James and Emma – he couldn’t remember their children’s names – but over nearly a decade they had eaten at each other’s houses, bought rounds at the Acorn, gone to firework parties, shared New Year – the stuff of life that slowly accretes into friendship. But they did not appear to recognise him. In fact, James raised a casual finger of thanks and was about to drive on, until Sean called out.
James did a double-take, and stopped. ‘Sean!’ he said. Emma lowered the phone she had been checking, and just that second also officially recognised him too, with a bright smile.
Engines running, they exchanged enthusiastic concerns about the weather and the state of the lanes, and Sean told them about the dust storm, which they’d seen on TV but only got a little of here, weren’t they lucky with their microclimate? And then the awkward pause.
Sean knew they wanted to go. He felt angry, he kept them talking, anything, about all the new vineyards, the farm, while he absorbed the fact they hadn’t wanted to stop. Pretending they hadn’t recognised him. People got divorced, people moved on – he looked pointedly at their trailer, where big sound speakers were covered with a tarp.
‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Your solstice party – here’s hoping for sunshine!’
‘Oh,’ James said quickly, ‘very small this year.’
‘Big speakers, for a small party.’
‘Not really.’
They looked at each other, their smiles fading. They were not going to invite him.
‘I came down to tell Gail a dear friend of ours died.’ Sean had to look up at them from his lower vehicle. ‘We’re still friends.’
‘Best way,’ said James. ‘And sorry for your loss.’
‘Absolutely,’ Emma said. ‘So sorry. Take care, Sean.’
James put the Land Rover in gear and the loaded trailer rattled dangerously close to the Aston as they passed, attention fixed on the lane ahead. Then they were gone.
Sean stared after them in the rear-view mirror, his heart pounding like he’d been in a fight. He’d thought of them as friends – he’d brought out his best wine and put up with their tedious company in the hope that they would surely reveal themselves at some point – he presumed it was just that English reserve—
No. They had never been friends; they had always been cold to him. It was Gail they’d liked, he knew they thought she’d married down. The loss of Tom burned through him again: Tom who had been a true friend and a gentleman, always showing the same kindness and self-respect whether he was talking to a tramp or a billionaire. Sean heard Kingsmith’s voice in his head, from the old days, when he’d taken a business loss. Learn, and don’t look back. He checked the time, and told the satnav Heathrow.
There is a power that we call Sila, which is not to be explained in simple words. A great spirit, supporting the world and the weather and all life on earth, a spirit so mighty that his utterance to mankind is not through common words, but by storm and snow and rain and the fury of the sea; all the forces of nature that men fear.
When all is well, Sila sends no message to mankind, but withdraws into his own endless nothingness, apart. So he remains as long as men do not abuse life, but act with reverence towards their daily food.
No one has seen Sila; his place of being is a mystery, in that he is at once among us and unspeakably far away.
Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition (1927)
Knud Rasmussen
Sitting in 1F, crammed against the plastic wall, the smell of his neighbour’s duty-free aftershave in his nose, Sean remembered Tom’s grim prediction that Svalbard would become the Ibiza of the north. The midnight sun, exotic locale, and public awareness of the fragility of the region had created the strongest driver for tourism the Arctic had ever seen. Now Longyearbyen even had its own club scene, a Mecca for outward-bound hen and stag parties and rich kids bored of skiing.
Sean watched the stewardess and her cart coming closer. The clink of ice made him swallow in anticipation. He must reframe the shock as closure. A stone – a literal heavy headstone, could be laid on Tom’s recovered body in its grave, and on the hope he would return.
‘Sir, any drinks or snacks?’ the stewardess repeated, with an economy-class smile. She passed him his two miniature vodkas, tin of tonic and a plastic cup with a single ice cube and moved on quickly before he could ask for more. He didn’t bother with the tonic, just poured in both vodkas and knocked it back. No matter what Kingsmith and Martine said, in his heart he knew this was anything but closure. He’d learned to live with the idea of Tom lost in pristine obscurity – that was how many Arctic heroes ended their story. His reappearance was unscripted, as if the glacier itself had moved against him.
Another shadow fell on his thoughts, provoked by Gail’s reference to his still-imminent knighthood. The New Year and Birthday honours had come and gone three times, but there was always a good reason he had to wait – bit of a backlog, wheels within wheels, don’t worry—
He guessed why it hadn’t yet materialised: there were questions about the accident. All right then, let the inquest lance that boil of suspicion. He’d tell them whatever they wanted to know and as he publicly cleared his name, he would also remind the world that risk and danger were at the very heart of exploration and even to this day the fittest and best-prepared polar adventurers still sometimes died. Surviving was not a crime, nor was making a fine living from Midgard Lodge, where the beloved Tom Harding had died. An aggrieved journalist, turned down for membership at Sean’s other clubs, had written about Midgard and called it ‘Dirty Davos’. This was not entirely untrue. Sean Cawson’s group of membership clubs around the world catered to a global elite, but Midgard Lodge was different. The northernmost hostelry in the world and converted from an old whaling station, it was inaccessible to all but its guests, and provided for those who valued discretion, whose reputations were not the holiest, but who wanted to improve their standing in the world as well as their profits. These were the people about whom the World Economic Forum felt squeamish, who would never be invited to actual Davos, but whose decisions were of great economic and political import. If they were excluded from the best business society – publicly, at least – they were welcome to meet, and talk, and explore different business models in the stunning environment of Midgard Lodge. Sean believed and Tom had agreed that it was pointless preaching to the converted; also that honey caught more flies than vinegar. A luxury retreat in a uniquely inspiring location, security assured, was part of the realpolitik of environmental progress.
The stewardess was at the rear of the plane. Sean felt anxiety coursing through him but he didn’t want to arrive blunted by alcohol. A delicate thing, for a CEO to re-establish the chain of command after so long an absence – but Danny Long was slipping up as general manager if he was reporting to Kingsmith first. Kingsmith might have recommended him, but he was only Sean’s sleeping partner in Midgard, not an official shareholder like Martine and her clean-tech investors, nor Radiance Young and her friends in Hong Kong. Sean always smiled at the thought of Radiance and her bare-faced insistence she was investing all her own renminbis, not those of the People’s Republic behind her. Fine, if that was what she needed to say. But she certainly brought the Party with her.
It would probably be a few days before details were released to the press and