“Yes,” I said, and it was only after I’d said it that I realised I’d committed myself to something I was by no means certain I could see through.
“Well, just wait till I call your name.” He turned to the others. “Okay, boys. Let’s get started.” And he began to call their names one by one and tick them off on the list in his hand as they climbed aboard.
I hadn’t reckoned on them having a passenger list just like an ordinary airline. The crowd was dwindling fast, and I wondered how I was going to explain that I’d tried to board a plane going up the line when I was booked out on a flight to Montreal? Unless I could bluff my way on to it! I was thinking of Staffen and his need of engineers.
“What’s your name?” The last man had climbed up into the plane and the man with the list was staring down at me.
“Ferguson,” I said, and I could hear the tremor in my voice.
He ran his finger down the list. “Your name’s not here. What’s your job?”
“Engineer.”
“This plane’s going to One-three-four.” He jumped to the ground beside me. “You work there?”
“No,” I said. “I’m going on up to Two-two-four.” And I added quickly, “The engineer there had an accident and I’m replacing him.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He nodded. “West. They flew him down this evening.” He was looking at me and I could see him trying to make up his mind. “Did you have a flight pass?”
“Yes,” I said. “The despatcher has it. Mr. Lands drove me down and asked him to be sure I didn’t miss this plane.”
“Ed didn’t say anything to me about it.” He hesitated, glancing down at the list again. “Okay, let’s go over to the office and sort it out. Hold it!” he shouted to the man with the starter motor.
“What’s the trouble, Mike?” asked the pilot, who was now standing in the entrance to the fuselage.
“Won’t be a minute. Leave your bag here,” he said to me. “We got to hurry.”
We ran all the way to the despatch office. There was no turning back now. I’d just got to make the despatcher believe me. I remember a car drove up just as we reached the office, but I had other things to worry about, and in the office I stood silent whilst my companion explained the situation to the despatcher.
“You’re booked out on the Beechcraft,” he told me. “Twenty-thirty hours for Montreal.”
“There must be some mistake,” I said.
“No mistake, mister.” He had got hold of my flight pass now. “There you are. See for yourself. Montreal. That’s what it says.”
I repeated what I’d said before, that I was bound for Two-two-four, and I added, “You were here when I arrived this afternoon. I came to get a job, and I got it.”
He nodded. “That’s right. I remember. Came in on that freighter and didn’t know who you wanted to see.” He scratched his head.
“Maybe I got the wrong pass or it was made out incorrectly,” I suggested. “Mr. Lands was asked to drive me down specially so that I wouldn’t miss this plane.” I pulled my passport out of my pocket. “Look, if you don’t believe I’m an engineer …” I opened it and pointed to where it gave Occupation.
He stared at the word Engineer. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “On whose instructions was the pass made out?”
“Mr. Staffen’s.”
“Well, I won’t be able to get Mr. Staffen at this time of night. They pack up at six.”
“Is there room for me on this flight up to One-three-four?”
“Yeah, there’s room all right.”
“Then can’t you just alter the flight pass? Look!” I said. “I’m not taking a plane down to Montreal. That’s certain. Why would I want to leave when I’ve only just arrived?”
He laughed. “You got something there.”
“And just when I’ve got the job I came to get. Besides, Mr. Staffen said I was to get up there right away. He’s short of engineers.”
“Sure. They’re having to move them about all the time.” He looked at me and I saw he was making up his mind and said nothing more. “Okay,” he said. “I reckon it’s a mistake, like you said. After all, I guess you’re old enough to know where you’re supposed to be going.” And he chuckled to himself as he put a line through Montreal on the pass, wrote in One-three-four and altered the despatch sheet. “Okay,” he said. “You’re on the list now. Lucky you found out in time or you’d have been back in the Old Country before you knew where you were.” And he laughed again, good-humouredly, so that I hoped he wouldn’t get into too much trouble for altering the pass.
But I didn’t have time to think about that, for I was hustled back to the plane. The port motor started up as we ran across the apron and I was hauled aboard through the cold backwash of air from the turning propeller. My suitcase was tossed up to me and, as I grabbed it, I saw a man come out of the despatch office and stand there, hesitating, staring at the plane. The headlights of a truck swinging in at the gates caught him in their blaze and I recognised Laroche. The starboard motor came to life with a roar and at the sound of it he began to run out on to the tarmac. “Mind yourself!” A hand pushed me back and the door was swung to with a crash, and after that I could see nothing but the dim-lit interior of the fuselage with the freight heaped down the centre and the construction men seated in two lines on either side of it.
There was still time for the plane to be stopped. If Laroche had checked with the despatcher and told him I was really bound for Montreal.… The engines suddenly roared in unison and the plane began to move, swinging in a wide turn towards the runway-end. And then we were moving faster, the fuselage bumping and shaking as the wheels trundled over the rough ground.
I squeezed myself in between two men on the seat-line opposite the door and sat with my hands gripped round my knees, waiting. Nobody was talking. The noise of the engines made it impossible and there was that sense of strain that always seems to precede take-off.
The plane turned at the runway-end. Only a few seconds now. I held my knees tight as first one engine and then the other was run up; and then suddenly both engines were roaring and the fuselage shuddered and rattled. The brakes were released. The plane began to move. And in a moment we were airborne and the nerves and muscles of my body slowly relaxed.
It was only then that I had time to realise what I’d done. I was on my way into Labrador.
II
We climbed for what seemed a long time and it grew steadily colder. I put my coat on, but it hardly made any difference. The plane was a relic of the war, the parachute jumping wire still stretched down the centre of the fuselage, and a bitter draught of air blew in through the battered edges of the badly-fitting door. The dim lighting gave to the faces of the men flanked along the fuselage a ghostly, disembodied look. They were types of faces that I’d never seen before, faces that seemed symbolic of the world into which I was flying—old and weather-beaten, and some that were young and dissolute, a mixture of racial characteristics that included Chinese and African.
The battering of the engine noise dropped to a steady roar as the plane flattened out. The cold was intense. “We’ll be going up the Moisie River now,” the man next to me said. He was a small squat man with the broad, flat features of an Indian. “Been up here before?” I shook my head. “I work on the line two winters now—all through the Moisie Gorge and up to the height of land.” There was pride in the way he said it.
“How long before we get to One-three-four?” I asked him.
“One hour, I think.” And he added, “Once I do it by canoe, all up the Moisie and across to the Ashuanipi. Six weeks. Now, one hour.” He nodded and relapsed into silence, and I sat there, feeling a little scared as we roared on through the night into Labrador.
I had some idea of the country. I’d read about it in my father’s books. I knew it was virtually unexplored, a blank on the map which only four thousand years ago had been covered by the glaciers of the last Ice Age. And I got no comfort from the men around me. Th
ey were all a part of an organisation that I was outside. And their hard-bitten, dim-lit features, their clothes, everything about them, only served to emphasise the grimness of the country into which I was being flown.
I was unprepared, inexperienced, and yet I think the thing that worried me most was that Laroche would have radioed ahead and that I should be stopped at One-three-four and sent down by the next plane.
But gradually the intense cold numbed all thought, and when the chill ache of my body had so deadened my mind that I didn’t care any longer, the sound of the engines died away, and a moment later we touched down.
We scrambled out into another world—a world where the ground was hard with frost and a few shacks stood against a starlit background of jackpines. Away to the left a solitary huddle of lights illuminated a line of heavy wagons. There was the sound of machinery, too. But the sound seemed small and insubstantial against the overwhelming solitude, and overhead the northern lights draped a weird and ghostly curtain across the sky, a curtain that wavered and constantly changed its shape with a fascination that was beyond the reach of explanation.
I stood for a moment staring up at it, enthralled by the beauty of it, and at the same time awed. And all about me I was conscious of the iron-hard harshness of the North, the sense of a wild, untamed country, not yet touched by man.
Stiff-jointed and cold we moved in a body to the wood-frame huts that were the airstrip buildings, crowding into the despatch office where the warmth from the diesel heater was like a furnace. Names were called, the despatcher issuing instructions in a harsh, quick voice that switched from English to French and back again as though they were the same language. The men began filing out to a waiting truck. “Ferguson.”
The sound of my name came as a shock to me and I moved forward uncertainly.
“You’re Ferguson, are you? Message for you.” The despatcher held it out to me. “Came in by radio half an hour back.”
My first thought was that this would be from Lands, that I wouldn’t get any farther than this camp. And then I saw the name Laroche at the end of it. Urgent we have talk. Am taking night supply train. E.T.A. 0800. Do not leave before I have seen you. Laroche.
Staring at that message, the only thought in my mind was that he hadn’t stopped me. Why? It would have been easy for him to persuade the base despatcher to have them hold me here. Instead, he was coming after me, wanting to have a talk to me. Had I forced his hand? Did this mean …? And then I was conscious of an unmistakably Lancashire voice saying, “Has Ferguson checked in on that flight, Sid?”
“He’s right here,” the despatcher answered, and I looked up to find a short, rather tired-looking man standing in the doorway to an inner office. He wore a khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled up and he had a green eye-shade on his head, and over his shoulder I caught a glimpse of radio equipment. “You got the message all right then?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I got the message, thanks.”
“You a friend of Laroche?” I didn’t know quite how to answer that, but fortunately he didn’t wait for a reply, but added, “You’re English, aren’t you?”
I nodded and he came towards me, holding out his hand. “That makes two of us,” he said. “My name’s Bob Perkins. I’m from Wigan. Lancashire, you know.”
“Yes, I guessed that.”
“Aye,” he said. “Not much fear of your mistaking me for a Canuk.” There was a friendly twinkle in his tired blue eyes. “Two years I been up in this bloody country. Emigrated in fifty-one and came straight up here as Wireless Op. They still think I talk a bit peculiar like.” And then he added, “That message—it’s from that pilot who crashed, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Aye, I thought there couldn’t be two of ’em with a name like that.” He looked at me hesitantly. “Would yer like a cup of tea?” he asked, and, surprised at anything so English up here in the middle of nowhere, I said Yes. As he led me into the radio room, he said, “I only been here a week. Five days to be exact. I was up at Two-ninety before that. I remember when they picked this Laroche up. Proper hullabaloo there was.” He went over to a kettle quietly steaming on the diesel heater. “Newspapers—everybody. Hardly had time to deal with the air traffic.”
“Who found him, do you know?” I asked. If I could find out something more before I met Laroche.…
“Oh, some construction gang. By all accounts he stumbled out of the bush right on top of a grab crane. The fellow that brought him out though was Ray Darcy, engineer up at Two-sixty-three. Radioed us to have a plane standing by and then drove him the twenty odd miles up the old Tote Road in one hour flat. Or that’s what he said. It’d be some going on that road. Would you like milk and sugar? Trouble is you never know with a man like Ray Darcy.” He handed me a battered tin mug. “Proper character he is and all. Came up to Labrador for a month’s fishing an’ stayed two years. You a fisherman?”
“No,” I said.
“Wonderful fishing up here for them as likes it. Me, I haven’t the patience like. You got to have patience. Not that Ray Darcy’s got much. He’s an artist really—paints pictures. But he’s a proper fisherman when it comes to stories. Twenty miles an hour he’d have to’ve averaged, and on the Tote Road. Aye, and you should see his jeep. Proper mess—glued together with the mud that’s on it, that’s what I say.…”
And so it went on. I sat there and drank my tea and listened to him talking, basking in the warmth of his friendliness and the knowledge that he was English. That fact alone meant a lot to me. It gave me confidence and drove out the sense of loneliness.
Bob Perkins was the first friend I made on my way up into Labrador. And though he couldn’t tell me much about Laroche—he had just seen him that once as they carried him out on a stretcher to the waiting plane—he had given me the name of the man who could.
I gleaned a lot of useful information from him, too. Camp 224 was a big place, highly organised, with a large engineering staff sending daily reports back to the Seven Islands base by teleprinter. Obviously no place for me. They’d know immediately that I’d no business to be up the line. Some twenty miles beyond 224 was Head of Steel. And after that there was nothing but the newly-constructed grade gradually petering out into isolated construction units slicing into virgin country with bulldozer and grab crane. No railway, no telephone link—nothing but the old Tote Road and the airstrips to link the camps with Base. Camp 263 he described as growing fast, but still just a clearing in the jackpine forest, primitive and pretty grim. “The only decent camp between Two-two-four and the permanent camp at Menihek Dam is Two-ninety,” he said. “It’s right on the lake with a big airstrip on a hill. Mostly C.M.M.K. personnel—that’s the construction combine that’s building the grade. They even got a helicopter stationed there for the use of the grade superintendent.”
“A helicopter!” But even if I could persuade the pilot to take me up in it, I didn’t know where Lake of the Lion was. Laroche had said there were thousands of lakes and, remembering what the country had been like flying down from Goose, I could well believe it. Had my father known where the lake was? And if my father had known, would my mother know?
Perkins was explaining that they’d used the helicopter to try and bring out the bodies of Briffe and Baird. “He had two tries at it. But it wasn’t any good. He couldn’t find the place.”
“Who couldn’t—Laroche?” I asked.
“Aye, that’s right. Like I said, he came back just two days after he’d been flown out. Proper mess he looked, too—a great gash in his head and his face white as chalk. They shouldn’t have let him come, but he said he had to try and locate the place, and Len Holt, he’s the pilot, flew him in twice. It didn’t do any good, though. He couldn’t find it. I saw him when he came back the second time. They had to lift him out, poor chap, he was so done up.”
“Did a man called McGovern come up with him?” I asked.
But he shook his head. “No, Laroche was on his own.”
I asked
him then about Camp 263. But he couldn’t tell me anything more than he’d told me already. He’d never been there. He’d just heard men talking about it. “They say it’s pretty rough. And the grub’s bad. It’s a new camp. All new construction camps are rough.” And he looked across at me curiously and said, “You’re not going there, are you?”
I’d made up my mind by then. I wasn’t waiting for Laroche. I wanted to see Darcy first. “Yes,” I said. “I’ve got to get up there as soon as possible.” And I asked him whether there was any way of getting north that night. “It’s urgent,” I added.
“What about Laroche?” He was looking at me curiously. “He says to wait for him.”
“Tell him I’ll contact him from Two-sixty-three.”
“But—”
“Laroche isn’t employed by the Company,” I said quickly. “I’ve been told to get up there as fast as I can and I’m sticking to my instructions. West has been injured and there’s been a switch of engineers.”
He nodded. “That’s right. Got his foot crushed by a gas car.” I thought for a moment he was going to pursue the subject. But all he said was,” Aye. Well, you know your business best.”
“Is there a flight going up from here to-night?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Northbound flights don’t stop here any more. This camp’s pretty well finished now. Another month and it’ll close down altogether, I wouldn’t wonder.” And then he added, “Your best bet is the supply train. You’d see your friend Laroche then and still be up at Head of Steel before dark to-morrow.”
So I was stuck here. “You’re sure there’s nothing else?” And then, because I was afraid he might think I was trying to avoid Laroche, I said, “I’m supposed to be at Two-sixty-three to-morrow.”
He shook his head. “No, there’s nothing …” He stopped then. “Wait a jiffy. I got an idea the ballast train’s been held up to-night.” He went out into the despatch office and I heard him talking to the despatcher and then the sound of the phone. After a while he came back and said,” It’s okay if you want to take it. Usually it’s left by now, but the ballast got froze going up the line last night, so she was late back and they’re still loading.”
The Land God Gave to Cain Page 11