RORY, female, fifteen.
When you get to the end of something, itâs hard to remember the start. Hard to remember how it began. Like, what was the first step? And how far back do you go? I got on a plane. And before that, a train, and before that, I walked. I took the ashes after I found the journal after I went into Dadâs study after the crematorium curtains shut which was all after I sat at the kitchen table and stared at a spoon when Mum said that heâd died. Which was after he died. But even thatâs not the start, is it? How can that be the start? Because the notebook wouldnât have existed without the history and the history wouldnât have happened without the geography and none of it wouldâve happened at all if all the skin of the world hadnât cooled and settled the way that it did and the oceans hadnât flowed the way that they do and the ice didnât freeze the way that it does, if the earth hadnât stopped exactly this far from the sun, if the sun never formed then I, Rory, me, here, hello, would never have been sitting watching my mum cry in a helicopter in a snowstorm with my dadâs ashes at the North Pole.
Jesus you already look lost. Okay. Here goes. Strap in.
My name is Rory.
Yes, I know thatâs a boyâs name.
Yes that is my real name.
Yes, really.
Oh, alright. Full name. If you really need to know; Aurora. Yes. Aurora.
Mortifying.
I swear the only people who like weird names are people with names like Bob or Sue or Tim. You like it? Try living with it. Itâs weird to think Mum wanted me to be the kind of person whoâd suit the name âAuroraâ. I wouldnât want to meet that person, would you? Sounds like a right bint.
Iâve totally forgiven her, as you can tell. Joking.
Nobody calls me Aurora. Call me Rory and weâll get on fine.
And this â (The urn.)
Is Dad.
Say hello, Dad.
Dad doesnât say anything.
Heâs shy.
RORY gives us a small smile. Sheâs testing us.
Used to be a lot more talkative. Didnât you, Dad? Lost a bit of weight, too.
Balances the urn on her outstretched hand.
Itâs weird a whole personâs in there.
This is Dadâs story, really.
He died. Obviously. Car accident. Walking home from school. Heâs a teacher. At my school. I know. Mortifying. And a geography teacher. The worst. Sorry, Dad, but itâs true. They didnât let me see the body before we got him cremated. I say âweâ but I didnât have anything to do with it, and actually if you ask me I think heâdâve hated being inside a shitty urn for eternity but nobody did ask me did they so here he is. The funeral was fucking awful. The coffin like, slides behind these red curtains, and all I could think about was how many other people mustâve been burned in there and how unless theyâre really good at sweeping thereâs probably little bits of other people still in there with him and I wondered who they were and what their family thought about when the curtain shut. Mum did a reading but she was a total state, like, crying so much she couldnât even get the words out which was actually a blessing cos the poem sheâd chosen was rubbish. He wouldâve hated it. And all my dadâs work friends which basically meant all my teachers coming to ours for sandwiches and relatives I never see saying empty things like âoh well, wasnât it a lovely serviceâ and Iâm like actually my mum cried so much she couldnât string a sentence together and then they burned my dad in a fire so lovely isnât really the word for it, Aunt Carol.
I didnât say that. Obviously. I made the tea. People canât talk to you if youâre busy making tea. And if they try you just say âSugar?â like that and they get distracted. I went to stand in the garden, just, breathe a bit and fucking Mumâs out there. Crying. Again. Leaving me to talk to everyone by myself. Very responsible. I go to leave as soon as I see her but sheâs already seen me so Iâm stuck and â
MUM. Hello, darling.
She says. Since when does she call me âdarlingâ.
RORY. Alright.
Pause.
MUM. Dâyou want a cup of tea?
RORY. No thank you.
Pause.
RORY. Great.
When there was a lull in conversation Dad used to hold his hands up like this â
RORY waves her hands like claws and makes a little bear sound.
Awkward paws.
I donât say that.
MUM. Itâs nice how many people came.
She says.
RORY. Yeah.
I say.
RORY. What are we gonna do with Dad?
We brought him back from the crematorium and he was just like, on the kitchen table.
Mum sort of flinches.
RORY. He canât stay in the kitchen, can he?
MUM. Rory. Just. Not now. Please.
RORY. Like a bloody pepper mill.
MUM. Rory. (Beat.) Iâll figure something out.
She says.
MUM. Just. Leave it. For now.
Her face is red from crying. Sheâs looking at me, with this funny look, like sheâs trying to remember my face. And then she looks away and she says.
MUM. It was a lovely service, wasnât it.
And I go all cold inside. And I say.
RORY. No. It was rubbish.
And I go inside and up to my room and I donât come down again till morning.
And when I come back down the kitchen is quiet. All the guests have left. Mumâs in her room. Hiding from me. I feel bad, like I should apologise, make us breakfast or something but then.
Dadâs on the kitchen table. In his urn. Just. Left there. So Iâm gonna have to deal with him, am I?
I pick him up. I can hold him in one hand. He feels cold.
You canât stay in here, Dad. People eat in here. Nothing personal but itâs creepy. Come on.
I decide to take him to his study. You can wait there, Dad, till we figure out what to do with you. I pause at the door. I half-imagine Iâm gonna open it and heâll be sitting there in his dressing gown, leant over marking some workbooks. But thatâs stupid cos heâs in my hand, isnât he?
I open the door. And itâs his study. And nothingâs changed.
The thing about my dad is, he was an explorer. Not literally of course. Literally he was a geography teacher but in his mind. And not these shitty TV explorers who drink piss for the cameras, like Bear Grylls, god what a bell-end, no, like a proper old-school explorer. Mungo Park or Shackleton, you know? The-blank-bits-on-the-map explorer. Thatâs who he really was, inside. When I was little weâd go to the woods and pretend we were the first people ever to go there. Take our compasses and cheese sandwiches and make our own maps, mark trees with chalk. Heâd set me treasure hunts, put an X on the map and Iâd have to get us there, and weâd arrive and the treasure would be, like, an interesting tree he liked or a river with some notable erosion. Iâd try to get him to give me clues, tell me what it was we were looking for, but heâd just say, âWeâll know it when we get there.â He taught me to figure out north from the stars. The Pole Star. If you know where north is, you can always find home, he said.
His favourite was the North. The North Pole. Explorers like Franklin and Peary hauling sleds over ice. Polar bears and furs and scurvy and Inuit. Have to call them Inuit, not Eskimos, according to Dad. And when I was little I thought it was ace. Weâd build igloos in the garden and heâd pretend to be a polar bear and chase me, and I tried to imagine it, a place where menâs tongues froze to their beards, where houses were made out of blocks of ice, the ground under your feet could crack open and swallow you whole. You know how all kids avoid cracks in the pavement? Mine were cracks in the ice.
But I got a bit old for it all, you know. And anyway it was only pretend exploring. Iâve got all the maps of everything on my phone, now. Itâs all finished. No blank places left. Exploring now is drinking piss for the cameras. He was born in the wrong time, my dad. Thatâs what someone should have said about him, at the funeral.
We stopped going on our adventures. I took down the maps from my walls. And Iâd sort of forgotten about it. The North and the snow and the beards. But I carry Dad into his study and there it all is. Maps of the Arctic Circle and posters of beardy men in thick furs looking moody, articles and clippings about global warming all over the walls, books and books and more books with big bold font on the spines. Manâs books. Dadâs books. And there on the desk is his notebook.
His journal.
His pen is on the desk next to it. Itâs okay to read someoneâs diary if theyâre dead, right? Like, we read Anne Frankâs in school. So.
I put Dad down on the desk. I sit in his chair. I look at the notebook. I open it.
âNorth Pole Trip.â
It says.
North Pole Trip.
And I remember.
I remember lying in our makeshift igloo on white sheets for snow. I remember Dad saying, âOne day. One day weâll go, Rory. When youâre older. Would you like that?â I donât remember saying yes.
I flick through the notebook. Careful plans. Weather charts. Tour operators, chartered-flight companies. Names of strange places.
Barneo. Longyearbyen. Cost estimates. For two travellers.
(To Dad.) You planned it.
âNorth Pole Trip.â It says. And âNext year.â
Next to the notebook, a book with a black-and-white cover, a photograph of a young man with serious facial hair and deep eyes staring out at me. Farthest North by Fridtjof Nansen. I remember this book. Dad used to read it to me instead of a bedtime story. A great Polar explorer, one of Dadâs faves. Some of the pages are dog-eared, folded down. I open to one. Heâs underlined passages in blue and black ink.
âAlas! Alas! Life is full of disappointments; as one reaches one ridge there is always another and a higher one beyond which blocks the view.â
Well fuck that.
Fuck that. Fuck disappointment. Suddenly itâs all so clear. What to do with him.
(To Dad.) Dad. You never got to go. But I can take you.
So itâs not quite as tricky to get to the North Pole now, but itâs still bloody hard. Iâve got to look at the maps, make a plan. Itâll be like an old treasure hunt, right, Dad? And I figure if Iâm going to go, I can learn a bit from the people who went before. The beardy men. And itâs funny, a lot feels familiar, half-remembered. The names come back to be quickly. The facts and stories Dad told me coming back in dribs and drabs. Like that thing about Inuit having thousands of words for snow? You probably heard that one. Well itâs total bullshit. A myth. Anthropologists making shit up. Funny what mistakes get stuck like that.
And ...