NEW LAND

1912

The others are at the penguin rookery, and Levick is alone. He bends forwards, and the halffrozen skins he wears crack as he reaches down to a wooden box where the photographic plates are stored. The smallest of sounds are amplified in this silent continent of white space and light. The sharp-edged glass rectangles grate against each other as he slides one out, and he can hear himself breathe as he crunches across the snow and loads it into the camera.

Ponting taught him how to do this and Levick can now take a decent enough photograph. He leans in and presses his eye against the viewfinder. The bright white expanse of the Antarctic is before him. He picks out the details — distant hills and peaks, ice shelves and cliffs — but after a moment, these details blur together. Everything succumbs to the ubiquitous, all-encompassing white.

God damned place, he says to himself.

Through the viewfinder he suddenly sees movement and a dab of colour. A man lumbers across the snow in crampons, a yeti of reindeer skins. He waits. When the man is quite close, Levick peers through the fur of beard and ice and sees the sunburnt face of Petty Officer Frank Browning nestled within.

Browning stares at Levick without saying anything. This is just like him. The others have turned it into a joke, but it makes Levick uncomfortable. He looks up, makes eye contact, then looks quickly away, pretending to adjust the camera.

Browning nods at the camera. ‘What will you do with the photographs?’ he asks.

‘Put them in a book, I suppose.’

‘Who will read it?’

‘I couldn’t say.’

Browning has the knack of making him feel boringly conventional. He is aware of his small,