Sun at Midnight

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘Niki? Come and have breakfast.’

  ‘In a few moments,’ he answered, not even looking up.

  Alice fought her way to the water pipe that already had a tap rigged to it. She filled the canisters and battled back to the skidoo shelter. The skidoos themselves were little more than white-and-black-speckled humps.

  Laure had made more porridge, and Rooker and Valentin were eating. Alice let her hand drop for a second on Rook’s shoulder, then sat where she could find a space. Richard was buried under his blanket and Arturo was nodding off too. There was a smell of bodies and burned fabric and grease, and the floor was gritty with dirt and puddled with water, but at least it was almost warm compared with outside. A heavy silence spread until Niki pushed his way in.

  He took his mug of porridge and thoughtfully wrapped his frozen fingers round it. It was almost impossible to do intricate electronic work in the icy chamber of the generator hut, and the radio room itself was too wet and exposed to the wind through the burned wall and roof.

  ‘What d’you reckon?’ Russell asked.

  ‘I think, maybe,’ he answered. Phil gave a little whoop of satisfaction and Laure clapped her mittened hands. ‘And since we have not made this morning’s radio schedule with Santa Ana they will know now that we have some problem. But for making contact I must of course have antenna in place, and for now…’ His shrug was expressive.

  ‘Last night’s forecast was only one to two days of wind. Not a full-blown storm,’ Russ reminded them.

  ‘Let’s wait and see,’ Rooker said coolly.

  There was no point, yet, in even speculating about when or if they could expect to be rescued.

  The time passed very slowly. Their cramped confinement was miserably uncomfortable, but the close press of bodies did keep the worst of the cold at bay. The wind showed no sign of slackening and the grey daylight quickly faded into blackness once again. They had no books, not even a pack of cards, and Phil’s guitar had gone up in flames with everything else. At Russ’s suggestion they sang a couple of songs, but the unaccompanied voices soon petered out.

  ‘Then someone tell us a tale,’ Russ insisted.

  Arturo told them about the restaurant his grandparents had owned, in one of the steep cobbled streets leading up to the hilltop magnificence of the Alhambra Palace. ‘My grandmother’s rabbit stew,’ he murmured. ‘With roasted potatoes flavoured with rosemary. That was marvellous.’

  There were groans of longing. Between nine people, only two full days of field supplies now remained, so food was strictly rationed. They ate an evening meal of soup and two crackers apiece. They had to ration the gas too, but in the evening they allowed themselves a small pan of just-warm water each to wash the soot and grease off their faces and hands.

  Alice sat quietly, occasionally shifting her weight on the hard floor. Laure kept looking speculatively at her, but she only smiled back. It was peculiar to think of happiness or even contentment in connection with their present plight, or to feel ambivalent about the idea of rescue, but each minute that slipped away brought closer the moment when she might have to part with Rook. Even though they hadn’t exchanged a single private word throughout the whole drab, worrisome day he was still close enough to touch. His eyes were often on her and she knew that he was waiting too. She heard his voice and felt his nearness prickle her thin skin through the foul layers of her clothes.

  Richard went outside before the light faded and in his absence they agreed in low voices that all they could do was keep a watch on him. Phil went out too, ostensibly to stretch his legs.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ Russ muttered. ‘It’s gone haywire all right, his big Sullavan–EU Antarctic enterprise.’

  When he came back the state of his hands told them that he had been sifting through the debris again.

  Alice put her mouth close to his ear. ‘There will be other fossil finds. There are seasons still to come.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ There was such despair underlying his flat monotone that she wanted to take him in her arms and try to comfort him. Instead, she undid his ruined bandages and replaced them with the last two strips of Laure’s vest.

  The night was even longer and more painful than the day, but the tilley lamp was blown out and Alice and Rooker were able to sit with their hands linked. It was almost as if they were talking, she thought. In the endless hours their histories and hopes and confessions seemed to flow through their joined palms.

  No one slept very much. The talk murmured between them.

  ‘In the village where I come from, in the mountains in northern Bulgaria, the houses all are carved in wood,’ Valentin said. ‘It is a picture. The lakes are full of fish, and the wild honey…ah.’ They heard him kiss the tips of his fingers.

  Laure whispered, ‘When I was a small girl, our family holidays were every year in Arcachon, near Bordeaux. In this place there is the biggest sand dune in the world. I remember slip-sliding from the top to the bottom, and near the foot of it there is a small seafood restaurant. Here you can eat langoustines, and moules, and soupe de poisson that is the best I have ever tasted.’

  It wasn’t surprising that the memories they chose to share were of food and summer’s warmth.

  Phil gave a deep sigh. ‘A long day’s climbing. The rock hot from the sun, jelly legs, a big thirst on. Sit down outside the pub and take the first pull on the first pint of the night. That’s the best taste in the world, followed by a fryup at Pete’s Eats in Llanberis.’

  ‘Rook?’ Laure said out of the dark.

  ‘No,’ he said. Nothing else. Alice held on to his hand.

  The second morning’s weather was no improvement on the first. In the generator shed a makeshift radio table had been rigged up from salvaged planking and Niki had reassembled the radio components. After three missed schedules with Santa Ana there would now be concern about what was happening at Kandahar Station, but until the wind decreased and the visibility improved there was no chance that they would mount an air reconnaissance.

  They ate the last of the porridge and some chocolate.

  Apart from his nap after breakfast the previous day, Richard had not slept since the fire. He told them about his grandfather’s march with Captain Scott and his raggle-taggle teams of ponies to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, beneath Mount Shoesmith, where the ponies were finally butchered to feed the dogs on the onward journey. ‘My grandfather shot his pony after a day on soft snow, when the beast had been sinking almost up to his hocks with every step. He wrote in his diary that Samuel enjoyed his last feed and, until the last days when the severity of the constant blizzards wore him out, he had pulled with all his heart.’

  Most of them were familiar with the story but they all listened in silence. Richard sat with his head thrown back against the shed wall and his burned hands hanging loose between his knees. There were tears in his eyes.

  As the light faded again, the wind seemed to give a sigh of exhaustion. The double row of dejected figures stirred and looked at each other. An hour after that there was no more banging and battering against the hut walls.

  The men filed outside to try to erect the pole.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Laure demanded as soon as they were alone.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Alice said smoothly. There were strange ripples of pressure chasing across her belly. Braxton-Hicks practice contractions, she remembered from her website reading. It was very early to be having them. Even now she didn’t want to leave, but she had to get out of here. To escape from Laure she scrambled outside to see if she could help.

  They worked by torchlight, digging a pit for the pole and clearing snow for ice screws to secure the guy wires. Eddies of snow chased across the serene landscape, where all the blackness of the fire had now been rubbed out. The wreckage was all soft, voluptuous white hummocks. Another pole was raised against the generator hut. Phil and Rook climbed up on the hut roof and the remains of the lab building with coils of wire. With a pulse beating in her neck, Alice held a torch
steady as they ravelled a cat’s cradle of loops between the two poles. Niki was already at the table inside the hut with headphones clamped to his ears. The tilley lamp overhead swayed as the roof sagged under Phil’s tread.

  There was a series of crackles interspersed with flat silences. Niki’s long fingers minutely tuned the signal. The rest of them crowded into the hut and crammed the doorway. A loud burst of static made them all leap.

  Niki clicked the hand mike and began calling, ‘Santa Ana, Santa Ana, this is Kandahar Station. Do you read me? Over.’

  The airwaves were a buzz of interference.

  ‘Santa Ana, Santa Ana, Santa Ana. Kandahar Station, do you read me? Over.’

  Nothing came back but scribbled noise.

  Niki was patient. ‘I will keep trying. What more can we do?’

  Valentin and Russ and Phil hovered in the hut. Richard broke away as if he couldn’t listen any longer. He blundered back to the skidoo shelter, and Arturo patiently followed him.

  Alice and Rooker stood outside in the billowing snow. The half of Margaret Mather House left standing was wreathed in garlands of white.

  Now that they had the opportunity, there was too much to say. The beam of Alice’s torch made a pallid circle round their feet as they looked into each other’s eyes.

  Rooker was remembering the moment of trying to drag Shoesmith away from the fire as it galloped through the hut. His skin crawled with fear, and with the ancient layers of recollection and determined oblivion that accompanied it. Fire was the worst thing he could think of. Fire and Lester.

  Then he had looked up and saw Alice at the window, heard her shouting his name. She had come because of him, not Richard, and that flash of grateful recognition set off a chain of realisation.

  He wanted her, this stocky, determined little English scientist with her quiet voice that made you listen. Not just her unseen body, although he desired that too. He wanted to touch her and learn about her and hear her talking just for him, and the wish had been in him from almost the beginning when she had stumbled over him out on the rocks. He had been drunk in an attempt to forget himself and her stillness had been like a cool hand on his burning head. She was courageous and stoical and clear-minded, and yet he sensed there were undercurrents of passion in her that ran like molten precious metal. Out of all the women he had known over all the years he had never met one like her.

  He had been angry with Shoesmith partly because he was jealous.

  It had seemed that she might favour him, of all people.

  But she came back to the burning hut for his sake. She had kissed him, and he had tasted smoke and tears on her skin, and they had sat for two endless and still too-short nights with their hands joined.

  Rooker smiled down into her eyes.

  Alice saw his face with the frown and the cynical glare melted away. There was just him and she felt a beat of won dering love.

  ‘I am afraid of fire,’ he confessed.

  She remembered the horror filling his eyes as he watched it. ‘You don’t fear anything else. What is it about fire?’

  He was very still. After what seemed like a long time, he said, ‘A friend of my mother’s died in a fire.’

  Jimmy came home from school one afternoon to find his mother and Lester both wearing bathing caps. The rubber caps were poked full of holes and there were hanks of gluey hair sticking out. They looked grotesque and they were drinking white wine from a two-litre flagon. They were even wearing the same lipstick, smudged from the boozing.

  ‘We’re highlighting our hair, darling. Blonde streaks,’ she said.

  Lester struck a pose, tilting his head on one side and kisspursing his lips. He rested his rubber-gloved fists on his snake hips. ‘What do you think, darling?’ he cooed.

  He was always in the house nowadays. Every evening: watching TV, drinking and giggling, painting her toenails, dressing her up and pinching her flesh as if she were some oversized doll.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Jimmy spat at him.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Lester said.

  ‘Jimmy, don’t be rude. Come on, sit down with us and have a chat. Tell me about…’ her eyes flicked to Lester and back again ‘…school. How was school today?’

  Lester was rubbing a lock of her hair between his fingers, squinting at it through the smoke of his cigarette. ‘Nearly done, hon.’

  ‘Is there anything to eat?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘I expect so, darling. Have a look in the fridge, eh?’

  Jimmy knew that there was no point, but he went anyway. Then he sat in his bedroom, staring out of the window at the scrawny plum tree and the view of old Ma Douglas’s backyard. She came out and pegged some dusters and cloths on the washing line. There was a science test tomorrow and he had other homework to do as well, but he made no attempt to open his school bag. After a while he stood up again and went along to the bathroom to pee. There were wet nylons dripping over the bath, and squeezed tubes of cream and face make-up in the cracked basin. He scooped up some orangey stuff on the tip of one finger and sniffed it.

  Behind him, the door slid open. He looked into the mirror on the tin cabinet and saw Lester.

  Lester was smiling, a big wet smile of pleading and fake friendliness that turned Jimmy’s stomach. ‘Hey, Jim. Hey, there?’ he said softly. There was the funny look in his eyes that always came when he was drunk. Jimmy whirled round but as he tried to wriggle past, Lester caught hold of him. There was the sour-wine and Players stink of his breath and then his wet mouth was pressed to Jimmy’s. His huge sloppy tongue probed between his teeth. Jimmy bit hard and then, as Lester recoiled, he brought his knee up between his legs. Lester folded up and slid to the floor, gasping.

  Jimmy stepped over him and walked to the kitchen. There was no food in the house, but there was a two-thirds-full bottle of whisky next to the bread bin. He stuffed it into the pocket of his coat.

  ‘Lester? Le-ess?’ his mother called blurrily from the sofa. Jimmy walked out of the back door. There was a tight, hot feeling in his chest that made him want to kick the dog that was licking its own arse in the lane, or to smack his fist against the nearest fence. He slouched round to Gabby’s house, thinking they might down the whisky together and that he would look at Joyce’s underclothes strung out to dry amongst Mr Macfarlane’s flannel work shirts. But when he opened the gate he saw Mr Macfarlane himself, standing in the doorway like a red-faced bull, and he slipped away again.

  He walked down the river path and sat on a log. He unscrewed the cap of the whisky bottle and took a long swallow. Later he tried to cry, but his eyes stayed dry and prickly. He shouted ‘fuck, fuck’, over and over again, but the damp chilly air closed over the words. He sat there until it got dark, thinking of Lester in his house with his mother. They would be watching Hawaiian Eye – no, Bonanza – and giggling over how handsome Jess Cartwright was, and slopping wine whenever they moved.

  Disgust at the memory of Lester’s breath and tongue rose in his throat, fighting with the fumes of whisky. A hot wall of rage hemmed him in, shutting out the drearily familiar outlines of the trees on the opposite bank and the pewter glimmer of the water. Jimmy stood up abruptly. The path rose under his feet and tipped him sideways so that he almost fell into the river, but he staggered and managed to right himself.

  Lester lived in a caravan that stood raised on blocks in a quiet cindery enclosure beyond a row of farm outbuildings at the edge of town. Jimmy had never actually been inside the van, but he and Gabby had played around outside when they knew Lester was out. There were thick curtains looped at the little windows, but when they stood on a couple of boxes from the rubbish tip they could peer inside at the cushions and framed photographs and the single armchair. They had also snooped through the outbuildings. There was an old petrol-driven lawnmower in one of them, and a mouldy shelf with jerrycans and tins and canisters on it.

  One of the bigger cans was almost full of petrol.

  Jimmy yanked the stuffing out of some old cushions that were piled in t
he corner of the end shed. He teased out the yellow fibrous material and gently, surprising himself with his gentleness, he fed all of it through the letter box low down in the door of Lester’s caravan. Then he poured petrol in on top. He lit a match and poked that in as well.

  There was an immediate huge boom followed by a whoosh of flame that came licking out of the slot. It was a cold night and Jimmy had his woolly gloves on. Feeling like one of the slick baddies in a TV show, he snapped off the gloves and hastily shoved them into the fire. As he walked away he heard the flames whipping and crackling.

  He took the back route home, down the lanes, but there was no one about. He expected to find the two of them sitting where he had left them but the house was utterly silent.

  ‘Mum?’ He clicked the light on in the living room and saw her lying on the couch. She was asleep, her mouth hanging open and drool marking the cushion under her cheek.

  ‘Lester?’

  Lester wasn’t anywhere in the house. Jimmy left his mother where she was and crept silently to bed.

  There was a police investigation into Lester Furneaux’s death, but no one was ever arrested for setting the fire. There was some question of whether the petrol had actually been stored in the caravan, and whether Lester might have fallen asleep and left a cigarette burning. He was known to drink heavily.

  Queers like him were not popular or welcome in Turner, South Island, in the 1950s.

  Two months later Mrs Annette Rooker committed suicide by pulling a one-bar electric fire into her bath. She left a short note saying that she felt too lonely to go on. She apologised to her son, Jimmy, and wrote that his uncle, Henry Jerrold, would look after him. He was to be a good boy in England.

  Alice was looking at him. She was waiting and listening, but not wanting to force him to say something he preferred to keep back. Maybe some day he might even tell her a part of the truth, although the mere thought made his throat close up. ‘Are you cold?’ he asked, just to fill the moment.