I nodded.
He called back instructions to the navigator and the radio operator, and then looked at me with a grin and added, ‘Who knows -1 may even get a mention in despatches if those poor devils are lifted out alive.’
A mood of optimism swept over me then and, as I went back into the fuselage, I was thinking that some divine providence must be guiding me.
The mood was still with me more than an hour later when we began to descend. I felt the check as the flaps went down and then the engines were throttled back and a moment later we touched down. We taxied for a while, bumping heavily over rough ground, and then we stopped, the engines quietly ticking over.
Farrow himself came back down the fuselage and opened the doors for me. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘And see they look after you. We’ll be in Montreal until midday tomorrow if you want a ride back.’
‘Of course I want to go back with you,’ I shouted. I was appalled at the thought that he might return to England without me.
He clapped me on the shoulder and I jumped out into the backwash of air from the slowly turning props.
‘I’ll be there,’ I shouted to him.
The door slammed shut and I hurried clear, to stand a little way off, watching, with my suitcase gripped in my hand. Farrow was back at the controls. He waved to me through the windshield. The engines roared, kicking up a great swirl of dust, and then the machine that had brought me across the Atlantic went lumbering away over the hard-baked dirt of the airfield, out to the runway-end.
I watched it take off — watched it until it was a speck in the sky. I hated to see Farrow go. I was alone now, and there was nobody here I knew. I stood there for a moment, waiting and turning the loose change over in my pocket. I’d a few pounds in my wallet, but that was all. Nobody came out to meet me.
PART TWO
CHAPTER ONE
When I could no longer see the plane I walked slowly towards the line of pre-fabricated huts that were the airport buildings. I felt abandoned, almost lost now, for there was nothing about Seven Islands to give me a sense of ease.
The bulldozed road, the dust, the maple leaf in the last flush of autumn, and the distant glimpse of new construction and heaped-up stores and equipment; it had a barbaric newness, an alien quality like the supply point for a battlefield. There were open hangar-like sheds piled with crates and sacks of foodstuffs, pieces of machinery, tyres, and a fork lift trundling the stuff out to a battered Dakota where a group of men stood smoking. They were a wild, mixed lot in strange headgear and gaily coloured bush shirts, and their kit stacked about them included bed rolls and thick, quilted jackets.
The place had an edge-of-wilds smell about it, and in the despatch office they knew nothing about me. There was nobody to meet me, not even a message, and when I asked for the offices of the McGovern Mining amp; Exploration Company, they had never heard of it. ‘You a geologist?’ the despatcher asked.
‘No.’ I didn’t want to start explaining myself here.
‘Well, what’s your job then?’
‘I’m an engineer,’ I said. ‘But that’s got nothing to do — ‘
‘You better report to Q.N.S. amp; L. then.’ He went to the door and shouted to a truck driver who was just moving off. ‘He’ll take you down. Okay?’ he was back at his desk, checking a despatch list, and because there seemed nothing else to do I went out to the truck and got in. An office would know where I ought to go or at least I could phone. ‘What’s Q.N.S. amp; L. stand for?’ I asked the driver as we lurched out through the wire on to a dirt road. I was thinking of the pencilled line my father had drawn in on his map.
‘Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway.’ He looked at me, his battered, sun-reddened face softened by a smile. ‘You from the Old Country?’ He wore a scarlet-patterned woollen bush shirt and the open neck of it showed the hair of his chest grey with road dust. He asked about England. He’d been there with the Canadian Army. And then we crossed the track and he talked about the railway. ‘I worked on the Tote Road when we started two years back. Boy, that was real tough. Now the Americans are in and they got all the equipment they need to build the grade. You going up the line?’
I shook my head. I was looking at the skyline ahead, staggered by the mushroom growth of buildings. And all to the left of us were acres of piled-up railway equipment — great stacks of rails and sleepers, and store sheds as big as hangars, and in between were the solid, powerful shapes of big diesel electric locomotives, their paintwork factory-new.
‘Guess I wouldn’t mind going back up the line again,’ he said. ‘Drive, drive, drive; but it’s good to see a thing take shape and be a part of it. ‘You oughter go up there, just to tell ‘em back in the Old Country how we built a railroad slap into the middle of nowhere.’ And he went on: ‘Gee, you oughter see it now the heat’s on. Not more’n a month to go before the big freeze-up and Head of Steel pushing forward near on two miles a day.’ He shook his big bullet head. ‘You oughter see it.’ He jammed his foot on the brake pedal and the truck stopped with a jerk. ‘Okay, fellow. There’s the office.’ He jerked his head at a group of wooden buildings and there was a board with Q.N.S. amp; L. R. on it.
The airport despatcher must have phoned them, for the man in the office took me for a newly-arrived engineer. And when I told him I had just stopped off to see the president of the McGovern Mining amp; Exploration Company, he said, ‘Hell! I thought it was too good to be true.’
‘If you could direct me to the Company’s offices,’ I suggested.
He scratched his head. ‘There’s no company of that name here. There’s just ourselves and the Iron Ore Company and the construction combine.’ He tipped his chair back, looking at me. ‘What’s this fellow’s name?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was just told to meet him here in Seven Islands.’
‘There was a guy called McGovern at breakfast this morning. Came in last night from Montreal — big man with a voice like a nutmeg grater. That him?’
‘Couldn’t you ring somebody and find out for me?’ I asked. ‘The plane landed me here specially. There must be a message for me somewhere.’
He sighed and reached for the phone. ‘Maybe the Iron Ore Company will know something about you. They handle all the mining and exploration side. We’re just the railroad here.’ He got through to somebody and told him my name and who I’d come to see, and after listening for a bit, he put the receiver down. ‘Well, McGovern’s your man all right. But he’s busy right now. A conference.’ His chair was tilted back again and he was looking at me with renewed interest. ‘That was Bill Lands I was on to. He keeps tabs on Burnt Creek and all the geological parties. He’ll be right over. I’m Staffen, by the way. Alex Staffen.’ He held out his hand to me. ‘I’m the personnel manager. Bill said something about your being here in connection with this survey party that crashed?’
I nodded.
‘Bad business.’ He shook his head, sucking in air between his teeth. ‘Briffe was a nice guy. Did you ever meet him?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘French-Canadian, but a fine guy. A throw-back to the voyageurs.’ He stared at his desk. ‘It’s tough on his daughter.’ He looked up at me suddenly. ‘You reckon there’s hope?’ he asked. And when I didn’t answer, he said, ‘There’s talk about a transmission having been picked up in England.’ His eyes were fixed on mine. ‘You know anything about that?’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said.
I suppose he sensed that I didn’t want to talk about it, for he just nodded and looked away towards the window which gave on to a drab view of sand and gravel huts. ‘Well, Paule’s lucky, I guess, to have one of them come out alive.’
He meant the pilot presumably and I asked him if he knew where Laroche was now.