When Nights Were Cold

by Susanna Jones

  For Joe, Alice, Dylan and Evan

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Two

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Tall Trees, Park Road,

  Dulwich

  London

  25 October 1913

  Dear Sir Ernest Shackleton,

  We are three graduates of the sciences from the University of London. Our research interests are in the fields of Physics, Biology and Botany. We share a profound interest in biological and geological features of the polar regions and we followed your expedition to Antarctica in the Nimrod with the greatest interest and respect. We understand that you are looking for men for your next journey and hereby offer our services. We are all active in sports, having experience of mountaineering at high altitude, crossing glaciers and camping out in bivouacs.

  We are strong and healthy and believe we would be an asset to your expedition. We are ready to endure hardship and physical sacrifice.

  Yours sincerely,

  L. Locke

  C. Parr

  G. Farringdon

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Last night I tried to climb the Matterhorn again. It seemed, for the first time, quite within my reach. I began from the Hörnli ridge, with my lantern in my hand and the weight of a full pack on my back, a coil of rope over my shoulder. Quite soon I was jogging upward over rock and snow to the pyramid’s chiselled top. How easy it was. This time there were no loose stones or rotten boulders and my climb was satisfying and sweet. Yet when I lifted my eyes to take in the view I saw that the sky was still black. I shone the lantern – I had not dropped it – but, beyond my own arm, nothing seemed to exist. There were no boots on my feet, just thin stockings, and I could not move. I called out for my guide, then my companions. No one answered and I knew that they were dead. My heart slumped. I peered over the ledge to the glacier far below and saw a woman’s body, arms outstretched, incongruous, a flat grey fish on the ice. Ink spots crept through the ice, burst into flowers around her head. Black vanilla orchids, a voice whispered and I crumpled between the rocks. My lantern had gone. The sun was up.

  The back door slammed and a shriek brought me to my senses. I threw the bedclothes aside, stumbled to the window and lifted a corner of the curtain. The housemaid was chasing a man across the lawn. He was a short, barrel-shaped creature, but he leaped over the back fence without a second glance. I dropped the curtain and stepped back lest he had hidden in the neighbours’ bushes to watch the house. It has happened before. Mabel scurried around downstairs, drawing curtains and locking the doors. I shuddered, climbed back into bed and resolved that it was safest to spend the day under my covers. A little later Mabel appeared with a pot of tea and a plate of kippers.

  ‘You should have seen him. What a fright he gave me. His nose was all squashed up to the pane like a snout. I don’t know what he expected to see in the scullery. There’s nothing in it but pots and the laundry.’ She put the breakfast tray on my lap, but I waved it away.

  ‘Just the tea, Mabel.’

  She shook her head, a gesture of hers that always intrigues me since nothing else moves. Mabel’s hairstyle is rigid, a crisp cottage loaf over a face of freshly expanded dough.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘I might have some bread later.’

  ‘I should have gone for the police.’

  ‘There was no need, Mabel. You did well to get rid of him so quickly. Could you pour the tea while it’s nice and hot?’

  Mabel filled my cup and set the pot on the bedside table.

  ‘It’s the anniversary tomorrow, isn’t it? If you just gave an interview to a newspaper, or wrote about the business – even after all this time – well, it would make things easier. It would make it clearer for people who don’t know you and who got the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘No, Mabel. It would make things worse and I have nothing to hide or deny. They’ve decided, and I can’t change it. Fifteen years since she died, and still not long enough. Even if I could, to talk about it now would either remind the people who have forgotten or inform the ones who never knew. Mr Snout down there was the first to show an interest for a long time.’

  I sipped my thick brown tea, imagined the stream finding its way into a cranky little wheel deep inside my body, to set the millstone grinding for a new day, as if I were an old, old woman. Mabel tucked the edges of my blankets under the mattress then went to the window, scouring the garden with eyes narrowed into a pillar-box slit.

  ‘As you wish. What will you have for supper today, Miss Farringdon? The butcher has some nice chops at a very reasonable price.’

  ‘A bit of porridge will be more than plenty.’

  I wondered what the intruder had gleaned from his brief visit. If he had seen my face at the window and the curtain sweeping it away, what story might he read from it?

  ‘Certainly And remember that I shan’t be sleeping here tonight. My mother wants me at hers so you’ll be alone. Will you be all right?’

  ‘Father’s old rifle is somewhere. I’m joking, no need to scowl like that. Now you’re getting on my nerves, Mabel. I’ll be fine. Miss Cankleton and Mr Blunt are here, after all.’

  ‘For what use they are.’

  Miss Cankleton has Mother’s old room, across from mine, and Mr Blunt lives in the attic. I talk to them if I meet them, but sometimes all that passes across the hall is hello or a nod. Once a week I collect their rent and I ask them if their rooms are satisfactory. They pay up and express satisfaction. We all hear each other’s noises – the squeak of a wardrobe door, the groan of a rotten floorboard, a cough or a sneeze – gossamer connections which are enough for people like us who don’t like our bonds tight.

  ‘I’ll fetch the newspapers.’

  ‘Stop making a fuss. I don’t know what’s happening in the world and I don’t care about it. Whatever Mr Baldwin does—’

  ‘Mr Chamberlain it is now. If things get worse on the continent, you will know.’ She took the kippers and left.

  I tiptoed to the window. Somehow another year has sloped by since Cicely Parr’s death. There was an inquest at the time, all the necessary business, and it was quite settled, at least by the coroner if not by the press. But I am the last surviving member of the Society and this seems to give me a certain poisonous glamour, notoriety of a kind I never wanted. I did want to be known, once upon a time, but not in connection with the accursed Cicely Parr.

  I stayed in bed all day, kept the curtains closed, and when the sun set and it seemed safe I ventured downstairs.

  Now I am sitting in the drawing room and nothing will trouble me because everyone is asleep. My neighbours’ windows are black. The Dulwich streets are quiet and I am cosy. I like it in my den. I have my things here, I am
comfortable and at the end of the night I shall sit at the window and watch the sun rise. I have an abundance of coal to keep me warm. I have a servant still and the money to pay her for months, even years, to come. Perhaps tonight I shall write to my sister and invite her for a visit. It has been a long time since she left and I have missed her. Perhaps a letter is all it would take to bring her back. If I have to spend the rest of my life in here, hiding from intruders and spies, I would rather do it with Catherine at my side. I look around my den, my bits and bobs. On the mantelpiece there’s a photograph of the Matterhorn’s north face, taken, I suppose, from the Schönbiel Hut, but I don’t remember. I hold it, for a better look, still feeling all off kilter, my mouth acrid with the taste of bad dream.

  Mountains, like stars, come out at night. After a day’s deep sleep, knees bent, arms twisted beneath rumpled sheets, dusk gathers and they shrug off the covers to take their proper form. They breathe out icy air, grow a little, shed a little, may crack and roar to one another or to the night. I have heard them. They know the tread and intrusion of the hobnail boot.

  It was not so long ago that I tramped the rocks some twelve thousand feet in the sky, with my axe and compass, wearing a sturdy pair of Jaeger knickerbockers. My sister never even saw a mountain, of course, couldn’t have cared less, and I know she will not have altered, at least on this point. As children and young ladies we spent much time in this room, but even then it was never the same for Catherine as it was for me. I let my eyes bounce around the den, suck it all in through my dilated pupils.

  I call this my den but it is a vast, rectangular room, with plenty of ornaments and furnishings. I spend most of my time by the fireplace. I have two armchairs and a settee around the hearth with a couple of low tables and a lamp in between. Some distance away is the baby grand piano and duet stool and then, in the corner that gets a greenish light from the back window, my globe. It is a large old globe, almost the length of my arm in diameter, and it spins as smoothly as it always did. Above the fireplace is an oil portrait of my father in his Royal Navy uniform. He looks solemn and a little worried, as well he should, for he was to meet great strife on his next voyage. His dark hair rises from his narrow forehead in a handsome, devilish stroke. I do not know why I never put up a picture of my mother or my sister. Father seems to represent us all.

  Dearest Catherine,

  It has been such a long time since I saw you (is it really fifteen years?) and I wonder how you are. If you think of visiting London sometime, I would be most delighted if you would like to come to Dulwich one afternoon for tea.

  Your Grace

  No, that is not quite right. I shall have to say more than that. It will look as though I don’t know her, that any stranger could have written it. We used to be such close sisters and knew each other’s secrets. She fastened violets in my hair and took me to play in the woods on Sydenham Hill. We had darker times too, of course – which family has not? – but we shared them as sisters do. She may have children of her own now, new relatives that I have never met. It is unlikely, though. She was not young when she married and left.

  The fire is dying and I am not ready to be cold. A faint music seems to waft from the piano, a chord that separates into two high notes a semitone apart, repeating alternately like the ghost of a siren. The room is no longer my den but our family drawing room and I am shivering in my memories.

  Chapter Two

  The blizzard thickened but I had reached eighty-two fifteen and would make it to the Pole. My stomach cramped with hunger and there was no food to look forward to but pemmican again. I groaned as I forced one frozen foot forward and then the other. Pemmican would be the death of me. In the whirling snowflakes I saw chocolates, roast turkey, giant hams, flying and dipping on the wind before they dropped into the snow and vanished. Scott and Wilson trudged silently, a few feet ahead of me, as the piano played on.

  ‘Grace, do make up your mind. It’s your turn and you are trying our patience.’

  ‘I’m ready.’ I moved my piece – a darning needle representing Ernest Shackleton – along the fold in the map.

  ‘Jolly good,’ said Father, and sat back in his chair. His button, Captain Scott, was just ahead of my darning needle and the thimble which represented Wilson. ‘I think we may go no further for this evening. These conditions require proper consideration and I’m too tired. We’ll have our cocoa now.’

  That night I was about fourteen years old and Catherine was eighteen. It was 1904 or 1905. The drawing room ached with music from the piano. Catherine had just learned that she had won a place to study at the Royal College of Music and we were excited. Father had allowed her to audition, but now could not decide whether to let her go. He always said that Catherine’s music was the heart of the family, for it pumped the blood through our veins and pushed air into our lungs. Catherine leaned over the keyboard with her eyes half-shut. She stretched back as her fingers pressed into the tinkling diminuendo. It was a dark, wet evening and the fire had burned all day. Perspiration jewelled her forehead.

  I took lessons, too, but was only a competent pianist. My parents encouraged me to be outdoors all day for, when I was nine years old, I had contracted pneumonia and almost died like my brother Freddie. Mother’s greatest fear was that she would find me, one day, cold and empty as she had found him. To keep my constitution strong and my lungs healthy, I spent hours playing hockey and tennis. I walked through London’s parks in fog and wind, and bought hot potatoes to stick in my pockets and warm my hands.

  In spite of Father’s grumpiness that night, I loved our evenings in the drawing room. The play with the maps had begun recently after Father had been talking about Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic in the Discovery. Scott, Shackleton and Wilson had left the main party to reach the Pole but had to turn back, partly owing to Shackleton’s poor health. I had told Father that I could not see why they hadn’t been able to reach the South Pole. It seemed to me that if they had gone within a few miles, it could not be so very hard to go all the way.

  Father said that I was very naive and I could not possibly imagine the brutality of the conditions the explorers faced. One mile might take hours to cover. A few yards might make a man relive his entire life and have dark thoughts he never knew his brain could hold. Father’s eyes seemed to blacken when he said this. In order to educate me, he took to unfolding great maps and newspaper articles in the evenings and we would throw a die across the hearth to make the journey ourselves, paying attention to physical health, the weather, food supplies and, as my father put it, the qualities of the hero from whom any schoolboy might learn.

  I was a schoolgirl, of course, but I did my best. I didn’t have any brothers, only Freddie, who died before I was even born so he was just a ghost.

  It became a game we played often. We laid out pieces of paper, cotton reels, any odd thing we could find, in order to represent the seals and whales in the southern seas. We made a paper boat to represent the Discovery, and put thimbles and buttons inside it to represent the men. We sailed her to McMurdo Sound and Father marked the places where Scott and his men had been in 1902. We ventured to other parts of the world, places that Father had been with his ships, but none was so exciting as the South Pole, still out of reach to man, now only by a few degrees. Sometimes we played Nansen and Amundsen, racing in their ship, the Fram, against the British, to the ends of the Earth.

  Mrs Horton, our elderly housekeeper, placed the cocoa tray on the table in the window, spilling a little as she set it down. We wished her goodnight and she left. I put away the huts and penguins and began to fold the map. It was very large and complicated. I almost disappeared underneath it, but Mother took the corner and helped me. Father, who always had to be Captain Scott but tired quickly, settled into his armchair. I, Ernest Shackleton, curled up by the fireplace with my book, Unpleasant Tales for Girls, or some such thing that I liked, but I didn’t read it. I watched my older sister at the piano and I listened to her.

  Frank Black,
who had been playing Wilson in our game, retreated to the cosy corner at the other side of the fireplace with his cocoa. Handsome Frank, with dark eyes like raven’s wings. He was our neighbour and had come for tea and to congratulate Catherine on her success, then stayed to hear her practise. Mother always said that he was in love with Catherine and the music was his excuse to be near her. He would be a very good catch, said Mother, though not yet because he was going up to Oxford in the autumn and would not want to marry before graduating, which was just as well because Catherine had no idea how to be a wife yet. Frank studied with the same piano tutor as Catherine and I but did not have her extraordinary talent. They played duets some afternoons and Catherine was always stopping for Frank to go over his part. She helped him when he got stuck, but gently and quietly so that he wouldn’t feel ashamed. He was clever, though, and great fun when we played our games. I longed for him to marry Catherine so that I could have him as my older brother. I liked him to come exploring with Father and me for Catherine never joined in, and Mother was always in and out of the room so spoiled the progress of the expedition. Tonight, though, Frank was as bad as Mother. He seemed more interested in my sister than in the South Pole.

  Catherine played Bach’s Concerto no.7 in G minor.

  Father slipped a bookmark into his atlas and let it close on his lap.

  Mother’s lips made a thin, tight line. Mother saw no point in so much piano playing. It’s unhealthy for the mind, she used to say. Catherine will become imaginative. She insisted that Catherine accompanied her to the Waifs and Strays Needlework Society and on visits to our neighbours, though Catherine hated at-homes and fumed about the pointless and tedious conversations of silly wives. She was a dreamy girl, my mother used to say, but must learn to stay awake. I did not mind visiting at all and was always willing to hand round the cakes when we had guests at home. I enjoyed entering other people’s homes, seeing their things, and listening to adult conversations, but because I was quite good at it I was rarely required to go. It was Catherine who needed the practice and routine lest she go the way of our neighbour’s niece, Margaret Mott.