“But I’ve been sending letters to Lord Bromley-Montfort…,” sputters the Deacon. He removes his pipe from his jacket pocket and clenches it between his teeth but makes no move to fill it or light it. “Lady Bromley mentioned a Cousin Reggie, so I naturally assumed…”
She smiles, and my legs go weaker. “Katherine Christina Regina Bromley-Montfort,” she says softly. “‘Reggie’ to my friends. Monsieur Clairoux, Mr. Perry, I sincerely hope that you will call me Reggie.”
“Jean-Claude, Reggie,” says my friend and bows low to her, taking her hand and kissing it even with the glove on.
“Jake,” I manage.
Reggie takes the seat at the head of the table while the tall, dignified form of Pasang stands behind her like a bodyguard. He hands her a map and she unscrolls it on our table, unceremoniously moving aside used plates and cups to make room. Jean-Claude and I look at each other and then also sit. The Deacon clamps down so hard on the stem of his pipe that it makes an audible clack, but eventually he sits.
Reggie is already speaking. “Your proposed route is the standard one, and I agree with most of it. The day after tomorrow we can take some of our plantation trucks to Sixth Mile Stone, do the final loading of packs and pack animals there, and proceed on foot with the Sherpas past the Tista Bridge and beyond to Kampong, where some of our other Sherpas will be waiting for us with more mules…”
“Us?” says the Deacon. “We?”
She looks up at him with a smile. “Of course, Dickie. Since my aunt agreed to fund your search for Cousin Percy’s body, it’s always been understood that I would accompany you. It’s an absolute condition for any further funding of the expedition.”
The Deacon must realize that he is going to bite through the stem of his favorite pipe, for he removes it with a violent motion that almost catches Reggie in the head. Rather than apologize, he says, “You on the expedition to Everest? A woman? Even to the Base Camp? Even into Tibet? Absurd. Ridiculous. Out of the question.”
“It was an absolute condition of the funding for this—my—expedition to recover Cousin Percival’s remains,” Reggie says, her smile still in place.
“We’ll go on without you,” says the Deacon. His face is very red.
“You’ll do so without a shilling more from the Bromley estate,” says Reggie.
“Very well, then, we’ll forge ahead on the funds we have,” barks the Deacon.
What funds? is my thought. Even the tickets from Liverpool to Calcutta have been paid for by Lady Bromley…evidently out of the money earned by Reggie’s tea plantation.
“I’ll give you two reasons for my going on this expedition besides the absolute necessity of my funding,” Reggie says calmly. “Will you be so kind as to listen, or will you continue to interrupt me with those barnyard noises?”
The Deacon folds his arms and says nothing. Everything about his expression and posture says that nothing will convince him.
“First…or, rather, second, after the funding,” says Reggie, “is the appalling fact that you’ve provided no doctor for your expedition. All three of the previous British expeditions had at least two physicians, one of them a surgeon, and usually they had more than two medical men along with them.”
“I learned some important first aid during the War,” says the Deacon through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure you did,” says Reggie with a smile. “And if any of us were to receive a shrapnel wound or be shot by a machine gun during this expedition, I have no doubt that you could prolong our lives for entire minutes. But there are no Aid Stations behind the battle lines in Tibet, Mr. Deacon.”
“You’re going to tell us that you’re a competent nurse?” says the Deacon.
“Yes, I am,” says Reggie. “With more than thirteen thousand local people working on our two plantations, I’ve had to learn some nursing skills. But that’s not the point I was going to make. I intend for us to have an excellent doctor and surgeon on our team.”
“We can’t afford to add people…,” begins the Deacon.
Reggie stops him with a gracefully raised palm. “Dr. Pasang,” she says to her sirdar. “Would you like to tell these gentlemen your medical credentials?”
Dr. Pasang? I thought. I confess—and it is a confession, a shameful one—that vague images of Indian fakirs and holy men, not to mention Haitian voodoo witch doctors, dance through my brain in the few seconds before Pasang speaks in that smooth and cultured English accent.
“I attended one year at Oxford and one at Cambridge,” says the tall Sherpa. “But I then trained a year at Edinburgh Medical Centre, three years at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, eighteen months studying surgery with the famous thoracic surgeon Herr Doctor Claus Wolheim in Heidelberg…that’s Heidelberg, Germany, gentlemen…then, after returning to India, I served another year of residency in the Karras Convent Hospital in Lahore.”
“Cambridge and Oxford would never allow…,” begins the Deacon and then bites down on what he was about to say.
“A wog in their midst?” asks Dr. Pasang without rancor. He shows the first broad, bright smile we’ve seen from him to date. There is no malice in it. “For some strange reason,” he continues, “both worthy institutions were under the odd illusion that I was the eldest son of the Maharaja of Aidapur, as were the medical schools in Edinburgh and Middlesex I mentioned. This was a short while before your days at Cambridge, Mr. Deacon, and the maintenance of friendly relations with the royalty of India was very important to England then.”
We are silent for a long moment, and then Jean-Claude asks in a very small voice, “Dr. Pasang, if you don’t find it impertinent of me to ask, why—after such excellent medical training and after becoming a licensed physician—did you return to work as a…sirdar…here at Reggie’s…at Lady Bromley-Montfort’s tea plantations?”
Again the white smile. “Sirdar will be my title only on this expedition to the Tibetan sacred mountain Chomolungma,” he says. “As Lady Bromley-Montfort has explained, there are more than thirteen thousand men and women in her direct employ. Those employees have extended families. My skills as a physician here in the hills between Darjeeling and the southern Himalayas do not go unpracticed. We have two plantation infirmaries, one for each large tea plantation, which are…if I may be so bold…somewhat superior in both equipment and medicines to the small British hospital in Darjeeling.”
“How can the people do without you while you’re on expedition, Dr. Pasang?” I hear myself asking.
“Lady Bromley-Montfort has, most graciously, sent younger men than I for medical training in England and New Delhi. And several of our Sherpa women have completed comprehensive nurse’s training in both Calcutta and Bombay and, to honor their benefactress as I did, returned to the plantation to offer their services.”
“You’re really a surgeon?” asks the Deacon.
Pasang shows a different, sharper sort of smile. “Allow me time to fetch a scalpel and lancet from my bag and I will show you, Mr. Deacon.”
The Deacon turns back to Reggie. “You said there were three reasons we’d have to accept your company. We could take Dr. Pasang along—with our gratitude—but having a woman on an Everest expedition…”