Lars, a modern man in almost everything, was old fashioned in this. He was like her own father, believing that a large brood of children guaranteed the survival of his own line.
Perhaps that was why Alfhild had gone mad, she thought. Perhaps her mother hadn’t wanted more children either, and her only escape from Thor had been to lose herself in the snow.
CHAPTER 13
Mathilde tried to settle her body in the narrow bunk. To roll from her back to her side required planning, shifting with care, realigning herself. The only saving grace of the trip had been the possibility of solitude, the chance to go deep into her grief without the need to function, at least nominally, for the children. But the weight of their absence, loaded on top of her grief, threatened to crush her. Alone, she could have made the cabin a sanctuary, a grieving place where she could come all undone. But that damned woman would be here with her, and there was no choice but to breathe each other’s air and smell each other’s sour breath and broken wind.
Mathilde had put thought into avoiding Lillemor. Over dinner, watching her down her wine with enthusiasm, Mathilde surmised that the woman was likely to keep late hours, and decided she’d keep early ones. If she took herself to bed well before Lillemor, and rose before her, she could avoid conversation altogether. It was important not to let any notion develop of friendly chatter or schoolgirl confidences after lights out.
It was much later when Lillemor came in, though Mathilde was still trying to get comfortable. Hearing the rattle of the door handle, she shifted so she was facing the wall. Lillemor flipped on the light, sending a blaze through the cabin. In the moment of silence that followed, Mathilde held herself ferociously still. She heard Lillemor begin to undress and could follow the sequence of it with awful clarity: the fur coat, the dress, the shoes, the stockings, the silk slip, the underpants. She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. Six weeks of this ahead of her. The whisper, slip, scuffle went on and on, how many layers was she wearing? And then there was the putting away, the opening of drawers, the clatter of hangers.
Mathilde had seen Lillemor’s luggage carried up to the cabin by a couple of muscular, jovial Norwegians. She had a big wardrobe suitcase and a number of smaller bags. Mathilde suspected she’d never planned to go mountaineering. She’d come to Cape Town in the height of summer with trunks of furs and mufflers, intending from the outset to take Mathilde’s place.
Mathilde could have groaned aloud with frustration. She’d have gladly given it to her, but once again she was under someone else’s power. Some man always had a say over her, without the softening effect of a marriage where she could convince, cajole or negotiate.
These wealthy women and their indulging husbands! Anton looked at his younger, glamorous wife the way a dog would – hungry, adoring, deferential. Lars and Ingrid were a well-oiled unit, running an empire of shipping and whaling and God knows what else. Lars was more powerful than her father-in-law, Ole, and of a newer generation, one not so afraid of women. Ingrid seemed more like his equal. But Mathilde was at the mercy of them all.
At last Lillemor finished her fussing around, switched off the light and settled herself in her bunk with a sigh. Mathilde slowly unclenched her tense muscles in the glorious dark, her only safety. The door rattled, startling her, but it was just the wind. Lillemor twisted and turned for a few minutes, finding the shape and heft of the bunk as Mathilde had, and then her breathing deepened, horribly close by. She exclaimed once, a kind of sleepy whimper, and then was silent.
The ship lifted beneath them, rising higher and higher, then peaking and pitching forward. Mathilde had never been on an ocean-going ship before the passenger liner that carried them to Cape Town and now they were heading into much wilder waters.
She thought of the children, concentrating on forming their image in her mind, recreating their features until she could almost see them standing in the cabin in front of her. She’d been unable to recall Jakob’s face and his voice within just a few weeks of him going to Venezuela and she’d wondered if this failure to keep him alive in her heart had contributed in some way to his death. She vowed she wouldn’t forget the children’s faces or the sounds of their voices. She’d recall them every hour of every day, imprint them upon herself.
Mathilde decided to imagine she was sailing in their direction, as if the children had cast a silver fishing line into the sea and were reeling her in. There would be no north and south. She would set her journey instead to the pole point of her children and sail to her own compass, her path laid down clear and straight across the sea, simply a distance to be travelled until she was with them again.
She’d have to be careful now and not show weakness. Lars acted for her parents-in-law and if they dreamed of taking her children, he’d help them. Mathilde had wanted nothing more than to hide herself away but she saw now it wouldn’t do. Her children may already have been taken from her. She had to start thinking in terms of winning them back, even before fully understanding she’d lost them.
She hadn’t missed the look of irritation that had crossed Ingrid’s face at the Cape Town dock when Lars refused to let Mathilde disembark. It had hurt, but more than that, it showed there was no past loyalty that Mathilde could rely on. She was alone in this battle. Her casual friendship with Ingrid from past years meant nothing, and Lillemor was a woman willing to do anything to get her way. The only person who’d shown her real kindness so far was Hjalmar.
The ship rose and fell slowly, tracing the arc of a swell, and Mathilde realised the movement was somehow reassuring. Rocked in the cradle of her bunk, heading home. She moved her feet until they were pressing up against the bunk’s end, braced herself and then surrendered to the ship’s motion. She gave up all resistance, letting it carry her. The feeling was somehow familiar, but she couldn’t place it. It wasn’t until she was on the lip of sleep, dropping down the face of it, that she remembered. Like sex, bracing herself on Jakob’s body, letting the movement carry her, recognising it as a bigger force than herself. She’d forgotten what it was like.
CHAPTER 14
Lillemor woke with a start in the thick, moving darkness. The world was shifting around her. She felt herself sliding and flailed till she caught the edge of her bunk and wrapped her fingers around it, trying to orient herself. The ship knifed down into the sea and she could hear the waves parting beneath them. When she raised her head, she felt a sickening nausea and lowered it again with a moan.
The ship rose again, higher this time, and Lillemor panicked as it tipped over the top of the wave and started down, nose first. Thorshavn had looked as substantial as a building in Cape Town. The small waves had lapped against her solid sides, giving no suggestion that the sea could throw her around like this, let alone on their first night out.
The ship crashed into the trough with a shudder. Lillemor clenched her teeth as her stomach lurched in sympathy. She tensed, ready for the next wave.
She hadn’t counted on the adventure being painful. She’d expected to stand at Thorshavn’s bow in the wind looking towards Antarctica, but instead she couldn’t raise her head from the pillow.
It was shocking how quickly and thoroughly seasickness changed a person’s outlook on the world, she thought dimly. It turned the greatest adventure into a nightmare, took a personality and wrung it out, leaving only the sorry dregs. If she’d had the chance to be magically transported from the ship and returned to land, at that moment she’d have taken it. Even the great Mawson had been dreadfully seasick, she remembered. She wondered how he’d had the courage to voyage south more than once.
Somehow she managed to doze. When she woke again, Mathilde was out of her bed, pulling aside the curtain that covered the porthole and sending in a blaze of daylight. Lillemor tried to sit up but the movement caused her stomach to lurch again and she fell back to the pillow. She heard Mathilde cross the cabin to her side.
‘A bit rough, eh?’ Her voice was matter-of-fact, hard. ‘Are you all right?’
Clenching
her teeth, Lillemor made a small shake of her head.
‘Need a bucket?’
She managed a nod and closed her eyes. The trick seemed to be not to move and not to look at anything. She heard Mathilde return and felt the cool of the tin pail on her fingertips.
‘I’ll hook it here for you next to the bed. Do you want something to eat?’
Lillemor retched then, somehow lurching across to the bucket to bring up a remnant of last night’s dinner. She hung over it, wanting to move away from the acrid stench, but afraid that any movement would set her off again. She felt a firm hand on her hairline.
‘I’ll get the doctor,’ Mathilde said.
Lillemor vaguely recalled the doctor talking at dinner about a new medicine for seasickness and felt a glimmer of hope. But Mathilde started to move her hand away, and with it went any sense of stability.
‘Wait,’ Lillemor croaked. The hand halted. Lillemor felt Mathilde tilt her head back slightly and wipe her mouth with something – a handkerchief, she thought. She kept her eyes tightly shut, though she could feel tears escaping from them anyway. ‘Please, stay with me,’ she said. Mathilde’s hand was the only thing between her and the abyss.
‘Lie still,’ Mathilde said. ‘I’ll ring for the steward and he can get the doctor.’
Mathilde’s cool hands guided her back towards the pillow. Lillemor kept her eyes closed, sunken in misery. There was no world outside the tiny cabin, which shook as though some god had picked them up in a box and decided to rattle them like dice. There was no London, no Cape Town, no Antarctica even.
If it were easy, everyone would do it. That sounded like Freda’s voice echoing around in her head. It was true, Lillemor supposed. Why hadn’t she taken up something on firm ground – mountain climbing, perhaps? Freda could have trained her and she wouldn’t have had to cross half the world in a ship in order to be the first woman to do something.
‘Dr Stevensson’s here,’ Mathilde said.
‘Mrs Rachlew, I hear you’re not too well.’ His voice boomed through the cabin, bouncing off the inside of her head. She winced.
‘I’ve got a little injection here that should be just the trick,’ he said. ‘I’ll just need your haunch if you don’t mind.’
She felt Mathilde roll her onto her side and pull back the covers. A rush of cold air on her skin, a quick sting, and she was lying on her back again, covered.
‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘You’ll start to feel better in half an hour. In a day or two you’ll have your sea legs.’
Half an hour. Eternity. She couldn’t imagine surviving that long. Mathilde and the doctor talked in low voices but Lillemor couldn’t hear them and didn’t care.
Then Mathilde was back at her side. ‘Doctor says to try and eat a few soda biscuits. Can you manage one? Come up on your elbow so you don’t choke.’
With Mathilde’s help Lillemor raised herself. The salty biscuit seemed to dry out and swell in her mouth. It took her an age to chew and swallow and her belly cramped dangerously when the first mouthful landed, but it seemed she might be able to hold it down. She finished the biscuit, took a few sips of water, and lay down again.
She looked up at Mathilde. ‘Could you stay?’
Mathilde sighed but kept her hand on Lillemor’s forehead. Lillemor closed her eyes. The ship continued to rise and fall, but gradually she realised she cared less about it. She felt a heaviness come over her, pinning her to the bed. She wanted to say something to Mathilde, but what?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, or dreamed she said. There was no answer.
CHAPTER 15
Ingrid felt a tendril of wakefulness steal into her dream. She pulled back, resisting. She was aware of motion and for a moment, in her half-waking state, she thought it was the fishlike movement of a child inside her. Her hands went to her belly. Finding flatness, she jolted fully awake.
She was being rocked in the ship, that was all. She sighed with relief, hoping the thought of a child wasn’t some kind of prescience, and sat up. Lars had gone. His side of the bunk was empty, his pyjamas neatly folded. He hadn’t been seasick a day in his life.
Ingrid rose and pulled back the curtains from the porthole. She could see swells washing past, tipped with spray, and some small birds flashed by. She hugged herself and began pulling out her clothing, desperate to get out of the cabin and see their surroundings. Woollen stockings, a warm woollen dress, a heavy coat with a mink collar and lapels, and her black woollen beret. She wedged herself in front of the mirror, drew on her eyebrows, rinsed her mouth and added a little lipstick. Her cheeks were pale, she noticed. She didn’t feel ill, exactly, but the ship’s rise and fall left her queasy. A bread roll and some coffee would help.
The wind slapped her as she stepped out of the cabin. The sky was a dull, glaring grey and the steely blue swells rose in jagged, messy peaks. Overnight, it seemed, they’d passed from seas softened by their proximity to the African continent to those wild and remote. They were crossing the Roaring Forties, she knew, and their passage was likely to get rougher as they moved into the Furious Fifties and then into – what did they call them? Ah yes, the Screaming Sixties.
Ingrid pulled her beret down hard and stepped out on the catwalk that ran from fore to aft. It had seemed such a practical structure back in Cape Town, raised above the flat deck below. But as she moved along it, Ingrid realised it was a precarious thing. She gripped the metal railing, feeling its slipperiness under her fingers. It wouldn’t take much to slither through the gaps in the railings and fall to the deck a good dozen feet below. As it tilted, she could see that a person conceivably could be washed from the deck into the sea. She wasn’t someone who worried about such dangers normally but she suspected Mathilde would find the reality of the ship terrifying.
‘Mrs Christensen?’
She turned to see one of the mess boys standing behind her, holding a tray.
‘Your husband told me to bring you breakfast.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Thank you. What’s your name?’
‘Tobias.’
‘Where is my husband taking breakfast?’
‘He’s done, ma’am. He’s on the bridge.’
‘Then I’ll have mine there,’ she said. ‘You go first; I’ll follow.’
He flung her a nervous look, then stepped around her with the tray, swaying with bent knees to stay upright. Ingrid followed more slowly, gripping the rails. The ship was both pitching up and down and rolling from side to side as it climbed over the swells. It was nothing like the motion of sailing on the fjord at home.
She followed the boy through a confusing maze of corridors and stairs and then they halted outside a heavy door.
‘After you, ma’am,’ he said.
She stepped past him, pushed the door open and stepped over the sill into the bridge. At first all she could see was the panorama through the bank of windows, revealing the waves in their full size and scope, marching shoulder to shoulder towards them in ranks that stretched to the horizon. As her eyes adjusted, Ingrid saw Horntvedt was glaring at her from behind a console.
Lars came hurrying across to cut her off. ‘My dear, it’s best if you take your breakfast in the saloon. This is the captain’s workplace.’
Tobias immediately began backing out the door. Ingrid looked around. The bridge even smelled masculine, of tobacco and some kind of hair oil. Her belly growled; she was in dire need of sustenance and it was fast disappearing.
She lifted her chin. ‘I see. I’ll come back shortly.’
She held the door for the boy, stepped out behind him and let it fall shut, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks. As if she were a child and might spill her food!
‘Will you go to the saloon?’ Tobias hunched his shoulders as if he was afraid of being whipped.
His posture reminded Ingrid of Lars Junior and she had to stop herself from telling him to straighten up. She forced a smile. ‘Good idea, young man.’
But the heat in her cheeks was still there as she fi
nished her breakfast and drained her second cup of coffee. It would take courage to turn around and go back there again without being cowed. The bridge was the domain of the ship’s captain and although Horntvedt couldn’t actually prevent her from visiting – not with Lars on board – he could certainly make it uncomfortable. Ingrid needed to stake her claim early, but she was still disoriented. The ship was unfamiliar and after breakfast her stomach had become unsteady. She was afraid she might get seasick up on the bridge, where the roll and pitch was greater than on deck level, closer to the ship’s centre of gravity.
Ingrid wiped her mouth and hands, laid down her napkin and decided she’d explore instead. Make a territorial reconnaissance and then a second foray into enemy territory when she felt more secure. She wondered if Mathilde and Lillemor were awake. She sighed, wondering if the three of them could be friends on this trip. Hopefully their strange start wouldn’t taint the whole voyage.
She pulled her heavy coat back on and stepped outside. The forecastle deck at the front of the ship, in full view of the bridge, felt too exposed so she climbed down a stairwell to the central deck. Hjalmar’s team of huskies were tied up there in a section with high edges to keep them safe. They all lay on their sides. Ingrid called out in a friendly voice, but though one or two raised a head, most ignored her. She wondered if they were dangerous. They were working dogs, but she’d seen Hjalmar handling them and they didn’t look vicious. She moved closer, reached a hand out to fondle one. Its tail thumped weakly. Then it retched and she realised they were seasick. She drew her hand back and continued on her way.
Ingrid skirted around the cabins and came to the boat’s stern where the two planes were lashed to the deck, flightless Qarrtsiluni and the pragmatic F18, ready for use in finding and mapping new areas that the ships couldn’t reach. She stationed herself behind Qarrtsiluni. Sheltered under its wing she was invisible from any vantage point on the ship.
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