When the Night Comes (7 page)

“Ready?” he says.

He checks my life jacket and holds on to me as I step down backward over the edge. My big boot finds the first rung and the ladder swings out with my weight.

“Make the most of it.”

Benny is still holding my jacket with his strong hand.

I might never get another chance.

I step down another rung. The ladder slaps back hard against the ship. I hold on, watch that my fingers don't get crushed between the ladder and the cold steel hull. We are riding high in the water, most of the heavy cargo offloaded, half the fuel delivered. It's a long way down. I grip the ropes. I step down. The ladder moves, the ship moves, the LARC below me moves. I'm almost there.

“Hey!”

Above, a head pokes over the side. It's one of the apprentice deck boys, Per is his name. He talks to Benny, a small voice, and the wind has picked up now, but I can hear enough of what he is saying.

“Need a cook to stay . . . refueling team . . . eleven
PM
break. Soup. Sandwiches.”

Benny looks down at me, his face still. My legs begin to move up the ladder, step by step, rung by rung, until I'm back at the top. I let go of the guide ropes, stand up straight and look down over the edge. Most of the crew are staring up at me. I raise my hand in a wave. Soren and Erik wave back.

“We'll bring you a beer if we don't drink it all!” Soren yells, and they are away. The LARC pulls out, moves off toward Casey, toward land. I hear singing, laughing, the party already started. The sound carries across the ice-cold water.

“Maybe one of the LARC drivers can come and get you later,” Benny says. But we both know that won't happen.

“Another time,” I say.

Another time.

Benny doesn't say any more. He is still again, his eyes on the LARC, and its wake is a straight shiny line pointing to land.

I step out of the little steel room and walk with my heavy boots, my life jacket still on. I go down the hall and into the passenger mess. I stand there for a while, I don't know why. It's not my place but I sit down on one of the chairs anyway.

The ship is almost empty now. A ghost ship. A few men on the bridge, some below. The captain. And Benny—our bosun. A few men asleep, a few on watch, one man resting after a cargo chain snapped and smashed his hand. He has been given some painkillers and sent to rest. No one knew if his hand was broken but Benny said it was bad. He said that when it happened it sounded like the bones shattered like glass. Klaus sent up a packet of frozen peas to help with the pain. That was all frozen peas were good for, he said. He hated peas.

It was something about the way his mother had boiled them, pale
and soggy. He never forgot the taste—that smell, of soft boiled peas on his plate going cold.

A small boy sitting there in the night refusing to eat his peas no matter how much his mother begged.

“I'll tell your father when he gets home,” she'd say. But his father was far away at sea, perhaps on this very ship. He would be away for months and months, and by the time he got home, the peas would be long forgotten. His mother would just be relieved. Everyone would just be happy.

Outside, through the portholes, it is light like a clear early morning.

I look up at the clock on the wall. It stopped at 6:24 somewhere out on the Indian Ocean. I don't know if it was
AM
or
PM
but Jens, the engineer, said he couldn't work out how the hell to fix it. He had tried twice. There are faint grease marks next to the clock where he leant his engineer's hands on the bulkhead while trying to get it down.

“I'll be damned if I can bloody fix that clock,” he said, and he shrugged his shoulders, walked away. He had better things to do, important things to fix—engine parts, hot, moving parts that had to keep working so that the ship could keep running. Jens had no time to be messing with dead clocks.

I know I should just go to bed, get some rest for a few hours before I have to prepare the sandwiches. My body is heavy, rocking with some kind of internal motion. I feel displaced.

I put my head down on the table. The damask tablecloths are new and clean and I can smell the stiff fabric. I stare at the sauce bottles in their little wooden compartments—the ketchup, the HP sauce, the salt, the pepper, the mustard. This mess, where so many expeditioners have sat, day after day, year after year, season on season. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, desserts and movie screenings and nightcaps. Then over. Over. The
daily menu typed and ready. Eggs and bacon, black pudding, pastries, coffee/tea, juice. Consommé, pommes frites, lamb cutlets, cheese and biscuits. Roast pork, honeyed carrots, salad, cabbage and butter beans, potato gratin, sponge cake, apple cake, preserved fruits.

The hot, crowded galley, that broken clock on the wall, the tape player that chewed all the best tapes, my hair always smelling like roasted meats, like browned butter, like salty pork crackling. Tonight, all these weeks in, I just wanted to step onto the solid frozen earth and say
, I am here
. Only a cook, but here all the same.

My eyes start to close, my body warm in the thermals and jacket and outer pants and boots, and I know that if I don't get up this very minute I will fall asleep right here, my head resting on the tablecloth, my nostrils filled with the sweet sickly smell of ketchup.

Get up.

Get up!

I make myself stand, walk, one foot in front of the other, big boots clumping and my outer gear swishing as I walk down the stairs to the Swamp, to my cabin. Inside—dark, snug, my washed socks hanging on the elastic clothesline. I take my life jacket off, sit with my travel clock in my hands. It is 7:20
PM
. If I get up at 10, that will leave enough time.

I lie on my bunk, face first. I close my eyes.

Tomorrow, in the morning, the expeditioners will say, “Thanks for the breakfast. Danish bacon is so good!” and I will nod and smile and say, “Thank you. Thanks so much. Have a good day.” I will clean up and start preparing the lunch and soon, when the resupply is done,
Nella
will pull away from Casey, move out of the harbor and pass the small island filled with seabirds so incredible. Out of the grime-stained porthole above the sink I will watch it slip away and it will be gone before I've finished the dishes.

MS
Nella Dan

VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

7th November 1986

POSITION:
66° 16.000' S, 110° 32.000' E

CAPTAIN'S NOTE:
Refueling continues. Weather holding.

Ice sparkles in the sun

Like diamonds—like jewels, thousands of them shining in the white

Beyond—the blue dark water

Above—the blue light sky

And out in the bay—the red of my ship

Red against the sea, the sky

Red against the ice

Red there, calling out to me

Don't stay away too long

I sit down on a worn couch and drink my coffee. It isn't very good, milk and too much sugar, but I don't mind. Someone made it for me and that's enough. I will drink it. I will enjoy it, sitting here in this room. Casey—Antarctica.

Antarctica. Inside, looking out.

Benny found me after breakfast and said I could go across, visit the station. “Just a few hours.” My prize for missing the party.

Opposite me, there are two men asleep in chairs, magazines open on their laps. One is snoring softly. He has a thick red beard even though the long hair on his head is brown. It is impressive, this beard. The beard of a winterer—a long cold year of solid effort. Sometimes my father would come home with a beard like this, strange and rough, and I would not recognize him after he had been away for so long. I would look at him from a distance, study him from the doorway. Wonder who this strange man was who knew me so well. Was it really him? My father, with brown hair like mine, but on his face a beard of red clear to see. Red—bright like fire. Red—bright like flames.

I touch my own face, feel the stubble on my chin. I can never grow a beard like that, not full. My beard would not keep my skin warm in the cold. I only need to shave once a week, and that is something at sea.

I look over at the pile of magazines on the coffee table near the sleeping men. I want to get one, to read some old news from the world, but I stay put. I don't want to wake anyone. They have been working hard, their hands stained from the resupply. So I just sit. I take it in. I drink this strange coffee. I look around.

It feels lived-in, the room. Stuffed full of life.

In the evenings, men crammed in, seats hard to find. Some stand by the pool table, some at the bar. There is laughter and there are arguments, there is joy, there is wanting. The mundane, day-to-day, all here in this room. The years here, in the corners and against the walls, years walked into the faded carpet.

The echoes of men.

The sun hits my face. My eyes follow the rays to the glass of the square windows. There, beyond the brightness, I can see a hill made of
stones. Brown against the white. Brown, the color of the earth, so out of place. A kingdom of rocks in the snow and in the ice.

Something inside me kicks alive, stings—like memory. Familiar. Real. I stand, move closer to the window. I keep looking at the hill. A hill of stones. A hill of rocks.

Something hits the floor, a magazine, and the man with the red beard wakes. He stretches his arms, his eyes surprisingly green and young and wide. He looks at me.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” I say.

He picks the magazine up off the floor and puts it on the table. He stretches out again, stands up.

I look to the window. “What is this place?” I ask, and I point at the hill, to the stones. The man comes closer, squints into the light.

“Reeve's Hill,” he says, and he stares with me for a while at the scene out there. Then he looks at his watch.

“Time for lunch,” he says.

I follow him up the tunnel to the mess. He tells me his name is Ben. He is a diesel mechanic and he's been up all night watching the fuel lines. We shake hands and his grip is strong. Welcoming. I still have my coffee cup in my other hand, almost empty, but I can't drink any more.

The mess is full, most people already eating. It's not large but there is room enough. The summer crew are sitting together. I wave to them—I know most by name from the journey down. Not yet grease-stained, not yet callused, not yet comfortable in this new place. What will it be like when the darkness comes? When the cold dark is pressing down on these small rooms, on these thin walls?

I have this sudden feeling that
Nella
has left, sailed away without me. I can't see her. I am far away, left behind. I want to run, to see if she's
there in the bay. I want to go back to my ship, my home. I do not belong here. But someone calls my name. I look across the room. It's a solid gray-bearded man. The station leader. He waves me over to his table, asks me to join him. And the feeling is gone. I know the resupply is still going and
Nella
is out there. Half a day of work at least. She won't leave me here.

“Have you had a good look around?” he asks me, and I tell him, “Yes, thank you. I have had a good look around. Inside.”

He is sitting with the winterers. A group bound together. They are almost home, their time over. But for now this is still their house. They are comfortable—many just in their long thermal underwear and socks, glazed eyes, cheeks sunburnt to the color of blood, eating with gusto. Beef casserole and pasta, fresh vegetables that have been missing for so long. Full bowls of fruit salad on the tables waiting to be devoured. Fresh fruit, eaten in silence—fresh fruit eaten with reverence. With cream, with ice cream. Fresh fruit.

The station leader nudges me. “Won't you eat something?” he asks. His eyes are dark and ancient and tired.