Sun at Midnight

by Rosie Thomas

  Trevor was watching her now too, but he didn’t say anything.

  A small experimental cry rose from the Moses basket. I am home, Alice was thinking. But I don’t belong here any longer. Everything has shifted and I don’t recognise the perspectives. Her parents were two tired old people, rattling around in a dilapidated house that was too big for their needs. There were too many books, the layers of dust were steadily thickening, there were memories and regrets blown into all the corners like drifts of fine sand.

  ‘Finish your food, before you pick her up,’ Margaret advised. ‘Babies have to learn who’s boss.’

  ‘I think things are done differently nowadays,’ Alice replied.

  Jo and Becky arrived in the middle of the following morning. Alice got as far as the front step to greet them as they whirled at her. They enveloped her in hugs and questions and exclamations, and as they swept into the house she laughed wildly with the joy of being with her friends again. ‘I missed you,’ she gasped. ‘I really missed you.’

  ‘Where is she? Let’s have a look at her.’

  Up in Alice’s bedroom where they had confided about boys, and chopped each other’s hair, and shared their first spliff one evening when Margaret was away, they leaned over the Moses basket.

  ‘Pete!’ they exclaimed in unison.

  Alice pressed her head between them. ‘I don’t think she looks like anyone, just herself.’

  Becky gripped Alice’s wrists, held her at arm’s length and studied her face. ‘You look tired, but more or less all right. How do you feel? And why didn’t you tell anyone about all this, not even Jo and me?’

  ‘Yes, why didn’t you?’ Jo demanded. ‘We’re your friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘You are. I didn’t know, I didn’t realise until weeks after I got there. And then it…seemed both too late and too soon to leave, and so I decided just to stay and to deal with everything to do with being pregnant once I got back home. I thought there was plenty of time. It sounds strange now, but can you understand how I felt?’

  Jo shook her head, Becky nodded.

  ‘How are the twins?’

  ‘They’re with Harry. They’re almost walking. Don’t try to change the subject, I still think you could have told us. I didn’t even realise why you were e-mailing me with questions about babies.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been fair to tell you, for one thing.’

  As she explained that once she had made the decision to stay on the ice it had seemed essential to take the entire responsibility herself, Alice had the strange sensation that there were two separate worlds spinning around her, both containing parallel places that she and Meg could occupy. There was Oxford; that took in the Department of Geology and her students, her house once she had retrieved it from the tenants, Jo and Becky and her parents, Pete, all their friends and the rhythms of a life that had once seemed to offer everything she wanted. And there was another world, a much hollower and emptier place where the wind blew and the horizons were cracked with ice, but it was where Rooker was.

  The two places would never merge.

  She could choose one or the other, but not both.

  Jo and Becky were both staring at her.

  ‘Ali?’

  She blinked, realising that she had stopped talking. ‘Sorry. I can’t seem to make my brain work properly.’

  Jo took her by the arm and steered her to the bed. They sat down, Alice propping herself against the wooden headboard and Jo perching on the end as they had often done before. But now the Moses basket lay between them. Becky leaned against the chest of drawers, listening, a frown line showing between her groomed eyebrows.

  Jo said, ‘I know how you feel. Just a few days ago you owned yourself and your body, and you slept when you were tired and talked joined-up sense to other sensible people, and you imagined that when the baby came life might be disrupted a bit but it wouldn’t change completely. And now it’s as if your entire existence has been whisked away. You can’t finish a sentence, you can’t even get dressed in the mornings. You’re exhausted and bewildered, and in your case you haven’t even got Pete around. That’s not to say he wouldn’t be with you if he could, by the way. He’s been on the phone non-stop to Harry and me. “I’m the father, I ought to be there.” Et cetera. Listen. It may feel like it, but it’s not going to be this way for ever. Remember what I was like? And now’ – she shrugged, then smiled – ‘I can get out of the house on my own for two whole hours at a time. Look, Beck and I bought you some things.’

  In the carrier bags that Becky had brought upstairs there were candy-striped Babygros and tiny pink socks and a hat like a strawberry, and a white toy polar bear.

  Alice had tears in her eyes as she unwrapped them. ‘Polar bears live in the Arctic,’ she sniffed.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody pedantic. And Al, you know what? It’s okay to have a good cry if you want to.’

  Noisy, racking sobs suddenly burst out of her.

  Her friends exchanged anxious glances. Jo held Alice’s shoulders and Becky put a clump of tissues into her hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Jo soothed, but tears ran down Alice’s chin and she gasped and hiccuped with grief, shaking her head because she couldn’t get out the words to say that it wasn’t all right at all. Meg snuffled and began to howl too.

  Jo turned aside and scooped up the baby. She nestled her against her shoulder and rubbed the tiny bent back, murmuring, ‘There, little girl. Hush now.’

  Becky kneeled and gripped Alice’s hands. ‘Tell us what’s wrong,’ she murmured.

  Looking down through the blur of tears Alice saw the pastel flowers on the duvet cover and the little pile of baby clothes, and bright frills of tissue paper and ribbon, and all the dense furnishings and memories accumulated in her room. She remembered the searing brilliance of the flowers in the clinic, and how Santiago had seemed so hot and crowded and complicated, and the noise and hectic speed of the flight from Santa Ana, and the close air of the medical room on the Polar Star, and all the way back to the utterly contrasting unlimited whiteness of the ice.

  She couldn’t speak. Jo rocked Meg to soothe her and Becky massaged Alice’s hands while she cried and cried.

  Kandahar had been a life stripped bare, reduced to a matter of survival that was too stark and too engrossing to require any embellishment or decoration. The grandeur of Antarctica didn’t account for detail, or call for any refinement. Rook was part of that; that was what he was for her. He was elemental and essential. It didn’t matter what he did or had done, or what he looked like or how he spoke. The only thing that mattered was where he was now, because she was beginning to believe that she couldn’t live without him.

  Gregory Shoesmith’s famous poem came into her head, ‘Remember This, When I Am Best Forgotten’. She had known it by heart, but exhaustion and the confusion of hormones had broken the lines into elusive fragments. How did it go?…no human ornament, only the day’s luminous aisles, night’s rafters…

  The white pillars and flutings, and the massive blackness of the endless polar night were so vivid in her mind that the absence at the centre, of Rooker himself, was almost unbearable.

  At last, the sobs came with less violence. Alice gasped for breath and lifted her head. She held the wadded tissues to her swollen eyes and looked away from the colours lapping over her bed. Then she took Meg gently out of Jo’s arms and held her against her heart.

  Jo stood up. ‘Pete’s said he’s sorry. You think he doesn’t mean it but he does. Let him take care of you both. You can move back into the house together, make it home again, be a proper family.’

  Becky shook her head at her, but Alice knew that Jo was offering her her own version of happiness. ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘So who is he?’ Becky asked.

  Becky had understood what Jo had missed.

  There was a small, weighted silence.

  Then Alice said, ‘Rooker.’

  It made her happy and at the same time
it pierced her heart just to speak his name. There was a pause while the other two placed him amongst the jumble of names and anecdotes that Alice had included in her e-mails, and in the garbled press reports of the birth and rescue.

  ‘The pilot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who took you out in the helicopter? Delivered Meg on the way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jo whistled. ‘That’s quite a story. You fell in love with him.’

  In spite of everything Alice smiled. Her nose was streaming and her eyes stung. ‘It’s not a story. It’s the truest thing I’ve ever known. I fell in love with him without realising it and then there was a fire and everything suddenly got very dangerous and difficult, and I understood that he is the most important person in the world for me. Then Meg started to come and he did everything he could. Somehow he saved us.’

  ‘Does he love you?’ It was Becky who asked this. The frown line creasing her forehead was easing.

  ‘He did then.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  Alice’s eyes met hers. ‘I don’t know. He seems to have disappeared. And I don’t know how to find him.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was an ache and an emptiness in Alice’s voice that discouraged any more questions for the time being. Meg was whimpering and nuzzling. Alice sat down and undid her shirt, and as the three women sat and looked at each other there were the small ticking sounds as the baby latched on.

  ‘Antarctic Drama Mum,’ Jo said in a bemused voice.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ Alice dismissed Lewis’s PR machine as she concentrated on feeding.

  ‘You are famous today.’ Becky nudged the heap of newsprint with her toe.

  Alice’s free hand suddenly flew up to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God. The journalist. And the photographer. Two o’clock. What time is it now?’

  Jo looked at her watch. ‘Coming up to one.’

  ‘What journalist?’ Becky demanded.

  ‘quoted magazine. Writer and photographer. Coming here. Heart-warming exclusive story. Mum-and-baby pics. I promised Lewis Sullavan’s people. If I do this garbage for him he’ll have to help me to find Rooker, won’t he?’

  ‘quoted? You’re going to be in a photo spread in quoted?’

  It was Lewis’s most popular and successful news and gossip title. Even Alice had occasionally leafed through it.

  ‘And look at you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that Lewis Sullavan won’t want Antarctic Drama Mum actually looking as if she’s just spent six months in somewhere godforsaken like Antarctica and then given birth in a helicopter, will he?’

  ‘Before crying for a solid hour.’

  ‘He’ll want you in full slap and straight from a blow-dry at Nicky Clarke’s. Are they sending hair and make-up?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What kind of a magazine is this? I’ll just have to do what I can. Let’s get going.’

  They set to work. Jo ran downstairs for ice for an eye mask and Becky began tugging at her hair. Alice submitted, the way she had done when the three of them first became friends, and Becky and Jo had propelled her away from her books and into a world that contained mascara and David Bowie. She didn’t care about how she looked for quoted’s photographer, but it was a way for her old friends to draw her temporarily back into the circle.

  They were not ready yet to acknowledge that she might not be the same old Alice any longer, and it was too soon for her to try to explain what had changed her. Perhaps no one would ever fully understand that, except Rooker himself. And Margaret. She suspected that Margaret did, somewhere in her heart.

  The photo shoot gave them something to fix on.

  Becky blotted out the windburn with matte foundation and erased the black lines under Alice’s eyes with Touche Eclat. They plucked and gelled her eyebrows, and applied coats of lash thickener and a hint of kohl. Jo squeezed something from a tube and scrubbed it over her mouth.

  ‘Ouch. Mind the baby. What’s that stuff?’

  ‘Lip exfoliant. Your mouth’s all chapped.’

  ‘I know that. Ow.’

  ‘Give me my goddaughter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, aren’t I? Isn’t she?’

  ‘Beck, of course you are, if you want to be. Wait, though. We’d better ask Pete what he thinks.’

  They stopped for a moment, with Meg and the lipgloss and the mirror suspended between them, acknowledging that there were currents here that would require careful navigation.

  Becky quickly nodded. ‘Of course. You’re right.’

  Jo said briskly, ‘What shall we dress the First European Citizen in? The stripes? And a clean nappy, to start with. I’ll do it.’

  At five minutes to two Becky held up the mirror. ‘What do you think?’

  Alice stared at her glossed and tweezed reflection. ‘Who am I?’

  They held each other’s hands and laughed. ‘Drama Mum.’

  Jo peered out of the window. ‘They’re here. They both look about fourteen. And the photographer’s unloading a silver lighting umbrella. Maybe he’ll shoot you through a soft-focus lens.’

  ‘Go away, both of you,’ Alice begged. ‘And leave me to my fate.’

  ‘Another car’s just arrived,’ Jo said.

  A moment later they heard a voice at the front door. ‘Hi. We met at the airport. I’m Lisa.’

  ‘Won’t you come in?’ Trevor said.

  Alice hugged Jo and Becky. ‘Thank you. Thank you for everything and I’ll call later, and…I’m glad you’re here. Now go.’

  Margaret’s wobbly gateleg table was pushed aside to make room for the photographer to set up his lights. The journalist was dressed in black from head to toe, and when she settled on a chair a greyish mat of cat hair instantly attached itself to her back. Alice sat on the sofa with Meg in her arms, and Lisa perched on an ottoman after pushing aside a pile of Royal Zoological Society papers.

  ‘Don’t pay any attention to me,’ she ordered. ‘I’m just here to look after everything. You look so rested, Alice, you really do.’

  Trevor and Margaret went and sat at the kitchen table.

  ‘Alice is a scientist, not a…pop star,’ Margaret sniffed.

  ‘I know that, dear. Maybe you should tell Lewis Sullavan.’

  The journalist turned on her recorder and set it in front of Alice. ‘What was it like to be a woman in Antarctica?’

  Alice smiled. ‘You should really ask my mother that, she was one of the very first.’

  The other woman took this at face value. ‘I hope to be able to have a couple of words with Dr Mather afterwards. And we’d love a picture of the three generations of polar women, if that would be possible.’

  ‘If Dr Mather agrees,’ Lisa chirped.

  ‘You can ask her,’ Alice conceded.

  ‘Ready,’ the photographer announced. The lights flashed in Meg’s eyes and set off a wail.

  ‘What was it like to be a pregnant woman in Antarctica?’

  Alice sighed. If this was going to be the price she would pay it.

  When her turn came, Margaret dealt with quoted in crisp style. She gave a rapid résumé of her seal and penguin work, smiling patiently as the journalist struggled a little with the scientific language. She dismissed the suggestion that she had been a pioneering female by saying that everyone had been on the ice to do their work and that gender was an irrelevance.

  ‘But sometimes gender does raise its head, doesn’t it?’ the journalist pointedly put in. Lisa sat upright on her ottoman and gently cleared her throat.

  Alice held up her hand. ‘I should answer that. I am a woman, but I went south as a scientist. I made a mistake, two mistakes if you like, in not knowing that I was pregnant in the first place and in staying on at Kandahar once I discovered it instead of coming home immediately. But anyone, woman or man, can make a wrong decision. All I can tell you is the truth. I stayed because I was proud
to be part of the EU team at Kandahar, and Dr Shoesmith and I were doing useful work. So were all the other scientists. We made a good beginning and then lost some of the ground we made, but it was only a beginning and there are many more seasons to come. I was very lucky to be with everyone who was there, both as professionals and as people. More than lucky at the end. Blessed. Now I’m very relieved that we are all safely home again.’

  Or safe somewhere, wherever he is.

  ‘Antarctica was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, but I’m more than happy to be back now. And I’m very proud of my daughter.’ Alice held up her head and Meg’s black eyes opened wide. The photographer clicked again and the lights flashed.

  ‘Very nice, Alice,’ Lisa said approvingly.

  Two weeks went by. At the end of that time the issue of quoted magazine appeared with its upbeat version of Meg’s birth and the European scientists’ eventual escape from the burned-out shell of their base. The fire was described as a dramatic accident and the survivors as polar heroes. The loss of most of a season’s data and samples was compensated for by Meg herself, as a perfect symbol of a successful European birth and flowering against all the natural odds of Antarctica, and as the latest addition to what the journalist chose to call a polar dynasty. The helicopter episode was played down and the only mention of Rooker was as ‘brave stand-in pilot’.

  Beverley Winston and Lisa telephoned to offer their congratulations and thanks, and another vast floral arrangement arrived from Lewis Sullavan. The Polar Office sent word that the story and pictures would be widely syndicated across Sullavanco media worldwide and that there had been some talk of a feature film of the events.

  ‘We weren’t heroes,’ Alice said with a sigh when she read the article. ‘Except for Rooker.’

  ‘Yes, maybe that Rooker. Any news of him?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘No. None.’

  Trevor’s concerned gaze rested on his daughter.

  The main picture, covering almost an entire double spread of the magazine, was of the three of them. Margaret stood up fierce and straight-backed in spite of her arthritis, with an emerald-green turban pulled down over her hair and one hand resting on Alice’s shoulder. Alice sat on the arm of the sofa, her face made neutral with make-up, and Meg lay in her arms, swathed in a blanket except for her little round red face with dark unwinking eyes.