Jack Higgins: East of Desolation

And then, on the far side of the mist the waters of the fjord gleamed silvery white in the intense light and the strange twisted moonscape rolled towards the ice-cap, every feature etched razor-sharp.

It was time to go. I reduced speed, put the auto pilot in control and unbuckled my safety belt. When I turned, he was there as he always was, the head disembodied in the light from the instrument panel, eyes fixed, staring into eternity as he lolled back in the co-pilot’s seat.

I moved into the darkness of the cabin and stumbled, falling to one knee, my outstretched hand touching the cold, ice-hard face of the other, and panic seized me as it always did and it was as if I couldn’t breathe as I lurched through the darkness and clawed at the quick release handles on the exit hatch.

It fell away into the night and I stepped into space without hesitation, aware of the intense cold, feeling strangely free. I seemed to somersault in slow motion and for a single moment saw the plane above me in the night drifting steadily eastwards like some dark ghost and then I reached for the ring to open my chute and it wasn’t there and I gave one single despairing cry that was swept away into the night as I plunged into darkness.

I usually only got the dream when I was overtired or depressed, but it always left me in the same state – soaked in sweat and shaking like a leaf. I lay there looking up at the ceiling for a while, then flung aside the bedclothes and padded across to the window. When I rubbed the condensation away a fine morning greeted me.

I was flying out of Frederiksborg that year, Godthaab the capital having got just a little too civilised for comfort. It was a small place about two hundred miles below the Arctic Circle on the south-west coast. The population couldn’t have been more than fifteen hundred, but during the short summer season it was artificially inflated by the influx of two or three hundred construction workers from Denmark who were engaged in building rather ugly three-storied blocks of concrete flats as part of the government development programme.

But Frederiksborg, like most places on the Greenland coast, still had the look of a raw pioneering town, the mushroom growth of some gold or silver strike. The roads were unsurfaced and most of the town was scattered over a peninsula of solid rock. The houses were made of wood and painted red, yellow and green, and because of the rock foundations everything went overhead and telephone and electric cables festooned the air from a forest of poles.

The harbour was half a mile away at the end of a rocky road beside the new canning factory and contained half a dozen fishing boats, a Catalina flying boat used by East Canada Airways for coastal traffic, and my own Otter Amphibian which was parked on dry land at the head of the concrete slipway.

It was almost ten o’clock and I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. There was a quick knock on the outside door and I wrapped a towel around my waist and returned to the bedroom.

Gudrid Rasmussen looked in. ‘You are ready for coffee, Mr Martin?’ she said in Danish.

She was a small, rather hippy girl of twenty-five or so, a Greenlander born and bred, mainly Danish by blood which showed in the fair hair plaited around her head, with just a touch of Eskimo in the high cheekbones and almond shaped eyes. Most of the year she spent housekeeping for her grandfather on his sheep farm at Sandvig about a hundred miles down the coast, but during the summer she worked as a chambermaid at the hotel.

‘Make it tea this morning, Gudrid,’ I said, ‘I’m feeling nostalgic.’

She shook her head in reproof. ‘You look awful. Too much work is not good for a man.’

Before I could reply the sound of an aeroplane engine shattered the stillness of the morning and I went to the window in time to see an Aermacchi flip neatly in across the harbour and drop flaps to land on the airstrip beyond the canning factory.

‘Here comes your boy friend.’

‘Arnie?’ There was a touch of colour in her cheeks as she crossed to the window. ‘Any girl is Arnie’s girl, Mr Martin. I hold no special rights.’

It would have been pointless to try and pretend otherwise and we stood there together for a moment in silence watching the wheels come down beneath the skis with which the Aermacchi was fitted.

‘I thought he was going to take those off and put his floats back on,’ I said.

‘The skis?’ She shrugged. ‘He’s got an extension of his service contract with the American mining company at Malamusk on the edge of the ice-cap. Up there the only place to land is the snow-field.’

His landing was good – not excellent, but then we all have our off-days. The Aermacchi rolled along the airstrip and disappeared from view behind the canning factory.

Gudrid smiled brightly. ‘I’ll bring your tea while you have a shower, then I’ll order breakfast for you. I’ll change the bed later.’

The door closed behind her and I went back into the bathroom and got under the shower. It was nice and hot and very relaxing and after a while my headache started to go, which was a good thing considering that I had a two and a half hour flight ahead of me. I pulled on my old silk dressing gown and went back into the bedroom towelling my hair briskly. In my absence, Gudrid had brought in a tray and the tea, when I poured it, was scalding. I finished the first cup and was pouring another when the door burst open and Arnie Fassberg blew in.

He was about my height, which was a little under six feet, but the resemblance stopped there. My hair was dark, his so fair as to be almost white, his face open, mine closed and saturnine. As yet he had not been used by life or at least had been used kindly and his forehead was as unlined as any child’s. By birth an Icelander, he had perhaps the most incredible appetite for women that I have ever encountered, and like all Don Juans he was an incurable romantic, falling in and out of love with astounding frequency.

He presented a slightly theatrical figure in his fur-lined boots and old flying jacket and he tossed a canvas holdall into the corner and moved to the table.

‘I thought you might have left. I’ve probably broken all records from Søndre Strømfjord to get here.’

‘Any particular reason?’

He helped himself to tea using my cup. ‘You’re flying supplies out to that American film actor aren’t you?’

He was referring to Jack Desforge, who’d arrived unexpectedly in Godthaab early in June in his motor yacht Stella . Since then he’d been cruising the coast fishing and hunting and I’d been flying out supplies to wherever he was at regular intervals.

‘Why the interest?’

‘I’ve got a passenger for you. She got off the midnight jet from Copenhagen at Søndre. Wanted me to take her straight to Desforge, but I couldn’t oblige. Have to be at Malamusk by noon with some spare parts they’ve had specially flown in from the States. Where is he, by the way?’

‘Somewhere north of Disko in the region of Narquassit as I last heard; looking for polar bear.’

There was genuine astonishment on his face. ‘At this time of the year. You must be joking.’

‘About the only thing outside of a Tibetan yak that he’s never laid low. You never know, he could hit lucky. I’ve seen bear up there myself in August before now.’

‘But not often, my friend. I wish him luck.’

‘This girl – what’s her name?’

‘Eytan – Ilana Eytan.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Israeli?’

‘I would have said English.’ He grinned. ‘Not that it matters – in any language she’s a lot of woman.’

‘Good looking?’

He shook his head. ‘Ugly as sin and it doesn’t matter a damn.’

‘A rare combination. I look forward to meeting her.’