I stared at him, unbelievingly. ‘Won’t you even try to understand?’ I said. ‘My father was a radio operator. The ether was his whole world. He’d never have invented a transmission that didn’t take place — never.’ And I went on to explain what it must have cost him in effort to force himself to his feet. But, even as I was telling it to him, I knew it was no good. The hard lines of his face didn’t soften, the eyes held no sympathy.
He heard me out, and when I’d finished, he glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But all this doesn’t really help us. If you’d been able to tell us something new — give us something positive to work on…’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ve got to go now.’ He came round the desk and stood over me. ‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate it that you’ve come a long way to tell us this. I do. But you must understand that yours is a personal point of view — a very personal one.’
‘Then you’re not going to do anything?’ I asked.
‘What can I do? Call for a resumption of the search? I’d have to convince the authorities first.’ He shook his head.
I jumped to my feet then. ‘But before you were searching blind,’ I told him. ‘Now you’d have something to go on. If you searched for this lake…’ I turned to Laroche. ‘For God’s sake try to make him see it,’ I cried. And when he didn’t answer, but remained staring down at his pipe, I burst out wildly, ‘Don’t you want them to be found?’ And at that his head came up with a jerk and he stared at me with a sort of horror.
‘Bert flew in twice,’ McGovern reminded me quietly, ‘Twice when he should have been in hospital. And he couldn’t find the lake.’ He paused and then added, ‘I understand your disappointment. It’s natural after coming so far. And I may say I’m disappointed, too. We all are. When I got Ledder’s message I had hoped …’ He turned away with a little shrug that was a gesture of finality. ‘I gather your aircraft has gone on to Montreal. That correct?’ he asked me.
I nodded, feeling suddenly drained of the will to fight them any more.
‘I’m told there’s a flight going out to Montreal tonight,’ he said to Lands. ‘Do you think you could fix him a ride on it, Bill?’
‘Sure.’
McGovern glanced at his watch again and then turned to Laroche. ‘You got your car with you? Then perhaps you’d drive me down into town. I’m late as it is.’ He picked up his briefcase. ‘I’m grateful to you, Ferguson — very grateful indeed. If there’s anything I can do for you let me know.’ And with that he strode out of the room. Laroche hesitated, glancing quickly at me as though he were about to say something. And then he hurried after McGovern.
The door slammed behind him and I stood there, feeling numbed and exhausted. I should have stopped him, made one final effort. But what was the good? Even if he’d known the name of the lake all along, it didn’t mean he could find it again. And the world had got used to the idea that the men were dead. That was the thing I was up against — that and the stubbornness of men like McGovern who couldn’t see a thing unless it was presented to them as hard fact. ‘Damn them! Damn them to hell!’
A hand gripped my arm. I’d forgotten Bill Lands was still there. ‘What did you expect?’ he said in a kindly voice. ‘We don’t abandon men easily up here in the North.’
I swung round on him. ‘But don’t you see …’ And then I stopped because I realized that he’d sat through it all and he still believed that Briffe was dead. He wasn’t involved. He was outside it and if I hadn’t convinced him, what hope had I of convincing anyone else?
‘I’ll just go and check this Montreal flight, and then I guess you’d like some food.’
He was gone about ten minutes, and when he came back he told me it was all fixed. ‘Flight leaves at around twenty-thirty hours.’ He took me out into the slanting evening light, across flat gravel that had the silt look of a river bed, and in the distance a locomotive hooted an inexpressibly mournful note. ‘Supply train going up the line to Head of Steel,’ he said. ‘Going up myself tomorrow.’ There was pleasure in his voice and he smiled at me. He had warmth, this big American with his eyes screwed up against the westering sun.
We entered a hut similar to the one we had just left, to be greeted by a murmur of voices, the rattle of crockery, and the smell of food. It was good, that smell of food, for I was hungry, and I sat down with Lands at a table full of strangers, who took no notice of me and ate with concentration. What talk there was centred around the line and it carried with it the breath of railway engineering. They were blasting rock at one point, bearing down on the muskeg at another, and the rail-laying gang at Head of Steel were driving forward at the rate of a mile and a half a day. Dozens of construction camps, thousands of men, even an air lift to supply them — a whole world in itself, thinking, dreaming, eating, sleeping nothing but this railway. I felt myself being sucked into it mentally, so that it was difficult, whilst I sat there eating with them, not to feel a part of it.
And then somebody asked me whether I was going up the line. When I told him No, that I was going back to England, he stared at me as though I were some creature from another planet. ‘Well, well — and we got such a good climate up here.’ They laughed, and their laughter made me less of a stranger.
Lands waited for me to finish eating, and then we went outside and all the western sky was aglow with the setting sun.
‘You’ll see a sight before you leave tonight, I reckon,’ he said. The northern lights should be real good.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s early for your flight yet, but I got to go down town. Don’t mind if I drop you off at the airstrip right away, do you?’
I shook my head and he went off to change and get his car. I was to pick up my suitcase and meet him at the Q.N.S. amp; L. Office. I moved out across the flat gravel space, feeling conspicuous and alone. All the purpose seemed to have been drained out of me. Glancing back, I saw that Lands had stopped to chat to a woman down by the farthest hut. I could see them looking at me and I went quickly on towards the office, conscious that others must know by now what had brought me here. Staffen would have told them, and the knowledge made the sense of failure overwhelming. If only I could have convinced Lands. I liked Bill Lands.
I reached the office and found my suitcase, and I went out and stood looking at the western sky, which had flared up into a violent furnace red. And now that I was leaving, I felt again the strange pull of this country.
Footsteps sounded, quick and urgent on the gravel behind me, and a voice that was soft and slightly foreign said, ‘Are you Mr Ferguson?’
I turned and found it was the woman who had been talking to Lands. Or rather, it wasn’t a woman, but a girl with black hair cut short like a boy and a dark, full-lipped face that had no trace of make-up. I remember, even in that first glimpse of her, she made a deep impression on me. It was her vitality, I think, and a sort of wildness, or perhaps it was just that her eyes caught and reflected the strange, wild light in the sky. Whatever it was, I was immediately aware of her in a way that was somehow personal. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m Ian Ferguson.’
She didn’t say anything, just stared at me, her nostrils aquiver and her eyes glazing with the reflected glare. Her wrists were very slender and her hands gripped the edge of her leather jacket so that she seemed to be holding herself in.
And then she said, ‘I’m Paule Briffe.’
I think I’d known that from the first moment, the sense of emotion dammed up inside her had been so strong. ‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured awkwardly. I didn’t know what else to say.
‘Bill told me your father is dead, that that is why you come.’ She spoke in a tight, controlled little voice that trembled on the edge of hysteria. ‘I can understand that. Believe me, I can understand that.’ And then, suddenly losing the grip she had on herself, she cried out, ‘But it doesn’t help him. It cannot do any good.’ The words came in a rush. ‘Please. Go back to England. Leave us alone.’