Maria is the new Chair of the Boardman Tasker Charitable Trust, our first female Chair.
Friday evening at the Kendal Mountain Book Festival. The Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature event was just getting underway. Our 40th anniversary. A full house. Everyone had been offered a glass of wine as they arrived, and told there would be a toast. Terry Stephenson, from Mountain Equipment, sponsor of the Kendal Mountain Festival BT Shortlisted Author’s event, was on stage giving a welcome speech. Behind him, a large projected image of Pete and Joe in the Himalayas, gazing up at a mountain, no doubt discussing a route. Terry invited us to raise our glasses, in memory of them, and in celebration of this award, their legacy. “To Pete and Joe!” he cried.
As the audience echoed his words, I suddenly spiralled back in time. 1981. London. The Alpine Club. Another room full of people, many of them grey haired men in sports jackets and suits. Waiters circling with trays of drinks. A hubbub of conversation. A toast. I have no memory of what that event was. I only remember standing very close to Joe, his arm around my waist, both of us gazing across the sea of heads and him saying to me, “I hope I end up like these old blokes, swigging gin and tonics with their mates, reminiscing about their climbs.” I thought, but didn’t say, “Oh Joe, I hope that too.”
In May of this year it will be forty two years since Joe and Pete disappeared on the Northeast Ridge of Everest. Those of us left behind had to find a way to make sense of their deaths, a light to help us through the dark. The seed that Pete’s mother Dorothy sowed – “Something good must come out of this”– was a big part of that light. It gave us a focus.
I have snapshot memories of the first meetings, when a core group of family and friendsdiscussed what the ‘something’ should be, and it began to take shape. Sitting on a high backed chair in Dorothy’s living room, gazing at the family photos on the mantelpiece, clutching a china cup and saucer. A few months later, in my house, tip-toeing around with a bottle, offering wine. The unreality of it all. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in half hoping that the doorbell would ring and they would be standing there.
Over the years, I missed many of the award ceremonies. I’d moved across the world, I’d married, I was going on my own big adventures with my husband. But the BT was always a touchstone. A connection to Joe. I’d also become a writer, and three times publishers and agents exhorted me to resign as a BT trustee, so I could submit my books to the award. I always refused. Being an integral part of the ‘something good’ was far more important than any potential prize.
BT has grown into an internationally recognised and valued award. Originally meant for books on climbing and mountaineering, its mandate expanded to include any work in the English language whose central theme involves the mountain environment. Sometimes there has been controversy over this, especially when the prize has been awarded to nature writers, to a long distance cyclist. But Pete and Joe would approve. They were explorers and perfectionists, not just in their climbing, but in their writing. Literary merit mattered to them. Had they lived, I’m sure their work would have taken new directions – and maybe Joe would have penned the novel he occasionally talked about.
Last November, when I snapped back to the present, Stephen Venables was starting his interviews with the short listed authors. I thought – ‘Joe and Pete would love this.’ The festival buzz, the award in their names, the big ceremony. Hanging out and reminiscing with some of their old mates. And enjoying seeing the past pushing into the future in new ways - their climbs and their writing the inspiration for that.
Maria Coffey
Chair of the Boardman Tasker Charitable Trust