But telling Laure was out of the question. Alice didn’t want to be banished from the present beauty of Antarctica, but the main reason she didn’t say anything was that it would be unfair to ask another person to keep her secret. If something went wrong – it wouldn’t, in her bones she knew it wouldn’t – but if it did, she alone must be responsible. So she dreamily hugged the baby to herself, not quite
believing in or even understanding the magnitude of what was unfolding.
For the first time in her life, she reflected, she was doing what she wanted to do. Not because she should, or because it was expected of her by her parents or her teachers or the University or her students or even Pete, but because of herself. She wanted to finish what she had come here to do, in this magical place, then she wanted to go home and plan for her child.
She could do it, she knew that. And she would have to do it alone, as a parent, when the time came, so she might as well get used to being alone now.
With Laure she went on talking about their work and life at Kandahar, and making wry jokes about men and boyfriends. She tried not to say too much about her own intentions for the future, so that when the time came Laure wouldn’t feel that she had been hoodwinked.
‘You are good at listening,’ Laure told her.
‘I don’t know about that,’ Alice answered, feeling guilty.
Christmas came.
Work at Kandahar didn’t follow the set pattern of weekdays and weekends. While the weather was good everyone went out and did as much as they could without taking a rest day, knowing that there might be a long stretch of enforced down time with the next spell of bad weather. The sunshine following Lewis Sullavan’s departure meant that the whole team worked for nine days straight. When Richard announced that, whatever the weather, Christmas Day and Boxing Day would be official rest days, there was a cheer around the table.
Richard had another suggestion, too.
Everyone had brought presents and cards from home to open on Christmas morning, but Richard said there should
be an exchange of gifts amongst the team members too. They should each put one present into a sack, and take out a different one.
Laure’s forehead creased. ‘But, what to give?’
‘You can make something, from whatever you can find on or around the base. Or you can give one of your own possessions, maybe something you value or which has significance for you. You can choose, you can use your imagination. Of course, you don’t know who is going to receive your present.’
Alice said, ‘That’s a very nice idea.’
‘It’s not original,’ Richard answered, but he was deeply pleased by her approval.
On Christmas morning everyone slept for an extra hour. Alice and Laure opened their eyes on a silver and gunmetal sea, and saw that the berg had faded to pearly grey, like slippery satin. The spell of fine weather was ending. Someone was playing a loud recording of Christmas carols on the living area CD player.
The kitchen was low on bottled gas and cooking had been severely curtailed for the past week, but today there would be no restrictions. Russell had defrosted a turkey and Alice had improvised a stuffing for it using dried apricots, tinned chestnuts and dried herbs. Kandahar cooking now involved a lot of improvisation as supplies ran low before the New Year resupply, but Alice enjoyed the challenge of opening the store cupboard and trying to devise custard or pasta sauce or chocolate cake from its contents. For their Christmas dinner there was also plum pudding and rum butter that had come down with the original supplies, and Russell had made mince pies. Richard relaxed the no-alcohol rule for the day.
‘
Bon Noël, Aleece
,’ Laure said. They hugged each other.
The living area was decorated with tinsel and candles, and a big picture of a decorated Christmas tree was pinned to the bulletin board. The day’s eating began with a convivial breakfast of scrambled eggs and fish, which Valentin and Niki had caught in the bay and smoked in a homemade smoke box. Russell produced two bottles of champagne and made Buck’s Fizz with concentrated orange juice. Led by Richard they shook hands and wished each other Happy Christmas, then drank a toast to families and friends. Rooker drained his in one gulp, Alice noticed, but he didn’t join in the chorus of the toast. He looked more withdrawn today than usual, if that was possible. His black eyes were hooded as he regarded the rest of them.
After breakfast there was the exchange of team presents. The only sack Russell had been able to find was a black bin bag, but Alice and Laure had cut out paper snowflakes and stuck them all over it. It made them laugh, to be manufacturing fake snowflakes when they were surrounded by an abundance of real ones.
After much thought, Alice had chosen to make someone a present of her treasured copy of
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
, with reproductions of the Doré illustrations from 1875. In one of them a frozen ghost ship glides on black water between towering cliffs of ice. Overhead, a solar arc spans the sky, just as strange suns had disturbed the skies in the last nine days. The thin volume had been a school prize, and her name and the date and the words ‘For Excellence in Mathematics’ were inscribed on a bookplate inside the front board. She had always loved the poem, and now that she had seen them for herself she thought more than ever that Coleridge’s description of the realms of ice was the most chilling she had ever read.
The verses ran in her head as she wrapped the book.
When her turn came to draw a present Alice reached into
the black mouth of the bag and took out the first item that her fingers touched. With everyone’s eyes on her she unwrapped some crumpled paper and looked down at the gift in her hands.
It was a piece of driftwood, rubbed bone-smooth by the waves and curved in a shape that fitted in her two palms. The outlines already suggested the finish, but the wood had been carved with a few extra deep, deft lines that made it into a sleeping, swaddled baby. The piece was beautiful for its simplicity. Alice knew that Rook had done it. She had seen him carving before, his head bent in preoccupation over the wood and the blade of his penknife almost swallowed up in his big hands.
Blood rushed into her face as she looked up.
He must
know
. Who knew, who else?
Then her eyes met his hooded glare. Of course he didn’t know. How could he have determined that she would pick this gift? It was a coincidence, no more than that. She took a breath to compose herself. ‘Thank you. It’s beautiful,’ she said quietly. Some of the darkness melted out of his face.
Jochen was the recipient of her Coleridge. He looked puzzled by it. Valentin had put in a bottle of his special Bulgarian
rakia
, which was drawn by Phil.
‘Ta, Valerie,’ he said with evident pleasure.
Richard’s present was a handsome old brass-bound compass, which went to Niki, but it was Arturo’s contribution that drew the most admiration. He had collected a varied pile of beach stones, black basalt and ribby quartz and greenish olivine, rounded shapes that nestled smoothly in the hand, each one with a hole rubbed right through it by the agitation of the sea. He had taken a length of smooth white cord from the stores and had linked the stones with macramé knots beween each one to make a heavy chain, too massive for a necklace, like a stone snake.
Laure gave a surprised wince when she felt the weight of the package, then her face flowered into a smile when she tore off the paper. She arranged the stones and the cord coiled sweetly between them. ‘Oh, it is a sculpture,’ she cried. ‘I love this.’
Arturo basked in the praise.
Afterwards, everyone went outside. The sky was purled with cloud now and they missed the sun that they had begun almost to take for granted. There was an assortment of old skis in the store, left behind by the British. Phil and Rooker got the skidoos out of the shelter and fixed tow ropes, and everyone took it in turns to be pulled up the longest slope behind the hut and to ski down again. Alice wondered if it was reckless of her, but she reckoned that if she could be pregnant and rock-climb then she could ski too, and anyway the exhilaration of swooping down from the lip of the glacier almost to the back of the hut was too pleasurable to miss.
Rooker didn’t ski; he drove the skidoo uphill over and over again with whooping skiers hanging on to the back.
‘I never learned,’ he snapped when Alice asked him why. She realised now that it was always Phil who went off on the cross-country skis to teams in the field when both skidoos were in use.
‘You have to try.’ She laughed. ‘Go on. I’ll be your instructor. Bend ze knees, remember.’
He studied her face for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said.
He borrowed Phil’s skis and boots, cramming his feet into the boots with a grimace. Alice walked a little way up the slope with him, took his hands and gently towed him as he ploughed downhill. They did it several times, ascending higher each time. For a man of his size he generally moved with economy and agility, and it was strange to see him looking awkward. At first he responded to her praise and
encouragement with the usual shrug, then he gave a slight smile followed by a sharp glance to see if she really meant it. He learned quickly, with a kind of wolfish concentration.
After another half-hour she drove the skidoo to the top of the slope with Rook wobbling on the tow rope. ‘Slowly.’ She pointed to the shallowest angle of descent. ‘I’ll drive alongside.’
He launched himself away immediately. His shoulders were rigid with determination.
‘Relax. Bend your knees. Keep your hands low,’ she shouted after him. But he knew what to do. He would turn out to be a natural.
He was gathering speed and she accelerated after him. She told him to lean all his weight on one leg, then on the other. A series of lurching turns developed.
‘Hey!’ he yelled in unaccustomed delight.
Laure came swooping by in an elegant arc, a plume of snow feathering up from her ski tails. She was an excellent skier. Rooker lost his concentration and plunged forward, crossed his ski tips and somersaulted down the slope to end up in a heap.
Alice shot forward to reach him. ‘Are you all right?’
He was lying in the snow, a tangle of long limbs and skis and poles. She felt a beat of concern and then she saw that he was laughing. He let his head fall back in a snowdrift and laughed up at the sky. She had never seen him look this way before, never even heard him laugh with all his heart. The blankness had all broken up and he was alive with momentary happiness.
‘I can’t get up,’ he gasped.
She dismounted and flopped down on her knees beside him. She released his bindings, took off the skis and untwisted his legs and arms. To touch him in this unceremonious, affectionate way made her breathe faster and feel grateful
for the shield of her goggles. They clasped hands like a pair of drunks and half lurched and half hauled themselves to their feet. There was powder snow glittering in the close fur of Rook’s hair and in his black eyebrows. He shook his head like a dog, the lines of laughter still transfiguring him.
‘Again!’ he demanded.
Like a child, Alice thought, as if his childhood had been largely unexplored and he had just glimpsed a corner of it. They realised simultaneously that their hands were still linked and quickly let go.
They did it again, faster, and this time he didn’t fall.
She bounced up and down on the skidoo pedals and applauded him. Rook stared around as if he didn’t quite recognise his surroundings. Everyone except Phil had gone back to the hut, in search of the
vin chaud
that Laure had promised to make.
Phil sat with his boots up on the other skidoo, smoking and grinning. ‘Downhill champ, boy,’ he called.
‘Yeah,’ Rook sneered, recollecting himself.
‘You could be, you’re really good,’ Alice insisted.
He hesitated, then put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her. ‘Thanks. I enjoyed that.’
He was very strong, she could tell from the absolute solidity of him under the folds of his parka. She didn’t want him to let go, she realised, but he did.
A freshening wind was riffling the bay water and twisting little whirlwinds of snow around their feet. The idea of indoor warmth suddenly became inviting. Alice stood and waited while the two men drove the skidoos into the shelter, briefly thinking of home and the e-mails that would probably be waiting for her later, when her half-hour turn at the Internet came. Then the three of them climbed the rocks round to the hut door and went in together, laughing about the ski lesson.
The smells of cinnamon and roasting turkey wafted at them.
Phil hung his parka on the peg and rubbed his hands. ‘I’m hungry enough to eat my own head,’ he said.
‘Alice just taught me to ski,’ Rook announced across him. He didn’t often volunteer a spontaneous remark. There was an instant drumming of good-humoured applause and an ironic cheer from Jochen. From his place across the room, Richard looked at them. There was a beat of silence before the general talk and laughter started up again.
Alice opened her in-box. There were a dozen messages waiting for her. Becky’s was first.
Christmas Eve, not a mouse stirring at my dear sis’s place. Everyone gone to midnight mass, her kids asleep at last altho touch and go for an hour. Vijay and I too frazzled from drive up here, so babysitting. No idea how V is going to deal with family gathering, my dad insisting on Queen’s speech, mum dropping heavy hints re weddings and babies, toddlers underfoot etc. etc. Love him for at least agreeing to come…
Am all Xmas partied out. Seven in a week, darling. Feet deformed from new Gina stilettos, skin mottled crepe w alcohol oozing from every pore, eyes two holes in a blanket. I need week at health farm to recover, not 3 days overeating in bosom of family. V suggests little holiday in Jan, somewhere warm. Well, why not?
Missing you. Can’t imagine what it’s really like down there, ice and polar heroes? Your messages not very informative!! Please expand. Are you sure okay?