The Survivor by Thomas Keneally Page A

the thing. Next he damned the Worcester School for writing its silly pride on the edge of the cover. Griffith, unlike the headmaster, was at hand.
    â€œWhy are you playing with me? Worcester School was Leeming’s old school. Do you expect me to tell you that this was left behind by Vivian Fuchs? What fool thought it necessary for you to come all this way?”
    â€œThe director of the Antarctic Division is the fool in question. We’re not trying to waste your time, and we don’t think you want to look at relics of what must be a tragic day. But surely you remember that another party preceded you down the glacier? This may have been left by them. Anyway, we thought it kinder not to tell Mrs Leeming until we were sure.”
    Behind Ramsey’s back the poet made a diminuendo movement with his right hand, meaning “Don’t be provoked. He’s old, irrational and sick.” Ella did not see this hint given; she sat astounded by the sight of concrete elements of the Leeming tragedy which had been so rarefied in debate between herself and Ramsey that one almost ceased to believe in it as something that happened in an ordinary material sense. This wreckage was to her, as to Ramsey, an amazing endorsement.
    Meanwhile Ramsey was behaving very crochety. In the teeth of Griffith’s reasonable explanations he muttered on. “Perhaps the director considers Magellan is an old boy of Worcester College, and suspects he wandered too far south, dropping a cooker given to him out of what could be bilked from small boys.”
    â€œBut I’ve already explained how it’s slightly more complicated than that. The question is whether you positively recognize these … relics … as the items you used … you and Dr Lloyd used in the burial of Leeming.”
    Ramsey glowered. He knew clearly that his emotions were exorbitant, but still had no control. “I did not allow him to be buried ,” he declaimed at Griffith.
    Ella turned her head aside. She hissed briefly in disgust. “Give the man a chance, Alec. Bury was only a manner of speaking.”
    The man from the Antarctic Division showed he could be a diplomat. “Yes, Mrs Ramsey, but I can understand Mr Ramsey’s sensitivity on that point. After all, the official history is very explicit on the matter.”
    Ramsey shook his head, saying “Oh!” in a tone that cast doubt on the sanity of those who believed official histories.
    â€œAccording to the official history,” Griffith persisted, “you used the cooker top as the basis of a windbreak around Dr Leeming’s head. And after you had heaped up a mound, you drove the ski-wood cross in, wedging it with the camera you had decided to leave and with some exposed plates. The director wants to know if the official history correctly details the … obsequies you performed that day.”
    Alec chose to stand on his dignity in a cockeyed way. “I like the bloody director’s cheek,” he said.
    Ella found such bloody-mindedness insufferable in her spouse. “The director’s not trying to impugn your truthfulness, dearie.”
    â€œOh no!” Griffith verified. “But you can get winds of a hundred and fifty knots and more down those glaciers.” Ramsey even considered sneering at the nautical pretentiousness of the word “knots” in the mouth of a man who, perhaps, sailed of a weekend on Lake Burley Griffin. “So that the question is, were the markers of Leeming’s … resting-place blown away? Now you had no anemometer on the sledge, but the record says that on the day itself the wind seemed to Lloyd to be about thirty knots, and that the next day was still though very icy. Were these markers blown away, and if so, were they blown far? You were weak. How solidly did you ground these things? You can well understand that we don’t wish to trouble the widow if the chances are that the supposed relics are merely