The Ice Lovers (28 page)

At night, and for the following month, Helen took diazepam to sleep and woke feeling sick. Her smell changed – for the first time in her life, she could smell herself. The scent was old, disused, the scent of a body which would not make love or be made love to in a very long time. She slept and sweated in sour sheets, which she did not bother to change.

With the Antarctic, this sinister requiem finally came to an end. Or so she had hoped.

When she finishes speaking, she finds David is staring at her openly. Spurred on by some reckless instinct, she tells him about going to see the crystal river woman. She knows he is likely to mock her. But then she is not sure she has ever had his respect, so perhaps there is not much to lose.

He listens without interrupting. When he finally speaks, his voice has changed. The challenge so often nailed across it has been removed and a new note, barren and raw, rings through.

‘Do you really believe that we can know the future?'

‘Some things you can know, yes. Other things have not yet been decided.'

‘Decided by whom?'

‘I think it's by what,' she says. ‘Not who.'

‘By what, then?'

‘I don't know. That's the mystery.'

David sits back in his chair ‘I'm less interested in the future than a lot of people.'

‘I'm not sure I think much of it myself.'

She means, she doesn't like the lack of clarity in her – in anyone's – relationship with the future. With the past she has an intimate bond. There was a time when the ice sheets were intact, when Greenlandic hunters had enough to eat, when caribou did not starve. In her own lifetime, she can remember this: that there was a moment, finite, identifiable, when everything was in perfect balance. And now this moment is gone, never to return.

David frowns. ‘I'm not sure I'm as interested in the future as most people are. Or not in telling it; and anyway, I don't think that's possible.'

He shakes his head. ‘The way I see it, the only real threat to our existence is ourselves, and other people. I don't think there's anything else…out there.'

‘I know. I can't prove that things are this way.'

‘Yes, all you have is an unproveable hypothesis. But worse, you're using this story as a kind of proof, in order to confirm your darkest suspicions about life.'

Helen stares at him. She has never encountered someone so sceptical of her existence, her motives, her very soul, so prepared to deflate and question and consign her to the wounded category where all unviable things live. She has the impression that David views her, her beliefs, suspicions, fears, as only a particularly vexing logistical problem.

‘You want to go back and change what happened,' he says.

‘Isn't there anything you've wanted to go back and change?'

He does not answer immediately. His expression has become cloudy and dense. She expects him to get up, to scrape out his chair and leave, as he did before. But he doesn't.

‘Did you know about what happened at Berkner Island?' she asks.

‘You mean the accident, on the way back?'

‘No. I mean what happened between Nara and the pilot.'

‘No. Why didn't you ask him?'

‘I know already, I know from what she wrote.'

‘So you are on her side, then?'

‘I don't take sides,' she says, firmly.

‘But doesn't this happen with writers, that you take on the life of your subject?'

‘Not usually. If you take someone's part you lose any objectivity you might have. But I'm here, aren't I? I'm in the same space, I use the same office she used, I read her diary, I'm stuck here for the winter.' She pauses. ‘I think sometimes, existences can overlap.'

‘Is that what your crystal river woman said?'

‘No. Yes. She said sometimes we are unaware that we are sent on missions in this life, on behalf of other people, to right certain wrongs, to bring things full circle.'

‘Were you glad, when he died?'

She stares at him. She wonders if she has heard David correctly. ‘Who?'

‘Your husband.'

‘Why would I be glad?'

‘He'd betrayed you. Did you think he'd gotten what he deserved?'

Her answer came to Helen from somewhere else, as if it were being dictated to her. She says, ‘People who live through a time of death are not the same as other people.' She means, living through a time of death taught her that retaliation was not her right. In the end, life takes its own revenge.

PART VII
Vanishing Point

1

Mean temperature 38°Fahrenheit or 3°Celsius. Wind 25 knots, gusting to 30/35 Northeast, Dew Point 4°C.

It was raining, of course. What did it do in the Falklands but rain? It drove against them as they walked down Ross Road, past the West Store, the Capstan Gift Shop, the Upland Goose Hotel.

Takeoff would be worst; they would be lucky to get 2k vis on liftoff, but once above the cloud mantle this would stretch to 6k. Luke studied the forecasts just in from the military base, deciphering their numbers and codes. In another ten minutes they would radio base and see what Horace was saying. Trust a computer model to get it right, and the forecasters be wrong. It had happened before.

Nautical Twilight 6:12 AM FKT and 5:48 PM FKT. Astronomical Twilight 5:32 AM FKT and 6:28 PM FKT. Length Of Visible Light: 10h 15m. Once in the Antarctic, the visible light would be about half that, he calculated: a five-hour window of dusky semi-darkness.

Clouds were the thing to worry about; high cloud and the icing would affect the propellers; low cloud and they might have to land on visuals in dusk without a runway beacon. You couldn't win. Overnight, they would refuel, then start back the following day.

Luke looked again at the report: high cloud at 8858 feet. Weather charts, little flags of wind speed and direction harried, clumping, showed a forecast of a 70-knot tailwind the following day. ‘With that kind of wind in your tail you hardly need fuel,' he said. Chris looked ruefully at the charts. He knew Chris would prefer to go in and come out on the same day. If they risked staying overnight they might be there for days, possibly weeks, if the weather closed in.

Years ago they would not have even contemplated flying in the four-prop plane at this time of year. Then the only way in would have been with the Otters, which were built for polar environments and could take almost anything the weather threw at them. But now it was warm enough that severe icing was, while still a possibility, a remote one. Now the runway could be cleared for a wheeled rather than a skifit aircraft, although it took an effort to shift the snow from its kilometre-long stretch. Down on base they had begun clearing it two days previously with the snowblowers, working in two shifts, day and night.

It had taken five days to fly the aircraft back down from Canada to the Falklands, leapfrogging from Houston to Merida to Curaçao to Manaus; then a giant leap of faith which pushed the aircraft to the limit of its range to Rio de Janeiro, then, after the first good night's sleep in a week, to Florianopolis, Montevideo, Stanley. He had been hiking in the woods with two of his children when his phone vibrated. On its screen a Cambridge number appeared. His summer holiday had ended, there and then.

He had never done a winter medevac before, in all his years flying. Very few people had ever done it; all they could do was try. He and Chris had calculated the Point of No Return, with Marsh as their divert. If Marsh was fogged in they could get to Punta Arenas, provided they turned back in time. Past their PNR, if the weather closed in, either they lost visibility on the ground or they encountered icing in low cloud, they would have to get to base, no matter what.

‘Ok,' Chris said, ‘we're going in.'

A shiver ruffled up and down Luke's spine. There was nothing he liked more than a challenge.

They donned the survival gear which had hardly changed in one hundred years, layer by layer: silk underwear, moleskins, fleece, padded boiler suit, parkas, boots. Once they were airborne they would peel these off, one by one, unless they had to climb above the aircraft's official ceiling, where the air would be cool and thin. Luke had done this many times before – gone high to save on power and fuel; in this way he increased his range. Even in the Otters he never suffered from altitude sickness. It was officially forbidden; if they went above altitude neither he nor Chris would log it in the flight book.

They went through the takeoff checklist: Number 1 engine, then number 2, 3, and 4. Fuel pumps, auxiliary fuel pumps. Chris was captain, but Luke would do the flying. He recited the flight plan: once airborne, steady climb to 5,000 feet, reduce power, set autopilot course for the Drake Passage, shortest transect possible. Once they reach 12,000 feet, radio Marsh. How, and where, and at what altitude they would turn the aircraft around and head back. Normally these rehearsals of plans B and C were routine and speculative, but on this day they might actually have to use them.

Then the landing: arriving in darkness was, while a possibility, something to be avoided. He and Chris knew the descent to base better than anyone, they had the most hours racked up on the aircraft. If anyone could bring it down safely in poor vis, in weather, in wind or snow, they could.

In the back of the plane sat the mechanic and the medevac doctor, strapped into passenger seats shoved hastily amongst the cargo. The medevac was also a chance to get essentials onto base – ten boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables, and eight drums of Avtur to be deployed on the Pine Island glacier the following year.

The doctor, an improbably young woman flown down from Cambridge on short notice, looked pale. She had seemed fine until she saw she would be sitting on top of aviation fuel. Luke was about to tell her, The wings are full of fuel anyway. Even without the drums, we're a flying bomb but at the last moment he opted for gentlemanliness, and assured her it would all be fine. The mechanic did not look particularly confident, either. He more than anyone knew what they were up against. If anything went wrong with the aircraft he would be on his own, with the prospect of being stuck for months if he could not fix the problem.

The first moments of a flight into or out of the Antarctic were the hardest. Luke knew from experience how difficult the transition could be; sometimes he had had to pit himself against it mentally. For years, flying into the Antarctic had meant saying goodbye to the people he loved for months at a time, and it had acquired a heavy air of regret, of absence, of resolve to find a job that would keep him closer to home.

After takeoff he felt immediately how different it was to flying in summer. Night lapped at their edges from all directions, like a dark tide. Below, the sea foamed with whitecaps. ‘It's a wild old day down there,' he said and Chris nodded in agreement. The most stable ship would struggle in these seas. These waves were borne by a relentless dynamic, unbroken in their journey from Australia through the southern Pacific, driven by the most powerful winds on earth through the botteneck of the Drake Passage, their loping kinetic force squeezed and torqued until they rose up and folded back on their own power, yearning for something to smash apart.

The moment Nara awoke in the surgery, she knew she had been sedated. A chemical burn lingered in her mouth, and there was a fogginess in her thoughts which refused to disperse.

She looked up into a wall of boxes of medicines, stacked in a perspex cabinet. Many of the boxes were empty; these belonged to the coveted drugs – antidepressants, the painkillers, the codeine and morphine, which were kept under lock and key.

She walked, uncertainly at first, then with more confidence, through the cafeteria, the bar, the hallways, prepared to meet eyes which refused to focus upon her. But base was empty. She went to the comms tower. There she found Alistair, the comms manager. Before he could look away she asked, ‘Where is everyone?'

‘Skiing.' His pursed lips. Evaded eyes. Yes, this was how it would be for some time, for months to come.

That night she did not eat dinner with the others. At midnight she crept into the kitchen and made herself some soup. At breakfast, she did the same – waited until everyone had eaten, then slunk into the cafeteria to make her own.

Alexander was tagged in on the tagging board. The doctor walked by; her eyes swivelled away.

She was seized by a feeling that something was wrong. It grew from the pit of her stomach, rose through her heart, then finally reached her brain.

‘What day is it?'

‘Thursday.' The doctor's voice said: Does it matter?

No path existed around the Point now, only snow-covered boulders and a hazy fissure of snow and ice where the fragile shore ice began.

Underneath her feet the snow squeaked. This meant it was minus fifteen, or colder.

There was no moon to guide her, only a pale glow on the horizon. The days were lengthening rapidly, now that Midwinter was past. Three hours of perpetual dusk had become, within only four days, an hour of visible light in the sky. Still the light was sealed off, as if contained on one side of a vast glass wall. Nacreous clouds glimmered in the sky. At times she stumbled. She stopped, stood still, listening to the lordly, unaccommodating silence. It thudded through her. After a minute she realised it was her own heart, beating.

The moment is one of balance. Of poise between safety, between a humdrum ice observation mission, back to base for a cup of coffee, back to his computer screen, and disaster.

Some part of him chooses disaster.

Alexander did not want to slip, he did not want to lean into gravity, but his body chose this for him. A mind not entirely in control, an instinct, a spiral. Before coming South he had had it – they all had – drummed into him that in the Antarctic, accidents never have one causal factor. For things to go wrong, one mistake had to lead to another, then another, until the situation becomes desperate.