Lillemor saw that Hans was crying, or perhaps his eyes were just streaming with the wind. They all had streaming eyes, she saw, the tears crystallising on their cheeks. The crewmen had stopped rowing and were leaning on their oars, some of them tucking their hands under their arms or in their jackets to try and warm themselves, but all of them, every last one, singing.
Mathilde held the last note long after the rest of them ran out of breath and trailed off. The sound was so pure that Lillemor felt her chest constrict. It was a sound that could lift you above grovelling fear and make you face death with some kind of pride. There could be worse ways to die, she thought.
‘Lifeboat ahoy!’ The faint call came floating to them through the snow, directionless, joining the final breath of Mathilde’s song. An exhalation of relief washed over the boat and suddenly there were smiles again. They were going to make it.
‘Thanks,’ Lillemor said to Mathilde, pulling her close.
Atle tipped his cap to Mathilde solemnly. He put his mouth to the foghorn and called. The reply from the ship came back at once, from over to the left, Lillemor heard, distant but audible. The crew turned the boat in its direction and began rowing with renewed vigour.
‘You saved our lives,’ Hans said. ‘Thank God.’
Mathilde shrugged. ‘Not at all, silly. Look how close by they were. It was a good way to pass the time, that’s all.’
She gave Lillemor a small smile. She quite possibly had saved their lives, Lillemor thought, but it sounded crass to repeat it and so she just smiled back. Now that she’d stopped singing, Mathilde’s teeth were chattering again and Lillemor felt herself shivering too.
Thorshavn’s white side appeared through the mist, suddenly close by. Lillemor saw the relief on Atle’s face. They wouldn’t have lasted much longer, she thought, for all that Atle acted calmly.
‘We’ll need to go up the ladder,’ he said. ‘It’s too rough for the basket.’
The ship and the lifeboat were both moving up and down in the swell and it would be a tricky job to get onto the ladder hanging down Thorshavn’s side. It took some time to manoeuvre the lifeboat alongside the ship and Hans was looking queasy by the time they made fast. Atle hurried them up, timing it so that each person stepped up when the wave was at its highest point. Mathilde, by common consent, went first, then Ingrid, then Lillemor. The cold slowed them, so they crawled stiffly up the ladder with numb fingers that refused to grip properly.
At the top, Horntvedt helped each of them over the gunwale. His own face was white and his mouth was a grim line.
When Lars reached the deck he gave the captain a smile. ‘We landed!’ he said. ‘What an experience!’
‘I hope so,’ Horntvedt said. ‘That was the worst morning I’ve had at sea. Not only did you go missing, but the depth went from two hundred and sixty metres of water to fifteen. The last hour nearly came for the ship and for all of us. Four metres to spare, Consul!’
Lillemor felt her stomach turn over. She could picture, vividly, coming back to find Thorshavn holed and sinking. With the wireless they could call for rescue, perhaps, but if the weather deteriorated, no one could get to them.
Lars clapped Horntvedt on the shoulder. ‘Things tend to work out.’
Horntvedt shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t be so relaxed,’ he snapped. ‘I want us out of here at once. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Of course, Captain,’ Lars said.
He turned to the rest of them. ‘Let’s celebrate,’ he said. ‘Dry clothes and hot breakfast.’
Hot breakfast, thought Lillemor. As if it was a morning like any other. And she supposed it was, in its way.
CHAPTER 48
Thorshavn turned for home, sailing north through the brash ice, which scraped and clattered down the ship’s side like a Morse code pattering of dots and dashes, tapping out a secret message Ingrid couldn’t decode. It was a deep, resonant sound, ice on metal, echoing through the hull.
She avoided the bridge and instead dressed herself warmly and stood outside for long hours in the empty place where Qarrtsiluni had been lashed, watching the snaking pathway they carved through the pack ice, a line stretching all the way back to the continent. She had until they reached home to gather the unravelled strands of herself and twist them back together into a person she could recognise. She wondered if it would be long enough.
Lillemor and Mathilde had clearly teamed up for the return voyage, strolling arm in arm, laughing and talking, sitting side by side in the saloon to take their meals, playing with the puppy and the penguins. Although they’d landed together, Ingrid still felt distant from them. She avoided them when she could, made polite chit-chat when she couldn’t.
After four days Thorshavn cleared the pack ice. The air temperature suddenly rose and the ship began to roll. They were back in a world ruled by open sea, and Ingrid’s fancies became strange in the constant motion. She imagined the undersea world dropping away, an upside-down night with large and small creatures flapping through its skies. She thought the ocean’s denizens must look up through the membrane separating the worlds and wonder what was up there. That membrane was a violent place. Birds pierced the sea’s surface and speared fish. Leopard seals came from below to snatch penguins from the air. And humans sent down their harpoons like arrows from the gods to snare their prey.
Ingrid wondered if humans were as mysterious to the gods as the whales were to humans. Would she one day be flensed and boiled in some unimaginable manner, her human essence liquefied for the gods’ pleasures?
Everything she had came at a price, Ingrid thought, and now she knew what it was. Their comfortable lives, Ranvik’s graceful lines on the grassy slope at the edge of Sandefjord, the hunting lodge, the servants, the motor vehicle, the food she put into the children’s mouths. It was paid for in blood that spouted into the air and hung in a red haze, blood that clouded the water and spread, blood sluiced off the flensing deck to float suspended in the water, attracting orcas – just as the smell of an abattoir hung in the air above it and attracted carrion birds.
Time became a blur, and as they steamed north into the world, Antarctica felt more and more like a dream. Ingrid feared she’d lose every memory. Perhaps that was how the continent held on to its secrets.
Lars left her to her musings. He seemed distracted and absorbed in his own thoughts, and spent most of his time on the bridge. Ingrid still hadn’t found the moment to ask him about what he and Ole had agreed about Mathilde. But one morning she came in from a long stint outside, cold and stiff, to find him sitting heavily on the bunk, his head in his hands. The whale foetus was on the floor in front of him. It was the first time she’d seen it – Lars had brought it back to the cabin and packed it away in his luggage after the Mikkelsens presented it to him.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, alarmed.
‘Those bastards,’ he whispered, and Ingrid felt a rush of fear.
‘What?’
He lifted his head. ‘A wireless has come. Unilever has found some loophole in our agreement. They say they won’t buy the oil.’
‘They can’t do that,’ Ingrid said, uncomprehendingly.
‘No,’ he said. ‘The contracts are watertight. So I thought. But they have bigger and better lawyers than mine to fight it.’
Ingrid shook her head. ‘They’ve pre-bought the oil. They can’t simply change their minds.’
‘I won’t know the details till we get to Cape Town,’ he said. ‘But this is very bad.’
The ship rose and Ingrid grabbed his shoulder to steady herself. ‘We’ll fight it. Tooth and claw. They can’t do this to you.’
‘Of course we’ll fight it,’ he said. He put out a hand and rested it on the glass canister. ‘But I’m afraid that may be our industry. Stillborn.’
Ingrid heard the tremor in his voice, over Thorshavn’s engines and the groans and creaks of every joint and rivet. The ship rolled, and the Southern Ocean crashed against the hull and the whale oil slick-slicked in the
tanks and the foetal whale rocked in the canister as if it were still in the womb. Lars was afraid, and Ingrid had never known him to be afraid without good cause.
The light had turned dark grey outside, the first hint of night’s return. He was a good man, this husband of hers. What had she to comfort him? Only her body and the chance of one success after all, a child conceived down here. Not a child to run a whaling empire. Just a child.
Ingrid drew his head to her belly. She bent her knees and rocked with the ships rhythm, holding him close. Then she manoeuvred him around to the bunk, drew them both down and pulled him close.
‘I can’t, my dear,’ he said, when she kissed him.
‘Never mind,’ she whispered back, ‘Just lie with me; just hold me.’
But she was duplicitous. She moved against him and touched and held and kissed, she took off her clothes piece by barely noticed piece, draping her cardigan over the baby whale to block it from her view. At last Lars was stirred and they made a sad and rocking love, riding Thorshavn’s pitch and swell so that the ship was a third presence with them, rising and falling, holding them safe, carrying them across the Southern Ocean, away from the ice and homewards.
CHAPTER 49
Lillemor stepped out of the cable car, smiling her thanks at the conductor and his assistant. It was cool up there. Clouds drifted over the mountain’s edge, tipping up their skirts to reveal Cape Town spread out below, and then dropping again, blotting out the city.
She strode up the steps to the lookout, leaving behind a gaggle of English tourists rummaging in their bags for hats and gloves, shocked at the change in temperature. The cold braced Lillemor. She wanted that chilly southerly wind on her face to blow away all of Cape Town’s humidity.
The ground was shifting and swaying beneath her feet, her blood still singing to the rhythms of ship and sea. Thorshavn’s throb had been her companion day and night for six weeks and her bones still reverberated with it.
She’d almost staggered down the gangway early that morning. The air was chokingly hot and the smells were vivid: sweat, hair cream, fuel and some kind of vegetation she couldn’t identify. Her nostrils flared, not only with the competing scents, but with the delicious humidity. Breathing it in was a sensation like eating when hungry, as if she’d only then realised how the dry Antarctic air had desiccated her.
She had searched the blur of faces to pick out Anton, but couldn’t find him. When her feet touched the ground and she stopped moving, the dock shifted alarmingly to one side and Lillemor staggered.
A flash popped nearby, blinding her momentarily. She felt Mathilde’s arm slip into hers as photographers gathered around Lars and Ingrid, and several journalists advanced, notebooks and pens ready.
‘Consul Christensen! Was it a successful trip?’
Lars smiled broadly. ‘Very successful. The whaling season is going extremely well and we’re very grateful to Cape Town. Without your port it would be impossible to resupply our fleet.’
There was a babble of questions, from which one rose clearly. ‘Consul, did your wife land on Antarctica?’
‘She did,’ Lars said, smiling down at Ingrid. ‘Four Norwegian women travelling in my fleet landed on Antarctica this season, bringing great honour to their country. One of the landing places has been named “Ingrid Christensen Land” after my wife.’
‘Mrs Christensen, how did it feel to be the first woman down south?’
Lillemor couldn’t see Ingrid’s face and it was hard to hear her words over the roar of sound on the dock. Something about it being beautiful.
‘Where’s your husband?’ Mathilde asked her, pulling the puppy close to their ankles.
‘I don’t know.’ Lillemor felt a moment of fear. What if she’d lost him somehow?
They’d taken a small fleet of taxis to the Mount Nelson Hotel, where bundles of letters were waiting for them in neat pigeonholes. Lars had checked them in to their suites and handed out the envelopes. Lillemor shoved hers into her handbag, fearful of what they might contain.
When the checking-in was done, Lars had looked at the time. ‘It’s early. Let’s rest for the day. We’ll go to Kennedy’s tonight for a meal together.’
They had dispersed in moments, going their separate ways to their rooms.
Mathilde gave Lillemor a peck on the cheek.
‘I’m going to sleep,’ she said. ‘I’m exhausted. See you tonight.’
Lillemor went up to her suite, followed by a porter who wheeled in her trunk and left it in the corner, bowing as he left the room. As soon as he was gone, she opened the first of the letters, the one from Anton.
He’d waited as long as he could, he said, but urgent business at the embassy called and he had to take a liner back to London. You won’t mind? I know how strong you are. I’ve been counting off the nights and lying awake longing to have you home. You’ve no idea how I’ve missed you.
Lillemor was exhausted suddenly, but with a brittle, buzzing exhaustion that she knew wouldn’t let her sleep. Every time she moved her head the world moved a beat later and the effect was slightly nauseating. She was sweating and restless; she longed for cool, moving air. It was then she’d remembered the cableway and the mountaintop, and decided to go there.
She was close to the top now, but the rocks still seemed to shift and move around her. She put out her hand for support and misjudged the distance, scraping her knuckles. She stopped and took a long, shaky breath. Voices were coming towards her up the path; she didn’t want to talk to anyone. Sucking her grazed hand, she pushed herself forward, scrambling and slipping, willing herself not to cry.
At last she made the top, but she could see nothing. The capricious mountain winds blew the clouds in her face, blotting out the harbour.
‘Excuse me, Miss. We’re on our honeymoon. Do you know how to use a camera? Could you take a photograph for us?’
They were English, and the man’s florid face was no match for the Cape Town summer sunshine. He was holding out a Beau Brownie, just like Lillemor’s own, though the cover was elaborately patterned. She nodded and took it from him, feeling the familiar size and weight of it in her hands.
She’d given her damaged camera to one of the men in the engine room and he’d managed to fix it on the return journey. She’d taken some photos of Mathilde and Ingrid holding the penguins, which due to handfeeding had become tame as dogs and provided much-needed entertainment when they were out of the ice and there was nothing but grey sea to every horizon.
But in truth, Lillemor had lost her heart for photography. She wouldn’t know till she got back to London and had the film processed if any of the pictures had worked out, but the camera had failed at the very moment it was most needed – the landing on Antarctica. She’d shrugged it off that day, but coming back with no proof that she’d ever stood there gnawed at her. The Mikkelsens had taken photographs, Klarius told them, and had promised to send some. Lillemor would burn them if they ever turned up on her doorstep. She still couldn’t think of Caroline’s landing without a rush of anger.
‘We’re ready,’ the man said, bringing her back to the present.
Lillemor positioned the Brownie to frame the couple, holding it in front of her belly with both hands and looking down into the viewfinder. She’d have guessed they were on their honeymoon; they looked as though they couldn’t wait to get back to their hotel. She pushed the lever, wound the film handle and handed the camera back to them. Their smiles at her were distracted and fleeting, as though she barely existed.
As their voices faded down the path, she turned again. The wind was playing with the cloud, lifting it and letting it fall. She found herself standing on tiptoes as if the extra inches would somehow help her see through it. Why on earth did it matter? She had no idea, but when the clouds swept back at last, giving her a straight view down the mountainside, over the city to the docks, her throat tightened. Far below, Thorshavn was unmistakable, its size and white colour making it stand out against the blue sea. She had to
bite her lip to make sure she didn’t cry. The voyage had been anything but what she expected, but she’d lived in that ship. It had carried her to another world and brought her safely back.
She longed for Anton with an intensity that hurt. He understood her, she realised now. She’d thought she was the one who snared him, but in truth he saw it all – her desire to be remembered, her competitive streak, her flirtatiousness, all of it. She hadn’t fooled him about a single thing and he loved her anyway.
The cloud dropped again, sudden as a curtain fall, and she was staring into white nothingness. The rocks of Table Mountain fell away steeply and disappeared below her. In the blankness Lillemor realised she understood something new about explorers like Hjalmar. He could never win the place. He might achieve his goal, might sledge to the Pole or walk an unknown coast or find a mountain range, but he’d be hungry again for that moment of rapture and silence, that moment of understanding the immensity of that land and his own insignificance in the face of it.
For Hjalmar, and perhaps now for her too, going once wasn’t enough. For the rest of your life you’d dream of ways to get back there. You’d invent expeditions, you’d find new goals: this coastline to be mapped, that unknown area to be flown across and named. You’d stow away if you had a chance, in a plane or on a whaling ship, and if, like Olga, you were foiled, you’d try again. Always there’d be something more to do and always the hunger to return, no matter how bitter it was, no matter what success or failure, no matter if you made it to your own South Pole or not.
Lillemor shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. Tomorrow they’d sail for London on the Warwick Castle, a passenger liner so large and impersonal, so unlike an actual ship, that Lillemor could scarcely remember a thing about her.
She had packed her rocks for Marie, but still had to buy a present for Freda. She longed to see her again. While Anton knew her, perhaps better than anybody, Freda understood this particular feeling, this mixture of elation and grief. The second envelope had been a letter from her. Lillemor took it out of her pocket and unfolded it again.
Chasing the Light Page 34
