Gone with the Penguins, page 25
The pain comes in waves. I will allow myself a period of grief for Pip, for the change he wrought in me, for his short, incredibly sweet, mostly mysterious life. For everything he represented.
Time ticks by.
I rally a little.
Pip is dead, but his message of hope lives on, and the lesson that he and all the penguins have taught me: to be brave. To carry on, no matter what happens.
And that is exactly what I shall do.
37
Veronica
Centaurus research station, Antarctic mainland
OUR STOP ON Locket Island lasted just three days. Now we have left Dietrich and Mike to their research and have travelled south again, via icebreaker and helicopter, to the eastern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is wholly different to the Locket Island set-up. The new study centre, Centaurus (named after a constellation), stands on the sea ice and is a spidery structure made up of a series of pods on legs. Patrick informs us that the legs can be lengthened or shortened according to snow accumulation. Moreover, each pod can be towed to a new location when the seasons change and the building gets too close to the retreating edge of the ice shelf. The station includes an aircraft hangar, garages for snow vehicles, and several laboratories as well as living accommodation. It is buzzing with activity from some seventy scientists, technicians and other workers who assist in the daily running of the place.
The interior is well fitted out and comfortable, with even some luxuries such as a small cinema and a snooker table. Once again I have a bedroom to myself, and we are all treated like royalty. I suspect this might be something to do with a certain knight of the realm who is currently staying as well.
It was a touching reunion with Sir Robert Saddlebow. I shunned his embrace, fearing, as with Terry, that it might prompt in me an excessive outburst of emotion, but his quietly positive presence is a balm to my aching soul.
Today is 27 October, we are approaching the end of our walk and victory is within sight. I shall at last set eyes on that remotest and most impressive of all penguin species: the Emperor. In spite of all this – and a Herculean effort on my part – my former zest for Operation PIP seems to have deserted me. Where is that thrill I should be feeling? Gone, all gone.
We have completed many steps on our tour inside the building, but Eileen, Daisy and I must go and see the Emperors whilst the weather holds.
Our first sortie outside is on Ski-Doos. We are arranged in several vehicles, for Sir Robert and the film crew are also anxious not to miss any opportunity, and, of course, Patrick and Terry come too. Well muffled in our polar gear, we whistle across flat plains of snow strewn with icy monoliths. Some crouch low like humble cottages, others rise in elaborate facades, towers and castellations. The wind whips the snow into a fine mist, blurring their borders, transforming them to craggy ghosts. Daisy’s pink scarf streams behind her. In the distance I can just make out a couple of dark beaky figures who trudge rhythmically towards a larger group.
We slide to a standstill and the engines give way to silence. No machines are permitted within a kilometre of the colony because the birds mustn’t be disturbed by the noise. The last part must be trekked on foot, which suits our purposes well.
Stiff from the ride, I pull myself into action. The others cluster round.
‘It’s minus sixteen degrees C,’ Patrick tells us helpfully. ‘Nice and toasty.’
We struggle through knee-high snow, huddling in our gear, marvelling that we are finally here.
Sir Robert, always at my side, lifts an arm and points. ‘There you are, Veronica.’ His voice resonates with passion for his subject and I’m conscious of his warm, wonderfully soothing Scottish accent. ‘There’s the sight you were longing for when we chatted at the Cloverleaf in Edinburgh. The stuff of dreams.’
It is a group of three. The parents are stout, solid beings, even taller than I had imagined; colossal, as birds go. They arc over the chick, tummy to tummy, proud and protective. The chick reaches its head upwards. Flippers enfold, heads nuzzle, beaks touch. It is a scene of exquisite tenderness.
Eileen and Daisy have bunched around me now. The three of us look on, mesmerized.
And slowly the swirl of snowflakes clears, and reveals hundreds upon hundreds of similar families grouped behind them, smudges of grey, black, yellow and white blending into the whiter white. Tiny chicks peep out from brood pouches, insulated by their parents’ padding. Toddlers waddle about in fuzzy fleeces, bedraggled wet fur on their nether regions, dragging tiny tails behind them. Adults look on or usher them forward. Every mother and father is swollen with pride, brimming with devotion; almost unbearable sweetness in the snow.
Daisy turns to Patrick. ‘Can we find our own penguins? Is Veronica Penguin here, and Eileen Penguin and Daisy Penguin?’
‘They’re here somewhere, for sure,’ Patrick assures her. ‘Let me see.’ He consults his gadget that can trace their exact whereabouts. ‘OK, we need to bear right and walk a little further. Are you up to it, Granny?’
‘Indeed I am.’
We progress further, step-by-step in the deep, wet whiteness.
And finally he indicates another tight group. Our three penguins, of course, look identical to all the others except that, as well as the trackers, they have colourful flipper tags to help them stand out. Veronica has a scarlet one, Eileen a mauve one, Daisy a pink one. Veronica Penguin stands tall and statuesque, wearing her red flipper band almost like … Well, almost like an ambassador’s sash. Eileen is a little plumper and is pottering around absent-mindedly, whilst Daisy is busy chasing a floating feather. I have to say, I am much enamoured with this soft, pudgy chick, her body a mass of fluff, her face white-cheeked, curious, bright-eyed. She looks squashier and cuddlier than any soft toy.
Daisy is understandably ecstatic. We pose for photographs with the penguins, and Miriam even sets up her tripod and takes some footage with the BBC equipment, under Sir Robert’s instruction. ‘We might be able to use it for the programme in some way, who knows?’
Sunlight threads through the clouds, highlighting the dips and dents in the surface of the snow, throwing dark shadows behind us. The blues become bluer, the whites whiter. Even with our sunglasses on, the dazzle is extreme. The penguins steam and glow.
Terry is now chatting with Eileen, whilst Patrick talks science with Sir Robert a little way ahead.
Antarctica, I recall, has a way of stripping back your shell and exposing the rawness underneath. For a single glance at Daisy tells me that something is going on. Her teeth are clenched, her face puckered up in agony. This is not homesickness, as I had presumed was her issue, but something else, something more akin to fear.
‘What is it, dear girl? Tell me.’ The words are a command now, not a request. ‘How can I help you if I don’t know what it is?’
She catches her breath, trying to hold it in, but it won’t and can’t stay inside her any longer. It blasts out into the frozen air on a jet of steam, a cry like the keening of a seagull.
‘It’s seeing all the families.’
I reach for her little hand. It clutches on to mine as if it will never, ever let go. Our skin cannot touch because of the chunky gloves, but I hope she can feel my aching fondness for her, my wish for her happiness, my desire to understand. This should be a joyous time for her. Not for me – not now – but surely for her?
‘Mum and Dad don’t love me any more.’ The words are not uttered with a wail of despair but in a resigned voice, as if every emotion has ripped through her and left her with nothing left to feel. ‘They only love Noah,’ she adds, as if this is any explanation.
I stoop a little to look straight into her eyes, my knees and back protesting at the movement. The bevelled snow creaks as my weight shifts.
‘How can you say that, Daisy? They adore you. They love you more than you could possibly conceive.’
How could they not?
But she, poor child, has latched on to the idea that they don’t. A shiver runs through me. No wonder she’s choked up at these scenes of penguin devotion.
Daisy starts listing things on the fingers of her free hand. ‘They let me come away with you and Eileen; they didn’t want me with them, you see. And they keep getting presents for Noah, really big ones, like the drum kit. And Mum went on that trip to Switzerland with Noah. She’s never taken me anywhere.’
‘But she did,’ I argue. ‘She took you to the Falklands last time!’
She stomps her feet with exasperation. ‘Yes, but that was with the whole filming team and you and Sir Robert, and only because she thought she had to.’
I can see it might have appeared that way. I was very persuasive at the time, I seem to remember.
‘And,’ she continues, ‘and they’re tired of all the years they had to give me when I was ill, all the trips to hospital, all the home educating, all the crying in the night. They went off me then, but they had to look after me, didn’t they, because I had cancer? Now they don’t, and they just want to be with Noah. Noah Noah Noah.’
Her brother is a sweet little boy, but I have never noticed Gavin and Beth showing a particular favouritism towards him. Still, Daisy has a big imagination; no doubt something has been taken out of context or blown out of proportion.
Her eyes are fixed on a parent penguin bending low to nuzzle its child.
‘I just want them to be proud of me,’ she blurts, ‘but I don’t matter to them at all any more.’
Ah, so that is what lies behind her avid commitment. She desperately wants not only to save the penguins or to come on an incredible voyage, but to win her parents’ attention.
‘They are proud of you. So very, very proud,’ I tell her firmly.
I am about to add more when she speaks again. ‘And it’s not just that.’
Her mouth moves but I can hear nothing except the roaring wind and the cries of penguins. ‘Speak up, girl.’
Her brows knit furiously and she yells it out. ‘Mum and Dad are splitting up.’
‘No!’ I exclaim.
From everything I’ve seen and heard, it seems impossible. I am flabbergasted … But one never truly knows what goes on in other people’s relationships.
Daisy is nodding now, quite sure.
‘They haven’t told me but I know anyway. Because Dad is buying that place in Jedburgh and Mum is staying in Bolton and because of what Patrick said.’
I think back. I seem to remember something Patrick mentioned on Bolder Island, crammed into a car, and soon after that Daisy cried when we were viewing the King penguins.
My face is numb and my nose is beginning to run. It is too hard to have this conversation out here in the cold, with the wind biting into us.
‘I’m sure that can’t be right,’ I declare, ‘but I will most certainly find out.’
I can do this easily. Patrick and Gavin are very close friends, or ‘best mates’ or ‘buddies’ or engaged in a ‘bromance’, or whatever man-speak is for these close platonic relationships between males. I shall quiz Patrick once we are back in the warm. He will undoubtedly know what’s going on.
38
Veronica
Centaurus research station, Antarctic mainland
PATRICK PRESSES MUGS of tea into our hands. He is good at making tea, a fact for which I will never cease to be grateful. It is perhaps the most important requisite in a grandson.
‘About Daisy,’ he says.
Last night I took him aside and asked what he knew of his Bolton friends and their family circumstances. He said he’d check it out, but ‘as far as I know, Gav and Beth are sound’.
Let’s hope he can confirm it now.
He has summoned Eileen and me to a small, private lounge. We are both seated on neon-blue blocky armchairs, the sort that are almost impossible to get out of once you have sunk in. Patrick takes a wooden upright chair, turns it and sits on it the wrong way round with the back between his knees. Why he cannot sit on a chair forwards like a normal person I cannot comprehend, but there we are.
‘So I messaged Gav,’ he begins. ‘And today I got a long email back from him and an even longer one from Beth. Then one from them both jointly. Explaining to me, so that I can talk to Daisy or tell you, whatever seems right. I thought I’d broach it with you first because you know her best.’
He pauses.
‘Proceed, Patrick. We shall endeavour to break any news to her in the kindest and most suitable fashion.’
‘Don’t stress; you won’t need to break anything. They’ve emailed her themselves, but it’s best we all know what’s going on.’
Eileen nods vigorously, and I see that her gossip antennae are out. It is forgivable, though. She cares for Daisy as much as I do.
Patrick blows on his tea then looks up. ‘The fact is, Gav and Beth have been up against a few problems. Beth had a bad case of anxiety and, knackered from all the years caring for Daisy, she’s had a near collapse herself. She had to go for a load of medical tests. She didn’t let on to Gav, not wanting him to worry, but it turned out not to be anything too dire, thank God. She just needs to rest up. As for Gav, he was distracted, overworking with the bike business, trying to expand, trying to provide for his family, but that meant being away from them. The second bicycle shop in Jedburgh is no more than that. The flat above is somewhere they can stay occasionally, not a place for him to live away from Beth, which is what Daisy thought (especially when I mentioned he’d employed a guy to man the Bolton shop). He’s been so wrapped up with it all, he didn’t realize Beth was struggling. The two of them have worked through the issues now, though. And they’re categorically staying together.’
Eileen interjects a ‘Phew!’
Patrick continues. ‘They’re both besotted with Daisy, of course. But she’s had a mountain of attention because of her illness, and because of you, Granny – and they knew her brother, Noah, must be feeling relatively neglected, which is why they’ve been lavishing him with treats. Which, of course, Daisy noticed. When they let her come on this trip she decided they must be trying to get rid of her (that’s Daisy logic. Sounds like she didn’t exactly give them much choice!). Anyhow, I’m sure they will have explained it to her just fine, but we’re all here for her if she needs to talk it through, right?’
‘Right,’ says Eileen. ‘I’m so glad Gav and Beth are staying together. It’s important for the children … and I know those two love each other, truly, madly, deeply. Not like Doug and me.’
We turn our eyes on her. Doug has not come up in conversation recently.
‘Whatever do you mean, Eileen?’
For a split second I think she is going to cry, but she doesn’t.
‘Doug has been seeing another woman behind my back.’
The words have come out simply, without any hint of accusation or acrimony. She produces a long sigh, pulls herself up, paces the length of the room. She is manifesting a strength and determination that I’m sure were never there before.
‘You knew?’ I ask, astounded.
She stops, frozen to the spot, and stares at me.
‘You knew?’ she echoes.
I’m flooded with a sudden and startling fondness for her. This stalwart woman who has turned up to clean The Ballahays and fetch and carry and organize my appointments and sort out recyclables from non-recyclables and countless other menial tasks over the years – she has always been there for me, yet I have scarcely noticed her.
It is time – it seems that time is overdue – for me to tell her what I saw that afternoon on my wet walk in Ayrshire, before all this began.
I reveal now how I witnessed her husband with the blonde (peroxide – that’s the word) and deemed it unfitting to tell her but decided to take her out of the situation, hoping the rapscallion would grow to appreciate her.
She snatches a breath. ‘Gosh, Mrs McCreedy. I don’t know what to say. That’s … That’s kind. And thoughtful of you.’ She sniffs. ‘And there was I thinking you needed me so badly when you didn’t actually need me at all.’
This is not turning out well. Her eyes are moistening. Yet the emotion seems to be more about me than about Doug.
‘I do need you, Eileen,’ I admit. ‘I need you far more than I realized. And I need you now more than ever.’ Not just for the physical assistance she offers, I realize, but for moral support, too.
‘Well, that means a lot to me, Mrs McCreedy. I won’t deny it.’
‘But how come you already knew about your husband’s infidelity?’
She swallows loudly. ‘Oh, I’ve known ever since that day we saw the stag and I got soaked in the rain. The day there was the first viewing of The Ballahays. You remember I popped back home early to change out of my wet things? A car was driving off from our house just as I arrived. This brassy, skinny, tarty-looking blonde woman was behind the wheel, and she turned her head to stare at me as our cars passed. It was such a look: pity and spite and superiority, all mixed up. Doug was bundling the bed linen into the washing machine when I went in. I mean, when has he ever done that before? It wasn’t hard to put two and two together, what with that funny smell, and the long hours he was spending at the oatcake factory and the way he kept checking out his muscles and wearing his nice shirt. It wasn’t normal.
‘I knew he was making a fool out of me. But I just felt he was right, because I was a fool, and how did I ever think he could love silly old Eileen anyway? And I thought, maybe he doesn’t love me but at least we’re used to each other and cosy together and I bet she wouldn’t make him porridge every single morning and not mind the fact he sometimes wears the same underpants all week. She just wants him for one thing and one thing only. Well, maybe two things only. Maybe she wants his money, but she’ll soon realize he doesn’t have much of that, even if he does go and buy her expensive knick-knacks. That’s never going to last, is it? And the other thing … well, I can’t believe that was anything to write home about, either. And I thought, he’ll come back to me and I’ll be there waiting for him, I’ll forgive him because that’s the Christian thing to do … and I had no idea what else to do, anyway. That’s what I was thinking.’
