Black Ice (19 page)

By six a.m.—by which time every bone in Lauren's body felt like it had frozen to the flesh that surrounded it—Frank judged that the blowtorches had done their work. The exterior of the engine was a blistered mess of bubbling paint but at least the oil inside would be warm. The temperature inside the shed was now thirty-seven degrees below freezing. They wired up two of the lead-acid batteries in series to give some extra clout to the charge and held their breath as the starter motor whirred once, twice, followed by the sweet sound of the diesel engine ripping into life.

Lauren and Frank smiled at each other in triumph, and, with temporary heat and light back on line, the fight to help Sean fix the main generator began in earnest. This they achieved by midmorning, replacing the damaged section of the heat exchanger and refilling the glycol reservoir with spare fluid to get the master system back up and running.

When they had finished in the generator shed, Lauren, Sean and Frank crossed back to the main block, where Murdo had prepared soup and tea. They sat in silence, sipping the liquid warmth into their bodies, emotionally and physically spent by the events of the night.

There was little incentive for any of them to stay in the frigid mess room, and by midday the team had dispersed back to the relative comfort of their berths. Lauren made her way wearily to her room and peeled off her glycol-soaked clothes. Her hair and face were encrusted with the frozen chemical, but a shower was not going to be possible until the ambient base temperature had risen to above freezing and the water systems replenished. That would be days away, Lauren was sure.

The radiator was still cold, the room completely unwelcoming. Lauren slipped into bed in her thermal underclothes and lay there shivering until her body heat had created a fragile pool of warmth.

From the window she could hear the ceaseless roar of the wind as it raced across the ice, the patter of frozen granules beating against the glass in sharp volleys. They had got away with it this time, she reflected, escaped with a few frostbite injuries and bruises.

Next time they might not be so lucky, Lauren knew; this winter could kill them yet.

39

Richard drew a ring around the date and snapped his diary shut with a sigh. Today was going to be a psychological endurance test, he already knew, even more of an endurance test than Capricorn days normally were. It was ninety-two days since he'd entered the base, with so many weeks of winter left to run that Richard preferred not to think about it.

He quit his room and went to the rota board, to see what tasks he'd been allocated today. Lauren routinely shuffled the rota pack around to keep things fresh.

Getting the casts off his legs had been a huge booster, and a daily two-hour physio session with Mel had got them feeling—almost—as good as new. Now, two and a half months on, he still got an occasional twinge of pain from the newly set bones, but on the whole Richard reckoned he'd got off lightly.

Standing on his own two feet had been a turning point which meant he could participate in the thousand and one physical tasks which were rota'd through the Capricorn week. This he did with an enthusiasm which made him wonder if that plane crash had actually altered his personality. Back home, Richard considered domestic chores a curse, but here he found himself enjoying the laundry sessions, the duties in the galley helping Murdo prepare the meals, the hours out in the drilling shed with Sean, maintaining the engine and generator. It was therapeutic, this mundane cycle of essential tasks; it voided his mind and seemed to banish the tick-tick-tock of the clock which was so slowly marking the hours of winter in his head.

And it gave him a break from thinking about Sophie.

Sophie. During the early days of that Capricorn winter, when he was still weak and dazed from the after-effects of the crash, Richard had been moved and grateful as Sophie's e-mails arrived almost daily. Her relief and joy that he'd been rescued was just what he'd needed, a familiar and sympathetic voice in a world which seemed to him to have taken some pretty vicious turns against him.

Breaking the news that he wasn't going to get home at all for the next seven months had not made things any better between them, particularly as it meant their wedding in her parents' home village in Suffolk—a full church affair with a three-hundred-guest reception—would have to be postponed.

That was when the e-mails started to change, with Sophie writing mournfully:

It always was too good to be true. Fate has really done a good job on us this time, hasn't it? I'd only decided on the dress the day before you flew to Antarctica, and now it's sitting in the cupboard like a spare rag. Dad says you should sue the newspaper for sending you in the first place. Mum's just as gutted as I am. Anyway, I will wait here for you to get back, and then we'll start again. But, Richard, you can't believe how difficult this has all been, what with having to contact all three hundred guests and explain why we've had to cancel for this summer.

By early June, their correspondence had deteriorated further:

This is the week we should be decorating the flat together, the week we agreed we'd find the sofa, the bed and all the things we need. I thought about going and choosing on my own, but what's the point … it's supposed to be us, doing things together, that was the whole point of us getting married, wasn't it? Now, I walk into the flat and it just feels so empty and hollow. I'm going to stay at home with my parents until you get back.

Richard had sat at the computer screen in the radio room for a very long time that day, searching for the words which would console, the words which would heal, the words which would make everything absolutely one hundred per cent all right. Then he had given up and retreated, deeply depressed, to the sanctity of his bedroom.

Now he made his way to the mess room, where he sat at the bar for a beer.

‘What's up, Rich?' Murdo asked. ‘Got the blues?'

‘Kind of.' Richard toyed with his glass.

‘Any particular reason?'

‘You could say that. Today's the day I should be getting married.'

‘Christ, that's a toughie. How's your dearly beloved taking it?'

Richard sighed. ‘How do you think?'

‘Oh dear.' Murdo went behind the bar and flipped open the fridge.

‘She's had to cancel the church and the reception, her parents have lost money on the deposits for the caterers. You don't realise how much stuff goes on around a wedding until you have to cancel the damn thing.'

‘Can't you just reschedule it?'

‘That's what I keep telling her. I'll be airlifted out of here by October, so why not a November wedding? But no, that would be too bloody simple for Sophie, wouldn't it? She wants a summer wedding; that's what she's always dreamed of, and that's what she's sticking out for. So now we're looking at waiting a whole year before it can happen.'

Murdo cracked open a Guinness. ‘Try and put it out of your mind,' he told the journalist. ‘If you dwell on what's happening fourteen thousand miles away, you'll end up talking to the pixies.'

‘But it's here. It's in my head. It doesn't matter how far away I am. How about you? You got someone back home?'

‘Oh, aye. Got a girlfriend called Jan, she works in the kitchens at one of the big hotels in Aberdeen. We've been together since school.'

‘Miss her?'

‘To bits. But we're used to time apart, before I got into these Antarctic bases, I was working the rigs, and that's even tougher on a relationship, believe me.'

‘You ever think of getting married?'

‘Nah. No point really. We're both saving at the moment, getting psyched up for a big trip round the world. Twelve months on the road, no responsibilities, just the two of us living out of rucksacks on the quest for the perfect beach. That's what keeps me going when I get blue down here in nowhere land.'

‘The really dangerous thing…' Richard continued hesitantly, ‘is that I think I'm beginning to have second thoughts. I mean, Sophie and I were going through a hell of a rough patch last year, and then everything got a lot better after we decided to get married … but now, well, she's just giving me such a hard time over this bloody mess I've got myself into here. And it's not my fault. It's just not my fault at all.'

‘D'you fancy a game of darts?'

‘You know what, Murdo? You're really kind. But I'm not in the mood. I'll just take my beer to my room.'

As he passed the radio station, Frank called out:

‘Richard. You've got mail.'

Frank tactfully left as Richard sat at the terminal and opened up his hotmail file.

Dear Richard,

I went to the church today. I had to, even though I know you'll be angry with me for doing it. It was a lovely afternoon, the sun as bright as I ever dreamed. The gardens smelled of jasmine and roses.

There was a couple just coming out, they must have taken our slot I suppose. And they just looked so bloody happy it made me want to scream. I didn't, of course. I just drove home, but I had a good scream in the car. And I need your shoulder to cry on now, more than ever before. Why haven't you sent me a message today? I need to hear from you now, not tomorrow.

Richard clicked on the mouse and closed the file, then sat for a long time just staring vacantly out into the dark otherworld of the Antarctic night.

God, I hate this place, he thought. When is this winter ever going to end?

40

Lauren went to the sun room and stripped off to her underwear for her session on the sun bed. The machine was still cooling off from the previous occupant, and she could tell from the sweet smell of coconut sun-tan oil that Murdo had been the last one on. She wiped down the surface with a towel (Murdo wasn't always the most fastidious of the Capricorn crew when it came to sweat removal, Lauren had discovered previously) and climbed onto the machine, the plastic creaking a little as she did so.

She placed the tiny protectors over her eyes and stretched out luxuriously beneath the buzzing brilliance of the ultraviolet tubes, enjoying the tingling sensation as her skin soaked up the rays. She let her body relax, putting all thoughts of work aside and thinking instead of the party that was being organised for that evening—the team's one hundredth day without sun, and the halfway point of the winter night.

From the sun bed it was straight to the sick room, where Mel was waiting with her scissors newly sharpened. Hairdressing was one of Mel's secondary duties, not that she liked it particularly, but she did as good a job as she could do on Lauren before taking the hot seat while Lauren returned the favour.

‘We're not talking Toni and Guy, but it'll do,' Lauren said as she admired her handiwork.

‘Doesn't matter anyway,' Mel told her. ‘I'm not planning to pull tonight.'

‘Men not up to your standards?'

‘You know what they say, by the middle of winter there are no ugly women in Antarctica. But the darnedest thing is, there are still
plenty
of pig-ugly men.'

Lauren showered to remove the loose strands from her hair and dressed in a light-blue silk shirt and a clean pair of jeans—the nearest thing she had to partywear.

At the store, she found Murdo and Frank hard at work. They had pulled what looked like half a ton of canned and packaged food out into the corridor, and only the rear end of Murdo was visible as he searched the darkest corners of the cupboard.

‘We're buggered without the bubbly!' he exclaimed, rummaging ever deeper.

‘He's misplaced the champers,' Frank explained, ‘and it seems to have made him a little stressed.'

There was an ecstatic yell from the depths of the cupboard, and a moment later Murdo emerged, beaming, with the case in hand.

*   *   *

The meal was a triumph, a ‘candlelit extravaganza'—as Murdo put it—‘fit for a king'. Assisted by Richard and Frank, the chef had roasted three chickens to perfection, lining them up with roasted potatoes, parsnips and all the trimmings. There were cheers from the crew as each steaming plate was brought in, and the champagne got a standing ovation.

The knowledge that they had successfully reached the halfway stage of winter had put the entire crew in an excellent frame of mind. There was a contented buzz of laughter around the table, eyes alive with candlelight as the champagne bottles emptied one by one.

For dessert Murdo produced caramelised apples with custard and cream, a dish which cunningly made good use of the dregs of their bruised apples. As the last of the desserts were finished, Lauren chinked a spoon on her glass and got the room quiet.

‘I just wanted to say thanks,' she told them, ‘for the first hundred days. We've had our problems, the genny failure and so on, but on the whole it's been pretty much how we planned it, and that's all down to your hard work. Murdo, you've kept us fed and watered, better than we could have ever hoped. Keep the breakfast pancakes going and we'll love you for ever! Mel, you've done wonders in the sick bay, the way you set Richard's legs was textbook stuff, and no matter how much frostbite and wind-burned flesh we throw at you, you still keep healing us and making us laugh.

‘Frank, where would we be without you? Lost in a world without radio calls or e-mails, that really would be hell. And, Sean, well, apart from the genny problem, you've kept those engines—and the drilling operation—as sweet as pie, and that's a hell of a thing in these conditions.'

Lauren turned to Richard, Carl and Julian Fitzgerald. ‘As for our three squatters, what can I say? Given the circumstances, you've all settled in better than I could have hoped.'

‘Tell the truth, Lauren,' Murdo shouted good-naturedly. ‘They're a bunch of wankers!'

A smiling Richard lobbed a chunk of bread across the table, hitting Murdo on the forehead.