Chasing the Light

by Jesse Blackadder

She pulled her hand out of his, outraged that he could joke. ‘You promised,’ she repeated.

  ‘But the children,’ he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  ‘We’ve left them before. What’s different now?’

  He pushed back his hood. ‘None of my boys show any promise in running a whaling empire. I want us to have another child.’

  Lars’s long face was pale against the snow, his eyes unfathomable. Ingrid doubted he had come to her bed as a husband more than a handful of times since their last child was born five years earlier. The heat of their early marriage had cooled over time and she’d been busy enough not to miss it too much. She felt a rush of rage, deep and elemental, the rage of a woman who has borne enough children and wants something for herself.

  ‘I’m thirty-nine, Lars.’

  ‘So there’s no time to lose.’

  Around her the night was dark and huge and she started to shiver in earnest. ‘You’d leave me with a newborn and go south for – what? Four months?’

  They looked at each other and then Lars shrugged. ‘Let’s get moving. It’s too cold to stand still.’

  Ingrid bent her knees, leaned into the stocks and pushed off hard, suddenly wild to get away from him. She was flying, the air freezing her cheeks, her body moving without thought, the grace of skiing unlike anything she knew in her ordinary life. Above her the black sky; below, the snow crunching as her skis sliced through it.

  She could hear the grating of Lars’s skis behind her and she leaned lower, speeding up so he couldn’t overtake her.

  She’d thought, when they first skied together on their honeymoon, that their marriage would always be like that, the one in front laying down the path for the one behind to follow close, their skis fitting into the grooves left by the other. Back when she was too young to understand how suddenly a divergence could crack between them, like a crevasse opening up in the snow.

  Ingrid slid out of the heavy front door and shut it behind her to stop Ranvik’s warmth escaping into the winter night. She stood on the back step, took a few deep breaths till her lungs adjusted, and then stepped out into the snow. It was overcast, but the moon had risen somewhere above the clouds and there was enough light to see by.

  She and Lars had returned to their home in Sandefjord in time for Christmas and neither of them had spoken further of the next season and the Antarctic trip. In public Ingrid was as kind to Lars as ever, but she turned away from him when he came to bed late at night, her legs clamped together to close off any idea of another child.

  The snow crunched under her boots as she walked around the house, skirted its curtain-darkened face and headed across the white expanse of snow, down towards the water’s edge. She dug her hands into her fur-lined pockets, feeling the chill nipping at her fingertips.

  It was January, the time of long nights and bone-deep cold and the water of the fjord freezing around the boats. The town of Sandefjord, a cluster of buildings and docks at the fjord’s head, closed in on itself in the dark season when the men followed the light down to the whaling grounds of the Antarctic. Winter was a place of women and children, with no comfort for those wives through the long hours of darkness, save for the little ones brought in to warm their beds.

  But this winter, with the fleet laid up, Sandefjord was full of restless whaling men with nothing to do, their agitation rippling through the air.

  The sea ice was glassy and perfect and she wished she’d brought her skates. In that smooth motion, like skiing, she could forget herself. A light snow began to fall, floating and insubstantial, the flakes suspended on Ingrid’s fur collar for a moment, then suddenly vanishing. She stopped and tilted her head backwards to watch them. She looked for a glimmer of the aurora, but the sky was heavy with cloud.

  Ingrid could still remember the first time she’d seen the aurora as a child. She’d found her way out of the house looking for her mother and she recalled the sensation of the thick snow crunching and how she sank ankle-deep with every step.

  She had followed the white path leading to the gate, some instinct telling her that the single line of footsteps breaking the snow belonged to her mother. As she toddled her thick-legged way along it, she glanced up at the brilliance in the night sky above and her mouth opened in wonder. She tilted her head back and overbalanced, falling with a soft crunch on her bottom. The snow cushioned the impact and she laughed.

  The aurora had flared again, lighting up the snow around her. Ingrid stretched out her hand, entranced, and tried to grasp the glittering colours. Her fingers closed on snow and she grabbed handful after handful, opening her hand each time to find just pale ice. As the aurora faded and the snow returned to its usual white, Ingrid remembered her purpose. She clambered to her feet again. Another few steps and she was at the gate. It was high, but she reached up, found a handhold in the wood, and pulled herself up from the ground, marvelling at how it felt to move through the air. Poised between sky and snow, she reached higher. Her hand flailed, her foot slipped and she fell, landing on her back.

  The snow rose around her protectively. Footsteps crunched down the path towards her, getting louder in her ears, and then she was lifted from the ground’s icy embrace. She started to cry.

  ‘What are you doing, little Viking?’ her father, Thor, asked, wrapping his arms around her.

  Ingrid strained against his grip. ‘Mommo?’

  ‘Mommo has gone with the Snow Queen.’ Thor hoisted her onto his hip and turned for the house.

  Over his shoulder Ingrid could see the next luminous wave of light, this one a green curtain drifting across the sky. ‘Mommo!’ she cried, her arms outstretched.

  Ingrid shivered at the memory, so long ago but still vivid. She came from Vikings on both sides. It was in her blood to know the deep winter of the Poles and the gift of the aurora to make the long night bearable.

  She’d grown up, too, with the legend of the Snow Queen, ruler of the snowflakes, whose kiss made people forget so she could lure them to her ice palace in the far north and keep them prisoner. It seemed Ingrid had known even as a child that she was one of those who could never resist the siren call of the snow.

  The flakes began to fall more heavily and Ingrid shook her head. The memory of Mommo was one she didn’t want to call up. She turned towards the house. Through a crack in the curtains she could see the light in the upstairs bedroom. She pulled her hood around her face and started back up the path.

  Since Wall Street had crashed in 1929, the world was changing so rapidly that Ingrid had trouble keeping track. She’d always stayed informed about the whaling industry, on which their fortunes rested, but now that she realised the depth of Lars’s worry – and that he’d kept it hidden from her – she made an effort to pay greater attention to it when they returned to Sandefjord. Whale oil had become the cheapest fat to use in producing soap and margarine, and while other industries foundered, deep-sea whaling in the Southern Ocean boomed straight after the crash. The newly formed British company Unilever had become a buyer of such might that it could control the price of whale oil in Europe. But after the record catches of the last few seasons, there was a glut of whale oil and even Unilever, churning out Sunlight Soap and Stork Margarine, couldn’t keep up. The Norwegian whalers had no choice but to capitulate when Unilever ‘suggested’ that the entire fleet lay up for a season so it could use the backlog.

  In January’s short daylight hours the view down the fjord from Ranvik was grim. When Lars left in the early morning to walk to his offices in town, the darkness was still thick. Even once the sun rose, Ingrid still felt hemmed in by her home’s dark wooden walls.

  One morning, several hours after he’d left, Ingrid went looking for the children, desperate for some activity. The eldest three were lazing by the fireplace with books, in the kind of winter stupor that infuriated Ingrid. She left them to their sloth, gathering the three younger ones with promises of treats. She dressed them up warmly, put them in the motorcar and set out towards town. She was the on
ly woman in Sandefjord who drove, one of the many privileges that set her apart.

  She parked near the waterfront. Lars had warned her not to go to the docks, not with the anger felt by out-of-work whaling men, but she had begun showing her resentment towards him in small acts of defiance.

  In Ingrid’s lifetime Sandefjord had grown from a small whaling and sealing port nestled around the harbour’s edge into the centre of Norway’s whaling industry in the Southern Ocean, with Lars and his contemporaries investing ample funds to extend the docklands and build a business centre. Lars’s pride was the Whaling Museum, which he’d designed, funded and built in honour of his father.

  For the past few years Sandefjord had bustled with activity, but this season the factory ships and their broods of catchers lay limply at anchor in the harbour, scrubbed and repaired, crisply clean, forlorn. However, the docks were far from empty. Nearly four thousand whaling men, a good number of them employed by Lars and all accustomed to toiling through the long Antarctic summer, were marooned in Sandefjord’s winter. In the middle of the day, when the sun rose for a few hours, they gravitated seaward to stand in small knots, staring up at the idle ships.

  When Ingrid reached the docks she let the older children run ahead, their feet thudding against the well-trodden boards jutting out in long reaches from the shore. Cato, the youngest, was still content to clasp her hand, but Soren and Sofie raced each other to the dock’s end, where their father’s fleet was moored. Ingrid followed them, looking up at the resupply vessel Thorshavn, ready for its maiden voyage, and the three gleaming factory ships, Thorshammer, Solglimt and Falk, less than three years old, purpose-built to navigate to the far end of the world. Lars tried to keep some of his men employed with cleaning and maintenance but there were only so many times you could polish a ship that wasn’t sailing.

  Ingrid turned her face skywards towards the snowflakes drifting down. Her anniversary trip with Lars had reawakened her old passion for the far south. When she thought of him boarding the fleet in the following season, her fists clenched involuntarily.

  ‘Ouch!’ Cato squirmed. ‘You’re hurting me.’

  ‘Sorry, my darling.’ Ingrid looked down at him. At his age, Lars had been going out on his own father’s ships. Her husband was right; none of his own sons showed that promise. At five, Cato was plump and sweet, still a mother’s boy. Soren, aged ten, was interested in sport, while fourteen-year-old Lars Junior was bookish. The girls, Motte and Bolle, were more than old enough for marriage. Sofie, the twelve-year-old, was the only one who showed her father’s interest in the sea, but being a girl, there was no future for her in that.

  ‘Come on,’ Cato said, tugging at her.

  Ingrid was aware of men falling silent as she passed. She held her head high, nodded politely in their direction and kept a tight clutch on Cato’s hand. It was Lars who’d represented the Norwegian whalers in negotiations with Unilever, and Lars whose name was known all over Sandefjord as the one who’d agreed to cave in. ‘The black day for whaling’ was what Sandefjord’s whalers called the day Lars had convinced them to let the fleet lay up for the whole season. But Ingrid thought it good for the men to see her and remember that Lars was also a father with his own children to feed. Not that the Christensens were in danger of going hungry. The only economy they’d instituted under Ranvik’s graceful roof was eating margarine – and as the main producers of the whale oil that comprised it, they would have been eating the stuff no matter what the world’s economic conditions.

  Ahead on the dock she could see Norvegia’s prow. Next to the new ships, the coal-powered Norvegia looked old fashioned, her wooden sides battered and marked, her masts rising like toothpicks against the bulk of the factory ships, her squat funnel laughably small. But on her unassuming lines rested their hopes. For three seasons now, under command of Captain Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, heir apparent to the great Norwegian explorers Nansen and Amundsen, the little ship had gone south with the whaling fleet in search of Antarctic lands and seas that Norway could claim as its own.

  Soren and Sofie, running ahead, had reached Norvegia and were dancing up and down on the dock, waving. Ingrid picked up her pace to reach them, pulling Cato past a group of men who stood together in sullen silence. Their eyes seemed to burn into her and as she drew level with them she heard the wet sound of spittle hit the ground.

  Norway’s whaling men were usually polite and the shock of it stopped her in her tracks. Ingrid turned on her heel to face them, pulling Cato close.

  ‘Is there something you wanted to say to me?’

  They all stared at the ground but for one, younger than the rest, who refused to look away. Ingrid took a few steps closer.

  ‘I don’t think I know you, Sir.’

  ‘I’m Erik Petersen,’ he said, without lifting his cap.

  ‘Mrs Ingrid Christensen. You look like a man who’ll speak his mind.’

  He shrugged. ‘Your youngsters are fat and well, while ours are thin. We hear your husband’s doing very nicely from Unilever while we’re laid off with nothing.’

  Ingrid swallowed. ‘I can assure you,’ she said, working to keep her voice steady, ‘that we’re getting nothing from Unilever either. My husband is working day and night to make sure the fleet goes next year, or we will all truly starve.’

  ‘What’s to stop us starving this season?’ he demanded, his voice rising.

  From the corner of her eye Ingrid could see movement and a quick glance confirmed that other men were gathering around them. Lars was right, she realised, in trying to keep her away from here. She hadn’t realised how strongly sentiment was running against him.

  ‘Mama!’ Cato said, tugging at her arm.

  She straightened. ‘Mr Petersen, if you or your family are in need, then come and see my husband in person.’

  A menacing murmur rose around her and Cato shrank against her legs. Ingrid sensed the circle closing; felt a prickle of sweat under her arms.

  ‘What about the rest of us?’ a voice called above the muttering. ‘You’ll feed all of us? Or just bolt your doors up there while we freeze?’

  Ingrid turned, trying to find the speaker. Some instinct told her not to show fear. ‘Why yes, I will feed you all if that’s what’s needed,’ she said, projecting her voice.

  There was silence and then a voice rang out from the back. ‘How dare you!’

  Ingrid tried not to show her relief as the men parted and Hjalmar pushed through to join her in the centre of the circle. But when she saw Sofie and Soren holding his hands, their faces afraid, her heart sank. It was a terrible gamble for Captain Riiser-Larsen, as now Lars Christensen’s three youngest were all at the crowd’s mercy. She hoped his judgment was sound.

  ‘When has Lars Christensen not looked after his men?’ Hjalmar said loudly, turning on the spot to look at the crowd. ‘It’s not his fault the fleet is grounded. He’s kept the industry going through two years of depression. You should be grateful. Shame on you, speaking this way to his wife and children!’

  Ingrid saw some of them shift their feet and look away, embarrassed. In the main they were good men, she knew; just desperate.

  ‘My husband and I will organise more assistance for the men of our fleet,’ she called, pressing the advantage. ‘There’ll be food here tomorrow for all families.’

  ‘You heard her,’ Hjalmar said. ‘Be here tomorrow, or send your wives. Now let Mrs Christensen and her children pass.’

  The men stepped back, some of them shamefaced. Hjalmar gestured for her to precede him. Soren and Sofie took her arm and Cato clutched her hand tighter as she forced herself to walk calmly through the crowd in the direction of town. Ingrid felt between her shoulder blades the gaze of every man watching their retreat.

  ‘I want to go home,’ Cato said, his lip trembling.

  ‘What a good idea,’ Hjalmar said brightly. ‘I think it’s time for hot chocolate, don’t you, Mrs Christensen? I’ll come up the hill with you and have one too. Now, children, who can be t
he first to the shore?’ He gave them a gentle push and they took off with a squeal, half pleasure, half terror.

  ‘Did you mean what you said about food?’ he asked when they were out of earshot.

  ‘Of course!’ Ingrid said, more sharply than she intended.

  ‘You’ll need more than a one-off. Perhaps a soup kitchen?’

  ‘Sandefjord men won’t go to a soup kitchen.’

  ‘You lose your pride when you’re hungry, especially if your children are hungry. They’ll send the women. And perhaps you should stay away.’

  Ingrid raised her chin. ‘On the contrary, I should come more often. If we’re talking a soup kitchen, I’ll be here running it. If they see me every day, this kind of talk can’t get out of hand.’

  ‘I’m not sure of that,’ he said. ‘But it would be a good investment for your husband to keep them fed.’

  ‘They’re people, Hjalmar, not an investment.’

  ‘Of course. I know just how they feel, anyway. Bored and cold and chafing to go south. Remember, Ingrid, we chase the sun. Some of these men haven’t seen more than three hours of darkness for years. They don’t know how to cope with the long nights any more.’

  ‘Well, all our hopes rest on you next season,’ she said. ‘Find us some coastline that Norway can claim.’

  ‘It’s no good if Lars doesn’t have a buyer for the oil.’

  One thing she’d learned from Lars was that appearances were everything in business. Ingrid covered her worry with a laugh. ‘Unilever will need oil again by next year,’ she said, more confidently than she felt.

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ Hjalmar pulled his long-stemmed pipe from his pocket. ‘I need something to do, Mrs Christensen. The Air Force has some work for me and, to tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind flying. I can’t sit here drumming my fingers all year either.’

  Ingrid’s heart sank. Even Hjalmar was abandoning them. It occurred to her, for the first time, that the whole whaling industry really might fail, not just the small operators. Other industries around the world had fallen after the Wall Street crash, but whaling had cushioned Norway from the worst of its effects until now.