by Cormac James
Isn’t there any way at all you can keep him alive? he said.
The minute he’s dead I can pickle or preserve him, but not before.
Not quite what I had in mind.
Dead or alive, what does it matter? DeHaven said. You go on running the ship the way you’ve been running it this fortnight past.
In a way, DeHaven was right. Sooner or later, in the coming weeks, he would have to announce that Myer was dead, that he was assuming Myer’s role. But there would be no decision for Morgan to make, no possible change of tack. They would wait out the winter here, exactly as Myer had planned. To anyone who grumbled, he could cite their orders, that were nicely vague and nicely clear – namely, to push up into the Wellington Channel, as far as they could. To further objections, he had only to rehearse the facts. They were trapped in a city-sized block of ice, stuck or adrift it did not matter, they were already too far from Beechey to make a retreat. It was too late in the year. They had a pregnant woman aboard. They could not abandon the ship.
With his fingernail, Morgan flicked open the latch of Myer’s locker. You don’t need any of this for the hospital? he said.
They sat drinking their captain’s brandy, watching him breathe.
How’s the face? Morgan said.
You tell me. You’re the one has to look at it.
It looks fine. Adds character. Like a duelling scar. Not that character was something it ever lacked, Morgan said.
Well, character’s not something a man can ever have too much of, is it?
No, I suppose not.
Morgan offered the bottle. DeHaven offered his glass. They sipped cautiously, as if tasting the thing for the first time.
I do ask myself, on occasion, however I ended up here, Morgan said. Where exactly it was we drifted off course.
Apparently, all a man’s problems derive from the fact that he’s unable just to sit quietly in his own living room.
Who says?
I don’t know. One of those gentlemen who thinks about these things. A Frenchman, I think. We’ll have to ask Cabot.
Whoever it is, it sounds like Kitty’s been reading him, Morgan said. He nodded at the partition wall. All day long, she just lies there reading or sewing or sleeping. Morning till night. And not a bother in the world, from what I can see.
In silence, they listened to the noise outside, the craving. Morgan knew he was stupid, in certain ways. There were blind spots. Some people – Kitty included – likely thought him deliberately obtuse. Dishonest, they meant. He was beginning to suspect they – she – might be right. Almost five months in, and he still did not believe. She had always been this size. She had always slept this much, at these times, in this way. When she woke, as always she would potter to the galley to chat with Cabot, tinker with the pots. Afterwards, if the weather was calm, she might shuffle awhile up and down the deck, that they’d finally cleared and housed over from foremast to stern. Very considerate of you, she said, when she saw what he’d done. That was the day after she’d come to confront him, drunk. Morgan said he’d merely relayed the order from Captain Myer, to fix the ship for winter, to house over the deck, and put up the rest of their stoves. Captain Myer has decided, were the words he used, to the men. As though inspired by her example, he had listed out daily duties for each man, a two-week roster, to coach them through all the idle days ahead. I don’t see my name on the list, she said. Name your trade, he said, and gave her a column, but left it blank. She didn’t need it. She already had her routine, and every arrangement. She woke, and pottered to the galley, and shuffled awhile up and down the deck, then read or sewed or dozed again, until dinner-time, day after day. It felt like a familiar life, where everything had finally found its slot. She was convalescent, slowly mending, the trauma far behind.
7th December
Often Morgan sat with the old man all afternoon. The men would think they were in conference, he told himself. So for hours he sat flapping through Myer’s books, sipping at his spirits, slowly draining them down, and sometimes talking aloud to himself.
Back in October, when they ceased to shave, Myer had confiscated the forecastle’s mirror, as though to hide all evidence from the men of their decline. Morgan looked down now on the man who’d written that order. The face was wax. The eyes stared stupidly into space. In the end he could stand that face no longer, and laid down one of his silk handkerchiefs to keep it out of sight. For the man without a face, of course, he felt nothing but sympathy. He himself had not been the same since coming back. It was trouble to sleep and trouble to wake. The slightest effort and it was work to breathe. Ten times a day he tested his teeth with his tongue, to see were they still firm.
He stared at the cloth in silence, waiting for the sympathy to drain away. Once it was gone, he knew, something else would take its place. He could feel a new fear inside him unfurling all its arguments, like a sickness coming on. The man’s breathing seemed deliberately louder, made to grate. The handkerchief was trembling at each breath. In the end he could stand it no longer, stood up to leave, and stood over the bed. He was stiff with rage. He took hold of the blankets and pulled them right up over the face.
About the ship the floe seemed perfectly solid, yet their nose had definitely swung round to the north. The thing was impossible, he told himself. It was too cold, and too late in the year. Astern, their storehouses were all intact. The row of lamp-posts that led to the shore, all still in place. But deep beneath the surface, something was on the move. He could feel it in his bones, in his teeth. He could feel his excitement mounting. He took a lamp and shuffled down the gangway.
A mile to the south was a clean new crack, a foot wide. He hounded it out into the Channel, then south, then all the way back to the land. By then the doubt was gone. The next high tide would rip them from the shore again, and set them free.
Coming in, he found a bright rind about Myer’s door. He turned the handle silently. She was lying beside the old man on the bed, mapped in gold, smug as a cat.
You make quite a couple, Morgan said.
I had to lie down, she said. The minute I came in he started to kick and I thought I was going to collapse. She lay on the covers in her housecoat. I came to see the patient, she said.
And how do you find him?
Find is exactly the word. He was hiding under the blankets. For a moment I thought you’d smothered him.
I won’t say I’ve not been tempted, Morgan said.
You’d be doing everyone a good turn.
Sure, he’d thank me for it afterwards, Morgan said with a smile, that she refused to match. You don’t seem too shocked at the notion, he said.
Five years with the natives and the whalers will school all that out of you. And do you honestly believe I never thought of it with my brother?
I won’t do it, of course, no more than you did, Morgan said. I won’t do anything, only let him go in his own good time.
Why not? I never had my brother as helpless as this. Where you want him, the way you want him, at long last. Suddenly she thought of something. Do you think he can hear us? she asked.
Very likely, yes.
She reached out her hands. He took hold and drew her up. What
ever her trouble, apparently it had passed.
I wouldn’t stand up to him when he was hale and hearty. But now he’s helpless, I should take my revenge? Quite a heroic role you’ve picked for me, Morgan said.
It wouldn’t take much, she said. The state he’s in.
Another blanket or two, you mean? A pillow, perhaps?
Not even that, she said. Forget to load the stove. Forget to feed or water him for a day or two.
Hurry it on, you mean.
Let it happen. Get out of the way.
I’m too much of a coward, Morgan said.
I don’t believe that. A man who’d come out here and then do what you did, to Beechey and back?
That’s not courage. It’s merely a greater fear trumping a lesser one.
That sounds very like courage to me.
It doesn’t feel like it.
She nodded at the bed. But you lack, at present, a greater fear.
It seems so.
Nothing comes to mind?
Not for the moment, no.
You’d better start digging. Otherwise you’ll be left to live with it afterwards. He’s not going to last much longer, you know.
All around them, the timbers were creaking restlessly. He charged the stove, as though to settle here for the day. He went and got them some tea. They talked. These were the stupid, blatant hours of the afternoon.
The day before sailing, I went to see my father, he told her. He was very ill. Perhaps that was why I volunteered. Perhaps I simply didn’t want to be there when his time came.
He’d been fading month by month, and Morgan had put off going to tell him the news, that he was going away, probably for several years. The unspoken hope was that he would die first, before Morgan was obliged to say goodbye. When I finally saw him, Morgan said, I wanted to turn around and walk straight out again. I stayed, of course. But it was hard to believe that thing, that person, lying there in the bed, was my father. That I was his son. He was so thin, and so old. The worst thing was, his mind was going, and he didn’t – couldn’t – wouldn’t? – recognize me.
Morgan told her the story as dryly as he could.
He was remembering the last night. He found one of his father’s men in the kitchen, by the fire. They’d played together as boys, needed no code. Morgan told him to open a bottle and they drank a silent toast. Afterwards he went upstairs to close his trunk. All night they heard him moving about the house, from room to empty room. In one of the wardrobes he found all his father’s folded shirts, perfectly smooth and perfectly white, looking like they’d never been worn.
That must have been hard, Kitty said.
It wasn’t easy, Morgan said.
She stared at him like a curious child. The dry eyes, the closed face, the dead passionless grief. Outside, the ice groaned and stuttered against the hull.
I’m going to show you something, Morgan said.
Kitty listened to him walking down the corridor. Almost immediately he was back. He’d brought his private journal. He fanned it out, foraging. Eventually he handed her a letter with his name on it. She weighed it in her hand, and looked up at him, impressed.
What’s in it? she said.
Open it and see.
As she began to unfold it, something bounced off the floor. It rolled and turned a tight circle, wound its way down. It was a coin, about the size of a half-crown.
Every July I get a card from him, with a little something inside, Morgan said. Every year, like clockwork, since I left home. Over twenty years now. And always the exact same amount, since the year I went away.
When did you get this one?
It was waiting for me at Beechey. It must have been sent about the time I left.
She picked up the coin, folded the paper over it again, handed it back.
To them, that’s who we’ll always be, he told her. Children. No matter what we do. No matter how far we go. Beyond a certain point, the passage of time can do no more for us. We stay young, and they grow older, and we lose sight of each other in the end.
They went up under the housing for her daily promenade, that DeHaven insisted on. There was some kind of commotion outside, a howling dog. They lifted the flap to look. Banes and Daly carried him in. He’d dug his way into the ice-house and got at a bag of salt cod. They stood watching him suffer. There was nothing to be done.
You need to keep moving, Morgan said. You’ll catch cold.
That’s another one, she said. How many does that leave?
At this point I’d almost rather it were one of the men, he said.
A man and a shipload of dogs, that’s what you want?
Three or four men, yes. As long as there’s no sailing to be done.
She mimicked his whimpers, poked at him with her boot.
You get attached to them, Morgan said.
More than to the men?
Well, they have admirable character, some of them. They know how to haul. They know how to starve. They know how to die. And in the meantime they neither drink nor smoke, they need no tents, no stoves . . .
And no sympathy, she said.
Precisely. And when they’re done, you can even put them in the pot.
Can you not do that too with a man?
In certain circles it’s somewhat frowned upon, I’m told.
The thing went on whimpering, and still no one stepped forward. They were too fond of him. He was one of their bravest dogs.
Wait and see, Morgan told her. I’ll have to do it myself.
Dogs are stupid, she said. I could never quite understand the attachment some men form towards them. Likewise with horses. A wonderful memory, but as stupid a beast as you’ll ever meet.
Still no one moved. Morgan stepped over and took hold of a spade. In his huge mittens the thing looked both clumsy and frail. He rotated the handle a quarter-turn, the better to deploy the blade.
Go get Cabot, he told her. Tell him tonight I want a good old-fashioned Irish stew.
And easy on the salt, she said.
Indeed.
10th December
The bed was empty. Myer was gone. Morgan quickly closed the door behind him and tried to think. He went and looked in the washroom, in the men’s mess. In the officers’ cabin, he leaned to look under the bottom bunks.
Lost something? DeHaven said.
Where’d you put him? Morgan said.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Kitty’s cabin. The galley. Then all around the deck.
He found him lying by the helm, face down, in full dress uniform, minus his hat. He was not moving, and not yet dead. But there he lay, Captain Gordon Myer, like a bundle of frozen rags. Morgan was afraid to turn him over, for fear his face had stuck to the planks.
DeHaven came with his bag and bent over him. He was barely able to breathe for pain. He seemed to have broken a few ribs, DeHaven said. However he’d managed that. Had he been climbing? They looked up at the mainmast.
Banes hooked his hands under the armpits. They watched Daly take hold of the legs. They carried him down the ladder and along the corridor. Overhead, the red light of the train-lamps poured in the open hatch.
Close that bloody door quick! Morgan roared. Before we lose every bit of heat we have.
That first night, Morgan came to sit once again by his bed.
Is she gone? Myer asked, fearfully. His forehead was sprinkled with sweat, like steam on a window pane.
She’s just gone out for a few minutes, Morgan said, with no notion whatsoever who was meant. A fussing mother perhaps, or a fussing wife.
He had only to stand up and he was already at the door. Once he got out, he thought, he would not come back. Here in this cabin, at the old man’s bedside, there was nothing but the cunning smell of old bodies and old clothes. The mirror’s silver turning to mould. Here the spiral had turned inwards, was now winding tightly about itself. Morgan sipped at his tea, cast his hands about the cup. Myer’s stove had gone out, but he did not call anyone to come and set it again.
All day the old man lay motionless, staring at the knots in the planks overhead. The face desperately concentrated, like a man struggling to learn his lines by heart. The short, shallow breaths had something mechanical about them at first. By evening, they had a faintly metallic ring, and when Morgan woke the next morning they told him Captain Myer had died some time during the night.
At ten o’clock the crew gathered under the housing, around the remains, which had been neatly sewed up in coffee sacks. MacDonald read the Burial Service by their best train-lamp. I am the resurrection and the life, he said. At some point he handed Morgan his Bible, pointed at the passage Morgan should read. Morgan imagined Myer himself reading it, solemn and trusting, and tried to imitate that voice. Even as he spoke, they could hear the clattering in the distance, that sounded like a cotton-mill. It was the floes out in the Channel, on the move again, always dragging them west and northwest. Morgan kept reading, but could not help speaking a little louder, as though to drown that other noise out. When he was done he slapped the book shut and gave a nod.
