Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine Read Free Page B

expedition.  Agnes, or Aunt Ankie as she was known to the family, had lived her last years at Bryn Llwyn with Willie and Lilian and had died in the house at the end of the Second World War.  A meticulous hoarder, she left precise instructions as to how her worldly goods should be distributed at her death. Would she have thrown the material away?  Possibly.  But my hunch was not.
    As I got more involved in the story I was able to make a fairly accurate list of what I believed would have existed immediately after Sandy’s death.  I was so certain that if the material was there it would all be found together that I began to nag members of the family about it.  My cousin at the Davies-Colley home, Newbold, turned over attics galore, making huge bonfires of mouldy mattresses and general rubbish accumulated over several generations.  But there was nothing on Sandy Irvine.  Finally, I persuaded another of my cousins to go through the attic at Bryn Llwyn, and locate any likely boxes which we could go through to be absolutely sure.  Jenny and Julia Irvine, who have been so supportive throughout this whole research period, agreed to have a final trawl.  On one of her visits up north at the beginning of May 2000 Julia collected three trunks that had belonged to Sandy’s elder brother Hugh and which had been at Bryn Llwyn since the death of his son in the 1970s.  Once the boxes were in her London house she set about going through them.  There was a mountain of material referring to Hugh’s life but little else.  We spoke at the beginning of the second week in May when she found a very poignant letter from Lilian Irvine in June 1926 (two years after Sandy’s death) describing how she had put red roses below the Mallory and Irvine Memorial Window in the cloisters of Chester Cathedral.
    Then, on Saturday 13 May she telephoned again.  She had found everything!  ‘What do you mean, everything?’ I asked, flabbergasted. ‘Well, everything you said would be there is there.’  We talked for about twenty minutes and it became abundantly clear that not only had she found what I believed would exist, but more material besides.
    I soon saw that Willie and Lilian had kept all the letters Sandy had written to them from the boat, the trek and the mountain – eleven long letters in total.  Then there were the most fascinating photographs from the trek, which he had sent back to his sister Evelyn.  These snapshots, albeit very high quality snapshots taken on a plate camera, had been developed for him by Benthley Beetham, another expedition member and keen photographer, and Sandy had carefully wrapped each photograph and negative in paper on which he had written a description.  I knew exactly what these were as he had mentioned the fact that he had sent them to Evelyn in his diary entry of 11 May 1924, but it was nevertheless a tremendous surprise to find them in amongst the papers.  Then there was a roll with a piece of paper wrapped round it and on it, in blue crayon, were the words ‘Plans for Oxygen Apparatus ACI [Andrew Comyn Irvine] 1923’.  I honestly held my breath as I unwrapped this bundle, and with good reason.  Here was the most professional set of diagrams in perfect condition, indicating Sandy’s suggestions for modifications to the 1922 oxygen apparatus.  These were sent to the manufacturers Siebe Gorman in the autumn of 1923 with long notes showing in the greatest detail, his modifications for the valves, flowmeters, cylinders, carriers, everything.  But they were totally ignored.  I am no scientist, but I could appreciate from the meticulous notes and exquisite drawings that Sandy had clearly spent the whole of his last term at Oxford working on the oxygen apparatus, to the considerable detriment I suspect of his own studies.
    The trunk contained other treasures too.  An address book, two wallets with press cuttings about his rowing career and his brief but exciting motorbike stunts in North Wales, a