Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Restoration
Talk of ex-soldiers: give me ex-antarctics, unsoured and with their ideals intact. They could
sweep the world.
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, from
The Worst Journey in the World
WE JUMPED
over the soft cracks in the snow to reach Scott's hut, and Lucia opened the door with
the heavy metal key. It was our last full day at Wooville.
'Remember -' she began, grinning mischievously.
'I think we've been through that enough times,' I said. I knew she was about to refer to our first
visit to the hut, when I had struggled to pull the wooden bar back from the door before unlocking it.
To free up my hands, without thinking I had put the key in my mouth, where it had instantly frozen
to my lips. Lucia had been obliged to exhale energetically over my face to unstick the key without
the loss of too much of the skin on my lips. No lasting damage had been done, but the image of me
parading around Wooville with the key to Scott's hut glued to my mouth had kept Lucia amused
throughout our tenure at Cape Evans.
As sunlight poured through the door, crusts of snow gleamed on the shovels hanging in the small
vestibule. For no real reason, we wandered through to the stables at the back of the hut. They were
under the same roof as the living quarters but separated by internal wooden walls. The first of two
openings on the left in the small snowbound vestibule led to a storage area and then the stables. In
the second opening they had hung a sturdy wooden door which opened on to the living quarters.
The stables consisted of a row of eight horse stalls of conventional design. Each horse's name
had been stencilled at the end of its stall.
'Abdul,' Lucia read. 'Is that a common name for an English horse?'
She had an endearing habit of assuming that everything Scott had done, or indeed everything that
she observed me doing in our camp, was indicative of activities in which all English people were
permanently engaged.
'No,' I said firmly. 'I've never heard of a horse called Abdul before.'
She was standing alongside a window at the end of the stable, concentrating on a lightning sketch
of the horse stalls. Next to her I noticed the blubber stove where Oates had cooked up bran mashes
for the horses. I narrowed my eyes and imagined Oates there - I had seen him standing exactly
where she was, in one of Ponting's photographs. He used to sleep in the stables sometimes, to be
near the sick ponies during the night. He was much taller than Lucia, but there was something sim-
ilar in the chiselled nose and high cheekbones.
I waited till she had put her sketchbook back in her pocket. On our way into the main part of the
hut, I stopped in the storage area at the large pile of glistening seal blubber, slabbed like peat and
stored by Scott's men for winter fuel, and bent down to touch it.
