by Jeremy Page
He threw the remainder of the bloater over the side and wiped his hands across the front of his jacket.
‘Look at the water,’ he said. ‘The snow’s not melting in the sea. Them grains is the ice crystals that are quite happy to raft.’
‘Yes, I see. It’s thicker.’
‘Aye.’
A small flock of birds flew below us, their wings beating in great haste in groups of threes and fives, hurrying northwards to an empty horizon.
‘Razorbills,’ I said.
‘Ah, is that right? Do you know all the names?’
‘Most of them. The razorbill is easy to identify—the beak is distinctive, and if they have a good hunt, they will hang the fish from the sides of the beak—like gentlemen with beards.’
‘I was told you’re looking for a dead bird.’
‘An extinct bird.’
‘If it’s extinct, then it can’t be found, sir.’
‘It seems so.’
‘I like that,’ he said, pointing to the woollen smock I was wearing.
‘Thank you, it’s a gansey I had knitted in Sheringham, in Norfolk. All the fishermen from that port wear them. It has a pattern here, see, of hailstones and lightning in the weave.’
‘I see ’em,’ he replied. ‘I have this,’ he added, showing me a tattoo on his forearm of a Celtic cross. ‘Same thing.’
‘How so?’
‘Same purpose. So they knows our bodies if we drown,’ he said, laughing.
After he’d gone, I studied the horizon closely, suspecting any gradual shifts in the quality of light to be an indication of ice. Instead of wonder, I felt that we were approaching a frontier to endlessness. A border where the world was rubbed away, and in its place was nothing but a wide, blank fear.
I was still there when Edward Bletchley sought me out.
‘Ah, Eliot,’ he said. ‘Sorry about yesterday. I was confused and had only just awoken.’ He was nervous. ‘My cousin is a fragile person, you must understand. She is still quite ill and must not become excited.’
‘She asked me to sketch her likeness,’ I explained.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, impatiently, ‘but she is …’ He trailed off. ‘Do you think her an odd person?’
‘In what way?’
‘I was considering it this morning. She is very beautiful, that is certain. But quite odd, don’t you think?’
‘I think she is very sensitive.’
‘She feels she has a connection with you, Eliot. Quite strange: you hardly know each other.’
I felt cautious. ‘I am flattered that she feels that way, but you are quite right. I hardly know her.’
‘Of course, I know her better than anyone. When we were children our families kept us apart. I was’—he adopted a proud whisper—‘considered a bad influence.’ He tapped his temple, as if asking me to keep it a secret. ‘You know what we used to do? I bet you don’t—we used to take to our beds, at prearranged times, and we would communicate with each other.’ He laughed, manically. ‘I know, it sounds crazy, but our minds would talk. Yes, she is skilled.’ He sighed, examining his fingers, looking blithe and relieved.
‘Yet she is beautiful,’ he repeated, almost talking to himself now. ‘Quite a rare beauty.’
From the top of the mainmast, a shout was heard: ‘The ice, captain!’
Bletchley sprang up, excited as a young foal. ‘Tremendous! Did you hear that! We’ve spotted the ice!’ He was almost too giddy to contain himself, and for a second I thought he might tip himself over the side. He straightened his jacket, as if expecting a visit from an aunt and, as if not knowing what else to do, actually polished his shoes against the backs of his trousers. He looked out to sea, rubbing his hands.
‘But where the devil is it?’ he asked, loudly, to no one in particular. Finally, he looked back at me, seeing that I was amused and a little bewildered by him.
‘Forget what I was just saying, before,’ he said, grandly. ‘I was a little carried away.’
French and Captain Sykes were on deck, studying the changes in weather. A bucket had been lowered over the side, containing a thermometer, and when they brought it back on deck Sykes beckoned me over to have a look.
‘You will smell the ice, soon,’ French said, standing above me.
‘If only these damned clouds would leave us, then we could take our sighting,’ Sykes muttered, staring up at the masts. ‘Run the log-line,’ he ordered.
Wishing to see the ice for himself, Sykes began the long climb to the top of the mainmast, moving rigidly and purposefully, one hand above the other, his little booted feet stepping stiffly in the rope holds. He resembled a beetle climbing broad-backed up the wavering length of a stem, with little speed or pleasure. He soon disappeared into the maze of the rigging, the blocks and pulleys, knots, cleats and carcasses of meat that hung around him.
He was there for a long time, standing inside the barrel on top of the mainmast, turning his telescope this way and that. It must have been cold up there, for he kept stamping his feet like a woodcock. When he descended, he did it rather more swiftly, with that light-footed walk of his inching along the yardarms, inspecting the knots and fixings of the main sail. Finally he returned to the deck, jumping off the rail and landing with surprising grace. He walked swiftly to me, with a wink in his eye.
‘Do you have the inclination for a climb, Mr Saxby?’ he asked, not at all out of breath. He pointed at the lookout above. ‘If you would like to see the ice, then you must climb for it.’ He stepped closer, lowering his voice, conspiratorially. ‘I trust you with your footing rather more than I do Mr Bletchley, so you might notice I’m not asking him. I don’t particularly want my passengers falling onto my deck.’
‘I have no wish to fall on your deck, either, sir.’
‘Good, so you will climb, then,’ he asserted.
‘I will?’
‘Of course, man.’
‘Is it safe?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘It is safe. It is only men who are not safe. If you’re a fool, you will drop.’
By the persistence of his expression I realised this was no casual invitation, but the setting of some form of test.
‘Well then, yes, of course, captain,’ I replied, firmly. ‘I would like to see what you have hidden in that barrel of yours up there.’
He laughed, satisfied. ‘Good man. The crew will teach you the ropes. Take my coat and hat.’
With little ceremony he placed his hat on my head and handed me the coat, pointing me towards two of the crew who were already waiting, with what I perceived to be an executioner’s welcome.
‘So, the captain’s putting you up the mast?’ one of them said. He was smoking a clay pipe, but the pipe had no stem, so the bowl was almost touching his lips. ‘How are you with heights?’
I wasn’t sure how to answer—I felt enrolled into a decision I had had little part in making. I noticed the captain had wandered off, amused. ‘If you think you might faint, do this,’ the man continued, demonstrating how to thrust an arm through the web of rigging and quickly make two twists of the rope either side of the elbow. ‘I’ll see you do it, and come up.’
‘Thank you,’ I answered. ‘But how will I know if I’m going to faint?’
He frowned, sucking on his pipe.
‘Tell me,’ I asked him, ‘your pipe has no stem—do you burn your tongue?’
‘Not much, sir,’ he grinned, ‘but it scalds the cheek a little.’
‘Do you not have another?’
He shrugged, unconcerned. I believe I noticed a blackening at the end of his nose, where the skin was sooty.
Above me, the masthead looked unbearably high. The barrel swayed perilously up there. But the first part of the climb was straightforward—up tapered rigging to the point where it intersected with the first yardarm. A slated platform with a simple balustrade was there; all very achievable, I thought. But when I stepped onto the rail and held the ropes, I was shocked to see that the rigging was also a slidin
g plane leading directly into the sea. Beneath my feet was nothing but a foaming current of waves as they ran by the ship.
With little alternative, I began to climb, remembering how the small-footed captain had done it. But where I’d expected the rope to have a rough grip, I discovered the tarring was actually worn smooth and difficult to hold. It was wet, too, and in places I had the sensation of my boots slipping on the glassy windings of the manila.
‘How do you feel?’ someone said, below.
‘The rope is slippery.’
The man laughed. ‘We’ll have you up there in a frost rime!’
I reached the first junction, where the rigging joined into a tightly wound ladder fixed to the slats of the platform. I held the mast firmly, looking at the scars left by the carpenter’s adze, and more cracks in the wood than I wanted to see.
Above me, the next section of rope ladder was far steeper, running up vertically beside the mast. Quickly I climbed behind the panel of the mainsail. It was pushed out, filled with air beyond my reach, but from its edges I heard the soft flapping of canvas as the breeze slipped around its corners. It seemed a living thing, with a wide skin across which the air rippled and channelled in a thousand conflicting tensions, creating a soft whir of sound. There was something of the pregnant form about it, a broad smooth belly behind which life was pulsing and a heart was beating. A draught sucked at my jacket, easing me gently this way and that as the wind moved the sail—a motion I had not anticipated. It toyed with me, aiding in one instant and knocking me the next, as a cat might play with a mouse. The sail filled then subsided, the buntlines pattering on the canvas like rain.
Despite the chilliness of the air I smelt the warming scent of canvas and was reminded instantly of boat sheds in East Anglia. Long dark sheds, each with a church-like serenity, with sails rolled and bound in rope, like bodies in shrouds. Beyond them, a glimpse of open estuary through a doorway passing by in brilliant sunlight. Each of those sails would be laid out on a trestle table, and tied with the same complicated knots that I noticed as I climbed further.
Above me the captain’s barrel was perched on its stick, as awkward as an oak apple, bound with rope and weather-stained. I noticed a new breeze around me, carving into sections as it divided between the sails, and I listened to the ropes thrumming with air. Each one vanished in a tightly curving plunge towards its fixing on the deck. An invitation to fall. I was afraid to touch anything, lest it spin away or unwind or hurl me into the sea—the ropes capable of unknotting in a thousand unexpected ways. At this height, the fixed rigging had not been attended to so frequently, and the footholds sagged when my foot touched them, bringing other lines towards me and giving the impression that this part of the mast was as soft as a warm candle. All was malleable where it should be rigid. I closed my eyes. Sounds I had heard on deck—the eerie shrill wind or the low moaning I’d heard from my cabin at night, the soothing sighs of ropes and canvas, the release and hold of iron fixings, or the creak of the mast, stretching like the tree it once was—these sounds surrounded me, explaining their origin.
The wind plucked at my clothes from several directions while, all around me, the empty chasm of air was overwhelming. It was the first moment that I truly looked out, away from the paraphernalia of ropes and clew lines, of bunts and footholds and bolsters, to a vast and empty ocean that stretched unbroken for as far as could be seen.
The mast swayed gradually to and fro, swinging its point from one side to another so that at one moment I saw the slated angles of the deck gliding beneath me, at another the cruel iron surface of the water. I concentrated on the small details and fixings that were the only things that held me: the nail heads hammered into the wood, the bends of the rope as they threaded through a simple iron ring, the carpenter’s chisel marks.
The last few feet were a climb of several metal rungs hammered directly into the wood. Upon the deck, the mast was as broad as a man’s shoulders, but here, it was a slender tree, a post that could whip and quiver in the wind. I could easily reach an arm round it. I grabbed the cold iron rungs grimly, feeling I had truly left the ship behind, that I was now hanging above it on a single point of wood.
Once inside the barrel, I braced myself while my toes gripped its thin rim, below which was a dizzying view of the deck. I saw the crewman peering up at me, his body foreshortened, a smile on his face. With immense satisfaction I let the floor fall back into position and I cowered, shaking and taking breath. As I peered from the top of the barrel the air was vast and thin; with its keen freshness, it wasn’t the same air that passed over the deck. A steady wind poured towards me, undivided by the rigging or sails—a wind that had never before met an obstacle of any kind. There was a new scent to it, of coldness, perhaps a hint of the icy world we were drawing near to. These tall trees stood in an Arctic wind, overhanging the ocean with open arms.
The captain’s telescope was slotted into a canvas tube, and above the rim of the barrel was a circular metal rail, upon which he rested it to gain a steady view. In this way, I scanned the horizon, but could see only distant miles of dreary and poorly defined ocean. I persisted, pulling and turning the telescope across its various sections, until I saw a startling sight: dark jagged waves, peaking and jostling in a crowded cataract. It was inexplicable, as if the sea at that point were racing in a torrent. Then I saw it, beyond the waves, a sudden unexpected whiteness as hard and flat as quartz. It was the ice sheet, that stretched for a thousand miles beyond, but which looked from this angle as thin as paper. Against its blunt edge, the waves slammed ceaselessly and with great fury. The worlds of ocean and ice were meeting in a frontier of rage, as if the Earth had torn in two along this line. This was a place, if there ever was a place, where you could disappear.
9
I JOLTED AWAKE, CONVINCED the ship was sinking. Men were running across the deck just as, below me, giant weights seemed to be moving around within the hull. We will be drowned, I thought, imagining reefs had torn a hole into the ship. I pictured a dark rush of icy water as thick and curled as ropes pouring in, the iron-black Arctic sea filling the hold, rising quietly and unstoppably until it welled through the hatches.
My mind in disarray, I pulled the curtain from the porthole and was halted by an astonishing sight: a few feet away was the edge of the ice sheet, almost touching the ship. I stared in disbelief. How could that violent border I’d seen the day before be in such quiet proximity now?
From on deck, where the men had arranged stores and sledges and were busily hanging fenders from the rail, the view across the ice was incredible. A low sun shone over the sheet, reflecting from the ice with doubled strength. The ship’s woodwork took on a luminescence I had never seen before: in such white brightness the deck appeared freshly dried and salted, whereas the masts appeared waxed and glassy, with a reddish tinge. The metal hoops and fixings attached to them looked unusually hard and cold. The crew, also, were lit by a new intensity—the blue of their work clothes was suddenly the deep fathomless hue of the Arctic sea, and their hands looked pale and clean as they worked at their tasks. They seemed unreal, a painting in too-vivid colours, and almost as quiet and still, apart from the smoke from their clay pipes, which rose in soft floury curls.
‘When did this happen?’ I asked Simao, who was pouring out morning coffee from a large iron kettle.
‘About four,’ he replied. ‘The captain tell the men to fix the ropes to the ice.’ He pointed to the long hawsers fore and aft that had been tied to the floe, about forty feet in.
‘It’s quite unreal,’ I said, seeing my breath plume in front of me. ‘And it is very cold!’
‘Mr Talbot is looking for you. He is busy to organise the hunting party, he would like to know if you attend.’
‘Hunting for what?’
‘Seal,’ he replied, pointing vaguely at the edge of the floe with the spout of the kettle. In that direction, I saw nothing but miles of hard flat ice. It was difficult not to view it as a great danger, to think that t
he ship was in a catastrophic situation. The ice sheet looked highly untrustworthy. Small pools and grey rivulets lay in patches across its surface, giving it a porous, misleading firmness, and large cracks snaked in from the sea, some as long as several hundred feet. Parts of the front edge had risen, sharp and cruel as ploughshares.
‘Is this … ordinary?’ I asked. ‘For the ship to be so close?’ In the gap between the ship and the floe, the seawater glinted with the impenetrability of metal as it vanished below the ice.
Simao looked back, friendly. In this light his face was older than I knew it to be, with many lines either side of his eyes. His hair was slicked back with oil, and it glowed as dark and bright as a wet otter. ‘Is very ordinary, sir,’ he replied.
Soon enough, Edward Bletchley appeared on deck, wearing a fox-fur hat that covered his ears and tied beneath his chin, carrying his guns towards one of the sledges. The hat was an elaborate construction, and actually had a fox’s tail hanging down the back of Bletchley’s neck, resting on his shoulders. Talbot was with him, insisting the guns must be handed to the men so they could stow them securely. Talbot looked harried by Bletchley’s impatience. I went to the stern, seeking privacy, knowing that otherwise I would be cajoled into a hunting party I had little enthusiasm for joining. The presence of the ice worried me deeply; I felt the need to resolve an issue I hadn’t quite understood. Here was the endlessness Clara had talked of, right at our front door, larger, more featureless, more cruelly void of life than I had ever imagined. The sunlight poured across it with a burning ferocity, a glare that was punishing and inviting in equal measure. It was pure, distilled, without colour, unlike the soft glow of the English sun. Surely this was a light that could shine right through you, illuminating every part of your soul and leaving you with nothing to conceal.
I was thinking this way when Clara approached me, as if my worry had sought her company. Our recent conversation, about the ice sheet and its gateway to a vanishing, was almost a third person between us, and needed to be acknowledged. But she was more curious about its presence than anxious, squinting into the light and appearing quite composed.