by Jeremy Page
I glanced at the row of men on the other side of the fire, who were watching the preparation of the meal. I had become used to the thickly bearded faces of the sailors and the roughness of their skin and clothing, but at that instant—lit by the devilish flicker of wild flames—these men looked ancient and harsh. They lived their lives on the frontiers of land and sea, and they resembled the rocks themselves, the craggy coastlines and isolated skerries that only they inhabited.
Johannes, with his smooth skin and fine hair, was looked upon by the whalers as something of a curiosity—a boy they could relentlessly mock and tease. Several times he was asked to do pointless errands, fetching articles from the sheds that were not required, being then told to put them back, and I saw him refusing to drink from one of the cups that was offered. These whalers had searched for amusement among their own, and Johannes seemed quite used to this role. He even sang, in a light voice that was not tuneful, but a little feminine, and I noticed several of my own crew beginning to laugh along at him. It had an edge of cruelty I didn’t enjoy, and stopped only when some of the Irish sailors broke into one of their shanties, about the Blood Red Roses.
When the shanty was nearly finished I leant forward and asked Captain Sykes the meaning of the words.
‘It is a favourite in these parts,’ he said, ‘and a good tune to raise the topgallants. The “blood red roses” does have a meaning. It is the moment when a whale is slain, and its final blow from the spout is filled with blood’—he made a graceful gesture with his hands—‘resembling a bouquet of roses.’ He laughed at the macabre nature of his image. ‘But not a bouquet that one would present to a sweetheart!’
He held his look, waiting for me to smile, then repeated his gesture of the bloody flowers once more.
‘It’s a gruesome song,’ I said.
‘Very much. But not the worst I know.’
The whale steaks were passed around on tin plates, accompanied by slices of rough baked dough and a few spoonfuls of a pickled green vegetable. I tried this first, by dipping my finger, expecting it to be cabbage or samphire. But instead it had the most bitter and acrid taste, and within the little leaves were many wooded stems that clearly shouldn’t be eaten. Sykes noticed my tasting of the herbs and whispered, ‘From the shore, my friend. A foul concoction favoured by the Esquimaux. Some place it on the meat, as one might mustard, but I prefer to flick it into the fire.’
‘Yes. I think I might join you.’
‘Ear wax,’ he added, with great pleasure.
I tried the whale meat. It cut effortlessly, but inside it was bloody, and as soft as pate. It resembled beef steak, tasted of beef, and it was possible to convince oneself that it was, in fact, supplied by a regular butcher, except that occasionally there was a strong aftertaste of fish, similar to the dark meat of mackerel or buckling. In this respect, it tasted like beef that must be rancid, a most unpleasant sensation, and I doubted that I would be able to finish even a mouthful. Around me, the sailors and whalers were eating hungrily, without concern, and I wondered why I, among them, was the only one to show such reservation. I thought of the mother and calf whales that the Amethyst had steered towards. How they had been harassed and shot at and eventually rammed by the ship’s bow. How the calf had obviously been terribly wounded by such a senseless collision. I remembered how its tail flukes had pointed lifelessly at the sky, far behind the ship, as I had led Clara away from the commotion. And yet here I was, just a few days later, the memory fresh in my mind but now a chunk of whale meat in my mouth.
I put my plate down and looked to the ship, silhouetted on the black bay in front of a sky that never truly turned dark. Several petrels flew past it, skimming the water as if they were skating on its surface. A couple of lanterns had been hung from the masts, and I could distinguish further illuminations coming from Simao’s galley and the cabin quarters. I imagined Clara eating her supper, with French at the other end of the table, freshly bathed and with his hair oiled. Bletchley would be by the fire, not wanting to talk. Simao would be serving the meal, attentive and precise in his gestures. Clara would be tasting the food, pushing parts of it away with the flat of her knife, as I had seen her do before. French would have his eye drawn towards the candles, as always, with moth-like fascination, or would be dabbing the side of his mouth with the napkin, as if blotting an ink stain. Dabs of cologne on his neck. I had an overwhelming sensation of anxiety. That I was missing something. That events beyond my control were already presenting themselves, but unseen.
I thought of the great auk in its chamber and imagined how it must have been when the Amethyst had dropped its anchor this morning. All those iron links suddenly springing to life like the dreadful animated skeleton of a giant serpent, dragging in a deafening rush through the chain pipe, heavy and lethal, clouding the air with iron dust. Clara and French would have checked the bird by now, and I had an equally worrying impression of them, in that miserably confined locker, sharing such a small space. French had an awkward presence about him which became magnified in small spaces. A presence that demanded attention and could make your skin feel sensitive. He made you itch. With Clara, he liked to stand too close to her, as if he was deliberately inhaling a sweeter air. Or poisoning it.
‘Tell me, captain,’ I asked. ‘I was intrigued by what you told me of Mr French. He served in the navy, you say?’
‘Indeed. A master’s mate. Until he was thrown out.’
I was intrigued. ‘Was it inappropriate behaviour?’
‘Now, now, Saxby, I do not possess a wagging tongue,’ he replied, regarding me with amusement. ‘But I can tell you this—I do not know whether Quinlan French’s blood is unusually hot, or whether it is ice cold. Do you have a theory on this? No, I see you are afraid to speak your mind. Well, perhaps we should cut him to see.’ With that, Sykes deliberately turned away, as if to physically close the exchange.
As nightfall descended, as much as it was possible in those latitudes, I watched the distant clouds to the west as they deepened into cobalt blues and lichen grey. Veins of light tunnelled through them, illuminating them with a fire unlike that of any sky I had seen in England. Held between forelands that were as dark as a blacksmith’s pliers, parts of this strange light were reflected briefly on the sea, as if a shine was emanating from beneath.
Captain Sykes had begun to tell the whaling commander about the great auks, his voice lost in the simple pleasure of a boast as he related the events on Eldey as an adventure, an outrageous gamble. He had secured a fortune from nothing, he was claiming.
‘You must have them skinned,’ the commander said, speaking in good English. ‘Then soak them in alum and salt.’
‘I have them cooled and in good condition. They are too valuable to cut.’
‘The Esquimaux will do it. They are better knife-smiths than you have in England.’
Sykes considered it. ‘Well, we shall see. Personally, I don’t trust an Esquimaux with a knife. I have seven birds. Their sale will allow a new refit for the ship. Next year, I shall be dressed as a sea lord, Jesper, just you wait. I’ll have none of your whale muck on my boots, thank you.’
‘I cannot wait, captain,’ the commander replied, taking his strange leather cap off and running a hand through goatish hair. He looked at me with a curious glance as if I had been the subject of a previous conversation, before replacing his hat.
Sykes reached into a canvas bag he had set in the rocks by his side, and passed the commander his nearly completed needlework image of the auk. In the firelight I saw the familiar profile of the bird, standing heroically on its bare rock, an unfinished sea behind it.
‘An ugly creature with a big nose,’ Sykes said. ‘Very much like Mrs Sykes. I shall hang it by her dressing table and be secretly amused.’ Sykes laughed loudly at his joke, until he began to cough, and could not stop. It was the commander of the whaling station who, at that moment, voiced something that had not been mentioned before.
‘You are ill, Kelvin,’ he said. H
e spoke it as a statement from a man whose duty it was to notice illness before it became a problem.
‘Pah!’ Sykes responded, brushing the issue aside with a wave of his handkerchief. ‘No, no. Not ill at all.’
‘I hear it in your chest.’
‘Merely the rattle of old bones, Jesper. I am cursed by all this journeying into the dampest and foggiest part of the world.’
‘I think you have had enough of the Amethyst. Am I right?’
Sykes treated the question seriously. ‘One should never be outlived by one’s ship.’
We rowed back to the Amethyst in near darkness, across water that was as smooth and black as Indian ink. I thought of the grim clouds of whale flesh billowing beneath us, now invisible. Those parts of fins and flukes that I had seen wavering in the tide earlier in the day were still there, and the fact that I could no longer see them made their presence all the more terrible. The night is a great obscurer. Looking back to shore, I saw the fire burning claret red among the rocks, and some lanterns shone brightly from inside the sheds. They were not short of lamp oil, that was certain. Behind them, the valley slope and crags had vanished into a solid blank depth without definition. The Esquimaux settlement had sunk into this impenetrable blackness without any illumination, in the same manner that the sound of the pebbles landing on the cairn had vanished in such vastness. I thought of the child I had waved to, asleep in some dark corner of the stone house, with an unwashed face and a smoking fire near him. And moving across the shore towards where the whales had been tethered, I thought I could see the pale outline of Johannes, his hair as ashen as a wandering ghost.
Back on board I knocked lightly on Clara’s cabin door, even though it was past midnight. For reassurance, I needed to see her; my sense of foreboding was difficult to overcome.
She opened the latch almost immediately. ‘I’m glad you are back,’ she said.
‘And I am glad you didn’t venture onto the shore,’ I replied. ‘It was a vile and horrific place. I fear I might stink of it …’ I stepped into the cabin. ‘What is wrong?’ I asked, urgently.
‘Eliot,’ she said, quickly and short of breath. ‘It has been such a long day, you must never leave this ship again—I have been counting minutes until you came back—but a clock moves so slowly, doesn’t it? When you look.’
‘What has happened?’
‘I thought I heard the oars in the dark, an hour ago. But it was nothing—there’s nothing out there but emptiness.’
I held her hands to soothe her, she was so nervous with energy—I could feel it in her wrists and in the way her fingers would not keep still.
‘Tell me,’ I asked. She lowered her eyes, taking breath.
‘The bird is ill,’ she said. ‘I think it is dying.’
17
PERHAPS IT SHOULD HAVE died, that night. Perhaps, with the bird’s death, other things more precious might have been saved. Things that were slipping away from me, although I failed to see them at the time. It is difficult to look back, with the knowledge of what happened, and place your finger upon the moment when an outcome might have been averted. A journey is made of right and wrong decisions, always, and I think we acted then as we should have done. We tried to save it, we tried our best.
As soon as it was light, French, Clara and I went secretly to the anchor locker to decide the bird’s future.
‘The bird may have been ill even from the start,’ I suggested, wanting to initiate a frank and straightforward discussion. ‘Remember how it was discovered, cowering in the crack between the rocks?’ French looked back, dubious. I felt uncomfortable with his presence—he was too angular a fit for such a room. Too tall and too brisk for shadows and corners and low beams. I continued: ‘There has been a distinct deterioration in the last two days.’
Clara was about to speak, but stopped herself to listen to footsteps pacing the deck just inches above. When she spoke, it was in a hushed voice. ‘I know very little about birds, but it seems listless and unresponsive to anything we’ve tried. It seems as if preparing for death.’
Behind the packing crates the auk lay slumped, like a parlour goose, its neck turned to one side as if half-wrung.
‘Can we do anything to make it more comfortable, at least?’ I asked. ‘It was a proud and inquisitive bird. Is it eating?’
Clara shook her head. ‘It has not eaten for two days.’
‘Then we must release it,’ I said.
French placed his hands on the beam by his head and contemplated them. ‘It’s too weak,’ he said, carefully. ‘Release it now … and we’d watch it drown. You don’t wish to see that, do you?’
‘None of us want it to die in captivity, Mr French,’ I replied. ‘That is what we promised when we found it.’
‘Oh I remember the promise and all that,’ he said. ‘But the circumstances have changed.’
‘Our principles do not need to change.’
He narrowed his eyes and began to gaze at a fingernail. With a sigh he said: ‘I don’t know the point of principles, when we have a dying bird on our hands.’ He pushed the toe of his boot towards the auk as if trying to stir it into action, but stopped short of actually touching it.
I was instantly reminded, purely by his attitude, of the moment when he had killed the greenfinch. How he had reached into Martin Herlihy’s hands and taken the bird and wrung its neck. The force of the memory struck me. How had I been so foolish to trust this man?
‘So what do you suggest?’ I asked, a little aggressively.
French regarded me, watchful but patient, in no hurry to reply, the attitude one sees in a hunter who is happily concealed.
‘Might it be melancholy?’ Clara asked, sounding brighter. I appreciated her efforts to keep the situation positive. ‘It’s a wretched place in here, next to that chain and oils. Perhaps it has given up hope?’
French sighed with impatience. ‘A bird has no concept of hope, Clara, it does not understand such a thing,’ he said.
‘But what makes you so sure?’ Clara replied, with some steel. ‘They say swans die quite regularly soon after their mate has gone. I have heard of that often. In Norfolk they say kill the cob swan and you kill the lake too—the whole place loses hope. That must be from the swan having a broken heart.’
French shrugged to show he had no wish to be drawn into such talk. ‘I know little about swans or the things that might kill them. Eliot is our expert in this matter.’
‘Do you mean with swans, or with affairs of the heart?’ Clara asked, recklessly responding to French’s provocation. Unexpectedly, I felt my cheeks reddening. I looked down at the links of the great chain by my feet, feeling surrounded by their entrapment. I became aware of French watching me with an expression that—at the edge of my vision—was now curious. After a few awkward seconds he brushed the dust from his hands and straightened his waistcoat.
‘If you will forgive me,’ he said, in the voice of an officer, ‘it is a great risk for me to be down here, and I have many duties to attend to.’
Clara nodded, grateful. ‘Quinlan,’ she said, ‘I will continue to nurse the bird until the end.’
He smiled, an oddly shaped smile that was close to a grimace, before bowing his head in a formal manner and smartly leaving the room.
It was as if a hotness vanished with him. He carved a particular presence, demanding attention, reluctant to relax, wherever he was. I looked at Clara, glad to be alone with her, but needing her as an ally.
‘On first name terms?’ I asked.
‘Was I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps it makes sense, to be friends with someone you are unsure about.’
‘He is unknowable,’ I sighed.
‘He behaves strangely in front of you.’
‘He does?’
‘Yes. And you are right. We should be watchful of him.’
Perhaps it was an unusual motion of the ship that prompted it, but all at once I had a startling image of lily pads floating on a dark lak
e fringed with trees. They were rising and settling among themselves, although in the water beyond them nothing moved any more. I shivered, needing to escape.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘You’re very perceptive,’ I replied. ‘Someone crossed my grave.’
She closed her eyes. I saw the shape of her pupils through the lids, as if she was still watching me. She sighed, opening her eyes and crouching to be with the bird again. As she stroked its neck I watched as the auk relaxed, opening its beak in quiet appreciation.
‘I won’t let you die,’ she promised.
The first icebergs we saw were blocks that drifted towards the ship, some large enough for several men to stand upon, but most much smaller. They floated on the black water of the fjords with an unnatural calm and unknowable purpose, the ice shining with a brilliant white gleam, and glowing pale blue beneath the surface. They had a beautiful and lonely character, drifting one by one out to sea, already weathered into strange but recognisable forms: necks and bodies, occasionally an outstretched limb that would wave, eerily, in a frozen greeting. At the bow a large wooden arrow was pinned to a weathershield that could be swung from side to side to let the helmsman know of obstacles. But mostly the man on ice watch leant against the boarding with his hands in his pockets, and the smaller blocks of ice were allowed to knock into the prow below, sending them spinning and revolving along the side of the ship.