‘But Jack—’
‘Gus, leave it! I came out here to get away from my life, not rake it all up. OK?’
I’d spoken more sharply than I intended, and there was an uncomfortable silence. I shredded a clump of Arctic poppies. Gus counted the tines on the reindeer’s antlers.
Then he said, ‘Back in London, did you really not have any friends?’
I shrugged. ‘Everyone I knew at UCL was doing further degrees. Why would I want to see them? And I’d got nothing to say to the lads at Marshall Gifford. So I just thought sod it, I’ll go it alone.’
His lip curled. ‘You’re so extreme.’
‘No I’m not.’
‘Yes you are. How many people do you know who’ve spent seven years entirely on their own?’
‘Well, since I don’t know any people, the answer is none.’
He laughed. ‘That’s what I mean! Extreme!’
I bit back a smile.
‘And after all that, to end up stuck in a tent with Algie and me.’ He hesitated. ‘Tell me honestly. Is it a strain?’
I threw away the poppies and looked at him. Sunlight glinted in his golden hair and lit the strong, clean planes of his face. He wasn’t merely good-looking. His features had a chiselled purity that made me think of Greek heroes. I wondered what it must be like to be so handsome. Surely it would affect the behaviour of everyone around you, always?
And more powerful even than his looks, he seemed genuinely to want to know how I was getting on.
‘Honestly?’ I said. ‘It’s not as bad as I expected.’
On the way back, a fulmar glided overhead, so low that I heard the hiss of air beneath its wings. Fulmars are serene grey seabirds which Gus says are first cousins of the albatross. I watched this one skim the waves till it was out of sight. As we headed past the cliffs, I heard that guillemot chick, still peeping. I wished something would eat it and get it over with.
At camp, we found Algie in high spirits. He’d made his way west into the next fjord, where he’d come upon a spit of land ‘crammed with eider ducks’. He’d shot five, and on his return he’d bagged a seal, which he’d hacked to pieces and fed to the dogs. Judging by the amount of blood spattered over the rocks, it had been a big seal, and Algie is a messy butcher.
For dinner we roasted the ducks on a driftwood fire, having (on advice from the ship’s cook) removed the fishy-smelling skin. They were the best thing I’ve ever
tasted. We washed up in sand and seawater, then lay about, smoking and drinking whisky. We had a long discussion about whether Amundsen was a greater explorer than Scott, and where did Shackleton fit in, and was Nobile a cad or a decent fellow.
Everyone looks tousled and tanned, and our beards are becoming quite respectable. Algie’s is red and fuzzy, like a hedge. Gus’ is golden, of course. It suits him inordinately. He says mine makes me look like a pirate. I suppose he means because I’m dark.
I never expected to get on with them like this. OK, sometimes Algie gets on my nerves. He’s obtuse and he snores, and takes up so much
space
. But I’m beginning to regard Gus as a friend.
He’s quite persuasive, too, is Gus. All that talk about new beginnings. I nearly believed him. It hurt. Like pulling off a scab.
I’m writing this in our tent. Outside it’s minus five, but in here, with our eider-down sleeping bags and Gus’ fur motoring rug on top, it’s quite snug. The tent’s green canvas walls are softly aglow in the white Arctic night. There’s an occasional yelp from the dogs, but they’re tethered a hundred yards away and full of seal, so it’s not too bad. I can hear the little waves sucking at the shingle, and the muted cries of seabirds. And now and then there’s a crack as an iceberg breaks apart in the bay.
The day after tomorrow, the Isbjørn is due back, and we’ll start building our cabin.
I never expected this, but I feel at home here. I love Gruhuken. I love the clarity and the desolation. Yes, even the cruelty. Because it’s true. It’s part of life.
I’m happy.
A strange day. Not altogether good.
After breakfast we decided to take a proper look at Gruhuken’s ruins, so that when the Isbjørn returns, we’ll know what needs clearing away. To my annoyance, Algie brought the dogs. (So far, I’ve managed to ignore them, and they’ve sensed my dislike and given me a wide berth.)
Another bright day, almost hot in the sun as we climbed the slopes to inspect the ruined mine – Gus and me striding ahead, Algie puffing in the rear. I was relieved to see that there isn’t much left of the mine. A rusty tramcar, a stack of tracks, a few hollows blasted from the rocks.
‘No cabins,’ remarked Algie.
‘I asked Eriksson about that,’ said Gus. ‘He says they were buried in a rockslide.’
Algie grimaced. ‘Poor chaps.’
‘Oh, the miners weren’t in them. But it was the last straw, and they abandoned the place.’
‘What do you mean, the last straw?’ said Algie.
‘What does it matter?’ I snapped. ‘They couldn’t make a go of it, so they left, and that’s that.’
‘Steady on, old chap,’ said Algie, turning pink beneath his freckles.
I was damned if I was going to apologise. I hate all this raking up of the past.
Gus the peacemaker suggested that we leave everything as it is, and we wandered down to take a look at the hut among the boulders.
A grim little place, squatting in its drifts of bones. The dogs didn’t like it either. They nosed about edgily, then raced off along the beach to investigate our tent. Which meant that Algie and Gus had to chase after them and tie them up. I went along to show willing, but they wisely didn’t ask me to help.
When we got back to the hut, Gus, the inveterate biologist, paused to identify the bones. Many are scattered, the disembodied skulls of walruses and reindeer, but others are recognisable skeletons. Gus pointed out foxes, fine and brittle as porcelain; and the big, man-like frames of bears. And smaller ones with short limbs and long toes that look unsettlingly like human hands, which he said are seals.
I tripped over a claim sign lying on the ground. A
posh one, of enamelled tin with emphatic capitals punched out in English, German and Norwegian: PROPERTY OF THE SPITSBERGEN PROSPECTING COMPANY OF EDINBURGH. CLAIMED 1905.
‘And now there’s nothing left,’ said Gus, chucking the sign away.
The hut itself was about six feet square. A lean-to, with three walls of driftwood logs built against a large boulder, presumably to save on timber. The roof was still intact, tarpaper dismally flapping, and the door was only two feet high, perhaps to keep in the heat. The side window had been smashed by a marauding bear, but the small one facing the sea was still shuttered. Three paces in front of it stood a driftwood post planted in a cairn of stones. Algie said it was a ‘bear post’, for luring bears to the trapper’s gun.
Gus took out his knife and prised the shutter off the front window, loosing a cascade of splintered glass. The old hut exhaled a musty smell of seaweed.
Gus peered in. ‘I suppose we could use it for a doghouse. What do you think, Algie?’
Algie shrugged. ‘Bit small. Though it’s a pity to waste it.’ He glanced at me. ‘Want to take a look inside, Jack?’
I didn’t, but I couldn’t think of an excuse.
I’ve never liked confined spaces, and as I crawled in
after him, my spirits sank. The cries of gulls fell away. All I could hear was the wind keening in the stovepipe. The smell was thick in my throat: rotten seaweed, and something else. As if something had crawled in here to die.
The walls were black with soot, the ceiling too low to stand without stooping. In one corner, a rusty iron stove squatted on short bowed legs. Against the back wall, a wooden bunk had collapsed beneath a mound of storm-blown debris. Rooting around, Algie found a mildewed reindeer hide and a battered tin plate. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Beastly. Hopeless for the dogs.’ He crawled out. I stayed. I don’t know why.
For the first time since reaching Gruhuken, I thought about the men who were here before us; who built this hut from logs dragged up from the beach, and lived through the ‘dark time’, and then left, leaving nothing but a tin plate and a blizzard of bones.
What must it have been like? No wireless, maybe not even a companion; at any rate only one, in a hut this size. To know that you’re the only human being in all this wilderness.
Moving to the front window, I scraped the broken glass off the frame and poked out my head. No sign of Algie or Gus. The bear post dominated the view. Beyond it the stony beach sloped down to the sea.
Suddenly, I felt desolate. It’s hard to describe. An oppression. A wild plummeting of the spirits. The romance of trapping peeled away, and what remained was this. Squalor. Loneliness. It’s as if the desperation of those poor men had soaked into the very timber, like the smell of blubber on the Isbjørn.
I crawled out quickly, and inhaled great gulps of salty air. I hate all this pawing over ruins. I want Gruhuken to be ours. I don’t want to be reminded that others were here before.
I know I’m right. Whatever Mr bloody Eriksson says.
The ship got back as scheduled, and we spent two days unloading. Finished today, and would’ve made a start on the cabin if it hadn’t been for him.
While he was away, we’d decided on where to build it. Which took about five minutes, as it’s completely bloody obvious: where the old hut is, at the western end of the bay. It’s conveniently near the stream, and the boulders give shelter from the winds off the icecap,
and
it’s far enough from the bird cliffs to ensure that my radio masts get decent reception.
But oh no, none of that matters to old Eriksson. As far as he’s concerned, we need to be
east
, practically
under the bloody cliffs. And we should leave the trappers’ hut well alone.
‘I think that’s nonsense,’ I said. ‘That hut’s no use to man nor beast, it’s got to come down.’
‘No,’ Eriksson said flatly.
‘Why?’ said Gus.
Eriksson muttered something about the dogs.
‘I told you,’ Algie said wearily, ‘it simply won’t do for them.’
‘It won’t do for my wirelesses, either,’ I said.
Eriksson ignored that. ‘You’re leaving the mining ruins alone, you should leave this too.’
‘The mining ruins aren’t in the way,’ I said. ‘That hut most definitely is.’
‘Not if you build the cabin further east,’ he said – which brought us right back to where we’d started.
It went on for hours. Eventually he was forced to agree that it would be better if we didn’t have to trudge the length of the bay to fetch water, but he remained adamant about not touching the hut. Algie gave in first, suggesting we use it as a storehouse. Then Gus conceded that maybe we could build our cabin alongside it. That’s when I lost my temper. Did they want to preserve a ruin, or did they want wirelesses that actually work?
But if I’m honest, I want that hut gone because I simply can’t bear the thought of it. Some places drag
you down, and that’s one of them. Maybe it’s the poverty and the loneliness: a reminder of what I came here to escape. Maybe I just don’t like it.
Anyway, I won.
It’s gone, though we had the devil of a job tearing it down. For some reason, none of the crew wanted to touch it, so we had to pay them double; and Eriksson had to have a stern word with them in Norwegian.
They worked in sullen silence and we helped, dragging the timbers away and chopping them up for firewood. Nothing’s left of it now, except for the bear post, which Algie told them to leave, as he wants to use it as a flagpole. I pointed out that we haven’t got a flag, and he tapped the side of his nose and said, not yet. God, he can be irritating. Why Gus should regard him as his ‘best pal’ I’ve no idea.
It’s been an exhausting day, and we turned in early. Gus and Algie are already asleep. Gus is frowning in his dreams. He looks young and noble, like the first officer over the top at the Somme. Algie is snoring. His thick red lips glisten with spit.
An hour ago, the weather broke, and a freezing wind came howling down from the icecap. It’s still
blowing, sucking and smacking at the tent. The icebergs are grinding in the bay, and now and then one breaks apart with a crash. Eriksson says that if this wind keeps up, it’ll clear them away, so I suppose that’s something.
This evening after dinner, when it was still calm, we strolled over to admire the site of our cabin. It’s perfect. We’ve even cleared it of most of the bones. But I wish Algie hadn’t kept that bloody post. Gruhuken seems to have had a dismal past. I don’t want any of it poking through.
And of course, he had to go on about how the wretched thing works. ‘Apparently, it comes into its own in winter, when the pack ice gets near the coast and brings the bears. They’re attracted to tall, standing things, especially with a slab of blubber dangling from the top. So all you’ve got to do is stay in your cabin with your rifle poking out the window, and wait till a brute comes within range. I confess I’m rather keen to give it a shot.’
‘Algie old man,’ said Gus, ‘I don’t think that’s on. We don’t want bears prowling around camp.’