Survival Page 5

  There wasn’t much wildlife within excursion distance of Stanley’s port, so Jane had organised three options for the passengers of the Sea Sprite that entailed no tracking down of wildlife at all. One was a visit to the site of a Falklands War battleground, the second was a guided walk around Stanley, and the third was a visit to a Falklands sheep farm to get an insight into how the locals made a living out of the local unforgiving terrain. Alex and Debbie had chosen this third option because there would still be an opportunity to stroll around Stanley after the farm visit was concluded, and the advertised attractions of this farm included some peat-cutting and a spot of sheep shearing, both of which sounded marginally more interesting than trying to find any tangible evidence of a now-ancient battle.

  They boarded a coach to take them to the farm, situated some thirty miles outside the Falklands capital, and it initially took them towards Stanley itself, which was no more than a mile or so away. The road was tarmacked, and it was still tarmacked as it skirted the suburbs of this mini capital, and apparently for quite a few miles after that. This, their local guide informed them, was because the British government had decided that a proper surfaced road was necessary to connect Stanley with the enormous airbase it had built after the Falklands conflict. And this stretch of road on the way to the farm was the beginning of that new highway. Their guide also informed them that his principal job was as a disc jockey on Falklands Radio, but of far more interest to Alex was his mention of that substantial military establishment, the positively named RAF Mount Pleasant.

  Before he’d embarked on this trip to Antarctica, he’d used Mr Google to do a little research on this place, and had been intrigued to discover its size – in population terms – compared to that of Stanley and to that of the whole of the Falklands. Because it was reckoned to be home to about 1,200 people, most of whom were service personnel engaged in manning and maintaining the aeroplanes on the base, along with the missile systems, and whatever other protective and monitoring assets were housed in its eight thousand acres of land. That meant that Mount Pleasant had a population only seven hundred fewer than that of Stanley, and that it constituted over a quarter of the entire population of West and East Falkland combined. It was an enormous investment by the UK, but one that was thought vital to guarantee the self-determination of the locals, and to protect the Falklands’ fish stocks and its potential offshore oil riches, both of which some dastardly South American nation might claim as its own. It was now an established outpost of the British military, and one that provided it with all sorts of training opportunities that were simply not available at home (such as the availability of empty, demanding countryside, and, of course, equally empty skies). And there was also, according to the oracle, Roy – who knew most things about all things – a listening post somewhere on the base that was run by GCHQ or some other agency, and that monitored communications throughout the whole of the South American continent. Roy did emphasise that he could not be entirely sure that this was correct, but over breakfast he had assured Alex that the base definitely did have its own library, cinema, swimming pool, gym, climbing wall, golf course, kart-racing track, cricket ground and even a Costa Coffee shop, such was the need to keep the troops happy in their enforced isolation. Alex would have dearly liked to visit the place, but that wouldn’t happen today. Instead, the coach driver finally found a turn-off from that tarmacked road to Mount Pleasant, and one that would eventually deliver his passengers to Long Island Farm, a rather smaller establishment than that military base – with a population of… just one.

  She was waiting to greet the coach as it arrived, a rather weathered-looking lady who called this secluded outpost masquerading as a farm, her home. It was West Point all over again, except her farmhouse, in its exposed coastal setting, was even lacking the shelter of some much-needed trees. The wind was blowing strongly, and Alex soon formed the view that it probably blew continuously as well. It would have sent him mad within days.

  Anyway, the lady of the farm had not just the company of the Sea Sprite visitors today, but also that of her (arithmetically) middle-aged son who had travelled from his home in Stanley to assist her in the hosting of her guests. And it was this sensible son who invited the coach-load of visitors to join him in order to observe some peat-cutting. He, it transpired, was the peat cutter, and whilst his skills were impressive, Alex soon decided that peat-cutting did not really constitute a spectator sport. Neither did the unsuccessful sheep-herding with a semi-retired sheepdog, conducted by the mother. And it wasn’t until the son took the band of visitors into the sheep-shearing shed that things began to get more interesting. He, of course, was the sheep shearer as well, and he was very good at it, and much better than he was at defending the general sheep husbandry in these parts, which seemed to involve letting the sheep roam wild until they died of either starvation or cold. Perhaps, thought Alex, there were some differences between Falklanders and Britons after all. Nevertheless, the lady of the farm proved to be another champion in the preparation of home-made cakes and biscuits, and when the visiting party had eaten enough of these – in the lady’s peat-heated house – it was time to be returned to Stanley to consider the comparative merits of urban and rural Falklands.

  There was no competition. Whereas rural Falklands was clearly a very close neighbour of purgatory, Stanley gave the impression of being within sight of the uplands of heaven. It was clean, ordered, relatively attractive, and it clearly provided its residents with a peaceful and comparatively effortless life; at least compared to those who struggled to exist on any of the surrounding sheep farms. It also looked prosperous; not outrageously affluent but just really very comfortable, due in part, no doubt, to all the wealth that seeped out from that huge military base thirty miles up the road. Maybe the Argentinians had done the Falklanders a favour. They had unintentionally provided them with a permanent source of additional income, courtesy of the UK taxpayers, which could only add to the gratitude of the locals to that faraway place off the coast of Europe.

  They were certainly grateful to Margaret Thatcher. Alex and Debbie had treated themselves to a drink in The Globe Tavern – but no lunch, as this rather basic drinking dive did not sully itself with anything so bourgeois as food – and had now walked along Stanley’s esplanade towards its Government House to arrive at the handsome and expansive war memorial. And there, no more than twenty yards away (and just as promised by Mike), was that bust of the Falklands’ saviour, situated in the most prominent position possible: at the entrance to ‘Thatcher Drive’! It was a likeness in bronze, thought Alex, an image of which had probably never been shown anywhere in Argentina. He also thought that it was probably time to get back to the ship. A shuttle service had been laid on to take the Stanley wanderers back to the Sea Sprite, and the last shuttle left at 3pm, just one hour before the ship was due to leave Stanley for its two-day voyage to South Georgia. And neither Alex nor Debbie wanted to miss that.

  So very soon they were back in their cabin, and very soon after that they were taking in the view from their ship, first of Stanley Harbour and then of Port William, the large inlet on the east coast of East Falkland that would allow them to proceed to the open sea. They were now embarking on a journey to an even more remote part of this planet, and they just couldn’t wait to get there. Even more than they just couldn’t wait for dinner…

  Tonight, it would be taken in the indoor restaurant on the lower deck with the usual suspects, joined on this occasion by John, the naturalist and immersion suit demonstrator. It was he who kicked off proceedings by asking the other five at the table what, if anything, had impressed them about their time in the Falklands. Elaine was the first to respond, and she did this by stating how English the whole place felt. And not British, but specifically English, an impression assisted to no small degree by her sighting a Waitrose van during her guided tour around Stanley. On hearing this revelation, Alex nearly choked. Not only, it appeared, were there English pubs in Stanley,
but also England’s premier grocer. Even if, as John explained, there was no Waitrose supermarket as such in Stanley; just a conduit for some Waitrose goodies in the form of that mobile Waitrose-branded van. What the logistics of this might involve, Alex could not imagine. But that there was a Waitrose presence here legitimately underlined Elaine’s contention that the Falklands were indisputably English before they were British.

  Debbie’s contribution was to point out how even ‘downtown’ Stanley was very peaceful and quiet, and how this was in part probably due to the absence of teenagers. She had not seen one. And this was not because they were hiding away in their bedrooms with their smartphones, but because they were at school – in England. That’s what happened to many of the local children, who then might stay on in England to attend university. It was a feature of life not uncommon even in the remoter parts of Britain, but in the Falklands it was the norm. And very noticeable.

  There were further contributions from around the table that addressed the hardships of life outside Stanley, the practical difficulties of living somewhere that was quite so remote, and the insecurity inherent in living somewhere that was claimed by another (hostile) country. Since the establishment of that Mount Pleasant facility, the Argentinian threat had been barely a threat at all, but it would never go away entirely. And this, it was proposed, must make life in the Falklands a little like living on the slopes of an inactive volcano. Which will still always be a volcano.

  Then Alex made his contribution to this discussion, and it concerned the Falklands’ modest population and how this compared to the overcrowded conditions in much of the rest of the world. However, he didn’t applaud the sparseness of Homo sapiens on this land mass, but instead suggested how much better it would be if there were no humans there at all.

  ‘I mean,’ he concluded, ‘I’ve nothing against the Falklanders. In fact, quite the reverse. I think they’re a model of decency and stoicism. But I do have to say that I think this stoicism element is in part due to how they’ve had to live. They’ve had to scrape a living out of the sort of environment our own species was never designed for. And they’ve only been able to do this by screwing up this environment – with swarms of sheep. And they can only really survive, even now, with all sorts of outside help. I mean, think how much they depend on Britain for stuff like education and defence. And even delicacies from Waitrose. No, in my mind, there’s no doubt about it. The Falklands would have been better off left to its own devices rather than it being… well, spoilt for the sake of three thousand souls. Or should that be over four thousand, if we include all those airmen and soldiers…?’

  At this point, John made his own contribution.

  ‘I tend to agree. The endemic plant life on the Falklands has been all but buggered. Though I have to say, that hardly makes the Falklands a unique case. Everywhere we go we bugger things up.’

  ‘Don’t be so technical,’ joshed Debbie. ‘We aren’t all naturalists and we might not all understand.’

  John chuckled, and then he apologised.

  ‘Sorry. In plain English, Homo sapiens does tend to have an impact on natural flora. And fauna. A quite considerable impact.’

  ‘Nobody would disagree with that,’ ventured Derek, ‘but it’s all about numbers really, isn’t it? If there were only a million of us on this planet, we would find it very hard to make much of an impact at all, no matter how careless and profligate we were. The natural world would overwhelm and absorb our puny efforts without raising a sweat. And it’s only because there are now nearly 8,000 million of us that the natural world is on the back foot. Or in some places it’s flat on its back and struggling to breathe. And you know, this is so often not at the centre of the debate. But it should be. Our out-of-control population is the root cause of all the world’s major problems, from resource depletion through rampant pollution to our old friend, climate change. We are an infestation, and we are destroying our planet.’

  Derek would find no one to disagree with him. On every group wildlife expedition Alex and Debbie had ever joined, sooner or later this subject of overpopulation and its impact on the world would arise, and every time it did, there was barely a debate. After all, it was difficult to debate a fact, even if the fact was as far reaching and fundamental as the deadly impact of a plague of humans. More often it was just the chewing over of some subsidiary facts, such as the tripling of the world’s population in the lifetime of most of those doing the chewing. Or maybe the fact that every three days, the number of new humans popping into the world was equivalent to its entire population just twelve thousand years ago. Or there again, it might be the likening of the explosive increase in our numbers to the sort of behaviour observed in other animals – such as rats or mice – which was then always followed by a catastrophic collapse in numbers. Populations increase exponentially – as ours was doing – and then they spike, and then they crash. Which, if we do as well, might be good news for the world if not for us.

  Maybe it was this last common theme of these discussions that led Roy to make a pointed contribution to the proceedings, and this concerned the control of our out-of-control population.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ he observed. ‘When we’re faced with a burgeoning population of any animal that might threaten our interests in any way, we resort to culling or maybe even eradication. But we never see that as a solution for ourselves. Even though it might be better not just for the world, but for us as a species. I mean, by culling ourselves we might just avoid a cataclysmic crash.’

  He grinned. He was, after all, being plainly provocative, and this became even more evident as he carried on.

  ‘Culling, of course, might be a little difficult in practice. I mean, how would you do it without causing untold psychological damage to those who survived the culling? And what would be the criterion one used to select those to be culled? Age? BMI? IQ? Political persuasion? Or maybe even sense of humour. I mean, there are just so many miserable bastards out there…’

  Derek guffawed, but Roy carried on.

  ‘No. I think eradication would be better. I mean, it worked in South Georgia. It took them a few years, but by dropping baited poison from helicopters in a very controlled and ordered way, they got rid of every rat on a huge island that hadn’t been rat free for over two hundred years. Ever since the whalers introduced them back in the late eighteenth century. For once, humans actually succeeded in undoing some of the harm they’d done in the past…’

  ‘You’re going to eradicate us all?’ inquired a smiling Elaine.

  ‘No, just a lot of us – in selected areas. So, we’d have not just the Falklands as a human-free spot in the world, but maybe most of Asia, some big slices of Africa and most of the New World. And that’d give the million or so of us who survived plenty of places to visit to enjoy the wildlife.’

  ‘And how are you going to achieve this laudable eradication?’ asked Debbie.

  ‘Easy. Poisoned Big Macs dropped from helicopters. With, of course, a few Quorn burgers for the vegans and the vegetarians…’

  That answer initiated a wave of laughter around the table, and an observation from Alex that Roy ran the risk of ending up with a slimmed-down humanity consisting largely of helicopter pilots, and that might not be the best result for our species in terms of diversity or even gender. Roy countered that challenge by first brushing it aside as a mere detail, and then suggesting that, even if Homo sapiens ended up as a collection of helicopter pilots, at least that would be better than it ending up extinct. Or possibly not…

  Alex had witnessed this before: people who thought just as he did, burying under a mound of humour their real feelings about what their species was visiting on every other species on the planet. Whether it had legs, wings, fins or roots in the ground. It was all so dreadful, so dismal – and so beyond hope – that this was the only way they could possibly deal with it. And the darker the humour, the more likely it was to entom
b their darkest of fears, at least for a while. Until that next time when they looked at the world and were confronted with the reality of its rising inundation by mankind.

  Fortunately, for all those aboard the Sea Sprite, that next time was some way off. This was Alex’s thought as he slipped into sleep, back in his cabin. Because if there was one place in the world that hadn’t yet been swamped by mankind it was the Antarctic, along with its satellite rugged outposts. And that’s where they would be spending their imminent future, starting with the rugged outpost of South Georgia. Alex could hardly wait. Even though he’d been informed that South Georgia could boast no Waitrose presence of any sort…

  seven

  Last night, Stuart had gone to see Gravity. The cinema in Mount Pleasant normally got its hands on new releases very quickly, but this was one that had eluded its grasp for years, and it was now showing it for three nights in a row. Stuart had expected it to be very popular, which was why he and his soldier mate, Gill, had decided to turn up early for its first night’s showing. But they needn’t have bothered. The modest cinema auditorium had been less than half full, and by the end of the film Stuart could well understand why. Clearly, word had got around – although not to him or to Gill – that Gravity was the new Citizen Kane; another Emperor’s Clothes film, lauded by the critics but about as stimulating as a dose of Rohypnol. Why anyone would think it was other than tedious in the extreme – and so damn ponderous – he could not understand. Unless, of course, as he’d long suspected, there was some sort of film-makers’ cabal, a secret coterie of these guys who simply manufactured an overblown reception for their wares, designed to distract the paying public from realising that what they were being fed was nothing more than a load of old crap.