by Laline Paull
Martine did not reply, but Sean saw her tense expression.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘Tom and I will just have a quick look.’
‘Or we can take them back.’ Tom had returned to Sean’s side.
‘We’ll be fine!’ Radiance winked at them. ‘I’m their leader now.’
Martine rolled her eyes at Sean. ‘Don’t be too long.’
‘Ten minutes,’ Sean said.
‘Fifteen, realistically,’ said Tom.
‘I’m the leader,’ Radiance called back. ‘Fifteen is OK.’ She herded Martine and Kingsmith back up the passageway. Sean grinned at the thought of what Martine would say later.
‘Might as well take a quick look,’ Tom said. ‘We’ve come all this way.’
‘We have.’ Sean looked at him, and this time Tom met his gaze for a second. They went down the passage together, towards the ice-cave known as the Great Hall.
‘We went inside,’ Sean told the court. He felt like the ice was taking his breath again, he almost expected it to come out in clouds. ‘Tom went in first.’ His lungs worked fast and shallow at the thought of it all.
They were so excited neither could speak, but they turned to each other to confirm they really were seeing this marvel. They were in a huge cavern, like some ice giant’s baronial hall. At first they looked around separately, then, by unspoken instinct, they moved their two torch beams together, like a single pair of eyes.
Parts of the structure glowed to life under their double gaze. Slowly, amazed, grinning at each other, they went a few steps deeper, nudging each other to point out the blue ribs and rafters of ice above them, a cathedral crossed with the inside of a whale. They gazed on a massive slab resting on smaller blocks, like a chieftain’s table. Below it, softer-shaped extrusions formed huge sleeping dogs. Here and there were stalactites spreading like candelabra, and other strange forms twisted into ropes hung with ice tassels.
Sean saw gargoyles and effigies, and then one eye of the double beam shifted, and Tom was looking at him.
‘Tell me now,’ Tom said. ‘While the cat’s away.’
It took a few seconds for Sean to remember what he meant. Kingsmith. That whole mess above the ice. Tom had broken the spell and now they stood looking at one another in the Great Hall, each face pinned by the other’s beam.
‘Fine,’ Sean said. ‘You have to understand though, no one’s doing anything wrong.’ But as he said it, he didn’t sound convincing even to himself. ‘We’re just protecting the place we both love.’
‘With a private military.’
‘Tom, I told you – it’s standing security for guests.’
‘You let Kingsmith do this, didn’t you? Of course you did.’
‘Yes, I left that side of it to him, but, Tom, if your own government asks you to do something …’
‘You’re delusional.’ Tom’s breath came in bigger clouds.
‘You know something, Tom?’ Sean’s breath billowed out as well, they were like dragons facing each other. ‘There are lots of ways to protect the Arctic, but you think you’ve got the only answer, you want a vital new trade route just taken off the table – you think the world really will put ice and whales and—’
‘Climate change first? Yes! I’m hoping—’
Tom stopped suddenly. He turned away, his beam flashing over the blue-and-white ice walls. Then back to one spot, where the blue ice gleamed more vividly.
‘Shit. Look—’
Sean’s torch beam picked it out too. A narrow thread of water trickling from high above, following the curve of the vaulted wall, down into the cavern floor, through the crack they both saw, running beyond the range of their light.
They stopped arguing, hearing the tearing sound. Only a second, then it stopped. Then came another sound – the high-pitched moan of ice squeezing ice.
Sean held on to the lectern. The eyes of the courtroom were on him and felt like ants, he wanted to scrape them from his skin. The carpet tiles smelled dirty, someone was wearing too much hairspray. He was close to it. He wanted to push his fingers under his jacket, into his shirt and the warmth of his sticky armpit – they were burning like they had when he was recovering. He put his fingers into the glass of water on the stand, and heard the tapping of keyboards, no doubt recording this strange gesture. Sawbridge was looking at him with an urgent expression.
‘Your Honour,’ he called out, ‘a break for my client, I think?’
‘Do you need that, Mr Cawson?’
Sean heard the metallic scrape of the louvre windows being opened. He felt a trail of air move through the room and over his face.
‘No. I’ll go on.’ His voice felt deadened, as if still in the ice. ‘A massive blow hit us under our feet then we were – we lifted up as the ice shifted and I fell sideways, there was nothing to hold on to, there was this rumbling noise and even as I was slipping I knew the cave was collapsing.’
He put his hands back on the lectern. ‘I tried to push my feet against something so I could get upright – I was still on my side – but I couldn’t find any purchase because everything was slippery and my torch had got knocked sideways so I couldn’t see. Then the rumbling stopped.’
Sean closed his eyes. No one moved in the courtroom, not a finger on a keyboard or a hand in a pocket. He could hear his breath, loud and shallow, and he didn’t know if he was at the lectern or in the ice.
‘I called for Tom. I called out – and then I heard him, his voice was coming from somewhere below me. He was alive but he’d fallen. I called to him to hold on – I got my boot against something and I pushed up so I could secure my torch – and all I could see was a jumble of huge ice fragments. I called out again and when he answered I saw the hole it came from.’
The sound of Angela and Ruby Harding’s weeping brought Sean back to the courtroom for a moment. He spoke directly to them.
‘I said to hold on. I said the others would be out by now, they’d raise the alarm. I kept saying, “I won’t leave you, just hold on, Tom, hold on.”’
Sean braced himself against the ice, his belly against a freezing slab of it, the hard edge of his boot soles scraped in behind him to get a hold. With one hand he felt for his torch and secured it, then shone it down into the black chasm.
‘Tom!’ He waited. ‘TOM!’
There was no reply. All he could hear was the great bloody gulp of his own heart. He was completely alone in the ice, deep below the surface. Tom was gone.
Sean stared into blackness for a moment. Then the court came back into focus. The staring faces. The sound of the traffic.
‘I don’t remember much after that.’ He did not wait for the coroner to release him, he left the stand and walked back down to his seat. Sawbridge stared at him with grave concern and patted him on the arm. No one spoke. The coroner cleared his throat.
‘We’ll adjourn for today. Mr Cawson, thank you, but I’m afraid I’ll need to ask you back to the stand tomorrow morning for questions.’
Sean nodded, then did not move until all the motion in the room was over, the scraping chairs, the stares, the chiming of phones released from silence. When he finally looked up, Sawbridge was waiting at the end of the row.
The traffic of Canterbury’s ring road looked like a film, as unreal and alien as the jerky Inuit of Nanuq of the North.
‘A drink, that’s what we need.’ Sawbridge steered him in the other direction, around the corner into the back streets where kebab shops jostled medieval walls and an old pub stood waiting.
They went into its gloomy womb of beery carpet and ugly dark-wood furniture, the only people except for the barman, his belly prominent under a sports shirt. He looked at them disapprovingly as he sloshed a pint of water down in front of Sean – the only thing he wanted – and a tomato juice for Sawbridge. Somewhere in the background a fruit machine whirred and pinged. Sean stared through the darkness that still clotted his vision.
‘You did splendidly.’
‘I failed.’
‘
Rubbish! If it were water off a duck’s back, if you just sang your song all well-rehearsed, it would be a disaster. You went through hell to survive.’
‘I failed Tom!’
Sawbridge held up his hands appeasingly, as if to show he understood. He opened the peanuts and ate them in meditative silence for a while, then hailed the barman. ‘Don’t suppose there’s anywhere I might fire up a very small cigar?’
‘The street.’ The barman was unimpressed. ‘You from the inquest?’
‘Ah, you know about it.’ Sawbridge pepped up his charm, just in case.
‘Know the family. I knew Tom.’
Sean looked up. ‘A friend?’
‘Village cricket, when he was around.’
Sean stared at him.
‘You were one of the pall-bearers.’
‘That’s right.’ The barman looked at him. ‘I remember you, too.’
Sean held out his hand. ‘Sean Cawson.’
‘Yeah. I know.’ The barman hesitated fractionally then shook. ‘John Burnham.’
Sawbridge stood: ‘A great tragedy.’ Sean ignored the signal.
‘I couldn’t save him.’
‘I’m not asking. Mate, you look in a bad way.’
‘He’s doing extremely well and we are almost at the finish line.’ Sawbridge tapped Sean on the arm and went to the door. ‘Very best to you,’ he called to the barman. ‘I’m sure we’ll stop by again.’ Out on the street a safe distance away, he stopped. ‘Important you hear this: discretion is most certainly the better part of valour. Quite serious now. Absolutely no vino veritas-ing with anyone, please, and I include myself in that.’
‘I wasn’t planning to.’
‘Who ever does?’
They walked back to the White Bear in silence. Sean changed his clothes, did not check his phone or email, went down to the restaurant and ate before Sawbridge arrived. They were both relieved to miss each other for dinner and, back in his room, Sean stared at whatever was on the television and drank vodka, until he was able to pass out.
Now we are in the very midst of what the prophets would have had us dread so much. The ice is pressing and packing round us with a noise like thunder. It is piling itself up into long walls, and heaps high enough to reach a good way up the Fram’s rigging; in fact, it is trying its very utmost to grind the Fram into powder. But here we sit quite tranquil, not even going up to look at all the hurly-burly, but just chatting and laughing, as usual.
Such an ice conflict is undeniably a stupendous spectacle. One feels one’s self to be in the presence of Titanic forces, and it is easy to understand how timid souls may be overawed and feel as if nothing could stand before it. For when the packing begins in earnest, it seems as though there could be no spot on the earth’s surface left unshaken. First you hear a sound like the thundering rumble of an earthquake far away on the great waste; then you hear it in several places, always coming nearer and nearer. The silent ice world re-echoes with thunders; nature’s giants are awakening to the battle.
Friday, 13 October 1893
Farthest North: The Norwegian Polar Expedition 1893–1896 (1897)
Fridtjof Nansen
26
Summer, 1988
The first time Sean stood on Arctic ice in Greenland, sponsored by Kingsmith and with Tom Harding by his side, he wanted to shout in triumph. He was here, he had made it. There were no green-tinted icebergs or radiant pink light, as in the painting, but the cold on his face, the sunny glitter of the air, the bluest sky and the sound of excited sled dogs howling at their approach, filled him with real joy.
It didn’t matter that Redmond was a tosser, that the whole thing still smacked of elitist privilege – he was here and that was all he cared about. Taking part in the Lost Explorers’ Society point-to-point dog-sled race on a section of the route of the 1935 Oxford University West Greenland Expedition.
They would be in six two-man teams, with no backup save each other. They could wear modern base layers, but the aesthetic was strictly 1935, and Redmond looked forward to his photographs being displayed at the Royal Geographical Society. He enjoyed documenting Sean and Tom’s fumbling attempts at harnessing their team. They could not help noticing they seemed to have been given the smallest dogs.
‘It’s like he wants us to die on the ice,’ Sean muttered.
‘Fuck him,’ Tom agreed, as they were the last to set off.
Redmond was pleased to humiliate them but not quite to the point of death, so he sent a couple of teams to escort them safely to the first base camp.
Inside an alarmed perimeter fence, to protect them against bear attacks, and with the thirty-six Greenland sled dogs, they all felt quite safe. The twelve young men fed their dogs, pitched their tents, gathered to share a communal meal of rehydrated chicken curry, followed by rehydrated apple crumble with custard – then they retired to try to sleep. Each pair had a rifle, just in case.
Sean was excited beyond being able to rest, but Tom insisted they try. They lay in their glowing orange tent, talking in low voices.
‘Thank you,’ Tom said after so long a pause that Sean thought he was asleep.
‘What for?’
‘Coming with me. Partnering up on this.’
Sean lay silent for a while, absorbing this. ‘This is my dream, to do this. If you hadn’t asked me …’
‘You’d have found another way. You’re resourceful.’ Tom wriggled around in his sleeping bag so that they were facing each other. ‘I really admire you, Sean. I’ve had everything given to me, and I know you wish you hadn’t told me, but you—’
‘Shh—’ Sean heard a dog’s short whuff outside.
‘No let me say it – you’ve done it all yourself—’
As the dogs began baying they were both on their knees scrabbling for the rifle. Sean was out first with it, loaded and cocked, Tom right behind him – and there, two hundred feet away from their encampment, was a huge female bear with a yearling cub, coming to investigate.
‘Flare!’ Sean shouted, and Tom grabbed one and released it into the air. It arced towards the animals, almost invisible in the sun. All the dogs were baying now, everyone was scrambling from their tents. The female stood straight ahead, curious and unafraid. Her deep pelt was cream against the blue-hued snow but her cub was pearly fluff. As she stood up on her hind legs, she looked so human, so intrigued, that Sean would not have been surprised if she had called out to know who they were. She was the most beautiful, most thrilling creature he had ever seen.
Tom fired two more flares and at their screech, the cub ran behind its mother. That seemed to decide her, she gave them one last look and turned to leave, but Redmond was taking aim with his rifle.
‘Mine!’ he called out.
‘Don’t shoot! she’s leaving!’ Tom yelled, but Redmond fired. He missed and when the mother and cub began to run, he took aim again. People were shouting to release the dogs, hold the dogs, the dogs were howling and barking—
Before Redmond could fire again, Tom hurled himself at him, knocking his rifle skywards and wrestling it from him. Redmond struggled for it but Tom hurled it away into the snow, before catching a furious punch on the jaw. As Redmond landed it, Sean was on him, slugging him back then kneeling on his chest and holding him down in the snow, one arm across his throat like he’d learned as a kid, putting his face close and telling him to be calm, be calm—
Sean knew how fights went, and this one was his. No one was coming to Redmond’s aid. He pressed down a little harder, and Redmond stopped struggling. Sean got off and offered his hand to help him up. Redmond spat at him, murder in his eyes.
‘You fucking oik.’
‘I think what Redmond is saying,’ said Tom, rubbing his chin, ‘is that he won’t shoot the fucking bears unless he fucking needs to – is that right?’
‘We could have died!’ Redmond screamed at the rest of them.
‘Anyone can panic,’ Sean winked at him, ‘don’t feel bad.’
‘You fucking
morons! Never touch my gun again!’ Everyone stared at him, even the dogs. He turned on Sean and Tom. ‘You’re off this expedition, do you hear!’ He glared at Tom. ‘You and your fucking oik servant—’
Tom grabbed him by his jacket. ‘Don’t talk about my friend like that.’ He shoved Redmond back so hard he fell over his feet, and the others laughed.
Sean turned to the rest of them. It was a surreal sight, the bright orange tents glowing in the midnight sun, the dogs, Redmond holding his nose, the red seeping through his fingers, dripping on the snow. ‘I’ve paid my way,’ Sean said, with all the confidence he could muster. ‘I’ve got a right to be here. Anyone who disagrees, say now.’
‘I do! This is my expedition.’ Redmond was staggering to his feet, still murderous. ‘Shut those fucking dogs up!’ He looked around for support. ‘Who’s with me?’ No one answered.
‘Fram,’ Tom said to Sean.
‘Fucking right, Fram,’ Sean agreed.
They walked back to their tent, not daring to look at each other, half expecting to feel a blow from behind – but all they could hear was Redmond’s furious hissing at the others, and the yelp of one of their dogs.
They settled their own team, they checked for bears – they caught each other’s eye with a glint of triumph – but only when they were back in the orange glow of their tent, the rifle safely stowed by the flap, did they turn to each other and high five, then lie on their backs and kick their legs in the air, laughing until they cried.
They did sleep, but a couple of hours later they woke to the sound of barking again. Looking out, they were astonished to see the other five teams had packed up and were harnessing their dogs. They were being left behind. They watched in amazement as, led by Redmond’s sled, their fellow explorers abandoned them, although they did leave them the tripwire fence.
‘Bastards.’ Tom scratched the head of Roxy, their lead dog. ‘Like we care.’