Under a Pole Star: Richard & Judy Book Club 2017 - the most unforgettable love story of the year

by Stef Penney

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Wallace?’

  Her voice floats down to the front of the theatre. Silence falls. Mr Wallace looks up – the back of the theatre is so dark, he has to squint to make her out.

  ‘Yes? I’m sorry, Miss . . . ?’

  ‘Miss Mackie. We can’t hear you at the back. We don’t know what you’re laughing about. We pay our fees, and we don’t want to miss anything important.’

  On the front benches, heads turn. Flora scans their faces – a mixture of curious, derisive, amused. One man – the one who has been talking the most – is smiling; he has wiry, dark hair and spectacles; a lively, clever face. The lecturer addressed him as ‘Our Israelite’, which made Flora stare. Flora looks hard at Mr Wallace, who clears his throat.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Mackie. I will bear that in mind. Rest assured, ladies, if you pay attention in lectures, you will not miss anything you need to know.’

  The girl on Flora’s other side mutters, ‘Old windbag’. Flora shoots her a grateful glance, surprised to find an ally in the girl with flaxen hair and a face of Renaissance purity. She has noticed male students glancing openly at her in the corridors. Afterwards, the girl introduces herself as Isobel Kirkpatrick. She admires Flora’s courage in speaking out. Later, Poppy explains that Isobel is the daughter of a wealthy MP. She is doing a degree as an accomplishment; she will never have to earn her own living. Poppy rolls her eyes as she says this.

  A few days later, Isobel invites Flora to lunch near the university. Flora has never been in a cafe like Berardi’s. Dundee has nothing like it. It sits on the corner of Chenies Street, a mysterious lair full of cigarette smoke and the sort of muttered talk that suggests goings-on of a fascinating and slightly disreputable nature. Lamps that look like jellyfish do little to alleviate the dimness. Isobel weaves through the crowd to a table in the corner. A handful of young men are talking, until one of them – a plump youth with sleek blond hair – catches sight of Isobel and jumps to his feet, and all break off and turn their heads towards them. Flora feels a rush of self-consciousness that is half painful, half pleasurable. Something inside her quickens under the scrutinising gaze of the men. She is conscious that she is not as pretty as Isobel, that a couple of them slide languid eyes over her and lose interest – this is humiliatingly clear.

  ‘This is Flora Mackie. She has just transferred here from the University of . . . Edinburgh, isn’t it?’ Isobel, congenial enough, has a habit of being vague about details, which gives the impression that Flora isn’t quite interesting enough to remember. Flora can’t believe it isn’t put on.

  ‘Dundee.’ She gives a small, tight smile to the table of men.

  The blond man holds out his hand and makes a bow. ‘Welcome to London. And, more importantly, welcome to Berardi’s. A home from home.’

  Flora shakes his hand and smiles. The others get to their feet.

  Isobel says, ‘Flora, this is David Lydgate. My cousin. He’s in our biology class.’

  ‘Please, sit down. We can shove over, can’t we . . . This is Thomas Outram . . . Mark Levinson . . . Oliver Bennett . . . and Herbert Wickham.’

  Flora nods at the others, and they raggedly sit down. Isobel is next to Herbert Wickham, who is good-looking, with smooth black hair falling over a high forehead. Flora registers a tension there – is he Isobel’s boyfriend? He is one of those who gave her a perfunctory, dismissive glance. David Lydgate waves at a waiter and orders tea for the girls. Conversation resumes. Flora is content to sit and listen as they discuss their lecturers, and realises that most of the men share one or other of her classes. She dismisses Herbert and Oliver Bennett, as they seem to take no interest in her. David is friendly. Thomas Outram is fresh-faced and almost entirely silent. She discovers that this is due to a stammer, which blurs his otherwise cut-crystal diction. Mark Levinson she recognises as the talkative ‘Israelite’. He smiles briefly, then resumes a story about some members of staff: one, apparently, an alcoholic; another, a wife-beater. He breaks off, peering at Flora through the cigarette smoke.

  ‘I’ve just realised . . . no . . . is it possible?’ His voice is accusatory. She holds her breath in fear.

  ‘What are you drivelling about now?’

  ‘I thought I recognised the name. But I didn’t hear it; I read it. Flora Mackie – the Snow Queen. You are, aren’t you?’

  Flora is taken aback. Few students read those sorts of papers, she has discovered.

  ‘Um, yes.’

  Mark Levinson smiles, eyes bright in a lean face. He doesn’t look like her idea of a Jew: his nose is fine and straight, the overall impression one of ascetic intelligence. ‘The others don’t know about these things, but I make it my business to know. This young lady,’ he announces to the others, ‘grew up with Eskimos. In Greenland. She is something of a celebrity.’

  ‘Hardly. I just went with my father.’

  ‘Is he an explorer?’ This from David.

  ‘No, he’s the captain of a whaling ship.’

  Oliver Bennett raises his eyebrows.

  ‘According to what I read, you have eaten things I can’t even begin to imagine.’

  ‘Can you imagine rotten auk meat?’

  ‘I can imagine it, but I can’t imagine eating it. What does it taste of?’

  ‘It’s pungent and slimy, but very savoury. I liked it when I got used to it.’

  Isobel is grimacing. ‘You’ve actually eaten that?’

  ‘Yes. I prefer fish’s eyeballs.’

  Herbert looks as if this is all rather tasteless. Mark Levinson laughs. She smiles, although she isn’t sure if she is the butt of a joke or in on it. The others stare at her. Isobel looks as though this is exactly the effect she intended when she brought her here.

  ‘I might have known Mr Levinson would know about her.’ Then she adds, ‘Flora lodges with Iris Melfort.’

  There is an exchange of meaningful glances around the table. Herbert says, ‘Then you do move in illustrious circles. Is she your relative? She is Scots too, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s not a relative; my benefactress, I suppose.’

  Oliver looks at her keenly, as if she has just become interesting.

  ‘Staying with La Melfort? Well, well.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Everybody knows Iris Melfort.’

  ‘I don’t know her,’ says Mark. ‘But I know of her.’

  ‘Mark comes from Bethnal Green. He doesn’t know anybody.’

  Flora has never heard of Bethnal Green – presumably a country village. Mark grins, not in the least offended. He and Oliver exchange a look.

  ‘So . . . thinking about what I know of Miss Melfort – I ask, of course, in a spirit of scientific enquiry – is it true that she’s a sapphist?’

  There is an outcry. Isobel scolds Mark with apparently sincere outrage. Oliver laughs. Herbert smirks. David and Thomas look embarrassed. It gives Flora time to collect her wits. She is shocked and angry, but knows her face hasn’t changed.

  Herbert looks slyly at Oliver and says, ‘She doesn’t know what it means.’

  Flora fixes her gaze on one of the lamps, her face burning. ‘I do know what it means, and I can assure you that it is none of your business.’ She aims her most glacial smile at Mr Levinson’s ear.

  ‘Touché,’ says David Lydgate. ‘Miss Mackie, I’m so sorry. Please let me apologise for my . . . acquaintances.’

  ‘It’s only a joke, David,’ says Herbert, and Flora keeps the smile on her face, determined to appear modern and unshockable. But, later that afternoon, when she is safely on the omnibus back to Kensington, she finds that she is shaking with anger, her vision smeared with tears.

  Flora didn’t know what to make of Miss Iris Melfort when they first met. They had corresponded for months by then, and Iris had written to her father to assure him that she was a suitable person to shelter h
is daughter from the depredations of London life.

  ‘I don’t understand why she would do such a thing. She doesn’t know us.’

  ‘She knows about me,’ Flora said. ‘She wants to help me be an explorer. She’s a New Woman.’

  Her father sighed at the multiplicity of folly in the world.

  ‘And what does Miss Melfort know about the Arctic?’

  ‘Not much, I imagine,’ said Flora, with the insouciance of one who has received admiring letters from strangers, including two proposals of marriage. ‘But then, she won’t be going.’

  .

  Now, Flora arrives back at the house in Kensington – an imposing stuccoed edifice (Iris is very rich) – and is let in by the sort of immaculate maid she never encountered in Dundee. Iris is in the first-floor drawing room overlooking the park. Another maid has brought tea.

  ‘What did you get up to today, Flora?’

  ‘Erm, chemistry – the noble gases, and, in mathematics, calculus.’

  ‘Did you speak to Dr Sullivan?’

  ‘Yes, I did . . .’

  Flora has voiced her concern to Iris about the lack of meteorology on the syllabus. Dr Sullivan is the only staff member who has any experience in this field, having been a junior member of an expedition to Iceland twenty years ago.

  ‘He said there is no meteorology class scheduled, and that I would do well to concentrate on my physics and mathematics, as there is room for improvement.’

  ‘Well, then, that is what you must do for now. Then, perhaps in a few months, you can . . . My dear, are you all right?’

  Flora blinks back tears. ‘I know I’ve a lot of catching up to do, but he talks as though I were an idiot, and my ambitions . . .’ She can’t go on.

  ‘You’ll have to get used to that, Flora. Most men – and quite a lot of women – will laugh at you, will think you’re mad, probably. Pioneers are always laughed at.’

  Flora tries not to think of the scene in Berardi’s. She suspects that many people laugh at Iris, and feels an unwonted desire to protect her. She is eccentric, by most standards, and a pioneer in her own way: a wealthy spinster; modern; voluble; an enthusiast for fashionable causes – all the things her father would most distrust. She is somewhere between thirty and fifty, and drapes her lanky frame in startling, flowing gowns. She and her friends embrace vegetarianism, universal suffrage and rational dress – to name only those causes Flora knows about. She is astonishingly generous. Over the past few weeks, Flora has become fond of her.

  ‘I know. But he as good as said that, if there were to be an expedition mounted through the university, I’d be the last person invited to join.’

  ‘You already know that. You won’t be joining anybody else’s expedition. We have other plans, don’t we?’

  .

  Sometimes Flora despairs of these plans. She is good at mathematics and a fast learner, but ignorant of some basic scientific concepts. She struggles to keep up, begging Poppy and Isobel to fill in the most glaring gaps in her knowledge – which they do, with varying degrees of patience. In lectures, she keeps quiet for fear of humiliation. She is painfully conscious of her lack of education, especially compared to those fellow students who have been to famous schools.

  At other times, she finds those same students curiously childish: most of them live with their parents, have never travelled outside Europe; they may have learnt dead languages, but have never spoken to a person from another class. They are ignorant of areas of life that Flora has come to take for granted: the whale fishery with its danger, butchery and profit; the toil and hardships of the men; the astonishing, carnal nature of the North.

  On her first voyage, walking with John Inkster, the mate who was like a second father, she came to a beach that was dark with seals; heaving with the violent motion of sack-like bodies. The massive creatures collided with shuddering impacts, alarming cries, bloodshed. Flora asked, disingenuously, what they were doing. Crimson with embarrassment, and unable to tell a lie, John told her the seals were getting married.

  She has seen glaciers crumble into the sea. She has seen an iceberg, eroded to expose the skeleton of a ship. She has seen a sky with three suns: things the Herbert Wickhams of this world can only imagine.

  .

  Outside of her course work, she spends hours in the library, reading Galton and Fitzroy on measuring the weather, Beaufort on winds, Dove on storms, Glaisher on the experiments in hot-air balloons that nearly killed him. She reads Tyndall on the transfer of heat in the atmosphere, the scattering of light by ice crystals, the plasticity of glaciers. She reads Humboldt’s Kosmos and Hall’s accounts of living with Eskimos. She studies the circulation of air, the hydrologic cycle, the formation of clouds. It is not out of gratitude or obedience that she does this, nor because she cares about being a pioneer. It is because the Arctic, with its stern, patient, endless light, is the only place she has felt free.

  One day, she returns to her seat to find an envelope tucked into her topmost book. It contains a passionate plea for forgiveness, and is signed Mark Levinson. It is over a week since she met the men in Berardi’s (when she vowed never to speak to any of them again). Mr Levinson claims he has been suffering the torments of the damned, is mortified by how rude and unkind he was, only did it for a bet, has no money, so cannot afford to turn down such dares . . . The letter is a curious mixture of contrition and defiance: absurd, yet somehow touching. She wonders if it is another joke, and puts it away, determined not to waste time wondering. But somehow she cannot concentrate on the absorption rates of gases with quite the same application as before.

  .

  A week later, Iris returns from a meeting of the Women’s Improvement Society on Bethnal Green Road. Flora asks, casually, what Bethnal Green is like.

  ‘Heavens, why do you ask? It’s the East End. You don’t want to go there, do you?’

  Flora shrugs. ‘I heard someone talking about it. Is it very awful?’

  ‘Ghastly. But one goes where the need is greatest.’ Iris is looking at her rather sharply. ‘Of course, it’s full of Jews.’

  ‘Oh?’ says Flora.

  ‘Is that where he’s from?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whoever is making you blush.’

  After a second, Flora regains her composure. ‘There isn’t anyone. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  .

  This is not part of the plan, so she tries to keep it from Iris, from everyone. There is that first encounter in the physics corridor, when he mutters, ‘Am I forgiven?’ and she does not reply, more out of confusion than propriety. But then they meet by chance in the street, or perhaps not by chance, and end up having tea in a quiet cafe. He is kind, amusing; his obvious interest flatters her. He wants to make amends, he says, for having embarrassed her in public. She tells him that, if he wants to atone, he could help her fill in the gaps in her knowledge (he has prizes for physics and chemistry, so who better?). He agrees. Flora congratulates herself on turning the situation to her advantage.

  .

  Early on, he says, ‘You know I’m that terrible thing: an East End Jew?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that.’

  He laughs shortly. ‘I’m not like the others, like Herbert and Tom. I don’t come from money, or a good family. So if you wish to change your mind . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t matter to me in the slightest where you come from.’

  Flora watches his expression soften into a smile of great sweetness, as though she has bestowed on him an unexpected gift. She tells herself that she is not susceptible, not interested, has other, higher, priorities, but Mark Levinson is unlike anyone she has ever met.

  In March, they take a ride through the City on the top deck of an omnibus. Sitting side by side, Flora is intensely aware of the inch of space that separates her skirt from Mark’s trouser leg. He po
ints out the Monument to the Great Fire – he seems to know everything about London, and many other things besides – and she leans until she brushes against him, as though she does not know she does it.

  ‘Robert Hooke had the tower built with a shaft all the way down the middle. He wanted . . .’ The omnibus jolts around the corner, and, from shoulder to knee, every inch of her is pressed against his body. He falls silent, but she doesn’t ask what Robert Hook wanted; they look up at the vertiginous tower with its frozen flames, and she feels the blood rushing in her ears, her composure loosening inside her.

  Later that afternoon, he says, with a helpless smile, that he never knows what she is thinking. He calls her the Greater Northern Sphinx. Flora laughs. If he really doesn’t know what is on her mind, then she is indeed a sphinx. She glances at his neck, where the skin of his throat vanishes under his collar. The space between them makes her dizzy; she is continuously falling into it.

  .

  In April, a warm wind blows the scent of the river into the woods. Flora and Mark walk into the shade of sweet chestnuts. It is a mild spring day, so they chose to go for a walk in Richmond Park, but it has been an oddly silent journey.

  ‘Why is it called the Isabella Plantation? It sounds romantic.’

  ‘It isn’t. The word “Isabella” used to be the word for dingy yellow. It probably refers to the colour of the soil.’

  Flora laughs, hoping to lift his spirits. ‘You’re making that up.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Do you think Isobel knows that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She wonders what is wrong, and if it is her fault. Mark picks up a broken switch and threshes it against the trunks as they pass. Motes of dust fleck the sunlight that fall between the leaves.

  ‘You seem troubled, Mark. Is something the matter?’

  He sighs. ‘It’s beautiful here, and I’m with you, and you must know how much I think of you . . .’

  He stops and stabs the path with the switch. He speaks in a strained murmur, staring at the impaled ground.