The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

  A quarter of an hour ago I begged Bill for a drop of brandy. He refused, giving the tommy-rot excuse it would do my shrunken stomach no good. ‘Please believe me, my dear Oates,’ he said. ‘I’m only thinking of what’s best for you.’

  He and Bowers still waste an inordinate amount of energy worrying about the welfare of others, whereas my world is no longer large enough to contain anyone but myself. I was trying to get my other boot off and Bill was squatting on his haunches at the cooker, stirring away at the hoosh.

  ‘Do you reckon a man without feet could still ride to hounds?’ I asked, and he had the grace to look discomfited. If I hadn’t felt so damnably feeble I’d have snatched the bottle from his medical box and to blazes with his permission.

  I caught Scott looking at me. I don’t know what he saw in my eyes, but a moment later he said, ‘For pity’s sake, Bill, do as he asks.’

  It was a miserly enough measure, yet the effect was immediate. Such a huge smile tugged at my mouth my lips cracked afresh and I could taste the trickling blood.

  ‘Get some food into him,’ Bill urged, and selfless old Birdie tried to feed me with a spoon.

  ‘I will lay down my life for Bill,’ I said, or something to that effect. I felt absolutely liberated, like a stone hurled into the depths, leaping not falling into that shining abyss where the piebald pony waited …

  We shot the remaining ponies when we reached the foot of the Glacier early in December. We were all pretty down in the mouth about it, though poor Bowers showed it the most, his horse being the strongest of the lot. For my part, I was thankful Scott had changed his mind yet again and abandoned his damfool notion to take them up the Glacier. They’d suffered enough; the surfaces had been uniformly terrible, and towards the end we’d had to lash them onwards. I think we all felt the inflicting of such cruelty harmed us almost as much as the wretched beasts who bore it.

  Bill congratulated me on having got them thus far. ‘After all,’ he observed, ‘they were hardly the best animals money could buy.’ He never spoke a truer word. The motors, for which not enough spares had been brought and which now lie under drift on the ice somewhere between Hut Point and Corner Camp had cost £1000 apiece, the dogs thirty shillings and the ponies a fiver – and I reckon that was a good few bob more than they were worth. Scott thanked me too, if a little stiffly.

  We named the depot where we buried them Shambles Camp, which was an apt enough name for it, and not just on account of the ponies. What with our late start, the almost immediate failure of the motors, our inexpertise on skis, ‘unexpected’ weather conditions and Scott’s mistrust of dogs, our journey so far had been a catalogue of disasters and miscalculations. Scott puts it down to ‘poor luck’.

  I’ve never known such a man for making mistakes and shifting the blame onto others. If it hadn’t always been so damned cold I think one or two of us might have got heated enough to forget he was Leader and resorted to fisticuffs. It was pretty shameful the way he laid into Bowers when the hypsometer got broken. Birdie was frightfully cast down at being given a drubbing in front of the seamen.

  ‘It would seem to me,’ I said to Scott, ‘that it’s something of an oversight we’re not carrying a spare one.’

  He didn’t go for me; nor had he, not since Birdie, Cherry and Crean nearly perished on the sea-ice. He turned on his heel and went muttering off to get words of sympathy from old Bill. In the end I don’t know what the fuss was about. We didn’t need an instrument to tell us what altitude we’d reached on the Glacier; any fool could tell for himself when he was a quarter way up, then half, and so on.

  Another time he got himself into a frightful fizz over the fact that Shackleton had apparently travelled on blue ice, whereas we floundered in drift. There was also that business of his not wanting me to shoot Jehu, not until we’d travelled another twenty miles or so. The animal was dying on its feet, but I was forbidden to despatch it until we’d passed the point at which Shackleton shot his first pony. One would have thought we were racing Shackleton rather than Amundsen.

  On New Year’s Eve, by which time we had slogged, heaved and crawled some 9000 feet up the Beardmore Glacier, we took a half day’s halt for the sledges to be adjusted. Once we reached the summit Birdie assured me it was little more than a hundred and fifty miles to the Pole. I took his word for it. In my opinion, without him we could have been moving sideways, or even backwards, he being the only one who appears to have any sense of direction.

  Scott still hadn’t told us which three he intended to take with him on the final run. Even Bill didn’t know, though he said Scott had asked him which of the three seamen he considered the fittest, Taff Evans, Lashly or Crean. Bill had told him he’d put his money on Lashly.

  Birdie was convinced he wouldn’t be chosen; he’s very naive and simply didn’t see that Scott would be in Queer Street without him. Quite apart from his doing the work of three men, he’s the only competent astronomical navigator among us, and if he’d been left behind it wouldn’t have been so much a question of reaching the Pole as finding it. For my part, I neither expected nor wished to be included. My feet were in a sorry state and I was none too happy about my leg.

  It had been Scott’s intention to make another march before nightfall, but the work on the sledges took longer than expected. Petty Officer Evans was practically rebuilding them, so we had time on our hands. We sat in the tent drinking tea, and for some reason I was seized with a dreadful bout of homesickness. It was Bill’s fault really, rambling on about those bluebell woods he’s so fond of. I was only half paying attention to the conversation, because my leg was giving me gyp. I had the oddest sensation my old thigh wound was coming apart, so much so I was pretty frightened of touching the skin in case it was gaping open. When I did get up the courage there was nothing under my fingers save that puckered scar. It was rougher than usual and there were one or two pustules, but we all had those. We hadn’t washed for weeks, or changed our clothes, and the hellhole we were in before we reached the Glacier – Scott dubbed it the Slough of Despond – when for four days we were tent-bound in a blizzard and the temperature rose so high we lay waterlogged in our bags, had wrinkled us like washerwomen. The pain in my leg was a blessing in one way – it stopped me thinking of my wretched feet. I suppose it was the remembrance of my time in hospital, my return to England, the delayed twenty-first birthday party in the grounds of Gestingthorpe that pitched me into thoughts of home.

  I must have listened for an hour or more to Bill rhapsodising over his nature study excursions, and a further hour while he and Birdie drivelled on about the Greeks and their notion of tragedy. I can’t pretend to know what Bill’s getting at when he says the ‘joy of being’ incorporates a delight in annihilation; not unless he means it’s all right for a fellow to break his neck coming off his hunter when clearing an eleven-foot hedgerow.

  Scott didn’t open his mouth. Nor did Teddy Evans. In Scott’s case I don’t believe he was out of his depth, rather that he had as little sympathy with the argument as I had. I reckon Bill’s whole philosophy is damnably unhealthy. Any man who spends years trying to find out why grouse fall sick of a parasitic disease, and is tickled pink at discovering it’s to do with some blob clinging to dew on the bracken, must have a very limited love of life. Dear me! Bill is the sweetest old chap in the world – one just gets a mite tired of his being so depressingly good.

  He and Birdie got onto another subject which left me equally in the cold – something to do with the birds of Stymphalos being frightened into the air by the shaking of a bronze rattle.

  ‘No,’ said Bill. ‘That won’t do. They were all shot. And besides, surely they were no bigger than kingfishers?’

  ‘Well,’ said Bowers, ‘what about Phosphoros, son of the Morning Star, and his wife Alkyone? Weren’t they turned into birds which nested on the sea in mid-winter?’

  ‘Halcyon days,’ Bill enthused. ‘Jolly good try, Birdie.’

  In the middle of their smiling at each other
in mutual if mysterious, gratification Teddy jumped in with a reminiscence of the time he’d sailed as a junior officer on The Morning, the relief ship sent out to rescue the Discovery expedition. At this Scott looked fit to boil over, though he held his tongue. Teddy made a good joke – he said the ship was known as ‘Joy Cometh in the Morning’. He spoilt it by boasting that he and a chap called Dorley had been given the nickname of the Evanly twins, on account of their winning the two most coveted prizes awarded by the Worcester, Dorley snatching the Gold Medal and Teddy the cadetship into the Royal Navy.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Bowers, ‘how ripping. I tried for the Gold but I hadn’t a hope.’ At which Scott took out his blessed diary and began to scribble furiously.

  Teddy would have gone on if one of the seamen hadn’t shouted out for Bill. Apparently Petty Officer Evans had cut his hand working on the sledges. Before he could go outside to see how serious it was Evans bawled, ‘It’s nothing, Dr Wilson, sir. Nothing at all. Hardly a scratch. Don’t you disturb yourself.’

  Scott said Evans was a marvel, a blooming marvel. ‘You realise,’ he told us, ‘that building a sledge in these conditions is phenomenal. Nobody’s ever done it before.’ And no doubt recording the fact, he continued to dash his pencil across the page.

  Teddy pulled a face. Whether it signified contempt for the Petty Officer or our Leader is a moot point. Most likely both. The animosity between Scott and Teddy hadn’t exactly been hidden. Times without number Bill had stepped in to keep the peace, and Teddy wore himself ragged trying to outdo Scott on the marches not that it did him much good; the one thing Scott thrives on is competition and he’s a formidable opponent. In spite of his nervous temperament – I’ve never known such a chap for tears – he’s tremendously strong. I’d go so far as to say he has more stamina than the lot of us rolled up together, and that includes Bowers. Meares said Scott reminded him of one of those natives who could dance about on hot coals; he reckoned they withstood the pain simply because they couldn’t stand the thought of the mind being controlled by the body.

  Until we reached the Glacier Teddy was in charge of a dog team, and time and again he romped into camp after us, fresh as a daisy. This really got Scott’s goat; he couldn’t wait to send the teams back. I can’t excuse him for having allowed his dislike of Teddy to fuel his already irrational prejudice against the use of dog transport.

  Some argue that Teddy hadn’t forgiven Scott for reinstating the drunken Petty Officer, others that it went deeper and stemmed from the time he had high hopes of leading the Expedition himself. Then there was that bust-up in South Africa between their respective wives, Mrs Evans blubbing because she’d received an invitation to Government House a day later than Mrs Scott, and Mrs Scott rounding on her and shouting she was a silly gubbins for minding.

  The following morning at our hotel in Simonstown, Cherry and I were knocked awake at some ungodly hour and summoned downstairs to join Scott and his wife for breakfast. Cherry couldn’t eat anything; he had a fearful crush on Mrs S and shredded the bread rolls into crumbs, which he arranged in rows across the cloth and shoved about as though they were dominoes. Scott was effusively genial, which I took for a bad sign. He would keep saying how well I looked.

  ‘I’m amazed to see you’re again wearing bootlaces,’ Mrs Scott said – she’d taken an interest in my footwear once before.

  ‘It’s possibly Sunday,’ I rejoined. ‘The two often go together.’

  ‘I’ve come to the conclusion,’ she said, digging viciously into her grapefruit, ‘that things ought to be considered in pairs.’

  ‘Darling,’ said Scott, ‘you’re spraying me.’

  ‘If it had been up to me,’ she burst out, ‘I’d have interviewed the wives first.’ Apparently she’d had to read a library book to Mrs E for two hours in order to calm her down, and it was a perfectly ghastly book, all about women simpering over their sewing and reaching for the smelling salts every time a man came within ten yards of them.

  ‘I think that was jolly decent of you,’ Cherry said, making sheep’s eyes across the table.

  ‘On the contrary,’ snapped Scott, ‘it was the least she could do, seeing it was her fault Mrs Evans got into such a state in the first place.’

  Mrs Scott wasn’t at all put out. ‘Don’t you just hate women?’ she asked me, as though she was something quite other.

  Things came to a head at a civic reception in New Zealand. Mrs E took it as a personal slight that Scott didn’t give her the first dance, and Evans backed her up. Later I learnt from Atkinson there’d been a hullabaloo in the ladies’ powder-room. He’d taken a cousin to the ball, who was present when Mrs S and Mrs E began a magnificent battle which lasted fifteen rounds. Mrs Wilson flung herself into the fight after the tenth and there was rumoured to be more blood and hair flying around than you’d find in a Chicago slaughterhouse.

  Bill, being Bill, protests that Scott had nothing against Teddy beyond he regarded him as lightweight and something of a slacker. As I tried to warn young Gran, it simply doesn’t do to be seen loafing about when Scott has his beady eye on one. A man could march for nine hours, unload the tents, build the snow walls, feed the animals, see to his personal gear, and Scott would still find him something extra to be getting on with. Meares and I got away with it by decamping to the stables; at least there we could lounge in peace.

  If it came to it, I’d have to agree that Teddy is lightweight, but I don’t suppose any of us will ever forget what a good sport he was during his command of the Terra Nova, or the blazing good fun we had those sea nights we sat round the wardroom table, hollering like banshees and laughing until we cried.

  ‘Weren’t they good times?’ I asked out loud, and they all looked at me. ‘I was thinking about home … Gestingthorpe,’ I lied, not wanting to antagonise Scott by reminding him of how little he’d been missed on the voyage out.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, closing his notebook and tucking it into the pouch strapped to his chest. ‘I saw the photographs you had pinned up in the hut … it’s a fine building.’

  ‘I’m going to make a few improvements when I get back,’ I said. ‘In fact, they’re already in hand … nothing very ambitious … a new dressing-room next to my sister’s bedroom, some more shelves in the library, extra kennels beyond the stables … that sort of thing. One day I’d really like to build a swimming-pool … Trouble is, the best place to put it as regards sunlight would be on the south terrace, and I can’t see my mother agreeing to that. I expect I’ll have to wait until …’ And here I broke off, because I don’t believe I’d ever seriously thought of the possibility of my mother dying. Well, I had, but I’d never linked it to swimming-pools.

  ‘Titus, old chap,’ said Bill, ever sensitive, ‘when we get home I’d dearly like to meet your mother. You must promise to invite me to tea. I might even do a sketch of the house.’

  ‘There’ll be currant cake,’ Teddy murmured, and we all laughed.

  ‘You’ll get more than tea,’ I said. ‘My mother’s likely to kill the fatted calf. You should have been there on my twenty-first birthday.’ And suddenly I wanted to tell them about my mother and my home and all the memories I’d kept bottled up inside me while we dragged those damn sledges mile after mile and my feet froze in my boots.

  ‘I was in hospital in South Africa on my birthday,’ I began, ‘after I’d copped it in that skirmish with the Boers. I’d lost three stones and was as weak as a kitten. That chap Campbell-Bannerman later accused the army of barbarism in its conduct of the war, but I just did as I was told. In point of fact I was far more alarmed about the proposed reforms – the changing of uniforms, Wolseley’s campaign for the abolition of bought commissions, his insistence that promotion should rest on ability rather than seniority. I was young, don’t forget, and hidebound, though I did approve of his wanting to break down the barriers between men and “officers and gentlemen”, and dub the whole lot soldiers.

  ‘I sailed home on the Bavarian, and my mother cried
when she saw me so wasted and on crutches. You’ve never known such a fuss to be made of a fellow. My sister Lilian used to come into my room in the middle of the night and force chicken broth down my gullet. My brother Bryan spent hours poring over jigsaws laid on a tray across my lap, making out he didn’t know which piece fitted into the sky. I think he imagined I’d lost my mind along with that three stone in weight. When the weather improved they put me out in the garden on a deckchair and Violet read poetry to me. It was frightful stuff and mostly sent me to sleep. In mid-June, when I was better, they gave me a birthday party to make up for the one I’d missed the previous March.

  ‘It was a magnificent bash. There was a tea for the village children in the schoolhouse, banners and flags all over the place, coconut-shies and a steam-roundabout juddering away in the Long Meadow, and at four o’clock most of the tenants sat down to a dinner in the main barn, my mother, the vicar and the estate manager taking their respective places at the head of the three trestle tables. My mother’s a wonderful woman for catching the mood of the moment, for knowing what’s suitable. We had quantities of roast beef washed down with nut beer …’ And here I stopped my babbling and swallowed, the very utterance of the word beef filling my mouth with saliva. Dear God, at that moment I would have traded my immortal soul for a mouthful of rump steak smeared with horseradish.

  ‘After we’d eaten the plum pudding,’ I continued. ‘Jordan, the head keeper, stammered through an address of welcome, followed by the vicar waffling on in praise of gallant young men, myself in particular, and ending up with a baffling comparison between my “bravery” and that Frenchman Becquerel’s assertion that atoms, thought for almost a century to be the ultimate units of matter, might contain yet smaller particles. None of us had the faintest idea what he was getting at, though most gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was being complimentary. At any rate, my mother looked as proud as punch, so I sat there smirking and pretending it was just the ticket, when all I actually wanted to do was go and admire my new steeplechaser, an absolute ripper of a brute, black as coal and glossy with it.