When the Night Comes Read online

  “I don’t like to make French onion soup,” he said. “So many onions! It tastes so sweet, but it comes from pain!”

  I had never had French onion soup. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t like the sound of it, but when Bo’s eyes were clear and he had washed his hands and set the big pot on the gas ring, he added a whole packet of butter and the smell of the onions gently sweating in the butter made me change my mind about the soup.

  There was garlic, lots of crushed garlic, and then more butter. Stock from another pot, clear and brown, that Bo ladled in, and then red wine, a big spoonful of flour. A pile of herbs, like little trees tied together with string, and then Bo stirred. He stirred until the mixture bubbled and then he put the lid on.

  The smell was sweet and sour, warm butter and salt and onions.

  Bo washed his hands again, wiped them on a tea towel. He stood opposite me, hands down on the counter.

  “When I was just a mess boy, maybe seventeen, on my first ship, I had to do lots of the prep in the galley. Cutting onions was one job I always had. I always hated this job! My eyes used to really weep. I could hardly even keep them open. There were no portholes to open in the galley, because it was low down, somewhere under the waterline—by five or six onions I could not see. I would have to keep stopping. I would take so long to just cut the onions. I would get yelled at every time.

  “One day, one of the cooks told me that if I wanted to cure myself of onion sting, all I had to do was rub onion in my eyes hard for about thirty seconds. He told me, ‘You will cry and cry but after, you will never cry again!’

  “The cook who told me this didn’t mean to be nasty—in fact he was a nice man. He never imagined I would be stupid enough to do it. He felt so bad. I think he almost cried when he saw me. When we got to Gothenburg in Sweden two days later, he took me to a bar and bought me lots of drinks. Anyway, my eyes swelled up and closed so that I could not open them at all. I was like this for hours. The first officer told me I was an idiot. He washed my eyes out with water and gave me strong painkillers that put me to sleep.

  “I was very young. I never had any reason to doubt what people told me. That was how I grew up—on my island you knew most of the people nearby and they knew you and you trusted what they said. I knew that I would have to toughen up a bit after that, get a bit smarter. I learnt a good lesson.”

  I looked up at him, at Bo—his eyes watching the past, somewhere distant. Somewhere I could not go.

  “I always believed what people told me,” Bo said again. “It feels like a long time ago now.”

  Bo opened a cupboard and the top shelf was full of Danish coffee, stacked in rows. Shiny red and silver foil like Christmas decorations.

  “Time for coffee,” he said.

  I knew he would make me a cup of tea, and he’d say, “Tea? I don’t understand tea.” But he’d make it for me anyway and put in milk and sugar. He would have thick black coffee in his cup, which was stained and cracked and always had a teaspoon in it.

  “Shall we sit here or go to the mess?” he asked.

  We stayed in the galley. I liked it there. The portholes were large and square and let in all the light, and the red booth was soft and lived-in.

  Bo opened an orange packet of biscuits and they were round and golden. I dunked one in my tea.

  “I keep these for when the expeditioners are sick,” Bo said. “If they are seasick, I make them eat two biscuits. They tell me they can’t eat anything. They say, ‘Please. No!’ their eyes rolling around in their heads.”

  Bo smiled then, took a biscuit.

  “When we leave Hobart they are all excited, in party mode. A few hours later, they are all outside ‘calling someone.’ ”

  I drank my tea. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but I knew it would be worth it. On Nella, I’d never feel bored or lonely or tired. There would just be moments of ocean and sky and ice, merging and flowing and passing by, and when I looked out the porthole I’d know that I didn’t have to be anything other than how I was.

  MS Nella Dan

  VOYAGE 3, 1986/1987 SEASON

  28th January 1987

  POSITION: 60° 54.000’ S, 99° 12.000’ E

  CAPTAIN’S NOTE: We’ve been able to find some light winds and calm seas, a rare occurrence on this voyage to date. We crossed the 60 degree south mark overnight and today we have our first negative air temperatures, letting us all know we are definitely in Antarctic waters.

  * * *

  We work hard.

  Roast beef, roast pork, three whole poached salmon. Red cabbage, and onions and golden potatoes. Beetroot salad, cucumber salad, cakes and pastries—the special rice pudding with berries and almonds. Brandy hot chocolate topped off with cream.

  The lights go out. A flaming magnum of akvavit to end the feast.

  The captain stands, he welcomes everyone. He welcomes us all. He starts his speech.

  “The King of the Southern Ocean has cast an eye upon us, and has declared that we are of sound but watery character. So we may pass!”

  Expeditioners start to clap, but he continues.

  “Today we cross the Antarctic line and become true and trusted friends of this good and special place, the south. May we take good care of it for now and always. I raise a glass to King Neptune—Australis Rex—and to our good ship, Nella Dan.”

  A cheer goes up, a cheer that fills the mess. I hear the words, yelled out with heart—Nella Dan! Nella Dan! Nella Dan!

  But now, I am standing on the trawl deck—watching the swell lines roll up higher than mountains behind us. Two light-mantled sooty albatross glide off the stern, effortlessly. I can’t take my eyes from them.

  Somewhere below, the crew are singing “Home by the Sea,” crammed into the Frozen Inn. I will join them soon, when I have taken it in. I will join them when I have had my fill of the wonder of this place.

  The Southern Ocean.

  WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE

  A man walked into the classroom and stood in the middle of the room. He had brown floppy hair and bright blue eyes and he looked very awake when he moved—alive and alert. Ready. He was wearing a white lab coat.

  “My name is Mr. Wilkins,” he said.

  Then he turned around, walked out of the door. “Come on,” he yelled.

  We stayed sitting at our desks looking at each other. We were strangers. It was the first day of high school and I had been put in Unwin house. No one else that I knew from primary school had been put in Unwin. It was just luck, which house you got into. Luck, or family connections.

  My brother would be put in the same house, Unwin. He was stuck with the decisions that had been made for me.

  Slowly a few of the boys stood up and moved to the door. Someone said, “Is that our teacher?” but no one answered.

  We followed Mr. Wilkins out of the building and down the hill to a covered quadrangle. He was standing in the middle of the concrete floor, hands in his pockets.

  “This is the outdoor gym,” he said, “at least that is what I call it. Sometimes there are assemblies here but not very often. However, we will be here often.”

  We stood in a huddle together, unsure of where we should stand or what we should be doing. Mr. Wilkins pulled a yellow rubber ball from his pocket and bounced it hard against the ground. He caught it in his hand and bounced it again.

  “Who knows how to play four square?”

  A few kids raised their hands. I didn’t. I didn’t know how to play.

  “Right!” he said. “Rules are simple. I’m your homeroom teacher. You can come to me with any problems—anything. We will meet every morning for ten minutes before your first class at the start of the day and then once a week on Fridays for homeroom—one hour.”

  Mr. Wilkins walked over and tapped a boy with curly hair and glasses on the head. “Name?” he said, and the boy said, “Nicholas Perkins.”

  He handed the ball to Nicholas Perkins. “You are king.”

  Then he tapped me on the head.
“Name?” he said, and I told him. “You are queen.”

  He kept going, tapping people on the head. “Jack . . . dunce . . . dungeon. Dungeon. Dungeon. Everyone who is not in one of the squares is in the dungeon. The king serves by bouncing the ball in his own square and onto another. When someone misses a shot—let’s say the queen,” and he looked at me, “then everyone moves up one square and the queen is chucked off the throne and goes to the dungeon at the very back of the line. Got it?”

  Mr. Wilkins grabbed my shoulders and moved me into one of the squares, the queen square. The other kids formed a line in the dungeon. I wanted to raise my hand and tell him that I still didn’t know how to play, but Mr. Wilkins yelled, “BEGIN!”

  The game had started.

  After a few nervous minutes we were all going with it. I was in the dungeon after two goes, but it came back around so fast and then you were out of the dungeon and playing again in no time. Mr. Wilkins made us call out our names when we got out of the dungeon. And it made us laugh—the speed of it. We seemed to be yelling out our names over and over. I guess this was his way of learning our names, but by the time the bell rang, almost deafening us in the concrete gym, we had learnt each other’s names too. We had become a group, a homeroom. A class that seemed to have a lot of kids who were good at math and science and I was one of them and that was okay. We had Mr. Wilkins. He was our homeroom teacher.

  We were lucky.

  We walked back to our classroom, sweaty and panting, and I saw kids I recognized from primary school looking down at us from their second-floor windows. They were stuck in their homerooms, in Ransom and Hodgkin and Mather—houses that would beat us at every single sporting competition for the whole of my time at high school. And Mr. Wilkins said, “Right! You all have me for physics now, so get your books and lab coats and follow me up the stairs to the incredibly amazing physics lab, where the mysteries of the universe will be unraveled!”

  I suddenly felt very hopeful about school and about everything.

  MRS. HADLEY’S TYPING ROOM

  Most mornings, even when the sun woke earlier and earlier each day, there would be frost on the windows of our car, and on all the cars in the whole of West Hobart. It was my job to wash the thick slabs of opaque ice off the glass with cold water. You couldn’t use hot water, or even warm water. The sudden change in temperature could crack the windshield. I had never seen this but I was frightened of it happening every single day.

  Sometimes the ice was stubborn and would stick fast to all the windows of the car and I would have to use my hands, rub at the ice while pouring the cold water from the watering can. My hands would stay cold all day at school. Cold right down to the bone.

  It was because of the cold that we would all run into the assembly hall as soon as the doors were opened by one of the head teachers. The yell of “No running!” wouldn’t stop anyone.

  There were three wall heaters on the back wall and standing near them was the only way to get through assembly without your legs freezing—without your hands freezing. In the hall you could see your breath, even in the summer.

  Year 7 kids never got near the heaters. We were pushed away by the older kids. Still we ran—still we tried.

  We all had to sit on the ground, on the wooden floor. There were no chairs. I think it was part of the Quaker thing. Hardship. The moment of silence was a Quaker thing too, and it seemed to go on for a long time. Just my thoughts. My thoughts and the cold. How long a minute can be. The long loneliness of a minute.

  There was hardly any relief from the cold at school. The buildings were all so old, with thick stone walls. Dark corridors ran down into the depths, deep down into the cold earth. But there was one room that was warm. Mrs. Hadley kept the small wooden typing room toasty with an electric fan heater.

  “Cold fingers are no use for typing.”

  Everyone loved typing, but we only had it once a week.

  JJJ space FFF space JFJ space FJF space.

  The rhythm of tapping the keys, the warmth of the room—it was like having a break from the world. The wooden classroom was on the very top floor of one of the oldest buildings at school. It was one of the old boarding rooms with a pitched roof and ceiling.

  I used to imagine young boys sleeping there in small bunks under gray woolen blankets. I only ever imagined the scene in black-and-white like an old photograph. That didn’t take much imagination, because the walls were cream and the carpet was gray. But Mrs. Hadley’s hair was fire-engine red and she’d chant in her strong Scottish accent, SSS space LLL space SLS space LSL space.

  MS Nella Dan

  VOYAGE 3, 1986/1987 SEASON

  20th March 1987

  POSITION: 67° 2.000’ S, 62° 9.000’ E

  CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Holding position in Horseshoe Bay—at anchor. Icebergs with the occasional growler. Pack ice.

  The last of the ingoing Mawson wintering team was transferred ashore this morning. We will leave for Hobart at 18:00.

  * * *

  A man stands on the deck in the low light as we pull away from Mawson. I cannot see his face. I cannot know what he is thinking. He stares out at the place that has been his home, all he has known for more than a year. Months of darkness and months of light. He watches it all get farther and farther away—the ice cliffs and the mountains behind the base, the landscape of frozen earth, of rocks, of white, of silence—knowing that he will never return. Knowing he will never see it again.

  Soft snow begins to fall, one of the rarest things to happen here in this desert. I go inside. I leave him be.

  WORLD OF HIS OWN

  I watched Bo out there through the glass door. He was in a world of his own. And all around him were tiny sparrows. They got so close, like he was one of them. Like they were not afraid of him.

  One bird was young, its feathers all fluff, and I saw how he made sure it got some bread too. No matter how much the bigger birds pushed it and bullied it, he made sure it got some. It even took a piece of bread right from his fingertips, and it stayed by him as it ate. It stayed near.

  He turned and saw me then. I opened the door carefully, tried not to disturb the birds, but they flew off as soon as I stepped onto the deck.

  “I keep thinking about my rowboat,” he said. He still had bread in his hand, and he was tearing off little chunks, rolling them tight between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s sitting on the beach with the winter there. I have been away a long time.”

  He put the rolled-up pieces of bread in a line on the railing, but he kept one piece in the middle of his palm—his hand resting, flat and still.

  I stood next to him, carefully, not touching. We stayed silent and eventually the sparrows came back, even the baby one.

  “They have been watching us,” Bo said, very quietly.

  The brown sparrows feasted on the rail, their bodies always moving, their eyes looking for danger. They ate all the bread and flew away as quickly as they had come. But one stayed. One stayed on the rail. It had seen the bread on Bo’s palm. It walked up and back, up and back, its little head turning, twitching. It got closer and closer and finally walked right onto Bo’s hand.

  It stood there for the briefest moment, looked at us, then it took the bread up in its beak and flew away.

  “The brave one, he gets the prize,” Bo said. He rubbed his hands together.

  The sun was shining but the sky was open and clear, the sun so far away.

  “I will go home to my island,” he said. “I will check on my house, maybe paint my rowboat. Then I will come back with Nella. It’s not very long.”

  We went inside and I thought about his island, where the houses were made of wood and not stone, and you could ride your bike from town to town along the coast, the sea always there. The Baltic. And you would never get tired riding because there were only a few small hills. Not like here.

  “It’s not long,” he said again. “I will come back.”

  GOING HOME

  There is this song called “Go
ing Home” by Mark Knopfler. It’s from the movie Local Hero.

  It starts off slow. You can hardly hear it, just acoustic guitar gently plucking out the melody, some soft kind of sounds in the background, like the sea and the wind and the open sky all there inside the song. Calling. It’s haunting and wanting and saying good-bye.

  Then it builds up, becomes electric, and the guitar echoes metallic—still soft, still slow, but when the drums start the song becomes hopeful—joyous, like a victory march.

  Look at all that’s happened. Look at all that’s changed.

  We sat in the car in Kingston, parked on the side of the road on a bend, and watched Nella Dan sail away.

  I got out and walked to the edge as far as I could. Below me was a steep drop, a cliff—rocks and trees and then the water. Mum turned the stereo right up and the music moved like mist in the air across the water—reaching out to the little red ship.

  I hoped Bo knew we were here, that we were watching, saying good-bye. I thought I should wave in case he could see us, but that was stupid because he wouldn’t be able to. He would be in the galley, already working. He would be inside, busy.

  Mum had made him a tape and maybe he had it on. Maybe they were playing it in the galley. Maybe he was listening to the same song.

  I knew he really liked it.

  The first time he heard it in the car he said, “I know this song. Yes.”

  He told us that he went to see Dire Straits in Copenhagen before he came here, and they ended the concert with “Going Home.”

  “Great song,” he said. “Nella Dan’s song.”