The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘There was a dance later. A limp is a marvellous excuse for getting out of all that waltzing rot, and after doing my duty and taking my mother, my sisters and the vicar’s wife once each round the floor I was able to slope off to bed. I would have gone to the stables, but, to tell the truth, I was more done in than I cared to admit.

  ‘I didn’t notice the picture right away. I read for a bit, and then Chalmers came in to put on more coals and I asked her why she wasn’t at the dance and she said she was going as soon as she’d seen to the fires. I told her she could extinguish the light. I wasn’t lying flat, because I was finishing a cigarette, and I blew one of those smoke-rings, an absolute belter, which rose sideways and sailed towards the hearth, drawn by the draught from the chimney. It was then, my gaze following its wobbling lassoo, that I noticed the picture, still in its tarnished green frame, hung on the wall above the mantelshelf. I found out later that my mother had given instructions for it to be removed from the old night nursery only that morning – I told you she was a woman with a remarkable sense of occasion.

  ‘The picture – it was a print – was of Queen Victoria seated side-saddle on a piebald pony, John Brown holding its bridle, taken in the courtyard of Balmoral Castle. It was a very small pony and its rider somewhat stout. One could tell from the expression on the Queen’s face that she found the pony restive.

  ‘From the time I could name things the picture had dangled on its cord above the tin soldiers marching along the third shelf in the nursery alcove. I called the pony Boy Charger. Owing to some bulge in the stonework of the wall the picture mostly hung askew. Before going down for her supper my nurse leant on tiptoe against the fireguard and poked it straight with her finger. When I was old enough I shoved it back into place with the handle of my tennis racket.

  ‘Looking at it by firelight, the reflection of the flames licking the glass, it was easy to conjure up the sound of hooves skittering on cobblestones. “Mr Brown,” the stout lady said in my dreams, “be so good as to keep Boy Charger under control.” “Get away woman,” John Brown replied, “ye canna expect me to hold back the dawn.”’

  After this somewhat embarrassing outburst I fell silent, and might have remained so if Birdie hadn’t asked me if I’d done any pig-sticking while in India. I said I had, but much preferred polo, which struck me as the same thing, though without the screaming, at which Scott and Bill looked fit to poop.

  ‘It’s all right, Uncle Bill,’ said Birdie. ‘If you’d seen what pigs get up to in India you’d feel sticking was too good for them. They root about among corpses, you know. I’ve never eaten a sausage since.’

  It was Birdie’s mention of India that set me off again; besides it had been a long time since we’d sat around doing nothing. Usually when we halted we either ate and moved on again, or ate and slept, and now we sat idle in that cramped, wind-torn tent, listening to the hiss of the primus and the occasional burst of hammering as the seamen outside reconstructed the sledges.

  I told them of the jackal hunts we’d gone on in Mhow, how we blew the horn at six in the morning. ‘… When the scent was still on the dew and the sun not yet fiery. A sister of one of the adjutants came out with us on several occasions; she was the first woman I’d ever seen riding astride … I can’t say it was an edifying sight. She was present when one of the jugglers came into camp, the time Maltravers made an ass of himself. This juggler was quite famous. With one stroke of his sword he could cut in half a lime fruit balanced on the palm of his assistant’s hand. Pinkie Maltravers was convinced it wasn’t possible. Thinking to expose the chap as a fake, he held out his own hand and told the juggler to perform the trick again. After studying his palm for some moments the Indian wallah refused. “I thought so,” shouted Pinkie triumphantly, only to have the juggler examine his other hand. “I will do it on this one,” he said. “What the deuce difference does it make?” demanded Pinkie. At which the juggler explained that his other palm was too hollow in the centre and the sword would most probably take off his thumb. One could tell that Pinkie was in a bit of a funk, but he couldn’t very well show the white flag, not with us all watching, and so he closed his eyes and stretched out his arm. The sword flashed down and the lime collapsed neatly in two. Pinkie said he’d had to bite on his tongue not to snatch back his hand at the last moment, and reckoned the beatings he’d got at school had stood him in good stead. The adjutant’s sister fainted before the sword fell.’

  On and on I babbled, during and long after we’d finished our evening meal, remembering places visited and things past, my days at Eton, my time in Egypt, the colour of the flowers in the borders of my mother’s garden, as though my life was one of Bryan’s jigsaws and I was determined to fit in all the pieces, until, the hot food making me drowsy and the picture all but complete, I trailed into silence. Whereupon Scott leaned across and, taking hold of my shoulders and shaking me affectionately, exclaimed, ‘You funny old thing, Titus, you’ve quite come out of your shell.’ I admit I blushed.

  Birdie said later it was the first time he’d ever seen me so at ease in Scott’s company, and I believe he was right. I put it down to the fact that with the ponies slaughtered and off my hands, and Meares and Cherry no longer with us, I was forced to make the best of things.

  The following morning Teddy’s team – Lashly, Crean and Bowers – were told to leave their skis behind and march on foot. On the face of it this seemed a pretty strong indication of their not going on to the Pole, but one never knew with Scott. Teddy looked the picture of misery all day and even Bowers had hardly a word to say for himself. I asked Bill what he thought it meant and he snapped that he was as baffled as the rest of us.

  ‘Surely I won’t be included?’ I said, and he said, ‘Is there any reason why you shouldn’t be?’ I hadn’t told him about my leg.

  There was a lot of whispering between Scott and Bill when we camped that night. Bowers’s name cropped up several times. I woke in the small hours to see the candle still burning and Scott propped up in his sleeping-bag, scribbling in his notebook.

  At dawn, while the rest of us were drinking our tea, he went into the other tent and told its occupants what he’d decided. Imagine our astonishment when he returned and said Bowers would be coming on with us for the last slog. Every detail of that final journey – tent, food, fuel, etc. – had been worked out with four men in mind, and now it would be five!

  As for me, my inclusion was so unexpected that I didn’t know what to feel. It did cross my mind to tell Scott I wasn’t fit, but when I thought of how Teddy Evans and his lot had been manhauling three-hundred miles longer than any of us owing to the breakdown of the motors, and still appeared as keen as mustard, I felt ashamed. It seemed foolish, never mind cowardly, to back out when only ten or eleven days of marching separated us from our goal. I came to the decision that even if I didn’t much want to go on for myself, I very much wanted to do so for my regiment. It would be a tremendous feather in the Inniskillings’ cap if I made it to the Pole.

  I had to write a letter to my mother for Teddy to take with him, telling her I wouldn’t be home for another year as we’d almost certainly miss the ship. I said I was feeling very well, perhaps better than anyone else with the exception of Bowers. I didn’t want her worrying about me. I asked her to ignore all the unkind comments I’d made about Scott in previous letters, as it was only the cold and the terrible plight of the ponies that had made me sound so scathing and that really he was a good fellow and utterly decent when it came to things that mattered.

  I enclosed a list of books I wanted her to send out to the Terra Nova at Lyttelton, so that I could study for my major’s exam on the voyage home. I knew that would please her. I’m afraid I’ve always been a fearful dunce, but I did truly feel that the experiences of the last two years had made me altogether steadier and that I was at last ready to apply myself to books and that sort of stuff.

  Teddy was awfully cut up at turning back, and Crean wept. I was sorry Lashly wasn’t coming with
us in place of Taff Evans. None of us, with the exception of Scott, had much time for the Welshman, though he was a splendid worker in the traces and quite the strongest puller among us.

  Scott made a gracious speech before we made our farewells, in which he thanked the support party for agreeing to return short-handed and urged them to remember it had been a team effort.

  ‘It may be us four … five,’ he said, hastily correcting himself, ‘who will stand at the Pole in a few days’ time, but we will never forget that it was you who sent us there.’

  Then Teddy called for three cheers and Scott gave the order to start. With what excitement we set off, what optimism! Every time we looked back those three figures were still standing there, waving, turning black and dwindling as the distance widened.

  Our high spirits lasted all of two days, mostly on account of the smooth surfaces and calm weather. Four in the tent had been cramped enough, five was a squeeze and cooking for five took longer than for four, but it didn’t matter when the sun was so warm we could stand about outside the tent in perfect comfort.

  Then the weather turned bad and we got amongst sastrugi and had to take off our skis and pull on foot. Bowers, of course, was without his the whole time. Scott got into a frightful dither over whether or not we should dump our skis altogether, and no sooner had he made up his mind and we’d done as he ordered and had struggled on another fearful two miles or so, than the surface improved and he had us plodding back to retrieve them. I think we were all weaker than we let on – I know I was – and we simply couldn’t afford to be indecisive and fritter away our meagre resources of energy on such manoeuvres. Cold was one thing, and hunger another, and we’d grown callous to both these forms of torture, but it was simply more than flesh could stand when exhaustion was added to the catalogue of pain. Then it mattered terribly that it took an extra half hour to get the food into our stomachs.

  Scott, poor devil, seemed genuinely perplexed at this setback. ‘I must admit,’ he confessed, ‘it hadn’t occurred to me that cooking for one more would add thirty minutes to preparation time.’ For a moment he seemed cast down. Then he said, ‘However, I’m sure we’ll get used to it.’

  In his ruthlessness of purpose he resembled Napoleon, who, when the Alps stood in the way of his armies, cried out, ‘There shall be no Alps.’ For Scott there was no such word as impossible, or if there was it was listed in a dictionary for fools. In the dreadful circumstances in which we found ourselves, half-starved and almost always frozen, our muscles trembling from the strain of dragging those infernal sledges, I expect his was the only way. To have faltered at this late stage would have been like pulling in one’s horse while it was leaping. He spared no one, not even himself, and he drove us on by the sheer force of his will. And then Birdie spotted that black flag.

  I suppose for a mile or two we kidded ourselves it might be a sastrugus, but soon we came to sledge tracks and the clear trace of dog paws – dozens of dogs. Amundsen had beaten us to the Pole. We put up the tent right away. It was curious how we each reacted to the realisation that our fearful labours had been for nothing. Birdie was angry; the Norwegians were poor sports, sneaks, not worth bothering about. When the story came to be told our feat of manhauling would be seen as the greater triumph. Bill busied himself making a sketch of the cairn and the flag and hardly opened his mouth. Scott himself was surprisingly philosophical. I think the shock of disappointment was so severe he could scarcely take it on board. He talked about his state of mind before the sailing of the Terra Nova from Cardiff, how he’d told his wife he was not quite himself, that there was some cloud hanging over him.

  ‘Kathleen said it would be all right once we were actually on the move … she was right … but I can’t help thinking it was perhaps too late. If I hadn’t been in the grip of such damnable lassitude perhaps the outcome would have been different.’

  There was nothing much one could reply to that, and none of us tried, beyond Bill murmuring that we’d achieved what we’d set out to do and at least we could plant the Union Jack at the Pole.

  For myself, it was all one, whether we were first or last at that god-forsaken spot. It was obvious that the best team had won.

  It was then that Taff Evans began to rock so violently back and forth in his sleeping-bag that we had to hold tight to the cooker for fear he tipped it over. ‘For God’s sake, man,’ cried Scott, thoroughly alarmed, and he tried to restrain him. Taff flung him off so fiercely that Scott fell against the tent pole and jarred his back.

  The Welshman was ranting that we’d all be laughingstocks when we got home, that none of our families would get a penny, that it was all right for the likes of us, but he was done for, finished. ‘I won’t never get my public house,’ he shouted. ‘Not now … no apples in the orchard, no little skiff at the water’s edge … all them bloody dreams turned as rotten as this bloody stump.’ And he pulled off his mitt and held out his hand for us to see.

  Scott turned as white as a sheet. I think if I’d had enough food in my belly I’d have vomited. Taff’s hand was vast and purple and most of his nails had gone. There was a great gash across his knuckles which gaped so-wide that the bone showed through. It wasn’t so much a hand as some grotesquely swollen fruit about to burst asunder.

  Bill took it badly. He blamed himself for not having attended to Taff’s wound when he first cut himself rebuilding the sledges. He gave the Petty Officer morphia to ease the pain. It took a long while to take effect and Taff kept up his rocking and his moaning until the tears stood in our eyes and we stuffed our fingers into our ears to drown that dreadful keening.

  We marched on the following day and came to the Norwegian flag and tent. They’d left us a note – ‘Dear Captain Scott, As you are probably the first to reach this area after us, I will ask you kindly to forward this letter to King Haakon VII. If you can use any of the articles left in the tent please do not hesitate to do so. With kind regards. I wish you a safe return. Yours truly, Roald Amundsen.’

  Scott thought it a bit of an insult, but I reckon it was no more than a wise precaution on Amundsen’s part. The Norwegians had no more certainty than we had of getting safely home.

  We marched another two miles to the spot Birdie calculated to be the exact geographical location of the Pole. Taff Evans was more or less himself again, though he moved clumsily and once or twice I swear I heard him chuckling.

  We halted when Birdie gave the word, built a cairn and stuck the Union Jack on top. We took a photograph of ourselves; I don’t think any of us had the heart to smile. Then we started for home.

  I don’t know when Taff died … a week ago, a month. It was somewhere on the Glacier. I know that the day before we’d got into a frightful pickle. Scott said it was our own fault. We’d started in a wretched wind, pulling on skis in a horrible light that threw fantastic shadows across the snow. Birdie said he was reminded of a pantomime set for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, all glittering back-cloths and eerie pockets of stagy darkness. As far as I could tell the world was a coffin and the lid of the sky was about to nail me down. It showed up the difference between us, but then I don’t imagine Birdie’s feet were in the first stages of gangrene.

  Around lunchtime – not that we had any food – Scott took the fatal course of steering east. I appear to put the blame on Scott, but none of us disputed his command and all of us followed him like lemmings. Truth to tell, I think he was the only one among us capable of making any decisions. Wilson had snow-blindness, Birdie still suffered under the delusion that it would be worldly to thrust himself forward, and Evans had gone soft in the brain. Scott had insisted Bill give him morphia at regular intervals, for pity’s sake, and half the time the Welshman was floundering on in a merciful haze of oblivion. He fell a lot, once raising a bump on his head the size of Bill’s blessed Emperor penguin eggs.

  When we got up the next morning and had crushed half a biscuit each into our mug of hot water, we had one meal remaining in the bags. If we didn’t reach the next
depot by nightfall we’d go hungry. I’d got past wanting food, unlike Bill and Evans who were always complaining that they were starving. I could understand Evans’s dilemma. He had been a great brute of a man, and doubtless he needed more rations than the rest of us, but it was curious to think that slim old Bill, by nature frugal, should suffer the same pangs as that giant of a seaman. I don’t know what torments Birdie was undergoing – he was too busy being helpful, taking readings, being a kindly light in a naughty world to let on what he truly felt.

  Half an hour from setting off one of Evans’s ski shoes came adrift and he had to leave the sledge. ‘On, on,’ he shouted, waving his good hand in the air. We stopped after two hours and he slowly caught up with us. We’d hardly started again before he dropped out under the same pretence. He asked Birdie for a piece of string. Scott cautioned him not to lag too far behind, and he replied, ‘Goodness, that I won’t. It’s lonely out here. I’ll be with you in a jiffy.’

  We had our meagre lunch, and still he didn’t appear. Alarmed, we went back to look for him. He was on all fours in the snow, his gloves off and his clothes dishevelled. When we approached he barked like a dog. ‘Taff,’ said Scott, ‘what’s wrong, man?’ but the Welshman didn’t reply. We got him to his feet, supporting him on either side, with the intention of walking him back to the tent, but after no more than a few steps he sagged between us and sank to his knees. He said something then about being sorry.