The Land God Gave to Cain (16 page)

The northern lights were gone now. The night was black with just one star low over the jackpines. A bitter wind sifted a light dusting of powdery snow along the ground. “If I don't wake you when I come in, you'll know your message has gone off all right,” Bob Perkins called up to me. “And I'll tell Laroche when he gets in that he'll find you up at Two-sixty-three. Okay?” He grinned up at me as the truck lurched forward.

We swung round the end of the airstrip buildings and out on to a dirt road where ruts stood out like furrows in the headlights. It was like that all the way to the camp, the ruts hard like concrete, and then we stopped outside the dim bulk of a wooden hut. “Okay, feller. This-a your bunk'ouse.” The driver was Italian. “You want me call you 'alf-past one, eh?”

“Half-past one,” I said. “Don't forget, will you? The train leaves at two.”

“Okay. I don't forget.”

He gunned the engine and the truck bumped away over the ruts, the swinging beam of its headlights shining momentarily on the little cluster of huts that was Camp 134. Somewhere in the darkness an electric generator throbbed steadily. There was no other sound. A few lights glimmered. The place had a loneliness and a desolation about it that was almost frightening.

I went into the bunkhouse and switched on the light. The naked bulb lit a small passage with a shower and lavatory at the end. The bare floorboards were covered with a black, glacial sand that was gritty underfoot. A diesel stove roared in the corner, giving out a great blast of heat. There were three rooms, two of them with the doors wide open so that I could see that the beds were occupied. I opened the door nearest the shower. It was cooler there and both beds were empty. On the table between them stood a leather-framed photograph of my Lancashire friend and a girl holding hands. There was a litter of paper-backs, mostly westerns, and a half-completed model of a square-rigged sailing ship. There was a bed roll parked in one corner and the cupboard space was full of cold-weather clothing.

Two canvas grips marked with the name Koster lay on top of one of the beds. I put these on the floor beside my own suitcase, switched off the light and turned in, not bothering to remove anything but my jacket and trousers. There were no sheets and the blankets were coarse and heavy with sand. Their musty smell stayed in my nostrils a long time, for sleep did not come easily. I had too much to think about. And when I did doze off, it seemed only a moment before I was dragged back to consciousness by somebody shaking my shoulder. “Is it time?” I asked, remembering the ballast train. The light was on and as I opened my eyes I saw the empty bed opposite and the alarm clock hanging on the wall. It wasn't yet midnight. And then I looked up at the man who had woken me, saw the half-healed wound running down through the shaved hair of the scalp and sat bolt upright in the bed. “You!” I was suddenly wide awake, filled with an unreasoning panic. “How did you get here?”

“I came by plane.” Laroche had let go of my shoulder and was standing there, staring down at me. “I was afraid I'd miss you if I waited for the supply train.” He unzipped his parka and sat down on the foot of the bed, tugging at the silk scarf round his neck. “It's hot in here,” he said.

The diesel heater in the passage was going full blast and the boarded and papered window gave no ventilation. I could feel the sweat clammy on my face and lying in a hot, uncomfortable pool round my neck. The atmosphere was stifling. But that wasn't the reason why my heart was pounding.

“Sorry to wake you. Guess you must be pretty tired.”

I didn't say anything. I couldn't trust myself to speak. The truth was, I was scared of the man. I can't really explain it, even now. I don't think it was the scar, though it stood out as a livid disfigurement in the white glare of the naked light bulb; and it certainly wasn't anything to do with the cast of his features or the expression of his eyes. There was nothing about him, except the unexpectedness of his arrival, to make me afraid of him. But that was my instinctive reaction and I can only think that, in the instant of waking, something of his mental state was communicated to me.

He had taken off his silk scarf and was wiping his face with it, and I wondered what he was going to do now that he'd caught up with me. I watched him remove his parka, and then he was sitting there in a thick woollen bush shirt buttoned at the wrist, staring at nothing. He looked desperately tired, the high cheek-bones staring through the sallow, tight-drawn skin and the shadows deep under the eyes.

“Have you told Lands I'm here?” I asked him, and my voice sounded dry and hoarse.

“No.” He reached into the pocket of his parka and produced a packet of cigarettes and offered it to me. It was an automatic gesture and when I shook my head, he put a cigarette in his mouth and sat there, staring at the floor, as though too tired to light it. “I wanted to talk to you first,” he said. And then after a while he reached into his trouser pocket for a match and struck it with a flick of his thumb nail against the head. The flare of it as he lit the cigarette momentarily softened the contours of his face and showed me the eyes withdrawn into some secret pocket of thought. His hands trembled slightly and he drew the smoke into his lungs as though his nerves were crying out for it. And then, abruptly, he said, “Why did you jump that plane and come up here? Didn't you believe what I told you?” He was still staring at the floor.

I didn't say anything and silence hung over the room so that the metallic ticking of the alarm clock sounded unnaturally loud and I could hear the murmur of breathing from the next room. The stillness of the world outside seemed to creep in through the flimsy wooden walls, and all the time I was wondering why he hadn't told Lands, why he had needed to see me first.

“Why didn't you believe me?” he demanded sharply, as though the silence were getting on his nerves. “You didn't believe, did you?”

“It's not a question of whether I believed you or not,” I said.

He nodded. “No, I guess not.” His hands gripped the silk scarf as though he wanted to tear it in shreds. And then he muttered something that sounded like “Fate” and shook his head. “I still can't believe it's true,” he breathed. “That old man's son, sitting there at his radio, listening to the reports, waiting for it to happen.”

“Do you mean my father?”

But he didn't seem to hear. “It's like a nightmare,” he whispered. And then he turned his head, looking straight at me, and said, “I suppose you think I killed them or something?” He gave a quick, harsh laugh.

It wasn't said jokingly, but with sudden violence, and the harshness of that laugh shocked me as much as the words.

“Because my name is Laroche, eh?” he added, and there was bitterness in his voice. “Oh, you needn't look so startled,” he said. “I knew what your father had been thinking as soon as I read Ledder's report.” He dropped the scarf, reached forward and gripped hold of my wrist, speaking very earnestly. “You must believe this. I'm not responsible for their death. That's the truth. It's nothing to do with me.” And he repeated it. “I'm not responsible.”

“It never occurred to me you were.” I was staring at him, appalled that he'd found it necessary to make such a declaration.

“No?” He stared at me, his eyes searching my face. “Then why are you here? Why, when nobody believes you, do you tell Paule that I'm a liar and that her father is still alive.
Mon Dieu!
And then to say you are employed by Staffen and come up the line when you are booked out to Montreal.… Do you think I don't know what's been planted in your mind?
C'est incroyable!
” he breathed, and he reached out to the table between the beds and stubbed his cigarette out viciously in the tobacco tin that served as an ash tray.

He picked up his silk scarf and wiped his face again. I think he was sweating as much with exhaustion as the heat of the room. “It would have been better if you'd told Mack the truth this afternoon,” he said wearily. “Then we could have had it out, there in that office, just the three of us. If you'd told him the reason you were here …”

“But I did tell him,” I said. Surely he couldn't have sat there in that office and not heard a word I was saying? “I came because my father picked up a message from Briffe and I—”

“That's not the reason.” He said it impatiently, brushing my explanation aside with an angry movement of his hand.

“But it is the reason,” I insisted.

“Oh, for God's sake!” he cried. “I'm not a fool. You couldn't be that much concerned about a man you'd never met before. How old are you?” he asked abruptly.

“Twenty-three,” I told him.

“And I bet you've never been out of England before in your life.”

“Yes, I have,” I said. “Once. A holiday in Belgium.”

“A holiday in Belgium!” He repeated it in a way that made me feel small, remembering that he must have flown thousands of miles over unmapped territory. “And you expect me to believe that you hitched a ride in a trans-Atlantic flight and came all the way over to Canada, where you don't know a soul, just because of a man you'd never met, never even heard of till your father told you about him. You'd reported the matter to the authorities. You'd have left it at that if you hadn't been driven by something more personal.”

“But if they're still alive—”

“They're dead.” He said it harshly.

“Then how could my father have picked up that transmission?”

But he didn't seem interested in the fact that Briffe had made contact with the outside world. “Why did you lie to him?” he demanded.

“Lie to him?”

“Yes, to McGovern.”

“But I didn't lie to him,” I cried. “I told him the truth. My father died because—”

“You lied to him,” he almost shouted at me. “You told him you didn't know the name of the man who'd accompanied your grandfather.”

“Well, it's true,” I said. “I'd never heard of the Ferguson Expedition until I talked to Ledder at Goose.”

“You'd never heard of it!” He stared at me as though I'd said the earth was flat. “But that's absurd. You've admitted your father was obsessed by Labrador. You couldn't have grown up not knowing the reason for that obsession. And then, when you heard about that transmission—you must have known the reason he invented it otherwise you'd never have come all this way.…”

“He didn't invent it,” I declared hotly.

“Well, imagined it then.”

“He didn't imagine it either.” I was suddenly trembling with anger. Couldn't he understand that this was real, so real that it had brought about my father's death? “He picked up a transmission and recorded it in his log. And that transmission was from Briffe. I don't care what you or anybody else says—”

“He couldn't have.” His voice was pitched suddenly higher. “The radio was in the aircraft when it sank. I told you that before. He couldn't possibly have transmitted.” It was almost as though he were trying to convince himself, and I stared at him, the sweat suddenly cold on my body. He hadn't said because Briffe was dead. He'd simply said that the radio was in the plane when it sank. “And what about Briffe?” I said.

But he only repeated what he'd said already. “He couldn't have transmitted that message.” It was said softly this time, to himself. He was so wrought up that he hadn't even understood the significance of my question. And then his mind switched abruptly back to the Ferguson Expedition. It seemed to worry him that I hadn't known about it. “I don't believe it,” he murmured. “You couldn't possibly have grown up not knowing about your grandfather and what happened to him.”

“Well, I did,” I said. It seemed so unimportant. “What difference does it make anyway? All I'm concerned about—”

“What difference does it make?” He was staring at me and the perspiration was gathering on his forehead again. “It means …” He shook his head. “It's not possible,” he murmured. “It's too much of a coincidence.” And then he looked at me and said, “Why didn't they tell you?” He seemed unable to leave the subject alone.

And for some reason it seemed to me important at that moment to convince him. “I think it was my mother,” I said. And I told him how she'd tried to keep the final log book from me. “She was afraid of Labrador. I think she didn't want me involved and made my father promise—”

“But that woman,” he said impatiently. “There was the diary …” He checked himself. “When did your grandmother die?”

“I was ten, I think.”

“Then you were old enough …” He stared at me. “Didn't she ever talk to you about your grandfather? She must have. A woman so determined, so full of hate.… Well, didn't she?”

“Once, when I was very small,” I said. “She came to my room and talked to me. But I was frightened and my mother found her there, and after that we never visited her again.”

That seemed to convince him finally, for he said quietly, “So you came over here without knowing anything about the Expedition.” There was a note of weariness in his voice.

“Yes,” I said. “The first I heard of it was from Ledder.” And I added, “Why is that so important to you?”

But his mind had leapt to something else. “And yet you know it was Lake of the Lion. How? How could you possibly know unless …” He stopped there and brushed his hand over his eyes. “The entry in the log, of course—the map, Ledder's report. You were guessing. Just guessing.” His voice had dropped to a murmur; he looked suddenly smaller, his shoulders hunched. “
Mon Dieu!
” he breathed. “So it is true.” He wiped his face again, slowly, and his hands were trembling.

“What's true?” I asked.

“About the transmission.” He must have answered without thinking, for he added quickly, “That that's the reason you are here. I had to be sure,” he mumbled. And then he got quickly to his feet. “I must get some sleep,” he said. Again that movement of the hand across the eyes. “My head aches.” He seemed suddenly to want to escape from the room. But by then my mind had fastened on the implications of what he had said. “Then it was Lake of the Lion,” I said. “You told me you hadn't noticed …”