The Nature of Ice (8 page)

Freya remembers that the music on the MP3 player is slushy's choice only when an opportunist takes advantage of her oversight and puts on Metallica. Loud.

‘On ya, Freya!' Tommo, the big chef, springs into life, drumming his meat knife on the stainless steel counter.

‘Turn it down, please!' Dr Ev calls from the furthest table.

‘Hear, hear.' Malcolm theatrically pokes his fingers in his ears.

Chad McGonigal slouches in the corner, swirling syrup across his high-rise of pancakes.

Sandy pleads, ‘Freya, I know we're one slushy down. I'm onto it, but for now, try and get those pots washed. Soon as you can.'

‘I told her already,' Tommo growls, throwing his frisbee of a meat tray onto the bench. Blood splatters the wall tiles. ‘She's slow.'

The two chefs are as glum as a pair of sad clowns. Sandy, the new summer chef who travelled south with Freya, looks exhausted as he pours filling into fluted shells of pastry, his forearms powdered with flour. Tommo, who wintered over, rocks to the rhythm as he trims fat from a weeping shoulder of pork. He throws the discards none too carefully into a bin.

Charlie, Freya's saviour, rounds the corner with a carton of milk powder balanced on his shoulder. ‘This should hold back the herd. You mix up a fresh lot. I'll get a head start on the washing up and we'll round them off at the pass.'

‘I'll do it, Charlie. You've been working since six this morning. Sit down and have your break.'

Charlie ignores her, pushing through the mess to the sink and rolling up his tartan sleeves. Two field assistants scuttle up from a table and run a stack of plates and cutlery through the glass washer, then launch into a tea-towel flicking match.

‘You galahs got nothing better to do with your time?' Malcolm ushers them over to the drinks fridge. ‘Merv, you unpack the juice and Wattsie, let's you and I get these boxes stacked away.'

Dr Ev pulls an overflowing laundry basket from under the bench. ‘Freya, I'll run the tea-towels upstairs, get them started for you.'

Freya does battle with an overfilled garbage bag that splits as she pulls it free of the bin. She seizes the bag in her arms, her futile grip all that stops it rupturing further, while the innards of the bag leak onto her jeans and across the floor.

Chad McGonigal appears before her and shakes out a new bag, easing it over the old.

‘Thanks,' she says.

‘When do you want to start?' he asks by way of hello. ‘Malcolm's given me the list of places you want to photograph.'

‘I can be ready as soon as you say.'

Chad winds a length of colour-coded tape around the neck of the bag: green for wet burnables. ‘It's not my project,' he says. ‘I'm just along for the ride.'

‘Look,' she says, frustrated at his surliness, ‘I'm sorry if you feel put out. I didn't ask for your help. If I had my way—' Freya stops herself. ‘I mean that I'm used to working on my own.'

‘The way it looked from the cab of the D8, you're lucky to be working at all.'

Freya flushes at the reference and Chad looks contrite.

‘Why don't I talk to Malcolm?' she says. ‘See if he can find someone else? I don't want to waste your time—or my own. You have the option of coming down here whenever you choose. I only have one chance at this.'

Tommo squeals, throws down his carving knife and holds up a finger plump as a frankfurter, the tip burst and bloodied. ‘Faaark!'

Sandy sighs. ‘Call the Doc, someone. Anyone.' He looks out at the empty dining room. ‘Never mind, I'll do it myself.'

Chad raises his hand. ‘I've got it, Sandy.' He turns to Freya. ‘I'll help if I'm wanted. Your call.' And off he marches towards the phone.

FREYA SPENDS HER AFTERNOON break in the lounge, still draped in her apron, shoes kicked off. She pulls a book from the library shelf—
Mawson's Antarctic Diaries
—kicks off her shoes and spreads out across two easy chairs.

Marcus says she owes her presence here not just to Frank Hurley but to Douglas Mawson and John King Davis, Antarctic pioneers after whom two of Australia's continental stations were named. A portrait of a gaunt-looking Davis hangs framed in the station foyer, a young face prematurely aged by dourness.
1884–1967. Master of the
Aurora
1911–14. Second in Command
of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.

Freya yawns as she leafs through Mawson's diary, her eyes heavy as she scans photos and hut notices:
Members of the Staff
will be appointed in succession to the special posts of cook, messman
and nightwatchman. Duties commence at 7 a.m. and continue
until the washing and cleaning are completed in the evening—

‘Douglas Mawson.' The station leader's voice jolts her back to full consciousness. Malcolm stands in the light, casting his shadow across the open pages. ‘A fellow we can all look up to. Thankfully no curried seal or penguin fricassee on our menu, but each man took his turn helping in the kitchen, just as we do today. Wouldn't we all give our eyeteeth to be on an expedition like that?'

Freya offers a feeble smile. ‘I doubt he invited too many women along.'

‘True,' Malcolm slides the chairs into an orderly circle, ‘though Mawson was an egalitarian. No class distinctions on his expedition. They were all expected to put their shoulders to the wheel.' Malcolm scoops up the magazines scattered on the coffee table. He is, Freya decides, a touch too industrious for his own good.

‘Sorted out your itinerary with Mr McGonigal?' he says.

Freya hesitates. ‘Adam Singer mentioned that he'd love the chance to help. Perhaps he and I—'

‘It's Singer's first time at Davis. Chad's been coming to Antarctica since the sledging days. He knows the Vestfolds like the back of his hand. He has a great deal of knowledge to impart, once you chisel your way through that outer shell.'

‘He doesn't appear very keen,' Freya says in desperation.

‘McGonigal? All bluff and bluster. He'd set up camp out on the ice if he had his way.'

‘Really?' she says, unconvinced.

‘There are some ripsnorting tales from the Heroic Era,' he says, dismissing further comment on the topic of Chad. ‘Always been a big fan of Mawson and Davis, outstanding achievers the pair of them. They made a good team, at least in the early years. Not always an easy alliance—one man driven by a passion for science, the other responsible for the safety of his ship and crew.' Malcolm pauses. ‘Not unlike the daily trials of a station leader.'

He returns the magazines to the cupboard and sorts them into evenly sized stacks.

‘Hours of riveting reading up there.' He gestures to the bookshelves. ‘If you want to get down to the nitty-gritty, you can't do better than Mawson's journal. Davis's is floating somewhere round the traps.' Malcolm sidles between the chairs and plucks a lilac-coloured volume from the bookcase, handing it to Freya as though it were a required text. ‘Blockbusters, the pair of'em.'

‘Great. Thanks.'

He returns to the magazine cupboard and snaps the doors shut. ‘Better than wasting your time on this mind-numbing rot.'

Everything shipshape and stowed away, Malcolm evaporates from the lounge as suddenly as he materialised. He leaves Freya feeling she should sit up straight, improve her posture, find better things to do than slouch about in socks.
Blockbusters.
She wouldn't put it past him to follow up with study questions.

FOLLOWING DINNER, A GROUP DRIFTS in from the dining room to gather around the bar. A clack of pool balls reverberates through the lounge, lights flood the dartboard, Meteorology vs Whitecoats chalked up on the blackboard. Chad McGonigal keeps to the sidelines, rinsing empty beer bottles for recycling. The help-yourself fridge is filled to the gills with homebrew—Adélie Ale, Davis Draught, Blizz Bitter and more. Bottling nights are a production assembly line rarely short of volunteers.

According to Fling, wintering sparkie and brewmaster extraordinaire, the reputation of Davis beer has gained international renown, confirmed by a tourist icebreaker that called in last summer. ‘'Twas only a matter of time,' he declares to those gathered at the bar. Chad listens to Fling ease from his usual Scottish brogue into his best Texan drawl, mimicking the couple that had declined tea and coffee. ‘Howzabout a li'lla' that holm-broo y'awl got stashed away.' Always good for a yarn, is Fling.

‘Wouldn't you know,' the brewmaster continues, reverting to his Glaswegian lilt, ‘before Chad could summon up a fresh tray of glasses, we had a score of Americans, six German neurologists, and a family of Italians sporting designer jackets with sealskin trims forming a queue from the bar, out through the lounge and clogging up the entry to the cold porch. Even the two wee bairns waited in line. Chad, is that not God's truth?'

Chad nods. Fling empties his glass. ‘Poor old Chad's morning tour of the station was reduced to a smattering of teetotallers.'

‘The fewer the better,' Chad says, though his words are drowned out by laughter.

Charlie makes a space for the new arrival. ‘Here she is, the little battler. Survived your day as super slushy, Freya?'

‘Barely. Thanks for helping out this morning.'

‘Chad,' Charlie calls. ‘Get the girl a drink before she drops in her tracks.'

But Freya doesn't need his help; she stands at the fridge scanning the homebrew before holding up a bottle marked Ginger Beer.

‘Kicks like a mule,' Fling boasts.

The recycled bottle still wears the remnants of a Japanese beer label. Chad watches Freya carrying the bottle at arm's length in case the fermented brew, like a dodgy firework, explodes unannounced.

He studies her as she uncaps the bottle and pours herself a drink, the sight of the foaming liquid washing his thoughts back to his own homebrewing days.

He remembers the pinch of sunburned skin pink with calamine lotion on a night too hot for a ten-year-old to sleep indoors. Lying in a canvas swag his father had rigged between two trees, he could spy Orion through the mosquito mesh. If he concentrated hard he could add up each star that winked—his count roundly broken by an almighty blast from the boatshed. At the second explosion he sat up, resigned to a third. His latest batch of ginger beer had blown its caps.

He could hear the old man up on the verandah,
Thar she
blows, Sal
.

Ma's belly laugh could fill all five rooms of the shack, roly-poly down the hill to the beach and still have enough in reserve to make the seagulls on the point stand to attention.

After breakfast Chad and Ma would be faced with the aftermath, their rubber thongs squelching on the sticky cement.
Don't go near the broken glass, love.
Ma would wear a stoic grimace as she gallantly carried the survivors from the shed and stacked them
out of harm's way
beneath the tank stand, arguing that as she came protected by an inbuilt layer of cushioning, she was best equipped to transport any live ammunition.

Even then, Chad understood his family summers were special, better by a mile than his schoolmates' back in town. Sacrosanct these things that are numbered, he thinks now, summers with all three of them together the
grab-'em-while-they-
last
kind.

‘Earth to McGonigal!' Simon stands at the whiteboard with his marker pen poised. ‘You putting on a flick tonight?'

‘Ask Freya. Slushy's choice.'

‘
Amelie
,' Freya announces.

‘New one on me,' spouts Fling, who hasn't watched a film since Chad's known him.

‘Chick flick,' two of the dart players cry out in unison.

At the end of the bar, Kittie jumps up in support of Freya. ‘
Amelie
is a wonderful movie. European films are so much more creative and uplifting than the formulaic crap Hollywood spits out.'

‘Chick flick with subtitles,' the met boys shout.

‘I've seen it. It's good,' Chad offers, though no one but Freya acknowledges him with a smile.

Simon adds a line beneath the film title:
Slushy's choice.
Uplifting and creative
.

‘What are you trying to do?' Charlie says. ‘Drive'em away in their droves?'

Chad leaves the banter, intending to secure a good seat at the end of an aisle.

Freya trails him to the theatre door. ‘I was wondering if you'd have any time this week. To come out.'

Chad shrugs. Freya Jorgensen has some ground to make up before she can start asking any favours of him.

‘I was thinking we could head out to one of the islands. If that sounds alright.' She begins to squirm, starts to walk away.

It feels a niggardly kind of win. ‘Sounds okay.'

A release of breath. ‘First day of good weather?'

Chad gestures to Kittie. ‘Have your mate put in an order.'

CHAD LINGERS IN THE THEATRE while the closing credits of
Amelie
roll up the screen. His seventh winter on the ice was the year the film was made. How many more winters would he put his hand up for, he who had always planned to see the world? He switches off the player and slips the DVD back onto the shelf. He runs his palm across the leather satchels that line the theatre walls. He likes the texture of the cases that house the old sixteen-millimetre movie reels; faded delivery stickers—railway express, films urgent—speak of their commercial days. Chad savours the smell of age trapped in the leather, the sense of preservation in the straps and buckles that hold the cans in place. Film was on its way out when he began his time down here. The collection would be gone altogether, shipped back to Australia lock, stock and two smoking barrels, if not for a few sentimental stalwarts like himself who refuse to surrender to change.

This past winter, he'd screened a golden oldie twice a week. He'd fed each reel through the jaws of a fickle reconditioned beast that would, given half a chance, chew up every splice and spit out rags of film. He'd arrived at the theatre ahead of time to fill baskets with Roses chocolates and chips—it was as close as he could imagine to hosting his own party.