East of Desolation

‘A neat strip,’ she said. ‘They could use you at Metro, but what about your own fantasy life?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘The tough bush pilot act, the flying boots, the fur-lined parka – the whole bit. Just who are you trying to kid? I wouldn’t mind betting you even carry a gun.’

‘A .38 Smith and Wesson,’ I lied. ‘It’s in the map compartment, but I haven’t had time to shoot anyone lately.’

I’d managed a nice bright reply, but she was hitting a bit too close for comfort and I think she knew it. For a little while I busied myself unnecessarily with a chart on my knee checking our course.

About five minutes later we came down through cloud and she gave a sudden exclamation. ‘Look over there.’

A quarter of a mile away half a dozen three-masted schooners played follow-my-leader, sails full, a sight so lovely that it never failed to catch at the back of my throat.

‘Portuguese,’ I said. ‘They’ve been crossing the Atlantic since before Columbus. After fishing the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in May and June they come up here to complete their catch. They still fish for dories with handlines.’

‘It’s like something out of another age,’ she said, and there was genuine wonder in her voice.

Any further conversation was prevented by one of those sudden and startling changes in the weather for which the Greenland coast, even in summer, is so notorious. One moment a cloudless sky and crystal clear visibility and then, with astonishing rapidity, a cold front swept in from the ice-cap in a curtain of stinging rain and heavy mist.

It moved towards us in a grey wall and I eased back on the throttle and took the Otto down fast.

‘Is it as bad as it looks?’ Ilana Eytan asked calmly.

‘It isn’t good if that’s what you mean.’

I didn’t need to look at my chart. In this kind of flying anything can happen and usually does. You only survive by knowing your boltholes and I ran for mine as fast as I could.

We skimmed the shoulder of a mountain and plunged into the fjord beyond as the first grey strands of mist curled along the tips of the wings. A final burst of power to level out in the descent and we dropped into the calm water with a splash. Mist closed in around us and I opened the side window and peered out as we taxied forward.

The tip of an old stone pier suddenly pushed out of the mist and I brought the Otter round, keeping well over to the right. A few moments later we saw the other end of the pier and the shore and I dropped the wheels beneath the floats and taxied up on to a narrow shingle beach. I turned off the mast switch and silence enveloped us.

‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘A disused whaling station – Argamash. Like to take a look round?’

‘Why not. How long will we be here?’

‘Depends on the weather. One hour – two at the most. It’ll disappear as unexpectedly as it came.’

When I opened the door and jumped down she followed me so quickly that I didn’t get the chance to offer her a hand down. It was colder than Frederiksborg, but still surprisingly mild considering we were twenty miles inside the Arctic Circle and she looked about her with obvious interest.

‘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 – Sea Queen 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.’

‘And he gave you a part?’

‘A small one, but I was the only woman in the picture so the critics had to say something.’

‘And then Hollywood?’

‘Old hat. These days you do better in Europe.’

Suddenly the mist dissolved like a magic curtain and behind her, the mountain reared up into a sky that seemed bluer than ever.

‘Time to go,’ I said, and held up my hands to catch her as she jumped down.

She looked up at the mountain. ‘Has it got a name?’

‘Agsaussat,’ I said. ‘An Eskimo word. It means big with child.’

She laughed harshly. ‘Well, that’s Freudian if you like,’ she said, and turned and led the way out through the gap in the wall.

Just like that she had changed again, back into the tough, brittle young woman I had first encountered in the dining room of the hotel at Frederiksborg, safe behind a hard protective shell that could only be penetrated if she wished, and I felt strangely depressed as I followed her.

3

Off the southern tip of Disko we came across another two Portuguese schooners moving along nicely in a light breeze, followed by a fleet of fourteen-foot dories, their yellow and green sails vivid in the bright sunlight.

We drifted across the rocky spine of the island and dropped into the channel beyond that separates it from the mainland. I took the Otter down, losing height rapidly and a few moments later found what I was looking for.

Narquassit was typical of most Eskimo fishing villages on that part of the coast. There were perhaps fifteen or sixteen gaily painted wooden houses strung out along the edge of the shore and two or three whaleboats and a dozen kayaks had been beached just above the high water mark.

The Stella was anchored about fifty yards off-shore, a slim and graceful looking ninety-foot diesel motor yacht, her steel hull painted dazzling white with a scarlet trim. When I banked, turning into the wind for my landing, someone came out of the wheelhouse and stood at the bridge rail looking up at us.

‘Is that Jack?’ she asked as we continued our turn. ‘I didn’t get a good look.’

I shook my head. ‘Olaf Sørensen – he’s a Greenlander from Godthaab. Knows this coast like the back of his hand. Jack signed him on as pilot for the duration of the trip.’

‘Is he carrying his usual crew?’

‘They all came with him if that’s what you mean. An engineer, two deck hands and a cook – they’re American. And then there’s the steward – he’s a Filipino.’

‘Tony Serafino?’

‘That’s him.’

She was obviously pleased. ‘There’s an old friend for a start.’

I went in low once just to check the extent of the pack ice, but there was nothing to get excited about and I banked steeply and dropped her into the water without wasting any more time. I taxied towards the shore, let down the wheels and ran up on to dry land as the first of the village dogs arrived on the run. By the time I’d switched off the engine and opened the side door, the rest of them were there, forming a half-circle, stiff-legged and angry, howling their defiance.

A handful of Eskimo children appeared and drove them away in a hail of sticks and stones. The children clustered together and watched us, the brown Mongolian faces solemn and unsmiling, the heavy fur-lined Parkas they wore exaggerating their bulk so that they looked like little old men and women.

‘They don’t look very friendly,’ Ilana Eytan commented.

‘Try them with these.’ I produced a brown paper bag from my pocket.

She opened it and peered inside. ‘What are they?’

‘Mint humbugs – never been known to fail.’

But already the children were moving forward, their faces wreathed in smiles and she was swamped in a forest of waving arms as they swarmed around her.

I left her to it and went to the water’s edge to meet the whaleboat from the Stella which was already half-way between the ship and the shore. One of the deckhands was at the tiller and Sørensen stood in the prow, a line ready in his hands. As the man in the stern cut the engine, the whaleboat started to turn, drifting in on the waves and Sørensen threw the line. I caught it quickly, one foot in the shallows, and started to haul. Sørensen joined me and a moment later we had the whaleboat around and her stern beached.

He spoke good English, a legacy of fifteen years in the Canadian and British merchant marines and he used it on every available opportunity.

‘I thought you might run into trouble when the mist came down.’

‘I put down at Argamask for an hour.’

He nodded. ‘Nothing like knowing the coast. Who’s the woman?’

‘A friend of Desforge’s or so she says.’

‘He didn’t tell me he was expecting anyone.’

‘He isn’t,’ I said simply.

‘Like that, is it?’ He frowned. ‘Desforge isn’t going to like this, Joe.’

I shrugged. ‘She’s paid me in advance for the round trip. If he doesn’t want her here she can come back with me tonight. I could drop her off at Søndre if she wants to make a connection for Europe or the States.’

‘That’s okay by me as long as you think you can handle it. I’ve got troubles enough just keeping the Stella in once piece.’

I was surprised and showed it. ‘What’s been going wrong?’

‘It’s Desforge,’ Sørensen said bitterly. ‘The man’s quite mad. I’ve never known anyone so hell-bent on self-destruction.’

‘What’s he been up to now?’

‘We were up near Hagamut the other day looking for polar bear, his latest obsession, when we met some Eskimo hunters out after seal in their kayaks. Needless to say Desforge insisted on joining them. On the way back it seems he was out in front on his own when he came across an old bull walrus on the ice.’

‘And tried to take it alone?’ I said incredulously.

‘With a harpoon and on foot.’

‘What happened?’

‘It knocked him down with its first rush and snapped the harpoon. Luckily one of the hunters from Hagamut came up fast and shot it before it could finish him off.’

‘And he wasn’t hurt?’

‘A few bruises, that’s all. He laughed the whole thing off. He can go to hell his own way as far as I’m concerned, but I’m entitled to object when he puts all our lives at risk quite needlessly. There’s been a lot of pack ice in the northern fjords this year – it really is dangerous – and yet he ordered me to take the Stella into the Kavangar Fjord because Eskimo hunters had reported traces of bear in that region. The ice was moving down so fast from the glacier that we were trapped for four hours. I thought we were never going to get out.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He left by kayak about two hours ago with a party of hunters from Narquassit. Apparently one of them sighted a bear yesterday afternoon in an inlet about three miles up the coast. He had to pay them in advance to get them to go with him. They think he’s crazy.’

Ilana Eytan managed to disentangle herself and joined us and I made the necessary introductions.

‘Jack isn’t here at the moment,’ I told her. ‘I think that under the circumstances I’d better go looking for him. You can wait on the Stella.’

‘Why can’t I come with you?’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you. Apparently, he’s finally caught up with that bear he’s been chasing. No place for a woman, believe me.’

‘Fair enough,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve never been exactly a devotee of Jack’s great outdoors cult.’

The deckhand was already transferring the stores from the Otter to the whaleboat and I turned to Sørensen. ‘I’ll go out to the Stella with you and I’ll take the whaleboat after you’ve unloaded her.’

He nodded and went to help with the stores. Ilana Eytan chuckled. ‘Rather you than me.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘When Jack Desforge starts beating his chest wig it’s time to run for cover. I’d remember that if I were you,’ she said and went down to the boat.

I thought about that for a while, then climbed inside the Otter, opened a compartment beneath the pilot’s seat and pulled out a gun case. It contained a Winchester hunting rifle, a beautiful weapon which Desforge had loaned me the previous week. There was a box of cartridges in the map compartment and I loaded the magazine with infinite care. After all, there’s nothing like being prepared for all eventualities and the girl was certainly right about one thing. Around Jack Desforge anything might happen and usually did.

The diesel engine gave the whaleboat a top speed of six or seven knots and I made good time after leaving the Stella, but a couple of miles further on the pack ice became more of a problem and every so often I had to cut the engines and stand on the stern seat to sort out a clear route through the maze of channels.

It was hard going for a while and reasonably hazardous because the ice kept lifting with the movement of the water, broken edges snapping together like the jaws of a steel trap. Twice I was almost caught and each time got clear only by boosting power at exactly the right moment. When I finally broke through into comparatively clear water and cut the engine, I was sweating and my hands trembled slightly – and yet I’d enjoyed every minute of it. I lit a fresh cigarette and sat down in the stern for a short rest.

The wind that lifted off the water was cold, but the sun shone brightly in that eternal blue sky and the coastal scenery with the mountains and the ice-cap in the distance was incredibly beautiful – as spectacular as I’d seen anywhere.

Suddenly everything seemed to come together, the sea and the wind, the sun, the sky, the mountains and the ice-cap, fusing into a breathless moment of perfection in which the world seemed to stop. I floated there, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for a sign, if you like, but of what, I hadn’t the remotest idea and then gradually it all came flooding back, the touch of the wind on my face, the pack ice grinding upon itself, the harsh taste of the cigarette as the smoke caught at the back of my throat. One thing at least I had learned, perhaps hadn’t faced up to before. There were other reasons for my presence on this wild and lovely coast than those I had given Ilana Eytan.

I started the engine again and moved on, and ten minutes later saw a tracer of blue smoke drifting into the air above a spine of rock that walled off the beach. I found the hunting party on the other side crouched round a fire of blazing driftwood, their kayaks drawn up on the beach. Desforge squatted with his back to me, a tin cup in one hand, a bottle in the other. At the sound of the whaleboat’s engine he turned and, recognising me, let out a great roar of delight.

‘Joe, baby, what’s the good news?’

He came down the beach as I ran the whaleboat in through the broken ice and as always when we met, there was a slight edge of unreality to the whole thing for me; a sort of surprise to find that he actually existed in real life. The immense figure, the mane of brown hair and the face – that wonderful, craggy, used-up face that looked as if it had experienced everything life had to offer and had not been defeated. The face known the world over to millions of people even in the present version which included an untidy fringe of iron-grey beard and gave him – perhaps intentionally – an uncanny resemblance to Ernest Hemingway who I knew had always been a personal idol of his.

But how was one supposed to feel when confronted by a living legend? He’d made his first film at the age of sixteen in 1930, the year I was born. By 1939 he was almost rivalling Gable in popularity and a tour as a rear gunner in a B.17 bomber when America entered the second world war made him a bigger draw than ever when he returned to make films during the forties and fifties.

But over the past few years one seemed to hear more and more about his personal life. As his film appearances decreased, he seemed to spend most of his time roaming the world in the Stella and the scandals increased by a sort of inverse ratio that still kept his name constantly before the public. A saloon brawl in London, a punch-up with Italian police in Rome, an unsavoury court case in the States involving a fifteen-year-old whose mother said he’d promised to marry the girl and still wanted him to.

These and a score of similar affairs had given him a sort of legendary notoriety that still made him an object of public veneration wherever he went and yet I knew from the things he had told me – usually after a bout of heavy drinking – that his career was virtually in ruins and that except for a part in a low budget French film, he hadn’t worked in two years.

‘You’re just in time for the kill,’ he said. ‘These boys have finally managed to find a bear for me.’

I slung the Winchester over my shoulder and jumped to the sand. ‘A small one I hope.’

He frowned and nodded at the Winchester. ‘What in the hell do you want with that thing?’