by Rebecca Hunt
‘I know that of the two of us, I am the trained practitioner.’
Despite striding off, furiously damning the doctor and his useless infirmary to hell, Lawrence had of course returned. His face peered round the door later that afternoon as Addison was writing in his journal. The now excessively friendly Captain drifted about recounting anecdotes as a form of apology. For example, oh, it made him laugh! He really must find a way of working it into the book! One of the men had told him the most incredible story. Lawrence picked up a scalpel, tested the blade and put it down. He flipped through a medical dictionary, then inspected a pair of surgical scissors, snipping at the air. So once, while helping the carpenter, Millet-Bass’s chisel had slipped to gash his thigh. Heard this tale already, Adds? So anyway, Millet-Bass had simply dropped his blood-drenched trousers. I mean right there on deck, I mean just dropped them. He’d called for a needle and sewed the cut together himself. Yes, and he even made jokes as he did it! Honestly, the man could remember him laughing. Unbelievable!
Lawrence turned to bask in the doctor’s amazement. It wasn’t the gratifying sight he’d wanted. Addison was smiling, but the smile was disdainful.
‘Unbelievable, I agree. Because what I remember is Millet-Bass in the infirmary, shaking and pouring with sweat, while I sutured the leg,’ Addison said. ‘And it wasn’t a cut as much as a hole deep enough to put three fingers in. A thick steel chisel leaves a very nasty mark, especially when struck with the power of a man like Millet-Bass.’
Lawrence raised his eyes to the heavens, wanting to reverse time to the second before he’d tried to lighten the mood with an innocent yarn and therefore spare himself the vexation of hearing Addison say, ‘He didn’t seem to find it funny at all. Although I suppose it’s possible that Millet-Bass cracked a few jokes while he had his head in a bucket, throwing up. I may have missed them. The acoustics aren’t good.’
Lawrence threw the scissors into the sink and punched shut a cupboard door.
‘However,’ Addison said, still smiling in the same terrible way, ‘another possibility is that the story is largely incorrect, as other stories might be. Many other stories, Lawrence. And you should be mindful of this before you commit any to print.’
There wasn’t a subject on earth which the doctor couldn’t reroute back to Lawrence’s bloody book-responsibilities and bloody Napps. Addison began to speak again and the Captain interrupted stiffly, ‘Don’t. No need.’
‘Thank you for coming by,’ Addison said.
‘Here’s the bag,’ the Captain said as he left.
After digging through it himself, Lawrence had passed over the knapsack discovered on Everland. It contained nothing more conclusive than a few broken sledging biscuits. The photograph of a young woman with dark hair was almost certainly Elizabeth. The quote on the back was scrawled in Dinners’s handwriting.
Although Dinners didn’t respond to the water Addison offered him and didn’t respond to food, the photograph caused a reaction.
‘Is this Elizabeth?’ Addison asked, showing Dinners the photograph. ‘I know you always carried a picture of her with you.’
With great effort, Dinners opened his eyes again.
‘Why wasn’t your bag with you?’ Addison placed the photograph on the bed and clasped Dinners’s bandaged hands in his own. ‘Why would you leave it in the cove?’
He broke off abruptly as Dinners tried to speak.
‘You want to see the photograph again?’
Dinners managed a nod: yes.
Addison held it close and Dinners fought through each weighty, hazy blink to focus on the image of his wife.
‘And where’s your diary, Dinners? I know you kept one. So did all the men.’
His breath ground from his chest as he remembered the diary. Yes.
‘Dinners, can you recall what happened on Everland?’
He looked at Addison. Yes.
‘Then what is it?’ Addison squeezed Dinners’s hands and leant closer towards him, searching his face for an answer. ‘What is it, Dinners? People believe the worst, and I would too if I had less faith in Napps. You have to tell me what happened.’
Dinners’s eyes rolled up, lapsing in and out. His chest jerked, his mouth bubbling.
Disgusted with himself, Addison stopped.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘You’re tired.’
Yes. Yes.
23
March 1913
Waiting alone in the tent, Dinners alternated between clapping out a rhythm on his knees and staring fixedly at the entrance. One candle burned inside a small tin, and he’d put it on his lap as a sort of substitute friend. He was beginning to panic. It seemed to him that Millet-Bass and Napps should have returned by now.
The sun didn’t rise into the sky any more. A thin sliver as red as molten iron appeared on the seaward horizon after a long dark morning, and was then gone by mid-afternoon. Half an hour ago, the light already starting to diffuse through progressively filthier shades of grey, Napps had noticed a densely clouded darkness above the ocean. The early stars were smothered out as the blizzard tightened in around Everland.
Dinners’s voice had been a thin, anxious bleat. ‘Do we have long?’
‘Just—’ Napps lifted a hand to stop Dinners. Just don’t ask me anything. Just do me a favour and keep your mouth shut.
With brutal clarity, Napps saw what an error he’d made in allowing himself to rely on faith. He’d been so convinced that the Kismet would arrive quickly, so arrogantly sure that their stay on Everland would be over in days, that Napps had chosen to prioritize their well-being over the long-term safety of their supplies. With Dinners rendered useless by the Joseph Evelyn ordeal, and he and Millet-Bass still weakened, Napps was unwilling to have them drag around crates and risk any further injury. Which meant that instead of rigorously securing the boxes, he’d temporarily piled them in the cove and made a little list. Instead of transferring the seal meat to the ice locker he’d let it stay unmarked and buried on the beach. Except he’d prioritized the wrong things, and it was therefore crucial that he didn’t speak until he’d got possession of himself. Because at this moment, if Dinners forced him to answer a question, he would react very badly.
‘No,’ Millet-Bass had said to Dinners. ‘An hour at best.’
On the scale of Napps’s anguish the one thing which ranked higher than Dinners’s confusion was Millet-Bass’s insight. Millet-Bass knew how cataclysmic the situation was. Lose the oil to heat water from snow and health wouldn’t stop you from dying of thirst. Lose the food and your strength was good for nothing.
Whenever the flame sputtered, Dinners shielded the candle with his hands and spoke to it. Don’t go out, he’d say, coaxing the flame in the tone of someone soothing a shy animal. Please, please. Dinners’s ongoing separation from the other two, plus the building fury of the storm, plus the suggestive brown shadows, had conspired to make it extremely difficult for him to avoid intense and aggressively frightening thoughts. He’d become certain that a malicious presence was in the tent with him, and was compelled to make endless checks. If he closed his eyes, noises outside the tent became words. If he opened his eyes, he saw peripheral movements which he wasn’t brave enough to look at directly.
The twists of fine snow which smoked across their boots had become a rushing current as Millet-Bass and Napps reached the cove. The two horns of Taurus were blackly outlined above the cliffs and the wind was skimming pieces of debris along the beach. Cracked slates of ice hissed across the snow or spun out of the carbon light and flew. A blade of ice the size of a roof tile caught Napps on the leg, sending him down with the crate he held. He stood up and floundered on. For each box he stacked beside the cove’s sheltered rear wall, Millet-Bass had carried three. In frustration at his slowness, Napps redoubled his efforts and found it made him lightheaded. The ache of hail against his face was now a painless sensation,
and this worried him. That his feet weren’t just numb but felt seemingly dead in his boots was another worry, as was the fact his hands weren’t working properly.
‘We’ve got to go,’ Napps said. The sky had turned the colour of mussel shells and would soon be the colour of soot.
‘Then we’ll be leaving the job half done,’ Millet-Bass said as he lashed the supplies together to anchor them from the blizzard.
Napps knew his mouth was moving sloppily, but couldn’t hear if this affected his speech because his frozen ears were ringing with a low, glasslike note. ‘Haven’t a choice,’ he said to Millet-Bass.
Dinners’s relief when they finally did lurch back into the tent made him talk exceptionally fast. Thank God you’re here, he jabbered as Napps and Millet-Bass argued over him, tersely contradicting each other with predictions about the severity of the blizzard.
Grits of ice sprinkled from creases in their clothing as they squeezed their feet to thaw them and kneaded bloodless hands. They smelt, Dinners thought, of wet stone. And he thought they looked like enchanted statues. He noticed the cadaverous way they radiated cold. He registered the fossil-coloured skin, the rusted automaton movements, and he smiled craftily. If they glanced at him, it was important they understood that it was the smile of a vigilant man who saw everything, and knew everything, but chose not to verbalize it.
Napps was still too cold to snatch enough breath to form more than chopped sentences. ‘Storm’ll be finished by morning,’ he wheezed out.
‘I’d describe that as improbable,’ Millet-Bass said. ‘Another word is naïve.’
Trying to be positive, Dinners said not every day could be good. There were other days.
‘What days?’ Millet-Bass snapped. ‘It’s just an endless single day growing darker by the hour. Talk to me tomorrow if you can make the distinction, and tell me then about this apparent wealth of time.’
24
November 2012
I need to get more sleep,’ Decker said. ‘Or a stronger coffee. Or a younger body.’
‘Wow, what you need is more suncream,’ Jess said, looking at his pink face.
‘Jess, is this actually mayonnaise?’ Decker said as she handed him the bottle. ‘I can’t have used it more than an hour ago.’
Thousands of Adélies had now gathered in the southern bay, and gridlocked highways of penguin traffic wound along the beach. The temperature had increased to two degrees, which made the birds pant with open beaks, and caused a film of mossy-coloured lichen to bloom across the cliff slopes. Compact dunes of winter snow had begun to dissolve, rivulets of water snaking down the beach towards the sea. The ice stranded along the tideline made tiny, crackling noises as it melted, which amassed into a pure, effervescent sound that was as refreshing to hear as a glass of carbonated water is to drink. Decker, Brix and Jess had started to unzip their coats when marching and pull off their fur-lined hoods. It was too warm for the mittens they wore over their gloves, or the four pairs of socks and triple-layered thermals.
They were at the colony to monitor the nests built next to the marker poles. Eggs were being laid and brooded in shifts by the parent birds beneath a psychedelic sky. The effect of ice crystals high in the atmosphere had created a trippy visual display. Everland’s sun was joined by a mini-galaxy of five other angelic suns and their multi-coloured haloes.
Brix’s ability to walk fast was hindered by her interest in the sky. That she was moving at a speed which any of the world’s oldest people could easily surpass was something she might have devoted more attention to correcting if it hadn’t conflicted with her desire to concentrate fully on the rainbow micro-suns.
‘Here’s an idea,’ Decker said, looking back towards Brix. ‘How about we try not to delay the work for longer than is necessary.’
Jess glanced at him. This was an entertaining new pastime. Decker would occasionally let slip grumbling asides when Brix was out of earshot, and for Jess it was like being privy to an excellent secret. She and Decker were in a club, the immense satisfaction of which was only partly marred by Brix, who’d risen in Jess’s estimation since she’d dealt with the injured seal. No one could have been more stunned at Brix’s actions than Jess was, and her harsh feelings towards Brix had reluctantly moderated as result. Not much, yet enough to make it less hilarious to find fault with every tiny thing Brix did. She’d noticed, however, that Decker didn’t necessarily share her sympathy.
‘Emotional. A few teary episodes. She’s finding it hard, I think,’ Decker had told Aegeus that morning, once Brix had left the tent to pack her quad. The psychological vibe to the conversation made Jess suspect he was talking to Canadian Sam. ‘Honestly?’ Decker breathed in. ‘I’m a bit worried, yeah.’
Now Jess watched Decker take off his hat and wipe his forehead with it. ‘You think I’m being impatient,’ he said. ‘Ack, I don’t mean to be.’
‘Hey, I’m not saying anything.’ Jess raised her hands. But she observed that for a boss who’d said he wasn’t a boss, he was certainly starting to act quite boss-like.
‘Well, I’m under a fair amount of pressure here,’ he said. ‘We’re only the second group of people to stay on Everland, and the first group didn’t exactly recommend it.’
He was just so tired, that was the problem. Or rather, it was part of the problem. The main difficulty could be traced to appetite. For most of his career, Decker’s hunger for the gratification of fieldwork had verged on insatiable. He returned shattered from one trip, and within a couple of weeks he was freshly ravenous for Antarctica all over again. The laboriousness, isolation and physical discomfort of an expedition were enticing when viewed with this mind-set. But without his old hunger, Decker saw the backache, sleep loss, hardship and danger through far less adventuresome eyes. If homesickness was induced by a hormonal reaction, then he thought that hormone was the opposite of adrenaline. It slowed a person down and made him less alert. The result was a sluggish passivity, a creeping awareness of your own limitations. He was, he realized, in a very weird mood today.
‘Sorry,’ Brix said when she caught up with them.
‘No big deal,’ Decker said, although his tone suggested it was some kind of an issue. ‘I wouldn’t even have to hurry you if there were more of us in the team. But that would ruin the symbolism, I guess.’
Brix was pleased to see the confusion on Jess’s face. It seemed that neither of them knew what he was talking about.
‘This centenary expedition is symbolic rather than practical,’ Decker said in a way which indicated their bafflement was charming yet curiously naïve. ‘I mean, yes, of course the job is important, but it’s also a device to raise Aegeus’s profile, and the profile of Antarctic research in general. Funding bases, funding expeditions, running long-term projects. It’s not cheap. It can also be hard to get people excited about. Polar exploration isn’t full of sailing ships and legendary escapades any more. These days the pioneers are scientists, working with very technical equipment on a cellular level. Which is far less romantic. So connecting modern Antarctic discovery to that past heroic age imparts a resonance everyone can understand. And although I get that, I’ve got to be honest. Beyond replicating Napps’s venture, there’s no real reason why the Everland centenary should be restricted to a three-person group. It’d be a lot easier if we had four people out here, or five even, or six.’
Jess’s scorn for the notion of work being easy made more sense to Brix now. Over the past few days, she’d commended herself on her improving fieldwork capabilities. The daily routines were no longer as mystifying. If there was a tent to dig out, she’d do it, along with refuelling the bikes, hooking up the solar-powered generator, packing the sledge, or tagging whatever animal came within grabbing distance. Brix ranked her efforts as going from bad to medium bad, to a medium average, and was aiming to reach a middling good before they left Everland. So she didn’t want to hear Decker talk about easiness. It w
as actually a little insulting.
‘Do you need me to get Aegeus on the phone, Deck?’ Jess’s voice had a coldly humorous edge as she repeated what Decker had said to Sam that morning. ‘Because maybe I’m a bit worried . . . you’re finding it hard, I think.’
Decker said briskly, ‘Ha, yes, very funny.’
He only became more melancholy when Jess discovered a dead Adélie among the rocks. Its head joggled loosely when she prodded it with the toe of her boot. Decker removed his glove and stroked the feathers, feeling that the body beneath was still warm with a living heat. It occurred to him that he was reacting as though the situation was far more poignant than it really was.
‘You’re present, and then you’re nothing at all,’ Decker said to himself.
What he’d done, he understood, in touching the bird, was to touch a faultline between the existence of life and its absence. And by doing that, something inconceivably powerful about the brevity of life, particularly his life, had triggered a depth charge in his head. The finiteness of his own life was now exceptionally real to him. It was like hearing his heartbeat.
‘Unfortunate that it died before you could get to it and stove its head in, Brix.’
‘You make it sound as though that’s my hobby,’ Brix answered Jess.
When Decker thought of Viv, he saw them both in the kitchen, drinking wine on the evening before he went to Aegeus. Her curly hair had been crazier than usual because they’d spent the windy afternoon out with the dogs, walking for hours to try and make the day last longer. They repeated the same things to each other whenever he left. Make sure you come home, Viv would say. Perhaps, Decker would answer, straight-faced. Then he’d laugh and promise she never needed to worry about that. He’d always come home.
‘Maybe it should be your hobby, Brix,’ Jess said. ‘It’s the one thing you seem to be any good at.’
