Everland

by Rebecca Hunt

  ‘Then tell him to keep the hell away from me.’

  ‘I said enough, Millet-Bass.’ Napps was becoming accustomed to his unnatural new role as Dinners’s protector. He noticed Dinners’s quivering chin. ‘What were you talking about?’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Foraging berries or something?’

  Ha, Millet-Bass interrupted, telling them they’d come to the right person if they wanted to talk about scavenging food. He’d got a lifetime’s worth of stories.

  ‘The mushrooms on my grandmother’s grave were so abundant they were almost too much for one man to finish on his own,’ he said. ‘I managed it though.’

  Dinners’s spoon clattered into his pannikin. ‘Really.’ The idea of grandmotherly fungus had destroyed his appetite. He put down his meal.

  What? Millet-Bass didn’t understand the reaction. ‘Fried them and ate them with toast. They were delicious. Cheered me right up on a lonely Valentine’s Day.’

  ‘That’s the most Gothic thing I’ve ever heard,’ Napps said.

  ‘Oh, you think that’s morbid?’ Millet-Bass had no tolerance for such finicky attitudes. ‘A few mushrooms? Tell it to the creatures, to the whatever they are. The whatever it is,’ he said, amused at how ludicrous he found himself. ‘Actually, no, tell it to me. My head needs a bit of sense banged into it.’

  Napps ordered him to explain and he became flustered. ‘I expect the dark’s getting to me. Or it’s your fault, Dinners, constantly peddling your mad visions.’

  ‘Such as,’ Napps said.

  ‘Such as funny things with the light. Such as perhaps on occasion I’ve seen things, and attributed sounds with false meaning.’

  Dinners’s eyes widened. ‘I think I know what you mean.’

  Napps asked about the sounds and Millet-Bass became defensively self-conscious. No, he didn’t want to say. It was too stupid.

  ‘But it’s not voices, Millet-Bass. It’s not men,’ Dinners said, happy to finally know something useful, although no one paid him any attention. ‘It’s only the wind. I’m always having to remind myself of that.’

  39

  December 2012

  The windows were always open and it was a spring morning for ever when Decker transported himself to Viv. He only had to close his eyes and he was home. Less of a man than a vapour, a spectral presence, Decker floated along past the turmeric-yellow walls and clustered picture frames, the Balinese lion sculpture. He wafted into their bedroom. Without doing anything, without even thinking, he found he could just materialize under the covers with his head beside Viv’s head on the pillow. I miss you, he said to her. I made a mistake, I want to come home.

  The tent was as muggy as a hot car. With a temperature of five degrees outside, the once thick snow covering the beach had virtually disappeared, and the sky was now a neon white twenty-four hours a day. Bird and seal calls could be heard constantly, from everywhere. Gulls and skuas collected near the refuse sacks, attracted by the smell of decaying food. The camp was overrun by the noise and reek which covered Everland.

  ‘Kimiko, hi,’ Brix said, checking in with Aegeus. She relayed the usual details. Yes, they were fine, life on the island was fine. The next day’s schedule involved weighing Adélie chicks and surveying the glacier. ‘Weather forecasted to remain stable,’ Brix said, passing on Kimiko’s information to Decker.

  Eyes still shut, he replied with a nod so as not to break his trance. He was in the garden with some friends, drinking cider. The group were laughing at some incredible speech he’d just made, which wasn’t only hilarious, but deeply moving. Having no talent for speeches in reality, Decker skipped straight to the applause. Please raise your glasses, he said. Here’s to being back with you fuckers, and most of all, here’s to Viv. I promised I’d come home, and I have. So, bad luck, you’re stuck with me now. Cheers as he kissed her.

  Blah, blah, blah, Andre. Trapped on the phone to the effusive and uninterruptable Kimiko, Brix tried to catch Jess’s attention to exchange some eye-rolling.

  Jess kept her head firmly turned away as she cleared up after their meal of soupy, baby-food beige chicken korma. From the second Kimiko answered the call, everything had become too difficult and claustrophobic and frustrating. The tent was shrinking to strangle her and there wasn’t room to unbend a leg or move without crawling into the piles of stuff thrown across the floor. But Jess had a talent for enduring discomfort in any of its forms, whether that was a Kimiko-shaped catastrophe, or the hot, sharp pain in her ankle which grew hotter and sharper each day.

  Unlike many other things in Jess’s life, work never disappointed her. The formula was simple and perfect: she had a purpose, she accomplished it, she felt good; and repeat. Work wasn’t just a job but a form of self-expression to Jess. It was the best friend she’d ever had. There were no inconsistencies in this relationship: it didn’t sideline her, or suddenly favour someone else, or draw her attention to qualities she lacked in comparison to, say, a Japanese meteorologist. Instead it could be relied upon to deliver exactly what she hoped it would, which was the sense of being valued. She invested her time and was rewarded with a sense of fulfilment. She strived whole-heartedly and was allowed to excel. She wanted to be the best and she was the best, she wanted to feel proud of herself and she was. Whereas outside of her job, Jess was subject to forces of doubt and dismay and envy, she was always protected from those horrors within work’s cosy confines. So the idea of going back to Aegeus early as a figure of sympathy and failure, unsuccessful at the very thing she depended on for self-esteem, was more heartbreak than she could bear.

  Which is why Jess had resolved to ignore whatever was wrong with her ankle. The solution was simple. All she had to do was carry on crunching down the painkillers. The problem was that the box of codeine was in her yellow medical kit, which was on the other side of the tent, and getting it would involve crawling over Decker, the sleeping kraken.

  Once the call to Kimiko had finally ended, Brix began the gruesomely satisfying task of unpeeling the grubby collage of Band-Aids from her fingers to replace them with fresh plasters. Wound inspection was part of the nightly regimen of preparing for bed. They all sported various nicks and lesions, and the small but disproportionately painful splits caused when skin cracked in the cold. Each injury required care in order to prevent it from becoming septic, as the Antarctic climate had suspended the healing process, and even the tiniest cut would remain open for months.

  A balled-up mitten bounced off her foot and Brix raised her head. Jess signalled at the drift of clothes and equipment heaped along Brix’s side of the tent, wanting her to throw over the medical kit.

  Brix’s first thought was: okay. Her next thought was: no. Jess’s covert gesturing and edgy, addict-like staring didn’t exactly comply with Jess’s assertions that her ankle was improving and had probably only been bruised. In the spirit of her newfound cordiality with Jess, Brix had agreed not to disclose the injury to Decker. She had, however, added a caveat. If it got worse, then maybe keeping it hidden wasn’t such a great idea. A better idea might be to do the sensible thing and get some proper medical care. She had definitely not agreed to get involved in a silent pact which enabled Jess’s health to secretly deteriorate. She picked up a snack-sized carton of Sun-Maid raisins instead and chucked it to land next to Jess’s knee. The packet showed a woman with a red bonnet and enviously fresh complexion smiling youthfully as she carried a tray of grapes.

  Jess suppressed a grin. ‘Brix!’ she mouthed. ‘Please!’

  ‘This feels wrong,’ Brix mouthed back.

  Jess’s signalling became more insistent. Her finger stabbed towards the little yellow kit. She put her hands together in a prayer for Brix to stop being such an idiot.

  Giving her a look which implied that she was a generous, forgiving person who didn’t approve, but was willing to trust Jess, Brix passed her the medical kit.

  Jess had taken one pill and
was gulping back a second as Decker hauled himself upright. He blinked, half asleep. ‘Did Aegeus have anything else to say about the cave petrol?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ Brix said.

  In a seamless move, Jess had buried the codeine under a discarded jumper and extracted a pocket mirror. Holding the little mirror very close to her face, as if the task required total concentration, she began rubbing E45 cream on to her sunburnt forehead. ‘What is there to say about the petrol?’ she said. ‘We’ve discussed it a trillion times.’

  Decker had informed the base during a scheduled call and then listened as Aegeus made surprised, interested noises at the discovery of a sledging flag and the exhumed petrol. Toshi had googled the Latin inscription.

  ‘Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis,’ he’d told them with the measured, deferential tone of someone reciting a sacred text. ‘Huh, it means get on with your scientific work, which you are being paid to do, you should be collecting data, not tattered old flags.’ He’d laughed as Decker replied with a damning critique of his talents as a comedian. ‘Yeah, okay, whatever. It means, “The times are changing and we with them.”’

  ‘Do I look like the raisin woman?’ Jess asked, finished with the E45 cream.

  Decker assessed the Sun-Maid carton. ‘You would if her face was more barbecued-looking. And if her hair hung in matted ropes. And if she was covered in dirt and wounds.’

  ‘I wish you had Temazepam in your medical kit, Jess,’ Brix said, lying down. ‘Or any kind of drug to knock me out so I could get an uninterrupted night’s sleep.’

  Decker thumped his pillow into shape. ‘What’s interrupting it?’

  ‘Oh, just noises.’ Becoming shy, Brix rolled over towards the tent lining in order to avoid seeing their reactions. ‘The constant light is messing with my head, I think. Sounds become distorted and start to sound like other things.’

  ‘Monsters, Brix?’ Decker said. ‘Aren’t we a bit old for ghost stories?’

  Jess was watching her intently. ‘No, I know what you mean, Brix,’ she said.

  It was a scream or a yell, loud enough to shock her. Brix wrestled one arm from the sleeping bag to check her wristwatch. It was nearly 4 A.M. The sulphurous orange tent gave everything inside a soft over-saturated focus. Jess was there next to her, faced the other way. Decker was in his bag on the opposite side. Brix thought, go to sleep, you know what it is. It’s just the seals.

  Nearly formed words filled the glistening white night. Voices were carried across the dunes, first nearer, then further, and then within metres of the tent. A low, agitated moan came from directly outside.

  In a whisper which was barely more than her breathing the word, Brix said, ‘Jess?’

  The whispered reply was instant. ‘I’m so glad you’re awake.’

  40

  June 1913

  He heard them talking outside the room, a brief muted dispute. Using pure dumb hope, Addison willed the door to remain shut. He didn’t want them in here. He fiercely didn’t want to talk to anybody.

  Addison required isolation in order to concentrate on his recovery, in his bed, in his own room for the first time in weeks. He wasn’t able to bear the men’s sympathy because he couldn’t trust his response. There was no way of controlling it. One moment he’d be fine and the next he’d be wretched as composure switched to devastation with no warning. In deciding that it was undignified and needed to be dealt with privately, Addison hadn’t left his quarters in three days.

  Lawrence was the only person who couldn’t be turned away. To his credit, he knew better than to address the issue which simmered contentiously between them. It would come out later, probably in a horrible manner, but for now he perched on the bed, smiling uncomfortably and saying the same things whenever he visited.

  He’d say: just a candle? Let me get a lamp. Addison, don’t lie here in the dark. He’d say: can I persuade you to eat? Tell me what you want and I’ll have Jennet send it. He’d pat Addison’s arm and say, what are you scribbling in that diary of yours? Confide in me. What do you write about that we can’t discuss together? He’d say, Adds! Come on, Adds! Have a drink with me, please. He’d keep trying until Addison thanked him in a tone which was a request to be left alone.

  ‘So there’s nothing I can do. So you want to suffer by yourself and make me ill with worry, as if I’m not sick enough with it already.’ Lawrence wearily lifted himself off the bed. ‘Because, God help me, Addison. If there was a way of sparing us both from such misery you must believe I would have done it.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’ The flickering candle stub on the desk filled the room with elongated shadows, and Addison’s silhouette towered over the wall as he sat up. ‘Dinners was an impressionable young man and I asked you not to send him. I told you my concerns and you chose to disregard them.’

  Addison said he was aware of the private conversation that had happened between Lawrence and Dinners before the Everland selection. And, yes, he could well imagine the enthusiastic case Dinners had put forward, the keen promises of biological and geological discovery, his starry ambitions of a place in the scientific canon.

  ‘I’m sure it sounded very inviting, very prestigious for the expedition,’ Addison said. ‘But I wish you’d thought more of your captaincy and less of prestige.’

  ‘Ah, you see, there you’re wrong, although I sincerely wish you weren’t,’ Lawrence said, his hand on the door handle. ‘I was thinking only of my captaincy.’

  ‘You could have prevented him from going, Lawrence.’

  ‘Not really, as it turned out,’ he said with a hard, embittered smile as he left the room. ‘No more than you could have prevented him from dying.’

  On that awful night and for those hours after it was over Addison had been hit by a supreme and instantaneous tiredness. He’d have gladly stooped forward in the chair, put his head on the bed and slept. He remembered going to the Mess, chairs scraping as he stood there and everyone went quiet, anticipating what he was about to say. He remembered Lawrence’s ashen face. Addison had broken the news with a short, respectful announcement, and then returned alone to the infirmary, his mind blank of much sentiment. It was a pity and he was sorry. He’d washed his hands in the sink and changed his shirt and thought, I’m deeply sorry. He’d tidied his hair in the mirror and said aloud, I did what I could and I am so sorry. Something had gone wrong at that point. Grief had overpowered him. And when a man knocked to bring in a bowl of soup, Addison was so unable to cope with seeing anyone he’d behaved disgracefully.

  I will apologize, Addison promised. I will speak to the sailor and explain. Because it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault because I was half out of my mind.

  Not every death is peaceful, and not every death is clean. Some of the worst can be savage as the body lingers in the final stages of illness. Although Addison had witnessed cases like this before, nothing in his experience had ever been as cruel as the last days of Dinners’s life.

  Both Addison and Dinners had exhausted themselves in the battle to find a route through the havoc of his agony. Since the job of tending to Dinners required every single minute of his time, Addison’s own health suffered as he neglected himself. There were moments when Addison dozed, perhaps for as long as half an hour, or managed to eat some of a meal, but mostly he worked without respite, because the work never stopped. He changed soiled sheets and clothing, and treated Dinners’s fever with cold compresses and spoonfuls of chipped ice. He did his best to bathe Dinners, and feed him, and make it less lonely by holding his hand. He soothed him, singing the songs he’d sung to his children when they were very young. And throughout those eight sleepless, famished days of Dinners’s end, two oppositional arguments concerning morality and humanity had raged inside the doctor. One of the arguments was lawful, and the other was inborn and merciful to the detriment of his professional sanctions. Each had a consequence, but when Dinners asked for s
omething which contravened Addison’s religious and medical ethics, he could no longer see how those laws made any sense. He couldn’t see the God he believed in, all he saw was the man in front of him.

  ‘Explain it to me again. What did you do?’ Lawrence had said with an impenetrable expression as Addison stood with his shakily written letter in the Captain’s quarters, past midnight, on the night that Dinners died.

  ‘To refuse Dinners’s request was to engage in torture,’ Addison said, watching Lawrence read and then re-read the letter.

  The line about dispensing a fatal dose of morphine wouldn’t remain clearly in Lawrence’s mind unless he stared at it. The moment he stopped, it became dreamlike and muddied and made him search through the page to find it again. He’d slammed the letter down on to his desk. ‘I want to hear you say it.’

  ‘I freed him.’

  ‘Lies. You freed yourself.’

  ‘Lawrence—’

  ‘What happened to the Hippocratic oath? Do no fucking harm?’ He’d clutched his head in the manner of someone condemned. ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done?’

  In those very last hours Addison’s sequence of duties had diminished until every one was hopeless and all he could do was talk. So he talked as Dinners strained to cling to the safety of his voice. He talked while Dinners was overtaken by enormous sensations which lifted his eyes back, or rose through him and made his body arch. Addison said, I’m here with you, when Dinners saw things standing at the room’s edges which came and went silently, or were beside the bed or were hovering above it. Addison tried to soothe him as a flush of lucidity gripped Dinners and he spoke for the first time in weeks.

  ‘I want to go, I want to go, I want to go.’

  ‘Shhh, it’s all right,’ Addison had said, putting his hand on Dinners’s burning forehead. ‘You’re all right, I’m still here.’

  ‘Help me, will you help me. I can’t.’ He’d grasped Addison’s sleeve.