Complete Short Stories (7 page)

‘Believe me, child, there was the
devil to pay about my embargo on wines and spirits; he had brought out twenty cases of Scotch. At first he didn’t realize that Scotch was not drunk on Desolation Island. He said
that in his opinion it would have been courteous of me, perhaps, to have put a bottle of my own stuff on the table, since I had not taken off any of his with the first boatload. But when I explained how it was, he went
up in the air and bellowed at me as though he was in his Orderly Room and I was a poor devil of a Sudanese recruit. I won’t repeat what he said, child, because a nurse might come in and catch a word or two and misunderstand. I was pleasant but firm; reminding him that I was Lord Chief Justice and Lord High Executioner and everything else on the island and that what I said went. Professor Durnsford
had been a witness to his threats, I said, and I would subpoena him, if necessary, for the trial. And I quoted
Alice in Wonderland:
“I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,” said cunning old Fury, “I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death.”

‘“You can’t prevent me bringing it ashore,” he said at last.

‘“Can’t I?” I said, in nasty tones, showing my Colt.

‘He broke into worse language than ever
and the only true things he said about me were that I must be a little insane and that I had a face like Dan Leno on one of his off-nights. He ended: “Remember these words, for they are the last I shall address to you while I remain on this island.” I answered, improving on poor Dan Leno: “Ha, Comma, Ha, among the trumpets. I’m Job’s war horse, and I scent the battle from afar.”

‘Morgan kept
it up throughout the meal. If he wanted the salt or beans or mustard when they happened to be right close to my plate, he would ask Durnsford, who sat between us, to pass them to him. I had decided to ship Morgan back home with his whisky the very next day, but when he started this baby game of sending me to Coventry, I was so pleased that I decided to keep him with me. As you know, child, I love
baby games. It was a nice game, because Morgan and I held the cards and Durnsford was pool for the winner to take. Not that I cared much about Durnsford then, but he seemed a decent little Pekinese of a man, too good to go coupled with an ill-tempered great mastiff like Morgan. They had arranged to come on this expedition together, by letter, before actually meeting. Morgan had written that he could
get permission from the New Zealand Government for them both to put up at my house; and Pekey Durnsford was glad of a companion. Neither of them had been in the Antarctic before.

‘Durnsford was the best possible “kitty” for our game of nap; he tried to be so neutral. Of course, I didn’t go out of my way to make myself pleasant to him; that would have been no sort of game – an auction with the
bidding in sugar plums and the prize to go to the men who bid highest. No, no, no! I answered his questions civilly, though not always pertinently, I supplied him with necessaries, and saw that he didn’t run into danger: but I allowed him no loose conversation. Little Pekey Durnsford felt ever so uncomfortable (and even, I believe, went so far as to ask Morgan to apologize to me), but I felt perfectly
happy. You see, child, having got accustomed to the deathly silence of Desolation Island when I
was by myself for months at a time, I thoroughly enjoyed the very lively silence of the man Morgan. Often he was on the point of asking me something important about the island which only I could tell him, but then his haughty pride choked back the question. And so next day the question would come innocently
enough through Durnsford. I would put on my “Schoolgirls we” voice and say: “Darling, that’s a
great
secret. But if you promise
on your honour
never to tell anyone else in the world about it, I’ll whisper it to you.” Durnsford would smile unhappily, and Morgan would scowl.

‘There were several rooms in my shack, but mostly storerooms, and only one big stove. Morgan made a show of moving his belongings
into another room; but he got too cold and had to sneak back. It was a log-built shack, by the way, with steel doors and steel window shutters. It had an airtight lining and it was anchored to the rock with four great steel cables that went right across the roof. Understand, child, that in the Antarctic we keep a special and unique sort of blizzard, so these were necessary precautions.

‘Well!
The oil tanker had steamed off and the whalers had come and dumped their barrels and had their blubber parties and said goodbye; so unless there came a chance call from a vessel that was built pretty sturdy against the ice, like the one my predecessor went away in – he’d been killing himself with Scotch and couldn’t lay off it because nobody was at hand to tell him not to make a beast of himself
– unless a chance vessel called, you see, there we were together for another nine or ten solid months. I had a wireless apparatus, but it hadn’t much of a range, and it was rarely I picked up a passing ship except in the season.

‘For five solid months the man Morgan kept it up’ (here Papa Johnson resumed the moustache, which had fallen off). ‘“Durnsford, old fellow, do you think that you could
prevail on that comedian friend of yours to disencumber the case he’s sitting on? It happens to contain the photographic plates. He has apparently taken a three-year lease on it, with the option of renewal. Haw! Haw! Haw!” Durnsford looked at me apologetically. I didn’t get off the packing case, of course… I never asked Durnsford to relay a message to Morgan. I pretended he didn’t exist, and if
he had been sitting on the packing case and I had wanted anything inside it, I should simply have opened it with him on it. He was afraid of me and careful not to start a roughhouse.

‘They didn’t get on too well with their natural-history studies, because they didn’t know where to look. I knew my island well and there’s a surprising amount of life on it, if you look in the right places, besides
the prions and the other creatures I mentioned before, which don’t take much finding, and a few ratlike animals that spend most of their life hibernating, and even a few honest-to-God birds. In the interior are fresh-water pools with all sorts of little bugs living in the ice. Heaven knows how they keep
alive, but when you thaw them out they wriggle nicely. Durnsford didn’t know that I knew and
I didn’t let on; his big friend took him round to see the sights, but he wasn’t by any means so good a guide as Old Papa Johnson would have been.

‘One day, it was twelve noon on Midsummer Eve with the thermometer forty-five below and the stars shining very prettily – you have heard of our beautiful long Polar night, I expect, that goes on month after month without a spot of daylight to help it
out? Well, one day – or one night, if you prefer – after breakfast – or after supper if you like – the man Morgan puts on his snowshoes and says to Durnsford: “Coming out for a shuffle, professor?” “All right, major,” Durnsford answers, putting down his book and reaching for his snowshoes.

‘“Durnsford,” I said, “don’t go out!” He asked: “Why?” in a surprised voice, so I said: “Look at the barometer!”
Morgan interrupted, saying to Durnsford: “Your imbecile acquaintance has no understanding of barometers. This one has been rock-steady for the last twenty-four hours.”

‘“Durnsford,” I said again, “don’t go out!”

‘Morgan haw-hawed: “Oh, don’t listen to it; come along for a bit of exercise. Leave old Red Nose with his string of sausages and his red-hot poker; he’s not in his best vein these days.”

‘Durnsford hesitated, with one snowshoe already on. He hesitated quite a long time. Finally he took it off again. “Thank you, Mr Johnson,” he said. “I’ll take your advice. I don’t know what you mean about the barometer, but you must certainly understand conditions here better than Major Morgan.”

‘That was good to hear; I had won my game of nap with the man Morgan at last and scooped the kitty.
And it wasn’t bluff: the unnatural steadiness of the barometer meant trouble. I had made sure that the shutters were fast some hours before.

‘So Morgan went alone, whistling “Oh, it’s my delight on a starry night in the season of the year,” and two minutes later a creaking and groaning and humming began. Durnsford looked puzzled and thought I was playing a trick. “No,” I said, “it’s only the
house moving about a little and the cables taking the strain. A capful of wind. But have a look at that rock-steady barometer.”

‘He went over to it, and behold! the creature had gone quite off its chump and was hopping about like a pea in a saucepan. Durnsford was silent for a minute or two and then he said: “Johnson, I know that the major has behaved abominably to you. But don’t you think – ?”

‘“No, dearie,” I said, “your poor old granny is very, very sleepy at the moment, and simply hasn’t got it in her to think thoughts about troublesome majors and the likes of them.”

‘“Oh, stop your jokes, for once!” he shouted, “I’m going out to look for him.”

‘He grabbed his shoes again. So I spoke to him severely and showed him my gun. I said that I didn’t mind his slaying himself if he felt
so inclined, but that I drew the line at his killing Old Papa Johnson too. They were double doors; the outer one was steel and the inner one solid two-inch oak planking, with an airlock between them. The moment he unbolted the outer door the wind would get into the air-lock and blow the inner one in and then tear the shack to pieces in three seconds.

‘“But the major?” he gasped. “Won’t he get
frozen to death?”

‘“Your intelligent friend was killed by the first gust of wind a few seconds after leaving the shack,” I said.

‘That blizzard blew without stopping for seventy-two hours; any moment I expected the cables to go. I set myself to learn the Book of Ruth to keep my mind from dwelling on our imminent fate. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began. We found the body only fifty yards
from the shack, wedged between two rocks. And you wouldn’t believe it, but that blizzard had got inside one of those big metal cauldrons – twice the size of this room, I’m telling you – and blown it clean into the harbour! As local registrar of births, deaths, and marriages I reported all these occurrences to a distant whaler, a month or two later, and when the tanker eventually turned up, it came
with a letter from the man Morgan’s sister, asking me to put her brother’s remains in the lead coffin which she enclosed. So I had to dig them up again, though I had said the burial service over them and left nothing out.

‘As for Pekey Durnsford, he was so full of gratitude to me for saving his life that he slobbered all over me. And soon I found that he liked silly games, just like I did. It
was he who first taught Old Papa Johnson how to do this paper-folding business, though Papa’s improved on Pekey’s methods a lot since. And in return Papa showed him where to scare up all the living creatures in our kingdom. Pekey found one quite new species of fresh-water cheese mite which he called Something-or-other Papa-john-sonensis. And you should have seen the letter of thanks that I got from
the New York Museum of Natural History!

‘Morgan’s sister – now child, for goodness’ sake don’t remind her who H.H. Johnson is – I recognized her handwriting when she put my name on the fever chart – is not a bad woman in spite of her airs, though it’s taken me three weeks and a lot of patience to coax her to be my playmate. And do you know, little Gravey-spoons? if it hadn’t been for that whisky
business I verily believe that Old Papa Johnson could even in time have made a playmate of her ill-tempered brother.’

AFTER A WHILE
the dead man, recognizing my voice, began to whistle and imitate the masters of his old school, many of whom, bicentenarians, survived him. ‘Though perhaps no longer, ahem, in the active pursuit of pedagogy,’ he intoned in a mock-clerical voice.

‘What’s the news?’ I asked.

‘News?’ he said. ‘Well, for a start here’s a letter that came last night from my
executors informing me that I am expected to write a posthumous Anthem for the League of Nations suitable for translation into at least twenty-seven languages.’

He went on to say that he had indeed already executed the commission: early that morning he had written a marching song of hope, to rhythms heavily stressed for percussion purposes, and poked it up through the letter slit of the stout
Welsh-quarried slabs of slate, inscribed ‘he being dead yet liveth’, which formed the roof of his quasi-eternal resting place. He had, however, recollected the nearness of the church, where the song would undoubtedly be sung at Christmas and Easter, on Empire Day, the King’s Birthday, and all similar semi-religious, semi-political feasts; and had slowly pulled the composition back and torn it up
before the sexton had caught a glint of it.

‘It was an ironic production,’ he said, ‘but the living can never believe that the dead have a sense of humour, so whenever any reference had been made to the song in my hearing or whenever it was sung or whistled, I should have been forced to chuckle audibly to disprove this popular fallacy.’

‘I am beautifully embalmed,’ he continued. ‘They were obliged,
of course, to remove my digestive and sexual organs, which are corruptible, but I still have my fingers free to pick my nose in the old absent fashion, to scratch my head when it itches and to use a pencil thoughtfully when the itch is eased. This is a lidless coffin allowing me plenty of elbow room. My eyes are shut with coins, but that is no handicap in the decent darkness of the vault;
even when alive, I always had the knack of writing with my eyes shut. I lay the left hand flat as a margin to the paper and, pricking the skin with my pencil each time, know by sensory indication just where to begin the new line.’

Thus he rattled on, remarking among other things that at least he had no more financial worries. He had benefited handsomely under his own will and paid the lease of
the vault and of a small plot of land around it for ninety-nine years in advance. Unfortunately the freehold, the property of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, was not for sale; he had, however, secured the option for renewal at the same terms when the ninety-nine years should have expired. He asked for news of his wife and children and of their step-father.