The Surfacing (8 page)

Until now he'd always seen her as a coward, and a simpleminded one, who wanted nothing
more than sympathy or admiration. That, he'd always believed, was why she'd left
everything to come out to Greenland and look after her brother, for whom she'd never
even registered on the scale. Now he saw quite clearly that this picture was too
simple, and altogether false. She was much more original, and much more complicated
than that.

13th August

You must have something on your conscience, said DeHaven's voice.

He'd been shaking his friend by the shoulders. For Morgan, the shaking had been a
crucial part of his dream. His eyes searched the dark cabin for bearings. There was
the taste of old age in his mouth. He'd been asleep for no more than an hour, after
his watch.

You were talking in your sleep, DeHaven said.

Morgan sat up and sat there gripping the frame, holding himself in place.

I confessed everything, I suppose?

I couldn't repeat it, DeHaven said. Pure filth.

Morgan peered out the open cabin door, considered the corridor's twilight.

Did I mention any lady in particular?

Not by name, no. Unfortunately.

Blindly, his hand was groping the upright, for the little hook. But his watch was
not where he needed it to be.

What time is it? What's going on?

Come and see.

What?

Come and see for yourself. Come on, shake a leg.

Scowling, Morgan stepped out into the light. As far as he could see, in every direction,
the floe was alive, shivering. He lifted the goggles out of the way, propped them
on his forehead. He was squinting fiercely, seemed disgusted with what he saw. The
entire floe was covered with birds. Little auks. Tens of thousands of them.

Goggled, owl-eyed, the two men walked out amongst them, under the blind stare of
the sun.

They stepped through the crowd in a silent pantomime, as though through a slumbering
mass of bodies they were afraid to wake. Each man was carrying an oar.

Don't be afraid, DeHaven whispered with his kindest voice, as one wandered towards
him. You won't feel a thing.

He lifted his oar. Shots would only frighten them all off, they had learned.

They killed all afternoon. Again and again Morgan raised his oar. Again and again
he brought it down. Occasionally DeHaven stopped to watch him, the exhibition of
rage. It was a release, sheer savagery – the force with which the blade came thundering
onto each bird. Again and again, beyond mere killing, as though trying to drive it
into the ice.

He kept at it until his arms were useless from fatigue. In the end he sat with his
back up against a hummock, propped his elbows on his knees. He was too tired even
to lie down. With a studied movement, he shoved his goggles up onto his forehead,
to rub his eyes. Scraps of purple flesh went scampering down his smock.

He had destroyed as many as he was able, yet all around him he could hear them bustle,
the horde as vast and as happy as ever, gloating noisily, crops gargling with shrimp.
For all his effort, he seemed not to have killed – even frightened off – a single
one.

It's not a good sign, DeHaven said. He flung another bloody heap at Morgan's feet.

It was true. It meant their summer was over. They were heading south.

14th August

In the officers' cabin, MacDonald was standing between the bunks, leaning forward,
hands flat on the inner hull, as though to hold it in place. It was not enough merely
to hear what was happening. The man needed to feel it, physically, every twinge.

For godsake sit down, Morgan told him. Sit down and eat.

But he too was starting to fret. The timbers were complaining freely now. It was
a definite squeeze. The wind had swung round to the southward, was pressing the looser
floes in on those ahead of them, that refused to cede. The ship was caught in the
middle, and now being pinched very nicely indeed. It was nothing, he had told the
men. It was merely the tides. The sun and moon would be in conjunction on the 18th,
that was all.

Not quite the little jaunt you expected, he told the woman sitting opposite him.

She considered him closely, seemed to be revising some opinion in her mind.

Do you honestly think I didn't know what I was getting myself into? she said.

No I don't, Morgan said. To be perfectly frank.

The ship I came out on went down just north of Baal's River, she said. The
Kronprindsesse
.

She told them the story. They'd left Copenhagen very early in the year, and when
they came round the southern tip of Greenland the ice was still in place, even that
far south.

I had gone up on deck to drink my coffee, she said, because it was the first fine
day of the whole passage. Seeing me up on deck, the captain invited me to the bow,
to show how he could squeeze through even the tightest gap. He was all swagger, of
course. Who knows how long before he'd see a white woman again?

That particular morning the gap shrank a little sooner than the captain expected,
and the floes touched her exactly across the beam. She went down with Kitty's coffee
still steaming in the cup, and they walked over the ice all the way to the shore.

A gorgeous day, she said. Hardly a breath of wind. You get a great many of those
up here, believe it or not. The entire world seems at such peace with itself. Even
the ice. Especially the ice. So quiet, so reliable. You're so ready to trust. I entirely
agree with you, Richard, how hard it is to convince anyone has not seen the thing
with their own eyes, that this is death.

Their cabin door was suddenly flung open, with a lovely pop. There was no one there.
Brooks went to close it, and could not. The frame was skewed. It was the crush. The
entire ship was trembling now.

Up on deck, the snow was fine as flour. The wind was freshening still. Morgan leaned
over the taffrail to watch the next slab come. Carefully, the thing lifted itself
onto its hind legs, stood there without the slightest stagger. He stood back out
of its way, to let it fall.

All evening the men worked desperately to relax the squeeze – shoving the ice back
as it rose up and readied to topple, and heaving off whatever they could not keep
from falling onto the deck.

By the time she came up, the men were shirtless, and bright with sweat.

A nice spectacle, she said.

Do you mean the men or the ice? said Morgan.

They both have their interest.

I could order them to put on their shirts again, if you prefer.

The last thing I want, she said, is to interfere. You should do exactly as you would
were I not aboard.

From their beds they listened all night to the ice grinding itself against the hull.
Whatever was out there, it sounded stubborn and wise. In it was a promise he knew
would be kept. Every now and then, he risked a glance at MacDonald, who had the top
bunk opposite. The man lay there motionless, his hands trapped in prayer. For almost
twenty-four hours he had not said a word.

17th August

Every dawn now was another miracle. Every morning, coming up out of the murk and
the stench, for the first few minutes he felt he could start afresh. Before him he
found a world stretched and flattened, boiled and starched, rid of every flaw and
stain. For the first few minutes, it seemed, none of it had happened yet. He had
only to shift his course slightly now and it never would.

But by mid-morning there would be a harsh, brittle beauty to it, and from then on
the men kept below, out of its sight. It was like a visitor or shipmate they were
desperate to avoid. It reminded Morgan of the tropics. The scorched, searing afternoon.
Wherever he stood, wherever he lay, even in total darkness, he could always feel
the weight of its stare. Outside, it was waiting for him.

By evening the glare would be more gentle, and often the men sat on the bulwarks
in their shirtsleeves until midnight, to sew. They worked idly, chatting and mumbling,
needles and threads sprouting between pinched lips. There would be a shout of dismay,
and to a man they would lift their heads. A circle was already formed around the
players, to enjoy the latest treachery. It was DeHaven again.

She's in there somewhere, he was telling Banes, goading. Just waiting for the right
gentleman to come along.

They had chosen their hero. Night after night they stood peering over his shoulder,
waiting to see him slap down that last, devastating card. They were never in any
rush to return to their work. They had time. The long bright days would never fail.

Morgan sat nearby, pretending not to hear. There was news now in every overheard
word, every careless threat, every jibe. Her cabin was directly under their feet.
She was down there now, counting the minutes, taking DeHaven's blue pills, and aching
for the end of the month. He had seen the date marked on her calendar, a reckoning.
He too was waiting, in much the same way. A week before, he'd brought
in a stone
picked from the side of a berg, olive-green and almost perfectly round. Now it sat
on the shelf in their cabin, wobbling constantly, alive. Every so often he found
himself staring at it, or taking it in his hands. It was something solid, real, irrefutable.
What the pregnancy might one day dare to become. A bald fact, that nothing could
erode. But for the moment he felt nothing so sure. For the moment he felt as though
he'd come into a familiar room to find the furniture shifted slightly, or something
removed – and this in every room he came into, everywhere he sat or stood, except
out on the ice. In everything there was some change now he could not quite put his
finger on, knew only by his own unease. He looked up and down the deck, tried to
remember how it had been. For all he could see, it had been much as it was now. Only
his body told him it was otherwise.

When the ice was too tight they diverted themselves with shinty, cricket, and wagers
against time. In everything it was the English against the rest. Today, with a spike
and a length of rope, Morgan had them etch out a circle that made quarter of an English
mile; they traced the line over with cinders the better to see, and he raced the
men round and round against the clock.

Petersen had been watching them from a distance, and now called Morgan to come with
his little grinder. The chronometer, he meant. Get your woman too, Petersen told
him. She will like the show of it.

A mound of minced seal flesh had been slopped out onto the snow. It was two days'
rations, and the dogs were frantic. Kitty and Morgan and Cabot watched from the deck.
Petersen let slip the chain. He was grinning with a crazy pride.

A real cheat! Petersen roared up. But it is the only way how to help the weak.

Morgan glanced down at the sweep of his second hand. The dogs were still savaging
the surface, too busy to turn on each other just yet.

She had forced herself to watch, but now hurried to the
side and leaned over. They
heard her retching noisily. Cabot made to go to her but Morgan grabbed his arm.

She wanted to come out here, Morgan said.

Afterwards, the ragged trail of it ran all the way down the hull. Already the dogs
were mopping at the snow, and the few feet above. Morgan told Cabot to leave the
rest for the night, the freeze, the easier to scrape off in the morning.

22nd August

On the 22nd DeHaven came to her cabin again. He laid the calendar flat before her.
The 12th of July was circled in red. She furrowed her brows, leaned forward for a
better look. No, she said, irked at the inaccuracy of a man from whom she expected
so much. The correct date, she said, would be the tenth.

It took Morgan a moment to realize what she meant. Already DeHaven was writing the
date in his ledger. With considerable pleasure, no doubt. As though he were present
at the actual coupling – the event, as he liked to call it – and looking on with
a wise smile, already relishing the consequences of so frivolous an act.

DeHaven and Kitty sat together on the bed. The calculations were a promise of certainty,
of proof. The voices were lowered, conspiring. Four feet away, Morgan was forgotten.
He saw her better now, he thought, the woman he'd lain with. Eventually she noticed
he was still there. She clapped the ledger shut. Either the affair was concluded,
or there was something in it she did not want him to see.

DeHaven asked her how she felt. She complained of irritable skin. That was perfectly
normal, he said. He seemed
to know in advance exactly what she would say. They were
merely making conversation now. They were running down the clock, Morgan saw. They
were waiting for him to leave, for the sake of her privacy. He who had already seen
everything, been there ahead of every other man. So he went and sat on the other
side of the wall, and listened to the lock turning in the door.

From the off, DeHaven had told Morgan he would not intervene. Let nature do its work,
he said. Give it time. He spoke with absolute authority, the catastrophes at his
feet.

Twenty minutes later, he called Morgan back in.

There was nothing to be done now but wait, DeHaven said, and let things run their
normal course. ‘Now,' he said, as though it were a milestone they'd reached, and
not one they kept passing, incessantly, all along the way. Le col est fermé, he said,
with a nod. Anything delicate, in anyone else's presence, was now said in French.
The ‘col' was closed. ‘Collar' might best translate it, Morgan thought. He thought
of the notices in the newspapers, in Geneva, after the first snows.
Le Col Est Fermé
.
Overnight, the blocked passes, the travelling season's abrupt end.

Sceptical, disapproving, Sir John Franklin stared down at them, from inside a gutta-percha
frame. Theirs was too trivial an affair. A distraction – and a slightly sordid one
– from more important things. It ought to have been beneath his attention, but was
being played out right under his eyes, making it impossible to ignore. Once DeHaven
was gone, Morgan reached over and faced the picture to the wall.