The Birthday Boys

by Beryl Bainbridge

  I must have listened for an hour or more to Bill rhapsodising over his nature study excursions, and a further hour while he and Birdie drivelled on about the Greeks and their notion of tragedy. I can’t pretend to know what Bill’s getting at when he says the ‘joy of being’ incorporates a delight in annihilation; not unless he means it’s all right for a fellow to break his neck coming off his hunter when clearing an eleven-foot hedgerow.

  Scott didn’t open his mouth. Nor did Teddy Evans. In Scott’s case I don’t believe he was out of his depth, rather that he had as little sympathy with the argument as I had. I reckon Bill’s whole philosophy is damnably unhealthy. Any man who spends years trying to find out why grouse fall sick of a parasitic disease, and is tickled pink at discovering it’s to do with some blob clinging to dew on the bracken, must have a very limited love of life. Dear me! Bill is the sweetest old chap in the world – one just gets a mite tired of his being so depressingly good.

  He and Birdie got onto another subject which left me equally in the cold – something to do with the birds of Stymphalos being frightened into the air by the shaking of a bronze rattle.

  ‘No,’ said Bill. ‘That won’t do. They were all shot. And besides, surely they were no bigger than kingfishers?’

  ‘Well,’ said Bowers, ‘what about Phosphoros, son of the Morning Star, and his wife Alkyone? Weren’t they turned into birds which nested on the sea in mid-winter?’

  ‘Halcyon days,’ Bill enthused. ‘Jolly good try, Birdie.’

  In the middle of their smiling at each other in mutual if mysterious, gratification Teddy jumped in with a reminiscence of the time he’d sailed as a junior officer on The Morning, the relief ship sent out to rescue the Discovery expedition. At this Scott looked fit to boil over, though he held his tongue. Teddy made a good joke – he said the ship was known as ‘Joy Cometh in the Morning’. He spoilt it by boasting that he and a chap called Dorley had been given the nickname of the Evanly twins, on account of their winning the two most coveted prizes awarded by the Worcester, Dorley snatching the Gold Medal and Teddy the cadetship into the Royal Navy.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Bowers, ‘how ripping. I tried for the Gold but I hadn’t a hope.’ At which Scott took out his blessed diary and began to scribble furiously.

  Teddy would have gone on if one of the seamen hadn’t shouted out for Bill. Apparently Petty Officer Evans had cut his hand working on the sledges. Before he could go outside to see how serious it was Evans bawled, ‘It’s nothing, Dr Wilson, sir. Nothing at all. Hardly a scratch. Don’t you disturb yourself.’

  Scott said Evans was a marvel, a blooming marvel. ‘You realise,’ he told us, ‘that building a sledge in these conditions is phenomenal. Nobody’s ever done it before.’ And no doubt recording the fact, he continued to dash his pencil across the page.

  Teddy pulled a face. Whether it signified contempt for the Petty Officer or our Leader is a moot point. Most likely both. The animosity between Scott and Teddy hadn’t exactly been hidden. Times without number Bill had stepped in to keep the peace, and Teddy wore himself ragged trying to outdo Scott on the marches not that it did him much good; the one thing Scott thrives on is competition and he’s a formidable opponent. In spite of his nervous temperament – I’ve never known such a chap for tears – he’s tremendously strong. I’d go so far as to say he has more stamina than the lot of us rolled up together, and that includes Bowers. Meares said Scott reminded him of one of those natives who could dance about on hot coals; he reckoned they withstood the pain simply because they couldn’t stand the thought of the mind being controlled by the body.

  Until we reached the Glacier Teddy was in charge of a dog team, and time and again he romped into camp after us, fresh as a daisy. This really got Scott’s goat; he couldn’t wait to send the teams back. I can’t excuse him for having allowed his dislike of Teddy to fuel his already irrational prejudice against the use of dog transport.

  Some argue that Teddy hadn’t forgiven Scott for reinstating the drunken Petty Officer, others that it went deeper and stemmed from the time he had high hopes of leading the Expedition himself. Then there was that bust-up in South Africa between their respective wives, Mrs Evans blubbing because she’d received an invitation to Government House a day later than Mrs Scott, and Mrs Scott rounding on her and shouting she was a silly gubbins for minding.

  The following morning at our hotel in Simonstown, Cherry and I were knocked awake at some ungodly hour and summoned downstairs to join Scott and his wife for breakfast. Cherry couldn’t eat anything; he had a fearful crush on Mrs S and shredded the bread rolls into crumbs, which he arranged in rows across the cloth and shoved about as though they were dominoes. Scott was effusively genial, which I took for a bad sign. He would keep saying how well I looked.

  ‘I’m amazed to see you’re again wearing bootlaces,’ Mrs Scott said – she’d taken an interest in my footwear once before.

  ‘It’s possibly Sunday,’ I rejoined. ‘The two often go together.’

  ‘I’ve come to the conclusion,’ she said, digging viciously into her grapefruit, ‘that things ought to be considered in pairs.’

  ‘Darling,’ said Scott, ‘you’re spraying me.’

  ‘If it had been up to me,’ she burst out, ‘I’d have interviewed the wives first.’ Apparently she’d had to read a library book to Mrs E for two hours in order to calm her down, and it was a perfectly ghastly book, all about women simpering over their sewing and reaching for the smelling salts every time a man came within ten yards of them.

  ‘I think that was jolly decent of you,’ Cherry said, making sheep’s eyes across the table.

  ‘On the contrary,’ snapped Scott, ‘it was the least she could do, seeing it was her fault Mrs Evans got into such a state in the first place.’

  Mrs Scott wasn’t at all put out. ‘Don’t you just hate women?’ she asked me, as though she was something quite other.

  Things came to a head at a civic reception in New Zealand. Mrs E took it as a personal slight that Scott didn’t give her the first dance, and Evans backed her up. Later I learnt from Atkinson there’d been a hullabaloo in the ladies’ powder-room. He’d taken a cousin to the ball, who was present when Mrs S and Mrs E began a magnificent battle which lasted fifteen rounds. Mrs Wilson flung herself into the fight after the tenth and there was rumoured to be more blood and hair flying around than you’d find in a Chicago slaughterhouse.

  Bill, being Bill, protests that Scott had nothing against Teddy beyond he regarded him as lightweight and something of a slacker. As I tried to warn young Gran, it simply doesn’t do to be seen loafing about when Scott has his beady eye on one. A man could march for nine hours, unload the tents, build the snow walls, feed the animals, see to his personal gear, and Scott would still find him something extra to be getting on with. Meares and I got away with it by decamping to the stables; at least there we could lounge in peace.

  If it came to it, I’d have to agree that Teddy is lightweight, but I don’t suppose any of us will ever forget what a good sport he was during his command of the Terra Nova, or the blazing good fun we had those sea nights we sat round the wardroom table, hollering like banshees and laughing until we cried.

  ‘Weren’t they good times?’ I asked out loud, and they all looked at me. ‘I was thinking about home … Gestingthorpe,’ I lied, not wanting to antagonise Scott by reminding him of how little he’d been missed on the voyage out.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, closing his notebook and tucking it into the pouch strapped to his chest. ‘I saw the photographs you had pinned up in the hut … it’s a fine building.’

  ‘I’m going to make a few improvements when I get back,’ I said. ‘In fact, they’re already in hand … nothing very ambitious … a new dressing-room next to my sister’s bedroom, some more shelves in the library, extra kennels beyond the stables … that sort of thing. One day I’d really like to build a swimming-pool … Trouble is, the best place to put it as regards sunlight would be on the
south terrace, and I can’t see my mother agreeing to that. I expect I’ll have to wait until …’ And here I broke off, because I don’t believe I’d ever seriously thought of the possibility of my mother dying. Well, I had, but I’d never linked it to swimming-pools.

  ‘Titus, old chap,’ said Bill, ever sensitive, ‘when we get home I’d dearly like to meet your mother. You must promise to invite me to tea. I might even do a sketch of the house.’

  ‘There’ll be currant cake,’ Teddy murmured, and we all laughed.

  ‘You’ll get more than tea,’ I said. ‘My mother’s likely to kill the fatted calf. You should have been there on my twenty-first birthday.’ And suddenly I wanted to tell them about my mother and my home and all the memories I’d kept bottled up inside me while we dragged those damn sledges mile after mile and my feet froze in my boots.

  ‘I was in hospital in South Africa on my birthday,’ I began, ‘after I’d copped it in that skirmish with the Boers. I’d lost three stones and was as weak as a kitten. That chap Campbell-Bannerman later accused the army of barbarism in its conduct of the war, but I just did as I was told. In point of fact I was far more alarmed about the proposed reforms – the changing of uniforms, Wolseley’s campaign for the abolition of bought commissions, his insistence that promotion should rest on ability rather than seniority. I was young, don’t forget, and hidebound, though I did approve of his wanting to break down the barriers between men and “officers and gentlemen”, and dub the whole lot soldiers.

  ‘I sailed home on the Bavarian, and my mother cried when she saw me so wasted and on crutches. You’ve never known such a fuss to be made of a fellow. My sister Lilian used to come into my room in the middle of the night and force chicken broth down my gullet. My brother Bryan spent hours poring over jigsaws laid on a tray across my lap, making out he didn’t know which piece fitted into the sky. I think he imagined I’d lost my mind along with that three stone in weight. When the weather improved they put me out in the garden on a deckchair and Violet read poetry to me. It was frightful stuff and mostly sent me to sleep. In mid-June, when I was better, they gave me a birthday party to make up for the one I’d missed the previous March.

  ‘It was a magnificent bash. There was a tea for the village children in the schoolhouse, banners and flags all over the place, coconut-shies and a steam-roundabout juddering away in the Long Meadow, and at four o’clock most of the tenants sat down to a dinner in the main barn, my mother, the vicar and the estate manager taking their respective places at the head of the three trestle tables. My mother’s a wonderful woman for catching the mood of the moment, for knowing what’s suitable. We had quantities of roast beef washed down with nut beer …’ And here I stopped my babbling and swallowed, the very utterance of the word beef filling my mouth with saliva. Dear God, at that moment I would have traded my immortal soul for a mouthful of rump steak smeared with horseradish.

  ‘After we’d eaten the plum pudding,’ I continued. ‘Jordan, the head keeper, stammered through an address of welcome, followed by the vicar waffling on in praise of gallant young men, myself in particular, and ending up with a baffling comparison between my “bravery” and that Frenchman Becquerel’s assertion that atoms, thought for almost a century to be the ultimate units of matter, might contain yet smaller particles. None of us had the faintest idea what he was getting at, though most gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was being complimentary. At any rate, my mother looked as proud as punch, so I sat there smirking and pretending it was just the ticket, when all I actually wanted to do was go and admire my new steeplechaser, an absolute ripper of a brute, black as coal and glossy with it.

  ‘There was a dance later. A limp is a marvellous excuse for getting out of all that waltzing rot, and after doing my duty and taking my mother, my sisters and the vicar’s wife once each round the floor I was able to slope off to bed. I would have gone to the stables, but, to tell the truth, I was more done in than I cared to admit.

  ‘I didn’t notice the picture right away. I read for a bit, and then Chalmers came in to put on more coals and I asked her why she wasn’t at the dance and she said she was going as soon as she’d seen to the fires. I told her she could extinguish the light. I wasn’t lying flat, because I was finishing a cigarette, and I blew one of those smoke-rings, an absolute belter, which rose sideways and sailed towards the hearth, drawn by the draught from the chimney. It was then, my gaze following its wobbling lassoo, that I noticed the picture, still in its tarnished green frame, hung on the wall above the mantelshelf. I found out later that my mother had given instructions for it to be removed from the old night nursery only that morning – I told you she was a woman with a remarkable sense of occasion.

  ‘The picture – it was a print – was of Queen Victoria seated side-saddle on a piebald pony, John Brown holding its bridle, taken in the courtyard of Balmoral Castle. It was a very small pony and its rider somewhat stout. One could tell from the expression on the Queen’s face that she found the pony restive.

  ‘From the time I could name things the picture had dangled on its cord above the tin soldiers marching along the third shelf in the nursery alcove. I called the pony Boy Charger. Owing to some bulge in the stonework of the wall the picture mostly hung askew. Before going down for her supper my nurse leant on tiptoe against the fireguard and poked it straight with her finger. When I was old enough I shoved it back into place with the handle of my tennis racket.

  ‘Looking at it by firelight, the reflection of the flames licking the glass, it was easy to conjure up the sound of hooves skittering on cobblestones. “Mr Brown,” the stout lady said in my dreams, “be so good as to keep Boy Charger under control.” “Get away woman,” John Brown replied, “ye canna expect me to hold back the dawn.”’

  After this somewhat embarrassing outburst I fell silent, and might have remained so if Birdie hadn’t asked me if I’d done any pig-sticking while in India. I said I had, but much preferred polo, which struck me as the same thing, though without the screaming, at which Scott and Bill looked fit to poop.

  ‘It’s all right, Uncle Bill,’ said Birdie. ‘If you’d seen what pigs get up to in India you’d feel sticking was too good for them. They root about among corpses, you know. I’ve never eaten a sausage since.’

  It was Birdie’s mention of India that set me off again; besides it had been a long time since we’d sat around doing nothing. Usually when we halted we either ate and moved on again, or ate and slept, and now we sat idle in that cramped, wind-torn tent, listening to the hiss of the primus and the occasional burst of hammering as the seamen outside reconstructed the sledges.

  I told them of the jackal hunts we’d gone on in Mhow, how we blew the horn at six in the morning. ‘… When the scent was still on the dew and the sun not yet fiery. A sister of one of the adjutants came out with us on several occasions; she was the first woman I’d ever seen riding astride … I can’t say it was an edifying sight. She was present when one of the jugglers came into camp, the time Maltravers made an ass of himself. This juggler was quite famous. With one stroke of his sword he could cut in half a lime fruit balanced on the palm of his assistant’s hand. Pinkie Maltravers was convinced it wasn’t possible. Thinking to expose the chap as a fake, he held out his own hand and told the juggler to perform the trick again. After studying his palm for some moments the Indian wallah refused. “I thought so,” shouted Pinkie triumphantly, only to have the juggler examine his other hand. “I will do it on this one,” he said. “What the deuce difference does it make?” demanded Pinkie. At which the juggler explained that his other palm was too hollow in the centre and the sword would most probably take off his thumb. One could tell that Pinkie was in a bit of a funk, but he couldn’t very well show the white flag, not with us all watching, and so he closed his eyes and stretched out his arm. The sword flashed down and the lime collapsed neatly in two. Pinkie said he’d had to bite on his tongue not to snatch back his hand at the last moment, and reckoned the beatings he�
�d got at school had stood him in good stead. The adjutant’s sister fainted before the sword fell.’

  On and on I babbled, during and long after we’d finished our evening meal, remembering places visited and things past, my days at Eton, my time in Egypt, the colour of the flowers in the borders of my mother’s garden, as though my life was one of Bryan’s jigsaws and I was determined to fit in all the pieces, until, the hot food making me drowsy and the picture all but complete, I trailed into silence. Whereupon Scott leaned across and, taking hold of my shoulders and shaking me affectionately, exclaimed, ‘You funny old thing, Titus, you’ve quite come out of your shell.’ I admit I blushed.

  Birdie said later it was the first time he’d ever seen me so at ease in Scott’s company, and I believe he was right. I put it down to the fact that with the ponies slaughtered and off my hands, and Meares and Cherry no longer with us, I was forced to make the best of things.

  The following morning Teddy’s team – Lashly, Crean and Bowers – were told to leave their skis behind and march on foot. On the face of it this seemed a pretty strong indication of their not going on to the Pole, but one never knew with Scott. Teddy looked the picture of misery all day and even Bowers had hardly a word to say for himself. I asked Bill what he thought it meant and he snapped that he was as baffled as the rest of us.