Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Lovell and his two colleagues. Houston got prime-time only when the mission was aborted and the
astronauts were in danger of dying in outer space.
As the days were slipping away from me, I decided I ought to catch a lift back to McMurdo
in the Otter, rather than wait for a Here which might not come. I whipped up a bread-and-butter
pudding as a farewell gift. While they were eating it, Jen, a feisty individual working her second
season as a field assistant, filled a tin bowl with hot water, rolled up her long-johns and perched on
a chair in the galley shaving her legs.
'But who's gonna see those legs, Jen?' someone yelled. This was followed by a ripple of
laughter.
'Get outta here,' she called. 'I wanna be a girlie for once.'
I went over to the igloo and lay down one last time, looking up at the spiral of bricks and the
blue haze.
Everyone came over to the Otter to say goodbye. 'See you in Mactown,' said Seismic Man,
squinting into the sunlight.
I watched them get smaller and smaller until they disappeared into the ice. However much the
mountains and glaciers furnished the most conventionally beautiful Antarctic landscapes, the flat,
white wasteland had a power all of its own. One of the Beards whom I interviewed before I left
England had said something similar, and conveyed a sense of spirituality in a particularly idio-
syncratic way. Robert Swan walked to the South Pole in 1985. He was obsessed with Scott, and
his romantic vision sustained him on the long one-way trek. 'We walked', he told me, 'knowing
that they [Scott and the polar party] were under us, not looking a day older than when they died.'
He had a vision of Antarctica. 'To me it is a symbol of hope,' he said, 'because - thank God -
nobody owns it.' He had spent a good deal of time in Scott's hut. 'The horror of the last winter,
when every time the door rattled the ones who were left behind thought it was them coming back
- that atmosphere was still alive, and I thought our expedition could put it all to rest.' As we talked
in his cavernous Chelsea offices, and he alternately bit the stumps of his nails and drew deeply
on a cigarette, I was disarmed by his identification with Scott. (In fact Swan was much more like
Shackleton.) When I mentioned the infamous biography, he snarled. 'Has Roland Huntford ever
walked to the bloody South Pole?' Turning the concept of heroic failure upon himself (as he did
most things, though I didn't dislike him for it), he said flatly, 'I am less known because I get there.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes is better known because he keeps on almost getting there, with lots of dra-
mas.'
More than anyone else I talked to, Swan appreciated the staggering effort Scott must have made
to write the lapidary last diary entries. 'In those circumstances, which I know,' he said, 'when you
can barely pick up a pencil, I would have just written, Oh, fuck it.'
∗
The pilot wanted to play cards with the air mechanic, so I moved into the cockpit. A stack of
cassettes were jammed between the front seats - most of it was 1970s stuff I hadn't heard since
school, and it was perfect cruising music.
Crime of the Century, The Best of the Eagles
, early Bow-
ie, that Fleetwood Mac album we all had. A good deal of joking took place over the headsets as
