The Birthday Boys Read online

  Brooding on it since, I should have spoken up. If I’m the pisspot they take me for, how do they think I held down the post of gymnastics instructor, let alone won the Naval Tattoo competition for field gunnery two years running?

  Crean, who overheard Dr. Wilson remarking that ‘Teddy was a cheerful soul, but something of a Peter Pan’, advises me I should keep my head low and bide my time. Rumour has it that Evans was intent on leading an expedition of his own, only he didn’t have the backing of the Geographical Society. For this presumption the Owner’s none to warm towards him and won’t be long in finding he lacks ballast.

  We’ve had our work cut out preparing the Terra Nova for sea. She’s an old Dundee whaling ship built in 1884 – the Owner had set his heart on getting hold of the Discovery again but the Hudson Bay Company wouldn’t part with her.

  First thing, when the Nova limped into dock, was to get rid of her blubber tanks. The stench of seal oil was enough to make a sewer-rat heave. When Davies, the shipwright, first took a gander at her he pronounced her little short of a wreck, fit only for the knacker’s yard. He was looking on the dark side. True, if you peer too closely you can still spot the tell-tale strengthening pieces in her cross-trees and detect the furrows worn in her sides where she’s been ground by ice-floes, but she’s sweet enough now she’s been white-washed and her bilges swilled out, and sound where it counts.

  It’s been more a matter of alteration than repair. She’s barque-rigged and fitted to the requirements of the Expedition, with laboratories built on the poop for the scientists, a dark-room for the photographer, a new stove in the galley, instrument and chronometer-rooms, an icehouse for the frozen meat, on top of which, owing to it being free of iron, we’ve stuck the standard compass and the pedestal needed for magnetic work.

  The amount of stuff we’ve managed to pack in beggars description, and there’s next to no pilfering going on. Half the items – tobacco, cigars, fancy chocolates, crystallised fruits, curried meat in tins, Christmas puddings, baked beans, even a pianola – have been given for nothing, and the crew seem to take this for a sign of generosity. I could spell out to them the increased profits likely to accrue to Messrs. Burroughs and Wellcome when it becomes known they’re suppliers of photographic equipment to Mr Ponting of the Polar Expedition, not to mention the rush on sales when the Wolsey Underwear Company advertise their windproof drawers as those worn by the southern explorers, but it strikes me as prudent to keep my mouth shut. I’ve known ships so rife with thieving that the only thing likely to remain in place was the galley stove, and that because it was too hot to handle.

  The Owner’s paid £100 out of expedition funds to have the Terra Nova registered as a yacht. This enables us to fly the White Ensign; more to the point, it means we can dodge the attentions of Board of Trade officials who would most certainly declare her an ill-founded ship within the meaning of the Act, seeing she’s wallowing so low in the water it was a waste of time to smudge out the Plimsoll line. Fresh painted lamp-black, with a funnel yellow as a buttercup and a neat white line all round her bows, she’s now as pretty as a picture. There’s one thing worries Lashly: she’s going to be the very devil when it comes to consuming coal.

  Before we sailed from West India Dock the wife of the First Sea Lord broke the White Ensign from our masthead. Every ship for miles around set off their hooters as we moved out into the river. A huge crowd had gathered to wish us godspeed; they ran in a tide along the dock, hats raised, a blizzard of handkerchieves fluttering farewell. We had known in our minds all along we were leaving, but it was only now that we knew it in our hearts, and more than one of us dashed the tears from his eyes. Mr Ponting, the photographer, observed to the Owner that if this was our departure, what on earth would our homecoming be like? The Owner was less enthusiastic, he said he didn’t care for this sort of fuss, that all he wanted was to finish the work begun on the Discovery and get back to the Navy. I don’t think he altogether approves of Mr Ponting, suspecting him of being tainted by commercialism. The word is that Mr Ponting’s struck a hard bargain in regards to copyright and such matters.

  We took nine days to reach Cardiff, making stops all along the Channel to acknowledge money given and in hopes of receiving more. Sir Clements Markham and party came with us, and the Owner’s wife. Mrs Scott’s a handsome woman and confident with it. On boarding, she strolled up to Captain Oates and says, cool as you please, ‘I see you’re wearing laces in your boots today, Captain Oates.’ He fairly wriggled. I noticed the Owner looking at her once or twice as if he wasn’t sure what she might do next.

  First stop was at Greenhithe, where we dropped anchor off the training ship Worcester. The Owner disembarked soon after to pick up two flags donated by Queen Alexandra, one to be brought back, suitably weather-worn, and one to be hoisted furthest south. At this rate we’ll have more flags than sails. Before he went ashore he addressed the cadets and told them he had no objection to their looking over the Terra Nova. Mrs Scott waved to me as she left.

  She’s taller than the Owner and it’s not just on account of her hat, because I’ve seen her without one, the afternoon he sent me round to his house to collect a document he’d forgotten. She wears her hair down indoors and goes barefoot. On that occasion, she said, ‘So you’re Petty Officer Evans. Con often refers to you as a gentle giant’, Con being a diminutive of Falcon, the Owner’s second name. I blushed. She’s ladylike but her manner and gaze are very direct.

  They don’t live in any great style. I noticed they were short on carpets and had just a few rugs strewn about the floor, and though I can’t swear to it I reckon the sofa, judging by its list to starboard, was missing a leg. She asked if I wanted to take a peek at the baby, and when I said I did she took me out into the garden at the back. He was in his pram with the hood pushed down and a stiff wind blowing. ‘There’s nothing more likely to make a child thrive,’ she said, ‘than fresh air. And love, of course.’

  When I told the wife about the air she flared up and said it was all right for some, that if we put our little one out in the backyard he’d be dead in a week, what with the sulphurous fumes from the tin-plate works and enough soot coming down over Swansea to make him into a piccaninny.

  With the Owner gone, Lt. Evans was in his element. He’d done his training on the Worcester and it evidently gave him no end of satisfaction to return as Master of such a celebrated vessel, even if she is nothing more than a whaler masquerading as a yacht. He turned to me some time during the afternoon, a crocodile of youthful wide-eyed lads slithering in his wake, and exclaimed, ‘Dewch, it’s wonderful to be off at last, isn’t it, Taff?’ He used the Welsh as though it came natural to him.

  ‘Dewch, that it is, indeed to goodness, sir,’ I replied, but the irony skimmed past him like a feather on the breeze. His eyes had a boy’s light in them, guileless, shiny with hope, and I was sorry afterwards I’d made sarcastic with him. When we get back he’ll become a Captain for real, and then he’ll be down on the list in line for an Admiral. To each his own dream, and I know mine.

  It was the lack of space, the smell of clothes drying in front of the fire, that set my mind on the sea. The first thing the wife does, when she knows I’m due for a spell of coming ashore, is to get rid of the washing and park the umbrella-stand against the front door to keep it wide open. I grew fast, and big, and the bigger I got the pokier our Mam’s house became, not a chair easy enough for me to sit in, nor a bed long enough to lie on. I cracked my head on the lintel of the door every time I went out back to the privvy. Most times I felt like a fish in a net. I was young then, and sailing the oceans let me stretch my limbs and expand my lungs.

  I’m slowing down now, I can’t deny it, and when I return I ought to be in a position to quit the sea and buy a little pub in Cardigan Bay. I stayed there once as a boy in my Mam’s brother’s house near Criccieth. His wasn’t a big house either, but there was a meadow alongside and an orchard beyond with a view of sands the colour of milk on the turn. In the rig
ht season my aunty kept a copper perched on a fire above a cattle grid in the orchard, and there was so much fruit to cook we stayed up all night feeding the flames with sticks. We baked bruised apples in the embers and juggled them in our palms until they were cool enough to eat. In the morning the whole world smelt of jam.

  I’ve tried to make my wife glimpse the silver lining, painted word-pictures of sunsets and sunrises free of smoke, of columbine snaking along a garden wall, of the baby’s cheeks tinted pink as an albertine in bloom, but she’s a pessimist and all she talks about is setbacks, death, an inadequate widow’s pension and her and the children thrown on the parish. All the same, I notice she never wastes an opportunity to boast of where I’m headed.

  The 3rd of June found us off Spithead, where the Superintendent of Compasses came on board and swung the ship. I was fretting the Owner mightn’t get back for his birthday but he turned up on the 4th. I’d bought him a little gift of two Havanas and a card with a picture of Nelson on the front. We’ve got 3,500 cigars in the hold already, and I wouldn’t like him to think I hadn’t paid for his out of my own pocket. I presented my offering on the morning of the 6th, finding him temporarily on his own in the wardroom.

  He was sitting in his chair at the head of the table, scribbling across a pile of papers.

  ‘A token of my esteem, sir,’ I said. ‘Many happy returns.’

  ‘How very kind of you, Evans,’ he said. ‘I’m much obliged to you’, and he put the package unopened into his pocket and continued with his writing. I don’t know what I expected, a handshake perhaps, a tot in celebration of his birth date – an offer which I would have refused, unless pressed. At any rate, I was left feeling flat.

  That evening, after completing a series of magnetic observations in the Solent, Lt. Evans announced we were welcome on board the Invincible which was anchored nearby. ‘It goes without saying,’ he said, ‘that I expect you to conduct yourselves like gentlemen.’ Come ten o’clock we could hear the racket the officers were making at table clear over the ship, and him in particular. One of his party tricks is to pick a man up in his teeth by the seat of the trousers.

  I don’t recall much of the latter part of the evening, beyond we were presented with two sledges and that at midnight me, Lashly and Crean were detailed by Mr Campbell, the mate, to stow a load of canvas in the boat and row with muffled oars to the Terra Nova. After which the Owner called me up from the lower deck to have a word.

  ‘I’m leaving now, Petty Officer,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in Portsmouth.’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ I replied. ‘Portsmouth it is.’

  ‘Do you know what I’m going to do?’ he asked me. ‘Before I leave England?’

  ‘Make a will, sir,’ I said, quick as a flash.

  ‘Near,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m going home to carve my initials on a tree that I’ve planted, and when I’ve done so I shall sit under it and smoke one of your excellent cigars.’

  As it happened, my talk of wills wasn’t short of the mark. He rejoined us on the 8th, a day of thick fog. We were taken in tow to the Needles and then to Weymouth Bay where the Home Fleet of the new Dreadnought class had assembled to pay its respects. We moved between those monstrous ships like a tiddler among whales. The time can’t be far off when the strength of a man’s arm, his knowledge of tides, of winds, will count for nothing, and I, for one, am glad I’ll be beached by then. When we were under the muzzles of the Dreadnought guns we held our breath. I daresay the mist added to our sense of awe; how else, but in silence, could one bob past the jaws of hell.

  We rounded Portland Bill at sunset, and a short while later the Owner ordered the men aft and said it was his wish that every man should make a will. He would, he said, give advice as to the allotting of money. We smirked inwardly, most of us having nothing to leave but debts, and the rest about as much as could be tied up in a handkerchief.

  While the Owner was talking, Lt. Evans had cause to ease the Terra Nova down, take soundings and go full astern to avoid our being in collision with a steamer; the Owner’s voice shook and he coughed to hide it. As Lashly put it, we’d have looked a right bunch of knuckle-heads if we’d sunk in home waters.

  On the 11th of June we weighed anchor in the Cardiff Roads and the Pilot came aboard to steer us into Roath Dock to berth alongside the bunting-decked warehouses of the Crown Patent Fuel Company. No businessman ever gives something without wanting a return. The Crown Company was supplying us free of charge with three-hundred tons of compressed briquettes of coal and bitumen, for which largesse the Owner had to smarm his way through the attentions of yet another welcoming party. He’s good at that sort of thing when he concentrates his mind; he has only to smile to set the ladies fluttering, but you can tell he finds it a strain by the way he keeps glancing over his shoulder to reassure himself Dr Wilson is at hand.

  The coaling of the ship was completed that same afternoon under his supervision. He didn’t have to be there, but I reckon he found it preferable to spending time hobnobbing with the company directors and their wives. When it was over all hands were landed for the ship to be fumigated and blown free of coal dust, after which we were invited – compliments of the management – to the second house of the Empire Theatre Music Hall. The Owner went hotfoot back to London.

  The same tedious procedure of loading and cleansing happened all over again on the Saturday, following our removal to the Bute Dock to take on board a hundred tons of steam coal. It was then that the shipwrights’ original misgivings came home to roost. The Terra Nova settled dangerously low in the water and leakage occurred in the bows. We all had to heave to, caulking and cementing the timbers. Lt. Evans warned us to keep our mouths shut in case word got round and we were prevented from leaving on time. Lashly thinks the trouble stems from the renewal-plates put in to strengthen the ship for the icepack; some bloody dockworker has used the wrong-sized rivets.

  Saturday night we were given shore leave, and I went to the house of my brother-in-law Hugh Price to join my wife Lois who had travelled up from Rhosili to say goodbye. My mother had come too, and her brother David Williams from Criccieth, now an old man, and so far gone in the head as not to know the time of day any more. It was an ordeal my mother being there, crying over me and carrying on as though our next meeting was destined to take place beyond the bright blue sky, forcing me to divide my attention between her and Lois and the baby. What with my brother-in-law’s three grown lads living at home and the neighbours popping in and out to shake me by the hand, it wasn’t long before I wished I was back on board. However delicately put, there’s always one question nobody can wait to ask, namely how does a man perform his bodily functions in a temperature below zero. You can hold yourself in your hands, I tell them, when you’re passing water, but when it’s a matter of something more pressing, no matter how you position yourself, it’s a frost-bitten bum for sure. I was beating about the bush, for that isn’t quite the way of it. There were times in the Discovery days when we did our business in our britches and shook out the turds when they froze.

  A bit of a storm blew up between me and the wife. She was pestering to know how my pay was going to come through. I could only tell her she had no need to bother her head for the next six months – after that it was a question of working out what remained in the Expedition kitty. ‘You can rest easy,’ I said. ‘The Owner has given his word that the families won’t do without.’

  ‘What use will a word be to me,’ she flared up, ‘when you and your precious Owner are thousands of miles away playing at snowmen?’

  The brother-in-law didn’t improve the situation. ‘I seen a photograph of Captain Scott’s wife in the newspaper this morning,’ he said. ‘You told me she was a good-looking woman, and by God, she is.’

  ‘I don’t know that I expressed an opinion one way or the other,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ he insisted.

  ‘I was talking about his mother, see,’ I said. ‘The Captain’s very attached to his mother
.’

  The damn fool wouldn’t let it go. My Mam compounded it by nudging my uncle and shouting into his ear that I thought the world of Captain Scott. It beats me why she had to bring the uncle into it; judging by the baffled look in his drowned eyes he was having difficulty in fathoming who I was, never mind the Owner.

  ‘Not the world,’ I protested, attempting to get hold of my wife’s hand under the table, only to have her snatch it from my grasp as if she’d touched dirt. I felt I was being torn in all directions, so much so that when Hugh Price suggested we go off to the pub I jumped at it. It wasn’t as though my wife was hanging on my every word and putting herself out to make a fuss of me. On the contrary, she was looking daggers all the while I was eating my tea.

  There was a fellow in the pub who came straight up and wanted to know if it was true that the Terra Nova was unseaworthy. ‘What gave you that idea?’ I asked. ‘I read it in the newspaper,’ he said. ‘It says they’re having to use the pumps.’ I saw him off with a flea in his ear, but later the brother-in-law was daft enough to repeat what had been said in front of my mother, which set her weeping again.

  I was all for going straight off to my bed, it being the last night me and Lois would snuggle down together for three long years, but she said she had to give the baby its feed and she didn’t want me lumbering about while she was trying to get him winded.

  Hugh Price fetched the cards from the sideboard. The old uncle was laid out on the sofa; every time the coals settled, or one of us swore or thumped the table, he shouted, ‘Is that you knocking, Lizzie … is that you, cariad?’ and we shouted back, ‘Hush there, Lizzie’s long since gone to her bed’, which was no more than an arrangement of the truth, seeing his wife Elizabeth had been unravelling in the ground for the last twenty years. Once, when next door booted the cat out for the night and it let off a yowl, he sat bolt upright and exclaimed, ‘Keep still, you bugger, I haven’t finished yet.’