The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,50
the loader or the Bobcat so I could shift the snow and ice. When a machine was finally moved into the workshop after being outside at minus thirty degrees Celsius, the dense steel sucked the warmth from the building. Two more days would pass before the shed and the machine were warm enough to begin work.
Nothing happened quickly. But it was this step-by-step routine that held the pieces of me together and enabled me to play out the actions of life as Tom Mason had known it. Each morning I showered and walked downstairs, one foot after the other, into the dining room. Food tasted like cardboard. There was a tightness in my throat from all the emotions knotted there.
When the light returned, I took to walking on the sea ice within station limits; as the sun grew in strength, I wandered the hills and watched the skies. There was solace to be found in landscapes and in distance and ice. The light was my saviour, and the colours of ice and sky: pinks, mauves and apricots, gradually intensifying to orange, silver and white. Light brought balance. In the shed, work increased. Spring was barely underway but preparations began for the summer season. I started talking to the others again.
And soon the Adelie penguins came tobogganing over the ice.
The first ship arrived in late October.
After seven months of isolation, we made a pretence at excitement about the new arrivals. But dread and anxiety soon took over. None of us was sure we could cope with the invasion. Who would be coming? How would they behave? What changes would they impose on the patterns of our lives? We were ready to prejudge the new expeditioners as insensitive, loud and pushy. And they were all three; how could they not be, after the months of quiet we had lived through, the months of space we had known, and our knowledge of the dark that we could not share? The summerers waltzed in like they owned the world. They violated our peace and privacy. They were boisterous, overly enthusiastic.
I avoided them by immersing myself in unloading the resupply ship. We worked around the clock, snatching meals when we could. The new biologists wafted around the LQ and skied out to the islands. Now that they’d escaped the ship it was as if nothing mattered beyond their leisure. In the dining room, the new crowd was amused by us, not understanding our strange little routines—the anchors that had carried us through the long days of darkness.
When the ship pulled away at the end of resupply, I sat along the wall of the LQ with a few other overwintering men and drank beer, speaking little. It was somehow shocking to watch the young women, some of them drinking too much and flirting outrageously. They danced provocatively and laughed too loudly. The old dieso sitting beside me grunted and stood up with his beer.
‘They shouldn’t be here,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand it. I’m going to my room.’
Our world had transformed: giggling in the corridors, crowds in the computer room, always someone in the dining room, talking and making coffee.
I retreated to the workshop, trying to find normality among the machines. One of the new helicopter engineers came in to book a quad bike. ‘Got your eye on any of the sheilas?’ he asked jovially.
The question floored me. ‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘I have a wife at home.’ Still in denial.
He laughed. ‘I didn’t think any of that mattered down here.’ He winked as I passed him the keys.
As usual, there was no privacy on station. Word quickly spread that I needed cheering up because of my marriage breakdown. People invited me into the field. The new scientists soon learned I was useful. On a remote island, I helped the biologist studying snow petrels. With a different scientist, I captured and tagged Adelie penguins, helping to monitor populations on the icebound islands near station. I also assisted Sarah, who was working on Weddell seals for the summer. She hadn’t worked with Weddells before and she appreciated the advice and experience I’d developed helping out the previous summer.
One night at a party on station, she came to me, drunk, and asked me to dance. But I declined and stayed in my post against the wall, swigging my beer.
‘Come into the field with me again,’ she said over her shoulder, as she swivelled back out to dance. ‘You need to get off station more. And I need a hand.