by Peter Tonkin
But Henri was talking to her. She dragged her attention back to him. ‘... for some kind of shelter. A cave. A deep overhang. Anything.’ The wind battered across the level plain as he spoke, the renewed force of its blast driving home the urgency of his words. She nodded and then hissed as the simple movement tore at the frozen muscles of her neck.
Side by side, they began to follow the cliff foot, looking to the right, exhausted eyes probing the white walls bulging and receding behind the dangerous fringe of icicles. They resembled the flanks of monstrous animals caught behind the crystal bars of some huge cage. The wind boomed and snarled against the surfaces, making strange, disturbing noises as though the monsters were trying to break through to consume them. The ice crystals billowed out on the wind as though giving form to their breath and the wind itself gathered enough force to make the ice bars shiver as though the animals were battering against them. It was more than mere fear of falling ice that made them walk further and further out from the sinister cliff foot.
They were lucky to see the cave at all for it had a narrow opening and seemed to be little more than the moon-shadow of a particularly thick icicle. Ann’s eyes were fastened on the feline flank of the ice, watching fascinated as the combination of their movement and its slow rippling made it seem that the ice was breathing. Her mind was withdrawing from urgent, agonising reality again, but she was still concentrating hard enough to notice that the black band did not move like all the other shadows had done, and its stillness jerked her awake. She speeded up and grabbed Henri. He had pulled her the better part of five metres before he realised she was trying to attract his attention. ‘Oui?’
His face was fine-drawn. Masked as it was by goggles and framed with frozen spikes of fake fur from his hood, it looked other-worldly. In the dead-pale moonlight he looked ghastly, every bit as white as the ice slopes behind them; every bit as terrifying as the frozen-hearted characters from her fairy tale nightmares.
‘There’s an opening, I think ... something ...’
‘Alors! C’est vrais?’
‘Oui. Yes.’
‘Tu es certain?’
‘Yes!’
‘Bien! En avant.’
They turned, side by side, and began to work their way back. Henri was actually stumbling now, in spite of the fact that his skis were still on tight. Ann, uncertain that he had actually recognised her during their conversation, was suddenly struck with worry.
‘Henri!’ she called urgently to him, but her voice was lost beneath the thunder of the wind against the cliff. ‘HENRI!’
He slowed and looked down at her.
‘ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?’ she bellowed.
He shook his head and at first she thought he was saying no, but then she realised he was simply clearing his thoughts.
‘Sure,’ he bellowed back. And the one word, in English, put her mind at rest.
They found the cave with no difficulty and almost ran towards its fragile hope of salvation. The position of that huge icicle, standing like a stalactite outside the crack, firmly bedded in the overhang above, meant that they had to remove their skis to get close to the opening itself, and then they had to remove their backpacks to get in through it. Henri went first. Ann passed in the equipment, and then followed.
The opening was tiny, just large enough for her to squeeze through, and she wondered how on earth Henri had got in at all. The moon shone directly through the portal and, disturbingly, through the south-facing wall in which it stood, as though the whole wall was made of thick glass. Outlined against the white glow of it, the skis and poles stood above the black bulks of the backpacks. There was not much light in here, but when she took her goggles off, she could see.
Beyond the restricting portal the cave opened out into quite a substantial little room. There was just enough height for them to stand erect and more than enough floor space for them to lie down. The walls were a pale glimmer all around them and the whole aspect of the place was what Ann imagined the inside of a freezer must be like. But out of the wind, it was relatively warm and, for all that it was made of water, it was dry. The floor was covered in a thick drift of ice crystals and the first thing they did was to push them bodily across to the narrow opening and block it as far as they were able. Here the proximity of the icicle proved a blessing for it broke the force of the wind and gave their makeshift sand wall a solid backing which held it firmly until they were satisfied they had excluded all the draughts they could.
They cleared a level area in the middle of the floor which was about the right size and shape to be a double bed. The two of them knelt on either side of it, looking speculatively across at each other, consumed by an almost uncontrollable urge to sleep. ‘We can’t just lie down fully clothed,’ said Henri. ‘We’d freeze, either tonight or in the morning when we get out again. We have to get our clothes off and make a bed.’
‘But how?’
‘Do what I do.’
He reached across and pulled one backpack across to his knees, pulled off his mittens with his teeth to reveal a pair of woollen gloves beneath and tore it open. Out of it he pulled a silver thermal sheet about six feet by six, the sort of thing designed to be wrapped round the shoulders of anyone likely to lose too much heat after running a marathon or getting lost on an iceberg. He spread it out on the ground while she was still tugging an identical piece free of her backpack.
‘Leave that a moment,’ he ordered, and began to take off his parka. She obeyed and began to follow suit without a second thought. After all they had been through together, it couldn’t possibly be some kind of seduction. Although now she thought of it, if Henri still had the energy after the terrors and exertions of the day, then maybe he deserved a little kindness.
The two parkas were laid out on the floor on top of the silver blanket, side by side, lining upwards. Then Henri was sitting clumsily, trying to get his boots unlaced without taking his woollen gloves off. Unexpectedly, he stopped and sat for an instant. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘Before we go any further, we’d better think ahead a little. I need to use the john. How about you?’
The light was, perhaps fortunately, not quite bright enough to reveal her vivid, schoolgirl blush. ‘Yes, I do too,’ she admitted. It had been worrying her increasingly.
‘Okay. I’ll go first. Up at the back of the cave. Then I’ll do some more work on this bed while you follow suit.’ He heaved himself up and walked off. A moment or two after he had vanished there was a thump and a grunt of pain. When she called his name there was no reply, but a sound like a distant waterfall assured her he was still all right.
The wait was brief. ‘The back of the cave shelves down pretty sharply,’ he warned. ‘Mind your head.’
‘And my feet, by the sound of things,’ she quipped tightly.
‘No. It’ll be frozen solid by now,’ he countered. ‘You know the old joke about Eskimos pissing ice cubes.’
The back of the cave was as low as he had described. She knelt to loosen her clothing, then turned onto all fours before rocking back carefully into a squat. The combination of Henri’s proximity and the incredible cold made things very difficult for her, but the thought of waiting until the cheeks of her bottom got frostbitten finally spurred her into action. She returned to the makeshift bed to find him still wrestling with his laces.
As soon as the boots were off, he tore off his thermal trousers. He shook them and dusted them dry, then folded them over to extend the parkas into a soft, waterproof mattress measuring more than six feet by four. The two Puffas went at the head end as pillows, stuffed with their heavy jeans. They tore off outer pullovers and placed them down at the foot end as extra protection against frostbite. They worked fast and the movement kept the chill at bay in spite of the fact that they were very lightly dressed now. He wore skin-tight white thermal long johns and vest under a brushed cotton lumberjack’s shirt with woollen socks and gloves. Her outfit was identical except that she wore a skin-tight roll-necked pullover instead of a
shirt. Her emergency beacon hung round her neck and swung as she moved, broadcasting its message unceasingly to a deaf, uncaring world.
‘Get your thermal blanket out and put it on top,’ he ordered. She was quick to obey and equally quick to throw it over the increasingly inviting-looking bed.
‘Get under,’ he directed and she rolled under the silver blanket. He rose above her and moved with the deft swing of a fisherman with a net. The canvas of the small tent he had been carrying spread over her to form a second, waterproof, upper layer. She folded the whole lot back and he slid under beside her.
‘What about the emergency beacon?’ she asked.
‘Turn it off. No one’s likely to come looking for us tonight. We may need it tomorrow. Keep wearing it, though. The warmth of our bodies will help preserve the batteries.’ She obeyed and they lay side by side for an instant. The ice beneath was incredibly hard. She could feel the chill of it burning through the thin layer of clothing beneath them. I’m never going to be able to sleep like this, she thought.
Then his firm, assured hands rolled her over and gathered her to him. One solid thigh slid between hers and his arms wrapped round her, pressing her to him.
She stiffened with suspicion and he chuckled. ‘Nothing personal,’ he said, ‘but I think you’re flattering both of us, honey. This is for body warmth. Nothing more.’
That was the last thing either of them said and as the warmth between them did indeed begin to build, Ann began to drift off into an exhausted doze, sleep kept at bay only by the gnawing hunger in her belly.
Outside, the wind rumbled and thundered. Beneath and all around, the ice grumbled and groaned as though the massive berg were made up of small parts all straining against each other, clashing and rumbling in a bid to break free. Deep in subterranean chambers, air moved with bass rumblings as the water which inhabited the greatest part of the berg forced it in and out of caverns and galleries. Once again the image of prehistoric animals too lightly caged occurred to her and adrenaline joined hunger to keep her wakeful. Her imagination gave a throat to each mysterious, threatening sound, and a body to each throat, the like of which had not been seen on earth since before humankind first learned to walk erect.
*
She sprang awake some time later. The moonlight had gone but the gently lucent wall at the end of the cave revealed great balls of powerful brightness which it took her a moment to recognise as stars. The night was electrically still, as though frozen in an instant before some terrible cataclysm. The cold was enormous, it had substance and weight. Only the puny warmth kindled by the intertwining of her body with Henri’s kept frigid death at bay. But it was not the cold which had awoken her. It was Henri, talking in his sleep.
Several things struck her at once. First, it came as some surprise to discover that he thought, and dreamed, in French. He had a French name, but so did many Canadians. He spoke in a North American English drawl, placeless but unmistakable, and it had never occurred to her that he thought in any other language. She should have been warned, she supposed, when he lapsed into French at the edge of exhaustion earlier.
She was next struck by a sense of mild frustration. Her own French was non-existent. She spoke Italian, but that was all. She found his throaty mumbling, however, almost erotic. Unconsciously, still close to sleep, she stirred against him. Her movement somehow made his dream more vivid and his voice became louder still, echoing strangely in that tiny cave of ice. He was mumbling something about someone called John. Ann half-listened, her mind still on the edge of a fleshly fantasy. She had dreamed of this moment herself, after all. The intertwining of their bodies was like something out of one of those dreams. The fact that they had reached such intimacy innocent of any actual wrongdoing allowed her mind extra freedom, somehow, though lurking powerfully at the back of it was the solid realisation of the danger of their position and the stupidity of indulging something so childish so close to the very real threat of death. She pressed herself against the solid, sculpted contours of his body, the thermal underwear sliding over her skin like warm oil. She wriggled until the uncomfortable lump of the emergency beacon had slid round under her arm. Trapped against their torsos, the points of her breasts were like two tingling pebbles.
Then it occurred to her that if he was dreaming about someone called John, things between them might get very complicated indeed. She thought back to his declaration just before Captain Black had interrupted their tête-à-tête. She had assumed he was talking about another woman then, but maybe not. And, now she came to think about it, maybe he hadn’t even said John at all. His accent was thick and he had been mumbling. He could have been saying Don. Or Sean. Or even Stone.
She just could not think of a woman’s name which sounded like the name he had said.
‘Are you awake?’ His voice came as such a surprise that it made her flinch with shock. No use dissembling after that.
‘Yes. Just this minute come to. Any idea of the time?’
He lifted his hand. A spike of breathtaking cold drove down her back under the blanket. ‘Six. Time to go. Sounds as though the wind’s dropped at any rate.’
‘I never thought we’d make it through the night.’
He grunted. ‘I wondered myself.’ His voice was distant and Ann suspected his mind was still preoccupied with John.
‘You need to use the john?’ he asked.
She flinched with surprise at his immediate echo of the name he had spoken in his dream, then tried to cover up with levity. ‘Are you kidding? I haven’t had anything to eat or drink for eighteen hours, why on earth should I need to use the john?’
‘That’s good,’ he observed dryly. ‘We seem to have stepped out without any toilet paper in any case. Taking a dump would have been something of a challenge.’
‘Don’t. I don’t even want to think about it.’
‘Okay. Let’s get dressed and go. It’s going to be hard and dangerous even if the weather stays on our side.’
They dressed like children on a chilly morning, pulling their clothing in under the blankets and wrestling their numb, cramped limbs into recalcitrant cloth. It was surprisingly exhausting, and Ann realised with stunning poignancy that she, at least, was growing physically weaker quite quickly. Thank God Henri had had the foresight to pack all their spare clothing into makeshift pillows and feet warmers: at least it was fairly warm and relatively easy to handle. The effort of getting into a pair of frozen jeans, and the shock of the icy cloth, would have killed her on the spot. She had been joking about their lack of nourishment, but she was realising very quickly with each new effort just how hungry and thirsty she actually was. How much the mechanism of her body really did need some solid fuel for both heat and energy. She even thought wistfully about massive, blood-rare T-bone steaks. His voice broke into her thoughts reminding her to switch on the emergency beacon round her neck before she covered it with clothing.
At last they had donned their parkas and stood looking down at the jumble of canvas and silver on the floor. ‘Should we pack all this away in our backpacks in case we need it again tonight?’ she asked.
When he looked across at her, his face was masked by impenetrable shadow but the tone in his voice told her enough of what the expression would have been. It was every bit as cold as everything else in this Godforsaken place. ‘No. We’ll never need these again, no matter what happens. If we haven’t got back to the others by tonight, then we’re never going back. We’ll sure as hell be in no position to pitch camp and snuggle down.’
‘We’d better get started, then.’
The atmosphere outside crackled with electric tension. The air was preternaturally clear and calm. The stars were huge, hanging low above them like crystal grapes. The sky seemed so close that the interstellar spaces seemed to glow with the reflection of galaxies too distant to be seen and the silent immensity of it was overwhelming. The only sound was the snap of their boots clicking into their ski bindings, a sound as loud as the cocking of a pair of guns, t
hen the whisper of the waxed wood shushing over the solid ice.
They struck back along the route they had come. Time played tricks on them. Yesterday it had seemed far enough coming up here through the storm, but now it seemed further going back through that unnatural stillness. Ann calculated grimly that this was just more evidence of their rapidly deteriorating state. Yesterday conditions had been bad but they had been strong; now conditions were nearly perfect but they were much weaker. Yesterday it had been possible to switch off and retreat far inside herself, following Henri like an automaton. Today she was too hungry and thirsty to do that. And anyway, if they approached the cliffs in the same way as they had approached the mountains, they would probably walk straight over the edge. Wakefulness was all-important, but it made time drag agonisingly.
Long before they reached the cliff edge, Ann found herself watching a shadow gathering in front of her and she soon realised that it was her own shadow. It took a little longer for her to work out that a shadow in front of her must mean that there was light gathering behind her. The realisation that the sky behind her was growing rapidly lighter stopped her dead in her tracks. The only cause of light she could think of was the dawn. And if dawn was breaking behind her then they were in very bad trouble for they must be walking west instead of south.
‘Henri,’ she said. Her voice was hoarse for her throat was dry, and she spoke in little more than a whisper, but the word in the silence was as loud as a shout. He stopped and together they turned to look behind themselves.