Out of the Ice (6 page)

The cop bible. They looked out for each other above all else. I blocked out thoughts of David White as quickly as they rose, and thanked her.

‘Koch is evidently very fit, and it’s keyhole surgery,’ she said, ‘so they’re not expecting this to take long. But I’d like you to start straightaway. Go to Fredelighavn tomorrow, if that’s okay?’

Scientists are used to teams. We would never usually go out into the field alone. I wished I could argue the point; say that we could catch up if we only missed a week or so.

‘Okay,’ I said instead.

‘I’ll send you the engineers’ report on the buildings. They were given a clean bill of health for safety last summer: they’re unusually well preserved. But with the winter storms things could have changed, so take care. You know what you’re doing. And Laura – it’s an honour Australia’s been chosen, and you in particular. It’s the right thing to do to go down.’

I wished I felt the same. I spent the next few hours reading the report on Fredelighavn’s structures, which did seem extraordinarily intact. The report was very dry in its details and annoyingly did not include photographs. My stomach dipped. If the weather held, I would be seeing it for myself in the morning.

4

T
he air was still and freezing, the light a piercing blue as I crunched along the ice not knowing exactly where I was going. No one had bothered to tell me where I’d find Travis, and I hadn’t seen him at breakfast, where I’d sat alone. My head was pounding – my body still adjusting from the days of no sunlight in winter to now having constant sunlight with only a couple of hours of night, and even that wasn’t black night. I’d slept badly. And I wished Rutger Koch was here.

There was no activity in the streets. No quad bikes roaring towards and away from the buildings, people returning, people going out, like my own base.

I tried to take in everything about the main building as I passed: it was comparatively large, and the centre that dropped underground was sheeted with thick steel. It looked like a giant insect giving birth.

I turned down another street and saw Travis up ahead, wheeling a red skidoo – a snowmobile, similar to a quad bike but with skis instead of tractor wheels, like a motorised sled with a windscreen in front of its long, low seat – out of a shed I hadn’t seen yesterday.

‘Hey there, Laura,’ he called genially as I walked up. If he was annoyed I hadn’t returned to his table last night, he was hiding it.

‘So a nice warm Häggie for the lady? Or would you prefer a skidoo? Or both. I can take you down in the Häggie and leave a skidoo there for your return. Or you can drive yourself but I wouldn’t advise it until you’ve been there once. We went out yesterday and flagged the way for you.’

‘I’d like you to show me.’ I didn’t add that it was also regulation to do it that way. Would he really have let me go off alone?

We then went through a lengthy process of approving my pre-approved field trip. Unlike the days when it was just entered into a logbook, this was all computerised. Supposedly more efficient but it took forever, particularly because Rutger wasn’t with me, which the computer didn’t like any more than I did. Finally, we were cleared to go.

Travis led me to where he had a Hägglunds prepared with a tow-tray that was carrying a strapped-in skidoo. So, he’d just been testing me after all.

Today’s Hägglunds was painted with penguins and seals.

‘Your artist-in-residence was busy,’ I said.

For a moment Travis looked bemused. ‘Oh, him. Yeah, he painted fast. Bit of a lowlife. Drank like a fish. Then scampered off home quick as you please. Family emergency. I don’t think he was cut out for the cold. Or the lack of girls.’ Travis grinned. ‘That reminds me. Tonight’s a theme night. Come as your favourite fantasy. I can organise a costume if you like. We have a store.’

‘Sounds good,’ I said, thinking it actually sounded grotesque. I was used to fancy dress nights, which were another Antarctic tradition, but usually they were on weekends and good, wholesome, light-hearted fun. Down here if they were anything like last night I couldn’t look forward to it.

‘Häggie awaits. Hop in.’ Travis went around to the driver’s side.

In the front cabin there were pin-ups of bare-breasted women. I caught my breath. In the Australian bases there was no way they’d have anything like that, and I doubted the British Antarctic Survey would allow it either. In fact, I was certain. Alliance seemed to operate outside the established rules. Travis caught my expression, and quickly ripped them down.

‘Beautiful day for a motor,’ he said as he fired up the engine and we crawled into the street. Travis drove slowly until we were off the base, then roared the Hägglunds to life.

‘Don’t you love it?’ he cried as we raced along. ‘Best place on earth!’

I felt a familiar surge of happiness as we flew across the ice. We were heading towards the coast, bright green flags mapping out the safe drive zone. Red flags stood sentry over the dangerous thin ice. ‘Point out everything I need to know?’ I asked.

‘Will do,’ Travis replied cheerfully. ‘Would you like me to come in with you when we get there?’

‘I’d love you to. But I can’t . . . You know it’s an Exclusion Zone.’

‘Asked and answered.’ He winked. ‘But I’ll give you my cell phone number. If you’re worried, just call.’

‘So my phone will work at Placid Bay?’ I’d brought it in the hope it would. Around all Australian bases we had good reception these days, but the whaling station was a distance out from Alliance.

‘Well, not right there, it’s too far away. But as you’re driving back you’ll get into range.’

I was uneasy about being alone in a foreign place, particularly with the hostile reception I’d received. I had a shortwave radio with me, but I didn’t know who I’d connect with at base if I needed to use it.

As we roared along Travis dutifully pointed out the terrain, and I carefully observed. He told me he’d fitted the skidoo with an on-board computer that warned of danger areas. I was relieved I’d have that in addition to the flags pointing the way, but it also paid to hear as much as possible about the problem spots. On the ice, a thorough safety code was vital.

After thirty minutes, Fredelighavn rose before us.

The buildings were much larger at ground level, towering wooden structures in all the colours of the rainbow. ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘I hadn’t expected that.’

‘Different, hey? More colourful than you thought?’

‘It just didn’t look like that from the air.’

‘That’s because you were seeing the roofs and bits and pieces. Looks red from above, doesn’t it?’

He was right. It had looked uniformly red. Not the purples and pinks and blues that were unfolding on the horizon. In Antarctica buildings were always painted strong colours to help them be seen in whiteout blizzard conditions, but these colours, while still bright, were elegant.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said before I caught my words. How could this slaughter yard ever be beautiful? How could it be more than a graveyard, a terrible monument to an abusive past?

And yet the buildings kept revealing themselves as we approached. It was a picturesque village.

‘Whoo-eee,’ whooped Travis, and turned to me. ‘Knew you’d love it! Wait till you walk around inside.’

‘Have you been in?’ I asked, confused.

‘They don’t track us on weekends – time off, we do what we want. Best diving on the island. We could go some time?’

‘Certainly,’ I said, ‘if I wanted to break every rule in the book, which I don’t.’

‘Suit yourself,’ he shrugged, breaking eye contact.

It infuriated me Connaught had a culture of staff that thought nothing of ignoring protocol. I would be including
that
in my report.

‘Do others go with you on your weekends away?’ I asked casually.

‘Yeah, of course.’

‘Well, then, perhaps I will some time.’ I smiled. Finding who had been in the Exclusion Zone would now be a priority, and best if I did it from the inside.

Travis slapped my thigh. ‘Thought you’d come round.’

I flashed him another smile, then quickly grew serious. We were miles from base and I didn’t want him to think I was encouraging intimacy.

‘If you drop me off by the first house, that’ll be fine.’ We stopped by a bright purple house raised high, presumably on stilts that were buried in ice. It had a highly angled corrugated- iron roof tethered to the ground with thick steel straps. Icy snowdrifts swept up the steps to the porch, but the doorway was accessible.

I strapped on my backpack, inside which was food, a second jacket in case the weather turned, the shortwave radio, emergency flares and bottles of water. I flung a second bag over my shoulder, which held my phone, tablet, digital camera, a sophisticated GPS, a high-powered torch and a first-aid kit. Travis quickly manoeuvred the snowmobile onto the ice and hung a helmet with a full-face visor on its handlebar.

The buildings stretching around us reminded me of Burano, a colourful village on an island I’d visited when I went to Venice years ago. I’d been desperately trying to take my mind off the loss of Hamish and breaking up with Cameron, and the gorgeous buildings had surprised me, momentarily lifting my spirits. These houses of Fredelighavn were similar, luminous in rich plum, fragile pink, deep sienna, pale blue, indigo, orange, yellow, ochre. All were timber, with horizontal boards cladding the walls and corrugated-iron roofs rusted a uniform red. In some places I could see the wooden stilts raising the houses above the ice that was piled high around the streets; ice that blocked windows in places, the result of blizzards powering through over the years. But in recent times there had been warmer summer temperatures and ice-melt, and that, with the help of the engineers, had left the buildings remarkably visible. There were also mountain ranges to the north and south of the village, and across the island to the west, which had provided protection.

‘Sure you’ll be okay?’ asked Travis, leaning towards me protectively.

I nodded, quashing my apprehension at going in alone.

‘I’ll be seeing you, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll have that costume waiting for the party. Be back by eight, okay?’

‘If I’m not, come searching.’

‘Don’t worry, I will.’ Travis looked at me seriously. ‘Have a great day.’ He grinned and his face lit up. Good little brother, I thought, taking care of family.

I waved as the Hägglunds took off, its rubber treads flying across the ice. As the hum of the engine receded, I became aware of the deep silence surrounding me.

I took another look at the purple house with its extraordinarily steep roof. It had faded white wood in its two front colonial paned windows and around the porch that protected its front door. All its paint was peeling but had been preserved in the cold, dry air – enough to give an absolute impression of what it would have been like in its heyday. It was cute and Norwegian, a little piece of home. On the edge of the world.

I laughed and was alarmed at the echo of my voice. I listened for other sounds. In the distance, I could hear the distinct wall of noise of an Adélie penguin rookery. I breathed more easily, relieved to be near something familiar.

I put on my skis and set off in the direction of the sea. The village was deep and set back from the coast at this point. I couldn’t even see the water, but I could see the tall smoke stacks from the whale-processing cookeries on the shore. To my left, a distance away, huge oil tanks, about fifty in number – round, with pointed roofs of corrugated iron – rose up the slope of the mountains. I knew from my time at Grytviken that some would have held the whale-oil, and others fuel-oil. A network of underground pipes would connect the tanks to the cookeries, from where the processed whale-oil would be pumped up to the tanks, and then, when the ships came, pumped out to them for delivery to markets across the world.

In the reverse direction, the fuel-oil would be brought from Norway and pumped off the ships, to run the generators for electricity.

My skis swooshed on the ice. I looked back to the skidoo, sitting beside the purple house. It was my escape route back to base. I felt a moment’s queasiness at leaving it.

No one else is here, I kept telling myself, trying to block out the knowledge that Travis had come when he wasn’t meant to – and that he’d been with friends.

‘That was on a weekend,’ I mumbled aloud.

I focused on the task ahead and moved down a street with colourful houses on both sides, their tin roofs kept firmly in place by steel cables fixed to the ground; in a few places the ends of harpoons were visible – the wires must have been attached to the harpoon, and then the harpoon stuck through the ice, its barbed, pointy end digging in to the earth below. Silence evaporated: the houses were creaking and cracking in the cold. Some sounded like they were sighing, as if they were alive. I stopped, feeling like I was being watched. I looked around, but there was no one there. My breathing grew rapid, little clouds of heat puffing into the clear day.

I was beside a house painted pale lemon, with a hot pink porch and windows. I was eager to get to the penguins, but my survey included the houses. As a kid, I always ate my least favourite food first, saving delicacies like jamon for last. I hadn’t changed. I took off my skis and trod up the slope of ice that covered the stairs. I put my hand on the doorknob that was carved in the shape of a whale and shuddered at the thought of what had gone on at Fredelighavn.

The door made a high-pitched brittle sound like snapping bones as it swung open. I paused on the hearth and peered inside. Everything looked as solid as the engineers had reported. There was a short passage and a set of stairs leading up to another floor. I flicked on my torch. The timber floorboards sank as I walked; they were dry and fragile but intact. A pretty pink lightshade hung above me and the passage walls were painted in lime green. I drew in the air, an odd mixture of stale wood and fabric, and salty freshness from the sea.

The first room off the passage was the lounge. With all its furniture. I stepped back in surprise. When they’d left, they’d taken virtually nothing. I hadn’t been able to find the date the whaling station had closed, but looking at the design, it seemed that time had stopped here in the late 1950s or early 1960s. That would fit with other whaling stations like Grytviken, which had closed in 1963 when the slaughter had been so great that there were no whales left. But of course on South Safety, they would have had to end the slaughter by 1961, when the Antarctic Treaty came into force, because native wildlife became protected.