Barrow

What a flight. Charles looked out the window but could barely make out the town far below. The plane was being tossed by the thick air and swirling clouds. It was his first time to Barrow and he knew its reputation well.

California seemed a distant memory as he stepped onto the tarmac and shivered, pulling his new coat around his ears.

The passengers were in a struggling line trying to reach the arrival gate just inside the airport’s main terminus – in fact it was the only fully grown runway, mused Charles as he saw the secondary strip and the row of sightseeing planes under wraps alongside.

He had hoped to take one of these flights himself, with his wife, on this very trip, being a visitor and all, although thinks were looked a bit bleak in that regard now. Rachel, had moved up here temporarily for six months and this trip, halfway through her stint, was Charles making good his promise to visit at least once in that time. However, a chartered flight seemed unlikely now with the view out the giant window walls further deteriorating from his earlier aerial view and even the access road outside was a dull grey strip.

This was an anxious trip for him. They had only been married for two years and he worried about her in this confronting latitude, where even summer could feel like deep winter. Hence his disappointment when the arrival lounge was near empty and certainly devoid of Rachel.

Charles looked at the rather careworn clock on the arrival lounge wall. Digital clocks had an old look and a new look, this one was undeniably of the former variety. So not a quiet tock, but rather whirr, click, whirr click – the clock’s regular oral update kept time with the changing swirls and patterns on the window.

But she’s never late, he returned hotly, on being informed by the airport concierge that there were no new waiting cars in the adjacent carpark, I don’t know how he could even see to tell, muttered Charles as he departed the concierge’s company and headed for the automatic doors that led to the outdoors and said carpark.

It was like a blow to the head when he departed the cosy airport lounge – it felt like he had sucked on one too many iceblocks and had brain ache, which was pretty much the only way he had experienced that effect back home, living in relaxed, doors-always-open Solvang.

The concrete was slippery underfoot and his feet soon wet as he pushed through the driving air and his eyelashes grew tiny pearls of white. And not that one either! He had scrapped the numberplates of the few cars there but none had the rented car plates he was hoping for. The concierge was right.

Or was he? Charles noticed one car he had missed. It stood almost enveloped in the corner behind a very Christmas-looking pine. However, this one was overloaded with nature’s own sparkling baubles – not on the ends of branches but right along them, weighing them down.

He approached the car and wiped a corner of the plate – it was a rental and red too. Rachel had mentioned the colour. But having scrapped the windows, he saw the car was empty and in the same moment that the sky was darkening and that footsteps led away from the car across the blanketed carpark, in the opposite direction to the terminal. He followed, and followed. The impressions of her petite size five tramping boots led across a feeder road and seemed to smudge and circle around a warning sign. No swimming, no fishing, and in winter no walking. A flat plain of white stretched out before him.

In summer this was a lake but in winter it was solid. No surprise there, the air was thick with whisking and swirling white particles, but even as he thought this, the delicate shapes became rounder, harder, fiercer and he covered his check from the horizontal flying white pellets. Ow! Ow!

Looking a few metre off the shore he saw a hole in the ice, with formidable cracks zigzagging away from it. Charles panicked and his heart leapt in his constrained chest – which was already tensed against the harsh environment.

He stepped out onto the edge of the lake, trembling, and centimetre by centimetre Charles moved closer to the hole. He was frantic now but also scared for himself – everything around seemed so raw, and so remote, which it was.

It felt like he was in one of those tunnels where they test plane aerodynamics with his cheeks pushed back into his face and his lips parting involuntarily from the extreme movement of air. This all seemed so unlikely, why walk out here where a human could hardly survive, and further, why would normally timid Rachel walk out on that inhospitable surface in the first place?

‘I was just looking,’ the black hole seemed to be saying to Charles although his senses felt enveloped and restricted due to the extreme environment. Then Rachel, or rather the black hole, iterated: ‘I was just looking’. What? What for? Charles was as out of kilter as the extreme surroundings that tugged at his hat, coat and scarf. Not a normal fare for mid summer, not even up here, muttered Charles as the moisture in his breath instantly solidified and whisked away across the lake.

‘I was just looking’ – the words seemed to float to him and driven forward by his terror for his wife, Charles was himself drawn to the black hole before him. Luckily he slipped instead and fell heavily, next to but not into the uninviting ripples of black water.

‘I was just out here looking where the ice was thinner,’ explained the disembodied voice. What? What?

“I was just asking if you’d like your dinner,” the airhostess seemed irritated upon her third attempt. Another drop and bump and the airplane and Charles both regained their equilibrium with a truly alarming lurch. He rubbed his eyes, nodded, replied and settled back to look out the window as Barrow rose up to meet them.