Death on the Ice (38 page)

‘What?’ asked Ponting, the mention of his own discipline finally getting through to him. His tongue was still thick from when he caught it on a metal flange of the camera in the ice pack. It had stuck fast and pulling away had ripped off the tip. He had filled three handkerchiefs with blood.

‘To Cape Royds.’

‘What about it?’

Scott looked annoyed for a second. He wasn’t, Ponting knew, the most patient of men. Repetition galled him. ‘My dear fellow, I was saying that there will be four parties. I will head south for the depoting, hoping to leave food and fuel as far south as eighty degrees. So I will be some time gone. Meanwhile, an Eastern party will be led by Campbell and five men. They will explore King Edward VII Land. A Western party with Taylor, Debenham, Taff Evans, Silas Wright and others, will explore the far side of this sound. Both expeditions will be taken by
Terra Nova
to a suitable landing site. And I have you, Lashly, Day and Nelson down for the photographic party to Cape Royds. There are some wonderful ice extrusions to be captured and more ice caverns.’ Scott knew Ponting was very taken with the icicle-fringed ice cave he had found and used to frame
Terra Nova
. ‘I have logged all this.’

Ponting adjusted his trademark tweed hat. ‘And how are you referring to me in your log?’

Scott shrugged. ‘Herbert Ponting, the well-known photographer.’

Ponting licked his lips and Scott flinched at the site of the damaged tongue. The tip was a lurid pink; it reminded him for a second of Peter’s newborn complexion. ‘You’ve seen my pictures so far?’

‘Of course. The one in the ice cave in particular—’

Ponting didn’t let him finish. ‘Do they look like ordinary photographs to you, captain?’

‘They are
extra
ordinary.’ Scott glanced back at the ship. The motor-sledge was down on the ice and Day was fussing with its treads. Ropes were being attached to haul it over to join the others on solid land. The machines were temperamental still and it would take Day a number of hours to check the condition of the engine and fuel and cooling system on each before starting them. So it would be some time before they could join in the hauling.

The horses had proved the hardest workers when it came to shifting stores from ship to storage, thanks to Oates, with the dogs a poor second. They were out of condition, exhausted by the lightest load and driven mad by penguins, which came up to taunt them. It was as if the waddling birds could calculate to an inch the length of chain holding an animal, so that when it leapt to bite, it was pulled up a fraction short. It was torture for the huskies; it was tempting to think it was a form of cabaret for the penguins.

‘So please, Camera Artist.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Ponting’s moustache twitched. ‘We have been over this. Not photographer. I don’t work on a pier, a shilling a portrait. Camera Artist.’

For a second, Scott wished the killer whales had actually got the insufferable man. But he was right. They were no ordinary pictures. He still smiled when he thought of Atkinson’s comments after the incident on the floe. ‘What irony of fate to be eaten by a whale thinking one was a seal, only to be spat out because one was a mere photographer.’ It might well have been that little dig which brought on his pique. ‘Very well. Camera Artist it is.’

‘Thank you. You know Cherry found one of my Jungfrau pictures in an old newspaper? Asked if he could keep it.’

Scott almost smiled. Cherry had shown him the clipping, remarking what a coincidence it was that Ponting’s shot should be on the reverse of a beautiful one of actress Marie Lohr. It was Marie who was displayed next to his bunk, not the mountain, although Ponting clearly hadn’t noticed yet. ‘Yes. Got a good eye for composition, has Cherry.’

Over the few hundred yards that separated them from the ship came the chant of the eight men hauling. Overcoming the inertia of an empty motorised sledge was even more difficult than shifting a fully laden wooden one, and even that often required spine-snapping jerks. But the tracks were moving now and the voices rang out strongly over the white plain.

‘Damn, this wasn’t a very good spot to choose.’

Scott followed Ponting’s gaze down to the ice. Water was bubbling up through tiny fissures, hissing as it came.

‘It’s rotten,’ said Scott absentmindedly. Then he remembered Tom Crean saying he had put a foot through the crumbling ice that morning and Lashly going up to his knees. ‘Oh, no.’

‘What is it?’ asked Ponting.

But Scott was already running, his feet skidding as he tried to get purchase from the felt boots. ‘Day! Watch out! Day!’

Bernard Day was on the machine, still examining the engine. Neither he nor the men hauling could hear him over their singing.

‘Day, stop!’

The gunshot cracked and fled over the ice in all directions, causing even men within the hut to look up in shock.

Scott was still fifty yards away when the second sound reached him. A groan.

Day leapt off the machine just as one end jerked and tipped, like a horse going lame, and there came the slurp of liquefying ice. It was floating on granular slush.

The song died in the men’s throats. The eight of them turned and pulled the ropes taught, as if they could hold back tons of metal. There came the squeaking of ice sheets sliding over each other as the hole enlarged. The sound rose to a scream.

Day plunged in up to his waist and began scrabbling frantically at the crumbling fringes of his ice hole. Keohane also dropped into the sea, the shock driving all air from him.

‘Let go!’ said Scott, as heels were dug in to take the strain. ‘It’ll take you down with it.’

The front of the motor-sledge reared up and the tail hit the water. For a few seconds it lodged there, jammed. All held their breaths, as if a loud exhalation could cause it to shift. Scott had stopped running. He took a step forward on tiptoes. All might not be lost.

Then, almost silently, the great machine simply slid away into the opening, leaving only two large bubbles that burst from the green water. Scott imagined it sinking into the darkening depths, spinning as it went, lost in hundreds of black fathoms.

The men stood around, open mouthed, astonished that the ice had swallowed such a mighty machine the way the Orcas took their prey. Lashly and Keohane lay on the treacherous ice, steam rising from them as they shivered.

‘Get those men to the hut,’ Scott instructed.

‘Aye, sir,’ replied Petty Officer Evans.

‘What a bloody disaster,’ Scott said with feeling. Because Scott knew what it meant: from now on he would be relying on the ponies, the hardest workers. And that meant Captain Scott would need Captain Oates more than ever. And Titus wasn’t convinced about the ponies’ capabilities. Not one bit of it.

‘A bloody disaster,’ he repeated.

P
ETER WAS NAKED THAT
afternoon, as he often was. He loved to run around free and unencumbered and, to Kathleen, it seemed the most natural thing. Not everyone agreed. When he came to tea, Sir Clements Markham thought it inappropriate and Hannah, Con’s mother, had scolded her on several occasions for under-dressing him when they went to feed the ducks in St James’s Park. She blamed the influence of Isadora Duncan. Even Peter’s nanny, she was sure, had doubts about the decorum of his wardrobe. Kathleen didn’t care. Her main concern was that the little boy was happy. He had been so overjoyed to see her returned from the south, he had kissed her, before running off to get Con’s picture and making her kiss that, too.

It was Bellamy, her houseman, who informed her that she had a visitor. She was taken aback when he told her the stranger’s identity, and instructed him to make tea once the guest had been shown in.

‘Professor Nansen,’ she said as he swept in. ‘How nice to see you.’ Peter streaked from behind the curtains and gripped her leg. Nansen crouched down to Peter’s level. ‘Hello, young man. My goodness, but you look like your father.’

‘Daddy not here.’

‘No, I know, he is doing great things. Great things.’

‘I shall call nanny to dress him.’

‘Why? He’ll be wearing clothes for the rest of his life soon enough.’

She laughed at this. ‘That’s very true.’

‘You know, my five were always running around like that. In the snow, even. He has nothing I haven’t seen before.’

They sat and Kathleen felt unnerved by the direct gaze from the pale eyes.

‘So, I have come for my sitting.’

‘Your sitting?’

‘You wanted to do my head.’

‘Oh. Yes, I did.’ The nerve of the man. As if she could drop everything. ‘I will, one day, I am sure. Just now … I have a large commission. Charles Rolls. Of the motor car? He died in an airplane crash—’

‘I am teasing you, Kathleen.’

‘You are?’ she said with relief.

‘Yes. I am not here to be sculpted. Not today.’

‘You had me worried. Between all the lunches with other wives and this commission and Peter and dealing with correspondence about the expedition, everything seems such a rush.’ She put her hand to her throat, the thought of all the letters to be written to sponsors and well-wishers making her breathless.

‘Forgive me,’ said Nansen slowly, wondering what had happened to the woman he had met in Norway. Something had changed in her. The fire had dimmed somewhat. ‘It was a poor joke. You won’t have heard much from your husband.’

‘Not yet.’ She had heard a lot from debtors, his family and other Antarctic wives, who needed to cling together during the long months of silence from the south.

‘I hope Tryggve is managing all right. You know he taught Queen Maud to ski?’

‘He said.’

‘I bet he did. He’s young. He does like to boast now and then.’ Ah, now he had the reason for her coolness. His nationality. A little improvisation was called for, perhaps. ‘I have come to say I am embarrassed.’

‘Really?’

‘About Amundsen.’

‘That was hardly your doing.’

‘It was my ship. Had I known, I might not have loaned it. Or, at least, I would have said he must come out in the open.’

Kathleen wasn’t sure what to say. She had been furious about it for so long, but now her anger had burned itself out.

‘You know there are those in Norway who disapprove? Many people. There was a request for money to the government. It was refused. We all wish it had been done differently. But Roald, he is his own person. I just wanted to reassure you, we aren’t all like that.’

‘I have no doubt of it. Why are you in London? You’re not returning as ambassador?’ Nansen had spent two years at the Norwegian Embassy shortly after the country’s independence.

‘No. A lecture. At the Royal Geographical Society. About crossing Greenland. But it will be overshadowed by Amundsen, I am sure.’

The tea arrived and she sent Bellamy away. She enjoyed pouring; it also offered her a distraction from that unnerving gaze.

‘And the voyage back?’ he asked. ‘How was it?’

‘Oh, it had its diversions. There was a tiresome young man in Ceylon who fell in love with me.’

‘I am not surprised.’

She reddened. ‘Does it always happen in Ceylon, then?’

‘No, I meant … You are teasing me now?’ He roared with laughter and slapped his thigh.

She busied herself with the tea. ‘Milk, sugar?’

‘Black. No sugar. So, no other adventures?’

‘I stopped off to see Isadora, Isadora Duncan, in Paris but she had just left for America. I went around my old haunts. But then I had this terrible urge to get back to Peter. As if something might happen if I didn’t. Did you ever get that with your children?’

Now he understood. The fire hadn’t dimmed, it was just redirected, towards a son and, perhaps, a man on the other side of the world. He was familiar with this feeling. ‘Every day while I was on the ice. But I was in no position to do anything about it.’ He hesitated, as if building up his nerve. ‘Will you come? To my lecture?’

‘This is Daddy.’ Peter toddled over with a photograph of Con in uniform.

‘I know. We are friends,’ said Nansen, examining it.

‘And Mummy?’

‘I’d like to think so, yes.’

‘Daddy away.’

‘He is. I envy him.’

Kathleen, not sure what he envied, asked Peter to go and find Nanny. She took the framed photograph and set it on the table. ‘When is it, the lecture?’

‘Friday night. Then I thought we could have dinner.’

She shook her head. ‘I promised Con and his mother I wouldn’t get noticed. Having dinner with one of his rivals—’

‘I am no rival!’ he exploded.

‘No, sorry.’ She handed the tea across. ‘But given the feeling here about Norway. You must appreciate, it could be difficult. As if I endorse what Amundsen has done.’

He gripped the saucer, making sure their fingers touched. ‘I understand. But I am also talking in Paris. In Berlin. This waiting and brooding. It is no good for you. No good for anyone. It eats into your soul till you end up hating the ice for taking your lover away. And you should never hate it, whatever happens, it isn’t its fault. So, there are other cities. Might you come to one of those? I promise you it will do you good.’

She hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t want to leave Peter again so soon. Not this time. Perhaps we could take tea again while you are in London.’

‘I would like that. Now, I need some recommendations for the theatre while I am here.’

‘You like the theatre?’ She was surprised. It had taken several attempts to get Con to appreciate it. Her husband was a man fascinated by the minutiae of ocean currents and cloud formation but bored by Ibsen. Obviously not all polar men were cut from the same cloth.

‘I adore it. Is there a new Barrie or Shaw?’

‘Shaw says he is working on something for next year. I can ask James for a recommendation. He is Peter’s godfather, you know.’

‘I didn’t. How marvellous to have Peter Pan as your godfather. And if he recommends something, would you accompany me?’

She sighed, but there was no anger in it. ‘You are very persistent, professor.’

‘It is a trait of polar explorers. One your husband has in large measure.’