Out of the Ice Page 2

  As the days grew closer to my full term I stopped working. Mum and Cam helped set up a cosy room filled with mobiles of penguins dangling from the ceiling, and colourful posters of whales of every species on the walls. We bought new furniture, and arranged the clothes in drawers from zero to twelve months. We were like blissfully nesting Adélies.

  When my waters broke, Cam, Mum and I went to hospital as planned. Everything was going perfectly until intense pain exploded in me, and blood flowed like rain. Our baby was coming, clawing his way out in monstrous bursts, but something was terribly wrong. Specialists raced in and took over from the midwife. The contractions were fast. Too fast. I was rushed to the operating theatre. Mum held one hand, Cam the other, as I was wheeled along, and then to my horror they had to leave. An oxygen mask was clamped on my face, I was given blood to replace the gush of red seeping out, and rapidly prepared for an emergency C-section. Doctors swarmed. An intravenous drip in my arm and a general anaesthetic were the last things I remembered. When I woke up, my life had changed.

  As I opened my eyes, the recovery room was silent. I looked around, waiting to hear for the first time the beautiful cry heralding my baby’s arrival, expecting him to be close in a crib. My mother was nowhere to be seen. Cam, dark eyes sunken and bruised from tears, broke the news. Placental abruption. Sudden, unexpected. Starving our boy of oxygen. The doctors were unable to save him.

  Stillborn.

  Cam held me tight.

  I asked to see my baby. The midwife was crying as she carried him in, swaddled in a hospital blanket, and placed him gently on my chest. Nothing made sense. He was beautiful, perfectly formed, with a head of black hair like Cam. Even in this miniature state I could see that he would take after his father – straight nose, narrow, pointed chin like an imp. I held his tiny crinkled hand and kissed him. My baby was limp, with no heartbeat. That wasn’t possible. He’d been bucking playfully inside me for months, with a strong, healthy, throbbing heart.

  He was as white as snow. A white I’d never seen.

  We called him Hamish. A Scottish name, like his father. The midwife offered to take photographs. Cam said no. Every instinct in me needed to bathe Hamish, dress him in his soft blue pyjamas and wrap him in his own new woollen blanket. I was slow and careful as I washed his dark hair, my body numb and aching simultaneously. I tried to keep him warm, but he was as cold as ice. Cam stood shivering beside me, crying softly. He reached out his hand to touch Hamish; pulled it back, unable to.

  After the funeral, with the pale coffin so small it looked like it housed a doll, we packed away the ultrasound scans of our growing boy, but we left his room furnished, with the penguin mobiles and whale posters. We kept his clothes. So many clothes. Cam and I couldn’t talk about it. Milk still came, useless. I was fragile for weeks from the caesarean. I couldn’t concentrate or care about my research. Mum tried to be supportive, but she was furious with the universe. It brought all the losses the Alvarados had faced rushing in. I blamed myself, my mind churning. What had I done? I hadn’t smoked, drunk alcohol, taken drugs; I didn’t have high blood pressure, wasn’t overweight. I’d had none of the risk factors. But I was certain it was my fault, and I knew my mother blamed me too. She said I was being irrational but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I withdrew further and further.

  Cameron and I tried for another child, but nothing happened. I wanted a baby desperately, to raise a little boy or girl so differently to the way I’d been brought up. I wouldn’t dominate; I’d make sure not to drive the father away. But Cam and I just weren’t the same after Hamish. Two miserable years later we separated.

  I felt so displaced I moved back in with Mum, which was a terrible mistake. We’d argue and make up and argue in a revolving psychodrama. And always, the face of my beautiful baby Hamish hovered. As soon as I closed my eyes. As soon as I woke.

  I caught my breath, a hot flush burning my cheeks. In Antarctica ghosts could visit.

  The blizzard was shrieking. I listened to the familiar roar, feeling the force of wind and ice and snow raging across the continent. It comforted me, even though it brought mortality knocking. Life could be so easily extinguished in extreme cold, if you were caught in the wrong place. Life was fragile. With sadness, I closed the image of the two drowned refugee girls, sickened by the injustice that they’d had to flee their homeland, only to meet death rather than a future of hope, the shared migrant dream.

  I lay back and kept listening to the wind, grateful to be warm and sheltered, and then I tapped open a journal: Bio-Medicine International. Mum had always wanted me to study Spanish literature, but there was something in my head that relaxed when I observed minute details with clean precision and recorded facts and figures, and I was addicted to collaboration, the teamwork that gave me an endless stream of tiny, tight-knit families.

  As Antarctica howled, I scrolled to the long article by my father, Professor Michael Green, on the influenza virus and how susceptible the world was to a massive pandemic, greater than anything we’d ever seen. I kept abreast of Dad’s research, even though I hadn’t seen him since I first graduated from university, following in his footsteps with my science degree. When Hamish died, Dad had sent flowers and money, and written expressing his condolences – but he couldn’t come to the funeral because he was overseas. Since then we’d had email contact, and left occasional phone messages. For the past decade Dad had been either away or too busy when I tried to catch up with him in Sydney. It saddened me, but I knew it was Mum’s fault. I looked so much like her, and she’d treated him so badly. That didn’t stop me feeling angry with him on my own behalf, but I always found myself slipping back into admiration. Dad had become a pre-eminent scholar, the most respected microbiologist in his field in the Asia–Pacific region. At least I could enjoy reading his work. It couldn’t hurt me.

  Or so I thought.

  2

  The morning was clear and pristine, as if the storm had forged everything anew in this ancient land. My heart swelled at the sight of endless white ice, lurid green flags marking out the safe path, red ones off to the edge warning of danger, as my skis made a rhythmic whoosh. Apart from the echo of cracking icebergs out to sea – smaller bergs calving off their mother-bergs – and the sound of my lungs working hard, there was a profound silence.

  I relished this time between camp and base. In between those two different worlds – one of quiet focus, the other of group camaraderie – was a space that no words could describe. It was a place I’d give my life for.

  I took it slowly, but far too soon the great red shed that formed the heart of our base grew large on the horizon, with quad bikes scooting up and away as people arrived back and others left for field trips. The base was still ensnared by sea ice which, as summer arrived, would melt and allow ships to sail close to unload their cargo. The buildings scattered along the coast gave the feel of a rundown frontier land. I envied Kate, who had stayed back in the Apple hut and would be joined this morning by Gretchen, another ornithologist who’d be her partner in the Adélie research. I’d only check in physically from time to time but would monitor the rookery every day via satellite. It would take three months to finalise my report on the new camera but in the meantime I’d oversee the continued repatriation of waste around the base, working with a team of newly arrived engineers. Beneath the ice were layers of domestic rubbish buried deep, leeching harmful contaminants, which had to be excavated. But before that, we had to deal with the surface waste: barrels filled with oil and an assortment of chemicals, old batteries, pipes, cables, and other refuse that in the past had simply been junked in the garbage field. Everything discarded must now go back to Australia. It would be a long, slow process: the barrels were leaking, and couldn’t be easily moved. Here in the clear, freezing air, human waste and the uncaring ways of decades ago stood out like beacons of neglect. I often wondered if people back home would be less polluting if what they were doing was so starkly noticeable. Here you couldn’t miss it.

&nbs
p; ‘There you are, you dag!’ Georgia Spiros’s voice rang through the gaping dining area as I sat down to hot porridge. In her mid-forties, Georgia was tall, athletic and graciously slim, with sparkling black eyes and a grin that could melt ice. A senior detective in the Victoria Police, this was her third time as Station Leader – she’d just arrived to take over from me for the summer. The Australian Antarctic Division employed leaders from all civilian professions, who took leave to work in this extreme land.

  The dining room was simply a shell with tables and chairs and a few comfortable sofas up one end, but Georgia managed to fill it with her exuberance. She came at me with open arms. I stood and hugged her. ‘You need to fatten up,’ she said. ‘I can feel your ribs.’

  ‘Lies will get you nowhere.’

  ‘Tell that to a jury.’

  She hugged me again, a great bear hug. There was nothing halfway about Georgia. If you were in, you were in.

  ‘Missed you,’ she said. ‘And thanks for your notes. I feel completely up to speed. We’ll have our formal meeting Monday, just to make sure everything’s covered.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agreed warmly. Meetings with Georgia were always good fun. ‘How are your kids?’ I asked, and she punched my arm. Hard. ‘Mad Greek dag,’ I said. ‘What’s all that about?’

  ‘Can’t think about them. I just hope Jeff does his bit. Between you and me, I nearly didn’t come. Stacey’s doing her final year of school next year, and I’d like to be there at the start. But she told me I had to be in Antarctica or I’d drive them crazy. Even Alex weighed in. Just as long as I call every day, he said. And David sends his regards,’ she added casually. I froze.

  David White was my second ex-husband. Yes, I have two of them: the one area where I’ve outdone my mother. In my early thirties I was desperately lonely when Antarctica called again. Returning to the icy wilderness had given me the first twinge of happiness after the loss of Hamish. It was a summer assignment studying whales in the Southern Ocean, with emphasis on how global warming might be affecting all the different species.

  Our Station Leader that season was David White. He was tanned, blond-haired, blue-eyed, with a footballer’s body; the physical antithesis of dark-haired, brown-eyed Cameron – and the difference didn’t stop there. David, like Georgia, was a police detective who’d held a lifetime fascination with Antarctica. He’d won the job because he was gregarious, solid and adult, like he’d never even been a child. He made us all feel secure.

  I was out in the field much of the time but when I came back, David was keen to hear my stories, particularly when I dived with the humpbacks and saw Lev again – now a fully grown forty-tonne whale, still with his diagonal scar and the black and white fluke markings I remembered vividly. As I swam near, Lev had moved his giant body gently with his long pectoral fins, like wings, so as not to crush me. He was as friendly as ever.

  When the season ended David and I went back to Victoria, and two months later we caught up. He was stationed in Torquay on the Surf Coast and had a house further along the shore at Aireys Inlet. From his family room, perched high on a cliff, I saw migrating humpbacks the first day, their sleek black bodies surging through the aqua sea, hurling themselves high out of the water, breaching, then rolling playfully onto their backs to reveal their white pleats. They were following us from Antarctica, migrating to warmer waters for the winter. I grabbed David’s binoculars from the windowsill. I could barely believe it as one whale started to lobtail, beating the water with its tail, its giant flukes rising up like a black and white butterfly – with a diagonal scar running through. My skin prickled, I flushed with joy: it was Lev. As I noted with excitement the date, time and location of the sighting, I couldn’t help thinking it was a sign. I spent the rest of the year commuting up to Melbourne for work, returning to the fresh sea air at Aireys that revitalised me, and David who made me feel better than I had for a very long time. One morning he carved a question in the sand. Marry me? We were so happy, how could I not?

  It was David who had introduced Georgia to Antarctica. That was a year before everything went wrong between him and me.

  ‘DVD night tonight,’ said Georgia. ‘I’ve chosen a ripper. Quite arty-farty. Reckon you’ll like it. Now do the vacuuming.’

  Saturday was chores day at base. I considered myself lucky only to be vacuuming. Bathroom duty was much worse.

  • • •

  The dining room lights were dimmed and Georgia, beer in hand, stood at the front to introduce the film to the audience of winter tradies and newly-arrived scientists, mechanics, electricians, engineers, and an extra cook for the summer season. And Fran, our doctor, who had spent the past months growing a crop of hydroponic tomatoes but now faced the prospect of many more people to care for. (We loved Fran for those tomatoes – it was the only fresh fruit we had all winter.) We’d grown from a group of nine to about four dozen. The base was buzzing.

  ‘This is a classic, set in the place I love almost as much as here. Can you guess where?’ Georgia swigged her beer and topped it up straightaway from a large bottle. ‘Open your eyes to Venice. Take it away.’ She motioned dramatically to a bearded engineer who stood at the back of the room working the projector.

  A little girl in a red raincoat was playing by a pond. Donald Sutherland appeared, sitting in a comfortable cottage, looking at a slide of a church. I caught my breath. I’d seen it before, and every ounce of me wanted to run from the room. The little girl in the red raincoat, his daughter, was going to drown in the pond. I couldn’t move. I shut my eyes when it happened.

  In Antarctica, there are rules. It’s important to stick with the group; at times, that can save your life. If I left now it would send a terrible signal, because Saturday film nights were bonding exercises. In such a vast and potentially hostile environment, social isolation can set in, and Station Leaders always tried to forge connections between expeditioners.

  I forced myself to watch the eerie landscape of Venice, its dark alleys where Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland get lost, the child – or was it a child? – in the red raincoat scampering away into the night. The body of a murdered woman hauled, upside-down, from a dank canal, her clothes falling away to reveal bruised flesh.

  I knew that Don’t Look Now was a good film, a great film, but I grew increasingly hot and claustrophobic, aware of the stale air from so many more people at close range. I was relieved when the lights came up.

  Georgia was quickly by my side, hand gripping my shoulder as the audience clapped appreciatively and I joined in.

  ‘Good, eh?’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘Been to Venice?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Love it?’

  I nodded. I did like Venice. But in the daytime and on the Grand Canal, not the malevolent, disjointed, empty Venice we’d just seen.

  ‘Jeff and I are taking the kids once Stacey graduates. We’ll stay at my favourite pensione, Hotel Leone Alato, in a little alley near St Mark’s Square.’ Georgia’s grin was so dazzling it warmed me up.

  ‘Got a moment?’ she said.

  I followed her into the small room that doubled as the communications centre and Station Leader’s office. Georgia plonked herself behind the desk; I sat opposite.

  ‘Strictly speaking I should wait and tell you this Monday, not on your night off, but the final approval’s just come in.’ Georgia had been steadily drinking through the film so was even more forthcoming than usual, but I had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘There’s a field assignment for you at Alliance Station.’

  I stared at her mutely as she smiled broadly back. We both knew that Alliance, a British base on South Safety Island in the Southern Ocean, was strictly off-limits to all but a team of elite scientists and a small support staff of technicians.

  ‘An Environmental Impact Assessment of Fredelighavn, the old Norwegian whaling station at Placid Bay,’ she continued. ‘There’s a push by some in the International Antarctic Council t
o open it as a museum.’

  ‘What!’ I blurted. ‘But no one’s allowed in because of the seal and penguin colonies. Not even the staff at Alliance.’

  ‘That’s being disputed,’ Georgia replied matter-of-factly.

  ‘Why? No one should go there. I’ve seen a few pictures from the seventies before it was closed off. It looked like paradise.’

  Georgia nodded. ‘That’s why some people want to open it. They allowed a team of engineers in last summer to do a safety check. There’s no asbestos, so unlike places like the old whaling station at Leith on South Georgia, tourists could go in safely. The buildings are evidently in very good condition, and with global warming there’s been ice melt. That, and with some help from the engineers, has meant most of the sheds and houses are accessible.’

  ‘What happens to the wildlife?’ I asked, concerned.

  ‘That’s what you’d assess. Along with the suitability of the site.’

  ‘I hate tourists,’ I bridled. ‘Why do they need access to so much of Antarctica? Can’t they just leave it alone?’

  ‘There are many who’d agree,’ Georgia replied. ‘Including, from what I hear, the staff at Alliance. The scientists don’t want a bar of it. But Chile and Argentina are really pushing.’

  I smiled wryly at the thought of my Spanish compatriots who hated the British, who also laid claim to some of the very same parts of Antarctica as the Brits, including South Safety Island.

  ‘The Chinese are thinking of building a base on the island but there’s a lot of quiet diplomacy against that,’ said Georgia. ‘Some think if Fredelighavn’s opened, the Chinese will choose somewhere else. It’s all just more jockeying for position before the Protocol expires.’

  The Antarctic Treaty was drawn up in 1959 during the Cold War and came into force in 1961, reserving everything south of latitude 60°S as a place for science, with no military activity allowed; all sovereign claims were frozen. In 1991 the Madrid Protocol went further and banned all mining, but this was coming up for renegotiation in 2041. Although countries could stake no new claims, squatting on land with base stations was a game they played. There were likely vast oilfields and other riches to exploit beneath the ice. Countries were getting prepared.