‘Really?’
‘Yes. I mean, it’s always fascinated me, why they do that here and nowhere else. It’s such a strange phenomenon.’
‘Life is full of strange phenomena.’
Conversation was tempting, but dangerous. Nora smiled a small, polite smile and then looked out of the window. The islands of ice turned into actual islands. Little snow-streaked pointed hills, like the tips of mountains, or flatter, craggy plates of land. And beyond them, the glacier Nora had seen from the cabin porthole. She could get a better measure of it now, although its top portion was concealed under a visor of cloud. Other parts of it were entirely free from fog. It was incredible.
You see a picture of a glacier on TV or in a magazine and you see a smooth lump of white. But this was as textured as a mountain. Black-brown and white. And there were infinite varieties of that white, a whole visual smorgasbord of variation – white-white, blue-white, turquoise-white, gold-white, silver-white, translucent-white – rendered glaringly alive and impressive. Certainly more impressive than the breakfast.
‘Depressing, isn’t it?’ Hugo said.
‘What?’
‘The fact that the day never ends.’
Nora felt uneasy with this observation. ‘In what sense?’
He waited a second before responding.
‘The never-ending light,’ he said, before taking a bite of a dry cracker. ‘From April on. It’s like living one interminable day ... I hate that feeling.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘You’d think they’d give the portholes curtains. Hardly slept since I’ve been on this boat.’
Nora nodded. ‘How long is that again?’
He laughed. It was a nice laugh. Close-mouthed. Civilised. Hardly a laugh at all.
‘I drank a lot with Ingrid last night. Vodka has stolen my memory.’
‘Are you sure it’s the vodka?’
‘What else would it be?’
His eyes were inquisitive, and made Nora feel automatically guilty.
She looked over at Ingrid, who was drinking her coffee and typing on her laptop. She wished she had sat with her now.
‘Well, that was our third night,’ Hugo said. ‘We have been meandering around the archipelago since Sunday. Yeah, Sunday. That’s when we left Longyearbyen.’
Nora made a face as if to say she knew all this. ‘Sunday seems for ever away.’
The boat felt like it was turning. Nora was forced to lean a little in her seat.
‘Twenty years ago there was hardly any open water in Svalbard in April. Look at it now. It’s like cruising the Mediterranean.’
Nora tried to make her smile seem relaxed. ‘Not quite.’
‘Anyway, I heard you got the short straw today?’
Nora tried to look blank, which wasn’t hard. ‘Really?’
‘You’re the spotter, aren’t you?’
She had no idea what he was talking about, but feared the twinkle in his eye.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Yes, I am. I am the spotter.’
