Everland

by Rebecca Hunt

  They returned to the cove the next morning to see the fur seals lazing around, untroubled by the previous day’s volcanic activity. Now the cows’ fertile period was over, the bulls had reverted to their former slothful ways.

  The stench billowing from the seal corpses had a thickness and throat-coating acridity which seemed capable of leaving a visible residue. It was hard to believe a bare hand held directly above a reeking carcass wouldn’t be painted with a brown nicotine film. Decker, Jess and Brix roved about with pliers, disturbing the scavenging gulls which lifted in shrill, flapping unison. By mid-afternoon the beach was at its fullest clamour and pitch, the snow flats dazzled to chrome under a sky as hard and scouring as pumice.

  Jess had failed to master the technique to yanking out teeth. The tooth either rocked in its socket with a noise of rasping bone, or didn’t move at all. Pulling harder caused the tooth to splinter, pulling from a different angle caused the pliers to slip. ‘Gross,’ she said in frustration as another tooth snapped into pieces.

  ‘What? It’s amazing,’ Decker said, holding up a fang. ‘See this? It makes me wish I wrote poetry, it really does. Our guy here has archived everything, not only his age. Each tooth is a prism reflecting entire chains of events.’

  It was beautiful to him, he said, describing the isotopes of carbon in each tooth. Comparable to the rings in a tree trunk, the isotopes created a record of growth and age. The tooth was a transcript of a conversation between the seal and his environment which had run for his whole life. It told you, year by year, whether food was plentiful or scarce. It told you how competitive or productive those years had been. And comparing the health and lifespan of one generation to the previous generations of fur seals produced a larger narration of every flux and consequence in the wider ecosystem. What appeared was a history which lived through the death of its speakers. What appeared, ultimately, was the story of Antarctica.

  Jess was only partly listening. If the skull didn’t want to surrender its stupid transcript isotopes, then Jess didn’t see why she shouldn’t just kick the skull down the beach. She was considering this when she heard Brix’s voice directly behind her.

  ‘It’s easier if you twist the pliers while you pull. Let me show you.’

  Jess’s red, frustrated face turned to stare at her. That she was actually being given advice by Brix took her a moment to adjust to. Watching Brix then achieve effortlessly what Jess, who understood herself to be infinitely more capable, had found impossible was no less discomforting.

  Jess expressed her gratitude with a nod instead of words. It was a type of thanks. Appreciating help wasn’t the same thing as liking it.

  ‘We’re finished here anyway,’ Brix said, rattling her full Kilner jar of teeth.

  ‘Well, then I should probably. . .’ Jess let the sentence trail off. She glanced around for something important and preferably impressive to do.

  Childish or not, Jess felt easier about being outdone by Brix when she recalled that the next task once the teeth were collected was to investigate the cave. What she wanted to do was listen to angry music in a room by herself, but since she couldn’t, she reasoned a cave was a decent enough substitute. Brix followed after her a couple of minutes later, once she and Decker had packed up the Kilner jars.

  The cave walls were glazed with layers of rime and the viscous sheen of algae, acid orange stains revealing where iron oxide deposits had seeped from the rock. Water bled through seams in the roof with the steady patter of trees dripping after heavy rain. It made clear notes as it fell into shallow water, deeper notes in deeper water, and ticked dryly against sand. Visibility inside the cave started as smoky outlines and gradually improved as Brix’s eyes became accustomed to the light. The ground ahead sloped down in a two-and-a-half-metre shelf, and beyond the slope, at the rear of the cave, were two small alcoves.

  Jess was standing at the edge of the shelf, peering over at the base. When she saw Brix, she started to descend, saying, ‘I just want to check something.’

  Decker traipsed into view as the sound of coursing gravel became louder.

  ‘Check what, Jess?’ Brix said.

  As Jess’s feet skidded and sank beneath her, she considered what had inspired her to start sliding down a loose gravel slope in the first place. Confidence perhaps, or intrepidness. It was more likely that pride was the main factor. She’d wanted to prove her competence to someone, herself maybe, or the world in general. And she now thought that she could have done it differently. Her boots were driving deep troughs into the surface and she was moving too fast.

  ‘Check what?’ Brix said again.

  There was an abrupt intake of breath. Scrambling down the slope to reach Jess, Decker and Brix found her clasping her ankle, her leg bent at an uncomfortable angle. She answered in a tight, breathy voice when they asked her if it hurt to move.

  ‘Yes, hurts,’ Jess said, leaning against them heavily as they laboured out to the beach. ‘I thought I saw—’ Whenever the ankle made contact with the ground it activated a megavoltage of pain. ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ she said, her eyes screwed shut, needing to stand still for a few seconds or possibly a year.

  ‘Frightening to realize how dependent we are on each other,’ Jess said when she opened her eyes. ‘Not so different to Napps and his men.’

  ‘Except that we’ve got better food, better equipment,’ Decker said. ‘We’ve got better clothing, better season, better everything.’ He sighed about the impracticality of being hurt in a cave and turned to Jess. ‘Okay, this is taking for ever.’

  ‘You’re not going to give me a piggyback.’ Jess considered him. ‘Or are you?’ The embarrassment and gratitude were about equal. Riding around on someone’s back was fine for a child, less so at the age of twenty-nine. Also, Jess wasn’t a little pixieish woman.

  ‘We’ve also got a better attitude to team members,’ Decker said, carrying Jess to the quads. ‘Way better. Are we abandoning you? No, we’re a team, which means your problems are my problems, your injuries are my injuries. Mi casa es su casa, and vice versa. I don’t know the Spanish word for body. You get the idea.’

  ‘But pull another stunt like that again,’ he said, his smile a bit too strained to be humorous, ‘and I might decide we’re better off without you.’

  31

  May 1913

  The Officers’ Mess had the doggish smell of damp wool as jumpers steamed in the warmth. Lawrence was playing cards with Coppers and McValley when he saw Addison enter to find him. Standing quickly, he and the doctor had a low-voiced discussion.

  ‘Look, I don’t see that we can delay telling the crew any longer,’ Lawrence said. ‘They have a right to clarification.’

  Addison felt Lawrence’s idea of what constituted discretion could be refined. That every pair of ears in the room was straining to listen to their conversation appeared to concern him far more than it did the Captain, and he stared pointedly at Lawrence to remind him of their audience as he spoke.

  ‘Please be careful, I’m asking you to bear in mind that—’

  ‘You think rumours haven’t been seething through this ship from the moment we found Dinners?’ Lawrence replied, loudly enough to provoke McValley into glancing over his hand of cards at Coppers, who raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you think, Addison, that the men haven’t discussed it? I’m confirming what they already know.’

  Addison leant closer to Lawrence. ‘Napps has a family who’ll never see him again, as does Millet-Bass. I’m asking you not to ruin these men for the people who love them.’

  ‘They ruined themselves,’ Lawrence said at a volume everyone could hear as he turned to address the crew.

  ‘We’re all aware of the terrible blow our expedition has suffered with the loss of Napps and Millet-Bass,’ he said. ‘So I ask myself, what possible solace can be found in such a tragic situation? And then the answer comes to me: it’s you men, my crew. I’
m heartened by the bravery of your efforts to find those missing men; I’m heartened by your resilience and spirit . . . ’

  Addison crept down the side of the room to one of the empty chairs next to Castle. Unpopularity was a terrifying illness, and the doctor was now the only person who chose to sit beside Castle. Even Smith, who’d spent years following Castle about like a devoted pet, avoided all contact with him, scuttling away with a smirk of apology.

  ‘You’re all right?’ Addison said, noticing the red mark on Castle’s face.

  Castle cocked his head once. ‘Been worse,’ he said.

  The injury was the result of a bizarre spat the night before over a song called ‘Boiled Beef and Carrots’. Don’t live like vegetarians on the food they give to sparrows, McValley had sung as Castle laughed and said, ‘Parrots! The food they give to parrots. Which rhymes with carrots.’

  ‘No, sparrows,’ McValley said with an ominous smile.

  ‘Boiled beef and carrows?’ Castle nudged the man closest. ‘He’s having us on, isn’t he, lads? Making fools of us.’ McValley had jumped to his feet.

  The hot sting of the slap faded into nervous, complicit sniggering as Castle put a hand to his cheek.

  McValley had sighed in disappointment. ‘You see, that’s the third time you’ve called me a liar.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to mention the “carrows” assault in my book and give you justice,’ Addison said to cheer him up.

  ‘You’re writing a book?’ Castle said. ‘Good.’

  ‘I’ve been considering it,’ Addison said. ‘After all, Lawrence isn’t the only one on this expedition with a diary. He’s also not the only one with an opinion.’

  ‘Then make sure you destroy McValley,’ Castle said, despite knowing the doctor was incapable of vindictiveness. ‘I’m serious; don’t be decent about this, Adds. I want you to tear him apart, line by line. My reputation is at stake here.’

  Castle himself wasn’t immune from the appeals of malice. There were pages in his journal entirely devoted to listing the faults of others, and vengefully loathing them for whatever crimes they’d committed against him. A few of those pages concerned Napps, who for one reason or another had infuriated Castle, perhaps by being dismissive of some idea, or for a terse remark, or for a woundingly sarcastic correction of a wrongly stated fact. After spending years cramped together, even the best of friends were occasionally ready to kill each other. So Castle would brood, rant his way through ten thousand words, and then feel restored. The difference between McValley and Napps was that Castle loved Napps like a brother, rowed with him like a brother, forgave him like a brother, but hated McValley exactly like he deserved.

  ‘. . . Which makes me truly honoured to call myself your Captain,’ Lawrence finished. The crew accepted his praise, not that interested. Their minds were bent on the real issue.

  Lawrence finally gave them what they wanted. ‘And I’m afraid the only logical assumption is that Napps and Millet-Bass have perished.’

  ‘What do you suppose happened?’ Smith asked.

  ‘Haven’t you figured it out?’ Coppers tapped a finger against his skull. ‘Anything in there, Smith? The Joseph Evelyn leaves with a mountain of gear, yet we find Dinners in an empty camp without so much as a pair of extra socks. Why’s that?’

  Smith crossed his arms, his eyes starting to brim.

  ‘It disgusts me, both as a Captain and as a Christian man, but I believe Dinners was abandoned by Napps and Millet-Bass,’ Lawrence said, his eyes downcast in sorrow. ‘The two men stripped the camp and left Everland to trek over the sea ice. I can only presume the Mate believed they’d reach Cape Athena.’

  And here, Lawrence explained, were the things Napps must have assumed.

  The first was that rescue was far off, since Napps couldn’t know the ship was trying to reach them, but had been trapped across the bay at Cape Athena. Napps had also assumed the early-season sea ice would hold out. And considering the extraordinarily low temperatures, who hadn’t thought the same? The ice which had locked around the Kismet during the frightening temperature drop at the Cape had seemed thick enough to last through winter. Not a man aboard had ever expected such leaden, deeply established pack could get swept away overnight, yet that’s what had occurred. The bay waters were entirely clear of ice by morning. It had astonished them, and they’d been studying freeze cycles for years. They were virtually ice savants.

  ‘Napps’s final assumption,’ Lawrence said, ‘was that Dinners would never be found alive.’

  Someone said, ‘Cautious enough to take his diary though, weren’t they.’

  ‘Well, you can probably guess the reason,’ Lawrence answered. ‘They didn’t want Dinners to write an account of what they’d done and consequently leave behind a journal full of evidence waiting to be discovered with his body inside the dinghy. I suppose if Napps and Millet-Bass had made it to Cape Athena, they would have said that Dinners had died on Everland weeks earlier. And no one returning then or later would have ever known the difference.’

  Fists hammered in delighted outrage. Almost all the men had volunteered for the Everland expedition and now they couldn’t believe their lucky escape. Any one of them could have been cursed to go ashore with Napps, to get served with Dinners’s barbaric terms if they’d crocked, or die on the ice as the worst kind of traitor. The Officers’ Mess filled with bragging self-righteousness and moral horror, as if none of them secretly wondered, couldn’t I? To save myself, couldn’t I do just about anything? And the answer for some, without hesitation, was yes.

  Napps and Millet-Bass were now human in name only. Their characters had been refined and refined again until the proportions were grotesque. Millet-Bass was a violent apelike thing with mad unspeakable lusts and a history of being unable to control himself. He couldn’t be blamed for his actions, though, because he was incapable of logical thought. It was accepted as common knowledge that Millet-Bass couldn’t read or spell and thought the moon was magic. He ate bones; they’d seen him do it. Napps was a schemer and a spy who lurked in the dark devising ways to hate a man. They’d all sensed his ear pressed to the door, his fingers rifling through their private letters. McValley’s bout of scurvy was one of a dozen incidents when Napps had verbally wished someone dead. It was amazing they hadn’t been murdered in their sleep. Smith heard his name called and readied himself for more unpleasantness.

  Instead the man joked, ‘Hey, Smith, maybe Napps was looking to snuff you on Christmas Day instead of your little cat?’

  Smith’s slavish hunger for approval immediately overwhelmed any sense of loyalty. He pretended to reflect and then said, Definitely.

  ‘Oh, this story? Great, I love it,’ Castle said with bitter enthusiasm. ‘My memory of that night never seems to correspond, but we’d all had a lot to drink, so.’

  Smith shifted in his chair to block Castle from his eyeline. ‘Yes, I’ve no doubt Napps believed it was my throat he was wringing between his hands,’ he said, rewarded with the laughter he craved.

  Smith’s tolerance to alcohol extended to two smallish drinks. After a third drink, and a fourth drink, and another drink which turned out not to be the water he’d asked for, Smith had thought it wise to start the semi-crawled journey to his bed. The Kismet’s Christmas Day celebrations always started early and went on until dawn. Lurching around in their paper hats, Napps and Castle had spotted Smith as he banged from wall to wall and fell headfirst into his room. Then he’d screamed.

  Forcing the door open, they’d found Smith howling over his cat as it writhed and flapped in agonized circles. He’d snapped the cat’s back when he’d tripped, and he begged them not to tell anyone and begged Napps to help. He wept as he answered Napps’s questions, saying yes, he did understand that there was no other way to stop the cat suffering. Yes, he did, he did understand, he’d sobbed, becoming hysterical. So Napps had done it. And moments later, Coppers had wa
lked into a chaotic scene. Smith was inconsolable, cradling his dead cat and wailing, ‘On Christmas Day! On Christmas Day as well!’ while a white-faced and shaken Napps instructed him to quieten down. But Coppers knew exactly what he’d witnessed. That no one involved would ever explain the situation to him merely confirmed it.

  ‘Well, at least the Dinners family will have good news,’ McValley said. ‘We’ll be bringing their boy home alive.’

  ‘Their boy, yes,’ Lawrence said. ‘Right, Addison?’ When the doctor didn’t respond, he said it again, louder. ‘Isn’t that right, Addison?’

  Addison’s nod affirmed nothing beyond that he had heard the question.

  32

  April 1913

  Napps remembered the October sky. It wasn’t the plush blue of summer, but thin and distilled with an early-morning moon. Rosie had caught him looking at her and he’d kept on looking. Whenever he went to sea, that last awful day before he left was always met by a bravely cheerful Rosie and an uncharacteristically demonstrative Napps. He needed to make sure that she understood he loved her. Because he did, and had done from the moment he met her at a Christmas party hosted by her father, which the surly fifteen-year-old Napps had been forced into attending with his parents. That was the evening a dark-haired girl came over to Napps and asked him why he was so boring. She’d been observing him, she said, and he’d spent the whole night staring at the floor. Napps knew nothing about women or how to talk to them. Having a mother was the limit of his experience. But he’d instinctively understood that the way to impress attractive girls was to ignore them. About twenty minutes later, Napps had become aware of three life-changing facts: the first was that a certain type of person just won’t be ignored; the second was that drinking a tumbler of rum on an empty stomach would produce strong feelings of both sickness and elation. The third fact was that whoever this girl was who’d stolen the rum and made him hide with her at the end of the garden, she now somehow owned him.