by Rosie Thomas
She said urgently, ‘When you get out of there, will you come to England?’
There was a static silence and she glanced in dismay at Miguel before Rook’s voice finally cut in again. ‘I told you something, do you remember?’
‘I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, all that matters is now. Please.’ She couldn’t contain the explosion of sobs. Tears ran down her face as a flood of exhaustion and confusion and grief swept through her.
‘It matters to me. Look after Meg, and yourself. Goodbye, Alice.’
‘No,’ she howled. Miguel’s hand descended and uncertainly patted her shoulder.
A second later Niki’s voice came back again. ‘Santa Ana, Santa Ana. Weather report, please.’
She handed over the mike and pressed the flat of her hands into her eyes. The dressing that the Polar Star doctor had put on her arm must be too tight because the veins throbbed in her wrist. Someone came and led her away from the radio room and someone else gave her another mug of sweet hot tea.
Two hours later they were in the air. The plane swept her away from Rooker and Antarctica.
Her room in the private hospital was full of flowers. There were scarlet and flame lilies with fiercely speckled throats, lush purple orchid stems and the spiky black and orange heads of birds-of-paradise, all from Sullavanco. In the car from the airport she had seen huge trees in the city parks, their leaves beginning to turn with autumn colours. There were skyscraper buildings all shining with glass and steel, lines of traffic steaming in the heat, shop windows crowded with goods. She had forgotten that the ordinary world held so much variety, and noise and relentless activity. There was too much detail, and she turned her head from it and looked down at Meg instead.
Her doctor at the Clinica was a young woman called Cecilia Vicente. She had thick, glossy black hair held back with tortoiseshell combs, and serious brown eyes. She gave Meg a thorough examination. She weighed only just over four pounds but she was having no problems with her breathing, she was alert and she would soon begin to gain weight. The baby was in good health, considering the circumstances of her birth. It was Dr Vicente’s opinion that she had been delivered about five or six weeks before full term.
‘We will watch her carefully for one or two days. But I am not very worried about this little girl,’ she announced. ‘Now let us take a look at her mother. Would you like to tell me the details about how you came to give birth in Antarctica?’
Alice did her best to explain. The doctor listened as she examined her, nodding once in a while. At the end she said, ‘I see. I suppose this makes some just-about sense. I had thought at first that you must be a kind of a crazy person.’ The doctor had a smile like the sun coming out and Alice found herself smiling back at her. It was the first time in days that she hadn’t immediately winced with the pain of cold-cracked lips.
It was, Dr Vicente explained, not quite the only time in history that a woman had miscalculated her dates by as much as two months. The first time Alice had bled might have been caused by the implantation of the embryo, and the second much heavier loss a little more than a month later had almost certainly been a threatened miscarriage. ‘But here we are. Your daughter is a determined creature. She is born with determination in her bones, a true survivor.’ Yes, Alice thought. She will be Margaret’s granddaughter in all that.
The doctor stripped off her rubber gloves but instead of putting her hands into the pockets of her white coat and bustling away to the next patient, she sat down on the end of Alice’s bed. For a minute they both looked out in silence at the opposite wing of the Spanish colonial clinic building.
‘How do you feel?’ Cecilia asked.
Once, before Antarctica, Alice might have answered that she was fine. And as far as her body and her immediate circumstances were concerned it was the case. She was exhausted and the cut on her arm was slightly infected. She had perineal stitches that made it agony to sit down and her breasts ached and leaked with milk, but she was alive and the wounds would heal. Meg was going to be all right and they were lying in a warm sunny room banked with flowers sent by Lewis Sullavan. She had much to be grateful for, but she was not all right.
The loop of images from the helicopter journey and the birth and the events before and after kept going round and round in her head. The more they repeated themselves the more she realised how desperate it had all been, and the faster the what-if scenarios multiplied. These thoughts made her shudder with delayed terrors.
Meg might have been born dead, or strangled by the cord, or she herself might have haemorrhaged. They might have crashed in the mist, or overturned on the ice, and all three of them would have died. She was only just comprehending the risks Rooker had taken for her sake. The more she thought about it the more she longed for him and the bigger the vacuum of his absence became. She had to learn to be a mother and go home to a life that could never be the same as the one she had known, and she didn’t know how she was going to do any of this without him.
It became important to try to answer Cecilia Vicente’s question without the old automatic defensiveness, but Alice was afraid that if she talked too much she would cry and never be able to stop. Whenever she was alone tears that tasted of longing filled her eyes.
‘Bewildered’ was what she finally said.
The doctor put her hand over Alice’s. It was smooth, lightly tanned, with short oval nails and a thin gold wedding band, and her own was rough and chapped, with the torn nails surrounded by half-healed fissures from working in the ice.
‘Where is the baby’s father?’
‘He is in England. But we are not together.’
‘Does that mean you are alone?’
‘I have parents, good friends.’ She paused. How to tell anyone, who had not been with them in Antarctica, about Rooker?
Her heart contracted with a beat of longing for Kandahar and the realms of ice, and all the people who had been there. For all of them, even poor Richard. Perhaps for Richard even more than the others, except for Rooker, because she knew and understood the heat and despair within his own layers of ice.
‘There is someone, the man who flew us out to the ship and delivered my baby. But he is not a person you can…put reins on.’
The doctor nodded her head. ‘I want you to remember that you have had a shock. A physical shock, yes, of course, but also an emotional one. You are too suddenly a mother but I believe there has always been a denial in you about this child, or you would not have been able to keep it so far to the back of your mind that you allowed yourself to become trapped on your base. Am I right, Alice?’
She thought about the past.
Pete, Margaret, Oxford. Science, the vast but measurable geological aeons, thesis and proof, self-control, quiet acceptance of her mother’s power. Trevor’s awareness, passed on to her, of how small individual human concerns appeared when you set them against the immensities of time and nature.
Now there was Rooker; passion that was held somewhere at bay but which still had the power to overwhelm her and a hunger in her that she hadn’t yet learned how to assuage.
Finally, in a burst of terror and wonder, the birth of her child. She had felt the absolutely imperative and uncontrollable impulses of her own womb. The unexpected birth of an unplanned baby was the antithesis of everything that had happened in her life before and nothing would be the same again.
Alice automatically turned her head to gaze at Meg, asleep in the crib beside the bed. Devotion shone through her confusion and the doctor saw all this.
Alice said, ‘Yes. You are right.’
‘And so it will take a little time for you to adjust and accept that this is what has happened to you. You will feel panic and fear that you cannot do what you know you must.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I have seen many, many mothers with their newborn babies. I think, I believe, all will be well for the two of you.’
‘Thank you,’ Alice said.
‘Try to sleep, or at least to
rest. I would like you to stay here maybe for three or four days, while we observe your Margaret. Is that possible?’
‘Of course, if that’s what is best for her,’ she answered unhesitatingly.
Later that day the telephone rang beside her bed.
‘Alice? Is that you?’ From halfway across the world her mother’s crisp voice was instantly recognisable. ‘I must say, I would have preferred a little more warning before becoming a grandmother.’
‘I know. You’ll have some knitting to catch up on.’
This was such an outlandish idea that they both burst into laughter and everything was all right. Margaret wanted her daughter to come home, and she was deeply excited about her granddaughter and namesake, and her voice gave as much away even though she couldn’t quite frame the words.
Then Trevor came on. ‘Ali, I am concerned about you,’ he said.
‘Don’t be. Meg is beautiful and I’m longing to show her to you. I’ll be home soon and we can talk then until we’re hoarse.’
‘What about Peter? He rang this morning, he was frantic for news of you.’
‘He’s her father. We’ll have to work out between us what that means.’
There was so much to tell Trevor, all of it impossible on the telephone. Then a thought struck her. ‘How does Pete know? Did you tell him?’
Trevor said, ‘Your mother and I haven’t spoken to anybody. A young woman from Mr Lewis Sullavan’s organisation telephoned to advise us against it. But, darling, it’s not a secret. In fact, you should get ready to be famous.’
‘What?’
‘You’re in Sullavan’s paper this morning. The rest of ’em’ll be following suit. The baby’s hit the headlines as the First European Citizen of Antarctica and you are Dramatic Snow Birth Heroine. Or some such,’ he concluded drily. ‘There are even pictures of you and Meg on the Internet.’
Alice fell back against her pillows. She hadn’t reckoned with this, but now she realised her naivety. Of course Lewis’s generosity with chartered planes and private clinics would have a double edge, and that edge was forthcoming publicity for Kandahar and the joint European Antarctic programme. The first season had ended in disaster, which meant there would be no scientific discoveries, glamorous or even routine. A heart-warming human-interest story laced with helicopter action and heroism was exactly and perfectly what Lewis needed. It was providence.
‘Oh, God,’ she said faintly. The pictures taken by the Chileans while she was dazedly waiting at Santa Ana must be the ones that had found their way on to the net.
‘Mmm. But don’t worry too much, old thing. Next week’s chip wrappings, you know.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
Later, when Alice was dozing after Meg had finally fed herself into milky tranquillity, the phone rang again. She snatched it up, hoping against the odds. But this time she heard a voice that had the colour and consistency of golden syrup; a familiar voice although not the one she longed to hear.
‘This is Beverley Winston.’
‘Yes.’
Don’t even think about jealousy. To be jealous of other women where Rooker was concerned would be to condemn herself to a life of agony. How had she described him to Cecilia? As a man you can’t put reins on.
And that was if she were ever to see him again. I will, somehow, she resolved, as she did over and over in her waking hours. When she slept he filled her dreams.
Beverley wanted to know whether she was comfortable, whether she had everything she wanted, that the medical attention was good enough, how the baby was getting on. Alice thanked her and insisted that all was well and then thanked her again. Beverley asked in a friendly, concerned way about the flight from Kandahar and the birth. Alice thought for a second, then answered her questions. If there were going to be stories about her in Lewis’s newspapers and magazines, they might as well be factually accurate. Her voice only grew warmer, and she couldn’t help it, when she described what Rooker had done.
‘Yes. Very daring, but perhaps not the most advisable course of action, on the face of it. To make off with a company-leased helicopter in weather conditions considered too dangerous by the authorised pilot.’
This time Alice didn’t think. ‘To hell with the company,’ she said.
‘Did you like the flowers, by the way?’ Beverley asked after only a second’s delay.
‘Wonderfully gaudy. After the visual purity of Antarctica, you know.’
‘That’s good. Well, now, I won’t disturb you any more. If I might just beg you to let us take all the responsibility for dealing with media requests. It is a lovely story, of course. Everyone will want to know about you.’
Will they? Or will Sullavanco just make sure that they do know?
‘It’s no big deal, surely? She’s by no means the first baby to be born inside the Antarctic circle.’ It was true that Argentinian and Chilean babies had been born in remote southern communities, partly as a form of territorial marker.
‘She is the first European on a European base, and she is Margaret Mather’s grandchild.’
Of course.
‘Beverley, there is something I would really like you to help me with.’
The suggestion of a bargain to be struck quivered between them.
‘What’s that?’
‘Where is Rooker now? And the others? Where can I reach him and how can I speak to him?’
She would trade her story for information. Beverley briefly weighed this up, then murmured, ‘Of course, you don’t know, do you? They were all finally lifted out of Kandahar this morning and transferred to another ship. They are at sea now, I gather.’
So they were all safe. And what remained of Kandahar lay deserted, under the pristine blanket of fresh winter snow.
‘The ship’s name? And I’m sure that the Polar Office must have an address where he can be reached?’
‘The best way to handle it would be an exclusive interview with a young journalist, the one I am thinking of is very good and totally sympathetic, and some lovely mother and baby pictures.’
‘The ship? And an address?’
‘It’s the Southern Mariner. And I do believe Rooker gave us an address down in Ushuaia, and a reference from, ah, a building company. I don’t have either to hand, I’m afraid.’
Alice smiled, even though her jaw ached with the tension of this exchange.
‘I’d be so glad if you could get them for me. And then I don’t see why there should be a problem about an interview and a couple of pictures. If you think anyone is likely to be that interested?’
‘Excellent,’ Beverley said quickly and rang off.
For two days Alice struggled to establish ship-to-shore contact with the Southern Mariner, but it was a ramshacklesounding cargo vessel registered in Liberia and it didn’t include a satellite telephone amongst its amenities.
On the third day Alice and Meg were discharged from the Clinica Providencia. Cecilia Vicente and Alice’s two special nurses came out on to the steps to wave them off in a car with a Sullavanco escort.
Cecilia said, ‘I will not wish you luck because I do not think you need it. But I do wish you happiness.’
Their eyes met. ‘Thank you,’ Alice said. She didn’t think Dr Vicente could even guess how grateful she was. They hugged each other, quickly and wordlessly.
Santiago International Airport was crowded and the temperature outside was thirty-two degrees. Alice stood with Meg in her arms, obsessively watching the departure boards even though the escort wanted them to sit down in a lounge.
The Southern Mariner must be putting into port very soon, if it hadn’t done so already. There was an obscure flight scheduled to Trelew in Patagonia, and Alice was certain that she would be able to take a connecting flight from there to Ushuaia. She could go right now and search until she found Rooker.
But Meg gave a small snuffling whimper and nuzzled against her neck. Alice massaged the tiny back with the flat of her hand. To go looking for him would mean flying her prema
ture baby to distant places, in a chase that might not even lead her to him.
She hesitated for one long, painful moment.
Then she turned round and boarded the overnight LanChile flight to Madrid. At the end of it she found Lisa waiting to whisk them through to London.
There was a thick blanket of cloud all the way from the Bay of Biscay. Meg woke up and wailed and wouldn’t be pacified, and although Lisa looked at her in the expectation that she would know what to do, Alice had no more real idea than she did. A suited man sitting next to them sighed and irritably refolded his newspaper. Only the thought that she was almost home kept her from howling louder than Meg.
At last they were walking down the endless carpeted tunnels at Heathrow.
There was no wait for luggage. Alice had nothing but what she stood up in: a tracksuit, trainers and underwear that had been brought to her in the clinic (there had been an invitation from Sullavanco to buy whatever she wanted, but she had refused all except the minimum), some toiletries in a plastic zipper bag, and another bag of nappies and a change of clothes for Meg. She cupped the back of Meg’s bonneted head and held her own head high as they walked through the customs hall towards Arrivals.
‘Ready?’ Lisa smiled.
As they emerged the sudden blaze of camera flashes almost blinded her.
There was a babble of voices shouting out her name, Lisa’s hand firmly propelling her forward, a television crew, the staring faces of other travellers, and in the midst of it all a brief glimpse of Trevor and Margaret. Alice’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of them. Her mother looked stooped, but she was wearing a new red hat and Trevor’s hair fluffed out round the dome of his head like half a dandelion clock.
Before she had a chance to see properly, Lisa’s hand dug into her arm and expertly swivelled her to face the cameras. There was another storm of flashes.
‘Dr Peel is very pleased and relieved to be home,’ Lisa called out. ‘Nothing else at this time. Thank you.’