The Ice

by Laline Paull

  ‘At ease.’ Sean had no military training, but apparently it worked because the men sat back down and resumed looking at their screens, or lying on their bunks. Danny Long seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

  ‘Good,’ he said, to cover his surprise. He went out into the open air. A retreat was in place he knew nothing about and a new detail of men – he had forgotten that part of the arrangement – were gathered in that dark cavernous room, at ease. ‘So everything’s all right.’

  ‘All good, sir.’ Danny Long was watching him. Sean felt he would answer any question, but he did not want to ask. ‘Line of command is clear, Mr Cawson.’

  ‘Good.’ He stood on the beach, a stranger to his own business. Too long away, avoiding this moment. He felt he’d returned not a moment too soon. He took out his own binoculars and stood back to back with his manager, sweeping the rocks and peaks of the bay with hi-mag scrutiny.

  Danny Long’s radio crackled from the upper lookout in the Lodge, where his second in command Terry Bjornsen was also scanning for bears. All clear.

  ‘Waiting,’ Long said into his collar, as he completed his own slow survey. He raised his arm to the Lodge. ‘All clear below.’

  Sean lowered his kayak into the water, climbed down the steel ladder and slid into the seat. He took the paddle from Long, coiled the red tethering rope into the cockpit and pushed off with a long slow glide. There was no wind. Midgardfjorden was a black mirror, the only movement was the undulating wake behind Sean’s kayak, and the slow rise and fall of his paddle, hissing softly as it cut the water.

  He skimmed out towards the centre, the rising shimmer of light around him showing that the sky was drying as the sun burned through. His consciousness fused with the subtle motion of the kayak and the long ripples of sunlight. He kept his eye on the jutting inner point of the M. He knew the current that circled the inlets and made a little area of turbulence close to the shore that could capsize the unwary – but here it was now, all the way out in the centre.

  Dipping his blade, he felt the pull from the water, the tug all the way up into his arm, as if it had caught on something. The current swirled like a water snake but Sean had good upper body strength and kept his head. He judged its velocity and angle, then twisted his paddle blade into its force. He felt the energy from deep in the water travel up his paddle, his hand, his arm, into his shoulder, neck, and face. He held the strain – and the hook of the current released him in the right direction. Only five or six seconds – but long enough to go in if he’d panicked. But he hadn’t – and in that instant of instinctive reaction, in that correct response, his feeling of power came flooding back – and he was embracing that beautiful and terrifying lover once again: the Arctic.

  His heart pounding with joy, he glanced back. Danny Long stood on the jetty, a tiny figure beneath the rearing mountain, his rifle above his shoulder like a tribesman’s spear. Sean rounded the point and moved out of sight.

  From the air the glacier was one thing, but approached in humility by kayak, she revealed another nature. Sean lifted his paddle and slowed, poised in the water. The towering blue and white face of the ice filled his vision, the Arctic silence his ears and mind. Sometimes it was so intense it almost formed into a sound; sometimes he had heard the bumping and scraping of the pack ice form abstract fragments like music.

  The silence gathered around him so that he could almost hear the squeeze and suck of his heart in his chest. He felt his sweat blot his base layer, and the bracing of his tendons far away inside the kayak shell. Below him the dark depth of the water; above, a thread of breeze that dried the molecules of sweat. His vision filled with the deep blue strata of the most ancient compressed ice, forty thousand years old.

  When Sean Cawson was eleven and in the care home while his mother was recovering from yet another attempt, he saw a huge oil painting of icebergs on one of the off-limits staff landings. It was so beautiful he started using this longer route, despite the threat of punishment if he were caught, just to gaze at the space and the colours of this pristine frozen world. While he stood before it, he forgot the misery of every waking moment of this new life, and threw his consciousness into the ice.

  There was a mast from a shipwreck in the foreground, and he imagined himself the sole survivor. Everyone else was dead but he must find a way to keep going. As he gazed at it one day it came to him like a truth – his father was on that ship, or one like it – he had gone exploring and been shipwrecked, that was why he’d never known him, why his mother was dying of grief. The ice had taken his family and he must go there to get them back.

  The iceberg painting grew in his imagination, even when his mother returned from the hospital and reclaimed him to the ugly council house where she struggled on in depression and drinking. Sean fixated on his lost explorer father, who was noble, clean and far better lost in the ice than occasionally passing through the house like the other men who visited his mother. By the time Sean was thirteen, the Arctic was his obsession and he had bolstered his fantasy father with such authentic details, and backed it up with angry fists for doubters, that it became fact.

  His fighting was a problem until a social worker intervened. Sean was in danger of serious delinquency but clearly bright, and the social worker goaded him into agreeing to sit the scholarship exam for The Abbott’s School.

  This was the grand, grey-stone public school where Sean had often joined the townie gang in attacking boys who wore the strange uniform – but now he was to be one of them. He’d listened outside the door after his interview – ‘Oh, the poor boy, think of what he’s gone through, yes, yes let’s extend a helping hand.’

  So Sean Cawson received the academic scholarship and the sports bursary and the charity award that topped up the rest and meant he could go for free. By the age of fifteen, he had become a chameleon at Abbott’s, sloughing off the misfits who would have been his natural friends and gravitating instead to the leaders of the pack, in sport and academic excellence. There he worked out the answer to the question he’d always pondered, about fairness and beauty and ugliness and justice. It was wealth.

  Sean blinked. Not eleven in the care home, not in the dorm at Abbott’s. In the kayak, frozen. The current had taken him closer to the ice face – how long had he been zoned out, thinking of the past? A few seconds – a couple of minutes? The temperature had dropped and the light was that milky veil that can suddenly appear in Arctic air like a spell, blanking out contours, hiding crevasses, wiping out direction.

  His heart slammed. In the few seconds he had mentally drifted, the current had taken him directly in front of the mouth of the cave into the glacier from which Tom’s body emerged. It was deep; the ice was the darkest blue he had ever seen, and as he paddled backwards, he could hear the echo of his blade striking the water. His ears blocked as if he were airborne and his mouth was dry. The new cave was the source of the pull in the water, it had changed the current pattern of the fjord.

  He felt a terrible urge to go in, but he knew that was crazy, like standing on a high cliff and thinking of jumping. Of course he would not do it. He braced his feet and bladed back, admiring the cobalt twists in the ice, the darkest sapphire catching flashes from the water. There was nothing more beautiful than Arctic ice.

  Something touched him. Not physically – but he felt it in the prickling of his scalp – something was there, around him or under him. He stared into the cave but saw nothing; he looked down and the water was grey-green translucent. Then he looked up.

  Standing on the lip of the glacier, staring down from directly above him, was an enormous male polar bear. It was close enough for Sean to see the duelling scar that twisted his black lip, giving the impression of a cynical smile. It must have stalked him while he was years away, and now they had come together.

  Sean dug his paddle to move away from the cave but caught another current that pushed him closer to the ice face. The bear watched with interest and slowly walked along the edge above him, keeping
pace.

  Sean knew not to take his eyes from it. He felt it most distinctly – the bear was pondering leaping in now, or waiting a little longer. If he came closer, if he lost control and capsized, it would take the chance and jump. Bears had been known to go for kayakers before, but always from the shore.

  This glacier was high – but the bear was enormous and highly intelligent; it knew the currents – it was standing waiting for him. When he met its gaze, he felt it willing him to panic and make a mistake. He stared back with equal force and ignored the jolt of fear down both legs.

  The current was a muscle of water writhing around his paddle, tugging it under the kayak. The light glittered and the mountains reared up black and strobing around him, locking him in. The bear lowered its head, looking for where to jump. He wanted a knife – why had he not brought a knife with him? He might have done something with a knife …

  As the bear gathered itself, a sharp growl bounced against the granite walls of the fjord, and it looked up in irritation. The vibration of the Zodiac engine came through the water. Sean did not take his eyes away – the bear would still strike, even now. Man and animal felt each other’s stare. Advantage animal – but man was lucky. The bear turned and loped away up the glacier and out of sight.

  Danny Long slowed the Zodiac as he approached, his rifle on his back. Benoit, Jiaq, and two young blonde women were his passengers, all wearing bright orange survival suits and busy photographing the scenery. They had not seen it.

  ‘Excuse me, sir: the guests wished to come out.’

  Sean reached down into himself for human speech again.

  ‘Of course.’

  Long carefully circled the Zodiac around behind Sean, giving him the benefit of the wake to help him out of the current. ‘How is it, in the kayak?’

  ‘Great,’ Sean said over his shoulder. ‘But no one else out alone. The current.’ He scanned the slopes. The bear had vanished and he was glad.

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s changed, I noticed as well.’

  Sean left Kingsmith’s guests exclaiming over the colour of the glacier and paddled back. Only as he boarded the plane that evening did he realise he had not thought about Tom for a moment out there. He had gone to see where he’d died, and mourn, but instead the confrontation with the bear had made him feel more alive than he had done in years. And now he wanted sex.

  As I raised my rifle, again I felt clutching at my heart that terrible sensation of life hanging on the accuracy of my aim; again in my bones I felt that gnawing hunger of the past; that aching lust for red, warm, dripping meat – the feeling that the wolf has when he pulls down his quarry. He who has ever been really hungry, either in the Arctic or elsewhere, will understand this feeling. Sometimes the memory of it rushes over me in unexpected places. I have felt it after a hearty dinner, in the streets of a great city, when a lean-faced beggar has held out his hand for alms.

  The North Pole (1910)

  Robert E. Peary

  7

  Sean recognised Economy Smile greeting passengers as they boarded the return flight to the UK. When she saw him, she switched up to First Class wattage and her posture changed.

  ‘Welcome back on board, sir! My name is Lisa, please do let me know if there’s anything you need.’ She escorted him the three feet to his seat. ‘We have plenty of ice this time, and I’ll make sure I save you extra. Are you staying over in London?’

  ‘I live there.’

  ‘So do I!’

  His heart sank. She had clearly been told who he was.

  He sat down, thinking that at least he didn’t have to worry about whether Martine’s interest in him was financial. Almost sixteen years younger than he was, she was highly successful and could buy herself whatever she wanted – and therefore appreciated gifts even more: so long as they were exquisite, expensive, and very hard to source. Otherwise she considered them ‘high street’.

  He watched the cabin crew getting everyone in. Lisa’s pretty colleague glanced over and gave him a special smile as well. He looked away.

  Once it would have felt almost wasteful not to invite them both out to dinner in London, and let his lower nature take its course. Kill the hunter, kill the man, Kingsmith had once said to him, and he had even tried that justification with Gail.

  It had not worked. In fact, it might have been the beginning of the end, or at least the point at which she refused to accept his lies any more. She didn’t want to hear about those times he’d succumbed to temptation, or chased a woman too beautiful to ignore, not so much for the sex, but for that magical time when he saw himself reflected in her eyes: a hero, an explorer, a powerful man. That fleeting feeling of acceptance. He never actually managed to say all that to Gail, because she was too angry and upset – and because he hadn’t known how.

  The stewardesses were talking about him. When he asked for a vodka tonic, Lisa made it herself in the galley and brought it to him, very strong and with plenty of ice. When he went to use the lavatory – he had learned to call it this, despite the illuminated sign that said Toilet – she brushed against him, her eyes merry with promise. He locked the door and looked in his pocket. She had given him her card. He’d joined the Mile High Club a number of times – Lisa too, he guessed.

  As the flush roared in the tiny cubicle he washed his hands and looked at himself in the mirror. He wanted to be back with Martine, and he wanted her a certain way – not frazzled and exhausted from her own day, but ready to look after him. In his fantasy, he would walk through the door, smell something fabulous to eat that she had made, and she would be wearing something beautiful and revealing, and be joyful to see him.

  Martine had a car waiting for him at Heathrow, and was at home with a decanted bottle of Margaux 1966, and if not the lengthily slaved-over meal of his dreams, had at least bought good steaks. She was wearing a black dress she knew he liked her in, and dressed the set with candles and flowers. She was also a clever woman who knew the times when sex must precede talk, and that this was one. Only afterwards, when she propped herself up so she could see his face, did he remember their unfinished conversation.

  ‘I want to know what it’s like,’ she said. ‘As a woman I want that experience. I don’t want to miss out.’

  He pulled her back down and held her, his face angled away. ‘It changes everything.’

  ‘But it’s what I want. I don’t know why we haven’t, yet.’

  ‘You’ve got an implant.’

  ‘Not for six months. But still nothing.’

  He closed his eyes, to hide what might show. Six months of him not knowing, and her not saying. He felt her lean over, then kiss him on the lips.

  ‘But now is not the right time. Sorry, darling.’

  He lay still as she got up to use the bathroom. When he heard the water running, he jumped up and dressed. He poured himself two fingers of frozen vodka and downed it, then decided to get on with the cooking himself. Steaks were within his repertoire. He opened a second bottle of wine while the skillet heated.

  Sean didn’t want another child. The one he had hated him, and he couldn’t bear to look back to when she hadn’t. To that naïve and innocent time when he thought he could do marriage, fatherhood and commitment—

  ‘Burning …’ Martine retrieved the skillet from him and took over, sleek, scented and in charge. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘we’ll park all that. Let’s just enjoy the evening.’ She refilled his glass and took one for herself, and Sean watched her cook, and she must have put music on, and then they were sitting eating together and that was what he focused on, the here and now, and the beautiful young woman opposite, his partner in business and life, who had helped bring Midgard Lodge into being.

  Martine listened carefully as he told her of Benoit and Jiaq, and their new ice-class yachts. ‘Joe’s not used to asking you for anything. If you’re back in charge—’

  ‘I am. I’m going to get back up to speed on everything.’

  ‘Good! I’d like to take a group of inve
stors – could we plan that?’

  ‘Sure.’ Sean smiled, the second bottle at last warming away his tension. He listened and made the right sounds as Martine relaxed and told him of all her new triumphs at work, but his mind was back in the kayak, staring at the bear that had seized him in its black gaze. It had wanted to kill him. He leaped up.

  ‘What is it?’

  He took her by the hand and pulled her from the table back to the bedroom. The bear had wanted to kill him but instead had made him feel alive. Flashes of other women invaded his mind and drove him on – the two stewardesses – and Martine thrilled to his ferocity as Sean shoved her back the way she liked and poured wine over her dark tanned body with its pale triangles. Extravagantly ruined, the white sheets soaked red around them, like a kill.

  ‘Svarten,’ alias ‘Johansen’s Friend,’ looked bad in the lantern-light. Flesh and skin and entrails were gone; there was nothing to be seen but a bare breast and backbone, with some stumps of ribs. It was a pity that such a fine strong dog should come to such an end. He had just one fault: he was rather bad-tempered. He had a special dislike to Johansen; barked and showed his teeth whenever he came on deck, or even opened a door, and when he sat whistling in the top, or in the crow’s nest these dark winter days, the ‘Friend’ would answer with a howl of rage from far out on the ice. Johansen bent down with the lantern to look at the remains.

  ‘Are you glad, Johansen, that your enemy is done for?’

  ‘No, I am sorry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we did not make it up before he died.’

  And we went on to look for more bear-tracks, but found none; so we took the dead dogs on our backs and turned homewards.

  Tuesday, 12 December 1893

  Farthest North: The Norwegian Polar Expedition 1893–1896 (1897)

  Fridtjof Nansen