Oil tanks, pipework, factory chimneys and vast sheets of corrugated iron lie strewn around the settlement in disordered heaps while the skulls of long-dead animals grin up from the shale. When the winds blow down from the mountains the whole unruly mess jumps and sings and dances like a ghostly percussion band.
Felicity’s heart sinks as she steers into the bay. She hates Husvik and is already regretting her decision to come here. She is hardly any distance from King Edward Point by boat and Freddie has seen her. He might persuade people to come looking. He might get hold of a boat somehow. He could be here within hours.
Scattered along Husvik’s foreshore is a graveyard of ship’s propellers, and a huge old whaling ship is beached near the water’s edge. The colour of dried blood, it lies on its side, beaten and exhausted, denied even the watery grave of other shipwrecks.
For a moment, Felicity is tempted to turn the RIB, head out to sea again, but there is nowhere else to go. Apart from King Edward Point and Bird Island, the only place on South Georgia where people can stay in anything close to comfort is the BAS station at Husvik. And since she left base, the weather has turned. A storm is getting up. She has no choice.
She avoids the crumbling jetty. Seals risk it, and most of them weigh more than she, but they’ll survive a plummet into icy water when the rotting planks give way. She might not. Instead, once she reaches the shallows, she cuts the engine and paddles into the shell of an old boat house. Only when the RIB is securely tied does she unload her stuff. The rucksack goes onto her shoulders. The rest of the kit she carries in two holdalls.
The BAS station is housed in the villa that once belonged to the manager of the whaling station. It is only half a mile along the waterfront, but the rail locomotives that would have made the journey easy in the old days lie rusting beneath scattered stones. Nor can the coast path be attempted. Since she was here last, the buildings that were the meat freezers and the blubber cookery have become unrecognizable. Wood, tiles, bricks and pipework are strewn down to the shore and beyond. She will have to make her way through the settlement.
She sets off, walking inland, careful where she puts her feet, because machinery parts in the tussock grass have become treacherous as mantraps. A penguin chick, separated from its parent, stares at her curiously as she reaches the first corner and for a second, she wants to pick it up, because its soft brown feathers and mild gaze offer a crumb of comfort in this horrible place. She’s almost stooped to touch it when a clatter of falling tiles a few yards away sends it scurrying into the tussock.
Reluctantly leaving the chick to its own devices, she makes her way between the barrack blocks and the boilers. The wind, rarely still on South Georgia, seems to revel in the old whaling settlements. It bounces off sheets of corrugated iron and whistles through felled chimneys and broken pipework. On the wrecked ships, it echoes the moans of dying whales. In Grytviken, it is easy to remember the years of slaughter. In Husvik, one need only close one’s eyes and hear it happening still.
Halfway along the remains of the street, when she is surrounded by the creaking, groaning buildings, Felicity hears someone call her name.
13
Freddie
Freddie has already spotted the accommodation block from the deck of the ship, and he makes his way over to it as soon as he reaches King Edward Point. A one-storey, white-painted, red-roofed building, it lies in the centre of the linear settlement. He keeps his hood up as he approaches. Tourists do visit King Edward Point, mainly to have their postcards franked in the harbour master’s office, but they typically arrive in groups. A lone traveller will raise questions. In particular, he doesn’t want to be spotted by the policewoman from the ship or either of her two companions. Something about that trio didn’t feel right.
He leaves the track as he draws near, crossing mossy ground to cut the corner. Up to thirty people work for the British Antarctic Survey in summer but two thirds, he reckons, will be away from the base at any one time on field trips. Some will be in the boatsheds, others in the lab. He steals a glance through the lab window as he passes but the white-coated bloke rinsing glass tubes at a sink doesn’t look up.
The accommodation block lies like the rest of the buildings a few yards from the shoreline. He walks along its rear and the rooms he glances into seem identical. Small, single-occupancy, simply furnished. The fourth window along has a pair of enormous hiking boots drying on the ledge. The fifth has its curtains closed. The next room, the sixth, is neater than the rest, the only visible sign of an occupant a white dressing gown hanging on the back of the door. It looks small, a woman’s size.
There is no one around, so he steps closer and presses his face against the glass. On top of the bedside cabinet is a trinket box that, with a start, he recognises, and a wooden framed photograph of a young blonde woman, dressed all in black, standing amid blue, white and grey columns of glacial ice. On the desk is what looks like an incubator, but he cannot see what, if anything, is inside.
Counting windows, he walks quickly to the corner of the block. There is a side door and he isn’t surprised to find it open. There is no need for security here. He hears voices, the blare of a radio and the rattling of crockery as he walks down the corridor. A credit card slid into the gap between door and frame makes short work of the simple Yale lock.
The room beyond is neat, with the functional simplicity of a college student’s room. The watercolour prints of seabirds look mass produced, and the colour scheme is the bland cream and blue of a budget hotel. The narrow bed is as neatly made as one in a hospital, there are no clothes lying over the armchair nor shoes behind the door.
A high-pitched chirruping catches his attention. He had forgotten the incubator on the desk. He steps over and peers inside to see two fat, brown feathered creatures with long, thin beaks looking back at him. Penguins, he thinks, although he has no clue which species.
The faint smell of something floral is released as he opens the wardrobe. A row of shelves holds her sweaters, T-shirts and underwear. Trousers, a spare coat and a single dress are hanging up. He steps closer, pressing his face against fabric, breathing in her scent. The clothes are simple and functional, designed for comfort and warmth. And yet, if the photograph is recent, she is still the lovely young woman he dreamed of, night after night in his prison cell.
The trinket box is made of white bone china, oval in shape, with a circle of violets on the lid and, for a moment, Freddie is lost. Once, he saw that box every morning when he woke. The lid feels cool and delicate under his fingers. Inside are hair grips, a couple of pairs of stud earrings, a silver lily on a chain and a wedding ring.
He feels tears rising, his throat tightening. He bought this ring himself, when he couldn’t imagine not being in love, not looking forward to the future with anything other than joy. He’d thought that man was dead and buried, and now he finds he was here all the time, just waiting to be woken.
Unable to help himself, he slips the ring into his jacket pocket. He bought the silver lily too, a birthday gift, but she can keep that. The wedding ring he needs.
A little unsteady, he sits on the narrow bed. Outside in the corridor a door opens and footsteps walk away. He is wasting time. She’s gone to Bird Island and if he wants to find her, he has to go there too.
He gets up. On the desk beside the incubator is an open chart, weighed down with a stapler, a calculator and a reference book. It shows the entire island of South Georgia, a circle drawn in red ink around Bird Island in the top corner. To one edge of the chart are stuck several Post-it notes. The first seems to be a crude calculation of the journey time in a RIB. Six hours, at an average of twenty knots. The next is a list of items she needs to take for people called Jan and Frank. The final one contains radio frequencies and a weather forecast for that day.