She was looking back when the crack came, much louder than the others. The sound of roaring reached her as the face of the berg behind them gave way and started to slide into the sea. The first mate, Atle, looked over his shoulder once to see how far away it was, and rapped out a curt order to turn the boat to face the coming wave. From the speed at which they manoeuvred, Ingrid understood the danger, and she reached for Lars’s hand. If the boat capsized, life jackets would be no help. They’d be dead from cold within a matter of minutes.
The impact wave was coming fast and Ingrid tensed, trying to judge its size.
‘Hold tight,’ Atle said, not wasting words.
Each of them gripped the nearest seat or gunwale as the wave hit and the prow of the lifeboat tipped up. Ingrid heard a cry of fear and wondered which of them had uttered it. They rose higher and then they were over the wave, sliding nose-first down into the trough. They hit the bottom and the boat bounced once, twice, throwing them against each other before righting itself. The following waves, smaller, rocked them again.
They were all silent. Ingrid took a few deep breaths. She was careful not to look at Lillemor or Mathilde. Should she call a halt? Would Lars?
Atle looked at Lars with a raised eyebrow and, when Lars nodded, ordered them to turn the boat again and continue. The boat slipped through the water, the snow kept falling and no one spoke.
Then they rounded the edge of the lead. Everyone gasped as the vista opened up. They were facing a dramatic string of peaks that formed a half-ring around the edge of a wide bay. The mountain closest to them rose straight out of the water, its sides dark and forbidding, specks of seabirds circling its summit. The boat rocked as they all tilted their heads back to try and take in its size.
‘Welcome to Klarius Mikkelsen Mountain, on Lars Christensen Land,’ Atle said. ‘Discovered by men of the Christensen fleet in 1931.’
It was completely different from the place Ingrid had flown over with Hjalmar. This formation would be visible from hundreds of miles away in the air, unlike the more modest land carrying her name.
She looked across at Lillemor and Mathilde. Lillemor was lining up the camera to take a photograph and Mathilde’s expression was one of awe.
‘Where are we going to land?’ Lars asked Atle. ‘I can’t see anywhere.’
‘There’s lots of penguins,’ Atle said. ‘We might find a spot where they scramble ashore.’
Ingrid could see brown specks around the shoreline. There were thousands of penguins, claiming every ledge and outcrop.
‘Why are they that colour?’ Mathilde asked.
‘The brown ones are the chicks. They’re not fledged yet,’ Atle said.
Atle called a halt and got to his feet. He stood, examining the shore keenly. At last he pointed and the men started to row again.
‘What did he see?’ Ingrid asked.
‘Some penguins just went ashore,’ Lillemor said.
The boat came closer to shore and Ingrid saw a gouge in the rock forming a passageway that led high up the side of the mountain. At its base, a group of adult Adelie penguins stood on the rocks, watching them with surprised, white-rimmed eyes.
‘It’s the only place I can see to try,’ Atle said to Lars. ‘I’ll go first.’
They manoeuvred in close. The water rose and fell, lapping over a tiny, slippery-looking ledge and washing back with a sucking sound. It would be a tricky business, Ingrid saw, waiting till the wave washed back from the ledge and then jumping across. Atle crouched and leaped. He scrabbled on the ledge, fell to his knees, and quickly recovered. He was up before the next wave could catch him, clambering to the rocks above the ledge, scattering a group of watching penguins that squawked indignantly.
Another crewman tossed the rope over and Atle pulled the lifeboat close to the shore and tied it to a boulder. He straightened and gave them a thumbs up.
The little boat rose and fell with the swell. Water washed over the rock ledge, drained away, covered it again.
‘What do you think?’ Lars asked Ingrid. ‘Can you do it?’
Ingrid looked at the ledge again and up at the forbidding slope of the mountain. It seemed so close, she could reach out and touch it. That swelling strip of black water, that rise and fall, that slippery ledge, were all that stood between her and Antarctica.
‘I’ll go first and then you can decide,’ Lars said.
Of course there’d be no stopping him so close to his goal. If Atle could make the leap, Lars would try. And so would she, she realised. It was a waste of time considering the question. Everything in her life had been leading her here, to a rock ledge by a restless shore at the foot of Antarctica.
She gave him a quick kiss. ‘Good luck. See you over there.’
Lars stood up, two of the crewmen crouching by his sides. Atle climbed down close to the ledge and bent his knees, ready.
‘Watch the waves a few times to get the rhythm,’ he said.
The swell came in, lifting the boat, rushing over the ledge, and then sucking away, letting them drop. It surged in again. Ingrid was suddenly aware of the smell of bird droppings, sharp and ammoniac.
‘The next one,’ Lars said.
The crewmen braced. ‘I’ll count for you,’ Atle said.
Ingrid gripped the gunwale and glanced at the others. Lillemor and Mathilde were holding hands, their eyes fixed on Lars’s back. Hans had shut his eyes. The wave rose, swelling over the ledge. Two penguins shot out of the water, landing on their feet in the very spot where Lars was headed, startling all of them. They scrambled out of the way, followed by a rush of chicks, their beaks gaping. The wave started to recede.
‘One, two, three!’
Lars crouched and leaped across the chasm, scattering the penguins. He balanced himself, reached for Atle’s outstretched hand and pulled himself up next to the first mate as the next wave started to come in. A spontaneous cheer rose from the boat as he turned back to them, his face split in a wide grin. Ingrid felt a surge of love for him as she clapped. Even the penguins seemed to hoot their approval.
‘Coming?’ he asked, holding his hand out to her.
Ingrid stood, steadying herself against two of the crewmen. Lars was holding her with his gaze, his arm outstretched. Atle was ready to jump down on the ledge to catch her, and still she hesitated.
‘Go on, Ingrid,’ Lillemor said.
Ingrid turned her head. Lillemor was clutching her camera on her lap, her face pale, her eyes wide. Even her freckles seemed to have disappeared. She wanted to be the first so badly, Ingrid thought. Would it hurt her to give up this turn? It didn’t really matter now, not after Caroline.
‘You can do it,’ Lars said, from across the other side of the world. ‘Come, Ingrid.’
‘Think of the Valkyrie.’ Lillemor’s lips were trembling and Ingrid thought she could see tears glistening, but in the cold it was impossible to tell.
Ingrid was about to offer the younger woman her place, and then she glanced at the shore again and saw Lars watching her silently. He knew what she was thinking.
She looked up at the mountain, towering above them. Lillemor wouldn’t even be there if it weren’t for her and Lars, she thought. Ingrid had waited since she was a teenager to get there. Why shouldn’t she go first?
‘Are you ready, Mrs Christensen?’ Atle said, his voice urgent.
Ingrid turned and locked her gaze on to Atle’s. At his count, the crewmen boosted her up. For a moment she was in the air, flying across the gap and then her boots landed heavily on the ledge. Atle caught her around the waist and Lars reached down from his perch and gripped the shoulder of her coat. The two of them swung her up as the next wave came rushing in below her feet. She landed beside Lars, wobbled, then gained her balance. A cheer came from the boat.
Lars threw his arms around her. ‘We’re here!’ he said into her ear. ‘At last.’
He held her so tight that it hurt and when they drew apart, Ingrid saw that his eyes were wet. He wiped his nose on his glove.
‘I wish my father was alive. He would have loved this.’
Ingrid stroked his cheek and cupped it for a moment. ‘I’m sure he knows.’
Lillemor was standing up to make the leap and Mathilde sat behind her expectantly. As they waited for the next wave, Ingrid felt the cold coming up through the soles of her boots. She was standing on the continent, at last, her feet pressed against the stone.
‘One, two, three!’
Lillemor landed with both hands on Atle’s shoulders, but her feet skidded on the wet rock. There was a collective gasp as he braced himself to take her weight and Lars reached down to help. They might all end up in the water, Ingrid saw, her own muscles tightening.
Scrabbling, Lillemor started to fall to one side. Atle bent lower and threw out an arm to get a better handhold. The Beau Brownie looped over her shoulder swung around on its strap and hit the rock shelf with a clunk. Lillemor groaned, but as if galvanised by the sound, found her footing, reached up to grasp Lars and swung up from the shelf just as the wave swept in. Atle, a moment later, got his feet wet for his trouble.
Lillemor was panting as she landed. Ingrid reached out to grab her arm and could feel her trembling. ‘Are you all right?’
Lillemor’s cheeks were flushed. ‘Fine. Thank you, gentlemen. I only hope the camera survived.’ She pulled it close. ‘Come on, Mathilde,’ she called down.
Mathilde, standing ready, hesitated. Ingrid wondered if she’d change her mind. She’d never wanted to come, not really. The risk of jumping might be too much for her, but Ingrid wanted all three of them there.
‘Imagine telling Ole and Aase about this,’ she called, projecting her voice.
Mathilde took the arms of the crewmen. Atle counted and she jumped with surprising determination, landing squarely and making the step up to the rock next to them easily.
She laughed upon reaching them. ‘My God. We’re here.’
Ingrid reached to Mathilde and Lillemor and grabbed their hands. They raised them and shook their joined fists at Hans, still miserably huddled in the boat.
Hans refused to make the leap, insisting he’d wait in the boat and watch from there. The other crewmen came ashore and after a sustained cheer when the last one landed, they all climbed up from the ledge and into the rock crevice, which seemed to rise to the mountain’s top, disappearing out of sight above them.
Atle directed the crew to collect rocks and deposit them on a ledge above the water, ready to build the cairn. They’d tossed over a stout wooden box and a flagpole from the lifeboat and these waited by the growing pile of stones.
‘The university will be pleased we landed,’ Lars said, looking around. ‘We’ll get some proper geological samples this time.’
Ingrid watched him talk to Atle and recruit several men to start chipping at the walls of the rock chute. Lars was proud of the scientific work done by his expeditions, and all his ships were charged with bringing back samples and observing weather and ice conditions, under the guidance of the University of Oslo. But the crewmen looked bemused as they wielded their picks. She wondered how they knew what to gather.
‘Where’s Mrs Rachlew gone with that camera?’ Lars asked, coming back to her.
‘Hunting for rocks, so she said.’ Mathilde pointed.
Ingrid looked up the crevice. She could see Lillemor’s white fur coat standing out against the brown rock about fifty yards up, almost hidden behind the boulders.
‘I’ll get her,’ she said.
‘Can you?’ Lars said. ‘I’ll have one more go at talking Hans into coming. I want to get the flag ready.’
Ingrid began to climb. It was steep and she used her hands to pull herself up, watching carefully where she placed her feet. Making the leap back into the lifeboat with a broken ankle wasn’t something she wanted to try.
Even just a short distance up the mountain’s shoulder, the view of the bay and the mountains was panoramic. Seabirds wheeled around the cliffs above Ingrid’s head, at least three different species she thought, their cries loud on the still air. Underfoot, desiccated white corpses littered the ground; penguin chicks that hadn’t survived. In this climate they might have lain there for three months or thirty years.
She stopped below the boulder where she’d glimpsed Lillemor and sat down. She was grateful for the chance to spend a few minutes alone, away from the flurry of the landing site.
Ingrid had spent the voyage down dreaming of ice, but in fact they’d reached bedrock. No ice was accessible from their landing place, not without climbing the full height of the mountain. It was rock that confronted her, a mountain of it, hard and real, brown and black.
Mostly. When she looked down among the pebbles scattered at her feet, she saw a chunk of pale green, which at first looked like a piece of ice. She bent to look closer. It was a small translucent rock, of some kind of crystal structure. She picked it up and held it on the palm of her glove to examine it. This one she’d take home, she thought, and not for the university. A piece of Antarctica for herself.
She’d bargained with Lars to take back something even smaller than that – a few cells in her belly, the start of a child. But her blood time had come and that was the last time they’d …
She felt a rush of shame thinking of it. There was still a chance of conceiving, on the way home. She’d be fertile again in a few days. Perhaps she shouldn’t try to avoid it, she thought. Men put their names on extraordinary places to make their mark. Explorers came home with maps and muddy, blurred photographs. What if she were able to carry the essence of this place home in her own belly, a child with white hair and eyes of iceberg blue?
Ingrid wished the sun would break through the heavy clouds. She needed the Antarctic light now, but it remained resolutely gloomy. This was the moment she’d hoped to find what drew her south, but there was no dazzling sunlight to help her see.
She closed her eyes and the sounds around her sprang into relief like parts of an orchestral score. The chittering of seabirds; the chink and chock of the men stacking the rocks for the cairn, the ring of stone and metal connecting as they chipped samples from the cliff. The swell rose and fell over the rocky shoreline, clattering loose stones under the surface. Below her, voices rose: a muted laugh, a snip of conversation, a shout. Ingrid could hear the sounds of her own body, her breath moving in and out of her lungs, the ringing in her ears. Beneath it all, there was something else.
It took her a while to realise that it was the quiet, palpably present. She’d thought it an absence of sound, but it was its own sound, carrying the immensity of the silence that lay over the whole continent, a silence that could hold the land’s sounds without being obliterated by them.
An image began to form behind Ingrid’s closed eyelids. It was Alfhild, she thought, seeing a sweep of alabaster skin. Then the image wavered, and she realised she wasn’t seeing her mother. It was a child, with Alfhild’s skin and aquamarine eyes. The child Ingrid might conceive, if only she would allow it. She wanted to reach for him, but sensed if she strained too hard, he would disappear. She squeezed the stone and tried to still her mind.
Yes, there. A cheekbone. His face turning slowly so she could see the delicate whorls of his ear, and his hairline.
His hair was red.
Ingrid recoiled. Her ice child would have blond hair, wouldn’t he? Not the red of the flensing deck; not the stain of blood spreading on the water after the humpback was harpooned. For her to come here, whales had died in numbers so high she couldn’t envision them. The whale that had risen in its turquoise glory to look at her would die too, next season or the one after, in all likelihood. She didn’t want a red-haired child to remind her of that.
Then the child opened its eyes and Ingrid saw that it wasn’t a boy, but a girl. Not a nameless girl, but Ingrid herself, her own child self with her Viking red hair and eyes the colour of the sea.
The recognition was a physical shock, reverberating through her body. Ingrid felt like an old woman now, tired and garrulous, worn ou
t. But that child before her, that younger Ingrid, glowed. A person with such life blazing from her could have found her own way to Antarctica, not as someone’s wife and not on the bounty of the whales. Where had that light gone?
Ingrid remembered the deep groan and lilt of the whale echoing through the oil tank. It felt like her own lament, for all the light she’d somehow lost.
The image disappeared and Ingrid opened her eyes. Tears were freezing on her cheeks and prisms of ice had formed on her eyelashes. Out across the water, snow was starting to fall. Leaving her name in Antarctica would be a reminder of this, she thought. She’d remember it was her own self she’d seen in the light.
It came to her that Alfhild had been seeking the same thing when she went out in the snow. The self she might have been, untainted, glowing, out of reach.
A snow petrel flew past her, tilted, turned and flew back again. Another hurtled past, and another, making a scolding sound. She wondered if she was sitting near a nest.
‘Let’s hope we don’t get a blizzard while we’re here,’ a voice behind her said. ‘We’d be in trouble.’
It was Lillemor coming around the side of the boulder, shattering the quiet. There should be a vow of silence in Antarctica, Ingrid thought, the way these same people wouldn’t dream of speaking out loud in a church. Her moment was gone. She closed her fingers tight around the green stone so Lillemor wouldn’t see it.
‘Lars wants you to come down. He’d love you to take some pictures,’ she said.
‘Oh, sorry about that,’ Lillemor said. ‘I was looking for some specimens.’ She looked down. ‘Here comes your husband now.’
Chasing the Light Page 32
