The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,52
Then we pulled closed the blackout curtains and slipped into our sleeping bags on opposite bunks. The wind echoed in the vents and buffeted the walls of the hut. It was quiet inside. Quiet and safe. I lay awake listening to Sarah breathe, feeling the night around me, thinking of Debbie at home in bed with a man I didn’t know.
Like a shadow, Sarah came across the room. I had thought she was asleep, but she must have heard my ragged breathing and felt the weight of my grief. She unzipped my sleeping bag and lay down beside me beneath the cocoon of feathers. Her hands were gentle, running up and down my arms. Her body was a warm entanglement.
I didn’t want to feel desire, yet I was unhinged by the soft touch of her fingers tracing my cheeks and lips. When she kissed me, I struggled to hold back, but she felt me rise even without touching me. I was too broken to refuse.
She was refuge.
My favourite field hut at Davis Station is the melon at Trajer Ridge. It’s shaped like a watermelon—hence the name. To get there you walk out from station over the undulating brown hills. You climb over saddles and walk through rocky valleys, until suddenly you rise above a crumbling ridgeline and see light shimmering on a secret lake tucked below. Beneath the spacious sky you wander down to the lake’s edge and squat by the still water. Early in the season the lake is locked by ice and laced with strings of ascending bubbles. By late spring it has melted to a mirror of light.
After you leave the lake, you bumble over endless rock fields and snowdrifts, descending gradually out of the hills until you step onto frozen Ellis Fjord. This is when you strap on the crampons that have been bumping and clinking against your pack, and begin crunching over the long flat drudgery of ice, working up blisters on your heels.
On a still day, the reflected light is hot. You sweat and have to stop to shed layers. Everything is quiet. When you start moving again, all you can hear is the sound of your breathing and the scratch of your spikes. The hills rise around you, and occasionally, along the edge of the fjord where ice meets rock, you find small pools, smooth as glass, melted by the sun.
At the end of the fjord the land climbs towards the plateau. You trudge up a long ridge with grand views across the desolate snow-patched Vestfolds. On a clear morning, the far hills are dark against the turgid blue of the sky. By afternoon, the light washes out and flattens the landscape, dissecting distance.
Cresting the ridge, you see the red dome of the hut, balanced on a slab of rock below. It’s attached to the earth by wire, to anchor it in the fierce blast of blizzards and katabatic winds. Beyond, the plateau stretches white. It’s a relief to step inside the hut and take off your pack. On the deck, you open a beer and sit in clean dry socks and thermals, watching the light wash over the hills until the cold drives you inside to cook dinner and read, listening to the voice of the wind escalating in the wires. At night, you slip into your sleeping bag and wait for sleep to find you. The wind buffets the walls and sings in the cables. You hear it whining in the vents, juddering at the door. Within the hut you are safe, curled up within your bag. You could be floating in a womb.
That is how Sarah made me feel in the aftermath of my marriage collapse. Through Christmas and over the summer, she continued to find excuses to invite me to assist her in the field. And, like a dog, I continued to follow her. Rumour quickly bound us together; this was good for Sarah, as she was safe on station, largely immune from flirtation and propositions. On the whole, there was no ill will towards me. We were discreet and people knew what I’d been through, they knew I had suffered. But questions accompanied me wherever I went. What was Sarah like in bed? How was it that I was the lucky guy? And how did I feel knowing Sarah had a boyfriend back home?
Sarah never mentioned her boyfriend to me. Other girls had photos of their boyfriends plastered over the pinboards in their rooms, but Sarah’s photos were