A Victim of the Aurora by Thomas Keneally

reading To The Polar Plateau , an account of Holbrooke’s expedition. I often saw men reading Holbrooke. Because five of his men had died and all had shown signs of scurvy and malnutrition, the book had become a sort of negative textbook for all of us.
    I congratulated Victor.
    He said, ‘Thank you, dear boy.’ And went on reading.
    â€˜You sound as if it was a foregone matter,’ I said. ‘Your getting chosen, I mean.’
    â€˜Oh well, it was. I mean, that was the stipulation the newspapers made to Sir Eugene. I was to go to the Pole. I mean, that’s fair enough. They paid us quite a price, dear boy, and contracted to pay more. I would say, the largest amount in the history of the newspaper business.’
    I felt immediate disappointment in Sir Eugene. He had let Paul Gabriel work so long without telling him that not only was one place reserved on the polar team, Sir Eugene’s own place, but Henneker’s was reserved as well. I felt disappointed not only for Paul but for all the others who could have been chosen. For Barry Fields and Beck, for Mead and Webb, for Coote and Goodman, for Petty Officers Wallace and Jones. In protecting them from the truth about Henneker, he was debasing them, pretending to believe that, if they knew, their work would not have been so willing.
    I went to the door of the laboratory, looking for Quincy. I saw Kittery first, but I knew he had no grievance. He had to stay around McMurdo all summer, studying the Barne Glacier and the glaciers across the sound. Goodman was in the corner, grinding geological specimens on a stone table. His fingers were slick like a potter’s with the clays and the rock he was working on. I didn’t speak to him in case he too felt hurt, in case he painfully suspected that anti-Semitism was in operation, even in this far place.
    I went through into the weather-room, where John Troy was writing up records, and then into the biology lab. Quincy and Byram Hoosick, the American, were identifying a parasite they had taken from the gut of an Antarctic cod. Hoosick, the extent of whose decadence the night before had been lemonade and peanut brittle, looked up at me grinning like a farmboy in love. Quietly, in their little compartment, they had found a previously unknown parasite. It was something they managed to do about once a week.
    I went to lunch depressed. I had been working badly for the last two hours on water-colour sketches for a large painting of the aurora. It seems everyone else at table was a little jaded and subdued, and I speculated on the reason. Maybe it was still last night’s boozing, maybe it was the news that the final élite had been chosen, the ones to stand at the Pole, and that therefore, in a way, that most spectacular area of the expedition was closed off now from the rest of us.
    John Troy stood up after soup. There was no cat-calling as when he’d announced his new conical nose protector.
    â€˜Gentlemen, because of the imminence of the blizzard, the ponies will not be exercised this afternoon.’
    There was no cheering. Perhaps by then we all wanted a pony walk as a therapy for our sense of mid-winter anticlimax.
    People drifted from table early. By two o’clock only Hoosick and Quincy were still there, holding some biological conference.
    â€˜â€¦ blood sample from the fish …’ said Quincy.
    â€˜â€¦ saline composition …’ said Hoosick.
    Ridiculously I wanted to sleep – sleep was a suitable refuge from my bad art. My easel was only a yard from my bunk. I sat heavily on the stool and stared at the last sketch. The real aurora pulsated continuously. How to get the pulsations in. As I considered the question I saw Henneker hauling on his windproofs and lighting a lantern for the two o’clock reading. He passed me, opened the door to the naturalist’s hut. That was the last I remember seeing of him.
    All at once the afternoon changed for me.
    I got my