by Rebecca Hunt
Jess was thinking of the polar coordinates tattoo she’d got at eighteen, and how long she’d striven for a career in Antarctic research. She thought of how good she was at her work, and how devastating it would be to waste those skills. And she thought, at first in a distant way, and then more intensely, that harming herself and Decker professionally wouldn’t benefit anyone. Brix would still be lost, the accident would still have happened. Time wouldn’t reverse and magically amend everything. Her indignation turned into something else more engaged and increasingly willing.
‘I know how much your job means to you, Jess, because I feel the same about mine. I’ve spent a lifetime building my career,’ Decker said, speaking in the persuasively compassionate tone of someone who sees their arguments are gaining traction. ‘And I’m saying, why complicate matters with accusations? I’m saying, why put either of us through it?’
‘Are you there?’ the tinny voice of someone from Aegeus said. ‘Decker?’
There was a complex silence as Decker held the receiver to his ear again. ‘So what do you want me to say?’ he asked softly.
She didn’t do much. She perhaps shook her head.
‘No, we’re fine,’ he said, continuing to look at her as he spoke. ‘Jess didn’t feel well for a minute there, but she’s doing much better now.’
57
December 2012
Brix couldn’t recall the moment when she’d truly understood the situation. Returning to find two quads, not three, should have explained it, except the thought that she’d been abandoned was too enormous to consider and therefore resisted being processed. Because she could neither ignore nor resolve the fact that she didn’t know what to do, and the superhuman resolution and tenacity she’d always thought would be activated in times of crisis didn’t appear, Brix had opted to just stand beside her quad for a while, as if patience might be a substitute for decisiveness. She’d watched as the blizzard threshed nearer, obliterating the horizon into whiteness, then the outline of the cove, and then drew close enough to obliterate the Joseph Evelyn. It was when Brix realized she couldn’t even see something as large as a dinghy six metres away from her that she grasped exactly how little her patience was going to achieve.
They’d left her and she was stranded. Brix accepted this and felt she ought to react. The problem was that she was very tired and very cold, which made it difficult to judge what an appropriate reaction might be. Her thoughts were disordered and wouldn’t focus on the subjects. So Brix rocked on the spot as she imagined a despairing person would, and made promises to herself. She cried a bit, out of a sense of obligation more than anything. None of it was particularly authentic-feeling or satisfying.
‘Formulate a plan,’ Brix said, and trawled the lumpen impenetrable things her mind offered in response. It occurred to her that one possibility was to shelter inside the cave on the bull seal beach, and she broke into a lumbering run.
The fact that she might die, and maybe was dying, was an issue she decided would be better reflected upon while sitting on the ground, or perhaps lying on the ground. When Brix opened her eyes again, she reconsidered. She felt strongly that she should keep moving. The instincts which translated the frozen wind as a harmless pressure and drugged her with sensations of false warmth were not to be believed. The blizzard would kill her, and Brix fully appreciated the seriousness of the matter. She devoted her full attention to it whenever she wasn’t busy with other important things. Such as sleeping for brief periods in the snow. Such as trying to solve the problem of her laces, which couldn’t be solved, and frustrated her efforts to remove her boots. Brix wanted to take off her coat as well, but whatever mechanism fastened her into the jacket, her cautious pinching and pulling at the fabric didn’t reveal how to unfasten it, and then she had no more time to devote to the issue because she was trundling along on her forearms.
The distance to the cave was approximately forty-five metres, but that journey had now taken over thirty minutes and Brix was trapped in a mystifying pattern. Whichever direction she headed in, she always found her path had circled back to the quads. She’d wobble up to her feet, aim north, or east, and then collide with the shin-skinning obstacle of a bike tyre. The curved shape of a leather seat would come out of nowhere to catch her in the stomach. If any of this hurt, Brix only registered it with mild interest. The sense of being rooted in her own body had gone, replaced by a pleasant abstractness. She was a kindly yet uninvolved witness to her own efforts as she floundered along. Colliding with an embankment of rock, Brix’s hand met an unspecified object.
She stopped to feel out a name for it. With the impotent tone of someone talking in their sleep, she said that the object in her hand was a rope.
Tied here by another lost person a century ago, the rope led Brix to the Joseph Evelyn. She remembered that it was somehow hollow. That there was a way inside. That she should dig at the snow to uncover the boat’s entrance.
Once Brix finally tunnelled her way inside the Joseph Evelyn, she brought her knees up to her chest. Sleep had been a gift she’d wanted for reasons which were now unimportant. Still, she accepted her gift with a sense of polite gratitude, and lay there, sometimes drifting, sometimes moored.
58
September 1913
Everyone was gathered on deck. The air smelt of woodsmoke and rain-logged soil. A dense pine forest was visible through the evening mist, and no one could absorb how beautiful the colour green was, or stop talking about it. Once, more exotic than any noise they’d heard for years, a dog had barked.
This was New Zealand, where the sun rose and set tamely every single day of the year. It was the kingdom of dry land, an incomprehensible place after such a long time away. The men began to remember the pleasures of civilization. It yielded fresh fruit and vegetables and agreeably normal meat. It offered safety, leisure and choice. It contained other people, including the euphoric addition of women. To think that they’d just lived among this extravagance and found it mundane. The men were baffled at themselves.
Unpacking their civilian clothes caused more puzzled amusement. Inside the cases were a heap of foreign objects. Compared to their bulky Antarctic gear, the tailored jackets and trousers seemed tiny to the point of ridiculousness. The men examined improbably flimsy leather shoes. Cotton shirts were held up at arm’s length and assessed primly, like they were lacy girlish underwear. The modern world not only demanded they wear these fancy-dress costumes, but also that they repair three years’ worth of personal neglect. Straggling holy-man beards were razored away and their mad woolly hair was chopped into tidy styles. The pinkly bald faces which emerged were startled and naked-looking. Snorting with laughter, they all waited for their turn at the full-length mirror.
Each man’s smile hardened into an introspective grimace as he confronted his reflection. The differences between the person who’d first boarded the ship and this person newly rehabilitated from his dirt and fur caused quite seismic shockwaves. It wasn’t simply about appearing older and weather-beaten. Staring back from the mirror was an impostor. He was a high-quality facsimile, but there were imperfections. He was shorter than the original man and not as handsome. There was something weird about his mouth. His eyes were smaller and his shoulders were less impressive. He couldn’t do a signature eyebrow raise with the same panache.
‘Not a word, tell them nothing,’ Lawrence ordered the crew as two men steered a rowboat towards the Kismet, swinging a lamp and hallooing.
As Captain, Lawrence’s first mission on reaching Oamaru harbour was to send an official telegraph message to England without saying anything about the voyage to anyone. His various press contracts embargoed him from discussing any element of the expedition. It was also a matter of decency that the Everland men’s families were contacted before the news became public. To help project an attitude which discouraged friendliness or curiosity, he’d chosen two thuggish and pathologically untalkative sailors to go ashor
e with him.
‘Welcome back, sir,’ the rowboat men shouted. They looked edible. Both were robust and red-cheeked piglet-men whose coats strained over porky stomachs. A low-voiced discussion estimated that they’d feed between ten and fifteen sailors.
‘Fifteen?’ Lawrence said under his breath. ‘More like twenty. Tell them nothing, understand me?’
The piglet oarsmen gawped up at the three intimidating creatures which came down the rope ladder to join them.
‘What stories you must have, Captain,’ the slimmer oarsman said.
Lawrence didn’t answer. He smiled cryptically.
‘We probably wouldn’t believe it even if you did tell us,’ the oarsman said, trying to goad out some information.
Lawrence sighed. ‘Maybe I was wrong about twenty,’ he said to the sailors.
‘I bet you could shock us with the things you’ve seen!’ the oarsman persisted.
‘What do you think, boys? Could we manage one between three?’
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ the fatter oarsman said warily to Lawrence.
Lawrence stared at the shore. ‘You will if you keep asking questions.’
The newly groomed Addison was a quaint and slightly heart-rending figure. Whilst his shapeless polar gear had disguised his weight loss, his tailored clothes emphasized it in pitiless detail. His jacket sagged and his trousers hung baggily. The collar gaped around his thin neck. His strangely white-patched hair seemed odder and somehow uglier now he’d done his best to comb it neatly. He was immune to the singing and rowdiness happening around him.
Since no outside contact was permitted before the cablegram’s dispatch, the Kismet would spend the next twenty-four hours loitering evasively in the harbour. They had one last infernal day to go before docking, a fact which was both joyous and a form of torture. Being so close to land, yet still trapped on the ship, gave the men’s celebratory mood a frenzied edge. They became even wilder after Jennet appeared on deck with a cauldron of punch. Standing alone with his glass, Addison didn’t seem to notice Castle sidle across.
‘They’re obviously happy. Are you?’
‘I think I am, yes.’ Addison glanced at Castle. ‘Why, you’re not?’
‘There he goes,’ Castle said, with a nod at Lawrence in the rowboat. ‘What’s your guess . . . will his diary cover this chapter, or did it end when we left the Pole?’
He tried to hide his impatience when Addison replied with characteristic neutrality that they’d just have to wait for the book to be published.
‘Here’s a riddle for you to solve while we wait,’ Castle said. ‘This is the last day of Napps’s life, although he’s been dead for months. Isn’t that a funny conundrum?’
Castle set himself his own dilemma and then resolved it for Addison’s benefit. Yesterday Napps was alive on the Kismet as far as anyone outside knew. He was just plain old Napps, a respectable First Mate with other titles of father and husband, son, brother and friend. He was destined to finish his days in anonymity to those who’d never met him, be fondly forgotten by those who had, and leave behind a solid, if unexceptional, legacy.
‘But tomorrow, well. That’s when Napps becomes a brand-new man,’ Castle said. ‘The second Lawrence delivers his cable, Napps’s forty-three years will condense into a few weeks. He’ll live on Everland, he’ll die on Everland, and that’s all he’ll have ever done. Same for Millet-Bass and for Dinners, more or less.’
‘Castle, shall we be straight with one another? I suspect you don’t need to enquire whether I’m aware of what will happen to Napps.’
Castle kept talking. ‘It’s not only Lawrence’s cable, though, is it? It’s Lawrence’s book. And it’s not only Lawrence’s book, it’s the queues of books behind it.’
‘Shall we speak openly, Castle?’
What Castle wanted to say wasn’t easy. He needed to get to the point before his nerve failed. ‘I mean, you’ve had your conflicts with Lawrence, haven’t you? What’s to stop him reworking events which concern you? There’s a chance you won’t recognize yourself either.’
‘I’m sure I will.’
‘You can’t be certain!’
‘I believe I can,’ Addison replied.
‘You say that, but you can’t censor what Lawrence puts in his book.’
Except that Addison and Lawrence had an agreement which guaranteed Lawrence would censor events. In Lawrence’s version of history, Addison had never upturned a medical case over the floor and never filled a syringe. He’d never come to the Captain’s quarters with a letter. As long as Addison kept his vow not to write his own account of the expedition, these career-destroying events simply didn’t exist.
‘Makes me wish you’d publish a book, Adds. You were considering it.’ With a terrible joviality, Castle added, ‘And then I wouldn’t be in this predicament!’
Castle’s worries about Lawrence’s poor opinion of him and its outcomes had deepened as they approached New Zealand. He’d thought about how Lawrence’s paper version of him would tower over the flesh-and-blood version. The real Castle was known by so few and was so logistically restricted, and the paper Castle would be known by countless people and travel everywhere. The idea of the book reaching strangers was painful yet endurable, but the idea of it accessing familiar and cherished people was intolerable. The paper Castle would threaten him directly as it came into his town to be read by his friends, and came into his street to be read by his neighbours. It would come into his house, into his marital bed, as it was read by his wife. It would gradually pierce into his family as it was read by his children, and their children to follow.
While Castle was alive the book would always contest him. It would undermine his word with contradictions and dilute goodwill towards him, perhaps making it hard for the people he loved to love him in return. And the paper Castle would live on after he’d perished to replace him and then finally eclipse him. So he’d made a decision. He’d intercepted the paper threat.
‘Castle, listen to me,’ Addison said, ‘Lawrence doesn’t have the last word on your life. Unlike Napps, you get to have your own last word.’
‘That’s not quite true, though, is it,’ Castle answered. ‘Which is why I gave Lawrence my diary and said he could use what he wanted.’
Castle looked somewhere off to one side in order not to see Addison’s reaction. ‘I told him what I’d written about Napps. His antagonism, his tempers, the occasional rows we’d had. I could see it pleased Lawrence when I said the arguments against Napps were valid.’
Addison smiled bitterly. ‘Oh, I’m sure it did.’
‘He shook my hand and called my honesty brave,’ Castle said with hatred. ‘Addison, look, you and I know there’s no truth in all this. Napps was one of my greatest friends. But the Captain can’t touch him, can he? And I can’t be in opposition to Lawrence. I’ve got to think of my family and how it will affect them. This isn’t just about Napps any more, Adds. There are consequences for other people as well.’
‘There always are.’
‘You’d do the same,’ Castle said, unable to interpret whether Addison was being ironic or sincere.
Addison’s expression was unreadable as he stood watching the waves. ‘I wish I could tell you differently.’
Evening became late, became later, and slowly became dawn. Everyone was out on deck long before the sky softened into the early pinks of daybreak. No one said much. From Antarctica, a place they’d once dreamt of, they were finally going home, the place they’d dreamt of every single night they’d been gone. And neither felt real today.
59
December 2012
It doesn’t matter about me,’ Decker said to Canadian Sam.
‘As a doctor, I’m saying that it really does matter.’ Sam was an attractive, serious woman in her mid-forties, who had a talent for remaining composed in any situation. But this was not th
e time for heroics, she’d told Decker. Finding Brix wasn’t his job. He’d been through enough. ‘You’ve got deep-tissue freeze injuries to your face and hands which require clinical attention. You need to let me help you.’
Behind them, teams with survival and rescue gear were assembled around a man outlining a strategy to find Brix in clear, methodical tones. The word casualty was used. The word fatality.
The blizzard had lasted for five hours, and the silence left in the aftermath was so perfect it had a tinnitus resonance. Two more desperate hours had passed before Decker and Jess finally heard the faint whine of a Twin Otter’s engines.
No one at Aegeus had slept. No one could get over the horror. Despite endlessly repeating that they had to stay positive, it was an empty slogan which no one believed. Coffee was percolated in giant amounts throughout the night and taken to the harried staff manning the weather systems and the radios until every desk was stacked with dirty cups. Dishevelled, sallow-faced people dissected the tragedy in rapid over-caffeinated debates, trying to find some grounds to explain it. Everybody at Aegeus was suddenly a psychologist.
Being friends with, or even an acquaintance of, one of the Everland team wasn’t deemed necessary in order to provide a detailed character analysis of them. Jess, Decker and Brix’s personalities were examined from a hundred different angles. The radio conversations were a point of intense scrutiny and certain details had emerged. For example, Decker had implied to Toshi that one of the team members wasn’t coping as well as the others. Andre had a similar story. He’d spoken to Decker and got the impression that things were difficult. Extracting information from Canadian Sam wasn’t easy because she was irritatingly discreet, but, yes, she eventually concurred with Andre and Toshi. It did perhaps seem that Brix was having a tough time. No, it didn’t appear likely that she’d manage well in an emergency.