The Ice

by Laline Paull

  Ruth spoke too carefully.

  ‘Some people there, some young people, still wanted to choose. They did not want to be resettled. They didn’t want Prism’s money, or to be bullied when they refused. I know that for a fact.’

  ‘Delicious, this beef.’ Kingsmith looked at her over his whale-loaded fork. ‘How’s that then?’

  ‘My research guide was one of the local leaders. He told me that, before he disappeared. Tom, I’m so sorry – for all that. He wasn’t—’

  ‘I know.’

  Radiance held out her glass. ‘You’ve got a lot of stories, Bear Lady.’

  ‘No story, Mad Lady,’ Ruth said to her. ‘But not everyone wanted mining.’

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ Kingsmith said, and Sean heard the edge cutting through the charm. ‘If you take the money, it’s a done deal. Right, Sean?’

  ‘Your company tore up denning sites that were used for generations.’

  ‘Oh, Ruth, please.’ Tom put his head in his hand.

  ‘No, she’s got a point,’ Kingsmith said. ‘Life’s constant change, and survival’s the prerogative of those who adapt quick enough.’ He smiled at her. ‘People and animals migrate. Old ways change.’ Now all the other diners were listening. ‘They serve whale here because the whale stocks have restored, so once again they’re a food source. Like cows. Neither of them want to die and be eaten, but we’ve all got canine teeth in our heads, whether we use them or not. I do, because I’m not just an animal, I’m a natural predator. So be sentimental and angry about how business is developing the Arctic, or get on board to make it a positive thing.’

  ‘You destroyed a human and an animal community, for profit! You call that a positive thing?’

  ‘Sunny side up, please,’ Radiance interrupted. ‘Tell the shipping story! So much less fuel in transit across the North Pole, so much less pollution – you know how many days you save?’

  ‘You know how many whales are hit by ships?’

  ‘No, and you don’t know either,’ retorted Radiance, ‘because no one does, no one can, because there aren’t any statistics. You say that to make me feel bad? Go on then, open the Suez Canal again, go make the terrorists be nice – oh no, you can’t. So we better send all those things another way, right? I better send them over the North Pole! Where there’s no more summer sea ice and climate change has made it quicker and cheaper for everyone! It’s not bad, Bear Lady, it’s progress. But new shoes hurt, right?’

  Ruth turned to Tom. ‘These are your partners?’ She pulled a handful of notes from her pocket and put them on the table. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Ruth! Don’t be so silly!’ Sean called after her, but she didn’t stop. Tom grabbed the money and ran out behind her. The whole restaurant remained paused, listening to their raised voices beyond the entrance curtain. Then there was the sound of a skidoo engine. Tom returned, holding the money.

  ‘May I?’ It was Osman. The coroner nodded permission. ‘Thank you.’ She cleared her throat with the small rasp Sean was growing to hate. He noticed a long scar just above her clavicle – surgery probably. Or an attack.

  ‘Mr Cawson, thank you for your very brief account. You alluded to Dr Mott leaving the restaurant first – do you know why?’

  ‘Dr Mott took offence at something my partner Joe Kingsmith said, about the future of the Arctic. They were coming to it from pretty much opposing points of view, and she stormed out before the meal was over.’

  ‘Was Tom involved? In this … disagreement?’

  ‘No. But he went after Dr Mott, to try to talk sense to her.’

  ‘She seems eminently sensible to me.’

  ‘She very rudely threw down some money, even though it was my invitation. He wanted to give it back to her. He was embarrassed at her behaviour, she was very ungracious.’ Sean left a pause. ‘Some people hold their drink better than others.’

  Mrs Osman shifted slightly, her crabbed shape now blocking his sight line to Ruth Mott. ‘Yet I believe she is godmother to your daughter, Rosie?’

  ‘She is.’ Sean was wary. ‘She’s always loved her, even if she led her astray.’

  Ruth Mott jumped to her feet. ‘I’ve done no such thing! I know exactly what you’re referring to and that was completely her own idea – just because you lied to her did not mean I had to.’ At Mrs Osman’s look, she sat down again.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the coroner. ‘If you do not observe the protocol of the court, Dr Mott, you will not be permitted to remain. And let me remind you, Mrs Osman, Mr Sawbridge, that this is a Jamieson inquest, in which all we are seeking to do is understand by what means the deceased met his death. It is not an Article Two inquest, in search of all the circumstances surrounding that fact. And it is emphatically not a criminal trial, much as you would both like to show off your rhetorical abilities on such a stage. Is that clear?’

  Mr Thornton waited until both Mrs Osman and Mr Sawbridge had respectfully nodded. ‘Then Court is recessed for fifteen minutes, after which, if you are able, Mr Cawson, we will hear of the events of the following day and the accident.’

  The event to which Ruth Mott referred was bitter to Sean to this day. At the age of fourteen, during a half-term at home, Rosie had heard a savage row. Gail knew about Martine, and pleaded with Sean to either stay or go. Not yet ready to do either, and in miserable desperation to buy time to think, Sean lied. He swore to Gail that she was wrong, she had misheard, he had been foolish in the past with silly girls, but now she was paranoid.

  Gail had wanted to believe him more than the truth. She had comforted Rosie, who came down in tears and stood between them, and told her she had made a mistake. Rosie had wept in relief, and for two or three days Sean felt like a good man and loved his wife and daughter with a fierce protective passion. Then Rosie heard him answer his phone in a different tone, and speak to Martine, who had been calling repeatedly.

  Rosie hid, and heard her father apologising, and promising. She noted the time, and when her father left his phone for a few minutes, she noted the number that had called. A friend hacked it to an office location, and as Sean found out later, Rosie did not go to London to meet friends, as she’d told her parents, but to Martine’s work – where, dressed as a bicycle courier, she delivered an envelope to her hand. She said she needed to wait for a reply and watched as, at her desk, Martine pulled out photographs of Sean and Gail’s wedding, of Sean and Gail and Rosie on their most recent holiday, and of Sean and Gail watching television, Harold the cat sprawled between them.

  ‘Leave my family alone!’ Rosie shouted in her face, before snatching back the photographs and running faster than the security guards coming to get her. Distraught, she’d gone to Ruth Mott’s. Ruth had applauded her courage, let her cry it out, and kept her for two days. It was the beginning of the end for Sean and Gail, and because he could not blame his own child for his own lies, he blamed Ruth Mott. So had Gail, for a few years, until the truth of Sean’s infidelity had become impossible to ignore any longer.

  It was my boy O-tah who disclosed to me that Peary was to leave me behind in the final few miles to the Pole, and with E-tig-wah he witnesses the disappointment of Commander Peary when a few miles from his camp, his observation told the lieutenant that he had overstepped and gone past the Pole, which we had reached the night before. Our camp itself was practically situated on ‘the top of the earth’. For the crime of being present when the Pole was reached Commander Peary has ignored me ever since.

  After twenty-two years of close companionship he refused even to say good-by when we separated in New York. And at Fort Conger, nearly ten years before, we had carried Peary nearly 200 miles with his feet frozen, traveling days and hunting nights for food to keep him and ourselves alive!

  A Negro Explorer at the North Pole: The Autobiography of Matthew Henson (1912)

  Matthew Henson

  24

  The press bench had filled up some more. Flip-flops was pushed further towards the end by reporters who checked emails and sent texts
until the last possible moment before being upstanding. Sean saw they all had a photocopied sheet – and so did the front two rows of lawyers and family. He had one too, on the stand: a large-scale map of Midgardfjorden with an inset showing its location on a map of the whole of Svalbard. At Mr Thornton’s request, he resumed his account of the eclipse trip.

  ‘Danny Long picked us up at the Polar Dream after breakfast and then we flew to Midgard. The mood was very upbeat, everyone was excited. The Lodge was looking great and it was an extraordinary experience to watch the eclipse from there …’

  Danny Long was all contrition. Sean reassured him: always better to be owed than owing, and this was the first time the Sysselmann’s office had required them, and must surely have been impressed? Danny Long admitted they’d done Midgard proud. Their twelve-man Dauphin had clocked nearly 500 kilometres ferrying the hapless British stag party out from the accident scene and back to Longyearbyen. He assured them no one else had flown it, nor noticed its many capacities. He added that they’d all been pleased to have the chance to serve.

  They put on their headphones and strapped themselves in, Kingsmith insisting, despite Radiance’s protest, that he ride shotgun with Danny Long. Radiance had also trained as a helicopter pilot, but everyone – even Tom – instantly protested against the suggestion of her showing them her skills.

  Airborne, no one spoke much. Tom was lost in thought, gazing out at the pale blue mountains. They flew north-east from Longyearbyen over Isfjord, banking to the right as they passed the Russian settlement of Pyramiden, so that Sean and Kingsmith could look down on the new constructions. The speed and scale of the expansion was impressive. Or, if you were Mrs Larssen, disturbing.

  They continued north over the great glacier of Mittag Letterbreen and then its delta into the steely water of Wijdefjorden. Martine and Radiance photographed the rippled strata of the mountainside, its layers of colour piled up and swirled like ancient stone marble cake.

  ‘It’s the only place on earth where you can see this much geological time.’ Tom’s voice came over the headphones again. ‘Each of those stripes represents about two thousand million years.’

  ‘Nice numbers,’ came back Kingsmith. ‘Keep talking.’

  Sean relaxed as Tom, now with permission, released the brake on his geological passion and talked them through what they were seeing: the clasts and the tillites, the glaciofluvial moraines, the time banks of plant and dinosaur fossils where armoured fish forever swam through seas of rock, the Devonian age, the Silurian, the Ordovician, the Cambrian …

  ‘We’ve got to record him, so we can have this on every flight,’ shouted Kingsmith, as Danny Long banked to show them the green glittering ribbon of rock as Tom pointed it out. ‘It’s like poetry – I don’t understand but I love to hear.’ He twisted round to see Tom. ‘You and Dr Mott, you two could be a lecturing duo. She talks whales, you talk rocks—’

  ‘Like a light entertainment double act? Joe, if that’s all you wanted me for—’

  ‘It wasn’t.’ Sean stepped in quickly. ‘He meant, you’re fascinating.’

  ‘That’s exactly right. And I have huge respect for your knowledge.’

  Tom didn’t answer, and Radiance put her hand on his arm.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, ‘I could listen to you for strata.’

  ‘Your English is brilliant, Radiance,’ he said. ‘Where did you learn?’

  ‘Roedean,’ she said. ‘While English girls still went.’

  Sean recognised the volcanic chimneys on the edge of the ice cap where the glacier pressed down towards the sea. It gave him an immense satisfaction to begin to recognise parts of the terrain; it connected him to his explorer gene. Then they clattered out over the middle of Wijdefjorden for the central approach between the high walls of Midgardfjord, the Dauphin a noisy mechanical insect lowering itself down onto the gravel beach.

  As the rotor chop slowed, Sean listened to them exclaim as first they saw the silvered wood of the old whaling station, and how subtly the scale of the building and its artful materials revealed themselves. The blackened wood was not a pile of driftwood, it was the upper part of the wall, made of a huge shelf of granite rock-fall.

  The whole edifice was an angular flow, an aesthetic paradox in Svalbard, where colossal geological actions formed cubist patterns on a massive scale, and the lack of man-made anything – buildings, signs, roads – was disorientating. Midgard Lodge met the eye as a restored old whaling station on the beach – and grew backward into the mountain from which it became indivisible.

  ‘Ye gods.’ Tom was beside him. ‘What a brilliant job!’

  After the bear all-clear had been radioed down to Danny, they ran up the beach to the steps, where Terry Bjornsen’s wife Anne was waiting.

  ‘Welcome to Midgard Lodge, even if you own it,’ she said in her soft South African accent. ‘It’s thirty minutes to the eclipse, so please make yourself at home and let us look after you.’

  Midgard Lodge looked as fine as Sean could wish. The reception area smelled of fresh coffee and cinnamon pastries, and was paved in under-heated stone strewn with worn sealskin rugs. The space was half-timbered with the same silvery wood used to restore the exterior: specially treated driftwood from the Russian taiga forest, washed up (actually shipped) across the Kara and Barents seas. A wide turning staircase led up to the rooms, each (a diplomatic essential) as good as the next.

  Silver nitrate photographs of the early Pedersen family, heroes of polar exploration, and photographs of the whaling station at work adorned the walls, and a silver samovar stood ready with Russian tea glasses on a colourful enamelled tray. The mezzanine seating area was walled with polished, fossil-embedded stone, before wide shallow steps rose to the main salon. Here, the central freestanding fire-pit with bench-height stone surround, gave the feeling of a chieftain’s hall, and the great triangular window wall looking down the fjord gave the aspect of a chapel to the primeval view. Today the water was mercury-coloured, but Sean had seen it gold.

  Anne Bjornsen brought out cloudberry cocktails, crystal tubes of dill vodka, and water from icebergs thousands of years old. Then ruby-red reindeer carpaccio and soft pearly wafers of halibut sashimi, to eat with moist black bread and sweet Norwegian butter.

  And then, Sean showed his guests the wardrobe full of furs from Sami or Greenlandic Inuit collectives. If they were going to watch the eclipse from the deck, it would be cold. Or of course, they could wear what they had brought.

  But the furs were irresistible. The weight of them, the sensual illicit touch … Even Tom succumbed to the childish pleasure of dressing up in the romance of the north. Kingsmith chose a polar bear parka, and Martine let Radiance grab the long blue fox coat with dramatic hood. She then debated between a wolverine jacket with a black-tipped sable pelt, or a narrow dark sealskin parka with a hood. She chose the wolverine, and was pleased to catch Tom staring. Her triumph was spoiled by Sean excitedly calling him over to show him the two old jackets he had at the back: ragged and worn sealing anoraqs, handmade, exactly like Gino Watkins wore on the British Arctic Air Expedition—

  —No, like Knud Rasmussen had, Tom said, equally happy. Like Peter Freuchen had when they were in Greenland, and Sean had forgotten that, yes more like that, and they marvelled over them. The wolverine stood impotent in her beauty, then followed the blue fox out to join the polar bear on the deck, and Anne Bjornsen made sure they all had sunglasses. Two telescopes were positioned ready. Tom and Sean came out in glacier glasses with the leather eye guards and their old sealing anoraqs and their arms around each other’s shoulders, posing and grinning.

  ‘Beards,’ said Tom, ‘we should have thought.’

  ‘With frost,’ Sean agreed.

  ‘Photoshop you.’ Radiance shot them on her phone. ‘With ice eyelash too, looks so hot – you’re welcome.’

  There was no need to time the eclipse: the birds told them it was near. At 10.40 they shrieked and wheeled across the long V of fjord sky, then disappeare
d. The grey mountains filled with black ink. The rippling water turned to sheet metal and the clouds stopped. All that moved was the colour of the sky. Changing faster than any dawn or dusk, from pink to violet to blue, a fast dark shadow pulled night over the mountain as Earth moved behind its moon.

  One telescope was shared by the polar bear, standing between the blue fox and the wolverine. The two sealskinned explorers shared the other. Or rather, Sean did, but when he pulled back from the telescope to offer it to Tom, he saw his friend standing in the dark of day, lost in thought.

  ‘You’re missing it,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got this feeling I am.’ Tom looked at him in the darkness. ‘But what?’

  ‘The eclipse—’ Sean stepped aside and Tom put his eye to the scope.

  ‘We decided not to go round the headland in a boat,’ Sean’s underarms prickled with stress, ‘but to go by skidoo – snowmobile – up to the ice-caves on the other side of the glacier tongue. It was a better use of the time we had.’

  ‘We’ve found an image of the topography,’ said the coroner, as behind Sean the screen glowed to rectangular life. Projected on it was a line drawing of Midgardfjorden, which changed at a click to a satellite photograph.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Google Earth, I think,’ said the coroner’s clerk. ‘Whole world’s there.’