The Promise Ese (34) “I’m not having any of that kind of talk in this house, thankyou very much. You’ll be upsetting our patient. I won’t have it. Without him, we are done for.” Lady Moncrieff, the imperious speaking trumpet for these troubled times, the conscience of neo-Georgia. Her loftiness left Hector shaking with suspense. Her tread shook the very tongues in their grooves. She closed in. He trembled as the curtains parted. “Boss,” she whispered at the shaven-headed figure overflowing a packing-case bunk, shielding his fear with the blanket border. “Boss, we have a problem.” Once she had adjudged him awake, her loudness seized the hut again. “The seal-meat is off.” “Oh. How long have I been unconscious?” “Far too long,” she bellowed. “Must say you look like last nights penguin-foot hoosh. Now up out of bed, work to be done. Time is of the absolute essence. Mackintosh, here will help you dress.” “Mac,” he murmured with relief, ‘what’s amiss?” “Antarctic fever, taken quite a few of them off. I’ve been doing a bit extra to make up for their loss. As you can see, though, boss, the icicles are taking over” Hector noticed spicules of rime adorning the packing-case shelves like fluffy moulds and hoar on his own beard. Mac was in fact decked in bulky furs. “What, isn’t the stove functioning.” “Run out of coal. And”, he lowered his voice, “the Llanlubbers just cultured the botulinus microbe from seal liver in our larder. Yes, it finished Franklin, so…its curtains for us.” He whipped his finger across his throat, “you know, the chopper. Sorry Boss.” But Mac still had his banjo so there was a cause for optimism. “Put this fur on,’ he said, helpful, “ and I’ll play number six in my repertoire of – six. Moncrieffs got loads of these esqimaux suits. She buys them wholesale from the nearest esquimaux and doles them out to those she feels deserves them.” The fur felt rigid and uncomfortable over his lightweight underwear. “I can’t bend my arms”. Hector complained whilst clomping an inelegant bear-shuffle. “Whose this?” “Have you forgotten our queen?” Mac squinted at him queerly. “Look, the queen, he leaned across the bunk and tapped his finger on a curling rectangle of processed negative tacked to a flattened packing-case stood vertical. “What about this one?” Hector nodded at a grimy face in the third level of a brickwork pattern of mugshots. A very plain woman. “Your wife, of course, and your daughter and here is your favourite pony. I’m afraid we ate Shifty yesterday, right tasty too. And here’s your brother, he’s ‘gone over’ to the other side, since your collapse. Shaved off his moustache, looks a different chap.” Hector stared blankly. “Strange that you can’t remember, boss…” Fanshawe was arguing with Moncrieff: “Won’t catch me in any of that Russkie kit. I’d rather freeze…’ Hectors authority and normalcy suddenly cracked his torpor. He stuck his head around the curtain and counted then growled: “Lost ten men- that’s ten too many” His combustible glare burned at the fractious Fanshawe. “I’m wearing it, you wear it.” “Have something to gnaw upon, Boss. You’ve lost weight.’ Murchison held out a tin plate with some bread. “The last of our farinaceous food. We’ve been experimenting with blubber dripping. Horrendous smell but if you hold your nose like this – slips down with the greatest of ease.” “Hmph. You cook for the week? “At your service Boss.” Hector, unable to sit in his furs before they had loosened up, stood at the stove like an insulated pipe. He probably could have stood on it without catching fire. Iced tea? “First things first,” he laid down the law. “We must save ourselves from starvation and hypothermia. We must find food and heat. Jones can you declare with all certainty our seal stock is inedible? Isn’t there a miracle solution we can inject into it to kill the parasites or whatever’s the source of rot?” “I’ve dug down deep, Boss. Even the pups from last season have putrefied. Its mush out there in the grotto. I think we should even dismantle the hut and rebuild it elsewhere. I can’t trust the ground. It’s been in contact with the affected seals for too long.” “Three cheers for the Llanlubber.” “Enough sarcasm from you, Fanshawe. Its smart-arses like you that break the spirit and corrupt the soul of man.” And you look like a galumphing big baby in that fluffy baby suit, Fanshawe thought cussedly to himself. Moncrieff slapped Hector spiffingly on the back as if to say Buck up, keep your pecker up, that’s the spirit, wipe the floor with em. He turned to her, asked softly: “Phyllis, where by the way are the woman? Has the fever taken them off?” She shook her head sagely. “No, she said,” but they have gone to god, in a manner of speaking. Your brother persuaded them…” She shouldered him towards the Northern window. “The God of the tundra…Captain Hunt. They have thrown themselves at his mercy, a week ago today, at the height of your own fever.” “That’s right,” added Mackintosh. “There’s mountains of food at his place, all sorts of indulgences. I can be a minstrel and sing for our supper. There’s one problem, but….” “The ice is beginning to thaw between our hut and his hut.” “Hut? He lives in a palace!” Murchison thumped the packing-case table, testily. “This bread? They bake loaves with mare’s milk. Unless you can fix things, me ol Captain, I’ll be off as well, dodgy ice or not, I mean Boss.” “Does this mean we can stop taking meteorological readings?’ They began talking over one another. Hector prioritised as the decibels skyrocketed. Despite the encroachment of ice his hut appeared almost brand new. Were there any dogs, sledges, paraffin for the Primus? Ah, the printing-press. Leaflets. Passing aeroplane might intercept a balloon towing an s.o.s tag but no it was 1907 again – stranded. He asked for opinions but it seemed the brightest of his meteoric expeditioners had succumbed or risked his wrath by defecting. Jones thought they could shut down their vital systems like rotifers and wait a few million years for the Antarctic to recede. “He’s been at the methylated spirits, Boss,” brayed Fanshawe. “And so has our scout-mistress there. Behold her nose.” “Its frostbite, you imbecile. I think his brain is softening. I request our leader write a certificate declaring this ‘bugger’ insane and henceforth and unwilling member of the shore party. Do it at once, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” Fanshawe mounted a box marked ‘luncheon tongue’ and flailed like a Cyclops. “What did you call me, you old battle-axe? You all heard her, I hope. Throttle her for me, Murch–ado-about-nuffin. Suffocate the old crow in her own blubber and pickle her in fur.” Hector tweaked the multi-layered arm of his dyed-in-the wool chum, Mackintosh. “What do you think, can I trust any of them?” he whispered confidentially. Mac smiled: “ Speaking for myself, I’d say ‘not on your life.’ Speaking for the fate of the whole expedition, I’d say ‘you’d best choose one.’” Hector, in the loudest voice he could muster after his stint in bed, demanded immediate quiet, then decreed: “Phyllis Moncrieff will assume the role of honorary leader while Mackintosh and myself are away seeking rescue. This will be made official with my signature, and in lieu of a seal, for any that cannot read, my thumb-print. Leader Moncrieff is hereby given permission to punish any who offend against the law of this hut.by whatever method she deems appropriate. For food, you must experiment with whatever is available, the same goes for heating. Joint with our mission of obtaining sustenance goes the bid to free our monarch…our much revered and beloved Queen?” “Queen Amaranthus.” “Who…” * * * Orchids flourished in the turquoise penumbra parasoling the leaden lamp-base, the Morris chair upholstered in ‘Pomegranate’ and its drowsy flushed-with- turquoise occupant. Lady Hunt inspected his eyelids – pouches full of adolescent marsupials, she thought, raking over metaphors. Restive eyes outgrown of sleep. She reoccupied her own chair, flipped her Turkish slipper and watched its amber, beaded flanges vibrate, kaleidoscope. Perhaps he would awaken as an idiot, a stutterer, a dribbler. She picked up the fire-tongs and gnashed them. She clapped, clapped her book. She sang. She played her tulippy glass with flimsy gold-rim reading spectacles. Then the precocious marsupials released themselves. Kicked up their kangaroo heels. What could she say but; “Had a good sleep?” Hectors concentration was still drying from dream, nevertheless he recognized her, even strangely lit by lamps, cadaverous. But he wasn’t sure of the location. “With reason, you have never been in this room – only my greenhouse.’ She’d spread a quilted comforter over his lap. He was made to feel a dopey invalid. The perception bit at his manhood. She told him it was five o’clock. “I have to be home before seven.’ “I already know, you told me earlier, so I rang your wife to reassure her. She asked me about the table-cloth, wouldn’t you like to tell me about it?” What had occurred? He saw the indecent sculptures, her, the fogged windows, the silk green Chinese rug pinching them with its little dry clay chips. He saw all in his head. What grew visible to him now was an artistic, nose-thumbing ambience of black pottery and the complete and eerie silence of snow on roofs and a crackling fire.
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