All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

Author:Ally Wilkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

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“Sunset and evening star.” The growl in Randall’s voice had transformed to something somber. “And one clear call for me.”

There was no point holding the service outside: there was no grave. As soon as nautical twilight had revealed the horizon, search parties were sent out, but no bodies had been found. Staunton said Duncan couldn’t possibly still be alive. “He shouldn’t have been able to get out of bed,” he kept saying, restlessly smoothing down his whiskers. “He was too weak—”

Bedloe had been cheerful on the ship, quieter and quieter with its loss, with the death of his bunkmates Smith and Benham, with the news that the Germans had disappeared, with the sea freezing over, until he barely spoke at all. He’d been no Richard Boyd: he wouldn’t have been able to carry Duncan, even in his reduced state. They might have crawled, on hands and knees, into the night.

With all of us gathered—the broken windows boarded up—the common room was stuffy, oppressive. I clenched my fists, fingernails biting into my sweaty palms. Something had summoned Duncan from the huts. Something so inexorable—so impossible to refuse—that he’d disappeared despite the pain, his injuries, the restraints. The dark. I drew an unsteady breath.

“Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark.”

Randall didn’t care much for the Bible, was reading from a small scuffed poetry book. Men stood side by side, hands clasped, heads down. The chess set on the long table had taken on a horrible gravity: in all the chaos of the storm and that long confused night, shouting, hammering, crates dragged inside, a search party for the fuel cans—it hadn’t been moved. It sat smugly, undisturbed. I wanted to upend it, scatter the pieces. But I knew I wouldn’t.

After that the dark. Two more weeks before the austral winter set in, and we would live in perpetual night. No one would dare suggest we leave—not now. There was no other place to go. The stokers had accosted me, demanding to know why the shutters were open. “They’re always closed after dark,” Ellis had kept repeating. “Always. You never know what’s out there.” He’d been desperate for an answer. I had none, and it terrified me beyond reason.

Nicholls had led search parties all day. They’d gone as far as the cliffs, to see if clothing, the signs of a fall, told a story we could—God willing—one day take to Duncan’s relatives. But the stokers were right: even Nicholls didn’t know what was out there. Unbidden, horrible, the image of Francis by the windbreak—turned away, looking down, clearly expecting me to follow—jostled its way into my head. I pressed my fists tighter, begged it to go away. To leave me in peace.

Randall finished the poem, said a few words about Duncan’s reliability, his sharp sense of humor, their first meeting in a Sydney dockyard. Macready told an anecdote from the lower decks, met with laughter. “And as for Bedloe—”

“Thank you, Robert,” Randall said.

Randall refused to believe Bedloe was past rescuing; the fruitless search parties would continue.

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