Alistair MacLean: Bear Island

"It's not a problem I'd care to be faced with myself," I said. "How are you feeling?"

"Me?" He inclined his bald pate forty-five degrees backwards, tilted the bottle, lowered it and wiped a few drops of the elixir from his grey beard. "Never been ill in my life. Who ever heard of a pickled onion going sour?" He cocked his head sideways. "Ah!"

"Ah, what?" He was listening, that I could see, but I couldn't hear a damned thing except the crash of bows against seas and the metallic drumming vibration of the ancient steel hull which accompanied each downwards plunge.

"The horns of Elfland faintly blowing," Lonnie said. "Hark! The Herald Angels." I harked and this time I heard. I'd heard it many times, and with steadily increasing horror, since boarding the Morning Rose, a screechingly cacophonous racket that was fit for heralding nothing short of Armageddon . The three perpetrators of this boiler-house bedlam of sound, Josh Hendriks's young sound crew assistants, might not have been tone stone deaf but their classical musical education could hardly be regarded as complete as not one of them could read a note of music. John, Luke, and Mark were all cast in the same contemporary mould, with flowing shoulder-length hair and wearing clothes that gave rise to the suspicion that they must have broken into a guru's laundry. All their spare time was spent with recording equipment, guitar, drums, and xylophone in the foreword recreation room where they rehearsed, apparently night and day, against the moment of their big breakthrough into the pop-record world where they intended, appropriately enough, to bill themselves as the Three Apostles.

"They might have spared the passengers on a night like this," I said.

"You underestimate our immortal trio, my dear boy. The fact that you may be one of the most excruciating musicians in existence does not prevent you from having a heart of gold. They have invited the passengers along to hear them perform in the hope that this might alleviate their sufferings." He closed his eyes as a raucous bellow overlaid with a high-pitched scream as of some animal in pain echoed down the passageway outside.

"The concert seems to have begun."

"You can't fault their psychology," I said. "After that, an Arctic gale is going to seem like a summer afternoon on the Thames."

`You do them an injustice." Lonnie lowered the level in the bottle by another inch then slid down into his bunk to show that the audience was over. "Go and see for yourself."

So I went and saw for myself and I had been doing them an injustice. The Three Apostles, surrounded by that plethora of microphones, amplifiers , speakers, and arcane electronic equipment without which the latter-day troubadors will not-and, more importantly, cannot-operate, were performing on a low platform in one corner of the recreation room and maintaining their balance with remarkable ease largely, it seemed, because their bodily gyrations and contortions, as inseparable a part of their art as the electronic aids, seemed to synchronise rather well with the pitching and rolling of the Morning Rose. Rather conservatively, if oddly, clad in blue jeans and psychedelic kaftans, and bent over their microphones in an attitude of almost acolytic fervour, the three young sound assistants were giving of their uninhibited best and from what little could be seen of the ecstatic expressions on faces eighty percent concealed at any given moment by wildly swinging manes of hair it was plain that they thought that their best approximated very closely to the sublime. I wondered, briefly, how angels would look with earplugs, then turned my attention to the audience.

There were fifteen in all, ten members of the production crew and five of the cast. A round dozen of them very clearly the worse for the wear but their sufferings were being temporarily held in abeyance by the fascination, which stopped a long way short of rapture, induced by the Three Apostles who had now reached a musical crescendo accompanied by what seemed to be some advanced form of St. Vitus's Dance. A hand touched me on the shoulder and I looked sideways at Charles Conrad.

Conrad was thirty years old and was to be the male lead in the film, not yet a big-name star but building up an impressive international reputation. He was cheerful. ruggedly handsome, with a thatch of thick brown hair that kept falling over his eyes: he had eyes of the bluest blue and most gleamingly white perfect teeth-like his name, his own-that would have transported a dentist into ecstasies or the depths of despair depending upon whether he was primarily interested in the aesthetic or economic aspects of his profession. He was invariably friendly, courteous, and considerate, whether by instinct or calculated design it was impossible to say.

He cupped his hand to my ear, nodded towards the performers.

"Your contract specifies hair shirts?"

"No. Why? Does yours?"

"Solidarity of the working classes." He smiled, looked at me with an oddly speculative glint in his eyes. "Letting the opera buffs down, aren't you?"

"They'll recover. Anyway, I always tell my patients that a change is as good as a rest." The music ceased abruptly and I lowered my voice about fifty decibels. "Mind you, this is carrying it too far. Fact is, I'm on duty.

Mr. Gerran is a bit concerned about you all."

"He wants his herd delivered to the cattle market in prime condition?"

"Well, I suppose you all represent a pretty considerable investment to him."

"Investment? Ha! Do you know that that twisted old skinflint of a beer barrel has not only got us at fire-sale prices but also won't pay us a penny until shooting's over?"

"No, I didn't." I paused. "We live in a democracy, Mr. Conrad, the land of the free. You don't have to sell yourselves in the slave market."

"Don't we just! What do you know about the film industry?"

"Nothing."

"Obviously. It's in the most depressed state in its history. Eighty percent of the technicians and actors unemployed. I'd rather work for pennies than starve." He scowled, then his natural good humour reasserted itself. "Tell him that his prop and stay, that indomitable leading man, Charles Conrad , is fit and well. Not happy, mind you, just fit and well. To be happy I'd have to see him fall over the side."

I'll tell him all of that." I looked around the room. The Three Apostles, mercifully, were refreshing themselves with ginger ale: most of the audience were likewise refreshing themselves though clearly in need of something stronger than ginger ale. I said to Conrad: "This little lot will get to market."

Instant mass diagnosis?"

"It takes practice. It also saves time. Who's missing?"

"Well." He glanced around. "There's Heissman-"

"I've seen him. And Neal Divine. And Lonnie. And Mary Stuart-not that I'd expect her to be here anyway.

"Our beautiful but snooty young Slav, eh?"

"I'll go halfway with that. You don't have to be snooty to avoid people!'

"I like her too." I looked at him. I'd only spoken to him twice, briefly. I could see he meant what he said. He sighed. I wish she were my leading lady instead of our resident Mata Hari."

"You can't be referring to the delectable Miss Haynes?

I can and I am," he said moodily. "Feminies fatales wear me out. You'll observe she's not among those present. I'll bet she's in bed with those two damned floppy-cared hounds of hers, all of them having the vapours and high on smelling salts."

"Who else is missing?"

"Antonio." He was smiling again. "According to the Count-he's his cabin-mate-Antonio is in extremis and unlikely to see the night out."

"He did leave the dining room in rather a hurry." I left Conrad and joined the Count at his table. The Count, with a lean aquiline face, black pencil moustache, bar-straight black eyebrows and greying hair brushed straight back from his forehead appeared to be in more than tolerable health. He held a very large measure of brandy in his hand and I did not have to ask to know that it would be the very best cognac obtainable for the Count was a renowned connoisseur of everything from blondes to caviare, as precisely demanding a perfectionist in the pursuit of the luxuries of life as he was in the performance of his duties which may have helped to make him what he was, the best lighting cameraman in the country and probably in Europe. Nor did I have to wonder where he had obtained the cognac from: rumour had it that he had known Otto Gerran a very long time indeed or at least long enough to bring his own private supplies along with him whenever Otto went on safari. Count Tadeusz Leszczynski-which nobody ever called him because they couldn't pronounce it-had learned a great deal about life since he had parted with his huge Polish estates, precipitately and forever, in mid-September 1939.