Sun at Midnight (24 page)

Valentin burst out in his wake. ‘He got his silly head in the way. Bat smack in face.’

Jochen took Arturo’s wrists and dragged the hands from his face. Arturo shouted louder as snow and wind drove into the crushedstrawberry remains of his nose.

‘Uh-oh,’ Jochen muttered. He took him by the arm and propelled him inside.

Valentin and the others followed. Valentin shrugged his shoulders up to his ears and spread his shovel-sized hands. ‘I didn’t mean to hit him. Little
maricón
.’

Of course not, Phil and Rooker agreed. It could have happened to anyone.

‘Shed squash. It’s a man’s game and a man must take risks,’ Phil said solemnly.

In the hut, Jochen had Arturo in a chair with his head back. He shone a torch up each pulpy nostril and into Arturo’s eyes while Laure laid out dressings and syringes.

‘Could be broken,’ Jochen said.

Arturo gave a thin howl.

‘But I would have to X-ray to be certain and here I cannot, so I must do what I can for your pretty face and we will hope for the best, my friend.’

‘Jesus, Maria,’ Arturo moaned.

By the evening he had two swollen black eyes and his nose was obliterated by a huge swath of splints, bandage and sticking plaster.

‘I dunno, Artie,’ Phil said. ‘I can see that it’s different all right. But I’m not sure it’s an improvement.’

Arturo held up his middle finger, then winced.

Valentin rapped the table for attention. ‘I am asking the company present for one decision. I am champion, yes, since Arturo here retired hurt?’

There was a chorus of contradictions. Finally Phil and Rooker, as the game’s inventors, were allowed to adjudicate.

‘Rematch,’ Rooker pronounced. ‘Nose status permitting.’

The night’s weather report indicated that conditions at Santa Ana were improving, with only moderate winds and precipitation. The pilots would assess the situation again in the morning. The news from the Bluff was that Richard and Alice were ending their fifth day in the tent, the fourth of their unscheduled extra stay. They were running low on food.

‘Tomorrow is always another day in Antarctica,’ Phil said.

Alice opened her eyes. The pyramid reach of the tent over her head, the smell of her sleeping bag and her own unwashed skin, the
hrggh
sound that Richard made when he cleared his throat and prepared to turn a page of his book, were all as familiar to her as if she had grown up with them. She would not have believed it possible to spend so many hours confined in such a small space with a man she barely knew, but still she
had
done it.

It was only a few seconds ago that she had woken from a deep, populous sleep – during the blizzard she sometimes wasn’t sure if she had been properly conscious for even one hour in twenty-four – but it was clear that there was something different happening outside. The tent walls bellied and then grew taut, but slowly. There was no roaring and banging, even when she shook her head to clear her dulled ears.

Richard was kneeling at the radio box. She studied the outline of his profile and the fuzzy promontory of his beard as intently as if he were beloved to her. As if he were her lover.

She did love him, in a way, after the six days that they had just endured together. They had sung songs, recited poems, played cards and talked until it seemed that they
had no more memories to share. Alice had told him about her mother, and about how Margaret had already experienced and triumphantly survived even what they were doing right now. ‘Sometimes I feel as if all my life already belongs to her. That was one of the reasons why I was reluctant to come down here. I can’t do any of it any differently, any better, than she did. Is it the same for you?’

Richard said, ‘I longed to come. I knew as soon as I was old enough to know anything that it was what I had to do.’ His eyes burned with zeal.

We’re not the same, Alice thought. Not quite the same.

When one of them feared that the wind would never stop blowing, the other joked and cajoled the sufferer back into optimism. They confessed to each other when they felt the grip of homesickness, took it in turns to stumble out to the barrel dug into a shelter a few yards from the tent, made each other laugh and listened to each other’s dream-ridden sleep. But they did not become lovers. That avenue had turned into a cul-de-sac.

Alice hadn’t explained the reason why. Once or twice she felt the words forming, but this news was so momentous, so personal to her in the way that it was embedded in the tissues of her body, that she had never spoken of it.

She had done plenty of thinking instead. She had chased reasons and plans and possible courses of action all through the claustrophobic hours of the blizzard. There had been moments of pure panic, but these had been balanced by incredulity and joy.

She was pregnant. There would be a baby.

She counted up the weeks and calculated that it would be in early July. It seemed a long way off, yet, but the day would come. It must come, that at least was one thing she was certain of. Alice had been with Becky after her abortion and had listened to her weeping. Even now, more than
fifteen years later, Becky still grieved for the child she had lost when she had been little more than a child herself. This unplanned baby, hers, was hardly more than an idea but there could be no destroying it. The thought alone made her draw in her shoulders and hunch her spine to make a protective cage round it.

But first there was her old life, the one she was used to living. That had to be given its due, too. Everything would change, but before it did there was this precious interval.

Alice considered the possibility of making her announcement as soon as they got back to Kandahar. There would be surprise and concern – Richard, Jochen and Russ would say that a research base in Antarctica was no place for a pregnant woman. There would be a hasty helicopter ride, a flight onwards from Santa Ana to South America and the rest of the long journey home.

For what reason?

Her house was let for the academic year, her role in the Department was on hold, no one expected to see her before the early summer.

If I go straight home from here in March, she calculated, instead of travelling for another couple of months, I will still only be twenty-one or twenty-two weeks pregnant.

She had confidence in her body. It always did what she wanted it to, or had done until it sprang this surprise on her. It could look after itself for another two or three months, why not?

I can finish what I promised to do here, Alice thought. No one need know until I get back home.

She would not have to creep back early and tell Margaret, my coil failed, can you believe it? The device would stay inside her and be harmlessly expelled when the baby was born, she thought. She must have read that somewhere.
I’m going to have a baby.

Trevor would be delighted. He would want her to go home right away, whatever the circumstances. But Trevor always did the safest thing. Margaret, on the other hand…Alice could see how her face would tighten at the news.

‘Well, are you pleased? You must be,’ she would say. ‘But what a shame that it should happen right now. And what about Peter?’

What about Peter.

He had slipped into a corner of her mind, one that she didn’t often visit. This was her baby, not his, not anyone else’s. She would make her own decisions.

The last factor in her reckoning was Antarctica itself. Even as the blizzard sucked and bellowed around their speck of shelter, making even the briefest dash outside a blind odyssey through choking snow and wind, Alice knew that she didn’t want to leave the ice. Not until it was properly time to go. Yesterday, with food and fuel running low, they had rationed themselves to one hot meal of a mug of porridge made with water, and divided the last of the chocolate and dried fruit between them for the rest of the day. They were hungry and the interior of the tent was a cold and squalid tangle, but Alice felt a bud of determination forming inside her, as strong and tenacious as the baby itself.

She would not easily give up this savage and beautiful place. She was learning to live with it, not against it.

Richard was searching for radio contact: ‘Kandahar, Kandahar, do you read me? This is Wheeler’s Bluff camp. Do you read me? Over.

‘Where are they?’ he muttered impatiently.

Niki’s voice faded in and out through the static, then grew clear. ‘Good morning, Wheeler’s Bluff, Wheeler’s Bluff, do you copy?’

‘Yes of course we do, what are they playing at?’ He frowned at Alice.

‘Copy you, Kandahar. Sitrep, please. Over.’

‘We have some news, Wheeler’s Bluff.’

Alice sat up. A shower of ice crystals from the roof of the tent fell over her head and neck.

‘Weather window now opening. Helo transport left Santa Ana at o-nine-thirty hours. ETA at Kandahar two-zero minutes from now, estimated departure time for Bluff eleven-thirty hours. Do you copy?’

Alice gave a little whoop of delight.

Richard had already taken the weather observations. He recited them to Niki.

‘Roger, Wheeler’s Bluff. Repeat contact in one hour.’

‘Hooray,’ Alice said.

‘I think it’ll be touch and go. But let’s get on with it.’

They lifted their hands and clapped them together.

Outside, it was still blowing. There was a lot of work to do. Their camp had to be packed up and and every bundle weighed, ready for loading on the helicopter. The last job of all would be to take down the tent and dismantle the radio antennae. If in the end the helicopter was delayed, they would need shelter and radio contact.

The temperature was falling. Alice zipped up her onepiece padded suit over all her other layers of smelly clothing, wondering if it was only her imagination that made it seem much tighter than it had been a week ago.

She began to work, packing the Primus components in the correct box, then starting work on the kitchen equipment. As each box was closed, she helped Richard to weigh it on a hand balance and made a note of the result. The work occupied her mind.

En route from Kandahar to Wheeler’s Bluff, Rooker listened to the pilots’ laconic exchanges through his headset. The weather at Kandahar had been fairly calm, but out here over
the glaciers and nunataks the visibility was steadily deteriorating. For the last five minutes it had been like flying through milk. The navigator peered forwards and downwards, his helmet rotating in Rooker’s sightline as he strained to pick ground features out of the wall of white. There were blue ridges of bare ice beneath them, visible for a few seconds before they were swallowed up again by the billowing mist and snow. Andy and Mick were as calm as if they were on a training run out of their home airfield, but Rooker knew there was no cause for celebration. He sat still with his hands loose in his lap, waiting for what would happen.

The helicopter turned in a tight circle and a savage gust of wind made it buck and judder. The Bluff suddenly appeared below them, its black back jagged in the surrounding void. Then they caught sight of a tiny orange triangle out in the wasteland. Rooker stared down at it as they circled closer. The isolation of this place and the utter precariousness of the shelter struck him forcibly. People wouldn’t survive for very long out here if their little props were swept away.

The pilot circled once again and Rooker saw two small figures next to the tent. A landing square, properly marked out with poles and flags, swam into view. The machine’s hover churned up a whirling wall of snow. A moment later the skis settled on the square and they were down.

‘Nice job,’ Rooker murmured.

‘Let’s get loaded up and back to the coast before we start to party,’ Andy answered.

Cold and wind assaulted them as they stepped out. Richard and Alice were already shovelling snow and hauling rocks off the flap of their tent, ready to stow it. Rooker headed straight for the skidoo pegged under its nylon cover. With barely a word exchanged, all five of them set to work in a methodical rush to get everything packed away before the
weather deteriorated further and left them all stranded there.

When it was done, Rooker saw Alice look around her, just once, to where the marks of their campsite were already being rubbed away by blowing snow. Then she walked towards the helicopter.

She looked different, even though her face was masked by her hood and snow goggles. She held her back straighter and there was a different angle to her head. Something has happened to her, he thought.

When they were airborne again he leaned towards her. In the cramped rear seats their sleeves were rubbing together, but he couldn’t feel her arm under the layers of insulation. ‘Good trip?’ he asked.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Alice answered. He noticed the warm flash of her smile.

Richard hadn’t entrusted his new mollusc to the sample boxes stacked behind them. He had put the bag with the fossil sealed inside it into the inner pocket of his parka. Once or twice during the flight Alice saw his hand go to the pocket zipper, to check that it was properly closed.

Over the coast there was a layer of clear sky sandwiched between snow and cloud. Its margins shimmered with silver and the undersides of the clouds were washed with a pale green as delicate as a bird’s egg. The red walls at Kandahar looked shockingly bright as the helicopter darted home over the glacier.

The hut door opened and tiny people spilled out, ready to greet them. Valentin and Niki stood at the door of the lab hut, looking as they always did, like one another’s antithesis. Russell stood with his hands shading his eyes and Laure bobbed beside him. The helicopter circled once, then dipped to the landing square.

They had been away in the field for thirteen days, but to Alice it seemed much longer. She was glad to see the huts
and the jumble of antennae and stores, and she immediately noticed the new skidoo shelter with the light dully reflecting off its metal walls.

‘Hey, look.’ She pointed as the engines stopped.

Rook grinned. He took off his headset and hung it up. ‘There’s a story attached.’

Richard looked round immediately, but Rook didn’t elaborate.