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Authors: Amy Sackville
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right to guess that he would turn, from time to time, to the page that his name would one day appear on — as, indeed, it now does, not interleaved but printed and irrevocable. When the editors
called upon her to check the details for the 1912 supplement, the difference between their entry and her own, which she had written with such a proud, light heart over a decade before, was a pain almost too great to bear. The volume was to account for those who had died between 1901 and 1911. It seemed by then a sure assumption. She could not pass the word ‘lost’ and asked John to finish the task for her.
In the photograph all this is in the future; the biographer’s subject has not reached the point of departure, when the myth she’d written for him was to split from the one she had to make do with. He has not yet even entered the fog that would shroud him as he sailed from her. But when it descended, this was the cabin that Edward was to read and write and smoke his evenings away in; this was the cabin in which Emily imagined him, and this is the picture that sits on Julia’s desk, the place that she too will embark from. Smoking his pipe as the fog descends: here is Edward.
Fog and freeze
The earth turned under the ship, relentless, until the shore was swallowed by the horizon. Below decks, he discovered Emily’s last act of love; unpacking his case of warm clothing, he found among the long-johns and the socks a photograph of her, smiling in the snow, a brief pledge of love written on the back (the ink, when it was found with his body, had almost faded). The photograph Lars Nordahl placed on his captain’s breast when he buried him now sits alongside Edward’s on Julia’s desk. It is not formally posed, or if it was, the subject could not be persuaded to contain herself; framed by frosted pine trees, a laughing, flushed young woman (so much younger, thinks Julia, than she herself is now) in a fur-trimmed jacket and hat. This, Julia thinks, is surely Edward’s Emily, as if the picture was taken from an image in his mind. This was the version of her that he was to carry with him. If, when he found it, Edward Mackley shed a tear, it is not for us to judge him, for heroes too love their wives and fear death.
He would soon address his crew. He would commend them for their valour. He would set out the schedule of their days, the programmes of exercise, mealtimes, watches, all the necessary measures to keep minds and bodies shipshape. He knew that with adventure comes exhaustion of the spirit, that awe is eventually tinged with boredom; he had lived already through an Arctic day and he knew the longing for darkness, the ache behind the eyes which one cannot tear away from the ice even as they burn from it. And he knew
that then the night comes, interminable. The captain’s address would not be touched with pain, or dolour, or yearning, however; it was a rousing speech full of ambition. It is there in the ship’s log.
The ship’s log was brought to London by the last of the Norwegian crew. The second diary was found, as we know, along with the telescope at the last camp that Edward and his party made on the ice; the same snow-stained pages that Julia earlier abandoned, filled with frozen regret, the record of the yearning he had denied himself on board. But by then he had no crew to speak of, let alone to speak to, and could afford himself a little honesty.
As the ship headed out into the Barents Sea, the summer fog closed all around them; the Varanger Peninsula had not long vanished over the horizon before everything else vanished too. It was not the clear bright blue that Edward might have hoped for. For five days they passed blindly through it. On deck, the men’s morale was as damp as their clothing; droplets clung to their beards and eyebrows, to be wiped away with a sodden glove. Water ran down their necks, it saturated their skins; soaked cuffs clung about their wrists. They were nothing but leaden smudges
called upon her to check the details for the 1912 supplement, the difference between their entry and her own, which she had written with such a proud, light heart over a decade before, was a pain almost too great to bear. The volume was to account for those who had died between 1901 and 1911. It seemed by then a sure assumption. She could not pass the word ‘lost’ and asked John to finish the task for her.
In the photograph all this is in the future; the biographer’s subject has not reached the point of departure, when the myth she’d written for him was to split from the one she had to make do with. He has not yet even entered the fog that would shroud him as he sailed from her. But when it descended, this was the cabin that Edward was to read and write and smoke his evenings away in; this was the cabin in which Emily imagined him, and this is the picture that sits on Julia’s desk, the place that she too will embark from. Smoking his pipe as the fog descends: here is Edward.
Fog and freeze
The earth turned under the ship, relentless, until the shore was swallowed by the horizon. Below decks, he discovered Emily’s last act of love; unpacking his case of warm clothing, he found among the long-johns and the socks a photograph of her, smiling in the snow, a brief pledge of love written on the back (the ink, when it was found with his body, had almost faded). The photograph Lars Nordahl placed on his captain’s breast when he buried him now sits alongside Edward’s on Julia’s desk. It is not formally posed, or if it was, the subject could not be persuaded to contain herself; framed by frosted pine trees, a laughing, flushed young woman (so much younger, thinks Julia, than she herself is now) in a fur-trimmed jacket and hat. This, Julia thinks, is surely Edward’s Emily, as if the picture was taken from an image in his mind. This was the version of her that he was to carry with him. If, when he found it, Edward Mackley shed a tear, it is not for us to judge him, for heroes too love their wives and fear death.
He would soon address his crew. He would commend them for their valour. He would set out the schedule of their days, the programmes of exercise, mealtimes, watches, all the necessary measures to keep minds and bodies shipshape. He knew that with adventure comes exhaustion of the spirit, that awe is eventually tinged with boredom; he had lived already through an Arctic day and he knew the longing for darkness, the ache behind the eyes which one cannot tear away from the ice even as they burn from it. And he knew
that then the night comes, interminable. The captain’s address would not be touched with pain, or dolour, or yearning, however; it was a rousing speech full of ambition. It is there in the ship’s log.
The ship’s log was brought to London by the last of the Norwegian crew. The second diary was found, as we know, along with the telescope at the last camp that Edward and his party made on the ice; the same snow-stained pages that Julia earlier abandoned, filled with frozen regret, the record of the yearning he had denied himself on board. But by then he had no crew to speak of, let alone to speak to, and could afford himself a little honesty.
As the ship headed out into the Barents Sea, the summer fog closed all around them; the Varanger Peninsula had not long vanished over the horizon before everything else vanished too. It was not the clear bright blue that Edward might have hoped for. For five days they passed blindly through it. On deck, the men’s morale was as damp as their clothing; droplets clung to their beards and eyebrows, to be wiped away with a sodden glove. Water ran down their necks, it saturated their skins; soaked cuffs clung about their wrists. They were nothing but leaden smudges
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