Betty Neels - Midnight Sun's Magic

And somehow this was all the more annoying when every other man there sought her out whenever she was free—trips on the sea in one of the powerful motorboats kept at the station; careful climbing expeditions to look for flowers, and when it was warm, long sessions by the sea with binoculars watching the birds and looking for seals.

The boss had taken her on a tour within a few days of her arrival; round the various huts, along to the big radio hut where the men sat at their instruments. She had only a dim idea what they were doing and she was quick to see that no one was going to tell her anyway, although she was shown how messages were sent and how they got their electricity and the wonderful view they had of the mountains around them as well as the open sea. Cruising ships passed from time to time, she was told, on their way to the Ice Barrier and Ny Aalesund, but they never stopped at the station; for one thing, although the water was deep, the pier was only a rickety erection, liable to fall down at any minute.

‘Why doesn’t someone mend it, then?’ asked Annis practically. She didn’t wait for an answer because the Coastal Express was just in sight. It wasn’t calling that day, it seemed; supplies had been brought back when she had been fetched from Tromso and as someone would be going to Ny Aalesund very shortly, the letters could be fetched from there. They trundled back to the main camp in the jeep and she went to get on with the dinner.

Her days were well filled; she was busy but not overworked and mostly the days were clear, with blue skies. There was always a boat available and someone to go with her, and when it was bad weather with ink-black clouds pressing on to the mountain tops and a cold, sullen sea, there were plenty of partners for a game of chess or backgammon. Letters to write too, a great many of them, to be taken to Ny Aalesund, the weekly film to enjoy, and books to read. She spent a good deal of time with Freddy, listening with sympathy to his account of his last love affair; he fell in and out of love so often and so briefly that she was hard put to it to remember the girl’s name. She didn’t think he was brokenhearted this time, though. He remembered, however, after a long monologue about girls and the last one in particular, to ask her if she were happy.

‘Yes, very,’ she told him, and was surprised to find that it was true. She was happy—there was very little nursing, the odd cut hand and septic finger, bruises and abrasions, but there was plenty to keep her occupied each day. She could work as she wished, no one interfered and she took her free time more or less when she liked. Only the daily surgery was strictly on time each day and although the doctor had never said a word, she made sure that she was punctual.

It was towards the end of the week when they were at supper one evening that the doctor mentioned casually that he had seen a small herd of seals further along the coast, and added: ‘If you’re interested, Annis, I’ll show you how to reach them—it’s not far if we cut across the base of the mountains. Only wear your boots.’

The invitation was given so casually that she wasn’t sure if he had meant it, but when supper was finished and she had cleared the table and put everything to rights, she found him waiting, sitting on an upturned box outside the hut. It was already late evening, but there would be no night, of course; the sun shone, a rich gold, above the horizon and would stay like that until day began once more.

‘Boots,’ he reminded her, and she went to her hut and obediently pulled on the strong footwear she had been given on her arrival. She picked up her anorak too, for the weather could change with disconcerting suddenness and she was wearing only a cotton blouse and slacks.

They went for the most part in silence. For one thing, it was quite hard work scrambling over the bare rock and for another it hardly seemed the right background for light conversation. Once or twice they stopped while her companion pointed out a seabird or a particularly beautiful ice floe, its pale green turned to gold by the sun, creaking and cracking as it went on its way south, but for the greater part of the time he went steadily ahead, turning to give her a hand over a particularly tricky bit.

They were cutting across a curve in the coastline, somewhere Annis hadn’t been yet, for on her boat trips they almost always went in the other direction. Now they rounded the last massive cliff and she caught her breath.

The mountains stretched in front of them, sweeping down to the sea, their snow-capped tops contrasting with the dark grey of their slopes and the dark blue of the sea. Their line was broken directly before them, though, and a fjord, its beginnings lost in a great glacier a mile or more away, cut them in two. Its water was smooth and still and dark, for the mountains held back the sun, and the barren shore, thick with ice, looked grandly desolate. It seemed incredible to Annis that anything should want to live there, but the doctor had been right. The seals were packed snugly side by side along the side of the fjord, with the giant male seals sitting on ice floes, guarding them. They looked fatherly and a little pompous, but they never took their eyes away from the mother seals and their pups.

‘We can get closer, they’re not afraid of us,’ said the doctor quietly, and helped her across a ridge of rock.

‘How can anyone bear to kill them?’ demanded Annis fiercely. ‘Look, their eyes are just like ours and the babies look just like our babies.’

Her companion’s firm mouth twitched slightly but he answered her gravely: ‘Indeed they do, and I deplore their killing, but here they seem safe, although one wonders how they can live so contentedly in this barren land.’

‘Yes, but it’s beautiful too, although it frightens me. I had no idea—I don’t know what I expected, but I felt sick with fright when I got here. It’s not like anything else…’ She felt she wasn’t explaining very well, but he seemed to understand her.

‘It’s still our world,’ he reminded her. ‘It’s hard to equate it with Piccadilly Circus or the Dam Square in Amsterdam, but it’s utter peace and quiet and awe-inspiring nature at her most magnificent.’

She was surprised into saying: ‘Oh, do you feel like that about it, too? Only I couldn’t have put it as well as you have.’

She took a careless step and slipped and his hand grasped her arm, and then without any hesitation at all, he caught her close and kissed her. It wasn’t at all the kind of kiss Arthur had been in the habit of giving her; he took his time over it and she thought confusedly that she was enjoying it very much.

His pleasantly friendly: ‘You’re such a beautiful girl, Annis—that and the midnight sun’s magic…’ brought her back with a sickening bump to a prosaic world again. Commendably, she managed to say coolly:

‘It is magic, isn’t it, and I wouldn’t have missed it for all the world. I’d like to come here in winter, though…’

He had thrown a great arm round her shoulders and she felt a thrill of pleasure.

‘Would you indeed?’ He turned his head to study her face. ‘Yes, I do believe you mean that. I came up here a couple of years ago for a few weeks and it’s quite extraordinary, more so because the people who live here take it for granted.’

‘But you live in Holland?’ She had never asked him any questions before; probably he would snub her politely, but he didn’t.

‘Oh, yes—I’ve a practice in a small country town; Goes—it’s near Middelburg, if you know where that is.’

‘Well, of course I do,’ she protested indignantly, ‘though I’ve never been to Holland.’

She felt a strong urge to ask him if he were married, if he had children and a family. She wanted to know more about him, but although he had kissed her with some warmth, his manner was as casual as it always had been and she was sensible enough to know that kissing a girl when there wasn’t another female to be seen for miles was a perfectly normal thing for a man to do. She stifled a sigh and asked: ‘What exactly does everyone do here? Freddy doesn’t make it very clear.’