Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle Page 13

  Annie leaves John Franklin, happy and alive at the end of his book, and switches over to McClintock’s account of his search for the truth about what happened to the ill-fated third expedition to the Arctic.

  The year Annie was born. The year Eldon Dashell lay feverish in his sick room, fifty-nine-year-old John Franklin left England to try and find a passage through the Polar Sea that would join the Atlantic to the Pacific. Franklin was actually the second choice of the admiralty to lead the expedition. The first choice, Sir James Ross, had promised his bride not to undertake any more voyages of exploration. He must have been grateful to his bride for this for the rest of his life, thinks Annie.

  The two ships commissioned for Franklin’s use, the Erebus and the Terror, were fitted with railway steam engines and the bows plated with sheets of iron to break through the ice floes. They were provisioned for three years at sea with an astonishing amount of food that included forty-eight tons of canned and salted meat, and 3,684 gallons of liquor. The ships were to sail west through Lancaster Sound and the Barrow Strait as far as Cape Walker, and then proceed south towards the Bering Strait. If this way proved blocked by ice, it was possible to try a northward approach through the Wellington Channel, between Devon and Cornwallis islands.

  Everything named for England. Why, thinks Annie, looking at the map in McClintock’s book. Why call a chunk of barren, icy land North Somerset? Was it merely a way to reassure themselves that they would be returning to England, that England was, in fact, still near at hand? North Cornwall, Cambridge Bay, Lands End. And then the names that made sense to Annie—Whale Sounds, Fury Point, Cape Farewell, Point Turnagain, the Esquimaux-named Upernavik. And then the name that made no sense, Cape Bunny. Not Cape Rabbit, but Bunny, as though the person who named it were five years old.

  Annie runs her finger around the coast of Beechey Island, where Franklin and his men spent the first winter locked in ice with no sun for four months and temperatures dropping to a cold that killed in a matter of hours. What did they do during those long months of darkness? Read perhaps, from a library of twenty-nine hundred books, administered by a shipboard librarian. Wrote letters home, in the hopes that there’d be a whaling ship to pass them on to, that the letters would make it back to England before the expedition did. Named things, she thinks. Connected themselves to where they were, tamed the wild, unforgiving landscape into something as harmless and friendly as a bunny.

  Two years passed and nothing was heard from the expedition. Lady Franklin began agitating for a rescue expedition, and in 1848 Sir James Ross, the man who had turned down the leadership of the original expedition, commanded a search along the Arctic coast. He found nothing. After Ross, there were searches every year, sometimes more than one at a time, sponsored either by the navy, or the government, or by Lady Franklin. But it wasn’t until McClintock’s expedition in 1858 that there were real answers as to what had happened to the souls aboard the Erebus and the Terror.

  Annie is surprised by McClintock’s book. She had thought that an expedition that had set off in search of Franklin would spend the time sailing towards the Arctic pondering what might have happened to Franklin and his men, imagining their possible fate. But McClintock doesn’t even mention Franklin for the first half of the book. Instead, he talks about what he’s seeing and experiencing, as though he’s on his own scientific survey of the Arctic.

  The glacier serves to remind one at once of Time and of Eternity. Surely all who gaze upon this ice-overwhelmed region, this wide expanse of “terrestrial wreck,” must be similarly assured that here “we have no abiding place.”

  Annie gets up and walks around the bedroom. Her arm has gone numb from where she was lying on it. She shakes it out in front of her body. From Tess’s side of the room Annie’s bed looks adrift, a raft of shadow snugged up against the sheer wall.

  McClintock finally starting talking about Franklin when his ship, the Fox, reached Beechey Island. There they erected a tablet from Lady Franklin.

  This tablet is erected near the spot where they passed their first Arctic winter, and whence they issued forth to conquer difficulties or to die.

  They established a winter base near Bellot Strait and, from there, ventured forth by sled on a series of journeys to determine where Franklin’s men had gone after their first winter. Some of the Esquimaux they met on these forays had relics from the Franklin Expedition—silver cutlery, buttons, bits of lead from the ships—these were bought or bartered back by McClintock and his crew. From interviews with the Esquimaux, McClintock found out the fate of the ships. One had sunk. The other had been forced up onto the ice and crushed to bits. The men had left for the “large river,” taking a lifeboat or two with them. The following winter their bones were found there. One old woman told McClintock, “They fell down and died as they walked along.”

  Annie tries to imagine how strength could just flutter out of a body, softly, like a moth rising in the dusk. It is what happened to her own family. They fell down and died as they walked along. On a road, in Ireland. On the shifting, unsteady pans of ice in northern Canada. At almost the same time. And Annie is the record of her family. She is the cairn they left, what remained for the world to see after they had gone. Franklin’s men left a note under rocks at Point Victory. A few lines on an admiralty report form to say that they’d wintered on Beechey Island, to say that all was well. And then, around the sides of the paper, a report from the second year saying that the ships were deserted, that men had died, including Franklin, that the remaining souls were heading out on April 26, 1848, for the Fish River.

  Annie leans up against the wall by her bed, the strict flat of it hard against her spine. Were there people who saw her family die? Were there those who would remember her as belonging to them?

  McClintock and his crew found one of the twenty-eight-foot boats Franklin’s men had been pushing over the ice towards Fish River. It was lashed onto a crudely fashioned sledge, the whole contraption, according to McClintock’s estimation, in excess of fourteen hundred pounds. Inside the boat were two skeletons, one of a young person, the other of a middle-aged man. The latter was perhaps an officer. The bodies had been obviously disturbed by animals. The sledge, loaded down with many unnecessary items such as silk handkerchiefs, teaspoons, dinner knives, needle-and-thread cases, would have required about seven men to move it over the ice. Had the others gone for help and left these two men, perhaps sick or too weak to come along? The only food in the boat was forty pounds of chocolate and some tea. There was a Bible, a prayer book, and the novel, The Vicar of Wakefield.

  McClintock’s search ended with his placing his own record under the cairn at Point Victory, a record stating all the explorations and discoveries his party had made. Because it was his voyage, thinks Annie, closing the book. John Franklin was just as much a place as Cape Farewell or Point Victory, something to head towards, something to take bearings from, but truly, the journey was McClintock’s.

  All the dead weren’t found. Even with McClintock’s new evidence, there still could have been survivors. And why, thinks Annie, holding The Voyage of the ‘Fox’ in the Arctic Seas against her chest, why have I never questioned Mrs. Cullen’s account of my family’s death? Why could I not believe, as Jane Franklin believed and kept believing, that out there, against all odds, there was perhaps one who had made it through alive. One person. One soul.

  “The boots,” says Annie, when she returns the books on Franklin to Eldon. “The boots are barely imaginable, and they’re perhaps the easiest thing to imagine.”

  “What boots?” Eldon has made their book discussion a formal arrangement. He sits opposite Annie in front of the fire. He has poured them tea.

  “The frozen boots.” Annie notes that there’s not quite enough milk in the pitcher for a second cup of tea. “Franklin and his men had to put on frozen boots every morning and walk across the ice. It is hard enough to have cold feet, but to put cold feet into boots of ice.” She sips her tea. It is a bit odd to be her
e, in the library with Mr. Dashell, talking about books. They are both nervous. But, she thinks, putting her teacup back onto the saucer, they are both enjoying this, too.

  “Frozen boots,” says Eldon. He looks across at Annie, suddenly so grateful that she knows this about Franklin, that she knows some of what he knows of the expeditions. Isabelle, in all their married life, has never once read the same books as he has, has never shown the slightest interest in doing so. “Did you know that when Franklin returned to London after that disastrous first expedition, he was known as the man who had eaten his boots. That’s what was said about him on the streets—‘There goes the man who ate his boots.’”

  “Really?” says Annie. She feels a bit like giggling, but suppresses this urge. Mr. Dashell is eager to please. He is altogether easy. All Annie has to do is to sip her tea and say frozen boots and he will get wiggly with delight.

  Isabelle is not easy. Later, when Annie is helping her pin up prints in the glasshouse, she thinks of this. Isabelle fusses and gets impatient. Isabelle is always convinced she is right. Isabelle is often short with Annie. “Oh, get out of my way,” she’ll say, even though it is she who has bumped into Annie. If that had been Mr. Dashell, he would have apologized and then, in his nervous regret, would have knocked something over.

  But it is to Isabelle that Annie is drawn. Despite Eldon’s kindness, it is Isabelle that Annie truly admires, wants to be like. Isabelle can take charge of the world more capably than any novel’s heroine. Even being next to her in the glasshouse is happiness. Even when Isabelle bosses her around or complains about something, Annie can think of nowhere else she’d rather be. And when Isabelle holds up a print of Annie as Faith to the light, stammering through the glass window pane, and says, “Just look at you,” with real feeling in her voice, Annie can forgive her anything.

  Just before Christmas, Cook decides, finally, to have her carte de visite done. Wilks is to drive her to a photographer in Tunbridge Wells. She models, one last time, for Annie and Tess in the kitchen as she waits for Wilks to hook up the fly and bring it round to the kitchen door.

  In the end Cook has chosen to go as her Sunday-best self. It’s funny, thinks Annie, watching Cook adjust her bonnet for the umpteenth time, but what we think makes us more who we are sometimes makes us less. Cook is cautious in her good clothes, moves around the kitchen carefully, afraid to brush against something that will leave a mark on her.

  “How do I look?” she asks one last time.

  “Very good, missus,” says Tess. But Annie can only nod in agreement. Sadness has closed her throat. Cook has thought about this moment all summer and fall. She has prepared in a hundred different ways. And this ordinary, nervous, frumpy woman in good clothes that have been her good clothes for so long that they’re now out of fashion, this woman is not who she really wants to be. Annie thinks of the photograph in the Bible under her pillow upstairs. Isabelle as Sappho. That look on Isabelle’s face, that knowing, that certainty in the moment. This is what she wishes, standing by the table in the kitchen, this is what she wishes for Cook with all her heart.

  There’s the sound of the horse and cart on the loose stones outside. Cook gives them a last nervous wave. “Well, I’m off, then,” she says, and opens the door.

  When she comes back from town, Cook doesn’t talk much about the experience of having her likeness taken. “It was smooth enough,” she says of the process, and hurries off to change out of her good clothes.

  Later, over a cup of tea in the kitchen, she confesses to Annie how disappointing it was at the photographer’s. “There was a queue,” she says. “Right out into the hall. I had to stand in the landing for ever so long.”

  “Christmas,” says Annie. “It must be the most popular time for likenesses.”

  “Well, I was almost there until Christmas,” says Cook. “And what’s worse is that once I finally made it into the studio, I was rushed through. The whole thing took only a few minutes from start to finish. He didn’t care how I posed. Wouldn’t advise me. He just wanted to get me out of there and be on to the next hapless soul in line.”

  Not like Isabelle, thinks Annie. Perhaps Cook, although she’s always derisive about what takes place in the glasshouse, perhaps she had imagined that her likeness would be taken with as much care and attention as Isabelle lavishes on her models. As Isabelle lavishes on Annie.

  Annie tilts her head up towards the kitchen ceiling. She can almost feel Isabelle’s hands on her chin, carefully moving her head into position. She has never felt rushed or abandoned. In the glasshouse it seems that time sways and stops.

  When Cook gets the photographs back of herself she dutifully gives one to Tess and one to Annie as Christmas presents. But she is disappointed with her carte, disappointed with the stiff, sharp image of herself sitting straight-backed in the leather studio chair. “I look like an old fool,” she says when she hands Annie the carte. “But I have nothing else to give you for Christmas.”

  “It’s beautiful, missus,” says Annie. This isn’t what she’d meant to say, but she feels badly for Cook and wants to help.

  “It’s bad enough without you lying,” says Cook.

  Annie doesn’t know what to do with the carte. It makes her feel sad to look at it. She takes it up to her room and buries it in the bottom of her drawer of underthings. She can always pretend it’s there for safe keeping.

  For Christmas Annie gives Cook some sweets. She doesn’t know what to give Tess, wants to make something for the baby, but thinks that Tess would be annoyed by this. Finally, out of desperadon, she offers to help Tess with some of the laundry work for the remainder of her pregnancy, as bending over the mangle is work that Tess is finding it hard to do with her increasing girth.

  She says this to Tess when they’re in their beds on Christmas Eve. At first she doesn’t think Tess has heard her, and clears her throat to say it again, more loudly. But Tess has heard. “Well,” she says, her voice light with surprise. “That is a gift I can use, Annie Phelan.”

  Annie does not expect anything in return from Tess, knows that Tess doesn’t really like her. So it’s a sweet surprise to wake up Christmas morning and see that Tess has hung a wreath of holly at the foot of Annie’s bed.

  On Christmas morning, after Tess has dressed and left the bedroom, Annie says hurried, furtive prayers in her nightgown, then dresses and goes down to the kitchen.

  The Christmas box from the Dashells consists of material for a new morning dress, two shillings, and some sweets. Isabelle and Eldon have gone to the Hills’ for Christmas dinner so the servants have the day off. Cook roasts a small turkey and they have dinner in the kitchen, complete with gooseberry wine.

  Wilks is there for dinner, and Annie notices that he and Tess aren’t really speaking. Tess looks miserable, keeps her head bent down over her plate throughout the meal. Once she tentatively lays her hand on top of Wilks’s but he shakes it off. Wilks bolts his food, takes an extra bottle of wine with him from the table, and leaves. Shortly afterwards Tess goes upstairs, saying she’s tired out and needs to rest.

  When Annie comes to their room, after washing up for Cook, she can hear the snuffled sounds of Tess crying.

  Annie undresses without a word, climbs into bed, and pulls the covers up to her chin. She can see the holly wreath, dimly, hanging from the foot of her bed. She thinks of the oily green of the leaves, the dark berries like drops of blood. “Thank you for the wreath,” she says. “It’s the best present.”

  There’s a gulp as Tess tries to switch from crying to talking. “I pricked my fingers getting it,” she says. “It wasn’t easy.” She’s quiet for a moment. “I thought you might like it because it’s sort of holy. Isn’t it?” Her voice is small.

  Annie imagines Tess cutting her fingers as she forced the sprigs of holly into a clumsy circle. The sharpness of the leaves sticking like the fine points of loss into her skin. Holy. “Yes,” says Annie. “I think it is.”

  Annie borrows The Vicar of Wakefield from
Eldon.

  She is not expecting it to be such a catalogue of disaster. She had thought that because it was found in the boat with the two dead members of Franklin’s crew, it would be a complement to the Bible also found there. But no, it is not that at all.

  The vicar himself is a rather pleasant man who lives, with his family, in a village in England. The family name is Primrose.The vicar is an ardent supporter of the institution of marriage. He is very encouraging towards those who are considering it, but he also believes that a man must never marry after his wife dies, that there are to be no second marriages. He publishes huge tracts concerning this. Many people don’t agree with him, and are annoyed by his constant reiteration of this subject.

  Life seems good for the vicar, his wife, and their six children, until they suddenly fall upon hard times and have to move from their comfortable home into a small, cramped cottage.

  Calamities always happen suddenly in The Vicar of Wakefield. The novel is like a bad storm and, at the end of it, Annie feels that she has been battered by the wind and rain, beaten down by all the disasters in the story, as sudden as weather. What were they thinking, those dying men on the ice, what were they thinking taking this book with them? Annie imagines them, hunkered down amidst their cargo of silver teaspoons and chocolate, reading to each other from The Vicar of Wakefield. Perhaps they would have marvelled at the terrible events that befell the Primrose family—two daughters stolen, all fortune lost—perhaps they would have, for a while anyway, felt lucky compared to them. For wouldn’t England exist for them as a safe, secure paradise? To imagine something happening there, something of the magnitude of their situation on the ice, would be to acknowledge that there was no safe place, that home was not a carefully preserved idyll, free from danger. And then perhaps, as they grew weaker, and their situation more obviously hopeless, then perhaps they would have relied a litde on the innate cheerfulness and optimism of the vicar—how he always tried to turn misfortune into reason for hope—how he forgave his enemies, forgave the cause of his troubles. He was an example of faith. And although, to Annie, he appeared a trifle foolish and pompous,and she skipped over most of his tedious sermons in the book, perhaps to these dying men his example provided comfort. And perhaps, too, they would not have thought the suddenness of the events in the book unlikely, for is that not what happened to them? A ship sunk, another crushed by ice, a journey across the ice, ice that was never solid ground, that shifted, that was unpredictable so that the very act of walking was dangerous. And now, huddled in the ribs of this boat, they were the living thing, the heartbeat. Around them all the comforts of an English parlour—silver service, a supply of tea that would outlast their lives here. Waiting to die or to be rescued. Were they able to do as the line in The Vicar of Wakefield said, the line that Annie stumbled over and then went back to again. Read our anguish into patience.