Death on the Ice (3 page)

The only place in the heavily garrisoned town to have coffee and a chat without rough-cut customers offending a lady’s sensibilities was the Hôtel Gascon. The establishment still clung to some kind of pre-war grandeur, despite having lost a wing to one of the German’s rail-mounted artillery pieces. Breakfast was just finishing as they entered, but, after a word with the manager, Lady Scott secured the re-opening of the dining room for pastries and hot drinks. They had the place completely to themselves; the pale, under-fed waitress was too irritated by the extension to the serving hours to hover once the order was taken.

‘You look well, Lady Scott,’ he said.

‘You look thin, tired and a little dirty.’ There was sympathy in her voice.

‘Not for the first time.’ Robert Falcon Scott had always complained he didn’t wash enough. Grant had countered that the English habit of bringing their ‘civilised’ bathroom habits with them wherever they went was ridiculous.

‘You fly a Sopwith,’ she said. ‘A fine little scout, I hear.’

‘Do you know aircraft?’

She looked cross. ‘I flew with Mr Sopwith. In a dual-control plane. It was 1911, while Con was … there was a fuss from the family, Con’s, I mean. They thought I shouldn’t get noticed while he was away. Do you know, I think I was the second Englishwoman to fly?’

‘No, but I can believe it. I’m just surprised you let someone beat you to it.’

‘It’s a family trait.’

If that was a joke, he didn’t think it amusing. It wasn’t done to jest about Amundsen’s primacy at the Pole. ‘How did you find me?’

She waved a hand as if it were nothing. ‘I have friends in high places.’

‘You always did, Lady Scott. You always did.’ Like her husband, she could turn on blazing charm when required. Tales of men who had been ensnared by her were legion. It was unlikely that without her tireless campaigning and courting of crusty old admirals her husband would have been given that second, fateful crack at the Pole. It would be nothing for her to find the whereabouts of a Canadian airman. ‘How is the boy?’

‘Doodles is well, thank you. Peter. I must stop using that name. Too old for it now. Peter has given up wanting to be a drummer, thank goodness. Wants to command a Dreadnought now.’

‘He must miss his father.’

‘We all miss Con,’ she said, once again using the diminutive derived from Falcon, Scott’s middle name. There was a defensive note in her voice. There had been some mutterings at the way she continued her career as a sculptor—and her partygoing—after her husband’s loss. But Grant knew she had never been the kind of woman to be imprisoned in widow’s weeds for very long.

‘You aren’t taking notes, Lady Scott.’

‘I’m not here to interview you, Mr Gran,’ she said, using his real name for the first time. ‘Not in that way. I’m here to ask a favour. Before they send you to Russia.’

He didn’t like the sound of that. What kind of favour could he possibly offer? Nevertheless, he said: ‘If I can help, Lady Scott.’

‘Call me Kathleen, please.’ She smiled and he remembered the power it could yield. Kathleen Scott was one of those women who often looked plain, especially in photographs, but to whom animation lent a whole new dimension. Her mischievous eyes, extravagant hair, dimpled grin and husky voice had certainly led those old admirals by the nose. You had to be on your guard.

Hot chocolate and pastries arrived and he waited till the sullen waitress had departed before speaking. ‘So, Kathleen. How can I help?’

‘I have written a book. Well, partly written. About my husband.’ He made to speak and she raised her hand to silence him. ‘I know. Everybody who ever met him has written a memoir. I hear Cherry is working on his, now he is recovered.’ She was referring to young Cherry-Garrard, another member of Scott’s
Terra Nova
expedition and universally popular. A terrible melancholy and debilitating colitis had subsequently afflicted him. He would be writing his account hoping to exorcise some of those demons, but Grant doubted he would succeed. Cherry blamed himself for Scott’s death, despite all the evidence to the contrary. ‘But there is not one that gives the views of my husband.’

‘His diaries.’ A hastily edited version of his journals had been put out after his death.

‘They do not tell the whole story.’

‘No?’

‘Diaries are written in haste, with slights and wounds still fresh. And mistakes and affronts still rankling.’

He had heard there were some personal slights by Scott taken out of the journals before publication; he wondered if any of them had concerned him. Unlikely. The British weren’t so worried about saving the feelings of a mere Norwegian. Tryggve Gran sipped his hot chocolate. Teddy Grant had disappeared for the moment, sidelined as the Norwegian was forced to revisit his past. To a man, every surviving member of Scott’s party had volunteered for the war upon their return. However, because his country was neutral, Gran had not been allowed to join the RFC. Quickly reborn as a thinly disguised Canadian, he was eagerly accepted because ready-trained pilots were a rarity. Teddy Grant was the pilot, but Tryggve Gran had been a polar explorer, a member of the most famous expedition ever undertaken at the bottom of the planet. Moreover, he was one of the team who had discovered that lonely, dispiriting tent, where men had endured suffering beyond belief and confronted death with a bravery the living could only envy.

He found himself gripping the cup, letting the warmth seep through the china into his hands. The old scar on his leg began to throb, as if scurvy was setting in. His chest ached, remembering the sharp, rasping pain of lungs sucking in super-cooled air. The memory of needle-sharp blasts of ice crystals caused his face to tingle. He swore the tips of his fingers were struck numb. Shackleton had been right. It never goes away, Gran thought, from the softest glow of deep-blue twilight to the ammoniac stench of the penguin rookery, there was always an echo of the South with you. You could leave that desert of ice, but it would never leave you.

She was waiting for him to comment and he picked up the thread. ‘I feel the immediacy of diaries makes them a more valuable document than mere hindsight,’ he offered. ‘There is a tendency to fix things at a later date, to self-aggrandise. Even your husband—’

Her eyes widened in anticipation of the criticism.

What was it the English said? Mustn’t speak ill of the dead.

‘Go on.’

He did. ‘I have read
The Voyage of
The Discovery.’ This was Scott’s account of his first Antarctic expedition. ‘And I have spoken to Shackleton about it. He was adamant that it was a heavily revised version of the truth. He feels it maligns him.’

She didn’t seem surprised. ‘That’s a very worn gramophone record. You’ve seen him, then?’

‘Shackle? Yes. Earlier this year, before he went to South America.’ He shook his head at the thought of the exhausted explorer, who was being wheeled around by the War Office to recount the tale of his hideous journey by rowing boat to seek relief for his men, stranded when the ice took their ship. It was a stirring cocktail of courage and self-sacrifice, and it usually did the trick for the troops’ morale. Such was its immediacy, few in the audience would reflect on one salient fact that certainly did not apply to the generals of the Western Front: Shackleton never lost a man. ‘He was drinking too much.’ Gran had a sudden urge to order a brandy, which he ignored. They all drank too much these days.

‘There you have it,’ she said, as if that could account for all the bitterness Shackleton still displayed towards Scott. ‘It was probably the alcohol talking.’

Gran didn’t want to pursue the subject any further. Both Shackleton and Scott were, each in their own way, heroic and pig headed. He had found their falling-out ridiculous, each scarred by mostly imaginary wounds they refused to stitch. ‘I don’t understand what you want from me, of all people.’

‘I want you to read the book. To tell me it is fair. To suggest changes. And to write an introduction—’

‘But I was only one of many. There are others, there are Englishmen—’

She dismissed his protestations with a long sigh. ‘All of whom have enough axes to grind to fell a forest. You know that. Or they are writing their own book with an eye on royalties. But here you are, fighting for our country. One day people will know about your efforts, about who Teddy Grant really is, about how he fought our war.’ As if to punctuate her remark, there was the distant crump of a shell. A standing wave formed briefly in his hot chocolate. ‘You are as much a hero as any of them.’

Gran shook his head at this.

‘Yes you are.’

‘I went South because I love to ski and thought I could convey that. On the way back from the Pole, I met a pilot who told me about the magic of flying, so I went to the Bleriot school and I learned to fly. And I made a promise to Soldier about what I would do if war came. I’m keeping my promise. Does all that make me a hero?’

‘Where and how you opt to do what you love makes you a hero. You could choose to fly anywhere. At home, for the Germans. But, no. You are flying for England.’ She frowned and leaned forward and for the first time he could see that her skin, beneath the fine powder around her eyes, was no longer young. ‘And you are a Norwegian, Scott’s Norwegian. That makes you dispassionate. I would like you to do this for me, for Con. For the Boy. And Soldier and Wilson. And Amundsen, if you like. You know I have no animosity towards him.’ That was news to Gran. He recalled she’d agreed with the late Sir Clements Markham of the Royal Geographical Society, who had called the first man to the South Pole a liar and a cheat and, in private, much worse. ‘Or any of your countrymen.’

‘Really?’

She gave a small, knowing smile. Gran wondered if it was an oblique acknowledgement of the rumours about her involvement with Professor Fridtjof Nansen, one of his country’s greatest explorers and the man who had introduced a young dreamer called Tryggve Gran to Captain Scott. ‘And you can write what you like.’

‘Because you can always change it.’

‘You have my word I will change nothing without checking with you first.’

Gran experienced a small flash of apprehension. Like all flyers on the Western Front, he rarely made plans beyond the next twenty-four hours. It seemed too much like tempting fate. ‘If I’m still around to be checked with. You know the average life of a pilot these days? It’s measured in hours. I’m overdue my turn.’

Kathleen reached over and took his hands in hers. He felt a small charge throughout his body, as if he had been plugged into one of those electrotherapy machines that had been all the fashion before the war. A fresh warmth spread over his chest. It was surprisingly pleasant. ‘That’s new pilots. Not grizzled old polar men. Nobody clings to life like they do.’

This was certainly true, even if he didn’t quite deserve to be described as grizzled or old just yet. ‘And if I say no? What happens then?’

This was no idle question. He doubted Kathleen Scott was a woman who took rejection well. A quiet word from her could expose his subterfuge and have ‘Teddy Grant’ ousted from the RFC. ‘I’ll be disappointed.’ She squeezed his fingers and let go. ‘But that’s all, Trigger.’

‘Trigger’ was what the English always made of Tryggve. ‘I’d need to read what you have written.’

He saw the flash of victory in her eyes. He had rolled over too easily. ‘Of course you will. And we should talk money for your efforts—’

This was going far too fast for Gran’s liking. ‘Later. I haven’t said yes, yet. Because if you’re looking for a mindless eulogy for the Owner, you’ve come to the wrong place.’ He laughed at the phrase that had come to him unbidden. ‘The Owner’ had been the expedition nickname for Scott, one that hinted at his proprietary attitude to all Antarctic exploration. Although it was often used in the Navy as a substitute for ‘skipper’, it had always been more appropriate than most names for Scott. ‘It’s not the Norwegian way.’

Another shell landed, nearer this time, and he felt the wooden frame of the old hotel vibrate. A thin stream of dust rained from the cornice on to the next table. The war, it reminded him, was still out there.

‘You think I don’t know who Con was and what he was? But I can’t sit by while others tear their own little strips off the story, like self-serving wolves. When this war is over, I want the truth out there.’

‘It has be Oates’s story as well. And Wilson’s. And there’s Bowers and Taff Evans. They are writing poor Taff out of it, you know.’

She ignored this remark. ‘And yours and Cherry’s and the rest. I know.’

‘And there is someone hanging over even that second trip.’

‘Shackleton.’ Lady Scott exhaled loudly, as if this were an irritation. ‘I suppose you would say none of it makes sense without him.’

‘I was thinking of Teddy Evans.’

‘The Lion of Dover?’ She smirked slightly at the unlikely epithet for Scott’s number one. Teddy Evans had been in command of HMS
Broke
when it encountered a large marauding force of German warships, intent on shelling Dover. Along with HMS
Swift
, the
Broke
sank two and rammed another, causing the surviving vessels to flee and offering Evans a second taste of glory. ‘Possibly. But Shackleton more so.’

The whole story was a spidery tissue of interconnecting strands, like the complex filaments of ice webs that formed on
Terra Nova
’s rigging as they edged south. But Lady Scott was right, Shackle was a major component.

Gran finished his hot chocolate and took a bite of a delicate almond croissant. Perhaps he could risk a coffee before returning to the airfield. He felt in need of warmth. The heat from her touch had faded fast, like a parting kiss, and his core felt as if he’d been sipping iced water. ‘I shall read it and let you know my decision. That is the best I can promise. Where can I contact you?’

She extracted a card from her purse and slid it over the table. ‘Paris. I am supposed to be sculpting a head of Pétain. But so far I have seen more of his hands.’ She wrinkled her nose to express her displeasure. ‘You can always leave a message. Thank you, Trigger.’

‘I haven’t said yes, yet,’ he repeated.