Sun at Midnight

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘I can’t get up,’ he gasped.

  She dismounted and flopped down on her knees beside him. She released his bindings, took off the skis and untwisted his legs and arms. To touch him in this unceremonious, affectionate way made her breathe faster and feel grateful for the shield of her goggles. They clasped hands like a pair of drunks and half lurched and half hauled themselves to their feet. There was powder snow glittering in the close fur of Rook’s hair and in his black eyebrows. He shook his head like a dog, the lines of laughter still transfiguring him.

  ‘Again!’ he demanded.

  Like a child, Alice thought, as if his childhood had been largely unexplored and he had just glimpsed a corner of it. They realised simultaneously that their hands were still linked and quickly let go.

  They did it again, faster, and this time he didn’t fall.

  She bounced up and down on the skidoo pedals and applauded him. Rook stared around as if he didn’t quite recognise his surroundings. Everyone except Phil had gone back to the hut, in search of the vin chaud that Laure had promised to make.

  Phil sat with his boots up on the other skidoo, smoking and grinning. ‘Downhill champ, boy,’ he called.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rook sneered, recollecting himself.

  ‘You could be, you’re really good,’ Alice insisted.

  He hesitated, then put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her. ‘Thanks. I enjoyed that.’

  He was very strong, she could tell from the absolute solidity of him under the folds of his parka. She didn’t want him to let go, she realised, but he did.

  A freshening wind was riffling the bay water and twisting little whirlwinds of snow around their feet. The idea of indoor warmth suddenly became inviting. Alice stood and waited while the two men drove the skidoos into the shelter, briefly thinking of home and the e-mails that would probably be waiting for her later, when her half-hour turn at the Internet came. Then the three of them climbed the rocks round to the hut door and went in together, laughing about the ski lesson.

  The smells of cinnamon and roasting turkey wafted at them.

  Phil hung his parka on the peg and rubbed his hands. ‘I’m hungry enough to eat my own head,’ he said.

  ‘Alice just taught me to ski,’ Rook announced across him. He didn’t often volunteer a spontaneous remark. There was an instant drumming of good-humoured applause and an ironic cheer from Jochen. From his place across the room, Richard looked at them. There was a beat of silence before the general talk and laughter started up again.

  Alice opened her in-box. There were a dozen messages waiting for her. Becky’s was first.

  Christmas Eve, not a mouse stirring at my dear sis’s place. Everyone gone to midnight mass, her kids asleep at last altho touch and go for an hour. Vijay and I too frazzled from drive up here, so babysitting. No idea how V is going to deal with family gathering, my dad insisting on Queen’s speech, mum dropping heavy hints re weddings and babies, toddlers underfoot etc. etc. Love him for at least agreeing to come…

  Am all Xmas partied out. Seven in a week, darling. Feet deformed from new Gina stilettos, skin mottled crepe w alcohol oozing from every pore, eyes two holes in a blanket. I need week at health farm to recover, not 3 days overeating in bosom of family. V suggests little holiday in Jan, somewhere warm. Well, why not?

  Missing you. Can’t imagine what it’s really like down there, ice and polar heroes? Your messages not very informative!! Please expand. Are you sure okay?

  Happy Christmas dearest xxB

  No, they were not very informative, Alice could only concede. It was hard to know how much or how little to say, to admit to, when the changes inside her and around her were so significant and her day-to-day life was so far removed from Becky’s and Jo’s. She didn’t want either of them to guess, and then have to worry about her or try to persuade her to do something different.

  Hectic! Mum here for 5 days, helpful but also hindrance if you know what I mean.

  Harry v busy week at work, surprise surprise. Twins now almost sitting up! Fall sideways on cushions and look startled, but definitely on the way.

  Sleep still getting better, thank God. Dad and Naomi also coming for Xmas dinner with her son Dan, Mum a bit mournful but determined to be modern as she puts it. However it works out with me and H I NEVER EVER want to get a divorce. Couldn’t deal with all extended bloody family ramifications. Envy you down there in the spartan south, bet not too much cooking and conciliating and smoothing feathers to do! Enjoy it – must be the strangest Christmas ever.

  Can’t wait for you to come home.

  Love and xxxs Jo

  And yes, it was the strangest Christmas. Half listening to the voices and bustle behind her, Alice thought what an unexpectedly happy one it was turning out to be.

  Margaret wrote too:

  Lewis’s people sent me a jpeg picture of the hut naming. How marvellous! I feel quite a heroine. I am so pleased that you were there for me. Thank you. I must say, you look as though you’ve taken to polar life like a seal to the waves. What did I tell you?

  There’s very little news up here. Oxford is cold and everyone is full of complaints, but it only makes me think even more of a summer season down south. I read your description of the parahelia and stranded berg over and over again. It brings it all back.

  Between the clipped lines Alice read her mother’s love for the place and her nostalgia for the glory days. She was glad all over again that she had come, most particularly because Margaret had so much wanted her to.

  She veered away from thinking about her mother and Lewis. It was a long time ago. And, as she was now beginning to understand, there were places that functioned outside the ordinary rules of time and experience. Maybe her mother’s love affair had taken place in one of those.

  Trevor’s message was much shorter. He had never been an e-mail enthusiast.

  Happy Christmas darling. I miss you and love you so much. Dad.

  There was also one from Pete. Alice saw his name, but his message was at the bottom of the list so it was fine to leave it until last.

  Alice, precious Alice, how far away you are. Why don’t you write to me? Remember last Christmas, in the house, when everything seemed right? How has it gone wrong? I’m in London, wanted to get away from Oxford for a while.

  Borrowed a studio, sleeping on the floor. Been pretty busy working on a new piece. Chase & Castle (gallery) interested in giving me a show. I might agree to go with them. I wish, I wish all kinds of things, what chance of any of them coming true?

  All my love P

  You know what went wrong, Alice mentally retorted. The tone of the message was irritating, yet so characteristic of him. She didn’t think the things he was wishing for were very likely to include a surprise baby. Peter always wanted what he couldn’t have.

  There would be difficulties ahead, but she would deal with them when they arose and there was no point in worrying about them until the time came.

  Behind her shoulder, Laure was making small fidgeting movements indicating that she was waiting for her turn. Alice logged off and gave up her seat. Oxford would be raw and damp, with a mist over the river and the water meadows, and the streets smoky and black with moisture. The big trees in the Parks would offer up leafless branches to the swollen sky and the windows of houses in Jericho would be lit up and then tight-curtained against the descent of mid-afternoon twilight. She felt a powerful gust of homesickness, and a longing for familiar places and for the company of friends. In that moment she would have given up everything Antarctica meant to her for the chance to spend Christmas night with her parents and Jo and Becky. But it was the same for everyone at Kandahar, she reminded herself. They were all spending Christmas away from home. Except for Rook, maybe. He didn’t claim his half-hour of Internet access.

  Dinner was a success. Russell carved the turkey and the team fell on it. After the plum pudding there was an Antarctic quiz, set by Niki. Everyone enjoyed it and competition was intense. Arturo won, by one
point from Russell, much to his satisfaction. Richard proposed charades and they played a couple of rounds, but Valentin and Arturo didn’t see the sense, and Phil made it clear that he found it all a bit country-house for his taste.

  ‘What next? Croquet?’ he asked.

  They fell back on singing. Phil brought out his guitar, and after they had done all the carols they could come up with from each nationality they sang rounds and Valentin’s drinking songs, and old Beatles hits because Jochen knew all the words of these.

  Then it was time for dancing. The room grew hot and the windows ran with condensation. After a while Alice sank down in a chair to get her breath back and found Rook next to her. He was watching with a full glass in his hand rather than dancing himself, but his face was animated, the characteristic blank expression that had slipped during the ski lesson still absent.

  ‘I think this is one of the nicest Christmases I have ever had,’ Alice told him.

  ‘Is it?’ He was surprised. He didn’t have much idea of what Christmas would be like for people who came from ordinary families, although he had a picture in his head that might have come from a Victorian story book.

  When she was still alive there had been parties. Always a gathering of odd people who didn’t want to go home, or didn’t have homes to go to. One year there had been a man with two artificial legs whose party trick, once he was drunk enough, had been to unstrap the legs and twirl around on his thick arms. The stumps were naked and fascinating to a small boy, the way the flesh puckered and dimpled round the severed bones. In the later years when the drink had got the better of her, Jimmy used to pick her up and mop her face, then haul her to her bed while she muttered and clawed at him. The very last year there had been Lester.

  At Uncle Henry’s there was church, which smelled of fir boughs for the day, as well as damp and mice. Uncle Henry read one of the lessons; the joyful message of Christmas seemed to be for other people, for the rosy faces in the small congregation, not for the Jerrolds. His uncle and aunt gave Jimmy books, when he wanted toy weapons and television and his mother back. He realised that he must have been a difficult presence in their clock-ticking, sombre house.

  Alice was saying something to him. Her face was a bright, still oval in the jigging room.

  ‘What?’ he asked abruptly.

  Her expression changed, becoming uncertain. ‘I was just asking if you have a family. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound intrusive.’

  He remembered the skiing lesson and he wanted not to reject her friendliness now. He searched his mind for what to say. ‘It’s all right. I don’t have a family. Some…friends, but no wife or children.’ The words felt unused in his mouth, rusty. He should have been in touch with Frankie, he thought. He could have sent her and the kids an e-mail at least. Alice was still looking at him and he could feel the happiness in her like heat radiating from a fire. An answering smile seeded itself in him. He wanted to go on talking and it was an unusual sensation.

  ‘I’ve never celebrated Christmas. My mother died when I was a kid in New Zealand and then I lived with relatives until I was old enough to move on. I don’t mean I never did partying or seasonal excess.’ Her mouth curved in response to this. There was a small indentation beneath her full upper lip, he noticed, like a tiny fingerprint. ‘But no tree or sack of presents or family reunions.’

  ‘This is a family tonight. Don’t you think?’

  Rooker shrugged. It sounded sentimental to him. Families were people who would make sacrifices for each other.

  ‘And we had the sack of presents. I liked your carving very much.’

  ‘How do you know it’s my carving?’

  She smiled. ‘I put two and two together.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘Shall we dance?’ Alice asked suddenly.

  Phil was picking at his guitar and crooning, with a tumbler of Valentin’s rakia at his elbow. Jochen and Laure were turning smooth circles and Niki was hopping up and down with his elbows sticking out.

  ‘Are you offering to teach me to dance as well?’

  ‘I think you know how to do that,’ she said.

  They stood up and the others moved to make room for them.

  He clasped her hand and bent his head over it. With his other hand at the small of her back he drew her close to him. She was small and light, and there was no waft of heavy perfume when she moved. He thought he caught just the faintest scent of her skin. She moved two or three steps in his arms, then seemed to collect herself and draw back to leave a hair’s breadth of empty space between them. But still a kind of electricity danced in the air.

  Looking over her head to the window, Rooker saw that it had started to snow. Thick flakes swirled out of blue-grey space and pelted against the glass. The snow and the room’s convivial warmth together seemed to make an eccentric version of his Victorian Christmas picture.

  At the end of the song Jochen came and claimed her.

  Half an hour later Rooker noticed that she had slipped away to bed. He and Phil sat up until very late, playing cards and finishing the rakia with Niki and Valentin.

  The next day was grey inside, with most people nursing hangovers and irritable tempers. Outside, the wind gusted and battered the hut walls, driving the blizzard so that no one could go out for exercise or to escape the atmosphere of ill humour. As she sat trying to read, Alice saw that Rooker claimed his half-hour of Internet time along with everyone else, although Arturo tried to insist that he had usurped his slot. Rooker’s face was dark and closed-in again. He didn’t look directly at her, or anyone else.

  The blizzard lasted for another five days. After the prolonged spell of sunshine and long days spent outside, confinement affected everyone. There were spates of pointless arguments, between Arturo and Jochen, between Valentin and Niki. Even Phil was snappy and disagreeable. Then, on New Year’s Eve, the wind lessened. The familiar landscape outside the hut was blunted with heavy layers of new snow and the berg had acquired a thick, dead-white topping, like meringue on a cake.

  As soon as she could get out Alice walked through the deep drifts along the shoreline to the secluded bay and beat her way up the steps of the dyke. As always, the place soothed her spirit. She watched a family of crabeater seals surface in the choppy water, then haul themselves through the ice on to the shingle. There were two pups with them, fat sleek creatures who rolled against the flanks of the cows. The sun was just visible as a hard white disc through a veil of cloud. Only ten days after the Antarctic midsummer it already hung lower in the sky. Alice thought of the time when it would dip below the horizon into polar darkness and shivered. It was too cold to linger at the steps. She pulled her hood close and trudged back to the hut.

  Throughout the early evening, as the midnight hour in the various countries of Europe came and went, the expedition members wished each other a happy new year while thinking of their absent families and friends. Russell and Richard tried hard to generate a more cheerful mood, but the melancholy persisted. Alice knew that Becky was giving a party, and she found herself longing for silly shoes and gossip.

  This time next year, she thought, where will I be?

  It was then, standing at the window and looking out at the shifting vista of ice and water, that she felt it.

  It was a movement inside her, like being gently nudged by another person, a small featherlike stroke, only it came from within.

  She knew immediately what it was, this intimate pressure.

  The baby was moving.

  She was amazed, flooded with awe at its wholeness, its presence as a new being, but it also made the hair stand up at the nape of her neck.

  And she knew at the same time that her calculations were wrong. Fourteen-week foetuses moved, they twisted and swam in their sea of uterine fluid, but you couldn’t feel it. This baby was older, bigger than that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The supply ship was due to reach Kandahar on 5 January but it was delayed for two days.

  At last the
Polar Star glided past the ice cliff at the eastern end of the bay and drifted out in the deep water. It rode there like a toy, incongruous against the waste of snow. Rooker and Phil were ready in their orange float suits. The Zodiacs bobbed out from the jetty and zipped prow-high across the waves to the ship’s side.

  Alice stood watching from the hut door. The last week had been a torment of indecision. Even now, at this last minute, there was still time for her to say that she would have to leave with the ship. The sentences ran through her head as they had done almost hourly, ever since New Year’s Eve: I’ve got to leave, yes, go back to London. I’m pregnant. No, I’m not sure how many months, I don’t know, I’m sorry…

  She didn’t say anything. There was a flurry in the hut where Russell and Laure were preparing breakfast for the ship’s captain, who would be coming across with the dinghies for a brief visit to the base. The two Zodiacs had reached the ship’s side. She lifted Russell’s binoculars to take a look at the chain of sailors forming up on the metal steps. Bags and boxes were speedily passed down to Phil and Rook who stowed them in the dinghies. There would be plenty of fresh food now, and bottles of gas for cooking and hot water.

  ‘Are you okay, Aleece?’ Laure called.

  ‘Yes.’

  She should help with the breakfast, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the ship. It was a lifeline and a sentence of execution all in one. It could remove her from her present dilemma, but to allow it to do so would mean the end of her Antarctic life.

  Stay, a siren voice whispered in her ear.

  Through the binoculars she watched the ship’s captain descend the metal steps with the first mate behind him. A minute later the dinghies, wallowing a little under the weight of their cargoes, circled away from the ship and ploughed back towards the shore. The link was easily made when the ship was here but once it was broken Kandahar would be wrapped in isolation again.

  Richard and Russell and Arturo drank coffee and chatted in Spanish to the officers. The rest of them unloaded supplies and did a series of carries up the beach to the base stores. Alice stopped to catch her breath with a box of apples resting on the jut of her stomach.