by Robyn Mundy
Light from the porthole filters through his faded eyes. When he shakes his head Charlie seems older than his years. ‘Love, this has nothing to do with Adam. There was a prang over at Mawson Station. Up on the plateau.’ His eyes comb her face. ‘Chad McGonigal and his bike went into a crevasse.’
THE TALK ON THE SHIP is of Aurora turning around, a dash to Mawson Station to bring Chad home. No, the captain shakes his head. The scheduled vessel, Polar Bird, is only eighty nautical miles away from the station. Already her ship’s doctor has flown in by helicopter to assist the doctor at the base.
An official release from the Division is pinned to the dining room’s notice board. Fell fifteen metres into the crevasse … evacuated to the station … acute injuries … emergency surgery. Freya closes her eyes to see an image of two doctors heading a surgical team comprising plumbers, chippies, sparkies, diesos.
Over the next days news trickles in from Kittie. But the most detailed accounts originate from Scally, Charlie’s radio mate at Mawson Station. The list of injuries alone is more than she can stand to hear. Compression fracture of the lumbar spine vertebrae, fractured pelvis, broken ribs, abdominal tearing, internal bleeding, and on it goes.
She paces the decks, climbs to the bridge, is unable to settle and returns outside to start all over again. The wandering albatross still follows in their wake.
THE INMARSAT SYSTEM IS DOWN and no emails reach the ship. Freya’s mind races with panicked speculations. She overhears the two women who work in the galley. The fair-haired woman stacks plates onto the racks. Spinal injury is what he told me.
The Portsmouth woman sighs. Words to chill a mother’s heart, dear.
Aurora’s doctor registers the tremor in Freya’s voice and sits down beside her.
‘Of course any spinal injury is serious,’ he says gently, ‘but it doesn’t automatically mean damage to the spinal cord. From what we know, your friend has a stable fracture that can likely be treated with a brace and physiotherapy. The concern, as I see it, is the extent of the mesenteric tearing, any other abdominal injuries, and whether they can stabilise him and stop the bleeding.’ He pats Freya’s arm. ‘We have to hope, send him our prayers.’
‘A BLIZZARD,’ CHARLIE TELLS HER. ‘Polar Bird has boarded the summerers going home and headed out from the coast to ride it out.’
‘How long will the ship wait for him?’ Freya asks the captain.
‘Depends on weather and ice. Her captain will have the final say. Polar Bird’s been out half the season doing oceanographic surveys. She must be low on juice.’
Freya returns each evening to the bridge, guided through the darkness by the scarlet glow of instruments. She stands at the corner window where she can see both forward and aft. The captain joins her and points astern. ‘See there, low in the sky, this side of the Southern Cross? Barely a whisper, but it’s there.’ Freya has to concentrate, search until her eyes accommodate the night, until she too can see the faint auroral glow.
She climbs the outside steps to the flying bridge. She leans against the railing, the midnight sky a swathe of stars. Within the hour, others join her to watch the sky stretch into life.
The aurora begins as nebulous bands of mist and brightens to vertical folds coloured emerald green through to aquamarine. For a time the lights hang motionless, as a drape, the intensity greatest along the lower edge where it glows lucent and iridescent, more vivid than the stars. Filaments of quartz pink rise from the upper folds into streamers that fray at the ends before fading to darkness above. The sky begins to pulse. All who watch are stilled to reverent silence, following the celestial array as it waxes and wanes in its dance across the heavens.
To be certain of her bearings Freya locates the Southern Cross and its pointers. She conjures all she has to give, collecting everything inside her that can mend and heal and soothe and sends it as a prayer, deep into the aurora and across the southern sky.
‘THAT’S NOT THE BIGGEST ISSUE anymore.’ Charlie holds court before the early risers. ‘They’re saying Chad’s stable enough to be moved if they can only get the ship back in.’ Gesturing to Freya to pull up a chair, he bites off a corner of Vegemite toast and continues. ‘The Polar Bird went out to sea to escape the worst of the weather. The current problem is she’s been trying to get back into Mawson for three days—she’s stuck in heavy pack-ice sixty k’s out. Scally says they’ve had both engines chewing through juice like there’s no tomorrow—she doesn’t have the grunt of the Aurora. They’ve had one hell of a battle getting in that far. The ice is causing them no end of grief and now with this new blow, there’s the risk the ice will hem them in.’
‘Causing them grief,’ says one of the field assistants loading his spoon with rice bubbles. ‘What about our guy half dead waiting for an ambulance ride home? Why can’t they send the choppers in to pick him up?’
Charlie scoffs. ‘Mate, it’s blowing eighty knots off the plateau. The katabatics haven’t let up for days.’
‘It’s simple triage,’ puts in Ian. Even Charlie leans in to hear the physicist’s softly spoken words. ‘The ship is in a vulnerable position and low on fuel, thirty other expeditioners need to get home, and some level of confidence—or resignation—has been reached that the chappie with the injuries should be left to take his chances.’
Freya closes her eyes. ‘What does it mean, Charlie?’
‘It means a second winter, love. It means he’s there to stay.’
THE MORNING OCEAN IS ALL sapphire curves and silver tips. Freya sits on the deck in the shelter of the hangar, the sun warming her legs. Aurora rides the waves of a running sea— each surge lifts and propels the ship forward.
She holds a pen, a pad of paper propped upon her knee. Give her a camera and Freya can show you what she feels, but she has always laboured with the imagery of words. She chooses this way knowing it is arduous, understanding as she writes that, once posted, the letter will not begin its journey south until the spring, eight months from now. A circuitous mode, when a message can be emailed with a click. But for all her letter’s poorly turned phrases and flawed expressions, she likes to think a residue of Freya will remain through the slant of the cursive, the loose-knit whorls. She rereads her sentences, pausing over words that comfort, that affirm her deepest feelings. The ship’s hull rises with a rush, hinging, momentarily, on the shoulders of the sea. She braces as Aurora begins its downward slide, gathering speed to skitter down a wave. She returns to the page, deliberating how to finish, looking for words that state her intentions, but cast neither obligation nor regret, nor place promise, upon the expression of a wish. She scans the ocean, looks towards the sky, searches the blue; her wanderer has gone.
Antarctic Ocean
26 December 1913
True One—
What a lovely time I have had reading your letters over and over.
It has not been unalloyed pleasure, for though the joy bells have been ringing through my head in admiration of you, there has been an undercurrent of anguish—that dull pain in the heart, a constraint upon its free beating—for the anxiety I have caused you.
Believe me, Paquita, I would not willingly have caused you any of it—but my Antarctic plans were laid before you and I were blended, and then under those circumstances it appeared to me right to go straight ahead …
My very dear Girl, my winter letters will explain the absence of more wireless news. Nobody seems to have understood our difficulties.
Darling I thought that you had at least one letter from me by the Aurora of March 1913, else would I have endeavoured to send you a few more words by wireless. Before sledging I wrote several letters including one to yourself and one to my Brother. These were written with the idea of delivery in case of my non-return … Well, Capt. Davis took the box off with the letters and they were all delivered but mine. I now find them still in the box undelivered …
Now Dearest all else can remain till we meet except perhaps a few references to your letters. Here goes.
‘So young and silly. How could you love me?’ Perhaps there were a few things that I wondered at, but if they were part of a large and true heart such as I knew yours to be, I was amply satisfied … Rather should I beg your forgiveness for my thoughtlessness and shortcomings.
‘Wireless messages … unsatisfactory, want a letter.’ I could never have given you my heart’s feelings by wireless. Had I really been incapacitated to be your Husband, I should not have reached the Hut. My love you had to trust—that you need never fear for unless miracles happen to yourself. Always trust me. Will you? I believe I begin to see how you have changed—I felt that any change would be so …
‘You won’t go again, will you?’ No dearest, nothing like this will happen again—rest assured.
No! I am not frozen in heart you may be sure, this is where the warm hearts are bred …
Believe me Paquita. I have never at any time loved anybody as I love you. Never had it entered my head before I met you to wed anybody. This is perhaps one reason why I love you so much.
Your 3rd letter tells of a visit to the ship. You are quite right, Davis is inclined to be pessimistic …
‘Everlasting silence’ indeed it has been unbearable. I do miss you dreadfully but would not have you here for all that life holds. It is my love that wishes you not here …
‘Only 3 or 4 wires.’ You should have had that letter and, besides the wires referred to, many assurances of our being ‘all well’ from various quarters intimated at the end of business telegrams. I would not have been ‘all well’ had my love for my Darling wavered even the least bit. Perhaps they did not tell you—Eitel and David are both very remiss. Oh; I cannot talk further about the horrid wireless—wait till we meet …
‘Dearie I hope you and I are going to be happy’. My Darling, it lies with You—Can you be happy with me. I have aged in appearance with this strain and may not appeal to you now. My body tissues have been strained and cannot be so good. But at heart I am just the same though perhaps more impressed with your qualities. Size me up critically, and don’t let us get married unless after reflection you feel nothing but attraction and an abandonment to my desire just as I feel to yours. This is so important for after marriage the merest indications of splits are apt to widen to become fissures and crevasses in which all hopes of married bliss are dashed to pieces …
The joint wire from yourself and Will never came. There has been scarce a message through since early October on account of daylight interference on top of all other troubles …
The first time I read these letters, I rushed through proud for news. The second time I don’t know why but I shivered & all the blood seemed to go to my heart in one great whirling eddy. Your love made me shiver.
I must turn in now and just wait and long for our meeting. Perhaps better not on the ship—really better not until I have a wash. My domestic life has been very miserable now for 2 years and I long for a clean up—ordinary clothes and a good bed— above all a carefree sleep—not dozing with one eye open as it has been for so long. Nay much better still a sleep in your arms my Love.
Douglas
A radiant turret, lit by the midsummer midnight sun
THE
BAY
AFTER TWO YEARS OF NEGLECT, the bush has taken hold of Chad’s shack at the bay. Bracken lines the gravel driveway. Overgrown branches grate against weathered boards. The water tanks are camouflaged beneath a crust of tinder-dry needles of she-oak. Even the gutters of the boatshed and workshop are jammed with leaf debris untouched so long it has composted to mulch.
Chad pours soapy water into a nest that has taken over the honeycombed cement of the back steps. Wasps bubble and seethe, filling the air and sending him running for cover.
Lines of sugar ants march along the worn railing of the front verandah and down the wooden joists to a damp bed of moss beneath the tank stands. A film of salt coats the windows. Inside and out, cobwebs droop like hanks of yarn. Chad drags at the threads with a broom, conscious of a residual weakness in his back and arms. The remains of huntsman spiders, desiccated things as weightless as tissue, litter the floorboards beneath the sills. He thinks of the morning’s grim discovery, the remains of a pygmy possum unwittingly trapped in the boat shed when he locked up the place so long ago to leave for the ice.
It takes all day to air the shack and sweep and rake and clean, and though he’s hungering for a meal and could knock back an ale without persuasion, he treads the road through the dimness of dusk to take a look around. Light in the western sky hangs by a thread of magenta; wind whistles through the tops of gums. Soon summer will be here, but seasons in Tasmania are capricious and bring a shiver to the air any time they please. The bush edging the road forms a canopy of kunzea and tea-tree whose branches hang heavy and pungent with petals of white. He snaps off leafy sprigs and returns to the shack, filling vases and jars with the heady scent.
The knock at the door startles him. The November long-weekenders have headed back to town and won’t return until December holidays begin. Only a handful of residents— retirees, arty types—stay on through the quieter months. Roma Buckle, his neighbour from the other side of the bay, stands stooped at the door cradling a plate of flathead fillets.
‘Saw the lights on,’ Roma says in her offhand way, as if arriving home twelve months late is neither here nor there. She hands him the fish and gives him a once-over. ‘Looks like you could do with a jolly good feed.’
When Chad asks her in she brushes him off. ‘Can’t stay, Chadwick. Jim’ll be twiddling his thumbs if I’m not back in time for Millionaire.’
Chad studies Roma’s gait as she totters up the driveway, her bad hip and the sou’westerly causing her to list and meander like a rudderless vessel. Perhaps with his injuries he walks the same. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he calls after her. Roma and her husband Jim are the only ones who call him by his christened name—possibly the only ones left, barring the old man, who’ve known him long enough to remember the wretched thing. After Ma died, the Buckles kept an eye on the shack for several years, stopped it falling into disrepair, until Chad was old enough to drive a car and come back on his own. Roma reaches the road and turns, huddling inside her duffle coat. She seems smaller, frailer than he remembers. Yet: ‘It’s blowing straight off the ice,’ she yells at a pitch that could waken the dead.
These first days back remind him it takes more than physical travel to coax mind and body home. He stands beneath the kitchen light looking over Davis Station photos taken last summer, the prints developed only this week after he returned to Hobart on the ship. He lingers on the image of Freya kneeling on the ice, jubilant, eye to eye with an emperor penguin. He studies a handful of prints from Mawson Station, a photo of himself that Barney Foot took at the summit of Fang Peak the day before Chad’s world collapsed. Chad sees how, in the space of nine months, his face has changed, aged in ways not governed by time. He runs a finger across his throat, feels the knotted scar left by the blade of his ice axe. He has reduced sensation in one leg and walks with a ponderous step. Cheloid scars from the surgery are hidden by his clothes. Deeper scars from the crevasse are there beneath his skin— marks fretted and raw that still pick at his dreams. He packs away the photos, resolving not to dwell on them again.
Chad sets a match to bone dry kindling laid in the fireplace two years ago. The sticks flare with a whoosh, an explosion of crackers spitting sparks against the screen. He kneels on the hearth, logs crackling, flames licking the chimney, warmth radiating through the room.
TEESHIRT AND SUNNIES FOR THE drive down to Hobart in December, his list as long as his empty trailer. For years he has mulled over changes he wants to make to the shack. During his winter of recovery at Mawson Station he sketched diagrams, talking through the renovations with B
arney Foot, as if it really were a plan.
He questions why it’s taken him this long.
‘Change,’ he utters as he motors down the highway; the fear of change has stopped him all these years. Fear that has resided within him so long now it’s turned into a great stagnant dam holding him to the past in want of something that can never be regained. Now, after hanging onto life by a thread, he refuses to let the rest of it slip by.
Shooting through on the sly had been the old man’s fucked-up way of relinquishing the past and moving on. Thinking back, it had begun when the two of them left the shack without locking up, the news of Ma still unconfirmed. Get in the bloody ute, Chad. The place can go to blazes for all I care. Returning shell-shocked from the memorial service to their family home in Hobart, to a year of going through the motions without Ma, sandwiches to fill, school shoes to clean, a bath before bed and don’t forget the soap. Dad would grip him by the shoulders so hard it hurt but still he couldn’t speak Ma’s name and would not meet his father’s eyes, when each morning as he left the house for school, and each afternoon as he walked home, and through the sunroom windows and from the kitchen porch stood the bridge, the guts of it gone, the great gulping chasm at its centre mirroring the collapse of the McGonigal home.
Dropped off at Nan and Pop’s to watch Greg Chappell bat against the Windies on their new colour TV . Australia by 165 runs, you bewdy! Then Nan at the sink, all flushed and teary, pulling him into her apron. Her tears, this time, were not just for a lost daughter. It was all prearranged. She’d been crying for him.
Pop’s voice from the doorway, You’ll be staying on with Nan and me for a spell; Chad’s confusion subsiding to relief then anger at his father.
BARNEY FOOT AND LACHLAN, HIS youngest, drive down after New Year, Barney’s FJ ute brandishing P-plates, his tray and trailer laden with sheets of roofing iron. Despite Chad’s protests that he’s strong enough to help, Lachlan and Barney move the fridge and stove and all the heavy furniture to the boat shed where the three set up camp. Our own little field hut, Barney coos before turning in.