The afternoon was so long and light that she could almost have been back in Antarctica, if it weren’t for the warmth. Ingrid threw a raspberry into the bucket, pushed her hair back from her forehead and stood up, putting her hand in the small of her back to ease the ache. Faint shouts and laughter drifted her way from lower down the slope, where the younger children were eating more raspberries than they were picking.
A voice said her name, familiar but at odds with the setting. It took Ingrid’s mind a moment to make the connection. He was standing with the sun behind him when she turned, and she blinked in the brightness.
‘Hjalmar,’ she said automatically, as though nothing had happened. She felt a rush of embarrassment and wished she’d greeted him more formally.
But he said ‘Ingrid,’ the same way, like a person in a strange country who had found someone from home. He looked haggard, she saw, when he stepped to the side and the light fell on his face, picking out areas of tender pink skin where frostbite had caught him. He’d lost weight; his cheeks were gaunt and his clothes hung loosely.
‘When did you get in?’ she asked.
‘This morning,’ he said. ‘You know my news, of course.’
She nodded. ‘Terrible, Hjalmar. I’m sorry.’
Word had come as they were on the way from Cape Town to London. Norvegia had set Hjalmar and Nils down on the ice for a sledging run along the coast, with an arrangement to pick them up in another location. But they’d sledged onto a loose ice shelf that broke away. All the dogs had been lost, along with most of the gear. Hjalmar and Nils had survived, but it had been a near thing.
‘Lars will be glad to see you,’ Ingrid said. ‘He was terribly worried.’
‘It will be good to talk to him,’ Hjalmar said. ‘It makes all the difference that he’s been there and knows how easily disaster can strike. We still managed some mapping from the plane. It wasn’t a total loss. I’ve a plan for the next expedition.’
‘I thought you nearly died,’ Ingrid said. ‘Would you go again?’
‘Of course,’ he said, and for a moment the old Hjalmar was looking at her with a boyish grin. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
It was true, she realised. ‘Yes, I would.’
She didn’t want to tell him that the chance wouldn’t come again. Locked in a legal case with Unilever over the purchase of the season’s oil, Lars was considering pulling out of the whole whaling business. He’d made a settlement offer, a closely guarded secret, to sell Unilever his whole fleet at a knockdown price. Ingrid hated to think how they’d live in Sandefjord if such an offer became known, let alone if it became a reality. Bjarne Aagaard champion of the whales, was perhaps the only one in Sandefjord who would be pleased with that outcome. She’d managed to avoid reporting back to Bjarne so far, but she knew she couldn’t put it off much longer.
‘Will you stay for dinner?’ she asked instead.
He looked at her steadily. ‘I’d like that.’
The moment lengthened between them and Ingrid was aware of the sun beating on her face. ‘I know some things changed down there,’ she said, and stopped.
He reached out and put a hand on her arm, and she felt a shiver that she hoped he didn’t notice.
‘It’s in the past,’ he said. ‘But there’s one thing I need to tell you.’
In the field below the children were absorbed in picking and eating. If they saw Hjalmar, there’d be a stampede, and no chance for them to speak privately.
‘Let’s go down to the beach,’ she said.
He carried the berry basket for her, eating a few along the way. She led him around the edge of Ranvik’s sloping lawn, not wanting Lars to see them from his study. He followed her down the steps and onto the sand.
‘Take your shoes off,’ she said.
‘Bare feet. What a thought.’ He bent down, unlaced his shoes, slid them off and pulled off his socks. Then he stood up and his face changed.
‘My God!’ he said, staring.
A line of Adelie penguins was waddling towards them. They’d taken up residence on the beach and seemed quite happy in their new home.
Ingrid took her own shoes off, hitched up her dress and waded into the water. The penguins threw themselves into the tiny waves and porpoised behind her, hopeful of fish. Hjalmar gave a short laugh and followed.
‘Incredible,’ he said. ‘It’s good to come back to summer. Although I’d love a long, dark night.’
He’d have that soon enough, she thought. ‘Have you seen Mathilde?’ she asked, as though she’d just thought of it.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I went around this morning.’
Ingrid felt a rush of jealousy, almost as strong as it had been on the ship, that he’d gone to her first.
‘She has the last of my dogs,’ he said. ‘I need to see if he’s worth breeding from. Mathilde looks very well, I thought. She said she’s happy.’
‘I must invite her over,’ Ingrid said. ‘Would you like her to come tonight?’
He shook his head. ‘Remember what it’s like when you first get back?’
She did remember. Everyone asking how the trip had been, everyone wanting to know what Antarctica was like. Too many people at once, all of them too loud, the whole thing too much. She and Lars had shut themselves in for the first weeks and seen as few people as possible.
‘What is it you want to tell me?’
He ran his hand through his hair. ‘After we left you, there were good conditions for two days, so I did as much flying as I could.’
She nodded. ‘I remember. When you radioed us about the lead in to shore.’
‘Right. I also made another flight over Ingrid Christensen Land. I was able to go fairly low and I saw where the Mikkelsens landed.’
He paused. ‘It was on an island, Ingrid. Four or five kilometres offshore.’
She didn’t realise what he meant at first, and looked at him quizzically.
‘Your party was the first to land women on the continent itself,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth.’
Ingrid laughed. So far from Antarctica the notion seemed ridiculous. After a moment, when she didn’t stop, Hjalmar joined in. They stood facing each other in the water, shaking with laughter.
‘Oh dear.’ Ingrid wiped her eyes. Then she grew serious. ‘Hjalmar, don’t tell anyone.’
He sobered. ‘But you’re the first woman to land on Antarctica. Presuming you got off the boat first.’
‘Oh, I did,’ she said. ‘But I don’t care for it. Caroline thinks she was the first; Lillemor is heartbroken that she wasn’t the first. Don’t stir it all up again.’
‘Your husband might have a different idea about it.’
‘Don’t tell him either.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
She waded closer to him. ‘I do, Hjalmar. It’s finished. I don’t want to be drawn into a public discussion of who got off where, how many hours earlier, and how many miles closer or further away. Leave it there.’
‘Don’t you want your moment of glory?’
She shook her head. ‘If it had been Lillemor off the boat first, I wouldn’t mind. She’d be thrilled. But this will just upset her more.’
He shook his head. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’ He looked down at his feet in the water. ‘I’d best see your husband. There’s lots to discuss.’
‘You go up,’ Ingrid said. ‘I’ll stay here a few more minutes.’
She watched him dry his feet on the grass, climb the stone steps and set out across the lawn barefoot, his shoes dangling from one hand. Let Lars tell him there’d be no more voyages on Norvegia. He was already planning to sell the little ship to shuttle tourists to Svalbard for bear hunting.
Ingrid waded out of the water and walked across the sand to the rocks. She clambered up, hand over foot, to the top of the low headland. The afternoon sun was starting to slant over the fjord as she sat down, facing south.
The ground had stopped rocking under her feet, though it took a few weeks. Day and night were circling around and coming back into alignment in a way her body understood. But some inner compass was still spinning, and Ingrid wondered if she’d ever find equilibrium again.
The house was full of Antarctic memorabilia. The penguins that hadn’t survived the voyage had been stuffed and mounted and were ready to go to the Whaling Museum. The rooms downstairs were crammed with samples for the University of Oslo.
Ingrid had put the foetal whale in its glass canister inside her wardrobe while she decided what to do with it. Lars had been kind, assuring her he quite understood if she didn’t want it in the house, and he’d send it to the museum for safekeeping.
‘It’s only fair other people should see such an extraordinary thing too,’ he’d said.
But Ingrid wasn’t ready to give it up yet. When she looked at the creature, bobbing in its sleep as if still in the amniotic waters of the womb, the smells and the sounds and the cold of Antarctica came back in a rush. She remembered the embrace of her bunk as the ship rose and fell, how that seemed at times the only place she could surrender to it, held safe in the ship’s belly as Thorshavn battled the sea on her behalf.
There was nothing sleeping in the fluids of her own belly. She hadn’t fallen pregnant. She was relieved, and strangely, it seemed Lars was too.
‘I don’t think there’s going to be whaling for my sons to take over,’ he’d said when her monthly time came. ‘I’m going to train Lars Junior in shipping instead. So never mind, my dear.’
Ingrid had made the decision on the voyage back not to ask him about Ole and Gerd unless trouble arose when Mathilde arrived home. But Mathilde was living with her children and Ingrid was inclined to think she’d exaggerated the possibility of losing them. At any rate, it was a relief to let it go.
She and Lars were tender with each other after their return. They’d become again like an old married couple, Ingrid thought. They were affectionate, as they’d always been, but there was a deeper side to it; what they’d seen of each other on the journey. That they still loved each other seemed a small miracle. She didn’t mind that the passion evident on their voyage had faded. It was something from that place, not from this one.
Hjalmar had been right; she’d go to Antarctica again in a heartbeat. But it wouldn’t be the same. Before going south, the dream of Antarctica had been the promise of a place so different, so transporting and transforming, that nothing would ever be the same again. She’d find her essential self there.
It was true, she had found something essential. But in finding it, she’d lost something else. The Antarctica of her imagination, that mystical, wondrous place, was gone. In its stead was the real Antarctica, at once smaller and larger than she’d imagined, at once more wondrous and more ordinary. It was a place indifferent to humans. It was itself, no more and no less.
The dinner bell clanged across the lawn, and she heard the children’s voices in the distance. They’d be gathering up their baskets, stuffing the last few berries into their mouths, grabbing shoes and hats and running to the house. They’d be hardly able to eat dinner, she knew, and she smiled. It was time she started to work on Lars about Sofie. Her youngest daughter would be as capable as Lars Junior of running a shipping empire, and she was old enough to learn something about it.
Ingrid stood up and looked out one last time over the water, blinking against the light. She put her hand to her chest and felt the hard knot of the small green stone tucked into her bodice. Since she’d got home, there had been no further appearances of her mother, or of any child floating in her mind.
The only thing she could see was the baby whale, lying in its glass womb, its flippers tucked close to its body, its eyes closed, dreaming of the south.