When Nights Were Cold

by Susanna Jones

  ‘She’s climbed the Matterhorn? Good lord.’

  I imagined Parr in a wide-brimmed hat, striding along a snowy ridge, impervious to danger.

  ‘How do we know if we can do it?’

  ‘It’s only Wales. We’ll be preparing for when we climb in the Alps.’

  ‘Surely we are not going to attempt the Matterhorn?’

  ‘Not to begin with, but who knows? Farringdon, are you afraid? It is no use sitting here telling schoolboy tales of polar expeditions as though you live in a storybook.’

  ‘But the Alps are not Erebus.’

  ‘No, indeed. Many of them are much harder to climb. It is all about the spirit of adventure and survival in the harshest conditions. If more Antarctic explorers took the time to train on mountains first they would be much better—’

  ‘Yes, I see, but my only income is for fees and living. My father would never give me money to travel to such places, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s impossible.’

  ‘For now there’s only your train fare to Wales and I’ll pay for that.’

  ‘I can’t accept—’

  ‘There should be four of us, as I said.’

  Now only Hooper remained unsure. ‘If Teddy doesn’t mind, I’ll come, but only to sketch. You are not getting me to the tops of mountains, thank you very much.’

  The moment called for courage and clear leadership.

  ‘Parr is right. As President of the Antarctic Exploration Society, I propose that we further our understanding of travelling in hostile environments by accepting her generous invitation. No one need be forced to go up mountains if they prefer to stay below. There can be opportunities for sketching as well as climbing. All in favour?’

  ‘Aye.’ We spoke in one voice.

  At last, an expedition into wilderness and harsh conditions. I looked around at my fellow explorers. In the bedroom light, their faces glowed but their expressions were solemn and dark. There we were: Hooper the doctor’s wife; Locke the actress and writer; Parr the lone mountaineer. I bit my lip and, smiling, sank into my chair. And me, whatever I was.

  Here we all are, fixed in sepia: cocoa parties where I was photographed talking to faces I no longer recognize; Locke crouching by her fire reading a book, the title obscured by her hand; Winifred Hooper emerging from a woodland path with a basket full of branches and leaves and an expression of happy surprise; the principal in her sombre skirt, jacket and tie, stalking across the quad with a young, fuzzy-haired lecturer scurrying a pace behind.

  Here are Hooper, Locke, Parr and me on the steps in the south quad. The walkway above us is empty, but someone has left flowerpots and a spade or gardening fork on the balustrade. I don’t remember seeing this picture before so I am not sure that I can trust it. Yet here we all are and we look a fright. It is a windy day, evidently, and our hair streams from the misshapen buns on our heads. Our blouses have high collars and the effect is severe. Even jewellery doesn’t soften this drab quartet of dressed dolly pegs but I don’t think that we were ever vain enough to care. And it wasn’t as though we expected attention from men. The rules around male visitors were strict, and quite tiresome. We had almost none.

  I go back to the picture of the four of us. I never tire of Winifred Hooper’s image. It is always as though I have just met her and am trying to take a first impression but know that I am getting it wrong. She has twig-coloured curls, pinned up into an untidy bird’s nest. She squints through her little spectacle lenses. Her nose is soft and quite flat, a cockle shell. She has a sweet, dimpled face with a crease between her eyebrows. She seems to be gazing at someone or something to her right so that her head is slanted away from the light. She was the reluctant adventurer in our group and yet she was brave.

  Anybody picking up this picture would point to Leonora Locke and say that she is the pretty one. They would not be surprised to learn of her many affairs and admirers, her talent on stage and her passionate campaigning for the vote. You can see the strength, the intelligence in her eyes. Her features are delicate and even. She is blessed with dark eyes and clear, cream skin, but it is more than that. Of the four of us, she is the one who seems to be more real than photograph. She seems about to step forward and address the photographer, or perhaps me, and I can almost see her arm rise, almost hear her spirited Hello. You’ll never guess what I just heard.

  Cicely Parr is the one whose image makes me laugh aloud, despite myself. Tall and gawky with a spot on the side of her nose, she looks as though she barged into the photograph and has no idea what she is doing there or what anyone should want from her. Her hair was always scraped so tightly that the sight of it gave one the faint beginnings of a headache. There is a pendant round her neck. It’s too small to see the detail, but it may be a gold locket she sometimes wore. I had forgotten it.

  Between Locke and Parr, I am quite the average girl. I am taller than one, shorter than the other, and am more conventionally attractive than one, less so than the other. My reddish hair would distinguish me, but in black and white it is medium grey. My expression is without guile or fear and I think I am the most ordinary of the four. Even so, I can see now that I was rather a pretty girl. I had a long, slender neck and good, clear features, Mother’s deep-set eyes. In spite of all the sport, I was never flat-chested and angular, or big and beefy, like other sporty girls, just trim and firm. I should have appreciated myself more when I was young.

  I imagine my three friends getting together now, in some Edwardian bedroom or sitting room in the clouds, to conduct a Society meeting without me, their leader. It’s childish to feel left out down here when I am the lucky one who has survived, and it is not as though they would ever have forgiven one another and been friends in any kind of afterlife. It’s more likely that Parr is up there, in a room of her own with plain walls and few belongings, and the others are in theirs with all their pictures and trinkets.

  The wind is high tonight. The letterbox rattles and bangs. It sounds as though my stranger is trying to get in, but I would never let him. It is just the night.

  Chapter Eight

  Locke and Parr never thought much of each other. I was friends with both and neither could understand why I liked the other. Parr thought Locke silly, talkative and dramatic. Locke made fun of Parr’s awkwardness, her tendency to pour scorn on ideas she didn’t share. Hooper and I had to become adept at diverting tricky conversations, making conciliatory remarks to keep the mood among us pleasant. But an incident occurred which showed the deep distrust between them and which I have often returned to when I try to understand those days. I suspect that Locke and Parr never forgave each other for this quarrel and that, years later, it was still in their minds even if they did not realize it.

  Locke had turned a scene from her play into a sketch and sent it to her mother. An anti-suffrage husband, who had travelled to the future and seen a better place, returned to the present and became a campaigner for the vote and distributor of Votes for Women. Hetty Locke was a member of the Actresses’ Franchise League and was performing at a suffragist pageant in Chelsea. She found her daughter’s sketch amusing and agreed to include it in the pageant. The performance was just two weeks away and on a Thursday evening, so Locke would not be able to attend it without missing lectures and dinner. Certain that everyone would appreciate the significance of her achievement – I’m a professional playwright now! – Locke asked Miss Hobson for the afternoon and evening off and even suggested that she might take a few friends with her. Miss Hobson was known to be a suffragist, and had written articles about it for the newspapers, but she waved Locke away saying that she had better finish her studies and then become a playwright when she had learned a few things. She shut her study door in Locke’s face then opened it, seconds later, to say that she had changed her mind. Locke might have the afternoon off, if her parents agreed, and take Hester Morgan with her as Morgan was too far ahead in her studies. She had been admitted to the sanatorium after chewing bagfuls of raw coffee beans at night to avoid sl
eep and be able to study until morning. Miss Hobson thought that she might benefit from a brief excursion. They must, of course, have a chaperone and be back by evening bell.

  Locke and Morgan took a favourite maid as their chaperone and dispatched her when they reached Waterloo. She could be bought for a shilling. They attended the pageant, then met Mrs Locke and her suffragist friends for dinner and enjoyed discussions about the power of theatre and non-violent action in promoting the cause and converting the ignorant. Some campaigners invited them to Parliament Square to sell copies of Votes for Women and they stayed out late, trudging the pavements in the cold. Somehow the pair missed the last train back to college and spent the night at Locke’s family home in Kensington. They reappeared after breakfast the following day. I found them in a corner of the common room, glittering with the thrill of their adventure. Morgan told me how the audience applauded Locke’s sketch and a man at the back of the hall stood to shout, ‘Hear, hear!’

  ‘It’s a matter of time now. The opposition will wither and die.’

  ‘They’re withered and dead already. Look at the sorts who represent them here, dry old corpses who should have stayed in the last century.’

  Parr was at the fireside reading a letter. She glanced up, folded her letter and left the room.

  ‘What’s she up to?’ Locke craned her neck.

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t kind to call her a dry old corpse.’

  Locke bit her lip, winced. ‘I wasn’t – I didn’t mean Parr, specifically I was thinking of some of the older lecturers and – do you think she’s furious?’

  ‘She might not have heard.’

  ‘I’m sure she did. Probably went sneaking off to write her own anti-suffrage play in retaliation. But no – she hasn’t got any imagination.’

  ‘I didn’t think she was sneaking,’ I said, always ready to defend Parr, particularly as Locke had referred to her as a corpse before and I thought her remark was deliberate. ‘She has a drawing lesson around now.’

  But I was wrong. Parr had gone to see Miss Hobson. We learned later that she went to ask the principal what should be done when one knew that the student next door was not in her room after lights out. After all, while one did not want to intrude, there were serious questions pertaining to our safety and, if it were the middle of the night and the student had not returned, might it not be considered an emergency? Miss Hobson asked Parr to explain what exactly she meant. Parr was always vague about her reply. She denied that she had mentioned Locke by name, or even this specific incident, but said she had merely repeated her question.

  Miss Hobson discovered that Locke and Morgan had not been at chapel or breakfast that morning and threatened to have them sent down. Locke had a quick mind and a talent for performance. She simply denied that they had not come back that evening and she paid the maid a few more shillings to back up her story. Morgan nodded meekly. Miss Hobson would not believe that any Candlin College student would have the audacity to lie about such a serious matter so agreed to take Locke at her word. She fined the pair for missing breakfast and chapel but decided not to investigate further, perhaps wishing to avoid a scandal. Instead she assured Locke and Morgan that they would be watched closely for the rest of their time at college.

  At the next Society meeting, we did not even begin official proceedings. Locke arrived last, marched in and banged her fist on Parr’s desk. Parr, who had been sitting with her hands clasped beneath her chin as Hooper and I chattered, jumped back with a cry.

  ‘Why the devil did you say anything?’ Locke banged the desk again. ‘It was none of your business.’

  A slight pinkness spread about the edges of Parr’s face, just around her hairline.

  ‘I – I merely asked for guidance in what might be a dangerous situation. I was careful not to say anything about you. It was really a criticism of the staff and the nightwatchman.’

  ‘But to what purpose?’

  ‘If someone is not in their bed all night and nobody knows about it, shouldn’t we all worry about our safety? What if a madman had come into the building and taken you? My bed is in the next room.’

  ‘I think you knew where I was and felt perfectly safe.’

  ‘How could I have known?’

  They argued the point for several minutes. I had planned for some study of oceanography and Nansen’s important work on currents at the North Pole and had even prepared sketches of the Fram, frozen in pack ice, as it drifted across the Pole. I was anxious to begin but no one was interested. Hooper sat at the back of the small classroom and finished off a letter to Teddy. Locke glared at Parr, tapping her foot against a desk leg. Parr stared out of the window with red-rimmed eyes.

  I declared the meeting utterly pointless and suggested a postponement until the following week.

  Locke chased me down the corridor. ‘I’m sorry we ruined it, but do you see what she did? I’m sure she knew I was in London.’

  ‘Parr was worried. You didn’t come back all night and could have been lost or murdered in the city. If she had only wanted to cause trouble, she could have told the nightwatchman and had the whole college up looking for you.’

  ‘But she is more subtle than that. Look, I don’t care about her and it’s my own fault anyway, but I don’t understand why you like her so much. She has shown herself to be malicious. I expect she is jealous because she thought I was with a lover.’

  ‘Try to see things from her point of view. She’s lost both parents and is quite alone. It’s easy to see why she might be afraid at night.’ We crossed the quad and entered the cloister. The chapel windows were open and the choir were practising Bach’s ‘Wachet Auf’. ‘It would be best to forgive her. And you did lie about it, which is rather terrible.’

  My response was pious and sanctimonious. The soaring voices of the choir seemed to emphasize this and mock me for it. I was disappointed in Parr. Why on earth had she gone to the principal? But I preferred to believe that Locke was wrong than that Cicely Parr could have acted with spite. Perhaps it was also the case that I envied Locke and Morgan their adventure.

  ‘We have to keep her happy,’ I said. ‘For the sake of our travels.’

  ‘I’m not climbing any mountains with her. Why does she want us to come with her if she despises us so much? Why doesn’t she go with all these extraordinary mountaineering friends she has?’

  I thought about this. ‘I’m not sure that she does have them.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I assumed—’

  ‘They’re all aunts and uncles and their friends. I think she thinks that we’re her friends.’

  ‘Strange way she shows it.’

  ‘Yes, it is and that’s why she’s lonely, but I think she’ll change in time. Will you still come to Wales?’

  ‘Cicely Parr doesn’t own all the snow and all the mountains in the world, though she may think she does. I’ll come, but I still say that she is treacherous.’

  The Society continued to meet each week and when Shackleton’s account of the Nimrod expedition, The Heart of the Antarctic, was published, I purchased it and used it to guide our role-play.

  We sat beneath the Earth shadows, as though it were sunrise at McMurdo. The long, black bars, projected up into the sky from the Western Mountains, crossed the ceiling of our small classroom. We travelled over plains of white, saw giant sastrugi and nunataks and their beauty amazed us. I was in charge of meteorology and took the temperature at regular intervals, boiled the hypsometer. Locke was the cosmographer, taking angles and bearings of the new land. In the freezing winds she operated the tiny screws of the theodolite. At times it almost brought her to tears, but her tiny, nimble fingers made her the best man for the job. Hooper made notes of our experiences and impressions in her diary. Parr was our guide, crunching through snow and leading us onward.

  We followed Mawson, Mackay and Professor David on their journey up the white slopes of Mount Erebus. A depression marked the old crater and we passed it, travelled towards the active cone at its side, not s
ure how close we could safely go, wondered what sort of noise it would make, if any. Parr led us safely up and down, not quite sure of the way, but telling us when to put our crampons on, where to make camp for the night.

  From below Erebus one can see a strange glow which waxes and wanes. Sometimes flame bursts across the crater. And when Shackleton looked out through Armytage’s telescope to see how his party progressed, he saw the six members of the main and support parties combined and, a little further away, the four figures of the Candlin College Antarctic Exploration Society.

  Though we were clearly pretending to be men when we played our Antarctic scenes, we couldn’t help thinking as women, when lying in our tent at night, imagining our sweethearts at home.

  Sometimes we got along fine. Hooper heated a tin of giblet soup over the coal fire one evening. We had decided that it would be better to conduct the imaginative part of our proceedings without electricity. In the flicker and glow of flames we sipped the soup from large enamel cups. Hooper was the first to address the meeting and she spoke about the emperor penguin, the largest of all penguin species and that which breeds the furthest south. She laid out sketches of penguins on pack ice sheltered by bergs and cliffs, but it was not easy to see them clearly without holding them close to the candles. We held a vote and agreed not to switch on the electric light until the end of the meeting so we would maintain our special atmosphere, but take extra care not to start a fire.

  Locke read Scott’s account of his journey south with Wilson and Shackleton. She read aloud so beautifully that I forgot that I had read the work many times before. Parr applauded her, then followed with an informative talk about skiing and sledging, not that she had done either but she had aunts and uncles who had. It seemed that the difficulty of skiing on the horizontal was the matter of balance and it could take much time to master this. I was pleased that Locke and Parr did not mention their argument again but appeared to have overcome their differences. They made a particular effort to laugh at one another’s jokes and agree heartily with pertinent comments.