by Jeremy Page
‘You are trembling,’ she whispered.
I nodded, unable to speak. I was thirty-two years old, but without any sensual knowledge or experience of women. I felt completely at a loss.
‘You may hold me,’ she said, quietly. The cabin was unlit, and her eyes were two perfect holes in front of me, without expression. I smelt her breath mingling with the perfume of her hair. This was everything I had dreamt of, to have Celeste this close, to call her mine. I placed a nervous hand upon her waist.
‘This is perfect, Eliot,’ she said. ‘You make me feel like a child again. Edward and I used to get into bed together and hold each other. We would pretend we were married—sometimes we would put the blankets over our heads and imagine we would never be found.’
My hand felt awkward and heavy upon her side. I tried to brace it with my elbow, not wanting to remove it, but afraid of keeping it there, also.
‘Have I said something wrong?’ she asked. ‘Is it because I mentioned Edward?’
‘No,’ I replied, ‘of course not.’
‘I don’t want to upset you. We don’t have to talk, not if you don’t wish to.’
‘But I want to know everything about you.’
‘Just hold me,’ she said.
‘Like this?’
‘Do you ever wonder whether moments such as these are really happening?’ she asked. ‘It feels as though I’m dreaming this.’ She stared quietly at me. ‘Pinch me,’ she said.
‘Pinch you?’
‘So I know this is real.’
I hesitated. My hand felt hot on her waist.
‘On my leg,’ she urged.
‘Why?’
‘To know this is not a dream.’
I moved my hand, full of doubt, to the soft length of her dress and the leg beneath. I pinched her.
‘Harder,’ she whispered.
‘No.’
She looked entirely lost. I pinched her again, more firmly. She winced, taking a sharp breath. Then her mouth relaxed and she smiled, gratefully.
‘We’re not dreaming.’ She paused, watching me. ‘Thank you for all that you told me, earlier.’
‘I should have told you before.’
‘But let us not talk about the past. Not now.’
I nodded, obedient to her lead. But I felt nervous, unable to move, afraid I might be indecisive, afraid I might start to shake.
‘Eliot, you must breathe deeply,’ she whispered. ‘That’s right. Now, let the breath out, it will calm you.’
I took a second slow intake, before releasing it. And as I did so I felt her bend towards me.
‘Shall I tell you where to touch me?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Here.’ She took my hand and guided it among the pleats of her dress. I felt the soft flat texture of the silk, in complicated arrangements of hems and folds, then the touch of her skin beneath—and a single quiver jumping from the tips of my fingers to her body.
‘I will show you what to do,’ she said. I believe she said it, because I felt I was drifting towards her, crashing with softness against her and feeling her roll into me. I noticed her hair laid across the pillow, like a dark stain spreading through water. I stopped, afraid, momentarily haunted.
‘Don’t lose heart,’ she whispered. Emboldened, I felt a strength in my arms and across my shoulders, a completeness of spirit and courage that ran down my spine.
‘This?’ I said.
But she seemed already beyond me, drifting, as if slipping underwater, her body rippling with a current that lifted and moved her, surfacing, sinking, resurfacing once more.
I thought of the aurora streamers. Perhaps they were still lying across the ship like a blessing; how blessed I had felt to see them, and how blessed I felt now, to lie next to her. When I touched her wrist, it was as if a residual charge of static, heaven sent, remained on her skin, rising in each one of the tiny hairs on her forearms.
‘The Northern Lights have transformed us,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I will tell you a story. When I was a child I had a book—a hand-tinted book with water-coloured illustrations, where a ship was besieged in the ice. It was such a beautiful book. The ship—I forget its name—was surrounded by bears, and then the Northern Lights lit up the sky and all the bears sat to wonder at it, and the men saw a path across the ice to safety. When I used to turn the page and see those lights, my whole body felt joyous and lifted. They do say books can transport you—I’ve never forgotten that feeling.’
‘I like that: how the lights shone a path to show them the way out. I had the notion, all day, that we were on the verge of seeing something wonderful. And then that egg. It felt like a premonition.’
‘The Arctic is a place for visions,’ she said.
I was immediately struck by her choice of phrase. It was the one Huntsman had used, when he had appeared in my cabin. ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.
‘What did I say?’
‘That the Arctic is a place for visions.’
‘Did I?’ she said, falling asleep.
‘Celeste?’ I whispered.
She smiled, vaguely. ‘My name’s Clara,’ she replied. ‘I feel unreal—I feel as though I have been lulled into a dream … You’re not real, either, are you, Eliot?’
Her hair still lay across my pillow. The neck of her dress had an inlaid pattern of rose petals embroidered among the fringing. The tops of each stitch had the same smoothness, and I was struck by how soft and feminine she was. The ship was a world of men. It was made from cables and hawsers, canvas and barrels. And its currency was muscle. The men wore dark and heavy woollens, with mittens against cold and boots against grease. Their faces were dirty and aged. Clara was made of a different substance altogether.
We curled together into the space, the blankets rising so that a draught kept my back almost permanently cold. She filled my bed with her smell, of perfume, of a malty warmth that I had often smelt on board but never quite realised where it came from, of her breath.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, her voice thick with sleep.
I stroked her hair tenderly, knowing that this moment, which felt so simple and pure, was one of the best of my life. As she sank further into sleep, drifting away from me as I watched her, I felt urged to chase her, a remaining question that was in need of answer.
‘For what?’ I whispered.
It took her a few seconds to reply: ‘For saving me.’
In the middle of the night I woke, startled. Clara had gone. I sat up in bed, trying to read the unfathomable darkness at the far end of the cabin. It was solid and menacing. Carefully I pulled the felt curtain to the side, expecting to see Huntsman, and was relieved to see nothing but the bare planking above the washstand, the knots in the wood that were so similar, at times, to eyes.
Through the window I saw the bay filled with icebergs, their bases darkly shadowed, and the tallest of them topped with brilliant orange light from a rising sun.
21
SITTING IN THE ROWING boat, I felt watched by the men at the oars. Privacy is a luxury not afforded on a ship, and I was uncertain whether I was already the subject of rumour or not. Cabin doors opening in the middle of the night, the tread of a woman’s feet, in stockings, crossing the saloon. The soft click of a latch.
The men were taciturn, pulling rhythmically at the oars, grimacing with the effort, and in their grimace there seemed to be an edge of amusement, directed at me. I tried to ignore them, as a gentleman should do, trying instead to concentrate on the glorious forms of ice we were passing. It certainly was a beautiful morning. The ice glowed bright blue and was carved smooth by the sea, dripping in the crisp light, each drip catching a single jewel from the sun. The air was brittle and cold, as if it too might have an element of ice in it, and like a lens that was sharply cut, it brought everything into vivid focus and intensity. I should have been captivated, but all I could think about was her. The night she had spent with me. Then her disappearance. I had not seen h
er at all since I woke.
Even French made time to admire the ice, although his orders were given in his usual dismissive tone. Pull here, avoid that, and so on. One berg passed so close it had to be boomed off by the men. The tip of the gaff hook glanced off its side as if it were glass. On the other boat, Sykes sat hunched in his thickest pea coat, a handkerchief held close to his mouth, and his collar turned up as was his habit in small craft. ‘This is the last stop we shall make,’ he had informed us, after breakfast. ‘If you wish to go ashore, you are welcome, although this trading place is poor and insubstantial. When we landed here last summer, the Esquimaux were preparing a dish of Greenland shark—the so-called blind shark—the flesh of which they had buried for a year. For the shark is poisonous and putrefaction is preferable. It was a repellent smell, which has never quite left my nostrils.’ He took no pleasure in his joke. ‘Its liver alone weighs a ton. But if you wish to visit, do.’
Bletchley, looking tired and restless, had listened to the captain, then shrugged his shoulders and moved to his seat by the fire, already wrapping his blanket around him.
‘We’ll leave you in charge of the ship, Mr Bletchley,’ the captain muttered, a hint of his old amusement returning.
Waiting on deck, hoping that Clara might emerge from her cabin, I went to the helm and observed the dipping-needle compass by its side. Its magnetic steel pointer was mounted in such a way as to tilt vertically the higher up the world we travelled. I had heard that compasses behaved erratically in the Arctic, that they wanted to point inward, towards the structure of the ship, or became so burdened by the need to point down into the earth that they were no longer free to turn. Sure enough, when I looked closely at the dipping-compass, its needle pointed straight through the deck. Up here, it points to hell, I had heard the men say.
As the boats were being loaded I took French to one side, pretending to ask his opinion of what clothes I should wear. After giving general advice and noticing I had taken him away from the men, he looked askance at me and said: ‘I assume you have something more pertinent to say than to get a mother’s advice for your warmth and comfort?’
The bird,’ I said.
‘Dead?’ he replied, quite without emotion.
I laughed, somewhat abruptly. ‘In fact, no. I have some surprising news for you. It has laid an egg.’
He stared at me, incredulous. Once more I was struck by the mixture of expressions that seemed to flit, ever-restless, on his face. One moment impatient, then curious, as if these feelings rose to the surface beyond his control.
‘I take it this is an amusing joke you have devised, to pass the time?’
‘You will see for yourself.’
‘I shall.’
‘It is feeding again. You might try it with some strips of fish.’
‘If I have the time.’
Why was this man so constantly infuriating? ‘You seem uninterested, Mr French,’ I asked, with a politeness I certainly didn’t feel.
‘I slept badly last night,’ he said, an edge to his voice suggesting I ought to take note. The image I’d had of him, pressing his ear against his cabin wall, perhaps had a degree of accuracy.
We had moored at various Esquimaux settlements along the coast, where French would trade the Sheffield steel plates, hooks and needles for freshly prepared animal hides. At this one, it appeared as though we were keenly expected. Laid out in one of the sheds were many bundles of sealskin, bound in hide strips, as well as reindeer skins and musk oxen, whose hides hung off each side of the trestle table, touching the floor, and were so deep with dark black hair that I could easily bury my hand and wrist in it. There were also various artefacts carved out of walrus bone—brooches, pipes and letter openers. A couple of wolf skins were held up to us, grey as smoke and darkened along the spine, and a small pelt that was of pure white which was said to be from an arctic fox.
‘No bear?’ French asked, disappointed.
In broken English the local man described a late blizzard when three bears had come to the village. He went to the side of the shack and pretended to peer round the corner, acting afraid.
‘You must shoot them, man,’ French said, with great dismissiveness. ‘My captain wants bearskins, you understand? He’ll pay for the white bear.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the man replied. ‘Shoot bear. Skyde isbjørn.’
‘Any bear?’ Sykes called, standing on a rock near the shore.
‘No, sir,’ French said. ‘Ask this fellow why, if you can be bothered.’
‘Do we have a coward?’ Sykes said.
‘Yes,’ French replied, before turning back to the man. ‘A coward, my captain says.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the man agreed. ‘We shoot isbjørn.’
I wasn’t keen on this general mockery. It contradicted the easily seen evidence that this was, in fact, a great haul. Sykes came to the shed, refusing to look at the Esquimaux, but addressing French directly. ‘We’ll have the men start ferrying, and we’ll fill up with water from the stream over there. I’ve drunk from this place before. It’s certainly good water, crisp and straight from the ice.’ He looked at me as if I was a separate problem for his consideration. ‘How are the preparations of the skins?’ he asked French.
‘Very fine.’
‘Who does them?’
French shrugged. ‘One of the old hags, I believe.’
‘Any nicks?’ the captain asked.
‘They are very fine, as I said.’
‘Have the men bring over the birds we have. I have decided they must be skinned here.’
‘Right, well, in that case I shall return to the ship. This fellow stinks.’
‘What are you in such a hurry for?’ Sykes asked.
‘You are well aware of my thoughts on the Esquimaux. Riddled with lice, and that’s just the start.’
The captain looked at me, smiling softly. ‘No bears!’ he scoffed. ‘We shall be here a while, if you wish to entertain yourself.’ He looked out across the bay. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘The petrels are flying. We’ll have bad weather ahead.’ With that he turned, a captain without a ship, but pacing a deck nonetheless.
I had come ashore not to partake in the trading, but to be as far away from it as possible. From the deck that morning I had spied the great slab of bare rock that rose behind the settlement and known that it promised all the solitude and escape I needed. I hadn’t seen Clara. Not at breakfast, nor as the men finished at the bilge pump, bent the sails and made the whaleboats ready for the trip to shore. I had waited until the last minute, hoping the commotion on deck would bring her from her cabin. But to no avail. Holding her during the night, calling her Celeste, then her disappearing before dawn, it made me quietly anxious. As I climbed behind the settlement, up a small path that led steeply to the crag, I wondered why I had insisted on calling her Celeste. I felt I had let a djinn from the bottle. For ten years my feelings for Celeste had been secret. A secret obsession. To call her by her true name was a shattering of the spell. And dreams are best not spoken of.
As I climbed, I distracted myself with the spectacular view. First, the settlement receded into its sheltering cove, the turf roofs virtually disappearing among the rocks and grasses, as if they and the few people who lived there were negligible. Then the bay widened in size, filled for as far as I could observe with icebergs, a great fleet at anchor, their sides as white as sails set for ocean journeys. In their middle, the dark wooden shape of the Amethyst appeared spidery and fragile, a nest of twigs among the swans.
The sounds of dogs yapping behind the settlement came and went. I watched the whaleboats busily ferrying water and supplies back and forth between ship and shore, soundless at this distance. I thought of my own cabin, how cosy and welcoming it had felt last night, so homely, a bed shared by a man and a woman, a bed I had never known before. Yet here, surrounded by the jagged ice, that same intimacy felt seconds away from disaster. Was she still in her cabin? What was she thinking? She had once asked me never to leave the shi
p again, yet I had. I felt fearful. She had asked me to pinch her. And I had obliged, willingly, not understanding why, enthralled and out of my depth.
The air grew cold and very fresh, with a gritty breeze coming off the land. Perhaps it was this wind that set sail to the bergs, pushing them out to sea. I felt strong and invigorated by the climb, and was glad I’d aimed for the summit, for when I reached it I was greeted by one of the most astounding sights of my life.
Stretching from where I stood was a glacier that curved in a vast snake of movement and ancient cracks, rising for several hundreds of feet and pierced by a chain of black mountains several miles away, shrouded in mist.
I climbed down towards it across rocks glazed with a fine and perfectly transparent coating of ice. It was difficult progress and I was afraid of slipping, but gradually the slope eased and I stepped onto the glacier. I was scared that my legs might sink into it, as if stepping upon a cloud, but the ice was as hard as granite; harder, in fact, than I could have imagined. The surface was weathered and jagged, stained dirty white and pitted with erosions. In some places a hard crystalline grit had blown and refrozen, with the texture of ground glass.
I have wondered at times why I chose to walk upon it, but I knew even at the time that it was irresistible. It was as solid as rock but made of water, frozen and ancient yet moving with the curved spine of something animal. How tremendous! Beyond its fragmented edge, the glacier became smooth. For several hundred yards I walked towards the line of black mountains—or nunataks as they are known—that snagged the fabric of this great sheet.
When I turned away from the wind, the only sounds were a distant rushing of water, impossible to place, and the small trickling of a stream that must have been very near or indeed below my feet. It is difficult now to understand how I failed to notice the wisps of cloud that had drifted above, gathering in strands. But suddenly a freezing mist settled around me, and as I tried to run back a fog descended, swamping me, arriving as if from nowhere.
The light diminished to a grey twilight and after a few rapid steps I realised I was utterly disorientated. I sat, deciding to wait. With dismay I felt the fog grow thicker and colder. I buttoned my jacket and turned up the collar, sickened by my recklessness and naivety, that I had so foolishly walked into a landscape I knew so little about. I thought about shouting, but knew I could not be heard and something, even then, prevented me from calling out for help. There was a dimension to the fog’s blankness that I felt wary of. Shadows and solid outlines appeared and vanished, as theatre wings might slide back and forth across a partially lit stage. I remembered when I had been on deck as the ship had been guided through a similar fog, with the men on watch looking for bergs and reefs, and that only I had seen the sheer cliff of ice that passed alongside the boat, before it vanished. The Arctic, I thought, it is a place for visions. So vast and empty, with air so crystal pure that distances appear foreshortened as though all exists in one perfect view. You might reach out your fingers and touch all that you see, yet a few steps away is always this: a blindness. It’s a wilderness that can encircle you, remove your perception, and dull your mind. I thought of the filigree of cracks that veined the sea ice like frozen cobwebs, then the breath of the whales, rising like the puff of smoke in a conjuror’s trick; of how the carcasses of meat hung in the rigging had frozen and clouded with ice, and the first sight of the auks appearing through the mist. There were many shrouds and partial obscurations. The seal in its breathing hole had slipped under water, never to return. It had sunk into a deep whose shadow beneath the ice was as black and impenetrable as oil. It was an animal that had drowned, but it had died like a human. A face slipping into the eternal. Water consumes. It takes away. And it lingers long in the memory.