by Jeremy Page
I remembered her whispering thank you to me, during the night. Thank you, for saving me. I had held her, tightly, afraid that she might slip away from me again. I had held her wrists, not able to let her go.
Please, she had murmured, not so tight. You are hurting me.
In the fog, a distinct new sound emerged: a scraping noise, intermittent. I tensed, knowing the sound was that of an animal, a large animal. The fear left me dry-mouthed. I crouched, silently, staring into the cloud, trying to discern any silhouette that might appear. The scraping continued for a few seconds, then stopped. I tried to hold my breath, sure now that it was a bear, a great white bear.
An outline began to emerge. I thought of Captain Bray’s warning of how, after shaking hands with the polar bear, the scent of the mother would be on me, unable to be washed off, rendering me visible to a vengeful offspring. I took an involuntary step back, trying desperately to conceal myself as the ghostly shape moved, in the forlorn hope it might not come my way. I smelt the scent of musk and, at the same time, the animal stopped to face me. The fog thickened briefly, then without warning it parted. I saw, standing, not the outline of a bear, but a man, dressed in a thick coat, looking straight at me. I gasped, thinking it must be Huntsman, fearing what this meant, as the man walked rapidly towards me. The briskness of his stride was familiar. So was the way that he spoke, in a matter-of-fact and concise manner.
‘You are lost, Mr Saxby,’ Talbot said.
My relief was overwhelming. ‘Oh, thank God it’s you,’ I replied.
Surprisingly, he smiled, quite warmly. He stood close and, in no immediate hurry, offered me some pipe tobacco. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘the fog came swiftly.’
We smoked our pipes together, regarding the cloud that surrounded us. ‘This is a strange place,’ he said. ‘They say hell is flames, but I disagree. It is this—it is frozen.’ He squinted at me, knowingly, and again gave me that unexpectedly warm smile. He slapped me hard on the back. ‘What possessed you to venture onto the glacier?’
What indeed, I thought. Curiosity? Surely, but it was more than that. I had been drawn to it. Drawn by a force that was stronger than my will to resist.
‘I think you understand,’ I said.
He regarded me, narrowing his eyes, a look I had seen when he weighed up one of his team, deciding on an order to be given. ‘No. I don’t understand,’ he replied. ‘Come on, man, let’s get you out of here.’
‘I thought you were a bear,’ I told him. He laughed, telling me it had been said before. ‘Your jacket,’ I added, following a few steps behind him, ‘your jacket stinks like a bear.’
‘It does?’ he replied, amused, smelling his own lapel. ‘I think you are right, Mr Saxby.’
‘When you were coming through the fog, I listened to the scraping sound you made—I thought you were some terrible animal, wounded and hungry, scenting me out. I realise now, it is merely the way you limp, Mr Talbot—perhaps as a result of frostbite?’
He stopped, fixing me with a questioning glance. He looked at his boots for explanation. ‘I have no limp, Mr Saxby. I was merely leaving scuff marks, so we might find our way off this infernal slab of ice.’ He kicked his boot against the surface. ‘See? Scuff, scuff.’
The men had made a fire on the shore and were cooking reindeer steaks upon a griddle, much as the Danish whalers had cooked the whale meat earlier in the voyage. As I walked between the houses a dog ran past, wagging its tail with excited greeting. Then a child approached and—for no apparent reason—passed into my hand a pebble she had found on the shore. The stone was warm, from her touch, and it felt smooth and soothing as I closed my palm around it. With this simple gift, I welcomed all that I saw: the fringe of humanity that clung to this wilderness. I was hungry for the cooked reindeer, I wanted the company of the men, I wanted to be in a place that I recognised and understood.
‘Mr Saxby,’ Talbot said, breaking the silence he had adopted on approaching the settlement. ‘I might have been a bear, you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, grateful, and humbled.
Along the shore, the seven bodies of the great auks had been skinned and laid out across a flat rock. An elderly Esquimaux woman was rinsing the last of them in the bloodied water that lapped against the shingle. I looked at the pelts, reminded of their first drowning in the gulley on Eldey. The poor animals had been drowned a second time. The woman’s hands looked leather-thick and greasy with the business of skinning. As she walked away, she spat on the stones, shook her head and uttered something. It sounded like Djævelen fugle, which I have since learnt is Danish. It means birds of the devil.
22
IT WAS LATE IN the evening and I was sitting on my bunk, looking across the saloon at Clara’s cabin. Her door was very firmly shut. I sat there for several minutes, staring at the details of the wood, the small brass handle that folded flat to the panel, within its own housing, the glimmer of light that I thought I perceived coming from underneath. Perhaps she had her lamp lit, or possibly it was merely a reflection from the edge of the metal tread. I couldn’t decide. Above the dining table a yellow pallor shone into the room, from a sky that had never entirely gone dark. It gave the saloon a sickly air, like corridors of convalescents; a light announcing that true light is elsewhere, where the world is vital, but here it is ill and in retreat and heavy with time.
I hadn’t seen Clara all evening. I hadn’t seen her, in fact, since arriving back on the Amethyst. Not while the men unloaded the boats or while the captain, in a boisterous mood, had handed round extra rum for the crew.
‘To our futures, men,’ he had said, grandly, ‘for tomorrow we shall be hoisting the Blue Peter and leaving this graveyard of bergs for our return journey.’ He had said it, I felt, for the benefit of his passengers, and was unconcerned that none of them was listening. Bletchley leant against the rail, wrapped in his faithful blanket, polishing the tops of his shoes against the backs of his trousers, frowning at the drink that was passed to him. I had sat near the mainmast, still chastened by my experience on the glacier—the knowledge that I had had to be rescued was quickly known by the men.
Sykes, never one to miss an opportunity, toasted me. ‘To Mr Saxby!’ he had offered, a touch cruelly, ‘who apparently wished to make his mark as an Arctic explorer, this very afternoon.’
I didn’t respond, apart from the most wan of smiles. It didn’t dissuade him. At supper, he had continued his tease: ‘We watched you disappear among the rocks and knew very keenly the perils on the other side. What was in your mind, Mr Saxby? Please do tell us.’
I was unhappy with Sykes’ little theatre, which he presided over at the head of the table, his glass still raised and his head cocked to one side, waiting for my reply. It had a brutish edge.
‘Well, as you say, Captain Sykes, I was merely taking a walk. I was wishing to cross through the heart of Greenland and wait for you to pick me up on the other side.’
‘A stroll of five hundred miles, sir!’ he said.
‘Correct.’
‘And no provisions to speak of?’
‘Only my boots, with which I intended to make a stew.’
‘You are a lucky man,’ Sykes said, keen to win the exchange. ‘Mr Talbot informed me that you were quite disorientated. The Arctic does not welcome casual strolls. Still, you have learnt your lesson. We sail tomorrow. Once we clear these bergs we shall steer for the open sea and make as swift progress as possible. There is no more trading to be had, our hold is full of skins and we have civilised many of these poor settlements with fine British manufacturing products.’
‘In Godthåb,’ I said, ‘the Esquimaux preferred bone hooks, rather than our steel ones.’
‘They do that,’ Sykes replied, dismissively, ‘in front of the Europeans. They will have cupboards full of our plate and needles, you can be sure of that.’
During the exchange I had been acutely aware of Clara’s cabin door being resolutely shut. Her setting at the table had been cleared a
way, mid-meal, by Simao. No one had commented.
By the time the others had retired, I was desperate to see her. But sitting at the end of my bunk, facing her cabin, gave me no answers. Don’t be foolish, I whispered to myself. You do this each time. You build up your thoughts. You let them rule you. But I could not resist. I walked lightly across the saloon and pressed my ear to her door.
I listened there, just as I used to do at her father’s manor in Norfolk. The similarity of my gesture was so precise, the memory so intense, that for a second I imagined I heard the distant call of the coot upon the lake in the woods. I thought I heard the sighing of the trees outside, their boughs cracking gently in the breeze, or the sounds of the old house settling in the cooled air of late autumn. Oh, how terrible to be imprisoned by such thoughts! I touched Clara’s door, but instantly felt that other door, the heavily painted one of her bedroom at the top of the house, with the promise of her within the room, trapped in there like a bird in a cage.
Abruptly, the door opened. Clara stood, facing me, showing no surprise.
‘I thought it might be you,’ she said, quietly.
I didn’t know what to say. ‘I have been worried about you.’
‘You worry too much,’ she replied.
‘You didn’t eat this evening.’
‘No.’
It was the first time I’d seen her since the events of the previous night. Why had she left? Why had she hidden all day? What was I meant to think? All these questions were unanswered and I was afraid to blurt them out. She was calm and wise. I felt unsteady and unprepared.
‘Come in,’ she said.
‘Should I?’
‘You should.’
I stepped into her cabin, thinking how little I knew about women, how easy it was to make a mistake, to push them away, to frighten them.
‘I don’t wish to frighten you, ever,’ I said.
She turned quickly towards me. ‘Why do you say such a thing?’
‘I want you to know that I have been thinking about you all day,’ I replied. ‘I nearly became lost, this afternoon, on a glacier.’
She softened. ‘I heard.’
‘You did?’
‘Edward told me. What happened?’
‘Upon the glacier?’ The recollection seemed surer and more certain than the feelings I had at that moment. ‘I ventured onto it and was caught in a cloud. A fog that had rolled down its surface. It was quite sudden.’
‘Why were you there?’
I sighed. ‘I was greatly relieved to see Mr Talbot, although I thought at the time he might be a wild animal.’
‘Why are you trying to make it a joke, Eliot?’
‘Because I feel stupid,’ I said apologetically. She gestured for me to sit at the foot of her bunk, then raised the wick on her lamp to brighten the cabin. ‘The captain enjoyed my misfortune,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘He is the worst kind of man—he hides behind his humour but he is a bully. And a bore.’
‘When did you hear?’
‘During your supper. It’s hard to avoid the talk that occurs just outside your cabin—these walls seem to be made of paper.’
I noticed she had tacked silks and other fabrics to her cabin walls. ‘Did you do these?’ I asked.
She gave a proud nod. ‘I had to do something. I have a vase here, but no flowers to put in it. I miss flowers very much.’
‘I picked some for you, when I went to the whaling station.’ She sat, propped up against her pillow, the length of the bed between us. ‘But I’m afraid I dropped them.’
She gave me a lingering look, as if weighing which way to guide our talk. Is this how Bletchley felt, in her presence, hanging upon every word?
‘How is the bird?’ I asked.
‘She is very well,’ she replied, brighter to be on the familiar ground where we had always been allies. ‘I fed her several times and cleaned the area where she appeared to have made the nest.’
‘That’s good. Did you show the egg to Mr French?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what did he make of it—or was he in one of those curious moods where he doesn’t seem to make any effort?’
‘You really are not keen on the man.’
‘No. Should I be?’
Clara didn’t answer. ‘He picked it up.’
‘The egg? But did the bird let him?’
‘The bird had very little say in the matter.’
‘But what was he intending?’
Clara shrugged. ‘I asked him not to. But he was keen to make a joke. He said an egg of that size would make for a fine breakfast, although it would threaten to overflow the frying pan. He has been trying to make me laugh all afternoon.’
‘Why?’ I asked, dumbly. The thought of French acting in such a cavalier manner, flirtatious too, made me uneasy. I had an image of him in the anchor locker, grinning wolfishly, caring only for himself and what he could carve from second to second. ‘He might have dropped the egg,’ I said, annoyed.
‘Sometimes,’ she continued, ‘I believe he thinks all this is just a game for him.’
‘All what?’ I asked.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘All that is happening on this ship.’
I wondered what she meant. Not just the auk, but other things too; I was afraid she might have told him about all that had occurred between us the previous night. ‘French has a peculiar way of amusing himself,’ I ventured, ‘but he has at least honoured the concealment of the bird. At least we can say that of him.’
‘He was asking many questions about you, today.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps it is as you say, he was amusing himself.’
‘What form of questions?’
‘About where you are from, and the nature of your employment. He seemed to think I knew much about you. But it isn’t really the case, is it, Eliot? I know very little about you, if anything.’
I was growing wary, hearing a new directness to her tone.
‘Where did you grow up?’ she asked.
‘In Suffolk.’
‘Where?’
‘Near Woodbridge.’
‘Woodbridge? Yet you told me you have been to Aldeburgh on only one occasion.’
‘Perhaps I have been more.’ She let my lie pass. ‘I cannot remember …’
‘I need to trust you—to believe everything about you. My life has taken place entirely under the shadows of unreliable men. I go from one shadow to the next—I’ve forgotten the feel of the sun on my face.’
‘You can trust me.’
‘Do you have siblings?’
‘No.’
‘Are you married?’
‘Clara! What do you mean by this?’
She grasped a hand in the air, as if trying to hold something. ‘Please answer.’
‘No. No, I am not married.’
‘You see, you told me you have been thinking of me all day. Well, I have thought of you all day, too. It happens once you have spent time in a man’s arms. And I have been quite upset.’
‘But why?’ I asked, knowing I was dreadfully losing my way with her.
‘When did we meet?’ she said, flatly.
‘You know this. We met on board, several weeks ago.’
‘But you say we have met before. Isn’t that what you told me? I wish to know about it—when did we meet for the first time?’
I felt enlightened, arrived at the kernel of her doubt. Had she engineered this moment in order to admit who she was? It made me calm to tell her. ‘At your parents’ house, near Somerleyton in Norfolk. It was in 1835, in the autumn. Your father had engaged me to restore his collection of birds’ eggs. I worked for several weeks in the conservatory at the side of the house. You remember—at the bench below those dead geraniums.’
‘Several weeks.’
‘Yes. It was quite an exacting job—and your father was very particular.’
‘Did we speak to each other?’
What was she trying to esta
blish? I felt dispirited, and wanted to stop this exchange, to gain some breath. ‘Do we have to talk like this?’ I asked.
‘Did we?’
‘No. Not at first. I wasn’t even aware of you in the house. Your father, you understand, he never made any reference to you. Not once. But I used to see you being led across the lawn.’
‘But you were in the conservatory?’
‘I took it upon myself to find you. I discovered your bedroom at the top of the house. I used to listen at your door, and … eventually we spoke to each other.’