When Nights Were Cold

by Susanna Jones

  And it was dark when I reached the college. Curtains were drawn in most rooms around Main, but a muted light shone through and made the college shimmer. Only the top floor, as yet uninhabited, was dark. I saw spectres of future students bustling and laughing behind the black panes. I passed under the clock tower and followed the edge of the lawn around the quad to my door. In the long windows of the dining room and kitchen, silhouettes of cooks and maids moved. We were passengers and workers together on an ocean liner. I thought of my mother and sister at home, keeping the fires going and tending to my father in his bed, sailing on a different sea.

  I arrived in my corridor to see that students were already closing their doors and leaving for dinner. The hem of my skirt was damp and dirty so I went to my room and changed quickly into my best dress, cream and brown with stiff, fiddly buttons. I dashed through the building to join the others.

  Staff and students processed each night in fine gowns and jewellery. We gathered at the east common room and found our dining partners, all chosen and approved at the beginning of term. There were about a hundred and fifty students that year. Miss Hobson, the principal, would then lead us to the dining hall. The selected student of the day would walk beside her, required to make interesting and erudite conversation. No one enjoyed this privilege and each dreaded her own turn.

  The procession passed through the library and then into the museum, bright with grand candelabra. A few latecomers waited in the shadows each evening, ready to creep out and join the back of the line. Tonight I was the only one. I fell into place after the others, catching phrases of the conversations, something about a sick uncle in Littlehampton and a tiresome classics lecture that no one had understood. I shut my ears and remembered the exhibition. The picture that came to me now was not the ship itself, or any item on board, but the figure of the explorer, setting out with his sledge, in the middle of a noisy hall in London, exquisite in his peace and determination, oblivious to gaping crowds. This was my lesson. I must keep him in mind, must be like him. I lifted my hands slightly as I walked and let them find his, just inches away. Where is my glove? I had two. I smiled and touched his fingers with mine.

  The dining hall crossed the width of Main, separating the two quads. The senior staff and two chosen students sat at high table as the rest of us took our seats.

  I joined Locke, who was with Hester Morgan and Cicely Parr. She was relating a meeting she’d had that afternoon with Miss Hobson. Locke knew how to amuse her audience, had eyes that flicked easily from one listener to another, knowing just how long to rest with each person before pulling in the next. Her hands made quick, graceful gestures. Hester Morgan laughed as Locke spoke. Morgan was a pleasant, always smiling girl with a pink bulbous face, thick limbs and a voice that had the quality of a lowing cow. She was standing to be president of the Suffrage Society and always wore an ivory Votes for Women button on her lapel. She was friends with Edith Foot and, later on, the pair were to spend time in prison for suffragette activities. Morgan kicked a policeman in the face and Foot took to sleeping on the roof of a house belonging to a Tory MP. Neither ever married and they shared a house after the war, not far from Dulwich but I didn’t keep in touch. Perhaps they are still there now.

  ‘Are you all right, Farringdon?’ asked Morgan. ‘Noticed you weren’t in the lab today.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I wondered whether I should pretend to be unwell. In fact I was still quite tipsy on my adventure and was sure I glowed with good health.

  ‘She has a cough,’ said Locke, who knew where I had been. ‘And the fumes from all the chemicals make it worse.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Parr. ‘Will you be playing hockey tomorrow or should I drop you from the team?’

  Parr regarded physical infirmity as a sign of mental weakness. If a player were ill or injured, she showed no sympathy but bossed them out of the way. We put up with it because so often she led us to victory, but we sometimes asked each other what Parr would do if she twisted an ankle or felt unwell. We suspected that it would never happen. I laughed with the team but I aspired to be as strong as Parr. I had even taken up her regime of daily exercise before chapel, only making sure not to make noise and wake the others.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ I gave a pathetic cough.

  As we ate, Locke told us about her play. It was almost finished and she hoped that the Drama Society might perform it.

  ‘You’ve written a play?’ asked Morgan. ‘What’s it about?’

  Locke explained. It was a comedy. A gentleman – his name was Charles – had fallen asleep under an apple tree while listening to his friends talk about their offices in the city. When he woke – or thought he woke, for in fact he was in a strange dream – he found himself in a new world, a hundred years in the future, where people travelled in fast motor cars and families had their own hot-air balloons. And, although Charles was still a city banker, he was now a woman named Caroline. His friends were women too and they were doing the same work as before. A farcical series of events followed – I did not quite understand these – involving hot-air balloons, people in strange androgynous clothes and lions roaming through the parks of London. At the end, Charles woke up, back in 1909. He was delighted to be in a familiar world, but was no longer a complacent fool. He spent his evenings wandering between gentlemen’s clubs on the Mall giving out copies of Votes for Women.

  ‘Very interesting,’ I said. ‘And inventive.’

  ‘It’s not entirely my idea. I borrowed it from a play my father’s friend produced. It’s called When Knights Were Bold by Charles Marlowe – who is in fact a woman – but in that play the character wakes up and finds himself in the chivalrous past. I don’t think it has a political message like mine, though.’

  ‘Hot-air balloons?’ Morgan looked uncertain. ‘Do you think everyone will have one in a hundred years?’

  ‘I’m not H.G.Wells. I’m not trying to tell the future. I’m just playing. I think a hot-air balloon would be the perfect stage device for taking Charles into the future. That’s all.’

  ‘Does your play have a title?’

  ‘Turn Back the Clocks!’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said I.

  ‘Preposterous,’ said Parr. ‘Women will not be voting in parliamentary elections a hundred years from now and neither will they be turning into men. Nor men into women.’ She took her knife and fork and played bully-off with a garden pea.

  ‘Do you have to have to be rude about everything, Parr? I told you that my play is just for fun. You need to have an imagination. Well, I suppose that you don’t.’ For the first time since I had known her, Locke appeared upset. ‘And besides, we shall have the vote a hundred years from now, otherwise there’s not much point in any of us being here at all.’

  ‘Your play could be a great campaigning tool,’ said Morgan. ‘All students would want to see it. If the political message is softened with the humour of a farce, you might even convert Celia Horsfield and her friends.’

  Celia Horsfield had opposed the motion at a recent debate on votes for women. It was carried by a clear majority and Horsfield had threatened to invite well-known anti-suffrage campaigners to college to convert us. Horsfield was a vain, not very clever woman, so we found it easy to mock her.

  ‘She wouldn’t understand the point, even in a light comedy.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Parr, ‘to assume that we’re unanimous in supporting votes for women and that you’re superior in your position to Celia Horsfield. I myself am absolutely opposed to women’s suffrage. Every time I hear about it, my teeth are set on edge.’

  ‘But why?’ I took a small mouthful of pork and chewed it slowly. I had not eaten all day, but did not want to appear hungry when I was supposed to be unwell.

  ‘Because women don’t need the vote. It is not because I’m foolish or silly or haven’t bothered listening to the arguments that I believe this. I’m not a goose like Celia Horsfield. It’s very simple. Almost all women live and work in the domestic sphere and ar
e not concerned with politics.’

  ‘That’s nonsense—’

  ‘Women aren’t in public life in the way that men are and don’t need political influence. It’s dreary and depressing to see all this conflict for nothing when there are more important things to care about. None of you has ever been anywhere or done anything and you probably never will. You make far too much noise about things of which you know nothing.’

  ‘How do you know what we have all done?’ Locke’s voice rose above all others in the dining hall and the place fell quiet. There were glances from high table, some of interest and some of disapproval. Locke blushed. When talk resumed and bubbled up around the hall, we continued our argument in low voices.

  ‘Have you fought in wars?’ asked Parr. ‘Are you going to fight wars?’

  ‘Our vote might prevent wars happening.’ Morgan waved her fork. ‘And we might find treatments for injuries and diseases. We are at the beginning and we can’t say what we shall achieve.’

  Parr shook her head with a smile and gazed into the distance. She generally did this when she disapproved of the conversation. She didn’t speak again that evening. I watched as she sipped her coffee, glancing sometimes at the door, eyebrows slightly raised.

  I wanted to say to her, ‘But I don’t believe you.’ She seemed to oppose us only because she could not bear to agree with us. Parr suffered my friends and me as though we were a penance she must endure. Her ideas were wrong – I was sure of that – but I admired her strength. I was sorry that she had lost her parents, but I could see the advantages in having no family and a lot of money.

  Lightning snapped over the turrets and rain battered the window panes. The sea was high and crashed against the red-brick walls. I drew back the curtain and, instead of the sea, there was Queen Victoria, battered and darkened, on her plinth at the centre of the north quad. I sprawled on my bedroom floor and took a fresh pencil. More lightning. I waited for the thunder.

  In my pocket book I had drawn a cross-section diagram of the Nimrod and, while it would have been onerous and beyond my skills to attempt to put everything required on board, I put representative crosses, circles and so on to make up the various people, objects and animals. Around it I sketched the Antarctic landscape and marked on it the known islands, mountains, inlets and bays. I added the huts and depots. I followed the routes with dotted lines and marked the places where the explorers had turned back.

  In my sketchbook I worked on drawings of ice and snow. I took my impressions from the photographs I’d seen at the exhibition, from my imagination and from books and journals I had read. To try to feel it for myself, I spent free afternoons in the college picture gallery, staring at a painting of a shipwreck in the Arctic Circle, where polar bears crunched on the skeletons of sailors.

  We took drawing lessons in the gallery and were allowed to copy parts of the great paintings in pencil, so I worked, not at recreating detail, but towards evoking some sense of the harrowing atmosphere, the bleak outcome which horrified and attracted me. I kept the sketches hidden in my wardrobe.

  ‘But it is no use,’ I said to a dot for a pony on the sketch. ‘I can’t know anything at all until I go there myself.’

  And when would that be? I curled up in my chair and opened letters that I had not had time to look at during the day. There was a short, polite letter from my sister telling me that we had a new carpet at home and that the garden was looking very pretty in the morning frost. She said that, although Father still refused to write a letter to me himself, he liked to read mine over her shoulder. I had letters from old schoolfriends, one of whom had just married a school teacher and was living in Herne Hill. She hoped that I would visit her next time I went home.

  I wonder, I thought, if I ever shall. Home was remote now, another continent, and sometimes I wasn’t certain that I could remember the way back. I opened my pocket book to a fresh page. Five minutes later I was sitting there with my pen poised above the paper.

  I have wasted enough time. What shall I do?

  Then I scrawled out my message. It took several attempts as I put lines through words and sentences, starting again and again. After filling and discarding seven or eight sheets of paper, I was left with this:

  THE CANDLIN COLLEGE ANTARCTIC

  EXPLORATION SOCIETY

  What are the qualities of a polar hero?

  When will men reach the South Pole?

  What will Science tell us next?

  The Society will hold its inaugural meeting

  on . . . evening in room . . .

  The Society is dedicated to learning about

  South Polar exploration and Science with a view to

  past, present and future expeditions.

  All are welcome!

  A rap on my door, but I wasn’t making any noise.

  ‘Hello?’ I whispered.

  ‘Nightwatchman, Miss. Principal’s instructions. I have to ask you to turn off your light.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  So I put out the light and climbed under my bed covers. I slept with the confused feeling that I was at the start of something overwhelming. The dummy explorer lay beside me but now he was human and breathing. I pulled my pillow between my arms to make his head, let his warm breath caress my neck and I cradled him.

  A few days later I pinned my notices up around the college. I had permission to use a classroom on the fourth floor for the Society’s weekly meetings. In the afternoon, a group of classics students and their lecturer filed quietly out of the room whispering of Priam and Antigone. I slipped in with my portraits of Captain Scott and Ernest Shackleton, and a map of the Antarctic.

  As I pinned Shackleton to the wall and smoothed him with my fingertips, I tried to imagine myself addressing a meeting. I stood at the blackboard, gazed at the small, scratched desks. I took a step towards the map and pointed.

  ‘And here,’ I told the empty classroom, at eighty-two fifteen is the point where Scott, Wilson and Shackleton had to turn back in 1902, though Wilson and Scott did make it to eighty-two seventeen on a walk southwards from their tent. They could go no further towards the Pole on this expedition and it was a bitter disappointment.’ I must find a proper pointer. My hand was unsteady and it was hard to show the precise coordinates with a wavering fingertip. ‘Shackleton was so ill by now that he made most of the journey on ski. Fortunately, despite the blizzards, they were able to locate the depot they had laid and so had food and shelter to sustain them before the return to McMurdo Sound. As you can imagine, the shore party was astonished to see them with their wild beards, red faces and long hair. In the recent expedition, however, we see that Shackleton and his men went further, reaching eighty-eight twenty-three, at a longitude of one-hundred-and-sixty-two east. Next time we are bound to succeed, but who will be captain?’

  It was possible that no one would come. I had never heard much discussion of Antarctic affairs over dinner or tea, and Locke, my loyal supporter, would be at Drama Soc that evening but, such was my excitement, I could almost imagine proceeding alone. On the classroom door I stuck a sign: The Discovery. No doubt it would be removed before the meeting but it gave me a thrill to see it. I looked both ways to be sure that I was alone in the corridor and I gave the sign a kiss for luck.

  I returned to my bedroom and dressed for dinner. Catherine had sent me a blouse with a note to say that she had made two from the same pattern, one for each of us. She hoped that it would fit me, that my studies were going well and that I would soon write to Father, though he was still too stubborn to write to me. She also mentioned that Arthur, our manservant, had left as there was little need any more to have as many servants as people. She added: well, servants are people, of course, but you know what I mean.

  It was a chilly evening, too cold to wear a thin blouse, but when I held it up and saw her neat little stitches, the fine cream buttons chosen with care and sewn tightly into place, I pressed the fabric against my face and imagined her putting on the identical version, f
astening her pearls around her neck and checking herself in the mirror. I wore the blouse with a heavy skirt and hoped for the best.

  I still have the glove. It is in the cellar with my axe, but I shall probably leave it there. To think of showing it to Catherine and explaining how I came about it makes me blush, even now. I have filled the kettle and placed it on the coals. I reach for the biscuit tin on the mantelpiece.

  One for you, Father? I offer him a ginger nut. His countenance softens. I have noticed, over many years, that I can make his expression change. I can make him severe and stubborn, or wise and tender, just by wanting it. Now I have made him hungry and he tries to eat the biscuit with his eyes.

  I shall ask Mabel to have the piano tuned, tomorrow if possible. We used to have a blind man from Gypsy Hill, but the last time he came was probably when Father was still alive and now the tuner must be dead too. I’ll have Mabel dust the strings and give the wood a good polish. Not only is the piano more than a semitone out, but three keys are stuck and so it is irritating to play. I tinkle the notes a little most days, but the sound is shocking and I have to go at it for a long time to reach a state where I hardly notice. One of the bad keys is top B so it is of no consequence, but middle F sharp and the A below that are also stuck. I try to sing the missing notes into place when they are essential to the melody but, as I am never quite ready when the moment comes, it sounds frightful. It is for Catherine, not for me, that I want the piano working again.

  I shall leave her old sheet music on the lid and let her notice it. If she does not, I shall only have to drop a hint or two while we talk of Mother and Father, our childhood, the war and all. I will offer her a bag of sherbet or some peppermint lumps – Mabel will go out in the morning and fetch them – and she’ll soon play herself into the past. She’ll begin with Bach. I smile as I see her hands working busily together, following the intricate patterns and stitch of the music, and she will knit her way through the evening until we and our house are all one fabric again and cannot be undone.