Out of the Ice

by Ann Turner

  ‘I’ve been down there for the past few weeks. It’s a beautiful village.’

  ‘It is.’ She nodded but didn’t seem certain.

  ‘I found a book in the library written by your father on the history.’

  ‘He was mighty proud of that book.’ Helen smiled.

  ‘Have you been down there yourself?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed I have.’ She fell silent.

  ‘It’s extraordinary to think all those people went each summer. It must have been bustling,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, my word. It was a bustling settlement.’ Helen paused, then sat forward. ‘I was eight when I first went. Daddy took me and my two elder brothers while Mama stayed home with little Peter, who was one year younger than me. Being the baby of the family, Mama over-protected him. He was so dark about not going.’ She blinked and I caught the trace of a tear. ‘We were a long time at sea. It was an adventure, all right.’ Helen glanced at Nancy, who smiled back gently, reassuring.

  ‘I’ll never forget crossing the Drake Passage,’ Helen continued. ‘Waves so high I thought we were gone. My brothers nearly died of seasickness but I managed fine. Uncle Olaf and Granny Inga looked after us like we were the Norwegian royal family itself. But the sight of the poor whales.’ She stood abruptly, and moved to pull a tray of golden cookies from the oven. ‘Better get these out before they ruin,’ she said.

  ‘Ooh, they smell good,’ said Nancy. ‘But remember what I told you.’ She winked at me.

  ‘What’s that, Nance?’ Helen arranged the cookies around an old creamware plate.

  ‘She’s not to like yours better than mine.’

  Helen laughed, her skin crinkling. She offered me a cookie. ‘Take two.’

  I willingly obliged.

  ‘You saw the whales?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. It was awful. I knew it was how Daddy and Uncle Olaf and Poppa Lars had made us rich, so I didn’t dare say a word. I’ll never forget my first whale. I ran away to the pigpens and hugged the little piglets and cried my eyes out. Then I went with the chickens and kept crying. Finally I went back to Daddy’s house and Granny Inga put me on her lap and rocked and rocked. She knew exactly why I was upset and said I’d understand when I was older.’

  ‘And now you do,’ said Nancy.

  Helen drew in her breath. ‘I respect it but I never liked it. And I never let that get in the way of my love for my father. Sometimes you just have to let people be who they are.’

  ‘This whole island’s descended from whalers,’ said Nancy, looking me firmly in the eye. ‘Men who risked their lives for our prosperity. And they were true-life explorers, heading out over the oceans. My great-great-grandfather was one of the first to get down over your way, Laura, into the Southern Ocean. How far was that! The other side of the earth. They were explorers, all right, with the American spirit. They made our country great and all from this little sandy spit of an island.’ She glowed with pride.

  ‘And I don’t disrespect them,’ Helen emphasised again as she passed me more cookies. I took three, they were so delicious, and it was also my way of trying to show her support.

  ‘My mama’s family were Quakers here from way ago,’ Helen continued. ‘All sailors. Four whaling captains among them. Mama had two brothers taken by the sea.’ Again Helen stopped. ‘Anyways, tell us more about Fredelighavn. How’s it stood up after all these years? I heard they turned it into a place no one could go.’

  ‘That’s right, in the seventies,’ I said. ‘And it’s stood up just fine. It was incredibly well built.’

  ‘Norwegians know how to do that,’ said Helen, smiling. ‘And the houses were pretty, weren’t they?’

  ‘They still are. Magical, actually.’

  ‘Colours like the rainbow in a soap bubble. I went there four times, you know. Daddy and Granny Inga thought it was good for our constitution, and Granny loved having us with her.’ This time Helen’s eyes did tear up, I figured from nostalgia. I could see that she was growing tired, so I thought I’d better seize the moment and ask what I really needed to know.

  ‘Helen, I was wondering – did you ever go in tunnels under the ice?’

  She frowned, her blonde brows knitting together. ‘Tunnels? No. Where are the tunnels?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said.

  ‘Well, that’s strange,’ she replied and looked suddenly so frail and gloomy I wondered what I’d done. ‘Laura, why are you asking about tunnels?’

  ‘It’s just . . . I wondered if I saw a chamber behind an ice cave.’

  Helen looked at me almost knowingly. I fell silent, thinking how unlikely it would sound to say I thought I’d seen a boy in that chamber.

  Helen was paling to the colour of porcelain as she gazed at me intently. She met my eyes, willing me to speak.

  ‘I thought there was a boy there,’ I stuttered, against my better instincts.

  Helen tensed. ‘A boy? What sort of boy?’

  To my astonishment Helen didn’t seem to think I was making things up.

  ‘How old?’ she demanded.

  ‘About twelve. Dark-haired.’

  She let out a yelp. I couldn’t work out what was happening.

  ‘Why are you coming round saying things like that?’ asked Nancy sharply.

  Helen pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose, her pale eyes drilling into me. ‘I lost my little brother down there, but you seem to know that already,’ she said.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t.’ I leaned over and touched her arm, which was as cold as if she were dead. In his book Erling had made no mention of his children.

  Helen sat glaring. Nancy did the same. All the warmth had drained from the room. I kept quiet – desperate to know more but cautious not to upset her further.

  ‘It was on my last trip down in 1955,’ said Helen. ‘I was thirteen and Peter was twelve. There was a whale in port and they were stripping its blubber. I stayed with Granny Inga and read a book. Peter hated what they did to those whales as much as I did and he slipped away. They always said he fell through a hole in the ice and drowned. Died of cold.’ Her eyes held a fire beneath their shiny pale blue. ‘Now you’re telling me there were tunnels. That he fell into a tunnel. That you’ve seen his ghost in the ice.’ She blew her nose again, loudly, furiously. ‘What am I meant to believe?’

  ‘No, no, that’s not what I’m saying.’ I leaned forward but she pulled her arm away. ‘The boy I saw. He was alive.’ As soon as the word left my mouth I knew it was the wrong one. ‘It wasn’t your brother.’

  ‘Obviously it couldn’t be my brother, he wouldn’t still be a boy after more than sixty years,’ she snapped. ‘Where exactly did you see him?’ She blew her nose a final time and slipped the handkerchief up her sleeve.

  ‘I swam in from the ocean, he was in an ice cave. But he must have got down there some other way. We don’t know who he is or why he was there.’ A pang of emotion swept through me as I remembered the boy.

  ‘Why didn’t he swim into the cave like you?’

  ‘He was behind a wall.’

  ‘A man-made wall?’

  ‘No, an ice wall.’

  ‘Where was this again?’

  ‘Up near Alliance Point. Below the cliff.’

  Helen’s shoulders sagged. ‘My little brother fell in the town. Near the bakery. The new bakery, not the old bakery – that was up near the pigs and chickens and wasn’t used any more by then.’

  It was strange to hear it talked about like a living village.

  ‘Do you think there could have been tunnels?’ I asked directly.

  She sat back and traced a nod. ‘I never believed he fell through the ice. There wasn’t that much of it around that summer in the streets. And when Peter and I had explored around those dreadful sheds where they boiled the blubber and made the guano, there were all sorts of nooks and crannies that could have gone underground. Well, there were trapdoors. But we opened a couple and they didn’t seem to go anywhere.’

  ‘When y
ou say near the bakery, do you mean by the cinema?’

  ‘That’s right. Straight opposite. In the street between the cinema and the bakery, that’s where they said he fell through. Froze to death in the icy water, they claimed.’ She turned even paler, and her breathing quickened.

  A chill crept up my spine. ‘Helen, did you ever play around the stage in that cinema?’

  ‘Around it? No. On it, yes. I fancied myself as a bit of an actress and Granny Inga indulged me.’

  ‘Could there have been a way underground beneath the stage?’

  ‘Well, anything’s possible, isn’t it, but no one told me anything.’ Her breathing was growing coarser. I’d taxed her. It was pitch black outside.

  ‘We must be on our way,’ said Nancy protectively, rising. I did the same.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve kept you too long.’

  ‘Come back tomorrow, dear,’ said Helen, softening. ‘You just gave me a fright but I can see you didn’t mean to.’ She stood stiffly, and Nancy and I followed her out of the room. In the passage I noticed a table of family photographs.

  ‘Peter’s not there,’ Helen said, catching me looking. ‘My mama never got over it. She wasn’t in Fredelighavn, see? Didn’t like the rough ocean journey even though she came from generations of sailors. Blamed herself, didn’t she? It’s not natural for a mother to outlive her son, not in this day and age, she’d say. Not in the 1950s.’ I felt an awful bond – a mother who’d lost her son – as I gazed at the photo of the thin, sad woman, pale-skinned, dark-haired, a thick knot forming in my throat. But Helen was moving away towards the front door and I had to follow. ‘Buried all the photos with her. It was Mama’s way of being with him.’

  I wanted to hug Helen as she opened the sea-blue door, but she stood proud and upright. She looked into the distance as we said goodbye.

  ‘Come back tomorrow, Laura. I’ll let you see some things. Maybe you’ll find those tunnels if you know where to look.’ She shut the door gently and we made our way through the freezing cold back to Nancy’s house. I forced myself not to dwell on Hamish – the terrifying emptiness that robbed my own will to live, on the day I buried him. I couldn’t afford to lose myself in memories or it would be impossible to think about anything else.

  I didn’t feel like sitting and eating; I wanted to be alone, to make notes about what I’d just heard. But Nancy insisted, heating up leftovers – an aromatic beef stew. Home-grown carrots, green beans and baby potatoes glistening with butter were dished on the side. They were the first fresh vegetables I’d had in months, and even though I was distracted my mouth watered with every bite, savouring each morsel after such a long absence. We sat in front of television, both only pretending to watch the news. As soon as we’d finished, we went upstairs. Nancy stopped on the landing; her room was opposite mine.

  ‘I know you didn’t mean any harm. I just hate to see my old friend like that. Erling never talked about it, you know, the loss of that poor little boy. I’m a year younger than Helen. I was in his class at school.’ Nancy went into her room and shut the door.

  I felt terrible. It was devastating to think of the death of a child down there. But Helen hadn’t dismissed the notion of tunnels under Fredelighavn. She’d embraced it. Clearly she’d wondered all these years about them.

  I didn’t believe in ghosts. There was a boy down there. One I could save. If I could find the tunnels, I could find him.

  16

  I woke cocooned in feather-soft sheets that smelled of salt and roses. Sitting up I remembered where I was, and the grief of yesterday’s conversation came flooding back: little Peter, his photos buried with his mother who had died of a broken heart.

  The friendship between Nancy and Helen was strong. I’d be like that with Kate and Georgia when I was old. Island life had similarities to Antarctica: friendships were more intense, enduring. Creating new memories; protecting us from the abyss of loss.

  I hauled myself out of bed and had a quick shower, the steam fragrant from a spiced cranberry soap.

  By the time I went downstairs, Nancy was serving up breakfast. Two puffy pancakes smothered in cranberry jam were placed in front of me. As I put the first forkful in my mouth, the cranberries exploded, sharp and sweet. There was a glass of fresh cranberry juice to wash them down.

  ‘Sleep well?’ Nancy shuffled back in an oversized fleecy dressing gown and placed another hot pancake on my plate. I devoured the lot and had a fourth, the food so different to the fare I’d eaten in the past twelve months.

  ‘So we’ll go over to Helen’s and see if we can make head or tail of the papers stashed in her attic. She was going to bring them down herself but I convinced her to let you do it. You’re much stronger and younger than us.’ Nancy beamed.

  I was touched they’d forgiven me so quickly.

  ‘And don’t you go listening to my friend about those poor old whales. The men had to make a living. I doubt any of them really liked the killing. It was something they had to do. They were brave adventurers who put this country on the map long before those west-coasters went out into the prairies.’

  I thought it best to let the conversation stop there. I didn’t want to get into a fight about the slaughter of American Indians on top of what happened to the whales. Yet I couldn’t help feeling a grudging respect for the ancestors of Nancy and Helen. It wouldn’t have been easy for them. I tried to convince myself that they didn’t know that whales had feelings akin to humans. The field of cognitive ethnology had only begun in the 1970s, when scientists put forward the theory that whales could not only feel, but love. I remembered Lev’s care when I swam with him – it would stay with me forever.

  Suddenly breakfast wasn’t sitting well as I tried to bat away images of the whales being stripped of their blubber at Fredelighavn.

  ‘Something wrong with the pancakes?’ Nancy hovered close.

  ‘No, they’re delicious.’ We chatted over coffee and then I went up to my room to put in a call. I was eager to start trawling through Erling’s papers but I wanted to set up a meeting with Snow. If I didn’t find anything about the tunnels today, I could leave the women searching while I went to re-establish a connection with the one person who might be able to tell me what was going on at Fredelighavn. I looked up his department at Harvard online, found the number, and dialled. After a while a woman picked up the phone.

  ‘I was wondering if I could speak to Professor Andrew Flynt please? It’s Doctor Alvarado calling.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Doctor Alvarado, but Professor Flynt isn’t with us.’

  ‘He’s not come in yet since Antarctica?’ I asked confidently.

  She paused. ‘Professor Flynt is no longer on staff.’

  I went silent with shock, and tried to gather my thoughts. ‘When did that happen? I mean, when did he leave?’

  ‘A few months ago. Back in July.’

  I felt the blood drain from my face. ‘Do you have a contact where I can reach him?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give out that information. Is there someone else who can help you?’

  ‘Thanks anyway.’ I hung up and sat on the bed, realising now the folly of my plan. Why had Snow lied? I thought of how he’d ignored me on the trip back to America, and how evasive he’d been when we’d arrived. Was Georgia right about him?

  I hauled myself up and stared out the window at the boats in the harbour. The Sankaty was coming in again, slowly approaching the dock.

  How would I find Snow now? And he certainly wouldn’t be pleased to see me. I looked at the time. Georgia would be asleep, so I sent her an email.

  Nancy called up from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Ready to head to Helen’s?’

  ‘Could I just have a few more minutes, please?’ I called back.

  ‘Take as long as you need, Laura. Come down when you’re ready.’

  I went back online, searching for Sam Wiltshire, a colleague I knew at Harvard in marine biology, who I’d worked with in Melbourne. I found his email addr
ess and sent a message, saying I was in the States briefly and would love to catch up. Could he contact me as soon as he could?

  I stared out at the harbour again, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard about Snow. I longed to speak to Georgia, but Nancy was waiting in the kitchen.

  The day was mild, with a fresh sea breeze as we walked around to Helen’s house. Birdsong filled the air. Most of the trees were bare, their skeletal branches overhanging the street. High up, I caught sight of a bright red bird. The reddest bird I’d ever seen, flitting between a few vibrant orange leaves that still clung on.

  ‘Whatever’s that?’ I stopped to gaze at the bird.

  Nancy peered up. In a red flash, the bird flew to another tree. As it perched, I saw it had a top-notch sticking from its head. It was cheeky and sublime. And perfect. A fiery, audacious bird.

  ‘That’s a cardinal. There’s a couple live out back in my hydrangeas,’ said Nancy. ‘In fall they seem to move about the streets. One of the prettiest birds you’re likely to see.’

  The cardinal seemed full of hope as it flitted from tree to tree, its striking red burning against the pale sky.

  Helen opened the door seconds after we knocked. ‘Come in, come in, I have a pot brewing. No doubt you’ve had breakfast but I’ve baked some blueberry muffins.’

  All hint of yesterday’s tension had disappeared. She took my arm and led me down the passage, smelling of spicy cranberries, like me.

  I loved the homeliness of the kitchen, its warmth and sweet aromas. Helen had set three mugs on the table again, which she filled with dark, rich coffee. She took the blueberry muffins from the oven and arranged them on another creamware plate. Although I was full, I couldn’t resist eating one – and then another. I had to force myself to stop or I would’ve eaten the whole batch. They were sweet without being cloying, and the blueberries, plump and juicy, were even tastier than the cranberries in Nancy’s jam.

  ‘So, I’ve been going through the boxes in the attic,’ said Helen, ‘but I stuck to my promise and have waited for you to bring them down.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘I can finish my coffee as we look through.’