The Crossing of Ingo. Helen Dunmore

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Conor lifts the globe from its place at the back of our living room’s deep windowsill. He pushes it with one finger so the globe turns a slow circle on its stand. The land is dark brown, with the names of countries written in close, spidery writing. The oceans must have been deep blue once but they have faded and now they are a pale blue-brown. The Indian Ocean… The Northwest Passage…

      I used to trace the names with my finger when I first learned to read. They were the oceans Dad used to talk about when he said, “One day, Sapphy, I’ll take you to see the world. We’ll cross the five oceans. North Atlantic, South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, South Pacific, maybe even the Southern Ocean. Or we might go north, way up here through the North Pacific until we come to the Arctic Ocean.”

      “But that’s not five oceans, Dad, that’s seven.”

      “Ah well, the North and South Pacifics really only count as one, same with the Atlantics.”

      If Mum was there she’d frown with annoyance. “Filling the child’s head with crazy ideas, getting her excited about things that will never happen. Why do you do it, Mathew?”

      “Who’s to say what will happen and what won’t?” Dad would murmur, touching the globe again to make it spin.

      I believed every word he said. The oceans seemed to belong to me already. I imagined Dad and me in the Peggy Gordon, cutting through the brilliant waves of the Southern Ocean. We’d discover a rake of tiny islands scattered across the water like stars in a deep blue sky. We would catch fish to eat and when our jerry cans were empty we’d steer for a green island to fill them up with fresh water from a little bubbling spring. We would pull the Peggy Gordon up on a beach at evening and maybe curious people would come down to talk to us. We’d eat and drink with them, and Dad would trade songs with the island singers…

      Conor traces a line between Cornwall and the huge continent of Australia. His finger travels around the western bulge of Africa, past the Cape and eastwards across the Indian Ocean. How easy the journey looks when you’ve only got to turn a globe. To the bottom of the world and home again in a few seconds. But it won’t be like that for us.

      “It’s so far,” I say.

      “I know,” replies Conor.

      “It’s quite – quite scary, isn’t it?”

      “Yeah. You know that time I went climbing on the cliffs with Jack up by Godrevy, near Hell’s Mouth? I never told you what happened. We got stuck. Couldn’t go back, couldn’t go on without kind of jumping and throwing ourselves on to the next handhold. The sea was boiling down below.”

      “You should have told me,” I say.

      “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to scare you. In the end we had to do the jump. Jack was in front of me so he went first and I had to watch him. Worst moment of my life. Well, nearly the worst.”

      “But he didn’t fall.”

      “Course he didn’t, idiot. He’s still alive, isn’t he? After that bit, it was easy.”

      “So once we set out it’ll be easier.”

      “Maybe.”

      Later, when Conor has gone up to the farm for the eggs, I go to the chest where Dad stored his prints and negatives. The chest has six long, shallow drawers which glide in or out at the touch of a finger. I go to the fifth drawer down and slide it open.

      I haven’t looked in this drawer since Dad went away. Nothing’s changed. Dad’s drawers were always kept ship-shape. I slide my hand to the very back, and my fingers touch a familiar, fragile roll of parchment. It just fits the shallow drawer.

      I take out Dad’s map. I don’t know why I call it “Dad’s map” really because he always called it “the Trewhella map” or “our map”. But I associate it with him because we spent so many hours together poring over it. It’s very old. A length of faded black tape ties the rolled-up map. The parchment is yellow brown and stained. I used to think the brown stains were blood, but Dad said they were just where sea water had darkened the parchment. This map has travelled the oceans, Sapphy. It’s been in our family for hundreds of years.

      We can’t display the map on a wall because it has to be kept away from the light, which would quickly fade the outlines and the writing. Besides, Dad always said such a map is a private thing. You don’t want outsiders to ask questions, or tell you that it ought rightly to be in a museum. This map was made by Trewhellas, Sapphy. It’s to be kept with the Trewhellas.

      I untie the black tape. I know what’s inside so well that I wait for a moment, not unrolling the map but letting every detail of it rise to my mind. It’s a map of the world, but not like any you could buy now. At each pole there is a vast prowling mass of icy land. In the centre of the Arctic mass a jagged black rock rises sharply from the whiteness. It is marked The North Pole. Our map was drawn at the time when people thought there was solid land at the North Pole, not a mass of frozen sea.

      Australia doesn’t appear on the map at all. Where it should be, there’s a sheet of empty ocean. The shape of South America is wrong, much shorter and wider than it really is. California is an island. The British Isles are drawn out of proportion, and there are beautiful tiny drawings of sailing ships making way out of London and Bristol. The European part of the map is detailed and complete with rivers and mountain ranges, but the northwest of America and the east of Russia and China are vast unmarked territories, enclosed by uncertain lines. It looks as if the mapmaker was guessing at the boundaries.

      When I first saw the map I didn’t question it. It was Dad’s map, so it must be correct. I even told my teacher that the world map on our classroom wall was wrong, but he said that mapmakers these days had satellite photographs to make their maps absolutely accurate. The next time Dad let me look at his map I felt as if it had tricked me. I said, “Dad, they’ve got it wrong