When Nights Were Cold (10 page)

Hooper leaned forward in her chair, both hands around her cup, tilted her head and smiled to herself. Her hair hung in ringlets over her forehead. Her face was so small and her glasses so thick that they obscured her features and gave one the feeling of trying to see behind a disguise.

‘If there were some sort of magic tram that could take me to the South Pole, I'd go. I'd like to see the penguins and all the ice. Teddy would love it too. He's my fiancé.' She stroked the fingers of her left hand with her right, as though imagining her wedding night. ‘Just a pleasure outing and then home again.'

‘But that's not the point at all,' I said, perhaps unnecessarily.

‘What I like about the Society is that we are all so different but our interest pulls us together.' Hooper gave an amiable smile, removed her glasses to wipe away steam from the cocoa. ‘Why isn't Parr here?'

‘She thinks we're narrow.' Locke rolled her eyes. ‘And can't bear to waste her time with us.'

‘I think she likes to be alone sometimes,' I offered. ‘She doesn't mean to insult anyone, but her mind is always in another place.'

There was a short rap on the door and it seemed to open by itself. Parr loomed in the space then moved shyly to stand against the door frame. It must have been obvious from our silence that we had been discussing her.

‘I'm here to speak to Farringdon. May I come in?'

Locke pulled out a chair and removed a pile of books. Parr sat opposite me, smoothed her skirt over her knees.

‘I know that your ambition is to be part of some Antarctic expedition one day.'

‘I don't think I've ever quite said that.'

‘Which is ludicrous,' she continued. ‘As we know.'

‘Yes, well perhaps one day I'll be a professor of science. Not all the scientists who go on expeditions are professors anyway. Sometimes they have been students of science with little more knowledge than I have. All sorts of people go.'

‘No, not all sorts of people. One sort of person. Nobody would want a woman amongst all those men, not in such conditions.'

‘Did you know that men's beards are very inconvenient in extreme cold? Breath freezes onto them and then trickles off down their necks and chests. It makes them colder.'

‘The chasm between your dream and reality is not going to shrink and close because you want it to. If you were prepared to adapt a little, to think in another way, it might be possible to achieve something.'

‘Parr, I'm grateful for your concern, but I don't understand what on earth you're talking about.'

‘There is other ground you must cover first.'

‘Is there?'

‘Following Mr Shackleton around like a schoolgirl, talking of writing letters to him. What would he think of you if you did? Then you say that women should have the vote. It's nonsense. We get on with the things we
can
do and we do them well. Look at this.'

Parr plucked a flimsy map from her notebook. She unfolded it and spread it over a desk. It showed a mountainous landscape with tight round contours, ridges, small villages, lakes and few roads.

‘Do you know where this is?'

‘The Alps?'

‘Peru,' offered Locke.

‘Let me see,' said Hooper. ‘No, it isn't high enough to be either. See the altitudes.'

‘So you've failed the first test,' said Parr, ‘by speaking too soon. It's North Wales. You're looking at the mountains of Snowdonia and we're going climbing there in the Easter vacation, all four members of the Society.'

‘We are?'

‘I'll teach you what you need to know: basic walking skills, how to read a map, how to climb on snow, use ropes and all the other things.'

‘How exhilarating.' Locke stood quite suddenly as though it were an epiphany, and made us laugh. ‘Who would accompany us?'

‘Who needs to come with us? We are four. An even number is best for rope work.' Parr looked at us, one by one, smiling.

We are becoming friends, I thought. She has shared her story, her tragedy, and now she can trust us.

‘As a chaperone, I meant.'

Parr shook her head. ‘I'm an experienced mountaineer so we don't need a mountain guide or any such thing. We'll stay with my aunt and uncle near Cader Idris and they'll look after us. My aunt has climbed the Matterhorn, you know, and I'm going to do it when I've finished my degree.'

‘She's climbed the Matterhorn? Good lord.'

I imagined Parr in a wide-brimmed hat, striding along a snowy ridge, impervious to danger.

‘How do we know if we can do it?'

‘It's only Wales. We'll be preparing for when we climb in the Alps.'

‘Surely
we
are not going to attempt the Matterhorn?'

‘Not to begin with, but who knows? Farringdon, are you afraid? It is no use sitting here telling schoolboy tales of polar expeditions as though you live in a storybook.'

‘But the Alps are not Erebus.'

‘No, indeed. Many of them are much harder to climb. It is all about the spirit of adventure and survival in the harshest conditions. If more Antarctic explorers took the time to train on mountains first they would be much better—'

‘Yes, I see, but my only income is for fees and living. My father would never give me money to travel to such places, or anywhere else for that matter. It's impossible.'

‘For now there's only your train fare to Wales and I'll pay for that.'

‘I can't accept—'

‘There should be four of us, as I said.'

Now only Hooper remained unsure. ‘If Teddy doesn't mind, I'll come, but only to sketch. You are not getting me to the tops of mountains, thank you very much.'

The moment called for courage and clear leadership.

‘Parr is right. As President of the Antarctic Exploration Society, I propose that we further our understanding of travelling in hostile environments by accepting her generous invitation. No one need be forced to go up mountains if they prefer to stay below. There can be opportunities for sketching as well as climbing. All in favour?'

‘Aye.' We spoke in one voice.

At last, an expedition into wilderness and harsh conditions. I looked around at my fellow explorers. In the bedroom light, their faces glowed but their expressions were solemn and dark. There we were: Hooper the doctor's wife; Locke the actress and writer; Parr the lone mountaineer. I bit my lip and, smiling, sank into my chair. And me, whatever I was.

Here we all are, fixed in sepia: cocoa parties where I was photographed talking to faces I no longer recognize; Locke crouching by her fire reading a book, the title obscured by her hand; Winifred Hooper emerging from a woodland path with a basket full of branches and leaves and an expression of happy surprise; the principal in her sombre skirt, jacket and tie, stalking across the quad with a young, fuzzy-haired lecturer scurrying a pace behind.

Here are Hooper, Locke, Parr and me on the steps in the south quad. The walkway above us is empty, but someone has left flowerpots and a spade or gardening fork on the balustrade. I don't remember seeing this picture before so I am not sure that I can trust it. Yet here we all are and we look a fright. It is a windy day, evidently, and our hair streams from the misshapen buns on our heads. Our blouses have high collars and the effect is severe. Even jewellery doesn't soften this drab quartet of dressed dolly pegs but I don't think that we were ever vain enough to care. And it wasn't as though we expected attention from men. The rules around male visitors were strict, and quite tiresome. We had almost none.

I go back to the picture of the four of us. I never tire of Winifred Hooper's image. It is always as though I have just met her and am trying to take a first impression but know that I am getting it wrong. She has twig-coloured curls, pinned up into an untidy bird's nest. She squints through her little spectacle lenses. Her nose is soft and quite flat, a cockle shell. She has a sweet, dimpled face with a crease between her eyebrows. She seems to be gazing at someone or something to her right so that her head is slanted away from the light. She was the reluctant adventurer in our group and yet she was brave.

Anybody picking up this picture would point to Leonora Locke and say that she is the pretty one. They would not be surprised to learn of her many affairs and admirers, her talent on stage and her passionate campaigning for the vote. You can see the strength, the intelligence in her eyes. Her features are delicate and even. She is blessed with dark eyes and clear, cream skin, but it is more than that. Of the four of us, she is the one who seems to be more real than photograph. She seems about to step forward and address the photographer, or perhaps me, and I can almost see her arm rise, almost hear her spirited
Hello. You'll never guess what I just heard.

Cicely Parr is the one whose image makes me laugh aloud, despite myself. Tall and gawky with a spot on the side of her nose, she looks as though she barged into the photograph and has no idea what she is doing there or what anyone should want from her. Her hair was always scraped so tightly that the sight of it gave one the faint beginnings of a headache. There is a pendant round her neck. It's too small to see the detail, but it may be a gold locket she sometimes wore. I had forgotten it.

Between Locke and Parr, I am quite the average girl. I am taller than one, shorter than the other, and am more conventionally attractive than one, less so than the other. My reddish hair would distinguish me, but in black and white it is medium grey. My expression is without guile or fear and I think I am the most ordinary of the four. Even so, I can see now that I was rather a pretty girl. I had a long, slender neck and good, clear features, Mother's deep-set eyes. In spite of all the sport, I was never flat-chested and angular, or big and beefy, like other sporty girls, just trim and firm. I should have appreciated myself more when I was young.

I imagine my three friends getting together now, in some Edwardian bedroom or sitting room in the clouds, to conduct a Society meeting without me, their leader. It's childish to feel left out down here when I am the lucky one who has survived, and it is not as though they would ever have forgiven one another and been friends in any kind of afterlife. It's more likely that Parr is up there, in a room of her own with plain walls and few belongings, and the others are in theirs with all their pictures and trinkets.

The wind is high tonight. The letterbox rattles and bangs. It sounds as though my stranger is trying to get in, but I would never let him. It is just the night.

Chapter Eight

Locke and Parr never thought much of each other. I was friends with both and neither could understand why I liked the other. Parr thought Locke silly, talkative and dramatic. Locke made fun of Parr's awkwardness, her tendency to pour scorn on ideas she didn't share. Hooper and I had to become adept at diverting tricky conversations, making conciliatory remarks to keep the mood among us pleasant. But an incident occurred which showed the deep distrust between them and which I have often returned to when I try to understand those days. I suspect that Locke and Parr never forgave each other for this quarrel and that, years later, it was still in their minds even if they did not realize it.

Locke had turned a scene from her play into a sketch and sent it to her mother. An anti-suffrage husband, who had travelled to the future and seen a better place, returned to the present and became a campaigner for the vote and distributor of
Votes for Women.
Hetty Locke was a member of the Actresses' Franchise League and was performing at a suffragist pageant in Chelsea. She found her daughter's sketch amusing and agreed to include it in the pageant. The performance was just two weeks away and on a Thursday evening, so Locke would not be able to attend it without missing lectures and dinner. Certain that everyone would appreciate the significance of her achievement –
I'm a professional playwright now!
– Locke asked Miss Hobson for the afternoon and evening off and even suggested that she might take a few friends with her. Miss Hobson was known to be a suffragist, and had written articles about it for the newspapers, but she waved Locke away saying that she had better finish her studies and then become a playwright when she had learned a few things. She shut her study door in Locke's face then opened it, seconds later, to say that she had changed her mind. Locke might have the afternoon off, if her parents agreed, and take Hester Morgan with her as Morgan was too far ahead in her studies. She had been admitted to the sanatorium after chewing bagfuls of raw coffee beans at night to avoid sleep and be able to study until morning. Miss Hobson thought that she might benefit from a brief excursion. They must, of course, have a chaperone and be back by evening bell.

Locke and Morgan took a favourite maid as their chaperone and dispatched her when they reached Waterloo. She could be bought for a shilling. They attended the pageant, then met Mrs Locke and her suffragist friends for dinner and enjoyed discussions about the power of theatre and non-violent action in promoting the cause and converting the ignorant. Some campaigners invited them to Parliament Square to sell copies of
Votes for Women
and they stayed out late, trudging the pavements in the cold. Somehow the pair missed the last train back to college and spent the night at Locke's family home in Kensington. They reappeared after breakfast the following day. I found them in a corner of the common room, glittering with the thrill of their adventure. Morgan told me how the audience applauded Locke's sketch and a man at the back of the hall stood to shout, ‘Hear, hear!'

‘It's a matter of time now. The opposition will wither and die.'

‘They're withered and dead already. Look at the sorts who represent them here, dry old corpses who should have stayed in the last century.'

Parr was at the fireside reading a letter. She glanced up, folded her letter and left the room.