Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Look at this,' said Ben when we got to the top. 'I've found a splinter of whale bone.' He strode
ahead, fiddling around looking for treasure. He was in his element off base. In the sixties, when he
was driving dogs, he had spent almost all his time in the field. He accepted that BAS wanted him
on base now because of his advanced age - but it wasn't the same.
I awoke the next day to a sound like sizzling bacon, the noise made by ice melting in a pan on a
primus. In the months after Antarctica I often heard it in the boneless moments between sleep and
consciousness; then memories ached like an old wound. Sunshine was pouring through the win-
dow. Steve brought tea to our bunks, and some of the ice must have been brackish, as it was salty.
I made up a jug of milk for our breakfast cereal, and that was salty too. I wasn't having much luck
with breakfasts. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. We basked on our veranda, and a flock of
Antarctic terns flew by, their high-pitched chirp exotically foreign after the coarse squawk of the
skuas. Later we took out the boats and followed a minke whale around the bergs, sailing through
Daliesque arches and poking the Humbers' noses into cold blue grottoes. The sun was low, and
evening. A day like that made everything worthwhile.
∗
When we got back to Rothera the planes were parked on the apron, spruced up for their long ferry
flights to Cambridge like cars on a showroom forecourt. The four Otters looked helpless without
their skis, crouching behind the Dash.
The next day the seven pilots and five air mechanics trooped in and out of the station, discussing
routes in loud voices. In the evening Al produced a four-course dinner, the air unit supplied cham-
pagne, a number of people made speeches, bread rolls whizzed through the air and we all got
drunk. I was on housekeeping duty the following morning, and when I started the dining room
looked like the site of a very small civil war in which neither side had emerged victorious. A pair
of training shoes had been stowed in the fridge, and congealed baked beans clung like glue to the
sandwich maker. We saw the planes off at eight o'clock. It was gusting forty knots, and very cold.
Great swathes of snow were sweeping across the ramp like smoke, tumbling over the ice cliffs op-
posite the point and dissolving into a gunmetal grey sea. The sun was peeking over the bergs in the
bay as one by one the pilots zipped themselves into their flying suits and took off for Stanley, first
stop on the long haul home.
The sense of shut-down was especially powerful then. We felt as if the birds had migrated.
People lingered longer at the tables after dinner, and at night the bar might be empty except for
two or three men playing Scrabble. People talked to me more easily, and seemed to find it less of
a gruelling experience than they had done during the first weeks of my tenure. Our favourite topic
of conversation was Relief. It was what they called the week when the ship anchored at the wharf
and disgorged a year's supplies.
'I hope that one stays,' one of the winterers said as we pressed our foreheads against a window
one morning and watched a particularly fine iceberg in the bay. They were waiting for the land-
scape to settle for the winter, and they wanted their favourite bergs to be marooned, like them. As
for the rest of us, at particular moments, when the evening light fell at a certain angle on the pack,
