The Surfacing (25 page)

Tomorrow she would take off the simple face she'd painted for tonight's performance.
She would lean into the mirror, begin to rub. The sharper lips and eyes, the darker
skin. It would come off in greasy, shit-coloured streaks. The rubbing would go on
patiently, pitilessly, until she was done.

In the end Morgan took her by the elbow and led her out the door. He watched her
moving down the dark corridor. She was swaying from side to side, bumping into the
walls, as though they were riding a heavy swell. Under her costume, the hips swung
back and forth. Watching that, he could not understand why he'd sent her away.

Back in Myer's cabin, he was tempted to shove Myer up against the wall and just lie
down by his side. The previous night again he'd barely slept for the pains in his
legs, and by now he felt aged and sickened by fatigue. He poured himself a nice-sized
brandy and put it inside him. He poured another. He looked at her letter. He'd let
her finish her speech without interruption. Now he tore the thing into little pieces.
He flipped open the lid of the stove with his fingertips – his fingernails almost
– a little knack he had, to avoid getting burned.

4th December

The door to Myer's cabin was warped again, and he had to pull on it with all his
weight. Bursting open, it felt like a dramatic entrance, a decisive act. Inside,
DeHaven was sitting on the hard chair, facing the bed. Morgan put his shoulder to
the door and rammed it shut.

How long before we're obliged to say something to the men? he said.

You know, DeHaven said, while we were away Brooks was laid up five days with the
flux, and it was MacDonald running the show. When Brooks finally surfaced he says
no one had missed him.

Morgan could well believe it, even on so small a ship. Since their return, he mostly
kept to the officers' cabin, and in the cabin kept mostly to his bed. He wanted to
see no one. He wanted to crawl into a dark corner, to pick at his scabs, root around
for blame. Kitty. Myer. The sly tug north. The failure to find any trace of Franklin
or Austin. His decision to come back.

The old man lay there unconscious. At night now, whenever the lard-lamp went out,
the blankets froze to the outside wall. Some day soon that bed would be empty, but
there was no prize in taking his place. It seemed a punishment as much as a test,
to inherit a ship lodged so far north, so deep in the ice, with the worst of the
winter still to come. To be obliged to keep them all alive until summer, then somehow
get them out.

Isn't there any way at all you can keep him alive? he said.

The minute he's dead I can pickle or preserve him, but not before.

Not quite what I had in mind.

Dead or alive, what does it matter? DeHaven said. You go on running the ship the
way you've been running it this fortnight past.

In a way, DeHaven was right. Sooner or later, in the coming weeks, he would have
to announce that Myer was dead, that he was assuming Myer's role. But there would
be no decision for Morgan to make, no possible change of tack. They would wait out
the winter here, exactly as Myer had planned. To anyone who grumbled, he could cite
their orders, that were nicely vague and nicely clear – namely, to push up into the
Wellington Channel, as far as they could. To further objections, he had only to rehearse
the facts. They were trapped in a city-sized block of ice, stuck or adrift it did
not matter, they were already too far from Beechey to make a retreat. It was too
late in the year. They had a pregnant woman aboard. They could not abandon the ship.

With his fingernail, Morgan flicked open the latch of Myer's locker. You don't need
any of this for the hospital? he said.

They sat drinking their captain's brandy, watching him breathe.

How's the face? Morgan said.

You tell me. You're the one has to look at it.

It looks fine. Adds character. Like a duelling scar. Not that character was something
it ever lacked, Morgan said.

Well, character's not something a man can ever have too much of, is it?

No, I suppose not.

Morgan offered the bottle. DeHaven offered his glass. They sipped cautiously, as
if tasting the thing for the first time.

I do ask myself, on occasion, however I ended up here, Morgan said. Where exactly
it was we drifted off course.

Apparently, all a man's problems derive from the fact that he's unable just to sit
quietly in his own living room.

Who says?

I don't know. One of those gentlemen who thinks about these things. A Frenchman,
I think. We'll have to ask Cabot.

Whoever it is, it sounds like Kitty's been reading him, Morgan said. He nodded at
the partition wall. All day long, she just lies there reading or sewing or sleeping.
Morning till night. And not a bother in the world, from what I can see.

In silence, they listened to the noise outside, the craving. Morgan knew he was stupid,
in certain ways. There were blind spots. Some people – Kitty included – likely thought
him deliberately obtuse. Dishonest, they meant. He was beginning to suspect they
– she – might be right. Almost five months in, and he still did not believe. She
had always been this size. She had always slept this much, at these times, in this
way. When she woke, as always she would potter to the galley to chat with Cabot,
tinker with the pots. Afterwards, if the weather was calm, she might shuffle awhile
up and down the deck, that they'd finally cleared and housed over from foremast to
stern. Very considerate of you, she said, when she saw what he'd done. That was the
day after she'd come to confront him, drunk. Morgan said he'd merely relayed the
order from Captain Myer, to fix the ship for winter, to house over the deck, and
put up the rest of their stoves. Captain Myer has decided, were the words he used,
to the men. As though inspired by her example, he had listed out daily duties for
each man, a two-week roster, to coach them through all the idle days ahead. I don't
see my name on the list, she said. Name your trade, he said, and gave her a column,
but left it
blank. She didn't need it. She already had her routine, and every arrangement.
She woke, and pottered to the galley, and shuffled awhile up and down the deck, then
read or sewed or dozed again, until dinner-time, day after day. It felt like a familiar
life, where everything had finally found its slot. She was convalescent, slowly mending,
the trauma far behind.

7th December

Often Morgan sat with the old man all afternoon. The men would think they were in
conference, he told himself. So for hours he sat flapping through Myer's books, sipping
at his spirits, slowly draining them down, and sometimes talking aloud to himself.

Back in October, when they ceased to shave, Myer had confiscated the forecastle's
mirror, as though to hide all evidence from the men of their decline. Morgan looked
down now on the man who'd written that order. The face was wax. The eyes stared stupidly
into space. In the end he could stand that face no longer, and laid down one of his
silk handkerchiefs to keep it out of sight. For the man without a face, of course,
he felt nothing but sympathy. He himself had not been the same since coming back.
It was trouble to sleep and trouble to wake. The slightest effort and it was work
to breathe. Ten times a day he tested his teeth with his tongue, to see were they
still firm.

He stared at the cloth in silence, waiting for the sympathy to drain away. Once it
was gone, he knew, something else would take its place. He could feel a new fear
inside him unfurling all its arguments, like a sickness coming on. The
man's breathing
seemed deliberately louder, made to grate. The handkerchief was trembling at each
breath. In the end he could stand it no longer, stood up to leave, and stood over
the bed. He was stiff with rage. He took hold of the blankets and pulled them right
up over the face.

About the ship the floe seemed perfectly solid, yet their nose had definitely swung
round to the north. The thing was impossible, he told himself. It was too cold, and
too late in the year. Astern, their storehouses were all intact. The row of lamp-posts
that led to the shore, all still in place. But deep beneath the surface, something
was on the move. He could feel it in his bones, in his teeth. He could feel his excitement
mounting. He took a lamp and shuffled down the gangway.

A mile to the south was a clean new crack, a foot wide. He hounded it out into the
Channel, then south, then all the way back to the land. By then the doubt was gone.
The next high tide would rip them from the shore again, and set them free.

Coming in, he found a bright rind about Myer's door. He turned the handle silently.
She was lying beside the old man on the bed, mapped in gold, smug as a cat.

You make quite a couple, Morgan said.

I had to lie down, she said. The minute I came in he started to kick and I thought
I was going to collapse. She lay on the covers in her housecoat. I came to see the
patient, she said.

And how do you find him?

Find
is exactly the word. He was hiding under the blankets. For a moment I thought
you'd smothered him.

I won't say I've not been tempted, Morgan said.

You'd be doing everyone a good turn.

Sure, he'd thank me for it afterwards, Morgan said with a smile, that she refused
to match. You don't seem too shocked at the notion, he said.

Five years with the natives and the whalers will school all that out of you. And
do you honestly believe I never thought of it with my brother?

I won't do it, of course, no more than you did, Morgan said. I won't do anything,
only let him go in his own good time.

Why not? I never had my brother as helpless as this. Where you want him, the way
you want him, at long last. Suddenly she thought of something. Do you think he can
hear us? she asked.

Very likely, yes.

She reached out her hands. He took hold and drew her up. Whatever her trouble, apparently
it had passed.

I wouldn't stand up to him when he was hale and hearty. But now he's helpless, I
should take my revenge? Quite a heroic role you've picked for me, Morgan said.

It wouldn't take much, she said. The state he's in.

Another blanket or two, you mean? A pillow, perhaps?

Not even that, she said. Forget to load the stove. Forget to feed or water him for
a day or two.

Hurry it on, you mean.

Let it happen. Get out of the way.

I'm too much of a coward, Morgan said.

I don't believe that. A man who'd come out here and then do what you did, to Beechey
and back?

That's not courage. It's merely a greater fear trumping a lesser one.

That sounds very like courage to me.

It doesn't feel like it.

She nodded at the bed. But you lack, at present, a greater fear.

It seems so.

Nothing comes to mind?

Not for the moment, no.

You'd better start digging. Otherwise you'll be left to live with it afterwards.
He's not going to last much longer, you know.

All around them, the timbers were creaking restlessly. He charged the stove, as though
to settle here for the day. He went and got them some tea. They talked. These were
the stupid, blatant hours of the afternoon.

The day before sailing, I went to see my father, he told her. He was very ill. Perhaps
that was why I volunteered. Perhaps I simply didn't want to be there when his time
came.

He'd been fading month by month, and Morgan had put off going to tell him the news,
that he was going away, probably for several years. The unspoken hope was that he
would die first, before Morgan was obliged to say goodbye. When I finally saw him,
Morgan said, I wanted to turn around and walk straight out again. I stayed, of course.
But it was hard to believe that thing, that person, lying there in the bed, was my
father. That I was his son. He was so thin, and so old. The worst thing was, his
mind was going, and he didn't – couldn't – wouldn't? – recognize me.

Morgan told her the story as dryly as he could.

He was remembering the last night. He found one of his father's men in the kitchen,
by the fire. They'd played together as boys, needed no code. Morgan told him to open
a bottle and they drank a silent toast. Afterwards he went upstairs to close his
trunk. All night they heard him moving about the house, from room to empty room.
In one of the wardrobes he found all his father's folded shirts, perfectly smooth
and perfectly white, looking like they'd never been worn.

That must have been hard, Kitty said.

It wasn't easy, Morgan said.

She stared at him like a curious child. The dry eyes, the closed face, the dead passionless
grief. Outside, the ice groaned and stuttered against the hull.

I'm going to show you something, Morgan said.

Kitty listened to him walking down the corridor. Almost immediately he was back.
He'd brought his private journal. He fanned it out, foraging. Eventually he handed
her a letter with his name on it. She weighed it in her hand, and looked up at him,
impressed.

What's in it? she said.

Open it and see.

As she began to unfold it, something bounced off the floor.
It rolled and turned
a tight circle, wound its way down. It was a coin, about the size of a half-crown.

Every July I get a card from him, with a little something inside, Morgan said. Every
year, like clockwork, since I left home. Over twenty years now. And always the exact
same amount, since the year I went away.

When did you get this one?

It was waiting for me at Beechey. It must have been sent about the time I left.

She picked up the coin, folded the paper over it again, handed it back.

To them, that's who we'll always be, he told her. Children. No matter what we do.
No matter how far we go. Beyond a certain point, the passage of time can do no more
for us. We stay young, and they grow older, and we lose sight of each other in the
end.