Sun at Midnight Read online

  ‘Fag,’ the red man sneered.

  ‘Outside,’ Rook answered.

  The night was thick and hot. At first Rook could hardly move against the pressure of ennui and disgust, but when the man’s fist smashed almost casually into the corner of his eye the pain lit a phosphor-white blaze in his head. He hit out, and hit again. The man went down instantly and when Rook looked at him he saw that his face was split wide open. There were teeth and bone in a mess of blood, and Rook was certain that he had killed him. Sick horror and a wash of memories rose up in him and he staggered backwards, hands up in a vain effort to shut out the sight.

  He left the man lying on the ground. He left Edith still inside the bar somewhere and he made his way home in painful and blurred slow motion. On the floor of the bathroom were the prints of Edith’s feet outlined in talcum powder. He rubbed them out with the side of his fist as the floor seemed to tilt sideways and the man’s smashed face stared out at him from the mirror on the wall.

  When Rooker woke up again he was lying fully dressed on the bed with Edith asleep beside him. He squinted at her, because he could only open one eye. There were black pools of mascara darkening her eye sockets and her breath bubbled through her slack lips. The light in the room was dirty grey and the air was hot to breathe. He sat up very slowly, wincing with pain. There was dried blood on the pillow where his head had rested. Sour-tasting saliva flooded his mouth.

  I have to get away from here, from this, he thought.

  Before he could move again, Edith stirred. She blinked at him and briefly focused. ‘Dear Jesus,’ she muttered.

  Rooker stood up and slowly turned his head to the mirror on her dresser. His left eye was puffed up, the skin crimson and shiny. His eyelashes were crusted black spikes embedded in the bruised tissue. A ragged cut with oozing margins ran from the centre point of his cheekbone to the corner of his eye. The man must have been wearing a heavy ring. He put his fingers up to touch the place, memories of the night before coming back to him in small unwelcome fragments. Edith lay motionless.

  ‘What happened?’ he mumbled. He meant what had happened to the man he had killed.

  ‘You ran off and left me in some shitty bar with a bunch of creeps, that’s what happened.’

  ‘The guy, Edith. Is he dead?’

  She coughed and then groaned. ‘Dead? No. But he needed some help getting home. So did I, but you’d gone.’

  Rooker gathered his thoughts.

  Of course the man wasn’t dead. Of course not. Immediately he felt reprieved. He had a chance after all, provided he grabbed it immediately. Leave now. The words pulsed in his head, taking on neon-bright colours that hurt the insides of his eyes. Just leave, get out of here and away from this.

  He went to the closet and took out his old canvas holdall. He began stuffing clothes and books into it.

  Edith raised herself on one elbow. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You can see what I’m doing.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  It came into his mind how much he hated we. All the bars and street corners, all the beds and apartments in different cities that were contained in that small word, all the arguments and reconciliations and half-hearted bargains struck and reneged upon, not just with Edith but with other women, and to what end?

  ‘We aren’t going anywhere. I am.’ He flung the last handful of his belongings into his bag and zipped it up.

  ‘Fuck you, Rook.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’ His wallet was missing, he realised. Somewhere between the bar and his bed last night he had lost it, or more likely someone had stolen it. It didn’t matter. Edith sat up. Tears started in her eyes and spilled out, running down through the black patches of yesterday’s make-up. Even when she was looking ugly Edith was beautiful.

  “Bye,’ he said, hoisting his bag.

  ‘Wait,’ she shouted, but he was already at the door. ‘I hate you,’ Edith screamed at his back. ‘I hate you.’

  Rooker had gone first to Miami, where a friend of his from back in Christchurch had a small airfreight business. He was doing well. Rook stayed with him as his eye turned from red to black and then faded through purple as the cut healed, although raggedly, because he hadn’t bothered to have it stitched. He had the idea that Ken might also give him some work, but instead he pointed out quite accurately that Rook hadn’t logged any flying hours in three years and he would need some refresher training before any outfit could take him on.

  ‘Back to pilot school?’ Rook frowned. ‘I’m forty-six years old.’

  ‘Listen, mate. We both know you can fly. But this business is one hundred per cent above board and without current certification you don’t step inside one of my planes. Get it?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Rook shrugged.

  ‘Don’t mention it. And you might consider throttling back on the booze as well.’

  From Miami Rooker went to Rio, mostly because he had never been there before. After Rio he went to Buenos Aires, but restlessness gnawed at him and he found himself moving further and further south, as if he was being driven away from the populous centre of the world and out to the margins, where he belonged. He didn’t try to swim against the current. He passed through Rio Gallegos and then, because there was still somewhere further to go, yet more remote, he drifted on down to Ushuaia. The southernmost town in South America clings on to the world between the tailbone of the Andes and the mountainous seas of the Drake Passage.

  Now Edith had found him.

  ‘Would I have come all this way if I didn’t care about you?’ she murmured. She touched the tight red scar that linked his eye to his cheekbone. ‘Rook?’

  ‘I don’t want this.’

  Her fingers were unpicking the tongue of his belt from the heavy buckle.

  ‘Not even for old times’ sake?’ Her lips and eyelids looked a little swollen and he remembered they always used to thicken this way when they made love. It was an unwelcome recollection, but it still excited him.

  Edith’s fingers travelled downwards. ‘But you do, don’t you?’ she whispered. ‘See?’

  Well, then, since you’re here, we might as well, Rook thought. If this is what you’ve come all this way for.

  He propelled her backwards and hoisted her on to his bed. Immediately she twisted her legs round his waist to hold him. Her head tipped back and her black hair fanned out on his pillow. Before he closed his eyes he saw that there was a triumphant glint in her smile.

  Afterwards she nestled up against him, as light as a bird.

  ‘We’ll find a better place than this, Rook. I’ll start looking tomorrow. Maybe one of those neat little tin-roof houses, painted bright blue or red, like I saw on the way up in the taxi? Then, once I’ve got it fixed up, I’ll look for some work. Perhaps in one of the hotels, or in the tourist office? I’ll have a blue suit, maybe, and a name badge. That would be funny, wouldn’t it? I’ll say to the tourists, “Welcome to Ushuaia. You have a nice day.” Then I’ll come on home and cook us some dinner. We’ll have a bottle of wine, watch some TV, then go to bed. Don’t you think?’

  Rook thought this scenario was about as realistic as Edith deciding that she was going to be elected president and planning what to do about the White House drapes.

  The room was quiet and the silence outside was unbroken. Rook sat and listened to nothing. It was only on paydays that there was much noise around these streets at night.

  Edith fell asleep, curled up around her small fists. He moved softly, putting on his coat and picking up his boots from beside the stove. At the doorway he hesitated, looked back at her and wondered if he was going to feel a flicker of affection or tenderness. Nothing came. He might have been looking at a stranger asleep on a bench at a train station, or at a picture of a woman in a magazine.

  He was usually impervious to the cold, but as he let himself out of the front door and walked out into the street Rooker was shivering.

  In a bar, a different place from the one he had visited earlier but th
e same in almost every respect, he met a man he knew.

  Dave was a big, shaggy blond New Zealander who did odd jobs to fund his sailing and mountaineering habits. ‘They’re hiring down south, you know,’ he told Rooker.

  The only place south of Ushuaia was the Antarctic continent.

  Rook took another mouthful of his drink. ‘Yeah? McMurdo?’

  McMurdo was the American polar research station down on the Ross Ice Shelf. Rooker had worked there for a brief summer season when he was in his early twenties. It had been a dull interlude. He had spent most of his time driving a shuttle bus between the gritty main street of the base and the airfield a couple of miles away. His few other memories mostly involved off-duty hours spent in a windowless bar. But it was watching the helo and fixed-wing pilots swooping away, lifting off the airfield and into the limitless white, that made him realise that he wanted to be a flyer himself.

  Dave shook his head. ‘Nope. It’s a new station, some rich guy’s bought a redundant base off the Brits and he’s tooling it up to be run for, whatchacallit, in Europe? The EU?’

  Rooker laughed. ‘Needs something to spend his money on, does he?’

  ‘I guess. Sullavan, that’s his name. I came across the site on the net when I was surfin’ this morning. Sounded kinda interesting, in a crazy way.’

  It did, Rooker thought. Keep going, that was the idea. Keep going, while some place even further away still beckons.

  He remembered how remote McMurdo had seemed, ringed by the ice and overlooked by the cone of Mount Erebus. In comparison, Ushuaia felt like a shimmering metropolis at the very epicentre of the world.

  Dave was saying that if he hadn’t fancied heading away to Byron Bay for a summer’s surfing and sailing, he might have given it a try.

  ‘Is that right?’

  Rooker bought him another beer and a whisky for himself. He had a long night to while away.

  In the end he stayed up until the last bar closed. Dave had said goodnight and gone home hours earlier, but Rooker banged on his door until he got up and let him in to doze in an armchair. When the morning finally came he didn’t show up for work. At 10 a.m., unshaven but sourly sober, he was waiting for the locutorio to open. Ahead of him in the line was a tourist couple holding a map open against the wind, the first arrivals of the summer’s migration.

  Paula, the locutorio manager, came up the concrete steps and unlocked the door. She flashed him a smile and gave him the best terminal in exchange for three pesos. Rooker logged on and began the search for Lewis Sullavan’s polar website.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a warm, still day. There were pools of deep shadow under the great trees and the river reflected the light like a sheet of crumpled tinfoil. Drawn by the day’s brilliance, Alice Peel had left her desk on an impulse and walked out into the University Parks. She moved slowly, letting the sun beat on the top of her head and the back of her neck. Once she stretched her arms out in front of her, absently noting the pallor of her skin. It was a weekday and it felt odd but distinctly pleasant to be wandering around in the middle of the afternoon. There were only a few other strolling or lounging figures dotted against the wide swath of grass. There was almost another month to go before the students returned and the academic year slipped into gear once more.

  The scent of mown grass mingled with dust from the path. It had been a dry summer and the margins of the leaves were nibbled with brown. When she glanced up into the blue sky she saw a contrail sketched by the pinpoint of an aircraft. She wondered briefly where the plane was headed, with its cargo of passengers and their expectations. The speculation faded gently in her mind, like the vapour itself dissolving against the sky.

  When the path reached the river she turned left to follow the curve of the bank. Ahead of her a footbridge and its reflection merged to make an O, the lower half blurred like a winking eye. She listened to the slow beat of her own footfalls and then to the tinny scratching of distant music. The scratching grew steadily louder and a punt rounded a bend in the river. Framed in the bridge’s O, it turned watery furrows of pewter and olive-green as it surged closer. A girl was vigorously poling. When she lifted the pole between thrusts, droplets ran down her arm and beaded the smooth wood, then struck silvery chips out of the water’s surface. The punt’s four or five passengers lolled on the cushions, laughing up at her. Their voices cut across the music.

  The girl’s T-shirt rode up to reveal a tattoo on her belly. The punt was close enough for Alice to see that the design was a butterfly before she realised that the man sitting on the flat prow with his back to her was Peter. The thick hair was his, and the skull’s distinctive architecture beneath it, and the faded shirt was the one she had washed yesterday and hung out to dry on the line in the back garden. He was leaning back, supporting his weight on his splayed hands. The unexpected sight of him made her heart jump.

  The punt drew level. The voices and the laughter were loud, raised over the blare of music. The girl with the pole didn’t glance at her. The long craft slid by, stirring the smell of mud and weeds mingled with boat varnish.

  Peter’s head idly tilted, then he caught sight of Alice, already receding on the riverbank. He sat upright. ‘Al! Hello, Al!’

  He scrambled to his feet, windmilling his arms at her. The punt rocked wildly and he danced barefoot on the slippery wood. She caught a brief glimpse of surprise like a flaw in the ready glitter of his smile.

  ‘Aaaaa-al,’ he shouted again. He was already into a jump, knees drawn up to his chest, the smile still seeming to hang in the air as his limbs hit the water. A plume of glittering spray shot into the air to the accompaniment of shrieks from the punt’s passengers. The girl didn’t shout. She stood looking back over her shoulder, her weight resting on one hip so that her body made a graceful curve against the willow trees on the opposite bank. The pole trailed in her hand.

  Peter’s head broke the water and he struck out towards Alice. A minute later he hauled himself on to the bank. Grinning and dripping, he shook himself like a huge dog. Dark droplets of water spattered the dust.

  ‘Hi,’ he gasped to Alice. “Bye!’ he called after the punt as it slid away.

  Disregarding his sopping clothes, Peter swept her into his arms. A watery kiss landed on her cheek.

  ‘Pete,’ she said. She wasn’t surprised. The shouting, the impetuous leap into the water, they were all typical of him. But she felt disquiet wrinkling her usual smooth tolerance of his extravagant behaviour. The declining sun shone straight into her eyes, causing her to frown. ‘Who were they?’

  He waved the arm that wasn’t attached to her, spinning out more drops to pockmark the dust. ‘Students.’

  ‘I thought you were teaching today.’

  Peter was an artist. He built big cuboid sculptures of tubes and wire and twisted metal that also incorporated found objects like pram frames and tailors’ dummies. He didn’t sell a lot of his work and he taught an art summer school for extra money.

  ‘We were playing hookey. And I thought you were working. Hey. Since we’re both not working, let’s go and have tea somewhere.’

  ‘But you’re wet.’

  ‘You’re dry enough for both of us.’ He kissed her again, on the tip of her nose. ‘Lovely and dry and warm. Are you hungry? Come on. Scones and cream. You know you want to.’

  She smiled at him. There was a café near the gates of the Parks. They walked there together, Peter comically wincing whenever his bare feet encountered a sharp stone.

  On the way they met a sculptor who rented the studio next to Peter’s. Pete introduced him to Alice and they lingered to talk.

  ‘I was in a punt, Alice was on the bank, so what could I do but jump in and swim to her?’ Peter laughed as he explained.

  ‘Er, pole in to the bank and just step ashore?’ Mark was literal-minded.

  ‘You have no soul,’ Peter rebuked him.

  They ended up heading for the café together.

  Alice walked beside Mark and Peter sh
uffled backwards ahead of the two of them so he could see and talk at the same time. As they passed a builder’s skip outside the park gates he noticed a typist’s chair with the padded seat and back support missing. He hoisted it by the metal claw foot and carried it away with him, spinning the shaft as he talked.

  There was a table free in the little row on the pavement outside the café and they crowded round it. Peter took off his shirt and draped it over his salvaged chair skeleton. His arms and shoulders were well developed from lugging heavy materials and oxyacetylene welding gear. Steam rose gently from his damp trousers.

  When it arrived, Alice poured the tea. The others were talking about art.

  She half listened to a heated conversation she seemed to have been overhearing ever since she had known Peter. In her experience art always appeared to involve arguments. It was messily subjective. To Pete, one piece of work might be magnificent, enormously impressive, and another might be timid, derivative shit or mere fusty doodling (to employ his vocabulary), but Alice could never work out which was going to be which, or if there was any empirical evidence on which to base these opinions. She found it difficult to predict what Pete was going to admire and what he would dismiss, and whenever she thought she had mastered one critical vocabulary so they might at least discuss the matter, the entire language was prone to change.

  In the end it came down to a matter of taste, she believed, and there was no measuring or calibrating taste.

  Science was different. As a scientist herself and the child of scientists, Alice had reason and logic in her blood. Knowledge meant measurement, demonstration, proof. Theories could be postulated, but it was necessary to back them up with solid data. Evidence was searched for and analysed, and knowledge slowly but steadily built up, tiny accretions of it accumulating in layers to make solid bulwarks of unassailable fact. There was debate and there were opposing theories, of course, and there was international and personal competition, but the main thrust was mutually constructive and collaborative. Unlike art.