Bear Island

by Alistair MacLean

  His trump card played, Captain Imrie rested his case. I had to stop the old coot, he was working himself up to having me clapped in irons. I sympathized with him, I was sorry for what I would have to say to him, but clearly this wasn’t my morning for making friends anyway. I looked at him coldly and without expression for about ten seconds then said: ‘My name’s “Doctor” not “mister”. I’m not your damned mate.’

  ‘What? What was that?’

  I opened the door to the wheel-house and invited him to pass through.

  ‘You just mentioned the word “court”. Just step out there and repeat those slanderous allegations in the presence of witnesses and you’ll find yourself standing in a part of a court you never expected to be in. Can you imagine the extent of the damages?’

  From his face and the perceptible shrinking of his burly frame it was apparent that Captain Imrie immediately could. I was a long, long way from being proud of myself, he was a worried old man saying honestly what he thought had to be said, but he’d left me with no option. I closed the door and wondered how best to begin.

  I wasn’t given the time to begin. The knock on the door and the opening of the door came on the same instant. Oakley had an urgent and rather apprehensive look about him.

  ‘I think you’d better come down to the saloon right away, sir,’ he said to Imrie. He looked at me. ‘You, too, I’m afraid, Dr Marlowe. There’s been a fight down there, a bad one.’

  ‘Great God Almighty!’ If Captain Imrie still had any lingering hopes that he was running a happy ship, the last of them was gone. For a man of his years and bulk he made a remarkably rapid exit: I followed more leisurely.

  Oakley’s description had been reasonably accurate. There had been a fight and a very unpleasant affair it must have been too during the period it had lasted—obviously, the very brief period it had lasted. There were only half a dozen people in the saloon altogether—one or two were still suffering sufficiently from the rigours of the Barents Sea to prefer the solitude of their cabins to the forbidding beauties of Bear Island, while the Three Apostles, as ever, were down in the recreation room, still cacophonously searching for the bottom rung on the ladder to musical immortality. Three of the six were standing, one sitting, one kneeling and the last stretched out on the deck of the saloon. The three on their feet were Lonnie and Eddie and Hendriks, all with the air of concerned but hesitant helplessness that afflicts uncommitted bystanders on such occasions. Michael Stryker was sitting in a chair at the captain’s table, using a very bloodstained handkerchief to dab a deep cut on the right cheekbone: it was noticeable that the knuckles of the hand that held the handkerchief were quite badly skinned. The kneeling figure was Mary Darling. All I could see was her back, the long blonde tresses falling to the deck and her big horn-rimmed spectacles lying about two feet away. She was crying, but crying silently, the thin shoulders shaking convulsively in incipient hysteria. I knelt and raised her, still kneeling, to an upright position. She stared at me, ashen-faced, no tears in her eyes, not recognizing me: without her glasses she was as good as blind.

  ‘It’s all right, Mary,’ I said. ‘Only me. Dr Marlowe.’ I looked at the figure on the floor and recognized him, not without some difficulty, as young Allen. ‘Come on, now, be a good girl. Let me have a look at him.’

  ‘He’s terribly hurt, Dr Marlowe, terribly hurt!’ She had difficulty in getting her words out during long and almost soundless gasps. ‘Oh, look at him, look at him, it’s awful!’ Then she started crying in earnest, not quietly this time. Her whole body shook. I looked up.

  ‘Mr Hendriks, will you please go to the galley and ask Mr Haggerty for some brandy? Tell him I want it. If he’s not there, take it anyway.’ Hendriks nodded and hurried away. I said to Captain Imrie: ‘Sorry, I should have asked permission.’

  ‘That’s all right, Doctor.’ We were back on professional terms again, however briefly: perhaps it was because his reply was largely automatic for the bulk of his interest, and all that clearly hostile, was for the moment centred on Michael Stryker. I turned back to Mary.

  ‘Go and sit on the settee, there. And take some of that brandy. You hear?’

  ‘No! No! I—’

  ‘Doctor’s orders.’ I looked at Eddie and Lonnie and without a word from me they took her across to the nearest settee. I didn’t wait to see whether she followed doctor’s orders or not: a now stirring Allen had more pressing claims on my attention. Stryker had done a hatchet job on him: he had a cut forehead, a bruised cheek, an eye that was going to be closed by night, blood coming from both nostrils, a split lip, one tooth missing and another so loose that it was going to be missing very soon also. I said to Stryker: ‘You do this to him?’

  ‘Obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘You have to savage him like this? Christ, man, he’s only a kid. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size next time?’

  ‘Like you, for instance?’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ I said wearily. Beneath Stryker’s tissue-thin veneer of civilization lay something very crude indeed. I ignored him, asked Lonnie to get water from the galley and cleaned up Allen as best I could. As was invariable in such cases the removal of surface blood improved his appearance about eighty per cent. A plaster on his forehead, two cottonwool plugs for his nose, and two stitches in a frozen lip and I’d done all I could for him. I straightened as an indignant Captain Imrie started questioning Stryker.

  ‘What happened, Mr Stryker?’

  ‘A quarrel.’

  ‘A quarrel, was it now?’ Captain Imrie was being heavily ironic. ‘And what started the quarrel?’

  ‘An insult. From him.’

  ‘From that—from that child?’ The captain’s feelings clearly matched my own. ‘What kind of insult to do that to a boy?’

  ‘A private insult.’ Stryker dabbed the cut on his cheek and, Hippocrates in temporary abeyance, I felt sorry that it wasn’t deeper, even although it looked quite unpleasant enough as it was. ‘He just got what anyone gets who insults me, that’s all.’

  ‘I shall endeavour to keep a still tongue in my head,’ Captain Imrie said drily. ‘However, as captain of this ship—’

  ‘I’m not a member of your damned crew. If that young fool there doesn’t lodge a complaint—and he won’t—I’d be obliged if you’d mind your own business.’ Stryker rose and left the saloon. Captain Imrie made as if to follow, changed his mind, sat down wearily at the head of his own table and reached for his own private bottle. He said to the three men now clustered round Mary: ‘Any of you see what happened?’

  ‘No, sir.’ It was Hendriks. ‘Mr Stryker was standing alone over by the window there when Stuart went up to speak to him, I don’t know what, and next moment they were rolling about the floor. It didn’t last more than seconds.’

  Captain Imrie nodded wearily and poured a considerable measure into his glass, he was obviously and rightly depending on Smithy to make the approach to anchorage. I got Allen, now quite conscious, to his feet and led him towards the saloon door. Captain Imrie said: ‘Taking him below?’

  I nodded. ‘And when I come back I’ll tell you all about how I started it.’ He scowled at me and returned to his scotch. Mary, I noticed, was sipping at the brandy and shuddering at every sip. Lonnie held her glasses in his hand and I escaped with Allen before he gave them back to her.

  I got Allen into his bunk and covered him up. He had a little colour in his battered cheeks now but still hadn’t spoken.

  I said: ‘What was all that about?’

  He hesitated. ‘I’m sorry. I’d rather not say.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I’m sorry again. It’s a bit private.’

  ‘Someone could be hurt?’

  ‘Yes, I—’ He stopped.

  ‘It’s all right. You must be very fond of her.’ He looked at me for a few silent moments, then nodded. I went on: ‘Shall I bring her down?’

  ‘No, Doctor, no! I don’t want—I mean, with my face like this. No, no, I couldn’t!
’

  ‘Your face was an awful sight worse just five minutes ago. She was doing a fair job of breaking her heart even then.’

  ‘Was she?’ He tried to smile and winced. ‘Well, all right.’

  I left and went to Stryker’s cabin. He answered my knock and his face didn’t have welcome written all over it. I looked at the still bleeding cut.

  ‘Want me to have a look at that?’ Judith Haynes, clad in a fur parka and trousers and looking rather like a red-haired Eskimo, was sitting on the cabin’s only chair, her two cocker spaniels in her lap. Her dazzling smile was in momentary abeyance.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It might scar.’ I didn’t give a damn whether it scarred or not.

  ‘Oh.’ The factor of his appearance, it hadn’t been too hard to guess, was of importance to Stryker. I entered, closed the door, examined and dabbed the cut, put on astringent and applied a plaster. I said: ‘Look, I’m not Captain Imrie. Did you have to bang that boy like that? You could have flattened him with a tap.’

  ‘You were there when I told Captain Imrie that it was a purely personal matter.’ I’d have to revise my psychological thinking, clearly neither my freely offered medical assistance nor my reasonableness of approach nor the implied flattery had had the slightest mollifying effect. ‘Having MD hung round your neck doesn’t give you the right to ask impertinent prying questions. Remember what else I said to Imrie?’

  ‘You’d be obliged if I minded my own damned business?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’ll bet young Allen feels that way too.’

  ‘That young Allen deserves all he got,’ Judith Haynes said. Her tone wasn’t any more friendly than Stryker’s. I found what she said interesting for two reasons. She was widely supposed to loathe her husband but there was no evidence of it here: and here might lie a more fruitful source for inquiry for, clearly, she wasn’t as good at keeping her emotions and tongue under wraps as her husband was.

  ‘How do you know’ Miss Haynes? You weren’t there.’

  ‘I didn’t have to be. I—’

  ‘Darling!’ Stryker’s voice was abrupt, warning.

  ‘Can’t trust your wife to speak for herself, is that it?’ I said. His big fists balled but I ignored him and looked again at Judith Haynes. ‘Do you know there’s a little girl up in the saloon crying her eyes out over what your big tough husband did to that kid? Does that mean nothing to you?’

  ‘If you’re talking about that little bitch of a continuity girl, she deserves all that comes her way too.’

  ‘Darling!’ Stryker’s voice was urgent I stared at Judith Haynes in disbelief but I could see she meant what she said. Her red slash of a mouth was contorted into a line as straight and as thin as the edge of a ruler, the once beautiful green eyes were venomous and the face ugly in its contorted attempts to conceal some hatred or viciousness or poison in the mind. It was an almost frightening display of what must have been a very, very rare public exhibition of what powerful rumour in the film world—to which I now partially apologized for my former mental strictures—maintained to be a fairly constant private amalgam of the peasant shrew and the screaming fishwife.

  ‘That—harmless—child?’ I spaced the words in slow incredulity. ‘A bitch?’

  ‘A tramp, a little tramp! A slut! A little gutter—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Stryker’s voice was a lash, but it had strained overtones. I had the feeling that only desperation would make him talk to his wife in this fashion.

  ‘Yes, stop it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Miss Haynes, and I’m damned sure you don’t either. All I know is you’re sick.’

  I turned to go. Stryker barred my way. He’d lost a little colour from his cheeks.

  ‘Nobody talks to my wife that way.’ His lips hardly moved as he spoke.

  I was suddenly sick of the Strykers. I said: ‘I’ve insulted your wife?’

  ‘Unforgivably.’

  ‘And so I’ve insulted you?’

  ‘You’re getting the point, Marlowe.’

  ‘And anyone who insults you gets what’s coming to them. That’s what you said to Captain Imrie.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I thought you might.’ He still barred my way.

  ‘And if I apologize?’

  ‘An apology?’ He smiled coldly. ‘Let’s try one out for size, shall we?’

  I turned to Judith Haynes. I said: ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Miss Haynes, and I’m damned sure you don’t either. All I know is you’re sick.’

  Her face looked as if invisible claws had sunk deep into both cheeks all the way from temple to chin and dragged back the skin until it was stretched drumtight over the bones. I turned to face Stryker. His facial skin didn’t look tight at all. The strikingly handsome face wasn’t handsome any more, the contours seemed to have sagged and jellied and the cheeks were bereft of colour. I brushed by him, opened the door and stopped.

  ‘You poor bastard,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. Doctors never tell.’

  I was glad to make my way up to the clean biting cold of the upper deck. I’d left something sick and unhealthy and more than vaguely unclean down there behind me and I didn’t have to be a doctor to know what the sickness was. The snow had eased now and as I looked out over the weather side—the port side—I could see that we were leaving one promontory about a half-mile behind on the port quarter while another was coming up about the same distance ahead on the port bow. Kapp Kolthoff and Kapp Malmgrem, I knew from the chart, so we had to be steaming north-east across the Evjebukta. The cliffs here were less high, but we were even more deeply into their lee than twenty minutes previously and the sea had moderated even more. We had less than three miles to go.

  I looked up at the bridge. The weather, obviously, was improving considerably or interest and curiosity had been stimulated by the close proximity of our destination, for there was now a small knot of people on either wing of the bridge but with hoods so closely drawn as to make features indistinguishable. I became aware that there was a figure standing close by me huddled up against the fore superstructure of the bridge. It was Mary Darling with the long tangled blonde tresses blowing in every direction of the compass. I went towards her, put my arm round her with the ease born of recent intensive practice, and tilted her face. Red eyes, tear-splotched cheeks, a little woebegone face half-hidden behind the enormous spectacles: the slut, the bitch, the little tramp.

  ‘Mary Darling,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here? It’s far too cold. You should be inside or below.’

  ‘I wanted to be alone.’ There was still the catch of a dying sob in her voice. ‘And Mr Gilbert kept wanting to give me brandy—and, well—’ she shuddered.

  ‘So you’ve left Lonnie alone with the restorative. That’ll be an eminently satisfactory all-round conclusion as far as Lonnie—’

  ‘Dr Marlowe!’ She became aware of the arm round her and made a half-hearted attempt to break away. ‘People will see us!’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I want the whole world to know of our love.’

  ‘You want the whole—’ She looked at me in consternation, her normally big eyes huge behind her glasses, then came the first tremulous beginnings of a smile. ‘Oh, Dr Marlowe!’

  ‘There’s a young man below who wants to see you immediately,’ I said.

  ‘Oh!’ The smile vanished, heaven knows what gravity of import she found in my words. ‘Is he—I mean, he’ll have to go to hospital, won’t he?’

  ‘He’ll be up and around this afternoon.’

  ‘Really? Really and truly?’

  ‘If you’re calling my professional competence into question—’

  ‘Oh, Dr Marlowe! Then what—why does he—’

  ‘I should imagine he wants you to hold his hand. I’m putting myself in his shoes, of course.’

  ‘Oh, Dr Marlowe! Will it—I mean in his cabin—’

  ‘Do I
have to drag you down there?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’ She hesitated. ‘Dr Marlowe?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think you’re wonderful. I really do.’

  ‘Hoppit.’

  She smiled, almost happily now, and hopped it. I wished I even fractionally shared her opinion of me, for if I was in a position to do so there would be a good number fewer of dead and sick and injured around. But I was glad of one thing, I hadn’t had to hurt Mary Darling as I’d feared I might, there had been no need to ask her any of the questions that had half-formed in my mind even as I had left the Strykers’ cabin. If she were even remotely capable of being any of those things that Judith Haynes had, for God knew what misbegotten reasons, accused her of being, then she had no right to be in the film industry as a continuity girl, she was in more than a fair way to making her fame and fortune as one of the great actresses of our time. Besides, I didn’t have to ask any questions now, not where she and Allen and the Strykers were concerned: it was hard to say whether my contempt for Michael Stryker was greater than my pity.

  I remained where I was for a few minutes watching some crew members who had just come on to the foredeck begin to remove the no longer necessary lashings from the deck cargo, strip off tarpaulins and set slings in place, while another two set about clearing away the big fore derrick and testing the winch. Clearly, Captain Imrie had no intention of wasting any time whatsoever upon our arrival: he wanted, and understandably, to be gone with all dispatch. I went aft to the saloon.

  Lonnie was the sole occupant, alone but not lonely, not as long as he had that bottle of Hine happily clutched in his fist. He lowered his glass as I sat down beside him.

  ‘Ah! You have assuaged the sufferings of the walking wounded? There is a preoccupied air about you, my dear fellow.’ He tapped the bottle. ‘For the instant alleviation of workaday cares—’

  ‘That bottle belongs to the pantry, Lonnie.’

  ‘The fruits of nature belong to all mankind. A soupçon?’