‘Don’t ever speak of this and my grandfather in the same breath,’ Richard begged her.
It finally dawned on Alice that he never would escape from under the dead weight of his history. It had pressed
on him for his entire life and now it was dragging him beneath the smooth surface of reason. She cast around for something positive she could offer him. All the scientists’ notes and papers had been burned, their laptop computers and Arturo’s weather records and Jochen’s incomplete human physiological data. Valentin’s ice-core sections had survived along with Laure’s penguin samples, buried in the ice cave, but she felt that this comfort was too meagre to offer. Their own rock samples from the Bluff and elsewhere, left in Margaret Mather House, were unaffected by a mere fire, although they were of little scientific value since all the plastic sample bags and labels had melted.
Richard’s hours of scratching through the debris had not uncovered the lost gastropod.
From the skidoo hut came the sound of Russ banging a spoon on a tin pot. The familiar noise conjured the best days at Kandahar and Alice’s heart lurched with affection for the place and sorrow at its destruction. Richard had turned away to conceal his face, but she grabbed his arm and dragged him round to face her again. It suddenly came to her that there was one thing she could say that might make a difference. She stamped her feet and swung her arms, realising that cold had numbed her feet and fingers. ‘You are still expedition leader. Lead us. Lead us out of here,’ she challenged him.
For a moment it seemed that he hadn’t heard.
But then he straightened up and lifted his head. He stood taller, closer, looming over her. An unfamiliar light suffused his cold-stiffened features and the sight of it chilled her. ‘Yes,’ Richard said.
Alice became aware that there was one other person loitering outside in the searing cold, while all the others had squeezed back into the shelter in search of hot food. It was Rooker. He would not deal well with being made to feel
jealous, now or ever. The thought reassured her rather than the opposite. Richard swung past Rook without even looking at him.
‘We should get some food while there’s some left,’ Alice said. The most trivial observations became significant because they were directed at him.
‘You were going to tell me something.’
There were voices spilling out of the shelter and a triangular smear of dirty-yellow lamplight at the open door.
She took a breath, an opportunity to consider. ‘I will,’ she temporised.
The helicopter would lift them across the barrier of ice to the ship and safety. They could walk on the rimed decks together and stare ahead for the first glimpse of Cape Horn. That would be the time to tell him, not here and now outside a hut full of ears and eyes.
‘Is that a promise?’ He didn’t smile and his expression was wary. He had been told too many things in his time that were not good news.
‘Yes,’ Alice said. She couldn’t guess exactly how he would react, but all her senses told her that she could trust him.
They crammed themselves in at the end of one row of bodies. Valentin passed up two plates from which other people had already eaten. The food was a small helping of dried pasta cooked up with a soup cube, and a squeeze of tomato ketchup. It was still hot, that was all that mattered, and they crouched down and spooned it up in hungry silence until the plates were empty again. There was plenty of talk around them and even laughter, after the grimness of the last two days. The forecast for the next afternoon and evening was for light winds and improving visibility.
When
, everyone kept saying, when the chopper arrives, when we get back, instead of
if
. The loss of a season’s work, and of the plans for the future based on that work, were briefly forgotten.
Niki had spoken by radio to the captain of
Polar Star
.
The ship lay fourteen miles north-west of Kandahar, in open water beyond the unseasonal ice. It was a short distance, but a serious obstacle as Rooker and Phil had already discovered. The frostbitten tips of Phil’s fingers had turned black and hard. He drummed a staccato rhythm with them on the side of his tin mug, causing Laure to shudder and turn away. Phil grinned. He knew that in the end the dead tissue would drop off, leaving new pink skin underneath.
When the helicopter was ready to begin the evacuation, the ship would nose deeper into the pack to bring the Zodiacs within range of ice solid enough for the Squirrel to land on. There might be a few hundred yards of more hazardous ice to cross between helicopter and dinghies, but the Kandahar personnel would be able to deal with that. Alice thought she was the only one who was anticipating the flight and the scramble to the dinghies with a shiver of foreboding.
‘They wait for us,’ Niki confirmed, nodding in satisfaction over the rim of his tin mug.
To follow the pasta there was a spoonful of instant coffee and a half-mug of hot water for each of them. When he came back with refilled water canisters Russell announced that the supply was slowing to a trickle, either because the pipeline was freezing up or because the glacier lake itself was turning to ice.
‘We’ve only got a few more hours to go,’ Rook rallied them. The sky above the hut was black and starless, and a thin, keen wind sliced off the glacier. There were just two full camping canisters of gas left. Without running water, they would have to melt snow for drinking. The gas wouldn’t last long under those circumstances.
Reluctantly, they settled as best they could for the third night in their cramped shelter. Niki and Arturo were taking
the first radio shift in the generator hut, but even with only seven bodies there wasn’t room for everyone to lie down properly. Alice half lay and half sat propped against the icy wall between Laure and Rooker. Rooker’s arm came round her shoulders and she let her face rest against him. She pulled her parka over her mouth and throat, and closed her eyes. If she concentrated hard she thought she could just hear his steady heartbeat.
An hour passed. Her feet and legs were cold, and her bones ached from lying on the hard floor. She listened to the sigh and scrape of the others’ breathing, and the faint catch of a snore in the back of someone’s throat.
How many more hours?
Rook’s grip on her loosened and his heavy hand dropped from her arm. He had fallen asleep too.
Alice tried to relax her limbs but they were knotted with cold. She was shivering, and every involuntary tremor brought a fresh little shock of loneliness and fear.
She told herself:
Don’t be afraid now, after all this time and when we are about to escape.
A bigger shudder swept over her, crawled inwards from her knees and elbows, intensified and found a focus in her belly. It turned into a definite knot of pain that tightened and made her gasp. Her eyes widened in the absolute darkness. As abruptly as it had come, the pain faded away again.
No, she thought. This can’t be.
Cramp. Indigestion. Food poisoning. Surely one of those?
Anything, please, let it be anything but what she feared.
She bit her lips until that different pain distracted her. Long minutes passed; she had no way of telling how many but it might have been ten or more. Her shoulders finally sagged and her clenched fists uncurled. Her palms were clammy with sweat.
Then it came again. An insistent wave that tightened until
she stared, then rolled away and left her prickling with sweat and horror.
Breathe. Think.
If this was the onset of labour, what did that mean?
The birth of a baby, several weeks premature, in this place?
No doctor, no medical supplies, no heat, severely limited water.
Alice levered herself to sit upright, away from the support of Rook’s shoulder.
Polar Star
was just a dozen or so miles away. Wait, hope. Daylight and the helicopter would come.
Daylight, the helicopter, she repeated to herself. It became a mantra as she sat and stared at the whirling infinity of darkness.
Daylight, the helicopter.
The radio shift changed. Rooker and Valentin yawned and crawled out into the painful cold, Niki and Arturo bundled back in their place. When the others come back, she calculated, there will be just four more hours until dawn. Then she would beg Phil and Russ to radio Santa Ana and call for the helicopter to leave at first light. If the wind and weather were right.
Please
.
She went back to repeating her mantra. Next to her, Niki fell asleep as if he were curled up on a feather mattress under a quilt of goose down.
These were the longest hours Alice had ever known.
The contractions intensified by stealthy bounds. It became as much as she could do not to cry out as the latest one reached its height. Instead, she gave a series of gasps that ended in a sharp hiss of exhaled breath. As the pain ebbed, her head fell back and hit the metal wall. Droplets of cold sweat stood out on her forehead.
The intervals were now much less than ten minutes.
She heard the sound of boots kicking the ice outside the door, then there was a shaft of bitter cold air striking her as Valentin’s head appeared. The shift was changing.
Where was Rook?
Phil swore softly and hauled himself out of sleep, with Russell in his wake. They blundered over the recumbent bodies and made their exit. A big shadow, blacker than the night, slipped in after them. Rook, thank God. He was nestling into his old place, pushing the dormant Niki aside, reaching out for her.
Another contraction started. This time there was no beginning to it, no time to prepare herself. The pain caught her full on and she cried out. Rooker took hold of her shoulders and muttered some wordless question but it was Laure who reared up and snapped on her head torch. The beam shone full in Alice’s face.
‘
Aleece!
’
The other sleepers were muttering and stirring.
Alice realised how bad she must look from the way Laure sucked in her breath so sharply.
‘What?’ Rooker demanded in a new, raw voice. ‘Alice?’
Laure’s head jerked round. ‘She is pregnant,’ she hissed. ‘That is
what
.
Dîtes-moi, Aleece. Vite
.’
‘It has started,’ Alice said wearily.
Through his hands that were still supporting her she felt the physical impact of these two pieces of information on Rooker. His body jolted as if he had been punched in the diaphragm. She had time to think
I wish it weren’t like this for us
and to glimpse the ring of murky faces with staring eyes and mouths gaping at her in the torchlight. Then the claw of yet another contraction dug into her.
‘What’s that? She cannot be pregnant. It’s not possible.’ Richard’s loud, shocked voice sawed through her head.
Laure was kneeling over her, gentle hands exploring the
dome of her belly and trying to loosen her clothes. Rooker hadn’t uttered a word but he drew her closer so that she rested against him. His elbow crooked under her chin and one huge hand cupped her cheek.
‘She is,’ Laure said curtly.
‘Radio Santa Ana for help. Tell them just to get here,’ Rooker said over her head. Niki was already moving, shouldering his way past Arturo who squatted against the shed wall.
‘
Madre de dios
,’ Arturo muttered. ‘What will be next? What will the end of this be?’ Laure glared at him, then bent over Alice again.
Richard spoke: ‘Rooker, I suppose this is your doing, is it?’
Alice’s head flopped back as the contraction ebbed away.
‘Shoesmith.’ Rooker’s voice was low, but there was a note in it that made everyone in the shelter breathe in and lower their eyes. ‘This is nothing to do with me, you piece of shit. Even if it were, it’s none of your business. So keep the fuck out of it. Just stay away from her, and me. I’m telling you now that if you interfere, if you so much as try to touch her, I will rip you to pieces.’
Richard seemed to shrivel, collapsing inside his layers of down clothing. ‘You can’t talk like that,’ he babbled. ‘She can’t give birth to a baby here. This is Kandahar, it’s a scientific research station.’
‘Or was. Until you burned it down,’ Rooker said.
Laure filled a mug of water and held it to Alice’s parched mouth.
Phil bumped in through the doorway. The habitual merriment had drained from his face and his eyes were bulging in disbelief.
‘Nik and Russ are trying to raise Santa Ana. Alice, can you…?’
But the question faded away as he looked from her to Rooker and Laure. He whispered, ‘I don’t know what to do with her. What’s a pregnant woman doing here? I’ve only got mountain first-aid training. I’ve never had anything to do with babies.’
‘She is going to be fine,’ Rooker said.
Phil was angry; concern and anxiety made him so. ‘She shouldn’t
be
here,’ he repeated. His head shook from side to side.
Alice struggled to sit upright. She couldn’t explain the complicated series of decisions and omissions that had brought her to this point. She wanted to move, the hut was so crowded and the smell of gas and bodies made her feel sick.
‘Let me,’ she muttered to Rook and he understood at once. Pushing Richard and Phil and the gaping Arturo aside, he helped her to roll on to all fours. The door of the shelter stood ajar and beyond it there was black emptiness. She crawled towards the ebony slice of pure air. Rooker’s arm supported her and they broke out of the shelter together. As she stood upright the cold seared her throat.
‘What do you need?’
‘I want to move around. It’s…’ Another contraction took all her attention. Her face screwed up in concentration and she gasped as it washed over her. But it was easier, better when she was moving around than lying inert and helpless in the smelly hut.
‘I’m here,’ he said calmly. ‘Hold on to me.’
Laure materialised at her other side. Another arm came round her waist. They took one and then two small, delicate steps in the greasy snow.
A round head bobbed at the door of the generator shed. Russell called out, ‘Santa Ana say that they’ll be airborne as soon as they can.
Polar Star
’s standing by as well.’