The letter from Hjalmar was waiting for Lillemor in the front hall. She picked it up and paused before opening it. She realised she was shaking, and put a hand on the bureau to steady herself.
Since she’d first had the idea to go south, she had planned her Antarctic assault with the same care as Amundsen or Scott. The challenges and logistics were different, but her determination was as strong. Lillemor had read every account of polar exploration she could find. She knew her north and south, she knew the great journeys, the triumphs and failures. She knew Scott’s dying words on his way back from the Pole, and Amundsen’s pedestrian ones as he set down the daily details of his race to beat the Englishman.
Every journey of exploration faced challenges before setting out. The real explorers were those who could navigate through them. Captain Riiser-Larsen had agreed to take her, she reminded herself. The only obstacle in their way was Unilever and its determination to grind down the Norwegian whalers until they were more desperate sellers of oil.
She picked up the letter opener and slit the envelope in a single motion. The paper slid out and she unfolded it.
I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Rachlew, Hjalmar wrote. It seems Consul Christensen wants his wife to be the first woman to visit Antarctica. Ingrid and a female friend are sailing with us on the resupply vessel Thorshavn, which is ferrying me south to meet up with Norvegia. The Consul has forbidden me to take any female passenger myself.
Lillemor threw the paper to the floor in disbelief and fury, and gave an impotent half-roar of the kind a woman was reduced to making when another opportunity was denied her.
Anton came running out of the parlour at the sound. He stopped when he saw her, then came closer and picked up the letter. He scanned it quickly.
‘Oh, darling,’ he said.
She kept out of his reach. ‘Those damned Christensens. Them and their great ancestors and their pure Viking blood!’
She thumped the bureau with her fist and groaned aloud, thinking of what had been snatched from her. Anton flinched. He hadn’t seen her temper yet, she remembered. She forced herself to take some deep breaths.
‘I bet Ingrid Christensen doesn’t give a damn about Antarctica,’ she said. ‘It’s just the latest season’s holiday. Last year Rio, this year Antarctica, next year bloody Tahiti. And so much for your friend Hjalmar. Doesn’t he rule his own ship? What kind of captain is he?’
‘The kind whose explorations are funded by someone else,’ Anton said. ‘In this case, Christensen. Hjalmar wouldn’t be exploring without the Consul’s backing.’
‘Well, he’s a sop then. I don’t care if he’s being funded. He should have stood up for himself.’
Anton reached out a hand. ‘I’ll make it up to you. We’ll go somewhere ourselves; have our own trip.’
‘It’s not just a trip!’
‘I’m trying to help,’ he said quietly.
She pushed him away. ‘I’m going out.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘I need to be alone.’ She turned and pushed blindly at the door, out into the English summer afternoon.
She wasn’t a crier, so she wished for gloomy English darkness and a cold London fog to close around her and express her misery. But as she strode along the street, the world refused to cooperate. Children played and carriages and cars went about their business and birds sang. London seemed as merry as if the crash had never happened and Lillemor hadn’t received the day’s news.
Damn London. She’d arrived there thinking it such a big step from Oslo. One of the world’s great cities, full of bohemians and suffragists and adventurers, a place where a woman like Lillemor could make a mark on the world. She’d left her staid parents and her married sister in Oslo without regret, barely remembering to dash off Christmas cards to them, and set herself to join the main current of world events. In London, a youngish woman of modest but independent means could find any new adventure her heart desired, surely?
She’d met many of those famous women, some through Women’s Service House, and been there to celebrate the achievement of universal suffrage in 1928. Freda was past her climbing days when they got to know each other, but Lillemor liked her anyway. Though grief had softened Freda’s body and hardened her face, Lillemor could see the formidable woman she’d been.
In the aftermath of the Wall Street crash, Lillemor had volunteered to help out in Dr Marie Stopes’s Mothers’ Clinic to keep herself busy while she waited to see what adventure presented itself. She and Marie had become friends over the last two years. But now she was married and had turned thirty. Life was passing quickly and, with it, her chance to make something of herself.
When Ingrid and her companion returned, the papers would trumpet them as the first women to reach Antarctica and the chance of Lillemor ever being the first herself would be lost. She thought of Robert Falcon Scott, still celebrated as a hero though he’d been second to reach the South Pole. The British mourned him still, with a fervour far greater than the Norwegians showed towards Amundsen. Lillemor herself felt more kinship with Scott and his tragic end. Hjalmar should have borrowed the phrase from Amundsen’s telegraph to Scott: ‘Beg to inform, heading south’, the words that carried, in their unspoken brutality, the death of all Scott’s dreams.
When Lillemor finally halted, sweating in the afternoon warmth, she looked around. She was in St John’s Gardens in Westminster, near Women’s Service House. The sun was slanting downwards, though couples still lay on the lawns in the park and people bared their arms and legs to catch the sun.
She turned away from the park, crossed the road and rounded the corner into Marsham Street. But as she strode into the lobby, she felt her frustration rise. These women thought themselves very fine but they were fools. Chesterfield sofas, whisky, cigars and maids may have been the trappings of power, but they didn’t carry any in their own right. If Lillemor had been a man, she’d have had the connections to get herself on an Antarctic expedition. As a woman, the connections were useless.
Lillemor looked around the lounge. Marie was sitting by the fire, nursing a whisky in Freda’s usual armchair. Lillemor threw herself down next to her and waved for her own drink.
‘That bastard,’ she said.
Marie looked across and raised an eyebrow. ‘Which one?’
‘Exactly,’ Lillemor said. ‘Captain Riiser-Larsen, who’s got no spine to stand up for himself, or Consul Lars Christensen, who wants his own wife to be the first woman on Antarctica and won’t let me get in her way.’
‘Giving up then?’ Marie asked.
‘I’ve rather run out of options.’
They sat in silence. The maid brought Lillemor a double whisky and she took a gulp. It didn’t help.
‘I know how you feel,’ Marie said.
Lillemor felt another rush of frustration. ‘You can’t possibly know. You’ve achieved everything.’
‘Do you know what I did before I opened the clinics?’ Marie put her glass down. ‘I worked as a palaeobotanist in Japan and Canada, and travelled all over North America studying geology. I was working to prove Suess’s theory that the continents were once joined.’
Lillemor stared at her in astonishment. ‘Why did you give it up?’
Marie leaned in close. ‘I wanted to go to Antarctica to study the rocks. I asked Scott to take me and he refused. I taught him what rocks to collect, but the rocks that came back from his expedition went to Cambridge, though they should have been mine. I was humiliated.’
She sat back and sipped her drink. ‘Oh, and my first husband, Reginald, was impotent,’ she added. ‘I knew I couldn’t be the only woman suffering from sex ignorance, so I decided to research sex and relationships instead. It turned out to be a good choice.’
Lillemor sagged in her chair, feeling the anger run out of her. ‘I’ve got no hope. I’m not even a proper photographer. Freda’s right. I’ve got nothing to offer an expedition.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. You’re a woman of energy and imagination. Tell me, what’s your greatest weapon, do you think?’
Lillemor looked over at her dryly. ‘Some would say my vagina. But it’s not much help in this case.’
‘Proximity,’ Marie said.
‘What?’
‘Things can happen if you put yourself in the path of the action. My one regret is that I stayed home. I should have refused to take no for an answer.’
Lillemor took another gulp and thumped the glass down on the table hard enough to slosh the remains over the side. ‘I don’t know how that applies in this case.’
Marie smiled. ‘I suggest you give it some thought.’
It was dark by the time Lillemor reached home again. Anton was sitting on the front step. He stood up as she approached and pushed herself into his arms. He held her hard, his chin on her head, his arms tight around her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, letting her body meld to his.
‘Don’t even think of it,’ he said. ‘If I could fund an Antarctic voyage, I’d make you the leader of it.’
She gave a small smile. ‘You’re sweet. Is there dinner?’
‘Warm and waiting,’ he said. He opened the door. He’d removed the letter from the bureau, she saw, as she took off her shawl. He took her arm and they started to walk towards the dining room.
‘You know that trip you mentioned?’ she asked.
‘Yes?’
‘What about Cape Town?’
He stopped and turned her around to face him. ‘What madcap plan are you cooking up now, Mrs Rachlew?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t have a plan. But you’re a tactician, Anton. You know sometimes you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time. Will you support me?’
He kissed her. ‘You should have been a man, with your brain. But I’m very glad you’re not.’