The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

  I don’t know how long the trembling lasted; time itself stood still. It was but gradually that I became aware of my surroundings: the sea, dark blue and choppy, the sun continuing to flood the horizon, my hand with its bloodied thumb quivering on the surface of my sketching-pad.

  I have thought of an explanation, though it’s far from rational. In my first year as a Junior House Surgeon one of my fingers became infected after conducting a postmortem, and I was reduced to slicing the swollen skin to bleed out the poison. This, and the recollection of that boy with the bandaged eyes, had led perhaps to a juxtaposition of the natural and the spiritual world, lifted that inner shutter on the mind which generally confines us in the dark and blinds us to things undreamt of in our philosophy.

  That I was alarmed by this omen – portent, call it what you will – puzzles me, because I’m no stranger to death. Indeed, there was a period after I’d contracted tuberculosis when I ran to greet it. My life, then, revolved round bacilli and expectoration and the precise amount of perspiration lost in the feverish nights, and I was weary of it. Worst of all was my having to do without tobacco. For some months I persisted in smoking, but finally the bouts of coughing that followed each blissful inhalation outweighed the pleasure. There was an afternoon in the Alps – I had climbed 8000 feet above the Dischma valley, the pleuritic pains in my lungs echoed in my ribs and back, my wretched pulse pounding at the rate of 168 per minute – when I almost gave up the fight and would willingly have left this world. Wanting to die isn’t a sin, merely the presumption that one can choose the moment. I crouched on a clump of grass, clutching a bunch of saxifrage in flower to my heaving chest, and waited: not so much for the end as a beginning. Then, from somewhere below, beyond the green larches and the purple meadows, I heard a Great Spotted Woodpecker rattling in a fir wood, and I caught my breath and knew I must stay, if only to fulfil the purpose – whatever that may be – for which I’ve been put on this earth.

  God moves in mysterious ways. A year later, having applied for the post of junior surgeon and zoologist to the Polar Expedition of 1901, I sailed south. Where sunshine, wholesome food and mountain air had failed to heal my diseased lungs, hunger, frost-bite and ordeal by blizzard affected a cure. As the body lives so does the spirit, and both must be born, and broken, in order to reach the light.

  I didn’t tell anyone about that glittering bird for several days. Then, just past midnight on the 23rd a fearful racket broke out on deck and I woke on the ice-house to find Rennick, Teddy Evans and Birdie dancing and singing by starlight on top of the main hatch dog-kennel. This impromptu war dance turned out to be in celebration of my thirty-eighth birthday and succeeded in rousing everyone on board.

  Later, we had a tremendous scrap in which Cherry, Campbell and I held the Nursery against the rest of the ward-room. The Nursery, originally designed to accommodate four, and now sleeping six of the younger members of the scientific staff as well as housing the pianola, forms the gangway between the engine room and the ward-room. There is only one door, and such was the crush, not to mention the combined charges of Oates and Atkinson as they hurled themselves against the wood, it’s a miracle it withstood the onslaught and remained in one piece. Likewise ourselves; half of us were naked at the finish, having had the clothes torn off our backs. I can’t think this sort of behaviour will continue once Con takes command. He’s not a spoilsport by any means, but I reckon his presence will put a damper on our exuberance.

  It wasn’t until the small hours that I climbed back into my sleeping bag and, turning to Birdie, confided what I had seen that dawn morning the previous week. I knew for certain he would listen sympathetically. Otherwise I wouldn’t have opened my mouth, though I daresay my tongue was somewhat loosened by the quantities of wine I’d downed. Nor did I imagine he’d be so foolish as to suggest I’d seen an extra large albatross – all the same, I was unprepared for his response.

  ‘I expect,’ I told him, having described the dazzling light between water and sky, ‘that it was some trick of the rising sun, some mirage conjured up by the inner eye.’

  ‘I don’t agree, Uncle Bill,’ he said. ‘It’s true that some of us see what we want to see, but I don’t put you in that category. That apart, I know from first-hand experience there are some things we should accept for what they are.’ And then he told me the following story:

  ‘I was serving as third mate on the Loch Torridon in the spring of 1902. I wasn’t very happy … due to circumstances I won’t go into. It wasn’t a contented ship; the captain was no good and every time we put into port one or other of the crew deserted. We berthed at Adelaide to take on sulphide ore, tallow and wheat. The steward jumped ship and I had to go into town to get the cook out of jail. The new crew came on board fighting drunk. There was one chap in particular, a brute with a golden eagle tattooed on his bald pate, who would make Petty Officer Evans look like an angel.’

  ‘Come now,’ I interrupted, ‘be fair. Evans is an excellent worker and he hasn’t touched a drop since we left Cardiff.’

  ‘Point taken,’ Birdie said. ‘At any rate, this fellow was a swine and he made my life a misery. I tried to persuade the Captain to dismiss him but he wouldn’t hear of it. Eventually, at three o’clock in the morning we got up anchor, trimmed yards, set sails and were off. I was at my lowest. I’d been reading a lot, you see, thinking about things … all sorts of things. I was bothered about leaving my mother. She doesn’t really like the career I’ve chosen, and yet she’s never stopped me. I’m her only son. It’s made me feel selfish, taken the joy out of it.’

  He peered at me in the darkness to see if I understood. I didn’t, not altogether. It’s a thing Con and he and Cherry and Titus Oates all share, this bond with their mothers – but then, of course, their fathers are long since dead, whereas mine is alive. It was dear old Dad who fostered my interest in botany and encouraged me to go on walking tours through the countryside, so it’s only natural I should feel closer to him than to my mother, there being so much more we have in common. When I was at Cambridge my mother wrote complaining I never allowed her to know what I really thought, that I was too reserved. I tore her letter into bits, but the sentences remain intact in my head.

  ‘I expect I was lonely,’ Birdie said. ‘Life at sea makes one so dependent on nature.’

  ‘I can’t see you suffering from loneliness,’ I protested. ‘Anyone but you.’

  ‘Not suffering,’ Birdie objected. ‘Just that from time to time one has a need to share one’s disappointments with someone … someone special.’

  It occurred to me he was talking about women. He has mentioned, more than once, some girls he met in Melbourne, sisters who entertained him and his fellow officers one weekend and who later sent him a pot of home-made jam, but it’s unthinkable to imagine he’s anything but utterly virginal in both mind and body. In Madeira, at the various functions we were required to attend, he was the life and soul of the party yet when he was obliged to get up and dance he turned scarlet. There was something irresistibly comical about his appearance as he capered boisterously and hopelessly out of step about the polished floor. Some men look right against any background, Con among them. Not Birdie; away from the sea and out of uniform he could be mistaken for a diminutive rent-collector. See him on deck though, muscular legs braced against the roll of the ship, and he comes into his element. He keeps the empty jamjar in his locker.

  ‘That night,’ Birdie continued, ‘I swear Christ came to me … not in any recognisable shape, that is … no haloes or long nightshirts, or anything of that sort … all the same, He was there …’

  ‘But my dear Birdie,’ I protested, ‘there was nothing of Christ in the creature I saw. On the contrary, it had more in common with the devil.’

  ‘You can’t have one without the other,’ he argued. ‘Ever since that night I fancy I know what’s important. I also know that my overriding ambition to get on in the world conflicts with my spiritual growth.’

  ‘I’m ambitiou
s too,’ I blurted out, and surprised myself; it’s not something I’m proud of. I remember taking my drawings to some gallery in London and their being rejected. I’d expected they would be, yet I never dreamt I would feel so angry. Con’s ambitious too, but he’s more honest about it, or rather the doubting Thomas part of his character enables him to put things in perspective. I walk backwards, though deep down I imagine I’m worthy enough to be in the forefront. Con strides ahead and doesn’t really believe leadership is worth a toss.

  It often strikes me that Con and myself, Birdie and Oates, even Peter Pan Evans with his penchant for swinging one round by the seat of the trousers, are the misfits, victims of a changing world. It’s difficult for a man to know where he fits in any more. All the things we were taught to believe in, love of country, of Empire, of devotion to duty, are being held up to ridicule. The validity of the class system, the motives of respectable, educated men are now as much under the scrutiny of the magnifying glass as the parasites feeding off the Scottish grouse. Such a dissection of purpose is unsettling and has possibly led me to hide my ambition behind a shield of puritanism. How significant it is that the words ‘naked’ and ‘ambition’ are so often linked.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Birdie said, ‘that we have to make a choice between the spiritual and the material world, and if we can’t become saints then we must find a sort of balance which will allow us to be at peace with ourselves. All I know is, nothing matters a damn except that we should help one another.’

  I was enormously impressed at his ability to put such thoughts into words. I may think as he does, but it’s beyond me to express myself so naturally; I’m far too wary of being taken for an ass.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’m awfully afraid I won’t be up to it when we reach the South. You’ll have to be prepared for me to lean on you.’

  I laughed, for the idea of Birdie turning to anyone for help struck me as absurd. ‘My dear boy, you’re the best equipped of any of us. If I could get through it while still an invalid, I’m quite sure you’ll romp home with flying colours.’

  He didn’t answer, and I thought he was lost in contemplation. A moment later he snored so loudly it woke him up and I heard him mutter, ‘It’s good to know the cold won’t rot us.’

  In spite of our little chat I still feel uneasy. It’s hard to wipe from my mind the memory of those lidless, malevolent eyes.

  We sighted South Trinidad Island two days later, furled sail and lay four miles off. Birdie agreed I hadn’t exaggerated its sinister appearance. Then night fell and moonlight transformed it into a fairy castle, towers, turrets and battlements touched with silver. Birdie stayed awake half the night, rhapsodising on its beauty and wishing his mother was there to see it. Every time a bird wheeled overhead he nudged me in the ribs demanding to know if it was my bird. I’d been vain enough to tell him that when we stopped here in 1901 Con had insisted on calling a previously unknown species of petrel after me. It’s rot, of course, but nice all the same to know a bird exists bearing the name Aestrelata Wilsoni. The fact that it makes a noise somewhere between the demented hoot of a cuckoo and the drumming of a snipe is neither here nor there.

  At half past five in the morning when we steamed closer, the reality of the island was more daunting. The mountains of volcanic rock twisted into jagged shapes, slashed by ravines and violently veined with basaltic deposits coloured mustard yellow and metallic red, the cascades of purple and black debris, rose sheer from the boiling surf. Though the day was clear, without cloud, a veil of dense vapour curled about the summit, through which the inky pinnacles thrust upwards to meet the rosy dawn.

  A forest of dead trees covers the island, interspersed with ferns which grow to a height of eighteen feet and a species of acacia and flowering bean. What little soil there is consists of a loose powder, almost like volcanic ash. The few sandy beaches, split by landslips of coal-black rock tumbling a thousand feet, are strewn with wreckage and alive with sea crabs.

  The most reasonable explanation for the decayed trees would seem to be that at some time, and not so far distant as one might suppose, an eruption of lava took place which consumed everything in its path. Either that or the place was engulfed in a tidal wave of such proportions that its vegetation was utterly destroyed by salt water. I have heard that in the seventeen hundreds the island was a penal settlement. There are written accounts of the ruins of primitive huts being found on the weather side. One can only shudder at the thought of being consigned for life to such a God-forsaken place.

  Cautiously, such was the menacing roar of the breakers as they dashed against the cliffs, we coasted under the lee of the island and arriving at West Bay let go the anchor in fifteen fathoms. Teddy Evans had been all for continuing to South West Bay. The Admiralty chart lists it as clean with a uniform depth of ten fathoms, but I happen to know from my previous visit that it’s full of sunken rocks. More important, it’s entirely exposed to the storm wind of these seas, the dreaded pampero.

  I also knew, from various documents lodged with the Royal Geographical Society, of the apparent foolhardiness of attempting a landing in June, July or August, these being the winter months in this latitude. All the same, I kept quiet. Apart from manning the pumps morning, noon and night, we’ve had an easy passage. We needed some kind of physical adventure to tone us up for the privations ahead. In such situations I go against my natural caution and attempt to think like Con.

  To my relief the water in West Bay was as smooth as a millpond, so much so that we could see the anchor below and the swarm of fish – shark, dolphin and rock-cod – which instantly flickered about its cable. We got out the whaler and the pram, and stowing the latter with guns, knives, rum, ship’s biscuit, tobacco and fresh water, rowed off. It took some time to find a secure landing; then, coming across a natural pier formed of fallen rock, and more by good luck than judgment, we managed to scramble ashore.

  The entomological party, comprised of Wright, Birdie and Teddy Evans, prepared to tramp inland. I felt alarmed for Birdie for he has a horror of insects, and spiders in particular. In Rangoon, when very young, while his mother was bathing him in preparation for bed, a tarantula climbed up the wall beside the tub. Upon his mother calling for help the houseboy ran in and squashed it with a slipper, at which it slid in a smear of burst slime, legs still obscenely twitching, and plopped into the water to float above the child’s knee.

  Knowing of this incident I suggested to Birdie that he accompany Cherry and myself. He wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Good of you, Uncle Bill’ was what he said, ‘but it’s absolutely no good to run away from things.’

  Oates, in partnership with Atkinson, who besides being a competent surgeon is an authority on bacteria, decided to make for the Cape below the Ninepin, leaving Cherry-Garrard and myself to climb southwards in the direction of the Sugarloaf on the weather side of the island, both parties in search of birds to shoot and eggs to collect.

  We had with us Seaman Murphy, a garrulous character from Liverpool, whom I’d been treating for stomach cramps, and who I’d thought would benefit from a day in the fresh air. For all I know he was malingering, but I wasn’t taking any chances because he’d only come aboard at the last minute in Cardiff as a replacement for a Belgian Con had suddenly taken against and dismissed.

  It had been the intention that my patient would loaf about on the beach; I’d forgotten those loathsome, goggle-eyed, yellow-shelled land-crabs which crawl in their thousands about the island. Confront them, throw any kind of edible mess in their path, and they stand there staring you in the face with an almost diabolical expression, pulling the food to pieces in their front claws before bringing the fragments to their mouths and commencing to chew. They don’t slabber, and I daresay, not having eyelids, they can’t help looking devilish, but they do bear an uncanny resemblance to diners at some fish restaurant in the Strand. Lapse into a doze, daydream under the warm rain and they scuttle up to nip your neck and nibble your boots. Though I don’t imagine they could kill
a healthy man, I didn’t like leaving an incapacitated one at their mercy.

  Murphy, however, insisted he was more than able to look after himself. ‘Don’t you fret, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll let the buggers have it, sir, and no mistake, if they come within a mile of my bunions.’ We settled him under a makeshift awning, the supplies heaped about him, and took the precaution of hiding the rum ration where he couldn’t find it.

  The setting off of the shooting parties was the cause of much merriment, the Trinidad petrel being so unused to humans as to regard us as nothing more threatening than so many ledges on which to perch, Birdie’s green hat attracting particular attention. Oates, grimacing in disgust and wielding his weapon like a stick, said we might as well leave the lead shot behind as the barrels of our guns would be equally effective.

  It took Cherry and me a laborious three hours to work our way towards the Sugarloaf. The ground is so rotten that often it was like walking a treadmill – no sooner had we managed to clamber a few feet than the surface crumbled away beneath us and we slid backwards again. With each resulting landslide the colonies of gannets and boobies perched on the surrounding rocks rose in a frenzy of beating wings and swooped about our heads. It was child’s play picking up the eggs which are deposited like stones and without benefit of nests in every available hollow.

  Backs aching, we crossed the Sugarloaf Col, slid down to the coast of South-East Bay and plodded along a shore marked with the tracks of turtles. At last, and I welcomed it, Cherry suggested we’d earned a rest. I’d given my ankle a severe knock when landing, and it was a relief to loosen my boot and rub the bruised bone.

  The bay was littered with the wreckage of ships; planks, hencoops, barrels, empty gin bottles, and the picked haunches of a pig. Cherry remarked, in his good-hearted, sentimental way, that the skeleton of man or beast was a rude reminder of the fragility of the body. I knew what he was thinking; it’s an exceptional man who doesn’t at some time or other glimpse death in every fallen leaf. By way of response I let my face fall into a thoughtful mask. In my head I was remembering the last time I ate roast pork – on land, that is – that last Sunday when we stopped off at Oriana’s parents for lunch before travelling on to Cardiff.