The Surfacing

by Cormac James

  Here he is, DeHaven announced, pleasantly surprised. Our lost sheep. We were going to send out a search party. He stood up and offered his hand. Geoffrey DeHaven, he said, by way of introduction. Ship’s surgeon, dentist, coroner and midwife.

  The others were laughing. The words were perfectly pronounced, and Morgan wondered how much more they’d had. It was half an hour since he’d slipped away, and the lack of drink now was making him drunk, showing him just how much he’d already had. He was no longer distracted by the momentum.

  Remind me what exactly it is we’re celebrating, he said. Her departure or your own?

  Mr Morgan, DeHaven said, did you honestly expect the lady to travel without a chaperone?

  24th September

  He was lying in the bottom of a rowing boat. From time to time it bumped gently against the wall of the quay. He did not let it wake him. He knew exactly what was wrong. Smiling harmlessly, he let himself drift off and drift under again. Afterwards, who knows how long he slept. Hours perhaps. And even when he woke fully, he did not get up. The sound of DeHaven’s lusty breathing was floating overhead. Something had dared him to open his eyes, and now dared him to smile again. They were on the move. He was sure of it. More than anything, he felt relief.

  By the time DeHaven finally woke and charged up on deck, they were well out in the Channel, being driven west. Already they were sinking Beechey, and rising the southeastern coast of Cornwallis Island.

  One by one, backs flat to the wind, the bergs came cruising past. Myer and Morgan and DeHaven stood shivering at the stern, watching the procession. To the south and west, the ice surpassed anything he’d ever seen. Beside him, DeHaven stood hypnotized. The man was no sailor, but even he must know there was no point trying to turn back. Even if they managed the manoeuvre, and swung her about, it would have been into the teeth of the gale. They would try to make fast to the Cornwallis shore, or the shore of Griffith Island, if the drift carried them that way, as it now seemed inclined to do. And there wait out the storm as best they could.

  That night it blew a lunatic gale straight down the Sound, and the mercury dropped to 14°. It was a new record. They were in new territory. They had managed to make fast to the southeastern tip of Griffith Island. Their small and best bower anchors were gone, but they still had the two kedge, and somehow managed to attach themselves to the land floe, a cable fore and a cable aft.

  For no more than a minute Morgan stood up against the galley and watched the slack racking along the ground – the snow drawn out into long thick tendrils, swaying endlessly, alive. It reminded him of his youth. It reminded him of the sandstorms of the Afghan plains.

  At eleven o’clock the stern-cable finally gave. Her rump swaggered left and right. But at the bow, for no good reason, the cable refused to cede. Afterwards, it was a sobering night for all aboard. All through the small hours Morgan lay awake on his bunk. DeHaven lay four feet overhead, mute. He had said nothing since bolting awake that morning, to realize that Beechey was behind – beyond – them, and that very likely he would now winter aboard the ship, with everything and everyone he despised. Morgan lay in the dark just as silent and still as his friend. For once he made no effort to defend himself. He let the bunk under him melt away, till he had all but merged with the floe. To the roots of his teeth he could feel it scouring, sounding, working with a purpose. If they broke loose now, they would be rushed straight out into the mayhem. It would not matter what they tried. Whatever happened would happen as it did to other men. They were helpless, paralysed. Their rigging was solid with ice and rime.

  All night he lay awake listening to the carnage. In the early morning, he wrote: We cling by a thread to a scrap of floe, itself but perilously fixed to a barren island out in the Sound, home to a million blocks of marble in total riot. If havens the locality has, they are unmapped. Mapped, they would be unattainable, against contrary winds, and with the ice as it is, prospering on every shore.

  All morning DeHaven sat at the table with his head in his hands, in despair, as if despair could somehow annul the defeat. Cabot and Hepburn made it four. At noon the door opened. It was Brooks, down from his watch. He shucked off his greatcoat and left it steaming on the boards. He stood dripping. At the table, in perfect synchronization, the heads bobbed and dodged like boxers. The mast mercury was down to 11°, according to Brooks. To every horizon now, it was a solid sea.

  During the night, miraculously, the wind died a little, and wheeled around more to the south. Next morning Myer ordered the ship flogged. They were going back, he said. If they could get her soft enough to steer, and steer her round and into the lee of Griffith Island, he had determined to try and work their way north, then beat their way back to Beechey.

  Bravo, DeHaven said. It was the first word he’d said in two days. A cup was rattling uselessly back and forth across the floor.

  By noon they were boring their way round the southern tip of the island, through the narrow lead that had opened up between the fixed ice and the drift. But even there a new scab was forming fast. Morgan at the helm, and Myer conning from above, they rammed their way north, and refused to count the cost. Time and again the ice looked too close to pass, but Myer roared at Morgan to plough on. Anything that was not a solid mass of the main pack, he had decided to ride it down.

  The wind wheeled one way and another. The tides swung back and forth. Mechanically, the canal opened and closed. Hour by hour they ground their way north in the lee of land, then swung east again into the channel between Griffith and Cornwallis Islands, and began to box from tack to tack. Everything to the west was now a single solid block.

  They bore east as best they could, through the young ice, that was stiffening by the hour. Morgan tried to sleep, but could not manage to slight it – the dull, lumbering rounds of the millstone, up against the hull, two feet from his head.

  They staggered on. The rigging was wrought iron. The wind was failing, and the mercury falling still. Now they stalled, now they limped a little farther. A little farther, they stalled again. They staggered on, erratic, almost petulant. The clockworks were wasted. It was a half-hearted struggle by now.

  In an austere silence, he listened to footsteps overhead, footsteps on the ladder, then along the corridor. The door flung open. It was DeHaven. The face looked nothing like the safe, brazen face of his old friend. Defiance, effort, ingenuity – they had all run their course. Morgan wrapped up again and went to see for himself. Myer was alone out on the new ice, twenty feet ahead of the prow. It was a final proof, he seemed to think, that the skin would now take his weight. Overhead, every sail was big with wind, straining, and they could not move another inch.

  28th September

  For the next three days, the ship lay swaddled in veils of mist and fog and falling snow. Their world was shrinking, dissolving. Time and again Morgan went up on deck to study the show – the way each layer feathered seamlessly into the next, and all were constantly renewed, and constantly on the wane. He went up again, and could not be satisfied. It was a world without ground or horizon, with no resting point for the eye. The affinities were endless, and endlessly shifting. Out there, nothing could impose itself for long. Some other world was whispering to him from beyond.

  For three days he studied the show, and all that time a gentle cradling of the ship warned they were not altogether fi
xed in their block of ice – their pedestal, as DeHaven called it. Either that or the ice itself was on the move.

  That Sunday Myer prayed aloud that the wind might haul around to the north. The wind continued strong from the south. Every night Morgan lay awake listening to the carnage. There was a new voice now in his head. At last, it said.

  1st October

  The officers’ cabin door was open, and the cold air was charging in. MacDonald, dripping, stood at the threshold, but did not step inside.

  Mr Morgan, he said. I wonder would you mind coming with me.

  Morgan closed his book and pushed himself to his feet. What now? he said. It had been MacDonald’s watch. He reached for his oilskins, the stiff empty moulting hanging from a hook on the wall.

  No need for that, MacDonald said. He was still out there in the dark corridor. Please, the voice said. You need to come with me.

  A minute later, Morgan was standing in silence in MacDonald’s cabin, staring at the physical block of her, laid out on the bed. She seemed not to have heard him enter. He watched her blink, and blink again, impossibly slow. He looked her up and down, head to toe. The evidence was irrefutable.

  Without a word, he began to turn away from her, towards the man who’d betrayed him, again. He was turning, and watching himself turn. Both feet swivelling on the spot, the way he’d been taught. Twisting at the knee and then at the hip, the shoulders coming round last, the momentum flinging the arm out, his fist pulling his whole body with it, towards a point where he would lose balance – a point just behind MacDonald’s head.

  The arm moved out and back, out and back, as a piston would. The shock of it had to go straight through the wrist, and straight through the elbow. The force of it had to come from the shoulder.

  Don’t hit the head, he coached himself. Hit through the head. Drive through it to what’s on the other side. That was the secret. Imagine a man just behind the man. A head just behind the head. That’s what they told you at the gymnasium. That’s what you were aiming for.

  He’d been boxing all winter, stuck in London waiting for the ship to come down from Aberdeen, and his arms were as good as they’d ever been.

  From time to time he shook out the hand, making sure to fold the fingers over right, to tuck in the thumb, to make the whole thing a single solid block of bone. He wanted to be sure and not break anything. Already he could see DeHaven’s smile, when the news was announced. He did not want to give him the chance of a smile extra. He did not want to have to go and ask him for help. He took a step to the side to hit another part of the face. Little by little the head was loosening up, rolling from side to side, like a puppet’s head. He could feel the whole arm warming up nicely, getting stronger at each punch, more relaxed. The arm kept moving in and out, towards what was left of MacDonald’s face. As though reaching for – or through – the pain. The thing was quite messy by now, but that mattered none. Bettered or worsed, the face would never be his own. It was something he’d been born with, and born to. It was merely something the world looked through, to see the resemblances. The faces of those who’d made him. That’s all it was. That’s all he’d ever be. Leftovers. That’s all you got.

  Between his feet was a bucket of snow, that he’d asked Cabot to bring down, when they came to carry MacDonald away. The snow was for his right hand, what had been his fist, and his fist was pushed deep down into it, red hot.

  He sat on the edge of his bunk without moving, alert to every sound aboard. He could hear nothing but the shy whisperings of his bucket of snow. The ship had been abandoned, it seemed. He wondered how many stitches DeHaven would have to work into the face. He wondered was the light good enough to work in, below. He saw MacDonald laid out in the main mess. Cabot holding the lamp. The whole ship leaning in to get a closer look at the new face Morgan had given him, trying to look through it to see the face he had before.

  He looked around. From the moment he’d stepped into MacDonald’s cabin, the ship had definitely changed. The distance between the walls, the height of the ceilings and doors – everything now seemed ever so slightly compacted, a mere inch or two. It felt like a house revisited for the first time since childhood. Nothing you’d notice with the naked eye, but the proportions no longer felt quite right. Even the size of the bunks and tables and chairs seemed to have been tampered with, deliberately, to make a man feel ill at ease. He’d spent months organizing it for himself, for the longer winter ahead. All those places to hide and tidy things away, offer himself the impression of order. The partition walls, purpose built. The shelves fitted around posts. His own desk in the corner, not three feet square, but which he insisted remain undefiled by the rest of the world and its business – a clean, uncluttered space for his mind. Now, in an instant, that was all something to be defended, against an invasion guaranteed to succeed. Before, she had merely been a passenger, from Disko to Beechey. Now she would begin making the ship her own. She would bully out all the space she wanted for herself and her baby – of that he had no doubt. She would make herself a home. And he – like every one of them – would have to take a step backward, to make way.

  When he heard the door-handle turning, Morgan drew his hand up out of the bucket of snow. To the wrist the flesh was pink, and tingling. DeHaven stood before him, looking slightly ashamed.

  Well? Morgan said.

  He’ll be even uglier than before, DeHaven said. But no permanent damage. Apart perhaps his pride.

  I’ll have to be punished, I suppose, Morgan said. After all, we can’t have that kind of thing aboard. If everyone suddenly started smashing everyone else’s face in, who knows where it might end?

  Don’t worry, DeHaven said. Myer needs you. Now more than ever before. I’d like to look at that hand.

  That’s true, Morgan said. He needs me. He does. I hadn’t thought of that. Poor Myer, I’m afraid I’ve put him in something of a spot.

  DeHaven flapped the thing to and fro at the wrist. Does that hurt? he said.

  What I don’t understand is why? Morgan said. What does she think she has to gain?

  Women, DeHaven said. Always the first to cry, and the last to give up hope.

  He found her presenting her profile to MacDonald’s great man’s mirror, hands flat on her hips, stretching the cloth tight. She seemed utterly immune, protected, chosen.

  Proud of yourself? he asked.

  Yes, she said.

  You want to be bigger, don’t you? he said. Her waist was perhaps a little thicker, but he really could not say. Had he not known she was with child, he would have noticed no difference at all.

  Yes I do, she said.

  A belly just like Banes. That’s what you want.

  Only Banes isn’t great with child. He’s fat.

  An imposter.

  Exactly.

  Why did he do it? Morgan said.

  Banes? What did Banes do?

  You know well who I mean. Why did he bring you back?

  Do you think he forced me?

  But what’s the good of it?

  I suppose he wanted to punish you. Force you to face your responsibilities.

  So you get to see me squirm a little longer
. You and everyone else aboard. I hope you all enjoy the spectacle. I hope it’s worth the trouble. Because now you’re stuck out here. A woman in your condition. Drifting north, and winter coming on. What a wonderful idea that was.

  So it was for my own good you sent me away? Is that what you’re saying now?

  Was it for your own good you came back? Or was it merely to punish me?

  The bell shyly summoned them to dinner. She seemed not to hear. She was stroking her belly with the flat of her hand, owning it. It was a habit by now, almost a tic. At Disko, he seemed to remember, she used to twist the stray ends of her hair.

  DeHaven says I shouldn’t be surprised, Morgan said.

  Does he now?

  Do you know what he says about women? He says they’re always the first to cry, and the last to leave. This from your best friend, your closest ally, Morgan said. He was testing, prodding, to see where the armour might cede.

  She refused to react. She had returned to the glass. It was an audition, for a new role. She was a debutante before the ball, fluffing herself up.

  What do you think? she said.

  To be perfectly frank, he said, they look much the same to me.

  Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty more to admire soon enough.

  He didn’t answer. The future, for him, was not something they would share.

  I don’t mean to offend you, he said, but if I wanted a woman with an ample bosom, I imagine I would have chosen someone else. I think that’s the least we can say.

  I suppose I could take that as a compliment, if compliments were what I was after.