The Promise Ese (36) “Tell me about Lady Hunt,” she oozed finally like a blister. “What does she think of the cloth?” “She thinks it is magnificent of course. She’s a bit down, her great art teacher died but she’s not against us, if that’s what your wondering. I think the animosity went with her husband, her interest in matters Antarctic as well, I suspect. All she does is make statues.” “Do you think she’s beautiful? People used to say that.” “No”, he said, honestly, propping himself up beside her in bed and winding his watch. “Her nose is too sharp…” be more general “…. I suppose she has a certain vivacity. That must be what people mean.” “Eight years since Captain Hunt perished, must have been very difficult. Were you going through maps with her? That’s what was told to me on the telephone, that she wanted to clear out some things she thought useless but what could prove useful to others.” Emily yawned. He yawned. “Mm,” he said, wearily. “Quite an adventure..I was able to advise her. She’s out of touch with most of the RGS mob. Think they blame her for the debacle that was an expedition.” “Yes but she woudn’t have wanted to kill her own husband, would she?” “No, dear,” he sighed. It was nice to feel something flannelly and floppy and warm beside him after months of separate beds. He almost felt bruised after his ‘modelling’ session. “And also I think you must give her that letter.” And his two socks spun in the gloom like two globes on two pillars in the lodge at the knob of the world. * * * “Mac! Carps! Fellas”… Murchison was calling after them. “Bring us back some baccy…” Then the plea and the figure wallowed in drift until the pathetic hut, the provision- cases and even the Stephenson screen were no more. “Cheer up” Carpenter spluttered down-wind or I’ll quote myself (‘it’s the old dogs for the hard roads’). “What do you think, these harpoons make damn fine ski- poles and well I’m not much for skis myself so I’d say these runner-boards make jolly fine skis.” Mac muttered that the thaw had kicked in, the sea-ice was sea-snow, “But where there’s breath there’s life and where there’s life…help!!” His aphorism glugged into history. The ice had silently opened like deathly jaws, slid back like the portal to some unearthly, watery purgatory. Hector had scarcely realized until Macs fingers twanged a string of his banjo, which then Hector instantly spotted floating like a buoy in the prismatic opening of Spring ice. At once he fell on his stomach and reached out an arm for Mac, whose freezing fingers left the banjo for a second before trying to latch onto the less freezing grip of his imploring comrade but alas, just as the two hands met, a black and sinister shape forced its ugly, brutish head up through the ice-hole and broke the bond, then with a pounding splash, retreated back to seek out its new, human prey. A killer whale! Hector gasped. Mac’s ice-block of hand had come away in his own like a snag of putrefaction, the curled fingers like a buzzards talons. He blenched and threw it away. His makeshift skis carried him away from this jerking scene of horror to fresh ice but it was all thin and all deadly and the walls of a cell from which there could be no escape. Then to his joy, the wind-muzzled voice of his friend Mackintosh resurfaced, a scrap in the teeth of the turbulent breeze, and said ‘All is well, all is well.’ It rang like a church-bell and gave Carpenter pause and cause to thank providence. Mac then reappeared, wringing-wet, almost stiff, waving not an instrument but a soggy green seaweed. “I found this while I was down there,” he ruminated like Jones the science-wonder. “It is a rare species, one of the Spitzbergen kind. Put it in your mitt for safe-keeping.” Hector took off all his own dry furs and padded them around Mac. “I don’t think you will dry but at least the air cannot penetrate,’ he crooned like a father and mother in one, shivering himself but invincible. Suddenly the ice started to crack severely but amazingly their skis held them like pontoons and they found that poling was as good as paddling for propelling them across the advancing tide. Hector was wondering how long he could last without adequate clothing. Mac confessed feyly, out of the blue: “The past week I’ve been reading up, some of the treatises Moncrieff brought with her. Some are like handbooks, some are like dictionaries, some are like Berlitz language and custom manuals for all parts of the world. There is one…well its about animals and I feel pretty sure that I have taught myself…. penguin so when you spot a penguin Boss, give us a shout.” The boss did at once. A six-foot tall emperor was cantering by, obviously on his way somewhere, checking the time as…. of what nature was the hurrying creature in that book? “There Mac, stop it, I’m too damn cold,” Hec chattered, grievously. “Aak, aak, eek, owee, uk, uk, ecc-a-ee, aw mee ga.” The penguin skidded to a halt. “Gwak,” it answered, then turned and drew Macs hand out from under its stub of wing… Hector’s eyes snapped open. Cold sweat. Em awoke, her nightdress clammy. Hector was awash, straight on his back, as rigid as death. Perhaps his heart had finally beat its last. She prodded him. ‘What is it dear. Are you dead?” Which was a foolish question. “Don’t be ridiculous. Nightmare.” He stared for a while into the dark. He stared at the hallucinatory pallid hand bobbing about in his minds eye. What was making him dream of the Cape and the Sound and the Ross Sea? He rolled over and pushed Em onto her side and squeezed her. She was immersed in his sweat, his fear. “Tell me in the morning, it must be awful.” Episodic. “Ek am awsk”, Mac thanked the penguin and dismissed it from further duty. It slid off on its barrel-shaped belly, speedily to avoid the hungry pairs of eyes it presumed to be watching from any one of the huts four misty windows. “That saved us time, eh Boss?” The emperor had towed them through the turgid sea like a trained dolphin. Hector could not speak. Frozen breath had sealed his lips. They had reached Hunt’s headquarters. Not a soul had emerged from the grand hut to greet them. “Pound on the door, that’s the best.” They nodded at each other. Hector, unfurred, looked like an abominable snow giant. “ Bang, Bang” Noises. “Who is it?” “Tell them it’s the Salvation Army.” “The Salvation Army. We’ve some pease porridge to distribute. Any down and outs at home?” An escalation of noise within. The squat stall-like door opened with a whoosh exposing Lady Emily who, blinking out into the white wonderland, whitened herself, in recognition of her Lord. “Good gracious. I would have thought you part of the landscape by now.” They bundled Lord Carpenter inside, dragged him in like supplies through a bunghole, all the time his eyes were rolling at the immensity of Tundra-dom – the chandeliers and walking-sticks and up-to date issues of the Times. What was the food? Bacon and Devonshire cream and asparagus. Emily had on a chic fur of Siberian-fox with matching slippers. “Gave up his own clobber for me, he did,” said Mackintosh humbly and now, “I don’t know we’ll have to rub some feeling back into him.” Luckily, the hut was hot as an oven. Then, responding to the needs of her husband with the automatic intensity of a female for infant, Emily threw off her gaudy attire, pat it over him, knelt down and delivered a plangent kiss on the scaly, frost-bitten mouth and kept her mouth there pumping in life until this freakish, heaven of an outbuilding revealed its deal and cork armature to his eyes wandering through recuperation and remembering and regeneration and…. she had never kissed him that way before. Sir Swithem snaked out from Hunts own little private corner and said: “Ah, that must be the other boy. We knew he didn’t have the stamina.” Emily upreared and faced him like a termagant. “That’s none of your business. I predicted it of you people up here- drowning in luxury without a splinter of human kindness or compassion. Serves Him right if He never returns, the manner in which He treats his comrades.” Sir Swithem wiggled his nose piquedly. Haggish, dirty thing, he thought. What would she do, man every expedition with Girl-Guides of sturdy calf? Then Morris sauntered over. “Play it careful with the ladies,” he mumbled, “especially the married kind. As tautly strung as the wires on this here Bosendorfer.” “Huff. I shall go away and polish some naval technology then. Did you know it is us you must thank for the concealed weathercock? Operates upon the re-distribution of noxious gases principle. The carbon-monoxide from the flue is siphoned into the roof then through an intricate web of welding drawn up into the trivet of the cock, thus percolating the foul through the virginal zephyrs of Aeolus.” “Bollocks!’ said the Boss, hoarsely but could anyone hear? “What’s he done with Captain Hunt, up the flue? Where’s my brother?” Emily swooped down. He was still flat on his back like a carcase. “He had to go”, she whispered, “on a rescue mission. Gwennie and the Queen.Ooh I wish I hadn’t deserted Neo-Georgia, my bumble-footed Hector, but it seemed as if all was up and there were the children to think of…little possum Perky he’s in a packing-case, even now- when the Vikings came I felt sure he would be butchered, what being so plump and only a few years out of the sac, I mean womb. I nailed him in. Oh but Gwennie, our plumsie, even that great piano could not hold her and now who knows what has become of her. But Captain Hunt he was convinced of the wherefore and rushed, oh well he tried to rush but some little matters required sorting out, anyway he has gone, just half an hour since towards Poleheim to bring the Vikings to order and to restore our loved ones to us.” “How come they got away with it? What about the others. What about weapons? Didn’t anyone offer resistance.”? “Captain Hunt had commandeered practically everyone for his small geological trip, so that’s where he was. Jack tried to bribe them with a pearl necklace. The old admiral has as much pluck as a pheasant stew.and Morris, he just got in the way trying to snip bits off the Vikings beards off, you know, to compare it with the hair of modern races. I suppose I should have set myself on fire or something as a signal. Oh I am a failure…” She sobbed, but Hector rejoiced. This indissoluble conundrum fired his heart more than any old scrounging trip. It was a fight. The Tundra King had robbed him of men, of the means of survival. He had over-turned loyalties and be sure of it, he would lose lives. He would dishonour the nation! Hector romped into action.
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