Collector of Lost Things (13 page)

‘So, the captain’s putting you up the mast?’ one of them said. He was smoking a clay pipe, but the pipe had no stem, so the bowl was almost touching his lips. ‘How are you with heights?’

I wasn’t sure how to answer—I felt enrolled into a decision I had had little part in making. I noticed the captain had wandered off, amused. ‘If you think you might faint, do this,’ the man continued, demonstrating how to thrust an arm through the web of rigging and quickly make two twists of the rope either side of the elbow. ‘I’ll see you do it, and come up.’

‘Thank you,’ I answered. ‘But how will I know if I’m going to faint?’

He frowned, sucking on his pipe.

‘Tell me,’ I asked him, ‘your pipe has no stem—do you burn your tongue?’

‘Not much, sir,’ he grinned, ‘but it scalds the cheek a little.’

‘Do you not have another?’

He shrugged, unconcerned. I believe I noticed a blackening at the end of his nose, where the skin was sooty.

Above me, the masthead looked unbearably high. The barrel swayed perilously up there. But the first part of the climb was straightforward—up tapered rigging to the point where it intersected with the first yardarm. A slated platform with a simple balustrade was there; all very achievable, I thought. But when I stepped onto the rail and held the ropes, I was shocked to see that the rigging was also a sliding plane leading directly into the sea. Beneath my feet was nothing but a foaming current of waves as they ran by the ship.

With little alternative, I began to climb, remembering how the small-footed captain had done it. But where I’d expected the rope to have a rough grip, I discovered the tarring was actually worn smooth and difficult to hold. It was wet, too, and in places I had the sensation of my boots slipping on the glassy windings of the manila.

‘How do you feel?’ someone said, below.

‘The rope is slippery.’

The man laughed. ‘We’ll have you up there in a frost rime!’

I reached the first junction, where the rigging joined into a tightly wound ladder fixed to the slats of the platform. I held the mast firmly, looking at the scars left by the carpenter’s adze, and more cracks in the wood than I wanted to see.

Above me, the next section of rope ladder was far steeper, running up vertically beside the mast. Quickly I climbed behind the panel of the mainsail. It was pushed out, filled with air beyond my reach, but from its edges I heard the soft flapping of canvas as the breeze slipped around its corners. It seemed a living thing, with a wide skin across which the air rippled and channelled in a thousand conflicting tensions, creating a soft whir of sound. There was something of the pregnant form about it, a broad smooth belly behind which life was pulsing and a heart was beating. A draught sucked at my jacket, easing me gently this way and that as the wind moved the sail—a motion I had not anticipated. It toyed with me, aiding in one instant and knocking me the next, as a cat might play with a mouse. The sail filled then subsided, the buntlines pattering on the canvas like rain.

Despite the chilliness of the air I smelt the warming scent of canvas and was reminded instantly of boat sheds in East Anglia. Long dark sheds, each with a church-like serenity, with sails rolled and bound in rope, like bodies in shrouds. Beyond them, a glimpse of open estuary through a doorway passing by in brilliant sunlight. Each of those sails would be laid out on a trestle table, and tied with the same complicated knots that I noticed as I climbed further.

Above me the captain’s barrel was perched on its stick, as awkward as an oak apple, bound with rope and weather-stained. I noticed a new breeze around me, carving into sections as it divided between the sails, and I listened to the ropes thrumming with air. Each one vanished in a tightly curving plunge towards its fixing on the deck. An invitation to fall. I was afraid to touch anything, lest it spin away or unwind or hurl me into the sea—the ropes capable of unknotting in a thousand unexpected ways. At this height, the fixed rigging had not been attended to so frequently, and the footholds sagged when my foot touched them, bringing other lines towards me and giving the impression that this part of the mast was as soft as a warm candle. All was malleable where it should be rigid. I closed my eyes. Sounds I had heard on deck—the eerie shrill wind or the low moaning I’d heard from my cabin at night, the soothing sighs of ropes and canvas, the release and hold of iron fixings, or the creak of the mast, stretching like the tree it once was—these sounds surrounded me, explaining their origin.

The wind plucked at my clothes from several directions while, all around me, the empty chasm of air was overwhelming. It was the first moment that I truly looked out, away from the paraphernalia of ropes and clew lines, of bunts and footholds and bolsters, to a vast and empty ocean that stretched unbroken for as far as could be seen.

The mast swayed gradually to and fro, swinging its point from one side to another so that at one moment I saw the slated angles of the deck gliding beneath me, at another the cruel iron surface of the water. I concentrated on the small details and fixings that were the only things that held me: the nail heads hammered into the wood, the bends of the rope as they threaded through a simple iron ring, the carpenter’s chisel marks.

The last few feet were a climb of several metal rungs hammered directly into the wood. Upon the deck, the mast was as broad as a man’s shoulders, but here, it was a slender tree, a post that could whip and quiver in the wind. I could easily reach an arm round it. I grabbed the cold iron rungs grimly, feeling I had truly left the ship behind, that I was now hanging above it on a single point of wood.

Once inside the barrel, I braced myself while my toes gripped its thin rim, below which was a dizzying view of the deck. I saw the crewman peering up at me, his body foreshortened, a smile on his face. With immense satisfaction I let the floor fall back into position and I cowered, shaking and taking breath. As I peered from the top of the barrel the air was vast and thin; with its keen freshness, it wasn’t the same air that passed over the deck. A steady wind poured towards me, undivided by the rigging or sails—a wind that had never before met an obstacle of any kind. There was a new scent to it, of coldness, perhaps a hint of the icy world we were drawing near to. These tall trees stood in an Arctic wind, overhanging the ocean with open arms.

The captain’s telescope was slotted into a canvas tube, and above the rim of the barrel was a circular metal rail, upon which he rested it to gain a steady view. In this way, I scanned the horizon, but could see only distant miles of dreary and poorly defined ocean. I persisted, pulling and turning the telescope across its various sections, until I saw a startling sight: dark jagged waves, peaking and jostling in a crowded cataract. It was inexplicable, as if the sea at that point were racing in a torrent. Then I saw it, beyond the waves, a sudden unexpected whiteness as hard and flat as quartz. It was the ice sheet, that stretched for a thousand miles beyond, but which looked from this angle as thin as paper. Against its blunt edge, the waves slammed ceaselessly and with great fury. The worlds of ocean and ice were meeting in a frontier of rage, as if the Earth had torn in two along this line. This was a place, if there ever was a place, where you could disappear.

I
JOLTED AWAKE, CONVINCED
the ship was sinking. Men were running across the deck just as, below me, giant weights seemed to be moving around within the hull. We will be drowned, I thought, imagining reefs had torn a hole into the ship. I pictured a dark rush of icy water as thick and curled as ropes pouring in, the iron-black Arctic sea filling the hold, rising quietly and unstoppably until it welled through the hatches.

My mind in disarray, I pulled the curtain from the porthole and was halted by an astonishing sight: a few feet away was the edge of the ice sheet, almost touching the ship. I stared in disbelief. How could that violent border I’d seen the day before be in such quiet proximity now?

From on deck, where the men had arranged stores and sledges and were busily hanging fenders from the rail, the view across the ice was incredible. A low sun shone over the sheet, reflecting from the ice with doubled strength. The ship’s woodwork took on a luminescence I had never seen before: in such white brightness the deck appeared freshly dried and salted, whereas the masts appeared waxed and glassy, with a reddish tinge. The metal hoops and fixings attached to them looked unusually hard and cold. The crew, also, were lit by a new intensity—the blue of their work clothes was suddenly the deep fathomless hue of the Arctic sea, and their hands looked pale and clean as they worked at their tasks. They seemed unreal, a painting in too-vivid colours, and almost as quiet and still, apart from the smoke from their clay pipes, which rose in soft floury curls.

‘When did this happen?’ I asked Simao, who was pouring out morning coffee from a large iron kettle.

‘About four,’ he replied. ‘The captain tell the men to fix the ropes to the ice.’ He pointed to the long hawsers fore and aft that had been tied to the floe, about forty feet in.

‘It’s quite unreal,’ I said, seeing my breath plume in front of me. ‘And it is very cold!’

‘Mr Talbot is looking for you. He is busy to organise the hunting party, he would like to know if you attend.’

‘Hunting for what?’

‘Seal,’ he replied, pointing vaguely at the edge of the floe with the spout of the kettle. In that direction, I saw nothing but miles of hard flat ice. It was difficult not to view it as a great danger, to think that the ship was in a catastrophic situation. The ice sheet looked highly untrustworthy. Small pools and grey rivulets lay in patches across its surface, giving it a porous, misleading firmness, and large cracks snaked in from the sea, some as long as several hundred feet. Parts of the front edge had risen, sharp and cruel as ploughshares.

‘Is this … ordinary?’ I asked. ‘For the ship to be so close?’ In the gap between the ship and the floe, the seawater glinted with the impenetrability of metal as it vanished below the ice.

Simao looked back, friendly. In this light his face was older than I knew it to be, with many lines either side of his eyes. His hair was slicked back with oil, and it glowed as dark and bright as a wet otter. ‘Is very ordinary, sir,’ he replied.

Soon enough, Edward Bletchley appeared on deck, wearing a fox-fur hat that covered his ears and tied beneath his chin, carrying his guns towards one of the sledges. The hat was an elaborate construction, and actually had a fox’s tail hanging down the back of Bletchley’s neck, resting on his shoulders. Talbot was with him, insisting the guns must be handed to the men so they could stow them securely. Talbot looked harried by Bletchley’s impatience. I went to the stern, seeking privacy, knowing that otherwise I would be cajoled into a hunting party I had little enthusiasm for joining. The presence of the ice worried me deeply; I felt the need to resolve an issue I hadn’t quite understood. Here was the endlessness Clara had talked of, right at our front door, larger, more featureless, more cruelly void of life than I had ever imagined. The sunlight poured across it with a burning ferocity, a glare that was punishing and inviting in equal measure. It was pure, distilled, without colour, unlike the soft glow of the English sun. Surely this was a light that could shine right through you, illuminating every part of your soul and leaving you with nothing to conceal.

I was thinking this way when Clara approached me, as if my worry had sought her company. Our recent conversation, about the ice sheet and its gateway to a vanishing, was almost a third person between us, and needed to be acknowledged. But she was more curious about its presence than anxious, squinting into the light and appearing quite composed.

‘Well, Clara, here is your ice.’

She accepted my comment with a curling smile. ‘Do not worry, Mr Saxby. I shall still be here when you return.’

‘Please Clara, do not joke.’

‘I have never been so serious.’

‘I haven’t decided whether I shall be joining them, yet,’ I said, a little feebly. Again, she had disorientated me in a matter of seconds. ‘The thought of a hunt fills me with worry. Nor do I know how to get out of it, should I be asked.’

‘Face your fears with an unflinching eye,’ she said. ‘You told me that.’

I looked at her, confused. ‘I did?’

‘Yes,’ she stated. ‘I am sure you did.’

I watched her as she began to massage her temples and forehead, as if trying to relieve a pain.

‘Well, if it helps you with your decision,’ she said, ‘you would be doing me a great favour by going.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Someone needs to keep an eye on Edward,’ she answered, nodding towards her cousin. ‘He is not what he seems.’

As if alerted to her comment, Bletchley looked up and stared in our direction. He appeared momentarily alarmed that we were talking alone. He frowned, then raised his hand in greeting, before turning back to harass Talbot with his requests once more.

‘He seems quite capable,’ I suggested.

Clara looked at me as if I had entirely missed her point. ‘Don’t be fooled by the impression he gives. He really is a most unusual person. He can be quite … extraordinary. I need you to keep an eye on him.’

‘Very well. For you, then,’ I said.

‘You make me shy when you look at me in that manner,’ she replied.

‘In what manner?’

‘Intently.’

Was I? I had no idea. I felt out of my depth. My feelings for her had sprung once more, fully formed, as if I had been a jack-in-the-box, coiled with pressure for all those years, restrained by a lid and a simple clasp that the slightest nudge would unlock, and now I was sprung, gaudy and exposed and unable to retreat. I apologised, claiming it was the brightness of the sun that had made me so fascinated. ‘Things appear new-made in this light,’ I said. I believe I only partially managed to explain myself.

Taking my leave, I went to join the group of men, noticing Bletchley in their midst, now clapping his arms with excitement, as a wood pigeon claps its wings in spring.

Dressed in a thick borrowed coat and snow boots, wondering how I had agreed to this, I walked across the ice sheet, following the men and sledges. Talbot led the way, marching around the ponds and cracks with instinctive directness, never pausing, his figure bulky and hugely solid in his hunting gear. Men such as him make company with the wild. Only when he slowed could I discern the limp he had on board the ship, the result of frostbitten toes. The men followed him without question, silent in their labour, dragging the two sledges and making a twin track in the grainy surface as a path. They wore cork-soled boots and thick coats, some that were sealskin, two layers of mitts about sixteen inches in length, the inner of yarn and the outer of oiled leather. In appearance the men now resembled seals walking on hind legs. I stuck to the path they made as if my life depended upon it, which may well have been the case. Several times we passed crevass in the ice, some of which descended in sharp blue edges to a glimmer of trapped dark water beneath.