The Ice

by Laline Paull

  ‘Good grief no, completely wrong signal, having me along. Make you look nervous! Never travel with your KC – unless you did it.’ Sawbridge glanced up and his chortle died in his throat. He switched to sober respect incarnate. ‘Mrs Harding.’ He withdrew.

  ‘Excuse me, Sean,’ Angela touched his arm. ‘You’re probably very busy, but at six o’clock we’re going to light candles in the cathedral for Tom, if you’d like to come?’ She lowered her voice. ‘I asked Ruth and a few other people. I – I just thought I’d ask you too.’ She walked away quickly, before he could answer.

  Relieved to have a reason not to go back to London straight away, Sean said goodbye to Kingsmith in the lobby – he would see him at the Carrington tomorrow evening. Sawbridge was visiting friends in Kent, and staying in Canterbury until the inquest was over. Back in his room in the White Bear, Sean checked his mail and messages. It was mercifully quiet, all his managers were good. Danny Long had nothing to report from Midgard, and Rupert Parch sent a cheery line confirming he would see him tomorrow evening, and that his master also sent his best wishes. He added an emoticon: a smiley face version of Munch’s Scream.

  Martine had left a voice message: everything was perfect and in place for tomorrow, it was going to be a triumph. She knew things must be OK or he would have called her, so she was out at a dinner tonight if he was still away, or cancelling it to be by his side if he needed her. Something in her tone hoped he wouldn’t.

  Sean texted back all was well but he had to stay another night. He’d call her tomorrow. He clicked on the x key. It looked strange. He made it a capital, and sent it. He emailed Jenny Flanders to ask if she had any time tomorrow before five. Then he put on his last clean shirt and went to the cathedral.

  Angela Harding hadn’t said where in the vast structure they would be. It was almost dark outside so the stained glass was subdued, but now the stone contours were alive in the candlelight. Once again, he followed the sound of singing deeper into the nave. The chapel where he had signed the book was dark and quiet, and the singing came from below. He found them in the chapel of Thomas Becket.

  Tom’s mother gladdened at the sight of him. ‘Oh you came.’ She embraced him as she had done all those years ago, when he used to wolf food at her table, and Granny Ruby rapped Tom’s knuckles for dropping scraps for Roxy. She was there too, holding hands with Ruth Mott, who looked surprised to see him.

  ‘Sean! I’m – it’s good you came.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He kept his distance this time, standing with people he didn’t recognise. But one knew him.

  ‘All right?’ It was John Burnham, the publican from the Feathers. They nodded awkwardly to each other. Sean was embarrassed at the thought of Sawbridge’s superior attitude to the man.

  ‘Here.’ Angela Harding gave them each an unlit candle and moved on. They stood in silence, until Sean remembered Flip-flops.

  ‘Do – do you have a daughter called Beth?’

  ‘Oh, I know, she’s been in there, hasn’t she? I said, don’t you make trouble—’

  ‘She hasn’t. She’s extremely bright. I’ve got one too, a bit older.’

  John Burnham’s forbidding expression disappeared, and the trials of teenage daughters transformed them from wary mourners to commiserating fathers. Sean found himself speaking of Rosie as if she were still his loving daughter, until the deacon interrupted with her lit taper. She arranged them in a semi-circle, then in a high singsong voice asked for blessing on the friends and family of Tom Harding at this difficult time, before leading them in the Lord’s Prayer.

  Wanting to do the right thing, Sean murmured a few words, but it felt hypocritical so he tailed off into silence. Surreptitiously, he looked up to see what other people were doing, and caught Ruth doing the same. For a second they shared a complicit look, intercepted by the disapproving deacon. Ruth snorted with a giggle, which Angela Harding interpreted as tears, and reached out to hug her. This toppled Ruth into real grief, and they wept together.

  Sean’s eyes stayed dry. He could smell beer on John Burnham’s clothes and it was a friendly smell. Tom’s spirit wasn’t in some cold crypt, solemn and spiritual as this was – it was in the diamond whirl of sunny Arctic air, or the clink of pints. It was rammed next to Sean at a gig, roaring along with the crowd, Ruth and Gail on their shoulders. It was racing on a sled in Greenland, and making the dogs howl in song when they bellowed their way through Bowie’s ‘Heroes’. That was the hymn he wanted to sing for Tom, he wanted to hear it blasting through the cathedral, and howl like a dog for the friend he’d lost.

  He would never see Tom again. It hit him.

  He felt Ruth looking at him again, and then the strange sensation in his face: his mouth was shaking, his eyes were burning, and something was running down his cheeks. Ruth left Angela and came to him. Without a word she put her arms around Sean and held him. He went rigid for a moment and then a great gasp came out of his mouth, and sobs began to tear out of his very core. He didn’t know if the deacon was still speaking but he felt hands touching him, patting his back, rubbing his arm; he didn’t know who it was and he was too ashamed to look. When he regained control, he apologised to whoever was there but he couldn’t look up. He pulled away and hurried out of the crypt, back to the White Bear and went straight up to his room. He wasn’t hungry, he didn’t want a drink. He kicked off his shoes and crawled into bed. He curled himself into a ball, shaking.

  Only in the morning, waking fully clothed under the covers he didn’t remember pulling over himself, did he realise he’d slept the whole night through.

  It is impossible to go through all the challenges faced by or limitations placed on the freedom of movement of ships. What makes the ensuing limitations or attempted restrictions on the freedom of movement so problematic is that they are undertaken multilaterally, by involving competent international organisations, as well as unilaterally or bilaterally. Such limitations are not easy to harmonise since they have different legal bases.

  Furthermore, it is their cumulative impact on the freedom of navigation/right of innocent passage/transit passage which should be cause for concern as regards the legal framework established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

  The legal situation in respect of international straits raises particular problems, given the enhanced status of international navigation.

  Whether ships carrying weapons of mass destruction which are not targeted against a particular State may be interdicted on the high seas by warships of another State without the consent of the flag State concerned is a matter of controversy. The exclusive jurisdictional relationship between a flag State and one of its vessels on the high seas is well-rooted in customary international law.

  Judge Rüdiger Wolfrum

  President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea

  8 January 2008

  32

  ‘I’ve been seeing Tom,’ Sean said to Jenny Flanders, before he’d even sat down. After his full night’s sleep, he had considered cancelling, but it felt right to keep the appointment. The end was in sight and this was part of the process of closure. She’d done some tidying since his last visit – the windows were sparkling clean and he could actually see the Victoria and Albert Museum in the distance. The rugs were brighter, and the cardboard boxes were gone – he felt relieved, as if a difficult decision had been made. So she was staying. She was all in beige again and he wondered if she had several copies of the outfit.

  ‘No flowers today?’ Some indistinct jade thing sat where the rude tulips had sprawled. ‘I bought some afterwards, the same kind.’

  She looked. ‘Oh, the parrot tulips. They’re seasonal,’ she said. ‘Very brief.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory.’

  She smiled but did not speak. Suddenly he was anxious again. He’d come prepared to talk, but now he changed his mind. He kept his eyes on the jade thing. Bad feelings fluttered inside him like moths.

  ‘You’re not my friend, ar
e you? I’m just paying you to listen to me.’

  ‘That’s right. But I still want to help you.’

  ‘Then help me.’ Sean felt himself slipping again, he heard himself talking, he hadn’t even realised he had begun, but Jenny Flanders sat there with her pale eyes on him, nodding as he told her about the walrus wife in a film he’d seen who stayed to watch her mate be butchered on the ice, and how he would never have this kind of love with Martine, how he wasn’t sure he even liked Martine, how Midgard Lodge was a dangerous place, with a maelstrom in the fjord now, new since the calving that brought out Tom’s body, and how it wasn’t true he was all crushed and purple, Tom still felt alive, he still couldn’t quite believe he was dead, he didn’t know what it was going to take if the funeral hadn’t done it—

  Sean had the sense of tipping out a great bag of rubbish on her sitting room floor. A great huge mess for her to sift through with her pals Jung or Freud or whoever she thought made sense of things. But Jenny Flanders just sat quietly. The rumble of traffic drifted in from the Cromwell Road. His fingers started burning. Soon it would be time to go to the Carrington.

  ‘Why do you say Midgard Lodge is dangerous?’

  ‘The Arctic is dangerous.’ He went to the window. Outside, the plane tree leaves were still green, and people wore shirtsleeves and light dresses. ‘It’s all wrong. It’s nearly Halloween but it’s like summer. Any second we’ll start hearing White Christmas, and we’re never going to see another one of those at this latitude.’ He came away from the window. ‘No one wants to face the truth.’

  ‘You said you’ve been seeing Tom.’ There was a stillness to her, as if she were a statue, or a paralysed oracle. For some reason, Sean thought of Ursula Osman: agile and dusty and penetrating.

  ‘Do other people with PTSD … have what I have? Do they … see things?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And how do you treat them?’

  ‘We start like this. Talking. It’s a painful process.’

  Sean stared out. He knew Ruth Mott was a friend again, despite what he had told Sawbridge about her. In the crypt, she had held him as only a true friend could. He was flooded with conviction he must make some reparation to her. He would ask her – humbly, not as a rich patron – if he could fund her to start her research again.

  ‘You’re smiling.’ Her face reflected it.

  ‘I was just thinking … maybe I’ve got some things wrong.’ Sean felt slightly dizzy at the thought. ‘Midgard was supposed to be a good thing, but Tom died there. And it feels like … it’s getting out of my control – but I’m the CEO.’ He felt his heart thumping, like it had when he saw the bear. ‘Can you give me something to take, for anxiety?’

  ‘You would have to see a medical doctor. I’m just a PhD, but I can refer.’

  Sean felt the kayak swinging in the current. He put both hands down on the armchair to steady himself. He did not remember coming back from the window. He felt the bear’s eyes on him, intelligent and intimate.

  ‘I saw this bear. On the glacier. He was calculating how he could get to me, he wanted to eat me.’ He put his hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat under his ribs. ‘I imagine it. And at night I hear my blood in my ears. When Sawbridge first told me about you and suggested I might have it, PTSD, I thought he was joking. Do other people get that pumping sound? It’s like bass coming through the wall. The vibration makes you feel sick.’

  ‘Do you feel sick now?’

  ‘Not physically. But what happened with Tom did something bad to me too.’ The words fly round the room on their own. What happened with Tom.

  Jenny Flanders re-crossed her legs, and he saw her inner thighs, pale and plump. He looked away. ‘Nothing can bring him back. It’s all over tomorrow morning. It’s either climate change that made the cave fall in, in which case the whole world’s to blame, or it was Ruth Mott keeping him up all night so that he was too tired to save himself. I got a full night’s sleep and I survived. That’s what it can come down to, a night’s sleep. I was able to hang on and get out. But Tom slipped. He couldn’t hang on.’

  Jenny Flanders looked at him with the same kind expression. Sean realised his right hand was clamped in his left armpit, and his fingers were burning. He pulled it out. His eyes fell on the jade Buddha.

  ‘You’re not a Buddhist, are you?’ he said again. ‘It’s just decoration.’

  ‘That seems rather important to you.’

  ‘It’s like you’re pretending to be someone you’re not.’

  ‘Me?’

  Sean stared at the jade. The beautiful blue-green colour of the meltwater lakes, on the Midgard glacier. The seeping water, undermining everything. The colour of danger.

  He got up. Jenny Flanders glanced at her watch.

  ‘We still have some time.’

  ‘No. We don’t.’

  ‘May I ask why you suddenly feel you have to go?’

  He looked at her. ‘Instinct.’

  Only when he had pulled the big black front door shut behind him, did he breathe more deeply. One more day and it was over, and he and Martine – he winced at what he’d said about her in there – they could go somewhere, into nature, far from people. He wasn’t sure if he meant it, that he didn’t like her – or that it was even necessary to like the person you were with, all the time. He was exhausted, that was what it was, he needed to rest, and they could do that together, and then see.

  Standing at her first-floor window, Jenny Flanders watched him go, then dialled a number. Two miles away in a small, unfavoured Whitehall office, Rupert Parch answered, and listened with interest.

  In Svalbard on Christmas Day in 1921, trapper Georg Nilsen went out to visit the German research station at Kvadehuken. When he failed to arrive, two of the station members went out searching for him, but they too disappeared, their bodies not found until June 1922. Later that summer the German station master took his own life.

  In 1965, the remains of a skeleton and a rifle were found – a cartridge jammed in its chamber. People believe that it was Georg Nilsen and his gun, and that he probably died when he met a polar bear, took aim and fired, but the bullet stuck. They speculate how he must have felt, as the bear came toward him, and killed him instead. They are careful to keep their weapons in full working order, but accidents still occur.

  The jammed rifle is now in the Svalbard Museum.

  As told to the author, Svalbard 2013

  33

  Sean’s taxi pulled up under the illuminated portico of the Carrington. The smell of the flowers grew thicker as he went to find Martine in the ballroom. Everything was black and white with accents of gold, conservative elegance to reassure the donors. He looked at the big board of placement on the easel by the door, then decided he did not care who sat where. He felt in his pocket for the speech cards and then remembered he had left them on the dresser. It didn’t matter, he didn’t need notes. His deepest feelings about Tom were not a performance for this crowd, or the coroner. He’d present the award, say something truthful. Long, short, awkward, eloquent – it didn’t bloody matter. Tom was dead.

  Sean looked about him irritably. Martine was supposed to be here to meet him, or he would not have come this early. He checked his phone – still switched off after his troubling appointment with Jenny Flanders. He turned it back on, that electronic nipple he constantly sucked from.

  ‘Sean – there’s a problem with Midgard. Kingsmith’s in a state.’ Martine was at his side, her face strained. She was in a dress he hadn’t seen before, a column of heavy lime-green silk which draped her small high breasts and dropped in a low V back, showing off her toned musculature and – he admired it dispassionately – boyish arse.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I don’t know, he practically threw me out – he’s got no respect for you if he talks to me like that. One minute we’re having mint tea and planning a diving trip on Brisingamen, the next he gets a call from Danny Long and kicks me out.’

  ‘Out
of where?’

  ‘His suite. Sean, I texted you to say I’d be there; it’s huge, much better to get ready in. You’re not jealous, are you? Are you calling him?’

  Sean didn’t answer, because his phone was on now and he scrolled down the list of calls – nothing from Danny Long, or Midgard, or Terry Bjornsen. Or Kingsmith.

  ‘Shit.’ Martine smoothed her dress, then waved across the room. ‘Darius! I’m so glad you’re first!’ She touched Sean’s arm before she left him. ‘My investors have a stake in Midgard too, so whatever’s going on, I need to know. But no drama.’ Then she clicked into gear, a lithe green flame moving across the room to warm the wallets of the early birds.

  Sean waited for the lift to the tenth-floor suites. He looked at the man in the copper-burnished mirror as he ascended. Good-looking, calm, entitled. Kingsmith did not have crises. He occasionally assisted in them and took his profit. But no one made money constantly, there had to be some reversals. Even for Kingsmith. More than likely, Martine’s hostess stress had made her melodramatic. But Danny Long’s phone went straight to message again.

  He paused outside the door of Kingsmith’s suite. At first there was silence, then he heard the muffled rise and fall of his voice. Sean knew at once by its timbre: Kingsmith was agitated. Not wanting to be caught eavesdropping, he squared his shoulders and pressed the buzzer. Immediately there was silence within. Kingsmith would be padding to the door to look through the spyhole. Then he opened the door, almost completely dressed but for the tie and shoes. He smiled broadly at Sean.

  ‘Hey! Sean boy, you’re through the fire. Come in, have a drink. How’s it looking down there?’

  ‘Battle-ready. They’ve started arriving.’

  ‘What’ll it be?’ As Kingsmith went to the bar, Sean saw the laptop open on the console table. Kingsmith pushed the cover down as he passed, but not before Sean glimpsed the flashing green dots of the AIS shipping location screen.