East of Desolation

It was only when she stood up that I realised just how small she was – not more than five feet three or four. She was wearing an expensive tweed suit, nylon stockings and flat-heeled pigskin shoes.

‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘You’re dressed just fine for those long country weekends, but you’ll need something different for where we’re going.’

‘Rugged country?’ she said. ‘Well that should make a change. So far I’ve found the whole thing just a little disappointing.’

‘They don’t wear sealskin trousers any more if they can help it,’ I said, ‘and a whaleboat with a diesel motor is a damned sight handier in rough weather than a kayak, but if it’s the rough outdoors you want, I think Disko should satisfy you.’

‘I can’t wait,’ she said dryly. ‘Where can I change?’

‘Use my room if you like. It’s on the first floor – twenty-one. I’ll finish here, then I’ve a few things to see to. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.’

She went out through the archway and spoke to the porter who hurried round to pick up the suitcase she selected from the stack that stood against the wall, and she followed him across the hall to the stairs. At that distance there was something vaguely familiar about her, but I couldn’t pin it down.

She walked well, with a sort of general and total movement of the whole body and in one very quick movement, I wondered what she would be like in bed. But that would have been Arnie’s reaction. He probably already had his campaign mapped out.

Suddenly angry with myself, I turned back to my steak, but it was already cold and I pushed it away and helped myself to coffee.

I think it was General Grant who said: War is hell. He should have added that women are worse. I sipped my coffee and stared out across the wide street towards the harbour where the Otter glinted scarlet and silver in the sunlight, but all I kept getting was a disturbing vision of Ilana Eytan crossing the hall and her damned skirt tightening as she mounted the stairs. It had been a long time since a woman bothered me as positively as that.

I borrowed the hotel Land-Rover and drove down to the harbour, mainly to get the met report from the harbourmaster’s office. I’d refuelled the Otter on flying in the night before so there was nothing to do there and at a crate of Scotch per week, Desforge had become such a valued customer of the Royal Greenland Trading Company that their local agent had supervised the loading of his supplies himself.

I drove back to the hotel and went upstairs. When I went into the bedroom there was no sign of the girl, but I could hear the shower going full blast so I went into the dressing room and started to change.

I was as far as my flying boots when the outside door opened and someone entered. As I got to my feet, Arnie called my name and I moved to the door. I was too late. By the time I reached the bedroom, he was already entering the bathroom. He backed out hurriedly and Ilana Eytan appeared a moment later swathed in a large white bath towel.

‘I don’t know what’s supposed to be going on,’ she said. ‘But would you kindly send Little Boy Blue here about his business.’

Arnie stood there speechless and she shut the door in his face. I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘On your way, Arnie.’

‘What a woman,’ he whispered. ‘My God, Joe, her breasts, her thighs – such perfection. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Yes you have,’ I said. ‘About three thousand and forty-seven times.’ I pushed him out into the corridor and slammed the door.

I returned to the dressing room and pulled on a sweater and an old green kapok-filled parka with a fur-lined hood. When I went back into the bedroom Ilana Eytan was standing in front of the dressing table mirror combing her hair. She was wearing ski pants, cossack boots and a heavy Norwegian sweater.

‘Arnie thought it was me in there,’ I said. ‘He didn’t mean any harm.’

‘They never do.’

There was a hip-length sheepskin jacket on the bed beside the open suitcase and as she picked it up and pulled it on, I once again had that strange feeling of familiarity.

‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ I said, and then the obvious possibility occurred to me. ‘In pictures maybe?’

She buttoned up the jacket, examined herself carefully in the mirror and put the comb to her hair again. ‘I’ve made a couple.’

‘With Jack?’ And then I remembered. ‘Now I’ve got it. You played the Algerian girl in that last film of his. The film about gun-running.’

‘Go to the head of the class,’ she said brightly and zipped up her suitcase. ‘What did you think of it?’

‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how he keeps it up. After all, he made his first film the year I was born.’

‘You make a poor liar,’ she said calmly. ‘That film was the original bomb. It sank without trace.’

In spite of her apparent calmness there was a harsh, cutting edge to her voice that left me silent, but in any case she gave me no chance to reply and went out into the corridor leaving me to follow with her suitcase feeling strangely foolish.

2 (#u51c2e289-5a22-5f0b-9f6d-75850883424f)

As we roared out of the mouth of the fjord and climbed into the sun, I stamped on the right rudder and swung slowly north, flying parallel to the bold mountainous coast.

In the distance the ice-cap glinted in the morning sun and Ilana Eytan said, ‘The only thing I ever knew about Greenland before now was a line in a hymn they used to sing at morning assembly when I was a kid at school. From Greenland’s icy mountains … Looking down on that lot I can see what they meant, but it still isn’t quite as back of beyond as I expected. That hotel of yours in Frederiksborg even had central heating.’

‘Things are changing fast here now,’ I said. ‘The population’s risen to sixty thousand since the war and the Danish government is putting a lot of money into development.’

‘Another thing, it isn’t as cold as I thought it would be.’

‘It never is in the summer, particularly in the south-west. There’s a lot of sheep farming down there, but things are still pretty primitive north of the Arctic Circle. Up around Disko you’ll find plenty of Eskimos who still live the way they’ve always done.’

‘And that’s where Jack is?’

I nodded. ‘Near the village called Narquassit as I last heard. He’s been looking for polar bear for the past couple of weeks.’

‘That sounds like Jack. How well have you got to know him since he’s been up here?’

‘Well enough.’

She laughed abruptly, that strange harsh laugh of hers. ‘You look like the type he likes to tell his troubles to.’

‘And what type would that be?’

‘What he fondly believes to be the rugged man of action. He’s played bush pilot himself so many times in pictures over the years that he imagines he knows the real thing when he sees it.’

‘And I’m not it?’

‘Nobody’s real – not in Jack’s terms. They couldn’t be. He can never see beyond a neatly packaged hour and a half script.’ She lit a cigarette and leaned back in her seat. ‘I used to love the movies when I was a kid and then something happened. I don’t know what it was, but one night when the hero and the girl got together for the final clinch I suddenly wondered what they were going to do for the next forty-three years. When you begin thinking like that the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.’

‘Not for Jack,’ I said. ‘He’s been living in a fantasy world for so long that reality has ceased to exist.’

She turned, the narrow crease between her eyes a warning sign that I failed to notice. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

Considering the way she’d been talking I was more than a little surprised at her reaction. I shrugged. ‘He’s playing a part right now, isn’t he? The rugged adventurer cruising the Greenland coast? He’ll spend the day in a dory helping to bait and hook a three-thousand-foot line or he’ll go seal hunting among the pack ice in a kayak, but there’s always the Stella to return to each night, a hot shower, a six-course dinner and a case of scotch.’

‘A neat strip,’ she said. ‘They could use you at Metro, but what about your own fantasy life?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘The tough bush pilot act, the flying boots, the fur-lined parka – the whole bit. Just who are you trying to kid? I wouldn’t mind betting you even carry a gun.’

‘A .38 Smith and Wesson,’ I lied. ‘It’s in the map compartment, but I haven’t had time to shoot anyone lately.’