The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

‘My dear fellow,’ I said, and I did feel contrite. ‘You were absolutely right to speak as you did. It’s just that we’ve had such damnable bad luck … lack of money … not being able to land where we wanted, the failure of the ponies, the ice breaking up, those blasted motors.’

  ‘None of it is important,’ he said. ‘None of that matters.’

  ‘The whole expedition is terribly unwieldy for one man to run. Perhaps we were too ambitious … perhaps I should have brought more dogs and less ponies.’

  ‘Now look here,’ Bill said, ‘forget the dogs, forget the ponies, the weather, the inadequate funding, and all the rest of it. Concentrate on what counts. First and foremost, remember this was always meant to be a scientific expedition, not just a conquest of the Pole. That’s the thing to cling on to. And above all, remember you have the best set of fellows under you a man could ever wish for. In the end, that’s what matters.’

  I think I dreamt all night, a kaleidoscope of disturbing images – someone reading to me from a book full of pictures of giant birds; Kathleen running away down an embankment beside a river; the pony I rode to school cantering across a meadow, flanks streaming blood; my father zigzagging along an avenue of birches, weeping. The last thing I properly remembered was dear, dead Archie raising his gun to shoot his first wood pigeon. The explosion, tearing the trees apart, jolted me wide awake and turned into the furious yapping of quarrelsome dogs.

  I ran out of the tent and looked for Bill. He was over by the sledges, attending to the runners. ‘By Jove, Bill,’ I cried, seizing him by the arm. ‘We should have taken them. There’s no law down here.’

  ‘Taken whom?’ he asked, looking blank.

  ‘Amundsen,’ I said. ‘Amundsen and the rest of his damned crew. We’re the law. We should have fought it out, with guns if need be.’

  He moved away, forcing me to follow him. ‘Look here,’ he hissed. ‘You must pull yourself together.’ He was terribly shocked. He marched off, footsteps cracking in the snow, speaking over his shoulder in a furious whisper, urging me to lower my voice.

  He told me afterwards that my suggestion that we should abandon civilised practices and take the Norwegians by force half convinced him I’d lost my mind. Apparently Forde and Crean were standing only a dozen paces from us. I’d been aware of no one in the whole white world but him.

  I know I was not myself, but I don’t doubt if Oates and Birdie had been there they would have backed me up to the hilt. Unlike Bill, who’s been trained to dissect the dead, we three have been schooled to provide the corpses.

  I came to sanity under Bill’s tuition. He wisely said I must continue as if nothing had happened, as if Amundsen didn’t exist. It was unthinkable that our scientific projects should be sacrificed in a vulgar scramble to reach the Pole.

  Bill’s definition of vulgarity hardly meets my own, but I said what he wanted to hear. What other choices did I have? ‘You’re right,’ I agreed, ‘as always, you’re absolutely right. We must go on, without fear or panic, and do our best for the honour of our country.’ I sounded convincing.

  In the circumstances I couldn’t stay in one place. The next morning I organised a party to set off for Corner Camp with the double purpose of taking out more stores and meeting Bowers and Oates. We man-hauled, as I was damned if I was going to travel with those bloodthirsty dogs. I didn’t let on, but I fancied there was something broken in me, some spring that no longer worked. When we halted, even my pipe tasted of ashes.

  There were five pony walls in evidence at Corner Camp, a sure sign that Birdie and Oates had passed that way. We left six weeks’ stores for men and animals and made our return. A bit of a blizzard blew up and raged for two days, but I refused to call a permanent halt. There were one or two murmurs at this, particularly from Atkinson and Teddy Evans. They really must learn that the more beastly the conditions, the harder the slog, the better prepared we shall be for the journey next year.

  Our reunion with Bowers and Oates at Safety Camp was hardly a joyful occasion. Meares, on hearing their approach, had run from the tent – apparently clad in nothing but his underpants – and blurted out the news concerning Amundsen.

  Bowers was very cut up – mostly on my account, which I found irritating. He launched into a passionate attack on the Norwegians, calling Amundsen a rotter, a sneak, and a good few other names. ‘If there’s any justice,’ he said, ‘once the rest of the world gets to hear of his deceitful behaviour, he’ll be condemned by all right-thinking men.’ His voice shook, and his eyes were so full of pity I might have been a household pet he’d discovered mangled in some accident.

  ‘It makes not the slightest difference to me,’ I replied. ‘I shall proceed as if he wasn’t there, and I advise you to do the same.’

  He went quite red in the face, and I could have kicked myself for sounding so cold with him. It’s to be regretted that the best of me, the part that recognises both the horror and beauty of destiny, remains submerged. When things go wrong – and God knows they do that with unfailing regularity – while outwardly I exhibit all the signs of a man in the grip of bad temper, underneath I’m actually going through a healing, if melancholy, acceptance of forces beyond my control. However, the process is so debilitating that I’m forced to assume a reserve I’m far from feeling, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to function.

  Some time later Bill came and told me the men were very low. The recent blizzard, coming on top of everything else, had much reduced them and they were all feeling the cold. ‘Morale is rock-bottom,’ he warned. I decided the only course was to move immediately to Hut Point.

  Bill advised against it. He said it was too dangerous, as the sea ice was possibly breaking up. I’m afraid I had to remind him who was in command. I hated doing it, but really, if every time I give an order every Tom, Dick and Harry feels free to put his oar in, we’ll get nowhere. I apologised afterwards.

  The sledges were three or four feet under drift, and it was late afternoon before the dog teams got away. I’d planned to follow with three groups of ponies, my party to start last and then spurt ahead of the others. Tom Crean, Cherry-Garrard and Bowers got off all right, but when we removed the blankets from Weary Willie his condition proved worse than I could possibly have imagined – ribs bursting through the skin, an open gash on the shoulder from his brush with the dogs, a continual tremble wracking the poor beast from nose to tail. Oates was all for putting a bullet through him on the spot.

  ‘I think not,’ I said. ‘We should give him his chance,’ and I gave the order for Bill and Meares to start.

  ‘We ought to finish him off, sir,’ persisted Oates. ‘It would be a great mistake for us to fall behind the others, the weather being so bad. He won’t last five yards.’

  ‘We’ll coax him along,’ I said.

  It was a losing battle. When Oates and I tried to get Willie to move, without a load and untethered, he instantly fell down. No matter what we did, he wouldn’t rise; a dreadful film of defeat dulled his eyes.

  ‘You might as well leave him to me and Anton, sir,’ Oates said. ‘We can manage between us. You and Gran go on ahead.’

  ‘I’ll decide when I shall leave,’ I said, as evenly as I could manage. I believe Oates thought I was acting out of a sentimental regard for dumb animals. He’s a man of few words, and those not often complimentary, and so comfortable with himself – and why not, he’s wealthy enough – as to be incapable of stooping to self-doubt. I can’t pretend we hit it off; yet I feel there’s mutual respect. I take him for a good soldier, and what might be termed a strenuous man, and I expect, with hindsight, it’ll come home to him that I have to be the one to call the shots. In the meantime he can go on scoring points off me.

  We hoisted the pony up by brute force and propped him against the snow wall. He would have fallen again if I hadn’t crouched down and supported his shrunken belly with my back. Anton, the Russian groom, boiled up a mash and he and Titus literally spooned the stuff down the poor thing’s throat. Several times I attem
pted to ease myself from under him, only to feel the instant buckling of his knees. A curious thing, there was no smell to him at all, no odour of harness or blood or fetid breath, nor any stench of waste, though the snow beneath him was stained sepia with urine. The scant hair on his withered flanks, far from being rank with sweat, scraped dry as corn stubble against my wrist.

  I crouched there for some time, looking down at my own footsteps jumbled in the snow. I thought of the accident to the dogs on our way back to Safety Camp. Two had dropped out of the traces and landed on a snow bridge some seventy feet below, and when we’d hauled the others up I went down on the alpine rope and managed to rescue them. I wondered how long it would be before one or other began to sicken from the ordeal. Those dangling in the crevasse must have suffered ruptures; three had already started passing blood.

  Had I perhaps been foolish to risk my own neck? I had fallen from a rope thirty years before, in the birch avenue at Outlands. My father had climbed a tree and slung a rope over for Archie and me to swing on. It was one of his good days. He took first go, swirling round, feet kicking up the gravel path, Archie thumping him on the shoulderblades so that he twisted again, round and round, the three of us wild with excitement. Then he said he’d give me sixpence if I could shin to the top of the rope. Half way up I could see the house in the distance, the sun glinting on the conservatory glass, and I waved one hand in case my mother should be watching, and fell. I was so giddy with laughter I dropped with my mouth open and knocked out a tooth.

  The daydream was so real I forgot where I was; as though on that childhood rope I swung out and up from under Weary Willie, at which the wretched animal collapsed, although this time he seemed to make some effort to scramble upright. I couldn’t bear it. I left Oates and Anton to do what they could, and walked about.

  Those who envisage this place as nothing more than a godforsaken plateau of ice and snow are mistaken. For one thing, there are outcrops of jet-black rock about which the wind blows so fiercely that the snow can never settle; and for another, the ice, being subject to reflections of sun and sea, is never purely white but tinged with rose and cobalt-blue and every shade of violet, the whole set against skies, day or night, that run through all the colours of the spectrum. Tonight there were lowering clouds of deepest purple, a sure indication of worse weather to come.

  There is nothing on earth so vast, so glorious, as the southern heavens. In the ordinary world a man measures himself against the height of buildings, omnibuses, doorways; here, scale blown to the four quarters, he’d be a fool not to recognise he’s no more significant than a raindrop on an ocean. Standing there, it seemed irrelevant where Amundsen was – we were both cut down to size.

  That being said, I was nevertheless seriously alarmed about the ponies. At this rate their numbers would be drastically reduced before we even started the Polar journey. Jimmy Pigg had left in a pitiful state, as had Bowers’s animal. I’d underestimated the effect blizzards could have on them and, unless their condition miraculously improves, it almost certainly means a late start at the end of the year. We never encountered such frightful weather on the 1901 expedition – not during the month of March. It’s surely unprecedented, and I don’t see how I could have taken it into account.

  We watched over Wearie Willie into the small hours. It was bitterly cold. Anton squatted on his haunches and rocked himself to sleep. Gran had turned in. Since the news of his countryman’s arrival he’s lost some of his bounce, which is all to the good. I don’t hold his nationality against him. He’s a tolerable enough chap, apart from being somewhat lazy and exhibiting a marked aversion to soap and water.

  Oates kept me awake by asking questions about Ross, Franklin, Crozier and the rest of the bunch. His interest centred on the fate of Franklin’s expedition, which had sailed north in 1845 and never returned. An investigation, paid for by Franklin’s wife, had uncovered the unpalatable fact that a few crew members had survived, though not for long, by eating the numerous dead.

  ‘I think I can accept that,’ Oates said. ‘One should never underrate the instinct for survival.’

  ‘Under certain conditions,’ I said, ‘I suspect instinct is the one thing left functioning.’

  ‘If we should get into such a pickle,’ he said, ‘I would prefer to shoot myself.’ His face in the light of the lantern, skin pitted blue from the smallpox, appeared curiously young. For once, his eyes expressed uncertainty.

  ‘In the unlikely event of its being necessary,’ I said, ‘we have more up-to-date methods. Bill has opium and morphia.’

  ‘Damn it, no,’ he said. ‘I want to be in control. I don’t want to drift into death.’

  He’s a solitary by nature, and a nihilist, which is why he ordered his men to abandon their positions and leave him to play the hero in the gully in South Africa. It’s easy to be brave when the only life in jeopardy is one’s own. Although it’s never been my lot to have that singular experience, I can well imagine the surge of well-being such a sacrifice can bring.

  The pony died. Anton set about the grisly job of chopping it up for the dogs. Oates didn’t crow over me. If he were less confident and I more sure, we might be friends.

  We set off on skis early in the morning. Above us the wind blew the heaped clouds along rivers of gold and crimson light. A quarter of a mile from the Barrier edge the sky darkened and the broken shapes of huge floes jostled on the distant horizon. I thought it an optical illusion – one often gets such mirages – but as we drew nearer we found to our horror that they were real. The sea was a seething mass of floating chunks of Barrier ice. A mere six hours earlier we could have walked to the Hut on sound sea ice.

  Everything fitted into place – the decline of the ponies, the death of Wearie Willie, the calamitous fall of the dogs into the crevasse. Let those who believe in random happenings, Caesar among them, carry on believing the fault lies in ourselves; nobody will ever convince me that the stars don’t play a part in it. My heart sank at the thought of the fate of the advance parties.

  Retreating, we marched parallel to the edge until we discovered a working crack. We dashed over this and increased pace as much as possible, not slackening until we were in a line between Safety Camp and Castle Rock. I took out the glasses and made out two specks moving in the direction of Pram Point. Hastening on, we met Meares and Bill, who greeted us with relief as they’d feared we were lost. Bill, disregarding orders, had taken a different route, and on climbing Observation Hill had spotted ponies adrift on the sea ice. He had thought it was our group.

  We put up the tent and brewed a hot drink. We were all terribly cast down, though Bill did his usual best. He was of the opinion that Teddy Evans, starting so much earlier, might possibly have got through. And if it was Bowers out there, why then he was such an indomitable little fighter he was bound to survive. Gran pretended to believe him. Oates didn’t say a word. He sat with slumped shoulders, staring fixedly at the flame of the primus.

  ‘Come now,’ I said, attempting a cheerfulness I was far from feeling, ‘Bill’s right. Dear old Birdie is well-nigh indestructible.’

  ‘There’s every possibility he took a different route,’ Bill said, backing me up.

  ‘Dear old Birdie,’ Oates said, ‘would stick to the route he was told to take. Dear old Birdie’s a stickler for following orders, even when they’re given by a bloody fool.’ Then he left the tent.

  Bill was shocked on my account. He was all for going after Titus and having it out with him.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Leave him. I imagine he’s only putting into words what the rest of you think.’

  At that moment Oates let out a shout, and on rushing outside we saw him pointing at a solitary figure walking in the direction of Safety Camp. Gran went off on skis to intercept, and brought back Crean, completely done in and far from coherent. As far as we could gather the ice had broken up all around while they were camped for the night. One pony had disappeared. They had packed with great haste and jumped from floe to f
loe, pulling the horses after them.

  ‘The sea was like a cauldron,’ Crean said. ‘And them killer whales were all about us, rearing their ugly snouts. We somehow got near to the Barrier edge, but when we tried to climb up bits kept breaking off and we couldn’t get a purchase. Lieutenant Bowers said one of us would have to go for help, so I left him and Mr Gerrard behind and went off sideways, jumping and scrambling until I comes to a heftier piece of ice which drifted closer in. Then I managed to get off and up.’

  ‘Well done, Crean,’ I said. ‘You’re a resourceful chap. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to have you safe.’

  ‘Them whales, sir,’ he repeated, shuddering. ‘Them murderous whales.’

  We lost no time in getting to Safety Camp to pick up rope and provisions. Marching cautiously in a half circle, we approached the ice edge. I’m not sure I’m a full-time Christian, but every step of the way I prayed to God I should find my men alive. To my intense joy I caught sight of Birdie and Cherry almost immediately. I was so relieved I found it damn near impossible to blink back the tears. We got out the rope and dragged them onto the Barrier. There was no time for anything but a heartfelt handshake all round before commencing the laborious task of salvaging the sledges and equipment.

  We worked into the small hours, and just as I’d decided we could now attempt to haul up the three ponies the ice began to shift again. Exhausted, we could do nothing more for them beyond attaching an anchor line to the floe and throwing down a quantity of fodder. Then we turned into our sleeping bags. None of us slept.

  The next morning we found the anchor had drawn and there was no sign of the ponies. Bowers begged we should at least go on a little further in the faint hope of finding them alive. We followed the edge for some three quarters of a, mile without result, and were just about to turn back when Bowers caught sight of them through the binoculars.

  It wasn’t too difficult to reach them, and we decided they should be rushed over the floes in a last attempt at rescue. We were worn out, don’t forget, and more than a little overwrought – we tried to leap the first pony across, but even as his front hooves left the ice the gap widened and he plunged into the water. There was no way we could pull him out, and yet it was unthinkable to leave him there. Oates showed Bowers the quickest way to end its misery. ‘Now,’ he shouted, grasping the animal by its mane to hold its head steady, ‘Strike hard!’ and Bowers sank the pickaxe into the middle of its forehead.