The Surfacing

by Cormac James

  He knew this must be their last stop. He could see they were spent, almost. They had courage enough for only one more start. He was almost relieved. There was no more need for heroics, no choice to make. He ordered everything abandoned, bags and knapsacks and all. For this last leg, he wanted everything neat and clear in their minds. He ordered them to make a pile of every provision they had, and from their pocket seams they turned out loose crumbs of chocolate, broken nuts, and dust and fluff, and mixed it all in with a cold tin of pork he had been holding back. As they ate he made a little speech. It was a speech from another, warmer world, where it was merely a matter of choice whether or not they went on.

  There are ten thousand reasons to give up, and all of them good, he said. They’re out there right now, waiting for us, all lined up in a nice orderly queue, every single step of the way. He had never heard himself so definite, so determined, so proud with belief. What he heard was the clamour of alarm.

  It was a fine speech, that got every one of them to his feet, except DeHaven. Morgan stared down at him, ready for murder. He was giving him one final chance to pretend. DeHaven would not look him in the eye.

  In the end he mumbled: My legs.

  Daly and Cabot and Petersen were stamping the ground. There were no favours possible now. All along the shore, the surface was like a layer of broken bottles, in outsized chunks and shards. That was the road they had to take.

  Get up, Morgan ordered him.

  It was his last chance, and still the man did not move. So Morgan turned to the heap of abandoned gear, and with trembling hands undid his sleeping bag. He had baled it with a length of leather from one of the traces. Slowly and carefully, he now wrapped this around his mitt, for a fist, buckle out. He stood over DeHaven, and lifted that fist into the air.

  Get up! he roared.

  DeHaven was looking him straight in the eye. He seemed perfectly calm, defiant almost.

  Get up! Morgan roared again. And then with all the strength and all the rage remaining to him, he gave one murderous punch to the head.

  He stood there panting. He had such pains in his legs he could barely breathe. He unwrapped the thong, then wrapped it around his mitt tighter again.

  Get up, he said.

  They still had some twenty miles to go. They had a last drink of rum, and then at six o’clock on the 16th of November, 1850, they all six men made their final start for the ship.

  PART III

  19th November

  Morgan was woken by the smell of fried bacon, and the smell of fried bacon today produced a shrewd, mortal pain in his heart. Then, the sound of crockery, cutlery – a table being laid. Then the first voice. It was MacDonald’s, a prayer, expressing profound gratitude to their Lord God and Maker, Who in His infinite kindness had spared these six men’s lives and delivered them out of the obnoxious wasteland, back to their friends and their ship, where they would henceforth properly appreciate His untold other mercies. Afterwards, the sound of a meal. Knives squealing on the plates. More voices, chat. Morgan showed no sign he heard any of this. He was awake, but in darkness. His eyes were swollen shut, and he made no effort to open them. He made every effort to lie there as still and as quiet as he could, to give no sign of life. It was as though he thought he could somehow defer it further, his return to the ship.

  20th November

  Dozing, he heard the door-handle. He did not need to open his eyes. He could smell her, the moment she stepped in. Someone had hung a blanket across DeHaven’s bunk, to let him sleep. She lifted it back, looked in. She emptied her lungs noisily, let the blanket fall back into place. A chair scraped. She was sitting down. He managed to open his eyes a fraction of an inch. She was knitting, waiting for him to wake. On the table, laid out in order, the contents of her box. A row of clothes for babies of different age and size – as though there were several babies already aboard, or several babies expected. It reminded him of the plate DeHaven had taken at Aberdeen, of the entire crew lined up in order of height, from Giorgio to Banes.

  Eventually she glanced up and caught his stare, set her wool on her lap. Until now, he had never quite believed her. More than once he’d heard the same news from his wife, and it had always righted itself in the end. But looking at her now, that hope was wrecked. Leaving for Beechey, the belly had merely seemed a little swollen, like someone who’s eaten too much during the festivities. Now, even under her coat, the shape of the thing could no longer be disguised.

  You came back, she said.

  Afterwards as best she could she dribbled soup between the shredded lips. He could feel it dribbling down his neck, inside and out. He did his best to swallow, but felt sickened by fatigue. And forcing himself to eat, it seemed, was forcing himself to recruit, as though the trial was still not done. At first he had protested, insisted on trying to feed himself, but he could not even hold the spoon. The hands lying on the blanket were no longer his own. They were the hands of a drowned man, a week in the water. The skin smooth and swollen and shining, stretched tight. At the end of each fat finger, a baby’s fingernail was embedded deep in the flesh, ready to pop.

  21st November

  Today the exhaustion had subsided a little, the better to let the pain push through. Every inch of his flesh was teeming with it, savage loud and savage bright. On the bunk opposite, too, DeHaven was breathing heavily, whimpering every time he had to break wind. Morgan looked over at the battered face. They held each other’s stare. In the eyes there was only recognition, no hate. They knew. They had pushed through, survived.

  Kitty came and sat with them again. She brought him a jar of preserved peaches, and today he could just about hold the spoon. One spoon at a time, he could just about keep it down. Afterwards she unwrapped his bandages, to rub salve into the broken skin.

  As she worked she chatted amiably, about what had happened in the weeks the sledge party had been gone. She was explaining about Myer, how his health had declined. It was now a fortnight since the old man had left his cabin, she said.

  Afterwards, as if out of politeness, she asked about the journey to Beechey, the efforts and obstacles, the empty-handed return. Before, he would have been wary of submitting it to her inspection, would have preferred to hoard – as though the thing were so fragile it might crumble on contact with the air, the light. Now, he began to talk. For what felt like the first time ever, he talked freely, to distract himself from what she was doing with his fingers and his toes.

  From his bed, he let his mind swing back compass-like to the scene. Often it seemed to him they were still out there, seen from afar – dim, tiny figures, featureless, the merest touch of a paintbrush on a vast backdrop. He didn’t know, he said, if they could have done more. They certainly could have done less. It was a first, faltering version of events, of their failure. He too wanted to understand what had happened, explain it, even if culprits had to be found. They seemed to have failed utterly, as though they had not tried at all. He felt it a mere sliver, that separated all their efforts from some kind of success. As though a greater or smarter effort could have brought another result. But what effort exactly, where, and when? And from that sliver, how had the gap grown so impossibly wide?

  In Trinidad he’d once seen a water-boa take a week to digest a bird. It had seemed an extremely tedious ritual,
but since returning to the ship that was how he felt his mind at work – trying to chew, swallow, and digest the ordeal. Deliberately, almost stupidly, he reminded himself that they had not failed. They had done exactly what they set out to do. They had travelled on foot from the north of Cornwallis all the way to Beechey and back, man-hauling, in the November storms of 1850. It had never been done before. It would never be done again. It was – he hoped – the greatest physical feat they would any of them ever perform. There was no point trying to water it down, or dreaming of some other exploit. This, here, in the Wellington Channel, in the heart of winter, was what had been asked of him, and he had spent every ounce in the task. He had given his all, was beyond reproach. They could say what they liked below decks, he told himself. He had led them safely out and back, pushed no one harder than he had pushed himself. Those were the hard, immutable facts, that he kept rehearsing to himself. Why were they not loud enough to drown the other murmurs out? Because there had been neither success nor failure, only effort and relief. They had found nothing, met no one, exhausted themselves in the process, that was all. They had not returned to safety, but to something else. What that was he could not quite say. There seemed so much more uncertainty now in the ship, and so much more menace. He had to be careful now where he looked. In certain places, he knew, there was some brutal proof he was not yet ready to meet. Perhaps – except the man opposite – that was why he’d thus far avoided those he’d travelled with. He didn’t even want to imagine what state they’d been in when the layers all came off – what was hidden underneath. He had been equal to it out there, in utter necessity, the torrent roaring in his ears. But here, with no useful distraction, he was not. He still couldn’t face it, whatever gross fact was scalded into their flesh. Even now, in the officers’ cabin, when she came to change his dressings, he still looked away.

  He’d still not been to see Myer, for something like the same reason. But he could not put that off much longer, he knew.

  23rd November

  They were all somewhat diminished, Morgan said, but none so much that a little mothering would not revive them. Dr DeHaven had returned of his own free will. His assistance had been invaluable. As ordered, they had proceeded south along the coast to Beechey Island, where they had expected to find the other expedition ships, but did not. Difficult conditions and diminishing supplies there prevented them from searching further. In the course of their travels, no evidence had been found of Franklin.

  Myer lay in his bed barely moving. He looked much worse than Morgan had been led to believe. Even so, Morgan felt his silence an accusation, and made the mistake of trying to explain. Given their strait, he said, at Beechey he had simply sounded the other men, as to whether they thought it better to search the neighbouring inlets for Austin’s ships, or to return.

  You are not telling me it was your subordinates made the decision for you, or should bear the responsibility for it? Myer said. He sounded almost amused. He seemed to be imitating himself. His voice was weakened, but the bluntness and breeding was still there.

  No sir, Morgan said. But I respected their experience, and I expected any considerations they might voice would be of value to me.

  Did you want a second opinion, Mr Morgan, or did you simply want someone to second the opinion you yourself had already formed? Myer’s head was propped up, stared straight ahead. He was addressing the wall just beyond his feet.

  It was the very severe reduction in our provisions, Mr Myer, in a worsening climate, on worsening roads, that discouraged me from searching further.

  And no one objected?

  Captain Myer, Morgan said, I would not for a moment have it understood that any man would have been slow to go on, but we – I – saw little point, and no safety in doing so, and the prospect of endangering others who might afterwards be obliged to search for us, should we be unable to complete our return, for want of supplies. If you cared to go and inspect the men, and saw their condition, you would be obliged to agree, I think, that even another day out would have been the end of us all.

  On the 18th of November, Morgan wrote in the captain’s journal, Mr Morgan regained the ship with all of his charges, plus Dr DeHaven, having been out one full calendar month, rather than the lunar month their orders had provided for. Several complain themselves a little less in the flesh. I expect them all to resume their duties shortly. There is no evidence whatsoever, he alleges, that Sir John Franklin ever visited the Devon Island coast.

  Myer thought he was being shrewd of course, forcing Morgan to take his dictation. He thought he was merely tracing over old lines. But Morgan was quietly pleased with this new task. From now on the ship’s journal and log would be in his hand, and already he was reworking some of the words. He would bide his time before adding the first phrase of his own.

  26th November

  The day was exceptionally mild, and DeHaven and Morgan went up on deck to try to walk a little life back into their legs. Morgan sent the watch below. He wanted to talk without being heard.

  What do you think it is? he said.

  It’s hard to say, DeHaven said. Out here, in this cold, with this food, the symptoms aren’t always easy to read.

  Do the men know how bad he is?

  They know he’s confined to bed, but I’ve been deliberately vague.

  They stopped at the Post Office, already out of breath. Morgan rattled the cage, to see were they still alive. We can’t have them thinking there’s no one in command, he said.

  What’s there to command? DeHaven said. The little there is to do, I could almost manage it myself. We’re like a ship in port, for godsake.

  Not quite, Morgan said.

  In any case, the man doesn’t command, he interferes. The day you left, he was so busy I swear to God I wanted to drug the bastard.

  Under the red light of the train-lamp, Morgan sprinkled the seeds through the wire cage. His mind was already hurrying ahead. His captain was dying. Of what he did not know, did not care. The news was neither warning nor chastisement. The thing was already too far gone, as though it had been going on quietly for years. He wanted it over, was all. He wanted it part of the past, of that other world.

  Around the ship the ice was stiff as glass. Overhead the moon was gaudy, in a sky the colour of mud. To the south and west, the land was a cobalt slab. It had taken him too long to admit it, that the day was definitely over, that the light had dimmed.

  He caught himself thinking about the baby, wondered would Myer last that long. Something in him, that he had not suspected, would be disappointed if Myer never saw it, was never obliged to admire. At the very least, he would like the man to know it was born. At least once to hear the raucous cry slice through the ship.

  Afterwards, he thought of his own father. In that direction too, everything was complicated. Deliberately, he asked himself several clear questions, trying to herd himself past the easy answers. Lying had always been a great talent with him.

  Would he have been eager to present it to his father, if his father were still alive?

  Yes and no.

  Why yes? Why no?

  There were so many good answers, it was almost impossible not to lie. He tried to tell himself it did not matter, that it was perhaps better this way. To his father – Myer
too, he told himself – it would have been no more than a mouth, a charge, a noise. In any kind of company, Morgan suspected, the man would have been mean with his joy. Even so, Morgan imagined handing over the child. He hoped it was not a question of proving anything, of parading, of success. The old man would have to hold it, of course, feel it struggle, tighten his grip. At any other distance, admiration or indifference came too cheap. He would have to relive, perhaps, what he’d felt when Morgan himself had been in his arms. Perhaps that was what Morgan really wanted to see.

  27th November

  She found him lying on her bed, in his boots, eyes closed. She set the cat down on the floor and instantly it leapt up onto the blankets, to sniff at his bandaged hands. At the first lick, the eyes opened wide. He started to get up but she waved him down. To answer the sickness and the fatigue – Morgan’s as much as her own – she now had nothing but care and patience, an endless fund. He was grateful. He still could not stand for long. He could not yet lift his arms above the horizontal.

  It was midday. She’d just had a bath. She stood towelling out her hair, in her nightclothes, made no show of getting dressed. Her boots stood side by side against the wall, waiting obediently. There was to be an inspection later, that was why. Even now, talking to Morgan, she was merely waiting for another admirer to call. That was why she’d had her bath. It was DeHaven. She wanted to be impeccable for him, as though he would be inspecting for flaws.