by Rebecca Hunt
This is what Jess’s friendship must be like, Brix thought. Forceful, jovially pragmatic. ‘Thank you.’
‘I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let you faint from shock and crack your skull open,’ Jess said. Looking sideways at Brix, her expression could almost be mistaken for kindness. ‘Besides, I need you around in case we see another wounded animal.’
‘Well, that was eventful,’ Decker said.
‘Is it live?’ Jess asked as the volcanic smoke tapered out into a white sky. ‘Is it going to go off?’
‘Don’t think so,’ he answered. ‘Although it’s active, there’s no record of it ever erupting.’
Although the spokes of its term were among the slowest on earth, the volcano had a life cycle the same as anything which exists or has ever done. It was destined to rise and perish, to rot like fruit under the infinite lens of millennia, and in an inconceivable future to be gone.
‘Just the occasional snore,’ Decker said.
‘Snore,’ Jess said. ‘Whoa.’
Brix said shakily, ‘Wait until you hear what I’ve found.’
29
March 1913
That was rather explicit,’ Napps said.
‘Knew you’d like it,’ Millet-Bass said without looking up. In order to solve the problem of his hand skidding down on to the blade of his clasp-knife, he was trussing the handle with a thick bandage of string.
Unlike Napps and Dinners, who could only remember parts of a few hymns, Millet-Bass had a seemingly unlimited catalogue of sailors’ songs. They all centred on a range of themes so narrowly specific, inappropriate and sinfully easy to visualize it made Dinners’s face boil red with embarrassment. Not that Dinners really minded. Singing at least stopped them talking, and the only thing they ever talked about was the storm. Feverishly discussing the storm from every conceivable angle was their main recreation. And whatever the angle, whatever the premise, the end result for Dinners was always skull-crushing despair.
The blizzard had now continued through four days and nights. In trying to make the supplies they had with them last, the men’s meals had dwindled into spoonfuls of pemmican and quarter-cups of water. Although the tent was designed to withstand one-hundred-knot winds, it shook and wrenched at the guy ropes. The walls strained concave, the whole flimsy-feeling structure threatening to lift airborne and vanish into the dark with a snap of fabric.
Millet-Bass put a rag into the candle tray to soak up the melted wax, then transferred the rag to his thickly bound knife handle and rubbed the wax in with his thumb. ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ he said as he worked. ‘The air’s almost clean in here.’
Dinners understood that Millet-Bass was referring to their curious lack of odour and pressed his nose into the friendly dirtiness of his top. The reek of their long-unwashed bodies had waned to a point where it was barely noticeable. Napps and Millet-Bass said it was a blessing, and had devised various theories to explain its odd disappearance, but Dinners thought their smell had been comforting and unmistakably human, and he secretly mourned its absence.
‘What are you thinking of now?’ Dinners said swiftly, filling the lull in conversation before Napps could mention the storm. He liked to ask this question despite the predictably monotonous replies. Dinners would always volunteer that he was thinking of Elizabeth, Napps always answered that he was thinking of Rosie, and Millet-Bass always lied.
‘No one. Swords,’ Millet-Bass would say, thinking of Grace. Or he’d say, ‘Pig farming.’ He’d say, ‘No one, I’m inventing an irrigation system,’ thinking constantly of Grace.
‘Irrigation? How you entertain yourself with that is a mystery,’ Napps said.
‘Personally, I enjoy it,’ Millet-Bass said. ‘I enjoy anything which distracts me from remembering that we’ll all die on Everland.’ Smiling in the furiously merry way of the obstinate pessimist, he lay back for a session of daydreaming about Grace. With a shave and a smart set of clothes, he thought, and no chat about collectible guns or field-dressing carcasses. He was sure his nervousness around Grace could be overcome with practice, so he rehearsed various scenarios. He pictured them sitting together on a riverbank, or in some restaurant where the new Millet-Bass would be the embodiment of charm. He’d limit himself to one moderate swallow whenever he lifted his wineglass, and if Grace was interested in carpentry or horses the conversation would flow. Maybe if I told you about horses, thought Millet-Bass, but God help me I never will . . .
Napps said something unflattering about Millet-Bass’s defeatism as Millet-Bass imagined the crustless sandwiches he’d offer to Grace. Napps said it took a certain kind of arrogance to be so deliberately negative, and Millet-Bass applauded himself for looking so spectacularly desirable on this riverbank in his new suit, with his hair combed and his shoes polished. But he did hear Napps say, ‘Lawrence will wonder what happened to you, Millet-Bass.’
‘Then that makes us even,’ Millet-Bass said, opening an eye. ‘Because I’m certainly wondering what happened to Lawrence. It’s been weeks; where is he?’
Napps ploughed into an exasperated answer about the Kismet being imminent, which he’d said hundreds of times, which he was saying again now, which he was tired of having to explain.
‘Another tiny sandwich?’ Millet-Bass said to Grace, who was enthralled by his knowledge of beetle species, and keen to learn how to guddle fish. Millet-Bass held her hand and told her there was a decent, respectable man under the fur and filth. You could trust me if only you knew me. But God help me, I don’t think you ever will . . .
Dinners hoped that Millet-Bass’s shut eyes and restfully methodical breaths were not actually the signs of sleep they appeared to be. He became nervous around Napps without Millet-Bass to defend him. As Dinners couldn’t will Millet-Bass into consciousness, he would compensate by willing himself into unconsciousness. ‘I might have a short nap,’ he said to Napps, ‘if you’ll be awake to guard us.’
‘From what?’ Napps had a habit of sighing to remind Dinners that pitying him was an arduous task. It wasn’t the sigh of a man who placed any value on the idea of guarding them.
‘Hmm, no,’ Dinners said in mock-contemplation and then instant resolve. ‘I don’t believe—no, I don’t want a nap after all.’
The men did an incredible amount of sleeping. Millet-Bass and Napps lay at the sides with their heads at the top end of the tent, and Dinners, in the middle, found it less claustrophobic to lie the opposite way with his head near the tent entrance. Their debt of exhaustion found a release in the storm and often knocked them unconscious before they’d finished a sentence. Napps’s experience of the blizzard was a journey through semi-coherence as he drifted out of conversations or emerged into them. He dozed and woke and floated from one extract to the next.
He’d once surfaced to find Dinners perched above him, saying, ‘I wanted to come, but I need help getting my boots on.’ In a blearily thick voice Napps said that he didn’t understand. ‘And then you were back,’ Dinners said.
On several occasions, Napps felt his awakening had interrupted something. Hushed conversations would promptly become stilted and abnormally bland the moment he stirred. He’d lean up and Millet-Bass and Dinners would perhaps seem to have a voltage of guardedness running between them. Their smiles were perhaps unconvincingly enthusiastic, and their glances at him were perhaps a little too long and a little too intent. These anomalies either did or didn’t really exist. Millet-Bass pulled a face of amused concern when Napps eventually chose to risk humiliation and ask if they’d been talking about him. He’d said, are you crazy now, Napps?
Another time Napps was roused by a hasty scribbling close to his ear. Dinners had crawled up the tent to rake through Napps’s belongings for his diary and was putting something between the pages. He seemed entirely ignorant of the fact that Napps would dislike this violation of his privacy, and dislike being startled awake, and dislike uninvited things being hi
dden in his diary.
‘It’s my oath to you,’ Dinners said, his voice quivering when Napps snatched the journal off him. ‘I won’t disappoint you, Napps, I swear. I’m giving you this photograph of Elizabeth to prove it. It’s the most precious thing I have, and I want you to keep it until I’ve fulfilled my oath, so that you’ll know I’ll be good to my word. I’ve written a quote on the back.’
Napps neither wanted nor had any interest in Dinners’s oath or his photograph. ‘Go to bed,’ he ordered.
The tentative noises Dinners made as he sat there clutching his own shoulders implied he was preparing a statement. He said, ‘Died in the night,’ and Napps half shoved him down the tent in his desire not to know the rest of the sentence.
‘Wouldn’t survive,’ Dinners said, lumpishly resisting the efforts to propel him away. ‘That’s what you said to Lawrence.’
‘Bed, Dinners.’
‘Said I wouldn’t survive the night. I know you don’t want me here. And you’re so angry with me.’
Itching with spite for this man and his sick-making neediness, it occurred to Napps that he could take Dinners by the neck and shake him. Just grab his arm and bite him. It also occurred to him that it wasn’t actually Dinners he wanted to attack. It wasn’t Dinners who’d insisted on his brilliance as a scientist, or slammed his fist on the table and enforced mindless decisions.
‘Lawrence sent you to Everland,’ Napps said, images of the Captain’s reaction to a knee to the groin flashing through his head. ‘You can’t be blamed for his mistakes.’
‘My mistakes, Napps,’ Dinners said. ‘And I’m so angry at myself.’
‘Fine, good, I accept your oath,’ Napps said. He had no idea what Dinners was babbling about, and he’d never cared less about anything in his life, but he saw that Dinners wasn’t going to stop until his wish to coerce the First Mate into taking his stupid photograph and nonsense promises had been granted.
‘Thank you, thank you, Napps,’ Dinners said with gasps of relief. ‘I won’t disappoint you,’ he pledged, finally shuffling off down the tent.
Hours had passed. Napps awoke to whispering in the dark.
‘Don’t ever mention it to him . . . ’
In the long silence which followed, Napps thought they knew he was listening. Then muffled crying broke out again. The accompanying voice was so quiet it couldn’t be traced to anyone.
‘I didn’t think, I never thought—’
‘Shhh. For your own sake, don’t say a word about it.’
There was a quick rustling when Napps seized the lamp. His match flared to illuminate Millet-Bass crouched by the tent entrance.
‘Do we want to wake him?’ Millet-Bass asked as the candlelight freshened and grew to a steady white flame.
‘Careful, Millet-Bass,’ Napps said. ‘I heard you both talking.’
‘But he’s asleep.’
Napps looked at Dinners motionless inside his sleeping bag.
‘You heard me, Napps. Not him,’ Millet-Bass said, the two of them arguing back and forth in murmurs, like men quarrelling in a church, or beside a baby’s cot.
‘Talking to yourself. About what?’
‘About nothing,’ Millet-Bass said. ‘It was a dream, I think. I didn’t know I was talking, it happened before I came to my senses. That’s why I sat up.’
Napps remained suspicious for a frostily tense minute. Then he relaxed, slapping a hand across his forehead. ‘God, Millet-Bass, don’t go mad. Don’t be another Dinners.’
‘Ah, you’re too rough on him,’ Millet-Bass said with a good-natured type of disapproval. Although he was smiling at Napps, his focus kept twitching to the lamp.
‘I admire your patience. It’s more than I have,’ Napps said. ‘Whining on about ghosts and hallucinations, his utter—’
Millet-Bass cut him off with a flustered laugh. ‘He’s getting better.’
‘You don’t believe that,’ Napps said. ‘And there are other ways a man can be ill. Listen.’ Whatever he was deliberating on was contentious enough to generate intense anticipation. He leant forwards. ‘Have you considered what our—’
Millet-Bass sensed an awful confession. ‘It’s late—’
‘Tell me you’ve never wished it was Castle here with us instead,’ Napps said. ‘Or Addison. Even bloody Coppers, I don’t mind.’ He stopped Millet-Bass from reaching for the lamp. ‘Let’s play a game. Imagine the ship didn’t come for us, just say it didn’t. And then tell me what you’d do. What you’d be willing to do.’
Millet-Bass corrected himself. For a second he’d glanced at the still shape of Dinners. Now he stared purposefully at Napps. ‘I don’t want to play these games.’
‘Oh, save your puritanical act! We don’t have an audience.’ Napps raised his hands at the self-evidence of this, grinning. ‘Tell me truthfully it wouldn’t have been easier for us without him. Tell me that it wouldn’t be easier—’
‘Napps, don’t say it.’
‘If he’d died in the dinghy.’
Millet-Bass’s expression was so painfully clenched, it struck Napps as insulting. It forced him to regret letting the private but abstract evils out of his mouth to become conscious and free. The sanctimonious Millet-Bass had put him in a morally disadvantaged position. More than annoying, Napps felt it was rude. He told Millet-Bass to extinguish the candle.
Millet-Bass spoke with a curious generality. ‘No one meant what they said tonight, I’m certain of it.’
The second before the light died into blackness, Napps understood. His eyes flicked from Millet-Bass to look again at Dinners.
30
November 2012
Sorry for being such a jerk.’ Decker shot Brix a remorseful smile. ‘Well, I say jerk. Jess used the word asshole, which is perhaps a more fitting description.’
What mattered when living jammed together in a tent was harmony, and that quality had been noticeably absent as they returned to the camp. The seal tag incident at the cove had left Decker sheepish, and Brix feeling awkward. For the past half-hour, they’d addressed each other with overly polite tentativeness, mostly avoiding eye contact. Although this was their problem to resolve and Jess had decided to stay out of it, she’d eventually lost patience. Announcing that the volcano drama was an excellent reason to treat themselves to the tub of frozen sausages and bacon, she’d tramped off with a shovel to dig them up, leaving Decker and Brix alone in the tent.
Brix had to repeat Decker’s last sentence in her head a couple of times. The idea of Jess defending her was unexpected, but also evidence that her theory was correct. She and Jess were undergoing a transition. Brix’s opinions about Jess’s surliness and irritability, her rudeness, her general awfulness, had been replaced with more benign feelings. And Jess’s views on Brix also seemed to have become more forgiving. Learning to like each other was a project they were both working on in secret, and similar to unstable chemicals or light-sensitive paper, it was a very delicate project which would be ruined if handled carelessly. For example, by mentioning anything, or displaying overt friendliness.
What Brix hated nearly as much as tension was lengthy apologetic discussion.
‘Well, here’s the good news,’ she said, hoping they could let the topic of the seal tags be forgotten. ‘We’ve only got three weeks left on Everland.’
‘Three weeks,’ Decker said with obvious longing. ‘You won’t believe how good that first hot shower is, or that first night in your own bed.’
However much he enjoyed his job, the centenary expedition didn’t have any particular significance to Decker. Unlike Brix, to whom everything about Antarctica was exotic and strange, it was all familiar to him. Everything was commonplace in its own habitat, and after twenty years of Antarctic research, penguins and glaciers were no more astounding for him to witness than cows or trees. Which left him plenty of time to think about other things,
such as roast chicken, king prawn jalfrezi, his local pub, the Sunday papers. He stopped himself. Brix clearly didn’t find thoughts of beds and showers as transporting as he did. Still, he had a good idea what she would be pleased about.
‘Three weeks, and then no more field assistants,’ he said. ‘Got to be good news, eh?’
To his surprise, Brix made a small ambiguous noise and shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Jess isn’t so bad,’ she said. ‘I occasionally think she might be okay underneath that attitude.’
They heard footsteps outside and Brix fell silent. Jess was back with upsetting information. The meat wasn’t frozen. It was black and wet, and oh my God, the smell.
‘The hole can’t have been deep enough,’ Decker said, rolling his head away as she showed them the rank tarry substance on her gloves. ‘Or the covering of snow was too thin . . . ’
No, Jess swore that she’d done everything perfectly. It was hardly the first time she’d buried fresh produce on an expedition, she said, growing more defensive, and she’d never had an issue with it before. Sensing an air of unfinished business underneath the new affability between Brix and Decker, she asked, ‘Did I interrupt something?’
‘Nope,’ Brix said in the carefree tone specific to lying. ‘We were talking about the dead bulls. Remember you wanted to know why we only collected teeth from the female seals?’
If Jess did remember, she didn’t answer. Decker’s suggestion that she was so talentless with a spade she couldn’t even manage to bury a little plastic tub of meat correctly had wounded her. Jess’s attention returned to her disgusting gloves.
Brix continued, explaining that, scientifically, it made no difference whether teeth were retrieved from a living or dead animal. A tooth was a tooth. But as female seals almost always died at sea where they couldn’t be found, their teeth had to be extracted while they were alive. Whereas the bulls conveniently tended to die on land, so their teeth could be removed when dead.
The notion of harvesting teeth animated Decker. ‘That convenience does come with a price, though.’ He shook his head, recalling a historic trauma. ‘Wear clothes you’ll never want to use again.’