Now that they had the opportunity, there was too much to say. The beam of Alice’s torch made a pallid circle round their feet as they looked into each other’s eyes.
Rooker was remembering the moment of trying to drag Shoesmith away from the fire as it galloped through the hut. His skin crawled with fear, and with the ancient layers of recollection and determined oblivion that accompanied it. Fire was the worst thing he could think of. Fire and Lester.
Then he had looked up and saw Alice at the window, heard her shouting his name. She had come because of him, not Richard, and that flash of grateful recognition set off a chain of realisation.
He
wanted
her, this stocky, determined little English scientist with her quiet voice that made you listen. Not just her unseen body, although he desired that too. He wanted to touch her and learn about her and hear her talking just for him, and the wish had been in him from almost the beginning when she had stumbled over him out on the rocks. He had been drunk in an attempt to forget himself and her stillness had been like a cool hand on his burning head. She was courageous and stoical and clear-minded, and yet he sensed there were undercurrents of passion in her that ran like molten precious metal. Out of all the women he had known over all the years he had never met one like her.
He had been angry with Shoesmith partly because he was jealous.
It had seemed that she might favour
him
, of all people.
But she came back to the burning hut for his sake. She had kissed him, and he had tasted smoke and tears on her skin, and they had sat for two endless and still too-short nights with their hands joined.
Rooker smiled down into her eyes.
Alice saw his face with the frown and the cynical glare
melted away. There was just him and she felt a beat of won dering love.
‘I am afraid of fire,’ he confessed.
She remembered the horror filling his eyes as he watched it. ‘You don’t fear anything else. What is it about fire?’
He was very still. After what seemed like a long time, he said, ‘A friend of my mother’s died in a fire.’
Jimmy came home from school one afternoon to find his mother and Lester both wearing bathing caps. The rubber caps were poked full of holes and there were hanks of gluey hair sticking out. They looked grotesque and they were drinking white wine from a two-litre flagon. They were even wearing the same lipstick, smudged from the boozing.
‘We’re highlighting our hair, darling. Blonde streaks,’ she said.
Lester struck a pose, tilting his head on one side and kisspursing his lips. He rested his rubber-gloved fists on his snake hips. ‘What do you think, darling?’ he cooed.
He was always in the house nowadays. Every evening: watching TV, drinking and giggling, painting her toenails, dressing her up and pinching her flesh as if she were some oversized doll.
‘Fuck off,’ Jimmy spat at him.
‘Oh,
dear
,’ Lester said.
‘Jimmy, don’t be rude. Come on, sit down with us and have a chat. Tell me about…’ her eyes flicked to Lester and back again ‘…school. How was school today?’
Lester was rubbing a lock of her hair between his fingers, squinting at it through the smoke of his cigarette. ‘Nearly done, hon.’
‘Is there anything to eat?’ Jimmy asked.
‘I expect so, darling. Have a look in the fridge, eh?’
Jimmy knew that there was no point, but he went anyway.
Then he sat in his bedroom, staring out of the window at the scrawny plum tree and the view of old Ma Douglas’s backyard. She came out and pegged some dusters and cloths on the washing line. There was a science test tomorrow and he had other homework to do as well, but he made no attempt to open his school bag. After a while he stood up again and went along to the bathroom to pee. There were wet nylons dripping over the bath, and squeezed tubes of cream and face make-up in the cracked basin. He scooped up some orangey stuff on the tip of one finger and sniffed it.
Behind him, the door slid open. He looked into the mirror on the tin cabinet and saw Lester.
Lester was smiling, a big wet smile of pleading and fake friendliness that turned Jimmy’s stomach. ‘Hey, Jim. Hey, there?’ he said softly. There was the funny look in his eyes that always came when he was drunk. Jimmy whirled round but as he tried to wriggle past, Lester caught hold of him. There was the sour-wine and Players stink of his breath and then his wet mouth was pressed to Jimmy’s. His huge sloppy tongue probed between his teeth. Jimmy bit hard and then, as Lester recoiled, he brought his knee up between his legs. Lester folded up and slid to the floor, gasping.
Jimmy stepped over him and walked to the kitchen. There was no food in the house, but there was a two-thirds-full bottle of whisky next to the bread bin. He stuffed it into the pocket of his coat.
‘Lester? Le-ess?’ his mother called blurrily from the sofa. Jimmy walked out of the back door. There was a tight, hot feeling in his chest that made him want to kick the dog that was licking its own arse in the lane, or to smack his fist against the nearest fence. He slouched round to Gabby’s house, thinking they might down the whisky together and that he would look at Joyce’s underclothes strung out to dry
amongst Mr Macfarlane’s flannel work shirts. But when he opened the gate he saw Mr Macfarlane himself, standing in the doorway like a red-faced bull, and he slipped away again.
He walked down the river path and sat on a log. He unscrewed the cap of the whisky bottle and took a long swallow. Later he tried to cry, but his eyes stayed dry and prickly. He shouted ‘fuck, fuck’, over and over again, but the damp chilly air closed over the words. He sat there until it got dark, thinking of Lester in his house with his mother. They would be watching
Hawaiian Eye
– no,
Bonanza
– and giggling over how handsome Jess Cartwright was, and slopping wine whenever they moved.
Disgust at the memory of Lester’s breath and tongue rose in his throat, fighting with the fumes of whisky. A hot wall of rage hemmed him in, shutting out the drearily familiar outlines of the trees on the opposite bank and the pewter glimmer of the water. Jimmy stood up abruptly. The path rose under his feet and tipped him sideways so that he almost fell into the river, but he staggered and managed to right himself.
Lester lived in a caravan that stood raised on blocks in a quiet cindery enclosure beyond a row of farm outbuildings at the edge of town. Jimmy had never actually been inside the van, but he and Gabby had played around outside when they knew Lester was out. There were thick curtains looped at the little windows, but when they stood on a couple of boxes from the rubbish tip they could peer inside at the cushions and framed photographs and the single armchair. They had also snooped through the outbuildings. There was an old petrol-driven lawnmower in one of them, and a mouldy shelf with jerrycans and tins and canisters on it.
One of the bigger cans was almost full of petrol.
Jimmy yanked the stuffing out of some old cushions that were piled in the corner of the end shed. He teased out the
yellow fibrous material and gently, surprising himself with his gentleness, he fed all of it through the letter box low down in the door of Lester’s caravan. Then he poured petrol in on top. He lit a match and poked that in as well.
There was an immediate huge
boom
followed by a whoosh of flame that came licking out of the slot. It was a cold night and Jimmy had his woolly gloves on. Feeling like one of the slick baddies in a TV show, he snapped off the gloves and hastily shoved them into the fire. As he walked away he heard the flames whipping and crackling.
He took the back route home, down the lanes, but there was no one about. He expected to find the two of them sitting where he had left them but the house was utterly silent.
‘Mum?’ He clicked the light on in the living room and saw her lying on the couch. She was asleep, her mouth hanging open and drool marking the cushion under her cheek.
‘Lester?’
Lester wasn’t anywhere in the house. Jimmy left his mother where she was and crept silently to bed.
There was a police investigation into Lester Furneaux’s death, but no one was ever arrested for setting the fire. There was some question of whether the petrol had actually been stored in the caravan, and whether Lester might have fallen asleep and left a cigarette burning. He was known to drink heavily.
Queers like him were not popular or welcome in Turner, South Island, in the 1950s.
Two months later Mrs Annette Rooker committed suicide by pulling a one-bar electric fire into her bath. She left a short note saying that she felt too lonely to go on. She apologised to her son, Jimmy, and wrote that his uncle, Henry Jerrold, would look after him. He was to be a good boy in England.
Alice was looking at him. She was waiting and listening, but not wanting to force him to say something he preferred to keep back. Maybe some day he might even tell her a part of the truth, although the mere thought made his throat close up. ‘Are you cold?’ he asked, just to fill the moment.
She shook her head quickly. ‘Rook, I want to tell you something.’
Her words seemed to mirror his thoughts and he frowned, trying to work it out. He was close enough to feel the warmth of her breath and he saw her eyes widen with uncertainty.
Then there was a huge yell from the generator hut. Someone banged triumphantly on the wall and the door flew open.
‘We’ve got ’em!’ Phil bawled.
Rook and Alice ran the few steps to the shed.
Niki’s headset was clamped to his head and the mike to his lips. Russ and Valentin were shaking fists in the air. They heard the tinny, distorted but still unmistakable voice of Miguel, Miggy, the radio op at Santa Ana.
‘Kandahar, Kandahar. Come in, please. Repeat, Kandahar, come in please.’
Santa Ana had been trying to contact Kandahar for thirtysix hours. But the people there had assumed that the prolonged radio silence was due to a technical malfunction, never imagining a disaster on the scale of the fire.
Alice listened to the rapid radio exchanges.
‘No major casualties,’ Niki was repeating. ‘Some minor injuries only. But the hut is gone. We are seriously short of food and gas. Shelter is limited. Over.’
They were going to be rescued.
Luck was with her after all. Everything would be all right in spite of the risks she had taken. They would be out of Kandahar and on to the ship, and she would be flying back to London and home in a matter of days. At first she felt a hot surge of relief, but after the first seconds her euphoria was dampened by a wave of sadness. She would be leaving the ice, probably for ever. To go home was to enter a world full of problems that hadn’t even delineated themselves as yet. But the question that was troubling her most of all was what about Rooker? Where and how could they ever be together beyond Kandahar?
A swoop of anxiety unbalanced her so that she stumbled
against him. He put out his arm to steady her and she resisted the impulse to cling on and never let go.
Richard and the others hurried in from the skidoo shelter. All nine of them crowded round the radio table. The voice of the Chilean expedition leader replaced that of Miguel the radio operator.
‘Let me,’ Richard ordered and with his burned hands seized the mike from Niki.
The first news was that
Polar Star
had arrived and was waiting for them out in open water. There was a cheer at this; Laure caught Alice’s eye and gave her a meaningful thumbs-up signal. Richard impatiently gestured for quiet. He was telling the Chilean leader that he needed the helicopters to be ordered out as soon as possible, to lift the Kandahar personnel to a point out on the ice margin from which the
Polar Star
’s Zodiacs could reach them.
The Chilean leader’s response was concerned but conservative. He was not prepared to risk both helicopters in a hazardous mission – one would have to remain at Santa Ana as a safety back-up. The Squirrel only carried four passengers so it would have to make three return journeys to the ship, unless some people made the difficult journey out over the ice by skidoo. The immediate weather forecast was bad, he said, so it was unlikely in any event that the pilots would be able to leave for at least another twenty-four hours.
‘I am sorry, Kandahar, I know you are in trouble. We will get to you just as soon as possible.’
‘We have field rations. We can hold out as necessary,’ Richard rejoined, glaring at the circle of intent faces pressing around him. ‘Morale is excellent,’ he added. Of course, he would not report anything else.
‘Very good,’ said the Chilean leader warmly.
It was arranged that they would maintain four-hourly radio contact.
‘Good luck,’ Santa Ana said in signing off.
Everyone was smiling and clasping hands, and patting Niki on the back. He had done a remarkable job to restore the radio equipment and get them back on air so quickly.
‘Top man, Nik. Antarctic hero, in fact,’ Phil crowed.
Richard nodded. ‘It’s good,’ he kept repeating, but he was outside the group now. The ripples of their relief and elation didn’t seem to touch him. Alice watched him duck outside and after a minute she followed. He was standing in the drifts of snow on the margins of the burned-out hut, with his hood pulled forward over his bent head. His damaged hands were muffled in torn mittens.
‘Richard?’
He looked round briefly, then resumed his contemplation of the wreckage. ‘I’ve failed,’ he said.
‘No, you haven’t. No one’s hurt, we did our work, we completed the full season. The fire was an accident, it’s one of those things that just happen.’
If
you light dozens of candles in a wooden hut where the atmosphere is so dry that it crackles with static electricity, she thought, and she knew he could hear her thinking it. Richard said no more, but as she studied his face she saw the depths of his misery and self-disgust.
She whispered fiercely, ‘We’re all alive. Lewis Sullavan’s values don’t matter, rock samples don’t matter. All that matters is survival and the power of the human spirit. You of all people should know that. Scott and your grandfather and the others on that expedition were beaten to the Pole and five of them died, but their heroism and will to survive is what the world remembers.’