The Surfacing

by Cormac James

  Still she was staring into the mirror, where admiration was guaranteed. Now there was a loud bang on the door.

  Coming! Morgan roared.

  Don’t shout, she pleaded. It’s bad enough for him as it is, with all this other noise.

  I should go get the organ, should I? A little lullaby, to send him to sleep?

  Precisely, she said. That’s precisely what we need.

  This, now, was the newest word in her vocabulary. We. It was an alliance, that she wanted him to join.

  In the officers’ cabin, he stood in the open door in silence, behind Myer’s back, as Myer lifted one spoon of soup after another to his mouth. MacDonald was sitting at the end of the table, head down. There were two empty places, fully set. One on each side of the table, at opposite ends.

  Miss Rink is not eating with us tonight, Morgan said. She’s not feeling entirely well.

  Myer had stalled his spoon, but he did not stand up, or turn around.

  Mr MacDonald, Morgan said. I am sorry for your face. I was angry. I hope you can understand.

  Well, Myer said. That’s being very much a man about it. Mr MacDonald, I’m sure you’ll accept the apology. Cabot, I think we’re ready for the meat.

  2nd October

  He went to see her again. As long as the storm lasted, there was little else to do. But, standing outside her door, something told him not to knock, to linger. There were voices at the far end of the corridor, in the main mess. He stepped closer, stood and listened to DeHaven explaining everything to the men. He was explaining – insisting – that if Myer let the ship drift any farther north, he would pronounce the man unfit to command. All along Morgan had thought they were merely mocking their situation, their helplessness, themselves. But now he saw DeHaven actually believed there was someone to blame, and something to be done.

  On medical matters, my word is final, DeHaven told them.

  Myer will say you were against him from the start.

  Paranoia, DeHaven said.

  It was call and response. The man had already decided – imagined – everything. Morgan was to assume command, turn the ship about, push as far south as possible, and find a safe spot to wait out the siege. That was all he had to do. That was the new role they’d written for him.

  And come spring, DeHaven was saying, the first chance we get, Disko, and then home.

  They were all idle promises, useless threats. They were drifting north. They had already drifted too far. In command, Morgan would be no more able to direct the ship than any other man. It was as well to let Myer in charge. They had crossed an invisible line. Only DeHaven and his disciples were able to pretend otherwise.

  That evening he reread his wife’s letters, those he’d brought along. He even reread some of his own, that he’d never sent. They were an old history book taken down off the shelf. Forgotten wars, pointless campaigns. They had been so important then, to those involved, and now read like childish spats, where everyone seemed absolutely determined to fight.

  3rd October

  At four he rose to take the watch with Cabot, and found him waiting in the galley, huddled up against the oven, and sipping at the jug of the spirit-lamp. They put on their hats and hoods and veils, their mittens, their furs, and each took a last warm breath, and together they stepped out. In the moonlight the floe looked like a slab of granite dropped from a height, that had shattered very nicely indeed. Underneath, the Kraken were brawling. They watched the ice shift. They watched the narrowing gap. Gently, the first slab touched the wood, and began to squeeze.

  They watched it rise, and watched it pile. Unseen, he knew, slabs were also being driven downwards, and prying the ship up, as a crowbar would. He wondered how that sounded below. He wondered how it sounded in her cabin, inside her.

  She began to groan. She began to tremble. Still the ice kept grinding itself to pieces against the hull. She weighed over one hundred and fifty tons, but now actually leapt up out of the vice. It felt as though she’d struck a rock, and Cabot’s hand shot out to catch Morgan’s arm.

  Cabot, he said, I do hope we’ll not have any show of unmanly emotion.

  Of course not, Cabot said from behind his veil. He’d lost his balance, that was all.

  Morgan smiled at the explanation, but something had tightened in his heart. It would be a long night – three hours more – trying to keep the man calm, trying to convince him the ship was not about to be crushed to matchsticks. In the end he said nothing, because there was nothing he could say that was not a blatant lie.

  The second their watch was over, Morgan went down. Very quietly, he opened her door. She seemed at peace, harmless, but then opened her eyes. Somehow she’d heard him come in. He asked how the night had been, how she felt. A little tired, she said. A little thirsty. He brought her a cup of tea. He watched her sip at it cautiously. They talked awhile, and he tried to describe how it was outside, above.

  He sat flapping through one of her magazines, looked up again. She had closed her eyes just for a moment, and dozed off. The cup was balanced on her belly. Inside it, the tea was echoing invisible shocks. Through the hull he could hear the noise of another world, the working parties and the ice, the rival industries. It seemed impossibly far and dangerously close.

  He took and set the cup on the locker. She did not wake. He leaned back in his chair and let himself stare. She looked no bigger than before, but the clothes definitely seemed tighter. Whenever she left them, the eyes followed her all the way out the door. Watching them, Morgan was watching himself, back in Disko, all those months before.

  He stared awhile, but his own eyelids wanted to come down. She had by far the warmest cabin aboard. He tried again to hear the hammering from a distant, safe place. The noise dulled and blunted by a wall of flesh. Like a distant knocking at the gate. He felt a certain solidarity. Alone with her in the cabin. Trapped in and shut out. At times he felt he was studying her through the glass, watching her move farther and farther away from him, day after day. The day before, he’d watched her stepping out of her bath. She had insisted on his staying with her, saying she was afraid she might slip. He knew she wanted to be admired. She stood there with the water running off her, the skin slick and shining and tight. Flaunting what it was she’d done to herself. He’d struggled not to stare. This was not the woman he’d known in Disko. This was someone else.

  All through the morning, hour after hour, the ice rose up relentlessly, to the level of the deck, then level with the bulwarks, then higher again. They worked like horses through the afternoon, every man, with shovels and oars and boat-hooks, trying to keep the slabs at bay. Early in the evening, taking pity, the ice slackened its grip. There were a last few whimpers about supper-time, then nothing more. Most of them were too tired to eat, too tired to undress, fell onto their bunks. Morgan, like the rest, slept in his boots, and that night he dreamt he was alone in a house, naked, with wardrobes full of women’s clothes.

  4th October

  Cabot was sitting alone in the galley when they came in. Between his forearms sat a plate of cold mush. In his hand was an empty glass. The stove was crowded with dirty pots. Morgan and Kitty sat opposite. He’d not yet spoken, had barely moved, but to Morgan it looked like his evening was already well under
way. He was drinking more now, in a quiet, dedicated way.

  I’d say he has a young thing in every port, Cabot said suddenly. He’d been prodding his food with his fork, as if he hadn’t even noticed them arrive.

  Hopping from one bed into the other, I’d say, Kitty said.

  I hope you’re taking good care of him, Cabot said.

  Very good care, she said. The Pasha in his hareem is not better served.

  I’d say she’s good, Cabot told no one in particular. I’d say she knows well enough where to fit the spout. As you say.

  Morgan knew well he wouldn’t leave it at that. He was in one of his states. He’d keep going until they wouldn’t put up with any more or until he couldn’t come up with worse. Soon he was talking about his wife, and what she liked. Drunk, he could think of nothing more daring than confidence.

  A real lady you think, when you meet her, Cabot said. But I tell you, once when you put a little wine into her, she’s a dog.

  We all have our crosses to bear, Morgan said with a smile, but he pitied the man, his near horizons, and how little he had left to defile.

  In the end Kitty said a few quiet words, trying to calm him without giving him an excuse to flare up. Cabot gave no sign he heard. He checked the level of his glass, filled it up. Then the saltcellar was somehow knocked over, and Kitty reached for a pinch, to flick over her shoulder.

  Leave it, Cabot said quietly, still staring at his plate.

  It’s bad luck, she said, smiling. Her hand was stalled in mid-air. She still had a smile between her teeth, but she’d heard the iron in Cabot’s voice.

  Cabot lifted his head and looked her straight in the face.

  Bad luck? he said, and he sounded confused. That means things could get worse? Is that what you mean? He looked her straight in the eye, waiting for the explanation. Go on, he said. I’m listening. I am only ears, like you say. Allez! He was shouting now, wild-eyed, choking on the words, spit spraying in all directions.

  Day after day, week after week, he stood in the galley punching holes in metal tins. Ever since the news of his boy, all he wanted to do was drink and sleep. He had grown thin. Overnight, he had grown old. Now he looked like he’d been whipped. Eventually he blew himself out. He’d been tired and shamed and determined to make the most of it. Morgan felt sorry for him, and embarrassed, because he hadn’t yet learned how to hide behind himself.

  A little later Cabot swaggered off to empty his bladder. He’s just drunk, Morgan told her. Because of his little boy, he meant. She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, Morgan told her, but there was more to it than that. From the day she came out of MacDonald’s cabin, Cabot had been watching her. Tonight she’d set her swollen body opposite him, began to manoeuvre it, and dared him not to admire.

  Where do you think he’s gone? she said. He still had not come back.

  There’s a fair chance he just lay down on the ice, Morgan said. Unless one of his friends goes out to get him, he’ll fall asleep and freeze to death.

  Apparently a rather pleasant way to go, she said.

  Apparently so.

  5th October

  Crushed and blind, it was hard to imagine they were still being driven north; they’d had no observation now for three days, and Myer refused to believe it, as he refused to believe that winter had definitely set in. Except for her cabin, he still refused to let them set up the stoves, as though this must necessarily stave off the worst of the cold.

  Then, early on the morning of the 5th, to the west, through thick fog, Morgan thought he spotted something like a headland. Their last bearings had put Beechey more than fifty miles to the south. They tried sounding, but could find no bottom, even with the hundred fathom line. They could not say where they were.

  The barometer was falling. The deck was covered in snow as dry as eiderdown, knee-deep. On the galley roof sat a lone raven, huddled there in stern judgement. It was one of their old friends from Beechey, the one with the cloudy eye – the only one who had not yet abandoned them.

  They hove to and bore up about breakfast-time. Morgan thought he’d snatched another glimpse of something solid through the veils, due west, but could not say for sure. They ran on until mid-morning, until the fog started to come off. Something very like a coastline was pushing through. The rest of the fog came away, and he told the helmsman to stand off, until he could properly fix the ship. But the headland opposite resembled nothing on their charts.

  Inland, there was rock and ice and frozen snow and nothing else, as far as the eye could see. As bleak a country as I have ever seen, he wrote. Beside it, Disko is a pleasure garden.

  A nice prospect, DeHaven said. He was too impressed, and trying to stir up a little scorn.

  Morgan did not answer. It was too soon to summon a front. He stood there marvelling morbidly. It was a dismal spot, without the slightest tint to the sterility. This would be their refuge, if they were crushed.

  By dinner-time the sun had dropped low enough to block out something like a line of hills much farther to the northwest. It was more of Cornwallis, or some northern reach of Devon Island, or an altogether new and unknown part of the globe. Between the ship and it, there was a wall of ice the colour of granite. In the log, Myer was already calling it The Fixed Ice, as though to reassure himself they could go no farther, that this year’s limit had finally been set.

  8th October

  It was the 8th of October. The air was alive with a million specks of light. The sky was remarkably clear, and Morgan spent all morning aloft, scouring for anything that was not white. Far out in the Channel he could see the black lines, the great rivers like open wounds, the steam rising from every one as from a hot spring. Down on the deck, they could see none of that. They were down there now, laying bets with Petersen on what they could get the dogs to eat.

  By noon the southern skies were ablaze. The low sun caught the masts to the root, and their shadows stretched farther north than he could see. He let the shadows lead his eye, and at the very edge of the northern horizon spotted something being carried through the air. He watched it drift over and beyond the ragged line. It looked like a courier balloon. But who would have sent it up, and to what end? Franklin, he knew, had been equipped with several, as they themselves were. Still, he did not call it out, or call anyone to come and confirm what he thought he saw. This was a secret he wanted all to himself.

  He’d done his sums. He’d made his observations. Three more days, his sums said, would carry them right to the edge of the map. By now Beechey Island was more than eighty miles off. He felt a strange sense of achievement. He had read every account of Arctic voyages, and no ship had ever let itself be trapped so far north so late in the year.

  Overhead the rigging stuttered. The mast thermometer gave 13°. Beside it, the galley blow-hole billowed ginger steam. Beside that, the hatch door was now the door of a sauna, as though fires were everywhere raging below. There were not. Miss Rink’s apart, not a single stove had been set. No matter. Walls and ceiling alike were slick with sweat, and that sweat dropped onto their faces as they read or ate or slept. They slept and woke, read and wrote, ate and drank, and kept themselves inside now as much as they could. Proud atop their pedestal, they drifted north and northwest.

/>   After lunch Myer summoned the officers to a conference. He had made a decision, Morgan supposed, and now wanted it confirmed. He gave them each a sheet of paper to complete. They worked in silence for a minute or so. Myer shuffled and squared the papers into a pile, went through them in silence, one by one. Their quickness had taken him by surprise. Morgan stared at the untouched cup of tea on the table before him. The surface was troubled, trembling. They were drifting again. Finally Myer cleared his throat and began to read aloud:

  Mr Morgan. Direction South, Inshore, Practicable or Not, Not. Offshore, Not. Direction North, Inshore, Not. Offshore, Not. Dr DeHaven. South, Inshore, Not. Offshore, Not. North, Inshore, Not. Offshore, Not. Deliberately, proving his point, Myer went through every sheet, every answer, and the answer was always the same.

  After dinner he had the men gathered, and announced his decision to winter locally, rather than attempt a return to Beechey.

  The situation of the lost ships makes inconceivable any immediate attempt to extricate ourselves from our current impasse, he said. Those inclined to doubt that obligation need only imagine our own situation should we continue in our drift, cut off from all communication with the civilized world, and all proper source of provision, in these latitudes during all the coming winter, and the five winters following. With that in mind, I believe the most useful course of action for us now would be to get in with the land and find a safe anchor for the coming cold months, all the more readily to commence exploring in the spring. That is the very best we can do for our friends, I believe, at the present point in time.

  10th October

  DeHaven was pointing at the sky. He let Morgan find the marvel. It was a pigeon, perched on the Crow’s Nest, looking as perfectly stupid as ever a pigeon looked. No one moved. No one spoke. They were afraid of scaring him off. They set out a heap of crumbs and a saucer of warm water, to tempt him down.