Page 33 of The Sky Beneath Us
You made the right decision, based on the information available to you at the time. From your mum and Davy’s points of view, it was exactly the right thing to do. They would never have wanted you to cancel.
Then a second one pings on to my screen, another one of Jack’s anagrams, as an afterthought:
And anyway, WRONG = GROWN.
I’m tempted to call him, suddenly overcome with the longing to hear his voice. But he doesn’t pick up my reply of a series of emojis, so I know the connection between Nepal and wherever-he-is-now in the mid-Atlantic must have dropped.
I’m still full of anxious energy and want to put it to use labouring in the fields, but Dipa tells me there’s nothing for us to do there today. So once I’ve finished breakfast I go in search of Pema. Her house is just below the lodge, a low, whitewashed cottage with a dark green tin roof, enclosed by a neat stone wall. Bedding has been spread out along the wall to air in the sunlight and a pile of yak dung discs is stacked between the posts holding up a little porch. I call out and Pema emerges from behind the door curtain. Her hug is very welcome, and I cling to her for several seconds. She draws back and looks at me searchingly. ‘Is something the matter, DaisyDidi?’
I explain to her about Davy and she ushers me inside, sitting me down at her kitchen table and bringing me a cup of mint tea. ‘I’m so sorry you have this news. It’s hard for you, being so far away. But you are with your Sherpa family, and we will take care of you. Your mum will be happier knowing this, I think.’
Once we’ve finished our tea, she gets to her feet. ‘Let’s go and see my grandmother. I’ve made her an apple pie. She’s always a good person to talk to when you have worries.’
As we climb towards Themi’s house, Pema encourages me to talk about Davy. I find myself telling her how he’s the only father I’ve ever known and the best one I could ever have asked for. I’ve loved going out in the boat with him since I was tiny. He taught me about the sea, about its moods and its power, and he showed me how – if you respect it – it will give you the best sense of freedom. I remember watching the spray fly like diamonds on the sunlit air as his boat ploughed through the waves, how he pointed outa pair of eagles soaring overhead and we saw dolphins dancing in the bow wave.
I share with her, too, the memories I have of a day when we climbed the hill above Ardtuath House and a thick mist unexpectedly closed in around us, scaring me. He picked me up and put me on his shoulders, taking long, loping steps through the heather and telling me I was a giant with my head in the clouds, to make me laugh. And then, as we reached the top, the mist swirled and lifted, and the sunlight played a magic trick. ‘Look at that, Daisy,’ he told me, pointing to where a giant’s shadow was being cast over the hillside across from us, surrounded by a strange rainbow halo. ‘It’s called a Brocken spectre. An incredible sight, isn’t it? It’s just the light and the mist making an illusion.’ He lifted me from his shoulders and set me on the ground so that I could cast a Brocken spectre of my own, alongside his. Our elongated, rainbow-encircled shadows looked to me like angels, and we waved our arms and danced, laughing as the strange, otherworldly figures copied us, the rings of light around their heads shifting and weaving across the hill.
Pema listens, smiling and asking me the occasional question as we continue slowly up the hill with frequent pauses for me to catch my breath. Walking and talking at altitude still isn’t easy for me. When I describe the Brocken spectre, she nods. ‘We sometimes see that here too, although it’s quite a rare sight,’ she says. ‘Long ago, our forebears thought it was the shadow of the Yeti, because surely no human shadow could look like that.’
When we reach the fork in the path leading towards Themi’s house, Pema says, ‘Let’s go up to the monastery first,’ pointing to the steps leading higher still. I follow her a little reluctantly, resenting the additional climb, my lungs labouring in the thin air like a pair of bellows. But it’s worth it when we get to the top. The brightly painted building has prayer wheels set into its walls andPema tells me to do as she does, setting them spinning. ‘The prayers are for all,’ she says. ‘But today we send them out into the world especially for Davy. For your mum also.’
Up here, at the highest point in the village, the fields and houses stretch out beneath us to where the terraces suddenly drop away at the valley’s edge. Huge white banners, inscribed with prayers, are hung on poles in front of the monastery, shifting languorously in the faint breeze, and the slopes above us are festooned with hundreds of strings of the smaller, more colourful prayer flags.
All those prayers, all those hopes, all those blessings, I think.Please let them work for Davy. And for everyone else who’s suffering in this terrible pandemic ... the people who are ill and the families who are afraid. We’re all in this together, no matter who or where we are.I feel strangely comforted by that thought as Pema leads the way down from the monastery to Themi’s little house. And it’s a welcome distraction to sit on chairs pulled out into the sunshine, eating apple pie and drinking tea with my Sherpa cousins as Themi reminisces further about her mother, telling me stories of what she and her family endured when she was growing up.
One of Themi’s favourite places was the Valley of Flowers, she tells us. She loved the days when Violet would take her there in search of more plants. They’d pack a picnic and then Violet would help Themi on with her little backpack before shouldering her own bigger one filled with her painting things and equipment for mapping and collecting specimens. Then she’d stride off up the path with Themi trotting in her wake.
‘I learned to help identify some of the flowers,’ Themi says. ‘And I loved spotting my namesakes, the little irises that grow out of the rocks and dust above the path.’
They’d always stop at the water-driven prayer wheel marking the entrance to the valley to pay their respects to the deities that were all around them, in the mountains and the plants and theriver. Then they’d follow the faint tracks made by musk deer andtahr– the mountain goats that inhabited the valley – winding their way upwards towards the rocky headwall.
‘There were snow leopards too, living in that place,’ Themi says. ‘We would see their droppings, matted with the hair of their prey, and when I saw them I’d hurry along to walk a little closer to my mum, knowing I must look like a tasty morsel to those powerful creatures watching us, unseen, from the crags above.’
‘They’re still there,’ Pema added. ‘Only now they have baby yaks to feed on too. Herders take their animals into the valley in the summer and have built some huts up there. They’ve made stone walls to enclose their yaks safely at night, but even the prayer flags they put round them don’t always keep the snow leopards at bay. I’ll take you there one day soon if you’d like to see it.’
Themi tells me Violet spent several years methodically mapping the hidden valley, cataloguing the rich diversity of plants that thrived there. Her eyes grow misty with her memories as she talks, remembering her childhood. ‘The best time was just after the early-summer monsoon, when the flowers blossomed. The ground would be carpeted with pink and purple and white blooms, and huge bumblebees drifted among them, drunk on the nectar. My favourites were the blue poppies, which looked like little bits of fallen sky, nodding on their tall stems, brushing our skirts as we passed by. I loved picking bunches of flowers to bring home and put on the table. But my mother would always tell me to be careful not to pick too many, to take just one bloom here and there so that the plants would be able to set seed and survive to grow again the following year. She herself got far more excited about the tiniest and shyest plants she found growing further up the valley walls – saxifrages and gentians and a much smaller variety of the blue poppy, which huddled close to the ground set in a rosette of spiky-looking leaves.
‘She’d mark the precise locations of the most interesting plants on her map so we could come back in the autumn and gather some of the seed to send back to Britain. And then she’d spread a blanket on the ground and get out her sketchbook and her paints to capture them in pictures while I hunted for mushrooms and gathered bags of sweet-smelling leaves to dry for making incense.’
Themi cuts herself another sliver of apple pie and tops up our teacups before continuing. ‘Those days in the Valley of Flowers were the best ones of all. But life wasn’t always that idyllic. We had to work hard just to scrape by. Even as a young child, I would have to go out and collect yak dung to dry for the fire or to make into discs for cooking with. And every so often we’d have to put our packs on our backs and trek down to Namche Bazaar to sell the incense we’d made in the market there so we could buy supplies of salt and rice, which my mother would lug back home. As a result of carrying those heavy sacks, she suffered terribly from back pain, and although she never complained, there were days when she could hardly stand.’
Themi gazes across to where a pure-white rhododendron grows at one end of the house. ‘She was like that tree,’ she says, pointing a gnarled finger towards it. ‘Her body became twisted and old, but she was still beautiful. And there was always an indomitable life force within her, which never stopped blooming until the day she died. No matter how hard life got, no matter what fate threw our way, she kept going, didn’t she, Pema? She said life is like trekking: it’s hard sometimes, but just keep putting one foot in front of the other, until you finally reach a place where you can see the sky beneath you.’
She looks exhausted, suddenly, and sadness casts a shadow across her face like a cloud passing in front of the sun. I think of the family tree and wonder what happened to Pema’s parents – Themi’s daughter, Poppy, and her son-in-law, Lhakpa. But just as I’m aboutto ask, Pema stands up and collects together our cups and plates, signalling it’s time to leave.
‘We’ll see you tomorrow, Granny,’ she says. ‘Time for you to rest now.’
And so my question must wait for another day.
Thankfully, the calmer weather stabilises communications with the outside world and I’m able to call Mum every day to get updates on how Davy is doing. The news is frustratingly unchanging: he’s still in intensive care and they’re keeping him sedated for much of the time as they try to help his body fight the virus. Mum tells me the nurses have been wonderful, letting her make video calls to their own phones so she can see Davy and speak to him on the rare occasions when he’s awake. He can’t talk, but she’s seen him smile a little behind the mask that pumps oxygen into his lungs to keep him breathing.
‘I just want to hold his hand,’ she tells me, her voice cracking. ‘It’s horrible not being able to hug him and look after him. But at least he knows how much we love him and are longing to have him home again.’
My heart aches with helplessness, wanting to comfort her, wishing I could be with them. The pandemic is taking its toll – not just physically but in the devastating loneliness and isolation it’s inflicting on humanity. How could we ever have imagined finding ourselves in this situation?
I think of Jack, too, sailing his boat across the miles of ocean. In the past, he and I would have been considered the risk-takers. But now it feels as if we’re the lucky ones, safe from contamination, in places where we have a sense of purpose to keep ourselves distracted. It must be far worse for those who are locked down intheir homes, cut off from their loved ones and living with the ever-present fear of the invisible threat that lurks beyond those closed doors.
I’ve made myself a little routine. Each morning before breakfast, I walk up to my viewpoint at the wall beside the prayer flags and give thanks, for the millionth time, that at least my girls are safe at Ardtuath and can comfort Mum while Davy’s in the hospital.
