Chasing the Light

by Jesse Blackadder

  Tobias, who was standing by with a tray of shot glasses, moved around the bridge handing them out. Ingrid took hers and steeled herself in readiness for their odd ritual. It seemed such an unnatural response.

  ‘A historic moment,’ Lars announced. ‘The first time the Antarctic continent has been seen by female eyes. I’d like to propose a toast to my wife.’

  As they raised their glasses, there was a stir near the other door and Ingrid turned. Lillemor was leading Mathilde onto the bridge. She looked dreadful. She’d obviously dressed in haste and her hair was wild. But her eyes were worse, dull and staring, surrounded by dark circles. She looked like some creature from Bedlam as she shuffled forward.

  Ingrid froze, waiting for Lillemor to turn and denounce her in front of them all.

  ‘How good to see you, Mrs Wegger,’ Nils said, going to her side. ‘I hope you’re feeling a little improved?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Mathilde said softly.

  ‘It’s wonderful you could join us,’ he continued, oblivious to the tension, or ignoring it. ‘The first women to see Antarctica. We’re just about to toast you.’ He gestured to Tobias, who hurried over with the tray. Lillemor and Mathilde took their glasses and everyone turned to Lars again, in uncomfortable silence.

  Lars lifted his glass high. ‘To my wife, Ingrid, and her companions Mrs Rachlew and Mrs Wegger. Skaal!’

  Everyone repeated his words. They drank and then Lars gave Ingrid a look and made a subtle movement with his head. She knew what he meant. She crossed the bridge to Mathilde’s side, put her hands on her shoulders and moved in to touch her cheek to Mathilde’s. Ingrid felt the stiffening in her body and willed her not to pull away. Their cheeks brushed, cool and smooth, and then Ingrid drew back.

  ‘I’m so glad you could see this,’ she said.

  In Mathilde’s eyes Ingrid read a matching fear, that everyone knew Mathilde had punched her and been punished for it. Now they each had a secret to keep. Neither of them would accuse the other aloud. Ingrid took a breath, weak with relief.

  Lillemor turned Mathilde to the window and gestured to the cape. Her camera case was slung over her shoulder and she opened it and drew out the camera.

  Mathilde moved closer to the glass, her mouth slightly open. Ingrid came to her side. She didn’t dare to take Mathilde’s arm but they stood close and looked out. Ingrid couldn’t think of anything to say. She felt disconnected, cut off from the land outside, her experience slipping away in moments, melting, disappearing, just as if a fog was coming down and cutting it off.

  ‘Time for a photograph, ladies,’ Lillemor said. ‘By the window, to show the continent. Nils, would you mind?’

  Lillemor joined them and the three of them faced Nils as he pointed the camera. ‘Smile!’ he said.

  Ingrid managed some kind of grimace as Nils pressed the lever.

  ‘Consul?’ Ingrid heard Horntvedt say to Lars.

  ‘Yes?’ Lars crossed to look at the charts and Ingrid left Mathilde and Lillemor to join him.

  ‘We must start making our way to Falk,’ Horntvedt said. ‘I don’t want to linger here.’

  ‘What about a landing?’ Ingrid asked.

  Horntvedt looked from her to Lars. ‘Every hour we spend here is risky. It’s the job of Norvegia to make landings. I doubt even a small boat could find a way through to land here, even if there was a place.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ Lars said. ‘I’d like to name this cape after my wife, but she’s made me promise to bestow her name only if she lands.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Ingrid said, and turned away. Her own name, imposed on this place, was unthinkable. The fact that the whole stretch of coastline carried Lars’s name felt strange enough.

  She went back to Mathilde and Lillemor and together they looked up at the headland. Thorshavn drifted gently and the bridge fell silent as they gazed at the sight so few would ever see.

  Hjalmar came to Mathilde’s other side with a coffee and handed it to her. ‘You should feel better after that,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  Ingrid tensed, wondering if he’d say something else. But Lars, alert to the situation, came up behind her protectively, and Hjalmar was silent.

  It wasn’t till dinner that he played his card.

  CHAPTER 35

  She had been under the sea ice, frozen fast, trapped, while around her the ice groaned and cracked and shifted. Far above, on the surface, she had heard footsteps, a murmur that might have been voices, but Mathilde was buried too deeply for them to reach. She had wondered if she was dead. Was this what it was like, the icy cold and the sounds of life like a muffled roar in the distance? The ice had held her as tight as a coffin, its arms wrapped around her, its cold lips on her brow.

  One noise had become more insistent, separated itself from the rest, increased in volume. If she could have moved she would have blocked her ears. Her jaw was locked, her eyelids crusted shut, and always the light behind them was blue, iceberg blue, crevasse blue.

  For God’s sake, Mathilde, wake up.

  She had flinched at that voice and found her body could move. She felt hands upon her and she shrank from them, curled in upon herself, brought her knees up like a foetus curled in the womb.

  ‘Please, wake up.’ The voice was gentle, gentler than she’d heard it, and Mathilde felt a tightening in her throat. Her mother had spoken like that, when she’d been a little child, and it felt like a lifetime since anyone had been tender with her.

  ‘Mathilde?’

  She willed her eyes to open. They were heavy and uncooperative, and forcing them was like lifting a bodyweight.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ the voice encouraged, and at last she managed to open her eyes. The face in front of her was blurry, and she blinked. As it slowly came into focus she realised it wasn’t her mother and the sadness of it was crushing. She could feel tears forming and then there was a hand on her forehead, warm and alive.

  ‘Can you sit up?’

  It was Lillemor. Mathilde was still on the ship; she hadn’t escaped. She must still have been dreaming because Lillemor’s hands couldn’t possibly be so gentle. Last time they’d caught her by the wrist and pinned her so that Ingrid could hit her. This Lillemor, the dream one, whispered in her ear and her hands were soft as they helped her sit up.

  ‘We need to hurry,’ Lillemor was saying. ‘We’re here, Mathilde.’

  She was tugging at her more insistently, trying to get her to stand. Mathilde’s thoughts were frozen too, heavy and unmoving. ‘Quickly. Don’t you want to see Antarctica?’

  Mathilde didn’t want to hear that word again. Antarctica, where forever some part of her would lie frozen in the fast ice. Lay me under the stones, she thought, build a cairn of rocks over the top of me; I will be a memory in this country.

  But Lillemor was firm and it had been too hard to resist the force of her motion. Mathilde found herself moving on unsteady legs across the cabin, out the door and onto the catwalk. When they reached the door of the bridge and Lillemor put out a hand to open it, memory suddenly sluiced through Mathilde’s body. She’d hit Ingrid. Punched her. Knocked her out. And Lars had been angry.

  Her knees locked. ‘No.’ She pulled back.

  ‘Yes!’ Lillemor’s voice was firm. ‘You’re going to see it, Mathilde. Up here with everyone.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Don’t worry. No one knows what happened.’

  Mathilde tried to pull away, but her muscles were watery and useless. Before she could resist, Lillemor had opened the door and drawn her inside, and the eyes of everyone on the ship, it seemed, were upon her.

  One face stood out: Ingrid’s. Her left eye was shadowed and she looked strange and wild. Mathilde felt their gazes lock.

  ‘How good to see you, Mrs Wegger.’ Nils was suddenly at her side. ‘I hope you’re feeling a little improved?’

  Lillemor’s arm was in hers. She didn’t know if the pressure was terrifying or comforting.

  ‘Yes, thank you,
’ she said to Nils.

  Mathilde hadn’t looked outside yet and beyond the faces it was all a blur. She took a glass obediently when it was offered, fumbling to wrap her fingers around it.

  ‘To my wife, Ingrid, and her companions Mrs Rachlew and Mrs Wegger. Skaal!’

  Mathilde managed to get the little glass to her lips and take a sip, though the taste made her gag. Then Ingrid was coming in close and fast so that Mathilde wanted to run. Ingrid pressed their cheeks together and stepped away. The look she gave Mathilde was piercing and there was no forgiveness in it.

  ‘Come on, have a look before the fog comes down again,’ Lillemor said. She’d kept Mathilde’s arm linked through hers and now she led her to the window.

  The bridge swayed under her feet as she stared out, blinking. She could feel Ingrid on her left and Lillemor still holding her arm on the right. Gradually the details took form. A dark, rocky headland, striped with ice, rising to a white peak far above them. The background sound resolved itself into the distant shrieks of birds, wheeling around the cape. Pale blue icebergs stood off the shore, cold and grim. She realised the tiny black shapes at their edges were penguins and suddenly Mathilde understood the scale of what she was seeing. Her mouth fell open. At this moment there was no past, no factory ships, no home and no journey. Just a landscape that felt utterly inimical to human life.

  Ingrid walked away, across to Lars and the captain, and Hjalmar stepped to her side. He didn’t say anything, and for that Mathilde was grateful. She could hear laughter and murmurs around the bridge, but for the most part people seemed to be mesmerised by the first sight of the continent.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked her quietly.

  She tried to find a word to describe what was before her and found herself shrugging helplessly. ‘I don’t think it’s a place for people.’

  He smiled. ‘Coffee?’

  A simple offer, but behind it was a world of unspoken understanding and she nodded gratefully. He touched her hand for a second, disappeared, returned with a cup. ‘You should feel better after that.’

  The coffee was strong, black and thick with sugar. Mathilde could feel it flooding through her veins, waking her. She remembered the last coffee she’d had, handed to her by Lars, with its strange, bitter taste and how she couldn’t remember anything clearly after drinking it.

  Lars had loomed over her with that drink while she was in bed and she’d been afraid of him. But he was actually very short. A middle-aged man, thickening around the middle, with a bald patch.

  She slipped her arm out of Lillemor’s and stood straighter. She’d been afraid of him before seeing Antarctica. Compared to that immense landscape, he was almost laughable.

  Mathilde was conscious of Hjalmar’s eyes on her as she sat down next to him at the captain’s table, and she felt flustered. She was a creature of Lillemor’s devising that night, and it was a revelation to see how the men looked at her differently. Lillemor had brushed her hair and twisted it into a soft coil on the nape of her neck. She’d taken Mathilde’s chin, tilted her head up, and inspected her handiwork. Her eyes had narrowed.

  ‘Lipstick,’ she’d said, and rummaged in her bag.

  Mathilde had watched her. The effects of whatever she’d been sedated with were still in her body, and she felt floaty and disoriented. She’d have been happy to eat a few biscuits and go back to bed to sleep it off, but Lillemor was adamant that she come to dinner.

  ‘It’s easier for them to treat you like a criminal if you act like one,’ she’d said, leafing through her dresses and selecting one that was a deep purple. She’d held it up against Mathilde. ‘Aubergine. All the rage in London. What do you think?’

  Mathilde stood in front of the mirror. ‘It makes me look pale.’

  ‘It makes you look interesting. And a bit vulnerable, to make sure they feel guilty. It’s perfect.’

  Mathilde was nervous that Lillemor’s kind-heartedness might disappear at any moment. She told herself to remain aloof, to stay firm in shutting Lillemor out. But when Lillemor told her about the sedative and stroked her hair sympathetically, Mathilde knew it was useless. In the face of such kindness she was powerless and she let Lillemor dress her and make her up without resisting.

  Thorshavn had steamed away from their brief sighting of land and they were back in the world of water and brash ice and icebergs. It was cold and still outside, but the saloon was so warm that Mathilde was sweating. As she smelled the rich scent of dinner on the air, she realised she was ravenously hungry. Hjalmar poured her a whisky and soda and she was still sipping it when the pea soup arrived. He seemed nervous, fidgeting with his napkin. She wondered if he knew what had happened.

  Lars had put on a suit for the occasion and Ingrid was also dressed smartly, with heavy makeup that almost masked the bruise around her eye. She was unusually talkative as the rest of them ate.

  ‘You’ve a hard job, Captain Horntvedt,’ Ingrid said as the steward and Tobias cleared the soup plates and began to lay out the main course and pour the claret. ‘You must have little sleep.’

  ‘No, not much rest,’ he said, and rubbed a hand over his forehead. ‘I nearly forget what night is.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  He shrugged. ‘I get used to it. I can snatch sleep anywhere and any time.’

  ‘What about you?’ Ingrid asked Hjalmar.

  ‘It’s an explorer’s lot, to have too much light, or none,’ he answered. ‘Men who winter here spend months in darkness, just like going to the North Pole. Me, I prefer the light.’

  ‘Me too,’ Lillemor said. ‘I love it in summer when you only sleep a few hours at a time.’

  ‘When you get home to spring, the dark will be nearly gone from Norway too,’ Hjalmar said to Mathilde.

  Mathilde shuddered and bent her head to her meal. She, too, longed for at least a few hours of dark to punctuate the days. She didn’t know how her countrymen in the north of Norway tolerated the unrelenting light of summer.

  ‘It’s been a great day, don’t you think, Captain?’ Hjalmar went on. ‘Confirming Mikkelsen’s discovery and being present for the first official female sighting of Antarctica.’

  ‘Official?’ Lillemor asked.

  ‘Well, you know about Olga, of course.’

  There was a moment of silence. Ingrid and Lillemor both stared at Hjalmar and Mathilde felt her shoulders tense. Oh, he knew something of what had gone on, no matter what Lillemor thought. She wished he wouldn’t say any more.

  Lars gave a broad smile. ‘Olga?’

  Hjalmar sat back with an expansive smile. ‘All the men working the catchers know the story, so I presumed you were familiar with it. Olga the stowaway, who hid on the factory ship Christianna when she left Sandefjord for the Antarctic with her whale catchers. By the time they discovered her in the fore hold, it was too late to turn back, so they were forced to take her with them.’

  ‘What happened?’ Ingrid asked. Mathilde saw that she had stopped eating.

  ‘The captain put her to work. He didn’t have much choice. But even though he kept her for long hours in the galley, she stirred up no end of trouble. She was pretty, see, blonde with blue eyes, and a sharp girl. All the younger crew preened like peacocks to catch her eye and there was nearly a brawl. The captain was passing by South Georgia to drop off provisions for some Scandinavians living there. He knew there was a woman on the island, the doctor’s wife, and the captain left Olga in her care till he could collect her on the way home.’

  ‘So she didn’t see Antarctica,’ Lars said.

  Hjalmar raised a finger. ‘She wasn’t going to be stymied so close to her goal. She gave the wife the slip the night the boats were leaving. Stole some men’s clothing and managed to sneak on board one of the catchers. She hid in a lifeboat all night, freezing cold and seasick, and only staggered out again when they were far from land. The captain was so furious he refused to let her back on the factory ship. She spent six weeks on the catcher in miserable conditions. Th
e captain felt it was a fitting punishment.’

  The whole table was staring at him. He smiled and took another mouthful of his meal.

  ‘So?’ Lillemor asked at last.

  He finished chewing. ‘So she made it to Antarctica, they say. She’s not officially recorded. It might be a legend for all I know. But all the men know the tale.’

  Ingrid laid down her fork, her face grim. Lillemor’s expression was unreadable. Mathilde wished she were anywhere but at the table. After seeing Antarctica, who could quibble about such a thing? It was irrelevant.

  Hans Bogen cleared his throat. ‘I’m sure that’s just a story made up by lonely sailors. I’ve no doubt you’re the first women here, and your names will be remembered by history. I’ve never heard of this Olga girl. You’ll need better proof than that, Hjalmar.’

  ‘If she came from Sandefjord, we’d all know of her,’ Lars said. ‘She must be a legend.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Hjalmar agreed. ‘Interesting tale though. She would have needed the courage and determination of a man.’

  Ingrid shook her head. ‘That’s the trouble with legends, isn’t it? Can anyone ever live up to them?’

  Mathilde felt sorry for Ingrid. Hjalmar was being cruel to her, as well as to Lillemor who so desperately wanted to be first. Lillemor had buried her head in her food and Mathilde couldn’t see the expression on her face.

  ‘How soon do we rendezvous with Norvegia?’ Lars asked, in an obvious effort to change the subject.

  ‘Four or five days, all going well,’ Horntvedt said. ‘After we resupply Falk.’

  ‘And then we turn back for Cape Town. We’ll be back there in less than a fortnight and onto the liner to London a few days later,’ Lars said.

  ‘How much longer will you be on Norvegia?’ Ingrid asked Hjalmar.

  ‘It depends on the ice,’ he said. ‘We’ll be trying to chart the coastline to the west of here. I’d say we only have another month, perhaps six weeks. The days are getting shorter and it’s like at home. Once the season starts to change, it’s rapid.’

  ‘Home,’ Mathilde said. ‘I like the sound of that.’ She glanced at Ingrid, who gave her a look so cold that Mathilde found it hard to imagine they’d ever been friends.