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

by Stef Penney

  Commander Soames comes to take her by the arm. They gather in various combinations by the flag, for the cameras. They smile and, for the film camera, wave. Randall takes a picture of the Snow Queen on her own, standing at the North Pole, and gets a scientist to take a picture of them both there, together.

  .

  They don’t have long, but, at some point, there is a lull – a reverent hush. The flag is up, measurements taken, the first excitement has crested. Randall wanders away a little, looks around him, looks up, and notices that the air itself is sparkling, like crushed and powdered diamonds. He wonders if he is hallucinating. He opens his mouth and breathes in the sparkling dust. It hurts. He listens to his heart beating, the crunch of his boots on hard, gritty snow. If he concentrates hard enough, he seems to hear the faintest of rustlings, as though something is whispering to him.

  Epilogue

  Onmogelijk Dal, 78˚14’N, 88˚32’W

  Flora lies on her side. Her eyes are shut against the westering sun. Her limbs feel heavy; her hair is loose, tangled. A stone presses into her hip, but she can’t be bothered to move. From time to time, she opens her eyelids the merest crack, so that gold light fractures in her eyelashes, making multiple, tiny suns.

  They have been in the valley for weeks. Time has blurred, without nights. She feels as though this is the only place she has ever lived. The rest of the world has ceased to exist. She can’t imagine leaving, but that morning there was a veil of rime on the inside of the tent: nilaktaqtuq. A portent. She turns her head a fraction so that she can see the angle of his shoulder, the smoke coming from his cigarette, his hair, outlined by light.

  .

  ‘I should have prevented his ending up . . . like that.’

  When he talks about the Eskimos who died, and, in particular, of Ayakou’s fate, he becomes incensed. She loves that about him. From lying in a state of sun-stunned and sated languor outside the tent, he has sat up, drawn up his knees, rolled a cigarette, smoked it down, pressed the stub twenty times into the damp soil – all while seeming unconscious of his fidgetiness, and of his nakedness.

  Flora is listening to what he says – she is – but a part of her mind is absorbed in watching the interplay of muscle in his body, the cordage of sinew and knobs of bone that make up his joints, the creases of skin at his flexed hips, the folds of flesh in his belly when he bends forward, his knees. The whole warm landscape of his sunburnt skin. She has been thinking, on the one hand, what a strange thing is a human body; such a gangling, awkward compromise of functional parts: feet, really, when you look at them, are very peculiar things, and as for noses, and ears – ridiculous. Yet his body is the loveliest thing she can imagine; she could look at it forever. She smiles: she will look at him forever. When he is worried, or angry, his forehead and cheeks crease into furrows which, with his grey hair, make her think, This is what he will look like when he is old. But when he laughs, which is often, he seems like a young man, and when his face is relaxed in sleep, he looks like a boy. She loves all of his faces – she has all of him here in the valley – past and present and future: all hers.

  She marvels that he can be so unselfconscious under her scrutiny; it is a kind of grace. She could never match it; even now, in the sun, she has one of the blankets half drawn over her: a spurious modesty. Today, the temperature has reached sixty-six degrees, but Ayakou’s fate is chilling. It requires, from her, a semblance of decorum.

  She says, ‘You did all that anyone could have done, and more. You didn’t know what the museum was doing.’

  Jakob glances at her. ‘I try to tell myself he wouldn’t have cared. After all, he’s gone.’

  ‘Before, when you were here, Armitage took bones from people’s graves, didn’t he? Did you object then?’

  Jakob grimaces. ‘That was different. It seemed different.’

  ‘Why? Because of the time that had passed? Because we didn’t know them?’

  She picks a tiny, pink flower and holds it up between her half-closed eye and the sun, before perching it on his knee: an offering.

  ‘I sometimes think I did wrong in taking the mummies. I had them displayed exactly in the way your museum had Ayakou displayed – to make people gasp and shiver.’

  ‘But they were long dead. No one mourned them. No one even knew who they were.’

  ‘I wonder if that makes enough of a difference. Ralph hated my doing it. It offended something deep within him. Is it just a matter of degree? I mean, after how long is it acceptable to display a person’s body? Five hundred years seems all right; a few weeks is grotesque. Where do you draw the line? At fifty years? Twenty?’

  Jakob shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps after everyone who knew them is dead?’

  ‘What about descendants? What if it was your great-grandfather?’

  ‘I don’t know, Flora. But it is surely a function of time. What you did with your mummies was not the same as the museum boiling the flesh off Ayakou’s bones in its haste to put him on show.’

  He looks at her, frowning. She takes his hand in hers.

  ‘Perhaps not. I thought, then, that the body is a shell . . . an envelope that is discarded. It’s not the essence, or the spirit or whatever you call it. Now, I’m no longer sure.’

  She kisses his scarred knuckles, the battered fingertips. The nails have grown back, but he thinks his hands are deformed and ugly. (‘I’m ashamed to touch you with these hands,’ he once said. She’d replied, ‘For God’s sake . . .’)

  ‘With different bodies, we’d be different people.’

  He smiles. ‘Would we? I think memories and experiences are more important in making us who we are.’

  ‘But with another body, you would have different experiences. If you were fat and ugly . . .’

  She suspects she is blushing, because of the way he is looking at her. He pretends to look stern.

  ‘Are you saying you wouldn’t love me if I had a different body?’

  Flora smiles. ‘Mm . . . Would you love me if I had a different mind?’

  They both laugh, rather awkwardly.

  Jakob lies back on the blanket. She is delighted that, for once, it is she who has disconcerted him.

  He says, ‘I can’t think like that. I just know that you are you, and that whatever it is that is me is very glad to be here, with you. More than glad. Let’s just stay here.’

  Flora moves to lie with her head in the crook of his shoulder, his arms around her, her leg folded across his thighs. His skin is cool and warm at the same time. She spreads her hand on his chest. She feels his ribs beneath, his heart beating beneath her fingers, the rise and fall. She thinks, This is everything, right here. It can all stop, now. Unaware that, at this moment, she is smiling.

  A Glossary of Inuit words

  aja!an exclamation, often of pleasure

  angekokshaman/person with healing powers

  angutwoman

  ayornamuta pity, but it cannot be otherwise/it is fated/bad luck

  erneqson

  iehyes

  illuhouse of stone (permanent) or snow (temporary)

  imaqamaybe

  InukEskimo/Inuit man (singular)

  InuitEskimo/Inuit people (plural)

  KallunatWesterners (plural)

  kamikbearskin boot

  kiffakmenial servant

  kiviakrotten auk meat, a delicacy

  kooyounahthank you

  kujappoksex

  marmaraiMm, it’s good

  naamikno

  naasutflowers

  Neqimeat, food; a place name

  nilaktaqtuqthe ice that forms on the inside of a tent

  ooangniktuqnorth wind

  panikdaughter

  perlerorneqwinter madness

  qamiutsleds

  qaniitsnowflakes

&n
bsp; qaqullukArctic fulmar (bird)

  qatannguhsibling

  qooviannikumutdeep happiness

  Siorapalukpretty little sandy beach; a place name

  tupiksealskin tent used in summer

  Tutsarfikroughly, the month of November. Lit. ‘it is listening’

  ulucrescent-shaped knife used by women

  Umingmak NunaLand of musk ox/Ellesmere Land

  upernallitwhalers, usually Scottish. Lit. ‘those who arrive in Spring’

  usukpenis

  Uttuqalualukold man; Inuit name for the star Arcturus

  Acknowledgements

  I owe huge thanks to a number of people for their help during the writing of this book. Firstly, as ever, to my agent, Diana Tyler, for her support, diplomacy, and for being an absolute champ. To Jane Wood, my editor at Quercus, for sound judgement, ideas, and being such a pleasure to work with. And to my lovely beta-readers: Sarah Collier, Paul Holman, Clare Mockridge, Bridget Penney, Jo Penney, Steve Roser, Tanya Trochoulias and Marco van Welzen, for reading this book to destruction, and much else besides.

  I am also in debt to many writers who have shared their insights and experience of the Arctic, both actual and historical, but above all to Barry Lopez, Jean Malaurie, Wally Herbert and Robert Bryce. I wish I could remember everything I’ve learnt from them.