Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
record was playing the duet 'When we were married' from
The Belle of New York
. While I was
standing in front of this object the curator of the museum introduced himself.
'Regard the museum as yours!' he said cheerfully, flinging his arms out to indicate the extent of
his domain. Around the corner, a sepia photograph of a man in a rocking chair next to a blazing
fire was captioned, 'About eighty years ago there was a time to relax in the Falklands'.
Later, I went swimming. I couldn't wait to swim; I had missed it so much. No one was in the
water except a handful of BAS men from the ship, lounging like seals. We were all thrilled to be
splashing about. On the way back I tried to buy fruit in the main shop, but they didn't have a single
piece.
We spent a few days in the Falklands, waiting for a TriStar and living on the
Bransfield
. I walked
through the low shrubs and Yorkshire Fog grass, and when upland geese rose out of the under-
growth and flew away from me and steamer ducks careering over the rocks flapped their redundant
wings irritably, I thought once again of solitary days in Tierra del Fuego, a lifetime ago. I went
to Yorke Bay; the dunes were wired off with signs saying 'D
ANGER
! M
INES
', but the rolling sand
made me think of hot places. At least there were still penguins. Over towards Gypsy Cove stripy
magellanic penguins brayed and peered out of their earth burrows. When I stooped to look in at
them, they fidgeted, twisting their heads from side to side. I thought with a pang of the fearless-
ness of the Adélies and emperors. I was so frightened of it all slipping away from me. I followed a
Falklands thrush to the end of the bay, looked down and saw more penguins swimming in the clear
green water far below. Then I walked slowly back to my ship as a soft white fog fell, and the other
boats were calling to each other like partridges in the evening when the mist lies low on the winter
field.
∗
The alarm ripped through the ship at five o'clock one gloomy morning, and we ran around with
our kitbags and bundled into a coach on the dark and glistening tarmac quay after hasty goodbyes
to those who were sailing on to Montevideo. One of them, a man who had ignored me during my
entire stay at Rothera, loomed out of the crowd, pressed his hand to mine, drew close to my face
and said, 'It's from the Eternity Range.' He disappeared back into the darkness, and I opened my
fist. It was a seashell.
It was a long trip to Mount Pleasant airport, and the diminutive Glaswegian chippie fell asleep
on my shoulder. The coach was flooded with sunshine, and outside the windows the island looked
resplendent. By the evening we were in Ascension, where it was twenty-seven degrees Celsius.
After a lengthy delay another long haul took us to the English meadows of Brize Norton. The in-
flight magazine still bore a photograph of a happy customer descending by parachute.
I wondered what was going to happen to the still, small voice when I flung myself back into the
cacophony of civilisation. I wasn't afraid of permanently losing sight of the certainty and calm I
had found - but it was going to have to fight off a lot of competition once I had the nuts and bolts
of urban life to worry about.
This flight was supposed to define the end, the termination of a long physical journey and the
beginning of a mental one. But nothing ended. It was all one continuous journey which never
