Lean Fall Stand
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Synopsis
A WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘It leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story’ Hilary Mantel
’So moving and delicate and terrifying and haunting’ Maggie O’Farrell
The highly anticipated new novel from the Costa-award winning, three-times Booker-longlisted author of Reservoir 13.
When an Antarctic research expedition goes wrong, the consequences are far-reaching – for the men involved and for their families back home.
Robert "Doc" Wright, a veteran of Antarctic field work, holds the clues to what happened, but he is no longer able to communicate them. While Anna, his wife, navigates the sharp contours of her new life as a carer, Robert is forced to learn a whole new way to be in the world.
Award-winning novelist Jon McGregor returns with a stunning novel that mesmerizingly and tenderly unpicks the notion of heroism and explores the indomitable human impulse to tell our stories – even when words fail us. A meditation on the line between sacrifice and selfishness this is a story of the undervalued, unrecognised courage it can take just to get through the day.
Release date: September 21, 2021
Publisher: Catapult
Print pages: 288
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Lean Fall Stand
Jon McGregor
When the storm came in it was unexpected and Thomas Myers was dropped to his knees.
The air darkened in the distance. There was a roar and everything went white against him. It had a kind of violence he wasn’t prepared for. He wrapped his arms around his head and lay flat on the ice to keep from being hurled away.
His hand twitched instinctively towards his phone, although he knew there was no signal and his phone wasn’t there.
His clothes felt as though they were being torn from his body, the air sucked from his lungs.
He had heard this described as like being inside a jet engine. As though people knew what being inside a jet engine was like. People said these things, but the words didn’t always fit.
The roar of it was everything. He had only his weight against the ice to know which way up he was in the world. He couldn’t see the others. He couldn’t see anything.
The important thing was to stay calm, and take stock of the situation. Remember the training: find shelter or make shelter, remain in place, establish contact with other members of the party, keep moving, keep calm.
There were contradictions in the training.
It was difficult to think with the weather scouring wildly around him.
He didn’t know where the radio was. He couldn’t see the others. He needed to find his camera.
He had set up his camera tripod at the edge of the ice, trying to get a shot that foregrounded the still waters of the Sound with the cliffs of Priestley Head in the near distance. Luke had stayed with the skidoo and the rest of the kit. Ten, maybe fifteen metres to his left. Maybe more. Doc had gone off on the other skidoo and climbed up Priestley Head, to give the picture perspective. Without someone in the frame there was no way to capture the scale of this place. He’d been struggling with it since they’d first arrived. In the pictures he’d taken so far, everything looked too small. The distant mountains. The ridges on either side of the valley. The glacier. The icebergs creaking against each other, with the light turning bluely inside them. It was difficult to fit it all in. He’d lined up a shot with Doc looking out from the cliffs of Priestley Head, scanning the waters. On the radio he’d told Doc where to stand; he must have put the radio down after that. Doc did a good polar explorer. He had the beard for it. The water was gleaming and grey and the mountains behind Doc were stark white against him. The auto-exposure kept jumping around. There was a shift in temperature. He’d glanced behind him and seen dark clouds banking over the top of Everard Glacier. He was just detaching the camera when the wind moved suddenly against him and he was dropped to his knees.
He must have put the radio down while he was adjusting the tripod. After speaking to Doc. He must have put it somewhere by his feet. It wouldn’t be far.
The wind was too strong to stand up in, so he edged forwards on his elbows and knees. Forward and to the left. He called Luke’s name, and heard nothing. He reached around for the radio. He edged a little further forward, and paused. The camera should be right there as well. He shouted for Luke again.
He wasn’t frightened, yet. Luke wasn’t far away. He was remaining calm. Retaining an awareness of his surroundings.
They had come down from the field hut by skidoo, down the bank from the plateau and across the skiway. The skidoos were parked a safe distance from the water. Doc had driven one to the foot of Priestley Head before climbing up to the cliffs. No more than ten minutes away. When the storm cleared, they would regroup.
He had left the camera bags with Luke, and walked towards the water, onto the ice. Ten metres. Twenty. No more. It was clean ice, and secure. The storm had come suddenly down from the top of Everard Glacier, behind them, to the south-east. He was crouching with his back to the wind. Luke should be with the skidoo and the bags away to his left. To his left and a little ahead. He shuffled in that direction, keeping his face away from the blast of the wind.
Remain calm. Stay in place. Make contact.
He shouldn’t have put down the radio. He shouldn’t have moved away from Luke. He shouldn’t have agreed with Doc’s idea about climbing Priestley Head just for the sake of a photograph. He’d let himself get distracted by the scenery. Doc kept pretending to be blasé about it, but it was hard not to just stop and stare. All that ice and snow and sea and sky. Glaciers and ridges and icebergs and scree. Weathering and wind-form and shear. The air so clear that distances shrank and all the colours shone.
The wind was still roaring around him. The cold was starting to seep through his clothes.
He thought he could hear the crackle of the radio but he couldn’t be sure. The wind was still raw in his ears. He reared up on his knees and reached out into the blasting snow.
‘Come in … K … K …’
‘Thomas, are … come in.’
It was Luke, barely. It seemed odd to hear him on the radio when he was so nearby.
He listened, and heard Luke’s voice again. There were no clear words but he recognised the tone. He turned until he was facing the sound. The wind was hitting him to the left. He crouched very still and listened but he could only hear the wind. Being down on the ice like this was a mistake. Keep dry. Remain calm, stay in place, keep dry.
He eased to his feet, keeping his body low. The gusts came and went and he was knocked around. Buffeted. He took two steps with his hands held out in front of him. The snow blasted against his back. He heard Luke’s voice again. It was behind him now. Something shifted in the quality of the sound and he saw open water at his feet. Roiling grey against the whiteness. Something was wrong. The water should have been behind him. He backed away. He was definitely starting to feel the cold.
He looked at the grey water and he concentrated. The wind was dropping slightly but it was still hitting the left side of his face. The wind must have changed direction. He turned through one hundred and eighty degrees, slowly.
He edged forwards with his hands held out.
There was the crackle of the radio again. Somewhere up ahead. He could hear Luke, asking Doc Wright to come in, come in. He crouched his way towards the sound. He wondered why Doc wasn’t answering. He kept his steps slow and steady but he could feel his heart rate shooting up. He heard Luke’s voice again. The sound was fainter now. There was a kind of ringing or rushing in his ears and he couldn’t be sure he was hearing the radio at all. The wind bit against the right side of his face, and it hurt to open his eyes. He took three more steps and again he came to open water. He watched it slosh against the edge of the ice. The sound of the radio had gone.
He was doing this all wrong. He should have stayed in place when the storm hit. He should never have moved. He could be close to Luke and the skidoo or he could have lost them altogether. Luke could have gone off in the wrong direction, looking for him. He should have stayed where he would know his location when the storm lifted. He should have stayed where he could have been found. He shouted Luke’s name again. His voice was nothing against the storm.
He kept moving to keep himself warm. The noise of the wind made it hard to think clearly. The radio was behind him now. He could feel the chill beginning to bite. The air felt raw and violent.
The number of calories they got through in a day, down here. It was hard work just eating enough food.
He heard the radio again, and again he scrabbled around at his feet. Luke’s voice was shrill, and distant. There were breaks in the transmission. ‘Doc, Thomas, come in. Come in, Doc? […] anyone? […]’
There would be food at the skidoo, when he found Luke. The dark grey water sloshed against the edge of the ice. The weather was thick and he could barely stand straight. He felt dizzy. Unsteady. Almost seasick.
Something was wrong.
‘Doc, Thomas, come in. Come in, Doc? Hello, anyone? Over?’
From the low shelter of the skidoo, Luke Adebayo listened, again, for a response. It was too soon to be worried, but he should have heard something by now. He was getting cold already. He checked the battery levels and the volume, tucked the handset back inside his jacket, and ran through his options.
He could stay put. The training had been ambiguous on this point. They’d been told to stay put in bad weather, to avoid the risk of getting lost. But they’d also been told to find any shelter they could, and to make contact. If he couldn’t make contact or find shelter, the case for staying put seemed weak.
He shouted into the wind, and nothing came back.
This was brutal. He could try and find Thomas, and they could both go and look for Doc together. Thomas had been close to the water when the storm came in, and if he’d wandered too far he’d be in danger. He was the priority. Doc had the experience to do the right thing. But neither of them were responding. Luke could barely see his hand in front of his face. It was too much of a risk. He didn’t want to start wandering off in circles.
If the two of them were lost he would need outside help, which would mean getting back to the field hut and radioing from there. It had taken less than twenty minutes to get here on the skidoo, and it shouldn’t take much more to get back. If he could stick to the right bearing, in these conditions. The field hut was bang centre on the plateau beneath Garrard Ridge. It was bright red, also. It shouldn’t be too hard to miss. But nothing was too hard to miss in this weather.
They weren’t lost. They couldn’t be lost. They were out of radio contact for a time, was all. The best thing would be to stay in place until he heard from them.
They shouldn’t have split up like that, in any case. Doc was always saying he knew this place like the back of his hand but they were still literally in the middle of nowhere. Going off for a photo opportunity had seemed suboptimal. Luke had thought it was a bad idea as soon as Doc suggested it. Thomas had just made a face like: no point arguing with the man, might as well get it over and done with. Get back to the hut for another night of hot chocolate and charades and listening to Doc’s stories.
People were going to ask him a lot of questions about Antarctica, when he got home, and one thing he wouldn’t be able to tell them was that a lot of the time it was pure boring. Beautiful, yes. Awe-inspiring and majestic or humbling or whatever else you wanted to call it, but once you were done looking, the actual experience of being here day after day was kind of long.
He edged out from behind the skidoo and called Thomas’s name again. He could barely hear himself, let alone any possible reply. He ducked back down. He wondered if it was too soon for emergency rations. He cleared the snow from his glasses and tried the radio again. It occurred to him that perhaps they just couldn’t hear their radios, with the noise of the storm.
There would certainly be a discussion about all this tonight. He suspected that not all of it would get back to Main Base. Doc had mentioned several times that he didn’t do everything by the book. Luke didn’t really know what to make of the man. They’d been down at Station K. for three weeks, and Luke was still trying to figure him out. At the training conference no one had taken him that seriously. There were jokes made behind his back. It was easy to wind him up and he didn’t always notice. He was strict about the logbook and the radio schedule, and what he called keeping a tight ship, but he was relaxed about other things. How much they drank, for example. He started drinking pretty early in the day. But he’d been working as a technical assistant down here for thirty-odd years and he obviously knew his stuff. He would know how to get them out of a difficult situation.
The wind showed no sign of dropping. It was constant and roaring. He tried the radio again.
‘Thomas, Thomas, come in? Doc, come in? Over.’
He waited, with the handset pressed up against his ear. There was a hiss of white noise. He tried not to think about how far they were from Main Base, or from any other human activity whatsoever. The Russian base was probably the closest, and that was at least a day by skidoo.
‘Thomas, Thomas, come in? Doc, come in? Over.’
There was another hiss, and the faint crackle of an incoming transmission. And then nothing.
‘Thomas, Thomas, come in? Doc, come in? This is Luke, this is Luke. Over.’
‘… is Thomas, this is Thomas. Over.’
‘Nice one, Thomas, thank fuck. You were starting to worry me, where the fuck are you? I can’t see you. I can’t see anything.’
‘Yes, Luke … issue, over.’
‘Missing word before issue, can you repeat, over?’
‘… find the radio. That problem’s over, over.’
‘Yeah, okay, okay. Have you heard from Doc? Over.’
‘Negative, over.’
‘Maybe we should get over to the Head and find him, what do you think? Over.’
‘… broken, can you repeat, over?’
‘Can you hear me now? Should we go and find Doc? Where are you?’
‘… this … again … out.’
The wind dropped for a moment and then slammed into him again. The visibility was still close to zero. Thomas must surely be close by. He’d been right over there when the storm hit. No distance at all. They should regain contact. Wait for the weather to clear. He wondered what was wrong with Doc’s radio. Or with Doc. Thomas was obviously wondering the same.
‘Doc, Doc … Come in … Doc? Over.’
It was probably just a technical issue. It would be resolved soon enough. Knowing Doc, there was always the chance this was some kind of test, or weird joke. He could be listening to them both now.
‘Doc, Doc … Come in … Doc? Over.’
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