Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer Page A

asked.
    “That may not be possible,” said Young. “There are one or two other fellows already hoping to be selected for that jaunt.”
    Somervell and Odell were now taking a far greater interest in the freshman from Magdalene. The two young men couldn’t have been more dissimilar. Odell was just a shade over five feet five, with sandy hair, a ruddy complexion, and watery blue eyes. He looked too young to be an undergraduate, but the moment he spoke he sounded older than his years. Somervell, in contrast, was over six foot, with dark, unruly hair that looked as if it had rarely been acquainted with a comb. He had the black eyes of a pirate, but when asked a question he bowed his head and spoke softly, not because he was aloof, but simply because he was shy. George knew instinctively that these two disparate men were going to be friends for the rest of his life.
    S ATURDAY , J UNE 23 RD , 1906
    If George had been asked what he had achieved in his first year at Cambridge—and his father did—he would have said that it had been far more than the third class he’d been awarded following his end-of-term exams.
    “Is it possible that you have become involved in too many outside activities,” his father remonstrated, “none of which is likely to assist you when the time comes to consider a profession?” This was something George hadn’t given a great deal of thought to. “Because I don’t have to remind you, my boy,” his father added—but he did—“that I do not have sufficient funds to allow you to spend the rest of your life as a gentleman of leisure”—a sentiment the Reverend Mallory had made all too clear since George’s first day at prep school.
    George felt confident that this was not a conversation Guy would be having with his father, despite the fact that he had also only managed to scrape a third. He concluded that it was not the moment to tell Papa that if he was lucky enough to be among those selected to join Geoffrey Young’s climbing party in the Alps, he would be making an excursion to Italy that summer.
    Unlike Guy, George had been mortified to be awarded a third. However, Mr. Benson had assured him that he had been a borderline case for a second, and added that if he were to work a little harder during the next two years, that would be the class he should attain when he sat his finals—and if he was willing to make sacrifices, he might even secure a first.
    George began to consider what sacrifices Mr. Benson might have in mind. He had, after all, been elected to the committee of the Fabian Society, where he had dined with George Bernard Shaw and Ramsay MacDonald. He regularly spent evenings with Rupert Brooke, Lytton Strachey, Geoffrey and John Maynard Keynes, and Ka Cox, all of whom Mr. Benson thoroughly approved of. He’d even played the Pope in Brooke’s production of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus —although George would have been the first to admit that the reviews had not been all that flattering. He had also begun a thesis on Boswell, which he hoped might in time be published. But all of this had been secondary to his efforts to be elected to the Alpine Club. Did Mr. Benson expect him to sacrifice everything in order to gain the coveted first?

CHAPTER TEN
    G EORGE M ALLORY HAD never climbed with anyone he considered his equal. That was until he met George Finch.
    During the Michaelmas vacation, George had traveled to Wales to join Geoffrey Young for one of the Cambridge Mountaineering Club meets at Pen-y-Pass. Each day, Young would select the teams for the morning climb, and George quickly came to respect Odell and Somervell, who were not only excellent company, but were able to keep pace with him when they tackled the more demanding climbs.
    On Thursday morning, George was paired with Finch for the ridge climb over Crib Goch, Crib-y-Ddysgl, Snowdon, and Lliwedd. As the two men clambered up and down Snowdon, often having to scramble on their hands and knees, George became painfully