Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
1 April, 1937



Thursday, April 1st 1937
   
A most vigorous day. The whole party of us assembled in the big hangar-like room which is the main entrance to the “hotel” area. There are fifty of us, all looking decidedly bulked-up in our full Polar costume – and feeling awfully clumsy, to be honest. It is like wearing one Sidcot suit inside another. That Monsieur Michelin who appears on the advertising hoardings promoting his tyre company is positively svelte in comparison.

    As fifty is far too big a group to properly teach anything like this, we were split into five packs of ten with an instructor apiece. Molly joined me with eight keen-looking furs and an even keener instructor, while Helen and Maria stuck together in another pack. Then the big doors opened, we pulled down our smoked-glass goggles against the sudden glare outside, and off we went!

    Dear Diary: I may have been too unsympathetic about Molly having fallen off that bicycle in all directions, in our two-wheel lessons back on Main Island. Things one learns at age five look easy – and only our instructors had been practicing this from cubhood. As with Molly’s cycling attempts, a full-grown fur hits the ground a lot harder than a cub – and though it was packed snow rather than tarmac we tumbled onto most of the day, that was quite hard enough.

    I have seen newsreels of furs skiing before, the object of which appears to be to hurl oneself down the steepest slopes available and stay upright rather than breaking all records for high-speed cartwheels head over paws (and breaking anything else on the way down, trees and bones in particular.) Thinking about it, that might have been on a par with the “test pilots” one sees in Hollywood films whose main idea of testing aircraft is power-diving it towards the water and pulling up at the last second to see if the wings stay on. This is what they call “Nordic” ski, not surprisingly a concept the Reich approve of on principle. Anyway, it is good fun and highly practical from getting from A to B, assuming there is a lot of fairly smooth snow in between. In Antarctica that is a safe bet.

    Our local guides come along with the group, and are very chatty. Trudi was asking me about Songmark, which I gave her the “prospectus version” of. I mentioned various famous folk whom she might have heard of – she had not heard of Professor Kurt von Mecklenburg und Soweiter (not amazing, given a lack of things around here to compost) but she certainly had of Ilsa Klensch! Letting on that we do the same kinds of thing as Miss Klensch put us well up in Helga’s estimation. Though I have still never seen Speed Week, let alone raced in it, if the British team suddenly needed a pilot I would certainly volunteer and have a jolly good try at it as would Prudence, I know. Despite our being Spontoonie honorary citizens, our homelands probably would let us race on our national teams. I expect even Beryl would, though for different motivations than patriotic loyalty. Furs had better take extreme precautions not to let her copy the ignition key or fill the fuel tanks more than the race demands or they would soon be one Schneider Trophy contestant the fewer.

    Of course, there were quite a few things she dropped enquiries about that we did not tell her – having such a mix of furs in Songmark who would not be well received in the Reich, such as Hannah Meyer, Saffina, Ada Cronstein and indeed any of Prudence’s dorm for their tastes rather than ancestry. On the other paw, we also have Red Dorm and that first-year Rosa the Anarchist – whom the Reich might have the right idea about, as indeed nobody is wrong about everything.

    By luncheon most of the party were drooping somewhat, and although our Songmark four are generally in good trim cross-country skiing is one of those sports that heavily uses muscles one least expects. The insides of the thighs are a particularly sore issue. Still, everyone else in the group was far worse off and with much relief we all returned to the rock-cut resort for refreshment.

    I was wondering just what furs find to eat out here, imports aside – but apparently the seas around Antarctica are rather well-stocked with all sorts of delights. Cold-water prawns as big as one’s paw, and fish that the most careless trawl can catch in plenty! The nearest competing nations of note are an awfully long way off, and hacking down through the “roaring forties” to get here from Australia or Chile and back is hardly worthwhile just for fish when the Pacific is so well-stocked nearer home. There were pictures on the walls of experimental trawlers based on surplus Great War U-boats; it seems that neutral nations such as Holland and much of South America bought job lots in 1918, and private companies have been buying them back for colonial use. Under-ice fishing certainly needs something like that.

    Lunch was an excellent fish and prawn soup – I think I will rather enjoy the trip at this rate. A definite lack of poi is always a good start. There is no vegetation on the land but the waters are absolutely teeming with life, even under the ice sheets.  Maria murmured in Spontoonie that a colony who had an undersea fishing fleet with docks hidden underwater would never starve as long as they could keep their “U-Fischbooten” in service.

    Another afternoon had us covering more territory and falling over a little less often though at higher crash speeds as our confidence improves and we dare longer runs. In the rest breaks I got to talk with the other tourists – an interesting bunch and a long way from the usual Spontoon tour-boat crowd that waddle off the liners in search of exotic cocktails and the exotic tails of grass-skirted waitresses (some of whom are hens, as indeed some of the waiters are cockerels.) I was talking to Mr. Van der Gulik, a tough-looking colonial boar from the Dutch East Indies who has been coming here for his health for the past three years. From his description the Dutch colony has about the same climate as the Gilbert and Sullivan Islands, that is to say a non-stop sauna. The impression was like walking around all day with an invisible hot towel wrapped around one’s head, and impossible to shake off. Coming down here is probably just what the doctor ordered.

    Molly was doing quite well on skis; though she may be short of experience on a bicycle there is nothing wrong with her sense of balance and indeed that is needed in this skiing business. It is one thing to slide and glide on the flat, but jumping into turns and “snow-plough” moves involve transferring all the weight on one ski, however briefly. The Antarctic air was somewhat blue with words in assorted languages as our party tried braking on even a little slope and mostly piled up at the bottom in a tangle of waving bamboo ski poles and wooden skis. If falling onto packed snow is hard, falling onto al already-crashed comrade’s ski edge is a lot harder and we were glad of the padded suits.

    Trudi and Helga made it look absolutely effortless as they swept down the slope ready to unpick the knot of struggling furs trying to find purchase on hard ice and deep powder snow. Really, falling into three feet of soft powder is rather like falling into water – there is nothing to get hold of. The snow is as fine and dry as talcum powder, and scarcely sticks to clothing.
 
    Four hours of this in the afternoon proved a great plenty, and everyone was quite glad to call it a day. Back indoors and rather a stagger up to our rooms. Helen and Maria had come through the day unscathed, with Maria quite enthusing over the conditions. It is certainly hard enough exercise for our Songmark Tutors to be happy with, had they known. Molly speculated that few Songmark girls are spending their time relaxing on a beach; she claimed the Sind sisters would be having an enjoyably energetic time on Gull Island studying Native traditions, though the Tutors might not be quite so well pleased with the sort of exercise they were getting. Mrs. Oelabe had a lot to say to Jasbir after they returned from there last time.

    One thing that is certainly in demand here is the hot baths. After a day tumbling down ice slopes, falling on hard ski edges and such, a long soak is definitely in demand. Getting a bathroom to oneself is scarcely realistic, so I went in with Molly for a decidedly necessary soak. There is one to every five rooms here; even on Spontoon only the dearest suites of Shepherd’s Hotel and the Marleybone has every room with its own bath!

    Molly remarked on any Songmark third-year being decidedly … altered by this stage in the course, in terms of most of us being rather trim and muscular. Well, all that swimming and running around sand dunes with packs full of wet sand and a largely poi diet tends to have that effect. Certainly, one notices when grooming each other that we are not nearly as well-padded as we used to be. Even Missy K has dropped several stones in weight since the first year, despite muscle being dense stuff. The bath is quite big enough to share for grooming and such, which is much needed after a hard day on the ice. Actually skiing on the ice is no trouble, but it is the bouncing off it at twenty knots that hurts.
 
    If anyone has searched through our bags while we were out in the snow, I expect some of our fur trimming kit may have puzzled them. Something we were glad to help each other with after a few days of not managing to trim that distinctive style Molly picked up on her first “adventure” I rescued her from being kidnapped in the Papeete Influenza outbreak – as part-grown fur in sensitive places is intolerably itchy and it is a job for a steady paw to make a clean job. Not something one wants to try while on a pitching boat or aircraft, with the exceedingly sharp surgeon’s razor. Helen refuses to help Molly or me with this task. I still wear that gold wire around my tail-root that I acquired on Krupmark, and indeed Miss Devinski made me promise to keep it till I graduate as another reminder.

    Molly joked that anyone with a peephole in the wall must be getting quite an eyeful. I recall back in Vostok most of the rooms were wired to microphones – unimaginatively enough there was always just one light bulb in every room that did not work (as a light bulb, anyway.) Just for the sake of it we have looked around our rooms here, but found nothing. Then again, spending our time taking the fittings to pieces would be a suspicious way to behave in anyone’s book! Speaking mostly in Spontoonie between ourselves is another matter. If anyone is listening to the guests, I expect they would find it a dull task unless cataloguing bumps and bruises is considered a vital piece of strategic intelligence. The skiing outfits have some padding, just as well since these days we have little enough of our own to fall back on.
 
    Maria commented in Spontoonie that so far we have seen less military than one sees back on Eastern Island, where at least one spots Constables and Militia furs with sidearms. Then, a holiday resort with selected and well-heeled guests is less prone to need any policing; there is nobody coming up from the Old China Dock end of town here intent on cat-burglary. With such a huge land area there is no need to put anything suspicious within a hundred miles of the tourist areas, although exactly what all those tunnels in the Neue Schwabenland cliff are for, is something one can only speculate over. Unlike our first Easter Holiday on Spontoon, we will not be poking around in forbidden areas this trip.

    Getting back into our evening wear it was definitely a case of “all dressed up and nowhere to go” – at least, outside the building. Molly whispered that three quarters of the tourists were male, and by the nature of the holiday none of them were particularly old or unfit. This might indeed be a place for an enterprising “gold-digger”, the kind one sees them relaxing alertly on the beaches and hotel terraces of Spontoon. One hears such things of ocean cruise liners, where an enterprising girl has a “captive audience” on which to work.

    Still, that is nothing I am likely to be doing! After all, I plan to be respectably Tailfast to Jirry this coming Summer Solstice, and that will be an end to one sort of “adventure.” Even as Kim-Anh Soosay – who is a fur I would like to give some fresh air to this year before becoming Mrs. Amelia Hoele’toemi which will take up all my time. My tail drooped somewhat thinking of half Siamese girls – recalling that had things been otherwise a year ago, I would have a kitten of my own three months old by now who would need no fur dye to look the part of a Siamese mix. Songmark would surely have thrown me out, but I know the Hoele’toemis would have taken me in. It would have been a mixed blessing but at least I  would have avoided being tangled with the Allworthies that way, as even if I had been supporting myself as a commercial pilot having been thrown out , last August I would have been six months along with my kitten and not flying anywhere!
 
    Having dressed up for the evening, we assembled on the lower level with the rest for a jolly fine evening meal. This one we could tell was imported; roast pork knuckle “in the Berlin style” with dumplings, pickled cabbage and crisply roast potatoes. Delicious and very solid, just what was needed after a day working hard in the cold. It was quite like old times, where back at Saint Winifred’s the suet would be found in the starter (soup with dumplings) the main course (typically steak and kidney pudding) and the dessert (steamed suet pudding, hopefully Spotted Dick or other such fine English ethnic dish.) The staff were very attentive and one could tell they were judging exactly how eagerly everyone was tucking into the roast. After all, this is carried a long way to get here from Australia, New Zealand or South America at the nearest, and the resort management need to know how well it is being received.

    It was a very lively first full evening, with the mulled wine flowing freely and some of the staff obviously “off-duty”. The female furs serving wore the traditional Alpine costume, a “dirndl” I think it is called, that looks a little draughty for Antarctica with petticoats and embroidered blouses. Then again, most things apart from our outside padded suits do, and those are about as glamorous as deep sea divers’ outfits. The four of us spread out to mingle with everyone – it is too easy when travelling with friends to just talk with one’s companions. I recall last year I spoke with so many more furs on my own, when I was down in the Gilbert and Sullivan Islands getting my flying licence – still, counting my role as Kim-Anh, there were effectively two of me encountering very different sides of Society.

    I had a long talk with my neighbour at table Mr. Lundquist, a Norwegian gentleman of the elk variety, who is a travel writer doing an article on this resort. Apparently it is not the first such he has reviewed; the German Government are building public resorts on the Baltic coast* that Good Citizens can have a paid holiday in with sun and well-regimented fun, however they define a Good Citizen. Party membership cards to be shown at the gate, I expect.
 
    Mr. Lundquist admits he has something of a down on this resort being where it is, as the Norwegians originally claimed it (Norway claims a piece of land half the size of Europe down here, even after the bite the Germans took out of it.) But he admits his countryfurs never did anything with their territory; there are still hundred-mile pieces of coast that no paw but a penguin has ever trodden, let alone the interior. There could be gold, diamonds, radium or anything out here – Molly overheard and said diamonds are likely, in that the whole place is piled high with “ice”. No wonder the Reich flew over and staked out the area with air-dropped flags as boundary markers. That must have been quite a flight schedule.

    On the other side of the table I was surprised to hear a decidedly Celtic accent, though not quite anything I had heard before. It is nearly four years now that I shared a dorm with Myfanwy Evans from Ebbw Vale in South Wales, and this was similar. But not quite – I gathered that this was a Mr. Gareth Glendower from Patagonia, where his family had been mining and prospecting for two generations. Apparently the Germans have a minor advertising campaign in South America, where they have their own Andes with plenty of snow but very little of it developed for leisure. Mr. Evans’ mines are down in Chile near the Towers of Paine – not a wonderful place name to put on a travel brochure.

    Having dined rather well, we repaired back to our rooms as the sun set outside. Helen reminded me we are still Warrior Priestesses in training, and need to practice. So we made a start at the Spontoonie Evening Song ritual, getting back into the swing of things. A fascinating piece for any Anthropomorphologist had they known – consecrating a piece of Antarctica under Spontoonie religion.

    It is interesting how getting into the right frame of mind leads from one thing to another. After Evening Song Molly and Maria went back down to talk with the party, while Helen and I kept at our training. One of the Warrior Priestess exercises is to make oneself into something like a sound-detector array, listening out for what is coming over the horizon. Our priestess Gha’ta claimed to be able to spot large rituals being worked at two hundred miles, given an open ocean in between with nothing much going on there to confuse the signal. Though we are only a few steps along that road (if Gha’ta was not mistranslating the numbering system as she surely was, she has had centuries of practice) the empty ice spaces should be nearly as good for our attempt.

    It was really most odd. The nearest thing one can compare it to is naval vessels switching on their hydrophones – the sea is a noisy place with storms and breaking waves, but what an operator listens for is engine sounds or the “ping” of a submarine. We could tell that Wotansberg was isolated, with great icy spaces empty of activity … but there were other things happening, far off to the South and almost out of our range. It was like the rumbling of distant thunder over the horizon; something energetic was certainly happening, though I could not work out just what. Although working out exact directions is hard, it was definitely in the interior, past the range of barrier mountains that rise up about a hundred miles south of Wotansberg. The “sound” of it was different too, something we have not come across before.

    Just when we were concentrating our hardest, Helen gave a jerk and swore that something or someone very close to us was also registering, looking back at her. I did not notice myself but she said it was like scanning a wood and suddenly catching the flash of another observer’s binoculars pointing your way; the visible angle is very small and someone standing quite close to you would easily miss it.

    Certainly, this Warrior Priestess training has its ups and down. It is like turning on a searchlight – one can suddenly see the previously unseen, but others with such vision can tell when it is switched on. Around here it is not likely to be any Spontoon Priestess either.

    A tiring business too, on top of a full day’s skiing and many a hard knock against the ice; I think by the time Molly and Maria returned from sampling the after-skiing entertainments (there must be a word for after-skiing, and someday someone will invent it) we were fast asleep!

    *Editor’s note: true, actually. The buildings were concrete apartment blocks by the seaside with amazing facilities by the standards of a Berlin or Ruhr industrial slum dweller, but rather on the Spartan side for the modern holiday trade.


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