The Surfacing (36 page)

The manner would be simple, but not easy. They would put one of the whaleboats on
runners, load it with gear and supplies, and nine men would haul it behind them,
much as he and the others had hauled the sledge. Due south, over the floe, until
they met open water, then launch and sail to Melville Island. Overland, then, to
Cape Dundas, where there was a depot and a winter house, and perhaps relief. That
is our object, he wrote. Nothing else matters from the moment we step off the ship.
Every man of us is now going to amnesty or annihilation, and needs to fix that thought
in his mind. Well and good if, on the coast of Melville, or on one of the many islands
said to adjoin it, we meet the other searchers, or the lost men, or depots laid down
for them, but we should not expect it. Well and good if, with our hunting pieces,
we have the occasional happy accident, he wrote. He scratched all that out and started
afresh. To stiffen my calculations, he told his journal, I must imagine that we are
going together into an empty room, where
we must remain for an undefined period of
time. We must not hope for sustenance beyond what we ourselves bring in. We must
not plan to bring anything out. We must simply survive.

One way or another, he judged, their fate would be resolved by the end of July. They
would have to arrive at the open water at just the right moment. Too early would
be too far to haul the boat. Too late, whatever open water was out there would have
begun to freeze over again, soon be too thick to sail through, and too thin to bear
their weight.

6th May

Listen to this, he told her. And take note. He was reading another of the letters
from Parker's postbag. It spoke of Lady Franklin, with keen reverence, for pages
on end. Her unstinting courage, it said. She has given everything to her husband's
cause. She has counted nothing, neither health nor wealth. It is impossible to imagine
a more selfless or substantial devotion.

An example to us all, Kitty said.

Indeed.

They compared sacrifices. It was a pleasant little parlour game, guaranteed to produce
a nice inner glow. He said he wanted her out here with them, the heroic Lady Jane
Franklin, watching the tip of her index finger being sawed away. He wanted her out
in the traces. He could only imagine her in a vast dress of tulle and crinoline,
dainty little dance slippers shuffling across the ice, lace flapping uselessly at
her wrist.

That night they put him down a little earlier than usual. She wanted to get him used
to being in his cot alone, awake. Half
an hour later, in the middle of their meal,
Morgan looked up from his plate, frowning. He lifted a finger. They listened, frozen,
readying their fear.

What is it? DeHaven said.

Morgan dropped his napkin on his chair, went out. In the half-darkness of the corridor,
he put his ear to her cabin door. The night was calm, did not interfere. Alone in
his room, trapped in his cot, the boy was chatting to himself. It sounded like compliment
and it sounded like shy complaint.

Bopopop, the boy said. boPOP.

It sounded musical. In the dark, for a friendly mind, it was something pleasant to
listen to.

DaDEE, he said.

Morgan closed his eyes. The hour was sacred, the place. It was the ante-room. He
was about to enter, to begin. Outside, listening, what he felt was a fierce physical
craving, as for fresh meat.

DaDEE, the voice said again, a little brighter, a little anxious, as though waiting
for a reply.

Morgan tilted forward, until his forehead touched the door. There were songs the
men sang, lines he'd known since childhood, open wounds. Sometimes he heard them
from afar, coming in. What he was hearing now was older and stronger than any of
that.

Under his feet, he could feel the entire ship moving, a quarter of an inch. Suddenly
he was afraid of it all, every plank, like a creaking stairs in the night. He was
jealous – the ship seemed at such ease with itself. Like the ship, the boy would
drift into a lively sleep. He was unknowing, full, without flaws. His mind had not
yet turned on itself. It was floating gently to the surface, towards the blazing
light.

Outside, his father's head was still pressed against the door, penitent. He wanted
to go down, to drift and swim. To loosen his grip, let slip, and let the current
bear him away, his entire stupid weight.

So often before, going to answer the screams, he'd found the boy in a rage, abandoned,
hurt. Tonight he heard someone
else. Now there was joy where there had been grief.
It was not progress but metamorphosis, unaccountable.

The minutes passed. Still no one came to get him, to check why he was taking so long.
Perhaps she knew what was going on. Perhaps she was giving him time to soak it up,
let it bleed through the outer layers, reach the core.

Popi basha! the boy was shouting now. Perfectly aware of his power, his unbearable
charm. He had begun to repeat himself. BA-SHA! BA-SHA! It was an incantation, that
Morgan wanted never to end. BA-SHA! BA-SHA! he was chanting, and Morgan's mind nodded
along like an idiot, desperate to agree. Both hands pressed flat against the door,
as though to hold it in place. He felt slightly drunk. Something inside him was working
itself loose, working itself free. Something was flowing through him like memory,
like blood, warm and slick. It was filling his stomach, his lungs, his throat. He
could taste it now. He was quietly drowning. He could not leave.

7th May

Morgan was hanging from the beam, by both arms. Beside him, Daly and Blacker and
Cabot and Banes. The arms were starting to tremble. DeHaven stood watching, chronometer
in hand, shouting them through the drills. Knees up. Nails in. Nails out. He had
another beam almost waist-high, and set them hopping over and back, over and back,
until they crumpled. They squatted low and leapt, frog-like, into the empty air.
They moved like poorly-mastered puppets, arms and legs grotesque, lifting stiffly
up and down. To keep them quick, DeHaven played out his orders with a pack of cards.
Clubs were frog-leaps, as many as there were spots on the card. Hearts were handstands,
diamonds pull-ups, spades hopping the low bar. Any Jack put them hanging again.

One by one, the bodies dropped. They made no effort to rise. Only Morgan was still
clinging to the bar. The fingers were starting to slide. Below him, the others all
lay panting.

DeHaven gave them time for water. He called them back again. He was on his hands
and knees, ready to start. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, the 7th of May. All
over the deck, men were lying on the boards, chests heaving. One by one they got
to their feet. They stood over him, looking down. The arms began to bend, ridiculously
slow, until he was holding himself only inches from the planks. The veins in his
neck were bulging horribly. There were sickened groans, grimaces, pantomime incredulity
at what was being asked of them. There were splutters of laughter. The man was asking
the impossible, and showing how it was done.

Morgan stood on the deck moving his arms back and forth, mechanically, in an empty
embrace. He was trying to interrogate the pain, to discover its roots and its reach.
What it wanted. How clever it was.

You don't want to go, is that it? DeHaven said.

The hospital is full of men can barely walk, Morgan said. I don't have the right
to suffer a little too? I'm obliged to be immune, am I? Because I'm the captain?

Dick, almost every time we go through the drills now, there's something wrong with
you. If you don't want to go, you have only to say so. There's not a man aboard won't
understand.

I have a pain in my back, Morgan said. I've had it before, I'll likely have it again.
The thing goes no deeper than that. He began to wheel his arms again.

Stop, DeHaven said.

He put the flat of his hand between the shoulder blades. It was like a hand stilling
a restless dog. There, he said. He touched his other hand to the base of Morgan's
sternum.

But the pain is in my back, Morgan said.

That's where it surfaces. But this is where it's coming from. Trust me.

Firmly, he pushed Morgan towards the open hatch door, put him standing between the
jambs, hands shoulder-high on the wall on either side.

Now lean forward, DeHaven said. Into the darkness of the stairwell, he meant. As
far as you can without falling.

At first it was only a kind of tightness. Morgan tilted forward a few inches more,
found the pain and leaned into it, let it hold him there, upright, testing, as though
it might flag or cede. After the brightness of the deck, for a few seconds he could
see nothing, not so much as an outline. He leaned forward a little more. And a little
more. From somewhere behind his ribcage, suddenly, there was unexpected news.

9th May

He lay on his bed with his journal in his hands. A number of men are willing to stay
aboard, he read, to guard over the ship, and guide her as best they can to safety,
should she be freed next year and I not to return in the meantime to resume my command.
I have thanked them sincerely, and more than an order consider it an offer I am obliged
to accept. In material terms, I have no fear for them. There are several good years'
living in what we leave behind. He read it over again. He was reassuring himself,
learning his lines by heart. From the locker came his watch's endless trim.

Patience, he read. An unlimited reserve. A good fund of
shame. Utter devotion to
the ordained object, even if one cannot say quite what that object is. He was rereading
his journal of the previous year. The date, shortly before the birth. A free run
of just three little weeks, if we get it, would bring us almost to Behring's Strait,
he had written then. It made Morgan smile, to read over his old self. That man was
luck and bluff. He had resolve and indignation, but no particular plan.

There was a gentle knock on the door, and instantly he was on his feet. It was Petersen,
as he knew it would be. DeHaven had sent him a warning.

You seem better, Morgan told him. I'm glad to see it. For a while there, we were
a little concerned.

Petersen did not answer. He had his meagre few lines held tight in his mind, and
he did not want to loosen his grip.

What's on your mind, Carl? Morgan asked. He opened his arms.

I want the promise you leave no man behind, when you go away.

I don't think I quite understand, Morgan said. What man exactly are you thinking
of?

I think the man is not in very good health, just now, maybe. Maybe the man is not
the very best for hard work, just now.

Do you think we should take them along, such men? Men that can't haul? Men that aren't
in the best of health?

I will not stay to live and die in this ship. This I know.

Listen to me now, Morgan said. Certain individuals are going out on a sledge journey,
and certain individuals are remaining aboard, to oversee the ship. You know well
there's no question of an abandon.

You cannot say you are coming back, Petersen said. Even if you want. Even if you
say you do it. The ice it changes, every day. You know this.

Do you honestly believe I intend to leave Kitty behind, and my own son? That I'm
planning to head south and never return? Do you really think I'm capable of that?

Petersen didn't answer.

I've obviously been a harder man than I thought, Morgan said.

I am strong, Petersen said. I am strong like any of you.

Didn't we come back from Beechey? Morgan said.

Yes.

And that was in the height of winter.

Yes.

Miss Rink and the baby, do you expect them to haul in the traces?

No.

Nor do I. That would be plain stupid. Anyone incapable of hauling all their own share
of the load is going to stay and oversee the ship until our return, that's all. It's
only common sense. Any other course of action would be reckless and irresponsible.

The man's smock-front, Morgan noticed, was dribbled with soup. It was another fact
come to join the line, to argue against him.

Carl, he said. No one under my command will ever be abandoned. Full stop. He sounded
annoyed, offended by something unseemly in what had been said.

When Petersen left, Morgan shut the door as quietly as he could. He was waiting for
the man to die. For the illness, these last weeks had been a triumph. The spots were
softening and darkening, like windfallen fruit. They could not leave him behind,
and they could not bring him along. Death, Morgan had decided, would be the politest
solution of all.

10th May

The high life, for everyone, for a little while, he told the men. They should enjoy
it as best they could.

Like prodigals, he said. Like the prodigal son.

The prodigal son mended his ways and came back home, DeHaven said.

The way he lived when he was away, Morgan said. Before. Gentlemen, he would say,
looking at what they were leaving on their plates. Our chef will be offended. You
know what a sensitive soul he is.

The bottles were left open on the table, here and in the main mess. The wicks were
left high, night and day. It was as though the order had gone out, to pirate their
own ship. It was part of the price. It was telling those left behind they would not
have long to wait. There would be food and fuel enough in the meantime. There was
no longer any need to scrimp and spare, to think of the future, the uncounted years
to come.

After dinner they sifted one more time through Franklin's postbag, and whoever found
a passage of interest set it aside, to be read aloud. They were bored of their books
and their Bibles. They were killing time.

You would be surprised to see how young Eliza is improved, Morgan read. This last
year and her growing have mended her health entirely. She now plays and sings very
well and greatly enjoys company. You may be assured as to her behaviour, which is
neither shy nor pert but perfectly modulated.