The Wild Rose (12 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Bloody hell, but she’s beautiful,” Seamie said.

He stood on the dock, head back, eyes wide and full of wonder as he took in every proud and graceful inch of the ship in front of him. She was a three-hundred-and-fifty-ton barkentine, with her forward mast square-rigged and the other two masts rigged for fore and aft sails, like a schooner’s. The subtle curves of her hull, the thrust of her prow, the soaring height of her mainmast—they all took his breath away.

“She’s more than beautiful, lad,” said the man standing next to him. “She’s the strongest wooden ship ever built.”

Seamie raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“The
Fram
comes close, I’ll give you that, but this one’s stronger.”

Seamie knew the
Fram,
every inch of her. He’d sailed in her, with Roald Amundsen, to the South Pole. That ship had been specially designed to cope with pack ice. Built stouter, its hull more rounded, it rose up on top of the ice when the ice closed in, almost floating on it, instead of being crushed by it. It was an ingenious design and an effective one, but not beautiful. Compared to the ship in front of him, the
Fram
looked like a washtub.

“She won’t do as well in the ice,” Seamie said.

“She won’t need to. She’s to be used for loose pack only.”

“Is that so? What do you call her?”

“Her name’s
Polaris,
but I’m thinking of calling her
Endurance
. After my family motto:
Fortitudine vincimus
—‘By endurance we conquer.’ ”

“
Endurance,
” Seamie said. “It’s a perfect name. Perfect for anyone, or anything, connected with you, sir.”

Ernest Shackleton laughed loudly, his shrewd eyes sparkling. “Come aboard her, lad,” he said. “Let’s see what you think. Still have your sea legs?” Before he’d even finished speaking, Shackleton was halfway up the rope ladder dangling down the ship’s side.

Seamie shook his head, smiling. He could see where this was leading. Shackleton hadn’t said too much over the telephone. He hadn’t needed to.

“How are you, Seamus, lad?” he’d bellowed. Seamie had recognized the voice on the other end of the line immediately. He’d heard it daily for more than two years in the Antarctic, when he made his first polar expedition aboard another of Shackleton’s vessels, the
Discovery.

Before he’d even give Seamie time to answer his question, Shackleton had launched into the reason for his call. “I need your help,” he said. “There’s this ship I’m thinking about. Norwegian built, but currently in dock at Portsmouth. Could you come out and take a look? I’d love to know what you make of her.” He’d paused for a breath then, and Seamie could hear the teasing note in his voice as he added, “If you aren’t too busy sipping tea and nibbling biscuits with Clements Markham at the RGS, that is.”

“You heard about the job offer?” Seamie said.

“I did. And I assume you turned him down.”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a good job, doing good work on behalf of the RGS, a place that means a great deal to me and to us all,” Seamie said. “I may take it. Why not? I haven’t had any better offers,” he added pointedly.

After they’d sounded each other out a bit more, Seamie had agreed to meet his old captain in Portsmouth and give him his frank opinion of the boat, quite certain that Shackleton would ask him to sign on.

But would he agree to go? A few weeks ago, he would have had no hesitation, but that was before he’d met Jennie. Before he’d started courting her. Before he’d taken her hand as they walked, talking about her life and his. Before he’d held her close and kissed her lips and felt her heart beating against his own. Before he’d started to think—for the first time in his life—that there might be another woman for him besides Willa Alden.

Seamie looked at the ship again now. He climbed up the rope ladder and stood next to Shackleton on the deck.

“Her keel’s seven feet thick. Sides are anywhere from one-and-a-half-feet to two-and-a-half-feet thick. She’s got twice the number of frames any other ship her size has. Bow’s over four feet thick where it meets the ice,” Shackleton said, answering Seamie’s questions before he could even ask them.

Seamie nodded, impressed—even though he didn’t want to be. He almost wished there was something wrong with the ship. He wished it had some terrible flaw in its design or construction—something that would give him a reason not to go. To stay in London and take the job at the RGS. To stay with Jennie.

“And her engine?” he asked.

“Coal-fired steam. She’ll do just over ten knots,” Shackleton said.

He talked on, telling Seamie about the ship’s many qualities and how it was purposely built to handle polar conditions. He went on about the oak, Norwegian fir, and greenheart wood that was used in her construction. He talked for over an hour, leading Seamie up and down her deck, then below it to the crew’s and captain’s quarters, the engine room, the kitchen, and the hold. When he’d finished the tour, he brought Seamie abovedecks again.

He lit a cigarette, offered it to Seamie, then lit another for himself. He took a deep drag, blew the smoke out, then said, “Well, lad, I might as well tell you, I didn’t bring you to the seaside for a box of taffy.”

“No, I don’t expect you did, sir.”

“I’m getting up another expedition.”

“I’d heard as much.”

“You lot found the South Pole, but that doesn’t mark the end of exploration in the Antarctic. I want to do another journey—a transcontinental trek. Two parties. Two ships. The
Endurance
will sail to the Weddell Sea and put a party ashore at Vahsel Bay, where they will begin a trek to the Ross Sea, via the pole.”

“What about supplies?” Seamie cut in, remembering how crucial the proper planning of food, drink, shelter, and warmth was to Amundsen’s success in obtaining the pole. “The Weddell Sea party won’t be able to carry enough to get them all the way across.”

Shackleton smiled. “That’s where the second party comes in. As the first party heads to the Weddell Sea, a second ship will take a second party to McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea, where they’ll establish a base camp. From that camp, they’ll trek toward the Ross Sea, laying down caches of food and fuel across the Ross Ice Shelf to the Beardmore Glacier, supplies that will sustain the first party as they complete the crossing. The Weddell Sea group eventually joins the Ross Sea group, and there you have it—the first land crossing of Antarctica.”

Seamie mulled Shackleton’s plan. “It could work,” he said at length.

“
Could?
There’s no could about it. It
will
work!” Shackleton bellowed.

Seamie heard the excitement in the man’s voice. He’d heard that same excitement the first time he’d met him—at a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, right before he’d talked Shackleton into taking him along on his
Discovery
expedition.

He smiled now. “You’re never happier than when you have a quest, sir,” he said.

“The quest is all, lad,” Shackleton said. “You know it as well as I do. So what’s it going to be? I’d love to have you with me. Are you in? Or are you going to let Clements make a file clerk out of you?”

Seamie laughed, but then found, to his consternation, that he had no answer.

Am I in?
he wondered.

He remembered the
Discovery
expedition and the South Pole trek. He remembered the stark, aching beauty of Antarctica—the steel gray seas, the ice-blasted landscape, and the vastness of the night sky. It was nothing like London’s sky, or New York’s, where man-made light and smog obscured the stars. It was so clear there, so unspeakably still, that he’d felt as if he was seeing the heavens for the very first time. On so many of those nights, he’d felt as if he could reach up and touch the stars, as if he could gather them in his hands like diamonds.

Most of all, he remembered the life-threatening push to the pole. The first time, with Shackleton, they’d had to turn back only a hundred miles away from it. If they hadn’t, they would have died. The second time, with Amundsen, they’d made it. He remembered how much each of the expeditions had taken out of him. He remembered the hunger, cold, and exhaustion. Two years had elapsed since the South Pole expedition, and he was only just now getting back to any sort of a real life, and the expedition Shackleton had outlined for him would take two more. Maybe even three. He’d be that much older when he returned. And what about Jennie? Would she wait for him? Was he sure he wanted her to?

“Well, lad?” Shackleton pressed.

Seamie shrugged helplessly. “Can I think about it, sir? I’m afraid I just don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Shackleton said, disbelief in his voice. “How can you not know? For God’s sake, where’s your heart, lad?”

Good question, Seamie thought. Where, indeed? Had he left it at Kilimanjaro? Was it lost somewhere out in the icy oceans of the Antarctic? Was it in London with Jennie Wilcott?

As he looked out over the harbor, past Shackleton, past all the ships moored nearby, he realized, with an aching sadness, that he knew the answer. He didn’t want to admit it, because it was so painful to always long for something you would never have, but he knew it nonetheless. His heart was where it had always been—in the keeping of a wild and fearless girl, a girl he’d never see again. How he wished it wasn’t.

Shackleton sighed. “It’s a woman, isn’t it?”

Seamie nodded. “Yes, it is.”

“Wed her, bed her, then come sailing with me.”

Seamie laughed. “I wish it was that simple, sir.”

Shackleton softened. “Look, lad, it’s only March. I won’t be sailing until August, at the earliest. Take your time. Think it over. I want you with me. You know that. But you must do the thing that’s right for you.”

“I know that, sir. Thank you. I will,” he said to Shackleton.

And to himself, he added, “If I only knew what the right thing was.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Max von Brandt took a deep drag on his cigarette, then exhaled slowly. He was glad of the plume of smoke that hung about him. It helped mask the stench.

Max was sitting on the one and only chair in his room at Duffin’s. Across from him, on the bed, sat Gladys Bigelow. She was sobbing and shaking. She’d already vomited twice, all over his bed, and she looked as if she would soon be sick again. He’d gathered up the quilt, the sheets and the pillows, and had taken them downstairs to the rubbish bin, but the smell still lingered.

Spread out on a table in the center of the room was the cause of Gladys’s tears—a set of photographs, ugly and obscene. They showed a woman lying in a bed, naked, her legs splayed. The woman’s face was clearly visible. Max knew the photos well. He had taken them himself, only a few days ago.

“Please,” Gladys sobbed. “I can’t. I can’t do it. Please.”

Max took another drag on his cigarette, then said, “You have no choice. If you refuse, I’ll send the pictures to George Burgess. You’ll lose your position immediately and the resulting disgrace will ensure you don’t find another. That job is your life, Gladys. You told me so yourself. On several occasions. What else do you have? A family? A husband? No. And you’re not likely to. Not if I make these photographs public.”

“I’ll kill myself,” Gladys said in a choked voice. “I’ll walk to Tower Bridge and jump off.”

“Who would look after your ailing mother if you did?” Max asked. “Who would pay her doctor’s bills? Buy her food? Pay her rent? Who would take her to the park on Sunday in her wheelchair? You know how much it means to her. She looks forward to it all week. Do you think the orderlies in the institution where she’ll end up will do it? She’ll be lucky if they remember to feed her.”

Gladys covered her face with her hands. A low, animal moan of anguish escaped her. She retched again, but there was nothing left inside her.

Max rested his cigarette on the edge of an ashtray and crossed his arms over his chest. He wished he was not here in this filthy place, breathing in the smell of vomit and despair. He closed his eyes briefly, summoning an image in his mind of the place he did want to be—a place that was wild and free and untouched by men.

It was white and pure and cold this place, it was Everest, the rooftop of the world, and the hope that he would go back there one day when all of this was over, and that he might find her—Willa Alden—still living there, as wild and beautiful as the mountain itself, sustained him.

Thinking of that place, and that woman, made him want to stand up and leave. Leave the wretched room he was sitting in. And the wretched woman nearby. And wretched, ugly Whitechapel. He’d put his life in danger every time he came here. He knew he had. He’d heard that the Cambridge lads were on to him, that it was only a matter of time. Well, that was as it must be, and to leave before the job was done was to put other people’s lives in danger. Millions of them. And so he stayed.

He waited a few more minutes, giving Gladys a little more time to recover, then he said, “Will you do it? Or do I send the pictures?”

“I’ll do it,” she replied, in a hollow voice.

“I knew you’d see reason,” Max said. He stubbed his cigarette out, then leaned forward in his chair. “I want copies of every letter that leaves George Burgess’s office.”

“How? How am I to do that?” she said. “He’s in and out of my office. So are other people.”

“Carbons. You make a copy of every letter for his files, don’t you?”

Gladys nodded.

“Use a second carbon. One for each letter. The carbons are all placed in a special basket, dumped into an incinerator at the end of the day, are they not? It’s a tremendous waste and expense, but necessary for security. At least, that’s what you told me.”

“Yes.”

“Make sure the second carbon does not go into the basket.”

“
How?
” Gladys asked. “I told you that people—”

“I would suggest you fold each one twice and tuck it into the top of your stockings. Wait until you are alone. Or pretend to reach under your desk for a dropped pencil. Use your good mind, Gladys. Your bag is searched every night, but you are not because Burgess trusts you completely. That’s another thing you told me. I also want notes on the documents you can’t copy. Incoming correspondence, for example. Blueprints. Maps. Tell me what they are and what they contain. Leave nothing out, I warn you. If I hear about naval plans or acquisitions from other sources, the pictures go in the mail. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Every Wednesday, my agent will meet you on the bus you take home from work. He’ll board at Tower Hill and sit next to you. You will be sitting on the top deck. He’ll be wearing a suit and carrying a doctor’s bag. He’ll also be holding a copy of that day’s
Times.
So will you. Inside your paper will be the carbons you’ve obtained for me. You will put your paper on the seat between you. The man will exchange yours for his. Afterward, you’ll get off the bus at your usual stop. That’s all you have to do. Do anything else, Gladys, anything at all, and you know what will happen.”

Gladys nodded. Her face was gray. Her eyes were dull and expressionless. She looked dead inside.

“May I go now?” she asked.

“Yes,” Max said. “This is the last you will see of me unless you give me some reason to doubt you.”

He stood then and pulled an envelope from his pocket.

“This is from the kaiser,” he said. “To show his appreciation for your efforts. It contains one hundred pounds. To help with your mother’s medical bills.”

Gladys took the envelope from him and tore it to bits, letting the pieces flutter to the floor. When she was finished, she staggered out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Max listened as the sound of her shoes on the stairs faded, then disappeared, and as he did, an expression of almost unbearable pain crossed his face. He knelt down, picked the pieces up off the floor, and fed them into the fire.