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  It soon became apparent that the six miles might well defeat them, irrespective of whether they were spotted or not. Stuart was fit, but he spent most of his time at a desk. Gill was probably fitter, but she was a signaller, not a Royal Marine, and the idea of any yomping was about as foreign to her as going about her work without a screwdriver. It just wasn’t what she did. And this was now rather more than evident from her gasping for air, just before she sank to her knees and then toppled sideways.

  Stuart was at her side immediately, and after he’d quickly sloughed off his bergen, he knelt down beside her and started to speak.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked. ‘Or you got a real problem?’

  Gill turned to face her solicitous interrogator and, before she made any reply, she treated Stuart to a broad, muddy grin. Then she did speak.

  ‘Shit! A bloody office civvy, and you’re still bloody standing. Don’t, for God’s sake, tell the lieutenant. He’ll have me doing press-ups for a week.’

  Stuart wasn’t sure how to interpret this response, but within a split second, Gill was pulling herself up into a sitting position – still with her bergen on – and complaining about the Falklands.

  ‘I mean, who the bloody hell thought it a good idea to cover this soddin’ island in this soddin’ grass and then soak it in soddin’ water? Christ! It’s bad enough with this bloody bergen, but there ain’t even a soddin’ path. Just these soddin’ tufts of grass and all this soddin’ water.’

  The expletives seemed to be doing their job. After taking a few more seconds to gather herself, Gill drew herself into the vertical and then reached down for Stuart’s bergen in order to help him hoist it onto his back. She had recovered as quickly as she had collapsed, and Stuart could only think that this was all to do with British military training. Gill might have just deserted from her ‘family’, but her family had somehow instilled into her something that simply prevented her from giving up. If the body failed, then the mind would take control and ensure that it didn’t fail again.

  And so it was. When Gill had collapsed, she and her civvy mate were no more than a mile into their yomp. But once she was back on her feet, she only ever stopped in her forward progress to allow Stuart to catch up. For now it was Stuart’s sedentary lifestyle that was making itself known, in that he was having more and more difficulty in making his way across the unforgiving terrain of the Falklands, and quite a lot of difficulty in even keeping upright. However, he did manage – just. And in the light of a dreary Falklands’ morning, the welcome sight of open water came into view, and in only a few minutes more, Stuart was able to make out the mast of a boat he knew well. The Bluebird was sitting at anchor in its normal spot – for which he was supremely relieved – and soon both he and Gill would be able to throw their bergens into the bottom of Joe’s skiff and row themselves out into the sound and take control of Joe’s lovely eight-metre boat.

  It was done. They were aboard the Bluebird, they had stowed their bergens below deck, and Stuart was giving Gill a crash course on how to sail a boat of this size without it coming to grief. He had no real idea of how Gill would adapt from being a soldier to becoming a sailor, but he would soon find out. Because before they had even treated themselves to an energy bar, Stuart had cast off and, without much hindrance from Gill, had got the Bluebird under sail.

  Now all he had to do was take it to the Antarctic…

  twenty

  The sea was getting rough. So far on this voyage, the passengers and crew of the Sea Sprite had been spoilt with seas that, for this part of the world, had been remarkably calm. But not any more. Alex had to steady himself in the bathroom as he shaved, and when he was in the shower, he came very close to being out of the shower, but not at his own choosing. It was only through some instinctive judicious footwork that he avoided exchanging his vertical situation for one that involved being horizontal on the bathroom floor. Debbie had similar problems when it came to her turn to ablute. Although, of course, she didn’t have to scrape her face…

  Breakfast – with a ‘new’ couple from Slough – proved a subdued affair, and Alex decided against enlivening it by making any reference to John Betjeman and his invitation to bombs to fall on that unfortunate town. Instead, he attempted to stimulate some conversion around the table by giving his (expurgated) opinions on various members of the expedition team and then offering his views on the challenges provided by very rough seas. He’d chosen this latter theme because the sea was becoming rougher than ever, and how the Filipino waiters were weaving their way between the tables with trays of food and beverages was beyond Alex’s understanding. If they had developed sea legs, he thought, then each of them must have developed at least six of them. Because they never needed to steady themselves, and they seemed almost unaware that the surface on which they were moving was itself moving – a lot. It was a quite incredible sight.

  No less incredible was the number of people packed into the main lounge to listen to the most miserable man on the ship deliver a presentation on his time in the Antarctic, a time more than forty years ago when, as a young man, he had been dispatched to that cold continent to study its rocks. This, of course, was Tony, the dour Scot, and his talk had been given the title of Working as a Geologist in Antarctica in the 1970s; not a title, thought Alex, designed to draw in the crowds. But it didn’t matter. Clearly, virtually every one of the Sea Sprite’s passengers – including Alex and Debbie – was thirsting for some sort of distraction, and a grumpy old Scots bloke recounting how he’d gone about chipping off bits of rock in a cold climate would be distraction enough. In fact, it proved to be more than just an adequate distraction, and instead a genuinely interesting diversion. And this was because grumpy Tony barely made a single reference to the geology stuff, but instead focused almost exclusively on just how demanding it was to be a ‘pioneer’ member of the British Antarctic Survey. In a time when one’s survival was dependent on small simple tents, dreadful rations and one’s all-important huskies.

  It appeared that Tony had been based at some sort of camp equipped with primitive wooden buildings, but that for most of the time he had been far away from this camp, living in a tent and doing his geological stuff with just a partner and a team of huskies for company. And life had been as basic as it was possible to be. The food was repetitive; it was from cans or packets, and it was very ‘uninspired English’ in character. Entertainment was just about non-existent, as it consisted of whatever books and puzzles could be squeezed onto one’s sledge along with the more vital provisions. And whilst personal hygiene was never ignored, it and all other necessary personal chores would often have to be performed when there was a blizzard blowing outside. How this was done was left largely to the audience’s imagination. So too were the intricacies of providing the husky team with its vital supply of raw, recently killed meat.

  Alex could just about come to terms with the hardships of early Antarctic life insofar as they concerned Tony and his fellow researchers looking after themselves, but he found it far more difficult when it came to how they had to deal with the grisly implications of having to feed and care for a much-loved team of dogs. There was clearly no room for the squeamish in those early days of Antarctic research, and one had to be prepared not only to tackle butchery duties but also to deal with canine wounds and even the demands of canine births whenever these arose. This was definitely the most captivating aspect of Tony’s story: his bringing into the world new huskies in order to furnish the British Antarctic Survey with all the huskies it required for its expanding work. It was impossible, he said, not to build an extraordinary bond with these new recruits to cold-weather science, or indeed with all the huskies one looked after in Antarctica, on whose efforts and resilience one’s life depended.

  It was very evident that Tony’s audience could easily understand this close relationship forged between humans and their huskies. Heck, hadn’t most of them, at some stage in their life, owned dogs themselves,
or maybe they still owned them now? So when, towards the conclusion of his presentation, he talked about the complete replacement of huskies with snow-cats – and how the huskies were rewarded for all their years of hard work with a bullet in the head – the mood in the auditorium immediately sank like a stone. But it had happened. Whoever had been running the British Antarctic Survey back then would not countenance the cost and the difficulties associated with repatriating so many dogs, and these dogs were therefore simply shot. Tony had shot a number of huskies himself, but had not been able to bring himself to shoot his own. He’d had to ask somebody else to do that for him.

  So that was it, thought Alex. That was why Tony was such a morose and miserable individual. He hadn’t got over it. Not after all these years. He had indeed spent most of his adult life with some sort of chronic post-traumatic condition, or at least something that had sucked the joy from his character and left him looking and sounding like a man consumed with gloom. So, for the first time on this trip, Alex felt really sorry for one of his fellow travellers; the man whom, up to now, he’d regarded with disdain, and whom he’d gone out of his way to avoid. He also, of course, felt desperately sorry for all those dogs. We use them, he thought, and when we have no further use for them, we kill them. Just like we killed all those thousands of faithful horses at the end of World War I. Not for the first time in his life, he felt guilty for just being a human. And to be feeling sorry and guilty at the same time was not what he had expected when he had sat down to listen to this Antarctic veteran. But he could do no more about it than he could about the state of the sea. Which was now very rough indeed.

  In fact, it had become so rough that, when Tony had answered the last of a series of questions put to him after his presentation, Alex and Debbie decided to eschew lunch and instead settle for some liquid refreshment and a couple of cookies in the bar. This, they had reasoned, would entail less movement around the ship, and therefore a reduced amount of grappling with its lively motion, and it would also reduce the burden on their stomachs should these come under any challenge. Which was by no means impossible. That sea was not about to calm down any time soon.

  Indeed, it continued to behave boisterously throughout the whole of their stay in the bar, and so much so that the two light-lunchers decided to eschew any further activity on the Sea Sprite that would involve their straying more than a few feet from their bed. It was going to be a cabin afternoon, and no attempt would be made to visit any other part of the ship until it was time to eat in the evening. And even then, leaving their cabin would be by no means a certainty. Their small maritime vessel was now – according to a tannoy announcement by Jane – having to deal with a genuine Southern Ocean storm, and it was quite possible that conditions would deteriorate further. And that might mean that it would then prove an insuperable challenge to deal with a regular dinner, even if the kitchen staff were able to prepare one.

  However, that was a decision for later, and once Debbie and Alex had, with some difficulty, made it back to their cabin refuge, the only immediate decision to make was how they might spend their afternoon. There was still a presentation on offer in the lounge, which could, of course, be accessed through the cabin’s TV, and its subject was Wind Speeds and the Beaufort Scale. It could not have been a more appropriate subject, given the present conditions. Nevertheless, neither Alex nor Debbie thought it would be an ideal accompaniment to their experiencing the real thing, and they decided against tuning in. Instead, having also decided that any joint activities might prove tricky on a bed that was now pitching and rolling in sync with the ship, they wedged themselves against its headboard, buttressed themselves with pillows, and set about some reading.

  Debbie chose a historical novel. Alex selected a work on identity, race, religion and gender; a recently published book that claimed it wanted to question what were and what were not ‘acceptable’ views in each of these four interconnected facets of modern life. It wouldn’t be the first time that while Debbie had sought to entertain herself, Alex had chosen instead to scourge himself. And what better way to indulge in a bit of self-flagellation than to expose oneself to some of the most divisive and poisonous issues on the planet? Or what had until recently been some of the most divisive and poisonous issues on the planet before the plague had arrived – back when humans had been able to indulge themselves in the luxury of contemplating their navels to the virtual exclusion of everything else. Including the fragility of their species. And this was what struck Alex as he read through a chapter on transgender rights and the rights of others to challenge those rights.

  It was all so narcissistic, he thought. Humanity had been focusing more and more on itself, and no more so than when it had embarked on a debate on transgenderism that had quickly descended into a catechism of transgender rights that could not be questioned. After all, the rights of a transgender male – who now identified as a woman – had, clearly, to trump the rights of any mere natural woman, even if it meant glossing over the fact that there might still be a willy in play. That was what the canons said, and one was a transphobic monster if one held any other (heretical) views. Obviously.

  Well, it was all nonsense, thought Alex. Because now, whether you had a penis or not, or whether you wanted to be called ‘she’ or the inexplicable plural ‘they’, it wouldn’t stop you being consumed by the plague. Neither, for that matter, would it be of consequence whether you were a mild-mannered Church of England sort or a fundamentalist Muslim who looked upon his non-Muslim brethren as a load of two-legged abominations. And as for whether you were a blond-haired Caucasian from the Black Forest or a bushman from the Kalahari, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. This terrible pestilence that had already consumed so much of mankind was clearly as indifferent to one’s racial antecedents as was the most liberal-minded liberal imaginable. And even identifying as a neutral, pathogen-sympathetic observer wouldn’t prevent you from being gobbled up by the disease with no name. If you were human, that’s all you needed to be. Your race, religion, gender and identity meant nothing at all. Just as they should have meant nothing at all, thought Alex, before this pandemic arrived. And the fact that they did – and did to such an extent – was merely a reflection of humanity’s selfish, self-centred, self-obsessed, self-absorbed and self-indulgent way of thinking. President Trump, Alex concluded, might be – or have been – an extreme example, but at heart every human on the planet was in some way a terrible narcissist. This is when he recalled what had happened to the original Narcissus of Greek mythology. He hadn’t been cut down by a disease, but he’d killed himself when he saw his reflection in a pond and realised that he could not have the object of his desire. And maybe, thought Alex, that was what was happening to the entire human race. Unable to live happily with all our differences and all our different outlooks, we had submitted ourselves to the agent of our doom. And after all, it did appear that the plague was something we had inflicted on ourselves…

  It was a tenable theory of sorts, but, like the constant pitching and rolling of the bed, it couldn’t keep Alex from falling fast asleep. Maybe he shouldn’t have had that last drink at lunchtime. And maybe now he shouldn’t sleep on, because, as it was coming up to six o’clock, there was somebody else on the bed who had clearly decided that she was beginning to get hungry. Alex knew this when she shook his shoulder and announced that it was time to wake up.

  He attempted to rouse himself while at the same time coming to terms with the movement of the bed.

  ‘Jesus,’ he pronounced, ‘what the…’

  ‘Ah,’ interrupted Debbie. ‘Shaken and stirred. James Bond would be proud…’

  Alex wasn’t quite awake enough to appreciate Debbie’s jest, and instead he just focused on pulling himself up into a sitting position on the bed while trying not to roll off it.

  ‘God,’ he observed, ‘it hasn’t got any better, has it? In fact, it feels as though it’s got worse.’

  ‘Well, nobody�
��s announced that dinner’s off. So, I suggest we just ignore the weather, and get ourselves ready for some food.’

  ‘Ignore? How can you ignore this? And that isn’t just weather, that’s a full-blown storm. Either that, or there’s something wrong with this bed.’

  ‘Look, we can’t just exist on biscuits. And anyway, I’m really peckish. So, come on. Get a move on. After all, I don’t want to be late. And as they used to say in ancient Rome, tempest fugit. Get it? Tempest fugit, not tempus fugit…’

  Alex gave his wife a mystified look, and then he did get it. ‘Mystified’ was swapped for ‘amused’, just before ‘alarmed’ arrived as he eased himself off the bed. And then it was the morning ablutions all over again, only worse, until finally he and his wife were as ready as they ever would be to tackle the journey from the Erikson Deck down to the Magellan Deck and there secure themselves a seat at a table in the downstairs restaurant. Seated at the table already were Derek and Elaine, and within only a few minutes Roy was there as well.