Sun at Midnight

Before he could move again, Edith stirred. She blinked at him and briefly focused. ‘Dear Jesus,’ she muttered.

Rooker stood up and slowly turned his head to the mirror on her dresser. His left eye was puffed up, the skin crimson and shiny. His eyelashes were crusted black spikes embedded in the bruised tissue. A ragged cut with oozing margins ran from the centre point of his cheekbone to the corner of his eye. The man must have been wearing a heavy ring. He put his fingers up to touch the place, memories of the night before coming back to him in small unwelcome fragments. Edith lay motionless.

‘What happened?’ he mumbled. He meant what had happened to the man he had killed.

‘You ran off and left me in some shitty bar with a bunch of creeps, that’s what happened.’

‘The guy, Edith. Is he dead?’

She coughed and then groaned. ‘Dead? No. But he needed some help getting home. So did I, but you’d gone.’

Rooker gathered his thoughts.

Of course the man wasn’t dead. Of course not. Immediately he felt reprieved. He had a chance after all, provided he grabbed it immediately. Leave now. The words pulsed in his head, taking on neon-bright colours that hurt the insides of his eyes. Just leave, get out of here and away from this.

He went to the closet and took out his old canvas holdall. He began stuffing clothes and books into it.

Edith raised herself on one elbow. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You can see what I’m doing.’

‘Where are we going?’

It came into his mind how much he hated we. All the bars and street corners, all the beds and apartments in different cities that were contained in that small word, all the arguments and reconciliations and half-hearted bargains struck and reneged upon, not just with Edith but with other women, and to what end?

‘We aren’t going anywhere. I am.’ He flung the last handful of his belongings into his bag and zipped it up.

‘Fuck you, Rook.’

‘Whatever you say.’ His wallet was missing, he realised. Somewhere between the bar and his bed last night he had lost it, or more likely someone had stolen it. It didn’t matter. Edith sat up. Tears started in her eyes and spilled out, running down through the black patches of yesterday’s make-up. Even when she was looking ugly Edith was beautiful.

“Bye,’ he said, hoisting his bag.

‘Wait,’ she shouted, but he was already at the door. ‘I hate you,’ Edith screamed at his back. ‘I hate you.’

Rooker had gone first to Miami, where a friend of his from back in Christchurch had a small airfreight business. He was doing well. Rook stayed with him as his eye turned from red to black and then faded through purple as the cut healed, although raggedly, because he hadn’t bothered to have it stitched. He had the idea that Ken might also give him some work, but instead he pointed out quite accurately that Rook hadn’t logged any flying hours in three years and he would need some refresher training before any outfit could take him on.

‘Back to pilot school?’ Rook frowned. ‘I’m forty-six years old.’

‘Listen, mate. We both know you can fly. But this business is one hundred per cent above board and without current certification you don’t step inside one of my planes. Get it?’

‘Thanks.’ Rook shrugged.

‘Don’t mention it. And you might consider throttling back on the booze as well.’

From Miami Rooker went to Rio, mostly because he had never been there before. After Rio he went to Buenos Aires, but restlessness gnawed at him and he found himself moving further and further south, as if he was being driven away from the populous centre of the world and out to the margins, where he belonged. He didn’t try to swim against the current. He passed through Rio Gallegos and then, because there was still somewhere further to go, yet more remote, he drifted on down to Ushuaia. The southernmost town in South America clings on to the world between the tailbone of the Andes and the mountainous seas of the Drake Passage.

Now Edith had found him.

‘Would I have come all this way if I didn’t care about you?’ she murmured. She touched the tight red scar that linked his eye to his cheekbone. ‘Rook?’

‘I don’t want this.’

Her fingers were unpicking the tongue of his belt from the heavy buckle.

‘Not even for old times’ sake?’ Her lips and eyelids looked a little swollen and he remembered they always used to thicken this way when they made love. It was an unwelcome recollection, but it still excited him.

Edith’s fingers travelled downwards. ‘But you do, don’t you?’ she whispered. ‘See?’

Well, then, since you’re here, we might as well, Rook thought. If this is what you’ve come all this way for.

He propelled her backwards and hoisted her on to his bed. Immediately she twisted her legs round his waist to hold him. Her head tipped back and her black hair fanned out on his pillow. Before he closed his eyes he saw that there was a triumphant glint in her smile.

Afterwards she nestled up against him, as light as a bird.

‘We’ll find a better place than this, Rook. I’ll start looking tomorrow. Maybe one of those neat little tin-roof houses, painted bright blue or red, like I saw on the way up in the taxi? Then, once I’ve got it fixed up, I’ll look for some work. Perhaps in one of the hotels, or in the tourist office? I’ll have a blue suit, maybe, and a name badge. That would be funny, wouldn’t it? I’ll say to the tourists, “Welcome to Ushuaia. You have a nice day.” Then I’ll come on home and cook us some dinner. We’ll have a bottle of wine, watch some TV, then go to bed. Don’t you think?’

Rook thought this scenario was about as realistic as Edith deciding that she was going to be elected president and planning what to do about the White House drapes.

The room was quiet and the silence outside was unbroken. Rook sat and listened to nothing. It was only on paydays that there was much noise around these streets at night.

Edith fell asleep, curled up around her small fists. He moved softly, putting on his coat and picking up his boots from beside the stove. At the doorway he hesitated, looked back at her and wondered if he was going to feel a flicker of affection or tenderness. Nothing came. He might have been looking at a stranger asleep on a bench at a train station, or at a picture of a woman in a magazine.

He was usually impervious to the cold, but as he let himself out of the front door and walked out into the street Rooker was shivering.

In a bar, a different place from the one he had visited earlier but the same in almost every respect, he met a man he knew.

Dave was a big, shaggy blond New Zealander who did odd jobs to fund his sailing and mountaineering habits. ‘They’re hiring down south, you know,’ he told Rooker.

The only place south of Ushuaia was the Antarctic continent.

Rook took another mouthful of his drink. ‘Yeah? McMurdo?’

McMurdo was the American polar research station down on the Ross Ice Shelf. Rooker had worked there for a brief summer season when he was in his early twenties. It had been a dull interlude. He had spent most of his time driving a shuttle bus between the gritty main street of the base and the airfield a couple of miles away. His few other memories mostly involved off-duty hours spent in a windowless bar. But it was watching the helo and fixed-wing pilots swooping away, lifting off the airfield and into the limitless white, that made him realise that he wanted to be a flyer himself.

Dave shook his head. ‘Nope. It’s a new station, some rich guy’s bought a redundant base off the Brits and he’s tooling it up to be run for, whatchacallit, in Europe? The EU?’

Rooker laughed. ‘Needs something to spend his money on, does he?’

‘I guess. Sullavan, that’s his name. I came across the site on the net when I was surfin’ this morning. Sounded kinda interesting, in a crazy way.’

It did, Rooker thought. Keep going, that was the idea. Keep going, while some place even further away still beckons.

He remembered how remote McMurdo had seemed, ringed by the ice and overlooked by the cone of Mount Erebus. In comparison, Ushuaia felt like a shimmering metropolis at the very epicentre of the world.

Dave was saying that if he hadn’t fancied heading away to Byron Bay for a summer’s surfing and sailing, he might have given it a try.

‘Is that right?’