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

by Stef Penney

  A few weeks later, bad news was growing:

  HOPES WANE FOR LATEST ARCTIC EXPEDITION

  MR ARMITAGE’S SILENCE LEADS TO QUESTIONS IN SENATE

  NORTHERN EXPLORATION – WASTE OF MONEY AND LIVES?

  Patriotic Americans are on tenterhooks as to the fate of the latest attempt to plant the Stars and Stripes at the top of the world. Eighteen months ago, Mr Lester Armitage set sail on his brave quest to fill in one of the last remaining blanks on the map, to claim the North Pole for the United States of America. The relief ship that attempted to make contact with him this summer was stopped by heavy ice, and had to leave supplies at Pym Island, far to the south.

  On a further somber note, fears are growing as to the fate of the explorers Mr Scott C. Welbourne II and Mr Jakob de Beyn, who failed to make a rendezvous with the ship hired to bring them home. There is no news as to their whereabouts.

  (New York Mail, December 1899)

  SPIRITUALIST CLAIMS KNOWLEDGE OF HEROES’ FATE!

  Mrs Eliza Jupp, the well-known New York spirit-medium, has told our correspondent that she has vitally important messages for the families of Mr Armitage, Mr de Beyn and Charleston banking heir, Mr Scotty Welbourne II, the Arctic explorers who have not been heard from since the summer of 1899, when all three disappeared in Arctic mists. She claims that she has information as to their whereabouts, which she will communicate to them privately.

  (New York Leader, April 1900)

  Only a few months after claims of success and extraordinary feats, Armitage, Welbourne and Jakob joined the ranks of the lost.

  .

  He has found only one photograph that shows his great-uncle and Lester Armitage together, and that is from the first expedition, in 1892. The five men pose in front of a dark stretch of water, two dogs at their feet. It is summer and little snow streaks the dark hillsides. Randall has stared at their faces for a long time, has judged them according to his lights. He thinks Armitage looks severe and arrogant – a frown is apparent, even on a face half-obscured by a handlebar moustache that makes him look old-fashioned, self-consciously heroic. Perhaps his judgement is coloured by his reading of Armitage’s book – all those things are evident in his writing. As for Jakob, it is hard to say. He looks rather weedy in this company. He is clean-shaven, a young man, smiling. He looks, unlike the others, as though he is having fun.

  Other than that, the picture tells him nothing. And the Snow Queen has told him nothing that throws light on the men’s relationship with each other.

  He is angry with her. He doesn’t want to be angry with his parents, or his grandparents, and he needs to be angry with someone. The truth is, he has not warmed to her; he finds her cold and unsympathetic, rather elusive. And – sometimes – he wonders if she is playing with him. Perhaps – this occurs to him, suddenly – she lied about his great-grandfather. Or is mistaken – an old woman, confused, telling stories . . .

  What if nothing she has told him is true – she and Jakob were never reunited in Greenland, never going to be married? What if the account she gave in her book was the true one? What proof is there that any of it really happened?

  Chapter 53

  Kennedy Channel, 81˚11’N, 67˚53’W

  July–November 1898

  People said Lester Armitage was looking older. He’d heard mutterings to this effect, and pretended not to care. It didn’t help that, when his wife, Emma, welcomed him home after his last trip to Washington, she had kissed him with a tender frown on her brow. ‘Darling, your poor little grey face!’ she had cried. ‘What have they done to you?’

  In fact, the senators had given him good news. Obstacles began to melt away, and a replacement for the Polar Star – another expensive, heavily reinforced and over-engined ship, the President McKinley – was nearing readiness. He had gathered a new team of helpers; money came in to provision them for a three-year sojourn. Three throws of the dice. This time, even allowing for mishaps and false starts, he would – must – be the first man to reach the Pole. As he was only too aware, he was forty-five years old, and he was running out of time.

  He knew that de Beyn had gone back to the Arctic the previous year. There had been little fanfare; in fact, the whole thing had a slinking, hole-in-the-corner air about it, as if he and his playboy friend were doing something underhand. When he learnt that their ship had dropped them off in Neqi, the very village he had chosen for his base seven years ago, Emma could hardly contain her indignation.

  ‘But Neqi is your village! How dare he . . . horrible little man!’

  ‘I agree he could have at least, ah, consulted me about it.’ Lester tried to control his anger. ‘But, of course, he was taking the Eskimo back home.’

  Emma pursed her lips. The whole affair of the Eskimos had been most distasteful. He knew she didn’t like him to talk about it. The hurtful thing was, people probably thought he was unfeeling. They didn’t know what torments he had suffered when he heard of their fate, particularly that of his little Arctic dove; there was no one on earth with whom he could share that grief. It had been essential to cut himself off from the whole thing in order to pursue his plans for the next trip. He could not be tainted with mess and failure when raising funds.

  .

  He had felt old and tired when they set sail, surrounded by bright-eyed young men, with their taut muscles and smooth skins, but once he smelled the ice, and saw the red cliffs of Melville Bay and the great, phallic spur of the Devil’s Thumb – he felt it a signpost that they were arriving in the proper country of men – he felt his spirits lift, and the years seemed to fall away.

  That feeling of exulted and rejuvenating purpose lasted until they had moored off Siorapaluk to take on board as many dogs and men as they could muster. All the hunters in the area heard that he was there, and came to see what he was offering. Dogs, hunters and their families came on board, and the decks of the ship turned into a filthy, floating village.

  Among the familiar faces was Metek, that fine dog driver, resourceful companion and veteran of the first northern journey, but this time he did not want to come – no, not even for two rifles! He has done with such things. He is a grandfather now and too old (he is younger than Lester, but, of course, these things are not comparable). He did not want to go away from the hunting grounds for so long. Only last year, he went with de Beyn on a repeat of that first northern journey – they reached the big cliff again, only this time there was no fog, and they could see across the sea-ice for miles and miles. A desolate place. No game. It had been a hard journey, very hard . . . He did not know why de Beyn wanted to go somewhere that Metek had already been with Armitage and Urbino, when they had found nothing there, but that was what they did. That was the last time for him. So naamik, kooyounah – thank you, but no.

  Lester’s jaw ached from smiling. When he heard what de Beyn had done, he was almost overwhelmed with nausea, and gritted his teeth. He knew why de Beyn had gone there: there could only be one reason.

  .

  As they battle their way up the ice-choked strait until the ship can go no further, as they build a winter camp and Lester makes his endless calculations, as he sets his team to hunting, and making clothing, and adapting equipment, as he does all these things with the energy of his relentless purpose, the boring beetle that Metek unknowingly – smilingly! – passed him worms deeper, gnawing at him, stealing his sleep. The days grow shorter and so does his temper. When he falls into his bunk, long after midnight every night, he closes his eyes and sees de Beyn’s face (or rather, the hazy approximation of it that he remembers), and wonders why the geologist should have it in for him. He gave the man his big chance – why isn’t he grateful, instead of trying to steal a march on him? Trying to snatch the prize of the Pole from under his nose? Now de Beyn knows what, for the last six years, even Lester has not allowed himself to know – that Dupree Land was a figment of his desire. He conjured it into bein
g with his will, and told himself that perhaps it was, after all, there – since they could not see through the fog, they could not assert that it did not (like God) exist. De Beyn must have hoped to find in it a viable road to the Pole, and when it failed to provide one, turned his attention elsewhere. That must be what he was doing on Ellesmere: looking for an alternative route . . .

  Ticking away, gnawing at him . . . Even if de Beyn does not get to the Pole (and without a ship, without a far northern base and without a large infrastructure behind him, Lester does not see how he can – surely?), even so, he now has the means to ruin Lester’s reputation. He will go back to New York and brand Lester a liar – or, at best, a fool. If Lester comes back with the prize, afterwards, will anyone believe him?

  Time flows like a torrent. His busily ticking watch strikes off the seconds as they rush past, each one a reminder that he is a fraction closer to death. If timekeeping were not essential here, he would have silenced it under his heel.

  Lester, long ago, persuaded himself that he had seen something in the dreadful murk: a high outline . . . a faint solidity, tantalisingly indistinct. He had to have seen it. He convinced himself that it was true.

  It is November, but traces of pallid dusk still stain the southern horizon. For the last two days of the trek south, made with two of his hunters, they have seen moon dogs – arcs of light and false moons refracted in the taut sky – hanging like cold lamps over the velvet rubble of the frozen sea. One of the men, Kussuk, says it is a bad omen.

  His old hut at Neqi, much pillaged and rebuilt, is banked high with snowdrift. He raps on the hut door, surprised that no one has come out to see the visitors and their howling dogs. The door opens, and there, in a shapeless sweater and bear-fur trousers, is the geologist, staring at him as though he, Lester, were a ghost.

  ‘De Beyn. It’s Armitage.’

  ‘Of course . . . Good heavens.’

  ‘Surely you knew I was here.’

  ‘We heard you were up north. I suppose we didn’t think to see you here . . . Come in!’

  De Beyn steps aside to let Lester enter his old domain, and bangs the door closed. Lester pulls off his snow-caked boots.

  ‘I’m surprised to see anything left of the place.’

  ‘We had to patch it up. It was a wreck.’

  ‘I’m sorry to be so unexpected. I hope it doesn’t inconvenience you?’

  De Beyn laughs then, and Lester is reminded of how his high-pitched laugh grated on him during the winter they spent together.

  ‘Inconvenience me? No, not much at all. It’s always a pleasure to have visitors, but I’m afraid Mr Welbourne isn’t here – he’s gone hunting for walrus, again. I would have thought he’d have tired of the sport by now, but apparently not. He thinks it quite the most exciting hunt in the world – better than lions, even.’

  As he chatters on about nothing in particular – another habit that irked Lester in the old days – de Beyn puts on a kettle of water to boil, finds mugs and biscuit, and carries it all to the table. Lester watches his former colleague. To look at, he is very much as he remembers him from their last meeting – when was that? The memorial for poor Urbino, it must have been – six years ago. He is just as slender, with that easy movement that belies his delicate appearance. His uncanny white hair is rather long, his face a little harder than it was; much like himself, he supposes, although de Beyn must be the younger by a decade.

  ‘You have no women to do for you?’

  ‘Oh, yes . . . try stopping them. But they come and go.’ De Beyn gives him an insouciant smile. ‘I’m working on my photographs at the moment, and it’s easier to do that on my own.’

  ‘Ah . . .’ Lester’s eye wanders over the walls of the hut. A couple of prints are pinned up, on display. One seems to show the inside of a cave, a vertical shaft of light falling on a fur-bundled figure. There is something odd and theatrical about it that draws his eye.

  ‘I hear the British woman has been here again.’

  ‘Yes. The British were at Siorapaluk earlier this year.’

  ‘Extraordinary thing. And the, er . . . husband? Was he recovered from whatever had befallen him?’

  ‘As to that, I don’t know. He wasn’t with them.’ De Beyn looks at the table.

  Lester shakes his head. ‘Blind folly. I shudder to think what could befall a woman here, don’t you?’

  De Beyn gives a non-committal smile. ‘I suppose anything could befall any of us.’

  ‘Well, with certain exceptions . . . You saw them, then?’

  ‘A couple of times. They spent most of their time to the south-west, I believe.’

  ‘The boys told me that one of the Britishers died.’

  De Beyn hesitates, before drawing a cigarette out of a pouch.

  ‘Yes, apparently some sort of accident with a gun.’

  ‘Dear me. I suppose we should be glad it wasn’t worse. When we met them, before, the whole thing struck me as a very queer affair. I must say, I cannot readily conceive of the sort of men who would agree to be part of such a . . . cheap stunt.’

  ‘I found the men to be good sorts. Certainly their geologist – that’s the only field where I’m qualified to judge, of course – seemed to be doing excellent work.’

  Lester shrugs. ‘I would have thought a woman would limit them too much. One would always be worrying, having to look out for her. One would be dreadfully slowed down. And the idea of a woman leading a group of men – it’s as ludicrous as a . . . an Eskimo leading a group of white men! It must be in name only – for the publicity, I imagine.’

  ‘It didn’t appear so.’

  ‘Yet they lost a man.’

  De Beyn looks at him steadily. ‘Accidents occur in the best-run expeditions, as I’m unlikely to forget.’

  ‘All the more reason why women should not be allowed to expose themselves to such risks. I wonder at her husband allowing it.’

  There is a pause, then de Beyn says, ‘Well, it’s not our affair.’

  His eyes flicker towards the partition that divides the end of the hut into a separate room – the room that used to be Lester’s private quarters.

  ‘So, you’re going north again, Armitage?’ de Beyn says at last.

  ‘Yes. We’ll make an attempt on the Pole in the spring. And you? I heard you had a successful season on Ellesmere.’

  ‘It was everything I could have wished.’

  ‘And what are your plans for next season?’

  ‘More scientific work. Perhaps on the glacier, here. When Welbourne returns, we’ll discuss it.’

  ‘I merely ask because I hope to avoid a conflict of interest.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about that, Armitage. I wish you luck with the Pole. It’ll be quite an undertaking.’

  ‘We will do our best.’

  De Beyn smiles at him. What does that mean? It is conceivable, to Lester’s mind, that de Beyn intends to launch his own polar attempt in the spring, and is keeping quiet about it – that would be in keeping with his hole-in-the-corner style.

  ‘Have you seen Aniguin, since you arrived?’

  ‘No. How is he?’

  ‘Well enough. He’s settled in a village to the south. I think he’s had enough of the kallunat for a while.’

  Lester nods. ‘I never thanked you properly for what you did in New York. For him, and the other Eskimos. A dreadful business.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was only sorry I could not be of more help to them, but I was so busy . . . my commitments, you know, were so onerous . . . my hands were tied.’

  ‘So I understood.’

  Lester frowns. ‘It was a source of great personal distress to me, as you can perhaps imagine. If I’d had any conception of how dangerous New York would be to them . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘But they were so keen to come. They earnestly petitioned fo
r it.’

  ‘You couldn’t have known,’ de Beyn says.

  ‘No. Yet I feel responsible. And, ah – do you have news of the, er, of Dr Urbino’s child? I’d like to do something for it, if I can.’

  ‘Meqro does some work for us. You can ask her yourself.’

  ‘Ah . . . ?’

  ‘The girl’s mother. She is well, and the child too. Aamma is five now.’

  ‘Ah . . . Good.’

  ‘She’s an independent soul. Dr Urbino’s parents offered to take the girl, but Meqro wouldn’t give her up. I’m sure, however, any assistance you offered would be graciously received.’

  Lester nods. ‘I’m happy to hear it.’

  He stares into the bowl of his pipe.

  ‘De Beyn, there’s something I wanted to discuss with you. I was concerned by something I heard when I arrived.’ He tries a smile. ‘It may have been a garbled account, but I was told that, last summer, you went to the north coast; in effect, retraced my footsteps – is that right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And did you cross the ice to Dupree Land?’

  De Beyn looks at him steadily. ‘We saw no land.’

  ‘Then you can’t have gone as far east as we did.’

  De Beyn glances down, and seems to smile slightly.

  ‘We went further along the coast from the coordinates you cited, about fifty nautical miles, and there was no land visible. I know the conditions you experienced were difficult. We were lucky in that respect; the weather was perfectly clear. We took several sightings to be sure.’