The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

In these temperatures the energy derived from hot food soon evaporates if one is forced to hang about, and the few who have stirred themselves into readiness suffer for the tardiness of the many. It’s difficult to hold one’s temper in check, and often I positively have to clench my jaw to stop myself from roaring with fury. Saintly old Bill merely smiles patiently and stomps up and down to keep his feet from freezing. Bowers, oblivious both to the delay and the cold, is here, there and everywhere, checking loads, adjusting traces, consulting his notebook. The dogs leap in alarm as the crust of the snow snaps beneath their paws. The sun, blurred by wreathing drift, casts a pale, shadowless light.

  At last, past midnight, we get under way. Finnesko can’t get a grip on the slippery surface and we fall down like inebriates. At first, from embarrassment, we used to utter curses, engage in comic banter; now, dumbly picking ourselves up, one hour succeeding another, one foot following the other, we concentrate on drawing breath against the icy wind. Above our heads, weaving among the panting exhalations, swirl pictures of home, beloved faces, food.

  At the end of the march – under these adverse conditions we’re barely averaging ten miles a day – I blow my whistle, and at the blast Birdie and Bill wheel to the left, Oates and I come to a halt behind, and the rest advance ahead. We are thus drawn up into camp formation, and in less than ten minutes the ponies are out of harness, the tents up, the cookers in place and the hoosh on the simmer. The dog teams, who have set off after us, try to time their arrival to coincide with ours. They have a pretty cold wait before catching up with us, but as they’re so much quicker than the ponies there doesn’t seem any better way of arranging things.

  Before we eat we build snow walls for the ponies. This was my idea, and at first there were quite a few sniggers behind my back; once they were up and everyone could see the benefit, it was a different story. Now it’s one of the first tasks Titus Oates sets himself when we make camp.

  I suffer pretty monotonously from stomach pains, and spend a good quarter of an hour after supper walking about battling the wind both without and within. I’ve always believed my gastronomic problems were due to bolting my food in order to get on with the more pleasurable business of smoking, but Kathleen has half persuaded me the trouble is down to undigested conflicts.

  According to her, the difficulty my stomach has in processing food is directly linked to an inability to express my feelings. Fortunately, this was my nurse’s fault, not mine, for in failing to comfort me when I cried she apparently conditioned me to regard any display of emotion as useless, thus shifting my natural sense of outrage from heart to belly. Which is why my infant son Peter has only to let out a squawk for him to be instantly picked up and petted.

  When Kathleen was pregnant she sometimes slept out in the back garden. She told my mother, who would have been happier left in ignorance, that our unborn child needed to lie under the stars. I’m afraid my mother thinks Kathleen too Bohemian for her own good, let alone mine. I must admit that on the rare occasions I’ve been left with the boy and he’s cried I’ve been shaken by the anguished expression on his yawling face; yet when I jiggled him up and down as instructed, the effect was disappointing. Kathleen said it was because he didn’t know me. When I discussed the matter with Bill, who is, after all, a medical man, he was fairly scathing, holding that children mostly wept from anger and an unconscious desire for discipline; he is, of course, childless.

  We’re five to a tent at the moment, and if the going hasn’t been too hard we have a good chat once we’ve got out our tobacco ration. Bill, no longer a serious smoker, indulges in a cigar, Teddy Evans favours cigarettes and I enjoy my pipe, though I’ll smoke anything on offer. It’s wonderful to get up a good fug after the misery of the march, and astonishing how quickly resentments vanish in the wake of that first, heavenly inhalation. I’m afraid Cherry-Garrard weeps from the resulting irritation to his eyes, but he’s a splendid sport and never complains. He obviously worships Bill, who, in his turn, is tremendously patient with him and spends hours teaching him the ropes, how to keep his foot-gear dry and so forth. As a result Cherry is shaping up awfully well and will be a great asset to us next year.

  What conversations we have! There’s scarcely a country under the sun which one or other of us hasn’t travelled in, nor any subject, ranging from the scientific to the philosophical, on which we don’t hold an opinion. We discuss the medieval ramparts of Aigues Mortes, the pronunciation of ancient Greek, the extraordinary aspirations of women and the working-class in our present society, the pernicious influence that modern inventions – motorised transport, the use of balloons for meteorological observation, sail versus steam – may or may not have on future explorations, and whether the power wielded by Jesuits in the sixteenth century was ultimately a good thing. This last debate, initiated this morning by Bill, bored me. I took off my shoes, got into my sleeping bag, knocked out my pipe and ordered the others to do the same. I truly love Bill, but when he starts bleating on about Ignatius Loyola I become irritated. If Kathleen were here she’d probably suggest it’s because I can’t stomach him admiring someone else.

  The condition of three of the weakest ponies, Teddy Evans’s Blossom, Keohane’s Jimmy Pig and Forde’s Misery, gradually worsened. Misery was reduced to scarcely more than skin and bone, and Jimmy Pig went lame. It was very worrying, and I could have done without Oates’s consistently gloomy predictions. We had quite a bust-up when we made one of our half-march halts.

  I was foolish enough to tell Bill, within Oates’s hearing, that I was thinking of sending Evans and the two men back to Safety Camp with the sick ponies.

  ‘We don’t want to lose them,’ I said. ‘And the poor things have suffered enough.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ he asked, at which Oates burst out, ‘No, it damn well isn’t. They won’t last out the return march.’

  ‘They will with lighter loads,’ I said.

  ‘They’re hardly carrying anything as it is,’ he persisted. ‘It would be far better to increase the loads and push them on until they drop. Then next year they can be fed to the dogs. That way at least their suffering will have been of some damn use.’ He addressed Bill, by the way, not me – he knows Bill can’t stand confrontation.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this cruelty,’ I told him. ‘Personally, it makes me sick.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid you’ll regret it, sir,’ he drawled, regarding me in that ironical way of his.

  ‘Regret it or not,’ I retorted, ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ and there and then I informed Evans and the others they would be returning the following night.

  At the end of the march the atmosphere in the tent was somewhat strained, and not improved by Cherry-Garrard putting his foot in it with some rambling tale concerning a pony he’d owned as a boy. It had something to do with how he’d gone for a ride wearing his best clothes and how the animal had stalled at a fence, pitching him headlong into a cattle trough. Normally the anecdote would have been received with the suppressed yawns it deserved, but of course on this occasion it gave Titus the opportunity to remind us of the differences between family ‘pets’ and ‘working’ animals.

  The word ‘working’ was emphasised in such a sarcastic tone that I nearly got into a spat with him for a second time, and would have done if Bill hadn’t butted in with the comment that there was no such thing as purely reproductive recollection. The ensuing argument had a soothing, yet curiously exhilarating effect and centered much round the dead having more reality for men than the living.

  Bill held that the reputations of the remembered dead, from the insignificant mannikin to the most illustrious subject, underwent a change from the very moment of departure. Temporal existence ended, the imaginative faculty of posterity took over. The man who had died in battle, or in the pursuance of some purely personal goal, instantly became the brave hero who had perished for the glory of his country.

  At this point Bowers came in from outside, having been attending to all those things none of us rea
lised needed doing. He really is a most exceptional fellow while we wear thick Balaclavas and wind hoods, all he had on his head was that misshapen hat. He’d overheard Bill’s last remark and vigorously agreed with him, maintaining that the living, out of a natural fear of death, needed to attach lofty motives to earthbound reactions, and that an act of so-called courage was merely a spontaneous response, dictated by upbringing, to a sticky situation.

  I must say I surprised myself by calling them both cynics. ‘Bravery is a conscious act of discipline,’ I asserted. ‘And as far as I’m concerned there are worse things than dying. Cowardice for one.’

  Bill misunderstood me and proposed that many men welcomed death, at which Titus and I cried out with one voice that he was talking morbid rot. After that he and I were civil to each other.

  I did consider telling him I regretted we’d had words earlier, that I understood his opposition to the return of the ponies was conducted in good faith, even that future events might well prove him to be right, but I didn’t. Justifying my actions would have been simply no good for morale. Like it or not, and God knows, half the time I don’t, someone has to take the decisions – along with the consequences.

  That night’s march was begun in moonshine, though it soon clouded over. I didn’t like the threatening aspect of the sky. The going, as usual, was wretchedly soft; even the dogs seemed to be labouring. For some unknown reason Osman had been disposed, in a not entirely bloodless coup, and Rabchick appeared to have taken over as leader.

  These surfaces have taught Meares a valuable lesson, namely that he must rely on his own two feet. Until we began the depot laying I fear he had but a hazy notion of what conditions would be like and rather imagined he would ride the sledges in the Siberian fashion.

  After dragging ourselves no more than four miles, by which time the wind had veered ominously from south to north and the temperature dropped to minus sixteen, Teddy Evans said his pony could go no further, and we made camp.

  The blizzard hit us just before dawn, and for the next fifty-two hours we were laid up in the tents. It wasn’t so bad for us, for once into our sleeping bags it was easy to ignore the hell blowing outside. When one realises there is absolutely nothing one can do about it, it’s astonishing the number of hours one can doze through. The dogs too were perfectly comfortable; they merely dug themselves into holes and lay on top of one another. It was the ponies who again suffered the most, though Oates and Birdie were in and out night and day attending to them.

  As soon as the blizzard had blown itself out we said goodbye to Evans and his party and struck off south, the sun circling low on the horizon. We struggled under puffy pink clouds sailing in a sky of deepest grey. The drift froze on the sledge runners and we were constantly stopping to scrape them free. After only an hour or so of this drudgery Gran, who was leading Weary Willie, dropped behind, so far back that the dog teams caught up. Suddenly Oates and I, who were ahead, heard the most tremendous commotion barking, whinnying, men shouting.

  We hurried back and met Meares who said the dogs had attacked Weary Willie. He’d fallen down and they were on him in an instant, sinking their teeth into shoulder and throat, raking his belly with their claws as if to disembowel him. Gran had broken his ski stick and Meares his dog whip in beating them off.

  When I got to the scene Weary Willie was on his feet again, legs splayed out, head hanging low, the dogs still snarling horribly, eyes watchful for an advantage, their silvery breath making circles in the frosty air. Willie had given as good as he got, and two of his attackers were bleeding badly. The whole episode was sickening and confirmed my opinion of the unreliability of the dogs. When we moved off we left a trail of blood dripping scarlet blotches on the snow.

  After lunch, Wilson, Bowers and I went and fetched Wearie Willie’s load. It was far heavier than that of the other ponies, and obviously this was the cause of Willie falling down in the first place. I was fuming at such carelessness. I blamed Gran, Oates, Meares – especially Meares. ‘He’s all very well in his way,’ I accused, ‘but he’s far too slack in his attitude.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Bill.

  ‘It was apparent to me from the moment I joined the ship at the Cape. Do you remember him coming up on deck in pyjamas? And his surprise when I bawled him out for it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bill said. ‘I do remember.’

  ‘I can’t stand his disgusting habit of shaving the soles of his feet in the tent.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bill. ‘It is pretty hard to take.’

  I raged on in this manner almost all the way back. Bill bore the brunt of it – Bowers had distanced himself by trudging ahead – nodding, murmuring agreement, occasionally tut-tutting in sympathy, until, the tents coming into sight, he cut me short. ‘I imagine,’ he said, ‘you’ve covered everything pretty thoroughly. I don’t feel it will do the slightest good to repeat any of it to the others. What’s done is done.’ I took his advice, but my God, it gave me a stomach ache.

  Two days later we built our last depot at One Ton camp. In the space of twenty-two days, twelve of us, with twenty-six dogs and eight ponies, had managed to cross the 79th Parallel and deposit a ton of stores 150 miles distance from Cape Evans. I would have liked to have pressed on further, but the ponies were done in, the dogs beginning to slow down, and so were we, some of us more than others. Meares had become incapacitated with an ingrowing toe-nail, and Oates’s nose showed signs of frostbite.

  We planted a black flag firmly on the top of One Ton depot, packed the sides of the cairn with biscuit boxes, so that the tin should reflect the sun, and turned back.

  Twenty-four hours later we were laid up in another blizzard, only this time we were prepared for it and the ponies were better protected. All the same, I was desperately worried about the sick animals sent back with Evans, and as soon as the weather improved, Bill, Cherry-Garrard, Meares and myself dashed for home with a dog team, leaving the others to follow with the ‘crocks’.

  I won’t dwell on what happened on the way – sufficient to say the dogs fell into a crevasse and we nearly lost the lot. They were twisting on their traces for an hour or more, and some undoubtedly suffered internal injuries. Even while they dangled, howling in agony, they still continued to bite and tear at one another. Such uncivilised behaviour went some way towards dulling compassion for their plight.

  On reaching Safety Camp I was relieved to see Evans and the others safe and sound. Alas, two of the three ponies had died on the way, Jimmy Pig being the sole survivor. The thing was, there was no sign of either Crean or Atkinson, not even a note. After a hot meal, Meares and I went to Hut Point in the hopes of finding them there.

  A mystery awaited us; although the old Discovery Hut was now clear of ice and had evidently been lived in – there were socks hanging rigid on the line above the stove – it was deserted. A pencilled note on the door said there was a bag inside containing mail, but there wasn’t. I concluded Atkinson had returned to Safety Camp and we’d somehow passed each other on the way.

  Back we went, and I almost wished we’d perished in the attempt, for Atkinson and his woeful bag were indeed there, and the news, conveyed in a letter penned by Campbell, was worse than anything I could have imagined. Amundsen’s intentions, hinted at in that fateful telegram I received in Melbourne, were now out in the open. Campbell had sailed into the Bay of Whales to find that the Norwegians had got there before him.

  It was a shattering blow to my hopes; indeed we were all fearfully affected. I turned in early and lay miserably in my sleeping bag. Usually the camp noises continue into the small hours; people calling out to one another; the clatter of cooking utensils; voices raised in good-humoured argument – so much so that often I’ve had to give the order for silence. But that night the men spoke in whispers and even the dogs ceased to bark.

  At midnight Bill brought a mug of cocoa to my tent. ‘I thought you could do with this,’ he said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be asleep. None of us are.’

  I told
him I thought Amundsen’s behaviour was absolutely appalling. ‘His duplicity, his lack of sportsmanship leaves me shuddering with disgust. All the while he was telling the world he was going north he was in fact proceeding south, although he knew perfectly well through newspaper reports what my own plans were.’

  ‘Drink it while it’s hot, Con,’ Bill urged. ‘It will help you sleep.’

  ‘You realise he’s a whole degree further south than we are,’ I shouted. ‘And he’s got over a hundred dogs. It’s quite obvious he intends to make a dash for the Pole.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bill said. ‘It certainly looks like it.’

  ‘Goddammit, Bill, he’s not interested in science. He just wants to make a race of it.’ I was so incensed I actually ground my teeth.

  ‘Now look here,’ Bill argued, ‘we’ve got the ponies and we’ve got the motor transport.’

  ‘Yes,’ I retorted, ‘and owing to carelessness in unloading, the best damn motor we had is at this moment lying at the bottom of McMurdo Sound.’

  ‘That’s unfair,’ Bill protested. ‘It was on your orders that Campbell had it shifted.’

  ‘Even Lashly’s lost faith in them. When they did manage to coax the blessed things to start they broke down five minutes later. As for the ponies …’

  ‘There was more than one person who spoke out against the folly of squandering hundreds of pounds on machines,’ Bill said. ‘Nansen among them.’ And now he, too, was shouting. ‘May I remind you that when you asked his advice, he said dogs, dogs, and dogs again.’ After this outburst he stalked off.

  The heat went out of me. Sweet Bill is so rarely stung into apportioning blame where it’s due that I hadn’t a leg to stand on. I plucked the reindeer hairs from my mouth and gulped down the cocoa. I trusted he’d come back. When he did, half an hour later, he squatted down on his haunches and said earnestly, ‘I apologise for losing my temper, but I really can’t stand what amounts to whining … not from you, of all people.’