‘I’d like to welcome you all on board the Cape Adare, for this expedition to the last great wilderness on the planet.’
Captain Haugen’s words drew a smattering of cheers from the people gathered in the observation lounge.
‘During the next twenty days, you will see the place described by Captain James Cook as a country doomed never to feel the warmth of the sun – but to lie forever buried under snow and ice. Cook felt that any man – or woman – who ventured there was quite welcome to the experience. But fear not – for there were other early explorers who felt the Antarctic was full of wonders beyond our powers to imagine. And I, for one, agree with them.’
Jenny looked around the crowded lounge, but she didn’t see the face she was looking for. Her tall, dark and handsome ‘friend’ was probably the only passenger not present for the captain’s pre-dinner welcome. The passengers were there for the free cocktails, and to find out what lay ahead of them. Jenny, like the rest of the expedition team, was there because it was part of her job. And, like the other crew members, she would be toasting the success of the voyage in soda rather than champagne. Despite that, she was rather enjoying herself. In some ways, she was finding it surprisingly liberating to be among total strangers. No one here had any expectations of her, apart from doing the job she was being paid to do.
The captain had finished his speech, and now it was Karl’s turn to outline the programme for the expedition, and the rules. Most of it was familiar to Jenny. She’d been reading up on such things during the past day and a half at sea, when not fighting with a life jacket or exploding coke cans in front of handsome men. She looked around the room again, as Karl announced a full lifeboat drill for the next morning.
‘No one is excused,’ the expedition leader said loudly. ‘This is a safety requirement under maritime law. The good news is that despite the many, many times my crew has run this drill, we’ve never had to use if for real … yet.’
The listening passengers laughed on cue. So did Karl’s team who had no doubt heard the line before.
‘After the drill, the first seminar of the voyage will take place in the Wilkes Lecture Theatre on Deck Four. You’ll be hearing from Jenny Payne – who’ll be talking about our first destination – Macquarie Island. We’ll reach the island early the next morning – so you want to be prepared.’
Jenny felt a few eyes turn her way. She smiled and nodded confidently.
‘Each evening, the next day’s schedule will be available from the expedition desk which is also on deck four, and conveniently close to the bar.’ That gave rise to another round of laughter, but the passengers were getting restless. It was time for that pre-dinner cocktail.
As if sensing the moment, Karl finished his speech by inviting all the passengers to the bar for a complementary drink. Jenny stepped aside in case she was trampled in the rush. As she did, she kept her eyes open for a shock of dark hair.
‘He isn’t here then, dear?’
‘Sorry?’ Startled, Jenny looked down at the speaker. The woman had to be seventy if she was a day. She was short, and almost as round as she was tall. Her eyes were a much darker grey than her hair, and they twinkled as she spoke. She was clutching an enormous purple handbag.
‘You were obviously looking for someone. I assume anyone who could cause that much interest in a young girl like yourself must be a man.’
‘I … I was just wondering who I might have on my table for dinner,’ Jenny replied, clutching at straws. Each of the expedition team was assigned a table for lunch and dinner, where they were expected to chat to the passengers. It was just part of the job. Jenny was starting to realise there would be no ‘days off’ during the next three weeks, and very little personal time. That wasn’t such a bad thing, though. If she was busy, she wouldn’t be worrying about what the hell she was going to do when she made it back to dry land again, or thinking about Ray … or …
‘Of course you were,’ the elderly lady continued in a conspiratorial tone. ‘Tell me, is he frightfully handsome?’
Jenny started to smile. There was something in the woman’s face that made it hard to do otherwise. ‘I’m not telling you anything about him,’ Jenny said with mock severity. ‘You’d probably steal him away from under my nose.’
‘In my youth, I might have done just that,’ the older woman replied. ‘But I’m afraid my stealing days are over.’
They both laughed.
‘You’re Jenny – our lecturer tomorrow, aren’t you?’ the woman asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s nice to meet you, Jenny. I’m Vera Horsley.’
Something about the name seemed vaguely familiar to Jenny, but looking down at the woman, she knew they’d never met before. ‘Welcome on board Mrs Horsley.’
‘Please call me Vera. Do you have some gruesome tales for us? Shipwrecks? Cannibals perhaps? There’s nothing like a bit of death and disaster to set the pulse racing.’
‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ Jenny said.
‘I’ll be in the front row,’ Vera promised. ‘Now, Jenny is that the ship’s doctor I spy over there. That charming gentleman with all the gold braid?’
Jenny followed Vera’s nod. ‘Yes, that’s him. Are you feeling unwell? I’ll go and get him …’
‘No. Don’t worry. I’m fine. I just want to have a little chat with him about amputating frostbitten toes.’
Of course you do, Jenny thought as Vera and her purple handbag set off across the room. What a strange woman. Nice – but strange. Jenny wasn’t at all sure if she wanted Vera on her table at dinner, or not. Conversations about surgical procedures were not exactly the sort of table talk she was looking for.
She need not have worried. By accident or possibly design, Vera was seated with the ship’s doctor just two tables from Jenny’s seat near the glass doors leading to a small balcony at the rear of the restaurant. Until now, Jenny had taken all her meals in the crew mess, and it was nice to enjoy the more luxurious surroundings. Her dinner companions included an English teacher, who was apparently chaperoning a group of youths on a school related adventure. The teenagers in question were seated at two nearby tables, for which Jenny was secretly glad. She hadn’t escaped her university students just to take on another group. The chaperone, Eric Dempsey looked to be about thirty. He seemed a nice man, very polite. He already knew the tiny Asian girl who was seated with them. The girl, Lian Chang, was extremely pretty, but very quiet. The food was very good, but Lian didn’t eat much. She pushed the food around her plate and sent it back almost untouched.
‘If the food isn’t to your liking,’ Jenny offered, ‘I’m sure we can arrange something else.’
‘No. That’s not it at all. I’m just feeling a bit queasy. Seasick, no doubt.’
Jenny hoped for Lian’s sake she wasn’t seasick. The weather at the moment was good – the water quite calm. According to Karl, once they hit the southern ocean, things would be entirely different, and Jenny had already equipped herself with a generous supply of seasickness pills. The meal passed pleasantly enough, although Lian excused herself immediately after not eating her dessert. Jenny was wondering if she should offer to help the girl, when she became aware of a crowd developing around her table.
‘Gentlemen, this is Miss Payne. She’s a lecturer on the expedition team,’ Eric explained to the gathering of young men.
‘Wow. The lecturers back home don’t look like you,’ one of the youths commented.
‘Enough of that,’ Eric said sternly.
‘Sorry.’ The young man looked contrite.
Jenny smiled to show that everything was fine. She’d dealt with more than a few over-exuberant school leavers in her day. These English boys couldn’t be any worse than the West Sydney lads, although for some reason their accents and manners made them seem older than they were. The thought did occur to her that she should have a quiet word with the hotel manager. The bar staff might need to be on the alert.
One of the things that Vera had noticed about getting old was the fact that she didn’t sleep as much as she once had. These days, waking up at five o’clock in the morning usually meant a cup of tea in bed with a good book. Not this morning though. This morning she stepped smartly out of bed and dressed quickly. Taking her cup of tea, she set out towards the observation lounge. It was just getting light outside. She thought it might be fun to watch the sun rise, while she waited for the rest of the ship to come alive.
As she stood in the glass sided lift, slowly ascending to deck seven, Vera saw some feet on the stairs. As she went up, the feet came down, and their owner glanced at her briefly as she sailed silently past. My, she thought. He was handsome. No wonder that young lecturer was interested. Any woman who wasn’t interested in a man who looked like that was probably dead. When the lift deposited her outside the observation lounge, Vera moved quickly to the stairs and looked down. The stairs were empty. He must have stopped at deck six. Probably a passenger heading back to his cabin. Strange though that he should be up and about this early. Normally it was only old folk like her who couldn’t sleep.
Shrugging, Vera walked through into the observation lounge. It was empty, as she suspected. She moved towards the huge glass windows that overlooked the bow of the ship, and the seemingly endless ocean beyond. In the dim pre-dawn light, the water looked dark and forbidding. Vera tried to imagine being alone out here in a small boat. Maybe adrift. Or lost. She shivered. Hic sunt dracones! Here there be dragons!
She lowered her handbag onto a chair, and was about to sit down, when she noticed something lying on an adjoining table. It was a paper napkin, but there was something drawn on it. Vera fetched it, and sat down to study it.
Someone had drawn a man’s hand on the napkin. Despite the flimsy nature of the paper, the hand itself evoked great strength. The fingers were long and powerful. They could have gripped a gun, or a woman, with equal ease. Vera’s eyes were drawn to the ring on the middle finger. A skull ring. It didn’t look like the sort of ring that would go with a motorcycle jacket and tattoos. The ring appeared finely crafted. A ring with a message that went beyond mere masculine posturing.
‘This is very good,’ Vera murmured to herself. ‘I wonder …’
She looked around the room, but there was no one else there. It might have been left behind by the man she’d seen earlier. Vera settled herself comfortably in her chair and placed the napkin on the table in front of her. Smiling, she reached into her bag and pulled out her ever-present notebook and pen.
When she set out for breakfast an hour and a half later, Vera took the napkin with her, folded carefully inside the cover of her notebook.
Breakfast was a far less formal affair than dinner, and this early, there weren’t many people about, so passengers could sit wherever they fancied. Vera looked about hopefully for the doctor. She had some questions for him about how long a person could survive in the icy waters around Antarctica. Not long, she imagined, but she wanted to make sure she got it right. There was no sign of the doctor, but she did notice another familiar face.
‘Good morning, Jenny. How are you?’
‘Hello, Mrs … Vera. I’m fine, thank you. You’re up early.’
‘One of the things about growing old. When you haven’t got many years left, you don’t want to waste them sleeping.’
‘Something tells me you were never one for wasting time.’
Vera laughed as she went to collect her breakfast from the selection laid out on the buffet. When she returned to the table, she asked Jenny about lifeboat drill.
‘I’ve never been on a cruise before, you see,’ she said. ‘I want to make sure I understand everything.’
‘Shall I tell you a secret?’ Jenny whispered, ‘This is my first cruise too.’
‘How wonderful,’ Vera was delighted. ‘We can explore this together then. Which is your lifeboat?’
‘Starboard side.’
‘That’s left. Right?’
‘No, Vera, it’s the right side.’
‘I think I should write that down,’ Vera pulled out her notebook. ‘Port is the left. Starboard in the right. Now, if I was the sort of person who would forget that, how would I be able to remember?’
‘Well,’ Jenny explained, ‘there are a couple of ways. For example, left is the shorter word – and so is port.’
That was good. Vera wrote it down.
Vera stayed in the restaurant, even after Jenny left. She loved sitting quietly and watching people. She chuckled as she watched the English lads flirting with the waitresses as they cleared the tables. A couple of ships’ officers appeared briefly. Vera looked closely at their uniforms, and then consulted her notes. One had a small golden propeller embroidered on his sleeve. An engineer. The other, with the gold diamond on his sleeve was bridge crew. Navigation officer, she guessed.
A sudden flurry of activity dragged her attention to a nearby table. The group of English lads was trying to get the attention of the pretty Asian girl she’d met briefly last night. It was obvious they wanted her to join their group at a large table near the window, but it was also just as obvious that she wasn’t too keen. She was standing near the buffet table, holding a tray and looking just a little lost. Vera waved to catch her eye, then smiled and gestured to her to join her table.
‘May I sit here?’ the girl asked a little shyly as she approached.
‘Of course,’ Vera said. She glanced over at the schoolboys. ‘They are just a little bit too much on an empty stomach, aren’t they?’
‘Oh … they aren’t too bad. It’s just that I’m on their deck, and I really don’t want to encourage them. And anyway, I’m …’ The girl’s voice tapered off.
‘Yes?’ Vera wasn’t one to pry – well, if she was perfectly honest with herself, she was. People were fascinating, and she loved finding out all about everyone she met. But in a nice way …
‘I’m on my way to meet my boyfriend – well, fiancé. He works at one of the Antarctic research stations.’
Now that really was interesting. ‘You must tell me all about it, my dear. By the way, my name is Vera. Vera Horsley.’
‘I’m Lian Chang.’
They were still chatting when the ship’s horn gave a series of short sharp blasts.
‘That will be the lifeboat drill,’ Vera said. ‘How very exciting. Shall we go together Lian?’
They made their way from the restaurant towards the stairs. A crew member appeared next to them, already wearing his orange life jacket. He directed them to the nearest lifeboat, which was up one level on deck five. Vera watched with interest as the crew gave instructions on how to don a life jacket. She was busy taking notes, when a crewman approached her.
‘I’m sorry, Ma’am. You’ve got to put the jacket on now. Please.’
‘Oh, yes of course.’ Vera carefully placed her notebook back in her bag, which she placed with equal care at her feet. With Lian’s help, she donned the cumbersome orange affair. It felt slightly uncomfortable, and not surprisingly, smelled of rubber. She bent to retrieve her notebook and add that detail.
All through the drill, Vera kept her eyes peeled for the handsome man she had seen earlier that morning. He didn’t appear. She didn’t see Jenny Payne either. Perhaps they were both on the other side of the ship, where the second lifeboat hung in its gantry. She would ask in a little while, when she saw Jenny at the lecture theatre. The Wilkes theatre, it was called. As they were thanked for their time and told they could go, Vera wondered if Jenny knew that the theatre had been named after the seaman who was said to have inspired Herman Melville’s mad Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. Vera made a mental note to tell her.