The White Voyage

by John Christopher

  ‘But if you leave enough for two, surely you can leave enough for me and the child as well – especially as you’ll have two less mouths to feed on the way?’

  ‘We will not leave enough for two,’ Olsen said. He spoke slowly and quietly, his eyes on the couple at the other side of the room. ‘Only enough for one. That is another thing. Mrs Jones is dying.’

  In horror, Mary said: ‘No!’ Olsen looked at her. ‘But we must do something.’

  ‘There is nothing to do. Death is with her now.’ He touched Mary’s arm. ‘Yes, there is one thing we can do. We can leave her to die alone with her husband. That is the way she wishes it, I think.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jones watched them set off, looking out of the little window in front of the hut. Mouritzen and Josef were hauling the sledge, with Annabel perched on top. They moved fast and to the south. In the dim morning light it was not long before they had disappeared from view. Then he turned back to Sheila.

  She said: ‘They’ve gone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not sorry – that you didn’t go with them?’

  ‘And leave you?’

  ‘I would have been all right. I could manage for myself.’ She looked anxious and tried to sit up. ‘You could still go after them. You could …’

  He pressed her back. She had not as much strength as a child. He said:

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’m better off here, aren’t I? No trudging across the snow, taking turns to heave a sledge – all we have to do is sit quietly until they send help back to us.’

  She half smiled. ‘I suppose so.’

  He said: ‘And we’re together – and we’re alone. This is our real honeymoon.’

  ‘It was supposed to be South America.’

  ‘This is better. Don’t you think so?’

  There was pain in her face. ‘I wish I could – give you pleasure.’

  ‘That can wait. This is enough.’

  She shook her head weakly. ‘No. But thank you for making do with it.’ She sighed. ‘I feel like an old woman.’

  ‘You look like a child.’

  ‘An old woman,’ she repeated. ‘As though the story were all over. Did we have a good life together?’

  ‘We will have.’

  ‘Three children,’ she said, ‘– the two girls, and then the boy. Ralph. I’d always wanted that name for a boy. I called him after my first sweetheart. You weren’t jealous, were you? He had blonde hair and blue eyes and he was younger than I was. He was five and I was six.’

  Jones said: ‘No, I wasn’t jealous.’

  ‘I think you always liked the girls best. Madelaine, anyway. Fathers always do fall in love with their eldest daughters, don’t they? And she was always so beautiful. Anyway, she’s married now – they’re both married. You have to put up with just me again.’

  He smiled. ‘Confidentially, I’m not too sorry. The last few years they were a bit of a strain – jazz and boy friends and clothes and gossip and giggles. I’m getting too old for that kind of life.’

  ‘Well, there’s still Ralph. But of course, he’s away at the university most of the time. He’s doing very well, isn’t he? He must get the brilliance from you.’

  ‘I was never brilliant. I wasn’t even clever.’

  ‘I think you were.’

  ‘You always had too high an opinion of me.’

  She said slowly: ‘I always loved you. All that time, all those long years. Spring and summer, autumn and winter, again and again, and loving you more all the time. There’s nothing better than that.’

  ‘No more than I loved you.’

  Her lips moved in a little smile. ‘I’m not going to argue. I love you too much even to say I love you more than you love me.’

  ‘We’ll let it rest equal.’

  She closed her eyes and, after a few minutes, he thought she had gone to sleep. He went to the window again and looked out. It was still dark, but less dark than it had been. There were the marks of the sledge and the footsteps leading away; but nothing else to show that life had ever come to this barren white waste, or would ever come.

  When he looked back, Sheila’s eyes were open. As he went to her he saw the tears welling there and brimming on to her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to cry for. Everything’s going to be wonderful.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. She closed her eyes again. ‘I know.’

  * * *

  They were encouraged by the fact that the going was better than at any previous time. They were on snow, with no more ridges and barriers of ice over which the sledge would have to be manhandled, and the snow itself was firm and close-packed. There was no longer the need to protect the sick woman from jolts; when they did come Annabel squealed with pleasure. And they themselves were refreshed by the food and warmth and comparative comfort of the previous night’s stay.

  The weather stayed fine as they tramped through the brief day and on into the new twilight. The wind was still from the northwest, and so a supporting one. At night they put up the tent in the protecting lee of a rocky rib of the hills. Once again they had to do without artificial warmth or the means to heat their food; but at least the food was sufficient to remove hunger.

  Except for Mary, they formed a cheerful company. Mouritzen had made one or two attempts to come to terms, but she had unequivocally rejected them. Josef and Mama Simanyi had found themselves, although more gently, as firmly excluded. Mary was isolated from the others by her own choice. Apart from the necessities of communication, she spoke only to Annabel; but Annabel herself continued to chatter to all of them.

  On the second day, with Olsen and Stefan pulling the sledge, Mouritzen watched Mary trudging along beside it. Annabel, from her perch on top, was chatting to Josef on the other side. Nadya and Mama Simanyi were bringing up the rear, about ten yards behind, and Nadya was laughing at something. Mary’s loneliness was pathetic, and made more so by their situation: in this empty, frozen land, human relations were thrown into higher, starker relief, and her isolation stood out.

  He called to her softly: ‘Mary.’

  There was no answer; she did not look round. He said more loudly:

  ‘Mary!’

  This time she did turn slightly to look at him. Her face was blank and unregarding, almost like the face of a blind person. Then, without saying anything, she turned from him again.

  Mouritzen moved up to walk beside Olsen.

  Olsen said: ‘Then she will still not talk to you?’

  He spoke in Danish, as they commonly did when alone together but not when, as now, there were foreigners within earshot. In the same language, Mouritzen said:

  ‘She will not even look at me.’

  ‘You are lucky,’ Olsen said. ‘You might not have found out her temperament until after you had married her.’

  Mouritzen protested: ‘She had justification.’

  ‘Justification? For what? For slapping your face – maybe even for deciding you would be no good as a husband. Not for behaving like a sulky child.’

  ‘Life has not been easy for her.’

  ‘The little love-child?’ Mouritzen looked quickly at him. ‘Thorsen told me. The Customs Officer told him the passenger list was wrong, since it showed her as a married woman.’

  ‘That was not what happened. He pried, as usual.’

  Olsen nodded. ‘That does not surprise me. He is no loss to Denmark. But to return to your little Irish woman – there have been plenty of women who have found themselves caught with a baby and no husband.’

  ‘She is virtuous,’ Mouritzen said. ‘As you have said, she is also Irish.’

  ‘The gloomy Dane and the Irish puritan. Maybe you are both well out of it.’

  Mouritzen was silent for a moment. He said:

  ‘You see people objectively, Erik.’

  Olsen said, with satisfaction: ‘Yes. There is no trick in it. It is not difficult to do so.’

  ‘For you, perhaps not
. You look through a glass wall.’

  ‘I can touch also.’

  ‘You do not touch what counts. And without that touching one does not know anything. To see a man or a woman objectively is to see nothing but an object.’

  ‘You think there is more than that to see?’

  ‘If one sees rightly.’

  ‘That comes from being in love, Niels.’ Olsen smiled. ‘A state of fever and self-delusion.’

  ‘You have never been in that state?’

  ‘No, but I have observed it.’

  ‘What kind of a doctor would you have made,’ Mouritzen asked, ‘having such contempt for your fellow-men?’

  ‘A good one,’ Olsen said. ‘To cure a man, one does not need to love him. A surgeon does not operate on his own son.’

  ‘Son? Or wife?’

  ‘Or wife.’

  Mouritzen laughed. ‘You see motives in others, Erik, but you have them too. They go a long way back.’

  In English, Olsen said: ‘Halt! Time to change horses.’ He stepped out of the harness and handed it to Mouritzen. ‘You can pull and brood at the same time. Maybe it will help both.’

  * * *

  On the fourth day they travelled by the side of a frozen fjord, which broadened out until it was about a mile wide. Olsen found its appearance disconcerting; his recollection of the geography of the district was imprecise, but he had not expected to encounter such extensive ice again before reaching the Sound, and there the ice would be before them and twenty miles wide at least. He was forced to recall that his attempts at navigation had been conducted under considerable difficulties, which might have rendered them unreliable. The immediate chilling suspicion which occurred to him was that what he had confidently assumed to be King Oscar’s Fjord might in fact have been Scoresby Sound – that he might have turned his party southwards when only a short distance farther to the east – perhaps no more than an hour’s journey – they would have found the Settlement. If that were so, then they were heading now into unknown southern territory. The only other village, Angmagssalik, was over five hundred miles from Scoresby. They would have no hope of reaching it.

  Providing he could be certain of that, the obvious thing to do would be to retrace their steps: their reserves of food and strength might just be enough to get them there. That was if the weather stayed good, and there were signs that it might be breaking. For the first time since the blizzard, clouds had appeared in the sky and the wind – now at their backs but one they would have to face if they turned north – had risen again.

  It was a complex problem, but it did not occur to him to consult Mouritzen over it. Olsen decided he would press on for the remainder of that day at least. Something might appear which would make the decision easier. Whatever happened it would be his decision.

  The sun rose and sank in a deeper welter of crimson than usual, and after it had gone the afterglow lit the southern clouds with a bloody red. Mouritzen and Stefan were pulling the sledge, with Mary and Mama Simanyi walking beside it. Olsen, Josef and Nadya were forty or fifty yards in the lead, setting the pace. The wind howled over the snow and across the ice to their right.

  Unexpectedly, Mama Simanyi sank to the ground. Mouritzen checked the sledge but she waved him on.

  ‘It is nothing,’ she said. ‘You go on. Mary will help me and we will catch you up.’

  ‘What is it?’ Mary said. ‘Is it your foot?’

  Mama Simanyi smiled. ‘It is only that I want to talk. Let them go on a little.’

  Mary said stiffly: ‘I don’t think there’s anything to talk about.’

  She began to walk on. Mama Simanyi said:

  ‘Stay. Please stay for an old woman.’

  She hesitated, and then came back. The sledge pushed on away from them across the snow. Mama Simanyi said:

  ‘You make yourself sad for nothing. I do not like to see you sad. Not Niels either.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘You think he and Nadya made love together when they were alone in the hut that night. But you are wrong. It did not happen.’

  ‘She gloated over it,’ Mary said, ‘and I saw his face. It would be too late for them to try denying it now.’

  ‘She is naughty, my Nadya,’ Mama Simanyi said. ‘And she is young so she does not know what is tease and what is torment. She saw that you were jealous – that is why she talked as she did.’

  ‘I know you’re trying to help, but I don’t think it helps to lie to people, even for their own good.’

  ‘I am not lying.’

  ‘Then Nadya is to you.’

  ‘That neither. I talked with her this morning. She is a great liar, but I am her mother – I know when she tells the truth.’

  Mary said: ‘There was guilt in Niels’ face.’

  ‘Do you read a man’s face so well?’ She let the question, with all its implications, hang between them for a few moments. She went on: ‘You had shown you suspected him. You both knew what there had once been between him and Nadya, and Nadya was saying things that would make you think they had happened again. What could poor Niels say? If he denied, it would be worse. No wonder he looked guilty.’

  They tramped on in silence; they were a couple of hundred yards behind the sledge.

  ‘It was thinking,’ Mary said, ‘that if he could betray me at a time like that – with Annabel and me lying out there, cold and hungry, on the ice …’

  Mama Simanyi shook her head. ‘Is it any better when you lie in a warm bed and well fed? But nothing happened. I tell you that, for certain. Nothing happened.’

  There was silence again. The wind howled on a higher, harsher note. Mary turned round to look in the direction from which they had come. She said sharply:

  ‘What’s that?’

  It looked like a belt of fog, covering the hills – a high, grey wall reaching up to the grey, twilit sky. But the wall was moving. As they watched, features were blotted out of the landscape in a steady and swift obliteration. It was not until it had almost reached them that they understood what it was, and a minute later they were blinded by the driving fury of the snow.

  ‘Keep together!’ Mama Simanyi said. ‘We must try to keep straight, so we find the others.’

  For a short time they were able to follow the tracks of the sledge; then the snow filled them. They tried to carry on in a straight line, but it was hard to know if they were succeeding. They could see for a few yards in front of them, no more. They were in a world without dimensions, a world of wind and snow and bitter cold.

  ‘We will call to them,’ Mama Simanyi said. ‘Maybe they will hear us.’

  They called, straining their voices against the wind, but only the wind answered. Probably they could be heard for not much farther than they could see. They staggered on, calling from time to time, but with increasingly less hope of being heard. Time was passing.

  ‘If we went straight,’ Mama Simanyi said, ‘we must find them by now. So we are not straight. Too much to the right, I think. We try to the left?’

  ‘Once we start wandering …’

  ‘What else can we do? If we stop, then we die.’

  They turned to the left, trying to count their paces so they would know how far they had gone from their original course. They found nothing, and the snow, coming from the side, lashed them more viciously. It was still more bitter when they turned into it, in case they had overshot the others. Now, despite what she had said, it was Mama Simanyi who wanted to call a halt.

  ‘We rest a little – just a little, maybe. Then we will be stronger.’

  Mary urged her on. ‘We mustn’t stop. You know that.’

  After they had gone a little farther, she collapsed again. She said:

  ‘You go on.’

  ‘Not without you.’

  ‘You have Annabel to think of.’

  Mary pulled the older woman to her feet and, putting her arm round her, persuaded her to go on. She fell again, and the coaxing and lifting had to be repeated. They could no longer, Ma
ry felt, go against the wind. They turned and had the blizzard at their backs. It made things a little easier, but not much. And they were lost now, truly lost.

  When Mama Simanyi fell again, Mary stood over her for a moment, trying to summon up the strength to help her to her feet. Then she collapsed beside her.

  ‘You – go on,’ Mama Simanyi said.

  But what point was there in going on, when for all she knew they might be heading directly away from the others? Mary huddled against the other woman, hoping to shelter her. She thought of Annabel. Niels would look after her. Niels would …

  It snaked across their bodies and had almost gone before she realized what it was and, desperately, reached for it. She caught the rope, but had no power to do anything but hold it against the tug from somewhere out in the blizzard. She did not have to hold it long; almost at once a figure appeared out of the whirling snow. He reached down, and she saw it was Mouritzen. She lifted to him and their two chilled faces met.

  ‘We walk back along the rope,’ he said. ‘The other end is at the sledge.’

  ‘Annabel?’

  ‘She is all right. Can you walk? I will carry Mama.’

  She nodded. ‘I can walk.’

  ‘The rope,’ he said. He looked at her. ‘Three metres less and I could not have found you.’

  She sighed. ‘I knew you would look after Annabel.’

  ‘Why not?’ He put his face to hers again. ‘She is our daughter.’

  * * *

  Day by day he had watched her grow weaker. From time to time he tried to persuade her to eat something; she would take a mouthful or two at his urging, but this was known by both of them – although it was never stated – to be a token only, a sign of companionship and love.

  Strangely, it was not a sad time. From minute to minute, hour to hour, they were happy together, and they looked no farther ahead. Even after he had realized that she was dying, and knew that she knew this too, there seemed to be no constraint between them. Only once, when he got hot water and washed her, he saw her thin white body, lying without movement, as a corpse; and fear savaged him. But he looked up to her face, and saw her smiling. He dared not look at the future, and so he did not look. In the present they were both serenely happy.