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Chasing the Light: a Novel of Antarctica

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Chasing the Light: a Novel of Antarctica Matt lam with SPOT UV Spine width = 30.74mm 432pp on 60gsm Hi Bulk CHASING THE LIGHT CHASING A N OVEL OF ANTARCTICA It’s the early 1930s. Antarctic open-sea whaling is booming and C H A S I N G a territorial race for the mysterious continent is in full swing. Aboard a ship setting sail from Cape Town carrying the Norwegian whaling magnate Lars Christensen are three women: Lillemor Rachlew, who tricked her way on to the ship and will stop at nothing to be the first woman to THE land on Antarctica; Mathilde Wegger, a grieving widow who’s been forced to join the trip by her calculating parents-in-law; and Lars’s wife, Ingrid Christensen, who has longed to travel to Antarctica since she was a girl and has made a daunting bargain with Lars to convince him to take her. As they head south through icy waters, the race is on for the first woman to LIGHT land on Antarctica. None of them expect the outcome and none of them know how they will be changed by their arrival. Based on the little-known true story of the first woman to ever set foot on Antarctica, Jesse Blackadder has captured the drama, danger and magnetic JESSE BLACKADDER pull of exploring uncharted places in our world and our minds. PRAISE FOR JESSE BLACKADDER: ‘she posits the ephemeral nature of humans against a weighty sense of history and an ageless landscape, something she does with an incisive grace that truly elevates her story ... she doesn’t hit one wrong note’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Her prose is both sexy and chaste, ruthless and tender, bringing out these elements in all her characters’ Lambda Literary ‘Blackadder has all the hallmarks of a great historical fiction writer’ Sunday Telegraph JESSE BLACKADDER FICTION ChasingTheLight_3pp.indd v 29/10/12 11:33 AM Fourth Estate An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers First published in Australia in 2013 by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited ABN 36 009 913 517 harpercollins.com.au Copyright © Jesse Blackadder 2013 The right of Jesse Blackadder to be identif ed as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000. This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. HarperCollinsPublishers Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia 31 View Road, Glenf eld, Auckland 0627, New Zealand A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB, United Kingdom 2 Bloor Street East, 20th f oor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022, USA National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Blackadder, Jesse. Chasing the light : a novel of Antarctica / Jesse Blackadder. ISBN: 978 0 7322 9604 9 (pbk.) Women – Travel – Antarctica – Fiction. Antarctica – Fiction. A823.4 Cover design by Philip Campbell Design Cover image by Victor Lyagushkin Typeset in 11/15 Baskerville BE by Kirby Jones Printed and bound in Australia by Grif n Press The papers used by HarperCollins in the manufacture of this book are a natural, recyclable product made from wood grown in sustainable plantation forests. The fi bre source and manufacturing processes meet recognised international environmental standards, and carry certifi cation. 5 4 3 2 1 13 14 15 16 ChasingTheLight_3pp.indd vi 29/10/12 11:33 AM Dedicated to The women who journeyed to Antarctica in the 1930s on the Christensen fl eet: Ingrid Christensen Mathilde Wegger Lillemor (Ingebjørg) Rachlew Ingebjørg Dedichen Caroline Mikkelsen Augusta Sofi e (‘Fie’) Christensen Solveig Wideroe My mother, Barbara Walsh (1941–1988), whose journey ended too soon And my partner, Andi, who came along on this journey from beginning to end ChasingTheLight_3pp.indd vii 29/10/12 11:33 AM AUTHOR’S NOTE This novel has been inspired by events in Antarctic exploration that took place in the early 1930s and by the people involved in those events. I have used real names for many characters, including those of the earliest women to reach Antarctica. However, this is a work of the imagination, and many of the events and dates have been signifi cantly changed, as have some of the names. The characters, though prompted by real people, are imaginary. In the afterword you can fi nd a more factual recounting of their stories. ix ChasingTheLight_3pp.indd ix 29/10/12 11:33 AM PROLOGUE England, 1914. Dr Marie Stopes held the chunk of raw coal in her hand, hefting its weight. She’d chiselled it from deep underground in the colliery tunnel, and kept it on her desk as a paperweight long after the other samples had been packed and stored in wooden drawers at the university. It contained an intricate leaf- fossil pattern, and fi tted nicely in her fi st. She needed it today. The British Museum Natural History Report had arrived in the morning post. It should have been a bag of Antarctic rocks sitting there on her desk, not a report. Marie gripped her piece of coal so hard that her knuckles turned white. It wasn’t done to think ill of the dead but she cursed Robert Falcon Scott. He and his four men had died to bring those rocks back from Antarctica, imbuing them with far more than their own physical weight. A decade ago she’d been the one to teach him what to look for – how dare he send them to someone else? According to the eminent Dr Seward of Cambridge, Scott’s rocks were imprinted with the fossilised patterns of leaf veins, indicating that trees had once grown on Antarctica. But it should have been her to make the fi nding. Trained for precisely that purpose, her eye should have been the one to pick out the traces of ancient Glossopteris indica. Marie had wanted to go with Scott. Wanted to chip the rocks from the seam near the Beardmore Glacier in the xiii ChasingTheLight_3pp.indd xiii 29/10/12 11:33 AM Queen Maud Mountains of Antarctica for herself. In the Manchester coal seam she’d known the thrill of levering out chunks of the earth to reveal its secrets. She’d found clues to the origins of the continents and saved them from being burned in factories and fi replaces across Britain. Without her, Scott wouldn’t have brought the rocks back at all. Wouldn’t have known what to look for. Another woman, one more charming and persuasive, might have convinced Captain Scott to take her, but there was little place for charm in Antarctica and, it seemed, no place for a palaeobotanist either, if she happened to be female. They had danced at their fi rst meeting. Marie knew it wasn’t her strength, but at the fundraising ball for the Terra Nova expedition it had been the easiest way for her to speak to him. She’d accepted his invitation and though he was short and slight, he was good on his feet and a fi rm leader, the kind you felt no hesitation in following. But he tricked her. While they danced, he described the expedition and her fi ngers tightened on his arm. He was going to the place where the answers to her life’s work lay. Etched in Antarctica’s rocks, where no life now survived, might be the imprints of earlier life, evidence of how the continents had once embraced in a lover’s grip – the fabled Gondwanaland. ‘Take me,’ she’d said, with her usual bluntness and lack of forethought. ‘But, my dear, it’s impossible.’ His smile was all charm. ‘A woman cannot go to Antarctica.’ ‘It was impossible for me to be Britain’s youngest Doctor of Science, but it was done,’ she said. He shook his head. ‘You’ve no idea of the hardships.’ ‘I’ve been down Manchester collieries in winter looking for fossils,’ she replied. ‘Which was easier, on the whole, than xiv ChasingTheLight_3pp.indd xiv 29/10/12 11:33 AM convincing the University of Manchester to employ a female academic. You have no idea of my endurance.’ The music ended and he stepped back. There were many infl uential wives for him to dance with and husbands still to fete, for the expedition funds were far from raised, she could see. ‘I will give you an answer, but not till the night’s end,’ he said. He bowed his head and excused himself. The sly fox had told her his decision only after she’d pledged a donation to the trip and in this she caught a glimpse of his ruthlessness. ‘But I’ll have my men collect your rocks,’ he said, by way of consolation. ‘Oh, really?’ she’d snapped. ‘And how will your men know what rocks are of use to me, Captain Scott?’ ‘I will learn them myself,’ he said, his face serious. ‘I’ll come to the university and you can teach me. I can give you three days, Miss Stopes.’ ‘Dr Stopes. It’s only taken me a decade to learn palaeobotany. I’m sure you’ll pick it up in three days.’ He was unperturbed. ‘I’m a fast learner.’ Scott had stuck to his word and come to Manchester. She’d been rude when he arrived but he was interested and diligent in learning and she sent him away with a rudimentary knowledge of what to look for.
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