by Stef Penney
‘If we leave in May. We’ll have the following season there, and should return next September or October. That’s the plan.’
‘Barring accidents.’
Jakob smiles. ‘All plans are barring accidents.’
Clara looks back at the house and says, ‘We’d better go in, I suppose.’
As she mashes out her cigarette with the toe of her boot, she takes him by the arm in a way that is unusually intimate, even for her. Tactfully, Lucille drifts away from them.
‘I wanted to ask you: you will look out for Frank, won’t you? After all, it’s your fault, this adventuring.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘You must realise . . . he wouldn’t have gone in for all this if it weren’t for you.’
Jakob is astonished. ‘That’s ridiculous! He’s been a member of the expedition far longer than I have. It was he who introduced me . . .’
Clara gives him an indulgent, elder sister’s smile.
‘I know, but he was always talking about the things you were doing, the wonderful, exciting places you were going to. I think he feels that his life has been boring and staid by comparison. Dear Frank – he wants to do something big and . . . newsworthy’ – she laughs briefly – ‘before it’s too late. He even says he wants to do something “worthy of” Marion. God knows why – Marion doesn’t like it, or even understand it . . . but I suppose you do.’
Jakob is troubled to hear this, although he suspects her of exaggeration. ‘Of course I’ll look out for him. But it isn’t going to be dangerous. There are people who spend their entire lives where we are going.’
‘They didn’t prevent the Greely tragedy.’
‘We learn from others’ mistakes. Armitage knows what he’s about. It’s really no different from going to the mountains here.’
He is equivocating and she knows it. Clara releases his arm and draws away from him as they reach the doors. ‘Look at you,’ she says. ‘You can’t wait. Just promise me.’
‘I will look out for Frank, I promise,’ he says, sure that no one is extracting such a promise on his behalf.
Marion extracts the same promise before he leaves, which makes Frank laugh out loud. He puts his arm around Marion’s slender shoulders and looks fondly down at Jakob from his half-foot height advantage. He repeats what Jakob told Clara: ‘You have nothing to worry about, dear little girl. There will be no danger. None at all.’
Chapter 11
London, 51˚31’N, 0˚7’W
Summer–Autumn 1891
On the eve of her marriage, Flora Mackie writes a letter to her father, far away in the Davis Strait. She informs him of her impending wedding, expresses sorrow that he will not be there to give her away, apologises for the hastiness of the arrangement and assures him of the wisdom of her decision. By the time her father reads the news, which will be this autumn, or even the next, it will be too late to object.
She has made a bargain. She renounces expectations that other young women might see as their right – emotional luxuries like romantic passion, along with ease, dependence, restricted and domestic responsibilities – in return for a career and the opportunity to return to the north. She will achieve this by marrying Freddie Athlone. She does not think that she is in love with him, and doubts, despite his claims, that he is in love with her. They complement each other, and she is fond of him. Perhaps, one day, she will love him.
He proposes just before her final exams. His proposal is unusual; not so much a declaration of love as a prospectus. He outlines their joint expedition to Greenland: a venture that requires her presence as the celebrated Snow Queen, and his presence as the driving force that will brook no opposition. He has energy, will, connections. She has something that no one has seen before. Neither his proposal, nor the form it takes, comes as much of a surprise; they have been talking of exploring the north ever since they first met. Flora takes a day to think it over, but her answer is never in doubt. She tells Iris after she has accepted.
Iris hugs her.
‘Darling, I’m so glad. It’s rather soon, but, if you’re sure . . .’
Flora smiles calmly. ‘I’m sure.’
Iris looks her up and down. ‘You’re going to do great things, Flora.’
Flora laughs. This is what she wants to hear. Then Iris surprises her by her suddenly serious expression.
‘I know I’ve encouraged you in this, but you’re not beholden to me. It is what you want, isn’t it?’
‘It’s what I want. I’m not as naïve as I once was.’
This is as close as she ever comes to referring to Mark Levinson.
.
Flora takes her natural science degree, coming sixteenth in the year. She has achieved what she wanted; she is as good as anyone else – or, rather, she now has proof of it. Over the last year, she worked hard to relate her studies to the field she wants to make her own. She suspects that she does not have the mind of an innovator; she lacks the overarching vision, the capacity to make intuitive leaps. What she can do – and perhaps this suits her ambition better – is endure. The more she learns and thinks about the science of weather, the more she appreciates the importance of simple accretion of data – unspectacular and repetitive. No lightning flashes of inspiration, perhaps, nothing extraordinary, but the day-by-day keeping of the record, a constancy of endeavour that gathers value and meaning the longer it goes on. Perhaps her marriage will be like that, also.
.
Isobel and Poppy react with astonishment when she tells them she is to become Mrs Freddie Athlone – but then, she has hardly spoken of him. They congratulate her in rather stilted tones. Isobel, who broke off her engagement to Herbert Wickham the previous winter, seems particularly aggrieved.
‘But don’t you see?’ Flora says. ‘It’s to further my ambitions, my career, that I’m getting married. We’ll be partners. We’re planning to leave next year. Can you imagine how impossible it would be to do that on my own?’
‘Yes, we see that. But do you love him?’ asks Poppy.
‘Of course. What’s more to the point: I like him.’
‘You like him?’
Isobel stares at Flora with a penetrating gaze. To everyone’s surprise, Isobel came fourth in the whole year, and won the prize for astronomy. Over the past year, she has become fierce in her devotion to female independence. She, who has always seemed quite without serious ambition, did far better than Poppy (Poppy is still smarting from it). No one says – who knows how many of them are thinking it? – that, if Mark had still been at the university, he would have outshone them all.
‘But what about babies?’ Poppy asks.
‘Oh, well!’ Flora affects a worldly disdain. ‘There are ways of avoiding them, of course, if one wants.’
Freddie has talked about this – in delicately vague terms. They agree that there will be no children, at present, and she assumes that he – a man about town – will know how to ensure this.
.
He is older than her, of course, but only by twelve years, and he is not bad looking – with pale skin, high cheekbones, thinning, wavy hair and eyes that are russet-brown. Altogether, she sometimes thinks, there is something fox-like about him. But Flora likes his face, likes the fact that he blushes easily and hates it. She also likes the fact – she has been told several times – that he is a catch; many young ladies have tried there and failed! And he has a quality that, to her, is of inestimable value: he defers to her greater knowledge of the north. He is as enamoured of her peculiar history as he claims to be of her person. Flora thinks they understand each other very well.
.
At first, Flora does not share Freddie’s confidence about their great plan. But, once it is made public, one after another, newspaper editors, sponsors, manufacturers and advertisers light up with the reflection of his enthusiasm, and chuckle and shake their he
ads and take out their chequebooks. Freddie and Flora sign a sponsorship deal, a newspaper deal, a publishing deal.
In Manchester, the new editor of the Evening Record, R. G. Whitfield, reads about the expedition – the Snow Queen is in the newspapers again, after three years – and writes a letter that is vitriolic in its wounded pique. It almost, but not quite, goes so far as to say that she will owe him money from any profits they eventually accrue. Flora shows Freddie the letter.
‘You don’t need to worry about him. He’s a nobody. You owe him nothing.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Flora says, ‘but if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.’
She means to reply, in a mollifying way, but, instead, forgets about him, caught up in the deluge of plans. Freddie has a kind of genius for this. There is no one else in the world, she thinks, who could have got her north again, as joint leader of an expedition. She is happy and grateful, and sometimes she prods her heart, pokes her feelings: what is it, exactly, that she feels for Freddie Athlone? It is nothing like the wild, confused craving she felt for Mark. She doesn’t feel raw with him. She doesn’t feel as though he could hurt her. She is determined never to be hurt like that again.
They marry in August. Since it is all rather irregular, as well as hasty, there is little in the way of traditional ceremony. They marry in a Unitarian chapel, since Freddie is Catholic, and Flora Presbyterian – both, nominally. There are few guests. The only other Athlone present is an elderly cousin who is drunk by ten in the morning. Iris is there, of course, and Poppy and Isobel, and some of Iris’s friends, like Jessie Biddenden and Lionel Fortescue, the actor (vying with Freddie’s cousin in signs of early inebriation, and, Flora can’t help noticing, wearing something that looks suspiciously like rouge). Freddie is accompanied by a couple of old friends: men she has not met before. There are no bridesmaids, or flowers, or other sorts of pomp, because they are saving every penny for the expedition. There has been so much to do, meeting sponsors, assembling a wardrobe (for the Arctic, rather than the wedding), interviewing prospective team members, drawing up lists and making calculations, that the wedding feels like just another task to be ticked off the list. As a result, Flora is only a little nervous.
With her father absent, Flora walks down the aisle by herself, which she thinks is appropriate. As she does so, she is overwhelmed by a dizzying sense of unreality, as though she is in a play and has not learnt her lines. In more than one way, she is pretending: to be grown up; to love a man she doesn’t know very well; to be an explorer. The effrontery of it terrifies her. She reminds herself that she does have the right: they are writing their own lines, making a new plot, and anyway, one day, she will come to love him.
.
After the ceremony, there is a toast to the new couple, and then the guests disperse, with a feeling of anticlimax. Freddie takes Flora to a smart restaurant in Piccadilly for lunch. Despite the occasion, it is not romantic. Freddie brings his perennial list of jobs to be done. When she makes him put it down, he finally takes her hands in his.
‘Dearest girl, you make me very happy, and one day, I promise, we will have a proper honeymoon. But tonight I have to go to Birmingham. There is a manufacturer I must see tomorrow.’
‘I know. I’ll come with you.’ She smiles. ‘I want to learn as much as I can about the business side. And anyway . . .’ She strokes his arm, thinking it feels thin and frail through his sleeve, imprisons his hand in hers and leans towards him. She has had two glasses of champagne, and they, on top of the excitement of the day, have made her bold. ‘You can’t go alone. I forbid it.’
‘Dear, I hardly think Birmingham is a suitable place for a . . . wedding night.’
‘I don’t care about that. I’m your wife. I want to be with you.’
She stares into his russet-brown eyes, trying to put her meaning into her own, so that he will know what she means – know that she is not afraid.
.
The trip to Birmingham, to interview makers of woollen underwear, gets off to a bad start. Their train is late, and they don’t arrive into New Street until after nine o’clock, tired and hungry. Freddie takes a suite at the Queen’s Hotel. They have a late supper in the restaurant. He drinks several glasses of claret, which, although she is used to his finishing off a bottle most evenings, strikes Flora as a sign of nerves. She is nervous, of course, but assumed that, because he has done this before (she has assumed rather a lot, perhaps), he would be more confident – and, one would hope, somewhat eager. At last, she takes his hand.
‘Dearest, are you all right?’
‘My poor girl, I’m sorry. I’m feeling a bit crock, that’s all. I suspect it was the crab at lunch. I think I’d better go up. Do you mind awfully?’
They go upstairs in the gilded, cage-fronted lift. Distant laughter follows them down their corridor, fading into muffled luxury at the door to their suite.
Once inside, he apologises again – he is very pale – and disappears to the bathroom at the end of the corridor. Left on her own in the bedroom, Flora undresses and puts on her new nightgown – a silk-and-lace confection, chosen by Iris. She brushes her hair, arranging it over one shoulder and then the other, rather pleased with the effect. Downstairs, she was nervous yet excited; now, she is frightened, but determined. She washes in the ornate basin. She does all this very slowly, but at last she can think of nothing else to do, and Freddie has not reappeared. Eventually, she puts on a robe and goes to knock on the door of the bathroom. There is no answer. She tries the handle and finds that it is locked.
‘Freddie? Are you all right? Freddie?’
She knocks again, but does not want to seem desperate – like a music hall sketch, except that, in the sketch, she would be old and bald, with a false leg, and he, young and terrified. Is she really that unlovely? The image of Mark comes to her; she pushes it away.
She hisses his name at the keyhole. No reply. Should she ring for someone? Who would come? And what would she say to them? At last, unanswered – but, at least, unseen – she creeps miserably back to her room, and gets into her bridal bed, alone. She lies awake for what feels like hours, hearing the clock dragging leaden minutes past while her husband does not come and does not come, wondering if this whole, hastily constructed edifice is crumbling around her. She wonders, in her small-hours madness, if he has run away, or is dead. If she is not a wife, will she not be an explorer, either?
.
In the morning, she discovers that they have both survived the wedding night – Freddie slept on a chaise in the adjoining room. He is apologetic, but seems better, blaming the seafood for his bad night. Flora is reassured – what is one night, after all, out of a lifetime? One day they will laugh about it.
The manufacturers of underwear are suitable, so the trip is not an entire failure: the marriage may be unconsummated, but they have free combinations. When they arrive back in London, they take a hansom back to his rooms, and he gradually falls silent. Flora’s belongings have been sent over, and form a small pile in the room that is to be hers, looking out of place. Flora starts to feel nervous again as bedtime comes nearer; she is worried by Freddie’s distracted air. Much as she tries not to think about him, she cannot imagine Mark – the Mark of the early days – being distracted and distant at the prospect of going to bed with her.
She goes up to her husband and shyly puts her arms round him, then turns her head to brush her lips over the skin of his neck. Freddie, standing very still, strokes her hair, then takes her by the shoulders and, quite gently, pushes her away.
‘Dear, I’ve been thinking . . .’
He smiles. She smiles back, not because she feels like it, but because she feels this is the right thing to do.
‘This is not a very suitable place for a young lady to live, at the moment, I’m afraid.’
‘Freddie! I’m your wife! If it’s suitable for you—’
‘I know. Perh
aps, for the present, you should continue to stay with Miss Melfort – just for the time being.’
Flora can’t help herself. Tears come to her eyes.
‘What have I done wrong?’
‘Dearest girl. You haven’t done anything wrong. Far from it.’
‘Then wh-why don’t you like me?’
‘I like you very much.’
Freddie sounds so sad that she is inclined to believe him. He sighs heavily.
‘It is I who have done wrong.’
She looks at him in alarm. He avoids her eye. Oh, God, she thinks. Whatever he says next, it will be awful. It occurs to her that this is what marriage is: it means that she can come up with no excuse not to hear what he is about to say.
‘What do you mean?’ Her voice sounds much calmer than she feels.
‘My dear, I’m ashamed. As you know, I’m considerably older than you.’
‘Freddie, I don’t expect that you have had no past. I know . . . Well, you know what I mean.’
Freddie puts his arms round her and crushes her in an embrace. Her ear is pressed against his Adam’s apple, but Flora doesn’t move.
‘You’re a dear girl and I don’t deserve you.’
‘I don’t mind, so you mustn’t either . . .’
‘God, I wish it were only that. It is that – a long time ago – I . . . contracted something. I truly thought that it had gone for good, but just before the wedding it reappeared. I didn’t want to lose you. But I don’t want to do you harm, so . . .’
He drops into a chair, buries his head in his hands and starts to sob. So people really do that, she thinks. At length, she puts her arm round his shoulders.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘If you wanted an annulment, you’d be entirely within your rights.’
‘No! I love you, Freddie.’
He doesn’t stop crying. She wonders what will happen now. There is a small, selfish core in Flora – perhaps not so small – that is luxuriating in the relief that it is not her fault.
