The Ice Child (38 page)

The crews looked at Blanky, and back at the captain.

“I’ll not lie to you,” Crozier said, leaning forward. “We are in desperate straits. We cannot stay, and we cannot go west, or east overland, or north. Our only hope is south, and to go south is certain death for some. Yet to stay here is certain death, in my judgment, for us all. The ships have survived this far, but there is nothing to say that the next storm could not break them up. We must assume the worst. If this summer is the same as last, there will be no food here, and no breaking of the ice.”

There was no more calling. Silence returned.

“We take three boats,” Crozier said, “each weighing eight hundred pounds and mounted on oak sledges. We take awnings and sail and weather cloth and paddles, and food and clothing, gunpowder, guns, and fuel.” He paused, a sudden emotion flooding him, threatening to break the steadiness of his tone.

In his hesitation each man’s thoughts fled from where they stood. Some thought of home; of streets, or farms, or other islands. They thought of wives or parents, or children. They thought of Easter; in three days time both the churches and the alehouses would be full. They thought of spring, turning to summer, in England.

One or two of them bowed their heads. Easter … Christ’s temptation, betrayal, and suffering. They would leave on Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion. Religious men among them shuddered.

It was not a good omen.

Crozier stared southward, into the ice-blue day.

He deliberately did not look at Fitzjames, or Little, or Irving, or any of the officers standing at his side.

“We leave the finest vessels in the world to God’s mercy,” he said softly, “and we commend ourselves to His care.”

Thirty

At eight-thirty the next morning Catherine was waiting.

She stood in the hallway of the Exploration Academy, gazing down the path through the glass doors. When Alicia arrived, she stepped forward.

“Mrs. Marshall …”

Alicia came through into the main body of the hallway, then stopped. “You” was all she said.

The doors behind them opened. Other people came in, people who evidently recognized Alicia and stopped to wait for her.

“Excuse me,” Alicia said. “I have a trustees meeting to attend.” She began to walk away.

Catherine ran after her. “Is he still in this country?” she asked.

Alicia had got to the foot of the stairs. “Who gave you permission to be in here?” she said.

“John,” Catherine said. “I must know. Please.”

A man walked up behind them. “Is everything all right?” he asked Alicia.

“I don’t know how this person got in here,” Alicia told him. “The doors are supposed to be closed to the public until nine-thirty.”

“Please,” Catherine said. She searched through her shoulder bag, took out a little wallet, and opened it. There was a photograph of Sam inside. She pulled it from the plastic casing and held it out.

Alicia froze. “Who sent you?” she said.

“I came by myself,” Catherine said. “Do you know this little boy?”

“The Harper woman,” Alicia said. “That’s who.”

“His name is Samuel Douglas Marshall,” Catherine said. “He’s only two.”

“Shall I call security?” the man asked.

“He’s very sick,” Catherine said. “Did you know he was very sick? He has an illness called aplastic anemia.”

Alicia seemed to flinch, just for a moment.

“He was in the newspapers,” Catherine said. “Did you see his mother? She was in
The Courier
, an article—”

Alicia’s face drained of color. She snatched at Catherine’s elbow, dragging her to one side. “What makes you think,” she hissed, “that I would want to see this child’s mother?”

“He’s very sick,” Catherine repeated.

Alicia’s grip tightened. “I have a son too,” she said. “And I had a husband. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that, like everyone else.”

Catherine tried to pull her arm away.

“I supported my husband, and I stood by him,” Alicia continued, barely above a whisper. “I brought up his son. I helped his career. I sacrificed myself to him and what he needed. And when he at last succeeded, and began to enjoy some success, what happened?” She flicked at the photograph of Sam with her fingernail. “This child’s mother took him away,” she said.

Catherine blanched. She pressed Sam’s photo to her chest.

“And that isn’t all,” Alicia said. “Not content with taking him away, she accused my son of murdering him.” She stared at Catherine, looking her slowly up and down. “And she took John away from you,” she added. “But evidently that didn’t mean as much to you as it did to me.”

Catherine returned the stare. She took a long moment to reply. “People say a lot of things when they are hurt,” she murmured at last. “Perhaps you are the same.”

Alicia bridled at this. She straightened and started to turn away. Catherine stepped up next to her on the stairs. “They regret it afterward,” she said. “Just as Jo has regretted it.”

“I am not interested,” Alicia said.

“John didn’t leave just because of what Jo said,” Catherine told her. “He stayed here after the funeral, didn’t he? But in the end he couldn’t bear it. And that has nothing to do with you, or me, or Jo. It’s to do with John and his father. That’s why he went and that’s what keeps him away, and all our love can’t bring him back until that is resolved, Mrs. Marshall.”

For a second Catherine saw that her words had hit home. Just for the briefest flash she glimpsed a realization in Alicia’s face.

“Won’t you forgive her?” Catherine asked. “What John carries in his heart is not Jo’s fault.” She paused and then added, “And she is very sorry.”

Alicia raised her eyebrows. “Oh, is she?” she said sarcastically. “Oh, well. That makes everything perfectly all right, then.”

Catherine blushed. “I don’t know about your husband very much,” she admitted. “But I know about your son, Mrs. Marshall. I know how much he loved his father.”

Alicia stared at her.

“He needed to be with him,” Catherine continued. “He wanted that more than anything.”

“You know nothing at all,” Alicia said.

Catherine’s face flushed. It took a great deal to make her angry, but she still felt the dismissive, insulting flick on Sam’s photo. “Did you read the newspaper article?” she asked.

“No.”

Catherine shook her head. She looked at Alicia closely, as if she could read her mind. “I don’t believe you,” she responded. “I think you read every word.”

Alicia turned. “James, would you mind?” she called to the man still standing close by. “This person really shouldn’t be here.”

“I think you read it,” Catherine repeated, in a low voice strung with tension. “But you still don’t understand. Sam is very sick.” She held up the photograph. “I think he looks like his father,” she said. “Is that why you won’t look at it? He looks just like Doug.”

Alicia’s mouth trembled slightly.

“He’s a very sweet little boy, isn’t he?” Catherine said. “His father’s eyes.” She pushed the photo under Alicia’s nose. “Except you can’t really see his eyes very well just now,” she told her. “He’s taking drugs to try to cut infection. His eyes are swollen,” she said. “And he cries a lot, but we try not to let him cry too much, because a child with aplastic anemia mustn’t cry.”

This time it was she who grabbed Alicia’s arm. “Do you know why that is?” she said. “Because his system’s breaking down. He mustn’t raise his blood pressure. He has nothing to fight injuries to himself. Nothing to combat bleeding.”

She tried to shake Alicia, as if she needed to wake her.

“He was fit and well,” she said, “and he looked like his father, and now he’s sick, and he looks like death. Like the walking dead. You understand what I’m saying?” Her voice shook with emotion. “He’s dying. He’s dying right now, your husband’s son. And his mother—this person you call the Harper woman—she’s at home right now. You know what she’s doing?” she demanded. “She’s sitting with her son. He won’t eat. He likes ice cream, but she’s not allowed to give him ice cream. She’s trying to make him drink milk. He can only drink one kind of milk, and he doesn’t like it, and she’s been sitting with him since five o’clock this morning, and he’s been sick, vomiting, and the doctor has been to him, and he has had an injection, and now …”

Catherine gasped for breath. She steadied herself against the wall.

“This …
Harper woman
,” she whispered. “She is trying to keep her son alive, and she doesn’t know how to do it, or what else she can do.”

There was a silence for a moment.

“You think I don’t understand that,” Alicia murmured.

Catherine looked up at her. “I am sorry,” she said. “But”—she pushed the hair back from her face, and looked down again at Sam’s photograph—“Sam is the only brother that John will ever have,” she said.

The two women stood face to face. A small knot of people had gathered at the foot of the stairs. The other trustees of the Academy glanced at each other, unsure as to whether they ought to intervene.

“This little boy needs his brother,” Catherine said. “He needs him right now.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Alicia said.

Catherine almost screamed in frustration. “You don’t lie to me, Mrs. Marshall,” she said. “You don’t do that!”

“I don’t know where he is,” Alicia repeated, her voice rising in response.

Catherine looked away, down into the body of the hall. There, in the cabinets, she could see the Franklin artifacts. The fragments that McClintock and Kane had brought back from King William Island. So many people had gone looking for Franklin. So many boats, so many men. All searching, just as they were searching now for John. And all that had ever been found of Franklin’s ships were a few tattered remains. She could see the sepia image of Crozier from here.

She looked back at Alicia. “Has he gone to Gjoa Haven?” she asked. “Did you give him the money to go there? Is that where we should look?”

Alicia did not respond.

“Gjoa Haven,” Catherine repeated. “It’s a small town on a place called King William Island, in the Arctic.”

Alicia dropped her eyes to the floor, her mouth tightened in a thin line.

“Don’t you see,” Catherine whispered, “we are all afraid. We have all lost someone. Please, Mrs. Marshall,” she added softly, “don’t let us lose anyone else.”

Alicia turned her back and walked on up the stairs.

Catherine watched her until she was out of sight, slow tears running down her face. She glanced back then at the hall, where the other trustees were still standing, eyeing her uncertainly.

She picked up her bag and put the photograph back inside it. Then she walked past them to the display cabinets, pausing for a moment by the images of Franklin and his first officer, and the heart-wrenching evidence of their decline.

She put her palm on the cold glass.

“Where are you?” she whispered. “Where are you all?”

Thirty-one

The city was heavy with heat. It was Sunday morning, barely eight o’clock. As Bill Elliott walked down Senate House Passage, he thought that he had never known Cambridge this warm in August. Any August. It might have been midafternoon; you could feel the humidity, and the pressure in the air. He looked up as he came out opposite King’s; thunderclouds building out on the Fens, big rollers. Eerie to see their distant towers rising already over the sun-barred trees.

Jo had said to come early. But he thought that he had probably been too early, because when he got to the house, the curtains were still drawn on the floors above. He didn’t like to knock; he knew what kind of night they might have had, and how precious sleep was. He had turned away and started to walk instead, to kill an hour in the quietest part of the day.

He had seen her last week, at the hospital.

Jo Harper looked much older now. She was not the twenty-something who had paced the wards that first day, fretting at her child being tested and hooked up to blood, and demanding to know what the problem was. She was not the same young woman who had wept into a handkerchief with relief at it only being anemia. She was weary now, and the attitude had gone.

She had lines around her eyes now. She had cut her hair short. The style didn’t really suit her.

“You needn’t say that I look bloody awful,” she had said, smiling a little as she had seen his eyes stray to the new style. She’d run her hand over the boyish crop. “But I haven’t time for anything else.”

It wasn’t exactly awful. It was a little cruel, hard on her, revealing the nakedness of her eyes, the high cheekbones.

“You must eat,” he’d told her.

“I do,” she’d told him. He didn’t believe her.

It was too early for King’s College Chapel to be open to the public. He skirted the entrance, glancing up at its ethereal face. Beautiful simplicity, a triumph of grace. He wished Jo Harper were alongside him now, so that he could stop and show her the product of man’s faith.

He went to the river down Garrett Hostel Lane. The river was low; the drought had taken its toll here, as everywhere. It had been eighty degrees in the east of England in the last month. He looked down at the Cam from the bridge and saw the muddy bottom of the water. He thought of Sam, mesmerized by the electric fan they had brought in alongside his bed during the last transfusion. Small things could distract the child now; his world had contracted to tunnel vision. He no longer fretted to run about. He wanted his mother, and his Beanie Baby toy, and the flexi-straws on feeding cups.

The boy reminded Elliott of the pictures of children discovered in Romanian orphanages years ago, fascinated and abstracted only by the pattern of their fingers against the cot bars. They had had no world beyond the bars, and Sam was now uninterested in anything but immediate detail: the straw, the toy, the hands of the person next to the bed. Illness and isolation were tiring, draining, confining. Colors shifted away. Causes diminished. Games faded.

Elliott bunched fists on the bridge parapet.

Last month Jo had brought a photograph album into the hospital. She had been trying to distract Sam with it, and when Bill came in, she had shown it to him.