by Cormac James
The boy lay on his back, satisfied. The water came to his chin. It was as though he’d been laughing long and hard. His smile was sheer relief. He lay in the shadow of some great task. Something had been proved or achieved. It was worth nothing now it was done.
Morgan watched closely. There was something he had to learn. They were joined. They were breathing the same air. He could feel the sweat trickling down the small of his back, into his waistband. The stove was going full blast now. In places the iron was a dirty pink. He had watched the water being poured. He’d watched Cabot shovel the coal.
The skin was glistening, polished, like fruit. Underneath was his sacred flesh. Morgan dared not touch it, did not want to leave the slightest trace. Very gently, he drew the hair back out of his son’s eyes. It was darker now. It hung like little lengths of frayed twine. In a room nearby was a slop-pot, soiled napkins, dirt. There were stray hairs, parings, snot. All these things were evidence of some kind, and all false.
There were little nails somehow planted into the end of his toes. The flesh was swelling around them, perfect and strange. All his life, all the useless hours – nothing had prepared him. He had merely trained himself to want, disdain, and indifference. He had nothing to meet this. Somehow he had opened the wrong book, the wrong page. It was a picture he was forced to stare at, to recognize. The boy was blinking, oblivious. He was like an animal wandered onto the stage, at just the right time, in just the right way.
1st May
Brooks was back from the island. He threw his canvas bag up on the table, let it sound. Already Cabot was reaching for it.
Don’t open it, Brooks said. Just guess.
A bottle, MacDonald said.
No.
Gold, DeHaven said.
No.
Fossils.
No.
A skull. A man’s skull. Bones.
No.
Brooks undid the straps and upended the bag, let it rumble out onto the table. They stared at it stupidly. Morgan took a lump in his hands. They watched him tighten his grip, the knuckles pale. The fist slackened. The table was scattered with chunks and crumbs.
Bear shit? Musk ox?
Sadly, Morgan shook his head. It was turf.
Is there much of it?
A whole mountain, Brooks said.
It was more treachery, the worst yet. Now there was no reason not to go. There was nothing to hold him back. The ship was now entirely out of the ice, impossible to crush. With an endless supply of turf, those left behind could live in something like total comfort, warm and dry, for years to come.
2nd May
They were up on deck, in the afternoon. Tommy was asleep in the hand-cradle, in the sun. In the wicker chair beside him, Morgan was patching the knees of a pair of trousers, as best he could.
DeHaven sighed grandly. A woman’s work is never done, he said.
Morgan looked at him bitterly. In his other life, he’d done his sewing in secret, by Myer’s sickbed, in Myer’s cabin, afraid of what the men might say. Like so much else, that fear too had withered away.
Tropic or Arctic? DeHaven proposed. By now it was an age-old debate, an excuse to argue. They were facing south.
In the Arctic a man suffers more, Morgan said.
But lasts longer.
Apparently.
So if you were offered two years in the tropics against two years here, DeHaven said. He was trying to force his captain to contradict himself.
The thing is, Morgan said, in the tropics the first two years are far and away the worst. Past that marker, freaks and accidents apart, you start to feel safe.
You can live long, if you don’t die.
Exactly, Morgan said. Whereas here, to be perfectly blunt about the matter, I think that after two winters it’s time to go home.
Somewhere under the mainmast, a chunk of ice bounced off the deck. They looked up and caught Cabot studying them from the galley. On the stove behind him, steaming, was the stew-pot.
Chef André, what’s on the menu? shouted DeHaven.
Napkins, Cabot said.
Hail the conquering heroes, Morgan said. Two useless years and counting adrift in the ice.
DeHaven was smiling. Louder, he said, lifting his head. Maybe they’ll overhear. Maybe they’re ready to bargain.
DeHaven was right, it was a fantasy. The ignominious return. In a moment of weakness, Morgan’s ambition had shrunk to that. It was a sacrifice, to appease the gods. A disappointment he was prepared to live with, if in exchange they would sanction and orchestrate his release.
From near the mainmast came another wicked thump. Morgan set his sewing onto his basket and stood over the cradle. I’d better take him down, he said. Some of those are two and three pounds weight.
Many times he’d imagined going to her cabin, to tell her what he had decided for them all. He would have to tell her first, of course, before anyone else. For weeks now he’d fretted over the scene, as something he had to get right. He knew his steps, his lines. He had rehearsed it out on the ice, where it all made perfect sense. Spoken aloud of the weeks and months already wasted, and the months and years ahead, to be spent in much the same way, moping about in the ice, making little or no progress, even losing ground, pushing them further than ever from the prospect of rescue or release. He played the scene over. Time and again, out and back, his mind was working the same ground, trying to make himself a smoother road. He was trying to convince her in advance. He was trying to make it come out right. Now, alone in his cabin, he unrolled again the blank chart, as though he might yet find there some solution that would spare him the task.
At first he’d thought of loading her into the boat with the boy, and covering the boat, and trying somehow to keep them warm. But the boy was too fragile still. The slightest sickness, out there, was death. The first severe storm. He could not fight it off. He could not soak it up. He was too small. Everything was on the surface, exposed. Morgan tried not to imagine the specifics – and then he would catch himself, like a child sneaking a treat from the pantry, gulping it down, every possible horror. He could hardly bear to think of it even in the abstract. He knew well he would not be able to watch it in the flesh. He himself was no longer strong enough for that. Before the boy was born he had considered himself an explorer of sorts. By now he felt himself a mere passenger.
As with any situation in life, he wrote, a man’s strategy must be shaped by his own strengths and deficiencies, and by the obstacles he expects to meet. I resign, therefore, all further hope of navigation. We are now almost two years beset in the ice, a schooling sufficiently long to teach us that we are no longer masters of our fate. Here, we have learned, no force counts which is not exerted by the floe itself. Nothing human even registers on the scales. The longer we wait, the farther we drift, the weaker we become, and the poorer our prospects. If we wait another year, I am convinced we shall all be lost. As matters currently stand, however, there remains the possibility of a reduced party, namely the strongest amongst us, reaching our friends by our own means, and the hope that with their aid we may return to the ship to retrieve those we mus
t temporarily leave behind. This is what he wrote in the captain’s journal. This was his official defence. Still he had announced his decision to no one.
3rd May
He was standing alone in the cabin, leaning forward, arms locked, hands flat on the door. Once he took that first step, he could never take it back. On the other side was an older man. For whom exceptions and excuses would be made. Less expected. Falterings and failings forgiven. Everything he had always refused. Leaving the cabin, he was leaving behind him a long trail of useless sacrifice. To say useless was perhaps saying too much. Along the way there had been moments of glory, of rightful arrogance. Times when the dream of domination seemed to be already flowering. But once he stepped out the door those moments would be history. The milestones would all be behind him, staring in silent reproach. Whatever heroics he’d performed out here, he knew, would be overshadowed by the fact of abandoning the ship. Heroics was the wrong word. The word could no longer wield the power it once had. He had the trip to Beechey to thank for that. Then, leaving the ship, he thought he was stepping out of the mire, into a spare, clean space. But the thing had not been neater, only more exposed. Setting out for Beechey, he thought he might get a glimpse of his true character, whatever was hidden under all the layers. He’d thought to test himself, sure that something definite must emerge from the trial – as though afterwards he would be stamped by it, his mettle proved, visibly. There had been nothing in it but quiet, confused misery. All he’d brought back were the shrivelled certainties of old. So he knew better this time what he was going to, out there. This time, if he left the ship it was not to bring back evidence, proof. He had enough of that. After thirty-seven years, he was finally giving up the search that had tormented him so long. He was quitting the game. He was walking away from all those familiar, childish devices, and their relentless appeal. He was not only turning away, he was turning back towards that shabby place that was his childhood, to find another way of living there.
In the corner, the empty chair rocked back and forth. It was another thing Cabot had made for her, to make the feeding more comfortable.
You’ve come to say goodbye, she told him, and showed him a smile, that he was obliged to admire.
Not quite, he said. Not yet.
And that was it, the thing was done, the news was old.
Heavy blue drapes hung over the door. The narrow bed, and the cot, that had replaced the desk. A locker, and under the bed a chest for clothes. Bookshelves on the wall. This was her room. With the boy, this was her life. He was asleep. They would have to talk quietly.
The breaths were measured in and measured out. The face was serious but calm, carved. As always, it had been transformed. Somehow, he was more beautiful than before. Looming over him, his father looked neglected, spent.
She leaned back in the chair, settled the wool on her lap. He sat opposite, on the edge of the bed.
I know you’ll come back, she said. You don’t have to argue it out.
She took up her needles, to busy her hands.
I want you to go, she said. I know it’s our only chance.
Out there, he said, there’s an invisible line. And once you cross that line, every danger is mortal.
I know, she said.
Dud matches, he told her. A dud lamp. The simple fact is, you’re safer here. Both of you.
I know, she said.
An entire heating system, he said. An endless supply of fuel. There’s many a poor man at home, I tell you, would be plenty happy to trade.
Several years’ supplies, he said. Cabot’s been working like a black.
Richard, she said. You know well I can’t argue with any of that.
The bargain is yours, if you ask me. You and the men who get to stay behind.
I’m sure you’re right.
The trouble, of course, will be finding volunteers. Not to go, but to stay behind. No matter how black a picture I paint. You know what they’re like. They’re like children. They’ll think we’re abandoning them. You’ve seen them, all mad keen to do their gymnastics now, to get into better trim. Even Petersen says he’s going to try to come up.
In her hands, the needles meddled tirelessly. Behind her back, the boy’s arm was dangling out the bars.
He’s too fragile, is the long and short of it, Morgan said. Perhaps in the most exceptionally favourable circumstances imaginable. Easy hauling, no storms, no winds. The open water not too far. The sailing clear. But that’s too many ifs. I can’t take that risk.
In the distance, the bell shyly summoned the next watch.
DeHaven says it’s waving the white flag, quitting the ship, Morgan said. The entire expedition, he means. Total failure.
What do you think?
I think he just wants to go home. He doesn’t give a damn about the expedition. Never did. I’ve often wondered why he came out. It wasn’t from love for his brother, I’m sure. I don’t think he’s mentioned him twice the whole time.
What about you? What do you think? What do you want? Morgan shrugged. For months now, far beneath the surface, the work had been going on. Anxiety and expectation, in continual, quiet conflict, had worn each other down. They now fitted smoothly together. The joint was difficult to see.
Perhaps they’ve already been found, she said. Perhaps even now they’re all sitting by the fire in London, drinking hot chocolate, and fretting over our sort.
Perhaps, Morgan said. The thought had often occurred to him.
He looked into the cot. Every morning a new child stretched out its arms. The words were piling up, the talents. He knew less and less every day who this boy would be.
Other men have abandoned, in their time, she said. Men quite as good as yourself, if I may say so. Your hero. Ross.
I’m not abandoning, he said. I’m coming back.
I know you are, she said. You already said that. She was fussing once more with her wool, perhaps to avoid looking him in the face. Je ne reviens pas, je viens, she said.
What’s that?
It’s what they say, the French. At least, it’s what one of them said to me, one time. I do not come back, I come.
I understand the words, he said. But what they actually mean, put together like that, seems deliberately vague.
When next I come, she said, it will be for the first time. Something like that.
He had lain awake in the dark arguing all the alternatives out of himself, making it sound inevitable, but he could not completely staunch the doubt. He pressed down hard, stopped the flow, and already it was leaking out at some other joint.
You hear them talking about it, he said, like it’s nothing at all. It’s just gritting your teeth, and tightening your belt, and toughing it out, apparently. As though these are choices a man makes. They’re choices a man makes when he’s snug and well fed in a well-heated ship.
He looked over at her, but she seemed not to have heard. She was too busy admiring her sleeping son. Afterwards he stayed on with her, to pass a little time, to shorten the afternoon. They sat in silence, listening. In the tiny nostrils, the air rustled like silk.
That evening he called DeHaven, and they worked their
way through the list.
Cullen, he said.
Lungs, DeHaven answered.
Morgan wrote the word down.
Bonsall.
Shaking fits.
Galvin, Morgan said.
DeHaven lifted his head, lifted his eyebrows.
Morgan made a mark on his page. Blacker, he said.
Rheumatism. Chronic, but not severe.
Line by line they went through the schedule, scouring for flaws. Later, the landscape and the weather would be too hard a judge. Here, now, he had to play their part. In any case, they could not all go. Someone had to stay to look after the ship. Someone had to stay to look after Kitty and Tommy.
Cabot, Morgan said.
Drunk or sober?
I’ll talk to him, Morgan said.
Do you think he even remembers what sober is?
Anderson, Morgan said.
Which one is he?
The one always licks his bowl.
There’s more than one of those.
The mangy red whiskers.
That lazy bastard, DeHaven said. Constipated again, he says. What that means is, he can’t be bothered to push. I’d almost be tempted to take him, for a lesson.
Leask.
Leaks, DeHaven said.
They went down through the list. Then the officers’ muster-roll. Half the names, he could not understand how Myer had been convinced to take them on. Most he rated as bodies to warm and mouths to feed, nothing more.
4th May
The days were endless, their long sodden march, that finally brought them round again to Sunday. The bell called them up on deck. MacDonald stood on a crate to make his sermon.