Chasing the Light

by Jesse Blackadder

  It felt like just a few hours later that a heavy knock on the door woke her. It was the sort of knock a person would expect after the night they’d had, a knock loud with accusation. She looked over at Mathilde, who hadn’t stirred. The woman would have a monumental hangover. The knock came again, demanding. Lillemor scrambled out of bed and into her dressing gown then opened the door a slit.

  Lars pushed in and past her without a word and by the time Lillemor had gathered her wits he’d already reached Mathilde’s bedside. He was carrying a mug of something steaming.

  ‘Mrs Wegger.’ His voice was low and frightening. Lillemor shivered.

  Mathilde’s eyes opened. She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  ‘I understand there was an unfortunate incident last night,’ Lars said.

  Mathilde sat up and looked around, confused. ‘What?’

  ‘My wife has a black eye and a lump on her head this morning.’

  Lillemor could almost see Mathilde sorting through the confused memories until an expression of dread spread across her face. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Mathilde pushed back her hair and Lillemor felt sorry for her. Lars wasn’t a big man but his air of authority was absolute. Lillemor was glad it wasn’t her under his heavy stare.

  ‘Things got out of hand … an accident … I’m so terribly sorry,’ Mathilde stammered. She tried to pull herself together. ‘Please let me come and apologise to Ingrid in person.’

  Lars shook his head. ‘She doesn’t want to see you. I have a duty to make sure you’re not distressed, Mathilde. It would be best if you stayed here in your cabin for a day or two until your mental state improves. Ingrid says you find the factory ships disturbing, so best you don’t look at them.’

  ‘As you say,’ Mathilde stammered.

  He offered her the cup and she took it. Lillemor could see her hands shaking.

  ‘The steward will bring your meals, and the doctor will look in to see if there’s anything you require.’

  Mathilde was staring at the coffee. Lars waited and the silence was unbearably tense.

  ‘When you’ve finished, I’ll take your cup back,’ Lars said.

  Mathilde gulped down the drink and handed him the empty cup. He strode back to the door, gesturing for Lillemor to follow. He stepped outside the cabin and she followed him.

  ‘This is most regrettable,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’d prefer word of it didn’t get around the ship. Mrs Wegger is resting for a day or two, that’s all.’

  Lillemor marvelled that the day before she’d felt they were of one mind. His eyes were now icy cold. She hadn’t seen him angry before. Ingrid had more to deal with than Lillemor had realised.

  ‘I want you to lock the cabin once she’s asleep,’ he said. ‘It won’t hurt Mathilde to think she’s in serious trouble.’

  ‘Asleep?’

  ‘There’s enough sedative in that coffee to knock out a horse.’

  Lillemor stared at him in shock. ‘What?’

  ‘You might not have known but Mathilde is unstable,’ Lars said. ‘Her family thought this trip might help, but it seems it’s too much for her. Stevensson agreed a sedative was for the best. He’ll be along shortly to check on her. I’d be obliged if you’d wait for him.’

  Lillemor felt her gut tighten. ‘Very well.’

  Lars looked out at the factory ship. ‘We’re about to cast off from Thorshammer. I think we’ll find land today or tomorrow.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Lillemor said.

  Lars turned back to her. ‘My wife will be the first woman to see Antarctica. No matter who is on the bridge. I hope that’s clear?’

  ‘Quite.’ Lillemor turned from him. ‘If you don’t mind, I need to get dressed.’

  She went back into the cabin and shut the door hard behind her. Whatever he’d sedated Mathilde with was already taking effect. She was lying back on her pillow, her eyes closed, breathing deeply. Her face was stripped of colour, and curiously vulnerable.

  Lillemor found herself shivering.

  CHAPTER 32

  Ingrid positioned herself next to Lars at the far end of the bridge where her face was away from the light, for in spite of her careful application of foundation powder, the bruised eye shone through. The worst part was she knew no one would comment or ask about it directly. There’d be rumours instead, of God knew what. She dreaded anyone thinking that Lars might have hit her.

  Thorshavn blew a farewell blast on the horn as it steamed away from the factory, the crews of both ships lining the decks to wave. Thorshammer, with newly drained tanks, faced another six weeks of hunting and processing whales until the season turned and the sea started to freeze. The faces of the crew were already lined with exhaustion and Ingrid was sure some of its men watched with longing as they steamed towards the pack ice, bound for exploration and then a return to sunny Cape Town.

  Fiddling with her camera, Lillemor was uncharacteristically quiet. Hjalmar, who’d looked at Ingrid piercingly when she arrived on the bridge, stationed himself far away from her. Horntvedt was, as usual, grim. Nils was the only one who didn’t seem aware of any tension, cracking jokes and calling for coffee so often that Tobias was constantly running up and back from the galley. Ingrid drank cup after cup without noticing when one finished and the next began.

  As the stench of the factory receded, Ingrid felt a weight lift from her. She wanted to put the memory of what had happened with Mathilde behind her and recall the real purpose of the journey – Antarctica.

  The ship was moving closer to the continent, sliding slowly through the brash ice, which slid and scraped and clattered along the hull, a chiming symphony of ice and snow and metal. Small, pure-white snow petrels fluttered around the ship and the sea was alive with penguins, whose small, fat bodies flew through the air and plunged in and out of the water like miniature porpoises, unexpectedly graceful. It felt a world away from the gore of the factory ships.

  Icebergs were scattered in the ship’s path, seemingly impenetrable. Hjalmar watched the ship’s course through them intently, consulting the chart from time to time.

  ‘There,’ he pointed at last. ‘That’s the lead we followed yesterday.’

  Ingrid could see a narrow opening in the ice ahead of the ship. It was hard to judge the scale. The lead could have admitted Thorshavn easily, or been as small as a canoe.

  ‘What do you think?’ Lars asked Horntvedt.

  He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t have taken a catcher in there.’

  ‘That’s the only lead we found,’ Hjalmar said.

  There was silence for a moment. ‘Then take us along the ice edge,’ Lars said.

  Horntvedt increased the throttle and turned the ship. He said nothing, though it seemed to Ingrid the lines on his face deepened. The aspirin she’d taken was wearing off too quickly. There was little conversation on the bridge and Thorshavn progressed at a frustrating pace.

  ‘Why so slow?’ she murmured to Lars after a while.

  ‘Come,’ he said. He led her to the control panel and pointed at the depth sounder. It was pinging on three hundred and seven metres.

  ‘Most of the factories have been operating at about three thousand metres,’ Lars said. ‘Last night we got as shallow as one hundred and sixty-seven. It might just be a shoal or a bank, but along this edge of the ice it seems consistently shallow, which suggests land is close.’

  ‘There’s just the eternal problem of finding a way through the pack ice to get near it,’ Nils said. ‘It might be just out of sight.’

  ‘How would you know?’ Lillemor asked Hjalmar.

  ‘You hope for a high landform you can see from a distance, like a mountain or a cape, with nunataks,’ he answered.

  ‘Rock sticking out of the snow,’ Nils explained. ‘But large icebergs throw shadows that can look just like nunataks, and some icebergs are dark and you’d swear they were land. Last trip we spent six days looking for the Nimrod Islands. They were supposedly discovered a hundred y
ears ago, but no one’s ever been able to find them again. So even the best explorers can be fooled.’

  Ingrid was relieved when he fell silent and she could step away. She moved close to the window. The icebergs ahead of them were curiously jumbled together.

  Hjalmar pointed. ‘Captain, that looks like a shoal to me.’

  Ingrid looked at the depth sounder. It had risen to two hundred and forty-nine metres. ‘What does he mean?’ she asked Lars.

  ‘Those icebergs ahead look to be resting on rock.’

  ‘Quiet on the bridge.’ Horntvedt was curt. ‘Consul, I require instruction.’

  Lars went to stand next to him at the wheel. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I cannot take responsibility for an accident if we go further. You can see we’re surrounded by shoals and icebergs, and the ship has a half-cargo of oil. If you want me to proceed, it’s under your instruction and at your risk.’

  There was a long silence as Lars weighed it up, but it was respectful. These men would trust him, Ingrid realised. There was no right or wrong here, no clear-cut trade-off, just risk and luck.

  ‘I think Amundsen, God rest him, would be disappointed in us if we called it a day already,’ Lars said at last. ‘I’m looking for something to name after his ship. She needs to win some friends before she falls to pieces. I want you to proceed past the shoal, Captain, at the speed you judge to be safest.’

  ‘I’ll issue a lifeboat alert first, if you don’t mind,’ Horntvedt said.

  Lars nodded. ‘If you think it’s necessary.’

  Horntvedt picked up the wireless handset and switched it to broadcast. Ingrid could hear his voice booming across the ship as he instructed the crew to be prepared for an abandon ship. She wondered if Mathilde, in her sedated sleep, heard it. Lillemor looked at her anxiously, and Ingrid turned to Lars and raised her eyebrows in a question.

  ‘It’s just a formality, don’t worry,’ he said.

  It was true; in the warm confines of the bridge the prospect of the ship foundering felt as remote as a dream. Ingrid buckled on a life jacket as if it were simply another layer of warmth. Nils stationed himself by the depth sounder and called out the readings. ‘206 … 180 … 246 … 173 … 80.’

  At eighty, Lillemor crossed the bridge and stood next to Ingrid. ‘If we run aground, will there be time to get Mathilde?’ she whispered.

  ‘I advise we don’t go any closer,’ Horntvedt said. ‘It’s clear there’s a bank under there. It’s probably worthy of a name.’

  Lars nodded and Horntvedt drew the engines into reverse to bring Thorshavn to a halt. Ingrid tried to picture the ocean floor beneath them, a series of underground mountains rising up towards the surface, shallow enough that the icebergs were grounded there.

  Tobias handed the little glasses of aquavit around and Lars waited till they all held one, before lifting his glass.

  ‘Here’s to our first discovery of the voyage,’ he said. ‘I hereby call this “Fram Bank”, in memory of Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen, who sailed the faithful Fram. Let’s hope we can find that ship a safe home before she rots.’

  Everyone raised their glasses. Lars made a show of being merry, but Ingrid could sense his disappointment. An underwater bank, no matter how shallow, had nothing of the glory of land about it.

  It occurred to her that seeing Antarctica itself, even landing on it, might be just as disappointing. Such a fuss was made about the first footfall, as though there was a mystical moment when foot met earth and the reverberations pulsed through the bedrock and rippled across the land. She would have liked to ask Hjalmar what he thought, but there was such a distance between them now that she didn’t know how to broach it.

  Horntvedt brought the ship around and they continued along the edge of the ice. Within a few minutes the reading on the depth sounder showed one thousand metres, then fifteen hundred, then twenty-five hundred.

  ‘We’re off that shoal at least,’ Nils said.

  ‘Pity,’ Lars said. ‘It was our best bet so far.’

  ‘Just as well.’ Hjalmar pulled out his pipe. ‘There’s a snowstorm coming. Best not to be in eighty metres when that hits.’

  Ingrid saw that a squall was making its way towards them, blotting out the pack ice in a grey blur, pulling the world down around them. It suited her mood.

  Lars looked at his watch. ‘A late lunch, I think. It looks like that’s our excitement for the day.’ He turned to Horntvedt. ‘You’re back in full command. I’d like you to continue along the edge of the pack ice and send for me immediately if you see anything interesting.’

  Hjalmar drained his aquavit and made a mock bow. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, Mrs Christensen, Mrs Rachlew. I’m staying here. I need to see as much of this territory as I can.’

  His eyes raked over Ingrid, and though his expression didn’t change she felt revealed, as though he could see every blow laid in her fight with Mathilde, not only her black eye, but also the hard slap that Ingrid had laid on Mathilde’s soft cheek and how she’d contrived to have her locked up and sedated.

  The blizzard overtook them as they ate lunch, hurling and shrieking around the ship, spattering the windows with ice. The engine dropped to idle speed as the continent’s white fist closed around Thorshavn. Ingrid couldn’t shake the feeling that Antarctica was furious at them for coming so close.

  She picked at her food, feeling the very marrow of her bones aching. Lars was cheery and loud, keeping the conversation flowing with his natural charm, deflecting attention from her. As soon as it was appropriate, he excused them, saying they were heading back to the bridge.

  ‘Why don’t you rest?’ he said quietly as they pulled their coats on before going outside. ‘You look terrible. It’ll probably be a whiteout all afternoon and we’ll have to sit it out here. I’ll send for you the moment there’s anything to see.’

  Ingrid nodded and squeezed his arm. She could see how worried he was that he’d ordered the ship into this treacherous area, this uncharted edge of an unexplored continent where a collision with an iceberg could sink them.

  He opened the door and they stepped out into the sudden force of the blizzard. Ice particles smacked Ingrid’s face and she shut her eyes.

  ‘Shall I take you back to the cabin?’ Lars asked, close to her ear.

  ‘Don’t be silly, I’m fine.’ Ingrid dropped his hand. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  She turned away from him and began making her way out on the exposed catwalk. Antarctica came at her with flailing wildness, threatening to throw her from her feet as she inched along the catwalk, clutching at the railing. Ingrid’s face began to freeze and her fingertips were becoming numb inside her gloves. The shriek of the blizzard filled her ears until she clapped her hands over them. She knew exactly why Antarctica screamed. Surely every man on board could hear her wordless fury that they dared to come with their harpoons and boilers, and slaughter her children in her own waters, where they had been safe for all time.

  She staggered in the direction of her cabin, found the door, shoved it open, entered and shouldered it closed behind her, shutting out the blizzard She shrugged out of her coat, already starting to drip melted ice on the floor, and hung it up. A glance in the mirror confirmed she looked as wild and desperate as she felt. Any makeup she’d been wearing had been scoured off by the wind and her face was frightening in its wide-eyed rawness, her still-darkening bruise revealed.

  CHAPTER 33

  Lillemor stepped over the sill into the cabin and shut the door behind her. She dreaded going inside, but wanted to check on Mathilde before dinner. The blizzard meant the ship wasn’t going anywhere, and the feeling of being trapped was strong within her.

  She set her shoulders and turned to face Mathilde’s anger. But Mathilde was still fast asleep. Lillemor tiptoed closer. It looked like she hadn’t moved at all. Her breathing was slow and regular, her cheeks white, and she was lying in exactly the same position.

  She felt a stab of concern. Damn Lars! What had he put in that
cup of coffee, and how much? There was no hospital nearby if Mathilde needed help, only a doctor who’d agreed that involuntary sedation was the best option. And now Lillemor had to be her unwilling guard.

  She wondered if she should try to wake Mathilde. How far would the Christensens take this? Ingrid had shown no concern about Mathilde when the lifeboat alert was raised. If they’d hit something or run aground and been in danger, how would Lillemor have got Mathilde awake, into her clothing and out to a lifeboat in time?

  She hoped Mathilde wasn’t doomed to sleep through their remaining time in Antarctica, waking at its end as if from dreams of ice.

  It was a moment that should be captured, Lillemor thought. She had a sense of needing evidence of what happened. She got up quietly and went to her cupboard. The Beau Brownie was heavy in her hands as she carried it back across the room and took aim. It was like hunting, she thought, as she looked at Mathilde’s unconscious face through the viewfinder and pressed the lever, though the success was delayed. She wouldn’t know till she got back to London if she’d caught her quarry.

  She put the camera away and went to the porthole. There was no horizon visible. The ship crept forward in the inky water. Stately icebergs appeared out of the fog and slid by silently. The brash ice clanked against the hull. No wonder men had once thought they’d sail off the edge of the earth. What courage it would have taken to keep sailing in such waters, not knowing what abyss may await, or what krakens might reach up to catch them.

  Lars had looked so different that morning with his stern face and his eyes like chips of ice. He was short and stocky, too long in the jowls to be handsome, but his face was pleasant and genial most of the time. The way he’d dispatched the problem of Mathilde with such cool brutality was chilling.

  Lillemor missed Anton suddenly. He was always on her side and she had no ally on board. Lars and Ingrid would cleave to each other; Mathilde would join herself to Hjalmar or remain aloof. Lillemor had no one to call on, for what loyalty had she shown anyone? She’d seen it in Lars’s eyes when he came to sedate Mathilde, the reminder that no matter what she might long for, in the end it was his choice what happened and who took part and what was remembered or recorded later.