‘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 ambitious 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 mo
ther 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.
Oriana wasn’t feeling too well. She’d had to lie down before the meal was finished, and on my going upstairs to see how she was she turned her head away when I bent to kiss her cheek; she said I had grease on my chin. I suspect she was upset I had shown such a hearty appetite for food when we were so soon to be parted.
Cherry kicked sand over those bleached bones and when everything was covered tramped up and down to smooth the surface. I half expected him to fashion a make-shift cross from driftwood to stick on the mound. He’s very young. He’d taken off his glasses to clean them on his shirt and though his face was burnt by the sun his anxious eyes were ringed with white moons. ‘Spectacles are an awful nuisance,’ he complained, peering short-sightedly about him. ‘The slightest exertion and they mist over. Either that or the sweat makes them slide down one’s nose.’
‘You may find them something of a handicap in the cold,’ I warned him. ‘They’re bound to freeze over.’
‘I expect I shall manage,’ he said. ‘Poor sight is something I’ve learnt to live with.’
I turned my face away from the sea. There was a stiff breeze blowing and I swear I could smell, mixed with the faintest trace of cooling, mushed apple, the aroma of pork crackling basted in hot honey.
‘Uncle Bill,’ asked Cherry suddenly, still kicking at the sand in that boyish way. ‘Is it true that adversity brings out the best in men?’
‘Yes,’ I replied promptly. ‘Good men, that is’, and looked him straight in the eye, knowing he was thinking of the journey ahead and whether he was up to it, and wanting to tell him, without using words, that in my book he was.
‘Men from our background,’ I explained, ‘are at an advantage. They’ve been schooled to accept things, not to argue the toss once the umpire has made a decision. Abiding by the rules is a great help, you know … it does away with introspection, leaves one free to get on with the game.’
‘I was never very much good at sport,’ Cherry said, ‘on account of my eyesight … apart from rowing, that is, though even there I failed to get a blue. I’m afraid I was a disappointment to my father’, and he smiled at me apologetically, as if I was someone else he’d let down.
I shirked taking him up on this, having been told about his father by Con, who maintains that the reason Cherry didn’t do well at Oxford was because his old man treated him like a skivvy during the vacations.
‘I can’t tell you,’ I said, ‘what hell Royds went through in 1901 trying to pit his will against Scott’s. He simply couldn’t accept authority, any more than could Shackleton.’
I didn’t think it fit to say more. I’d remembered the morning Shackleton accidentally burned a hole in the tent floor while cooking, and the broadside Con gave him. It had happened many times before, this spilling of oil and the subsequent blaze. We’d all done it, including Con. It’s hard to behave like a Boy Scout boiling a billycan on the village green when the cold has paralysed one’s mind and swollen one’s fingers to the size of bananas. Taff Evans hadn’t got a wigging. On the contrary, Con had told him not to worry and that he was sure we were all grateful for the warmth, however unexpected – but then Con has always had an exaggerated regard for the lower classes.
Some two days after Shackleton had set alight to the ground sheet he and I were employed in packing sledges. I daresay we were making a fair amount of noise, he laughing and me protesting at an indelicate story he’d just spun concerning a Grenadier Guard and an amorous batman. In those days, having been married for less than two months, I was far more prudish than I am now and I seem to remember I was trying to stuff his head into one of the sleeping bags. Just then Con came out of his tent and shouted, ‘Come here, you bloody fools’, only he used a stronger word.
Going up to him I said, ‘I trust you weren’t speaking to me, Con?’ and he said, ‘No, I wasn’t, Bill.’
‘In that case,’ Shackeleton challenged, ‘you meant me’, at which Con stared him out. ‘Right,’ said Shackleton, standing his ground
like a bantam cock, ‘perhaps you should bear this in mind. You’re the worst – fool of the lot, with – bells on.’
It wasn’t until some years later I realised Con was upset at me for being so pally with Shackleton. He’d taken it on board that I was his man. That and the fact that earlier, while trying to get the dogs into the traces, he’d been bitten by one of the bitches.
With Con it’s all or nothing, which is in part why I admire him. It sounds blasphemous, but one only has the energy to die for one man at a time.
‘Is it nothing more than a game?’ asked Cherry, wistfully, staring at me owl-eyed. Re-tying the laces of my boot, I stood up and busied myself with the fastenings of my backpack. I didn’t consider it advisable to continue the discussion; one can never be sure where such conversations may lead.
We followed the shore line until we came to East Bay, where the sheer wall of Noah’s Ark mountain, rust red in the sunlight, dropped into the angry surf. There wasn’t a beach as such, merely a tumbled floor of shattered rocks over which lay solidified streams of black lava. I’m constrained to think, from the quantity of debris and the tempestuous shapes which mimic the surge of waves, that the mountain was once an active volcano.
We proceeded on our way until we came to the magnificent tunnel known as the Archway which connects South West Bay with East Bay. The water gushing through this natural aperture is black as pitch, save where the frenzied spray spurts upwards and dissolves on the rose-red crags of the outer walls. I wanted to get out my sketching pad there and then, but there was simply nowhere to sit.
The Birthday Boys Page 6
