by Stef Penney
‘Any advice you can give us would be gratefully received,’ Freddie says. ‘It would be wonderful to have the benefit of your expertise.’
Mackie promises to speak to a man he knows. He will do what he can to galvanise the works. This is all well and good, but the real problem, as Freddie and Flora know all too well, is that there is not enough money. Even with sponsorship, donations from private sources, the publishing deal for the book Flora will write, the exclusive newspaper contract and an unknown amount of Freddie’s personal fortune, they are desperately short. The shipyard refuses to work without money up front, and no matter how Freddie rails at them, Flora can see their point.
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Flora and her father walk out of the office one afternoon two weeks later and take a hansom to the docks. The rechristening ceremony is due to take place soon, but that, as Freddie pointed out, is not the same thing as a launch. As long as the side of the boat closest to the cameras looks all right, that will do.
As they rattle along the Embankment, her father clears his throat: a noisy affair – one that usually precedes a long-gestated remark.
‘I suppose, if you cannot raise the necessary funds, you will be obliged to put off your journey until next season.’
‘Freddie will find it. He’s a genius at such things.’
‘I’m sure . . . but I’m concerned for you. Has anyone on this expedition been to Melville Bay, other than yourself?’
‘Captain Traill is a whaler. And most of the crew will have experience with ice.’
Her father sighs.
‘I know you want to go back, Flora. I understand. But I am worried. You will be on a boat full of men . . .’
‘I will be with my husband – it’s not the same.’
‘I don’t think you understand. The Vega was unusual. I knew the crew inside out, and they knew me, and even then . . . If you are scraping a crew together, even the best captain cannot guarantee perfect discipline. I don’t think you knew how close you came to . . . something for which I could never have forgiven myself.’
Flora feels a cold finger of alarm, but shrugs. ‘Something terrible could happen to me here, down any side street, or in Dundee . . . There are risks everywhere. I know what I’m doing. You think of me as your child still. But I’m grown up.’
Her father looks tired. This sort of conversation is painful.
‘In the end, Flora – you may forget this, but others won’t – you are a young woman, and they are men. It is Freddie who will set the tenor of your undertaking.’
Flora looks at him in surprise.
‘You’ve never called him Freddie before.’
‘You don’t want me to?’
‘No, I do. He’s your son-in-law.’
She smiles. She feels that she has won a victory – a tiny one, but it cheers her.
‘I’ve been practising marksmanship. And, once we’re there, Aniguin will help me.’
Flora has not heard of her friend for four years. Her father grunts.
‘If he’s still alive.’
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When they arrive at the dock and see the Resolve, Flora’s heart sinks. Despite promises, nothing appears to have been done. Flora looks at her little black ship and feels a frustrated tenderness. It causes a wrenching in her gut, like the runt of a litter: the poor thing isn’t really up to it, but doesn’t she deserve a chance? She is small and battered and ugly; her lines are not quite true; her mainmast is too tall, her bowsprit too short.
‘Come,’ says her father.
They make their way to the shipyard office, where their agent is bleary-eyed behind piles of paper. Her father takes out an envelope and hands it to him.
‘Flora, see this. I’m giving Mr Smedley a cheque for two thousand pounds to make the most pressing repairs and give the Resolve a new engine. I’m sorry it’s not more. But she will be seaworthy, at least.’
Flora gapes at him, and her throat tightens. For a minute, she can’t find her voice. ‘Daddy, you don’t . . . How can you afford it?’
‘I haven’t sailed for thirty years for nothing, Flora. I don’t want to see you drown.’
Flora feels a part of her should stop him, but she knows she won’t even try. ‘I don’t know when we can repay you. It will take time . . .’ She doesn’t want to cry in front of the agent, who already doesn’t bother to hide his contempt for her. She pushes down the lump in her throat, and smiles. ‘That’s wonderful. You see, Mr Smedley; I told you not to worry.’
When they go outside and look at the poor Resolve again, Flora sees an entirely different ship, one with strong, sturdy lines, which – once her hull is re-sheathed and her mast trimmed, a new engine installed, knees replaced and braces strengthened – will be an entirely suitable vessel for an expedition. All it takes is a shower of cash.
Flora squeezes her father’s arm through his sleeve. She whispers, ‘Thank you.’
.
Despite his gift, they run out of money before all the improvements are carried out, and Freddie is compelled to sell a place on the expedition to a young man called Edwin Daneforth. He has no noticeable skills other than an athletic physique. He is not a scientist. He has never been north of a Perthshire grouse moor. But he is willing. He is keen on photography, and it turns out that a condition of his family’s handsome donation is that he be appointed the official photographer. As this position has already been promised to Maurice Seddon, it presents a small difficulty. Seddon is not happy, but is mollified by the assurance that he will still be able to take photographs of birds. At last, Ralph Dixon signs a contract to be the expedition’s geologist, Belgian financing having collapsed entirely.
On 18th May, they weigh anchor. Flora stands in the bows of the patched and primped Resolve, staring over the gunwale (raised a compromise eighteen inches), adding her will to the momentum of the ebb tide. They ghost downriver, the seamen’s marks sliding past, insubstantial in the pre-dawn murk: Limekiln Creek, Halfway Reach, Erith Rands. The crew is new and unfamiliar; Captain Traill, on the quarterdeck, clicks his tongue as one green hand collides with another.
They pass Northfleet Hope with listless slowness; still landlocked, the ship moves sluggishly, deep-laden, through mud-coloured water.
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Before he left London, Flora’s father surprised her with an embrace. They have never been demonstrative, and she laughed in surprise.
‘Promise me you won’t do anything rash.’
‘You don’t need to worry; I’m your daughter.’
‘Good luck, my dear,’ she thought he muttered, although she couldn’t be sure, and couldn’t speak to ask.
.
At the bend of Lower Hope, a quiver runs through the timbers of the ship; the Resolve seems to stiffen and gather herself, like a pointer catching a scent. The river broadens; the eastern horizon flattens and softens into the indistinct grey of the North Sea, and Flora, one hand on the gunwale, feels her heart lift with the rhythmic movement of the hull, the heartbeat of the open sea.
PART THREE: REGELATION
Chapter 13
Ellesmere Land, 80˚32’N, 86˚13’W
June 1892
The sky is like the inside of a shell. To the west, where the sea is visible between floes, the water is as flat as a pond, as mysterious as an old mirror: mercury streaked with lead. The sun, his constant companion, is swathed in fine cloud, a blurred disc of nacreous light, too weak to cast shadows. He pauses at the top of the hill to get his breath back; despite being shirtless, he is sweating. He has walked for hours. It is one o’clock in the morning.
To the north lies the land they have spent the past weeks chiselling out of the unknown: 384 miles of new coastline. Fjords, headlands, mountains they have measured and plotted. Most of the features are named for sponsors – their map is sprinkled with the names of brewers, railway barons and financial spe
culators – but, far to the north, there is a bay called De Beyn Inlet. He will probably never see it again, but he has photographs. He likes the fact that the number of people who will ever set foot there is vanishingly small.
Shimmering on the tarnished mirror is the uncertain spectre of more land – which could be either a continuation of Ellesmere, or – tantalisingly – an as-yet-undiscovered island. He shrugs off the heavy pack, pulls out his Kodak and takes a picture of what he sees – grey on grey. He notes down: position, direction, weather, time.
Time is easy to forget – clocks and calendars have little meaning when it is always day; you eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired. But they have to adhere to a schedule, keep the record. Easy, in the endless light, to lose an hour here, a day there; but without accurate dates, they do not know where they are. Navigation would be inaccurate; mapping, meaningless. They have to impose a rhythm and structure on this subtle place, because, if they did not, they could not say truly that they had discovered anything.
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Far down below, a dot moves around by the tents, squats by the campfire – probably Johannes, their half-Eskimo, half-Danish interpreter. Hopefully, it is his day to cook – Jakob’s stomach growls at the prospect of fresh steak. He hoists the rucksack of rocks back on to his shoulders – his sunburn is painful, but even that is somehow a pleasure – and sets off down the slope. Intermittently, he hears the dogs bark. Rhythmically, the crust of snow yields to his boots. At every step, he thinks, I am the first man to tread on this piece of the earth. He is aware that, at this moment, he is completely happy.
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A naked physicist is in one of the tents – Louis Erdinger, hunched over his notebook. Jakob squats outside the open tent flap and says, ‘Knock knock.’ Inside the tent, it must be eighty degrees.
A week ago, Erdinger told Jakob he couldn’t wait to get home. He had three more years in which to do useful work, and then . . . He shrugged dismissively, implying it would all be over. Jakob was alarmed – was he ill?
‘No,’ said Erdinger. ‘In three years, I’ll be thirty and my brain will be mush. I’ve got to do my best work now.’
Jakob thought he was joking.
‘It’s all right for you,’ said Erdinger. ‘You’re only a geologist.’
Jakob knew he didn’t mean to be insulting.
Erdinger says, ‘Pass me that shirt,’ as if Jakob has been gone ten minutes instead of three days, and he is struck afresh by the oddness of the physicist’s face – flat, square and decorated by a perfect equilateral triangle of a nose. The square is red and peeling. The rest of his body is pink with sunburn.
‘What are you laughing at?’
‘I don’t know. It’s such a beautiful day . . . morning . . . night.’ Jakob grins at him. ‘I’m going to get Johannes to cook some steak.’
‘Shull’s disappeared again,’ says Erdinger, from under the shirt.
‘I expect he’s following musk oxen. They don’t run to timetables.’
Erdinger grunts, indicating his contempt for imprecision, even on the part of beasts.
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Camp Hendrik consists of three tents above a river that rushes down from the ice cap. When they chose the spot, they followed their custom of taking it in turn to christen the place. Thus far, they have pitched and struck Camp Herta (Erdinger’s mother), Camp Edith (Shull’s mother) and Camp Annette (Jakob’s mother), followed by a bevy of sisters and sweethearts. They toast each person so honoured with cups of tea and a certain amount of teasing – especially at Camp Jane (Shull’s choice), which a sudden downpour turned into a quagmire. This spot – one of their last camps on Ellesmere – Jakob has named for his brother.
‘What does Hendrik do that merits such a fine spot?’ asked Shull, with an arch smile.
Irritated – partly because a mosquito had just bitten him on the eyelid – Jakob said snappishly, ‘He’s a butcher,’ and enjoyed the look of shock on Shull’s face.
Erdinger laughed. ‘You see, Shull, de Beyn and I are men of the people. No silver spoons for us.’
‘I didn’t say anything! It’s a . . . very fine profession,’ mumbled Shull, before Erdinger could go on to remind him, as he tended to do, that Shull’s family had bought his way on to the expedition.
‘Hendrik put me through college,’ said Jakob. ‘But for him, I wouldn’t be here.’
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This valley, more than any other they have found over the past weeks, is a blessed place. Effectively the head of an inlet, it is now almost bare of snow. With the sun wheeling endlessly around the sky, it gets as warm as a New York spring – on several days the temperature has broken sixty-five degrees. To men acclimatised to cold, the temperature is tropical. The river swells and shrinks according to the time of day – a trickle in the morning; a torrent by late afternoon. Its gravel banks have become a green haze of mosses and grass, powdered with tiny flowers – cinquefoils, saxifrages, mountain avens. From a distance, they are all but invisible – swallowed up in the overall dun of the land – but, close to, they are minute jewels of vivid pink, white, yolk-yellow. And there are animals: foxes, Arctic hares, ptarmigan; caribou and musk oxen.
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In spring, after crossing the frozen strait from Greenland, Jakob and Erdinger left Camp Susan to climb a nearby mountain. At least, the mountain appeared close. But, as happened time and again, the clarity of the air deceived them – the summit took far longer to reach than they had reckoned. It was a clear day, and the view from the summit, when they finally reached it, stunned them into silence. A range of snow-covered peaks to the north was the Victoria and Albert mountains, but beyond them they could see still higher summits. A curving peak like a raptor’s talon, perfectly white, poked above its neighbours. They looked in awe.
It was one of those rare, windless moments when the silence was strangely absolute; Jakob was aware of his heart pumping, his breath rasping, Erdinger gasping beside him. Directly in front of them, a dozen brownish-black beasts were scraping away the snow to find something edible beneath. They seemed indifferent to the interlopers. Jakob could hear the animals’ slow tearing, smell their rank odour. He seemed to hear his own blood pulsing through his veins.
There was something supremely dignified, magisterial, about the musk oxen. The largest, a bull, slowly walked towards them and stopped. It appeared to float over the snow, the long hair on its body swaying like robes of state. It regarded the men from one small brown eye: a bright boss in the blunt shield of its head. Finding them of no interest, it turned and walked away.
Later, Johannes shot him. Jakob was sorry, but they had to eat. He also shot a cow, milked it, and they savoured the warm milk as though it were a rare vintage.
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Johannes has perfected a way of frying meat so that it is charred and crusty on the outside, bloody and almost raw in the middle. Jakob falls on his steak – tough but delicious. Sweetness, blood, charcoal and salt explode in his mouth. He closes his eyes. He has learnt this about life in the north: when you are perpetually hungry, tired, uncomfortable and (usually) cold, the sensations of warmth, comfort and taste are overwhelming. It’s the same with the landscape: at first, a vast monotony, its colours and treasures hidden by scale; you have to squat down to appreciate them, and then their delicacy moves you beyond measure. As for the ice, it confounds with its indifferent beauty; there are so many ways to look at it, and each reveals something new, whether from a distance, when it suggests fabulous, ruined cities, or squinting at the universe in a snow crystal, or the changing reaction of either with light that teases you with colours you can neither describe, nor photograph, nor forget.
‘Good,’ mumbles Erdinger, mouth full. Jakob eats in voluptuous silence. Johannes sits by the fire, legs straight out in front of him, his eyes on the middle distance, and sucks on his pipe.
When he is finished, Jakob lights a cigarette, li
es back and sighs with contentment.
‘I saw more signs of the Paleocene forest: there are trunks three feet in diameter!’ He shakes his head in mingled frustration and delight.
Johannes coughs. His pipe shifts from the centre to the corner of his mouth: the signal for approaching speech.
‘Te Peyn – tomorrow we go back?’
‘Not yet, Johannes. Another three days. Maybe four. I want to make a dash to the south – see if we can get close enough to see the land over there.’
Armitage has instructed them to return to winter quarters on the Greenland side of Smith Sound no later than the last day of June, so they will have to set off soon.
‘Snow is coming.’ Johannes gestures at the western sky.
The others look – it is clear, though tinted with yellow.
‘When?’
‘Soon – one, two days.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘The water is different. The wind has changed.’
There is hardly any wind; a cool breath, welcome in the sun.
‘The wind is ooangniktuq.’
‘Does that mean there will still be ice in the strait?’
Johannes glances upward. ‘I will ask the Lord.’
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A few hours later, Jakob is shaken awake. The sky is the congealed grey of an oyster’s flesh; the wind drives snow into their faces. Instead of being able to see all the way to the coast, they can barely see each other. They strap down stores and sleds, pull stoves and food into the tents, and crawl into their sleeping bags to wait. Moisture freezes on the inside of the tents. When the blizzard dies down, two days later, plates of ice fall on them, and the valley outside is white and silent – no animal, bird or plant is visible, nor sign that they were ever here. The only thing still moving is the shrunken river, grumbling darkly through a land in which life appears not only wiped out, but inconceivable.
