Sun at Midnight

by Rosie Thomas

  She said to him, once, when she had her bottle of wine on the table between them and they were talking, or rather she was talking and he was listening, because that was what they did, ‘One thing I’ve got that they haven’t, Jimmy, eh? I’ve got my big boy. I don’t need anything else in the world. Not your father, rot him, that’s for sure. Not family, either, except for you and me. We’re all we need. And a few bob in the bank, of course. That wouldn’t go amiss at all.’ She laughed and lit a cigarette, lipsticking the butt.

  Life had a way of turning on you, he had discovered. They didn’t have each other any more, because his mother was dead. Uncle Henry and Aunt Eleanor had him now, even though he was the last thing they wanted.

  Rooker thought about all this as he watched the penguins going about their business.

  It wasn’t Richard Shoesmith’s fault that he looked and sounded like Uncle Henry Jerrold, but just to be in the same room with him brought back memories of the five years he had spent in Northumberland. Five years of rain and routine misery, during which Rooker had taken to a life of rebellion as if he had been born to it. As Annette Rooker née Jerrold’s son, he had been born to it. At first he was just mute and the Jerrolds had taken his silence as insolence. They were expecting gratitude for rescuing him from the orphanage in Dunedin, but none was forthcoming. In time, he had taken up real insolence, defiance, truancy and petty thieving. He had been expelled from two schools.

  ‘You don’t care, do you? You don’t give a damn,’ Henry had once said, in a rare attempt at communication with the surly adolescent whose resentment curled through the house like smoke.

  ‘No,’ Jimmy said. It was the truth. What was there to care about?

  On the day before his sixteenth birthday he finally walked out. He got a job packing boxes in a Tyneside factory and lodgings in a draughty house belonging to a thirty-year-old divorcée who liked to be kept warm at night. He never went back to the Jerrolds.

  Rooker didn’t like recalling the past and this tide of memories was particularly unwelcome. If it weren’t for Richard Shoesmith’s accent, and all the associations that went with it, Henry Jerrold would never have entered his head and he could just be watching the penguins. Maybe if he had had a chance to meet the expedition leader before they all flew in to Kandahar he would have changed his plans and just travelled on somewhere else. But perhaps he wouldn’t, and maybe it didn’t particularly matter because he liked Kandahar otherwise, and Antarctica was harsh enough and immense enough to make even Rooker’s demons seem insignificant. He could ignore the man, most of the time. It was only when he had had a few drinks that the anger threatened to crack his reserve.

  ‘Hi,’ a voice said, breaking into his thoughts. Rooker turned to see Beverley Winston. ‘They’re cute, aren’t they, these little guys?’ she added. Penguins continued to bustle past their feet.

  He didn’t think it was necessary to agree with the obvious. Beverley was standing close to him, their eyes almost on a level.

  ‘You don’t say much.’ Her smile was very bright. She had taken her hat off and her hair was cropped close so that he could see the bones of her skull. The nape of her neck was a long groove. Against so much whiteness she was like an ebony carving.

  ‘No.’

  Beverley took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. Fumbling with her gloves, she took out two cigarettes and put one between Rooker’s lips. Their heads came close together as their hands cupped round the flame of her lighter. She stood back and inhaled deeply. A long way off, high up amongst the rocks, Rooker could see Sullavan and the others.

  ‘Quite a place,’ Beverley said. She kept her voice low but he could hear her perfectly, not just what she said but what she was suggesting. He had been amused by her effect on the other men, but now that it was turned on him alone he felt the full force of her allure.

  ‘What happens later?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you want to happen?’

  She smiled at him. Her perfume was so intense it made his head swim. ‘I’m sure we can think of something.’

  She finished her cigarette and extinguished it in the snow. Tidily, she dropped the butt into an empty film canister and snapped the lid.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Why not?’ It would be a straightforward transaction and the prospect was enticing.

  She shot him another smile and strolled away to the water’s edge. Melting ice swished and rattled where the waves broke and the shingle was crusted with pitted slabs of it. Penguins surged in both directions.

  Russell and Niki collaborated on a second big dinner. The hut interior was steamy with cooking fumes and condensation misted the windows. The guests had all taken showers in the narrow slit of communal bathroom, so there was no hot water left for washing-up. The gas cylinder that heated the water and powered the oven was now running low, ten days before schedule. There was one spare, but that would have to last until the next visit of the ship in January. The room was crammed with people and the cooks were sweating. The expedition members were ragged with the efforts of hospitality but the guests were clean and relaxed, looking forward to a good meal and the arrival of the helicopter the next day.

  Lewis beamed. He was pleased with the operation of the base and with his brief tour of the science programme. In the morning he would look at Valentin’s glacier project and Arturo’s weather survey. Beverley had changed into jeans and a soft white sweater that showed the velvety scoops of her collarbone. She slid into her seat next to Rooker and put her hand on his arm when she asked him to pass her the salt. No one had said anything, but it was clear to everyone – except Lewis, who was too insulated to bother to take note – that it was a done deal.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Phil murmured. His jaw sagged with frank envy and awe.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Alice laughed. She felt vaguely discomfited but wasn’t sure why.

  The other men watched Beverley. Cutlery rattled and the atmosphere prickled with tension. Lewis talked about his ideas for the next science season. He planned to install a bigger dormitory block, better kitchen facilities, extra support personnel. Richard listened attentively, putting in answers where required. Rooker filled his glass whenever the bottle came within reach. It was a relief when the meal finally ended. Lewis tapped his glass for silence and made one of his speeches. He thanked everyone for their work and the warmth of their welcome, and proposed a toast: ‘To next year. Antarctica.’

  They echoed his words. Next year, Alice thought. Her once-loose fleece pants felt too tight round the middle. Not Antarctica, that’s for sure.

  The generator shed was Rooker’s domain. He serviced and maintained the main generator and the back-up, and kept his tools racked along the wall. Washing lines criss-crossed the overhead space where the heat rose from the machinery. The only reason for any of the others to come in here was to collect or hang up laundry, and the lines were bare now except for a forlorn trio of unmatched socks.

  Rooker leaned against the wall, listening to the steady diesel-powered chugging. After a few moments the door opened on to a slice of royal-blue sky. Beverley appeared, wrapped in her parka. They slid together without exchanging a word.

  After the kiss ended Beverley put her hands on him. ‘This place. It’s so primitive. Makes you act primitive.’

  He liked the way she was matter-of-fact about what she wanted; without dressing up her desires with wiles and pretences. He kissed her again, sliding his hands under the parka and her white sweater. Her skin was like satin. It was extraordinary after so much cold and rough work to feel smoothness and warmth that seemed ready to melt under his touch. Her hands tangled with his clothes, pulling them aside until greed swept through them both. Locked together, they stumbled back against the generator housing. The machine’s vibrations drummed through them. Rooker looked around and saw an old chair against the shed wall. He sat down, and guided Beverley astride him. She stood up for a second, looking down at him with defiance that was almost a glare. She wriggled her jeans down round
her hips. A second later they were connected. She dropped her head and he felt her lips and tongue against his neck, hot enough to burn his skin.

  They rocked together, gently at first.

  Rooker forgot everything.

  He was arching his hips to push higher and harder when the door opened again, admitting the same section of sky. The outlined head and shoulders were unmistakable.

  It was Uncle Henry, authoritarian intruder in a child’s lonely bedroom.

  It was Richard Shoesmith, checking up.

  Beverley gave a long sigh. She stood up, not in any great haste, and in one fluid movement hoisted and buckled her jeans. Rooker bundled his clothes approximately into place.

  ‘What’s this?’ Richard demanded. He was flustered by what he had discovered and was covering his embarrassment with fury.

  Rooker stepped up to him. ‘What does it look like?’

  Richard’s head gave a wobble of outrage that was much too familiar.

  Rooker swung his fist and hit him. Richard went down in an untidy heap and lay there.

  Beverley looked coolly at the body sprawled at her feet. ‘Oh dear,’ she said softly.

  Rooker bent over him. ‘He’ll live.’

  ‘I think I’ll leave you to deal with the aftermath,’ she said unhurriedly. Her fingertips brushed the top of Rooker’s head. Her legs looked very long in the jeans as she slipped away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They all stood in a circle beside the resting Squirrel. Lewis shook hands and murmured a word to each of them. He moved in a bubble of importance so insulated from the concerns of others that he was the only person on the base who didn’t feel the after-effects of Beverley’s play for Rooker and Rooker’s assault on Richard. Everyone else was sharply aware of what had happened. There was no concealing drama on this scale in such a confined world.

  To Alice, Lewis said, ‘I won’t forget. And give my best wishes to your mother.’

  To Rooker, ‘Get in touch when you’re through here. I may have something for you.’

  And to Richard, ‘You’re doing a fine job, you and the team. Now I’ve seen how tough living conditions are on the base we’ll be working on improving your budget.’ He gripped Richard’s hand in both of his, then stepped in for a statesmanlike embrace. At such close range he could hardly miss the damage to Richard’s jaw and he did an exaggerated double take. ‘Hey. What happened here?’

  ‘I took a fall on the ice.’

  Lewis swung round to look at Arturo, whose eyes and nose were now shaded in blotches of purple and yellow.

  ‘You people are accident prone, aren’t you? I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, Doc.’

  Jochen smiled obligingly.

  The TV crew stowed their metal equipment cases in the helicopter. Andy and Mick were in their seats, waiting for the visitors to be ready.

  Beverley came out of the hut in her white sweater and silvery fur gilet. She strolled across to the group, her expression unreadable behind her wrap-round sunglasses, and held out her hand to Richard. ‘Thank you,’ she said warmly. ‘Antarctica is a wonderful place.’ Then her attention turned immediately to making sure that all Lewis’s bags were safely aboard and that he was happy with the flight schedule.

  Lewis rubbed his hands. ‘Let’s go. The dirty old world beckons. I’m sorry to be leaving and I envy you all for being able to stay right here.’

  ‘Sure you do,’ Phil murmured as Beverley followed Lewis up the step into the cabin. Everyone watched her rear as she ducked inside.

  The rotors sliced the sky and spun into a blur. No one moved as the helicopter lifted off the snow square and buzzed away northwards. It disappeared quickly into a crystalline haze and only then was there a collective sigh of relief. Russell marched straight back to the hut. Laure announced to no one in particular that she was going for a walk.

  Rooker had been looking at an iceberg out in the bay. The berg was the size of a church and the lower sides were an intense, sepulchral sapphire pocked and sculpted into twisted pillars and grottoes. The blue ice was the oldest, hundreds of years old, calved from the heart of the glacier.

  Richard swung round to him. ‘I want to speak to you.’

  The others moved off. One of the difficulties of living at Kandahar was that there was nowhere for private conversation except outside.

  With an effort, Rooker took his eyes off the berg. ‘I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have decked you,’ he muttered.

  Richard sagged. The spontaneous admission took the wind out of his intended rebuke. He had prepared a sharp warning that any more disruptions would see Rooker on his way back to Ushuaia on the next supply.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Rooker mildly asked.

  Richard tried to regain control. ‘I won’t stand for any more from you. You’re surly, you drink on the base, you’re subversive. You can either get yourself into key with the rest of us or get out. Do you understand?’

  Rooker stood and listened. It seemed that he had been hearing a version of this speech for as long as he had been able to understand the words. His response had been to shrug and ignore it until, sooner or later, it became easier to get out than to stay. This place, though, was different. He didn’t want to leave, because of the silence and the light and the blue-ice cathedral majestically drifting in the bay, and also just because it was so far that there was nowhere else to go. If he ended up back in Ushuaia he could head northwards again, or he could go back to the hotel site and try to make the Mexicans work. He was momentarily struck by the oblique similarities between his role there and Richard Shoesmith’s here. Making unwieldy compromises, making the best of poor materials under difficult conditions.

  His mouth hooked in a smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  Richard’s fists clenched. He had expected his anger to be met with anger but Rooker outmanoeuvred him. ‘I should have hit you back.’

  Rooker’s short laugh clearly said As if.

  Richard was watching the iceberg now, too. The wind was driving it aground in the shallow water at the head of the bay. It would remain captive for the rest of the season for them to admire, and for the wind and waves to sculpt into further fantasies. They stood with a yard of shingle separating them, the space prickling with antipathy.

  At last Richard sighed. Almost to himself he admitted, ‘I underestimated the force of it.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Sex. It’s the real power in a closed world like this, isn’t it? There’s no money, no hierarchy to speak of, no physical escape, no distraction apart from work. Then sex unfolds in a blank landscape and it’s overwhelming.’

  Rooker shrugged. He hadn’t noticed that Richard was so smitten by Beverley Winston. Then he realised that he wasn’t talking about Beverley at all.

  It’s the geologist, he understood. Dr Alice Peel, with her deceptive mildness and an occasional flash in her eyes that betrayed the opposite. Rooker disliked this thought and the surprise caused him to consider what Shoesmith had said.

  Edith had wielded a certain kind of power, that was true, and so had some of the other women he had known over the years. But it was a short-lived, tawdry version of it. Even in this confined environment Beverley’s appeal hadn’t been overwhelming, not by any means. He had felt momentary lust and had casually taken the opportunity to gratify it. Only her perfume remained with him. He remembered how it had cloaked him in the generator hut when Shoesmith clumsily opened the door, then his own thwarted desire and the wave of anger that it had triggered.

  But in the back of his mind Rooker knew that there was a force much more powerful than sex. He was fumbling to identify it while Shoesmith was still talking.

  ‘At least my grandfather never had to take account of that.’

  In the hut photographs of celebratory dinners, or in the stories of superhuman sledging feats, there had been no swooning perfume or little fur designer gilets, only beards and frozen mittens, and the absolute courage of men out of the sphere of women.

  ‘
Do you wish you were him?’ Rook asked.

  ‘I never could be. I only do what I can here, in my own way.’

  The intensity in the words was startling, but Rook only blinked. Indifference was a defence. He didn’t want to hear Shoesmith’s story, or risk its effects on him. He wanted to maintain his distance, because to be distant was to remain impervious.

  It was Richard who turned and made Rooker face him. He held out his hand. ‘Shall we declare a truce, then? I don’t expect friendship, or even loyalty if that’s really beyond you, but I do require absolute cooperation.’

  Rooker recoiled from this.

  Shake, like a gentleman. Your word is your bond.

  It was Uncle Henry incarnate, every Victorian mock-heroic syllable of it. He stood still for a long, insulting minute while Richard’s conciliatory smile slowly congealed. Then he lifted his hand and shook Richard’s as if it were a dead snake.

  ‘Good,’ Richard said carefully. ‘That’s good.’

  They walked back up to the hut, not exactly together – Rooker stepped deliberately three paces behind – but they arrived simultaneously. Russell was cooking again, the others were clearing up the mess left by too many people living without a daily routine. The smells of coffee and baking bread competed with cleaning fluids. The floor was no longer gritty underfoot. Valentin was rubbing the windows with one of the newspapers that Lewis had brought. There was an air of expectancy and some sidelong glances to see how the face-off had proceeded.

  ‘There will be no more fights of any kind on this base,’ Richard announced stiffly. No one spoke. ‘We are here to cooperate and collaborate.’

  Phil didn’t actually say that he personally would have been happy to collaborate with Beverley at any time, given the chance, but everyone knew what he was thinking anyway.

  Richard maintained just enough dignity to hold their silent attention, even with the split skin from Rooker’s knuckles angry on his jaw. There was no joking or muttering.