The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

  Mrs Scott was there too, and Dr Wilson. The doctor put himself out to be pleasant to Sarah. She asked him if there were any books to do with birds that he would particularly recommend she should read. There and then he made her out a list. While he was talking to her I overheard the Lord Mayor say something to the Owner about the ‘hazardous task’ ahead, and whether he thought it would be accomplished. The Owner replied, ‘I will reach the South Pole, or I will never come back again’, at which Mrs Scott exclaimed, ‘Con, my dearest, you will succeed.’

  We moved away from the dockside at one o’clock, the tug Falcon attached to our bow and the Bantam Cock to the stern. You’ve never heard such a coronation roar as went up when we were towed through the lock-gates; hooters and sirens whooping like devils, bands playing, detonators and guns firing, thousands of people hurrahing under the drizzling rain. Even when we got out into the Channel we were still surrounded by pleasure boats, their rails lined six deep with cheering passengers. We’d hauled aloft the Cardiff flag at the fore and the Welsh flag at the mizen, and one of the officers – Captain Oates, I expect – had hung two large leeks up with the latter, and some wag belonging to the Chamber of Commerce bellowed through the hailer that he hoped we’d left the Welsh ‘leak’ behind. We hadn’t; indeed, when the tugs let go and we began to sail under our own steam it became only too apparent we’d gained a few more.

  In the late afternoon, off the Breaksea Lightship, the Owner and the Lord Mayor’s party quitted the Terra Nova. He had the crew assembled aft to shake hands with him; he didn’t have a special word for me, simply looked me in the eye and passed on down the line. Then he said, ‘It has taken a long time and you have served me well. We are all contributing to a great enterprise which is only just beginning. Each and every one of you will play your part. I wish you godspeed and look forward to joining you at Simonstown.’

  It was still raining and a light breeze had sprung up. Mrs Scott held on to her hat as she was helped aboard the tug. Those of the after-guard not at the pumps stayed at the rail to cheer the Owner away. I doubt if he heard us; the military band aboard the Falcon was playing Auld Lang Syne, the tune coming in rags across the darkening water.

  Dr Edward (Uncle Bill) Wilson

  July 1910

  We spent three days at Madeira, taking on supplies, during which time I took the opportunity to make an excursion to the Palheiro with Titus Oates and Birdie Bowers. We rode upwards among Portuguese laurels and camellia trees growing forty-foot high. After a quarter of an hour Titus said he couldn’t stand the slow pace; pressing his heels to the sides of his mule as though he was out hunting, he wheeled about and slithered back down the winding path in a flurry of dust.

  The scenery was magnificent; abrupt precipices, wooded hills and crags, tumbling waters and a paradise of mosses, ferns and pink belladonna lilies. One moment the air was polluted with the odour of the black til (Oreodaphne foetens), so named because of its awful smell, and the next filled with the delicious scent of the beautiful lily of the valley tree (Clethra arborea).

  Halfway up we overtook a procession of mourners carrying a dead child in a litter. We dismounted, out of respect, and had a good view of the small corpse draped in white lace, its doll-like hands clasped on its breast. There was another child, whose duty it was to keep the flies away. He was smugly smiling, proud of his responsibility, dashing a palm frond to and fro above the bier.

  From the Palheiro we rode across to the Curral dos Romeiros to look at the Mount Church associated with so many miracles. Birdie was particularly taken with the one concerning the Virgin. The island being caught in the grip of famine, the inhabitants climbed in procession to the church and prayed to the statue of the Madonna for deliverance. Next day a ship loaded with grain came into the harbour, and the statue of the Madonna was found to be dripping with moisture. Some even claimed to have seen the Virgin swimming ahead of the ship, towing her in with the cable between her teeth!

  Not far from the church is Monte Quinta, with a splendid view from its summit of the Bay of Funchal and the blue ocean beyond. Birdie’s enthusiasm was touching; he is a fellow after my own heart, being possessed of many enviable qualities – self-abnegation, curiosity, a capacity for hard work, meticulous attention to detail, and above all, an unsung yet deep-rooted belief in the love of God.

  His face glowed brick-red, and he perspired so freely I feared he might melt before my eyes. He said he hated the heat and heartily took issue with Dante in placing the circle of ice below that of fire as the worst of all torments.

  I told him he might have cause to change his mind once we reached our destination.

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ he replied. ‘Excessive heat brings raging thirst, fever and delirium, whereas the cold, from what I’ve read, merely numbs the mind and positively lulls one into sleep.’

  He’s possibly in the right of it. Though I have only to glance at the scars on my hand to remind myself of the damaging effects of low temperatures, I would have to read the notes I made at the time to recall the true horror of that first expedition. The experience, once a blazing nightmare, has long since faded to a chilly dream.

  That being said, any doubts I may have had about the wisdom of coming south again have evaporated like snow under sunlight. After five weeks at sea I’m as fit as a fiddle and have actually put on weight. It’s a blessed thing to be driven by hard work, because one never feels the want of exercise. I may spend a good deal of my time standing stationary, endeavouring to turn out water-colours of the sea and the sky; but trying to keep balanced against the roll of the ship requires the use of muscles I scarcely knew existed outside the pages of an anatomy book. There is also nothing more fatiguing and laborious than a four-hour stint at the pumps. As for transferring coal from the main hold to the bunkers – within ten minutes I’m streaming with sweat and as black as a Kaffir.

  I cannot imagine now why the thought of leaving my work and committing myself to three years away from home caused me so much anguish. I tremble sometimes to think of what a wrench it was to leave my dear wife Oriana, and how quickly I have adapted to the parting. I can only suppose that it’s in a man’s nature, and mine in particular, to bury regrets and make the best of things once a decision has been made.

  I’m fortunate, of course, in that my fellow voyagers have turned out to be so congenial. With the exception of one or two, and I readily admit my antipathy towards them springs not so much from their defects as from my own deplorable lack of tolerance, one couldn’t wish for more delightful companions. Campbell will make an excellent leader, Pennell and Atkinson are absolutely splendid, Nelson a perfect treasure, and young Cherry Garrard as deserving of encouragement as any man I’ve met. As for Titus Oates, I’m beginning to suspect there is a great deal more to him than his air of amused taciturnity would have us believe.

  And then there’s Birdie: it strikes me as mysterious the way the right man emerges just when destiny has need of him. I really believe Bowers to have been placed at our disposal by something other than chance. Listening to his history – and he’s the most modest of fellows – his navigation of the Irrawady, his accounts of shore-leaves spent bicycling across India, through terrain menaced by bear, leopard and elephant with nothing more formidable than a butterfly net strapped to his back, one can only marvel at his endurance.

  Con recognised his worth at once, which is why he signed him on. The rest of us took him at face value; we thought him too young, too unprepossessing, too short of stature to rise above the common herd. We should have remembered Napoleon.

  Just before dinner the other evening Nelson spotted a Portuguese man-of-war floating in its glassy bubble off the port side. They’re astonishingly beautiful in their natural element, reflecting water and sky. Once removed from the sea they go out like a candle, the colour snuffed away. I did a painting of it, all the same. Birdie, studying both the finished water-colour and the shrunken original, remarked how obviously the finger of God illuminates the animate world.


  It’s significant, after so short a time, how we have all shaken down and begun to work as a team. Birdie and I are usually the first up in the morning. The ship now having run into the doldrums, and below decks often as steamy as a Turkish bath, we sleep on top of the ice-house. There are few more enjoyable experiences in this world than lying under the shooting stars to the sound of the wind moaning through the rigging, and the voice of dear old Birdie asking his interminable questions.

  First job for everyone is a stint at the pumps – the ancient ship leaks like a sieve – after which some of us go over the side to bathe and others make do with hauling up buckets of sea water. I must say I’m considerably less enamoured of the former method since a shark made a beeline for Birdie. He, not at all put out, merely removed that absurd green hat he wears at all times and sweeping it round above his head hollered so loudly the shark took fright and fled. When I asked him if he had not felt afraid, he said, ‘Certainly, Uncle Bill, but it wouldn’t have done to let the beggar know it.’

  When it rains, as it frequently does in these latitudes, you’ve never seen such a sight topside. The entire ship’s company strips off and stands naked beneath the tropical downpour. Some of us take the opportunity to wash our clothes in the stream that forms between the laboratories and the ward-room skylight.

  By eight o’clock I’m generally in the crow’s-nest with my sketch-book and colours. The sunsets and sunrises in these regions are spectacular. Sometimes the equatorial sky resembles a vast continent soaring above us, its snow-capped mountains ringed with fire, its blue oceans edged by shores of blazing gold. At others, the clouds, sliding from pink to green to sullen purple, press so low that the ship quivers and stands still, stuck in black water under the bell-jar of the heavens, until, as though some mighty artery had burst, the sun nudges the horizon and stains the world with crimson light.

  For two or three hours I make my poor attempts to capture such wonderful effects on paper, and then continue my work on Lord Lovat’s survey of diseases in grouse which I hope to complete by the time we reach Simonstown. Any odd hour left over sees me at the ward-room table working out sledging rations for the depot journey.

  Lord knows what I should do if the crow’s-nest wasn’t available to me. Quite apart from its being the best vantage point from which to work, it also enables me to be solitary. Constant companionship exhausts me, and but for my lonely hours up against the sky I would find the boisterous evenings unbearable. I’m something of a dull fish, and though I’m flattered when one or other of the chaps come to me with their grievances – and sooner or later they all do – I’m much afraid that my reputation for patience and impartiality stems more from lassitude than involvement. Better to say nothing than to condemn, and to laugh with than to criticise, and so much happier.

  Con is far more intuitive than I am. For example: upon first meeting Cherry-Garrard he deduced him to be a timid young man, much diminished by a domineering father and an over-protective mother. I haven’t the slightest idea how he reached such a conclusion on such short acquaintance, but I daresay he’s right. I have no quarrel with his additional observation that Cherry’s heart is in the right place.

  The fact that we all mix so well is greatly to the credit of Teddy Evans. Though he could be considered somewhat lightweight, a little too boyish at all times, his lack of complexity and absence of moods are in the best interests of those under his command. The men respond to him well, and he seems to bear not the smallest grudge towards Petty Officer Evans, whose drunken behaviour after the Lord Mayor’s reception in Cardiff – it took six men to carry him back to the ship – caused so much personal affront. What one needs in these cramped conditions is to be under the government of a sunny disposition, and in this respect Teddy more than fills the bill.

  He’s the leader of the pack when it comes to ragging; it was he who instigated the originally innocent game of ‘The Parish Priest Has Lost His Cap’, which now ends with the entire ward-room losing their trousers. I haven’t laughed so much in years. Titus says he’s never known a rowdier mess, yet it’s all good clean fun. We behave as though we were June boys again, waiting to go into bat, and I’m convinced that these frequent displays of bubbling high spirits bode well for the greater game ahead.

  Last night, lying alongside each other in our sleeping-bags on top of the ice-house, and having exhausted me with his queries as to the reproductive processes of dolphins, thrashers and kingfish, Birdie asked me what I thought of Con. ‘You’re close to him, Bill,’ he said. ‘I have enormous respect for him myself, but I’d value your opinion.’

  ‘He’s the best,’ I replied, without hesitation. ‘If he seems unapproachable at times, it’s to do with his sense of fair play. He doesn’t want to appear to have favourites. He once confided that although he considers the sea his whole life and wouldn’t have it otherwise he nevertheless feels something of a misfit.’

  Birdie immediately wanted to know what I meant. I tried to explain how Con has often thought that being subjected to Naval discipline at such an early age, hardly more than a child, has perhaps turned him from what might have been his true direction. ‘He fancies it has made him too rigid in his ways, too protective of himself.’

  ‘When I was a boy on the Worcester,’ Birdie said, ‘they dragged me under the hose every morning and scrubbed me with a deck brush until I bled. Particularly my nose, it being so prominent.’

  ‘You poor old fellow,’ I exclaimed, and meant it. He must have been such a very small boy.

  ‘What direction might he have gone in?’ he suddenly enquired.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I told him. ‘And nor is he, his nature being a peculiar mixture of the man of action and the dreamer …’ And here I trailed into silence, feeling I had already said far too much, at which Birdie, sensitive fellow that he is, changed tack instantly and chirruped that he couldn’t wait to see South Trinidad Island.

  Thinking about my wife in the warm darkness it occurred to me there is something of the female in both Con and Birdie, though it surfaces in different ways: while only one is capricious, both are equally perceptive.

  I’m not altogether sure Oriana cares for Con, any more than she admires Kathleen Scott. I’m in favour of Mrs S, even if she is a little too forthright in her ways and not at all inclined to take a back seat, for there’s no denying she’s made Scott a happier man. She once informed me, without the trace of a smile, that she couldn’t stand women and would much prefer the world to be composed entirely of men and children.

  It’s understandable, I suppose, that Oriana should regard Con as something of a rival, he being the one to entice me from her side. When we discussed whether I should go south I told her I felt Con needed me, that in many ways I regarded him as my responsibility.

  ‘And then, of course,’ she said, ‘you have such a feeling of the absolute necessity to be doing something, at any hour of the day or night … before the end comes.’

  I have often found that women reach the heart of the matter without having the faintest idea of the route.

  Something happened to me on the morning of July 16th – the ninth anniversary of my wedding-day which disturbs me. It was dawn, and I was standing in the crow’s-nest trying to see what effects might be achieved by dragging my thumb across a wash of vermilion water-colour, humming a Schubert song, the one Oriana sang the night we first met, when suddenly my head was filled with pictures of my time at medical school.

  In those days, and I cringe now to think what a prig I was, I seriously considered becoming a missionary. My father was very much against it, as well he might be. He had supported me, without complaint, through three years of university and two years of medical training at St George’s Hospital, and here I was about to throw it all up in favour of Africa. He didn’t tell me it was out of the question; he simply suggested I should defer a decision until I had passed my final exams.

  The conceit that I might be cut out to help others doubtless stemmed from my exper
iences as a Sunday School teacher at the Caius Mission in Battersea, where I read Bible stories to the children and gave lantern-slide lectures on life in other lands. I have never forgotten that slum brat who attended with eyes bandaged, both being bunged up with ophthalmia and blepharitis. At each change of the slide he would peer up from his grimy bandages for a second or so, and then hide his head in his hands until he heard the click of the lantern heralding the next.

  It was hardly a bed of roses teaching those unwashed children – the girls smelled worse than the boys, for some brought babies with them, who howled throughout, and what with their wailing and the cry of the Hokey-Pokey man in the street outside, not to mention the Church Army band practising in the hall next door, I sometimes went home with my voice a mere croak.

  I was seeing the mission-room in my mind’s eye, those rows of shaven heads illuminated in a slant of sunlight writhing with dust, when, by some trick of the early light in the sky above me, the sea below broke into a thousand glittering fragments, and in that heavenly dazzle I clearly saw a creature, half man, half bird, soaring above the waves.

  A moment before I had been as warm as toast, and now I was so cold I shuddered, and in that shuddering blinked, and the creature was gone, though not before I had gazed down into those lidless eyes fixed on mine, observed where its powerful shoulders jutted into wings, followed the silver spray kicked up by its cruel talons as it skimmed the bright water. There was no doubt in my mind that the apparition was a harbinger of death and yet, in the blaze of that terrible second a sensation akin to joy, something pitched between sexual arousal and fear bubbled up inside me. Still my body shook, and through chattering teeth I heard myself stuttering over and over, ‘So cold … so cold … so cold.’