The Surfacing (27 page)

From the start I knew it was a blessing, poor Captain Myer getting sick, he told
them. Never God closes one door but He opens another, as MacDonald says. Richard
Spread Morgan at the helm. When I heard that, gentlemen, I knew we were saved.

It was neither brag nor bluff, nor another greedy capitulation. The Cornwallis coastline
had sunk ingloriously, day by day – then all at once, in a rush to be done. Ahead
of them now, in every direction, were battles they could not win. North and south,
east and west, it was endless devastation. Overhead, the rigging was dripped glass.
A veil of fog was coming down, blurring the outlines. If he stayed out much longer,
it would be transparent shadows, no more. Even so, he was sad to leave it, to go
back inside. The night before, in the captain's journal, he had written: We cannot
turn back. It was a convenient truth. Might there still be a means to find a haven
for the winter and get themselves in? Perhaps, but he had refused to think it out.
Some part of him did not want to stop the slide, or try to return – stay close, at
least – to what he knew. He was too fond of the notion by now, the growing distance
to the known world.

Below, they had begun to sing. DeHaven was leading the chorus, grandly beating time
with a fork. Morgan sat with his back to the crowd, hoping they would not see him
alone and try to come to his rescue, try to get him to join in. The brandy bottle
was empty, but by now his cabin – his own private supply – seemed too far away. He
took a drink from his friend's glass, pushed it round his mouth, trying to paint
over the taste of Cabot's peculiar beer.

When eventually DeHaven came back, he pointed at where he'd been sitting before.
Sir, he said, I regret to inform you that place is in matter of fact occupied.

I know it is, Morgan said. By me.

They were sitting looking at each other when Cabot came by again, carrying a platter
piled high with meat. They could have whatever they wanted, he said. Bien cuit, à
point, saignant, or bleu.

Where's the blue one? DeHaven said, lifting up the slabs of meat, looking under them,
searching. Blue! he said. He was almost shouting now. His fingers were dripping with
grease and blood.

Cabot looked frightened. He looked like he did not know the word.

B-L-U-E! DeHaven roared at the struggling face. You want us to spell it out for you?

That night they drew lots, noisily, and the men refused to allow that the draw had
been fair. If it wasn't done over, there'd be mutiny, shouted Banes. Cabot won a
pint of brandy. Hepburn won half a dozen cigars. Morgan had made sure to allow them
plenty from the stores. It was another trade. In the half-light, the faces were famous
with drink. Champagne! shouted DeHaven. Cabot said there was none left. It was a
lie, a two-man conspiracy. Morgan had confiscated the last two cases. They were in
his cabin, hidden under the bed. He was keeping them for the birth. When – if – it
happened, he wanted to show it was something to celebrate.

31st December

Alone in his cabin, Morgan reviewed the year. Exactly as DeHaven wanted him to do,
he set off the evidence against their ambitions. A more perfect failure, he wrote,
would be impossible to achieve. He reviewed the ship's stores and equipment, their
position and prospects, the crew. Qualities, he wrote. Obedience? For some reason,
I have always been wary of a man too willing to obey. There are men who need to follow,
and those I cannot trust. Curious qualm for a commander, I know. I prefer a refusal
to fail, even to the point of pig-headed stubbornness. For weaklings and cowards
are never stubborn, even in their vices. Intelligence, he wrote.
Good up to a point,
but no more. Bravery, I find, often is little more than the ability to recognize
necessity in advance. He thought stupidity the greatest threat out here. He who thinks
himself smarter than all mischief. That man is mortal danger, and not only to himself.
One by one he copied the names out of the muster-roll, and gave each his qualities.
In any case, he wrote, it matters not how I rate any individual, for there is no
one to supply his place. They will serve. The inevitable will temper them, every
one.

He read again Ross's advice for choosing an Arctic crew. It said nothing about experience,
hardiness, constitution, age. All Ross said was, no married men, if it can be helped.
No man who thinks his life worth something to someone else.

12th January

On the 12th an invisible current began to draw them more northerly, and still he
did nothing to resist. Higher latitudes. He liked the words. He would take it as
a reconnaissance, a chance to bring back news of the living to be had there, the
fee.

Waiting, they talked.

C'est longue, she said.

Morgan nodded in sympathy, but already their drift felt to him like a kind of reprieve.
Not an exit, but an unearned stay.

During the night of the 16th they crossed another mythical line. The 76th parallel.
Morgan did not announce the fact, but with a flutter he felt something wake inside
him – the useless pride that they had penetrated farther north than any
other ship.
He had expected far greater inhibition, far south of this. He was almost disappointed
to find the sea here not utterly impenetrable, to find it was still possible to navigate
– navigate! – in the legendary north. It cheapened everything he'd read, the blocks
of Arctic literature he'd brought along. His disbelief was part flattery, but he
knew well they'd done nothing exceptional. They were trapped in a block of ice ten
acres in size. That was their little world, the cast of their lamp. Their progress
was no fault or feat of their own. It was an accident of currents and winds that
let them penetrate so far, he told the crew. He barely heard his own efforts at modesty.
Nothing could shout down the applause he heard incessantly now.

17th January

Several times a day, greedily, he went up to try for new bearings, desperate to
figure their drift. But for a week now there were no bearings, and no stars. Day
after day he scoured the sky with the glass. Then, just for an instant – it was noon,
the 17th of January – he thought he saw a more solid spectre – cliffs? – pushing
towards them through the veils, directly ahead. The naked eye only brought it closer,
all in a surge. Without warning, a ragged wall stood in their way.

That night he did not sleep. He sewed his last letters and log into his tarpaulin
bag and waxed the seam. In two minutes he could be fit to jump. The hull was scraping
along the shore. Calmly, he imagined the scene of their destruction. He took one
last look at the gilding on the mirror, the crumbs on the desk, the bevelled planks
of the cabin wall.

25th January

After lunch he watched her waddle more slowly than ever to the bed. He watched her
lie back, with an offended sigh. She lay with the blankets folded to her knees, hugging
the bump, warding off the danger. The stove was kept going for her now all day long.
It was too warm, and Morgan felt oppressed, felt the sweat rolling down the small
of his back.

Oh! she said. The word was full of air. It was a plea for sympathy.

Twenty-four, she said. Contractions, she meant. She'd been counting them, miserly,
all through the day.

Kitty, he said, you're not even at seven months. This too would pass, he meant, as
every crisis did.

But the old sheets were already piled in the corner. They'd been sitting there for
weeks. Even if it were born now, DeHaven had said last night. It was a provocation,
a test. His friend was merely sounding the surface, Morgan told himself. He needed
more time.

It was unsettling, the way time had begun to expand, to make room for what was to
come. Looking back, there were entire years he could barely remember. They had been
squeezed of all their flesh. In his journal, on the calendar, they were mere numbers
on a page. But the ten or twelve weeks remaining now seemed phenomenally wide. It
was an obstacle he would have to hack his way through, inch by inch. Progress would
be tedious. He could be patient. He could take his time.

You wouldn't prefer to just stay that way indefinitely? he said.

She considered the conundrum, wary of its traps.

I wish it would just be over, she said. That we could skip all the . . .

All the mess, he said.

All the waiting, that's what I hate. Yet there's a part of me wishes it would last
for ever, that the end would never come.

It's not something you can rush, he told her, smiling. As DeHaven says, it's like
the blooming of a flower. It's like the leaves on a tree. It takes its own time.
You plant the seed, and then you wait.

27th January

Day after day the wind drove them north. It drove them past shingle beaches, past
frozen quarries, past sheer, stupefying walls of stone. He remembered running along
under the cliffs of Greenland, the cliffs of Devon. Those men had been proud of their
summons, and the courage it called for. Before them now was an enemy shore.

It was her birthday. He watched the candles gasping. He watched her heave again and
blow the last of them out. Cabot brought a better knife, and Morgan cut.

Not for me, MacDonald said.

Cabot put a lot of work into this, Morgan said.

It's too rich, MacDonald said. My stomach won't take it.

He's fasting, DeHaven said. To mitigate his own vile sins, and the sins of every
man aboard.

As soon as she went to bed, MacDonald began to complain. All night and longer he'd
been holding it in. He spoke bitterly of their situation, their prospects. In his
mind there was only one possible outcome. They were going to be crushed. The first
proper pressure, he said, she'll crack open like an egg.

Brooks considered the source of the stupidity. Nonsense, he said. The great merit
of this lady – he slapped the wall
gently, as though slapping the rump of a champion
– is she's not only strong, she's flexible.

Thank you Mr Brooks, Morgan said.

The reed that bends and the reed that breaks.

Precisely.

That's not what Banes says, said MacDonald.

What does Banes say? Brooks was smiling, ready to laugh.

He says she's too heavy and too stiff. All those knees and Samson posts below.

What in hell does he know about it? Morgan said.

He's seen more ships than you and me both.

Ten years building them in Greenock, DeHaven said.

You seem to know more about my crew than I do.

Go talk to them once in a while, DeHaven said. Go play a hand of cards with them.
You might learn something's not in the Regulations and not in the log.

Go get him. Brooks.

Brooks brought him back. He stood there defiant, wondering what he'd done. They
put it to him, what MacDonald had said.

Look at her, Banes told them. The big fat hips and belly on her. She's all fat and
fight and nothing else.

They sent him away, then argued it out.

Believe you me, MacDonald said, every one of those timbers is a sin of vanity, committed
by men in the dockyards imagine themselves more savvy than the Lord above. Think
on it. Should ever He desire to shuffle about His ice, is it a few lengths of Irish
oak will stop him? They're stalks of corn in a threshing machine, no more. They serve
no purpose whatsoever but to weigh her down, and make it that much harder for her
to heft herself up, when comes the final crush.

We've survived every crush so far, haven't we? Brooks said.

MacDonald looked at the man with open disdain. Once His mind is made up, he said,
the ice will go over her, or under her, or through her, or whatever way takes His
fancy, and the best and wisest thing you can do then is to stand well out of His
way.

10th February

It's now, she said.

It's not now, Morgan told her. It can't be, not today.

Why not? she said. Have you something else planned?

Yes he had. One more day, was his prayer now. Twenty-four more hours was all he ever
asked for, when the contractions came on like this. It seemed so little, for such
relief.

Breathe, he said, refusing to be rushed.

Her breathing was audible, shallow, fast.

It's now, she said.

It can't be now, he told her. DeHaven says there ought to be at least a month left.

Ought? she said, and almost managed a smile.

It was just the time he needed to prepare. Having to live through the last day over
and again, constantly rally and muster – the process was steadily draining him of
all anxiety. The timing, now, seemed admirable. These next few weeks would wear him
down perfectly, find him merely resigned when the moment came.

Today, as always, the contractions came and went.

Well? Morgan said.

I wish my other patients knew how to suffer half as well, DeHaven said.

How many have you now? she asked. In the hospital, she meant. She was trying to change
the subject, to take her mind off herself.

Her stove was going full blast, and she was lying in only her nightdress, the blankets
folded to her knees.

Why are they sick? she said.

Who? DeHaven said.

The ones are sick, and not the rest.

You see how they live, he said. You see what they eat.

She knew well what they liked to eat. She'd spent more than one afternoon with Cabot
trying to concoct something more palatable, and still they'd barely touched it. They
wanted their salt junk and their hard tack, and nothing vegetable.

Why don't you go down to see them? Morgan said. To the hospital, he meant – that
little corner of the men's quarters that had been curtained off. I'm sure they'd
appreciate a little mothering.

The two men sat with her, chatting, trying to distract her as best they could. The
contractions did not return. Eventually she dozed off. Once his friend was gone,
Morgan stared openly. By now her body ought to have been sacred, but was not. Still
it stood in the way of everything else. A wall of feeling surged up as he forced
his mind towards it, dwindled as he drew back. He could come no nearer than that
to the pregnancy, the birth, whatever was on the other side.