The Birthday Boys

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘Surely I won’t be included?’ I said, and he said, ‘Is there any reason why you shouldn’t be?’ I hadn’t told him about my leg.

  There was a lot of whispering between Scott and Bill when we camped that night. Bowers’s name cropped up several times. I woke in the small hours to see the candle still burning and Scott propped up in his sleeping-bag, scribbling in his notebook.

  At dawn, while the rest of us were drinking our tea, he went into the other tent and told its occupants what he’d decided. Imagine our astonishment when he returned and said Bowers would be coming on with us for the last slog. Every detail of that final journey – tent, food, fuel, etc. – had been worked out with four men in mind, and now it would be five!

  As for me, my inclusion was so unexpected that I didn’t know what to feel. It did cross my mind to tell Scott I wasn’t fit, but when I thought of how Teddy Evans and his lot had been manhauling three-hundred miles longer than any of us owing to the breakdown of the motors, and still appeared as keen as mustard, I felt ashamed. It seemed foolish, never mind cowardly, to back out when only ten or eleven days of marching separated us from our goal. I came to the decision that even if I didn’t much want to go on for myself, I very much wanted to do so for my regiment. It would be a tremendous feather in the Inniskillings’ cap if I made it to the Pole.

  I had to write a letter to my mother for Teddy to take with him, telling her I wouldn’t be home for another year as we’d almost certainly miss the ship. I said I was feeling very well, perhaps better than anyone else with the exception of Bowers. I didn’t want her worrying about me. I asked her to ignore all the unkind comments I’d made about Scott in previous letters, as it was only the cold and the terrible plight of the ponies that had made me sound so scathing and that really he was a good fellow and utterly decent when it came to things that mattered.

  I enclosed a list of books I wanted her to send out to the Terra Nova at Lyttelton, so that I could study for my major’s exam on the voyage home. I knew that would please her. I’m afraid I’ve always been a fearful dunce, but I did truly feel that the experiences of the last two years had made me altogether steadier and that I was at last ready to apply myself to books and that sort of stuff.

  Teddy was awfully cut up at turning back, and Crean wept. I was sorry Lashly wasn’t coming with us in place of Taff Evans. None of us, with the exception of Scott, had much time for the Welshman, though he was a splendid worker in the traces and quite the strongest puller among us.

  Scott made a gracious speech before we made our farewells, in which he thanked the support party for agreeing to return short-handed and urged them to remember it had been a team effort.

  ‘It may be us four … five,’ he said, hastily correcting himself, ‘who will stand at the Pole in a few days’ time, but we will never forget that it was you who sent us there.’

  Then Teddy called for three cheers and Scott gave the order to start. With what excitement we set off, what optimism! Every time we looked back those three figures were still standing there, waving, turning black and dwindling as the distance widened.

  Our high spirits lasted all of two days, mostly on account of the smooth surfaces and calm weather. Four in the tent had been cramped enough, five was a squeeze and cooking for five took longer than for four, but it didn’t matter when the sun was so warm we could stand about outside the tent in perfect comfort.

  Then the weather turned bad and we got amongst sastrugi and had to take off our skis and pull on foot. Bowers, of course, was without his the whole time. Scott got into a frightful dither over whether or not we should dump our skis altogether, and no sooner had he made up his mind and we’d done as he ordered and had struggled on another fearful two miles or so, than the surface improved and he had us plodding back to retrieve them. I think we were all weaker than we let on – I know I was – and we simply couldn’t afford to be indecisive and fritter away our meagre resources of energy on such manoeuvres. Cold was one thing, and hunger another, and we’d grown callous to both these forms of torture, but it was simply more than flesh could stand when exhaustion was added to the catalogue of pain. Then it mattered terribly that it took an extra half hour to get the food into our stomachs.

  Scott, poor devil, seemed genuinely perplexed at this setback. ‘I must admit,’ he confessed, ‘it hadn’t occurred to me that cooking for one more would add thirty minutes to preparation time.’ For a moment he seemed cast down. Then he said, ‘However, I’m sure we’ll get used to it.’

  In his ruthlessness of purpose he resembled Napoleon, who, when the Alps stood in the way of his armies, cried out, ‘There shall be no Alps.’ For Scott there was no such word as impossible, or if there was it was listed in a dictionary for fools. In the dreadful circumstances in which we found ourselves, half-starved and almost always frozen, our muscles trembling from the strain of dragging those infernal sledges, I expect his was the only way. To have faltered at this late stage would have been like pulling in one’s horse while it was leaping. He spared no one, not even himself, and he drove us on by the sheer force of his will. And then Birdie spotted that black flag.

  I suppose for a mile or two we kidded ourselves it might be a sastrugus, but soon we came to sledge tracks and the clear trace of dog paws – dozens of dogs. Amundsen had beaten us to the Pole. We put up the tent right away. It was curious how we each reacted to the realisation that our fearful labours had been for nothing. Birdie was angry; the Norwegians were poor sports, sneaks, not worth bothering about. When the story came to be told our feat of manhauling would be seen as the greater triumph. Bill busied himself making a sketch of the cairn and the flag and hardly opened his mouth. Scott himself was surprisingly philosophical. I think the shock of disappointment was so severe he could scarcely take it on board. He talked about his state of mind before the sailing of the Terra Nova from Cardiff, how he’d told his wife he was not quite himself, that there was some cloud hanging over him.

  ‘Kathleen said it would be all right once we were actually on the move … she was right … but I can’t help thinking it was perhaps too late. If I hadn’t been in the grip of such damnable lassitude perhaps the outcome would have been different.’

  There was nothing much one could reply to that, and none of us tried, beyond Bill murmuring that we’d achieved what we’d set out to do and at least we could plant the Union Jack at the Pole.

  For myself, it was all one, whether we were first or last at that god-forsaken spot. It was obvious that the best team had won.

  It was then that Taff Evans began to rock so violently back and forth in his sleeping-bag that we had to hold tight to the cooker for fear he tipped it over. ‘For God’s sake, man,’ cried Scott, thoroughly alarmed, and he tried to restrain him. Taff flung him off so fiercely that Scott fell against the tent pole and jarred his back.

  The Welshman was ranting that we’d all be laughingstocks when we got home, that none of our families would get a penny, that it was all right for the likes of us, but he was done for, finished. ‘I won’t never get my public house,’ he shouted. ‘Not now … no apples in the orchard, no little skiff at the water’s edge … all them bloody dreams turned as rotten as this bloody stump.’ And he pulled off his mitt and held out his hand for us to see.

  Scott turned as white as a sheet. I think if I’d had enough food in my belly I’d have vomited. Taff’s hand was vast and purple and most of his nails had gone. There was a great gash across his knuckles which gaped so-wide that the bone showed through. It wasn’t so much a hand as some grotesquely swollen fruit about to burst asunder.

  Bill took it badly. He blamed himself for not having attended to Taff’s wound when he first cut himself rebuilding the sledges. He gave the Petty Officer morphia to ease the pain. It took a long while to take effect and Taff kept up his rocking and his moaning until the tears stood in our eyes and we stuffed our fingers into our ears to drown that dreadful keening.

  We marched on the following day and came to the No
rwegian flag and tent. They’d left us a note – ‘Dear Captain Scott, As you are probably the first to reach this area after us, I will ask you kindly to forward this letter to King Haakon VII. If you can use any of the articles left in the tent please do not hesitate to do so. With kind regards. I wish you a safe return. Yours truly, Roald Amundsen.’

  Scott thought it a bit of an insult, but I reckon it was no more than a wise precaution on Amundsen’s part. The Norwegians had no more certainty than we had of getting safely home.

  We marched another two miles to the spot Birdie calculated to be the exact geographical location of the Pole. Taff Evans was more or less himself again, though he moved clumsily and once or twice I swear I heard him chuckling.

  We halted when Birdie gave the word, built a cairn and stuck the Union Jack on top. We took a photograph of ourselves; I don’t think any of us had the heart to smile. Then we started for home.

  I don’t know when Taff died … a week ago, a month. It was somewhere on the Glacier. I know that the day before we’d got into a frightful pickle. Scott said it was our own fault. We’d started in a wretched wind, pulling on skis in a horrible light that threw fantastic shadows across the snow. Birdie said he was reminded of a pantomime set for Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, all glittering back-cloths and eerie pockets of stagy darkness. As far as I could tell the world was a coffin and the lid of the sky was about to nail me down. It showed up the difference between us, but then I don’t imagine Birdie’s feet were in the first stages of gangrene.

  Around lunchtime – not that we had any food – Scott took the fatal course of steering east. I appear to put the blame on Scott, but none of us disputed his command and all of us followed him like lemmings. Truth to tell, I think he was the only one among us capable of making any decisions. Wilson had snow-blindness, Birdie still suffered under the delusion that it would be worldly to thrust himself forward, and Evans had gone soft in the brain. Scott had insisted Bill give him morphia at regular intervals, for pity’s sake, and half the time the Welshman was floundering on in a merciful haze of oblivion. He fell a lot, once raising a bump on his head the size of Bill’s blessed Emperor penguin eggs.

  When we got up the next morning and had crushed half a biscuit each into our mug of hot water, we had one meal remaining in the bags. If we didn’t reach the next depot by nightfall we’d go hungry. I’d got past wanting food, unlike Bill and Evans who were always complaining that they were starving. I could understand Evans’s dilemma. He had been a great brute of a man, and doubtless he needed more rations than the rest of us, but it was curious to think that slim old Bill, by nature frugal, should suffer the same pangs as that giant of a seaman. I don’t know what torments Birdie was undergoing – he was too busy being helpful, taking readings, being a kindly light in a naughty world to let on what he truly felt.

  Half an hour from setting off one of Evans’s ski shoes came adrift and he had to leave the sledge. ‘On, on,’ he shouted, waving his good hand in the air. We stopped after two hours and he slowly caught up with us. We’d hardly started again before he dropped out under the same pretence. He asked Birdie for a piece of string. Scott cautioned him not to lag too far behind, and he replied, ‘Goodness, that I won’t. It’s lonely out here. I’ll be with you in a jiffy.’

  We had our meagre lunch, and still he didn’t appear. Alarmed, we went back to look for him. He was on all fours in the snow, his gloves off and his clothes dishevelled. When we approached he barked like a dog. ‘Taff,’ said Scott, ‘what’s wrong, man?’ but the Welshman didn’t reply. We got him to his feet, supporting him on either side, with the intention of walking him back to the tent, but after no more than a few steps he sagged between us and sank to his knees. He said something then about being sorry.

  Scott sent Bowers and Wilson back for the sledge. He seemed terribly affected by Evans’s condition and, kneeling, cradled him in his arms.

  ‘You have to understand, Titus,’ he told me, ‘that a man is often a reflection of another.’

  I couldn’t make head nor tail of that, and kept silent.

  ‘I know you all puzzle over my regard for Evans,’ he said, ‘but there’s nothing very strange in it.’

  ‘The crevasse,’ I said. ‘You faced death together.’

  ‘No, Titus, nothing so simple.’ And here his face crumpled to such an extent I feared, he would howl. I turned away, pretending to look for the sledge.

  ‘Titus,’ he said, ‘did you love your father?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied.

  ‘And I loved mine,’ he said. Then he let go of Taff and got to his feet. ‘Stay with him,’ he ordered. ‘I’m going to help the others.’

  I tried to make Taff more comfortable, not that it was possible. I buttoned up his coat and thought of trying to put his gloves back on, but the sight of that awful hand unnerved me. Suddenly he stirred and opened his eyes. ‘Lois?’ he said.

  ‘Help’s coming,’ I said. ‘The Captain’s gone for the sledge.’

  He murmured something then about cigars and being sorry, and after that he closed his eyes and didn’t speak again, not ever.

  We got him into the tent and waited for him to die, which he did around noon. Bowers and Scott buried him. Bill was practically blind, and my fingers were useless with frostbite. They had intended to build a cairn over the body, but when it came to it they were too weak so they just scuffed the snow over him.

  Bill thinks it was probably that last blow to his head that really did for him, that and the state of his hand. Scott said he’d noticed a deterioration in his character even before he fell.

  ‘He was usually such a strong man,’ he said, ‘and utterly reliant, never slack, never slipshod in his work. And he understood what one was on about. Yet the day before we got to the Pole he didn’t strap the sleeping bags securely enough onto the sledge. If you remember, one went missing and Birdie had to go and look for it.’

  It was the first time the Pole had been mentioned since we’d turned back. God knows, we’d all thought about it and what it meant in regard to our home-coming, but none of us had dared to put our thoughts into words for fear of upsetting Scott. I’d had a dream three nights running in which we approached the Pole and, instead of those paw prints in the snow and that black flag, I stumbled across a small cairn with a blue enamel plate on top with a slab of steak lying across it.

  ‘It’s a dreadful thing to say,’ Scott said, ‘and I know you chaps will take it in the spirit in which it’s meant, but Taff’s death has considerably enhanced our own chances of survival.’

  And that was the first time, too, that survival had been mentioned, or rather the notion that we might not get through. There again, we’d all thought about it – I can’t imagine I was the only one who realised the food depots were spaced too far apart, and that blizzards and bad surfaces hadn’t been sufficiently taken into account.

  ‘He was holding us back,’ said Scott. ‘He was simply …’ and here he broke off and we all saw the tears welling up in his eyes.

  None of us knew how to comfort him, not even stalwart old Bill. During the last few weeks I’d revised my opinion of Scott, though I still couldn’t fathom why he had been so stupid as to disregard the overwhelming opinion that dogs were the only form of Antarctic transport. I still thought he was a poor leader of men in the military sense, meaning he hadn’t given enough attention to strengths, capacity, terrain, superiority of the enemy, but I had none the less come to recognise his other, more important qualities, not least his ability to put himself in another’s shoes. One could see in his eyes, even when he wasn’t blubbing, that his heart was too big for his boots. God knows how, but he’s managed to surmount his naval training and retain his essential humanity.

  I haven’t. Well, it’s all there, buried within myself, and I kid myself that faced with some terrible dilemma I’ll be able to drag it to the surface, that I’ll act out of an inborn sense of what is right, but I fear it’s not true. I’m too rigid, too encased
in rules and codes of behaviour.

  I’m not explaining myself very well, but I had suddenly come to comprehend why Bill loved him. Scott is the man Bill would have liked to have been. Scott can’t draw to save his life, but he sees things.

  ‘You must have wondered,’ Scott said, ‘why I cared for Evans.’

  ‘That crevasse,’ Bill said.

  ‘Exactly what Titus put it down to,’ said Scott. He remained silent for some minutes, now and then dashing the moisture from his eyes. Then he launched into a rambling account of his childhood, his love for his mother, his fear of his father. ‘My father was a drunk,’ he said. ‘It was what one would call an occupational disease, seeing he was the manager of a brewery. I daresay he had other problems to contend with … the fact that his brothers and sisters were brighter than him, that my mother was a strenuous character. She loved him, yet despised his weaknesses. All through my childhood he alternated between the good father and the bad one. Sometimes he hit us.’

  ‘Con,’ said Bill, ‘please, there’s no need.’

  ‘Once,’ Scott said, ‘on my mother’s birthday he rose up from the dinner-table and hurled the gravy-boat into her lap. Archie and I were on the landing, peering through the banisters. We couldn’t see what went on, but we heard that thud and the murmur of disgust that followed. Then my mother came out into the hall, her dress stained with meat juice, her face blank. She looked up and saw me and Archie on the stairs, and waved. I think she wanted to say something, but words failed her.

  ‘Con,’ said Bill, ‘please stop.’

  ‘What I could never forgive,’ continued Scott, ‘was the way he cried afterwards … the way he grovelled in self-pity … the way he pleaded for understanding. Taff was an altogether different kettle of fish. He drank because he enjoyed it, not because he wanted to obliterate the moment … he never once tried to excuse his alcoholic outbursts. He was a strenuous drunk, and for that I admired him.’