‘It was the map, wasn’t it?’ I was excited by the sudden certainty that it was the map that had drawn him to his feet.
A shadow seemed to cross her face. Her gaze fastened on the log books strewn on the table. ‘What are you doing up here, Ian?’
But I was remembering something a Canadian pilot had told me at the airfield — something about a party lost in Labrador and Canadian Air Force planes searching for them. The references to an expedition in the log books, the map and my father’s obsession with Labrador, and that sudden frightened look on my mother’s face — it was all coming together in my mind. ‘Mother,’ I said. ‘There was a message, wasn’t there?’
She looked at me then and her face went blank. ‘I don’t know what you mean, dear. Why don’t you come down and finish your tea. Try to forget about it;’
But I shook my head. ‘You do know what I mean,’ I said, and I went over to her and took hold of her hands. They were cold as ice. ‘What did you do with his log book?’
‘His log book?’ She stared at me and I could feel her trembling. ‘Aren’t they all there?’
‘You know they aren’t. The current one — it’s missing. What have you done with it?’
‘Nothing, dear. You don’t understand -1 was too busy. It’s been a terrible day … terrible.’ She began to cry gently.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘All the log books are there, except the current one. It should have been on the table beside the morse key. He always kept it there, and now it’s gone.’
‘He may have thrown it away. Or perhaps he’d forgotten to keep it for a time. You know how your father was. He was like a child.’ But she wouldn’t look at me and I knew she was hiding something.
‘What have you done with it, Mother?’ I shook her gently. ‘He received some sort of a message. Something to do with Labrador.’
‘Labrador!’ The word seemed to explode out of her mouth. Her eyes widened and she was staring at me. ‘Not you, too, Ian. Please God. Not you. All my life …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Now come down and have your tea, there’s a good boy. I can’t take any more — not today.’
I can remember the weariness in her voice, the note of pleading — and how cruel I was. ‘You never understood him, did you, Mother?’ I said that to her, and I believed it. ‘If you’d understood him, you’d know there was only one thing would drive him to call out, struggling to his feet and reaching out for the map. It was the map he was reaching out to, wasn’t it?’ And I shook her gently whilst she just stared at me with a sort of fascination. I told her then about the planes searching for a geological party lost in Labrador. ‘Whatever Dad may have been during these last few years, he was still a first-class radio operator. If he picked up some sort of a message from them…’ I had to make her see it my way — how important it could be. ‘Those men’s lives might depend on it,’ I said.
She shook her head slowly. ‘You don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘You can’t know.’ And she added, ‘It was all in his imagination.’
‘Then he did pick up a message?’
‘He imagined things. You’ve been away so much … you don’t know what went on in his mind.’
‘He didn’t imagine this,’ I said. ‘It made him suddenly find his voice. It forced him to his feet and the effort killed him.’ I was being intentionally brutal. If my father had killed himself in an effort to save other men’s lives, then I wasn’t going to have his effort go for nothing, whatever my mother’s reason for concealing it. ‘Look — I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I must have that log book.’ And when she only stared at me with a sort of dumb misery in her eyes, I said, ‘He wrote the message down in it, didn’t he? Didn’t he, Mother?’ I was exasperated by her attitude. ‘For God’s sake! Where is it! Please, Mother — you must let me see it!’
A defeated look showed in her face and she gave a tired little sigh. ‘Very well, Ian. If you must have it…’ She turned then and went slowly out of the room. ‘I’ll get it for you.’
I went with her because I had an instinctive feeling that if I didn’t she might destroy it. I couldn’t understand her attitude at all. I could literally feel her reluctance as I followed her down the stairs.
She had hidden it under the table linen in one of the drawers of the sideboard, and as she handed it to me, she said, ‘You won’t do anything foolish now, will you?’
But I didn’t answer her. I had seized hold of the exercise book and was already seated at the table, leafing through the pages. It was much the same as the others, except that the entries were more factual with fewer doodles and the word search caught my eye several times.
And then I was staring at the last entry on a page clear of all other jottings: CQ — CQ — CQ, — Any 75-metre phone station — Any 75-metre phone station — Come in someone please — Come in someone please — K.
There it was in my father’s laboured hand, and the desperation of that cry called to me through the shaky pencilled words in that tattered child’s exercise book. And underneath he had written BRIFFE — It must be. And the date and the time — September 29,1355 — voice very faint. Voice very faint! And below that, with the time given as 1405 — Calling again. CQ — CQ — CQ etc. Still no reply. Then the final entry: Calling VO6AZ now. Position not known but within 30 miles radius C2 — situation desperate — injured and no fire — Baird very bad — Laroche gone — CQ — CQ — CQ-Can hardly hear him — Search for narrow lake (obliterated) — Repeating… narrow lake with rock shaped like … The message ended there in a straggling pencil line as though the point of it had slipped as he made the effort to stand.
Injured and no fire! I sat there, staring at the pencilled words, a vivid picture in my mind of a narrow desolate lake and an injured man crouched over a radio set. Situation desperate. I could imagine it. The nights would be bitter and in the daytime they’d be plagued with a million flies. I’d read about it in those books of my father’s. And the vital part was missing — the bit that had brought my father to his feet.
‘What are you going to do?’ My mother’s voice sounded nervous, almost frightened.
‘Do?’ I hadn’t thought about it. I was still wondering what it was that had so galvanized my father. ‘Mum. Do you know why Dad was so interested in Labrador?’
‘No.’
The denial was so quick, so determined, that I looked up at her. Her face was very pale, a little haggard in the gathering dusk. ‘When did it start?’ I asked.
‘Oh, a long time ago. Before the war.’
‘So it wasn’t anything to do with his being shot up?’ I got up from the chair I had been sitting in. ‘Surely you must know the reason for it? In all these years he must have told you why — ‘
But she had turned away. ‘I’m going to get supper,’ she said, and I watched her go out through the door, puzzled by her attitude.
Alone, I began thinking again about those men lost in Labrador. Briffe — that was the name Farrow had talked about in the Airport Bar. Briffe was the leader of some sort of geological expedition, and I wondered what one did in a case like this. Suppose nobody but my father had picked up that message? But then they were bound to have heard it in Canada. If Dad had picked it up at a distance of over two thousand miles … But, according to Dad, Goose Bay hadn’t replied. And if by some queer chance he had been the only radio operator in the world to pick that message up, then I was the thread on which those men’s lives hung.
It was an appalling thought and I worried about it all through supper — far more I think than about my father’s death, for I couldn’t do anything about that. When we had finished the meal I said to my mother, ‘I think I’ll just walk as far as the call box.’
‘Who are you going to phone?’
‘I don’t know.’ Who did one ring? There was Canada House. They were really the people to tell, but they’d be closed now. ‘The police, I suppose.’
‘Do you have to do anything about it?’ She was standing there, wringing her hands.
‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘I think somebody ought to know.’ And then. because I still didn’t understand her attitude, I asked her why she’d tried to hide the message from me.