Sun at Midnight (51 page)

She
had
to find him and tell him that whatever was in his past they could confront it together. How long before she could go to him? Where could she begin the search?
What if she couldn’t find him – how could she live with that?

Trevor’s hand was resting on her arm and he felt the electric impulses flickering under her skin. This burning, passionate creature was a different daughter from the cautious, reflective one he had known. He was happy that she had caught fire and he was full of apprehension for her.

‘I know. I know you do,’ Alice was saying to him.

The front door slammed and Margaret marched into the room. ‘Well, then. Has he gone? What are you two talking about?’

Trevor smiled. ‘Antarctica,’ he said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Rooker glanced briefly around the bare room. There wasn’t much to see. The bookcase was empty and there was nothing in the cupboard except a few twisted coathangers. It was already dark outside and in any case the view from the window was of the same old rocky slope, now crusty with snow. He hoisted his two bags and tramped down the stairs.

Marta was waiting for him, her bulk almost blocking the hallway. She was smiling but her eyes were sad. ‘Rooker, you know, I am sorry you leave.’

Her hand grabbed his sleeve and the sudden movement set the carved wooden hatstand teetering. He caught and steadied it.

‘Maybe I’ll be back.’

‘Maybe, eh? We don’t know anything in this world. You have time for a little drink before you go?’

He didn’t care where he was going and time stretched shapelessly ahead of him, but he shook his head just the same. ‘Better be getting to the airport.’

She nodded quickly, her smile still in place. ‘So, where you heading?’

‘North. Somewhere warm. I’ve seen enough snow for a
while. Marta, thanks for looking after my stuff and for the room.’

She had stored his few surplus belongings while he was at Kandahar, collected half a dozen items of mail, none of them personal, and let him have his old room back for two nights after the
Southern Mariner
docked in Ushuaia.

‘
De nada
. As you can see, there is no people fighting for it.’

Winter was closing in on the town. The tourist restaurants were shutting down, Guillermo, the chef, had already moved on and Marta had no other lodgers. For three or four months the flame of life would barely glimmer down here.

‘Are you staying?’ he asked.

Marta regarded him. ‘Where else I go?’

‘I don’t know. Stupid question, I’m sorry.’ Anywhere and precisely nowhere, he thought. Just where he was going himself.

‘
Adiós
, Rook,’ Marta said.

He leaned down and kissed her, and for a second she pressed her broad cheek against his.

‘I’ll send you an address, when I’ve got myself fixed up somewhere,’ he promised.

‘Sure,’ she agreed.

It was bitterly cold outside, too dark to see the sea, but he knew that it would be greasy with plate ice. Rooker carried one bag on his back and lifted the other on to his shoulder. He walked quickly downhill, over the hard ridges of frozen dirt and away from Marta’s house, his breath clouding round his head. Once he hit the main street he would thumb a ride out to the airport, or he might even take a five-dollar ride in a cab if there was one waiting at the rank down the side of the Hotel Albatross. He had money, a whole season’s money from working at Kandahar, and a
seat booked on the evening flight up to Buenos Aires.

The other Kandahar personnel would all have left town by now, heading back to their homes and families. Rooker wanted and needed to travel alone.

A truck stopped for him and dropped him off at the airport. The flight when he boarded it was half empty.

The plane banked sharply after take-off and the bitterorange and pale-green lights of Ushuaia tilted briefly beneath them before they were blotted out by low cloud. Rooker remembered the sea mist and the desperate helicopter journey across the ice from Kandahar. He reached quickly into the pocket of his coat, slid out his flask and took a long swallow of whisky. The seatbelt sign winked off over his head.

He made a silent tribute. To you, Alice Peel. Then he drank again.

His thoughts resumed the course they had been following for days.

The birth of a baby. He had never seen such a thing, had never dreamed that it could be so profound and so pure, and that a tiny, wet, hot body delivered into his hands, and a woman’s face contorted with pain and then elation, could etch themselves so deeply into his mind. He remembered every detail of those minutes and he heard all over again Alice shouting and gasping, and then the first tiny fluttering cry from the baby. He knew that what he had witnessed was as timeless and elemental as the slow glaciers, the mercurial shifts of the weather and the ice itself.

Rook closed his eyes. He was glad of the whisky; the bottle was a better companion tonight than Niki or Phil.

Meg was another man’s child. Apart from the accident of her birth he hadn’t the remotest claim on her. This was a new life and he couldn’t contaminate her absolute innocence with his presence, let alone his history. No: Alice and Meg belonged together, in a safe place, a long way from the
marginal territories that he occupied. Rooker had never been to Oxford but he made a picture in his mind of calm grey stone and green lawns and lamplit college rooms with their walls lined with books.

He loved Alice but he must let her go.

She had said things to him that he would treasure –
I love you, don’t leave me
– but he understood now, with distance widening between them and Kandahar, that she had spoken under pressure of danger and isolation. It was enough, he tried to tell himself, that she had turned to him in those circumstances. It would be too much to expect her to look at him in the same way once she was safely back in England and amongst friends. What could Alice Peel want, or need, from him?

The memories were what he had; he didn’t want to diminish them by demanding more and being refused, however gently. She would do it gently, of course.

‘
Señor?
’

The cabin attendant had appeared with a plastic tray of food. Rooker shook his head and his fingers closed on the flask in his pocket. He was hungry, but he didn’t want to eat anything. The attendant passed on down the aisle and Rooker turned his head to the window. There was nothing to see; only impenetrable blackness.

The birth of a baby. Alice’s lovely face, as no other man had ever seen her, burned into his consciousness. He loved her but he must let her go.

His thoughts went on, round and round, following the same course.

In Buenos Aires it was hot and at first Rooker felt his bones ease in the benign warmth. He walked beside the broad reach of the Río Plata and watched the fishermen with their lines arcing into the khaki water. But after Antarctica the air tasted acrid with pollution and his hotel room was so noisy
with traffic that he couldn’t sleep. He flew on up to Cuba and sat for three days in a bar in Havana Vieja, drinking
mojitos
and avoiding the attentions of the
jineteras
. There was the same aimlessness with which he had originally drifted south, but the emptiness was far harder to bear. Time weighed heavily on him and the future stretched away like a parabola that finally dipped out of sight beyond an uninviting horizon.

In the end he moved on to Mexico City, where he rented a room and looked half-heartedly for some casual work in the construction business, just to give himself something to do. But he felt too withdrawn to put much effort into the search and nothing came of it. In yet another bar one night a young girl slid into the seat beside him and rested her hand on his thigh.

She greeted him in Spanish and asked if he was looking for a friend.

He answered in English, ‘Yes, but not the kind of friend that you mean.’

The girl smiled. There were tiny gems of sweat on her top lip. She reminded him of Edith in one of her taunting, bar-room moods. ‘
Americano?
’

‘No.’ He didn’t want to talk but the girl was still looking expectantly at him, with her head tilted to one side. ‘
Inglés
,’ he said, surprising himself. It had been a long time since he had admitted to any nationality except for official purposes.

‘English. I like,’ she said. ‘I speak very good.’

‘Yes.’

‘Me drink?’

He had a bottle on the table beside him. Rooker shrugged and poured whisky into a second glass. They sat for a few minutes in oddly companionable silence, watching the eddying of the crowds.

‘You like to?’ the girl asked after a while, making a small suggestive movement.

‘No,’ Rook said shortly. She was pretty and she looked clean enough, but he couldn’t imagine touching her. He couldn’t imagine anything except Alice.

The girl looked over her shoulder, checking for her pimp. She understood that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with Rook, so she hitched her bag over her skinny arm and prepared to move on. But before she went she leaned across him, giving him a good look down the front of her blouse. Her breath fanned his face. ‘You know, everyone have friend some place. Even you, mister.’

Immediately, Rook thought of Frankie.

‘
Chao
.’ The girl nodded, pleasantly enough, and wandered away.

The morning after her return to Boar’s Hill, Alice was woken at five in the morning by Meg’s crying. She sat groggily up in bed and fed her. Afterwards she stumbled between her bedroom and the bathroom, fumbling with the nappy tags that wouldn’t stick and making lists in her head of all the equipment that she would need to buy. Changing mat. Wipes. Nappy disposal bags. Zinc cream. Baby bath. Some kind of sling to carry her around in. Breast pads. The practical implications of motherhood were dawning on her.

The dawn probed between the folds of her old curtains. The stripe of light bisecting the wallpaper moved slowly leftwards, turning from grey fuzzed with pale-lemon to bright gold. Meg slept again, wrapped in a white cellular blanket, her mouth fallen open in a moist triangle. Alice studied the light on the blanket’s satin binding. The way that suggestions of colour were locked into the whiteness made her think of the ice, and a wave of longing for Antarctica and for Rooker swept through her. She ached with loneliness for him and for what she had left behind.

Later, Trevor came in with a pot of tea on a tray. He
brought the newspapers too. Alice thirstily drank her tea and they sat on her bed looking at the
Oxford Mail
together. There was a big picture of their arrival at Heathrow, with Meg’s face just visible and Alice herself looking shellshocked in the camera’s flash.
South Pole Mum home
the subhead read inaccurately. There were pictures and brief stories in the national tabloids too.
Ice cool, baby. Antarctic drama Mum. Snow place like home for polar birth scientist
. Most of the papers mentioned the joint European Antarctic initiative and two described Meg as the first European citizen of Antarctica. Lewis would be pleased with that, anyway.

‘Fifteen minutes of fame.’ She smiled wryly at Trevor.

‘More tea?’ he asked.

Between feeds, Alice managed to telephone the Polar Office. She remembered the sleek curve of the receptionist’s desk and the arrangement of hot-orange flowers, rather like those in her room in the clinic. Alice identified herself and heard the note of avid curiosity in the woman’s voice as she answered, ‘Oh
yes
. Dr Peel. How can I help you?’

Alice said quickly, ‘I would very much like to speak to Mr Sullavan, if possible. To thank him.’

‘Of course, Dr Peel. I know that he’s eager to speak to you too, but he
is
involved in a series of meetings in Toronto today.’

‘I understand. Perhaps you could just leave that message? Oh, and one other small thing. May I have James Rooker’s contact details, please? His telephone number, in particular?’

‘I’m
so
sorry. We can’t give out…’

‘You see, I didn’t have a chance to thank him properly. For what he did,’ she added delicately.

‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘Dr Peel, I know that Mr Sullavan is
particularly
hoping that you’ll want to tell your story personally. So many people will be interested to hear it. I know I will.’

‘We-ll,’ Alice said, trying to sound as if she might countenance the idea but was too preoccupied at the moment to give it proper consideration. ‘Beverley Winston did mention it,’ she added vaguely. Another meaningful silence ensued.

‘So maybe I could just make an appointment for the journalist to pop in to see you and the babe, and have a chat about it all?’

‘Perhaps, if I could clear my mind first, you know? I owe such a debt to James Rooker.’

‘I
could
just take a very quick peek at the records. For the interview, though, shall we say tomorrow at 2 p.m.?’

‘All right. Yes.’

‘And a photographer? Just a couple of lovely informal snaps, you know, mum-and-baby?’

‘All right.’

‘Perfect, Dr Peel.’

A moment later she was noting down a telephone number and an address in Ushuaia. She replaced the receiver, took a breath, then lifted it again and dialled. She listened to a foreign ring tone for what seemed like a very long time and at length a woman’s voice answered. With her heart hammering in her chest Alice asked to speak to him.

‘Rooker? No.’ She couldn’t properly decipher the rapid Spanish that followed but the meaning was clear enough.

‘But he must have left a forwarding address, surely? He can’t have just gone.’

She heard the other woman’s laugh, a wheezy exhalation of breath without merriment in it. ‘I think you don’t know Rooker,’ she said in English.

You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve done. I am a murderer.

The last words he had spoken to her face-to-face echoed in her head yet again.

But she
did
know him. She knew him better than she had ever known anyone, as if their hands matched palm to palm at this very moment and their eyes met and saw right inside the other’s head. She didn’t know any of the ordinary things, like who his friends were, or exactly how old he was, or his birthday, or his mother’s name, or where he might be heading right now, but she knew in every fibre of herself that he was not what he claimed. He had a black place in his past and he believed it must be hidden from her. To disappear was his solution.