Alistair MacLean: Bear Island

"Three hundred miles, give or take the usual. Twenty-eight hours, if we can keep up our best speed."

"You can keep it up?"

I wasn't thinking about the Morning Rose. It can stand anything. It's your people, Mr. Gerran. Nothing against them, of course, but I'm thinking they'd be more at home with those pedal boats in the paddling ponds."

"Yes, of course, of course." You could see that this aspect of the business had just occurred to him. "Dr. Marlowe, you must have treated a great deal of seasickness during your years in the Navy." He paused, but as I didn't deny it, he went on: "How long do people take to recover from sickness of this kind?"

"Depends how sick they are." I'd never given the matter any thought, but it seemed a logical enough answer. "How long they've been ill and how badly. Ninety rough minutes on a cross-Channel trip and you're as right as rain in ten minutes. Four days in an Atlantic gale and you'll be as long again before you're back on even keel."

"But people don't actually die of seasickness, do they?"

"I've never known of a case." For all his usual indecisiveness and more than occasional bumbling ineptitude which tended to make people laugh at him-discreetly and behind his back, of course-Otto, I realised for the first time and with some vague feeling of surprise, was capable of a determination that might verge on the ruthless. Something to do with money. I supposed. "Not by itself, that is. But with a person already suffering from a heart condition, severe asthma, bronchitis, ulcerated stomach-well, yes, it could see him off."

He was silent for a few moments, probably carrying out a rapid mental survey of the physical condition of cast and crew, then he said: I must admit that I'm a bit worried about our people. I wonder if you'd mind having a look over them, just a quick check', Health's a damn sight more important than any profit-hahl profit, in those days!-that we might make from the wretched film. As a doctor I'm sure You wholeheartedly agree."

"Of course," I said. "Right away." Otto had to have something that had made him the household name that he had become in the past twenty years and one had to admire this massive and wholly inadmirable hypocrisy that was clearly part of it. He had me all ways. I had said that seasickness alone did not kill so that if I were to state categorically that some member or members of his cast or crew were in no condition to withstand any further punishment from the seas he would insist on proof of the existence of some disease which, in conjunction with seasickness, might be potentially lethal, a proof that, in the first place, would have been very difficult for me to adduce in light of the limited examination facilities available to me aboard ship and, in the second place, would have been impossible anyhow for every single member of cast and crew had been subjected to a rigorous insurance medical before leaving Britain: if I gave a clean bill of health to all, then Otto would press on with all speed for Bear Island, regardless of the sufferings of "our people" about whom he professed to be so worried, thereby effecting a considerable saving in time and money: and, in the remote event of any of them inconsiderately dying upon our hands, why, then, as the man who had given the green light, I was the one in the dock. I drained my glass of inferior brandy that Otto had laid on in such meagre quantities and rose. "You'll be here? ","Yes. Most co-operative of you, Doctor, most." "We never close," I said. I was beginning to like Smithy though I hardly knew him or anything about him: I was never to get to know him, not well. That I should ever get to know him in my professional capacity was unthinkable: six feet two in his carpet slippers and certainly nothing short of two hundred pounds, Smithy was as unlikely a candidate for a doctor's surgery as had ever come my way.

In the first-aid cabinet there." Smithy nodded towards a cupboard in a corner of the dimly lit wheelhouse. "Captain Imrie's own private elixir. For emergency use only."

I extracted one of half a dozen bottles held in place by felt-lined spring clamps and examined it under the chart table lamp. My regard for Smithy went up another notch. In latitude 70" something north and aboard a superannuated trawler, however converted, one does not look to End Otard-Dupuy VSOP.

"What constitutes an emergency?" I asked.

"Thirst."

I poured some of the Otard-Dupuy into a small glass and offered it to Smithy who shook his head and watched me as I sampled the brandy then lowered the glass with suitable reverence.

"To waste this on a thirst," I said, "Is a crime against nature. Captain Imrie isn't going to be too happy when he comes up here and finds meknocking back his special reserve."

"Captain Imrie is a man who lives by fixed rules. The most fixed of the lot is that he never appears on the bridge between 8 P.m. and 8 A.M.

Oakley-he's the bosun-and I take turns during the night. Believe me, that way it's safer for everyone all round. What brings you to the bridge, Doctor-apart from this sure instinct for locating VSOP?"

"Duty. I'm checking on the weather prior to checking on the health of Mr. Gerran's paid slaves. He fears they may start dying off like flies if we continue on this course in those conditions." The conditions, I'd noted, appeared to be deteriorating, for the behaviour of the Morning Rose, especially its degree of roll, was now distinctly more uncomfortable than it had been: perhaps it was just a factor of the height of the bridge but I didn't think so.

"Mr. Gerran should have left you at home and brought along his palm reader or fortuneteller." A very contained man, educated and clearly intelligent , Smithy always seemed to be slightly amused. "As for the weather, the 6 P.m. forecast was as it usually is for those parts, vague and not very encouraging. They haven't," he aided superfluously, "a great number of weather stations in those parts."

"What do you think?"

"It's not going to improve." He dismissed the weather and smiled. "I'm not a great man for the small talk but with the Otard-Dupuy who needs it? Take the weight off your feet for an hour then go tell Mr. Gerran that all his paid slaves, as you call them, are holding a square dance on the poop.

I suspect Mr. Gerran of having a suspicious checking mind. However, if I may…"

"My guest."

I helped myself again and replaced the bottle in the cabinet. Smithy, as he'd warned, wasn't very talkative, but the silence was companionable enough. Presently he said: "Navy, aren't you, Doc?"

"Past tense."

"And now this?"

"A shameful comedown. Don't you find it so?"

"Touche." I could dimly see the white of teeth as he smiled in the half dark. "Medical malpractice, flogging penicillin to the wogs, or just drunk in charge of a surgery?"

"Nothing so glamorous. "Insubordination is the word they used."

"Snap. Me too."

A pause. "This Mr. Gerran of yours. Is he all right?"

"So the insurance doctors say."

"I didn't mean that."

You can't expect me to speak ill of my employer." Again there was that dimly seen glimpse of white teeth.

"Well, that's one way of answering my question. But, well, look, the bloke must be loony-or is that an offensive term?"

"Only to psychiatrists. I don't speak to them. Loony's fine by me. But I'd remind you that Mr. Gerran has a very distinguished record."

"As a loony?"

"That, too. But also as a film-maker, a producer."

"What kind of producer would take a film unit up to Bear Island with winter coming on?"

"Mr. Gerran wants realism."

"Mr. Gerran wants his head examined. Has he any idea what it's like up there at this time of year?"

"He's also a man with a dream."

"No place for dreamers in the Barents Sea. How the Americans ever managed to put a man on the moon-"