CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TUESDAY, JULY 9TH, 1907

“ONCE YOU’VE STARED death in the face, nothing is ever the same again,” said Young. “It places you apart from other m

en.”

George poured his guest a cup of tea.

“I wanted to see you, Mallory, to make sure it wasn’t that dreadful experience that has caused you to stop climbing.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” said George. “There’s a far better reason. My tutor has warned me that I won’t be considered for a doctorate unless I get a first.”

“And what are your chances of that, old fellow?”

“It seems I’m a borderline case. I can’t allow myself not to succeed simply because I didn’t work hard enough.”

“Understandable,” said Young. “But all work and no play…”

“I’d rather be a dull success than a bright failure,” retorted George.

“But once your exams are over, Mallory, will you consider joining me in the Alps next summer?”

“I certainly will,” said George, smiling. “If there’s one thing I fear even more than failing to get a first, it’s the thought of Finch standing on the peaks of higher and higher mountains singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’.”

“He’s just had his degree results,” said Young.

“And…?”

Guy was astonished by the amount of work George put in as his finals approached. He didn’t take even a day off during the spring vacation to visit Pen-y-Pass or Cornwall, let alone the Alps. His only companions were kings, dictators, and potentates, and his only excursions were to battlefields in far-off lands as he studied night and day right up until the morning of the exams.

After five days of continual writing, and eleven different papers, George still couldn’t be sure how well he’d done. Only the very clever and the very stupid ever are. Once he’d handed in his final paper, he emerged from the examination room and stepped out into the sunlight to find Guy sitting on the steps of Schools waiting to greet him, a bottle of champagne in one hand, two glasses in the other. George sat down beside him and smiled.

“Don’t ask,” he said, as Guy began to remove the wire from around the cork.

For the next ten days a period of limbo followed as the examinees waited for the examiners to tell them the class of degree they had been awarded, and with it, what future had been determined for them.

However much Mr. Benson tried to reassure his pupil that it had been a close-run thing, the fact was that George Leigh Mallory had been awarded a second-class honors degree, and therefore would not be returning to Magdalene College in the Michaelmas term to work on a doctorate. And it didn’t help when the senior tutor added, “When you know you’re beaten, give in gracefully.”

Despite an invitation from Geoffrey Young to spend a month with him in the Alps that summer, George packed his bags and took the next train back to Birkenhead. If you had asked him, he would have described the next four weeks as a period of reflection, although the word his father continually used was denial, while his mother, in the privacy of the bedroom, described her son’s uncharacteristic behavior as sulking.

“He’s not a child any more,” she said. “He must make up his mind what he’s going to do with the rest of his life.”

Despite his wife’s remonstrations, it was another week before the Reverend Mallory got round to tackling head-on the subject of his son’s future.

“I’m weighing up my options,” George told him, “though I’d like to be an author. In fact, I’ve already begun work on a book on Boswell.”

“Possibly illuminating, but unlikely to be remunerative,” replied his father. “I assume you have no desire to live in a garret and survive on bread and water.” George was unable to disagree. “Have you thought about applying for a commission in the army? You’d make a damn fine soldier.”

“I’ve never been very good at obeying authority,” George replied.

“Have you considered taking up Holy Orders?”

“No, because I fear there’s an insurmountable obstacle.”

“And what might that be?”

“I don’t believe in God,” said George simply.

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