Free When Nights Were Cold by Susanna Jones Page B

page. Five minutes later I was sitting there with my pen poised above the paper.
    I have wasted enough time. What shall I do?
    Then I scrawled out my message. It took several attempts as I put lines through words and sentences, starting again and again. After filling and discarding seven or eight sheets of paper, I was left with this:
    THE CANDLIN COLLEGE ANTARCTIC
    EXPLORATION SOCIETY
    What are the qualities of a polar hero?
    When will men reach the South Pole?
    What will Science tell us next?
    The Society will hold its inaugural meeting
on . . . evening in room . . .
    The Society is dedicated to learning about
South Polar exploration and Science with a view to
past, present and future expeditions.
    All are welcome!
    A rap on my door, but I wasn’t making any noise.
    â€˜Hello?’ I whispered.
    â€˜Nightwatchman, Miss. Principal’s instructions. I have to ask you to turn off your light.’
    â€˜Yes, of course.’
    So I put out the light and climbed under my bed covers. I slept with the confused feeling that I was at the start of something overwhelming. The dummy explorer lay beside me but now he was human and breathing. I pulled my pillow between my arms to make his head, let his warm breath caress my neck and I cradled him.
    A few days later I pinned my notices up around the college. I had permission to use a classroom on the fourth floor for the Society’s weekly meetings. In the afternoon, a group of classics students and their lecturer filed quietly out of the room whispering of Priam and Antigone. I slipped in with my portraits of Captain Scott and Ernest Shackleton, and a map of the Antarctic.
    As I pinned Shackleton to the wall and smoothed him with my fingertips, I tried to imagine myself addressing a meeting. I stood at the blackboard, gazed at the small, scratched desks. I took a step towards the map and pointed.
    â€˜And here,’ I told the empty classroom, at eighty-two fifteen is the point where Scott, Wilson and Shackleton had to turn back in 1902, though Wilson and Scott did make it to eighty-two seventeen on a walk southwards from their tent. They could go no further towards the Pole on this expedition and it was a bitter disappointment.’ I must find a proper pointer. My hand was unsteady and it was hard to show the precise coordinates with a wavering fingertip. ‘Shackleton was so ill by now that he made most of the journey on ski. Fortunately, despite the blizzards, they were able to locate the depot they had laid and so had food and shelter to sustain them before the return to McMurdo Sound. As you can imagine, the shore party was astonished to see them with their wild beards, red faces and long hair. In the recent expedition, however, we see that Shackleton and his men went further, reaching eighty-eight twenty-three, at a longitude of one-hundred-and-sixty-two east. Next time we are bound to succeed, but who will be captain?’
    It was possible that no one would come. I had never heard much discussion of Antarctic affairs over dinner or tea, and Locke, my loyal supporter, would be at Drama Soc that evening but, such was my excitement, I could almost imagine proceeding alone. On the classroom door I stuck a sign: The Discovery. No doubt it would be removed before the meeting but it gave me a thrill to see it. I looked both ways to be sure that I was alone in the corridor and I gave the sign a kiss for luck.
    I returned to my bedroom and dressed for dinner. Catherine had sent me a blouse with a note to say that she had made two from the same pattern, one for each of us. She hoped that it would fit me, that my studies were going well and that I would soon write to Father, though he was still too stubborn to write to me. She also mentioned that Arthur, our manservant, had left as there was little need any more to have as many servants as people. She added: well, servants are people, of course, but you know what I mean.
    It was a chilly evening, too cold to wear a