The Surfacing (15 page)

Between his feet was a bucket of snow, that he'd asked Cabot to bring down, when
they came to carry MacDonald away. The snow was for his right hand, what had been
his fist, and his fist was pushed deep down into it, red hot.

He sat on the edge of his bunk without moving, alert to every sound aboard. He could
hear nothing but the shy whisperings of his bucket of snow. The ship had been abandoned,
it seemed. He wondered how many stitches DeHaven would have to work into the face.
He wondered was the light good enough to work in, below. He saw MacDonald laid out
in the main mess. Cabot holding the lamp. The whole ship leaning in to get a closer
look at the new face Morgan had given him, trying to look through it to see the face
he had before.

He looked around. From the moment he'd stepped into MacDonald's cabin, the ship had
definitely changed. The
distance between the walls, the height of the ceilings and
doors – everything now seemed ever so slightly compacted, a mere inch or two. It
felt like a house revisited for the first time since childhood. Nothing you'd notice
with the naked eye, but the proportions no longer felt quite right. Even the size
of the bunks and tables and chairs seemed to have been tampered with, deliberately,
to make a man feel ill at ease. He'd spent months organizing it for himself, for
the longer winter ahead. All those places to hide and tidy things away, offer himself
the impression of order. The partition walls, purpose built. The shelves fitted around
posts. His own desk in the corner, not three feet square, but which he insisted remain
undefiled by the rest of the world and its business – a clean, uncluttered space
for his mind. Now, in an instant, that was all something to be defended, against
an invasion guaranteed to succeed. Before, she had merely been a passenger, from
Disko to Beechey. Now she would begin making the ship her own. She would bully out
all the space she wanted for herself and her baby – of that he had no doubt. She
would make herself a home. And he – like every one of them – would have to take a
step backward, to make way.

When he heard the door-handle turning, Morgan drew his hand up out of the bucket
of snow. To the wrist the flesh was pink, and tingling. DeHaven stood before him,
looking slightly ashamed.

Well? Morgan said.

He'll be even uglier than before, DeHaven said. But no permanent damage. Apart perhaps
his pride.

I'll have to be punished, I suppose, Morgan said. After all, we can't have that kind
of thing aboard. If everyone suddenly started smashing everyone else's face in, who
knows where it might end?

Don't worry, DeHaven said. Myer needs you. Now more than ever before. I'd like to
look at that hand.

That's true, Morgan said. He needs me. He does. I hadn't thought of that. Poor Myer,
I'm afraid I've put him in something of a spot.

DeHaven flapped the thing to and fro at the wrist. Does that hurt? he said.

What I don't understand is
why
? Morgan said. What does she think she has to gain?

Women, DeHaven said. Always the first to cry, and the last to give up hope.

He found her presenting her profile to MacDonald's great man's mirror, hands flat
on her hips, stretching the cloth tight. She seemed utterly immune, protected, chosen.

Proud of yourself? he asked.

Yes, she said.

You want to be bigger, don't you? he said. Her waist was perhaps a little thicker,
but he really could not say. Had he not known she was with child, he would have noticed
no difference at all.

Yes I do, she said.

A belly just like Banes. That's what you want.

Only Banes isn't great with child. He's fat.

An imposter.

Exactly.

Why did he do it? Morgan said.

Banes? What did Banes do?

You know well who I mean. Why did he bring you back?

Do you think he forced me?

But what's the good of it?

I suppose he wanted to punish you. Force you to face your responsibilities.

So you get to see me squirm a little longer. You and everyone else aboard. I hope
you all enjoy the spectacle. I hope it's worth the trouble. Because now you're stuck
out here. A woman in your condition. Drifting north, and winter coming on. What a
wonderful idea that was.

So it was for my own good you sent me away? Is that what you're saying now?

Was it for your own good you came back? Or was it merely to punish me?

The bell shyly summoned them to dinner. She seemed not to hear. She was stroking
her belly with the flat of her hand, owning it. It was a habit by now, almost a tic.
At Disko, he seemed to remember, she used to twist the stray ends of her hair.

DeHaven says I shouldn't be surprised, Morgan said.

Does he now?

Do you know what he says about women? He says they're always the first to cry, and
the last to leave. This from your best friend, your closest ally, Morgan said. He
was testing, prodding, to see where the armour might cede.

She refused to react. She had returned to the glass. It was an audition, for a new
role. She was a debutante before the ball, fluffing herself up.

What do you think? she said.

To be perfectly frank, he said, they look much the same to me.

Don't worry, you'll have plenty more to admire soon enough.

He didn't answer. The future, for him, was not something they would share.

I don't mean to offend you, he said, but if I wanted a woman with an ample bosom,
I imagine I would have chosen someone else. I think that's the least we can say.

I suppose I could take that as a compliment, if compliments were what I was after.

Still she was staring into the mirror, where admiration was guaranteed. Now there
was a loud bang on the door.

Coming! Morgan roared.

Don't shout, she pleaded. It's bad enough for him as it is, with all this other noise.

I should go get the organ, should I? A little lullaby, to send him to sleep?

Precisely, she said. That's precisely what we need.

This, now, was the newest word in her vocabulary. We. It was an alliance, that she
wanted him to join.

In the officers' cabin, he stood in the open door in silence, behind Myer's back,
as Myer lifted one spoon of soup after another to his mouth. MacDonald was sitting
at the end of
the table, head down. There were two empty places, fully set. One on
each side of the table, at opposite ends.

Miss Rink is not eating with us tonight, Morgan said. She's not feeling entirely
well.

Myer had stalled his spoon, but he did not stand up, or turn around.

Mr MacDonald, Morgan said. I am sorry for your face. I was angry. I hope you can
understand.

Well, Myer said. That's being very much a man about it. Mr MacDonald, I'm sure you'll
accept the apology. Cabot, I think we're ready for the meat.

2nd October

He went to see her again. As long as the storm lasted, there was little else to do.
But, standing outside her door, something told him not to knock, to linger. There
were voices at the far end of the corridor, in the main mess. He stepped closer,
stood and listened to DeHaven explaining everything to the men. He was explaining
– insisting – that if Myer let the ship drift any farther north, he would pronounce
the man unfit to command. All along Morgan had thought they were merely mocking their
situation, their helplessness, themselves. But now he saw DeHaven actually believed
there was someone to blame, and something to be done.

On medical matters, my word is final, DeHaven told them.

Myer will say you were against him from the start.

Paranoia, DeHaven said.

It was call and response. The man had already decided – imagined – everything. Morgan
was to assume command,
turn the ship about, push as far south as possible, and find
a safe spot to wait out the siege. That was all he had to do. That was the new role
they'd written for him.

And come spring, DeHaven was saying, the first chance we get, Disko, and then home.

They were all idle promises, useless threats. They were drifting north. They had
already drifted too far. In command, Morgan would be no more able to direct the ship
than any other man. It was as well to let Myer in charge. They had crossed an invisible
line. Only DeHaven and his disciples were able to pretend otherwise.

That evening he reread his wife's letters, those he'd brought along. He even reread
some of his own, that he'd never sent. They were an old history book taken down off
the shelf. Forgotten wars, pointless campaigns. They had been so important then,
to those involved, and now read like childish spats, where everyone seemed absolutely
determined to fight.

3rd October

At four he rose to take the watch with Cabot, and found him waiting in the galley,
huddled up against the oven, and sipping at the jug of the spirit-lamp. They put
on their hats and hoods and veils, their mittens, their furs, and each took a last
warm breath, and together they stepped out. In the moonlight the floe looked like
a slab of granite dropped from a height, that had shattered very nicely indeed. Underneath,
the Kraken were brawling. They watched the ice shift. They watched the narrowing
gap. Gently, the first slab touched the wood, and began to squeeze.

They watched it rise, and watched it pile. Unseen, he knew, slabs were also being
driven downwards, and prying the ship up, as a crowbar would. He wondered how that
sounded below. He wondered how it sounded in her cabin, inside her.

She began to groan. She began to tremble. Still the ice kept grinding itself to pieces
against the hull. She weighed over one hundred and fifty tons, but now actually leapt
up out of the vice. It felt as though she'd struck a rock, and Cabot's hand shot
out to catch Morgan's arm.

Cabot, he said, I do hope we'll not have any show of unmanly emotion.

Of course not, Cabot said from behind his veil. He'd lost his balance, that was all.

Morgan smiled at the explanation, but something had tightened in his heart. It would
be a long night – three hours more – trying to keep the man calm, trying to convince
him the ship was not about to be crushed to matchsticks. In the end he said nothing,
because there was nothing he could say that was not a blatant lie.

The second their watch was over, Morgan went down. Very quietly, he opened her door.
She seemed at peace, harmless, but then opened her eyes. Somehow she'd heard him
come in. He asked how the night had been, how she felt. A little tired, she said.
A little thirsty. He brought her a cup of tea. He watched her sip at it cautiously.
They talked awhile, and he tried to describe how it was outside, above.

He sat flapping through one of her magazines, looked up again. She had closed her
eyes just for a moment, and dozed off. The cup was balanced on her belly. Inside
it, the tea was echoing invisible shocks. Through the hull he could hear the noise
of another world, the working parties and the ice, the rival industries. It seemed
impossibly far and dangerously close.

He took and set the cup on the locker. She did not wake. He leaned back in his chair
and let himself stare. She looked no bigger than before, but the clothes definitely
seemed tighter. Whenever she left them, the eyes followed her all the way
out the
door. Watching them, Morgan was watching himself, back in Disko, all those months
before.

He stared awhile, but his own eyelids wanted to come down. She had by far the warmest
cabin aboard. He tried again to hear the hammering from a distant, safe place. The
noise dulled and blunted by a wall of flesh. Like a distant knocking at the gate.
He felt a certain solidarity. Alone with her in the cabin. Trapped in and shut out.
At times he felt he was studying her through the glass, watching her move farther
and farther away from him, day after day. The day before, he'd watched her stepping
out of her bath. She had insisted on his staying with her, saying she was afraid
she might slip. He knew she wanted to be admired. She stood there with the water
running off her, the skin slick and shining and tight. Flaunting what it was she'd
done to herself. He'd struggled not to stare. This was not the woman he'd known in
Disko. This was someone else.

All through the morning, hour after hour, the ice rose up relentlessly, to the level
of the deck, then level with the bulwarks, then higher again. They worked like horses
through the afternoon, every man, with shovels and oars and boat-hooks, trying to
keep the slabs at bay. Early in the evening, taking pity, the ice slackened its grip.
There were a last few whimpers about supper-time, then nothing more. Most of them
were too tired to eat, too tired to undress, fell onto their bunks. Morgan, like
the rest, slept in his boots, and that night he dreamt he was alone in a house, naked,
with wardrobes full of women's clothes.

4th October

Cabot was sitting alone in the galley when they came in. Between his forearms sat
a plate of cold mush. In his hand was an empty glass. The stove was crowded with
dirty pots. Morgan and Kitty sat opposite. He'd not yet spoken, had barely moved,
but to Morgan it looked like his evening was already well under way. He was drinking
more now, in a quiet, dedicated way.

I'd say he has a young thing in every port, Cabot said suddenly. He'd been prodding
his food with his fork, as if he hadn't even noticed them arrive.

Hopping from one bed into the other, I'd say, Kitty said.

I hope you're taking good care of him, Cabot said.

Very good care, she said. The Pasha in his hareem is not better served.

I'd say she's good, Cabot told no one in particular. I'd say she knows well enough
where to fit the spout. As you say.

Morgan knew well he wouldn't leave it at that. He was in one of his states. He'd
keep going until they wouldn't put up with any more or until he couldn't come up
with worse. Soon he was talking about his wife, and what she liked. Drunk, he could
think of nothing more daring than confidence.