Under a Pole Star: Richard & Judy Book Club 2017 - the most unforgettable love story of the year

by Stef Penney

  No one speaks.

  ‘As you know, transportation came to an end thirty years ago. But the problem of prison overcrowding has not come to an end – far from it. British prisons continue to grow; convict hulks are bursting at the seams. There are those in our government actively looking for alternatives, such as undiscovered islands in the Arctic.’

  He holds up his hand in Flora’s direction.

  ‘I realise that conditions here are harsh, but, in some ways, that is all to the good. Prisons should be punitive. People survive here – the natives prove that. And there are vast areas of the map that are uncharted. It seems likely that any new lands will be, like Ellesmere, uninhabited. The first step – the reason for my presence here – is to see if there are any such islands.’

  Flora breaks the silence: ‘The sea is no barrier when you can walk on it. It is more in the way of a road than a prison wall.’

  ‘But you need dogs and sleds to travel on the ice. If it is sufficiently far from the inhabited portion of the Greenland coast, then distance and difficulty themselves will be the barrier.’

  ‘You say that people survive here, Mr Ash . . . Gilbert – they do, but they survive only by being nomadic. They go where the food is – they go to Neqi to hunt walrus, they come here for auks, to Pittufak for seals – and there are only . . . two hundred people, perhaps, in this huge stretch of land. That is all the land can sustain. Two hundred, spread up and down the coast. Even so, they sometimes starve.’

  ‘You’re right in what you say, but with new ideas there are always obstacles to be overcome. I’m sure that, like me, you believe the British race supreme in overcoming obstacles that seem insurmountable to others. It is the harshest, coldest place on earth. The prospect of living in such a place fills you with fear. A perfect place, then, for prisoners and degenerates, the detritus of our mills and factories, the dangerous and the damned.’

  He leans back and looks around at them. His eyes are shining. Flora takes a deep breath. In her wildest speculations, she never imagined this.

  In the silence that follows, Atitak brings the jug of tea and refills their mugs. Ashbee’s eyes pass over the girl’s face as if she did not exist.

  The weather in December is so bad that the possibility of inviting the Americans begins to seem out of the question. But, after a week of storms, the wind drops, the temperature rises, and Haddo sets out to check on their recovery. Flora tells herself they won’t come. But Haddo reappears after four days with a written acceptance. Even without his report, Flora can tell from the handwriting that Jakob’s hands have recovered. Haddo is touchingly pleased with himself, as if he has pulled off a major diplomatic coup. Flora smiles as if she too is pleased, thinking, It will be all right; there will be so many people here; and, anyway, it doesn’t matter.

  They plan an elaborate meal, and Flora wraps presents of cigars and sweets. On Christmas Eve, she, Haddo and Meqro decorate the hut with sledging flags. Flora surveys the warm, colourful room, and thinks that this hut feels more like home than her home has ever done.

  .

  It does not seem, despite her incoherent hopes to the contrary, that anything is going to prevent the guests’ arrival. The weather on Christmas Day is cold and still. At around three o’clock, there is a shout of ‘Qamiut!’ and the dogs go into a frenzy of barking.

  The terrible scarecrows of a few weeks ago have gone; they have shaved off their beards and put on weight. Their faces and hands still show scarring, but they look human again. Jakob shakes Flora’s hand with a smile and apologises for his manners at their last meeting. Welbourne is effusively charming; he holds her hand in his and raises it to his lips, saying he will never forget her kindness to him, and if she would only deign to call him Scotty, it would make him extremely happy. In another man, such heavy-handed gallantry could be ridiculous or even offensive, but Welbourne carries it off with style.

  ‘Mr Welbourne is from North Carolina,’ says Jakob. ‘Southerners get away with the sort of behaviour we northerners never could.’

  The men laugh. Flora hopes that, in the dim light of the hut, no one has noticed her blush.

  .

  After midnight, the wind rises. The hut is full of the shuffling and grunting of men and women asleep after a long, rich meal. The villagers have curled up on the floor rather than go back to their cold houses. Flora, awake, is aware that there is someone only a foot away from her, on the other side of the wooden wall. She hears a creak, the slither and hush of outdoor clothes being pulled on, the pad of footsteps: someone going out to the illu. She knows the hut so well that she can tell from the number of footsteps, the creak of particular boards, where he has come from. She sits up, takes her parka from its hook, pokes her feet into her kamiks. The wind has driven away the clouds, uncovering a moon two days off full and allowing a faint, silver light to bleed through the window.

  Closing the inner door behind her, she is in the denser darkness of the corridor. To her left is the back door that leads to the convenience; he must have gone through there. The storm is getting worse. She steps outside into a freezing wind.

  ‘Can I speak with you?’

  The figure straightens up from the illu entrance, ghost-haired in the moonlight.

  ‘You gave me a fright.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you, without everyone else around. It’s so difficult.’

  ‘Now?’ The wind rips his words away, but not the incredulity.

  ‘We could go to Meqro’s illu. They’re all in there.’

  Hunched against the wind and stinging ice crystals, she fumbles her way to the stone house and dives into the low entrance tunnel. She hears Jakob behind her. When she can lift her head, she is horrified to see the flame of a lamp, and the creased, polished face of Pualana peering at her from the sleeping platform. If he is put out to be disturbed, he does not show it. In the storm, she has taken a wrong turn. Jakob, crawling blindly, bumps into her.

  ‘Fellora. Te Peyn. You are welcome in my poor house. Sit. Eat.’

  ‘Thank you, Pualana. Thank you.’

  They sit on the sleeping platform and Pualana, who has no wife to cook for him, pokes at the flame and throws seal meat into the pot over the lamp. After a few general remarks, she asks Pualana if he minds if they speak in English. He nods acquiescence.

  ‘I’m sorry; I mistook the house, but he can’t understand English. I want to discuss plans for the spring tomorrow, but there are also things I want to say to you alone.’

  Until yesterday, she thought she would not speak of their past. But at dinner she happened to look up – Jakob was on the other side of the table – and their glances met. To her right, Welbourne was playing the gallant and flirting with her; he was the type to flirt with any woman, but he was charming and she enjoyed his attentions. Jakob’s look had frozen the smile on her mouth.

  ‘I hope we can be friends, as before.’

  ‘Of course.’ His face is stiff. He seems irritated that she has dragged him out here, and embarrassed by her mistake over the illu. Neither can be helped now.

  ‘Good. I hope our expeditions can work in a complementary way.’

  Jakob nods. ‘I’m sure they can.’

  ‘I don’t want there to be a misunderstanding between us because of . . . before.’

  She watches his face. He looks slightly abashed.

  ‘I’m sorry. When you came to Neqi, I wasn’t pleasant. It’s not that I want to . . . deny the past – but not in front of the others. I assume they don’t know?’

  ‘No, of course not. I want to apologise to you. I know it’s all past, but I should have answered your last letter. It was unforgivable of me not to have done so, and I’m sorry.’

  Jakob smiles briefly. ‘There’s no need to apologise. I understood perfectly.’

  Flora glances at Pualana. He is staring into space, sucking on his pipe, as tho
ugh he were alone with some pleasant thoughts. She speaks in a low voice, looking at the wall of the hut.

  ‘I think there is. Your last letter was so kind. I had misunderstood . . . some things. I should at least have explained properly. I don’t think I gave you the right impression.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I quite understand how difficult your situation must have been. The quickest way to break it off was not to respond. I should not have pestered you.’

  She is stung by a hard note in his voice.

  ‘I didn’t want to break it off,’ she says in a miserable little voice that she despises. ‘I wanted to come to Switzerland more than anything; I kept thinking, if I went, and he died . . .’

  Jakob sighs, a little impatiently, it seems to her.

  ‘Well, it’s water under the bridge. I accept your apology, which was unnecessary. As you said, it’s all past.’

  ‘You seem angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry.’ His smile is again no more convincing than before. ‘I don’t know what else I can say.’

  ‘No, I . . . I wanted to . . .’ She stops, because, although what she wanted to say had been clear to her when she lay awake in her bunk, it no longer is.

  ‘I’m not angry in the least, but I’m embarrassed to be keeping Pualana from his bed.’

  .

  They walk back in silence, but, in the lee of the hut, Flora turns to Jakob. She has to raise her voice to be heard over the wind.

  ‘It wasn’t just Freddie’s illness that made it impossible. There was something else.’

  ‘What?’

  The fact that he so clearly wants to end this conversation makes it easier to say: ‘I thought I was safe, but I wasn’t.’

  ‘What?’ He is almost shouting over the wind.

  ‘When we were together – I thought I was safe . . .’

  As the realisation comes to him, he seems to shrink away from her. Flora thinks, Yes, they say they want us to be weak, and womanly, but when we are, they despise us.

  ‘It was my fault. I believed it was safe. I was wrong.’

  Jakob seizes her by the arm and pulls her towards the convenience – the summer lavatory, unused now. The door is stiff with disuse. He forces it open and pulls her in out of the wind. Moonlight fills the shack with silvery luminescence, turning his hair into a halo.

  ‘Do you mean . . . You mean that you were pregnant?’

  She nods once, without looking at him. There is a silence. When she looks at him again, he is staring at the ground.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Why? What would you have said?’

  He doesn’t seem to have an answer, but looks at her fearfully, the question in his eyes.

  ‘There was no child.’

  He lets go of her arm – she hadn’t noticed he was still holding her.

  ‘I was desperate. Alone. I didn’t want to seem to be importuning you, or asking for anything. What could you have done? It was my fault.’

  She looks out to where the moon casts sharp shadows on the spoilt snow.

  ‘No, it . . . I should have known, better than you. I only meant, if you had told me, perhaps you wouldn’t have felt alone.’

  When she looks at him again, he looks anguished, his face pinched. His voice is quiet. She had expected anger, condemnation, shouting.

  ‘Flora, I’m . . . sorry.’

  With an effort, she pushes down the lump in her throat.

  ‘It was all right, in the end. It was . . . difficult for a while, that was why I couldn’t . . . Do you see now?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘There’s no need. I learnt a lesson. Not to be so . . . rash.’

  Jakob looks at her with wrinkled forehead. ‘Rash . . . ?’ he repeats. He looks winded, aged, his skin the same grey-white as the snow.

  ‘Things have to be paid for.’

  It was something her father might have said. She had not set out to tell him; God knows, she’d thought that would never happen – but his anger kindled her own. She wanted to shock him. To punish. Now he frowns, having recoiled from her as far as the confines of the shack allow. He is shivering.

  ‘You must go inside – your hands will get nipped.’

  He is holding them curled protectively in front of his chest.

  ‘Go in!’ She nods, emphatically. ‘I’ll wait a while.’

  ‘Flora . . . we’ll talk tomorrow . . . ? Flora, for goodness’ sake!’

  She nods at last, so that he will leave her alone.

  Chapter 47

  Siorapaluk, 77˚47’N, 70˚38’W

  Boxing Day, 1897

  Conflicting emotions keep him awake. Initial shock and horror – which he could see she had read on his face – then pity, and chagrin as he has to revise everything he had thought. Then he is overtaken by anger that she had not seen fit to tell him such a thing – braided with the old anger: the hurt he had felt at her silence, her rejection. Do her reasons explain it, really? A terrible, craven relief when she said there was no child. (Is that wrong? Human, surely . . . Anyway, that is what he feels.) But also, beneath shock and sorrow and anger and relief, under all that, deep and glittering, a dark nugget of pride.

  He does not know what she must have felt. Surely, it had been a dreadful dilemma. She was right, though – what would he have said? And now? Out there, she was brittle, defensive, matter-of-fact. Dry-eyed throughout. He finds himself both admiring and resenting her unwillingness to share the blame, as though he were not really involved, as though he were not . . . important enough. Yes, perhaps that is what she thought.

  Throughout the night, he comes back to his first question: why hadn’t she told him, when they had made those promises to each other? When they had shared something extraordinary? When he, for one, had been in love?

  There is no dawn, no breaking of day, but the morning after Christmas begins with a strengthening of the storm. The wind has got up overnight, the noise outside the hut has risen to a tremendous howl; Jakob estimates it is blowing fifty knots. No chance of an early departure.

  The first person he sees on pulling aside his curtain is Dixon, stirring something in a steaming jug. Already dressed, Jakob swings his legs to the floor and joins him at the table.

  ‘Good morning, sir. Coffee?’ Ralph hands him a mug.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He looks around at the landscape of frowsy humanity, most still asleep, muttering and exhaling. One of the curtains twitches, and Jakob looks away as Meqro slithers, half-naked, from the bunk behind it – Ashbee’s bunk. He feels a stab of irritation, but knows it to be irrational. It is hardly as though she is being unfaithful to Frank.

  ‘I guess it’s not usually this busy in the mornings.’

  ‘No. High days and holidays only.’

  Ralph, too, pointedly ignores Meqro’s appearance. He smiles at Jakob. Over last night’s dinner, Jakob’s liking for the man was confirmed. Dixon’s shyness dissipates when talking about his work. He is modest and painstaking, eager to hear about Jakob’s experience. Jakob has brought a copy of his book of the Gorner Glacier photographs, and thinks he might make a present of it to Ralph on parting. (Hard to believe that, on leaving Neqi, he had toyed with the idea of giving it to Flora – to show her what she had missed.) Ralph promises to show him his notes and specimens from Melville Bay – a prospect that fills Jakob with uncomplicated pleasure.

  Meqro is at the stove, melting snow in a pan. She keeps her eyes down, as if she is embarrassed to have been seen with Ashbee. Although, Jakob reflects, she is probably not in the least embarrassed.

  Aamma shouts for her mother. Jakob finds it almost incredible that she is also Frank’s daughter; he can see no trace of his friend in the little girl. If Frank’s parents could see her now, yelling, with snot dribbling over her lip, he can’t help feeling th
ey would blanch at offering her a home.

  Does any part of Frank live on in this child? She will never know her father, or understand what he was like. He was never aware of her existence. If Frank lives on in her, then the lunatic Arent de Beyn lives on in Jakob, and that is something he cannot countenance. That is why, perhaps, he has never imagined himself having children. But Aamma is not Frank, just as he is not his father . . . He glances up to see Flora emerge from her room, and drops his gaze to stare into his coffee, terrified that she might look into his eyes and be able to read his thoughts.

  Like Greenland, Ellesmere is known by its edge. The eastern coast – facing Greenland across Smith Sound – is well explored, and the north coast was mapped in its rudiments by the British naval expedition under Nares, and by Greely, before his expedition ended in disaster. A further portion of the north-west coast was completed by Jakob’s own journey, five years ago. The rest – the massive interior, the south, the west – is a blank. The map that Flora now spreads on the workbench in their small laboratory covers the known coasts, Smith Sound and Greenland, feathering out into obscurity from Whale Sound, where they stand.

  ‘You’ve already added to this,’ she says. ‘Thirty-nine degrees west.’

  She taps her fingernail on a point in the whiteness at the northern edge of the map.

  ‘How much coast did you survey?’

  ‘Can they hear us in here?’ Jakob asks in a low voice. He is sure they cannot be overheard, what with the wind crashing and banging against the walls, making it resound like a drum, but he has to say something.

  ‘Not unless the wind falls.’ She speaks – also in a low voice – while peering at the map, as though she thinks she is being watched. ‘It was a remarkable journey. Bold of you to leave so late in the season—’

  ‘Flora, please . . .’

  She stops, becomes very still.

  ‘I’ve been thinking over what you told me last night . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry about mistaking the house. I didn’t mean to embarrass you like that. I was sure it was Meqro’s.’