Where Bones Dance: An English Girlhood, An African War

Pole

258 Pole T he cold, the dark, the cold, the dark. What comes next? Start again. Captain Scott. No. Due south of Tierra del Fuego lies the South Pole. Tierra del Fuego means Land of Fire in Spanish. The South Pole is cold and dark. Not all the time. In June and July it is dark. In December you go blind from the sun. Ice cracks under your feet. On the South Pole winter is in July and December is summer. South of the equator everything is back to front. Husky dogs have no smell. They lack the glands other dogs have. So they can live in igloos with the Eskimos without smelling. Captain Scott took huskies to the South Pole. They all died. Christine comes in with a basket of T-shirts and socks. She opens the drawers and begins to sort out Bill’s from mine. Under the armpits of her dress there are dark circles. I put down my pen. I turn around in the chair so my legs are on either side of the back, and rest my chin on it. “Christine,” I drawl, “whaddya think about five men who died looking for the South Pole? They wanted to eat each other because they got lost and anyway all there was was ice and their toes fell off, it was so cold.” “What?” she says. She keeps on picking out T-shirts, pinching their shoulders between her big fingers, then letting them drop so they come out in perfect squares. I can’t figure out how she’s doing it. “Captain Scott and his team. They wanted to be the first men to go to the South Pole.” “What they going to do when they get there?” “Stick a flag in it I guess. They have to find it with a compass anyway. Maybe the stars. I mean it isn’t anything.” She shakes her head. She looks like she might laugh but she doesn’t. I want her to. Suddenly I don’t know if she knows where the South Pole is. “It’s all ice,” I say, “down there past Tierra del Fuego.” She looks hard at me. “You think I don’t know where the South Pole is?” “No. I was just thinking aloud. When you were at school did you have to do projects?” She stops folding. She is holding my red and blue and white T-shirt in front of her. It looks very small against her dress. She takes a deep breath and stands up straighter. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way, 259 C y c l e 4 260 They stretch’d in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. “‘Daffodils,’ by William Wordsworth.” She pauses then she waves the T-shirt in front of her like a matador’s cloak. She grins. I think she’s going to wave it over her head like a flag. The Union Jack. I know she already figured that out. She stops and then she says very slowly: “A daffodil is a yellow flower, twelve to eighteen inches high, which blooms in spring.” “You remember that whole poem and you never even saw a daffodil?” “Every morning for a whole dry season,” she says, “we stood up and recited it. Miss Hargraves was the teacher in the CMS. She said, ‘Children, poetry is most important.’” Christine’s lips are twisting. Miss Hargraves has a Scottish accent. “‘A beautiful poem like “The Daffodils” may flash upon the inward eye, bringing solace and joy in time of trouble.’” Christine puts her finger...