Storymania - The Promise Ese by June M Harcourt

The Promise Ese (48)
June M Harcourt

“Is that effect anything like an aurora,” asked Emily, transfixed. “The missionary ladies always go on about it, as if I’d seen it myself.” Hector managed a smirk.

“It’s beyond the power of description, mine anyway. Tell them to read Hunt; he spends pages knitting every simile under the sun into a most remarkable…account. But Billy’s diaries contain the best description I read of colour and of the lights peculiar movement. They dance weirdly, lap as waves do.”

“Well I can hardly get a hold of his diaries. I’m surprised he showed them to you. Must have been a long time ago.”

“Only parts, you understand, innocent parts.”

He thought; why could not Hunt have read those parts about me before he maligned me in his extensive ‘account’. Vilification forsooth. Why couldn’t he expel the accursed past from his mind? He shouldn’t have hurt Katherine. Wrong. Ding-dong. A shabby thing to do. His instincts had recoiled from her act…but his act, meager, symbolic, aberrant, resolved nothing. Oh dear, oh dear…

“Lets go up to bed, dear,” suggested Emily, forcing a yawn. He hoped she was genuinely bushed.

Just then the doorbell rung. It was late so Emily went to answer it herself, staff having gone home. Katherine Hunt in a fashionable camel-coloured high-waisted single button coat, swooped onto the doorstep, her heart fluttering, the fur-trim fluffy like the feathers of a young bird. The hum of a motor-car engine backed the sudden appearance. She carried a little pouch that trembled in her hand.

“Oh thank goodness its you, Emily. We were passing and I saw the light on. I…this is your sisters residence, is that right. I believe….no your absolutely correct. It’s not the kind of main road I would be passing through. I hope you weren’t in bed. I’m impulsive, you see. I had an urge – to give your husband this, a keepsake. I was very taken with that cloth and it made me sad and concerned. Its dangerous work, I though this might help.” Emily gawped, perplexed, just a little elated. Lady Hunt had sort of been knighted in her own right, in lieu of her husband – an awe-inspiring woman – more so when resplendent in evening finery exalting the doorstep of an ancient, murky residence. Emily had always been a hesitant social climber and Hectors fame sometimes bewildered her upper middle-classness. Katherine sported an aristocratic diffidence although of humble origins herself. She always swayed leisurely, lightly, labile at the very tip of the ladder.

“Will you come in and see the cloth, we chose to have it framed. My sister Nancy is out – its just Hector and I chinwagging.” How she has suffered from his verbal dominion, noticed Katherine, astutely, and how matronly she looks in her dressing-gown. She must feel embarrassed, I would. But Emily rose like the “Stalwart’ on the cusp of a pressure ridge, just as diffident and nonchalant as their dazzling visitor.

“Only for a moment, Gerald, my fiancé, is waiting in the car.” Katherine made the excuse as she was supposed to. Emily tapped the ball back over the net of social protocol.

“Wouldn’t he like to come in, too? It’s a cold night.” Hector suddenly loomed at the door wearing his moth-eaten old cardigan. That settled it. Katherine desired to have them pushing together like bookends with the women in-between as the books. She disappeared momentarily allowing Hector to consult Emily as to the nature of the house-call. Emily could only shrug saying that Katherine had something to give him. Why tonight? Where had she gone? To the mythical hon. M.P esq., her driving companion. Aha! Hector retreated into the drawing-room, rubbing his hands. How dare she sneak up on them.

“Well we are on our way to Hobart in three days time,” Hector heard her say in a rather high-pitched, excited voice. Must have been the depths of the night winding her up.

At last the wonderful meaty gentleman strode into the room, all six-foot two inches of lean frame and gaunt gentility. Graceful, indeed, for a tall man. Katherine introduced them, almost stumbling over the words, disarmed by the sight of a homey Hector – an inedible Hector. She rocked on her feet until he offered them brandy. With a sheepish glance in Emily’s direction Hector permitted himself a dram. Gerald declined whilst Katherine demonstrably requested another.

“Hobart,” she continued, “is a dear place nestled at the foot of a stupendously gigantic mountain that has a vertical rock formation called the organ-pipes and a divine little hotel on its lower precincts, like a lodge. The water is so pure, it just drips down the mountain slopes for people to collect as their drinking water. And the tiny wallabies hop alongside the road, completely accustomed to sightseers, unafraid but timid. I clambered all about the mountain when we were there in 1910, such a long time ago. Gerald is a keen mountaineer so we hope to repeat the experience. But I’m afraid my legs are not as compliant as they used to be, I haven’t exercised very much lately.” Just a little trot at the cott.

“Hector has, haven’t you dear, up and down the coast paths in readiness for the journey. Besides it puts him in a better humour, otherwise he feels confined.” Emily sat informally, legs crossed, in her over-stuffed chair close to the fire. “Oh but I was forgetting….” Then she persuaded the newcomers into admiring the cloth, wavering a lamp in the vicinity as their backs blocked the main light. They could all see themselves in the glass, a few specks of the actual embroidery cutting across their reflected faces like theatrical make-up moustaches. Emily explained the symbolism for Gerald’s benefit.

“This new boat is a crock,” expounded Hector to amiable Gerald Cochrane who was content to patiently listen, “wouldn’t last like the last one, suspended over the ocean by rods of ice. She’d plummet like a stone, but our plan is to hedge about the main pack looking for islands. People sometimes mistake bergs, for islands you see. The base of bergs is usually dirty brown, the base becomes visible when the old ones flip over. Yes these mysterious unknown islands…” He tapped at a spouting whale seeming to nudge along a lustrous brown mound of island towards ‘Destiny’, the name of the ship now central to the cloth’s schemata.

Gerald laughed goodnaturedly at appropriate moments and furrowed his brow thinking over any less than trite remarks. He had the dimensions of a runner together with a concave chest, protruding belly and bandy-legs but looked at altogether, a handsome prospect, in spite of these imperfections. Katherine linked one arm to his.

“It looks more than lovely,” she said, gushing with praise. “It is an illuminated manuscript. The gold shines like hair.” Gerald peered at what was meant to be a sledge.

“Teams of nine dogs for each one. Seventy dogs we had aboard. Their confounded yapping day and night, grated on the old nerves.” Hector enlightened.

“I’ve read the major Polar accounts,” said Gerald, a little indignant. “I’m familiar with the technicalities. I presume this is an eleven-foot sledge and these dogs are Siberian. I can tell by the way they are harnessed. two by two. They only respond to Russian commands. But I’m disappointed,” he stammered, “ not to see a hoosh-pot – that’s a favourite of the books.” They laughed. Emily rejoindered:

‘I found it difficult to obtain the silver thread.’ They laughed again.

“There’s the autograph of its inventor, Jansens and Bergstrom – big names, internationally.” Gerald had donned a pair of spectacles and seemed earnestly studious. “So its quite comprehensive.”

‘Oh Carpenter tops them all. The Americans love Hector, don’t they dear,” Emily preened proudly.

“Which reminds me - did you know that a hotel in Hobart is advertising that one can sleep the night in Bergstrom’s very bed, the one he slept in that night when he broke news of the Pole, to the world. I think it’s a big joke.” Katherine’s words slid through a brandy haze. “It would have been Richard’s bed had he survived – no then he would have stayed with his sister at Government house. Imagine the reception.” Emily and Gerald perfunctorily glanced at each other, moved by mention of the lost Hunt, by Katherine’s meandering voice. by the hurt she must surely feel. Then they glanced at Hector who remained impassive, his blue eyes blackly fixed on her. He said normally:

“Might smell a bit.”

“ What of dried cod-fish!” Katherine chuckled. “What’s the other thing, Sir Hector, sennegrass, if he hadn’t changed his boots in weeks.”

“And putrid reindeer pelts.” Suddenly it was if the two of them had tumbled into a little private world, like the front-bar of a pub.

“Body odour,” she said, almost raucous, “that’s the worst of it. The pong of the Swedes. As bad as that dog, you remember, the vole.”

Gerald, nudged by the vulgarity, quickly squeezed her arm whilst clearing his throat in a policeman’s stern fashion. Katherine looked at him strangely then looked at Hector and her eyes grew moist. “I have this for you,” she said meekly, taking the pouch from her pocket and handing it to him.
”What can it possibly be,” Emily speculated, monitoring everyone’s eyes intently.

Hector untied the strings and drew forth a compass, polished and treasure-like. Payment for the letter?

“You know it?” asked Katherine. “Yes you do. Furthest south 1902. It’s the one, Hector, the one that got you all through.”

Her voice was soft as if there was no one else in the room besides she and he. He said he couldn’t accept it.

“It was with Richard when he died. I don’t want it.” Katherine insisted.

“Do take it, “ urged Emily.

“Yes we’ve motored all the way here in the middle of the night,” Gerald added. “You know what Katherine is like when she has a notion, or maybe you don’t.”

Once again Hector felt alone, guiding his companions safely to the next depot. Behind him their conferring and private laughter; with him, the beat of his own heart, stentorious breathing, piercing weakness, desperation, the holding of the compass as though it was a potion, as if it was an engine as though it was Gods hand. Perhaps it was jinxed too. Instinctively he searched for North. He was directly South.

She was North, Em N.N. E and Gerald N.N.W. The brassy metal of the compass warmed in his hand. Silence pervaded for a minute until Hector quizzed Gerald as to what he did in the parliamentary off-season.

“I’m cataloguing my father’s library. It contains many volumes of historical importance, bound journals and pamphlets and suchlike. And I shoot…”

“What, you mean shoot?” Hector made his hands into a camera.

“Not at all…shoot” Gerald made as if to shoulder a rifle-butt. Ah the idle rich, Hector thought enviously. The compass made an ignoble bulge in his cardigans breast pocket.

“I suppose you read a great deal then,” said Emily. Katherine had by now thrown her coat over a chair, revealing a black-grape gown that shimmered bottomless and a long, long string of rugged colourless crystals weighing her neck down. She had seated herself casually on the arm of a chair as if to promote her lack of intent to impinge. She twirled her string of quartz, said boisterously;

“Emily, the library is piled to its eye-teeth with first-editions, Blake, Chaucer, Milton even Browning, but do you know, Gerald prefers bills of social reform and hundred year old Hansards oh yes and scientific reports.’

“And art books,” smiled Gerald adoringly but warily. Kat seemed more disinhibited than usual.

“Now he does, of course.” Said Katherine. “But tell me, Emily, is it true you read Browning every night before bed to send you to sleep, one of his historic verse-dramas?” Emily frowned, said:

“No its not at all true,” puzzlement evident in her voice. “Did you deduce that from something I said?” Hector, feeling uncomfortable, cut in:

“Must have been when you took tea together, in the city, that right m’dear?” Katherine had really sunk her foot in with the remark. Emmy was like a snappy dog that would never let go. She sniffed about posts and trees.

“No, no, I don’t think so.”

Suddenly Katherine realized her slip. How could she know what the Carpenters got up to at night in the privacy of their own bedroom? She must have been feeling so at home in the affable, cozy, little sitting room with pleasant people she would most probably never see again, as the most extravagant book on the shelf of ill-matched bookends and ragged books such as the couple of human tomes in fustian. Like a wallower in jelly. Hector stampeded towards Gerald – climbed Mont Blanc had he? We’ve need of a mountaineer.

“There’s a Swiss company invented a type of boot with inbuilt crampons.” Hector explained. “Fancy joining us on the expedition. I’ve already sent my associate Morris over to Geneva to clinch the deal. It means climbing a volcano.” Katherine sucked in her breath. Was he joking?

“Joking of course,” he qualified, instantly aware of her bamboozlement and apprehension. It was her breaths he could read. He could play it up. She glared. Nevertheless, he risked an omniscient grin in her direction, as if to jibe ‘‘would be the making of him. How old, forty-five, his last chance. Hero number five..or six.” She could have tickled him playfully, the tease.

‘No,” said Gerald, also glad to see he was kidding. “I’ve seen what it does to folks. That initial journey of yours, for instance. It was almost the finish, coughing up blood and the rest.”

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