Death on the Ice (24 page)

Scott joined in the laughter, even though he wondered if there was a hidden jibe in there. Did Bert Armitage think they had won Farthest South by too narrow a margin for comfort? That he had risked lives with meagre rations? There was another toast and he dismissed the thought.

After plum puddings and jelly and glasses raised to the King, the evening passed over into musical entertainment and increasingly ribald parlour games. When they began to play The Bishop in His Belfry and Roll the Topsail Gallant Down, which always ended with britches being removed, Scott excused himself. His head spinning with tiredness, he left the room to much painful backslapping. His ankles had grown tender and each step caused a jolt of agony. He walked as if he had gout. As he passed Shackleton’s door, he tapped on it. There was no reply, but he slid it open. Shackleton lay in his berth, a thin pillow over his head. The little cabin smelled strongly of soap. Shackleton opened a red-rimmed eye, saw Scott and swung his feet down. ‘Don’t move. You should eat something. Sardines on toast?’ he asked.

‘I think I might manage that,’ said Shackleton with a lazy grin. Sardines were a luxury usually reserved for the night watchman.

‘How do you feel?’

‘All done. You?’

Scott shrugged. ‘My eyes hurt and my feet ache and my gums are sore.’ He patted his stomach. ‘And now my belly gripes. Tiptop, I’d say.’ Although he knew the answer to the next question, he asked it anyway. ‘Did Bill come along?’

‘Yes.’ Shackleton raised himself on one elbow. ‘You won’t send me back, will you?’

There was a roar of laughter from behind Scott, so forceful he felt as though he were buffeted by a gale. Someone on the mess deck had come up with a new set of filthy lyrics for ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck’ and there came insistent demands for a repeat performance from the wardroom. Armitage seemed to have dismantled some of the traditional distance kept between the two messes while he was away. Scott wasn’t sure he approved. ‘I’ll get Hare to call you when the sardines are done.’

‘Skipper.’ Scott stopped halfway out of the doorway, keen to be gone. He didn’t want this discussion. ‘We know you’re sending a few of the black sheep back on
Morning
. But Macfarlane thinks he won’t be allowed to stay on either. Because of his heart.’ This was true. Armitage’s initial verbal report of his journey was pretty conclusive. They could not risk a recurrence on another expedition. Macfarlane had become a liability. ‘Don’t send me back as well.’

‘Nobody is talking about that now. All they are talking about is what we achieved. Farthest South. We covered almost a thousand miles. Not always well, but we covered it. Enjoy this moment; our record will not stand for ever. Now, sardines on toast coming up.’

Scott slid the door shut, seriously contemplating for the first time the consequences of sending Shackleton back. He would hate him for it. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the correct course of action. He worried for another few seconds, then put the dilemma out of his mind. The decision would wait till they were fully recovered, as would
Morning
.

Shackleton banged the table, almost upsetting the oil lamp on Scott’s desk. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘Keep your voice down.’

‘Dammit, I will not.’

They were in Scott’s cabin, the door slid shut, but both knew sound spilled into the wardroom through the slats. ‘I don’t take this decision lightly—’

‘Don’t be such a prig. It’s me, Shackle. You can’t send me back. The men wouldn’t stand for it for one thing.’

Despite his weariness, Scott felt the old hot flash of temper. ‘It isn’t up to the men. It’s up to me.’ Once Scott remembered just how low Shackleton was, he recovered his equilibrium. It had been a stupid thing for him to say. The man didn’t normally try to capitalise on his popularity. ‘Both Bill and Koettlitz—’

‘You brow-beat them into it.’

‘I can show you their written comments. Bill was reluctant, yes, but then he’s your friend.’

‘As I thought you were.’

Scott winced at that. ‘Mr Shackleton. It took me three whole weeks to find my usual energy levels. Bill slept for ten days solid and is more or less his old self. But more than a month of good food and rest has left you still well below par. Look at your hands, man.’

Shackleton instinctively slipped the shaking fingers behind his back. ‘I might have failed out there, but if it wasn’t for me and Bill  …’

‘What?’

‘You and those dogs. Was that not a failure by you?’

‘I offered to do my part.’

Shackleton laughed and leaned in towards Scott. ‘You couldn’t do it. You haven’t the heart for it. You said so yourself. You were weighed in the balance pans and found wanting. Yet it’s me who is going back.’

‘I have made my decision, as your commanding officer and friend.’

‘You’d best add rival to the list.’

Scott frowned. ‘How’s that?’

‘You send me home, skipper, and I’ll have to come back to this godforsaken place. Just to prove you wrong.’

‘Well, I wish you good luck.’

Shackleton banged the table again.

Scott picked up a piece of paper and handed it to the lieutenant. ‘This is part of a letter to the Royal Geographical Society.’

The Irishman read it carefully.

Mr E.H. Shackleton, who returns much to my regret, should be of greatest use in explaining the details of our position and of our requirements for the future. This gentleman has performed his work in a highly satisfactory manner but unfortunately his constitution has proved unequal to the rigours of the polar climate. He was and remains a valued member of the party. I trust it will be made evident that I am sending him back solely on account of his health and that his future prospects may not suffer.

‘It still makes me sound weak.’

‘It isn’t meant to. Nobody who knows you will think you weak, Shackle.’

‘You know why I made it back in one piece?’ he asked. ‘I heard you and Wilson talking. Bill said he doubted I would last the night. Remember?’

‘Yes.’

‘I swore I would prove him wrong. And you.’

‘And you did,’ said Scott. ‘And I’m glad of it.’

Shackleton stood to his full height, looking partly mollified. He slid back the door. ‘You’d better reach the Pole next season, skipper, or I’ll be snapping at your heels like the devil himself.’

The cabin shuddered as he rammed the partition back home.

The day of
Morning
’s departure dawned grey and overcast. Every rope and spar of the old whaler was clearly outlined against a darkening sky. Thick snow was blowing and a thin layer of fresh ice had formed around the ship’s hull. The
Discovery
crew, all thirty-six of them, gathered on the floe to bid her farewell. They cheered when, with a creak and a shudder, she reversed, smashing the tentative hold the ice had already made.

‘Just in time,’ said Mr Barne. ‘Another day and she might have been frozen in with us.’ The imprisoned
Discovery
had still not broken free into clear water, despite the use of ice saws and explosives. It wasn’t a concern this year, as Markham had sent permission for them to overwinter for another season, but it might be a problem when they wanted to go home. At the back of Scott’s mind was a concern: what if this ice-free anchorage had been a one-off freak occurrence? That the ice rarely retreated so far south? It might be that
Discovery
would have to be abandoned, a possibility he really didn’t want to face just yet.

Scott raised a hand as his men cheered the departure. ‘How was Shackle on the journey here?’

‘Shaky,’ said Mr Barne, who had accompanied him over the ice. ‘And gloomy.’

‘It’s understandable.’

Scott had said his final goodbyes to Shackleton on board
Discovery
, rather than on the ice, fearing a public outburst. The man had still railed against his removal, but had accepted he had no choice. The captain’s decision was final.

Now, Scott could see Shackleton standing on
Mornings
deck, and next to him an equally despondent Macfarlane, the latter waving half-heartedly. Not Shackleton. Both his hands were over his face; he was weeping. Scott took this as a further sign of a man still not fully recovered. The old Shackleton would have plucked his eyes out before making such a display.

‘I am sorry to see him go. And Hare. He’s a good boy. Too good to be a steward and drawing baths for the rest of his life. The rest are crocks.’

Brett, the despised cook, was pulling out, as were Duncan, Page and Hubert, three misfits who never rubbed along with the others, and Buckridge, an Australian troublemaker, too clever by half to ever be caught in his mischief. All had elected to return on
Morning
and would be replaced by members of her crew. Armitage, whose formidable wife was involved in some scandal at home, should have been among them, but he had flatly refused to go. He had accused Scott of trying to weed out all the Merchant men and of wanting to keep the best sledging expeditions for himself. Scott had assumed this was his upset at his wife’s errant behaviour talking.

Scott was quietly pleased with the reminder of his crew. Royds was a changed man since his success at Cape Crozier, and gratified when it was his message that
Morning
had found, telling them the location of
Discovery
. And Barne’s fingers had once again recovered and he was back to his cheery self. Even the most bumptious of the scientists had settled down. All he had to do was remember not to play bridge with Koettlitz, a sure source of friction.

The
Discovery
crew cheered themselves hoarse as the ship turned north and quickly receded, steaming the first few miles of the long voyage home. There wasn’t a man on the ice who didn’t both envy and pity those leaving.

‘Look at it. Have you ever seen such a heartbreaking sight?’ asked Wilson.

‘Yes. Eighty-two degrees south.’

‘We were still four hundred miles short, Con. There was no way we could have made it. Not over the mountains and the bergschrund.’ This was where the barrier reared up against the land and created the treacherous fields of fractured ice and crevasses.

‘I know. But at the time, it seemed so much nearer than that.’ He made a fist. ‘Within our grasp.’

‘You don’t blame Shackleton?’

He thought for a moment. ‘No. Not at all. Or you, before you start thinking it, Bill. I might sometimes judge in haste. But in the end, you know, I only ever blame myself.’

‘It’s a shame! A shame!’ It was Frank Wild, still drunk from Shackleton’s farewell party. He and Shackle had always got along well. ‘He shouldn’t be going, skipper.’

Scott ignored him, knowing it was the alcohol in charge. Others calmed Wild down and his head drooped. Scott was glad he had declared a holiday. Quite a number of them had rumheads to sleep off.

Scott waited till the final hurrah had faded, turned south and flinched as the wind from the Pole cut into his face and moulded his clothes to his body. He pulled out the windbreak from his helmet. The company gave one last look at the rapidly diminishing
Morning
, bowed their heads into the icy blast, and marched off over the floe, singing balefully as they went, back to the ship that was to be their home for another year, steeling themselves for a second long Antarctic night.

‘The object of this expedition is to reach the South Pole and secure for the British Empire the honour of that achievement’

Robert Falcon Scott, 13 September, 1909

K
ATHLEEN SCOTT CAME VERY
close to getting Teddy Grant killed. It was two days after their initial meeting, and he was part of a four-plane patrol charged with protecting two camera-laden reconnaissance planes. They were antiquated FE2bs. The pair lumbered along at barely seventy miles an hour. The Germans called them pigeons. They were somewhat easier to shoot down than that.

There was a tin-coloured ceiling capping the whole of the front, which forced them down lower than was desirable. It also gave the Germans somewhere to hide. The FE2bs, however, could not seek the protective cover of the cloud. The pilots had a clear mandate: to capture images of the new German artillery installations and head for home as fast as they could. Perhaps the overcast sky could help shield the British then.

A flaming onion was discharged as they crossed the first trenches of enemy lines, whooshing through the sky and bursting ineffectually behind one of the Sopwiths, leaving a wispy stain in the sky. A stutter of machine guns followed, but they didn’t have the range, the tracers drooping well before their target.

Grant armed his Vickers and began to weave, back and forth, at the rear and slightly below the older planes. One of the observers raised a hand, but Grant didn’t respond. The fool shouldn’t be waving at friendly planes, but looking over his Lewis and checking for hostiles.

He had finished reading Lady Scott’s manuscript and also gone over his own diaries, but had done nothing yet by way of corrections or additions. He wasn’t sure why he was so reticent. Something didn’t seem quite right about the whole business. Her explanation of why she had come to him seemed spurious. After Amundsen, the British were less likely to trust a Norwegian, no matter where his allegiance lay, than an Englishman. Grant’s involvement could actively damage the book.

There was another thing. Her asking him about the state of the bodies, to describe her husband’s condition when they found the tent, now seemed oddly calculated. She had seemed genuinely upset when he had done so. Yet he was certain that Atch—Atkinson, the surgeon—had written to her with a full description and that Cherry had also discussed the matter. In fact, he recalled Cherry telling him just how difficult it had been, but how he felt he owed it to her to be honest and straight. And Tom Crean, too, had sent a letter.

Lady Scott was lying to him.

The bullets from the Spandau light machine guns entered the canvas of Grant’s Sopwith with a hiss, followed by sparks and the ping of released tension as another burst severed part of his cat’s-cradle of bracing wires.