The Surfacing

by Cormac James

  There is great faith in that letter, MacDonald said.

  Who was it for? said Brooks.

  A man called Hickey, Morgan said. Cornelius Hickey.

  In all the cabin there was silence, respect or shame. Only DeHaven seemed not to have heard. Already he was sifting through the bag for another one.

  That’s enough, Morgan said. He folded the letter away. Afterwards he got out the London Illustrated and began reading aloud from the very first page, even if they had heard it many times before. It was the latest news of the Piraeus blockade. Palmerston was holding firm, but the French ambassador had now withdrawn from London, and that threatened to complicate matters quite seriously.

  12th May

  He was listening to the boastful knocks of a mallet, as Banes knocked the pins from the housing mainframe. He could feel the thing deep in his chest. They’d found a fault-line, and a wedge was being driven in, opening it up, letting in air and light. The housing had already been rolled up and tidied away. Above was a calm, clear sky. Clothes-lines looped from mast to mast. The yards were strewn with shirts and smalls and every sundry. They’d had their first great wash.

  You wouldn’t want to leave a mess behind you, she said.

  Of course not. What kind of a man do you think I am?

  Below and above, almost every man was on his knees, Bible in hand, scrubbing hard. They would leave her as they’d found her, he had announced. Mint clean and mint bright. To some of the men, it was perfect proof their captain never expected to see her again.

  13th May

  Morgan carried him down the gangway, upside down, the head flopping, squeals of terrified delight. He carried him around to the far side of the ship, into the long iron shadow, where he wanted him to play. The instant he set him down, of course, the boy made for the blazing snow. Morgan let him wander, strut. He had lived in fetters too long. The snow was soft now, he had his mittens on, it did not matter where he fell. Giant hands always picked him up and set him back on his feet.

  The world sloped downwards in every direction, drawing him on. The boy was luring his father out into the open, into the light, where all the old certainties would shrink and crumble. There was something out there he needed to find, and Morgan followed, striding, trying always to keep between him and the sun. There was a time when he had prized such light. Not now. The shadows were too sharp and too deep. They slurred reptile along the ground. Still Morgan loomed, his fathomless silhouette. His shadow was flat and solid. The boy stood in the middle of it, as in a pool of dirty water. He dragged it along the ground like a cape.

  In the distance the shadows were bottle-green. A lone gull drifted down like a windstolen handkerchief. The boy watched it with admiration, wobbled off in pursuit. The gull lifted into the air, set down again a little farther off. Morgan watched the hunt.

  No! he shouted, but it was too late, Tommy had veered under the hull, run straight into one of the props that held the ship upright. He bounced off. He sat stunned on the ice. He wrestled himself to his feet and set off again. He wanted with purpose, not whimsy. He had no interest in sympathy. Morgan watched with no small esteem. Here was the man he himself would like to be.

  The men were leaning over the taffrail. Below was what looked like a frontier atrocity – a dozen bears spliced and stretched on the ice. The clatter of voices. The brilliant, savage light. On its southern face, the whole of the hull was splattered with shirts and smalls. The floe was strewn, treasure everywhere – bales, bottles, planks. The boy wanted it all.

  Then Morgan saw the bear. Standing shyly at the corner of the coal-house. She seemed curious, and a little confused. The boy hadn’t seen her yet, but was wandering in her direction. Suddenly he lifted his head, and stopped dead in his tracks. He turned his head to search for his father, to check did his father see. His arm was pointing.

  Ca! he shouted, grinning beautifully, with great pride.

  He was waddling towards her now as fast as he could.

  In the belly of the ship, in the still afternoon, Petersen was struggling to breathe. Beneath them lay twenty-seven feet of ice. On the surface, Morgan was frozen in time, in temptation. If, for another few seconds, he did nothing at all, everyone could go home together, once and for all. He stood watching, sick. These were the final moments, the final breaths. Time was flowing around his body, like a river around a stone. He could hear it rushing past.

  He put a ball into her just under the left ear. She was already turning to move away. A ripple ran through her from head to haunch. The boy was screaming, on account of the noise. A single step, then she toppled clumsily, like a drunk on his hands and knees trying to get up.

  14th May

  A spoon and a pair of blinkers, Morgan said. One spare pair of drawers, one spare shirt. He was proud and dismayed, that he could be reduced to this.

  Opposite, DeHaven was folding and refolding a pile of clothes on his bunk.

  I keep hammering it home, Morgan told the room. No et ceteras. And I keep finding little trinkets and other nonsense in their bags.

  He set a pack of cards on the scales, and noted the weight. The same for the little bundle of books. They were for the boat generally, to help pass the time. His concern with every little detail, the men regarded as mere fuss, a sign of nervousness. He himself knew it as a lack of confidence in his scheme, and in the crew.

  In the forecastle they were sewing in silence. Patching. Doubling seams. That morning he had ordered them to replace all their buttons with buttons twice the size. They were tailors now, making clothes for other men.

  He thought freely of Melville Island, its northern coast. It was a callous hope. He wondered where the real attraction lay – in the prospect of relief, or in the trial itself?

  He read his latest list aloud, for the ship’s surgeon to perfect. Boiled pork and pemmican. Candied ginger and chocolate. Coffee and rum. More than almost anything else, the coffee was sacred. He had seen its miraculous powers with his own two eyes. Coming back from Beechey, every morning it had raised the men from the dead.

  To save weight, he would have anything tinned turned out and put in bags. Have each week’s ration separately packed, with the sacks for later weeks a little heavier, to give them something to look forward to.

  15th May

  The galley door was wide open. She was in there with Cabot. Morgan put a stool under him and leaned back against the door. The man’s evening was obviously well under way. He moved only when he had to, and the words came out one at a time.

  Say your goodbye, Cabot told her now. Say it to his face and not just to the back of him.

  Your goodbyes, Morgan said. Plural.

  Why should he come back? said Cabot’s voice. Why? Tell me for what reason.

  Whatever was said, Morgan made sure it made no dent in his face. He watched Cabot pour again. There were several bottles on the counter, but he made no remark. For the first time in his life, he refused to count. It was a city they were abandoning, an entire civilisation. By morning the Cossacks would be galloping through the church.

  Cabot was still searching for the cork, and Morgan watched him sway.

  Perhaps you’d better go to bed, Cabot, Morgan said.

 
Why?

  Because you’re drunk and you’re talking nonsense and you’re embarrassing me and Miss Rink with every word you say, and if you succeed in remembering any of this tomorrow I sincerely believe that in recollection you will be an embarrassment to yourself.

  Richard, Kitty said, and managed to make this some kind of plea. She still wanted to be the man’s friend, and Morgan was angry at her, too easily. He was too ready to condemn. He was still struggling to convince himself to leave Cabot behind.

  It’s like a holiday, Cabot said. Your life. Did you ever think of it in such a way? You do what you want, and afterwards nothing of it matters at all.

  That is one way of considering the matter, Morgan said.

  That is the reason I like it so much out here. Up here. It’s not real, everything that happens. It’s just like a holiday. When I go home, everything will be the same as it was when I went away. And for now I can do as I prefer, and later it is forgotten, it disappears. I just leave it all behind.

  You’re not coming with us, Cabot, Morgan said. You’re staying with the ship.

  Cabot gave no sign of having heard. Morgan studied the face, that the drink and the cold and the lack of light had turned to cheap meat.

  Why would I bring you, given your physical state? he said. Why would I want you along, more than one of the other men?

  Richard, Kitty said.

  Look at you, Morgan said. You’re a weight and a liability and nothing else. How much hauling do you honestly think you could stand?

  I’m sick, I know it, Cabot said. But I’m not the only one. There are plenty in the hospital. Petersen.

  There’s healthier than you will be left behind.

  I got all the way to Beechey, didn’t I?

  We’re going a lot farther than we went to Beechey. And besides, that was a long time ago. You’ve done a great deal of harm to yourself since then.

  Cabot struck himself in the chest, very hard. I’m still a good man, he said. You’ll see.

  No you’re not.

  You have decided to punish me, is that it?

  I’m not in the business of punishing. I want men that can haul hard and long and won’t be looking for any special consideration. I want to get to Melville.

  Cabot reached for and tilted the bottle for a better look. He seemed tempted to finish it off. The captain decides, he said. I’m not going to beg. He poured another dose and put it inside him. The empty glass struck the surface with a solid, decisive knock.

  There’s something inside me, Cabot said, more quietly. Something alive. He was talking to the floor.

  What is it? Kitty said.

  I don’t know. But sometimes I’m glad it’s there. Sometimes I feel I would like to wake it up. This does that, sometimes, for a little while. He showed them the empty glass. And sometimes I wish I could kill it, I could rip it out. Sometimes I think it wants to kill me. I can’t explain. I myself, I find it hard to comprehend.

  Cabot, you’re not well, Kitty said.

  Have you been eating properly? said Morgan.

  I’m the chef, Cabot said.

  You’re the chef and your clothes are hanging off you, Morgan said.

  When Cabot was gone, she talked and Morgan listened.

  He’s not making it any easier for himself, is he? she said.

  No, Morgan said. He looked up at her and looked down again. The galley floor was caked with filth, all about the foot of the stove.

  Are you really going to leave him behind, or are you merely trying to scare him?

  If I leave him behind, I don’t like to think what he’ll do to himself.

  I could take care of him, Kitty said.

  I know you could. But I think you’ll have enough on your plate. In any case he’s not fit to bring along, as matters stand. You see the state he’s in.

  But if he stops drinking?

  I don’t know. I don’t think he wants to. I don’t think he can.

  They talked of Disko, of before. Those people seem like strangers to me now, she said. Living a very strange life. Doesn’t it seem that way to you?

  I don’t think of it too often, he said. It’s hard to imagine, out here.

  I sometimes wonder how it would appear to me, if ever I was able to go back.

  Perhaps you will, some day.

  Perhaps, she said.

  We live in hope.

  I thought you said hope is not a strategy.

  It’s not. Not a good one, at least. Not advisable, but inevitable, I suppose.

  I’ve been thinking of it recently. Of what happened there, between us.

  What’s done is done, Morgan said. What’s the use of going over all that again?

  She was looking him straight in the eye, had something she had rehearsed, and was waiting to say.

  Perhaps you thought you were doing what you did for my own good, she said. Leaving me behind, I mean. I can see that now, but at the time I couldn’t help asking myself if in some way I did not deserve it. As if it wasn’t in some way a judgement or a punishment.

  Kitty, I gave you no great thought in those days. It was an entirely selfish decision, I can assure you.

  What I’m trying to say, she said, is that before I was sure I was with child, and I thought I would allow you leave Disko without me, I felt not just betrayed and abandoned, but totally destroyed, by everything that had taken place between us.

  Destroyed? he said.

  I don’t know if that’s exactly the right word. But it feels right to me.

  Rather strong, Morgan said. Humiliated, I might understand.

  It was more than that. And it wasn’t merely at Disko. It stayed with me for a long time after coming aboard. I don’t feel that way anymore.

  I’m glad to hear it. I know well it hasn’t always been easy, with me. I know I haven’t been much of a help.

  Now I’m glad it happened, she said, even the way it did.

  When Morgan said nothing she asked him directly: Aren’t you? Hasn’t it all worked out for the best?

  I’d hardly say that. Given our circumstances. They could be better, to say the least.

  But are you not glad it happened? she said. Are you not glad he is alive?

  Yes I am, Morgan said.

  Despite everything else.

  Yes.

  But you don’t like saying it.

  I don’t need to say it. Not for you and not for him. Haven’t I shown it a thousand times, in a thousand different ways? Is that not enough?

  He was now standing by the stove, leaning forward, both hands flat on the wall, as though to support it. As though there were a storm outside, as in the old days, and he needed to feel it, physically, every twinge. But there was no storm. For months now there had been nothing new to her tilt. There was no more creaking, no complaint. She sat proud on the surface now, safe from all immediate harm.

  Why are you asking me all this? he said. Why are you forcing me to say it out loud? D
o you want me to stay, is that it? I thought we’d been over all that twenty times. I don’t want to go, but in my heart I know it’s the best and maybe the only chance he has.

  16th May

  Before he even opened his cabin door he could tell something was wrong. There was too much fresh air. The voices were too loud. They had left the hatch open again. Climbing up, he could hear a dozen voices chanting, stamping uselessly on the boards. He stood watching. Tommy was in the middle of the circle, swaying on his feet. Kitty, Cabot, DeHaven. A slow handclap, all together, as he started to dance. The handclap quickly wilted and died. Tommy had staggered into the mast. He stood hugging it with both arms, drunk with fame and fright. The men were laughing. They seemed outraged at their own audacity, at how easy the boy would be charmed. Now they grabbed his arms and legs and carried him wriggling across the deck. They were going to throw him over the side. The little body swung back and forth. There were shrieks of terror, brilliant shrieks of delight. All at once, the hands let go.