The Nature of Ice (32 page)

I should add a proviso that the vitamin A theory as the cause of Mertz's death has been challenged, with reasonable cause, in recent years. One peer-reviewed article in the MJA calls for a re-evaluation and proposes severe food deprivation as the outstanding contributor. It also suggests that Mertz was affected emotionally after Ninnis's death, and suffered from cold after losing his burberry trousers and helmet to the crevasse. In my view, this last factor plays a big part in the equation. You can appreciate what a dramatic difference the wind in Antarctica makes. Mertz's ability to maintain his core temperature would have been seriously compromised, particularly with an insufficient diet. Mertz was an elite athlete in terms of cross-country skiing and he was an experienced mountain climber, but that didn't necessarily equip him for a 500-km march through snow. Mawson, on the other hand, had proven his abilities on a record 2000-km man-hauling trek during Shackleton's 1907–09 expedition.

Some say Mertz died from exhaustion, that Mawson survived because he simply refused to die. Incidentally, Mawson set out on his trek weighing 95 kilograms and returned to Commonwealth Bay, thirteen weeks later, weighing 51.

Robert Scott's men (1910–13 South Pole Expedition) were likely vitamin C deficient before they even began their race to the pole. During the winter leading up to the trek, in addition to poor food choices, they all smoked like geysers. I remember a radio interview that said Scott's provisions included 35,000 cigars!! (Makes the Davis Station chocolate rations look paltry.)

There's a suggestion that this lack of vitamin C, and also of B-group vitamins and total kilojoules, exacerbated by smoking, contributed to the failure of Scott's group on their return trek from the pole—they died in their tent on the plateau just 11 miles from One Ton Depot.

How does this relate to your question? Mawson also took tobacco and cigarettes to Commonwealth Bay and rationed them out weekly to the men, but he himself was a non-smoker (albeit a passive one with a hutful puffing away). If Mertz smoked—and I believe he did—then a deficiency in vitamin C, on top of a long winter of inactivity, may well have contributed to his demise out on the ice.

In any case, there's more to survival than physical ability. Some people derive extraordinary strength from their belief in a higher power. Then there are the stories you read of Holocaust survivors and prisoners of war, how those who had someone to come home to—a reason to keep living—withstood astounding privation while others around them perished. Mawson was a determined leader, an ardent scientist. I'd hazard a guess that on both counts he was a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps his will, sheer bloody-mindedness, call it what you will, helped get him through.

Best wishes for your exhibition—Ev

Freya prints out the email to file with her list of things to follow up. Already her imagination is off on a tangent—she will travel to Commonwealth Bay, photograph winter quarters, even start on a larger study of Scott, Shackleton, all the polar explorers from the Heroic Age, and their huts, from Commonwealth Bay south to Cape Royds. She couldn't possibly do the field work on her own.

In the second email, Astrid, ever the big sister, writes to confirm Freya's arrival time in Perth.

>> Prepare yourself. Mama's organising an Antarctic slide presentation and you're the guest speaker. It started out as a book club gathering, now she's talking about hiring the Kalamunda Hall.

Sigh
.

Freya's niece, Sophie, has her own news to add.

>> We have a dog! Maximillius (Max to his friends) is an adorable beagle with velvet-soft ears. Some low-life abandoned him at Dad's work. Bestemor says he's as good as her ducted vacuum system because he hoovers up every crumb in sight. Max is waiting to meet and greet you. xxxxoooxxxx

>> Astrid again. It's been 40-plus for three days straight (one guess who's been left to walk the hound). I thought we might all have an early barbecue at our place the first evening, if you're not too tired. I've left several messages with Marcus but he hasn't phoned back.

Freya feels a flutter of homesickness and pictures herself with Astrid and Sophie, the three of them floating in the pool. Sophie would be doing her utmost to entice her grandmother in but Mama would be shaking her head, waving her hands, shooing her granddaughter away—
the weather's too hot
;
the
water's too cold
.

Freya scrolls to her last email, from Kittie.

>> Greetings Freya,

How's life on the AA? Here at Davis, we've had our first official blizz—winter's on the way.

The following may be second-hand news by now. If not, I'm truly sorry to be the bearer of crap tidings but you need to know what's been happening around here.

The night before last, Adam Singer called your home in Perth and spoke to your husband. Adam gave some bogus name, claiming he was a friend of yours down here. He apparently talked to your Marcus for ages, chitchatting about the season and Antarctica, buttering him up as only Adam knows how. He eventually went for the jugular, asking was there anything he could do to help because your affair—Adam's words, not mine—with Chad McGonigal had become public knowledge around the station and you'd left on the ship in a very distressed state.

I know, unbelievable.

BTW, the above came from Dr Ev who heard it from our esteemed station leader. Adam didn't count on the fact that your husband would phone Family Support at AntDiv. They were brilliant. The Division sprang into action and traced the call back to Chad's phone PIN, which was a crock because Chad's over at Mawson Station and apparently working out at the field huts. It was like a courtroom here last night, seventeen of us assembled in the dining room presenting our alibis to Malcolm. After the conversation you and I had had about Adam it was obvious who the culprit was and I was all set to have a quiet word in Malcolm's ear. As it turned out Ev beat me to it. She'd gone over to the Green Shed the night in question to organise the chocolate rations and saw Adam going into your studio, which at the time she thought was odd. Then during last night's ‘interrogation' Adam dug his own grave by claiming he was out on a walk to Lake Dingle at the time, saying, when Malcolm quizzed him, that he must have forgotten to turn over his tag. The next thing we knew, Adam was hauled into Malcolm's office and read the riot act. Methinks Adam's working days for AntDiv are numbered. Charlie always said he was the one bad egg in the basket.

I'm sorry, Freya. I figured you'd rather hear this now than face things cold when you get home. Calm seas—xx Kittie

PS Keep in touch. I'm an email away.

Freya sits benumbed, oblivious to the bustle around her, staring past the monitor, through the porthole that reveals a surge of ocean each time the ship rolls. She pictures Marcus answering the phone, responding to the friendly tone in the stranger's voice. She shudders at the stealth of Adam's attack—words honed razor sharp to cut a husband's faith in two. She gauges, by her own anaesthetised shock, the hurt Marcus would have felt as he'd sat alone through the night, reflecting, filling in the blanks from her dwindling emails, replaying her evasive answers to his questions, systematically putting things in place until he pieced together a core of truth from Adam's words.

She rereads Kittie's email and feels a sorrowful kind of pride in her husband for summoning the courage to phone the Division. She pictures them talking over the ugly allegations.

The ship rides up at an angle and runs along the swell. Freya grips the table edge and waits until it levels out. Perhaps strangest, at odds with this wave of protectiveness she feels towards her husband, is the easing of the burden of a lie now that Marcus knows. This is not as she has planned to tell him, yet she feels she has been dragged out from under a tonnage of deceit.

Charlie appears at her side. ‘Got a minute?' He directs her along the hallway to the empty dining room. ‘Quieter in here.' He sits down beside her and slips his reading glasses into the case clipped to his pocket. ‘I've had an email from the radio officer at Mawson Station. Scally's an old mate. He told me something on the quiet—it concerns a friend of yours and I think you ought to know.'

She raises an eyebrow at how quickly gossip spreads in Antarctica. ‘You're ten minutes too late, Charlie. I already heard from Kittie.'

‘Kittie?'

She reminds herself Charlie is only being kind. ‘Kittie told me what's been happening. Adam Singer; the phone call.'

Light from the porthole filters through his faded eyes. When he shakes his head Charlie seems older than his years. ‘Love, this has nothing to do with Adam. There was a prang over at Mawson Station. Up on the plateau.' His eyes comb her face. ‘Chad McGonigal and his bike went into a crevasse.'

THE TALK ON THE SHIP is of
Aurora
turning around, a dash to Mawson Station to bring Chad home. No, the captain shakes his head. The scheduled vessel,
Polar Bird
, is only eighty nautical miles away from the station. Already her ship's doctor has flown in by helicopter to assist the doctor at the base.

An official release from the Division is pinned to the dining room's notice board.
Fell fifteen metres into the crevasse
. . .
evacuated to the station . . . acute injuries . . . emergency
surgery.
Freya closes her eyes to see an image of two doctors heading a surgical team comprising plumbers, chippies, sparkies, diesos.

Over the next days news trickles in from Kittie. But the most detailed accounts originate from Scally, Charlie's radio mate at Mawson Station. The list of injuries alone is more than she can stand to hear.
Compression fracture of the lumbar spine
vertebrae, fractured pelvis, broken ribs, abdominal tearing,
internal bleeding
, and on it goes.

She paces the decks, climbs to the bridge, is unable to settle and returns outside to start all over again. The wandering albatross still follows in their wake.

THE INMARSAT SYSTEM IS DOWN and no emails reach the ship. Freya's mind races with panicked speculations. She overhears the two women who work in the galley. The fair-haired woman stacks plates onto the racks.
Spinal injury is what he told me.

The Portsmouth woman sighs.
Words to chill a mother's
heart, dear.

Aurora
's doctor registers the tremor in Freya's voice and sits down beside her.

‘Of course any spinal injury is serious,' he says gently, ‘but it doesn't automatically mean damage to the spinal cord. From what we know, your friend has a stable fracture that can likely be treated with a brace and physiotherapy. The concern, as I see it, is the extent of the mesenteric tearing, any other abdominal injuries, and whether they can stabilise him and stop the bleeding.' He pats Freya's arm. ‘We have to hope, send him our prayers.'

‘A BLIZZARD,' CHARLIE TELLS HER. ‘
Polar Bird
has boarded the summerers going home and headed out from the coast to ride it out.'

‘How long will the ship wait for him?' Freya asks the captain.

‘Depends on weather and ice. Her captain will have the final say.
Polar Bird
's been out half the season doing oceanographic surveys. She must be low on juice.'

Freya returns each evening to the bridge, guided through the darkness by the scarlet glow of instruments. She stands at the corner window where she can see both forward and aft. The captain joins her and points astern. ‘See there, low in the sky, this side of the Southern Cross? Barely a whisper, but it's there.' Freya has to concentrate, search until her eyes accommodate the night, until she too can see the faint auroral glow.

She climbs the outside steps to the flying bridge. She leans against the railing, the midnight sky a swathe of stars. Within the hour, others join her to watch the sky stretch into life.

The aurora begins as nebulous bands of mist and brightens to vertical folds coloured emerald green through to aquamarine. For a time the lights hang motionless, as a drape, the intensity greatest along the lower edge where it glows lucent and iridescent, more vivid than the stars. Filaments of quartz pink rise from the upper folds into streamers that fray at the ends before fading to darkness above. The sky begins to pulse. All who watch are stilled to reverent silence, following the celestial array as it waxes and wanes in its dance across the heavens.

To be certain of her bearings Freya locates the Southern Cross and its pointers. She conjures all she has to give, collecting everything inside her that can mend and heal and soothe and sends it as a prayer, deep into the aurora and across the southern sky.

‘THAT'S NOT THE BIGGEST ISSUE anymore.' Charlie holds court before the early risers. ‘They're saying Chad's stable enough to be moved if they can only get the ship back in.' Gesturing to Freya to pull up a chair, he bites off a corner of Vegemite toast and continues. ‘The
Polar Bird
went out to sea to escape the worst of the weather. The current problem is she's been trying to get back into Mawson for three days—she's stuck in heavy pack-ice sixty k's out. Scally says they've had both engines chewing through juice like there's no tomorrow—she doesn't have the grunt of the
Aurora
. They've had one hell of a battle getting in that far. The ice is causing them no end of grief and now with this new blow, there's the risk the ice will hem them in.'

‘Causing
them
grief,' says one of the field assistants loading his spoon with rice bubbles. ‘What about our guy half dead waiting for an ambulance ride home? Why can't they send the choppers in to pick him up?'

Charlie scoffs. ‘Mate, it's blowing eighty knots off the plateau. The katabatics haven't let up for days.'

‘It's simple triage,' puts in Ian. Even Charlie leans in to hear the physicist's softly spoken words. ‘The ship is in a vulnerable position and low on fuel, thirty other expeditioners need to get home, and some level of confidence—or resignation—has been reached that the chappie with the injuries should be left to take his chances.'