The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1
Page 17
Within half an hour of stowing his kit Bowers stepped backwards and fell nineteen feet into the hold. I peered down at his face, red on arrival and now dark in shadow, his barrel chest unaccountably heaving up and down, and remarked, ‘He’s breathing, lads, but he’s a gonner.’ We all thought he’d broken his back on the pig-iron, but ten seconds later he bounced up unscathed.
Since then, the Owner refers to him as a perfect treasure, and although I won’t go so far overboard I will concede he’s a worker and strong as they come. Lashly maintains he may well turn out to be the toughest of us all. ‘Why is that?’ I asked him, and he said it was owing to his being so bloody ugly. ‘A man like that,’ he said, ‘has a need to prove himself.’
The Owner admires physical strength above most things; I suspect it has something to do with him being considered sickly as a child. By that I don’t mean to imply he was ailing, rather that he lacked robustness, languished under a melancholy disposition. It’s been my experience that men overburdened with emotions often have an exaggerated regard for muscle. I don’t let on I’m sentimental myself by nature; that’s why him and me get on so well. To my knowledge he’s never flinched from a show of feeling exhibited by his equals, but I reckon he’d be discomfited if I went in for the same sort of caper; being down a crevasse together is no excuse for stepping out of line. All I know is I’d die with the man, and for him, God help me, if the necessity arose.
There’s another bloke arrived from India, a Captain Oates of the Fifth Royal Inniskilling Dragoons. He presented himself on the dock wearing an ancient raincoat and an old bowler-hat. None of us knew what to make of him, and some took him for a farmer. Crean says he’s paid a thousand pounds to join the expedition and that he’s down on the parole for a shilling a month. I’d have known he had money without being told, just by the easy way he conducts himself and his disregard of appearances. The talk is that he distinguished himself fighting the Boers and lay in a dried-up river-bed east of Kaarkstroom with a bullet through him. He’s been taken on because he’s an authority on horseflesh, and it had been planned he travel out to Siberia to join Mr Meares and advise on what ponies to buy, only he quickly became such a favourite, such a willing dogsbody, that the mate begged the Owner to keep him aboard. The other day he returned from being ashore, looking more dishevelled than usual. Everyone had been ordered to the dental surgeon that afternoon, and I asked him if he’d had a rough time in the chair.
‘I didn’t go,’ he said. ‘I borrowed a friend’s motor-bike instead and took a spin as far as Greenwich.’
‘Well, now sir,’ I said, ‘was that wise? The cold can play the very devil with a man’s mouth.’ I should know, seeing I lost most of the nerves in my lower jaw at Cape Crozier, and my teeth along with them.
‘I’m against medical precautions,’ he said. ‘There’s an awful lot of rot talked about germs. In India one was almost forced at gunpoint to be vaccinated against smallpox. I refused.’
‘You were very lucky to get away with it then sir,’ I said.
‘I didn’t,’ he replied. I went down with it in Bombay and damn near died.’
He’s pleasant with me, no side to him at all, yet I sense a space around him. He has a manner of eyeing people, even if he’s standing face to face, as though he sees them from a distance.
The only foul-weather Jack among the officers, thus far, is my namesake, Lieutenant ‘Teddy’ bloody Evans. He’s going to be in command of the ship until we reach Capetown, the Owner being obliged to stay behind to pay off bills and drum up more money. Though I’ll allow Lt. Evans is a capable enough seaman, it’s my opinion he suffers under illusions of grandeur. On the strength of having influential connections in Cardiff, he’s been raising funds for the expedition by poncing up and down the country waxing poetic on the Land of his Fathers – and him with about as much Welsh blood in his veins as the Kaiser. Besides, he has a down on me on account of the drinking, which is rich when you think of the kerfuffle he raises of an evening after they’ve passed round the port in the wardroom.
The day before last I was working up near the forecastle with Lt. Bowers. He’s responsible for the stores – food, paraffin, excess clothing and suchlike and I’m officer in charge of the scientific and polar journey equipment. It’s not up to me to say whose job is the more important. God help us if we made landfall only to find the sledge runners defective, the lamps without wicks and the sleeping-bags unlined; but then, I doubt if any of these items, in apple-pie order or otherwise, would be of much use if we were lacking the necessities of life. I was just shifting a crate of whisky, donated by some distillery in the Midlands, in order to get at a consignment of photographic chemicals, when Lt. Evans came up and said, ‘Well, now, Petty Officer, I see you’re giving due consideration to the priorities.’
Thing is, I had a black eye. From the way he looked at me a blind moggie could tell he thought I’d come by it in a brawl. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, controlled enough. The worst thing a man can do is to belittle another. The next worse thing is for a man to make the mistake of justifying himself.
‘I’m keeping my eye on you, Taff,’ he said, but smiling, as if he was jocularly referring to my shiner.
‘That’s what’s needed in this job, sir,’ I replied, which was a dig at him, and I trust it went home. Originally, see, he’d been in charge of equipment, until I spotted something wrong with the skis newly arrived from Norway and informed the Owner directly, whereupon he ordered the Lieutenant to hand the whole caboodle over to me.
Lt. Bowers kept his head down all the while. Had he been older he might have said something in my defence, having been present the night before when one of the crew tripped coming down the companion-way and jabbed the bridge of my nose with his elbow. Once Lt. Evans was out of earshot, he said, ‘It’s unfair, but a man’s reputation often goes before him.’
Brooding on it since, I should have spoken up. If I’m the pisspot they take me for, how do they think I held down the post of gymnastics instructor, let alone won the Naval Tattoo competition for field gunnery two years running?
Crean, who overheard Dr. Wilson remarking that ‘Teddy was a cheerful soul, but something of a Peter Pan’, advises me I should keep my head low and bide my time. Rumour has it that Evans was intent on leading an expedition of his own, only he didn’t have the backing of the Geographical Society. For this presumption the Owner’s none to warm towards him and won’t be long in finding he lacks ballast.
We’ve had our work cut out preparing the Terra Nova for sea. She’s an old Dundee whaling ship built in 1884 – the Owner had set his heart on getting hold of the Discovery again but the Hudson Bay Company wouldn’t part with her.
First thing, when the Nova limped into dock, was to get rid of her blubber tanks. The stench of seal oil was enough to make a sewer-rat heave. When Davies, the shipwright, first took a gander at her he pronounced her little short of a wreck, fit only for the knacker’s yard. He was looking on the dark side. True, if you peer too closely you can still spot the tell-tale strengthening pieces in her cross-trees and detect the furrows worn in her sides where she’s been ground by ice-floes, but she’s sweet enough now she’s been white-washed and her bilges swilled out, and sound where it counts.
It’s been more a matter of alteration than repair. She’s barque-rigged and fitted to the requirements of the Expedition, with laboratories built on the poop for the scientists, a dark-room for the photographer, a new stove in the galley, instrument and chronometer-rooms, an icehouse for the frozen meat, on top of which, owing to it being free of iron, we’ve stuck the standard compass and the pedestal needed for magnetic work.
The amount of stuff we’ve managed to pack in beggars description, and there’s next to no pilfering going on. Half the items – tobacco, cigars, fancy chocolates, crystallised fruits, curried meat in tins, Christmas puddings, baked beans, even a pianola – have been given for nothing, and the crew seem to take this for a sign of generosity. I could spell out to them t
he increased profits likely to accrue to Messrs. Burroughs and Wellcome when it becomes known they’re suppliers of photographic equipment to Mr Ponting of the Polar Expedition, not to mention the rush on sales when the Wolsey Underwear Company advertise their windproof drawers as those worn by the southern explorers, but it strikes me as prudent to keep my mouth shut. I’ve known ships so rife with thieving that the only thing likely to remain in place was the galley stove, and that because it was too hot to handle.
The Owner’s paid £100 out of expedition funds to have the Terra Nova registered as a yacht. This enables us to fly the White Ensign; more to the point, it means we can dodge the attentions of Board of Trade officials who would most certainly declare her an ill-founded ship within the meaning of the Act, seeing she’s wallowing so low in the water it was a waste of time to smudge out the Plimsoll line. Fresh painted lamp-black, with a funnel yellow as a buttercup and a neat white line all round her bows, she’s now as pretty as a picture. There’s one thing worries Lashly: she’s going to be the very devil when it comes to consuming coal.
Before we sailed from West India Dock the wife of the First Sea Lord broke the White Ensign from our masthead. Every ship for miles around set off their hooters as we moved out into the river. A huge crowd had gathered to wish us godspeed; they ran in a tide along the dock, hats raised, a blizzard of handkerchieves fluttering farewell. We had known in our minds all along we were leaving, but it was only now that we knew it in our hearts, and more than one of us dashed the tears from his eyes. Mr Ponting, the photographer, observed to the Owner that if this was our departure, what on earth would our homecoming be like? The Owner was less enthusiastic, he said he didn’t care for this sort of fuss, that all he wanted was to finish the work begun on the Discovery and get back to the Navy. I don’t think he altogether approves of Mr Ponting, suspecting him of being tainted by commercialism. The word is that Mr Ponting’s struck a hard bargain in regards to copyright and such matters.
We took nine days to reach Cardiff, making stops all along the Channel to acknowledge money given and in hopes of receiving more. Sir Clements Markham and party came with us, and the Owner’s wife. Mrs Scott’s a handsome woman and confident with it. On boarding, she strolled up to Captain Oates and says, cool as you please, ‘I see you’re wearing laces in your boots today, Captain Oates.’ He fairly wriggled. I noticed the Owner looking at her once or twice as if he wasn’t sure what she might do next.
First stop was at Greenhithe, where we dropped anchor off the training ship Worcester. The Owner disembarked soon after to pick up two flags donated by Queen Alexandra, one to be brought back, suitably weather-worn, and one to be hoisted furthest south. At this rate we’ll have more flags than sails. Before he went ashore he addressed the cadets and told them he had no objection to their looking over the Terra Nova. Mrs Scott waved to me as she left.
She’s taller than the Owner and it’s not just on account of her hat, because I’ve seen her without one, the afternoon he sent me round to his house to collect a document he’d forgotten. She wears her hair down indoors and goes barefoot. On that occasion, she said, ‘So you’re Petty Officer Evans. Con often refers to you as a gentle giant’, Con being a diminutive of Falcon, the Owner’s second name. I blushed. She’s ladylike but her manner and gaze are very direct.
They don’t live in any great style. I noticed they were short on carpets and had just a few rugs strewn about the floor, and though I can’t swear to it I reckon the sofa, judging by its list to starboard, was missing a leg. She asked if I wanted to take a peek at the baby, and when I said I did she took me out into the garden at the back. He was in his pram with the hood pushed down and a stiff wind blowing. ‘There’s nothing more likely to make a child thrive,’ she said, ‘than fresh air. And love, of course.’
When I told the wife about the air she flared up and said it was all right for some, that if we put our little one out in the backyard he’d be dead in a week, what with the sulphurous fumes from the tin-plate works and enough soot coming down over Swansea to make him into a piccaninny.
With the Owner gone, Lt. Evans was in his element. He’d done his training on the Worcester and it evidently gave him no end of satisfaction to return as Master of such a celebrated vessel, even if she is nothing more than a whaler masquerading as a yacht. He turned to me some time during the afternoon, a crocodile of youthful wide-eyed lads slithering in his wake, and exclaimed, ‘Dewch, it’s wonderful to be off at last, isn’t it, Taff?’ He used the Welsh as though it came natural to him.
‘Dewch, that it is, indeed to goodness, sir,’ I replied, but the irony skimmed past him like a feather on the breeze. His eyes had a boy’s light in them, guileless, shiny with hope, and I was sorry afterwards I’d made sarcastic with him. When we get back he’ll become a Captain for real, and then he’ll be down on the list in line for an Admiral. To each his own dream, and I know mine.
It was the lack of space, the smell of clothes drying in front of the fire, that set my mind on the sea. The first thing the wife does, when she knows I’m due for a spell of coming ashore, is to get rid of the washing and park the umbrella-stand against the front door to keep it wide open. I grew fast, and big, and the bigger I got the pokier our Mam’s house became, not a chair easy enough for me to sit in, nor a bed long enough to lie on. I cracked my head on the lintel of the door every time I went out back to the privvy. Most times I felt like a fish in a net. I was young then, and sailing the oceans let me stretch my limbs and expand my lungs.
I’m slowing down now, I can’t deny it, and when I return I ought to be in a position to quit the sea and buy a little pub in Cardigan Bay. I stayed there once as a boy in my Mam’s brother’s house near Criccieth. His wasn’t a big house either, but there was a meadow alongside and an orchard beyond with a view of sands the colour of milk on the turn. In the right season my aunty kept a copper perched on a fire above a cattle grid in the orchard, and there was so much fruit to cook we stayed up all night feeding the flames with sticks. We baked bruised apples in the embers and juggled them in our palms until they were cool enough to eat. In the morning the whole world smelt of jam.
I’ve tried to make my wife glimpse the silver lining, painted word-pictures of sunsets and sunrises free of smoke, of columbine snaking along a garden wall, of the baby’s cheeks tinted pink as an albertine in bloom, but she’s a pessimist and all she talks about is setbacks, death, an inadequate widow’s pension and her and the children thrown on the parish. All the same, I notice she never wastes an opportunity to boast of where I’m headed.
The 3rd of June found us off Spithead, where the Superintendent of Compasses came on board and swung the ship. I was fretting the Owner mightn’t get back for his birthday but he turned up on the 4th. I’d bought him a little gift of two Havanas and a card with a picture of Nelson on the front. We’ve got 3,500 cigars in the hold already, and I wouldn’t like him to think I hadn’t paid for his out of my own pocket. I presented my offering on the morning of the 6th, finding him temporarily on his own in the wardroom.
He was sitting in his chair at the head of the table, scribbling across a pile of papers.
‘A token of my esteem, sir,’ I said. ‘Many happy returns.’
‘How very kind of you, Evans,’ he said. ‘I’m much obliged to you’, and he put the package unopened into his pocket and continued with his writing. I don’t know what I expected, a handshake perhaps, a tot in celebration of his birth date – an offer which I would have refused, unless pressed. At any rate, I was left feeling flat.
That evening, after completing a series of magnetic observations in the Solent, Lt. Evans announced we were welcome on board the Invincible which was anchored nearby. ‘It goes without saying,’ he said, ‘that I expect you to conduct yourselves like gentlemen.’ Come ten o’clock we could hear the racket the officers were making at table clear over the ship, and him in particular. One of his party tricks is to pick a man up in his teeth by the seat of the trousers.
‘I’m leaving now, Petty Officer,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in Portsmouth.’
‘Right you are, sir,’ I replied. ‘Portsmouth it is.’
‘Do you know what I’m going to do?’ he asked me. ‘Before I leave England?’
‘Make a will, sir,’ I said, quick as a flash.
‘Near,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m going home to carve my initials on a tree that I’ve planted, and when I’ve done so I shall sit under it and smoke one of your excellent cigars.’
As it happened, my talk of wills wasn’t short of the mark. He rejoined us on the 8th, a day of thick fog. We were taken in tow to the Needles and then to Weymouth Bay where the Home Fleet of the new Dreadnought class had assembled to pay its respects. We moved between those monstrous ships like a tiddler among whales. The time can’t be far off when the strength of a man’s arm, his knowledge of tides, of winds, will count for nothing, and I, for one, am glad I’ll be beached by then. When we were under the muzzles of the Dreadnought guns we held our breath. I daresay the mist added to our sense of awe; how else, but in silence, could one bob past the jaws of hell.
We rounded Portland Bill at sunset, and a short while later the Owner ordered the men aft and said it was his wish that every man should make a will. He would, he said, give advice as to the allotting of money. We smirked inwardly, most of us having nothing to leave but debts, and the rest about as much as could be tied up in a handkerchief.
While the Owner was talking, Lt. Evans had cause to ease the Terra Nova down, take soundings and go full astern to avoid our being in collision with a steamer; the Owner’s voice shook and he coughed to hide it. As Lashly put it, we’d have looked a right bunch of knuckle-heads if we’d sunk in home waters.