Sun at Midnight (16 page)

‘You know, these are crazy people,’ the man said.

Alice guessed who this must be.

‘How do you do, Dr Petkov?’ she said.

He bellowed with laughter. ‘I love you British. You are always “How do you do? Would you like a nice cup of tea?”’

He was right, Alice thought. Richard and she, that was how they were. Valentin swept an arm round her and kissed her enthusiastically on the mouth. She kissed him right back. It would be good to have a friend like Valentin.

There had been a babble of loud conversation, but now it died away. She blushed under the sudden general scrutiny, but Valentin Petkov only laughed harder and slapped her on the back.

‘Soup, Alice?’ Richard asked.

Across the table was a big blond man with thick features and painful-looking cracked lips. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Jochen van Meer. Base medic. The soup’s really good, have some.’

From the other side of Arturo, Nikolai Pocius, the radio operator, poked his skull-head forward. ‘He is right. Russ is making it, even though it’s my duty day. It is a flavour known as not-Lithuanian soup.’ Someone else gave an ironic cheer and Alice saw a dark-skinned impish-faced boy on the other side of Nikolai. Philip Idwal Jones, the Welsh mountain guide. He winked at her.

Richard had ladled soup into her bowl. Alice lifted a spoonful and tasted it. Jochen and Nikolai were right, it
was very good. She was hungry, ravenous again. She could have eaten the entire contents of the big saucepan, straight down. Then, as she was trying not to devour her plateful too quickly, she noticed something else. It would have struck her at once, if she had not been distracted by Valentin.

A force field of antagonism divided the two ends of the table. In a moment’s silence that was broken only by the clinking of cutlery, the separation seemed as obvious as a brick wall.

On one side, Richard Shoesmith’s side, were Jochen the doctor, Arturo and herself, with Valentin somewhere on the borderline. On the other were Russell and Nikolai and Phil and, somewhat suprisingly, Laure. Laure was sitting with her head and shoulder inclined towards her neighbour and the swan curve of her long white neck drew Alice’s eyes to the man at the far end of the table.

Her glance almost travelled over him and on to Philip, because there was nothing outwardly remarkable. The man was eating with quick economical movements, his head bent, looking at no one. She saw that his hair was shaved close to his skull and that it might have been white or grey or silver. There was a dark mole on his forehead, just at the point where his hairline came forward in a vee, and his skin was weather-beaten.

At that moment, with her eyes on him, Rooker lifted his head. She expected that he would meet her glance, but he did not. Alice had never seen such a withdrawn expression. James Rooker looked at nothing and nobody, in spite of Laure’s seductive posture. All he would see, she guessed, were the images that played behind his own eyes.

Her soup spoon drooped in her empty plate and she quickly put it down.

She folded her hands out of sight, under the table, in case they were trembling.

She told herself that she had imagined the force field. Antarctica must already be affecting her. There was no brick wall and no opposing ranks, only ten tired people having dinner in a remote place, and a ripple of dislike between two of them. There was antagonism between Shoesmith and Rooker, and Richard had even hinted as much, but anything else was mere fancy. It was the sensation of being trapped, closed in this room with the blizzard driving against the windows, that was heating her imagination.

Richard touched her elbow.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s a lot to take in. Have you worked out who everyone is?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll just make a brief introduction.’

He tinkled his spoon against his water glass. There was no alcohol in sight. The low hum of talk stopped.

‘Not all of you have had a chance to meet her yet, so I want to introduce Dr Alice Peel who has just joined us from Oxford. Welcome to the Joint EU Antarctic Expedition, Alice, and to Kandahar Station.’

The others made a polite murmur and now Rooker’s abstract gaze briefly settled on her face. It made her feel uncomfortable. Alice nervously cleared her throat. She made a little speech about how happy she was to be here and how much she was looking forward to working as part of the team. There was a small patter of applause, not ironic, she thought.

‘Bravo, Alice,’ Valentin shouted. He put his arm round her and hugged her again, and she found this comforting.

There was a boiled ham and mashed potatoes to follow the soup, then tinned fruit salad. Alice had overestimated her appetite after all and couldn’t finish hers, but Valentin obligingly exchanged plates with her.

After the meal she tried to help with the clearing up, but Russell told her that it was Niki’s duty day and she would have plenty to do when her own turn came. Rooker and Phil had disappeared, and Nikolai went over to the radio room once the washing-up was done. As soon as the door opened a long arm of wind-driven snow and icy cold snaked into the hut and tried to snatch at them.

Everyone else was reading, writing notes or listening to music on headphones. Alice went to bed. She lay in the dark security of her bunk, feeling loneliness stretched out beside her. The wind sometimes fell to a low growl, at other times it rose to a high-pitched scream that battered at the roof and the walls.

She thought about the nine other people at the dinner table. Each of them had their stories behind them, all the people and places lined up in the recesses of their past, and she tried to imagine what they might be. Then she turned on to her back and lay with her eyes open, her fingers laced over her belly.

Quite soon, sleep came and claimed her.

The blizzard lasted for three days. It was impossible to leave the base – even crossing the few yards to the other hut was a serious excursion.

On the first day Alice thought she would go and talk about their joint geology projects to Richard, who was working in the lab. She put on her parka and a pair of snow boots, and told Russell where she was headed.

As soon as she stepped out of the door the wind slammed it shut behind her. She took an unthinking step forward as driving snow filled her eyes and mouth. She choked and lifted her arms to shield her face. The sudden movement and an extra-vicious gust of wind made her stagger, and she overbalanced and fell into thigh-deep snow. Coughing and
gasping, she floundered on all fours trying to get her bearings. It was like huddling inside a tin of icy whitewash that was being violently shaken. Snow stung her eyes and half blinded her, and when she did shield them with a numb hand she couldn’t see beyond her own fingers.

She had no idea which way to turn. The edge of the bluff was a couple of yards away in one direction, the main hut could only be the same distance away in the other. But she could see nothing. There was just the blizzard, a whirling wall of snow and sea fog, and the wind tearing as if it wanted to strip and flay her. She stood up again and glimpsed the blurred outline of her fall and the fumbling step that led to it, in a completely different direction from the one she would have guessed.

She retraced the step and the red-painted wall of the hut loomed ahead. With a sharp gasp of relief she felt her way along it to the door. Against the gale, it took all her strength to heave it open. When it yielded she fell inside in a slanting column of snow. Papers blew off the table and saucepans rattled. She forced the door shut and bent over, panting for breath.

It was like stepping from one universe into another. The noise of the wind was muted to a sonorous organ note. It was almost impossible to believe that the calm, domestic interior existed on the same planet as the wilderness outside, let alone that they were separated by only a few inches of insulated wall.

She had been out for one or two minutes. Russ was still sitting in exactly the same position at the table, reading a two-week-old newspaper. Arturo was beyond him, tapping at his laptop. They both looked up.

Alice’s eyes were watering. She didn’t know if they were tears of cold or shock.

Russ got up, went to the coffee pot and poured some into
a mug. He put the mug on the table and guided Alice to a chair in front of it.

‘Rough weather,’ he said kindly. ‘You’re not adjusted yet. Best to stay put until it quietens down.’

‘I had no idea,’ she whispered when she could speak.

It was true. Every slow hour that passed seemed to underline the fact that she knew nothing about this place she had come to.

Since her arrival there had been no chance to explore outside the hut even for half an hour. All she knew so far was this tiny space, enclosed by four walls against the fury of the weather. Although she had tried to prepare for it, a world of such absolute hostility was completely new to her.

She kept reminding herself that compared with what the polar explorers of her childhood bedtime stories had endured they were living a life of ease at Kandahar. She was warm, dry, well-fed and quite safe. She didn’t have to man-haul a loaded sledge across massive unseen crevasses, or shiver for days and nights on end in a precarious tent with only a sleeping bag made of soaking animal furs for protection. She wouldn’t have to walk for days with no food, or eat the remains of the sledge dogs and consider it a luxury. But even so, the brief confrontation with the real Antarctica hit her hard. She was fearful, afraid that her first instinct, to stay away from this harsh place at the end of the world, had been the correct one.

As the second and third blizzard days of idleness crept by, Alice found it hard to occupy herself. Everyone else seemed quite happy. Russell ran the base, overseeing everything from food preparation to the sorting of waste. Laure had her Adélie penguin samples to work on and spent most of her time sitting at her microscope in the lab. Arturo and Valentin worked on their data too, or collated their notes, or read scientific papers. Richard was always busy. An air
of abstraction clung about him, except at mealtimes when he made an effort to preside sociably at the table. Jochen van Meer, the stolid Dutchman, was content to read paperback thrillers and watch DVDs. His own scientific study, to do with respiration, nutrition and body weight at extreme temperatures, involved nothing more at present than taking everyone’s blood pressure once in a while and enquiring about their appetite.

Whatever the weather, Niki had to spend most of his hours in the radio room. He had a series of schedules to keep with the Chileans and other bases, and with the ships in the vicinity. Alice found it comforting to know that even though while the blizzard lasted they were actually as far out of reach than as if they were on the moon, there were other people alive and well in this white inferno.

When she tried to think about home and her parents, or Pete, or Jo and Becky, they seemed too far away to conjure up. Each expedition member was allotted thirty minutes’ on-line time every day for personal e-mails, but when she sat down to write, Alice couldn’t describe her feelings of isolation and claustrophobia.

It’s snowing, she wrote lamely. But I expect we’ll be able to get outside soon.

In their replies their voices sounded unfamiliar.

Margaret was tired. It does snow, she wrote, without the brisk advice to get used to it that Alice might have expected. Becky’s comment was how exciting, is it deep? She was plainly imagining somewhere not unlike Verbier.

Philip Idwal Jones and the boatman, as Alice still thought of him, Rooker, were less in evidence than the rest of the team. The four male scientists occupied one of the bunk rooms and the support staff the other. Philip and Rooker seemed to spend most of their days behind the closed door of their room, with Niki whenever he was off duty. Sometimes
Valentin joined them. Raised voices and laughter were occasionally audible. When the door did briefly open a breath of thick smoky air escaped.

Everyone slept a good deal, Alice supposed. Certainly Laure did, whenever she wasn’t working. She slept very neatly and quietly, her spine curled against the room, threads of her dark hair spread on the pillow. Alice lay on her back, staring at the wooden base of the overhead bunk and listening to the wind.

Margaret had once spent fifteen consecutive days in a tent, waiting for the weather to break so she could get back to the base. Her food supplies had run so low that by the end she was on quarter rations. ‘I just waited,’ was all she said about it. ‘It’s not very long, out of a lifetime, is it? To get what you want?’

But Margaret had only worked on the coast or at the margins of the ice shelf, because that was where the animals she was studying were to be found. She never went inland, towards the white heart, where Alice would have to go to find her rocks. Sooner or later the blizzard would be over and the preparations would be complete, and she and Richard would head out into the field. They would spend a week alone together, collecting rocks, in contact with base only via a daily radio link. It was an intimidating prospect, but with the walls of the hut pressing closer and closer around her she was also longing to get outside, anywhere, to do anything at all that wasn’t hanging around waiting and trying not to be conspicuous.

At mealtimes she covertly studied Richard Shoesmith’s profile, wondering how they would work together out on the ice.

On the third day of confinement Alice was rostered for hut duties. It was a relief to have something concrete to do. She cleaned the bathroom, scrubbed the floor of the living area and baked scones for tea, as well as serving up lunch
and dinner. As soon as she banged the plate and spoon, everyone flocked to the table. With so few other diversions, they were all inquisitive about whether the new arrival could cook. After her day in the kitchen Alice was relieved and flattered when her Spanish omelette and spiced beef casserole were both wolfed down.

‘Bravo, Alice.’ Valentin beamed again. ‘You turn out to be a true gift.’

Over dinner there was a noticeably more cheerful atmosphere. Richard rested his elbows on the table, and laughed when Jochen asked whether he was going to invite any more geologists to join them who were good cooks
and
betterlooking than Russ.