The Sun Kisses Them All

by Joanna Garbutt

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As I crawl out of my hiding place after the storm has passed, I realise I am alone. I shout, though my lips are chapped and stinging, and struggle to form the words as the harsh, cold air floods my throat. The winds have been intolerable the last few days, with drifts up to a foot high, maybe more. And last night, there was a blizzard. I fashioned a hiding place for myself under a rock, fear forcing me to work despite my exhaustion. I had assumed that the others had done the same, but when I re-emerge, I see no one. I call and call, but there’s no reply. My head throbs with panic and the piercing rays of the midday sun.

I look around. I don’t know what direction to take. I try to remember where we were heading, but I have completely lost my bearings. I hear their voices echoing around, bouncing off the mountains, but I see nothing. Perhaps all I hear is the wind.

How I long to hear their voices. How much I had hated them, and now I can’t bear to be without them. It had been an unhappy voyage for me. I was insular, only responding in short, quick sentences. Their company was difficult – I always wanted to be alone and avoided them when possible, volunteering for extra shifts on watch for the solitude. When I wasn’t working, I would watch them play their games after dinner, something childish like ‘The Priest of the Parish has lost his cap’, the tears rolling down their faces as they struggled to breathe with the laughter. They weren’t unpleasant towards me, but I know I made them uneasy. I had despised their happiness when I was at my most miserable.

When we arrived and started the expedition, they became less happy – too cold for laughter. We walked and walked. They would obsess about food or the lack of it. It was at the front of everyone’s mind, and some days, it would be all anyone would talk about. We would all dream about an abundance: onions with curry powder, sweetened hoosh with pemmican, arrowroot and biscuits, caramels and ginger, meat pies with thick gravy that we could sink our teeth into. I felt like an engine where paltry pieces of coal were thrown into the furnace infrequently.

I decide to go west and start walking. I pray I am not heading away from the rest of the expedition.

As I trudge on, I think of Mother and my sister, Elspeth, and wonder what they are doing back home. It would be cold and snowing there as well. I can’t quite remember what the date is, but I know it is not yet Christmas. Still, I imagine Mother bringing out the shiny red ornaments and the candles for the tree. The wreath for the front door will be layered and put together by Elspeth. I see her profile, the light of the fire casting her in shadow, the pink nib of her tongue sticking out in concentration as she works.

It is Father’s death that has brought me to this place. His debts, which we had not known about while he was still with us, but which have made the world appear darker. Father’s friend, Edward Stanhope, pulled strings to arrange my place on this expedition, saying it would set me up for life, and would provide us all with a solid wage and promises of further riches on my return.

“It’s what your father would want me to do in these circumstances, William,” he’d said as we sat in his drawing room, sipping thick, treacly sherry. “Now that you are the man of the house. And it will put your training to good use.”

Stanhope would look after my mother and sister until my return. He told me this to comfort me, but it doesn’t, as I worry about what he feels this duty will entail. I remember the way he would look at Elspeth.

It is hard to be grateful now that I am out here and looking around these mountains, feeling like a lamb brought to the slaughter. Early in the expedition, a man cut himself attempting to catch a seal for food, using the wrong kind of knife. The sight of his crimson blood on the white ice, its starkness, haunts me; this is what scares me, me a living, breathing thing of warmth in this place of complete indifference. How could anything exist here, I wonder How could I exist here? But we would stumble on the remains of past expeditions, which would provide evidence that it was possible to survive, but only if you kept moving.

I must carry on, I tell myself.

Then I see something in the distance. A dark figure. A man coming towards me. In a rush of joy, something warm fills my veins. I shout at the top of my voice and start waving. The man does not wave back, but he continues to walk towards me, and I see it is Harry Brown, a member of our team. He comes so close I can hear his voice.

“Turner!” he shouts.

“Brown!” I shout back. And we draw closer still so that we no longer need to shout.

“I was sent back for you,” he explains.

“On your own?”

“Yes,” he says. “They couldn’t spare anyone more.”

He is carrying a bag like mine but hopefully, it contains some other supplies. I assume they gave him no cooking equipment, as there wouldn’t have been much to spare.

“They’ve made a change in direction,” Brown says. “We need to head off towards the mountains to the east. The blizzard has thrown us off course. That is the direction we need to take if we’ve a hope of getting to the summit.” He looks at me. “Do you have food?”

“Some horsemeat. Not much.” The remains of Lazy Lenny, who was unfairly named after an initial resistance to using snow shoes. He grew so thin and worn that the dogs finally set about him. After they’d had their fill, I collected the meagre remains of poor Lenny for my own provisions.

Brown nods. “It will only take a couple of days for us to catch up with them. If we keep a good pace.”

“We must find some shelter,” I say after what must have been hours of walking. “Some rocks. Something to keep the wind off. I don’t suppose you have a tent, do you?”

“No.”

We eat before attempting to get some rest. I take some of the horsemeat from my pouch and set it to warm slightly in the sun so that I will at least be able to chew it to get it down my throat. I know it might make me sick but the hunger pangs are worse, pain that can only be silenced through food. I see Brown’s profile as he stands in the sunlight. Brown was popular on the boat. Knew the words to lots of songs. He especially annoyed me. But he is quiet now, staring out into the horizon. His good humour is the first casualty in our battle against our environment.

I sleep badly. There is a lot of noise, a constant reminder of where we are. The ice cracking, the wind wheezing through the mountains. I think of how far we have come and how far we still have to go. The cold is absolute, the numbness in my bones which has turned from an ache to a pain and then to a weight heavier than any load I carry.

I examine the shapes in the darkness. My eyes find things in the black. Will we meet the others? Brown seems confident and shows no fear. I must get back. For Elspeth and Mother.

In the morning, we rise and eat again before walking.

“I am surprised they sent you, if I’m honest,” I say to Brown. “That they could spare you.”

He shrugs. “Stanhope would have raised hell if no one had tried to find you.” He states it as a fact, but I would have been surprised if there was no bitterness. Everyone knows about Stanhope and my relation to him. He is a major donor to the expedition, so no one feels they can say anything against him in front of me.

We go further. We travel along a ridge and look at the endless inclines and declines. They must surely not be too far away.

I remember when we took photos, setting up the camera to catch evidence we were in such a harsh landscape. All still and squinting in the sunlight. I remember this and feel a rush of happiness and think of a time when Mother and Elspeth would see those photos and ask me questions and what I would be able to tell them. The details seem banal and commonplace on our journey when lived with day in and day out, but details which, so far removed from anything she has experienced, will make Elspeth’s green eyes widen in amazement.

I keep them in my head as I move forward –the times when we would sit in front of the fire,  simply enjoying each other’s company. It was only ever marred by my father, coming in drunk and criticising us. Sometimes, he would cuff me, irritate me, just to make me angry. He would knock me about the head and jeer. He would call me an idiot, a waste. Not enough of a man to truly be his son.

I almost fail to see the huge crack in front of me, narrowly avoiding falling into a large crevasse. I cry out and step backwards, edging slowly away. My heart thumps, and I try to catch my breath after the shock.

“That was close. How come you didn’t see it? A bloody big crack like that.” Brown says, appearing next to me.

“I was distracted.”

“We need to go. We can’t be too far away from them by now.”

And he goes, so I follow behind him even though I am still annoyed at his lack of concern. I wish that someone else had come to find me.

We camp for another night, going slightly out of our way to find somewhere suitable. I struggle to sleep and think of Mother and Elspeth in front of the fire again. It is one thing being cold on the outside, but to constantly warm myself on the inside, to keep away all the dark thoughts, requires too much energy. I start to miss the other men. What I hated about their good humour and happiness on the boat, I crave now. I feel a burning need to be with them, their red faces smiling at me, though it feels too late.

The next day, we begin early, hoping to finally reach the others. I try asking Brown how long he thinks it will take, but he is vague. I set the remains of my rotten horsemeat, barely a tablespoon, to defrost in the sun and look over at him.

“How much food have you got?”

“Not much. Enough.”

“How much?” I ask again, but he won’t say. 

How much did they give him for being the search party? They were running out of food before the blizzard, and there was talk of a further reduction in rations. I had been quiet about my horsemeat, hugging it to me when I sheltered underneath the rock during the blizzard.

Dark thoughts refuse to be held back any longer. What if something has happened to the rest of the group? Maybe Brown is not leading me to them. Maybe he has lost his mind. It would be an easy thing out here. But I continue after him as I don’t know what else to do.

My memory shows me once more the night of Father’s death. The two of us standing on the bridge. Mother had been concerned and asked me to fetch him from the tavern. To get him before he shames himself and all of us. I’d found him outside in the streets, walking slowly, swaying in the lamplight.

“You’re an embarrassment, William,” he had said, trailing behind me as we walked over the bridge, calling insults at my back. “You’re a bastard, I’m sure of it. Nothing so pathetic could have come from my loins. Your mother–”

I’d turned round to face him. “Is worth twenty of you,” I’d said, finishing his sentence. I’d begun to turn away. To hell with him. He could make his own way home.

He laughed. “She’s damaged goods, you know. She tricked me. She’s nothing but–”

I didn’t hear what he said next. I turned around to face him and hit him, a punch to the side of his face with as much force as I could muster. A greater force than I had known myself capable of inflicting. I didn’t care how much I hurt him. I just wanted him to stop.

Only he was a lot more unsteady than I thought. Now at the top of the bridge, not a high bridge but high enough, he fell to one side, some of the cracks in the brickwork giving way, so he lost his footing and went over the side. As he fell, in the moonlight I saw his face, the realisation he would fall into the water, his look of panic and terror. I watched his face disappear into the running water, knowing he couldn’t swim and I willed him to fall. I didn’t move, didn’t go to get help. I stood watching till I knew he had gone, and then I went home.

The next day, we heard his body had washed up lower down the river. Everyone assumed he had simply fallen in after the side of the bridge gave way. A terrible accident. I thought things would be better after he’d gone. But the debts made it so none of us could sleep. His legacy was more disruptive to us than his company had been.

I realize we’ve been walking for hours.

“Where are they?” I call out to Brown, beyond exhausted.

He doesn’t reply. He continues moving.

“Stop! Stop!” I cry, looking around us.

He stops and looks towards me and gives me a frost-bitten grin. A sickness rises in me despite the emptiness of my stomach. A realisation that has been creeping slowly finally consumes me.

I look at him and see what is there. Or at least become aware of what I am not seeing.

I think back. Brown has not been eating. He makes a show of it, but I never see him actually put anything into his mouth. I never see him sleep. I take it for granted that he sleeps because I have been sleeping, but I have not seen him lie on the ground or close his eyes. I finally understand that I am alone out here.

We have been going nowhere. I am in a hell, a purgatory, a punishment. The devil is in front of me, with his jeering smile leading me along. My hell is not the fires, the pit of suffering with all the other lost souls. It is this cold, unrelenting loneliness.

“We are lost,” I shout, as much to myself as to him. I can’t see anything ahead, just an endless expanse of white.

“I think it’s beautiful,” he says, looking out over the horizon, smile gone. “Everyone always complains about it, the ice, everything. How unrelenting, how frightening it all is. But these mountains, the sun kisses them all.”

He isn’t Brown anymore. He is Elspeth in her pretty blue dress, and I feel a deep sharp pain inside me. Tears beginning to form in my eyes. I’d told myself over many months that what I had done, I had done for her. But I realise that is nonsense. I have left her to the mercy of Stanhope.

“Elspeth, I…” But I don’t know what to say. She turns to me, unsmiling, the desolation on her face. She doesn’t look me in the eye, just stares out at the nothingness behind me.

I am overcome by nausea and drop to the ground, breathing quickly. It hurts to continue to breathe, to move. I look up and Elspeth has gone. I see no one for a minute, my vision blurred, until another figure comes into view. It is Father staring down at me. He takes a step closer and watches me for a moment. I know now that I am finished. I cannot continue. I sit down and wait.

In these final moments, I try to escape these dark thoughts. I try to think of Mother and Elspeth and the fire, and our easy company, and their smiles when they would see me there reading, asking what was holding my interest. I try to keep this memory alive. I force myself. But I finally know that I will never see them again.