The White Darkness

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  Ten o’clock. The light went out in the yard. The children disappeared off the stairs. The TV set downstairs was switched off.

  “And then there are the noble metals,” said Titus, “though I rather tend to confuse them with the Knights of the Round Table.”

  “He’s been gone a long time,” I said aloud into the darkness.

  “Left his raincoat, too.”

  In the dark, I could feel Victor’s raincoat lying across the foot of my bed. I thought I might phone Mum again—even risk nuking my brain by holding the phone right hard up against my ear. Just to say: Paris wasn’t so wonderful. She wasn’t missing so much. A bed, for instance.

  But Uncle Victor had taken the phone with him, of course. There was nothing in the raincoat pocket but a passport. Even in the dark my fingers recognized the stiff cover, the brittle pages inside. I sat cross-legged on the bed, wondering what it gave as Victor’s occupation. “Shot peener?” Even I’m hazy about what one of those is.

  “What would you put in yours, Titus? Polar explorer?”

  “Plorer. I never made it to be an ex-plorer,” said Titus tersely. “Look in the passport.”

  So I turned on the light, though we both already knew whose name, whose occupation, whose photograph would really be on the back page.

  Full Name: Lillian Jennifer Wates. Occupation: Secretary.

  Well, Victor always keeps his own passport in the breast pocket of his jacket, doesn’t he? Like a special agent waiting for his next assignment.

  Eleven o’clock. I kept trying to think what I’d say when Victor got back. About finding Mum’s passport. Not that he would have taken it on purpose, of course. Of course not. But there are worse things you can say than “Did you steal Mum’s passport?” You can suggest someone made a mistake—slipped up—forgot. Everyone makes mistakes. But some people you can tell and some you can’t. Victor you can’t.

  The smell from the toilet in the yard below was pretty unendurable. Tomorrow, Nikki and Maxine and Nats and everyone would sit down to do the chemistry exam, and I felt an absurd, wrenching desire to be there. Nobody might ever again ask me questions about the periodic table, and there it was, in my head, learned, and as useless as a pair of binoculars to a blind man.

  “Tell me the noble metals, Titus,” I said. “Or the Knights of the Round Table, I don’t care which.”

  “Would you settle for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”

  Then Victor came back, and he was grinning from ear to ear. “All set!” he said, jolly as Santa Claus. “We’re all set!” And his eyes gleamed with impish delight, fists dancing in front of him like a man driving a fiery chariot. Putting down the mobile phone on my dressing table, he set it spinning with his forefinger, faster and faster, until it spun off the glass surface and fell to the floor.

  “So where are we going, Uncle?”

  “Can’t you guess, lass?” he asked, perching on the end of my bed.

  Not south to the Loire, then, or the sea. Not south in search of educational museums or improving cathedrals or swimming. How could I ever have thought Uncle Victor would be so unkind? I’m his “right-hand girl.” He taught me chess and bought me all my ice books and videos. Uncle Victor’s a genius and a true original! And he’s about to grant me my dearest wish.

  “In all the world, where’s the one place you’d like best to go?” he said, grinning so broadly that the pink of his dentures showed. “Money no object.”

  When Victor said south, he meant the southest you can go. He meant catching a plane for Buenos Aires. And from Buenos Aires another plane south to Punta Arenas. And from Punta Arenas . . .

  We hugged and danced about wildly till the dirty carpet came adrift from its gripper rods and the room bared its carpet-tack teeth at us on all sides. “You got through to Mum? What did she say? Does she say it’s all right? She says we can go?”

  “Chance of a lifetime,” said Uncle Victor. “Her very words. ‘Chance of a lifetime. Too good to miss.’ Now, if she’ll just leave us in peace to enjoy ourselves . . .” The two halves of the mobile phone had come apart, spilling the SIM card out of its slot. Victor picked it up and, with the air of a naughty schoolboy, tipped back his head, opened his mouth, and dropped the SIM card into his gullet, choking and laughing and crunching down on the delicate contacts. I laughed until the tears oozed from my eyes.

  Oh, Titus! Titus! We’re going to Antarctica! Think of it, Titus! The Antarctic!

  The man inside my head did make some response, but I didn’t catch it. The excitement was so huge, and Uncle Victor and I were both laughing so loudly, that I could not properly focus my mind.

  It is a knack. When I was little and it was cold, I used to put my hands in my pockets and instantly my fingers became tribesmen sheltering in a cave from a blizzard. They cuddled together for warmth and ate bear’s meat and drank hot mead. I could think myself into that cave. The transporter room aboard the starship Enterprise is rubbish in comparison with a little child’s imagination.

  Nowadays I can call Titus to mind whenever I like—at least I can usually. But what with the smell from the toilet, the mice in the ceiling, the drunks fighting in the yard, and my heartbeat thumping the mattress under me, it took a while that night. In the end, I managed to focus the shafts of moonlight falling through the window, like sunbeams through a burning glass, and—presto!—my captain’s head was on the pillow next to mine.

  Except that his back was turned. And to judge by the sheet rippling over my skin, someone in the bed was trembling violently. Another truck thundered past on the overpass, shaking the hotel. That must have been it. Not Titus trembling at the prospect of Antarctica. And surely not me? Just heavy traffic shaking the hotel.

  That must have been it.

  Chapter Four

  Dreams

  I was a disappointment to Dad, Victor says, because of my hearing and my clumsiness (and he ought to know—he and Dad used to see each other every day). But Uncle Victor likes me. He tells me I am “Sympatica!” And he’s been so good to Mum since Dad died.

  First it was just a matter of coming around, mowing the lawn, knowing the mower is too heavy for her. (Besides, he says Mum does it wrong, and the grass needs to be cut north-south and east-west but never diagonally, or the blades of grass twist as they grow.) He’s been generous, too, considering he must have lost just as much when the company went bankrupt. But apparently he managed to put a little money aside during the good days—being more prudent than Dad. That’s how he was able to pay for the funeral.

  Mum tried to take out a bank loan to pay for it; that was when she found out that our overdraft was already on the limit. She tried to extend the mortgage, but that was when she found out Dad had already done it—borrowing more cash against the value of the house, trying to keep the company afloat. I was there.

  “Where did it go?” she kept saying. “Where did it all go?”

  And the bank manager went and changed the sand tray in the bottom of his budgie’s cage, because he was so embarrassed at the way she was crying. He didn’t want to show us out of his office until she had stopped.

  But he didn’t lend us the money, all the same. Uncle Victor had to do that.

  And now Antarctica! And his generosity didn’t stop there. He took me into the middle of Paris and bought me clothes!

  Apparently our fellow travelers in Antarctica would be well-heeled, and Victor did not want me to feel “at a disadvantage” socially. I wanted to say that being me was all it took to be at a disadvantage socially. But that might have sounded ungrateful. And I did so want the red camisole, the swirling red silk skirt with its deckle-edged price ticket. (How could Victor afford this?) The gilded mirrors in the changing room multiplied my reflection into an army of Syms, and all of them looked . . . fantastic. Salesladies in soft knit suits stood about and discussed me. I wanted to squirm away out of their sight.

  But I wanted the stuff.

  “What do you think, Titus?” I said, spinning around to m
ake the red silk skirt swirl out.

  But he only shrugged, having no interest himself in fashion or nice clothes. “I like you whatever you wear,” he said without looking up from his book.

  Me, I recognized all those scarlet-clad girls reflected in the mirror. They were the kind Maxine and Nikki and Nats would have been desperate to hang out with: the Chic Chicks; the Chic Clique. To tell you the truth, I wanted to hang out with them—those sleek Sym lookalikes in the gold-glass tunnels of light.

  I studied myself, trying to see what it was that still irked me. “I wish I could have been blond,” I said, flicking my mousy hair to and fro.

  “I wish I could have been gray,” said Titus.

  He has a certain way of putting things in perspective, Titus does.

  Click went Victor’s credit card on the counter of the salon. Click, like a gambling chip on a roulette table. At the door of the shop, one of the assistants put an arm around me and nodded in Victor’s direction as he strode off down the street. “Votre papa?” she asked, searching my face, worry in her eyes.

  “Mon oncle,” I said, and smiled broadly to reassure her. I hardly needed rescuing from Uncle Victor!

  Then we went to some luggage-storage depot, where Uncle Victor produced a ticket and was given, in exchange, a huge suitcase. I mean huge!

  “The cold weather kit,” he said. “I sent it on ahead.”

  My ancient family suitcase was dwarfed by this great crate of a bag. It put me in mind of King Osiris floating down the Nile in a sealed coffin, slowly suffocating while Queen Isis sent all the birds and crocodiles frantically searching for him. Then and there, in the middle of the cracked concrete floor, watched by surly faces behind the grilles, Victor crouched down and redistributed our luggage.

  The huge suitcase seemed to be already full—of brightly colored clothing with glossy tags in unpronounceable languages: Ullfrotte, Brynje, Barrabes, Hvitserk, Brenig . . . But he laid on top of them my red silk finery, and bundled our Paris clothes any-old-how into the family suitcase. I supposed we were going to pick it up again on our return. But instead Victor took it outside onto the rainy Quai de la Tournelle. He set off across the Pont de Sully while I followed behind, towing King Osiris. I was busy negotiating the dimpled pavement by the traffic lights, so I didn’t see him rest the old suitcase on the bridge parapet.

  But I saw it hit the water.

  It was a long drop. The impact made the cheap zipper gape its teeth in surprise, and the contents spilled out. Victor’s sweatsuit and my best shirt stayed afloat as the suitcase sank from under them—floundered on the surface for a while, gathering river litter into the crooks of their sleeves. Then they were swept away, balling up and rolling over in the current, floating downstream beyond sight.

  I hate water. I have a horror of drowning. At the sight of my school shoes capsizing and sinking, I could not quite remember how to breathe. But Victor’s face was a scrawl of eager happiness.

  “You’ve still got Mum’s passport, though?” I said, before realizing my mistake. Victor neither noticed nor answered.

  “Think on, lass. New beginnings. Let’s start the way we mean to go on!”

  Out with the old, on with the new. Uncle Victor has no idea, bless him. He has no idea how good it would be—to take a second run at things. In high jump they give you three chances to clear the bar; in school they only give you one. After junior high, Victor thought I ought to be home-schooled, instead of going to high school. Apparently Dad said no: He saw quite enough of me already. The local school board said no too. I was glad. I was clinging desperately to good memories of school: friends, skipping in the playground, gold stars, wiping the chalk off blackboards. Friends. Sleepovers. Friends.

  But high school isn’t junior high. It isn’t Hogwarts. It’s notes on the blackboard saying “Sym Wates is a sad loser.” “Sym Wates runs on nerd power.”

  It was my own fault. I should never have invited Hilary over to our house to play Spirit of Speed on the computer. But Uncle Victor was there for some reason, tidying out the filing cabinet, and he began telling Hilary about the plans to home-school me. Except that somehow, suddenly, it sounded like my idea.

  “Doesn’t want to turn out mediocre, our Sym. Doesn’t want to be run-of-the-mill ignorant. Got her eyes set on higher things than most. Doesn’t want to get held back by the dead weights.”

  Also, after she had gone, I found there was a new notice in the bathroom: Uncle had been practicing his beautiful calligraphy again. It said:

  Visitors may use this toilet but please remember: A single bacterium can multiply 700,000 times in a day. You are requested to maintain high levels of hygiene. Thank you.

  The words spread through school like a germ and multiplied quicker than bacteria: that Sym Wates thought she was too good for ordinary school—too good to consort with anyone at ordinary school—also that visitors weren’t welcome at her house. Sym Wates was a misfit weirdo.

  Whereas in fact I’d give anything to fit in.

  If only I was fit to.

  An elbow jabbed me awake.

  “If you ever dream that you are hanging from a cliff by your fingertips—jump.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Jump,” said Uncle Victor again. In his flat Yorkshire accent—joomp—it had a kind of military authority. It cut through the roar of the aircraft engines, the drone of voices. The sense of what he was saying, though, could not quite cut through that fog of sleepiness that fills up airplanes like cold fills up a fridge. After eight hours in the air, being awake seemed less real than the dreams that dozing brought on.

  “Got that? Ever dream that you’re hanging from a cliff—or a tall building—or a bridge—jump.”

  “Why?”

  “Wake up right away. Never fails.”

  “Do you dream it often, then?” I asked.

  “Say again?”

  “Do you often dream you’re—”

  “Everyone dreams. Proven fact. Every ten minutes. Eyes go jigger-jagger behind the lids—that’s dreaming. You watch.” And he directed my attention to the lady sitting alongside us.

  Me, I dream I’m in the school play and I don’t know my lines. I rush from person to person asking to see their script, but they won’t let me, so I search and search until I find a script, but all the pages are blank—white as snow. Not a word, and the curtain’s going up and I don’t know what to say. . . .

  “Mine drizzle away . . .” I said. “I don’t think I ever—”

  “Me, I write mine down,” said Uncle Victor. “Always keep a book by the bed. Columns. Black-and-white or color. Pleasant or not. And the setting. That’s all you need. The detail’s not important.”

  “Need? Need for what?”

  “Say again?”

  I like to do my dreaming when I’m awake; but I didn’t say so, because that would sound loony. Some nights I don’t sleep at all—not from midnight till morning, because I’m with Titus and I’ve got such a good imagining going, and, next day, flashes of delight go through my stomach like electricity—as if something real and marvelous has happened and I’ve just remembered. But if I admitted to that, Uncle Victor would say that’s why I’m so slow-witted—because I waste my time and energy daydreaming.

  I would have liked to get an imagination going on the plane, but my head was full of headache and recycled air—pressurized like the aircraft cabin. If for any reason the pressure drops inside your head, masks will fall from your skull. . . . The pressure in my head had been mounting steadily since takeoff. Uncle gave me one of his herbal medications, but it just filled my mouth up with the taste of unraveled sock wool.

  Uncle Victor has a corner of the garden where he makes all his own medicines, stitching them into little muslin pouches the size of tea bags “because doctors are all in the pay of the big drug companies.” Also doctors refuse to accept a man’s diagnosis of what’s wrong with him. “My body. My symptoms, and yet they persist in thinking they know better,” says Victor.

/>   Uncle Victor took lessons from a Chinese herbalist in Whipps Cross and got a degree in allopathy through the mail from Phnom Penh University; so he knows what everything does for you. Apparently it was Uncle Victor’s tea bags that kept Dad alive six months longer than the doctors could have. Without them, also, the dying would have been worse, says Victor. The dying would have been worse? How much worse could it have been?

  The cabin lights dimmed, and everyone around woke up enough to drape blankets over themselves and settle down to sleep. My legs were twitchy with sitting still for so long. I tried to curl myself into my seat and put the blanket over my head. Like a tent. But the seat was full of plastic cutlery and cake crumbs, empty plastic bags and free newspapers. Information flashed up regularly on the movie screen: We were traveling at 488 miles per hour over the ground, and at a height of 39,500 feet.

  When I was little, I used to have a herd of imaginary horses. They all had names, and I kept a record of their feeding in a notebook Dad gave me. When we went on vacation down to the trailer park, my horses would run beside the train, keeping up, stretching their necks, leaping hedges and drains and signal boxes, clattering through stations. Tireless.

  “What do you dream of, Titus? Do you dream of hanging from the lip of a crevasse by your fingertips?”

  “I dream of huskies appearing out of a blizzard: first their breath, then the black dots of their noses, then their masks, with the noise of a sledge’s runners behind. Arriving in the nick of time. I dream of One Ton Base coming into view and the smell of hoosh cooking. I dream that Death and the pain were both a dream and I’ve woken up fit and well and the blizzard has blown itself out. . . . And naturally I dream of you, Sym. At least . . . whenever you dream of me.”