Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

Comin’ and Goin’ was seated by Otto at the head of the table and they, too, were silent. I wondered just what the relationship between the two men was. They seemed to be on cordial enough terms but they only sought each other out, I had observed, when questions of business were to be discussed. It could well have been that, personally, they had little in common, but the fact that Comin’ and Goin’ had recently been made Vice-President and heir-apparent to Olympus Productions seemed to speak highly enough of Otto’s regard for him. And as they were together now and not talking I assumed that they were pondering over matters similar to those that were engaging the attention of Imrie and myself.

The Three Apostles weren’t talking, but that meant nothing, when they were deprived of their instruments, their music magazines and their garishly primary-coloured comics, the presence of all of which they had probably deemed as being inappropriate in the present circumstances, they were habitually bereft of speech. Stryker, still in solicitously close attendance upon his wife, was talking quietly to the Count, while the Duke was conspicuously not talking to his cabin-mate Eddie, but as they were rarely on speaking terms anyway, this was hardly significant. I became aware that Lonnie Gilbert was at my elbow and I wondered what degree, if any, of the underlying significance of Captain Imrie’s words had penetrated his befuddled mind. Lonnie was clutching a glass of scotch, both container and contents of genuine family size, a marked contrast to the relatively small portions he’d been pouring himself in the lounge bar about midnight: I could only assume that somewhere in the remoter recesses of Lonnie’s mind there lurked some vestigial traces of conscience which permitted him only modest amounts of hooch not honestly come by.

‘ “Envy and calumny and hate and pain, and that unrest which men miscall delight shall touch them not and torture not again,” ’ Lonnie intoned. He tilted his glass, lowered the liquid level by two fingers and smacked his lips. ‘ “From the contagion–” ’

‘Lonnie.’ I nodded at the glass. ‘When did you start this morning?’

‘Start? My dear fellow, I never stopped. A sleepless night. “From the contagion of the world’s slow stain they are secure, and now can never mourn the heart grown cold, the head grown grey–” ’

Aware that he had lost his audience, Lonnie broke off and followed my line of sight. Mary darling and Allen, proprieties observed, were leaving. Mary hesitated, stopped in front of Judith Haynes’s chair, smiled and said: ‘Good morning. Miss Haynes. I hope you’re feeling better today?’

Judith Haynes smiled, a fractionally glimpsed set of perfect teeth, then looked away: a false smile meant to be seen and understood as a false smile, followed by a complete and contemptuous dismissal. I saw colour stain Mary darling’s cheeks and she made as if to speak, but Allen, his lips tight, took her arm and urged her gently towards the lee door.

‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘I wonder what all that was about. A clearly offended Miss Haynes but I can’t conceive of our little Mary giving offence to anybody.’

‘But she has done, my boy, she has done. Our Judith is one of those sad and unfortunate females who can’t abide any other female who is younger, better-looking or more intelligent than she is. Our little Mary offends on at least two of those counts.’

‘You disappoint me,’ I said. ‘Here I was, manfully trying to discount – or at least ignore – what appears to be the universally held opinion that Judith Haynes is a complete and utter bitch and now–’

‘And you were right.’ Lonnie regarded his empty glass with an expression of faint astonishment. ‘She isn’t a bitch, at least she doesn’t make a career out of it, except inadvertently. To those who offer no threat or competition, little children or pets, she is capable of generous impulses, even affection. But that apart, a poor, poor creature, incapable of loving or inspiring love in others, to wit and in short, a loveless soul, perverse but pitiable, a person who having once seen herself and not liking what she has seen, turns away from reality and takes refuge in misanthropic fantasy.’ Lonnie executed a swift sideways scuttle in the direction of an unattended scotch bottle, replenished his glass with the speed and expertise born of a lifetime of practice, returned happily and warmed to his theme.

‘Sick, sick, sick, and it is the sick, not the whole, who require our help and sympathy.’ Lonnie could, on occasion, sound very pontifical indeed. ‘She’s one of the hapless band of the world’s willing walking wounded – how’s that, four w’s and never a stutter – who takes a positive delight in being hurt, in being affronted, and if the hurt is not really there, why, then, all the better, they can imagine one even closer to the heart’s desire. For those unfortunates who love only themselves the loving embrace of self-pity, close hugged like an old and dear friend, is the supreme, the most precious luxury in life. I can assure you, my dear fellow, that no hippo ever wallowed in his African mud-bath with half the relish–’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Lonnie,’ I said, ‘and a very apt analogy that is, too.’ I wasn’t listening to him any more, my attention had been caught and held by the fleeting glimpse I’d had of a figure hurrying by on the deck outside. Heissman, I was almost sure it was Heissman, and if it were I’d three immediate questions that asked for equally immediate answers. Heissman was rarely observed to move at any but the most deliberate and leisurely speed so why the uncharacteristic haste? Why, if he were moving aft, did he choose the weather instead of the lee side of the superstructure unless he hoped to avoid being observed through the large snow-obscured windows on the weather side of the saloon? And what, in view of his well-known and almost pathological aversion to cold – an inevitable legacy, one supposed, of his long years in Siberia – was he doing on the upper deck anyway? I clapped Lonnie on the shoulder. ‘Back, as the saying goes, in a trice. I have to visit the sick.’

I left, not hurriedly, through the lee door, then paused to see if anyone was interested enough in my departure to follow me out. And someone did follow me, almost immediately, but if he had any interest in my movements he wasn’t letting me see it. Gunther Jungbeck smiled at me briefly, indifferently, and hurried forward to the entrance to the passenger accommodation. I waited a few more seconds, then climbed up the vertical steel ladder to the boat deck, immediately abaft the bridge and radio office.

I circled the funnel and engine intake fans casing and found no one there. I hadn’t expected to, even a polar bear wouldn’t have hung around that bitter and totally exposed boat deck without a very compelling reason. I moved aft by one of our two motorized lifeboats, took what illusory shelter I could find beside a ventilator and peered out over the after-deck.

For the first few moments I could see nothing, nothing, that was, that was likely to be of any interest to me, not so much because of the driving snow as the fact that all objects crowding the after-deck – and there were well over a score of them, ranging from fuel drums to a sixteen-foot work-boat on a special cradle – were so deeply shrouded in their shapeless cocoons of snow that, in most cases, it was virtually impossible to decide upon not only their identity but whether they were inanimate or not. Not until any of them might move.

One of the cocoons stirred, a slender ghostly form detaching itself from the shelter of a square bulky object which I knew to be the cabin for a Sno-Cat. The figure half-turned in my direction and although the face was almost entirely hidden by a hand that held both sides of the parka hood closed against the snow, enough of straw-coloured hair showed to let me identify the only person aboard with that colour of hair. Almost at once she was joined by a person moving into my line of vision from behind the break of the boat deck and I didn’t even have to see the thin ascetic face to know that this was Heissman.