She wraps herself into her short coat, buries her face between the lapels, and walks swiftly back towards the Natural History Museum. To me, she’s an enigma: reckless, short-tempered, weak and beautiful all at once. I have to lengthen my stride to keep up with her. We reach the corner of two streets, have to pause, wait for the lights.
‘Why didn’t you bother looking at the magazines?’ I say.
She shrugs. ‘Dunno. Not to destroy my illusions? Because it’s irrelevant? Because it is irrelevant.’
‘Sorry,’ I mumble.
‘What for?’ Her breath tumbles from her mouth in a veil of fog.
‘You wouldn’t be talking about your illusions if I hadn’t spouted that load of crap in there.’
‘Oh, but I would. I wake up every day asking myself if this is the right thing to do.’
‘Is there nowhere else you can get more info?’
‘Of course there is,’ she says. ‘That’s why today was only the start.’
‘So where is there?’
‘Scott Polar in Cambridge, like I said. But …’
‘But?’
‘But there’s a six-month waiting list to get into their archives.’
‘Can’t you get in there more quickly?’ Why am I getting impatient now, about that?
‘No. Dad and I applied five months ago, so there’s not that much longer to wait. I go in a couple of weeks. It should’ve been Dad and me.’ She sniffs.
‘Is that why you came here today?’ I have to ignore her sadness.
‘Partly,’ she nods. ‘There are other reasons, too.’
‘Like? You talk in riddles sometimes.’
‘That comes from living alone.’ She smiles, and her eyes light up for the first time since we met.
‘I live on my own and I don’t talk in riddles.’
‘Maybe you don’t spend enough time with your books trying to solve a puzzle that’s been with you all your life.’
‘Oh, no.’ I shake my head. ‘I have plenty of puzzles to keep me occupied. It’s just that they’re computer puzzles, and boring, mostly.’
‘So who are you, actually?’ she asks. ‘I don’t even know your surname.’
‘Caird, my surname’s Caird.’
‘You’re joking.’ Her voice rises.
‘Why would I be joking?’
The lights change to green. People push past us, in between us. She stands still, a rock in the deluge. ‘Because it’s too much of a coincidence.’
‘Too much of a coincidence for what?’
She pulls a face. ‘Stop interrupting.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you? You don’t know anything about that name.’
‘It’s a bog-standard Scottish name. What’s there to know?’
‘Caird has Antarctic connections.’
‘Go on.’
‘When Shackleton got marooned in the Antarctic, he sailed to South Georgia in a tiny lifeboat, the James Caird.’
‘I’ve heard of Shackleton, but I didn’t know that.’
‘I don’t suppose that many people do know.’
‘He’s nothing to do with Scott, though?’
‘He was on an expedition with Scott in 1901, and he did get to within ninety miles of the Pole in 1909, but no, not really. The Caird thing happened in 1916. But it’s weird, anyway, you being called Caird.’
‘Listen –’
‘Look –’
We speak at the same time.
‘After you,’ I say.
‘No, you started first.’
‘I was wondering.’
‘So was I,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘There’s a café in the NHM. Fancy a coffee?’
‘Should you be drinking coffee after that fainting fit?’
‘I guess not. I’ll have a hot chocolate.’
‘All right. I’ll buy.’
She grunts, turns on her heels, and we walk up the long, slow rise of the drive that leads to the museum’s main entrance. She’s got multiple personalities, I think.
‘Maybe we can get a look at those penguin eggs.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘After all that, Cherry-Garrard had a problem even getting a receipt for them. They’re probably lost again.’
So she’s a cynic as well. Weird how much you can get to know about a person in the space of a couple of hours, and still not understand them. Some people marry and never get to know each other. Maybe that’s why I’ve been a bachelor for so long. Because I don’t want that to happen to me, to wake up one morning to find I’ve been living with a stranger for most of my life.
We sit down with our hot chocolates. The air is full of many languages. There’s an old German on my right, talking quickly to two teenage girls who must be his daughters. There are two old dears to my left, talking about their mad friend and cathedrals and bridges and summer. Behind me, a trio of young women, tourists, all with their maps out, jabber away in what sounds like Spanish. And behind Birdie, there’s nothing, no one, just a wall of red brick, a warm, dark frame around her light hair.
‘You’re staring again,’ she says.
‘Am I? Sorry. Just the contrast … the wall and your hair and … skin.’
She raises a blonde eyebrow. I blush. Push my glasses back up my nose.
‘How sweet. An artist.’ She stares at me, right at me, into my eyes, won’t look away. ‘I’m joking.’
‘Anyway …’ I cough. And stutter. ‘You were going to tell me about your other reasons for going to the RGS today.’
She looks down at her cup, breathes deeply. Once. Twice. Takes a sip. Her lips on the porcelain. My gaze on her lips. That voice in my head telling me not to be so stupid.
‘It’s ninety-six years since their bodies were found. Today.’ She doesn’t look up. ‘That’s why I had to go. Why it had to be today. It made the connection even stronger.’ Now she raises her head. ‘Can you understand that?’
‘Sort of.’
I do understand her rage and her tears. Although I’m only just starting to feel connected to them or their reason. Should I tell her it’s my birthday today? I don’t think that’s such a good idea.
She shakes her head.
‘What?’ I say.
‘I really can’t believe that you were never interested in Scott or Shackleton,’ she says.
‘I was never much of a one for history. I always thought it was better to look forward, not backwards. I didn’t want to lumber my brain with useless half-truths. And with Scott, and most of the other things they wanted to teach us at school, there was too much Empire, so much propaganda. It’s all done and dusted, finished. How can you glorify failure? It doesn’t change anything. It hasn’t changed the world we live in.’
‘That’s not really true. They made huge scientific advances.’
‘They didn’t invent the computer, did they?’
‘That’s silly,’ she says. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘What, then?’
‘What they achieved for that time was amazing. They put their hut up in ten days. They anchored it into the permafrost. They measured wind speed, temperature, snowfall every two hours. They were hard as nails, really. Courageous.’
‘Look, I understand what you mean. I just don’t think it’s relevant in this day and age. Not when there are millions of starving kids in Africa.’
‘And why do you think those kids are starving? Don’t you think it might have something to do with people not caring, because this age is one where no one gives a toss about anything anymore? Don’t you think that if all people had respect for others, the world would be a much better place?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘And don’t you think that to remember people who’ve died with courage and integrity might actually encourage those alive now to live with some respect, some dignity, some endeavour?’ Her cheeks have gone very red, their pale skin aflame with that anger of hers which seems to appear from nowhere. The conversations around us stop. She flashes a big smile around the room, changes into another one of her many selves. The buzz starts again. People lose interest. They’re all happy to be smiled at.
‘Who are you?’ I ask. ‘Really?’
‘Google me,’ she says, and rummages in her coat. ‘And here’s a card.’
‘What?’ I look at the card. An abstract splash of colour, a number and a stencil: Storm Moon. ‘What’s this?’
‘Go away. Read some books about what I’ve told you. See if you don’t become addicted. If you can’t see the mystery, if you don’t see how someone wouldn’t want to let go of finding out what really happened to those men, then don’t call me. If you end up wanting to find out more, ring me.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘You hardly know me.’
‘So? I haven’t asked you to marry me.’
I half wish she would. I want to wrap her into warm sheets and kiss her face, want to watch her scamper across the wooden floor of my house dressed in my baggy jumpers and shirts, kicking pillows off the bed with her naked feet. I want her to put those strong hands on my face and kiss me. I’m a fool.
‘I don’t have your energy,’ I say, and try to pull myself together. ‘Nor your faith.’
‘You may have. Some day.’
She grabs her coat and runs for the door. I rush out after her. She’s disappeared into the crowd. I make for the main entrance, head outside into the cold wind. No. She’s gone. There’s no point looking for her.
I’ll have to do as she said and read books about the Antarctic, about Scott and his expedition, about the real Birdie Bowers – Henry. And what if they don’t move me? What if I don’t feel the way she does? Do I still call her? Probably not. Why make life complicated? But it became complicated the moment I decided to stand in the same carriage as her, and when all those following moments, those little shards of time, joined together into this fragile coincidence. Today, on my birthday, something’s changed. I’ve changed. And won’t ever be the same again. But for now, all I’m left with is her card and the lemony scent of her perfume.