I nodded. Now that it was all fixed I felt very tired. ‘I was flying all last night,’ I explained. And then I remembered that Farrow was expecting me at Dorval Airport in the morning. There was Mr Meadows to notify, too — and my mother. I ought to tell her where I was. ‘I’ll have to write some letters,’ I said. And I explained that people back home didn’t even know I was in Canada.
‘Why not cable them then?’ He went over to the radio and tore a sheet off a message pad. ‘There you are. Write your message down on that and I’ll radio it to Base right away.’
It was as easy as that, and I remembered how small the world had seemed in that little basement room of Simon Ledder’s house. I hesitated. ‘I suppose you couldn’t contact a ham radio operator at Goose for me?’
He looked doubtful. ‘I could try,’ he said. ‘Depends whether he’s keeping watch or not. What’s his call sign?’
‘VO6AZ,’ I told him. And I gave the frequency.
Ill ‘VO6AZ!’ He was looking at me curiously. ‘That’s the ham who was acting as contact for Briffe’s party.’
I nodded, afraid that he’d start asking a lot of questions. ‘Will you try and get him for me?’
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He seemed to be thinking it out. ‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘It may take a little time. And I may not be able to get him at all. Do you want to speak to him personally or would a message do?’
‘A message,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’
‘What’s his job at Goose? Is he with the Air Force?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s with D.O.T. Communications.’
‘Goose Radio. Well, suppose I send it to them? I can always get Goose Radio.’
That would do fine,’ I said.
‘Aye, well, you write the message and I’ll let you know whether I’ve been able to send it when I come off watch.’ He pulled a pencil from behind his ear and handed it to me.
I sat there for a moment, uncertain what to say, conscious that he was standing over me, watching me curiously. Twice I started to write and then crossed it out. My brain was sluggish with lack of sleep and I wasn’t certain how much I dared say. At length I wrote: Company refuse take seriously. Going north into Labrador to try and find Lake of the Lion. Please notify Farrow. Request him on return Bristol to notify Meadows, Runway Construction Engineer, also my mother, Mrs Ferguson, 119 Lansdown Grove Road, London, N. W.I. Would he telegraph her and ask her did my father ever tell her exact location of Lake of the Lion. Reply c/o Perkins, radio operator. Camp 134, Q.N.S. amp; L., Seven Islands. Thanks for all your help. Ian Ferguson. I read it through and handed it to him. ‘I hope you don’t mind me using you as a post box?’ I said.
‘That’s okay.’ He stood, reading it through, and then he was looking at me and I knew there were questions he wanted to ask. But in the end he stuffed the message in his pocket. ‘Well, if you’re going to get any sleep tonight you’d better get down to the camp,’ he said. ‘There’s a truck outside will take you down. You can have the spare bed in my room.’
I thanked him. ‘I’d appreciate it,’ I added, ‘if you’d regard that message as confidential.’
‘Aye,’ he said slowly. ‘I won’t talk.’ He gave me a sidelong glance. ‘But if you weren’t English and I didn’t like you, I might act different.’ And I knew he’d guessed why I was here. He couldn’t very well help it with Laroche radioing for me to wait for him. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the driver to run you down to our bunkhouse. And I’ll let you know what luck I’ve had with this message when I come off duty at midnight.’
He took me out to the truck then and told the driver where to take me. ‘Call him at one-thirty,’ he said. ‘He’s taking the ballast train north.’
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 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 paperbacks, 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! 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.