ONE

The storm lasted two days, so that by the time we got back to Isvik it was the last day of February. Fortunately we had the power of the snowmobile to help us, for by the third day Eduardo was not only mentally deranged, but so physically weak that he was just a half-conscious body strapped to a sledge that had to be pulled. As soon as we were within VHF range, Iain had informed Iris her brother was with us. But though he did his best to prepare her for the condition he was in, it still came as a dreadful shock to her.

We were used to it by then, of course, but after that first wild, garrulous outpouring, he had withdrawn into a mental shell that isolated him from the world. And when they met, he didn’t even seem to recognise her. In fact, if we hadn’t had the use of the snowmobile from the point where Angel had abandoned it, I doubt whether we would have got him to the ship alive. The going was very bad, with a lot of wet snow, the air temperature rising so sharply that the melt was producing large areas of slush ice, and new polynyas were appearing all the time, so that we were on water more often than on ice.

It was this melting of the ice, which, according to the British Antarctic Survey at their Halley base, had been going on for several years now, that had enabled the Andros, after she had been dismasted, to find open water throughout her drift along the eastern and southern perimeter of the Weddell Sea. In addition, of course, once past the South Shetlands, driven first west, then south through the sixties and into the seventies, Andros had had the advantage, not only of the prevailing wind, which shifts from west through north into the east, but also of the current, which follows the wind pattern, running clockwise round the Weddell Sea at a rate of anything up to a knot. It had, in fact, taken her less than two and a half months to drift down to the Ice Shelf and then along the Ronne Front until she was blocked by those stranded bergs and sealed in for good.

As soon as we reached Isvik, Iain went into the wheelhouse, talking urgently into the Inmarsat boom mike. We had been away over a week, and in advance of the storm that had pinned us down, they had moved the vessel some twenty miles to the south, where the water was more open. Even so, they had been badly squeezed and, for a short time, the bows had been forced right up on to the ice. Now, with a southerly wind, she was afloat again, in open water that was steadily expanding as the pack ice was driven northwards.

I had the details of what had happened while we were away from Andy Galvin, a nervously excited rush of words. Our absence seemed to have made him even more turned in on himself, so that he was now so self-centred that other people’s experiences barely registered with him. He asked very few questions and seemed more relieved than anything else when I told him Ángel and Carlos were both dead.

Iris had taken charge of her brother as soon as the sledge to which he was strapped had been floated across to Isvik. Nils produced hot soup that was so thick it was more of a stew, also the remains of a bottle of rum. Afterwards I went up on deck, had a quick look round to make certain the ship was in a reasonable state of readiness for any sudden change in the weather, then I turned in. The forecast was good, but with the altered wind direction, and the sun already set, it was much colder, so that a thin film of ice was beginning to form round the hull.

I woke in a sweat to the sound of Eduardo’s voice shouting in his sleep, and a wonderful smell of coffee. The sun was already high in an opaque, milky sky and to the north of us a whiteout was forming where the warmth of it was lifting a fog of moisture from the ice.

There was a slight heel to the ship, the creaking of spars and the sound of water rushing past the hull. By the time I had cleaned myself up and put on some fresh clothes, it was past midday and they had been under way since first light. I hadn’t heard a sound.

Iris was sitting at the saloon table. She got up and handed me a mug of coffee. There were dark rings under her eyes, tiredness showing in the wan smile she gave me. She looked utterly drained. ‘The ice-breaker that was at the BAS base at Halley Bay left three days ago,’ she said. ‘Iain was on to the MoD. The best they can do is have the RFA supply vessel rendezvous with us in the vicinity of the South Orkneys. They want an ETA, of course, as soon as possible, and if the weather is right, they could have their helicopter meet us and winch him off.’

That was what finally happened. We had a rough time of it off the Filchner Ice Shelf, with strong, gusting winds, almost katabatic at times, coming down on us from the interior of Coats Land. There was a lot of ice about, but we always seemed to find a way through, and when we were finally able to head north, we sailed into open water. In fact, we didn’t run into any more pack ice till Iain insisted we tried to short-cut it across to the rv point. It cost us the better part of two days, and when we did get clear of the pack, we lost the wind and had to motor.

By then Eduardo was in a bad way. Partly it was the violence of the movement, partly reaction. Also, of course, he was suffering badly from vitamin C deficiency. But it was his mental state Iris was chiefly worried about. The shock of his return to a world and people he had thought he would never see again was traumatic enough, but added to that was the knowledge of what he had been through, all that had happened on the Andros, the bodies in that hold. That was what was eating at his mind. He had shut himself in with the demons of recollection.

In a way, that was fortunate. Iain and I kept our own counsel, so there was nobody to tell the others. I think it probable Iris guessed at some of it, but not the full horror. And I kept a guard on my tongue on the numerous occasions when she questioned me, till in the end she avoided the subject.

That was after we had had a blazing row in the wheelhouse on a night watch. She had suddenly turned on me – ‘You don’t tell me, do you? Whenever I ask about how he lived for all that time, what exactly there is on board for him to eat, what he said to you when you found him – always, you and Iain, you avoid my questions.’ And she added in a choking voice, tears of anger and frustration in those strangely blue eyes of hers, ‘What is it you are hiding from me? For God’s sake, Pete, tell me. I am not a child. If it is something dreadful, and you are keeping it secret, I can hold my mouth shut. Tell me, please,’ she pleaded. ‘I am his sister. I have a right to know.’

What could I say? I didn’t answer her, and in the end I simply turned away. After that she spoke to me only when she had to, avoiding my company as far as she could.

The odd thing was she made no attempt to subject Iain to the same emotional pressure. He told me that himself. Perhaps she sensed it would be a waste of time. Instead, she had fastened on me as more likely to give in to her pleading.

We were well into March now, and even in the open sea, we were motoring through a paper-thin crust of newly-formed ice during the early hours of each day. By then our course was west of north as we coasted the edge of the pack with the great north-pointing finger of Graham Land to give us something of a lee, so that there was hardly any swell, the sea at times glass-calm. We had two days of this, and each day we were in touch by radio with the RFA ship.

She had left Grytviken, South Georgia, on 11 March and we were now closing each other at a combined speed of 24 knots. The next day she flew off her helicopter, and shortly before four in the afternoon it was hovering over us like a giant dragonfly. By then the wind had picked up and was strong in the gusts, which made the winching operation difficult, the waves having become steep and breaking and the mast wavering around erratically to the plunging, rolling movement of the ship.

I had never been right underneath a chopper while the winch was being operated, and this was a grandstand view of it, for I was at the upper steering position, on top of the wheelhouse, trying to keep the ship as steady as possible. I was dead scared the winchman would reel in the wire at the wrong moment and tangle the gyrating stretcher with the mainmast crosstrees. It seemed an age that the helicopter hovered there, but they got him up safely in the end, and as I watched Eduardo’s stretcher-bundled body manoeuvred into the helicopter fuselage, the tautness went out of my muscles and I began to relax.

I was expecting the side door to be closed and the machine to wheel away from us and head back to its mother ship. Instead, the winchman’s head reappeared above me and he was waving to me urgently as he lowered the wire again. Somebody yelled at me. It was Iain, standing just below me on the side deck, but I couldn’t hear what he said. He was muffled up in full cold weather gear and he had a suitcase with him, also a sailbag crammed so full he hadn’t been able to tie it properly, and that olive-green haversack slung over his shoulder.

He looked up at me, then smiled and shook his head as he realised his words were being drowned by the down-rush of air and the chop of the blades. I can still see that beak-nosed face of his, brown and wrinkled with ice glare, the heavy jaw and the tight line of his lips as he smiled. He raised his gloved hand and turned aft, calling to Andy to give him a hand.

It was only then I realised he was leaving us. No warning, no goodbyes. I saw Iris stop in her tracks as she was leaving the afterdeck, her eyes widening in unbelief. So he hadn’t told her either. He hadn’t told anyone. They just stood there, staring at him.

Andy was the first to move, taking hold of the sailbag and slinging it into position as the cargo net came down towards us. A sail began to slat and we yawed wildly, a broken wave rolling under our hull. I dived back to the wheel, forced now to go through the whole process again, holding the boat steady long enough for Iain and his baggage to be got into the net and the whole thing winched up clear of the masts.

‘Did you know?’ It was Iris. She had climbed the port ladder to join me as I stood there watching the helicopter put its nose down and begin driving forward, northward to regain the fleet auxiliary. ‘Did you know?’ she repeated in a strangled voice.

‘No,’ I said, and for a while we stood there in silence, watching the helicopter dwindle to a speck, watching until, finally, we could not see it any longer.

‘What a strange man!’ she murmured. ‘Never a word to anyone about leaving. Just bang, I’m off. And that’s it. He’s gone.’ She turned, groping blindly for the gap in the rail and the first rung of the ladder. ‘Jumped ship, that’s about it, isn’t it?’ She smiled at me, and the way her lips trembled on that forced smile I knew she was very near to tears.

Partly it was the abruptness of his departure. We hadn’t expected it and the sudden removal of such a dominant personality left a gap that all of us felt in our different ways. But for Iris and myself it was much more personal. We had been through a lot together these last few months, and always he had been there, providing the motivation and the driving force.

However, we had little chance to brood over it. The wind was steadily increasing, and as the clouds swept lower, darkness closing in, we shortened sail. No squares’ls now; we were close-hauled on the port tack and barely able to lay South Georgia, let alone the Falklands.

It took us eleven days to reach Port Stanley, eleven exhausting days of extreme discomfort. Once past the South Orkneys, we felt the full impact of the great Southern Ocean waves that circle the globe and at Lat. 60° S have to squeeze themselves through the narrow gap between the Horn and Graham Land that is named Drake Strait. It was against a dawn sky of incredible clarity that I got my first glimpse of the Falkland Islands. Nils had called me up to identify a small pyramid of rock just lifting above the north-western horizon. It was Mount Kent, fifteen hundred feet high and almost fifty miles away.

Once under the lee of East Falkland, we were able to motor-sail, and something I shall always remember is the sudden transition to peace as we passed the lighthouse on Cape Pembroke and entered calm water, with the wired enclosures of old Argentine minefields on the slopes above us. We dropped anchor for the night close to an old dredger, with the steeple of Port Stanley’s red brick cathedral bearing due south, and went straight to our bunks.

We had reported in by VHF, of course, and they let us sleep through till midday before coming out in a launch to deal with the formalities of entry. The media came out to us, too – the Penguin News, the little Tea-Berry paper, the local and forces radio stations. They knew by then we had located the wreck of a wooden sailing vessel down at the southern end of the Weddell Sea, but islands that boasted more wrecks and hulks of old square-riggers than any other place in the world were less interested in the discovery of another than in personal accounts of our voyage and the ice conditions we had experienced. They knew nothing about the deaths of Carlos and Ángel Borgalini, so there was no necessity to parry questions.

Customs had already told us the vessel that plies the triangular route, Stanley-Montevideo-Punta Arenas, was leaving that evening. Since it would be over a week before they would have another opportunity, Andy and Go-Go decided to take it. They got a lift ashore with some local people who had come out to us with cans of beer and kind offers of hospitality. Then, just as it was getting dark, a police launch came alongside with a note from Government House requesting Mrs Sunderby’s presence at 4 p.m. next day.

There were now just the three of us left, and after we had fed, Nils produced a bottle of vodka he had secreted against the moment of our return to civilisation. We toasted the boat over our coffee, then each other, finally Iris raised her glass to absent friends. No mention of Eduardo’s name, nor of Iain’s, just absent friends. And after that, Nils went off to his bunk muttering something about being too old ‘for gallivanteering around the Veddell’.

Iris got up at the same time and went aft. I started to say goodnight, but she waved me to stay put. ‘No, please. Stay there. I won’t be a moment.’

I sat down again and poured myself another drink. I thought perhaps she was going to the heads, but she was back almost immediately, a large brown envelope in her hand. ‘More coffee?’ She put the envelope down on the table and reached across for my mug. ‘We have to talk, about money.’

She poured the coffee, sat down again and helped herself to another vodka. She had on an emerald green shirt that was cut low and had a very silky sheen. The top button was undone. I don’t think that was intentional, for her mind was on the envelope, which she kept on fingering. ‘How much money have you got? I am sorry. It is not a proper question, but I need to know.’

I told her and she gave a little half-smile. ‘Not enough even to get you back to the UK.’

‘No.’

She pushed the envelope over to me. Scrawled across it was the one word Yours. No signature. No address. Nothing.

I looked across at her. ‘Iain?’

She nodded. ‘After he is gone I find it lying on my bunk. Have a look inside. No letter – nothing personal. Not even a note.’

The envelope contained a thick wadge of traveller’s cheques, all countersigned with an illegible signature and ready for encashment. Also Isvik’s registration certificate, together with deed of ownership, both in the name of Iris Sunderby. ‘You own the boat then.’ I was staring at her, all sorts of possibilities rushing through my mind. ‘You own all sixty-four shares in Isvik’

‘Yes.’ She shook her head slightly, still with that little half-smile. ‘I didn’t like it, but he insist.’ She hesitated, then leaned forward suddenly. ‘Pete. Who is he? Why doesn’t he want his name on that certificate? And the traveller’s cheques … That is not his name.’ She shook her head again and reached for my hand. ‘What do I do now? I have this boat. But what to do with it? And he won’t come back. I know that. He is out of my life altogether.’ She stared at me a moment, then picked up the ship’s papers and put them back in the envelope. ‘And these.’ She waved the traveller’s cheques at me. ‘I suppose I cash them?’

‘Of course.’ There was Nils to pay, work to be done on Isvik, repairs, replacements, stores, all the incidentals that go with the running of a boat. And there was her brother. ‘You’ll be going to England, will you?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I must see that Eduardo is all right.’ All we knew was that he had been airlifted out on the first available Tristar flight to RAF Brize Norton, and Iain had gone with him. ‘Will you stay here till I get back?’

I hesitated, my mind switching to the house in Cley, to my mother and her flower festival, to the search for a job and the struggle to set up on my own. I think it was then that I realised I had changed. I was a different person. And here was a whole new world, over three hundred islands full of sheep and rock runs, penguins, upland geese and albatross, a land spun off from the bottom of Africa that I would certainly never get the chance to see again once I returned to Norfolk.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll be here.’

She reached out and touched my hand, at the same time raising her glass. ‘To Isvik then!’

Forgotten now was the horror trapped in that icebound wooden frigate, my thoughts reaching out into the future. ‘To Isvik!’ I said.