by Laline Paull
8
London, four years earlier
Sean and Tom were not exactly estranged, but they had neither seen nor spoken to each other in over two years. But now he needed Tom and, though Tom didn’t yet know it, he needed Sean. Because here, in his old friend’s gift, was a golden, global opportunity that he could not possibly pass up. A chance to protect the Arctic – and for once, get handsomely paid.
Sean rang Tom rather than emailing, catching him in high spirits in a cab back to Richmond from Heathrow after a long-haul trip to a sunken Pacific nation whose name Sean pretended to know. Tom was surprised but genuinely pleased to hear from him, and very interested that the rumour of the Svalbard land for sale was true. Not land, Sean corrected, just property. It’s Midgardfjorden.
‘Seriously? Are you buying it?’
‘When are you home? I want to send you something to read.’
‘Email it now, I can’t wait.’
‘I want to send a hard copy.’
Sean wanted to send something else as well. While he waited for the courier, he took a small framed photograph down from his home office wall. It was from his Oxford days, and had gone with him everywhere since then, even during his two peripatetic years apprenticing with Kingsmith, when all he had was his suitcase.
The sepia faces of best friends and polar explorers Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen looked out at him from somewhere in Arctic Greenland, circa 1925. As a student, he’d found it in a junk shop and intended to give it to Tom, who was obsessed with the pair at the time. But as soon as Sean tried it out on his own wall he wanted to keep it, even though he himself was more interested in the British Arctic Air Expedition of 1930, led by the glamorous and tragic Gino Watkins and his band of bright young men. But Rasmussen and Freuchen felt totemic, so he kept it.
‘Must have been in Greenland,’ Tom had murmured in envious admiration when he’d peered at Sean’s new treasure. ‘On their way to Thule. If you ever don’t want it …’ Twenty years later, Sean tucked it into the document case with the proposal, and the courier took it away.
Their time at Oxford had been the high-water mark of their friendship, but without physical proximity, the gap between them widened with each career decision. Now they were no longer posturing: Tom really did want to save the world and Sean really did want to put his name on the map and become phenomenally wealthy. Both were articles of faith.
Sean served his apprenticeship with Joe Kingsmith, proving himself humble and energetic in the service of whatever his mentor required – back-office support with administration, proxy purchases of properties, and occasionally, holding large amounts of money in his own name – which he scrupulously and instantly returned the moment he was asked. He had no criminal bent, he wanted wealth by the straightest possible road, and Kingsmith applauded him for it, and helped him towards his goal with pearls of advice Sean was quick to act on. His investments prospered, and Kingsmith increased his protégé’s line of credit.
Soon Sean was able to buy and renovate a small unfashionable hotel, which he turned into a home away from home for people like Kingsmith. Though his mentor never used it, he put business Sean’s way, and then he was able to buy another. He consolidated. He expanded. He raised prices, and standards, and prices again. It was extraordinary – the more expensive he made it, the harder it became to join the elite membership, the more people wanted to stay and to play there.
Tom declined membership of Sean’s clubs, even as a gift. They were not his crowd. They weren’t Sean’s either, but now he was far wealthier than Tom and the line had blurred. He could no longer switch his chameleon-like abilities on and off, but automatically took on the colour of every surrounding. When he saw Tom, he was struck by his old friend’s unfamiliar bolshiness – as if they had exchanged some part of themselves. But Tom was still sweet-natured at his core, and Sean was still amazed by his own good fortune, and for a while, they managed to ignore the new differences, but the ease was missing. So the friendship became historic, and then, when Tom embraced Greenpeace – and to Sean, an uncompromising attitude about how the world should be run – they both let it gently ebb away.
The last time Sean and Tom had spoken had been the night Martine dragged him to the opening of an exhibition painted by one of her new investment clients. It was in a small gallery in St James’s, and the white Kenyan artist painted cheetahs in all their forms. A manifesto on her price sheet declared her family’s love for all African wildlife, and their longstanding commitment to teaching the native people how to better steward their land. Sean couldn’t believe it was really Tom, adrift in a sea of booming-voiced striped shirts and tidy women, one of whom was talking incessantly at him, drunkenly clinking her glass on his as if to get him moving. Her hand flashed with diamonds. Tom saw Sean, grinned and excused himself. He came straight over and bear-hugged him.
‘Strange crowd for you,’ Sean said, awkward and moved by Tom’s affection.
‘I’ve become a whore.’ Tom looked furtively over his shoulder. ‘She thought I still worked for Greenpeace and said she’d donate ten grand if I’d come. So I came, even though I don’t.’ He noticed Martine, and his expression changed as Sean brought her forward, her hand in his.
‘Tom’s reputation and annoyingly handsome face precede him, and Martine runs the Linnaeus fund, which is—’
‘I’ve heard. Clean energy tech.’ Tom nodded but did not smile. ‘Hello.’
Martine’s smile dared him. ‘Please think of us as a new force for good.’
Tom turned to Sean. ‘Does Gail know?’
A flash went off and the photographer saluted his thanks. Sean darted after him, and Martine and Tom heard his low urgent tone, asking him not to use the picture. The photographer shrugged and nodded, then two women greeted Sean and he paused to exchange pleasantries.
Tom and Martine sized each other up.
‘He’s talked about you a lot. He misses you.’
‘Here I am, we’re still friends.’ He looked at her. ‘You should probably know I’m Gail’s friend too. Sean’s wife.’
‘What a thankless job that always sounds.’
‘Perhaps you’ve never been offered the position.’
‘You think?’
‘No. I don’t. It’s none of my business.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more.’
‘Are they still married? They have a child.’
‘For now. And she’s a very independent-minded young woman.’
‘Ah yes. She dropped in on you at work, didn’t she?’
‘It was a very unpleasant and immature thing to do.’
‘I thought it was courageous.’
Sean returned and felt the freeze. ‘What?’
‘Sean,’ Martine said. ‘I’m tired of hiding. I’m not a bad person, but your friend Tom seems to think I am. I don’t deserve to be shamed like this.’
‘That’s not what I intended.’ Tom put down his glass. ‘Sorry, Sean, but I don’t know how to talk to your mistress when I’m friends with your wife. And I won’t be learning.’ He walked out.
Sean had not spoken to Tom since that night, until the Midgard Lodge tender came up. Then they talked, but only about the business in hand. Tom had gone through everything, he understood the stakes. His credibility plus Sean’s money. A vulnerable piece of the Arctic on the block. He could hardly refuse.
This snowless ice-plain is like a life without love – nothing to soften it. The marks of all the battles and pressures of the ice stand forth just as when they were made, rugged and difficult to move among. Love is life’s snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight – whiter and purer than snow itself. What is life without love? It is like this ice – a cold, bare, rugged mass, the wind driving it and rending it and then forcing it together again, nothing to cover open rifts, nothing to break the violence of the collisions, nothing to round away the sharp corners of the broken floes – nothing, nothing but bare, rugged drift-ice.
Friday, 15 Dec
ember 1893
Farthest North: The Norwegian Polar Expedition 1893–1896 (1897)
Fridtjof Nansen
9
‘I don’t want to do this.’ Tom didn’t even wait for the meeting to officially start. The Pedersen family agent, Mogens Hadbold, their lawyer and their accountant, stared at Sean in confusion.
‘Wait.’ Sean felt like he was in a bad dream. ‘Tom, what is this?’ They were in a penthouse suite at Claridge’s in the final round of the bidding for Midgard Lodge, and Tom was destroying everything. Now he was holding up Sean’s bid proposal in its embossed leather cover.
‘I do not want the Pedersen family to sell their property,’ Tom said, ‘because it’s in such an environmentally sensitive location. All change is disruptive, and the Arctic ecosystem is already massively stressed by warming seas. There is no more summer ice. Politicians pay lip-service to bringing the temperature down while quietly drawing dividends from their fossil fuel investments. We’ve got government ministers on the boards of oil companies. I don’t want that either, but that’s reality.’
Sean consciously relaxed his hands so they did not make fists. What an absolute fucker, telling him one thing and waiting until now—
‘But,’ Tom continued, ‘we’re here because someone is going to be chosen as the new owner. Someone is going to become responsible for that corner of the Arctic, at a most critical moment for its safety. I’m here to tell you that, if this sale is going to happen, I stand with this man to buy it. We’re here because the numbers are right.’
‘Certainly in the correct area,’ confirmed the family agent. ‘But above a particular threshold that Mr Cawson has passed, the family are even more concerned to select the correct buyer.’
‘I led Greenpeace for two years,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve been involved in environmental issues my whole life and I will continue to be. I’ve known Sean since we were at college together. I’ve learned a lot from him, and as I’m now in this room, I hope it’s become a two-way street. I used to turn my nose up at people whose main interest was money, because they didn’t seem to care how they made it. Now I’m less naïve. The only way the world will change for the better is if it is precisely those people who start thinking differently about profit.’ He looked at each of them in turn.
‘Last year’s coup in the Maldives cost every hotel group there untold sums as well as several lives. Many people saw it coming, the hotels were warned, they absolutely knew what was going on, but profit blinded them. Climate change means the poorest people suffer first – people who don’t buy organic or vote for liberal democracy. The Maldives is happening all over the world, in every poor country where the sea level is rising and the land is flooding.’
‘Mr Harding,’ Mogens Hadbold smiled patiently, ‘we all care—’
‘Caring is meaningless without action. We must stop the economic apartheid that is killing this planet.’
‘Tom, for pity’s sake!’ Sean was on his feet too. It was appalling, Tom was like a mad man, he hadn’t seen him like this before.
‘Sit down, Sean. You wanted me here, you wanted me on board, so let me continue. I’m nearly finished. Look at the world – a great big band of drought or flood that just happens to coincide with mineral resources, with political instability and then with foreign intervention by the very powers that benefit from the extractive rights. Powers that do not give a shit about the cost, human or natural, of that resource exploitation. What we’re looking at is a global environmental sacrifice zone – and the Arctic is just the latest part of it.’
Sean sat there, his face burning. Tom’s ego was out of control. How could he not have seen it? What was he doing now, with the mineral water? Holding it up to the big mirror on the mantelpiece. He looked mad, speaking to the flowers.
‘Bottled at source in the Alps. Where the shrinking snowline means only the highest resorts still exist, and their prices make even the rich feel poor. And if they’re starting to think about climate change, you know we’re in the last-chance saloon.’ He turned and came back to them. ‘When that chunk of Venice collapsed into the lagoon, the dead included guests at the Cipriani, as well as refugees.’
He drank again.
‘So if you’re not worried, you’re not paying attention. And if you are, then it is your moral and civic and patriotic duty to either keep your property and be vigilant stewards of the Arctic, or, ensure that you only sell to a buyer who will use it to be a vigilant pain in the arse to any and everyone who is trying to make a killing up there. I don’t know, you might be those people yourselves. I don’t know you, but I do know this man.’ He pointed to Sean.
‘Arctic obsession started our friendship. We’ve gone our separate ways, but that’s still our bond. He’s the capitalist pig in a great suit and I’m the pain in the arse in jeans. He’s clever or crazy enough to invite me to be a board member, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that people hear you better if you’re in the room, not yelling through a loudhailer from the street. That’s why I’m in with Sean: he knows the very people I want to reach, the brokers between governments and mining companies, the shipping people, the people who make things happen, or make things disappear. I’ll be in the room with them on this.’
He laid down the bid proposal on the table. ‘How can people say what they really think at places like Davos? It’s about being seen to do good, and someone with a vested interest in the outcome is always playing the host. Sean’s plan takes that layer away. A luxurious private retreat in Arctic grandeur – who doesn’t want to go there? Who wouldn’t be affected by those surroundings?’
Sean stared at Tom. He was selling it better than Sean had ever been able to. Such a showman, Sean had to admire him. No – not a showman, every word felt genuine. Tom had made protecting the environment his life’s work, he had the broken bones, scars and jail time to show for it – as well as the adulation of thousands of people. He’d put all his money into it too, though his family had tried to stop him; Sean remembered hearing that.
‘Enough with the bleeding-heart liberals crying over the polar bears. I want the greediest, ugliest-thinking, most short-sighted, ego-crazed politicians and plutocrats we can find to stay in the place Sean will build on the shore of Midgardfjorden. There’s a reason men have risked their lives again and again for the Arctic; it shows you your soul, even if you think you don’t have one.
‘I’m naïve: I still believe you can reach people through their hearts. But I’m battle-scarred: profit speaks louder. Sean’s plan combines both those things. So that’s why I say that my first position is still no more development in the Arctic. But as it is happening, from all sides, as the summer ice has gone – twenty years ahead of government projections, and as it is a free-for-all, no matter what people say, then let us be there, let us try to guide development to do the minimum harm, and protect the life of this fragile, sublime, vulnerable environment. You can only lose it once.’
Tom walked round behind Sean and put his hands on his shoulders. ‘I know my friend and I trust him. So if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ He took his seat again.
No one spoke for a long moment. The atmosphere had shifted. The lawyer and the accountant were staring at Tom with that star-struck look Sean had seen on people’s faces before. Mogens Hadbold’s laptop pinged, two, three, four times, breaking the spell. Hadbold looked across to the mantelpiece and waved. Only then did Sean spot the tiny camera in the flower arrangement.
‘Yes,’ said Mogens Hadbold. ‘I’m sorry that I did not tell you the meeting was streaming live. They wanted to be present, but discreetly.’ He started laughing. ‘Sometimes I wonder if they really trust me! No no, it is to make sure that they could form their own opinion.’
He turned his laptop to face Sean and Tom, and the quartered screen showed different Pedersens on Skype.
‘That was very impressive,’ a female voice said, out of the screen. ‘We will let you know. Tak, Mogens.’
He replied in a rapi
d burst of Norwegian, and closed the laptop.
‘Mr Harding is something of a hero to the younger generation, you know this. They are the ones making all the big noise about the right buyer. The older ones – well, you know how we are as we get old. We like security. And money! But the young have the power.’ He stood up, as did the lawyer and accountant. ‘Thank you very much for returning.’ The meeting was over. Sean stood too.
‘You don’t want to ask me anything?’ He looked from one to the other. Mogens Hadbold shook his head. ‘We have looked into your partners, Miss Martine Delaroche and Miss Radiance Young. We are satisfied of your financial commitment. And of course we know Mr Harding’s environmental work. And you know Midgardfjorden, so there is no more to say on that. Everyone is clear what is on the table. You are the last presentation, and I hope the family will not keep us waiting for their decision.’ The old man winked at Sean as he walked them to the door. ‘I too long to know the future.’
They were both silent in the lift going down. Tom was buoyant, Sean furious. Only when they were out on the street did he explode.
‘You knew there was a camera!’
‘Yep. Want a drink?’ Tom grinned. ‘I’m gasping.’
They went into the first place that smelled of beer. It was the middle of the afternoon, a strange time to be in a pub, but everything was strange. Sean had taken Tom to the presentation as his mascot; Tom had taken the meeting. Sean had said almost nothing. Tom put his arm round his shoulder.
‘I wasn’t so bad, was I?’
‘You were an utter, utter, bastard. They loved you.’
‘Didn’t overdo it?’
‘You chewed the furniture – I wanted to throttle you.’
‘Result.’ Tom ordered two pints without asking what Sean wanted. Sean wasn’t a pubbish sort any more, certainly not any old boozer on a midweek afternoon. Not that he was in any state to do business – he was fizzing with energy and outrage at Tom’s hijacking of his event.