A Victim of the Aurora (2 page)

‘I don't come to you with any recommendations, Sir Dexter,' I told him. ‘I called in to see Sir Eugene. I haven't come for a job.'

I felt red in the cheeks. Didn't this old man know I'd been treated kindly by critics, sold out my exhibition, and become a public figure?

Stewart put his pen down. ‘Forgive us, Mr Piers. We're overworked and we come to the point at a great pace, don't we, Sir Dexter?'

In fact I didn't know till the expedition was finished and became history how hard the two men were working when I first met them. Writing begging letters to manufacturers of biscuits, chocolate, dehydrated and canned meats, canvas and windproofs, tractors and woollens, hydrometers, anemometers, aneroid barometers, signals equipment, and so on and so on. Inviting companies to enhance Britannia's name by giving their goods and/or a cash donation to the New British South Polar Expedition. Not only that, but processing the thousands of applications for membership of the expedition, and travelling the country by second-class rail, speaking anywhere a crowd could be expected, speaking also at schools, many of which gave an arctic stove here and a tent there or a down sleeping bag or even, where the masters were enthusiastic, the cash for a dog or a pony. Both Stewart and Sir Dexter had been working a ninety-hour week for four months. They could be pardoned for forgetting that I was one of London's young lions.

‘Can you ski?' Stewart asked. Exactly the way he'd asked me if I could paint auroras.

‘A little.'

‘A little,' sniffed Sir Dexter, as if I'd avoided the ski slopes just to annoy him.

‘I spent a fortnight at Zermatt.'

‘Well, you can manage to ski cross-country,' Sir Eugene said, as a fact. ‘You start off ahead of most of the members of the expedition.'

I blinked, because he had so randomly opened up an Antarctic vista for me.

He continued. ‘No matter how well an expedition is planned there is always a debt at the end. Sir Dexter and I have cast about for means of alleviating the debt. I mean, people aren't interested in making donations to an expedition that's over, are they?'

‘I don't suppose so.'

‘Now this is confidential, Mr Piers. We've approached a renowned popular journalist to come with us and document our efforts. He was virtually the first staff member to be approached and accepted. We have already sold his articles under contract – before they're even written – to newspapers and magazines the world over – England, Germany, Sweden, the United States. Of course, we won't get the bulk of the fee until the articles are delivered, which will be, for the most part, when the expedition is over.'

He paused for me to comment. I couldn't speak. Was he in fact inviting me into the expedition? I didn't think that for an irreplaceable eighteen months of my young life I would be without women and theatre and good food and modest adulation. All I thought was that soon I'd be on the ultimate ice, watching the world's farthest sunlight burst and dazzle on and through it. As for the golden haze of London summers, the sweet-pea colours, the dalliance and the sparkle, it would all be there when I returned. Perhaps by then the world would be entirely rid of the S form corset.

‘The journalist's name –
entre nous
– is Victor Henneker,' Sir Eugene told me. ‘Do you know him?'

‘The poor man's George Bernard Shaw,' I said.

That was what people called him. Henneker was, in fact, a cross between Shaw and, say, Lowell Thomas. His fame was dazzling in those days, and his death became a journalistic issue. But if you read him now (as I have, perhaps the last reader he'll ever have) you see he was just a glib hack. He had been on the expedition to Tibet in 1905. Afterwards he wrote a famous article about the ridiculous nature of the exploring urge and said he'd never do anything so fatuous again. It seemed he'd changed his mind. Normally he interviewed politicians and generals, and reviewed theatre, art and even motion pictures with a stylish barbarity.

‘Similarly,' Stewart went on, ‘we've employed Peter Sullivan, the cinematographer, to make a moving picture which will be exhibited all over the world when our efforts in Antarctica have come to a conclusion. As for you, Mr Piers, we were wondering if – under similar terms – you would like to be the expeditionary artist?'

I couldn't answer straightaway. I was a little dazzled by Sir Eugene's intention to exploit the media. It was a new idea then. When I did speak I found myself saying, ‘You mention terms?'

Sir Dexter took over. ‘Your wages as an officer of the expedition will be five pounds per month. When the pictures you paint are exhibited you will receive 40 per cent of the net profit. The net profit will be calculated on the price the picture sells for minus only the normal advertising and framing charges and the Gallery's commission, if any.'

‘My wife,' Stewart explained, ‘has connections with gallery owners who will very likely give us free hanging space. You have to remember, the interest in such an exhibition would be intense and therefore the prices paid would be high. Clubs, universities, museums and private patrons can be depended on to compete for the paintings. Our profit depends on your output, Mr Piers. Therefore we'll leave you as much free time as we can. Just the same, I would expect you to do some sledging and depot-laying and help out as energetically as any other member of the party at busy times. I should tell you that now.'

It wasn't sledging and depot-laying that worried me. ‘Sir, I think I ought to take 50 per cent. I'm sure you agree.' It felt blasphemous to argue with a great Englishman, yet I had a sort of marketplace stubbornness from being a farmer's son.

‘Oh look,' Sir Dexter growled. ‘The world's full of artists.'

‘I'm sure most of them would take fifty per cent. I'm sure Mr Henneker is taking fifty per cent.'

Sir Eugene laughed. ‘You shouldn't use that name against me. I mentioned the names of Mr Henneker and Mr Sullivan to show you we were employing the top talent.'

‘I have to say, Sir Eugene, I would have asked for fifty per cent anyhow.'

‘Sir Dexter,' said Stewart, ‘would you consider fifty per cent if Mr Piers forgoes his wages?'

At last Sir Dexter grunted. An affirmative grunt. Stewart turned to me.

‘Mr Piers? All found. Free food. Free shelter. I want paintings which will stand prominently on the stairwells of this nation, I want the essence of Antarctica set down. We won't expect you to work yourself into the ground.'

I was actually tearful, in front of Stewart and the harsh old man. ‘I'm grateful to accept. I'm honoured …'

‘I think you'll do a lot of water colours,' said the polar knight. ‘You'll find oils sluggish in those temperatures.'

That was how I was recruited. I suppose it was the same for most of us, captivated by Lady Stewart, cajoled by Sir Eugene Stewart, bullied by Sir Dexter. Not that we all needed cajoling. Three thousand members of the Edwardian middle classes lined up to apply for positions on Sir Eugene's staff.

Like most of the expedition's younger men I presumed that Sir Eugene's suavity derived from his genius and Sir Dexter's snarling arose from mediocrity. Henneker eroded some of this innocence.

It was the morning we left the Thames. The expeditionary ship, a third-hand Norwegian whaler renamed
McMurdo
for the sake of the journey, was moored in the river at Rotherhithe and the Bishop of Southwark came off from the shore in a barge to bless it. After the blessing there was, strangely enough, a champagne breakfast on board. All the executives and officers of the expedition brought their mothers, wives and girls. Byram Hoosick the American, for example, had brought his mother. The press said of Mrs Hoosick that she was a notorious chaser of royalty and had once thrown herself at King Edward's feet as he walked down a hotel corridor in Biarritz. I had always imagined her a massive New World woman, entirely jamming the King's corridor with an ample body, while half a dozen royal equerries struggled at her various extremities to clear her away. I saw now that she was a frail, short, sick-looking woman, speaking quietly at Byram's elbow. My mother, down from the country in a lacy summer dress, would make far more noise at the champagne breakfast than Mrs Hoosick.

We were all crowded on the small quarter-deck. The main deck below us was piled with a lumpy cargo of oil and paraffin drums, coal sacks, lumber and scientific gear. The cartwheel hat had come back into fashion that year, even Lady Stewart was wearing one this morning, and I remember that quarter-deck as a delightful clutter of hat-brims and flowers and osprey feathers and oriflammes.

Although the ponies and dogs would not be loaded until New Zealand, I was amazed how low the
McMurdo
sat in the water.

‘I don't like this ship, Anthony,' my mother told me. ‘It's nearly awash now.'

‘Some ships look like that,' I told her. ‘Look, don't be superstitious.'

On the way to Westminster from Kensington that morning we'd passed a great number of houses that had straw laid down in the street in front of them to quieten the wheels of passing traffic. In those days, straw in the road meant someone indoors was sick. My mother had seen all this morning's straw as an omen.

Now, on the quarter-deck, we found ourselves in a group hard up against the railings. Here Henneker, Sir Dexter and a man called Lord Stonehurst were the luminaries. Stonehurst was Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron.

‘It lies low in the water,' my mother said in a gap in the talk.

‘I beg your pardon, Madam,' said Sir Dexter.

‘This ship,' said my mother. ‘It lies down in the water a lot.'

‘My dear lady.' Henneker leaned over her. He was tall and dark and worldly in his light flannel suit, whereas Sir Dexter and Stonehurst were dressed too heavily for the morning in dark, thick, official-looking clothing. ‘The
McMurdo
wouldn't sit half so low if his Lordship here had not so kindly permitted us to load it to the gunn'ls.'

‘I don't believe you, Mr Henneker,' said my mother. ‘You make it sound like a plot …'

Henneker gestured with his hands to silence her. She was fascinated – they were more or less the same age. ‘You see, if this ship were registered in the normal way, with anyone but the Royal Yacht Squadron, it would have to have a Plimsoll line. And, if it had a Plimsoll line, we wouldn't be allowed to load aboard half the things we need in the Antarctic.'

By the railings Lord Stonehurst was coughing and seemed angry. He half-turned to walk away from us, but decided he had to stay.

Mrs Dryden, a small pretty woman and the wife of the chief scientist, muttered at Henneker.

‘Why do you have to raise issues like this, Mr Henneker?'

‘Professional bias, Ma'am,' Henneker told her mysteriously and with a bow.

Lord Stonehurst growled. ‘The Royal Yacht Squadron agreed to register the
McMurdo
purely so that we could be associated with a great British enterprise.'

But my mother wasn't stopped. ‘If they load it below where the Plimsoll ought to be,' she observed, ‘they won't get to Antarctica at all.'

Henneker said, ‘There are some who claim that polar heroes should enjoy all the safeguards that ordinary seamen sail under. Others however think the sea will overlook our little omissions on account of our holy cause.'

‘Infamous, infamous!' Lord Stonehurst was growling.

I got my mother away from Henneker and spent an hour reassuring her. I wished I had a girl there to say a painful goodbye to, someone to part from sharply, deeply, less stupidly.

As it turned out the
McMurdo did
nearly founder. Twice. Once off Spain and once in the Southern Ocean. In the Southern Ocean, for example, the pumps clogged with balls of coal dust and oil and I served with the bucket brigade who emptied the engine-room, one end of the line working naked and waist-deep in warm water, the other on deck and freezing in polar clothing. I remember thinking, dazed and amazed, that the exalted kinship of
McMurdo
and the Royal Yacht Squadron was merely a ruse to avoid certain Admiralty regulations.

2

If your quaint fancy is to read the classic books of Antarctic exploration you would notice how the authors – usually the expeditionary leaders – go to so much trouble to praise their staff. There has never been, they seem to say, a happier band of brothers landed on the ice.

On Mid-winter's Day, the year I remember so keenly, at the deepest point of the Antarctic darkness, Stewart made a speech that was typical of this genre.

‘First we faced storm,' he said, ‘the fiercest the Southern Ocean could provide. As the storm eased we found ourselves confronted with the worst pack-ice in human record and battered at it until we found a clear passage. It was during those days I saw the kind of colleagues I had.

‘When we came into McMurdo Sound and put out our ice anchors, we made up for the lateness of the season by unloading our stores and fabricating our hut all within a fortnight. Then, despite the lateness of the season, we laid depots to a distance of two hundred miles across the ice-shelf. So that, as we celebrate here, the supplies which will be the basis of our success next summer, the pemmican, biscuit, oil and tea, are waiting cached in the ice within sight of the great glaciers we must climb to approach the Pole. No other group of men I could possibly have chosen in England or any other nation on earth could have done more, performed so superlatively. I salute you …'

The plum pudding had been eaten when this was said. The boxes of cigars had been broken out and port and Benedictine were being passed about as we all listened to the visionary, the polar knight, and believed him. As Par-axel Beck would often say, ‘We work bloody bloody hard, Tony.'

In fact we were frankly proud of ourselves. You don't have to be told that in those days people weren't always examining their motives in volunteering for such projects as the Stewart expedition. If we were asked why we had offered ourselves for at least a year and a half of isolation far more intense than the isolation of astronauts in command modules, we would have said we were doing it because we loved adventure or because it was a manly thing to do. They would have been the orthodox replies for that age. We didn't question whether our withdrawal to Antarctica meant we were insecure in the real world, or frightened of women, or latent homosexuals. So we believed in duty and believed as well that what we were doing was sane and not suspect. The fact was that we were tough and efficient – most of us – and deserved some praise from Sir Eugene Stewart. Yet élites are very hard to achieve, since those who seek them have one way or another suspended their belief in original sin.