Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

‘I don’t know what I mean. That’s why I’m asking you. I heard Lonnie, just snippets, talking about his family’s fatal car crash, and as your daughter seemed to know something about it I assumed you would too.’

‘I don’t know what he’s talking about. Nor you.’ Otto, who seemed suddenly to have lost all his inquisitorial predilections, wheeled and walked up the passage to the centre of the cabin. I followed and walked to the outer door. Smithy was in for a hike, I thought, no doubt about it now. Although the cold was as intense as ever, the snow had stopped, the west wind dropped away to no more than an icily gentle breeze – the fact that we were now in the lee of the Antarcticfjell might have accounted for that – and there were quite large patches of star-studded sky all around. There was a curious lightness, a luminescence in the atmosphere, too much to be accounted for by the presence of stars alone. I walked out a few paces until I was clear of the main cabin, and low to the south I could see a three-quarter moon riding in an empty sky.

I went back inside and as I closed the door I saw Lonnie crossing the main living area, heading, I assumed, for his cubicle. He walked uncertainly, like a man not seeing too well, and as he went by close to me I could see that his eyes were masked in tears: I would have given a lot to know just what it was that had been responsible for those tears. It was a mark of Lonnie’s emotional upset that he did not so much as glance at the still three-quarter-full bottle of scotch on the small table by which Otto was sitting. He didn’t even so much as look at Otto: more extraordinarily still, Otto didn’t even look up at Lonnie’s passing. In the mood he’d been in when he’d accosted me outside his daughter’s door I’d have expected him to question Lonnie pretty closely, probably with both hands around the old man’s neck: but Otto’s mood, clearly, had undergone a considerable sea-change.

I was walking towards Luke, bent on rousing the faithful watchdog from his slumbers, when Otto suddenly heaved his bulk upright and made his way down the passage towards his daughter’s cubicle. I didn’t even hesitate, in for a penny, in for a pound. I followed him and took up my by now accustomed station outside Judith Haynes’s door, although this time I didn’t have to have resource to the keyhole again as Otto, in what was presumably his agitation, had left the door considerately ajar. Otto was addressing his daughter in a low harsh voice that was noticeably lacking in filial affection.

‘What have you been saying, you young she-devil? What have you been saying? Car crash? Car crash? What lies have you been telling Gilbert, you blackmailing little bitch?’

‘Get out of here!’ Judith Haynes had abandoned the use of her dull and expressionless voice, although probably involuntarily. ‘Leave me, you horrible, evil, old man. Get out, get out, get out!’

I leaned more closely to the crack between door and jamb. It wasn’t every day one had the opportunity to listen to those family tête-à-têtes.

‘By God, and I’ll not have my own daughter cross me.’ Otto had forgotten the need to talk in a low voice. ‘I’ve put up with more than enough from you and that other idle worthless bastard of a blackmailer. What you did–’

‘You dare to talk of Michael like that?’ Her voice had gone very quiet and I shivered involuntarily at the sound of it. ‘You talk of him like that and he’s lying dead. Murdered. My husband. Well, Father dear, can I tell you about something you don’t know that I know he was blackmailing you with? Shall I, Father dear? And shall I tell it to Johann Heissman too?’

There was a silence, then Otto said: ‘You venomous little bitch!’ He sounded as if he was trying to choke himself.

‘Venomous! Venomous!’ She laughed, a cracked and chilling sound. ‘Coming from you, that’s rich. Come now, Daddy dear, surely you remember 1938 – why, even I can remember it. Poor old Johann, he ran, and ran, and ran, and all the time he ran the wrong way. Poor Uncle Johann. That’s what you taught me to call him then, wasn’t it, Daddy dear? Uncle Johann.’

I left, not because I had heard all that I wanted to hear but because I thought that this was a conversation that was not going to last very long and I could foresee a degree of awkwardness arising if Otto caught me outside his daughter’s door a second time. Besides – I checked the time – Jungbeck, Otto’s watch-mate, was due to make his appearance just at that moment and I didn’t want him to find me where I was and, very likely, lose no time in telling his boss about it. So I returned to Luke, decided that there was no point in awakening him only to tell him to go to sleep again, poured myself a sort of morning nightcap and was about to savour it when I heard a feminine voice scream ‘Get out, get out, get out’, and saw Otto emerging hurriedly from his daughter’s cubicle and as hurriedly close the door behind him. He waddled swiftly into the middle of the cabin, seized the whisky bottle without as much as by-your-leave – true, it was his own, but he didn’t know that – poured himself a brimming measure and downed half of it at a gulp, his shaking hand spilling a fair proportion of it on the way up to his mouth.

‘That was very thoughtless of you, Mr Gerran,’ I said reproachfully. ‘Upsetting your daughter like that. She’s really a very sick girl and what she needs is tender affection, a measure of loving care.’

‘Tender affection!’ He was on the second half of his glass now and he spluttered much of it over his shirt front. ‘Loving care! Jesus!’ He splashed some more scotch into his glass and gradually subsided a little. By and by he became calm, almost thoughtful: when he spoke no one would have thought that only a few minutes previously his greatest yearning in life would have seemed to be to disembowel me. ‘Maybe I wasn’t as thoughtful as I ought to have been. But a hysterical girl, very hysterical. This actress temperament, you know. I’m afraid your sedatives aren’t very effective, Dr Marlowe.’

‘People’s reactions to sedatives vary greatly, Mr Gerran. And unpredictably.’

‘I’m not blaming you, not blaming you,’ he said irritatedly. ‘Care and attention. Yes, yes. But some rest, a damned good sleep is more important, if you ask me. How about another sedative – a more effective one this time? No danger in that, is there?’

‘No. No harm in it. She did sound a bit – what shall we say? – worked up. But she’s rather a self-willed person. If she refuses–’

‘Ha! Self-willed! Try, anyway.’ He seemed to lose interest in the subject and gazed moodily at the floor. He looked up without any enthusiasm as Jungbeck made a sleepy entrance, turned and shook Luke roughly by the shoulder. ‘Wake up, man.’ Luke stirred and opened bleary eyes. ‘Bloody fine guard you are. Your watch is over. Go to bed.’ Luke mumbled some sort of apology, rose stiffly and moved off.

‘You might have let him be,’ I said. ‘He’ll have to get up for the day inside a few hours anyway.’

‘Too late now. Besides,’ Otto added inconsequentially, ‘I’m going to have the lot of them up inside two hours. Weather’s cleared, there’s a moon to travel by, we can all be where we want to be and ready to shoot as soon as there’s enough light in the sky.’ He glanced along the corridor where his daughter’s cubicle was. ‘Well, aren’t you going to try?’

I nodded and left. Ten minutes’ time – in the right circumstances which in this case were the wrong ones – can bring about a change in a person’s features which just lies within the bounds of credibility. The face that had looked merely drawn so very recently, now looked haggard: she looked her real age and then ten hard and bitter years after that. She wept in a sore and aching silence and the tears flowed steadily down her temples and past the earlobes, the damp marks spreading on the grey rough linen of her pillow. I would not have thought it possible that I could ever feel such deep pity for this person and wish to comfort her: but that was how it was. I said: ‘I think you should sleep now.’