Daisy: April 2020

The news of Davy isn’t good the next day. Mum sends me a message to say he’s been moved into intensive care, and I’m so upset that I can’t sit still.

Jack’s been in touch, sending messages of support. Elspeth’s told him the news about Davy. I message him back, grateful to have a friend I can talk to, one who understands:

Can’t bear to think of them going through this and not be there to help. I think I was definitely wrong to carry on with this trip. I should have turned back when I could.

After a few minutes a message comes back:

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, Daisy Didi ?’

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 out a 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 and Pema 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 the river. Then they’d follow the faint tracks made by musk deer and tahr – 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 about to 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 in their 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.

I feel guilty, though, that my presence in the village is putting an added strain on its already scant resources and after a few more days I ask Tashi if it would be better for me to leave. I could trek back to Namche Bazaar on my own, then see if I could get accommodation there and sort out transport back to Kathmandu. But he tells me, ‘No one go anywhere now. Government says to stay put. Not good in the world right now.’ Then he reassures me. ‘No worry, Didi . You stay here with us to be safe. And you help in fields, so you earn food like all of us.’

He waves his phone at me. ‘Anyway, we just hear they sending helicopter to drop supplies every week. Keep us going. After the earthquake,’ he tells me, ‘Phortse completely cut off for months, all through winter. Whole country badly affected and no supplies getting through because roads and tracks have been destroyed. We living outside, sleeping in tents in snow. Your old cousin Themi too, she afraid to be in her house in case more earthquakes come. Then, once we have managed to build homes up again, we all work together to make place for helicopters to land. So can receive supplies that way if needed.’ His phone flashes and he checks the incoming message. ‘Ha! It coming now. You want to go see?’

I follow him past the school, along a path through the rhododendrons to where the hillside flattens out a little before falling away steeply to the valley floor below us. A flat stone circle has been constructed, just big enough to land a helicopter on. A few other villagers have gathered there too. After a few minutes, we hear the faint beat of the propellor blades and then the helicopter comes into view, flying up the valley beneath us. It soars higher, the noise reverberating from the mountainsides as it comes to hover above the helipad.

‘We not allowed to help. Must stand back,’ Tashi explains. ‘Let pilot unload first so no risk of virus.’

A heap of sacks and boxes are offloaded, and the pilot gives us a cheery salute before climbing back into the cockpit and taking off again. Then we file down to the helipad and collect up the supplies.

‘We bring to community centre,’ says Tashi. ‘Then everyone can get their share.’

Later in the day, I go with Tashi and Sonam to carry rice, bread and powdered milk up the hill to Themi’s house. She emerges, grinning broadly at the sight of such a bounty, and insists on making us all tea. ‘Sit, sit. I found something I wanted to show you, Daisy,’ she says. From a tin box on one of the shelves, she brings out a sheet of thick paper, torn from a sketch pad, and passes it across to me. ‘My mum painted that. I know she’d want you to have it.’

It’s exquisite. A painting of a poppy, its petals the colour of sky and in its centre a circle of fine, sun-gold stamens. I can just make out the writing, in Violet’s familiar script, in one corner. Meconopsis grandis. (Betty’s Dream).

Themi pours the tea and settles herself on the bench beside me, picking up her cup to take a sip.

‘One day, an expedition came through the village. It was led by a well-known plant-hunter called George Sherriff and comprised a number of men plus his wife, Betty. They set up their camp just below the house here, and Violet was pleased to be able to talk to them and get news from the outside world. She showed them some of her paintings and said she could help him with his expedition, but George Sherriff was very dismissive of her. He didn’t believe a woman could really know enough about plants to identify new species. He was an army man, used to giving orders, and he wanted to be the one to make the discoveries.

‘Violet liked his wife, Betty, though. She was a kind woman. I remember her teaching me songs in English and she gave my mother some of the medicines and bandages they’d brought with them so we could use them for people in the village who needed them. Betty told Violet that, to be honest, she was getting a bit tired of trailing around after her husband and his men and then being left on her own while they went off exploring, but that George wouldn’t rest until he’d found a new variety of the famous Himalayan blue poppy. He was jealous of another plant hunter, Frank Kingdon Ward, who’d already discovered a few, and wanted a poppy with his own name on it. And so the two women hatched a plan. Violet took Betty to the Valley of Flowers and showed her a place where this beautiful flower could be found.’ Themi points at the painting in my hands.

‘The women knew George Sherriff wouldn’t take kindly to being told where the poppy grew, though, it had to be his own discovery. And so when he returned to the camp, Betty told him she’d had the most extraordinary dream the night before. In it, she’d walked up the hill and discovered a hidden valley full of flowers, where a poppy with petals the colour of sky grew. And she persuaded him it was such a vivid dream that he should go and have a look. He returned triumphant. And he declared he would take the seeds home and name the poppy Betty Sherriff’s Dream , which he did. My mother had already painted this picture, but she added the new name beneath it, to remember how the two women had allowed him to have his wish of making the discovery. It was their secret.’

I pick up the painting to look at it more closely. ‘I think I read about that story. It’s a bit of a legend among gardeners who love growing Himalayan poppies. But it should have been named after Violet!’ I say indignantly.

Themi smiles. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Betty Sherriff made sure my mother received a payment for the discovery. And the medical supplies she gave us for the village were worth more to Mum than the fame would have been. She enjoyed knowing the secret too, I think. That was enough of a reward for her.’

‘I’d love to see the valley,’ I say.

Themi pats my hand. ‘Pema will take you. Maybe I will come too. I haven’t been up there for years, but it would be good to see it again. We’ll give the flowers a bit more time to have a chance to blossom after all the snow that came so late, but we’ll find a good time to go soon. I have one more thing to show you, too.’ She gets up stiffly from the bench, and rummages in the tin box once more.

‘Open your hand,’ she says, and then she drops something into my outstretched palm.

Tears spring to my eyes as I realise what it is: the first gift Callum gave Violet, all those years ago.

Reverentially, I stroke the whittled palmetto leaf with my thumb before returning it to Themi for safekeeping. The small wooden talisman seems more precious than if it were made of solid gold. Because it embodies so much love. And it has endured where so much has been lost.

After another week of warmer weather, the first tiny green spikes begin to push their way into the sunlight in the fields. One morning, we pack food and bottles of water and Pema comes to call at the lodge to take us to the Valley of Flowers. Dipa’s coming too and she’s added some cotton tote bags to her own pack for collecting leaves to make incense, as well as anything else she can forage to add to her cooking.

I’m very thankful for the distraction. The news from home is no better. Davy’s still in intensive care and Mum has told me they’ve put him into an induced coma to try to allow his body to rest and fight the virus. Every waking minute – and I know there must be many through the long nights as much as during daylight hours for all of us – is an agony of hoping for the best and fearing the worst.

I’ve been trying to throw myself into helping Tashi and Dipa with chores around the lodge to keep myself busy. Even the effort of doing washing has become a welcome ordeal. It involves clambering down to the river carrying a large metal bowl heaped with clothes, sheets and pillowcases, then scrubbing them in the freezing cold water. We rinse the items and wring them out between us, before hauling the bowls filled with the heavy, damp washing back up to the village, a climb of half an hour even at Dipa’s brisk pace. Pushing myself physically is a way of channelling my anxiety about Davy, though. If I can make the climb in five minutes less than the day before , I tell myself, then he’ll recover. With every searing breath, I think of him in his hospital bed, his own lungs labouring, and I feel as if I’m breathing for him, desperately trying to will him to stay alive.

On the day of our trek to the Valley of Flowers, we walk up to Themi’s house, where she’s already waiting in the sunshine outside her door. She doesn’t carry a pack, but neither does she use a stick to help her on the walk, and when I begin to breathe more heavily as we start to climb, she’s the one who slows her pace to allow me to catch up.

It feels a little like a pilgrimage as we process in single file along the narrow path running above the village. Pema leads the way, then Dipa and Themi, and I bring up the rear: four women of different ages and backgrounds bound together by Violet’s story.

While I can scarcely draw breath – let alone speak – Themi talks more about her reminiscences of coming this way with her mother all those decades before us. ‘She would tell me about the plants, of course, teaching me to identify them so I could help her. But she would also talk about the plant hunters who’d come before us and the way they were greedy sometimes, taking everything they found. “It’s our job to change that, Themi,” she’d say. “Always remember, there’s a big difference between being given something and taking it. We’re the guardians of this place now. If anyone else comes looking for plants, choose carefully which ones you decide to give them.” She was one of the first people to realise how important it is to conserve what we have.’

Pausing to catch my breath and press a hand into the stitch that’s gnawing at my side, I picture the envelopes of seeds I’d unearthed from the wooden chest back at Ardtuath. How sad it was that the damp had got in and I never managed to get any of them to germinate.

We push on along the path, which, to my relief, mostly follows the contours of the mountainside once we’ve made the initial climb from the village. I stop beside a small heap of mani stones piled on top of a deeply carved rock and draped in a string of prayer flags so old and tattered they’ve become bleached of their colours. I turn and look back the way we’ve come. Phortse is spread out beneath us, dwarfed by the might of the snowy peaks surrounding it and the valley that plunges away to the thin ribbon of turquoise river a thousand feet below. The fields and houses look so tranquil from up here on this beautiful day, and yet it takes such determination and strength to be able to survive in this environment where Mother Nature can be as cruel as she is kind.

I notice Themi has taken a new string of prayer flags from her pocket and is winding them round the carved mani stones. ‘This is my mother’s memorial,’ she says. ‘We remember her here.’

I reach out and trace the outline of a stylised flower, incised into one of the slabs. I realise this is the point where the path twists up and over the next ridge – the final viewpoint from which the village can be seen. In Violet’s case, of course, it must have been the spot she described in her journal after fleeing from her kidnappers. It was from here that she got her first glimpse of the place that would become home for the rest of her days, Themi heavy in her belly, as Palden guided them to safety.

At last, we reach a point where the main path carries on ahead of us, but we turn to the right and scramble upwards alongside a little stream that tumbles over white stones. There’s nothing much to differentiate the spot from the many other meltwater streams we’ve picked our way across, but Pema turns to smile back at me, saying, ‘Here’s where we enter the Valley of Flowers.’

We’re climbing more steeply uphill now but, rather than slowing down, Themi’s pace has quickened.

If I hadn’t already been gasping for air by the time we reach the lip of the valley, I’d have gasped again at the sight that awaits us. The mountains seem to lean apart a little, as if making room to cradle this beautiful spot in their arms. The valley is a sheltered bowl, nourished by the tumbling stream, stretching away from us to meet a rocky headwall at its far end. At the lower end, where we now stand, the water becomes dispersed, meandering among white river stones, creating a broad meadow where swathes of purple candelabra primulas grow. The waters braid themselves together again into a single channel, turning the water-driven prayer wheel before rushing over the valley’s lip to cross the path and carry on their way to join the larger river far below.

As we pick our way across the river stones, the years seem to fall from Themi’s shoulders, and I catch a glimpse of the much younger woman who came to this place as a child and would have brought her own daughter, Poppy, here too. When we stop beside a low wall, she perches there, lifting her face to the sun, and smiles, closing her eyes, lost in her memories, while Pema and Dipa wander on, foraging for mushrooms growing beneath the birch trees in the most sheltered spots. I sit down beside her, thankful to be able to rest and breathe a little more deeply, taking stock of our surroundings. There are several small stone huts in the valley, where yak herders have come to graze their animals on the fertile meadow that stretches up the valley sides to meet the steeper scree. The faint clanking of yak bells drifts down to us from above and I shade my eyes to try to make out the herd among the distant scrubland of juniper and grasses. A pair of eagles soar against the endless blue of the sky, spiralling on the air currents between the mountains. And we stand among a tapestry of flowers, just beginning to open their petals to the sun after the recent cold snap.

A sense of peace washes through me as my muscles release tension born of anxiety and stress. They’re tight with a coldness as well, which has more to do with something internal, I think, than with the chill Himalayan air. I feel my heart tentatively begin to open too, where it’s been frozen for so long by fear and loss and sadness: not just from my current preoccupations with the pandemic and what it’s doing to my family, but from years of loneliness and emptiness.

Like Themi, I close my eyes for a while, absorbing the warmth, letting it soak through me, and what Mum said to me at the start of my journey comes back to me: Try to find out a bit more about where Violet went. And while you’re at it, try to find out what’s happened to the fearless, audacious girl you once were, Daisy .

Well, I’ve managed to find Violet’s family – my family too, now – and in doing so I’ve gained a whole new perspective on the world. In following Violet’s journey, putting one foot in front of the other just as she did, I’ve reached a place where I can see the sky beneath me. I’ve both lost and found more than I ever thought possible. I’ve left behind the person I’d become, and while that’s frightening, it’s liberating too.

I open my eyes to find Themi scrutinising me closely. I smile and say, ‘Thank you for bringing me to this beautiful place.’

She nods, her expression shrewd. As if she’s been reading my thoughts, she says, ‘You are beginning to find what you came looking for, I think?’

I laugh. ‘Is it that obvious? Am I such a cliché? Another tourist coming to try and find myself in this foreign land? Looking for answers?’

She shakes her head. ‘My mother often used to say that life is not about finding yourself – it’s about creating the person you want to be. Life doesn’t always give us answers. She taught me we have to accept there are some things we can’t understand, and in the end our lives will be defined by what we do with that fact – how we accept it and pick ourselves up, facing reality and adapting to it, rather than denying or ignoring it. Violet made a life for herself here, even if she had to do it the hard way, and she gave me a future that I could never have had if she’d returned to Britain. She gave me freedom. And the hardships were worth it because they gave Violet her own freedom too.’

We’re both silent for a moment, lost in thought. Then Themi continues, ‘It’s never easy, making changes, is it? It takes quite a bit of work because, as we Buddhists know, the natural human way is to cling blindly to the desires and beliefs that make us suffer. Wishing life was otherwise keeps us stuck. Accepting where we are and focusing on finding the goodness in every day can go a long way to getting us out of that downward spiral of suffering. Life can be very overwhelming, and that’s especially true right now, while the virus is making things so hard for everyone, everywhere. But we can still choose to be like those eagles up there.’ She nods towards the distant birds, just flecks in the sky now as they circle far, far above us. ‘If we can let go of the thoughts that are keeping us trapped, stop fighting with them and struggling against them, we will soar upwards, where the currents take us.’ She pats my hand. ‘Come, let’s walk again. I want to show you something.’

I follow her as she threads her way up a faint track, deeper into the valley. Every now and then she pauses to point something out to me: the tiny white stars of a saxifrage growing through a cushion of emerald moss; the hoofprint of a musk deer in a patch of damp sand where it’s come to the river to drink; and, as we begin to climb higher towards the scree, the droppings of a snow leopard, matted with the hair of its prey.

Perched on top of a boulder, a large bird squawks a warning as we draw near. Its plumage is extraordinary, an iridescent peacock-blue. ‘ Danphe ,’ Themi says. ‘The Nepali pheasant.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ I say.

‘Beautiful, but slow. Tasty food for snow leopards and wolves. Easier to catch than deer and mountain goats.’

‘There are wolves here too?’ I ask, casting an anxious glance towards the rocky heights above us. Are those grey shapes just boulders, or predators silently watching us?

She nods, unperturbed. ‘They follow yak herders coming through the mountains from the Tibetan plateau. Sometimes when they’re hungry in the winter they come right to the edge of Phortse looking for food.’

She lifts the hem of her skirt in order to scramble more easily over a pile of rocks. ‘This is where some of the blue poppies grow, the ones Violet showed Betty Sherriff. No flowers to see at the moment, it’s still too early and that cold spell will have set them back even more this year. But look, here are the first leaves starting to sprout.’ She shows me the tiny, hairy blades just beginning to unfurl where the sun warms the earth. ‘They’ll grow to be this high in about a month’s time.’ She gestures to her mid-thigh level.

We climb higher until we reach a point where the scree begins, giving us a viewpoint over the whole of the valley. Themi sits down on a lichen-crusted boulder, spreading her apron over her lap. I take a seat next to her. She nudges me. ‘Look,’ she says, her face crinkling into a smile as she points her gnarled forefinger towards the ground at our feet. ‘That’s what I really wanted to show you.’

I see the bud of a tiny blue flower huddled between the stones, hidden away, nestling in a low-growing coronet of spiky leaves, determined to lift its face to the sun. ‘ Meconopsis horridula ,’ Themi says. ‘It’s a rare type of Himalayan poppy. Keeps to the high places and never grows big. I was up here with my mother when she first discovered it. But she said we must keep it a secret because she knew people would come and take it from here otherwise. Others have found it elsewhere since, but only we know it’s here in the Valley of Flowers.’

I touch it gently with my forefinger, marvelling at how something so beautiful and fragile can survive in such a tough, inhospitable environment.

Then Themi says quietly, ‘I named my daughter after it. Poppy. Of course, her father insisted she had to have a proper Sherpa name too, so we called her Nima because she was born on a Sunday and Nima means “sun”. But to all of us, she was always Poppy. Violet absolutely adored her, as only a grandmother can.’

‘What happened to her?’ I ask softly. I’ve scoured Violet’s journals for any mention of how she lost her granddaughter, but she stopped writing them in the late 1970s. I’m guessing whatever became of Poppy may lie behind that silence.

Themi gazes into the distance, her eyes not focused on the landscape stretching out below but on something else, something only she can see. ‘The same thing that has happened to so many of our families. Mount Everest. You see, Daisy, that mountain is both a blessing and a curse for the Sherpa people. It changed our lives and our fortunes when people around the world realised it could be conquered. But it’s the Sherpas who are the key to climbing it. They find the routes, fix the ropes, set the ladders across the ever-changing crevasses in the ice fields. They carry the oxygen and the supplies up to the camps higher up the mountain, allowing climbers to survive in the death zone. They’re paid well for this work, of course, but they risk everything in order to try and improve life for their families.’ She sighs, reaching out a finger to stroke the face of the tiny blue flower in the stones alongside us.

‘My Poppy grew up in the village surrounded by her Sherpa family and friends,’ she continues. ‘Even though we were outsiders, everyone had accepted Violet into the community, and they just sort of adopted me as one of their children. I’d married a Sherpa – my husband, Tshering – so when Poppy came along, she was completely assimilated, despite being half Scottish. She was loved by everyone, but she had one particular friend, a little boy called Lhakpa. They were inseparable. As they grew up, they trained together with my husband to learn how to climb. Poppy was always an adventurer, like her granny Violet. She loved the thrill of being able to see the world from a different angle, hanging from an ice cliff or scaling a rock wall. Her dad always said that, technically, she was the best of all of them. She had an instinctive feel for the mountains.

‘Eventually, Poppy and Lhakpa became husband and wife. When I’d married her dad, we had a very small and quiet ceremony as I was from the outside. But when Poppy and Lhakpa were married we had a big traditional Sherpa wedding, which went on for days. People came from all around, dressed in their finery, and we celebrated and danced. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Violet’s too, she always said. I think she sometimes felt a little guilty that she’d denied me an easier life in Europe, although it was never something I wanted, but on that day, she felt all the hardship had been worth it to give her daughter and granddaughter so much relative freedom and a sense of belonging in a community of equals.

‘A year after the wedding, Pema arrived. That was another great day in all our lives. Violet was old and frail by then, but she loved being a great-granny. She’d rock Pema to sleep in her arms, singing the songs she remembered from her Scottish childhood.’

I smile, remembering the songs I’d grown up with – those same songs, I bet.

‘Like so many Sherpas, though, Lhakpa wanted a better life for his wife and child. He was already a strong climber and he’d accompanied his father and brothers on expeditions, along with my husband. They were a tight-knit team, and became known as some of the very best Sherpas. Lhakpa’s dad was what they call an “icefall-doctor”. That’s a Sherpa who has specialised knowledge of finding the way through the Khumbu Icefall, the very dangerous area just above Everest Base Camp where the glacier flowing down the mountain meets the valley. Even though it’s moving in slow motion, it crumples and breaks, making it a complicated and hazardous start to every climb. Lhakpa learned how to be an icefall-doctor too, because that way he’d be paid more. And so he’d leave Phortse at the beginning of each climbing season to go and live in a tent at Base Camp, where, early every morning, while the other climbers were still asleep, he was part of the team who went up on to the icefall to work out that day’s safest route through it, fixing ladders and ropes for the other climbers to use.’

Themi pauses as a sudden gust of chill wind whisks a strand of hair loose from her braid, into her eyes. She tucks it behind her ear, then continues.

‘Lhakpa was on the Khumbu Icefall when a towering block of ice – a serac – fell from the western side, right where he was working. It triggered an avalanche. The other Sherpas in Base Camp rushed on to the icefall to try to help their brothers. They recovered two bodies. But Lhakpa was still unaccounted for.

‘It was devastating for the brothers and cousins who retrieved the two broken, frozen bodies. But in Sherpa culture it’s even worse for the families of those whose bodies can’t be recovered because in the Sherpa faith if the body cannot be given the correct care and respect then the soul might never be at rest. Bereavement and grief are a natural part of our lives, but it helps us survive the devastation of loss if we can observe the rites we believe will help the soul leave the earthly realm and find peace. So you can imagine how distraught we all were – especially Poppy – when word reached us that Lhakpa had been lost.

‘She was determined to go to try to find his body. One of the helicopter pilots summoned for the rescue mission stopped off here at Phortse to pick up more Sherpas to help at Base Camp and Poppy joined them, along with her dad. Helicopter operations are normally forbidden around the Khumbu Icefall because the reverberations can trigger more avalanches in that area, where lumps of the ice on the moving glaciers can easily be destabilised. So, to get to the scene of the disaster, the rescuers had to climb out of the helicopter and hang from a long line to be deposited on to the ice.

‘My husband told me that once he and Poppy had landed, they heard from one of the men who’d been on the icefall when the avalanche struck that Lhakpa had been fixing a ladder over a crevasse, immediately below the serac that had fallen from the side of the mountain. It was terribly dangerous, going back to that place where everything was still shifting and settling, but Poppy was determined to find Lhakpa. She and her dad searched for hours, even after everyone else had given up, and then they came across a deep crack in the ice that had opened up with the immense force of the blow when the ice fell. Poppy was convinced that was where Lhakpa would be. Tshering wanted to be the one to go down, but the crevasse was narrow, and Poppy insisted to her dad that it would be better if she went in to search. And since he was the stronger of the pair, it made sense that he should hold the rope for her. They quickly set up a fixing point in the ice and rigged the ropes for Poppy’s abseil. They knew they had to work fast, because it was late morning by now, so the air was warmer, beginning to make things even more unstable.’

Themi can’t speak for a few moments as she tries to hold back the tears that have started to flow. I take her hand in mine and hold it tightly.

When she can continue, she says, ‘She found him deep in the ice. My husband felt her tugging on the rope to let him know that. He let out more slack so she could tie Lhakpa’s body to the rope to bring him up to the surface. Then he felt Poppy start to climb, and he busied himself managing the ropes. But all at once the fixing point broke as the ice sheared. He tried desperately to take the strain but couldn’t hold them. He hung on to that rope for dear life – there was no way he’d let go – but the surface was slippery now and he began to be pulled towards the opening.’

She stops again, struggling to say the next words.

‘Poppy was experienced enough to have realised what was happening. She knew she would drag her father to his death in the crevasse and then there’d have been three missing bodies, putting others at risk if they tried to recover them.’ She pauses again, brushing her tears away with the back of her hand.

‘And so my husband felt his daughter cut the rope, falling to her death alongside her husband’s body in that deep, icy grave. The other Sherpas who heard his cry of anguish say it’s a sound that’s seared on to their souls. They scrambled to stop him from trying to climb into the crevasse himself. It was far too dangerous by then, the ice was creaking and groaning as it shifted around them, and they dragged him from the icefall. They promised him they’d come back early the next morning to try to recover Poppy and Lhakpa, when the night air had restabilised the ice. But by the next day, the movement of the ice had closed up the crevasse and it was impossible to get the bodies out.’

It’s my turn to cry now, big, ugly, gasping sobs that shake my body, and Themi wraps her arms around me, our tears mingling as she presses her cheek against mine.

‘How do you come back from something like that?’ I ask at last, when I can manage to speak again.

Her smile is filled with sadness as she replies. ‘I think you know the answer to that already. You go on because you have no choice. Baby Pema had lost her mum and dad in one fell swoop and we had to look after her. She kept us all going, Violet, Tshering and me. Tshering was never the same again. He’d often wake in the night, crying out as he relived that terrible moment when he felt Poppy cut the rope. The only time he was at peace was when he was holding Pema. She could always make him smile. He never climbed in the mountains again and he died a few years later. It was peaceful in the end. His heart, which had endured so much pain and so much love, simply stopped beating one night.’

She raises her hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she watches the eagles circling above us. ‘You remember how Violet used to say you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, slowly, slowly, until you reach a place where you can see the sky beneath you again? Well, that’s what we did.’

She reaches down again to brush the bud of the tiny blue poppy growing in the shelter of the rocks, then gestures towards the barren expanse of the scree above us. ‘Life is like that scree sometimes, isn’t it? It seems bleak and dead. But if you look really carefully, you’ll find little signs of life. Tiny, fragile plants, like this one, determined to push their way into the light. Determined to change the desolation into something else – a place where there is still hope and beauty. Pema was our constant reminder of that in the desolation after we lost Poppy and Lhakpa.’

She reaches over to take my hand in hers again and gives it a squeeze. ‘Unless we’re incredibly fortunate, sooner or later we all live through such times. Often, it’s something personal and individual. But just at the moment I think the pandemic has created an avalanche of sadness for the whole world. So it’s all the more important to look for these tiny signs of life and hope that keep us going.’

I nod, pulling a tissue from my pocket to blow my nose and wipe my eyes.

‘I hate that so many Sherpas still choose to climb,’ she continues. ‘The mountain gods have been angered by the disrespect shown to them and no matter how much we pray and make offerings, sooner or later they show their anger by taking lives. But we still have such limited opportunities to make money and support our families that many continue to risk it. Women as well as the men, these days. And it’s the old and the young who are left behind to manage as best we can. One good thing to have come out of this pandemic, for us at least, is that all the guides have come home now the climbing season’s been cancelled. The village feels like it did in the old days, before there was the opportunity to stand on the heads of the gods and be paid for it. For the time being, everyone is home, and everyone is safe here. That makes us happy, even if we will struggle to make ends meet this year. The future is very uncertain for us all.’

Just then we hear Dipa and Pema’s laughter, carried on the breeze as they make their way up the hill towards us, dispelling the sadness. They hold up bags bulging with the foodstuffs they’ve foraged, waving them in triumph. Even Pema is a little out of breath when they reach the rocks along the lower edge of the scree and sink down beside us, but that still doesn’t stop the pair of them from chattering on about the dishes they’ll be able to cook with the mushrooms and herbs they’ve gathered.

Then Pema must notice my red nose and tear-blotched cheeks because she puts out her hand and pats my knee. ‘Granny has been telling you some sad stories, I think?’ she says.

I nod, feeling my mouth tremble and my throat close again as I think of how she lost both her parents so tragically.

She smiles at me, her dark eyes shining with compassion. ‘I know how hard it is for you right now, Daisy. We Sherpas understand pain and sorrow, so we’re right here with you in this. Whatever comes. One of the things we all share, though, is Violet’s resilience. She led the way for us, fixed the ropes and set the ladders, so we could follow. So we could keep on with the journey she began all those years ago. No matter what the world throws at us, we will adapt and survive by helping each other. It’s the love in our hearts that makes us invincible, isn’t it, Granny.’

Themi nods, pushing herself up to stand and brushing a few flecks of lichen from her apron. ‘Your great-granny taught you well, didn’t she, Pema. And now I think it’s time we took those supplies back to the village so you can show Daisy how to prepare the mushrooms for drying.’

We walk back towards Phortse in single file and when we reach that first viewpoint over the village, we all stop for a few minutes beside the little pile of mani stones with their bright wrapping of new prayer flags. I realise this memorial isn’t just for Violet, but for Poppy and Lhakpa as well. I press the palm of my hand flat against the incised characters on one of the slabs, sending my love to the three of them.

I listen carefully as the wind gusts around us, but I don’t think I can hear their voices among those of the wind walkers. I get the sense that they’re at peace, that they lived their lives without regret. And now the love of their friends and family has laid them to rest, regardless of whether or not their bodies were given the last rites.

Poppy must have had so many things go through her mind when she felt the rope give and her father struggle to hold her as she swung in the void of that crevasse: her love for her tiny daughter and her parents making her want to fight to live, but outweighed by the knowledge that she’d lost Lhakpa and her attempt to recover his body could kill her father too. And so I think she must have made her impossible decision without regret, reaching for her knife and cutting the rope.

Because, as Themi said, Poppy and Lhakpa always were inseparable. Even in death.