The Sun At Midnight. Sandra Field

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СКАЧАТЬ standing in the road waiting for her, his face, tanned, unsmiling, giving nothing away. The sun gleamed in his hair while his eyes were a distillation of all the blue of the sky. With a jolt of surprise Kathrin realised that Pam was right. Jud was a very handsome man.

      She stopped in her tracks. More than handsome. He exuded a highly charged masculine energy of which she was sure he was unaware, coupled with an air of utter self-containment: an intriguing paradox that bore no relation to the Jud she had grown up with. It was as though, she thought slowly, she were suddenly seeing him for the first time.

      He said caustically, ‘It’s too late to change your mind.’

      She tossed her head. ‘I said I’d take you to the muskoxen and I will.’ In a surge of adrenalin she added, ‘I’m the one who jumped the ravine—remember?’ The ravine was on the far boundary of Thorndean, an outcrop of granite where ferns grew lush and green, and water dripped mournfully in the murky shadows among the rocks. It had long been a haunt of the ravens. ‘The summer I was twelve you dared me to jump across it—and I did.’

      ‘I never thought you would.’ A reluctant smile tugged at Jud’s lips. ‘I was crazy to dare you and you were crazy to do it...that was the day I tore my shirt.’

      He had also scraped the skin from his ribs and she had been the one to smooth on antibiotic ointment that she had stolen from her mother’s medicine cabinet; as if it were yesterday she could see his teeth gritted against the pain. She said tersely, ‘Let’s go. I want to find the herd before we stop to eat.’

      ‘Can’t handle the memories, Kit?’ he jeered.

      Exasperated, she said, ‘You have a choice here, Jud—you can stand talking to thin air or you can follow me.’

      Suiting action to word, Kathrin set off past the radio shack for the nearest rock ridge. Soon her boots were crunching among loose stones and shell fragments, and her stride had settled into its natural rhythm; although Jud’s longer stride was right beside her, the tension of his presence lessened as she filled her lungs with the crisp, pure air. This was where she wanted to be. Perhaps it didn’t matter who was with her as long as she could inhabit this immensity of space.

      He said casually, ‘Karl was saying this whole area was under the sea not that long ago.’

      ‘That’s right. The weight of the ice cap pressed the land down. But as the ice melted, the land rose. You can see a whole series of beach ridges ahead of us.’

      ‘So tell me about the blue-green algae of which Calvin is so enamoured.’

      She laughed almost naturally and described their role in the slow evolution of the Arctic soil, finding Jud’s questions intelligent and his own knowledge considerable. They descended the first ridge and skirted a lake. A pair of loons flew overhead. Jud spotted a phalarope, Kathrin a sandpiper; and their boots brushed the tiny Arctic flowers, glossy golden buttercups and purple-striped campion.

      For the next hour they climbed steadily towards the plateau, beyond which lay the valley where the muskoxen roamed. At about six o’clock Kathrin said breathlessly, ‘We should fill our water bottles at this stream. And let’s take a short break.’ Loosening the straps, she lowered her pack to the ground.

      The stream gurgled out of the hillside between rocks carpeted with green and scarlet mosses. Chewing on some trail mix, Jud said reflectively, ‘Colour leaps out at you here, doesn’t it? The flowers and mosses are so vivid, so full of life.’

      She had often noticed the same thing. She said eagerly, ‘I think it’s because at first glance the Arctic offers a kind of sensory deprivation—dun-coloured tundra, grey rocks, and the white of last year’s snow. Even the sky’s pale blue, as though the ice cap has sapped it of all its strength. So the flowers make straight for the heart.’

      ‘You love it here.’

      She nodded. ‘I feel as though I’ve come home...I don’t know why.’

      His eyes fixed on hers, Jud said, ‘It’s a land pared to the bone. No euphemisms possible—only truth.’

      She knew instantly that he had shifted from the landscape to the personal. For a moment she looked around her at the vast sweep of land and sky, recognising that her anger early that morning now seemed petty and unworthy of her. She said gravely, ‘Jud, seven years ago my world turned upside down. I’ve done the best I can since then, in my own way, to deal with that. But I really don’t want to talk about it...please.’

      He was hunkered down very close to her, the breeze ruffling his hair. ‘You think I stole that money.’

      ‘I know you did. You confessed, didn’t you?’

      ‘Ivor made the phone call, Kit.’

      ‘He couldn’t have—I was with him at the time.’

      ‘You were in love with him.’

      ‘I wouldn’t have lied, Jud!’

      ‘You did lie.’ As she made a sudden move, he stayed her with one hand on the sleeve of her jacket. ‘You were young and vulnerable and very much in love...perhaps it was inevitable that you supported Ivor over me.’ A harsh edge to his voice, he added, ‘I just need to know the truth, that’s all.’

      There was a scar across his knuckles, a scar white as bone. Staring down at it, because she could not bear the force of his gaze, Kathrin said, ‘How did you hurt yourself?’

      ‘In prison—I was on a labour gang for a while,’ he said impatiently. ‘Kit, the truth...surely this place deserves the truth.’

      When she looked up, her eyes were deep, troubled pools of darkness. ‘I’ve told you the truth. Just as I told it at the trial.’

      In total frustration Jud picked up a chunk of granite, banging it so hard against a boulder that chips flew; the noise seemed a violation of the unfathomable silence of the tundra. ‘I thought better of you than this,’ he said.

      In a clumsy movement Kathrin scrambled to her feet. ‘You’re proving my point—this is just why I don’t want to talk about what happened,’ she cried. ‘What’s the use? It’s over and done with. Finished.’

      He stood up as well, balancing his weight on the rocks. ‘I could have photographed muskoxen on lots of other islands in the Arctic. I came here because I saw your name on the roster of scientists at the camp...I always figured you’d end up somewhere like this.’

      ‘Then maybe you’d be better off going to one of the other islands,’ she said steadily.

      ‘I’m staying here.’ He paused, his eyes narrowed. ‘There’s something else I should tell you—some time in the next week or so, Ivor will be coming here, too.’

      Kathrin’s heart gave a great lurch in her breast. ‘What did you say?’

      His face as immobile as if it had been carved from stone, Jud repeated, ‘Ivor will be visiting the camp in the next few days—he pilots the company helicopter.’

      ‘No!’ She took two steps backwards over the uneven ground, all the horror of that last meeting with Ivor invading her as if the intervening years had never happened. ‘Not Ivor—not here.’

      ‘You’re СКАЧАТЬ