‘Fine, thanks,’ he said, pulling himself together, just as he had so many times before when the alarms rang and he had found himself on the bridge without quite knowing how he got there or who had put his duffle coat and cap on.
He stepped out into the sunshine, determined to walk. Sailors do not walk much; up and down a bridge wing in time with the roll of their ship; up and down ladders, companion ways and gangways; a rushing, grasping progress from stanchion to lifeline along a corticene decking keen to fling him over a low bulwark; but not walking properly, not along country paths or city streets. He took off though, rolling slightly with a sailor’s gait, staring up at the remnants of VE-Day bunting clinging to lamp-posts as he headed up the Grey’s Inn Road and ultimately Fleet Street.
On the opposite side of the road he stood and looked up at Southmoore House, ‘Home of The Courier and the Evening Reporter,’ remembering it from all those years ago when he had come here for a job – an odd employment agency for a seaman. Beyond the mahogany doors with their polished brass furniture the lobby was the same, though older and dowdier from years of war and the dust of Blitzkrieg. The belle époque appearance seemed to mock now, rather than enunciate the power of imperial influence. Well, that was none of his affair; the country was on its knees and at least Southmoore House stood splendid among the ruins further along the road and up Ludgate Hill.
He hesitated a moment, eyed suspiciously by a uniformed commissionaire who wore medal ribbons from the Boer War. Just as the old man approached he made for the reception desk beside the lift-shaft. He had not prepared anything and simply said: ‘I’ve come to see Elizabeth Southmoore,’ in his most commanderly-like voice.
A frown crossed the receptionist’s face. ‘You mean Elizabeth Grant, the Late Lord Southmoore’s daughter?’ Her tone of voice was mildly incredulous.
Oh God, he thought, his heart now thumping at his effrontery, she is married. Well it was too late now. The tenacity with which he had pursued that last U-boat, seeking her in the beam of his frigate’s sonar, losing her, then regaining contact to vector-in the little corvette Daisy and holding the echo to bring Jonquil in too so that the two of them sent their Hedgehogs and depth charges down to blow four score Germans into Hell, would not let him retreat. Married or not, he was here to see her and he had come a long way to do so. And at least he had run her to earth.
‘Yes,’ he replied smoothly.
‘Is she expecting you, sir?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s a surprise. I’ve, er, been away…in the navy.’
‘What is your name sir?’
‘Edward Adams, Commander Edward Adams if it makes any difference.’
The receptionist picked up her telephone and he turned away to watch the comings and goings of The Courier’s functionaries. It took a moment to register that the receptionist was trying to attract his attention.
‘She’s coming straight down, sir. Would you care to sit over there?’
‘Thank you.’
She stepped out of the lift much as he remembered her on that last night at the Adelphi and his heart thumped. Then he realised she did not recognise him as she looked around the busy lobby. He stood up and she saw him.
‘Edward,’ she said coming towards him. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t… the civilian clothes…but you’re so thin…’
‘Mrs Grant…’ he held out his hand. No point in pretending that fragile intimacy of two-and-a-bit years ago remained. He would not stay, just make his number…
‘What d’you mean…?’ Her puzzlement changed to a laugh, taking his hand she drew him to her and turned back towards the lift. ‘I’m not married; Grant was my family name. Besides, that last meeting…’
‘When we drank to the end of the war?’
‘Yes…’
They entered the lift, followed by a dishevelled young man who asked, ‘d’you mind Miss Grant, only I’ve got something on the Lambeth murder.’
‘Not at all, Gordon, hop in.’
They rode aloft in silence and it was not until they were in her office that they spoke again.
‘You do look so dreadfully thin,’ she said again, concerned, for there was something suddenly abject about him, vulnerable, all the hardness of their first encounter leached out of him.
He stood, his arms hanging down by his side. ‘I am so very tired,’ he replied in a piteous tone, swaying again as he had done outside the station.
‘Sit down,’ she indicated a chair by her desk. ‘Would you like tea, or coffee, or something stronger?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing, thanks, I just wanted to see you…now that it’s all over…’
Gone was the edgy half contempt of her former acquaintance. The man was so obviously shattered, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ‘You came specially to see me?’
‘To London, yes. I don’t really have anywhere else to go… my ship’s in dry-dock and I don’t know if I’m going back to her, she’s slated for the Far East…’
She rang for coffee anyway and when it came he drank it and it seemed put new heart into him. She watched him pull himself together.
‘I’m so sorry to dump myself on you like this,’ he said, his voice stronger. ‘I was near the end of my tether. It’s the letting-go of the tension.’
He heaved himself up in the chair and stared about him. ‘This was your father’s office, if I remember correctly.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘So are you The Courier’s editor?’
‘No, I’m it’s proprietor. I’ll be ousted when all the men come home, but for now I’m the gaffer.’
He looked down at his coffee and then, seemingly suddenly emboldened asked: ‘were you able to tell your father what happened to us on Kvitøya.’
‘Yes, thanks to you, though I think he had guessed a good deal of it all.’ She paused, then added, ‘he died a few days later.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Now that he had directed their thoughts to the how-and-why of their acquaintanceship they both sat in silence, both thinking of that strange week in Liverpool and then they spoke simultaneously, and both spoke of the same thing.
‘We said at the end of the war…’ she said.
‘I thought at the end of the war…’ he said.
They broke off and smiled at one another. ‘It was a kind of pledge, wasn’t it?’ he asked wearily and she could sense the anxiety in his voice.
‘Yes, it was,’ she replied, ‘I had a plan to trace you…’
‘Really?’ his face brightened.
‘Yes, really. You were a curmudgeonly fellow but I knew it was misanthropes like you who might actually win the war. And you did and we drank to the end of it and I have remembered you in my prayers ever since we said good-bye and you called me back after you remembered Bosun Tucker’s name.’
It came out in a whoosh, so that he looked keenly at her. ‘So I am not importuning you?’
She shook her head and he could see tears in her eyes. ‘No, not as I once importuned you.’
‘Yes, I was a bastard; I’m sorry. And you were buying me my dinner.’
‘Oh,’ she laughed, ‘you were fine when I was buying you dinner.’ She paused a moment and then asked, ‘what are you doing for lunch?’
‘Taking you out if you’ve the time and you’ll come.’
‘Of course I’ll come. But where are you staying tonight?’
‘I’m checked into a hotel near King’s Cross.’
‘That must be salubrious.’
‘I’ve got three week’s leave, then I shall call at the Admiralty and find out my future…’
‘You’ll stay with me tonight,’ she said firmly and finally. ‘I’ve a flat in Clarence Gate Gardens, off Baker Street. And tomorrow is Friday, we’ll go down to my cottage in Essex, it’s on the Stour. You can rest there for as long as you wish. It’s very peaceful.’
‘But I cannot…’
She got up and came towards him. ‘Don’t argue,’ she said, be
nding and kissing him. ‘Not now and not ever.’
Then she moved back to her desk, lifted the phone and began giving instructions that he did not listen to. Was this kindness real? Or some weird fantasy caused by his mental condition? When she looked up at him again she saw that he was quietly weeping.
‘It’s all over now.’
He nodded, and blew his nose. ‘I’m sorry,’ he spluttered.
‘You have nothing to apologise for,’ she said briskly, getting up and reaching for her coat as he wiped his nose. ‘Now, you can buy me lunch.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Cold Truth is almost entirely a work of the imagination. The only fact in it is that in 1897, during the ‘Heroic Age of Polar Exploration’ an expedition was mounted by the Swedes. Its leader was Salomon Andrée who attempted to reach the North Pole by balloon (named Eagle, or Örnen in Swedish). This flight of the Örnen ended in disaster and its three occupants’ end was on Kvitøya.
In 1999 I stood on the White Island of Kvitøya and first learned the tragic story of the ‘Andrée expedition’ from my Swedish shipmates. ‘Andrée and his two companions are to us Swedes like Captain Scott and his men are to you British,’ I was told, as they reverentially added stones to the lonely cairn raised in that bleak and unforgiving landscape. The story, with its sad and dark hints of morphine overdose, trichinosis and even cannibalism caught my imagination. Documentation exists to suggest at least the taking of morphine was suppressed, ‘but kept a secret’ and Danish analysis revealed trichinae present in polar bear meat shot by the adventurers. I have perhaps taken my greatest liberty with the notion of cannibalism. Hints of it persist, but it is odd that Andrée did not mention the death of Strindberg in his otherwise meticulous diary.
Such hints are – alas – grist to the novelist’s mill. Thus embedded, they would not go away, but wormed their persistent way into the form of a story set, largely, aboard a type of vessel that had also captured my imagination when I had first gone aboard Scott’s Discovery as a boy. The Alert is not so grand a barque as Scott’s Disco’, but she is a tidy little craft which, once conjured up, had to go to sea somehow or other. As for her crew, I have met exemplars of all of them during a longish life, most of its spent at sea – which perhaps adds some few more ‘facts’ to my odd little tale.
© Richard Woodman
April 2020.
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