Everland

by Rebecca Hunt

  ‘Listen!’ Dinners cried, accidentally kicking Napps as he scrambled to open the tent.

  The storm had died overnight to leave a gentle, ruffling breeze, and the men emerged from their long bedridden period. On stiff legs, they hobbled around the tent to inspect it for damage and found nothing more serious than a few small tears in the outer lining. Dinners said it was miraculous. Not only had they survived the blizzard unscathed, he thought they’d actually benefited from it. He wanted to know if they agreed that a few warm days of enforced sloth had done them good. Didn’t they also feel better? His hands and feet were healing and he personally felt a great deal better. So well, in fact, that he said he would now accompany them to the cove to check on the supplies.

  While the other two walked in front discussing some ludicrous theory of Millet-Bass’s, Napps fell behind. He didn’t believe Millet-Bass had been dreaming that night in the tent, or that Dinners had been asleep during his badly judged confession. The proof was in Millet-Bass’s watchful awkwardness and Dinners’s grovelling enthusiasm. His face brightened hopefully whenever Napps looked at him. Whatever Napps wanted, Dinners would offer immediately. And his constant efforts to please only succeeded in making Napps angrier with both men, since his bullying of Dinners forced Millet-Bass to intervene. Napps’s temper might possibly have improved if he’d been able to rage at them for betraying him as he wanted, but the situation was complex. Napps was as guilty as they were. He’d also behaved shamefully that night when he admitted he resented Dinners to Millet-Bass. So their pride relied on a pact of mutual ignorance. No one could mention the incident without disgracing himself in the process.

  ‘It’s certainly an unusual theory,’ Dinners said when Millet-Bass claimed that it was possible to smell shattered ice on the breeze when enough of it was broken. Learning to detect its faint, cleansing smell was just one of the skills he had honed over his years of sailing. And honestly, he could smell broken ice.

  ‘Don’t believe me? What will you stake on it?’ Millet-Bass said.

  ‘The sugar I put in my evening drink,’ Dinners answered, which was a bold wager for him. Their one mug of sweet tea was a luxury he obsessed about from the second he opened his eyes.

  ‘And what else?’ Millet-Bass said.

  Immersed in his daydream, the volume of their voices was almost inaudible to Napps. He was with Rosie on the October morning before he left.

  Although he’d never spoken these words to Rosie, he recited them to her now. No man or deed or sin or obstacle, he said, even as he heard his name being shouted. The midday sun was a frayed stain on the horizon, and its light cast everything in the same dusky shade of blue. It was the colour of wistfulness, Napps thought, as he pictured the translucent October moon. Millet-Bass suddenly broke into a full sprint, and Dinners faltered, clasping his head, and then chased after him. No man or deed, Napps promised Rosie, distracted by his name still echoing along the beach. Or sin, he said, and broke off to look in the direction of the interruption.

  ‘Napps!’ Dinners was stepping erratically from one foot to the other. ‘Napps!’

  Beyond Dinners was an indecipherable scene. The cove had been transformed by the blizzard, the cliffs partially buried under an avalanche of rubble. Taurus had ruptured to flood the bay with tons of ice and its horns lay in fractured segments. Of the colossal-sized chunks which had smashed down into the cove, one had fallen on to the tethered supplies and caused rations to explode from the flattened crates. The stylized emblems of familiar brands, with trademarked illustrations of happy animals, or ripe harvests, or picturesque farmhouses, were strewn among shattered wooden slats. Crushed tins had leached their contents, marking the snow with red and orange splashes of soup, pulpy brown streaks of stewed beef, the black charred-looking patches of spilt tea-leaves. Out of the twenty crates, only half had survived intact. Six were in motion, sliding loosely towards the sea before tumbling up the shore on the next wave. The other four undestroyed crates remained on land, their saltwater-drenched webbing of snapped and knotted ropes iced solid to the beach.

  ‘Rescue whatever you can,’ Napps said when he reached Dinners, who stood alone amid the wreckage. ‘Anything you can lift. Get the supplies to higher ground. Where’s Millet-Bass?’

  ‘The crates won’t move,’ Dinners said, doing his terrified dance from foot to foot. ‘The ropes are frozen to the beach.’

  Napps held Dinners by the arms to make him concentrate. ‘Cut the ropes.’

  ‘But Millet-Bass has both the knives.’

  ‘Then get them,’ Napps said, shaking Dinners harder than he meant to. ‘Where is he? Get the knives.’

  ‘I tried to stop him. Napps, he’s in the sea.’

  Every wave sent a flotilla of supplies and ice crashing against the rocks. Heinz and Colman’s and Tate & Lyle were churning through the surf, and another box splintered to release a shoal of canned herrings into the water. Standing waist-deep in the ocean, Millet-Bass made no effort to avoid the debris floating around him. He didn’t seem aware of the cold, or the spray flung across his back with each swell, or the danger of being hit by one of the crates and knocked down. When Napps shouted that the cold would kill him, he didn’t even turn his head.

  ‘Leave what’s in the sea, we can’t save it,’ Napps ordered.

  To leave it would be to leave everything they had. It was distressingly clear to Millet-Bass that Napps hadn’t understood the situation. He might have explained it to him, but Millet-Bass found that parts of the explanation were in another language he’d lost the ability to translate. He wanted to tell Napps about his plan to resolve the crisis, except the details of his plan were difficult to recall. He’d stormed into the sea, he remembered doing that, yet what he’d actually intended to do once semi-immersed in icy water was now a mystery. Because it seemed like it might be the answer, Millet-Bass grabbed a can of pears and absently threw it towards the beach. He went for a pouch of tobacco suspended below the surface with tobacco flecks wafting from the ripped lid. He caught a bag of flour and it disintegrated, a thick paste of soaked flour covering his glove.

  The task of surviving Everland took the combined effort of Napps and Millet-Bass. It was so beyond the capability of one man, that unless they were both well, they were all finished. Therefore in order to save himself, Napps had to save Millet-Bass, which meant he had to endanger himself by wading into the sea. He was dependent on a man whose reckless contempt of his own life was killing them together, and the torment of his powerlessness, his reliance on someone who was now destroying him, manifested in Napps as a violent nihilism. He would die if he couldn’t stop Millet-Bass from dying, and if Millet-Bass couldn’t be stopped from wanting to die, then Napps would give him what he wanted. He’d take Millet-Bass round the neck and squeeze the life out of him, he’d happily stamp the life out of him. Using his own two fists, he’d beat the life out of him.

  ‘Our fortunes can’t be separated, yet you choose to act as if any loss is yours alone,’ he said, plunging across to Millet-Bass.

  Millet-Bass stared at Napps as though surprised to see him. ‘How many days is this?’ he said, gesturing at the cans bobbing nearby. ‘Four days? Five days lost?’

  A crate rode over the wave and Napps didn’t have time to answer. He twisted to stave off the collision with his shoulder and the force of the impact rolled him underwater. He felt a pain score along his side from the hip. When he choked back up to his feet, Millet-Bass didn’t seem to have noticed the incident. He continued to talk to Napps in the same vague, reminiscing tone.

  ‘So what have we lost in total, Napps?’

  Hearing Millet-Bass’s voice as a remote and dispossessed static buzz, Napps banged his ear with one hand, the other hand grasping his waist.

  Millet-Bass pointed at the wider slick of tins and packets which drifted around them. ‘How many weeks?’

  ‘Stay in the water and you’ll ruin us,’
Napps said. At a certain temperature the freezing becomes indistinguishable from burning, and his chest was searing hot. His legs and arms were in flames. ‘But what do you care. You don’t have a wife worrying, children you haven’t seen for years. You wouldn’t understand what I have to lose.’

  Millet-Bass regarded him with an impassive expression. ‘You think I’ve got less to go home for.’ Then his eyes focused. ‘You genuinely think that.’

  ‘Say another word and I’ll drown you,’ Napps said.

  ‘You bastard.’

  Napps burst towards him.

  The sky was darkening. Dinners watched from the shoreline as Napps struck at Millet-Bass, causing the bigger man to overbalance. With Millet-Bass tripping and fumbling on his knees, Napps dragged him to the beach by his collar and flung him down on to the snow.

  ‘Get him up,’ he said to Dinners, and would have said more. A rush of nausea stopped him. He turned his head to better concentrate on swallowing it back.

  Dinners cringed towards Millet-Bass and took him under the arms, hauling him to his feet. ‘Napps, are you injured?’

  Napps needed to put pressure on his side. Without pressure, the pain spread into other areas of his body and his mouth filled with gastric-tasting fluid. ‘Get the knives,’ he said, pressing his side so hard he felt his ribs flex.

  The tremor of mortification which passed through Millet-Bass was more chilling than his soaked clothes. He glimpsed the madness of his lunging into the sea from the perspective of the near future. In about an hour, he would be engulfed in a cyclone of self-hatred and shame. Hoping to make amends for his unforgivable behaviour by being useful, he tore off his gloves and ransacked his jacket pockets for the clasp-knives. His clumsily moving numb fingers wouldn’t grip and the knives dropped, clattering to the ground.

  Dinners bent to snatch the knives as a huge wave with ragged foam on the crest came gliding towards the beach.

  ‘Dinners, quickly. Give me my knife,’ Millet-Bass said.

  Unlike the handle of Millet-Bass’s knife, the handle of Napps’s wasn’t bound with a thick truss of string. The wood had been polished smooth by years of use. Dinners didn’t think when he passed one of the knives to Millet-Bass. He was frightened his frostbite wounds would deteriorate if he got wet in the wave which had broken and was surging towards them. He thrust a knife towards Millet-Bass, saying, here, take it, take it. Millet-Bass accepted the handle in his bare hand and raised his arm to slash at the ropes.

  The blade had largely severed the rope and for a moment there was no sensation. Once the water receded, Dinners began ferrying the loose crates to safety as Napps limped after him in the hunched posture that his pain would allow.

  Millet-Bass opened his hand, looked at it, then closed it and rinsed it in the water. He put his gloves on and stood with his eyes shut as the blood in the water bloomed red, then pink, and then dispersed.

  33

  June 1913

  Castle was perched on the slim shelf inside the crow’s nest, embellishing the carving of his wife’s name as he did every shift. It was one of the few distractions available to a man trapped in a barrel one hundred and ten feet up a mast. He chipped at the oak with his penknife and refined his many homecoming lists. Some of the lists were very chaste, and concerned things he would eat and drink, or things he would buy, such as a motorbike. Other lists were naughtier.

  ‘Castle, I said all well?’

  The barrel had small holes drilled through the sides so that its occupant could avoid exposing his head to the raw wind. Castle pressed a cold watering eye to one of the holes and spotted Lawrence and Smith down below on the lamp-lit deck.

  He appeared above the rim. ‘Having the time of my life, sir.’

  ‘Castle! You ass, stop hanging over the side of the barrel,’ Lawrence said. ‘I’ve got enough to worry about.’

  The sky was clear, the flat black ocean illuminated by a full moon. Although it was one of the nicer evenings for a shift on watch, no one was ever that happy to stand alone on deck at night, policing the sea for hazards. Smith, however, seemed oddly giddy about the prospect. He waved at Castle with both arms until Lawrence restrained him by an elbow, telling him to sober up.

  Castle tried not to sound resentful. ‘You’ve been drinking.’

  ‘Yes! All of us!’ With only Lawrence around to witness it, Smith allowed himself to be friendlier to Castle. He shouted up that Jennet had delighted everyone by trolling out of his lair with brandy in order to commemorate his wedding anniversary.

  Jennet’s surprise toast had come as a relief to Lawrence. The atmosphere on the ship was restless and he was happy to have any excuse to lighten the mood. There was some diabolical connection between their proximity to home and the escalating pressure of the voyage. Each new day punished Lawrence for his success in navigating them closer to safety by presenting him with an ever wilder crew. He was increasingly forced to deal with gnashing bolts of craziness and conversations which escalated into violence. He’d begun to carry a bullwhip around as a menacing prop to jab at people while he demanded obedience. The situation had confirmed his very worst fears. He was the Captain, he had the title of ‘Captain’, but he didn’t have the authority of a Captain. That talent belonged to another man, and that man wasn’t here any more. That man had died on Everland. And without Napps, Lawrence’s shortcomings were reflected back at him in the faces of every one of his untameable sailors.

  Smith’s brandy-silliness influenced him to say that it was probably better that Castle had been stuck in the crow’s nest for Jennet’s anniversary drink. What with the jokes Coppers was telling. What with the subject of those jokes. Smith very much doubted that Castle would have enjoyed the jokes.

  Castle’s smile had the rigid interest of someone absorbing offence. He said, ‘Why don’t you let me decide for myself?’

  ‘Get back in the barrel, Castle,’ Lawrence ordered. Shoving Smith further along the deck where he couldn’t cause trouble, Lawrence strode off, thumping down the stairs to his cabin.

  Castle spent another fifteen minutes carving his wife’s name before the task struck him as infinitely sad and purposeless and he had to stop. He was whittling a tribute for a fondly forgotten stranger whose face he could barely picture. All that was left of his wife was a string of letters which spelt Margaret and a ring on his finger symbolizing an oath hollowed of its meaning. His marriage, which had once seemed so mountain-like and warmly encompassing, no longer provided him with anything more substantial to cling to than a few grams of gold.

  Castle thought of himself in two ways. There was the nomadic, risk-loving self, which had drawn him into his career as a sailor, and there was the real self, the man he was at home. Castle was anchored in being a husband and father, and in being both a brother and a son who would follow into the family business. For sensible reasons, he’d separated that man and the man on the Kismet. Yearning caused heartache and a listless inability to do anything constructive. Self-pity was a paralytic disease. So Castle had trained himself to think of home as a heavenly entity. He believed in it and knew it existed somewhere, yet its distance was magical and beyond comprehension. Home was real in the same way a thousand years in the past was real. It was a strategy which freed Castle to enjoy his work. But since they were now returning to Britain, Castle changed his tactics. After three years of refusal, he allowed himself to pine, only to find it wasn’t the bittersweet pleasure he’d expected. Instead it made him feel unbearably lonely.

  When Castle thought of his children, he thought of babies, yet these babies would have vanished. They’d have grown absurdly tall and be speaking, reading, running, and they wouldn’t know their father. And when Castle thought of his friends and family, he thought of himself in a central role. Except he’d become peripheral. Their news would define a togetherness which didn’t include him, whilst his own news only defined his absence.

  Oth
er, more malignant concerns festered underneath. Although three years wasn’t so inconceivably long to be separated from everyone, Castle wondered if the important factor wasn’t the duration of time but the nature of that time. He worried about this when he remembered walking the same little routes around the same little town. He worried about repacking himself into the man who’d admired the furniture business established by his grandfather. He remembered his previous ability to be satisfied in the tight confines of domesticity. Those miniature clockwork weeks. He’d been strutting about in his chicken-run kingdom with each tiny day ticking neatly to the next. When he wondered whether the man he’d taken from his family was now as vanished as those babies, he worried he knew the answer.

  There was a sharp snap. Castle saw the feathery spray as a bullet smacked into the water. A gust of suction and large wet plume came from the diving whale.

  ‘Smith? What are you doing?’

  Hearing his name, Smith acknowledged Castle with a nod. He was standing against the lee rail, the barrel of his rifle slowly patrolling the waves for a dorsal fin. Minkes were a smaller species of whale which regularly lolled alongside the ship. This one was swimming close enough for some of its spray to rain across the deck.

  ‘Smith, don’t.’

  Smith couldn’t concentrate with Castle yelling at him. He aimed and pretended to shoot at the crow’s nest, bang, dead, and then said petulantly, ‘What do you care?’

  The normal Castle might have been able to restrain his temper, but an hour of devastating introspection inside a barrel had left him in a volatile mood. The cowardly way Smith ignored him in public suddenly made him angry. Smith’s toadyism made him furious, and Smith’s disloyalty to Napps made him incandescent with rage. To needlessly hurt a minke was one more reason for Castle to go down there and give him a beating. He was already out of the crow’s nest and descending the ropes.