Bear Island (22 page)

    “You'd be obligated if I minded my own damned business?”

    “Exactly.”

    “I'll bet young Allen feels that way too.”

    “That young Allen deserves all he got," Judith Haynes said. Her tone wasn't any more friendly than Stryker's. I found what she said interesting for two reasons. She was widely supposed to loathe her husband but there was no evidence of it here: and here might lie a more fruitful source for enquiry for, clearly, she wasn't as good at keeping her emotions and tongue under wraps as her husband was.

    "How do you know, Miss Haynes? You weren't there." I didn't have to be. I--”

    “Darling!" Stryker's voice was abrupt, warning.

    "Can't trust your wife to speak for herself, is that it?" I said. His big fists balled but I ignored him and looked again at Judith Haynes. "Do you know there's a little girl up in the saloon crying her eyes out over what your big tough husband did to that kid? Does that mean nothing to you?”

    “If you're talking about that little bitch of a continuity girl she deserves all that comes her way too.”

    “Darling!" Stryker's voice was urgent. I stared at Judith Haynes in disbelief but I could see she meant what she said. Her red slash of a mouth was contorted into a line as straight and as thin as the edge of a ruler, the once beautiful green eyes were venomous and the face ugly in its contorted attempts to conceal some hatred or viciousness or poison in the mind. It was an almost frightening display of what must have been a very, very rare public exhibition of what powerful rumour in the film world to which I now partially apologised for my former mental strictures maintained to be a fairly constant private amalgam of the peasant shrew and the screaming fishwife.

    "That-harmless-child?" I spaced the words in slow incredulity. "A bitch?”

    “A tramp, a little tramp! A slut! A little gutter--“

    "Stop it!" Stryker's voice was a lash, but it had strained overtones. I had the feeling that only desperation would make him talk to his wife in this fashion.

    "Yes, stop it," I said. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Miss Haynes, and I'm damned sure you don't either. All I know is you're sick."

    I turned to go. Stryker barred my way. He'd lost a little colour from his cheeks.

    "Nobody talks to my wife that way." His lips hardly moved as he spoke.

    I was suddenly sick of the Strykers. I said: "I've insulted your wife?”

    “Unforgivably.”

    “And so I've insulted you?"

    “You're getting the point, Marlowe.”

    “And anyone who insults you gets what's coming to them. That's what you said to Captain Imrie.”

    “That's what I said." I see.”

    “I thought you might." He still barred my way.

    "And if I apologise?”

    “An apology?" He smiled coldly. "Let's try one out for size, shall we?"

    I turned to Judith Haynes. I said: I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Miss Haynes, and I'm damned sure you don't either. All I know is you're sick."

    Her face looked as if invisible claws had sunk deep into both cheeks all the way from temple to chin and dragged back the skin until it was stretched drum-tight over the bones. I turned to face Stryker. His facial skin didn't look tight at all. The strikingly handsome face wasn't handsome any more, the contours seemed to have sagged and jellied and the cheeks were bereft of colour. I brushed by him, opened the door and stopped.

    "You poor bastard," I said. "Don't worry. Doctors never tell."

    I was glad to make my way up to the clean biting cold of the upper deck. I'd left something sick and unhealthy and more than vaguely unclean down there behind me and I didn't have to be a doctor to know what the sickness was. The snow had eased now and as I looked out over the weather side-the port side-I could see that we were leaving one promontory about a half mile behind on the port quarter while another was coming up about the same distance ahead on the port bow. Kapp Kolthoff and Kapp, Malmgren, I knew from the chart, so we had to be steaming northeast across the Evjebukta. The cliffs here were less high, but we were even more deeply into their lee than twenty minutes previously and the sea had moderated even more. We had less than three miles to go.

    I looked up at the bridge. The weather, obviously, was improving considerably or interest and curiosity had been stimulated by the close proximity of our destination, for there was now a small knot of people on either wing of the bridge but with hoods so closely drawn as to make features indistinguishable. I became aware that there was a figure standing close by me huddled up against the fore superstructure of the bridge. It was Mary Darling with the long tangled blond tresses blowing in every direction of the compass. I went towards her, put my arm round her with the ease born of recent intensive practice, and tilted her face. Red eyes, tear-splotched cheeks, a little woebegone face half-hidden behind the enormous spectacles: the slut, the bitch, the little tramp.

    "Mary darling," I said. "What are you doing here? It's far too cold. You should be inside or below."

    I wanted to be alone." There was still the catch of a dying sob in her voice. "And Mr. Gilbert kept wanting to give me brandy-and, well-?' She shuddered.

    "So you've left Lonnie alone with the restorative. That'll be an eminently satisfactory all-round conclusion as far as Lonnie-?'

    "Dr. Marlowe!" She became aware of the arm round her and made a half-hearted attempt to break away. "People will see us!"

    “I don't care," I said. “I want the whole world to know of our love.'

    `You want the whole--" She looked at me in consternation, her normally big eyes huge behind her glasses, then came the first tremulous beginnings of a smile. "Oh, Dr. Marlowe!"

    "There's a young man below who wants to see you immediately," I said.

    "Oh!" The smile vanished; heaven knows what gravity of import she found in my words. "Is he-I mean, he'll have to go to hospital, won't he?"

    "He'll be up and around this afternoon."

    "Really? Really and truly?"

    “If you're calling my professional competence into question—“

    "Oh, Dr. Marlowe Then what-why does he-'

    “I should imagine he wants you to hold his hand. I'm putting myself in his shoes, of course."

    "Oh, Dr. Marlowe! Will it-I mean in his cabin-"

    "Do I have to drag you down there?"

    "No." She smiled. I don't think that will be necessary." She hesitated.

    "Dr. Marlowe?”

    “Yes?"

    “I think you're wonderful. I really do.”

    “Hoppit."

    She smiled, almost happily now, and hopped it. I wished I even fractionally shared her opinion of me, for if I was in a position to do so there would be a good number fewer of dead and sick and injured around. But I was glad of one thing, I hadn't had to hurt Mary Darling as I'd feared I might, there had been no need to ask her any of the questions that had half-formed in my mind even as I had left the Strykers’ cabin. If she were even remotely capable of being any of those things that Judith Haynes had, for God knew what misbegotten reasons, accused her of being, then she had no right to be in the film industry as a continuity girl, she was in more than a fair way to making her fame and fortune as one of the great actresses of our time. Besides, I didn't have to ask any questions now, not where she and Allen and the Strykers were concerned: it was hard to say whether my contempt for Michael Stryker was greater than my pity.

    I remained where I was for a few minutes watching some crew members who had just come on to the foredeck begin to remove the no longer necessary lashings from the deck cargo, strip off tarpaulins and set slings in places, while another two set about clearing away the big fore derrick and testing the winch. Clearly, Captain Imrie had no intention of wasting any time whatsoever upon our arrival: he wanted, and understandably, to be gone with all dispatch. I went aft to the saloon.

    Lonnie was the sole occupant, alone but not lonely, not as long as he had that bottle of Hine happily clutched in his fist. He lowered his glass as I sat down beside him.

    "Ah! You have assuaged the sufferings of the walking wounded? There is a preoccupied air about you, my dear fellow." He tapped the bottle. "For the instant alleviation of workaday cares--”

    “That bottle belongs to the pantry, Lonnie.”

    “The fruits of nature belong to all mankind. A soupcon?"

    If only to stop you from drinking it all. I have an apology to make to you, Lonnie. About our delectable leading lady. I don't think there's enough kindness around to waste any in throwing it in her direction.”

    “Barren ground, you would say? Stony soil?"

    “I would say.”

    “Redemption and salvation are not for our fair Judith?”

    “I don't know about that. All I know is that I wouldn't like to be the one to try and that looking at her I can only conclude that there's an awful lot of unkindness around.”

    “Amen to that." Lonnie swallowed some more brandy. "But we must not forget the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son. Nothing and nobody is ever entirely lost."

    “I daresay. Luck to leading her back to the paths of the righteous-you shouldn't have to fight off too much competition for the job. How is it, do you think, that a person like that should be so different from the other two?”

    “Mary dear and Mary darling? Dear, dear girls. Even in my dotage I love them dearly. Such sweet children.”

    “They could do no wrong?”

    “Never!”

    “Ha! That's easy to say. But what if, perhaps, they were deeply under the influence of alcohol?”

    “What?" Lonnie appeared genuinely shocked. "What are you talking about? Inconceivable, my dear boy, inconceivable!”

    “Not even, say, if they were to have a double gin?”

    “What piffling nonsense is this? We are speaking of the influence of alcohol, not about aperitifs for swaddling babes.”

    “You would see no harm in either of them asking for, say, just one drink?”

    “Of course not." Lonnie looked genuinely puzzled. `You do harp on so, my dear fellow.”

    “Yes, I do rather. I just wondered why once, after a long day on the set, when Mary Stuart had asked you for just that one drink you flew completely off the handle."

    In curiously slow-motion fashion Lonnie put bottle and glass on the table and rose unsteadily to his feel?. He looked old and tired and terribly vulnerable.

    "Ever since you came in-now I can see it." He spoke in a kind of sad whisper. Ever since you came in you've been leading up to this one question."

    He shook his head and his eyes were not seeing me. I thought you were my friend," he said quietly and walked uncertainly from the saloon.

    8

    The northwest corner of the Sor-Hamna Bight, where the Morning Rose had finally come to rest, was just under three miles due northeast, as the crow flies, from the most southerly tip of Bear Island. The Sor-Hamna itself, U-shaped and open to the south, was just over a thousand yards in width on its cast-west axis and close on a mile in length from north to south. The eastern arm of the harbour was discontinuous, beginning with a small peninsula perhaps three hundred yards in length, followed by a two-hundred-yard gap of water interspersed with small islands of various sizes then by the much larger island of Makehl, very narrow from east to west, stretching almost half a mile to its most southerly point of Kapp Roalkvarn. The land to the north and cast was low-lying, that to the west, or true island side, rising fairly steeply from a shallow escarpment but nowhere higher than a small hill about four hundred feet high about halfway down the side of the bight. Here were none of the towering precipices of the Hambergfiell or Bird Fell ranges to the south: but, on the other hand, here the entire land was covered in snow, deep on the northfacing slopes and their valleys where the pale low summer sun and the scouring winds had passed them by.

    The Sor-Hamna was not only the best, it was virtually the only reasonable anchorage in Bear Island. When the wind blew from the west it offered perfect protection for vessels sheltering there, and for a northerly wind it was only slightly less good. From an easterly wind, dependent upon its strength and precise direction it afforded a reasonable amount of cover-the gap between Kapp Heer and MakehI was the deciding factor here and, when the wind stood in this quarter and if the worst came to the worst, a vessel could always up anchor and shelter under the lee of MakehI Island: but when the wind blew from the south a vessel was wide open to everything the Barents Sea cared to throw at it.

    And this was why the degree of unloading activity aboard the Morning Rose was increasing from the merely hectic to the nearly panic-stricken. Even as we had approached the Sor-Hamna the wind, which had been slowly veering the past thirty-six hours, now began rapidly to increase its speed of movement round the compass at disconcerting speed so that by the time we had made fast it was blowing directly from the east. It was now a few degrees south of east, and strengthening, and the Morning Rose was beginning to feel its effects: it only had to increase another few knots or veer another few degrees and the trawler's position would become untenable.

    At anchor, the Morning Rose could comfortably have ridden out the threatened blow but the trouble was that the Morning Rose was not at anchor. She was tied up alongside a crumbling limestone jetty-neither iron nor wooden structures would have lasted for any time in those stormy and bitter waters-that had first been constructed by Lerner and the Deutsche Seefischerei-Verein about the turn of the century and then improved upon-if that were the term-by the International Geophysical Year expedition that had summered there. The jetty, which would have been condemned out of hand and forbidden for public use almost anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere, had originally been T-shaped, but the left arm of the T was now all but gone while the central section leading to the shore was badly eaten away on its southward side. It was against this dangerously dilapidated structure that the Morning Rose was beginning to pound with increasing force as the southeasterly seas caught her under the starboard quarter and the cushioning effect of a solid row of fenders consisting of blocks of softwood and motor truck tires was becoming increasingly nominal. The jarring effect as the trawler struck heavily and repeatedly against the jetty was sufficient to make those working on deck stagger and clutch onto the nearest support. It was difficult to say what effect this was having on the Morning Rose for apart from the scratching and slight indentations of the plates none was visible but trawlers are legendarily tough and it was unlikely that she was coming to any great harm: but what was coming to harm, and very visibly so, was the jetty itself for increasingly large chunks of masonry were beginning to fall into the Sor-Hamna with dismaying frequency, and as most of our fuel, provisions, and equipment still stood there the seemingly imminent collapse of the pier into the sea was not a matter to be viewed with anything like equanimity.