the House, used by no one else but royals, is the gold door—or, rather, gold carved portal might be more accurate, since it is only the outer layer of several beautiful doors, designed and constructed specifically for Elizabeth’s first visit. This was sometime before the death of the first Lord Bromley. I believe Queen Elizabeth and her court retinue came to stay with us for several weeks in fifteen ninety-eight. There is a beautiful courtyard at the center of the residential wings, sirs—totally private, although you may catch a glimpse of it when you have tea with Lady Bromley—where it’s said that Shakespeare’s troupe of players performed several times. The courtyard was actually designed—in terms of perfect natural amplification of the human voice and every other aspect—specifically for theatrical events with audiences of hundreds.”

I interrupt with a banality: “Jean-Claude, Deacon, look at that ancient ruin on the hill. It looks like a small medieval castle—or a keep—that’s gone to ruin. Tower all overgrown with ivy and stones tumbling down, an old tree growing out of that tall Gothic window on that broken wall standing alone. Amazing. I wonder how old it is?”

“Almost certainly less than fifty years old,” says the Deacon. “It’s a folly, Jake.”

“A what?”

“A folly. They were all the rage in the seventeenth through the nineteenth century—going in and out of style. I think it was the last-but-one Lady Bromley in the late eighteen hundreds who demanded her medieval folly on that hill, where she could see it when she went riding. Most of the landscaping, though, was redesigned earlier—in the late seventeen hundreds, I believe—by Capability Brown.”

“By whom?” asks Jean-Claude. “That would be a good name for a good climber—‘Capability.’”

“His real first name was Lancelot,” says the Deacon. “But everyone called him Capability Brown. He was considered England’s greatest gardener in the eighteenth century and designed the gardens and grounds for, I think—I’m not sure of the exact number—almost two hundred of England’s top country houses and estates, and for such noble piles as Blenheim Palace. I do remember my mother telling me about what Capability Brown said to Hannah More in the seventeen sixties, when they were both famous.”

“Who or what was Hannah More?” I ask, no longer embarrassed by my ignorance. England is a stranger land than I’d bargained for.

“She was a religious writer—very widely read—and a very generous philanthropist up until her death sometime in the eighteen thirties. Anyway, Capability Brown called his complicated gardens and grounds grammatical landscapes, and when he was showing Hannah More around some completed estate grounds—perhaps her own, although I have no idea if she hired him to do her country place—he put his landscaping in Hannah More’s own terms, and I remember most of what my mother, who was an avid gardener right up until her death twenty years ago, quoted from Brown’s soliloquy.”

I think even Benson up on the driver’s seat is listening, since he is leaning back further than before without reining in the horses in any way.

“Now there, Capability Brown would say, pointing his finger at some landscape figure which looked as if it had always been there but which he’d designed,” says the Deacon. “There I make a comma, and there—pointing to some boulder or fallen oak or other seeming natural element, perhaps a hundred yards away or in the gardens—where a decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject.” The Deacon pauses. “Or something fairly close to that. It’s been a lot of years since my mother talked to me about Capability Brown.”

I can see by the inward direction of his gaze that he’s been hearing his mother’s voice.

“Maybe that castle folly on the hill is a semicolon,” I say stupidly. “No, wait, you said Capability Brown didn’t do the folly.”

“He would not have constructed a folly for a million pounds,” says the Deacon with a smile. “His specialty was doing elaborate gardens where even the trained eye doesn’t realize there’s a garden there.” The Deacon points to a partially wooded hillside with an amazing variety of shrubbery, fallen trunks, and wildflowers.

But then the carriage tops a low rise, we make a slight right turn with hooves still clopping on asphalt, and all of our babble ceases.

The formal gardens are clearly visible now, surrounded and sometimes intersected by straight and circular driveways of pure white gravel—or perhaps crushed oyster shells, or maybe pearls for all I know. The gardens and fountains are breathtaking, but it’s the first full sight of Bromley House beyond the gardens that has me immediately standing in the carriage, looking over Benson’s shoulder, and muttering loudly, “My God. Dear God.”

Not exactly the most sophisticated entrance I’ve ever made. But quite probably the most American-fundamentalist-religion-sounding (though my family in Boston were Unitarian freethinkers).

Bromley House is officially a Tudor mansion, designed—as I mentioned earlier—by the first Lord Bromley, who was chief clerk and assistant to Queen Elizabeth’s Lord High Treasurer, Lord Burghley, when he began work on the house in the 1550s. The Deacon later told me that Bromley House was one of several prodigy houses built by rising young men in England around that time, but I’ve forgotten what the term really means. He also told me that although the first Lord Bromley and his family moved into the livable parts of the estate in 1557, the actual building period of Bromley House extended over thirty-five years.

Thirty-five years plus another three and a half centuries, since it is obvious even to my architecturally untutored eyes that generations of lords and ladies have added on to, subtracted from, fiddled with, experimented with, and altered this estate a thousand times.

“The House…”—I can hear the capital letters in Benson’s soft but proud old voice—“was damaged some during the Civil War—Cromwell’s men were beasts, absolute uncaring beasts, uncaring and careless about even the finest works of art—but the fifth earl enclosed the damaged south side with windows to create a great gallery. Filled with light, I’ve been told, and charming in all except the cold winter months. That gallery was enclosed and turned into a Great Hall—much easier to heat—sometime later in the seventeenth century by the eighth earl.”

“Earl?” I whisper to the Deacon. “I thought we were dealing with lords and ladies and marquesses with Percival’s family.”

The Deacon shrugs. “Titles change and shift a little over time, old boy. The fellow who designed this pile in the fifteen hundreds was William Basil, the first Lord Bromley. His son Charles Basil, also Lord Bromley, was anointed the first Earl of Lexeter in sixteen oh-four, the year after Queen Elizabeth died.”

I understand nothing of this except the part about Elizabeth dying. Our carriage is rolling around the south face of the huge structure toward a distant entrance on the east side.

“You might find this blank corner a bit interesting,” the Deacon says, pointing to a corner of the house we’re passing. On the west side, two vertical rows of beautiful windows rise sixty or eighty feet, but the corners of the building look less elegant, as if they had been covered almost hastily with heavy masonry.

“A few hundred years ago, whatever Lord Bromley it was at the time realized that while the elevation of his Great Hall looking out onto the Orangery Court was beautiful and light-filled, almost all glass across this entire exposure, there were just too damned many beautiful windows and not enough load-bearing walls. The incredible weight of the English oak roof, combined with the weight of the thousands of Collywestons…”

“What is a Collyweston?” asks Jean-Claude. “It sounds like the name of an English hunting or herding dog.”

“A Collyweston is a slab of a particularly heavy sort of gray slate used for the roof tiles in many of the larger old estates in England. It was first found and produced right here, on this property, by the Romans. Actually, that Collyweston slate is almost impossible to find in England today except here on the grounds of Bromley House and a couple of other remote sites. At any rate, you can see where the alarmed earl a few centuries ago covered over more beautiful vertical lines of windows and added more load-bearing stone. Those little windows you see up around where the fourth story would be as we came in from the north—they have glass panes but just more masonry behind them. That roof is one heavy bugger.”

The totality of Bromley House is staggering—larger within its myriad walls and interior courtyards than many Massachusetts villages I’ve visited—but it is the rooftop and above that pulls my gaze upward at the moment. (I suspect that my mouth is hanging open, but I’m too carried away by this sight to worry about that. I’m sure the Deacon will close it for me if I look too much the village idiot.) Benson spryly hops down from his perch and comes around to the side of the carriage to open the half-door for us.

Just the rooftop of the endless manor—so far above us—is an almost impossible mass of vertical (and some horizontal) protrusions: obelisks with no seeming purpose, a magnificent clock tower with the face of the clock turned toward the apparently unused-for-guests south face of the house, row upon row of high, ancient-Greek-looking columns that are actually smokestacks for the countless fireplaces in the city-sized house below, arches arching over nothing to speak of, crenellated towers with high, thin windows on their erect shafts and tiny little round windows under their priapic muffinheads, more windows on horizontal Old London Bridge–style hanging upper floors that connected some of these thicker and more windowed erections, and finally a series of taller, thinner, more sexually provocative towers scattered at apparent random around and between and above the other projections on the tower-cluttered rooftop. These last are graceful towers which look like nothing so much as Moslem minarets pilfered from some Middle Eastern mosque.

Another butler in very formal and old-fashioned livery—this gentleman apparently even older than our carriage driver but clean-shaven, bald as a proverbial billiard ball, and with a much more stooped posture caused by curvature of the spine—bows toward us at the open east entrance door and says, “Welcome, gentlemen. Lady Bromley is expecting you and will join you shortly. Master Deacon, you must forgive me if I comment that you look extremely well and tanned and fit.”

“Thank you, Harrison,” says the Deacon.

“Pardon me, sir?” says Harrison, cupping his left ear. He seems to be almost deaf as well as terminally stooped over and evidently not very good at reading lips. The Deacon repeats his three words in a low shout. Harrison smiles—showing perfect dentures—and rasping out, “Please follow me, gentlemen,” turns to lead us inside.

As we follow this ancient butler’s slow shuffle through anterooms and then into a series of Great Rooms on our march to God Knows Where, the Deacon whispers to us, “Harrison is the butler who paddled my arse when I punched young Lord Percival thirty years ago.”

“I would like to see him try it today,” whispers Jean-Claude with an evil smile that I’ve seen before and which somehow manages to look attractively roguish to the ladies.

We follow the shuffling old butler through a series of art-hung, Persian-carpeted, and red-drapery-laden foyers, then out into and through at least three “public rooms,” where the art and color and size and quality of the antiques alone take one’s breath away.

But it’s not the gilded antique furniture that almost makes me stop in amazement.

Harrison manages a feeble wave of his left arm toward the ceiling and room in general and announces in his old man’s croak, “The Heaven Room, gentlemen. Quite…”

I don’t catch the last word, but it might have been “famous.”

To me it seems more like “the Football Room,” since the ceilings are at least forty feet high and the room looks to be as long and almost as wide as an American football field. My thought is that you could set rows of bleachers up against these gilded, picture-addled walls and hold the Harvard-Yale game in here.

But it is the endless and elaborately painted ceiling that makes my jaw drop open again.

I’m sure that the hundreds (hundreds!) of naked or mostly naked male and female grappling forms up there are supposed to be gods and goddesses gamboling in some innocent pagan god way, but it just looks like the world’s largest orgy to my barbarian’s eye. Amazingly, the artist has many of the figures spilling off the ceiling itself and grappling and tumbling and evidently fornicating their way down the actual walls, stacking up in the corners in fleshy masses of thighs, breasts, and biceps, with more intertwined bodies painted onto side doors and mirrors, as if they’re trying to stop their tangled mass from falling to the Persian-carpeted parquet floor. The three-dimensional effect is dizzying and disturbing.

“Antonio Verrio did most of these murals in sixteen ninety-five and ninety-six,” the Deacon says softly, obviously assuming that our aged guide won’t hear him. “If you think this is something, you ought to see his Mouth of Hell murals on the ceiling at the head of the grand staircase—according to Verrio, the Mouth of Hell is the maw of a giant cat gobbling up naked lost souls like so many mangled mice.”

“Magnifique,” whispers Jean-Claude, also looking at the Heaven Room ceiling. And in an even lower whisper, “Although—what is your word?—ostentatious. Very ostentatious.”

The Deacon smiles. “Word is that during the year or so Verrio was here painting, he had his way with every female servant on the estate—including the peasant girls who worked in the fields. Actually the walls weren’t completely finished when they brought in a children’s book illustrator—I think his name was Stothard—to finish off this hell of a heaven.”

I stare at the scores upon scores of entangled, thrusting, intertwined naked male and female forms, many—as I mentioned—falling off the ceiling and writhing down the walls in their physical grapplings, and think, A children’s book illustrator painted some of this?

As I follow the shuffling, silent butler through the Heaven Room, I’m grateful that the Deacon insisted on my going to his tailor on Savile Row for a proper dark suit. Since J.C. had once mentioned to me that the Deacon, the last of his once well-to-do family, had little money these days, I protested strongly, but the Deacon said that he simply couldn’t allow me to meet Lady Bromley in that “dusty, dung-colored, misshapen tweedy thing that you wear when a suit is called for.” I huffily explained to the Deacon that this “dung-colored thing”—my best tweed suit—had seen me through all of the formal demands of Harvard (at least where evening dress wasn’t necessary), but my British climbing friend was not impressed with my argument.

So as we leave the Heaven Room to enter a smaller, much more intimate side room, I once again appreciate the tailored smoothness of my new Deacon-chosen and Deacon-paid-for Savile Row suit. Jean-Claude, on the other hand, has enough personal confidence that he’s wearing an old suit in which he’s probably guided climbs—it looks as if it would go well with mountain boots, and I’m sure it has.

Old Harrison the butler finally parks us in a side room only two absurdly imposing hallways and a breathtaking library away from the Heaven Room. After the great expanses we’ve covered getting here, this cozy little side room seems like a dollhouse miniature, even though it’s probably half again the size of most middle-class Americans’ front parlors.

“Please have a seat, gentlemen. Tea and Lady Bromley will be with you promptly,” says old Harrison and shuffles out. The way he announces it makes the tea and the lady of one of England’s greatest estates somehow sound like conjoined equals. Perhaps one never travels anywhere without the other.

For a moment the small size and sense of intimacy of this little room—only a few pieces of furniture centered atop a gorgeous Persian rug surrounded by gleaming parquet floors, one high-backed chair upholstered in a fabric that looks to be from the nineteenth century, a low round table presumably for the imminent tea service, two delicate chairs on either side looking too flimsy for an adult male to sit in, and a red settee directly across from the upholstered chair—make me think that this is one of the private rooms in Bromley House, but then I immediately realize I’m wrong. The small paintings and photographs on the delicately wallpapered wall are all of women. The few bookshelves, unlike the impossibly huge library we glimpsed earlier, hold only a few volumes, and they look homemade, perhaps scrapbooks or photo albums or collections of recipes or family genealogy.

But, no, however much it looks like one, this room is not a private room for the house. I realize that Lady Bromley must use it to meet people of lesser social stature in an informal setting. Perhaps she’d talk to her landscaper or head gamekeeper or very distant visiting relatives here—ones that were not going to be offered a room for the night.

Jean-Claude, the Deacon, and I are squished thigh to thigh as we sit upright and waiting on the red settee. It’s an uncomfortable piece of furniture—perhaps another invitation not to stay too long. I nervously run my thumb and finger down the sharp crease in my new suit trousers.

Suddenly a door hidden in the library wall opens and Lady Elizabeth Marion Bromley comes through. The three of us almost stumble over one another in our hurry to stand.

Lady Bromley is tall, and her height is emphasized by the fact that she’s dressed all in black, a lacy sort of dress with a high frilly black collar that might have been from the nineteenth century but which looks strangely modern. Her erect posture and poised but seemingly unself-conscious way of walking add to the sense of height and importance. I’d expected to meet an old lady—Lord Percival Bromley was in his thirties when he disappeared on Everest this summer—but Lady Bromley’s hair, swept up in a complicated fashion I’d seen only in magazines, is mostly dark with only the slightest traces of gray at the temples. Her dark eyes are bright and alert and—to my deeper surprise—she comes toward us walking quickly, coming around the table to be closer to us, smiling kindly and evidently sincerely, and with both her hands—elegant, pale, with long pianist’s fingers, not an old woman’s hands in any way—outstretched in greeting.

“Oh, Dickie…Dickie…,” says Lady Bromley, taking the Deacon’s large, calloused hand in both of hers. “It’s so wonderful to see you back here. It seems like just yesterday that your mother was dropping you off here to play with Charles…and, oh, how irritated both of you older boys became at little Percy’s attempts to keep up with you!”

Jean-Claude and I risk a look and silent query to each other. Dickie?!

“It is wonderful to see you, Lady Bromley, but I am so deeply sorry about the circumstances which bring us together again,” says the Deacon.

Lady Bromley nods and looks down for a second as her eyes fill, but she smiles and lifts her head again. “Charles greatly regrets that he cannot greet you himself today—his health is very poor, as you know.”

The Deacon nods sympathetically.

“But you were also wounded during the War,” says Lady Bromley, still holding the Deacon’s hand with one of her hands above his, the other below.

“Mild wounds, long healed,” says the Deacon. “Nothing like the terrible gassing that Charles experienced. My thoughts have gone out to him a thousand times.”

“And your letter of condolence about Percival was beautiful, just beautiful,” Lady Bromley says very softly. “But I am being rude—please, Dickie, introduce me to your friends.”

The introductions and short conversations go smoothly. Lady Bromley speaks in fluent French to J.C., and I pick up enough of it to understand that she is expressing how impressed she is that such a young man should be known as such a fine Chamonix Guide, and Jean-Claude replies with his biggest, brightest grin.

“And Mr. Perry,” she says when it is time to turn to me, taking my clumsily outstretched hand gracefully in hers. A brief touch but somehow electrifying. “Even in my rural isolation, I’ve heard of the Perrys of Boston—a fine family.”

I stammer my thanks. I am from a well-known and fine old family, Boston Brahmins all down to the next-to-last generation, a family history traceable back to the 1630s, family members famous as merchants and Harvard professors, and a few brave ones who distinguished themselves in places like Bunker Hill and Gettysburg.

But alas, the Brahmin Perrys of Boston were now almost broke. Declining wealth had not kept my parents from calling the Harvard-Yale football game only “the Game,” or from doing their modest Christmas shopping downtown at the seven-story S. S. Pierce Company, which had been serving families like ours since 1831. Nor, initially, did our advancing poverty prevent me from experiencing the best private schools, the tennis courts and greens and formal dining areas of the Brookline Country Club (which, of course, we referred to only as “the Country Club,” as if no others existed in the world), and of having my parents pay my way through Harvard—which finally drained the last resources of the family. All so that I could spend every spare minute and all my college summers climbing rocks and mountains with friends, never worrying about the expenses. Even with the inheritance of my aunt’s $1,000 when I turned twenty-one, I never considered giving it to my parents to help them with some of their bills—or mine—but subsidized this year in Europe, climbing in the Alps.

“Please, sit down,” Lady Bromley is saying to us all. She’s moved to the other side of the low table and taken her place in the comfortable-looking high-backed chair. As if on cue, three maids—or servants of some kind—come in through another door with trays carrying a teapot, ancient porcelain cups and saucers, silver spoons, silver containers of sugar and cream, and a five-tiered silver serving dish with small pastries and biscuits on each layer.

One of the servants offers to pour the tea, but Lady Bromley says that she will do it, and she does, inquiring of each of us—except for “Dickie,” who, she remembers, takes his tea with a bit of cream, a bit of lemon, and two sugars—how we take our tea. I answer, idiotically, “Straight, ma’am,” and receive a smile and my saucer and a cup of tea only. I hate tea.

There are a few minutes of small talk, mostly between the Deacon and Lady Bromley, but then she leans forward and says briskly, “Let us discuss your other letter, Dickie. The one I received three weeks after the beautiful condolence card. The one about the three of you going to Everest to look for my Percival.”

The Deacon clears his throat. “Perhaps it was presumptuous, Lady Bromley, but there seem to be so many unanswered questions about Lord Percival’s disappearance that I thought I might offer my services in an attempt to clear up the mystery surrounding that accident or fall or avalanche…or whatever happened.”

“Whatever happened, indeed,” says Lady Bromley, her voice almost harsh. “Do you know, that German gentleman who was the only witness to that so-called ‘avalanche’ that he says carried away Percy and a German porter—that Herr Bruno Sigl—will not even answer my cables and letters? He sent one brutish note stating that he had no more to say on the matter, and he’s maintained that silence, despite the Alpine Club and Mount Everest Committee demanding more details from him.”

“That is not right,” Jean-Claude says quietly. “Families need to know the truth.”

“I am not fully convinced that Percival is dead,” says Lady Bromley. “He might be injured and lost on the mountain, barely surviving, or in some nearby Tibetan village awaiting help.”

Here it is, I think. The insane part of all this that the Deacon wants us to cash in on. I feel a little nauseated and set down my cup and saucer.

“I understand that the chances of that—of my Percy still being alive on the mountain—are very low, gentlemen. I still retain all my faculties. I live in the real world. But without a rescue or retrieval mission to the mountain, how will I ever be able to know for sure? Percival’s young life was so…so private…so complex…I have understood so little about him over the past years. I feel that I should, at the very least, understand the details of his death…or disappearance. Why was he in Tibet at all? Why on Mount Everest? And why with that Austrian man…Mr. Meyer…when he died?”

She stops, and I think of all the reports I’ve heard of young Lord Percival Bromley being a rake, a high-stakes gambler, someone who spent years in Germany and Austria, an endless rambler who rarely came home to England to visit and who stayed in the best suites in the best of Europe’s hotels, and, it was often whispered (although I’d not had the courage to ask the Deacon about it), was a sodomite specializing in German and Austrian brothels for men who like such things. Private, complex—yes, a life filled with such preferences and activities would be private and complex, wouldn’t it?

“Percy was such a wonderful athlete…you must remember that, Dickie.”

“I do,” says the Deacon. “Is it true that Percival was going to row for England in the nineteen twenty-eight Olympics?”

Lady Bromley smiles. “At his advanced age—out of his twenties—it sounds ridiculous, does it not? But that was precisely Percy’s plan, to go to the Ninth Olympiad in Amsterdam in four years and row with the British crew. You remember how he excelled at rowing when he was at Oxford. He has—had—kept in superb physical shape and trained with Olympic-class English rowing teams whenever he was here for a visit. He practiced in Holland, France, and Germany as well. But rowing was only one of the sports in which Percy excels…or excelled.”

“What was his climbing experience before going to Everest?” the Deacon asks. “I’d been out of touch with Percival for a long time.”

Lady Bromley smiles and pours more tea for each of us. “More than fifteen years of climbing in the Alps with the best guides and with his cousin,” she says proudly. “Since he was a young boy. All five summits of the Grandes Jurasses, including the highest and true summit—Point Walker, I believe it’s called—from the south side, by the time he was twenty. The Matterhorn, of course. The Piz Badille…”

“From the south?” interrupts the Deacon.

“I’m not sure, Dickie, but I believe so. Also Percy and his guide made a—what is it called—a long sideways travel during a climb?”

“A traverse?” offers Jean-Claude.

“Oui. Merci,” says Lady Bromley. “Percy and his guide had made a traverse of Mont Blanc from the Dôme hut to the Grands Mulets in what he called a summer blizzard. I remember his writing about doing the Grand Combin, whatever it is, in a very short time—he wrote mostly about the view from the summit. I have postcards from him talking about his…traverse, yes, that is the word…of the Finsteraarhorn and successful ascent of the Nesthorn.” She smiles sadly at us. “Through all the years of Percy’s risky sports, including these climbs, I spent many an anxious mother’s hours looking up these hills and peaks on maps in our library.”

“But he never joined the Alpine Club,” says the Deacon. “And he wasn’t an official member of last spring’s Everest expedition with Norton, Mallory, and the others?”

Lady Bromley shakes her head, and once again I admire the complex simplicity of her hair. It makes the tall, perfectly upright woman seem even taller.

“Percival was never much of a joiner of groups,” she says, and there’s a sudden shadow of sadness passing over her face and eyes as she realizes that she’s already speaking of her son in the past tense. “I received a brief note from him in March, posted from his cousin Reggie’s tea plantation near Darjeeling, saying that he might follow along after or with Mr. Mallory’s expedition and walk into Tibet, and then nothing…silence…until the terrible news reports in June.”

“Can you remember the names of any of his alpine guides?” asks the Deacon.

“Oh, yes,” says Lady Bromley, brightening some. “There were three favorites of his who were from Chamonix…”

She gives the names, and Jean-Claude makes a silent whistle with his lips. “Three of the best we have,” he says. “Geniuses on rock, snow, and ice. Great guides and brilliant climbers in their own right.”

“Percival loved them,” says his mother. “Another British man he climbed with frequently in the Alps was also named Percy…Ferrou, Ferray?”

“Percy Farrar?” asks the Deacon.

“Yes, that’s it,” says Lady Bromley, smiling again. “Isn’t it odd how I can remember the names of all of his French and German guides, but not a fellow British subject?”

The Deacon turns to look at J.C. and me. “Percy Farrar would have had sixteen or seventeen years of extreme alpine experience when he was climbing with Percy…with young Lord Percival.” Looking directly at me, he adds, “Farrar later became president of the Alpine Club and was the one who first proposed that George Leigh Mallory be included in that first nineteen twenty-one expedition to Everest.”

“So your son climbed with the best,” Jean-Claude says to Lady Bromley. “Even though he wasn’t invited on the Everest expedition, his climbing abilities could have been formidable.”

“But Percy wasn’t on any of the official rosters of either the Alpine Club or the Everest Committee,” says the Deacon. “Do you happen to know, Lady Bromley, how it was that your son came to be on Everest at almost the same time as Mallory’s climbers?”

Lady Bromley sips the last of her tea and sets the cup on its saucer with a delicate touch. “As I say, I received only that brief note from Percival, written from the Darjeeling plantation in March,” she says patiently. “Evidently Percy met Mallory and the other members of this year’s expedition at his cousin Reggie’s plantation near Darjeeling in the third week of March. My son had just trekked through parts of Asia and arrived unannounced at our tea plantation very near to Darjeeling…the plantation that’s been owned and managed for years now by Percy’s cousin Reggie.

“Cousin Reggie was very helpful in finding Nepalese porters for Mallory’s expedition—Sherpas, they are called—many who have relatives who’ve worked at our plantation for years. The actual leader of the expedition at that time, as you must know, was Brigadier General Charles Bruce…but from what Colonel Norton told me when the others returned to England, General Bruce was in poor health and had to turn back only two weeks after the expedition had left Darjeeling to pass through the Serpo La to Kampa Dzong and Tibet. I understand that Colonel Norton, who was already part of the group, was chosen to replace General Bruce as expedition leader, and then, according to Colonel Norton himself—who was very kind in visiting me—he appointed George Mallory as climbing leader. That’s really all I know of the details of Percival’s last days. He did not camp with the British expedition, nor attempt to climb with them.”

“Did Lord Percival travel alone or with manservants?” asks the Deacon.

“Oh, Percy always preferred to travel alone,” says Lady Bromley. “It made no sense—all that fussing by oneself over wardrobe choices and luggage—but it was his preference, and Colonel Norton says that he camped alone during the five-week trek in to Mount Everest.”

“Never staying with the official party?” asks Jean-Claude with some slight wonderment in his voice. Why would a British lord travel separately from a British expedition?

Lady Bromley shakes her head ever so slightly. “Not according to Colonel Norton’s and the Alpine Club’s report to me. Nor did his cousin Reggie know why Percy was going to Tibet or choosing to travel near the expedition but not with it.”

“What about these Germans?” asks the Deacon. “This Meyer person who is said to have been caught in the same avalanche with Lord Percival. Bruno Sigl, who says he witnessed it from lower down on the mountain. Do you happen to know if Percival knew these gentlemen?”

“Oh, heavens no!” cries Lady Bromley. “I am quite sure he did not. This Meyer seems to be very much a nonperson as far as the Alpine Club and my friends in His Majesty’s Government can make out, and Herr Sigl…well, let us say that he was not the sort of man with whom Percival would have social intercourse.”

The Deacon rubs his brow as if he has a headache. “If Lord Percival was not with the British expedition when Mallory and Irvine were lost, how is it, according to this Bruno Sigl, that he and some unknown German were supposed to have been carried away by an avalanche between Camp Five and Camp Six? Mallory’s Camp Five was a few hundred feet above seven thousand six hundred and twenty-five meters—that’s twenty-five thousand feet, Lady Percival, very high—but Camp Six, their jumping-off point for the summit, was over eight thousand meters—around twenty-six thousand eight hundred feet. Less than three thousand feet below the summit of Everest. The newspapers speculate that Lord Percival was attempting a search for Mallory and Irvine, days after they were declared lost by Norton and the others on the expedition. No one on the expedition saw either Lord Percival or Meyer or this Sigl person during their retreat from the mountain. Can you think of any other explanation for Percival to have been so high on the mountain after Colonel Norton and the others had left the area?”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” Lady Bromley says. “Unless Percival…my Percy…was making an attempt to climb to the summit of Mount Everest on his own, or with this Austrian climber. It is not an impossibility. Percy was…is…was very ambitious, you know.”

The Deacon only nods at that and glances at me. Norton and the others, after giving up Mallory and Irvine for dead, ended all further summit attempts, not merely out of respect for their lost fellows, but because of fears that the monsoon season had begun in earnest. They retreated from Everest Base Camp in strangely clear weather but feared that the monsoon would catch them any day en route. Certainly even an amateur such as Bromley would not attempt to summit the mountain—or even climb high to hunt for the missing Mallory and Irvine—under the imminent threat of monsoon weather. Being caught high on Everest when the monsoon struck would have been a particularly stupid and useless form of suicide.

The silence stretches until it feels almost uncomfortable. There’s no more tea to drink to distract us, and only Jean-Claude and I have eaten anything. Finally the Deacon speaks.

“Lady Bromley, do you wish the three of us to carry out this…a year after Lord Percival’s disappearance is too late to call it a rescue mission, but it certainly can be a search and recovery mission…this coming spring when climbing becomes possible again at Mount Everest?”

She looks down, and I see white teeth softly biting her full lower lip. “The Everest Committee and the Alpine Club are not planning a nineteen twenty-five expedition, are they, Dickie?”

“No, ma’am,” says the Deacon. “The loss of Mallory and Irvine—and, of course, of your son—has so shaken the Club and Committee that it may be several years before another formal expedition is launched toward Everest. Also, the Tibetan authorities seem angered at the Alpine Club and the Everest Committee for reasons I don’t fully understand. Word is that the Tibetan prime minister and local chieftains might not allow another expedition soon. Yet, of course, both the Alpine Club and Everest Committee consider Mount Everest a British hill and can’t even dream of some other nation climbing it first, but there are rumors in the Alps that the Germans are considering such a bid. Although not, I think, for next summer. Not for nineteen twenty-five. But the three of us could do it.”

“But Mallory’s expedition which Percy joined had dozens of men with them,” says Lady Bromley. “More than a score of white men, I believe, and hundreds of porters and more hundreds of pack animals. I remember Percy writing and complaining from the plantation about their plan to use Tibetan army mules, which he said were all but impossible to manage. And Colonel Norton described to me how slow the process was of establishing one camp after the other, first on the glacier, then up onto that icy ridge between Everest and its neighboring summit—I studied my geography of the mountain, gentlemen, oh, how I studied it—with the white climbers cutting steps for the porters every few feet of the way up the initial ice wall of that ridge, the North Col. It takes that many men weeks upon weeks of slow ascent. How on earth could the three of you succeed—not in summiting the mountain, which is not my interest in this expedition, but in getting high enough to Camps Five and Six to look for my son?”

It’s Jean-Claude who answers. “Lady Bromley, we shall climb very quickly, alpine style rather than this military assault style that all of the Mallory expeditions used. We shall hire only a few Sherpas to act as porters, including high-climbing porters—perhaps finding these good men at your tea plantation with the help of Percy’s cousin Reggie—but from the time we reach the actual mountain, speed and efficiency will be our constant goals. We shall climb, sleep, and eat alpine style—often taking our bivouac gear with us in our rucksacks, not worrying about a series of established camps—and we should be able to carry out a comprehensive search from Camp Four on the North Col all the way to and above Camp Six within a week or two…rather than the five to ten weeks it takes to get that far with a huge expedition such as General Bruce’s.”

Lady Bromley looks at the three of us, and then steadily at the Deacon. Her gaze has suddenly gone…not cold, exactly, but distant, businesslike. “How much will this rescue…recovery…expedition cost, gentlemen?”

The Deacon answers, and his voice is as businesslike as Lady Bromley’s. “The Alpine Club set aside ten thousand pounds for the entirety of the first two attempts—the nineteen twenty-one reconnaissance and the nineteen twenty-two serious attempt on the mountain. Their estimate was that the reconnaissance would cost only three thousand pounds, the actual climbing attempt in ’twenty-two using up the rest of the ten thousand pounds. But they went over budget on both. And this year’s climb—the nineteen twenty-four climb on which your son, Mallory, and Irvine were lost—cost them almost twelve thousand pounds.”

Lady Bromley’s no-nonsense gaze never leaves the Deacon’s face now.

“So you are asking me for twelve thousand pounds to attempt this…recovery…expedition to seek out my son?”

“No, ma’am,” says the Deacon. “With just the three of us and perhaps two dozen good Sherpa climbing porters, everything—including steamship transportation to Calcutta, tents, climbing gear, including oxygen rigs such as Finch designed and Sandy Irvine refined for the last expedition, plus the rental of some horses and pack mules to get us and the gear to Everest Base Camp—I estimate the total cost of this recovery expedition at being no more than twenty-five hundred pounds.”

Lady Bromley blinks her surprise at the low figure. I confess that it does not sound low to me.

“We’re professional alpine climbers, ma’am,” the Deacon says, leaning closer to the woman in black. “We climb fast and through all weather, we eat light, we sleep in canvas bags tied to the mountainside by a rope or—failing that—sit out the night on a narrow ledge with a lit candle under our chins to keep us from nodding off.”

Lady Bromley looks at all three of us and returns her gaze to the Deacon. She remains silent.

“Lady Bromley,” says the Deacon, “as you mentioned, Norton and Mallory’s expedition which your son followed to Everest carried tons upon tons of supplies. The Army and Navy Co-operative Society alone added sixty tins of quail foie gras, three hundred one-pound Hunter hams, and four dozen bottles of Montebello champagne. You must understand that this will not be our kind of expedition—three expert alpine climbers, moving quickly, knowing in which places to look for your son, and capable of getting high up on the mountain quickly, doing that job, and getting out.”

It is a long speech for the Deacon, and I’m not sure if it has convinced Lady Bromley until she finally speaks.

“I will provide three thousand pounds for your expedition,” she says softly. “But there will be one condition.”

We wait.

“I want a member of the family along,” says Lady Bromley in a tone I haven’t heard from her before. It’s almost royal in its there-will-be-no-argument-about-this, soft but infinitely certain finality. “Percy’s cousin Reggie has climbed in the Alps—with Percy and many of the excellent guides I mentioned earlier—and is fully capable of going with you at least to the lower reaches of Mount Everest, perhaps all the way to Camp Three or whatever high camp you number up on that icy ridge between the mountains. You will, of course, make all climbing decisions, Dickie, but Reggie will be in charge of the overall expedition, of disbursing funds—to the Sherpas, to the yak sellers at Kampa Dzong—whatever is required. And Cousin Reggie will keep track of every receipt, every pound spent, every farthing. Agreed?”

The Deacon turns to look at Jean-Claude and me and I can read his mind. Having another Percy-type amateur along…it will probably slow us down, possibly put us in dangerous situations if we have to rescue him on the glacier or North Col ice face. But Lady Bromley’s tone has been clear enough: no Cousin Reggie, no expedition. And this “Cousin Reggie” obviously won’t be doing any of the truly high climbing with us.

“Yes, ma’am, we agree,” says the Deacon. “We will be delighted to travel with Percy’s cousin Reggie. It frees me from keeping track of expenses, a task at which I confess to be terrible.”

Lady Bromley stands suddenly, and the three of us quickly get to our feet. She shakes the Deacon’s hand, then Jean-Claude’s, and finally mine. I see tears filling her dark eyes, but she does not allow them to fall.

“How long…,” she begins.

“We should have the expedition completed and our complete report back to you by midsummer of next year,” says the Deacon. “I’m bringing a small camera, but I promise that we’ll retrieve anything that we can…Lord Percival’s personal possessions, clothing, letters…”

“If he is dead,” Lady Bromley interrupts in a totally flat tone, “I believe he would have preferred to be buried there on the mountain. But I would so much appreciate a few of the tokens of remembrance you’ve mentioned and…as hard as it will be to look at them…photographs.”

We all nod. I feel absurdly close to weeping myself. I also feel very guilty. And exhilarated.

“If my Percy is alive,” says Lady Bromley, standing straighter and taller than ever, “I want you to bring him home to me.”

And without another word, she turns and leaves the room through the secret door in the library wall.

It takes a few seconds to realize that we’ve been dismissed and also that the Deacon got us exactly what he’d promised—a funded three-man (and one accountant now) alpine-style expedition to climb Mount Everest. If we find poor Percy’s body, all the better. If not, the tallest mountain on Planet Earth may well be ours to summit.

There’s a quiet cough, and we turn to find old Harrison, the butler, standing near the far door, ready to lead us back through the hallways and then the impossibly huge library and then more hallways and the Heaven Room and the foyers and God knows what else to the front door and freedom.

The carriage ride to the entrance of the estate seems endless. Benson, the walrus-mustachioed driver, says nothing, and we three in the carriage do not speak. But our emotions surge around us.

Benson drops us off at the white gravel chauffeured-car park, empty except for our coupe parked under nearby trees, and still we do not speak.

Suddenly Jean-Claude runs at the endless expanse of trimmed grass beyond the gravel, whoops loudly, and does a perfect four-circle cartwheel. The Deacon and I laugh and grin at each other like the pleased idiots we are at this moment.

But as we drive away, one thought keeps seeping through my joy and anticipation of this impossible expedition: there at the center of perhaps the most beautiful 9,400 acres in the world resides a permanently broken heart and an eternally damaged mind.

Can we bring some peace to her? It is the first time in all our planning—our “conniving,” as I’ve thought of it—that this question has entered my mind. I realize it should have been the first thing I’d thought of when we started discussing this impossible-to-believe-in three-man Everest expedition.

Can we bring Lady Bromley some peace of mind?

Riding in the open air in a beautiful English summer afternoon, with the shadows just beginning to lengthen across the fields and empty highway, I decide that perhaps we can—can do this climb the right way, can find the remains of Percy Bromley, and can bring back something, anything, from that mountain of death that will…will what? Not heal Lady Bromley’s broken heart, for she’s soon to lose her older son to the endless effects of mustard gas dropped on him eight years ago by British shells, and her younger son is lost forever on Mount Everest, but perhaps we can quiet her mind about the details, the reality, of Lord Percival Bromley’s senseless death on this particular mountain.

Perhaps.

The Deacon is grinning as he drives, and Jean-Claude is grinning as he rides in the front passenger seat, his head cocked to one side to catch the wind like a dog, and I decide to join them both in grinning.

We have absolutely no concept of what lies ahead for us.