Warney drones on and on. Don’t do this, do that. Don’t forget your earplugs. Make sure you’ve got your ice boots on, otherwise you won’t get on the plane. Ditto if you don’t bring your boarding card and passport. I know it has to be done. I just wish I didn’t have to sit through it. There aren’t any windows in this room.
‘And that’s about it,’ Warney finishes. He looks at me. ‘You haven’t listened to a single word I’ve said, have you?’
‘Oh yes, I have,’ I say, and recite his list of dos and don’ts back at him.
‘Look, boys, can we stop all this messing around and get our kit sorted out?’ Birdie interrupts. ‘I can do without all this alpha male bonding crap.’
So we go to the kit room. There are hundreds and hundreds of coats, boots, trousers, shirts, hats, gloves; racks and racks and racks of every possible item of clothing anyone could ever need. Everything except underwear. Understandably. That’s why we’ve brought our own.
I lose count of how many different things we try on, because, although they’ve already laid out gear in our sizes, there’s always something wrong. Salopettes too tight or too loose; shirts uncomfortable; boots pinching when we’ve got thick socks on; neck gaiters scratchy; gloves too small. And so on.
By the time we’ve finally found the stuff that fits, we’re sweating like pigs, because we’ve got five or six layers on, and huge boots to match. Everything has to be just right for the supervising Warney, because he’ll feel responsible if anything goes wrong, and because it’s important to be comfortable, and warm, and safe.
Birdie looks swamped by her massive outfit. And cute. Her small face is hidden under the wire-reinforced hood of the anorak. She pulls the hood back. Her hair is totally flattened and dishevelled.
‘Strewth, there’ll be nothing left of you if you keep that stuff on for much longer,’ Warney says.
‘I can take it off now, can I?’
‘Be my guest.’
She retires into the cubicle. It takes an age for her to get out of the clothes. But I take even longer. And then we have to practise packing it all into two small canvas bags. Naturally, she does it in two minutes flat, while I’m still floundering fifteen minutes later. By that point, she’s laughing so hard she can hardly stand. And then, at last, she comes across to me and helps.
‘Right, guys,’ Warney says. ‘Last thing. You know it’s a Condition One out there at the minute. Odds-on that you won’t be flying out tomorrow. But the pick-up’s still scheduled for twenty past six in the morning. If the weather’s fine, you won’t get a call from me. If the flight’s cancelled, I’ll call you at about five.’
‘You’d better not bloody call us,’ Birdie says.
‘We’re due at the museum in half an hour,’ he says.
‘Are we?’ she says.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Welland will be gutted if I tell him.’
‘Then don’t tell him.’
‘You’re a hard woman.’
‘I try to be.’
Nev and Warney shake their heads. They can’t work her out. That makes three of us. At least they’re not in love with her. That would be even more confusing.
The museum is all grey stones and white arches. A square tower tops the building, makes it look like a castle. The round window above the entrance is a rose, like the ones at the ends of churches. We walk out of the sun into the quiet building. Welland’s waiting for us. I hadn’t noticed yesterday that he’s even taller than me, and definitely a lot thinner. And he’s got a tan like he spends all his time outdoors. He’s a handsome man.
‘I’ve got a real treat for you today, children,’ he says, rubbing his hands together. ‘Something not everyone gets to see. Follow me.’
Birdie skips into step with him. The two of them wander off ahead. I don’t mind. Quite the contrary. I walk behind her, watch her tight shape, and rest my eyes on my favourite part of her, that tender spot at the nape of her neck where the hair ends and the skin begins.
I missed her last night. I wanted her to keep me awake. I hoped to listen to her talking in her sleep, to hear her breathing, to watch her silhouette rise and fall in the dark and feel the warmth of her body next to me. I hope we’ll be in the same bed tonight.
Funny how we’ve spent so many nights together and never seen each other fully naked. Maybe I’m wrong to want commitment first. Maybe I’m wrong to be so obsessed. I should just give in to my want for her. Maybe I’m wrong to be here. This is all a mistake.
‘Here’s our Antarctic gallery,’ Welland says, and drags me out of my regrets.
We’ve moved from the low, artificially lit galleries into a tall hall full of natural light. It must be a modern extension at the back of the Gothic mansion. The space is sparse and harsh and aggressive, sharp edges to every object, every simple single thing. It knocks the breath out of me.
Birdie slows down. She brushes against me as if by accident. I catch her scent again; fresh lemons warmed by the sun.
‘You OK?’ she whispers.
‘Yeah, I just feel a bit out of it.’
‘You worry too much. I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Do you?’
‘This is fantastic, Welland,’ she says loudly.
‘Wait till you see the best of it.’ He smiles. ‘But you need to look round this first. There are artefacts here from before Scott and Amundsen right through to Sir Edmund Hillary’s joint expedition with Sir Vivian Fuchs in the fifties. I’m sure you’ll love it.’
‘Thanks,’ she says, and she’s not being facetious.
I just want to get this whole thing over and done with. I want to get out there and find the tent, reach a conclusion, and get her back to England. I want to build a proper relationship. I want to be with her. I want to live in a house that always smells of lemons and sunshine.
She stops in front of every exhibit, reads every sign. She absorbs it all. Stuffed penguins and seals stare back at us from behind glass. The walls are littered with paintings and photographs. The one that affects me most is an enlargement of Tryggve Gran’s photo of the cairn they built over the tent after they’d buried Scott, Wilson and Bowers. I’ve seen it so often in so many books, but its size transforms it. It’s almost nothing but different shades of white. The cross of skis and the sledge are the only black objects in the frame, the cairn a white pyramid merging into the horizon, a desolate, disappearing mound, a fresh grave to the three men buried beneath, three men frozen into the continent that killed them. And all around the cairn, a chaos of footprints. The left corner is the lightest, the sun about to burst out from behind the cold clouds, with no hope of warmth, no hope of revival.
‘Reckon we can find it?’ Birdie asks me.
‘It won’t look like that now.’
‘I know that. But there’ll be something inside it that we can locate with the radar.’
‘I hope so. Something metal. Even if we find one of the sledges, or just a trace of a ski binding or a belt buckle, we’ll be able to find the tent.’
‘There will be something, Adam. There will be. There’s got to be. I can feel it.’
‘We won’t know until we find it.’
‘Or till our time runs out. Bloody weather! Bloody bureaucrats!’
‘And if we don’t go?’
‘I don’t even want to think about that.’
‘And what if we don’t find anything?’
‘We will, we’ve got to.’ She stamps her foot. ‘God, why the hell is this so bloody complicated? It’s just a five-hour flight away, for fuck’s sake.’
I shrug.
We stop in front of a scale model of four men hauling a sledge and a fifth pushing. Although they’re only small figures, plastic figures, they make the physical effort of man-hauling suddenly real.
‘God, I’m glad we won’t be doing any of that,’ I say.
‘It might do us some good.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’
‘It doesn’t outweigh my appetite for life.’
‘And cigarettes and booze.’
‘OK, and cigarettes and booze.’
‘We all die in the end.’
‘Not yet, Birdie, not yet.’
She smiles, stretches. I catch a glimpse of her stomach, of the ring through her belly-button. The veins in her neck stand out with the effort of living, of keeping awake, her body still in the wrong time zone.
We move through into an even larger room. A staircase at the far end reaches up to another floor. The sun bounces down to us from the partition windows.
‘What’s up there?’ Birdie asks Welland.
‘Some of our archives.’
‘Is that where you’re keeping the surprise you promised us?’ she asks him.
He’s flirting with her. He’s very good at it. I smile at the floor.
‘Should we?’ he asks and offers her his arm.
‘Yes, let’s,’ she says and takes the offered arm, glides elegantly up the steps at his side. They make a fine couple.
He opens the glass door for us. As we file into the room, the first thing I feel is a change in temperature. It’s almost cold in here, even compared to the coolness of the Antarctic Gallery down there. I shiver.
‘We need to keep the temperature fairly low in here,’ Welland says, ‘on account of the fragile nature of these things. Come.’
He gestures at a U-shaped arrangement of tables, covered from end to end by white cotton cloths and an array of old manuscripts, books and notebooks. Two nervous-looking women in white coats stand behind all this. They’re wearing white gloves.
‘These are my lovely curators.’ He smiles at us and them at the same time. He could charm blood from a stone, this bloke.
‘And these are my lovely guests, girls,’ he goes on. ‘Now don’t worry. They won’t break anything. Nev is vouching for them with his life – and his wallet.’
Nev ignores him and goes to stand by the window. He’s probably used to Welland’s performances. I find it hugely amusing. Birdie’s already over by the tables, ignoring us. She wins the women over by helping herself to a set of white gloves and standing back, waiting. If I got her back to England, and if I got her to be with me, could I ever get used to the chameleon she is? My head’s not convinced by my heart.
‘Come on, then, Welland, tell us all about this stuff. Can’t hang around all day,’ she says.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Can I open this?’ She points at an oversized notebook covered in stains.
‘Please use the white card to separate the pages,’ one of the conservators says.
‘Sure thing,’ Birdie says.
The spine is loose, the pages fragile and frayed. Birdie places her left hand flat on the cover, lightly pushes the white card under the inside of the cover and turns it over. She gasps. I touch her shoulder.
‘What?’
‘This one’s for you, Adam. It’s Frank Worsley’s, from the Endurance. The guy who sailed the James Caird to South Georgia with Shackleton. Dear God.’
Inside the front cover, in copperplate writing: Lieut. F. A. Worsley R.N.R. commanding s.y. Endurance on a Voyage of discovery to the Antarctic. Work Book. Amazing.
‘And it did go all the way with them,’ Welland says. ‘He wrote in it every day, even when they thought they’d never get saved.’
‘Tough bastards,’ Nev says from his window spot.
‘They must all have been. All those who’ve been down there,’ Birdie says. ‘We can’t compete with that.’
‘But you can help take their message back to the modern world,’ Welland says. ‘Young people don’t understand about endeavour, respect, dignity and honour.’
‘I’m not old,’ she says.
‘But you’re exceptional, my dear,’ Welland says.
She doesn’t even blush. She just nods. I wish I was as sure of myself. Welland smiles. They’re two of a kind.
We make our way round the table to look at more manuscripts from Shackleton’s time. I love the way the paper crackles and rustles when we turn the pages, the paper’s weight has reduced with age. I ask Welland if they’ve scanned all this stuff into a document management system.
‘Of course. But we hope we can find ways to preserve the paper, too, because it would be dreadful to lose it.’
‘Sorry to be geeky,’ I say.
‘You’re not,’ he says. ‘It’s good to know someone else cares as much as we do.’
There is an original copy of Aurora Australis, the book that was created on Shackleton’s 1907 expedition, when he got to within ninety miles of the Pole. It’s one of only eighty copies printed, full of schoolboy humour. Funny, but not funny. Not when I think of the real reason we’re here. But it’s still history. Where do we draw the line? What we scribble today may be artefacts in a hundred years. Birdie’s paintings definitely will be. Those of us with no talent will be lost in the drifts of history.
We’ve looked at just about everything on the table. I’m about to walk off when Welland stops me.
‘Hey, you’ll miss the best piece I could find,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Here.’ He points at a small notebook at the end of the table. It’s undistinguished, but in fairly good condition. I hadn’t noticed it.
‘What is it?’ Birdie says.
‘Frederick Hooper’s diary,’ he says. ‘He was one of the search party that found the tent.’
‘But haven’t all the diaries been published?’ she says.
‘Hooper’s started as a letter to his fiancée. It wasn’t long enough to be published. And, to be honest, all of those that have been published are nothing compared to Scott’s.’
‘True.’ She picks the book up. Opens it. ‘Does he mention finding the tent?’
‘I believe so. You’ll have to leaf through it, though.’
I stand close to her as she turns the pages. She’s trembling. The scrawl is almost indecipherable. Then she stops shaking and stands motionless.
‘Here it is,’ she says. I look over her shoulder as she reads out loud.
10th November – 1 Ton Depot. A dull morning and bitterly cold wind, face badly frostbitten, surface getting much softer.
She skips the rest of that day.
11th, 12th. We found the Pole Party this evening about 11 miles south of 1 Ton Depot. We noticed what we thought was a cairn … When we got up to it we found it was a tent badly drifted up. We dug it out & lifted the tent off & I shall never forget the sight that met our eyes. Capt. Scott was lying with his head opposite the door, half out of his bag, both of his arms were thrown across the other two bags which we found contained Dr Wilson & Lt. Bowers. It’s apparent they have died of starvation.
We had a service over them & buried them as they were absolutely stiff, frozen in every limb. It was an awful sight to see our dear comrades in such a state, a sight I shall never forget in a hurry. I forgot to say that a blizzard kept them at this place. It lasted over 8 days. It looked very much like Dr Wilson and Lt. Bowers died while asleep, but Capt. Scott must have been awake when he passed away, his eyes were wide open & he looked as though he must have been in great pain.
Birdie puts the book down and turns to me. She’s crying. ‘We have to find them.’