Black Ice (17 page)

Fitzgerald lay awake all that night, his mind racing as he chewed on the problem. Eventually, he consoled himself with the thought that Carl was really too sick at present to be thinking of the diary at all. Fitzgerald decided to return the document, confident—for the next few weeks at least—that Carl wouldn't be in a fit state to act on it.

But after that? Who could tell?

One thing of which Fitzgerald was absolutely sure: there was no way that he was going to permit his fellow explorer to go public with these lies. That was most definitely not going to happen.

35

Lauren burst into the generator shed in a state of high excitement, her eyes glittering beneath the swaddling fur collar of her parka.

‘Sean. Leave the engine and come with me. You have to see what's happening in the sky.'

Sean shucked on his thermal outerwear and walked out to join her. It was the end of their third winter week, an unusually calm night with virtually no wind to speak of—one of the first occasions in this winter sojourn that Sean had seen it so still.

‘Come away from the base. We have to get away from the lights and the engine noise.'

Lauren took Sean's hand, and they walked together for a while, their rubber bunnyboots squeaking on the fresh scattering of dry snow which had fallen earlier in the day.

When his eyes had adjusted, Sean whistled in amazement. The moon, platinum brilliant, was surrounded by a number of concentric circles of coloured light which shimmered and pulsed as if fired by some internal force. The effect was as if a rainbow had somehow gatecrashed the winter night and decided, for the fun of it, to play rings around the moon, each bangle a fusion of iridescent reds and greens.

‘Moon halo,' Lauren whispered, ‘but wait a while, there's more happening…'

Moments later the luminous rings began to fade as a new phenomenon superceded them; this time it was a coppery curtain of luminescence stretching in a languid spider's web of light from horizon to horizon. To Sean the light looked liquid, metallic, as if a shower of mercury droplets had been atomised into the heavens and left to play. The intensity of light shifted sensually, gliding endlessly from one glittering array to the next, illuminating sections in the same way that a laser fired from earth will play among the clouds.

‘It's like it's raining light,' Sean whispered. ‘I've never seen anything more wonderful.'

‘Want to know what causes it?' Lauren offered.

‘You know, I think I'd rather take it for a miracle.'

They stood for many minutes, watching the lights play across the deep jet black of the night sky.

‘Have you heard of Reinhold Messner?' It was Lauren who broke the silence.

‘Sure. Didn't he cross Antarctica on foot?'

‘He did. And he wrote something that always comes to mind when I witness something like this. He said that he felt when he was travelling here that he was in a time and state where “nature alone is God”.'

‘Nature alone is God,' Sean repeated, still gazing up at the shifting heavens. ‘He got that right.'

Then Sean took Lauren in his arms.

‘You know, this winter would be a hell of a lot warmer if we were together,' he told her.

‘We are together. With six other people.'

‘You know what I mean. If I kiss you now, do you think our lips would be frozen together for ever?'

‘Try,' Lauren laughed. ‘I bet no one else has at minus sixty-four.'

They slowly kissed, the warmth of their mouths shocking in the freezing temperatures.

Suddenly, Sean was laughing. ‘I just got this vision of the two of us creeping into the doc with our faces welded together. You think we'd get any sympathy?'

‘We'd never live it down.'

They turned their attention back to the night sky, but the southern lights had melted away. The moon was also sitting alone, naked without its haloes. They returned to the warmth of the engine room where Sean poured Lauren hot chocolate from a flask and watched her drink.

‘How do you feel about it?' he asked her.

Lauren kissed him again, the chocolate sweet on her chapped lips.

‘There's nothing I want more,' she told him. ‘Since the rescue, I guess we both felt the same…'

Sean pulled back and looked at her quizzically. ‘And I sense an Antarctic-size “but” coming along.'

‘This base is everything I've ever wanted,' she told him softly, ‘and being the commander brings special responsibilities. I have to be equal to everyone, and I definitely can't be seen to be having a relationship with one of my crew. It would change the whole dynamic.'

‘I see. So the dynamic's what's important, is it? More important than what I might feel for you? Or what you might feel for me?'

‘Hey, Sean, I didn't mean that…'

Sean held up his hand to stop her. ‘Please. I know what you're saying. Forget we ever mentioned it.'

He turned his back on her and busied himself with the engine as Lauren, flustered, left the shed and crossed back to the main block.

Back in her bed, she struggled to find sleep, reliving the beauty of the moon halo and the southern lights and the gentle kiss which she had torn herself away from with God only knew what regret. When she heard Sean going to his room some hours later, it was all she could do to prevent herself racing along the corridor and throwing herself into his bed.

But she didn't. And she doubted she had ever hated herself more.

36

Mel cut Richard's legs free from their casts on 6 May, the forty-fourth day of winter. Lauren used the event as an excuse for a party, knowing from experience of other bases that each and every milestone of the passing winter should be celebrated as vigorously as possible.

They gathered in the mess room at eight p.m., all bar Carl, who, despite the best efforts of his fellow base members, had failed to emerge from the medical bay. Murdo had decided on an Indian theme for the food, conjuring up a mouth-watering selection of samosas, spiced chicken and popadoms. Pride of place went to a substantial foot-shaped cake, piped with Murdo's subtle icing legend: ‘Let's get legless.'

To the chef's irritation, Fitzgerald immediately began picking at the food.

‘We were planning to eat together,' Murdo told the explorer icily.

‘Oh yes?' The smiling Fitzgerald languidly popped another morsel in his mouth.

‘Leave it.' Lauren flashed Murdo a warning look. ‘This is a party not a food fight. Richard's been locked in those casts for six weeks, and he's itching to get out of them.'

‘Itching's the word,' the journalist agreed with feeling.

Mel used a pair of Sean's tin cutters for the task, slicing with some difficulty through the stubbornly tough cast and creating a mini dune of powdered plaster beneath the journalist's seat. As Richard's legs were revealed, the watching team burst into a spontaneous round of applause.

‘Those are the ugliest pins I've ever seen,' Frank remarked, ‘and, believe me, that's quite an achievement.'

Richard looked at the atrophied limbs in horror, shocked at the pallid chicken-skin flesh and the blotchy blisters where the plaster had irritated the skin.

‘Take a walk,' Mel told him. ‘Carefully.'

Richard rose from his seat, picked up one of his crutches and took a few cautious steps around the mess room.

‘How do they feel?' Lauren asked him.

‘Weak. Stiff as hell. And light, like someone switched off gravity.'

‘Your legs have lost about thirty per cent of their muscle mass,' Mel told him. ‘It'll take a while to get that back.'

‘We'll get you into physio first thing tomorrow,' Lauren said. ‘Three hours a day on the bike machine, and you'll be as good as new.'

The team sat to eat, relishing the exotic spices of the Indian meal after six weeks of relatively bland fare. The beer rations were distributed, Fitzgerald and the
Daily Mail
journalist receiving an equal share of cans, even though this meant the others were not getting their full allocation. As the alcohol kicked in, the babble of conversation picked up, voices rising to be heard above the Radiohead album Sean had put on the CD player.

Lauren was at the head of the table, with Sean, Frank and Fitzgerald seated closest to her.

‘Let's tackle the big one,' Frank said as he stuffed another samosa into his mouth. ‘Scott or Shackleton, who was the greatest?'

Lauren laughed. ‘I wondered how long it would take you to get round to that old chestnut. I think my answer would be neither—it was Amundsen who was the greatest; he was a polar explorer par excellence.'

‘Better than Shackleton?' Frank was surprised at her response. ‘On what grounds?'

‘Attention to detail. Amundsen was a man who knew his subject intimately; he was the first polar professional if you like. Unlike Scott, one might say.'

‘What's this I hear?' Sean joined the conversation at this point, putting on his crustiest British accent. ‘Slagging off one's fellow countryman? Not the pukka thing, what?'

‘It is when you look at the amateurish way Scott put the whole project together,' Lauren told him. ‘Amundsen was in a different class.'

‘Examples,' Frank demanded. ‘Support your argument with facts.'

‘All right.' Lauren thought for a while. ‘How about the question of clothing? Scott relied on cottons and wools, warm enough until you sweat, at which point they freeze as stiff as a board, reducing you to little more than a human icicle. Amundsen, on the other hand, did his research, he spent time with the Inuit up in Greenland and realised that their loose-fitting animal furs were vastly superior. He kitted his entire team out in fur—and it was a great success.'

‘What about the animals?' Sean asked. ‘Amundsen had the edge with that too, didn't he?'

‘He did. He had more than two hundred dogs and a great deal of experience of how to handle them. Scott only had a couple of dozen inferior dogs, putting more of his faith into ponies.'

‘Ponies!' Sean scoffed. ‘I'd forgotten that little detail! What kind of madman would bring ponies to Antarctica?'

Frank and Lauren could think of no answer to this, but after a pause Lauren continued: ‘And to give you a further example of the way Amundsen planned ahead, he'd even calculated the precise day on which each of the dogs would have to be slaughtered to feed the others.'

‘Brutal!' Sean was outraged. ‘Those animals worked themselves to the bone for that guy, and he thanked them with a bullet?'

‘Scott's team did the same. One of the few advantages of their ponies was the amount of meat they could get out of them.'

‘Amundsen might have had the planning expertise,' Frank commented, ‘but the man didn't have any charisma. Shackleton was a born leader, wasn't he? And don't forget, he never lost a man … brought them through that shipwreck, the open boat journey, the crossing of South Georgia, without a single fatality.'

‘Aha!' Lauren was quick to challenge him. ‘That's a myth. It's not true that he never lost a man. He lost three men on that expedition, and that's a fact.'

Frank gave her a sceptical look. ‘You sure? I was brought up as a schoolboy believing that Shackleton was the greatest expedition leader because he never lost a man.'

‘He didn't lose anyone from the half of the team that was with him, but that expedition was in two parts,' Lauren corrected him. ‘It was split on both sides of the Antarctic: Shackleton and one half of the team preparing for the crossing in the west, the other half travelling down by ship to lay depots and meet them on the eastern side of the continent. That group had a dreadful time, were pretty ill-prepared for what was in front of them, and they
did
lose three men. So there.'

Frank was crestfallen. ‘So. In those few brutal words you've destroyed the myth of my childhood hero.'

‘And how about Scott?' Sean asked. ‘What really killed him in the end?'

‘I don't think there's too much doubt about that,' Lauren replied. ‘It was the disappointment of being beaten to the Pole. When he saw that Norwegian flag flying there, something died inside him, and in his team mates too.'

‘You mean they might have survived the return trip if they'd been first to the Pole?'

‘Quite possibly, yes; they were returning as failures, and, for someone with Scott's drive and ambition, that would have been an unbearable cross to bear.'

Frank turned his attention to Fitzgerald, who had been ignoring the conversation. ‘What about you, Julian? What do you think?'

The explorer toyed with his beer glass for a while before responding. ‘I don't think any one of you has the faintest idea what you're talking about.'

With that he downed the last of his drink, rose from the table and left the room.

The conversation went quiet for a while.

‘That man is beginning to get on my nerves,' Frank said. ‘And to think we have to suffer him for the rest of the winter.'

‘We don't have a choice,' Lauren told them, ‘We're stuck here with him, and we've got to make the best of it.'

‘Then you should do something about his behaviour,' Murdo protested. ‘That's your job as base commander, right?'

The party resumed, but the mood never regained the carefree spirit of celebration it had had at the start of the evening. Lauren was particularly preoccupied, aware that Murdo's words echoed the sentiments of everyone at the base. It
was
her job to do something about Fitzgerald; there was little doubt he was getting increasingly bad-tempered, flaring up over trivial irritations. Each passing week was making him more withdrawn and isolated, classic symptons of ‘Big Eye'.

Lauren resolved she would confront him about the problem, next time an opportunity came up.