Sun at Midnight

by Rosie Thomas

  She pressed her scrubbed hands over her stomach, noticing how it protruded. It felt solid and full, with a purpose, nothing like it did when she had overeaten. Then she examined her hips and breasts. There was no doubt about it, her breasts felt tender to the touch and her hips and thighs were thickening, ready to carry a new burden.

  Alice tilted her head back, letting water run into her mouth and eyes.

  She had never felt so connected to and yet so in awe of her own body. It was doing what it was meant to do, almost without reference to the Alice who lived behind her eyes, inside her head.

  She was strong. Everything would go well. There was nothing physical to be afraid of, only to rejoice in.

  For lunch there were fresh tomatoes. A supply ship had called into Santa Ana and the helicopter had brought them down. The colour and the dewy bloom of the skin were more luscious than anything Alice had ever seen. She ate her portion as slowly as she could but it still disappeared too quickly, the sharp sweetness filling her mouth, a thin trail of juice overflowing and running down her chin. She mopped it up before anyone could see, but Rooker’s eyes were on her again.

  He said carelessly, ‘Here, do you want mine? I don’t like tomatoes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, unable to help herself, and ate them too.

  After the meal, Richard called for attention. Everyone was present. Richard himself was still wearing the clothes in which he had come in from the field.

  ‘As you all know, Lewis Sullavan and a camera crew will be arriving in four days’ time. I don’t think I need to explain how important this visit is for Kandahar. Mr Sullavan is our principal funding agent at present, and we have an unexpected and enormously valuable opportunity to show him at first hand the research work we’re doing. For each listed project, therefore, the scientists should be ready to demonstrate in breadth and in detail exactly what is involved in the work. We will take Mr Sullavan and his people out into the near field wherever it is safe and practicable, and I will go through the arrangements for this separately with Russell, Philip and Rooker. The support staff should also be ready to discuss their separate and joint contributions to the various scientific projects – for example, Niki, your monitoring and logging of weather patterns in the local area – as well as their more general role on the base.

  ‘I know you will all do your utmost to make this VIP visit successful. Are there any questions?’

  Russell leaned slowly forward. ‘The party’s going to consist of five people, right? Four men and one woman?’

  ‘That’s correct. Lewis Sullavan and his assistant, a two-man television crew and a journalist. There will be TV and press coverage of the entire visit.’

  Richard couldn’t hide his satisfaction at this prospect.

  Alice thought, he’s quite right to be happy about it. He works very hard; he hasn’t even given himself time to shower and change. And being on television will mean that maybe a few people will know who he is, instead of always asking him if he’s related to Gregory.

  ‘So where are they all going to sleep?’ Russell asked, ever practical.

  ‘The assistant in the women’s room, Mr Sullavan in the scientists’ room and the other three men in the support staff’s room.’

  Looks were exchanged around the table. Phil chafed his beard.

  ‘Four of us, therefore, will have to move out into tents for the duration. Arturo is injured. Niki should remain in the hut in case there is a communications emergency. Likewise Jochen for medical purposes,’ Richard continued.

  ‘In case the old boy has a heart attack, finding himself without an en suite bathroom or room service?’ Phil murmured.

  ‘Or if he decides to call up the helo and have himself flown straight out again,’ Rooker added.

  Everyone laughed, even Richard.

  ‘Volunteers?’ he asked. ‘I’m happy to give my bunk to Mr Sullavan.’

  To volunteer was the correct thing to do. In the old days, for his grandfather and the polar heroes, it was a matter of honour. A matter of course. Alice knew how much Richard wished that he could volunteer for a Winter Journey, for a selfless dash to save another man or to fuel a camp, instead of just to give up his warm bed for a media mogul.

  ‘Looks like us three, doesn’t it?’ Phil stabbed his finger at Rook and Russell in turn.

  ‘It’s a kind of volunteering,’ Russell laconically murmured.

  Valentin flung up his arms. ‘And I, I give up my place for my leader. I prefer. In tents we have some fun. Some cards, maybe a glass of my special rakia. Better than best behaviour inside, I think.’

  ‘Well done, Valerie,’ Philip cheered.

  It was good to be back.

  Alice spent the days that followed unpacking and examining the samples she had collected at Wheeler’s Bluff, making preliminary microscopic analyses in the lab and writing up her notes. The time passed quickly.

  She read her accumulated e-mails and wrote back about the field trip. The words came slowly at first as she tried to describe how intense the experience had been, then flooded out as soon as she stopped considering and lost herself in living it all over again.

  Margaret replied, Yes, I remember. That was just how it was. Thank you for bringing it back.

  The brief message from Jo was the one she hesitated longest over. They’ve started to sleep much better. Four and sometimes five whole hours at night, can’t tell you what a difference it makes. Days are still a bit tough. It’s the never having a single hour to yourself that’s so hard. When I think of all those hours, days, I SQUANDERED before they were born…

  Flashes of panic at the prospect of motherhood made Alice’s skin shiver, but her alarm alternated with a hungry fascination. She remembered the way the babies had felt in her arms, their milky smell and the fleeting frowns and smiles that had changed their tiny faces. How would it be when she held her own?

  She wanted to bombard Jo with questions. It would have been the greatest luxury to have a friend to confide in. But she knew that if she was going to keep her pregnancy to herself for another three months it would have to be entirely to herself. No one else should have the responsibility for keeping her secret. Any information, any medical information she needed, she could look up in her daily half-hour on the Internet. She would have to keep her correspondence short, that’s all.

  Richard spent hours combing through the reference books in an attempt to classify his mollusc. It was a gastropod, a type of periwinkle with a shell in the form of a conical spiral, but in significant aspects it was unlike any of the species that had already been described. ‘I think we have got an entirely new form,’ he said. ‘A late Cretaceous rapid evolutionary development, much earlier than I would have expected to see anything similar. Is this the centre of origin for the species? It could affect the developmental dating of Gastropoda from the period.’ His face looked as if a bright light had been turned on under the skin.

  Alice made a careful notation of the locale and the rock composition. Only a couple of weeks ago the discovery would have intrigued her. Now, the importance of even this major find seemed less immediate. It was disconcerting to realise that her engagement as a scientist was diminished by the insistent presence in her womb. She bent her head over her notes with extra determination. Even so, in the early afternoons she sometimes found herself nodding off.

  Preparations for the visit went ahead. Everyone worked hard. The huts were cleaned and tidied from top to bottom. Russell drew up menus and Niki radioed for supplies to be sent down with the helicopter transport. The scientists chose the best places to show off their fieldwork, and Rooker and Phil plotted how to transport five inexperienced visitors to the various sites without pitching them down crevasses or into the sea.

  There was a lot of joking and mock-complaining, but the prospect of critical strangers arriving in their midst made them work as a team in a way that none of Richard’s speeches had done.

  ‘If they’ve got to come down here and bother us, we want K
andahar to be the best effing base in effing Antarctica, right?’ Phil said.

  On the scheduled day a radio message from Santa Ana announced that the fixed-wing flight from Punta Arenas in Chile had just landed.

  ‘Not even one hour’s weather delay?’ Russell said in disbelief. ‘Sullavan must be more powerful even than we thought. He must have a direct line straight to God.’

  ‘Nah. He is God,’ Phil corrected him.

  In the afternoon, under a fierce sun, they stood waiting. Rooker half expected Shoesmith to line them up like a military guard of honour. They heard the helicopter’s buzz before it appeared against the breadth of blue sky.

  As soon as it landed and the rotors stopped the doors flew open. Andy and Mick sprang out and manoeuvred steps. A man clambered down and walked backwards across the snow with a camera on his shoulder. Another man followed with a recorder and a microphone, and a third emerged and stood beside him. The pilots grinned at the waiting line, but the other new arrivals formed a semicircle beside the helicopter with hardly a glance over their shoulders. There was a moment’s pause, then a woman appeared. She was tall, and even in her padded parka she looked slender and elegant. Jochen gave a low whistle.

  Beverley Winston had skin the colour of pale milk chocolate and the cheekbones of a goddess carved out of stone. Her lips were a set of perfectly symmetrical seductive curves. She was the most beautiful woman any of them had ever set eyes on.

  This vision looked coolly around her, then lifted one hand in a signal as she stood aside. The cameraman began filming, the third man spoke urgently into the microphone held close to his mouth by the second. Lewis Sullavan appeared at the door of the Squirrel.

  He stood still to allow his television crew to film his proprietorial gaze out over the ice. He stepped slowly and confidently on to the snow and they filmed that too. Then he smilingly held out his hand to Richard, who was hesitating in the middle of the waiting line. Richard hurried forward and they shook hands. Lewis Sullavan was shorter than he was, but he still managed to look bigger and broader, and more powerful in every way. He had a high gloss to him, as if he had been hand-buffed with rolled-up wads of money. The camera and mike homed in.

  ‘Welcome to Kandahar,’ Richard said, his voice somehow catching in his throat and coming out cracked.

  Lewis swept his arm in a broad gesture that took in the line of waiting scientists and staff, the homely red huts, a pair of watching penguins, and the glittering expanse of snow and blue bay water. ‘This is a wonderful place,’ he intoned. ‘This is a place to treasure and to preserve. It is ours, for as long as we do valuable work here, but we must always remember that even though the flag of the European Union flies overhead, Antarctica truly belongs to the community of the world.’

  It was an excellent performance, Alice thought. The humility of the words in no way masked Lewis Sullavan’s proprietary manner. He acted just as if he owned the whole place.

  And in effect, of course, he did. Without his money none of them would be here.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Richard and Alice stood close together, smiling to order, just next to the peeling red wall of the lab hut. A sweep of snow was satisfactorily visible behind Richard’s left shoulder, but even Laure had not been able to persuade the penguins required by the director to wander into shot.

  ‘We’ll cut in some bird footage,’ he said to the cameraman.

  Alice shuffled her feet. Either God or Lewis Sullavan had arranged a day of scintillating sunshine, but it was cold standing in one place while the TV crew conferred.

  Beverley Winston came out of the main hut. She was wearing wrap-round sun goggles and a gilet made of some long-haired silvery fur that fired off tiny rainbow darts as she walked. All the men, who were working to set up the shot or otherwise trying to look busy, stopped what they were doing to watch her. She was five inches taller than the harassed director.

  ‘We’ll be ready for him in just a couple of minutes, Beverley,’ the man said.

  Phil and Rooker finished screwing the plaque to the wall of the hut and Russell checked that it was level. All three of them were taking exaggerated care over the tiny job. No one else paid any attention, however. Wherever Beverley was, her beauty absorbed all the available regard. And then, when Lewis Sullavan was present, she reflected on him, so that he was bathed in the lustre of having such a creature for his handmaiden. Not that Lewis himself was physically unimpressive. For a medium-sized man with ordinary features he glowed with supernatural amounts of power and energy. When the two of them were in the room at the same time they seemed to take up all the available oxygen, leaving everyone else feeling dim and lifeless.

  ‘What about the flag?’ she asked the director now, having consulted her pocket organiser.

  ‘Well, Beverley, we tried it draped over the plaque so that Lewis could unveil it.’

  Valentin had stood in for Sullavan during this exercise. He had whisked the blue and yellow flag back and forth several times, winking and mugging for the camera.

  ‘But it looked too cheesy, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Cheesy?’

  Beverley turned her stone goddess head slowly to look at him. Her expression was unreadable behind the black shades but they could all guess at it.

  The cameraman waded in to the rescue. ‘Too like the Queen opening a new leisure centre in Gateshead or somewhere?’

  Cheesy might be perfectly all right for the Queen, but it certainly would not do for Mr Sullavan. Beverley nodded briskly. ‘We thought that tracking away to it flying up there would be better.’

  Eight flags, representing each of the nationals at Kandahar, flew from the poles above the window of the radio room. Phil had insisted that the Welsh dragon was included. Above them a much bigger EU flag fluttered in the stiff breeze, with the glinting silver filaments of radio antennaecriss crossing in front of it. A skua strutted on the hut roof.

  ‘Good. We’ll do that, then. Is everything else okay?’

  Beverley checked that there was nothing untoward between the two huts for Lewis’s gaze to fall upon, then went to see if he was ready for the camera.

  Lewis wore the apparently identical red parka, complete with the EU and Sullavan logos, as all the Kandahar personnel, but his looked less stiff and unwieldy, and it was a subtly more attractive shade. ‘Let’s do it.’ He beamed, as if he had been as involved as everyone else in the meticulous setting up.

  The new plaque on the lab hut wall read simply:

  Margaret Mather House

  The sound recordist held up the mike as the director spoke his intro and the cameraman panned over the line of flags. Theatrically, the skua spread its wings, then settled again.

  The camera came in on Lewis. He gave a little speech almost identical to the one he had made when he stepped out of the helicopter, but it sounded spontaneous as well as sincere. He said how proud he was that the operations at Kandahar were being headed up by two scientists whose names were already written in the history books. Alice wondered how Laure and the others would react to the suggestion that as a recent no-no she was capable of heading up anything polar.

  When her turn came she delivered her rehearsed soundbite about Margaret’s career as one of the first women to work this far south and added that times had changed. Antarctica now offered opportunities for all scientists, regardless of race or gender, and Kandahar was in the forefront of this revolution.

  A shot of Laure and herself sharing a skidoo ride or even performing some science together might be cut in here, she thought. Unless the idea was rejected as too cheesy.

  When Richard’s turn came he spoke about his grandfather’s legend and how proud he was, almost ninety years later, to have followed him south. He made a graceful tribute to Lewis for having the vision and determination to bring Kandahar Station back to life and give it a new incarnation.

  There was a drumming of mittened applause, firmly led by Beverley.

  Lewis came forward again. He tilted his he
ad at a respectful angle. ‘In honour of Dr Margaret Mather, biologist and inspiration to two generations of scientists, this laboratory block is named Margaret Mather House.’

  The low sun made the plaque shine like a square of molten gold. Alice was always proud of her mother but sometimes the pride was diluted by exasperation. Today, however, it was as uncomplicated as the day long ago when Margaret came to talk to her school. She thought of how single-minded she was and how brave she could be, and she felt her mother’s presence as strongly as if she were standing at her side. The cameraman closed in to film Alice studying the plaque.

  She was glad she had kept her secret. If she had blurted it out as soon as she had got back from Wheeler’s Bluff she would almost certainly be on her way home by now. She would have missed this, and with the liquid gold blinding her eyes, spiky cold air prickling her skin and the heat of family pride in her blood, she knew that it was one those memories that you should keep, and hold, and remember when you were tempted to ask yourself whether anything really mattered.

  The filming of the small ceremony was over. Lewis strode back towards the main hut, pounding his hands together and talking to Richard, and calling instructions to the director. The expedition members turned away too, thinking about dinner. Russell had been cooking for most of the day and the centrepiece of the evening meal was to be a saddle of roast New Zealand lamb. Everyone on the base had been looking forward to this treat for days.