The Land God Gave to Cain (4 page)

“No,” I said. “I don't mind.” It seemed useless to say anything more. And yet … My eyes strayed to the map of Labrador. He'd forced himself to his feet in order to look at it. Why? What had been in his mind?

“I don't think it's necessary for us to trouble Mrs. Ferguson after all,” the Inspector was saying. They went down the stairs then and I showed them out. “I'll let you have these back in a day or so.” The Inspector indicated the exercise books in his hand.

I watched them as they walked out to the police car and drove away. What had he meant by saying he'd like to have them examined by experts? But, of course, I knew, and I felt as though in some way I had let my father down. And yet, if the men were dead … I went back into the parlour to be faced with my mother's reproachful gaze and Mrs. Wright's eager questioning.

But there were other, more practical things to think about, and with the funeral the sense of grief pushed everything else into the background of my mind.

It wasn't until the morning I was leaving to return to Bristol that I was reminded of the strange message that had caused my father's death. The postman brought a registered package addressed to me, and inside were the log books. There was also a letter, impersonal and final:
I have to inform you that the Canadian authorities have been unable to obtain any confirmation of the message claimed to have been received by your father, Mr. James Ferguson, on. 29th September. Our experts have examined the enclosed, and in view of their report, and the statement by the only survivor that the two remaining members of the party are dead, the Canadian authorities do not feel that any useful purpose can be served by resuming the search. However, they wish me to express their appreciation, etc., etc
.

So that was that. The experts—psychiatrists presumably—had looked at the log books and had decided that my father was mad. I tore the letter savagely across, and then, because I didn't want my mother to find the fragments, I slipped them into my suitcase, together with the log books.

She came to the station to see me off. Ever since that visit from the police she had never once referred to the cause of my father's death. As though by tacit consent we had avoided any reference to the message. But now, just as the train was about to leave, she gripped my hand. “You'll let that Labrador business alone, won't you, Ian? I couldn't bear it if you …” The whistle blew then and she kissed me, holding me close that way she hadn't done since I was a kid. Her face was white and tired-looking and she was crying.

I got in and the train began to move. For a moment she stood watching, a small, lonely figure in black, and then she turned quickly and walked away down the platform. I often wonder whether she knew in her heart that she wouldn't see me again for a long time.

II

I had forgotten to get anything to read and for a time I just sat there, watching the backs of the houses until London began to thin out and the green fields showed beyond the factory buildings. I was thinking about my mother and our parting and the way she had referred again to Labrador. She hadn't mentioned the message my father had picked up. She wasn't worried that the lives of those two men might be at stake. It was Labrador itself that was on her mind, which struck me as odd. And then I began thinking about my father again, wishing I had known him better. If I had known him better, I might have understood what it was about Labrador that had so fascinated him.

And then I got out the log books and looked through them again. It wasn't difficult to see why the authorities and the “experts” had decided to disregard the message. The books were such a mess. And yet, running through them, was this thread of the Labrador expedition.

My training as an engineer had taught me to break every problem down to its essentials, and before I knew what I was doing, I had got out pencil and paper and was jotting down every reference in the log books that could conceivably have a bearing on Briffe's expedition. Disentangled from all the jottings and drawings and scraps of other messages, the thread became stronger and more lucid. It told a definite story, though it was necessary to read between the lines to get at it, for it soon became clear to me that my father seldom took down anything verbatim; a single line of comment or a brief note to give him the gist of the transmission was all he bothered about. This was not surprising since the forming of legible characters had always been a labour to him. Indeed, there were several jottings that it was quite impossible for me to decipher.

In all I found I had isolated seventy-three references. Twelve of these were unintelligible and seven I finally discarded as having no bearing on the subject. From the remaining fifty-four I was able, with the help of a little guesswork, to build up some sort of a picture of what had happened. Briffe had presumably started out on his survey sometime around end-July for the first reference to a location occurred on August 10. The note simply said
A2—where's that?
Three days later there was a reference to—
Minipi River area:
and on August 15 my father had noted:
Moved to A3
. Then followed B1, B2 and B3. Clearly these were code names for the areas under survey and as A1 would have been the first, my father must have been picking up Ledder's reports almost from the start. There was no indication of the purpose of Briffe's expedition—whether he was prospecting for gold or uranium or just a base metal like iron ore. He might simply be making a general survey, but this seemed unlikely since he was working for a mining company and was coding his areas and reports. The fact that the location code was dropped in later reports suggested negative results. This happened, not only in the case of A2, but in several other cases as well. Thus A3 later became
Mouni Rapids
and B2
near old H.B. Post
. Against the reference to Mouni Rapids my father had written—
Winokapau! The right direction
.

By September 9, the expedition had reached Area C1. This was later referred to as
Disappointment
, and later still it became obvious that it was the name of a lake. These scraps of information were all apparently gleaned from the same source—VO6AZ. And always at the same time—2200 hours. An entry for August 3 appeared to be the first reference to the expedition. It simply said:
Interesting—some sort of code
. The next day's entry read.
2200. VO6AZ again. Survey report?
And he had scrawled in pencil:
EMPLOYED BY THE McGOVERN MINING AND EXPLORATION COMPANY OF MONTREAL?

And on the top of the next page, again in pencil:
KEEP WATCH 20 METRE BAND 10 PM
. Later in August was an entry
2200—VO6AZ. Code again! Why can't he report in clear?
And a note on the following page:
BRIFFE, BRIFFE, BRIFFE. WHO IS BRIFFE? 75 METRE PHONE. NET FREQUENCY 3.780 kcs. WATCH 2000
. But this was so fantastically scrawled over that I had difficulty in deciphering it. Two pages further on I found the name Laroche mentioned for the first time. He had written it in capitals, heavily underlining it and putting a question mark at the end, and had added a note:
QUERY LEDDER
.

Isolated from all the nonsense and doodles which disfigured the pages of his log books, my father's notes confirmed what I already knew—that he had been picking up messages from Simon Ledder at Goose Bay to the McGovern Mining Company in Montreal and that these were daily reports in some sort of code passing on information received from Briffe at 2000 hours from somewhere in Labrador. I found one half-obliterated entry which appeared to read: 3.780—
nothing, nothing, nothing—always nothing
. It suggested that my father was also keeping regular watch on Briffe's transmitting frequency. But I could only pick out for certain one entry a day at 2200 hours, until September 14. That was the day of the crash, and from then on the pattern changed and the entries became more frequent, the comments fuller.

Two days before that Briffe appeared to have called for air transport to move the party forward to C2, for on September 13 occurred an entry:
Plane delayed, W bad. B. calling for usual two flights, three in first wave and Baird and himself in second. If C2 NORTH OF C1 THEY ARE GETTING V. NEAR
.

The move apparently took place on September 14, but the first flight proved difficult for at 1945 hours he had made this entry:
In luck—Contact VO6AZ. Beaver floatplane not back
. Scrawled across this were the words
TROUBLE
and
KEEP CONSTANT WATCH ON 75-METRE BAND
. And then an hour later at 2045:
Fog cleared, but Beaver still missing
. VO6AZ was now apparently transmitting to Montreal every hour at 15 minutes to the hour, for the next time entry was for 2145. But nothing had been written against it and the time itself was barely decipherable amongst the mass of little drawings my father had made. In fact, the whole of this last page of the log book was an indescribable mess and it took me a long time to sort it out. The next entry, however, was only half an hour later—
2215: Advance party safe C2. Beaver back. Hellish W. report. B. going.…
The last part was completely unreadable. But the comment that followed was clear enough:
POOR HOLDING DISAPPOINTMENT—THAT THE REASON? BARELY AN HOUR. THE FOOL! WHAT'S DRIVING HIM?

After that the entries were back to 15 minutes to the hour—2245, 2345, 0045, right on to 0345. They were all blank. There was a sort of finality about those blank entries, and though it was the soft, warm English countryside that slid past the windows of the train, I saw only the cold and fog and the desolate misery of Labrador, the night closing in on the little floatplane and my father sitting up half the night, waiting to find out whether they were safe or not.

The entries in the log book were, of course, for British Summer Time which is four and a half hours ahead of Goose Bay. Briffe's report that the plane was back must have been made shortly after 5 p.m. so that my father's reference to “barely an hour” obviously referred to the fact that Briffe was taking off with little more than an hour to go before nightfall.

The train stopped at Swindon and I sat staring down at that last page of the log book. I couldn't blame the authorities for regarding him as unbalanced. It had taken me almost a quarter of an hour to decipher that one page. I could see my father sitting in his wheel-chair with the earphones clamped to his head, waiting and waiting for the news of Briffe's safety that would never come, and passing the long, slow, silent hours by drawing. He had covered the whole of that page and all the cover of the exercise book with little pencil drawings—lions and fish with faces and canoes, as well as squares and circles, anything that his wandering hand and brain took a fancy to. It was here that he had written—
C2—C2—C2.… Where the hell is it?
and had scrawled the words: LOST AND GONE FOREVER and framed them with the names—Winokapau—Tishinakamau—Attikonak.

As the train started again I picked up the last log book, the one my mother had tried to hide from me. He could have had little sleep that night, for the first entry was for 0800 hours.
Ledder failed to make contact
. And an hour later—
No contact
. After that there were entries for every hour, but nothing against them. And by midday he was picking up odd scraps of news commentaries and transmissions from other stations. The word GREENWOOD occurred once. This appeared to be some sort of code word, like MAYDAY, for immediately afterwards there was a note:
Air search ordered
. There was a reference to bad weather and then, two days later:
Nova Scotia Air Rescue base
.

But this book, like the last, was a mass of doodles, on the front of the cover, inside and all over that first page, an indication of the long hours he had spent alone, huddled over the receiver. If I hadn't been so familiar with his writing I don't think I should ever have been able to decipher it.

I re-checked the entries against the notes I had made, and as I turned the pages the men involved in the disaster were revealed. There was Briffe, the leader of the party, and a man called Baird, and then a third man, the pilot.
Ledder keeps calling Laroche
. This was on the second page, and two days later he had written the name
LAROCHE
again in capitals, and underneath:
No, it can't be. I must be mad
. Nowhere could I find the names of the three men who had gone up to Area C2 on the first flight, though I did find a further reference to them amongst the jottings from news broadcasts—
Advance party evacuated from C2, all three safe
.

There were two other entries I thought might have some bearing on the disaster, one of which I could only partly decipher. On September 23 he had written
1705—Made contact VO6AZ—Query geologists
. And then two pages farther on:
1719—VO6AZ. SO THEY HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ABOUT
… The rest was completely obliterated, though I could read my father's initials, J.F.F., written for some unknown reason into the middle of the sentence.

Excerpts from news broadcasts referring to the search continued until September 26. But on that date, against the time 1300 hours, he had written the one word:
Finis
. And then later the same day:
1714—Made contact Ledder. Briffe and Baird both dead. L. safe
. And he had added:
L-L-L-L-L—IMPOSSIBLE
.

Reading all this through as the train ran into Bristol, it was clear that my father had not only followed the story of the whole expedition with great interest, but he had even made direct contact with VO6AZ to clarify certain points. And bearing in mind that he was only making very brief notes for his own personal use and not transcribing messages in detail, it seemed to me there was nothing to indicate that there was anything wrong with his mental state. Some of the comments I didn't understand and, of course, these, if looked at amongst the jottings and drawings of the muddled pages in which they appeared, would give a different impression. If, however, the so-called experts had bothered to isolate the references to the expedition, as I had done, they would have seen how clear he was about it all.