The Surfacing (31 page)

Mr MacDonald, Morgan said brightly. You may inform the crew that the captain notes
their concern, without sharing it.

Overhead, the boots of the watch swayed back and forth. MacDonald put a forkful of
his dinner into his mouth. He looked sullen, accused.

The door opened. She had come for her supper. Am I late? she asked.

They watched her shuffle to the end of the table. Tonight she was wearing her sealskin
jacket, that Petersen had shown her how to make. She bowed her head over her plate,
pursed her lips, and sucked it up.

The pan was passed from man to man. When it came to him, Morgan took his slice and
leaned across her, handed it back to Cabot. It was the last of their frozen blubber.
Coddled since morning in a marinade of kitchen-spirit and thaw-water, meant to help
the thing go down.

Hello, she said brightly. Remember me?

It's not for you, Morgan said.

Why not? I won't be more fussy than anyone else.

I don't think it wise. For your stomach. And for the milk.

Why don't I be the judge of that?

They ate in silence. Outside, the world was changing shape.

I hope I didn't interrupt anything, she said.

Mr MacDonald is a little worried about the weather, Brooks told her.

We are in the Arctic, Mr MacDonald, at the tail-end of winter, Morgan said. It is
a storm. That is generally how it goes in the Arctic, at the tail-end of winter.
He had not even looked up from his plate. If you don't like it, he said, there's
the door.

They came flailing out of the ship as from a house in flames. Some men leaping straight
over the gunwale onto the ice. Roaring like drunkards. It sounded like a full-blown
revolt. Here at last was the chance they'd been longing for. Every timber was whimpering.
It was the end. They had already decided, she would be crushed. With a proud, ponderous
groan, she was heeling over. As perfect a heeling over as I ever saw, Morgan said
afterwards.

From a safe distance they watched a lump of ice the size of a billiard table topple
over the gunwale, slide across the deck, bounce out onto the floe again. Humbled,
they watched the main crack ploughing for the bow. A gang was already shovelling
it full of snow, hoping the thing might somehow freeze again into a solid block.
Any other time, Morgan would have laughed at it as a practical joke, and a shrewd
one. Now it dismayed him, the effort wasted, but he did not call them off. It would
be a wonderful example to cite, of their own stupidity.

She was standing up against him, in her bearskin boots and her bearskin coat. He
opened his own, tried to stretch it around her. The boy was underneath, pressed between
them, screaming as loudly as he possibly could. The physical
power of the thing was
impressive. The depth of the outrage. Simultaneously hopeless and insistent, every
lungful milked to the full. He'd not let up since they'd grabbed him from his cot.

Daly and his party were hauling crates across the ice, away from the listing ship.
MacDonald was lowering the boats. Cabot was counting the bread bags, over and over,
and Morgan wondered was the man drunk again. All set, Brooks came to say. Morgan
held her a little tighter. He did not know where to go.

Careful, she ordered. You're crushing him.

They stood face to face by the coal-house, listening to the war. Before, the collisions
had always been deep and dull, like distant artillery. This was new. This was clean
and brittle, like breaking glass. It was the extreme cold. The vast, mechanical
rattling all around. This is what it had sounded like, he reminded himself, before
Ghazni. The awkward hundreds on horseback. The thousands in restless gear. The nagging
of stirrups, sabres, spurs. It brought him right back. For just an instant, for no
good reason, he wanted the thrill of seeing the
Impetus
destroyed.

Half an hour had passed. Where there had been screams, now there were whimpers. To
comfort himself, Morgan held the small, warm body against his own, as gently as he
could. More than ever, he felt the original, sickening need. It was half-sleep drifting
into a well-tailored dream. It felt, at times, like he was falling in love.

By now the moon had come out to watch. Overhead, the spars were etched into a gunmetal
sky. Out in the desert, the men were playing at ghosts. The ice had the cold conscience
of pearl.

Then the spell was broken. Suddenly Morgan was roaring, ordering the boats hauled
back aboard, and ordering everyone off the ice. From every crack now came a cloud
of steam. Whatever was beneath the ice had started to simmer. Now it was starting
to boil. The world entire was breaking up. Not one square yard was sure, no two in
agreement. A boat would
have been bucked in seconds. In a minute, it would have been
kindling.

They stood by the gangway in their furs, bundles at their feet, looking over the
wastes. Out there, somewhere, was their island. On clear days, even in the very best
light, it was never more than a sketch. Only six or seven miles off, he goaded himself
now. It did not matter. Over such terrain, in such turmoil, they might as well have
tried for Peru.

They watched the coal-house, intact, sliding towards the edge of the floe. Afterwards
there was only a long black streak, like a lone slur of charcoal on a clean page.
They watched the main crack close up again, squeezing its filling like cream from
a cake. About eleven o'clock, inexplicably, the pressure eased off. By midnight the
ship had begun to right herself, bit by bit. Each concession seemed begrudging, but
one followed the other, in fits and starts, and that is how they were reprieved.

21st February

Breakfast was quiet. The faces were grey. Some of the men had slept in their clothes.
Some had not slept at all. He had Banes and Leask scrape off the deck to proof the
seams. He sent Cabot down into the crawling space, to proof the Samson posts.

Nowhere, strangely, was there any sign of play.

Some of the men seemed relieved. As after every crisis, they seemed to think they
had seen something like the worst. To Morgan, the ice had merely been toying with
them, and he could not esteem men so fond of hope. But that evening, from
his private
supply, every man had half a gill of brandy to toast McIntosh & Sons, Shipmakers,
of Inverness. It would restore a little swagger, after this latest crush. It would
oblige them to absorb a little more the next time, to have boasted how well their
ship was built.

Alone in his cabin, he took a book from the shelf, opened a marked page.
Mount Raleigh
,
he read. First charted by John Davis himself.
A brave mount, the cliffes whereof
are orient as golde
. The words had been written over two hundred and fifty years
before. To Morgan the man was a friend and neighbour. Now they too had their own
lump of rock.

He had sighted it a week before. The date was marked forever in the log. It had been
the quietest day in months, with a noon sky very like the colour of mud. He would
hardly have called it brighter, but to his eyes it was decidedly less dark, and
he could not resist going out for a walk. An hour later, a full moon in a clear sky
suddenly showed him a spectral coastline to the southeast, about four miles off.
He should have jumped up and roared Land! but did not dare. He was terrified such
presumption might make the thing disappear. He wanted to rush towards it, to touch
and grip the thing, to hold it in place. He merely shuffled a few feet closer and
stood in silence, as though expecting someone to appear and wave to him from the
shore. Even as he stood watching it, the weather was worsening again. Snow of the
finest grain now hung in the air. Between him and the island, already, it was someone's
breath on the window pane.

Since then – a week ago – no one had gone up but the watch, and even they stayed
mostly under the housing, that the latest storms had now set hard as board. Below,
lying on his bed, Morgan dreamed of sleeping for months on end, to wake in blatant
sunshine, like a bear. More and more, he admired the animal world. He had almost
entirely ceased to think of returning home. His mind could not reach further now
than the island, the return of the sun. The sun, he knew,
was daily closer to the
horizon. He read it and repeated it. At noon every day, he went up expecting some
sudden break in the weather, some little hint of pink glass, and always found everything
the colour of steel.

25th February

The men's natural vigour must be properly husbanded, Morgan said. October twenty-eighth.

Natural vigour, Kitty said. What a wonderful man he was.

They were drinking tea. It was late afternoon. Morgan was reading aloud from Myer's
journal again, the best parts. The watch was shuffling back and forth. DeHaven lifted
his head. He was next on the roster.

God forbid, he said, that our island should drift away with no one there to wave
it goodbye.

The exercise will do you good, Kitty said. You said so yourself. Want of exercise,
Morgan read. Want of light. Salt meat. He flapped over another page. Simple problems
with simple solutions, he said. He was very fond of them. Our late, much lamented
Captain Gordon Myer.

There was no miracle remedy, he knew. Some men were more susceptible than others,
was the useless truth. Maintain their diet, the daily exercise, was DeHaven's own
advice. And perhaps a bath per man per week, with a rough towelling afterwards, to
get the blood flowing again.

Lemon juice, Morgan said. Correction,
fresh
lemon juice. Cabot! he shouted at the
ceiling. Go pick me a dozen!

They say if sorrel doesn't altogether cure, it certainly calms, MacDonald said.

Small beer, said Brooks.

You can't say it has Cabot in the best of health. For all the gallons he's drinking.

I don't mean that dross he concocts for himself, Brooks said.

The yeast might in fact do the gut some good, DeHaven said.

I've heard it said there is nothing more effective than a cheerful outlook, said
Kitty.

All nonsense. The only thing we need is patience, Morgan said. It had become almost
the chief virtue in his mind, because he was so much better at it than most other
men.

Does chewing tobacco have anything to recommend it?

A wise choice of race, MacDonald said. Did you ever hear of an Eskimo going down
with it?

It hasn't done Petersen much good, has it? Have you been to see him lately?

Pure-blood I mean.

The list went on, suggestions from all sides, and nothing in it untainted by mockery
or despair.

The only guaranteed remedy I ever heard of, DeHaven told them, is to take an apartment
in London for the summer and take a stroll in St James's Park every afternoon, if
the sun is out.

They smiled bitterly. Outside the world was still raging, worse than a sandstorm,
and as cold as it was ever likely to be. For months now, they'd lived like monks
of a lax but enclosed order, undisturbed by the prospect of change. They spoke to
God, and spoke to each other. They wrote and read, and followed the trump. They had
nowhere else to go.

They talked of the island, and what they would find there, with the return of the
light. But above all they spoke of the release summer should bring. Morgan did not
contradict them, but knew they were wrong. It was his own fault, perhaps. All winter
the living had been so much better regulated, for the sake of the boy. Below, there
were no more gloves, no hats. Even a topcoat often was too much swaddling. They were
too
snug and too easy, and liked to forget what exactly was on the other side of
the wall.

But he himself had not forgotten. He knew well what was going on. As from a great
distance overhead, he saw the prodigious cold clotting and closing every lead, every
last crack – everything loose, soft, wet – like so many wounds staunched and healed.
He tried to sell it to himself. It would stop the drift. It would be easier to traverse,
if the ship were crushed. His mind was searching for an exit, something to force
his hand. This last crush had squeezed her farther than ever out of the ice, and
she now stood lurching a little to port, timbers propping her up, very like a boat
beached at high tide. As such, she was now unlikely ever to be destroyed. She was
just as unlikely, he thought, ever to sail again.

29th February

It was the last day of February. He was in the washroom, in the bath, in an inch
of lukewarm water. There was a scratching on the door, exactly like the scratching
of the cat. Calling for an answer, an acknowledgement, from whoever was inside. Morgan's
heart was tightening, readying itself for the first blow. He could not even see the
door for steam. He did not know what to do.

He put a knuckle to the panel, tapped twice. Wondering would the boy understand what
it was, who, how to respond. He sat naked and perfectly still, waiting for the reply.
The silence was terrible.

Finally the boy struck again, with all his force and all his weight. Three slow,
deliberate blows, and with each blow
Morgan felt something cede. The fear told the
true story, as usual. It was a summons he had been waiting for, and dreading, all
his life. He touched his hand flat to his chest. There was an animal knot under the
ribcage, a muscle tight as a fist. This must be how it felt, he thought – the first
great valve faltering, the first trickle of death. In his mouth, this was the taste.

Dadda! the boy shouted.

It was a sharp breath on slumbering coals. Something within him was burning, mortified.
There was suddenly life again – glory – in a place that had been iron, grey.

Again he tapped a knuckle against the door, and in answer the boy began to pound.
Morgan reached for the walls on either side of the tub, as though to brace himself
against another shock. He could feel the whole of the ship, every nerve, trembling
in his hands. She was about to be crushed, to fall apart. There was nothing to keep
her joints, to stop the planks from clattering loosely onto the floe. But he was
not strong enough. The crack between door and jamb began to breathe. The boy was
trying to push it open, to get in.