The Surfacing (29 page)

It had always looked tight and hard, as though there were a solid object underneath.
But under his hand now it felt far more generous. He'd often seen sharks hooked and
hauled aboard, thumping about the deck, and that was the only thing he could think
of that felt similar. The underbelly, tight and heavy and hard. That same sense of
bulk, of history.

The thing was definitely warm, like freshly-baked bread. That meant his hand was
cold, he supposed. He wondered could whatever was inside feel the chill. The cold
spot. The hint of an alien presence.

Then, under his hand, the world jumped.

Lord Jesus, he said, loud and clear.

He had whipped his hand away, as though from a scorching hot plate. He would not
have been more surprised had something started under his own shirt. He took her shoulders
and turned her into the light. There was something animal, alive, on just the other
side of the skin. It was jerking now, to a monstrous pulse. Hiccups, she said, but
he looked at her
sceptically. The thing was far too frivolous for a baby in the womb
under its father's hand. The kick had answered his touch. He was sure of it.

Afterwards, alone in his cabin, he faced the mirror. His beard was as rowdy as a
castaway's. His carbine stood in the corner. The shock came slowly, dragging its
feet. He could feel his face straining, not to smile. It was going to happen, and
here was the first flush of joy. It was a complicated happiness, with so much residue
to flush away, that had been building so long. He wondered would there always be
so much resistance, so much noise, so much protest from the pipes. He did not know.
He could not think.

He read DeHaven's books, most of them. He studied the pictures. He studied his own
mind as best he knew how. What he decided was, he was going to be taken by surprise.

When I think of it, he said, I think of the smell. The linen. The soap. The shit.
I can never get much farther than that.

Me, DeHaven said, I think of the geography. Think of the American continents, he
said. North and south, and the narrow strip of land linking the two. Think of an
hourglass, he said. Think of your wineglass, if you prefer.

Morgan turned the thing in his hands, suddenly delicate.

You have the bell, DeHaven said. That's where the baby is for the moment, suspended
in a class of soup. It's obviously not as stiff as a wineglass, of course, more like
a pigskin, let's say, to maintain the drinking metaphor. You've seen them drinking
from wineskins à la Bayonnaise, squirting it straight into their mouths? That squeezing,
those are the contractions.

Morgan looked into the glass. The wine looked darker. It no longer looked like something
he wanted to put in his mouth.

The finger was pointing to the junction of bell and stem. Of course, it's quite a
squeeze, DeHaven said. Yet, what's up here – he flicked a fingernail against the
bell, with a nice, clean note – somehow has to make its way down here. He tapped
the same nail against the foot. The sound was blunt, dead.

Easier said than done, I suppose, Morgan said.

From the pictures he'd seen, DeHaven's model was not quite right. The stem was too
long. Impossibly narrow but mercifully short, one book said. Morgan had already
considered the question, with her laid out on the bed. It was a matter of inches
at most. But these were real inches, unfortunately – the ones used by surgeons and
dentists, on people in great pain. They were not the inches of an Ordnance Survey
map.

5th March

She was holding a single finger up in the air, as though performing some complex
calculation and warding off distraction. It was what she did, sometimes, when waiting
for a contraction to pass.

Finally he dared ask: Should I get DeHaven?

She nodded mutely, severe. This time she was afraid of having gone too far. She was
afraid of being forced to give birth now, as punishment.

He found DeHaven in the officers' cabin, found him sitting at the table, cradling
the cat. On the table was a tin of their precious preserved milk, that should have
been kept to go next door, later, if need be.

I thought we were saving that for the baby, Morgan said. In case.

Dick, we only have the one case of the stuff. It would only be dragging it out.

DeHaven got his bag to go, but stopped at the door and turned back.

She has a doctor at hand, and a very distinguished one at
that, he said. She should
count herself lucky. In many ways she's better off having it here than at Disko.

Still Morgan looked unhappy, unconvinced.

Everything's ready. Everything's clean, DeHaven said, but it sounded like pleading.

Morgan pushed the saucer of milk under the cat's nose. She sniffed at it suspiciously.
Torture, he reminded himself deliberately. From the inside out. With those attending
her doing nothing to relieve or refine the agony, only goading her on. Spectators.
Il faut tenir, the French said. Simply face into the pain, and bear it, rather than
try to get out of its way.

What if she doesn't survive, but it does? he said. His was an ever-ambitious anxiety.

DeHaven was looking at him curiously. For godsake, Dick, he said. What are you worrying
about? No mother, no milk. No milk, no baby. It's as simple as that.

Afterwards he lay down on the bunk to wait and brought the cat with him. Just as
she liked it, his fingers caressed the cat's throat, felt it throb. Satisfied, the
eyes began to close. The Beast, he boasted, bitterly. The name had been spoiled.
Kitty had heard and taken to using it, for the thing squirming inside her. Somewhere
in the depths he felt a definite deflation – the soft flag and slump of surrender.
The last of the barricades had collapsed. The grand, brassy thoughts could now come
marching down the boulevard.

Later, he wrapped himself up well and climbed aloft, all the way up, the ropes shattering
under his feet. It was midday. He was trying to steal a glimpse round the corner,
to bring back news of the sun. A small red light sat neatly on the horizon. He felt
his face tighten, then felt it relax. The hope had lasted a second, no more. In any
other sea it would have been a beacon. Here it was merely the Dog Star, on a new
round. Sirius, that makes men wane, and women pine, said the Greeks.

Crates flung over the side in the last crush still lay all about the ship, as though
nothing had changed since then. Beyond
lay the vast, virgin plain. They were cast
out and encircled. The stars wheeled loosely overhead.

As long as he could bear the cold, he stayed aloft. There was a new world waiting
for him below. Even when he went down he lingered awhile on the deck. About the ship
it was now freezing so hard the ice was sizzling, like meat on a spit. It was a full
week since the last fall of snow. From the distant floes came a sound that brought
him back to his army days, in the East. It was the ice exploding. It was a firing
squad, in the quiet dawn.

11th March

March. The last days. The sky was not brightening but being washed clean. The sheet
stretched to dry. They were idle, according to a strict routine. He marked nothing
in the log but what they read on their instruments. For five days there was wind
from the east, steady and strong, one long breath. The Liberator, he called it, when
any of the Irish were near. What we need is wind from the north, he wrote.

What we need is wind from the north, DeHaven announced to the dinner-table that night,
to usher us to a more genial part of the globe. He had rooted out and been reading
Morgan's journal again.
Genial
, meaning that which contributes to propagation, DeHaven
explained.

Out of boredom Morgan wrote to his wife – a letter to the wife he would like to have,
from the man he wanted to be. He wrote: When last I felt something warm and yielding,
or when last I felt warm myself, I would be at pains to say. It was not true. It
was another empty appeal. He spent the best
part of every morning away from the ship,
hoping to fortify himself. It was now not ten degrees below the freezing point. On
paper, in black and white, it sounded cold. In the flesh, it was not. Rounding the
ship, at a stroll, I tingle, he wrote. Farther or faster, over uneven ground, I begin
to sweat.

He went to see her. They went up for her daily stroll. It was strangely calm and
strangely mild, and for the first time that year she did not stay under the housing,
but came out onto the ice. He bent and drove a finger into the surface, to show how
it gave. The finger left a dent, like the neat patter of footprints now scattered
all over the floe. His little mark would not last long, of course. Someone would
stand on it. Later, it would all melt.

It's like putty, he said. It was a kind of promise. Try it, he said, but she could
not bend.

It was almost noon. The sky was like a dirty glass bowl. The glass began to blush.
The reddened bar began to glow. Nearby, as they often did now at this time of the
day, the men gathered to stare at the same horizon. Slowly, gracelessly, their idol
was rising, like some luminous sea creature lifting itself off the ocean floor. Morgan
and Kitty stood side by side. Each lifted their veil and let their faces soak up
the light.

They turned a slow circuit about the ship. He watched the way she shuffled along,
as though managing a deep wound, something any untoward movement might tear open
again. She moved like one of those characters in their plays – the wounded soldier,
the beggar, the blind king. Every movement a signpost towards the past, saying I
was well, I am sick, I was young, I am old.

They talked and he listened. Today she was like someone slightly drunk, with a happiness
she was determined to share. Every now and then she stopped to breathe. Waiting,
he scanned the ice with the glass. Eventually he found something of interest. Bear.
A mother and two cubs.

Now they were ambling along far behind her. Now they were sprinting to catch up.
She bent and licked them all over,
lavishly. He handed Kitty the glass, let her find
them, listened as she let out a wounded groan. She watched them waddling over the
ice, skating splay-legged down the hummocks. She turned to him with begging eyes.

I want one, she said.

I think you're going to have your plate quite full as it is.

Please, she said, with the old pain in her voice.

You really think you'll have enough milk? He sounded anxious, sceptical.

You jest, she said. Haven't you noticed? She was puffing out her chest. Even now,
she said, I could feed the entire ship.

Once he'd put her to bed, he made the mistake of telling DeHaven, and DeHaven insisted
on going out for them, immediately. Fresh meat, he said. For the hospital.

Morgan watched his friend take aim. She sprinted forward a few yards, seemed to trip
over, did not get up again. The cubs ran forward, pawed at her impatiently. This
was a new game, that they wanted to learn how to play. Afterwards the men stood around
grinning and panting, each in a halo of steam. Twenty yards off, the dogs slobbered
and scoffed over the steaming entrails. Under a sky that shone like slate, the shadow
puppets slid left and right. The night was quiet now but for the sound of Cabot sharpening
his knives.

12th March

He wondered what time it was. He hadn't heard the last watch. It didn't matter. It
was still the middle of the night. He'd been sleeping but in his sleep had heard
her scratching on the wall.

How go you? he whispered to the taut face.

I lost, said a voice ragged and dry. She did not finish the sentence. She was searching
for the right words. It was like fumbling in a trunk in the dark. It would have to
feel right. Had she lost her waters? Was that what she wanted to say? That it had
started at last, and so soon?

The plug, she said. It was not the right word. No such word existed, for her, for
this.

The jelly thing, she said. That blocks the . . .

I understand, he said. He turned up the lamp. When?

Just now.

Describe it, he said. You're sure that's what it was?

Sticky. Brown, she said. Like something you blow out of your nose. Like something
you cough up out of your throat.

He wished he'd not asked. Now he would have to explain to DeHaven, with words of
his own. He turned to go.

Richard, she said.

He halted, but did not turn to face her. What? he said.

Could you take it out?

What? he said. He wanted to hear her say it out loud.

The pot.

Why?

It's just, well, I don't really want him to see it.

The pot was already waiting by the door, with the cover on. He carried it up, to
fling over the side, onto their rubbish heap. But first he took the cover off and
held it under the lamp. She was not wrong. The glob looked like what they hacked
up into the bowls in the hospital. The water was a greenish brown, the surface slick
and greasy, as though spilled with train oil. It was another kind of proof. The birth,
it said, was a purely physical thing.

A corner of the housing had come loose and was flapping frantically. He went over
and tied it down. In the galley, he got two cups and set them on the tray. The kettle
was beginning to tremble. The cat leapt onto the counter. The props all looked so
familiar, so uninclined to change. Then he lifted his head, frowning. He stepped
out and lifted the hatch. She was roaring his name, with a new kind of hate in her
voice.

Back down into the animal kingdom, down the ladder, step by step. He stood facing
the door. He was about to face the judge. He was a child again, and it felt unfair
to give someone so helpless so much responsibility.

In the cabin, she had one foot on the floor and one on the bed, knee bent, was leaning
back on an elbow, and perfectly still. The pose looked ridiculous. He glanced between
her legs, ready to see a mess.