The Still Point Page 7

  ‘I’m sorry I woke the dogs, Anton. My brother would never allow me to let a beauty like this pass us by.’

  There is no white fox in the collection at John’s home, of course. She sank, presumably, with the ship.

  Edward caught at least one other. He describes it in the diary he took with him to his death: ‘A fox on the ice today. Shot it with one precious round. She was weak with hunger, as we are. A pity to watch her last breaths. Call it an act of mercy. Our vegetarian is now a happy carnivore, picking at the carcass and sucking at the bones like a child on his thumb. We skinned the meat and divided it as fairly as we could, and ate her raw. Foolish to waste fuel on fresh meat. We are become as savage as the dogs, which tore at each other out of boredom.’

  In fact, the days of boredom were long past; the dogs had wolfed their dead companions down, skin and all, one by one as they fell or were shot for the only meat Edward could afford to spare them, until there was nothing left but two corpses. He is reluctant to go into detail and does not, or cannot bring himself to, record if the men too ate their own pack, who had dragged them, panting, for so many miles towards their goal. But he writes that their keeper Andreev is starving and ‘yet cannot take what meat there is’. Julia, who is not squeamish, hates to think of them feasting on the fox in grim silence, but cannot stop her mind worrying at the scene:

  hands trembling hungry and slick with innards, painfully portioning it out, dry mouth flooded suddenly with the smell of blood. Fresh red, a shock against the snow, cramming meat into mouths and stomachs cramping…

  One day, near the end, this is his only entry:

  In past days we would talk always about the meals we’d eat when we got back to our countries. Lars listing lutefisk, sild, salting and pickling an endless litany of fish — and the sea all about us empty, it seems. Stoic Anton longing for his beetroot soup. Hugh’s childish sweet tooth, aching for Eton mess. Beef stew; whitebait, poor Freely’s favourite. I believe now it sickens us to think it. We have forgotten the sensation of hunger. Now, when we talk, which is rarely, we talk of dying. None of us can take comfort in a God, it transpires. I wish just one of us could bring that solace and save the rest.

  These are the pages that Julia couldn’t bear to read this morning, now safely closed and waiting on the desk to be revisited. She has set out with him from the beginning, and this time will not fail him; in time, she will come to this part, and give death its due. But there were months of dull civility before barbarity set in.

  Gifts and a thimble

  Julia is bent forward, chin resting on the desk, peering into a thick, greenish glass jar. The jar has a label that reads — in the elegant copperplate of a man with time to take care over his handwriting — Porifera, Crustacea, 18 August 1893, Beaufort Sea, 72° 21’ N, 125° 64’ E. A sodden sponge floats sadly in the murk; if we peer a little closer, just as Julia is, we will also see a collection of very tiny, pale eight-legged things, some specks of silt; the alcohol only faintly discoloured urine-yellow; and, beyond, Julia’s yellowed eye pulled wide by the curve of the glass then retreating. She sighs; she struggles to find the contents interesting and it is true, they are rather dull.

  Indeed, even Edward, the label’s author, would agree; and yet it was from the depths of this inauspicious specimen that his illustrious, if brief, career was born. Drifting off the coast of Canada as a green young officer, it was his task to dredge and examine silt samples from the sea. Having little else to occupy himself with, he did his duty and wrote out label after careful label in his cabin (Julia, imagining him thus, lends him Simon’s stoop). Once, on an impulse prompted by boredom, he took a sip of the preserving liquid, and his curiosity was rewarded by a violent attack of vomiting. Edward was not a scientist by nature any more than he was by training.

  On his second expedition, he personally undertook no such experiments. The monitoring of flora and fauna, scant as it was, fell to Dr Wilkinson, who had little else to attend to as the small crew remained in remarkably good health for as long as they remained on ship. An acquaintance of John’s, a fellow collector keen to see his trophies in living motion, he had volunteered with the Geographical Society’s backing. He was not a seafaring man and could not grow accustomed to calling young Mackley, who as a swaggering lad had poked fun at the postures their mounts were made to adopt, his captain; he called him by his first name as he always had done. There was no lack of respect meant and no offence taken. Edward accepted him as his brother’s friend, and an elder, with a right to familiarity.

  I complained to our doctor of a mild headache this morning and the poor man could hardly contain himself as he brought out the medicine chest and dispensed two pills, which did their job admirably. I thanked him profoundly, but he seemed almost disappointed to have lost his only patient, upon hearing of my return to rude health over lunch. He has gone back, I suppose, to his specimens. I shall express my deepest interest in his latest catch when we meet at the card table this evening,

  writes Edward in the ship’s log–the one that he left with the ship, in which he entertains himself with such observations of his companions and their lives on board through the long months of winter and summer.

  He is even-handed and cautious, of course. When Hugh Compton-Hill, the diplomat’s son, refuses the taint of meat and insists on a greater share of the precious vegetable matter they have brought, and will otherwise eat only porridge, bread and chocolate, Edward seems to indulge him. ‘It’s true the boy’s eyes are bright and his health and energy excellent,’ he notes. He cannot betray doubt or distaste. It is his duty to preserve them all — not only to bring them home, but for history. These months must make good reading, for they precede his victory, the victory of Persephone over the top of the world, and his diary will be the account of it — the camaraderie, the good cheer, the courage.

  Julia turns the pages carefully, making occasional notes to herself, points of cross-reference and queries to verify later. The months pass with little incident, until she catches at a sound from those pages and hears, as if she were there, the chink of glasses and a toast to the Queen. A favourite scene so often conjured that she feels the eagerness of approaching festivity as if she were once again listening to Aunt Helen tell it; as if it were a childhood December, pine-scented and fairy-lit and thrilling.

  Christmas 1899: a holiday. They were far from land now and long since locked into the sea. The crew were relieved of their duties, such as they were. Christmas Eve’s after-dinner entertainment was provided by the making of garlands, and they decked the saloon with scraps and oddments of paper, tin foil and bright cloth. Edward smiled to see them, the frown of concentration creasing Nordahl’s wide forehead and the paper snowflakes falling from Freely’s clever fingers.

  Edward woke in the morning feeling, absurdly, a frisson that had last seized him when he was a boy of six or seven, waking early in the dark and feeling the hush of the house charged with expectation, a full bladder bursting with excitement. Knowing that below him in the drawing room lights were twinkling and presents waiting, and seeming to smell already the spices on the air (and indeed, although this didn’t touch young Edward, the cook and parlour maid had been up for hours).

  A break at last in the monotony, which seemed to have stretched so much longer because there was so much longer to go; and a gift, not beneath a glittering tree, true, but immediately below his bunk and just as brightly wrapped. Something of Emily to make her memory new, which he had resisted opening all those months.

  For the crew she had given a dartboard to hang in the saloon, with an inlaid message around its rim: TO THE PERSEPHONE — A TARGET TO PRACTISE ON! How wonderfully simple, that bright red bull’s-eye, unwinking at the centre of the perfect circles. Edward, the marksman, would hit it again and again in the year to come until it seemed to taunt him with its ease, while their true target lay so many miles to the north and they seemed to draw only inches closer by the month. Tock — the dart hit home again — We’re not yet even on an
outside ring, he would think — tock — we’ve barely hit the cork — tock — embedded here as if in the wood of the wall like one of Compton-Hill’s poor efforts. He would sigh and pluck the darts out, returning to the line; three bull’s-eyes again, for all the good it would do him.

  But as a Christmas morning’s entertainment it was a resounding success, and the captain’s wife was roundly toasted — especially as she had also provided a generous batch of cigarettes to add zest to their wagers. The winners, leaving the field to the gasping hopeful, made frequent retreats to the galley to smoke (much to Janssen’s affable annoyance as he basted and chopped). So the hours before dinner were spent, after a breakfast of marmalade, fresh bread, Gruyère, and the first of the day’s treats: a Christmas cake from their cook, with the luxury of marzipan, iced like the landscape in miniature, sculpted with a knife (‘Zaztrugi!’ cried Andreev. ‘Like the wind-blown snow!’) and planted in the centre with a Union Jack.

  ‘How long have you had this up your sleeve, Einar?’ asked Freely, for the cake was moist and dense and the fruit had soaked for weeks; Janssen, who hummed happily through his days and spoke little, peered up inside his huge tunic to the cavern of his armpit and shrugged.

  In such good humour the day passed quickly. Dinner was a grand affair: smoked oysters, soused mackerel, a reindeer roast with peas, buttered potatoes and redcurrant sauce (not a scrap of raw fox meat anywhere in sight). The tender meat was, to Edward’s palate, finer than any venison he had tasted at his brother’s table; he thought of the club they attended in London and smiled a victory over pale insipid gravy as the rich maroon coated his tongue. And then — chink! — to the Queen, to Persephone, and to Emily Mackley’s tobacco and all their wives and children.

  Janssen had a word in his captain’s ear then, and Edward announced that they’d stewed in their own juices long enough; it was a fine, clear night, the moon required their presence and all must step outside. What could be more invigorating than a walk in the snow at Christmas? He quieted their protests — ‘Patience, boys, you shall have your pudding.’

  They staggered on deck with much griping, and clambered down onto the new-fallen snow, where their grumbles were slowly appeased by the beauty of the night. Every granule on the ground had its glimmer, and the sky was almost as close-packed with the powder of starlight. White on black like the shine in Edward’s eyes, as he strove to see wide and far, to see everything, longing to bring this perfection back to Emily; if he could only close a glass orb around it and carry the universe home to her.

  And then Janssen appeared with his pièce de résistance — he couldn’t have lit it in the saloon, but out on the ice, the green-purple flame of the plum pudding was a beacon of cheer, an indomitable flame in the darkness. He bore it out to them, red-faced and beaming, and set it down among them as it guttered out. Overhead, the same green-violet fire flashed suddenly over the vast sky, a spirit burning incandescent. They looked one to the other then, in the hush of the milky moonlight, and shook hands in silence as they passed Nordahl’s flask between them.

  Later they played sports on the ice, racing each other and clutching at full bellies, laughing like children let off school and delirious with snow. Janssen, spinning and spinning with his gaze skyward to the stars, fell giggling at Nordahl’s feet. Having worked so hard to bring comfort to all, in that place so far from any of their homes, no one could begrudge him a nip of the pudding brandy.

  And at one o’clock, after an evening’s indolence and yet more gorging on candied fruit, nuts and macaroons, after one last smoke, they retired. And then, at last, Edward drew from beneath his bed that other, smaller parcel meant for him alone, which he had saved all day, which he had for months savoured the thought of.

  A pocket watch, fine-filigreed, engraved To Edward — For our hours apart, and so that he may find his path and come back to — His Emily. He wound and set it and held it to his cheek, a cool disc against his skin, the ticking through his jawbone like her distant heart. He smiled as he thought of the pucker of her brow, following the trace of his diagrams as he explained how longitude is reckoned by the hour and the angle of the sun. Attentive, intelligent Emily, the brightness of her eye emblazoned always on his mind.

  Just as he thought of her then, just as Julia imagines her now, so she might still be sitting in the dining room, if we descend to seek her there. See: fires are blazing in every hearth in the house, a beacon of welcome. All the curtains drawn against the frosty night.

  Emily’s face burns; she thinks she will surely stifle; a dark flush colours her cheeks as it did the night she met Edward; she is sleepy with heat and wine and longs to run out to the garden and press her face into the frozen grass and imagine it is snow. When at last she is free to retire, she will open the window and turn down her sheet, and climb into the cold cotton with a sigh. She will take up the little bound notebook he gave her, which she unwrapped this morning in the dark, and read over again by a candle the poem scribed in his fine hand on the first page. The lines she has known, since she was a girl, by heart…

  Thy firmness makes my circle just,

  And makes me end, where I begun

  They are no dull sublunary lovers, who have spent months in the light of a constant sun. He has filled the words with meaning for her; this is his gift.

  But now, at the table, she is far from the lonely bed she longs for and the little comfort she can draw. Her hair is caught up in the loops and curls that are forever reluctant to stay in place. Her shoulders, skimmed by the cut of her dress, are slender but strong. She shows her teeth when she smiles and laughs and cannot manage to simper; her hands are long but not tapering and must be kept in check, as they tend to gesture. She rests them interlocked on her legs and feels the hardness still in her thighs from skiing, under her skirts. Her eyes are bronze-brown and bold.

  She is not quite of her time. She looks, in fact, a little like Julia.

  Julia sat in that same chair — or so it would be pleasing to imagine, the seating plans were not preserved — just over a century later, last Christmas. In the drawing room, in the bay window, there was a fine Scots pine just like perhaps the one that little Edward once imagined twinkling as he thrilled in the darkness. The house was full of the smell of it, and of spices and port, of orange and clove, of sage and roasting, of the warm nostalgia that has been worked into the wood for so many years — the festive glow which Julia had relit, resplendent. She had sweated and fretted over the goose in the kitchen, but now it was brought forth, complete with potatoes roasted in its fat, sprouts of course, redcurrant and bread sauces, a rich brown gravy and, most proudly of all, the chestnut stuffing (the liver dutifully identified and recovered by Simon from the plastic bag of innards). Her sister sat to one side of her, Simon to the other, and Aunt Helen wasn’t there but it was all in her honour, and Julia would do the day justice. She was wearing a dark red dress — yes, cut to show the angles of her slim sharp shoulders — her hair caught up in a failing bun, her colour a little high with heat and happiness, and Simon watched enraptured again as her hands looped and curled her words, her laughter flowing free with the wine, at last at leisure.

  This is the only occasion on which Simon and Julia have used the dining room, although it amuses her sometimes to imagine them sitting at either end of the long table, politely smiling at each other, too distant to converse. They eat in the kitchen, or on laps in the sitting room, or on a night like tonight — if all goes to plan — in the conservatory with the doors wide to the garden. But in the days when families were formal, and the damask was darker, the shine of the pattern more crisp, Emily took her seat at table thrice daily with her brotherin-law and his wife. There she sat, always the same seat, opposite Arabella, feeling like an unwanted relative’s orphan or a maiden aunt. John would attempt a light political sally, into a debate that a woman might have formed a view upon, not wishing to appal or confuse her; Emily, uncertain of her bounds, would respond politely. Then Arabella would yawn in a manner sh
e thought discreet, and all would consider the matter resolved, as far as that table was concerned. It was a missed opportunity, for Emily’s mind was quick and John’s was surprisingly open. Arabella, for her part, had long since given up on broaching any subject of interest to herself, seeing that the endlessly fascinating activities of their acquaintances, and their intrigues and hat trims, were of apparently no consequence to her rather peculiar sister-in-law. Besides, these were not appropriate topics for the dinner table; she had no wish to irritate her husband, and anyway Arabella liked to dedicate her attention to the task in hand, especially if it came with a cream sauce. And so Emily’s first months at her brother-in-law’s table passed without interest or incident.

  Come Christmas time John, knowing that Mr Gardiner, Emily’s father, would be alone for the festive season, invited him to stay at the house with them too; and now here they sit, it is Christmas Day, and a select band of the town’s luminaries have been invited to share the goose. Arabella, with the tact she considers foremost among her talents, has placed Mr Gardiner beside Mrs Dempsey, a widow of her acquaintance who has kept her good humour despite her loss, and a nice womanly figure besides. Daniel Gardiner, a kind and quiet man who, for his part, will never quite recover from his wife’s departure, replies to her teasing in awkward monosyllables; he tries to respond to John’s generous attempts at conversation, but is a little hard of hearing and finds the words are lost in crossing the table, swallowed up in the nudging, pealing laughter of his neighbour. Well, he thinks to himself at the peak of one particular crescendo, perhaps tonight I might consider the Lord to have blessed me with deafness. And as he smiles his mild smile, he catches his daughter’s eye across the table. Emily is seated too far away for them to speak, between a clergyman and a lawyer, he surmises; she smiles back, helpless, and he knows that all her vivacity, as lovely as it is, can only be for show. Still, how lovely she is tonight. With her mother’s pale gold skin that he liked so much better than the fashion for blue-veined pallor.