The Ice Child (18 page)

There was a general murmur of consent.

Except for Crozier.

“Sir,” Crozier said, “steam will not get us through Victoria Strait.”

Franklin’s face hardened for a second. Gus saw a flash of what he might have been as a younger man. Then it vanished. The older man, who saw himself as the father of his crew, reappeared.

“We know your opinion of steam, I think,” he replied.

“Had I commanded this expedition, I should have refused to sail depending upon steam,” Crozier said. “It is not the answer to our prayers. If we hope it will bring us through Victoria Strait, we are wrong. We shall be beset out of any safe harbor. The ice will close in upon us before we have passed King William. Before we sight Simpson. Long before.”

It was almost insubordination. The officers froze, as if the slightest movement might cause offense. Crozier’s voice had risen, and his Irish accent become profound. Gus saw a little spot of color on each of Franklin’s cheeks—little round red farthings.

Franklin leaned forward. “But you are not commanding this expedition,” he said.

Crozier colored.

“We shall not be beset in Victoria Strait,” Franklin said, slowly. “We shall not sail to the east to find ourselves, as Ross himself predicted, in Poctes Bay, with no way out. We shall sail on through Victoria and reach Simpson before the week is out, and we shall blast our way, if necessary, through ice. And, with God’s will, we shall see the Pacific before winter comes.”

Crozier, at last, dropped his eyes.

“And that, Mr. Crozier,” Franklin said, standing at last, “is my final word on the subject.”

Twelve

It was Friday night.

Jo was fast asleep on her couch, and the comedy tape she had rented from the video store was spooling away, entertaining thin air. She was lying on her side, dead to the world, when the doorbell rang.

She woke up and tried to think where she was. She squinted at her wristwatch. Nine-forty. She rubbed her eyes, wondering if the caller was Gina; earlier that day she had rung to invite Jo to her godson’s birthday party.

“I can’t,” Jo had said. “I’m decorating.”

There had been a moment of disbelieving silence. “No kidding.”

“I
am
,” Jo protested. “I’ve got paint and everything.”

“What color?”

“Yellow.”

“All over?”

“All over,” Jo told her resolutely. “It’s going to be bright.”

“What brought this on?”

“Boredom,” Jo told her.

“More like shame.”

Jo laughed. “I emptied the moving boxes too.”

“You did? Where did you put it all?”

“On the floor.”

“Ah. Nice try,” Gina said. “You’re sure you won’t come over?”

“Will there be jelly and ice cream?”

“Tons.”

“Tempting,” Jo said. “Look, if I get finished …”

“And if not?”

“Come around tomorrow morning. Bring food.”

Gina laughed again. “See you.”

The doorbell rang again.

Jo got up. “Okay,” she yelled.

She looked down at herself. Her jeans were spattered with paint; her hair too. She had started off using a roller and, finding that she somehow managed to get more on herself than the walls, switched to a brush midafternoon. It had been slower, but more effective. Now her one large living room glowed. Even in the dark.

“I’m here, I’m here,” she grumbled, as whoever it was on the other side began knocking. She turned off the TV. “Who is it?” she called.

“Doug,” came the answer.

She stopped dead and stared, in surprise, at the door on her side. Then she rapidly undid the lock and chain.

He was leaning on the outside wall just by the steps. Even in the sulphur shadow of the streetlights he looked gray.

“My God,” she said, “what on earth are you doing here?”

“I’m on a half marathon,” he said.

“You what?”

“A joke.”

“I thought you were Gina,” she said.

“As you can see …”

“Yes.”

“Jo,” he said, “if you don’t let me in, I can’t guarantee I won’t fall down.”

She jolted. “Jesus, I’m sorry. You just gave me a shock … come in. Are you okay? Let me help you.”

By a series of shuffles and stumbles she at last got him to the couch, Jo kicking the door shut with one foot as he leaned on her arm.

“Thank the Lord,” he muttered, collapsing in the seat.

“You look awful,” she said. “What possessed you?”

“Insanity,” he told her. He looked around him. “You’ve been busy.” She registered the powerfulness of the smell for the first time, since the fresh air of the doorway. “And yellow,” he said. “Very yellow, isn’t it?”

“What’s wrong with yellow?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s a bit streaked, though.”

“It is not,” she said. She paused, hand on hip. “Where?”

“By that table.”

“It’s not a table, it’s a box.”

He smiled. “And to think that I was worried you’d be offended by
my
flat.”

“I beg your pardon,” she retorted. “This is not offensive. It’s tidy.” She looked back at him. “You really do look bloody awful,” she said. “Do you want a drink?”

“I’m not allowed. Medication. What have you got?”

“I’ve got a bit of brandy. Tea and brandy.”

“You persuaded me,” he said.

She went to the kitchen and found the brandy bottle pushed to the back of a cupboard. “How long does brandy keep?” she shouted. “I got it at Christmas.”

“Which year?”

She shook her head, laid a tray, took in the drinks, and a big teapot. She had rummaged in the biscuit tin and found two sad-looking wafers, slightly soggy.

“Look, this is embarrassing,” she said, putting the tray on the carpet. “I could go and get takeout.”

“Sit a minute,” he said. He drank the brandy. Color gradually returned to his face.

“How did you get here?” she asked.

“A friend gave me a lift to Charing Cross. I got a hotel room. Taxi from the hotel.”

“Just to see me?”

“Just to see you,” he said.

“But why?”

“To apologize.”

“Doug,” she said. “I could have been out.”

“I’d have tried again in the morning.”

“But I could have been out all weekend.”

“Then I’d try again on Monday.”

“Come on.”

“I have a meeting at the National Maritime then.”

“Ah.”

He shifted forward. “But that’s not it, Jo. That’s not as important. I came early to see you.”

“To apologize for what, exactly?”

“Alicia.”

“Oh,” Jo said. She considered. “Well, maybe she should apologize.”

“She should. I should have thrown
her
out, not you.”

“You didn’t throw me out,” she reminded him. “I walked.”

He fisted his hand around the stem of the glass. “She is just such a steamroller.”

“It doesn’t matter, Doug.”

“It does,” he said. “You took the flight out to the ship, you drove up to see me when I got back.”

“None of which you asked me to do.”

“Well, no. But I’m glad you did.”

She smiled.

“So the least I could have done—”

“You can’t throw your own wife out,” she told him. “As far as she’s concerned,
I’m
the interloper.”

“If anyone’s an interloper, it’s her,” he retorted Jo could see she had struck a nerve. An old, ragged nerve that flared to life within seconds. “She won’t take no for an answer,” he said. “It’s driving me mad. I’ve tried talking, I’ve tried shouting. I’ve tried breaking the furniture.”

“You did?”

“A year or two back.”

“She loves you,” Jo said.

“She doesn’t love me,” he told her. “She’s attached. It’s parasitical.”

“You’re still her husband.”

“Only just,” he said. “I filed for divorce two months ago.”

Jo drank her own brandy slowly. “Perhaps that’s it,” she said. “Losing you. Hanging on all the harder.”

“I can’t tell you,” he said, “what the last five years have been like.”

Jo paused, fiddling with the edge of the tray. It didn’t feel quite right to sit condemning Alicia in the other woman’s absence, even if Jo found it hard to cast Alicia in any kind of favorable light.

She found herself eating one of the biscuits, and tried not to pull a face. “How did you meet?” she asked.

He smiled. “Now you’re asking ancient history,” he said. “College. University.”

“In Cambridge?”

“No. A place called Lancaster.”

“I know it,” she said.

“Do you?”

“One of my schoolfriends went there. I went up … God, three years ago? Near the sea.”

“Lancashire coast,” he confirmed. “Alicia took economics and politics.”

“Fearsome.”

“She always was.”

“And you …”

“Alicia decided we would get married,” he continued. “She was a very organized girl. She had this aura … you know, she would get things done. Moving. She was like no one else in that place. She was light-years ahead of the other girls. She had vision, a map of her life.” He at last put the glass down, staring at it while remembering. “Where she would be by thirty. By forty. By fifty. She suggested the postgraduate degree. She seemed to think I had a bright future.” He frowned. “I couldn’t see it, but she did. We moved south, she got a job, she supported my studies …”

“And you got married.”

“Only when John was on the way.”

“I see.”

Doug caught her expression. “Yes,” he said. “I’m a selfish person.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “Plenty of people find themselves in situations—”

“I used her,” he said. “She handled everything. She was a storm force. I think she even planned her pregnancy, although she denies it now.”

“Didn’t you discuss it?”

He hesitated. “I had someone else.”

Jo looked at him in surprise. “You’d split up?”

“No,” he said. “We’d been together for two years. I had met a girl, and was thinking of telling Alicia, break it off …”

“To be with this other girl?”

“Yes.”

“And then Alicia told you she was pregnant?”

“Yes.” Jo met his eye. “I know,” he said. “But I couldn’t let her down. She forgave me.”

“Forgave you for loving this other girl?” Jo said. “That was good of her.” She couldn’t help the cynicism that had sprung to her voice. Seeing his reaction, she gave a little shrug. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It just sounded a little like blackmail. Alicia’s pregnancy. What did the other girl say?”

“She was”—he paused—“well, there isn’t a good word for it, Jo. She was devastated. Really devastated. I was so torn, I didn’t know what to do.”

“Did you love her?”

To her surprise he blushed deeply. “Very much.”

“More than Alicia,” she said. It was not a question.

“I couldn’t leave Alicia,” he replied.

“So you did the right thing.”

“John was born,” he said. “We both worked hard. It faded. The girl got married to someone else.”

“Do you still know her?”

“No. She moved away,” he said.

“But with John around, things must have got better.”

He looked up. He had been staring at the floor all this time. “Things never got better. I knew by then that I didn’t love the woman I’d married. I knew she didn’t share my interests. I just worked, and she worked, and she did the lion’s share of bringing John up, which I was grateful for, because I was so often away.…”

He stopped. “I used her,” he repeated. “She wanted a certain kind of life, home, career. Never wanted any other children. Never really interfered with what I wanted to do. We limped along.” He scratched his forehead distractedly. “Like a lot of marriages by accident or habit, it’s not a very attractive story.”

Jo shifted. She was sitting on the floor, and she crossed her legs. As she passed her hand through her hair, she felt the hardened flecks of paint.

He glanced at her. “Jo,” he said, “I didn’t mean to tell you my life story. I just wanted you to know I was sorry.” He started edging forward.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I ought to go.”

“No, you oughtn’t,” she said. “I’m going for the takeout any minute.”

“You’re tired.”

“I am not.”

He smiled at her. “That’s right,” he said. “I was forgetting. You’re twenty-six. You don’t get tired.”

She gave him a wry grin. “I get shattered like any normal person.”

“So …” He looked around for the walking stick that he had brought with him.

“But not tonight,” she said.

He stopped and looked hard at her.

“I’m not tired tonight,” she repeated.

A look coursed across his face: pure astonishment.

She knelt in front of him, and carefully avoiding the injured leg, she leaned forward and kissed him.

She thought that she had done with it all a very long time ago, the fantasy picture of the prince in the fairy tale. She had dispensed with it, just as she had dispensed with other toys, thrown away fiction for fact, made herself take on reality. She had made her way in the actual world, a world packed full of people who belonged in no one’s fairy story. She talked to them every day, the egotists with feet of clay; the frightened and disenfranchised; the mundane, the stupid, the ambitious, the plain lucky.

And all this time she had had no idea that there was still a knight waiting in the wings, a fantasy still to be had. She didn’t think that her heart had anything unprotected left in it, anything yielding, anything naive.

She looked at him, and saw everything that had just passed through her own mind reflected in his face.

My God
, she thought.
There are still miracles
.

He reached forward and hugged her to him, pressing his face into her shoulder. She felt his chest heave, his arms tighten around her.

“I didn’t know,” he murmured. “I didn’t know.”

She leaned back a little and looked him in the face.

“Neither did I,” she told him. “But … I know now.”

Thirteen

Through the storm the great bear slept peacefully.

The temperature dropped rapidly, driving even the Inuit population of Bylot, Borden, and Brodeur into shelter. When the wind began here, there was no facing it: the animal migrants that had come to the fjords turned their backs to the wind, grouped together. Large bull caribou, waiting for the return of the females with calves, crowded in the lee of banked snow. They had crossed the ice from Bylot Island only two weeks before, and now could only endure the howling blast of the gale, bony and ragged already, their winter coats shedding.