The Birthday Boys

by Beryl Bainbridge

  It really was splendid to see the manner in which everyone had chipped in and not wasted a moment. The scientists had got their instruments and work tables arranged, the differential magnetic cave was under way, the larder dug out and already stored with mutton and penguin. P.O. Evans was in the middle of overhauling and making adjustments to the sledges, and Gran, the young Norwegian brought along to teach us skiing, boasted of a concoction he had been working on, a mixture of vegetable tar, soft soap and linseed oil which, when applied to the ski runners, would stop them from freezing. Each man in his way is a treasure, and I can’t help congratulating myself for picking them.

  We now have a truly seductive home built on the dark sands of one of the spurs of Mount Erebus, and here at least, in the shadow of that mighty volcano, we shall be more than comfortably housed through the night-black days to come.

  There was just one thing I felt would make for a happier ship. I had instructed Bowers to make cubicles for us all, so we could each fit up our own space, thus ensuring the tidier storing of personal belongings. This he had begun to do, but it immediately became apparent to me that the men would be more at ease if they were separated from the officers. With this in mind I got Bowers to build a bulkhead of provision cases between their space and ours. I’m quite sure the arrangement is to the satisfaction of officers and men alike. Whatever conversations take place on the other side of the divide, however audible and no matter of what purport or subject – it’s possible I would have to make an exception in the plotting of mutiny – we are honour-bound to respect privacy and react, to all intents and purposes, as if stone deaf.

  I had an amusing exchange with Clissold, the cook, before our evening meal. Ponting and I were coming back at sunset from photographing the Terra Nova held fast to its wedge of ice on the outskirts of the Bay. Ponting was fairly bubbling with enthusiasm, babbling of the magnificence of the landscape, the glistening bergs, the glaciers that ripple down beyond the bays to thrust their gleaming snouts into the sea, the smoking summit of Erebus amid its snowcapped peaks. Clissold was relieving himself in an angle of the hut. He didn’t hear our approach because someone inside – most likely Meares – had put an operatic record on the gramophone. Clissold was standing there with closed eyes, face raised to the heavens. We startled him, and he gave a little grunt.

  ‘It’s only Mr Ponting and me, Clissold,’ I said. ‘We’ve been down to look at the ship. Mr Ponting seems to think this the most glorious spot on earth. What do you say?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘I don’t know about glorious, but I do feel at home.’

  ‘Home?’ said Ponting, taken aback. ‘Are you a native of the Scottish Highlands?’

  ‘I was born and bred in the city, sir,’ Clissold replied. ‘And noise-ways I don’t see much difference, what with the seals honking and them birds screaming, not to mention those blessed dogs.’

  He’d prepared a most tremendous spread for our evening meal – seal soup, roast mutton, redcurrant jelly, asparagus. Usually Bill sits on my right-hand side, and I was a little put out to find Teddy Evans had beaten him to the post. He’s such a robust character, waving his arms about as he recounts his endless tall stories, thumping the table to emphasise some point or other, laughing at his own jokes, that an hour spent in such close proximity leaves one exhausted. That being said, his imitation of a Siberian sledge driver shouting out commands to his dogs – he borrowed Clissold’s knitted tea-cosy to wear on his head – was extremely comical, and at least it put an end to the previous vexed topic of the ponies and the motors.

  While we were away at Hut Point, Day and Lashly had got the motors started, only to have them break down almost at once. Poor old Day is very morose about this, but he’s such an excellent mechanic I’m quite sure the difficulties are only temporary. The ponies are a different matter; according to Oates no amount of tinkering will overcome their obvious defects. To my mind, rest and an increased diet will do wonders. We sat long at the table, all except Meares and Oates who spend a good deal of their time with the ponies. These two have struck up a great friendship, based, one imagines, on an unspoken communion, both of them being equally laconic.

  I went for a short walk after supper, and came back via the stables. Through the window I could see Titus and Meares crouched over the blubber stove, pipes clamped in their mouths. The door was a little ajar to let out the smoke, and I was about to open it wider when I heard Oates say, ‘We ought to buy the Owner a sixpenny book on transport’, at which Meares laughed.

  I was upset, of course, but then we all make disparaging remarks behind each other’s backs and it simply isn’t productive to take every scrap of overheard tittle-tattle to heart.

  Towards the end of the month we said goodbye to all those on board the Terra Nova, which, under the command of Campbell, was preparing to sail 400 miles eastwards along the edge of the Great Ice Barrier to King Edward VII Land. She carried with her two geologists belonging to the shore party, and Wright, the physicist, who would be deposited further down the coast with the purpose of exploring the Western Mountains. I lent the latter group Petty Officer Evans, now something of an expert on sledging.

  ‘Will we be gone long, then, sir?’ he asked me, when I first told him he would be going.

  ‘Several weeks, no more,’ I replied, and noticed he looked rather downcast. ‘Come, man,’ I chided. ‘Do you think I won’t be able to manage without you?’

  ‘I had thought I’d be here for my birthday, sir,’ he said, and I couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘Birthdays,’ I told him, ‘are hardly our first priority.’

  It was the aim of the depot party left behind – we had by this time established our first camp at the limit of open water six miles south of Glacier Tongue, close by our old Discovery hut – to lay as many provisions as possible at the furthest point on the Great Ice Barrier as we could manage before the winter closed in. Taking into consideration the infernal bad luck which has dogged me ever since leaving New Zealand, things are going forward as might be predicted – damned slowly and with unprecedented fluctuations in weather.

  I fear I’m beginning to lose faith in the ponies. The storm that hit us twelve days out from Port Chalmers, and which nearly did for us all, has affected them terribly. I had hoped comfortable stabling and a few weeks rest on shore would have set them to rights, but their continuing feebleness fills me with alarm. Oates, a pessimist to his boots, doubts if they were ever in the best of health and never wastes an opportunity of listing their defects – Snippets: bad wind-sucker, slightly lame of forelegs; Victor: aged, narrow chest, knock-kneed, suffers from his eyes; Chinaman: ringworm above coronet on near fore, both nostrils slit up; Nobby: aged, goes with stiff hocks, spavin near hind, etc. As for Wearie Willie, Oates pronounces him a walking disaster.

  It’s obvious a serious mistake was made in the selection of them, but as Meares was assisted in his choice by ‘Mumbo’ Bruce, who joined him at Vladivostock, I can’t be too forthright in laying blame. After all, Mumbo is my brother-in-law and I shouldn’t want Kathleen to know he’s let me down.

  As always, Bill has been a tower of strength, reminding me that even though we’ve left the fittest of the animals behind at Cape Evans and only brought along what Titus Oates refers to as ‘the crocks’, we’ve still managed to get them to transport two good loads onto the Barrier. As for the dogs, they’re doing better than I allowed for, and have run their first load almost two miles past this point to the site I’ve chosen for ‘Safety Camp’. The name speaks for itself; in the unlikely event of the sea ice melting, taking with it part of the Barrier, this spot should remain intact.

  Our short stint at sledging has already exposed weaknesses, not least in character. Atkinson has owned up to a badly chafed heel, an injury he hid until now in the misguided belief he would be letting the side down by complaining so early on in the march, with the result that the wound is now suppurating and he’s unable to walk. I’m afraid I have very little sympathy for h
im, and am far more concerned about the ponies. The surface is appallingly soft and they’re forever sinking past their hocks into the drift, something I hadn’t bargained for. It would melt the hardest of hearts to watch them floundering and straining to get free, jumping with forelegs braced to take the cruel weight of the sledges, their struggles only serving to plunge them deeper, until, buried up to their shrunken bellies, they can move no more. Shackleton must have had the luck of the devil to have brought his animals thus far.

  Also, and I find this astonishing, they appear to suffer from snow blindness, even though the skies are generally dismally overcast. Oates has suggested we dye their forelocks green to counter the glare.

  Cherry-Garrard, who wears spectacles, is burdened with the same problem. Bill has found him a pair of Discovery glasses, made of wood with a cross slit in the middle, which he now uses with every sign of relief. It’s inconvenient that the ponies don’t have ears in the proper places.

  Accordingly, I’ve revised my plans and from now on we shall travel by night and sleep by day. The sun never goes below the horizon, and though it is bitterly cold at all times, the so-called daylight hours are fractionally higher in temperature, and it seems sensible to allow the ponies to rest up in comparative warmth and slog it out in the bitter night, thus reducing exhaustion and eliminating the agony of snow glare.

  Something happened yesterday which temporarily raised my expectations. Petty Officer Keohane discovered a set of snow-shoes under a provision box, and on fitting Wearie Willie with them he strolled around in the easiest manner possible. It was a miracle – even the pony seemed to think so, and kicked up his heels as if he was frolicking in a meadow. I immediately dispatched Meares and Bill with a dog team back to Cape Evans to fetch the other sets. It meant a wait in camp until their return, but I reasoned the delay would be more than justified once the rest of the ponies were similarly equipped.

  Oates, of course, was unimpressed and gloomily remarked that any improvement was bound to be short-lived. It’s his pessimistic opinion that the use of snow-shoes, like skis, requires practice. Unfortunately, I couldn’t prove him wrong, because Bill eventually returned empty-handed. He’d found the sea ice gone between Glacier Tongue and the Cape and we are now cut off from our comfortable winter quarters!

  On top of everything else, Atkinson’s foot refuses to heal and I’m forced to go on without him. Worse, Tom Crean, a perfectly able man and one we can ill afford to spare, has to be left behind to act as nursemaid. Atkinson’s carelessness in the matter of fitness has put an unfair load on the rest of us and I’ve had to reorganise.

  Still, in spite of all our setbacks and the continuing wretched surface conditions, my spirits rise at the thought of being on the move again. Inactivity always leads to introspection, and I’m simply no good when I’m not doing something. It will be splendid to fall asleep utterly exhausted from a long, strenuous slog.

  Each day begins very much like the last. A little before 9 pm we struggle out of our sleeping bags, light up the primuses and cook breakfast. Some two hours later, having been ready and raring to go an hour since, I shout to Titus, ‘How are things?’, and he shouts back, calmly enough, ‘Fine, sir, fine.’

  The tents are struck, the rugs come off the horses, the sledges are loaded, the dogs wrestled into submission – and still I wait. Attempting to get everyone off on time is like trying to spoon treacle back into a tin with a feather. The monotony of our routine makes for slackness, and inside my head I’m forever giving lectures on how we must buck up and come to the realisation we’re not on a picnic.

  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.’