Isvik Page 23

  I woke then to the stillness of the night and Iain’s wristwatch alarm ringing like a cracked musical box. ‘What is it this time?’ I mumbled as he heaved himself out of the bunk below me.

  ‘Got to catch a plane,’ he replied.

  ‘Where to?’

  There was a long pause. Then he said, ‘BA. Then Montevideo.’

  ‘Checking up on the Santa Maria del Sud?’

  He didn’t answer that and I dozed off. He woke me just before he left to say he would be away three days, possibly more. ‘Tell Iris, will ye? And as soon as Galvin arrives to give ye a hand, take Isvik out again and give those new sails a thorough trial. Don’t worry about the engine. It’s the sails and the crew we need to concentrate on now. Ah don’t want any balls-up reefin’ as we beat our way down towards the Beagle Channel. Okay? Ah want everybody knowin’ exactly what they have to dae on deck in any eventuality.’ I could just see the lift of his hand in the meagre light that came from the uncurtained window. ‘And don’t put the ship ashore, understand?’ Then he was gone, and a minute later there was the sound of a car pulling away.

  Shortly after dawn it began to blow very hard from the west with intermittent outbursts of driving sleet. We wondered how Carlos was faring after his first night out as we finished tidying up below, sorting gear out ready for the arrival of the Galvins that evening. It was the end of November now, and though the intention had been to sail mid-December, the customary time for expeditions to leave for Antarctica, we now had to allow for the switch to Ushuaia as our point of departure. Also, the Chilean Met. people were muttering about the ozone layer and an earlier than usual break-up of the ice.

  Darkness fell and no sign of Carlos. Or the Galvins. Their flight had been held up by bad weather. However, the wind was beginning to fell away and by the time we started in on our evening meal the sky had cleared and the almost full moon was peering up at us out of the Strait, where the waters had suddenly gone still and as black as polished obsidian.

  It was stew again that night – we were eating plenty of fresh meat and vegetables while we could – and I had just passed my plate to Iris for another helping when there were thumps on deck and the sound of shod feet, then a voice called, ‘Ahoy there! Anybody home?’ The call came again, this time from the wheelhouse above our heads, the voice a soft drawl with the faintest of nasal twangs.

  ‘The Galvins!’ Iris jumped to her feet. ‘Come on down!’

  The man who entered was tall, almost lanky, with a narrow, slightly freckled face, sandy hair and the brightest of blue eyes shining like sapphires in the glare of the saloon light. ‘Andy Galvin.’ And as we shook hands, he said, ‘And this is my wife, Go-Go.’

  She was still on the companion ladder, just the crimson slash of her pants showing. A bulging valise was heaved down, then in a flash she was beside her husband, and we just stood there gaping at her. All I remember of that first sight of one of the most extraordinary young women I have ever met was the white gleam of her big teeth, the brilliance of her smile of greeting and the way her mouth was made to appear even broader by the scarlet of lipstick that matched her pants almost exactly. Her skin was the colour of a golden coffee blend, the nostrils broad, the eyes black and her hair even blacker, frizzed out so that she bore a startling resemblance to an adman’s idea of a golliwog.

  I saw a flicker of anger cross her husband’s face. So did Iris, for she recovered from her sense of shock quicker than either Nils or myself, stepping quickly forward and giving the girl a warm hug. ‘Welcome aboard. I’m Iris.’ She hesitated. ‘Do we really call you Go-Go, or would you prefer us to use your proper Christian name?’

  ‘No, Go-Go – please. Just look at me. I can’t remember anybody ever calling me anything else.’ She was laughing, a deep, infectious chuckle.

  She had a warmth that almost at once enveloped us all, so that the saloon became a brighter, more cheerful place. They had fed on the plane, but they needed no pressing to help themselves from the stewpot. Later, in the more relaxed atmosphere that followed coffee plentifully laced with rum, Andy admitted that he had not been as open as perhaps he should have been about his wife’s origins. ‘I thought if I told you she was quarter Aborigine it might crook the whole deal and I very much wanted to be on this expedition. So did Go-Go once her firm had agreed.’

  It was Andy, not Iris, who had brought this up, but now that it was out in the open I could see she was worried. ‘Two things.’ She reached across the table impulsively, taking hold of the girl’s hand. ‘I’m thinking of her, Andy, not the expedition. She comes from a hot climate.’

  ‘So do I,’ Galvin cut in.

  ‘Not genetically you don’t. You’re a Nordic. Just look at your skin.’

  ‘And she’s quarter black, is that what you mean?’ His tone was defensive, almost belligerent.

  ‘No, it is not what I mean. The colour of the skin is immaterial except in so far as it indicates an affinity with heat rather than the sort of cold –’

  ‘She’s used to the cold, Mrs Sunderby. Her father’s an Orkney man, and when she left veterinary college, she started work up in the Snowies. That’s where I met her. In any case, the Abo background is the desert, in the case of her mother’s tribe, the Simpson, a place where no white man can exist without an airlift of supplies, and they lived there in complete self-sufficiency, hot as hell during the day and bitter cold at night. Try that with no clothes on, Mrs Sunderby …’

  Iris held up her hand, laughing. ‘All right, Mr Galvin …’ She was mocking him with a matching formality. ‘Just so long as she can take it. I don’t want her to get hurt just because of your determination to join us.’

  ‘She won’t get hurt. I’ll see to that.’ He was leaning forward, his eyes fixed on Iris across the table. ‘Now, you said you had two points. What’s the other?’

  ‘Her sailing experience!’

  ‘Virtually nil. I told you that in my letter. We’ve been married less than a year and after buying a house all I could afford in the way of a boat was an old racing dinghy. She’s been out in that quite a few times, so she knows port from starb’d, how to tack and gybe, and though she’s a bit pint-sized, I can assure you she makes up for it in quickness, and in toughness, don’t you, mate?’ He grinned at her, at us. ‘And I speak from experience.’ Then, more seriously. ‘She’s also a bloody good vet, which means she has experience of dealing with most bone injuries and knows the difference between a tumour and a pregnancy.’ Again that little gleam of humour. ‘Sort it out for yourselves and let us know in the morning what you decide.’ He had got to his feet. ‘Right now we’d be glad to get sight of our berths and kip down. What with the weather and some trouble with the air crews, we’ve been three days getting here and we’re just about all in, both of us.’

  They were sleeping on board, so Nils and Iris agreed we’d breakfast at nine, which would give them an extra hour’s lie-in. But when I went across in the morning, they were already on deck. ‘Couldn’t wait to look her over.’ He was bright and chirpy, and his wife was standing at the upper steering position, her appearance quite changed by a bright red woolly cap with ear-flaps. ‘Got it taped now, squares’ls, everything, except one or two strings aft of the foremast. You set reaching sails between that and the main, do you?’

  I took him briefly through the handling of fisherman and reaching stays’ls, then we went down to breakfast. As we passed through the wheelhouse he paused at the head of the companionway. ‘Good gear you got there.’ He nodded to the radio equipment banked behind the chart table. ‘A nice little amateur network outfit as well as single sideband HF. Anybody on board got a licence?’

  I hesitated. ‘Iain might have.’ With him anything seemed possible. ‘But I don’t think so.’

  Andy looked at me, that crooked little half-smile on his face. ‘Reck’n it won’t matter much anyway where we’re going. Nobody’s going to arrest us ’cos we ain’t got a licence, not in the middle of the Weddell Sea! I’ll check it over this evenin
g, make a few calls. But it’s all good gear and it looks okay.’

  Next morning the weather was fine with cirrus high up and very little wind. ‘We’ll take her out as soon as we’ve had breakfast,’ I said. ‘Give you a chance to get used to the deck layout.’

  It was incredible what a difference it made to have the back-up of somebody really experienced, and he was right about his wife. She was very quick, very sure-footed round the deck, and she learned fast. Before the wind began to get up shortly after midday, we had tried out all the sails, not once, but several times. We had lunch hove-to, coffee and sandwiches in the wheelhouse so that we could watch for any change of wind and keep tabs on any traffic bearing down on us.

  By the time we packed it in for the day I was beginning to feel I had the makings of a crew, that we really could sail down into the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. We had been so concentrated on sail handling that I think all of us had quite forgotten about Carlos, but he was waiting for us on the quay as we came alongside. He had a bottle of that rough red Chilean wine you could get in the bar-ristorante. I recognised it by the label and he waved it at us as we came alongside. He had made it over to Seno Otway and was very full of himself, which he had a right to be, for it was a hike of some fifty miles there and back. ‘I was lucky, I had a moon both nights. A lot of shooting stars, satellites, too. The clarity of the sky was incredible.’ His voice was a little slurred. ‘And the birds. I should have taken that book you’ve got on board. Now, of course, I can’t remember all the details.’ He was talking mainly to Andy. He seemed fascinated by the lanky Australian, who had just seated himself at the chart table, the earphones on the back of his head and his long fingers playing over the controls of the single sideband. ‘You interested in birds?’

  Andy nodded vaguely, his attention on the radio.

  ‘You were at the Davis Station, I hear.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you see Emperors there?’

  ‘No. Lots of King penguins, Adélies, too.’

  ‘But no Emperors?’ He turned to me. ‘Will we be calling at South Georgia?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘There are several Emperor rookeries there.’ He had turned almost eagerly back to Andy. ‘They’re all of three foot tall, beaks level with your belly button, and they can break a man’s arm with their flippers. I was reading all about them on the plane, an old book on South Georgia. It said they slide belly-down on the ice and then tip themselves upright with their beaks like those little weighted dolls you get in Christmas crackers.’

  He went on like that, his tongue running away with him and constantly asking questions till Andy turned on him. ‘Shut up, will you, for Christ’s sake! I’m trying to listen.’ In the sudden, almost shocked silence Iris’s voice called up to us that the evening meal was ready.

  It was stew again, but with a lot of deep-freeze cauliflower and some fresh seaweed in it, so that it was like a thick soup. And just as we had started to eat Iain came in. He looked tired, and after he had said hullo to the Galvins, he just sat there, saying nothing, even when Iris offered to get him some stew, merely shaking his head.

  He didn’t show any surprise at Go-Go Galvin’s appearance, seeming to accept her presence as though he had known in advance she was part Aborigine. But Carlos wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass. And that little devil was peeping out of his eyes as he leaned forward, staring at Go-Go and quoting, ‘A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw’. There was a cruel little smile on his lips as he went on, speaking slowly and deliberately, ‘It was an Aborigine maid and on her didgeridoo she played, singing of Mount –’

  ‘Belt up!’ Andy’s voice was quiet, but menacing. ‘You’re drunk, but that doesn’t excuse you, mate.’

  Iain thrust his head forward, smiling and addressing Go-Go. ‘There’s a bottle in the cupboard behind ye. Pour me a slug, there’s a dear.’ Then he turned to Carlos. ‘A neat little parody. Very clever of ye. But ye dae that again –’

  ‘You don’t like poetry, no?’

  Iain stared at him, the silence suddenly electric. Then he smiled, and speaking slowly took up the quote, ‘Could Ah revive within me, her symphony and song, to such a deep delight ’twould win me, that with music loud and long, Ah would build that dome in air, that sunny dome! What comes next, boy?’

  Carlos was staring at him fascinated, a poodle confronted by a bull mastiff.

  And Iain went on, ‘Those caves of ICE! And all should cry, Beware! Beware!’ He looked round the table, eyeing each of us, emphasising the warning. ‘So beware,’ he repeated gently. ‘This is a small band of human beings headed into the unknown. Start a quarrel and you have a disaster. So, gang warily, and mind yer tongues.’ He downed the drink Go-Go had passed him in one gulp and got to his feet. ‘Ah’ll bid ye all goodnight. God willin’, we sail the day after tomorrow.’ He turned to me. ‘How long will it take us to get to Ushuaia?’

  ‘Depends on the weather,’ I said.

  ‘’Course it does. But what is the probability?’

  ‘It could be bad in the Cockburn. That’s the channel that runs almost due west, straight into the prevailing wind, with the whole weight of the Pacific ahead. Storm-force winds would almost certainly stop us dead. I don’t dare think what it would be like out there.’

  ‘And if it’s only force 5 and we can keep goin’?’

  ‘Then we ought to be able to make Ushuaia in three days, provided nothing goes wrong, of course.’ And I added, ‘It’s a bad area, and after Ushuaia we’ll have Cape Horn ahead of us. It’s bloody stupid making our final departure from Ushuaia. If we left from here –’

  ‘He insists on Ushuaia.’

  ‘Just look at the chart, man. Tell him –’

  ‘Ah’ve told him. Ah can read a chart, too. So can he.’

  ‘And he still insists?’

  ‘Yes. Ah phoned him as soon as Ah got in to Montevideo. Ah thought it safer from there. He refused to discuss it. He would join us at Ushuaia, or not at all.’ He paused, looking round the table. ‘So, the day after tomorrow, unless anyone can show good cause …’

  ‘That’s Sunday,’ Iris said.

  ‘Aye, Sunday. What’s the difference? We’re not a bunch of Wee Frees and even the Catholics allow football in the afternoon, provided ye genuflect in the mornin’, of course.’ He looked across at me. ‘If we left, say at 06.00, that would make an ETA of 06.00 at Ushuaia on the Wednesday mornin’ a reasonable bet, right?’

  ‘DV,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘DV. Aye.’ He looked at each individual face in turn, and when nobody else said anything, he nodded. ‘Good! Then Sunday it is. Pete will give ye the precise time of departure tomorrow after we’ve got the weather forecast.’

  It was Carlos who asked when Mario would be arriving at Ushuaia and Iain told him Wednesday. ‘Wednesday of next week, Ah said – by the latest. And he agreed.’ Then, suddenly relaxed and smiling, he added, ‘A wee gift from the gods to cheer us all up. Ah’ve been on to our base at Halley Bay. The ice information is still good. It could be an early break-up.’

  THREE

  Ushuaia is only just inside the Argentine boundary with Chile. You would, I think, have to go to Africa to find a demarcation line between two countries more arbitrary and ridiculous than that which gives the tip of the Tierra del Fuegan ‘boot’ to Argentina. Patagonia finishes at the very tip of the northern entrance to the Magellan Strait, the border then jumping a slice of the South Atlantic to reappear, quite disjointedly, at the Strait’s southern entrance point. Hardly to be wondered, therefore, that there is constant friction between the two countries that share the very bottom of the South American continent. Ushuaia, like Punta Arenas, has a barracks and a strong naval presence. Also it has an airfield with a single runway laid out on a north-south axis. Thus all take-offs and landings are at right angles to the prevailing wind and that much more uninsurable.

  We arrived at Ushuaia shortly after midday on the Tuesday, having had
what really amounted to a very successful shake-down cruise, logging altogether two hundred and eighty-three nautical miles. We were lucky with the weather, the wind a light westerly on the Sunday, so that we were reaching, even broad-reaching, on the starb’d tack right down to the start of the Cockburn Channel, which we reached shortly after midnight. By then the wind had died away and we were motoring.

  There is a series of channels between the Cockburn and the Beagle – the Brecknock, the Aguirre, the Burnt, the Ballenas or Whaleboat and the O’Brien, all of them intricate and all of them requiring maximum vigilance on the part of the navigator. Thanks be to God it was a wonderfully clear, starlit night, and when the moon rose it was so bright we no longer needed the radar. The long stretches of water, and the hills all round, reminded me of the fortnight I had spent sailing with a school friend on the west coast of Scotland.

  The wind came in from the west again shortly after dawn and we then had a fast passage rock-hopping through the out-islands on the edge of the Pacific. The passage was well marked with lit buoys at almost regular intervals and, with the sort of visibility we were blessed with, the navigation was easy. So was the sailing, for the wind held at a fairly steady force 5 on the starb’d quarter. By Monday evening we were approaching the Beagle Channel and the wind had become variable, the sky overcast, with sudden squalls of rain, sleet and hail, so that I had a wretched night of it, constantly on watch, or being called, and in the dawn, well into the Channel, and with the wind aft, we had everybody on deck and for the first time hoisted our squares’l rig. And it worked. It worked a fair treat, well enough to give us speeds of over 10 knots, a third less with the prop rotating in reverse and generating power on the alternator.