We may well be stranded here for the polar winter.
The Ukrainian ship had gone; miles of sea ice would separate them from
Polar Star
when it finally did arrive. Helicopters didn’t take off in weather conditions like these. It wasn’t that they might die or even go really hungry, because they had walls and a roof to shelter them, and fixed-wing flights from Santa Ana would drop fuel and food supplies on the ice even though they could not land. A few months of isolation would be a grand inconvenience for the other expedition members, but it would mean something entirely different for her.
Alice ran her tongue over her cracked lips and kept her head turned towards the window in case anyone should glimpse her face. Ripples of panic began to wash through her.
Russell was putting mugs of tea on the table. Valentin came banging back from the lab hut. ‘No defrosting yet, lucky to say.’ He drank a gulp of hot tea and scowled.
Rooker and Phil returned, stamping their feet and shaking snow off their protective clothes.
Richard repeated his apology. ‘I should not have closed down the generator.’
‘Does that really need
saying
?’ Rooker snarled.
‘Shut up, Rook.’ It was Russell, startling them all with the crack in his usual mildness.
‘Tomorrow, as a group, we will make contingency plans for rationing fuel and food,’ Richard said.
Alice sat down at the edge of the circle, keeping as far as possible out of the lamplight. Richard looked almost himself again, although his face was drawn. She glanced in turn at each of the other bleary, bearded faces. She had felt safe, all through the past months, in the company of these men. She hadn’t liked them all equally, or felt completely
comfortable with some of them for the entire time, but she had trusted their decisions because their experience of everything in Antarctica was much greater than hers. Now the props were being removed, leaving each of them exposed. When it came down to it, she thought, when the collective strength was eroded by pressure of circumstances or failing leadership or just the expiry of mutual tolerance, then all you were left with was yourself.
Perhaps, after all, she had been too dependent on other people for too much of her life. On Trevor and Margaret; her friends; Peter. She had set too much store by their beliefs and trusted too little in her own instincts. Except for coming to Antarctica in the first place, that is, and then deciding to stay on even though she was pregnant. She had done
that
by following her own instincts.
A cough of self-mocking laughter almost broke out of her, but she managed to suppress it before any of the others turned to stare at her.
Right or wrong, foolish or criminally insane, she had brought herself to this point and all that mattered from now on was survival for her child’s sake.
She lifted her head and straightened her spine. There was no question but that they would survive, the two of them. For now, there was no point in doing anything more than she had already done. She would wait quietly, to see if the ship or the helicopters came in good time.
You wait too, baby.
Richard concluded, ‘Thank you for restoring the power tonight. Rooker, you’ve got your job back. Let’s try to work together, shall we?’
Rook laughed again. ‘Thanks a lot.’ His levity was somehow shocking in the sombre atmosphere. Alice alone was glad of his shrugging carelessness. It meant – it must mean – that their plight wasn’t serious.
They drifted back to their bunks, with the old refrain of the howling wind and the bass vibration of the generator to lull them to sleep. Laure had slept through the whole business.
When the next all-too-brief break in the succession of blizzards came, Rooker and Phil took the skidoos across the sea ice to attempt to find the margin beyond which the water would be navigable. The rest of them waited in the huts, monitoring the threatening weather reports and listlessly arranging their belongings ready for packing. No one could believe that a day of departure would actually come, but the opposite was equally unimaginable.
The brief daylight subsided rapidly into darkness, and Phil and Rooker were still not back. Niki reported that they were in radio contact, but return progress in darkness over the snow-blanketed ice was painfully slow. Alice was tortured by anxiety. She reached a point when the only way to contain herself was by pacing slowly from the kitchen to the window overlooking the bay and back again.
Arturo jerked his head at her. ‘What is the matter with you? Can you not sit still for one moment?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured and slumped into a chair, but five minutes later she was on her feet again and staring through the snow-laced glass.
A smear of torchlight was visible in the distance, swaying in the blackness. ‘They’re back,’ she cried.
The two men were exhausted. They stood blinking in the hut lights, clods of ice and driven snow thickening their beards. Phil’s hands were so numb that he couldn’t pull off his fur-lined gauntlets. When Russ did it for him they saw that his fingers were frozen into claws and the tips were blackening with frostbite. There were dead white patches
on his cheeks too. Rooker sat down heavily and let Valentin unfasten and pull off his boots.
‘How far is it?’ Richard asked.
‘Let them get warm first,’ Russ said.
Warm drinks and food were produced. Neither of them could eat much, but they drank mug after mug of sweet tea.
It was nine miles over the ice to the closest point where they judged the ship might be able to follow leads inwards through the pack ice. These were conditions almost unheardof for the early part of March. The frozen ice was extending fast. By the time the ship did arrive, navigable water might easily be twelve or fifteen miles distant.
‘A day’s travel,’ Richard judged.
Phil said nothing. After a moment Rook told them, ‘It doesn’t sound far by skidoo. But it’s uneven going all the way. With nine people and loaded sledges, I’d say more than a day.’
‘So if we get a clear weather spell we’ll do it by helicopter shuttle. It’s only in the worst case that we’ll have to go out over the ice. I’ll talk to Santa Ana and I’ll ask the Polar Office if they can get the ship in earlier.’
Phil and Rooker looked at each other. With her heightened awareness Alice saw the flicker of resigned disbelief that passed between them, but she didn’t think any of the others did.
To save fuel, the main generator was turned off every night at 10 p.m. (‘We’re not short of freezer capacity,’ Richard had said, jerking his chin at the white outdoors. The men had dug an ice cave behind the lab hut and consigned the lab freezer contents to it.) Everyone piled on extra layers of insulation and retired to their bunks to keep warm, but tonight Alice was too restless. She lit a couple of candles and paced the main room, wearing most of her clothes except her windproofs.
A man’s shadow loomed over the wooden wall ahead of
her. She turned with her heart leaping into her mouth and saw Rooker.
‘So you can’t sleep either,’ he said. He produced the inevitable bottle and poured scotch into two mugs.
‘Will you have enough whisky for the winter, if we get stuck?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘This is the last. Cheers.’
She drank, then took a breath, with the spirit still scalding her throat. ‘Rook, I’ve got to get back to England.’
‘This is Antarctica, not Spain or somewhere. There’s no
got
to. You’ll get back if it’s possible and if it isn’t you’ll stay here until the ice breaks up.’
‘But…you said we’d get away, if you had anything to do with it.’
The look he gave her was pitying. ‘You didn’t see what I saw today. Outside this bay, the sea has frozen in broken waves. Can you imagine that? Crests and troughs of ice, choppy, either bare and slippery or piled with loose, soft snow. Every ridge has to be negotiated, up and down for miles. It’s difficult and dangerous. And with nine people and heavy sledges?’
‘There are two helicopters at Santa Ana. They’ll come.’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
Shockingly, she felt her face begin to crumple. Tears burned at the back of her eyes. Rooker saw and put his hands on her shoulders. Very gently, he drew her close to him. She wanted more than anything to rest her head against his shoulder and tell him what was wrong. Instead, she arched her back and resisted his comfort, afraid that he would notice the swollen bulk of her stomach.
‘What is it? Why does it matter so much?’
She only shook her head.
With his thumbs he stroked the tears away from under her eyes, surprising her with his gentleness. Then he took
her face between his hands. ‘I’ve watched you. You’re strong and you’re brave as well. It’s only waiting. What do you fear?’
She was ashamed to tell him her secret, with all its soft womanishness and the attendant implications of wilful miscalculation. She stepped away from him instead. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a different voice. ‘The uncertainty gets to us all in different ways, doesn’t it? I think I’ll go to bed. Thanks for the whisky.’
‘Goodnight,’ he said.
Alice lay in her bunk and listened to the familiar din of the night wind. None of them knew for sure yet that 15 March wouldn’t see them on board the
Polar Star
.
Beverley Winston and the Polar Office responded to Richard’s request that in view of the extreme weather conditions the relief ship might come to bring them out earlier than scheduled. Unfortunately, she noted, the ship’s programme was already determined and to change its itinerary would be very expensive. It would cost an estimated mimimum of $25,000 to reroute the
Polar Star
and in view of the fact that it would only make a few days’ difference to the planned date, Mr Sullavan judged that this would be an excessive expenditure.
When he gave them this news, Richard’s face was creased with resignation.
Russ let his disgust show. ‘A few days? Does he really not understand that a single day can make the difference down here?’
‘We should have accepted the invitation of the Ukrainians,’ Arturo complained.
‘Too fucking right,’ Phil groaned. He was angry with himself for having come down on the wrong side.
‘Lewis Sullavan’s an amateur. He wanted a polar station,
but now he’s finding out that his toy’s too expensive.’ Rooker was scathing and no one tried to contradict him.
The days passed, but every hour stretched out painfully.
The last week came. The base was stripped down ready to be closed up and most of the equipment was packed, although it seemed impossible that they would actually be leaving.
The weather reports were seized upon as soon as they arrived, but there was never an optimistic note. The helicopters had been on the ground at Santa Ana for more than two weeks, without flying a single excursion. The blizzards followed one upon the other with hardly a break between them, and fifty- and sixty-knot winds screamed down from the glacier.
The Kandahar personnel watched and waited. On 12 March the
Polar Star
left port to make its way across the Drake Passage and down to the peninsula.
The same night Alice was lying sleepless and cold in her bunk. There was a wind, but for once the sky was clear. She had seen the brilliant necklaces of stars when she took a last look out over the motionless bay.
She heard the small noises of someone moving around in the hut, but after a while everything went quiet again. But then she sensed something else. It was unidentifiable at first but it still made her heart leap and pound with fear. She sat upright, groping for her torch.
She couldn’t see the window. It should have framed a velvet, starry square. Then she coughed.
Smoke. The room was full of smoke.
She couldn’t see anything. She half fell out of bed, coughing and gulping for air, and flung herself in pitch darkness to try to find the light switch. Her hands clawed at the wall and then scraped over the switch, but no light answered the click.
No generator, of course.
‘Laure,’ she shouted, as she fell across her bunk. ‘Laure, wake up.’
The other woman’s body was warm under the covers. She stirred and groaned as Alice shook her. ‘
Qu’est-que c’est…?
’
‘Get up,’ Alice yelled. ‘Fire.’
They were both coughing in the rolling, blinding smoke.
Torch. Find the torch. Breathe some air. Low down. Disconnected imperatives swirled in Alice’s head as Laure reared out of bed and stumbled against her, grabbing at her for support. Brutally Alice shook her off and dropped to her knees. Better. Air clearer down here. She groped and found the legs of her bunk, the coiled mass of covers, the pillow, yes – and here, her torch lying where she had dropped it. The yellow beam reassured her for only a split second. The wreathing, acrid smoke was so thick that the light was
just a dim blur. Alice took two steps and heaved open the door of the bunk room.
The scene beyond brought a scream into her mouth. There was a wall of flame where the main room lay and there were figures silhouetted against it, spraying a fire extinguisher which even in her shock and panic Alice could see was useless. She slammed the door again. There was no escape that way.
‘Quick, blankets. Here, seal the cracks.’
‘
Comment? Je ne comprends…
’
They were both choking. Burning tears poured down Alice’s face. The window, that was the only chance. She hauled the blankets off the bunk and wadded them against the crack under the door, then hunted wildly around the room for something with which to break the window.
Fighting for sight, she hammered with a shoe, then threw it aside when she realised that the thick glass would never shatter under the feeble impact. There was nothing else here…
‘
Attends, j’ai mon piolet
,’ Laure shrieked. Alice couldn’t understand what she was saying, but Laure squirmed under her bunk and dragged out a kitbag. Inside, blessedly, there lay an ice axe. Alice grabbed the shaft, double-fisted, and swung the adze at the glass. The first blow only cracked the pane but the second splintered a hole in it. Cold clean air flooded into the room.