Henry brushed a hand over his hair. ‘I’m hoping to support the team that will make the pole.’
‘We were just discussing the pole,’ Wilson said.
‘What else is there to talk about?’ Shackleton cut in.
Bowers nodded. ‘You were ill your first time out, weren’t you, sir? Bad luck.’
The boy’s cordial danced green in the light from the fire. Shackleton restrained himself from commenting on Scott or his damn expedition. If he isn’t the one to see the pole first, he doesn’t know how he’ll bear it. You’d think one piece of snowbound icy ground was much the same as another. But it wasn’t.
‘Bowers is developing quite a reputation.’ Wilson decided the new recruit was probably the easiest topic of conversation. Bowers cracked an easy smile as the surgeon continued. ‘He fell into the hold at West India Quay. Landed on a ton of pig iron and got up, dusted himself down, and got back to the job.’
That’s the kind of thing Scott would love, Shackleton thought, but he played the game.
‘Good man,’ he said.
‘It was luck,’ Bowers shrugged off his heroism and ignored his aching leg. ‘I have a bruise, that’s all.’
‘I’ll bet you want to see the pole, don’t you?’ Shackleton said. ‘I bet when you fell you thought, I better get up or I’ll never see it.’
‘I’ve read everything I can lay my hand to,’ Bowers admitted. ‘I can be a bit of a swot. I doubt I’ll be lucky enough to go on the ultimate expedition but I can support it. I bought the identical overcoat to you, sir,’ he admitted, suddenly shy again.
Shackleton warmed to the fellow. He hadn’t meant to slight him.
‘It’s wool you need,’ Wilson said sagely. ‘Layers upon layers of wool, never mind a gabardine.’
‘Finnesko. Fur mittens.’ Shackleton held up his hands.
‘And boots, maybe? Finnesko boots?’ Bowers chimed in. Shackleton didn’t demur. It was Scott’s job to make sure his men had the right kit. ‘The skipper’s all set,’ Bowers continued cheerfully.
Shackleton shifted in his armchair and the leather creaked. He caught Wilson’s eye only momentarily. Questions about Scott’s leadership trailed a shaky undercurrent to polar discussions by the experts, the backers and the general public, never mind those among his personal acquaintance. At heart, Wilson knew that though the skipper was brave, different decisions might have produced different results. Certainly some of the Discovery’s scientific findings had not proved watertight. Scott had vigorously defended his methods and his stories of derring-do had charmed the nation. Boys’ magazines venerated him. Ladies wrote admiring letters. His wife called him a British hero, publicly. But the unanswered questions and doubts formed a gnarling nugget of discomfort that left the way open. Shackleton had stepped eagerly into this gap once and he hoped to do so again.
Shackleton let the taste of malt pervade his mouth. He’d been drinking too much since he quit the Nimrod. For a few uneasy months now, both of Great Britain’s most famous polar explorers had been in London at the same time. There had been no love lost. The Establishment’s approval had fallen neither on one side nor the other. The Navy and the Royal Society were even-handed in their accolades. Scott had been promoted and Shackleton was elevated to the peerage. Neither man had yet congratulated the other.
Scott would never forgive Shackleton his landing on McMurdo Sound. When he got command of the Nimrod, Shackleton promised to stay away from the sound, which Scott claimed was his territory. But as he sailed in he realized it wasn’t possible to make land anywhere else. Scott could hardly have expected him to turn tail, but he still hadn’t forgiven Shackleton. This was only the latest irritant in the open sore of their relationship and while neither had outright bad mouthed the other, they poached each other’s men. They tried to catch the march on each other’s innovations. They bristled when the other’s name was spoken. Shackleton had designed a tent ideal for polar conditions. Scott refused to use it. They were an odd pair – walking in each other’s footsteps, taking it in turn to lead.
Karina shifted. She laid an icy finger on Shackleton’s shoulder as she realized that last month he had travelled to Scotland to meet Sir Joseph Hooker. Two knights of the realm together. Ah, so that is what brought me here. The old man was ancient now – his skin was like paper, his eyesight was failing. In his study, the air smelled of talcum. Shackleton was guided to a chair by a butler. Hooker peered at him with rheumy yellow eyes that were unable to distinguish anything more than light and shade. He reached out and laid his thick fingers on Shackleton’s hand.
‘Tell me about your adventure,’ he said. ‘It has been a long time since I saw you.’
Shackleton wasn’t sure how to reply. He’d never met Hooker. The old man thought he was Scott. He’d be angry if it wasn’t so tragic. He realized that he hoped, most fervently, that he never got to be Britain’s oldest explorer. Better the ice should take him.
In the stillness of the old man’s study, it was clear that Hooker’s memories had faded and his passion for the Ross expedition was no longer fired by any kind of spark. Many of the names on the Antarctic map these days commemorated men with whom Hooker was not acquainted.
‘I cannot settle,’ Shackleton admitted as if it was a holy confession. ‘Once you’ve been down on the pack …’
‘Marry.’ Hooker grasped his arm. ‘You must marry a good woman. A family life is the thing. The right woman will be your greatest conquest, you’ll see.’
Karina reeled as she stared at him.
‘Emily,’ Shackleton said.
‘Well, there you are.’
After the meeting, in the first-class waiting room at Glasgow’s Central Station, Shackleton waited for the London train. He’d hoped to find a kindred spirit in Hooker – a veteran of the ice. He’d hoped to find someone to whom he could admit that he had felt as if something was with him that first time out and that it had never entirely gone away. A whispering spirit or a deity perhaps. Either way, he’d swear on his mother’s grave that someone had been walking alongside him. One minute it was a cloud, then a gust of wind and sometimes a thin ray of sunshine, but it had been there. It had stayed with him, troubling and comforting at once. Shackleton tried to dismiss it. He thought of this sixth sense as his Irish side, but when it came to it, he knew that in this matter, and perhaps this matter alone, his instincts made more sense than his rational mind.
‘Are you married?’ Shackleton asked Bowers.
‘No,’ the boy said. He was young – still in his twenties – and, Shackleton noticed, his shoes were worn. Not all the Royal Indian Marine’s sons were monied. This one, however, must be talented, at least, and Scott must trust him if he was in charge of loading supplies.
‘Where have you served?’
‘Ceylon,’ Bowers smiled. ‘America, Australia, Burma – you know.’
‘Those are different waters to where you’re going. Positively tropical.’
‘I’m from Scotland. Greenock.’
‘Still.’
‘A chap can only fling himself into an expedition. I’ve always wanted to see the south. I’ve thought of it since I was a child.’
‘After glory?’
Bowers shook his head. ‘Was it glory for you?’ he asked.
Shackleton laughed. He no longer believed in heroes. It was the challenge that counted. Proving your mettle.
‘There is no glory in it, Bowers. That’s the truth,’ he said. ‘The Antarctic is a hard place and mesmerizing. She’ll take your love, your life and your devotion and she’ll give nothing back. An attempt on the pole is only unfinished business. That’s all it can ever be. Afterwards, when they offer you glory, it doesn’t mean anything any more. You can’t help yourself. You just want to get back on the ice.’
Wilson was disquieted by such talk.
‘Well, it’s for the good of Britain. It wouldn’t be our glory in any case – it’d belong to his Majesty – to the nation.’
‘Strange ho
w countries are female,’ Shackleton pondered. ‘Both Britain and the South Pole.’
‘They just are feminine, don’t you think?’ Wilson said.
At the next table, a man peered carefully around the corner of his newspaper. It was the most extraordinary conversation. Generally in the members’ lounge if you were going to discuss anything it was the cricket.
‘It is women who inspire us, though,’ Bowers said. ‘That’s why England is always referred to as she.’
Karina laughed. He was a romantic. Women indeed. She saw him with his mother, earlier and his sister too. He had scrimped on his equipment as they had trailed from shop to shop picking up the last things he needed on his ever-decreasing budget. Bowers dreamed of softness. Girls blonde as angels, like she used to be. Frills. Flounces. Accomplishments.
‘Well, the Antarctic is definitely not a lady.’ Shackleton’s laugh sounded like a bark. ‘She’s a cold and knowing widow, if anything. An ice maiden. A callous whore.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’ll scare the boy with this nonsense,’ Wilson objected.
Bowers leaped to his own defence. ‘I’ve wanted to see it since I was a nipper. Whether I’m on the final expedition or not. I want to see it. Her, I mean.’
‘And not make the pole? Surely, the pole’s the thing. You’re chipper, Bowers. That’s good. Just make sure you don’t die trying whatever Scott sets you to.’ Shackleton couldn’t help himself. ‘Sometimes the skipper makes poor decisions. You’re trusting the old man with your life.’
‘That’s enough!’ Wilson raised his voice. ‘Your life was never in danger because of Captain Scott, Shackle. You take that back.’
Shackleton waited for a moment. The whisky had gone to his head and the discomfort on the air sobered him.
‘Probably not,’ he admitted. ‘But it could have been. I maintain we might have made it if—’
Wilson put up his hand. ‘That’s quite enough.’
Bowers shifted. He thought both Scott and Shackleton were marvellous. With so much in common, what could they have to argue about?
Wilson looked relieved when the porter whispered discreetly in Shackleton’s ear. Emily was waiting for him in the hallway. He got to his feet with gruff good humour and pulled himself away. Emily made Shackleton happy, but the Antarctic was a formidable mistress.
‘I wish both of you the best of luck – Wilson. Bowers. And my best to Oriana, Wilson,’ he half bowed.
Wilson and Bowers remained silent as Shackleton strode away.
‘I’m glad to have met him,’ Bowers said, his voice low.
As Shackleton turned his wife towards the dining room, he wished fervently that his marriage was his greatest conquest. It would be far simpler.
Karina was surprised at herself. Her mind’s eye was not drawn back to Hooker’s study. Still, the image of him stayed with her. At least Hooker knew he was alone, she thought. The very old always do. He was separate somehow from his chair and books and papers. From the family photographs and his attentive butler. He was, she realized, ready to die. And yet, she didn’t stay there. She couldn’t. Her gaze lingered on Wilson and she caught up with him, not that night but some days later.
The doctor had one last mission before the ship left London. He had said his farewells, he had left money in the bank for his wife to draw on, he had prayed privately in the sailor’s church in Greenwich – a personal totem for luck – and lastly, he had held Oriana as she wept, which she did every time he departed. Now he made for the west of the city – to Notting Hill Gate where George Vince’s widow had settled – as far away from London’s ports and their population of sailors as possible.
Scott had written to Mrs Vince upon the occasion of her husband’s death, as he had intended. But it was Wilson who sought her out when he got home. Writing was one thing, he felt, but having the courtesy to look the woman in the eye was quite another. It was a shabby brick-built terrace like thousands of others in the capital. Children played in the dirt on the road. He bided his time on the doorstep of the boarding house Mrs Vince ran, until a shabby-looking serving girl answered the bell and saw him into an unexpectedly bright front room while she went to fetch her mistress.
Mary Vince entered, rolling down her sleeves. She must have been engaged in some kind of household activity.
‘Oh, sir,’ she said, shocked to see him. ‘It’s you, Doctor Wilson. The girl said you was a gentleman looking for lodging. Whatever can I do for you?’
Wilson smiled. ‘I am returning to the south, Mrs Vince, and I wondered if I might do you the service of taking anything with me. Anything you might like to leave at your husband’s memorial?’
Mary hopped onto a comfortable chair by the fireplace. She was a sprightly woman almost thirty years of age now.
‘I can get the girl to light the fire, sir, if you would like? It’s cold for June,’ she offered.
Wilson shook his head.
‘The thing is,’ Mary Vince continued, ‘I got married again. It does no good for a person to be on their own, does it, sir?’
‘I am certain George would be glad to know you are settled.’ Wilson said.
Mary Vince looked only a little dubious, for she married a man with whom George was acquainted. They once brawled in a bar not half a mile from where she was now sitting and they never made it up before George left.
‘Will you sail soon, sir?’ she changed the subject.
‘Almost at once. Well.’ Wilson did not want to linger where surely he was unwelcome. ‘I must be getting along.’
Mary Vince jumped to her feet. ‘It’s kind of you not to forget me. George would have appreciated that.’
Wilson was not sure how to reply. Now and then when a man died in the business of polar exploration, it was generally unavoidable. The Antarctic weather was a trap set to freeze a fellow’s blood in his veins. A wave might sweep a sailor overboard into icy waters from which his body would never be recovered. Anything might happen. But George Vince’s death was entirely avoidable. Barne should have camped. Mrs Vince was too kind or perhaps the poor woman simply did not realize.
‘All good wishes, madam, on your marriage. My congratulations to the lucky man,’ Wilson said as he turned to go.
Walking uphill towards the more salubrious area of Holland Park the doctor marvelled at how quickly the world recovered from the death of its heroes. He wondered how quickly it might do so should he succumb to the grim Antarctic weather. The night before Oriana had clung to him but a year or two from now if he fell victim to the pole, might she simply find someone else? Love is the only thing we have in the end. That and a few scraps of sensation. The thought surprised him. Wilson was not given to dramatic statements or sentimentality. The idea came out of nowhere, a gift from the heavens, and he decided not to ponder it – the implications were simply too awful, for if love was all he had, then what was he doing boarding the Terra Nova and setting out on this difficult mission? He turned into Holland Park Avenue and comforted himself that Mary Vince, after all, was quite a different kind of woman from his wife.
And far off, Karina felt a sting of jealousy that Mrs Vince had taken her husband’s death so lightly. That she had loved again. That she had not been abandoned. She turned back towards the pole and she waited. For, it seemed Scott was set to return.
TWENTY-ONE
In no time at all, she could feel him. The cluster of dark wooden huts waited, ready. There was still a crate of whisky in the store, left behind in the rush to leave last time. Out on the ice both Scott and Shackleton had peppered the landscape with provisions they had buried and marked with flags to supply their expeditions. The winter had swallowed the tins and boxes whole, smoothing them over with snow till they were only bumps on the horizon and the flags had disappeared, cut to pieces by the wind.
She curled on the craggy edge of the ice and relished the silence. A shoal of seals stared back at her and then dived casually under the waves. The whales beyond them sang the whole dark winter long
. A mother would dote on her calf, even a fully grown one. It was quiet now and the snow sparkled in the low sunlight. It seemed impossible there had ever been a blizzard or a storm. That the weather had ever been any way other than this, here and now. Blue sky. Calm water. They think they can tame it.
She thought of the women who had been left behind. Scott’s wife, who, she realized, had travelled with him as far as New Zealand, ambitious for her own part in his glory as the muse of a national hero. Oriana Wilson, the doctor’s true love. Mary Vince. While their husbands embarked on extraordinary adventures, their lives were day-to-day but also somehow fruitful. Frances Hooker had bequeathed the world her garden, her children and her home. Hooker must have loved her. He must have. What did I leave behind?
Karina cast her eyes towards her grave. Her ice mummy stared back, eyes shrunken. That is my legacy and nothing else, she thought, and came back to Hooker’s blank-eyed stare as he gazed uncomprehending at her spirit through the window. The men would become famous for their sojourn in the south, but nobody would even know she had been here – the first woman to step foot on the ice pack.
Still, she was drawn to them. She tried to sleep but the darkness had not taken her.
Aboard the Terra Nova, now, it was late. In the small hours, the mess table was littered with glasses, the empty bottles moved with the ship. The officers had settled. Wilson had retired to his cabin, but a few of the others still sat around the table. Bowers was there and another man called Evans, which was causing problems because what was one to do with two Evanses. And then there were Oates and Cherry – two new recruits, plucked from the eight thousand hopefuls. They pored over the photographs that had been taken by Skelton on Scott’s last expedition. Some pictures seemed to be missing – days unrecorded – but they were too drunk to discuss why. Skelton, for his part, had been quizzed by everyone from the Navy to the Royal Society to Scott himself but he would only say that there was a problem with the developing process in the cold.
The Ice Maiden Page 21