Jack Higgins: East of Desolation

‘Can we explore?’

‘If you like.’

We followed the beach and scrambled up an old concrete slipway that brought us to the shore-end of the pier. The mountain lifted above us shrouded in mist and the broken shell of the old whale-oil processing factory and the ruins of forty or fifty cottages crouched together at its foot.

It started to rain slightly as we walked along what had once been the main street and she pushed her hands into her pockets and laughed, a strange excitement in her voice.

‘Now this I like – always have done since I was a kid. Walking in the rain with the mist closing in.’

‘And keeping out the world,’ I said. ‘I know the feeling.’

She turned and looked at me in some surprise, then laughed suddenly, but this time it lacked its usual harsh edge. She had changed. It was difficult to decide exactly how – just a general softening up, I suppose, but for the moment at any rate, she had become a different person.

‘Welcome to the club. You said this was once a whaling station?’

I nodded. ‘Abandoned towards the end of the last century.’

‘What happened?’

‘They simply ran out of whale in commercial quantities.’ I shrugged. ‘Most years there were four or five hundred ships up here. They over-fished, that was the trouble, just like the buffalo – hunted to extinction.’

There was a small ruined church at the end of the street, a cemetery behind it enclosed by a broken wall and we went inside and paused at the first lichen covered headstone.

‘Angus McClaren – died 1830,’ she said aloud. ‘A Scot.’

I nodded. ‘That was a bad year in whaling history. The pack ice didn’t break up as early as usual and nineteen British whalers were caught in it out there. They say there were more than a thousand men on the ice at one time.’

She moved on reading the half-obliterated names aloud as she passed slowly among the graves. She paused at one stone, a slight frown on her face, then dropped to one knee and rubbed the green moss away with a gloved hand.

A Star of David appeared, carved with the same loving care that had distinguished the ornate Celtic crosses on the other stones and like them, the inscription was in English.

‘Aaron Isaacs,’ she said as if to herself, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘Bosun – SeaQueen out of Liverpool. Killed by a whale at sea – 27th July, 1863.’

She knelt there staring at the inscription, a hand on the stone itself, sadness on her face and finding me standing over her, rose to her feet looking strangely embarrassed for a girl who normally seemed so cast-iron, and for the first time I wondered just how deep that surface toughness went.

She heaved herself up on top of a square stone tomb and sat on the edge, legs dangling. ‘I forgot my cigarettes. Can you oblige?’

I produced my old silver cigarette case and passed it up. She helped herself and paused before returning it, a slight frown on her face as she examined the lid.

‘What’s the crest?’

‘Fleet Air Arm.’

‘Is that where you learned to fly?’ I nodded and she shook her head. ‘The worst bit of casting I’ve seen in years. You’re no more a bush pilot than my Uncle Max.’

‘Should I be flattered or otherwise?’

‘Depends how you look at it. He’s something in the City – a partner in one of the merchant banking houses I think. Some kind of finance anyway.’

I smiled. ‘We don’t all look like Humphrey Bogart you know or Jack Desforge for that matter.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it the hard way. Why Greenland? There must be other places.’

‘Simple – I can earn twice as much here in the four months of the summer season as I could in twelve months anywhere else.’

‘And that’s important?’

‘It is to me. I want to buy another couple of planes.’

‘That sounds ambitious for a start. To what end?’

‘If I could start my own outfit in Newfoundland and Labrador I’d be a rich man inside five or six years.’

‘You sound pretty certain about that.’

‘I should be – I had eighteen months of it over there working for someone else, then six months free-lancing. The way Canada’s expanding she’ll be the richest country in the world inside twenty-five years, take my word for it.’

She shook her head. ‘It still doesn’t fit,’ she said, and obviously decided to try another tack. ‘You look the sort of man who invariably has a good woman somewhere around in his life. What does she think about all this?’

‘I haven’t heard from that front lately,’ I said. ‘The last despatch was from her lawyers and distinctly cool.’

‘What did she want – money?’

I shook my head. ‘She could buy me those two planes and never notice it. No, she just wants her freedom. I’m expecting the good word any day now.’

‘You don’t sound in any great pain.’

‘Dust and ashes a long, long time ago.’ I grinned. ‘Look, I’ll put you out of your misery. Joe Martin, in three easy lessons. I did a degree in business administration at the London School of Economics and learned to fly with the University Air squadron. I had to do a couple of years National Service when I finished, so I decided I might as well get something out of it and took a short service commission as a pilot with the old Fleet Air Arm. My wife was an actress when I first met her. Bit parts with the Bristol Old Vic. All very real and earnest.’

‘When did you get married?’

‘When I came out of the service. Like your Uncle Max, I took a job in the City, in my case Public Relations.’

‘Didn’t it work out?’

‘Very well indeed by normal standards.’ I frowned, trying to get the facts straight in my mind. It all seemed so unreal when you talked about it like this. ‘There were other things that went wrong. Someone discovered that Amy could sing and before we knew where we were she was making records. From then on it was one long programme of one-night stands and tours, personal appearances – that sort of thing.’

‘And you saw less and less of each other. An old story in show business.’

‘There seems to be a sort of gradual corruption about success – especially that kind. When you find that you can earn a thousand pounds a week, it’s a short step to deciding there must be something wrong in a husband who can’t make a tenth of that sum.’

‘So you decided to cut loose.’

‘There was a morning when I walked into my office, took one look at the desk and the pile of mail waiting for me and walked right out again. I spent my last thousand pounds on a conversion course and took a commercial pilot’s licence.’

‘And here you are. Joe Martin – fly anywhere – do anything. Gun-running our speciality.’ She shook her head. ‘The dream of every bowler-hatted clerk travelling each day on the City line. When do you move on to Pago Pago?’

‘That comes next year,’ I said. ‘But why should you have all the fun? Let’s see what we can find out about Ilana Eytan. A Hebrew name as I remember, so for a start you’re Jewish.’

It was like a match on dry grass and she flared up at once. ‘Israeli – I’m a sabra – Israeli born and bred.’

It was there, of course, the chip the size of a Californian Redwood and explained a great deal. I quickly smoothed her ruffled feathers. ‘The most beautiful soldiers in the world, Israeli girls. Were you ever one?’

‘Naturally – everyone must serve. My father is a lecturer in Ancient Languages at the University of Tel Aviv, but he saw active service in the Sinai campaign in 1956 and he was well into his fifties.’

‘What about this film business?’

‘I did some theatre in Israel which led to a small film part, then someone offered me work in Italy. I played bit parts in several films there. That’s where I met Jack. He was on location for a war picture. He not only took the lead – he also directed. Most of the money was his own too.’