The Sun At Midnight

Because I’m frightened of him.

Her eyes widened a fraction. That was it, of course. She was frightened. Not for anything did she want to plunge back into all the pain and confusion of her love for Ivor, or the horror of Jud’s trial, or the dreadful day when she and her mother had left Thorndean. The past was over. She could not bear to live through it again.

From the direction of the sauna she heard men’s voices in a jocular chorus that grew louder and more distinct. The kitchen door opened and shut. Pam called something to Garry.

But no one knocked on her door.

* * *

In the morning Kathrin woke suddenly, with the sensation of having been dragged too rapidly from the depths of an ice-cold lake up into the air. Then the sound that had woken her came again: a peremptory rap on her door. She sat up, her heart racing, not sure whether she was awake or dreaming, and called out uncertainly, ‘Hello?’

‘Kit? I need to talk to you.’

The knob was turning on the inner door. ‘Go away!’ she cried.

Jud pushed against the panels and the chair that she had rammed under the knob scraped against the floorboards. ‘Open the door,’ he demanded. ‘I want to talk about our plans for the muskoxen.’

The chair clattered sideways to the floor, the door swung open, and Jud strode into the room, which immediately seemed to shrink. After he had closed the door behind him, he picked up the chair, straddling it and resting his arms on its curved back. He looked large, immovable, and—once again—angry.

Kathrin leaped out of the bunk and stood at bay, her cheeks still flushed with sleep, her hair a chestnut tangle on her shoulders; and perhaps if she had been fully awake she would not have spoken so hastily. ‘You’ve got one hell of a nerve,’ she seethed. ‘Bursting in here like a common crimin—’

As she broke off in mid-sentence, horrified by her choice of words, Jud snarled, ‘In your eyes that’s all I am, isn’t it? A common criminal.’

Striving for some semblance of dignity, which was difficult when she was clad in baggy pyjamas, Kathrin said, ‘I shouldn’t have said that—but you did wake me up and you did burst in uninvited. Jud, we can talk at breakfast once I’ve had a cup of coffee. Not that there’s anything to say. Because we don’t have any plans. I’m going back to the valley—you’re not coming with me.’

‘That’s not what Garry said yesterday afternoon.’

‘It’s what I say!’

‘Oh? I wasn’t under the impression that you ran the camp.’

Her breast rising and falling under her fleece top, Kathrin fumed, ‘I didn’t invite you up here, it should be entirely obvious that I don’t want you here, and there’s no way I’m heading out into the tundra with you. Have you got that straight? Now will you please get out of here so I can get dressed?’

Jud gave her a leisurely survey. ‘I won’t see anything I didn’t see last night.’

Like a hare startled by a wolf, she froze, every nerve taut, and again was aware of fear. ‘You know what? I don’t like what you’ve become,’ she said in a small, clear voice. ‘I never used to be afraid of you and now I am. So just leave, will you? Garry’s around somewhere, and he’ll tell you that you’re not going out with me.’ Unwisely she added, ‘He’s changed his mind since yesterday.’

‘Now why would he have done that, darling Kit? Because you’ve chosen to inform him that I’m an ex-convict?’ Jud asked silkily. ‘But he already knows that, you see, and I don’t think it’ll make him change his mind.’

‘Don’t call me darling! And he’ll change his mind for safety reasons. It must have been embarrassingly clear to everyone last night that you and I can’t stand the sight of each other. This is the Arctic—one of the most unforgiving environments in the world. It would be stupid to send us out together. Stupid and risky.’

To her fury Jud laughed. ‘You always were quick-witted in a crunch. That hasn’t changed.’ Then he went on with an air of calm reason that infuriated her, ‘However, much as I hate to disappoint you, Garry isn’t going to change his mind. It’s very simple. I need to photograph muskoxen. You know where the herd is. Therefore we’re going out together.’ He raised one brow in mockery. ‘But if you’d rather discuss our plans in public in the kitchen, that’s OK with me...by the way, you’ll never make it to the pages of Vogue magazine with those pyjamas.’

His eyes drifted down her legs, hidden by the thick green pile of her pyjama bottoms. Then suddenly his gaze sharpened. He got up from the chair and crossed the room, standing so close to her that she could see the individual stitches in his sweater. ‘That rug,’ he said, the tone of his voice altogether different. ‘I remember it—your mother made it, didn’t she?’

Kathrin fought the urge to step back. ‘Yes. The year you finished high school.’

Jud dropped to his knees, and unwillingly she looked down on his bent head. His hair was just the same, she thought, exactly as it had been since he was a small boy. She had always loved the ravens who nested in the tall beeches at Thorndean, admiring their adaptability and their fierce independence; and Jud’s hair had the same blue-black sheen as a raven’s wing. His fingers—the long, flexible fingers that she remembered so well—were caressing the blue strands of cloth interwoven in the rug. ‘My dad gave me that shirt,’ he said quietly. ‘I wore it until it was nearly falling apart.’

The words came out in spite of her. ‘You tore it the day you fell down the ravine. My mother mended it for you.’

‘Yeah...’ He glanced up, his eyes a much deeper blue than the faded fabric, and for the first time his face was unguarded and open, the face of the Jud she had always known. Kathrin’s breath caught in her throat. She said loudly, ‘Ivor’s cashmere sweater is part of the rug as well.’

As if prison bars had slammed shut, Jud’s face changed. He stood up, his gaze trained on hers. ‘I think you fell in love with Ivor when you were in the cradle,’ he said with a total lack of emotion. ‘So why didn’t you marry him, Kit?’

With all the dignity she could muster she answered, ‘I don’t want to talk about Ivor. The breakfast bell’s going to ring any minute and I’m not ready—it’s not fair to keep Pam waiting.’

‘You’ve got it wrong,’ Jud said with a softness that rippled with menace. ‘It’s due time we talked about the past, you and I. About Ivor and my father and all that happened seven years ago. But not now. Not before breakfast. In that, at least, you’re right.’ He smiled at her, a smile every bit as menacing as his voice, and turned back to the door. But as he opened it, he looked at her over his shoulder. ‘You don’t think it’s coincidence that I turned up here do you, Kit?’ he said, and closed the door gently behind him.

Kathrin’s bare toes curled into the softness of the rug. With Jud gone, the room had resumed its normal proportions. Yet the silence within the four board walls echoed and pulsed with his presence, and with a sick feeling in her heart she knew that everything had changed. For she had not for one instant doubted the claim he had made on his way out of the door. Jud had indeed come here seeking her out. And he would not go away until he had achieved his purpose. Whatever that purpose might be.

With a raucous clang the breakfast bell split the silence. All her movements mechanical, Kathrin got dressed, not even noticing the small pleasures of a newly folded shirt and clean socks. Pulling on a pair of leather mukluks, she grabbed her jacket from the hook and left the hut.

It was a beautiful day, the breeze from the plateau tinged with real warmth. She’d do a wash this morning, she thought, and ask Pam to take it in for her. That way she could set off to find the muskoxen after lunch. Without Jud.

‘Kathrin! Got a minute?’

A wrench and an oil can in one hand, Garry was emerging from the white-painted building that housed the generator. She smiled at him, happy to see his bearded, pleasant face. No surprises with Garry, no hidden depths. ‘Isn’t it a wonderful day?’ she called, walking to meet him.

‘Supposed to stay like this until the weekend. Not that I ever trust the weather reports.’ He replaced the wrench in his metal tool box, which was sitting on the bench outside the hut. Then, without finesse, he plunged into what he had to say. ‘Pam told me about you and Jud. But it’s no go, Kathrin. Jud’s prepared to underwrite one whole research programme for us, and you know what that means.’

Kathrin’s heart sank. The research station received only minimal government support, depending on funds from universities and private donors. With all the cutbacks in recent years, the donors were becoming more and more crucial to the station’s survival. ‘He can’t have that much money,’ she said sharply.

‘He’s already given me a certified cheque—he made a small fortune on that prison movie he produced.’ At Kathrin’s look of mystification Garry went on, ‘You must have seen it, it came out a couple of years ago and did phenomenally well in the States.’

‘No, I never did.’ She frowned in thought. ‘That would have been the year I was taking honours and working part-time, I either had my nose buried in a textbook or I was trying to catch up on my sleep.’

‘Look, I know this is awkward for you,’ Garry said. ‘But in the interests of the station, I think you should be able to ignore any personal differences. All Jud wants is some shots of muskoxen. You’re the logical person to go out with him.’

She did not feel logical. She felt trapped and rebellious. ‘What does he want photos of muskoxen for?’

‘His next book will—’

Floundering in a sea of unknowns, Kathrin sputtered, ‘I didn’t know he was a writer.’

‘Well, you haven’t seen him for years, have you?’ Garry said patiently. ‘His first book, on west coast grizzlies, is due out next month. I saw the advance copy—some inspired photography and a really excellent text; the man knows his stuff. He’s even willing to plug the station in this Arctic book—so we sure can’t afford to antagonise him.’

As a boy Jud had always been fiddling with cameras; that at least was familiar territory. ‘All right, I get the message,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll take him out there and I’ll find him a herd of muskoxen if we have to walk thirty miles. But I’ll only be as polite to him as he is to me. And I won’t nursemaid him.’

Garry clapped her on the shoulder, and not until she saw the relief in his face did she realise he had half expected her to refuse. ‘Great!’ he said heartily. ‘He’ll carry all his own gear, and I’m sure he won’t be any trouble to you. Apparently he camped out in the Rockies for the better part of a year doing his first book—you won’t have to nursemaid him.’ He plunked the oil can beside the tool box. ‘Let’s go for breakfast. Pam’s making bacon and eggs.’

Every piece of information Kathrin was gathering about Jud only served to confuse her more and more. The Jud she had known when she was fifteen had certainly had the skills for wilderness camping. But the man who had cold-bloodedly stolen from his father and then spent four years in prison? How could that man have survived in the awesome silence of the mountains, alone and thrown upon his own resources?

Unhappily she trailed behind Garry to the kitchen. Inside, Jud and Karl were bent over a topographical map, Karl explaining the layout of the beach ridges, lakes and plateaux of the Carstairs lowland in his careful English. Turning her back on them, Kathrin helped herself to an orange and began peeling it. The delicious smell of frying bacon filled the kitchen. As Calvin offered her a freshly baked muffin and as she bit into the first sweet, juicy segment of orange, her spirits began to revive. She would hike as fast as she could to the herd. Once there, she would do her work and Jud could do his—after all, he was used to being alone. And she would not discuss with him anything that she didn’t want to.

Which, she thought, mischievously, could mean a very silent trip.

The muffin had blueberries in it and was warm enough to melt the butter she had lathered on it. After rinsing her hands at the sink, Kathrin cut some of Pam’s homemade bread, put the slices between two metal racks, and went over to the stove to toast them. ‘Did you sleep well?’ Pam asked.