The Birthday Boys – Beryl Bainbridge (1991)

For my 1993 (bear with me) slot of A Century of Books I chose my second Beryl Bainbridge of the year; The Birthday Boys, which is Bainbridge’s take on Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. It was a book I was a little uncertain about before I began. I knew that is was a very different Bainbridge to those of hers I have read before. Also, a novel about people who really lived – and are already widely written about – can be problematic. However, this is a novel reviewed very positively by lots of people – and it was my only book for 1993 so it was worth taking a chance on. Then!! While writing this review – I discovered it was first published in 1991! So not only needn’t I have read it – but now I have slid back one year in my race to the end – so, so massively depressed by this I can’t tell you. How did I manage to make such a mistake? Just realised it wasn’t the only book I had for ‘1993’ either – I checked my trusty spreadsheet and there was another. Absolutely fuming with myself.

I have always been strangely fascinated by the men who chose to set off on such perilous and uncertain expeditions, in times when they could only rely on themselves. To set off for years, journeying into such inhospitable environments with no guarantee of return, what drives people to do that? I am similarly fascinated by the men who tried and then succeeded to conquer Everest.

In five chronological first-person narratives, Bainbridge tells the story of Captain Scott and the four other men who set out to conquer the South Pole with the Terra Nova expedition. Bainbridge gives each of the doomed men a voice, Edgar (Taff) Evans, Dr Edward Wilson, Capt. Scott himself, Henry Robertson Bowers and Capt. Titus Oates, relate their experiences, thoughts and feelings. Through good and bad, arguments, relationship breakdowns, thoughts of home and frostbite.

“It wasn’t all misery. On one of our halts we lay spreadeagled on the ice and stared up at a sky blazing with the glory of the most wonderful aurora I’d ever witnessed. I groaned beneath the splendour of those silken curtains, yellow, green, and orange, billowing at the window of the heavens.”

The novel opens in 1910, before the Terra Nova sets sail, with the testimony of Petty Officer Taff Evans – a large Welshman, who isn’t always popular with his colleagues, but who ‘The Owner’ Capt. Scott has a particular liking for. Taff has a wife and children, he is a proper sailor with a love of the sea, and a hatred of being too hemmed in. He is ready to give up the sea however after this two-year expedition, when his dream is to open a pub in Wales.

“I left him and went up on deck to look out at the slithering city, its glitter of street lamps fizzy under the rain. There’s something wrong about a ship in dock, something pathetic, like a bird fluttering in a spill of oil. The Nova was tethered to her berth by ropes and chains, caught in a pool of greasy water. I could feel her shifting under my feet, tugging to be free.”

In Taff’s company we first meet the other men who – in 1912 – Scott will select for the final push to the pole. He shares his thoughts about his colleagues, Scott’s wife and the terrible state of the Terra Nova. Taff’s account was my favourite, so much so, I was rather sorry to move away from him, and it took me a while to settle into the other narratives. When Taff, the most physically strong of the men, finally begins to break down it makes for hard reading.

Throughout the other narratives Bainbridge shows the heroism and patriotism that drove these men on. We see Scott’s rage when letters arrive informing him that Amundsen’s expedition is headed for the pole too – it is known that the Norwegian has a large number of dogs to assist the men – something which Scott had chosen not to have on his expedition. The psychology of these men is deftly explored – the delicately balanced relationships, jealousies and terrible hardships as the conditions inevitably begin to take their toll. All Bainbridge’s descriptions of landscape are glorious, you really feel the bitterness of the cold – the dreadful blizzards that almost halt their progress.

We know of course what happens before we start the book, yet Bainbridge does manage to tell the story of these men as if we don’t. There is a real poignancy to their fate – their efforts were heroic, their fate so horribly tragic – we can picture those families waiting two years for them to come home. We have witnessed their dreams, imagined along with them the glory of their successful home coming. It all went so horribly wrong – their dejection when they see the Norwegian flag ahead of them at the pole – is gut wrenching. In, The Birthday Boys Bainbridge writes sensitively and with an obvious fascination and understanding for these men. What she has produced is probably as close as a novel can get to a biographical account. This is not my favourite Bainbridge novel, but I enjoyed it, well written and researched with this novel she really showed her versatility.