Death on the Ice (48 page)

As she reached for the pitcher of water, she saw that the pale shape of Peter was standing in the room, naked, a teddy bear dangling from one hand.

‘Daddy’s not coming back,’ he said slowly.

Kathleen held out her arms and he ran through the gloom of the room to her. ‘Nonsense. Daddy’s coming back. He has to come back.’

‘I dreamed it. Daddy’s not coming back.’

Kathleen pulled the little lad tight, squeezing so hard he gasped. She turned her head to one side, so that her tears fell on the pillow, rather than on to Peter’s head.

‘Great God! This is an awful place’

Captain Robert Falcon Scott,

Diary

G
ESTINGTHORPE WAS A HOUSE
in mourning. It was as if the colour had been sucked from the building and its grounds. Even the gardeners wore black, and the front door was still adorned with a wreath, more than five years after Oates had died.

Tryggve Gran was shown through to the drawing room. As he passed the library, he noticed a sledge was propped against the bookshelves. And there was a bust of Napoleon. ‘That will be a museum in time,’ the butler whispered. ‘To Mr Laurie.’

A museum or shrine? Gran wondered, but said nothing.

He was shown in and Caroline Oates stood. She was dressed entirely in black, as was much of the room. He felt the sense of claustrophobia assault him. It was a mausoleum.

‘Mr Gran.’

‘Mrs Oates. Thank you for seeing me.’

‘Not at all. I welcome anyone who knew my boy. Sit, please.’

Gran did so.

‘Can I get you something?’

‘No, thank you. I don’t have much time. I—’

‘Have you been to St Mary’s? Our church.’

‘No.’

‘You must. There is a plaque there, from the Inniskillings. To Laurie.’

‘I shall take a look, of course.’

‘You know, Teddy Evans comes to see me quite frequently. Less so now he has remarried, but we have had interesting talks. He has strong views on Captain Scott. As have I.’

So there were to be no pleasantries. It was a full-frontal assault. ‘He was a fine man.’

Her lips pursed. ‘A fine man who killed my son. Murdered, more like.’

‘Murdered?’

‘I don’t use the word lightly. It was murder, was it not? Or do you think manslaughter?’

He didn’t intend to be caught in that trap. ‘I think it was bad luck.’

‘No, no, I can’t accept that.’

Gran chose his words carefully. ‘You can’t accept bad luck happens?’

‘Did Amundsen have bad luck?’

‘The first time he set off for the Pole he had to turn back. Beaten by the weather. Dogs froze to death. His party suffered frostbite. There was much bad feeling. Almost a mutiny. Later, a suicide.’

‘Oh.’ He could tell Caroline Oates hadn’t heard that. Few had. His fellow countryman was presented as the one with all the luck in his favour, his undertaking a lean, smooth-running machine.

‘But Amundsen was not—is not—a man for giving up. So he went again, and this time luck was with him. Scott was the same, determined, but luck was elsewhere that season.’

‘Why are you here, Mr Gran?’ Her voice was laced with suspicion.

‘To ask you to be careful.’

‘About what?’

‘About how you proceed. I know the loss of your son—’

‘No. No, you don’t. Teddy does. He lost his wife on the voyage home.’

‘I know of that.’

‘He understood.’ Teddy would have been whispering in her ear, fuelling her grief and bitterness, feeding her with his own.

‘Evans and Scott didn’t always see eye to eye.’

She made a grunting sound. ‘Neither did Scott and my son. I have read his account. Scott’s, I mean. Written with one eye on history. A litany of excuses. It should have been called
It’s Not My Fault
.’

‘That book has made your son a hero.’

‘I’d rather he were alive than a hero. I ask again, what do you want?’

Gran turned the question back on her. ‘What is it that you want from all this—’ he indicated the shrouded room—‘and from Teddy?’

‘The truth.’

‘No.’ Gran smiled. ‘No you don’t.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ The tone reminded him of the Antarctic winds. He tried to ignore the piercing gaze. She was a formidable woman.

‘I don’t think you want the truth, not really. Not all of it. Just part. I will tell anyone about Scott’s mistakes. But there are other considerations.’

‘Such as?’

‘Titus’s diary.’

‘There is no diary.’

‘That’s what we all thought. I was surprised when he told me he was keeping one.’

She said nothing.

‘It was with his sleeping bag. I know Teddy brought it back and gave it to you.’

‘Do you?’

‘I know what Teddy said. That nobody had read it.’

‘There is no diary to read.’

Gran wondered how she could lie so shamefacedly.

‘I know there is, Mrs Oates.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I saw it. Titus, Laurie, said he would make sure it came to you should … anything happen.’

What little colour there had been in Caroline Oates’s face drained away. What, he wondered, was in the journal?

‘Mrs Oates, an official inquiry or a muck-raking book might not be a good idea.’

‘If it unmasks Scott, it will be.’

‘It will unmask more than that. You see, I know all about Edie.’

The sound that came from Caroline Oates’s throat suggested she might be choking to death. ‘You scoundrel. How do you know? Did you read his journal?’

Gran took out the parchment-like letter he had kept all those years. ‘He wrote it down for me.’

‘Can I see?’ As she said it her eyes flicked to the fireplace. It was a fleeting glance, but it betrayed her intentions. The letter would be consumed by the flames.

Gran refolded it and placed it in his pocket. ‘It was written for me.’

‘You are an unscrupulous swine. How much do you want?’

Gran struggled to dispel his anger at the accusation. ‘Really. I am not blackmailing you, Mrs Oates. I simply think you have to be prepared for everything to come out. For the moment, your son is a national hero. A beacon, an example. What more could you ask short of having him back? But I am not here to threaten you with exposure. The secret is safe with me.’

‘Is it?’

‘You have my word.’

‘Then why come?’

‘To deliver a request from your son. I know for a fact it was his wish that no blame be attached to Captain Scott.’

Mrs Oates recovered her composure enough to ask: ‘How do you know this? How on earth could you?’

‘Your son told me.’

‘When?’

Gran shifted in his seat. He had never revealed this to anyone else and he felt self-conscious saying it. ‘As he lay dying.’

‘O
H NO!’ THE ANGUISH
in Captain Scott’s voice caused every man in the Southern Party to turn and look at him. They were gathered in front of the old Discovery Hut, slowly getting colder as Ponting fussed with his camera, the photographer seemingly oblivious to the tail end of the blizzard swirling around them. ‘Damn it.’

‘What is it?’ asked Wilson.

‘The flag.’ Scott took off his hat and dashed it to the floor. ‘We’ve left the flag at Cape Evans.’

‘I have a Welsh one,’ said Taff Evans, causing a ripple of laughter. ‘We could always plant that at the Pole.’

Scott glared, his sense of humour, never very reliable, suddenly AWOL. ‘It’s the flag Queen Alexandra gave us.’

‘I’ll go, sir,’ said Bowers, ever the little red-haired terrier.

‘There might be no need. Hold on, Ponco, I’ll be back.’ Scott retreated into the hut.

Oates looked at Meares who shrugged. ‘What’s a few more minutes ponting around out in the cold?’ Ponting was the term used for posing for the photographer: it described a condition of slowly turning blue while Ponting adjusted his lenses.

It was more than a week since the motor-sledges had set off, dragging their loads of one and a half tons, nursed by Teddy Evans, Lashly, Day and Hooper, crawling at barely three miles an hour. They had heard the machines coughing and spluttering long after they had disappeared into the white. Scott had intended to follow sooner with the horses, but the weather had turned grim. Now it was clearing, but every man waiting for the photograph could feel the keening wind through his clothes. ‘Can you hurry up while I’ve still got ten fingers?’ said Debenham.

‘You can’t rush art,’ said Ponting.

Someone let out a long, rippling fart and the party dissolved into laughter and ribald comments. Ponting began to fume at the disrespect.

‘How is Christopher?’ Meares asked Oates.

Oates slipped off a mitten and showed his wrist. There was a series of deep red dashes across it. ‘Still got those teeth.’

‘I’ve telephoned Gran,’ announced Scott as he emerged from the hut. ‘He’s skiing over with the flag. Be a few hours at most.’

‘What a shambles,’ Meares muttered.

Oates said nothing. He and Meares had griped their hardest on the journey over from Cape Evans with the animals, baffled by the logic of stretching out the party. First the motors leave, then the weak horses—Atkinson and Keohane had already set off with the worst of the crocks—then the stronger ponies would depart. They would be followed, a considerable way behind, by Meares and Dimitri with the fast-moving dogs.

‘Not only that. Our journey starts with a Norskie carrying the Union Jack,’ added Meares.

‘That’s all right,’ said Oates with a grin. ‘At least he’s our Norskie.’

‘Gentlemen,’ said Ponting, ‘if you will just look this way. Hold very still. And gentlemen,’ Ponting looked over the camera body at them, ‘if even those of you with rancid bowels could at least try and look heroic.’

They laughed at this and the shutter snapped on what appeared to be a happy band of explorers.

Gran arrived in record time, the silk flag safe in his backpack. After he had handed it over to Scott, and received his thanks, Oates took him to one side.

‘Trigger, can you take this?’

It was a thick sheet of paper, folded in half, with no envelope.

‘Sorry about the writing. Just scribbled it down while we were waiting for you.’

‘Is it for your mother?’

Oates looked over at the caravan of men and horses, the former eager to be gone, the latter already looking half beat. ‘No. She can have my journal. It’s for you. Just to say thank you.’

‘For?’

‘Being a friend. Sticking with me when you should have just thrown me to Christopher and had done with it. And to explain something. About my black mood the other day.’

‘There is no need—’

‘There was something preying on my mind. It’s clear to me now. I shall make amends when I return.’

‘After you have seen the Pole, unless I am mistaken.’

‘Ha! Perhaps. You’re not a bad lad, Trigger.’

Tryggve Gran smirked. ‘For a Norskie.’

‘Oh, yes. I was forgetting. For a Norskie.’

The two of them shook hands, for the last time.

The weaker horses were also the most docile, and Chinaman and Jehu stood stock-still while they were harnessed to the sledges. Christopher turned into a devil the moment he saw the load he was expected to haul. Anton and Oates wrestled with him while the other horses were slipped into their traces. It was circus entertainment to them; Oates knew such behaviour out on the barrier would not be at all amusing.

Anton was caught on the shin by a hoof and cursed in Russian.

Scott came over and pulled Oates back from the skittering horse. ‘Titus, I don’t need you to get a kick to the head, not now. Don’t take any chances.’

In the end, Oates resorted to grabbing a foreleg and bending it up. With Christopher unbalanced, Crean came over and with Cherry’s help, they pulled the animal down on to the ice.

‘You ungrateful monster,’ said Oates to his face. Christopher rolled back his upper lip and bared his yellow teeth.

‘Remind me,’ mused Cherry. ‘What has he to be grateful for? You are about to make him drag hundreds of pounds of provisions four hundred miles to the foot of a glacier where you will shoot him.’

Oates stroked the horse’s head, but he continued to thrash. ‘He should be grateful he doesn’t shoot him here and now,’ said Anton.

‘Shush, don’t listen,’ said Oates. ‘Nobody is going to shoot anyone. Anton, get me some rope.’

As gently as he could with such a recalcitrant beast, he hobbled the animal by tying the front leg into the bent-back position. Now it was a three-legged horse.

‘Let’s see you be quite so frisky with that,’ said Oates as he stood up.

Christopher let out a loud neigh, thrashed about, and then levered himself to his feet. He lunged at Oates, causing him to scrabble back and fall over, made a feint for the terrified Cherry, and then sprinted off over the ice on three good legs, barging aside anyone in his path.

Oates began to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ Anton asked as Christopher stopped some two hundred yards away and looked back defiantly, tossing his mane.

Oates shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He looked at the other ponies, for the most part now in their traces, a sorry-looking bunch. ‘But if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.’

‘What should we do?’ asked Cherry, who did sound close to tears.

‘We wait,’ said Oates.

Christopher eventually became hungry and the leg binding began to chafe, so Oates was able to coax him to the sledge and harness him, with only minor damage for his trouble.

The convoy set off in the late afternoon; Scott with Snippets and Wilson with Nobby leading the plodders and Bowers, Crean, Taff Evans and Oates bringing up the rear with the more spirited animals. Counting the two early departures, there were ten men, each leading a doomed pony and a heavily loaded sledge.

Ponting took some more photographs, but there was a real impatience in the team as he posed them. It was time to leave, to take the first steps south; there had been enough preamble to last a lifetime.

It was difficult for any of them to grasp the full enormity of what they were doing: heading for the Pole. Or at least, four of them were. Four out of fourteen would be selected to make that final assault. Oates, though, wasn’t thinking about that. He had one overriding duty: to get his charges to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. After that, he would see what fate offered him.