Minds of Winter

by Ed O’Loughlin

  ‘I wonder, young fellow, if that telegram is for me?’

  The man by the fire had lowered his newspaper. His upper-class British accent was exaggerated by the briar stem clamped in his teeth: it clipped his vowels and tapped up his consonants. He looked to be in his forties and his cloudy blue eyes had a touch of a squint to them, as if he’d spent too much time looking into the sun. The hair was thin on top and his moustache was conventionally trim, but his face was a little too lean and unnaturally dark, tanned by something other than weather. The woman read on, still invisible.

  Hugh looked at the name on the envelope. ‘Are you Colonel Meares?’

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Meares.’ There was a turn to his lips, as if his name contained a private joke.

  Meares folded his newspaper, then stood up to receive his envelope. He opened it and read the telegram, then reached into his pocket and fished out a coin. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘There’s no reply.’

  Hugh looked at the half-dollar in his hand. ‘We’re paid by the company, sir. We’re not supposed to take tips.’

  The colonel sat down. He curled his lip again. ‘Well, I usually give them.’

  Hugh wanted to say: Look, of course we take tips, whatever the company says; but this is too much. The colonel forestalled him.

  ‘I’ll give you the same again,’ he said, ‘if you’ll do something for me. I’m expecting another telegram this evening. It’s rather important. If it comes through, I’d like it brought to me as quickly as ever you can. And you give it to me in person, not the hotel staff. But it’s only one particular telegram. There may be others but they’re not urgent. They can wait for the regular rounds.’

  Hugh puzzled it over, still fingering the coin. This was unusual. ‘If there’s more than one message,’ he asked, ‘how will I know which one is the urgent one?’

  Colonel Meares, who had already picked up his paper, studied him over the top of it. ‘You’ll know,’ said Meares, ‘from the name on it. If it says “Commander Meares” instead of “Colonel Meares”, it’s the one that I need.’

  The woman lowered her newspaper. She was maybe fifteen years younger than her husband, her dark hair daringly worn in a bob. She looked at Hugh with droll brown eyes, then turned to her husband. ‘You aren’t much bothered about “Mr Meares” today either, are you, dear? We can set him aside too.’

  Meares nodded gravely. ‘That’s right. Just the Commander. He’s the only man for me today. If Commander Meares gets a message, please bring it directly to me and no one else. If I have to go out I’ll leave word where you can find me. Any other telegrams you can leave with the staff.’

  Mrs Meares smiled at Hugh. ‘It’s Valentine’s Day,’ she said, as if that explained it. And then she winked at him.

  Hugh beat his retreat. He was sure he was blushing. Are they messing with me or with each other? What’s this funny business with the name and the ranks?

  Later that evening, just as the office was about to close for the night, a telegram arrived for the Angela Hotel. The clerk pinged the bell and Hughie, who was the last boy on the late shift, reached in through the hatch and took the message from its rack.

  There it was on the envelope: ‘Commander C.H. Meares RN’.

  He could hear the late clerk moving about in the office, putting his coat on, getting ready to lock up. He called out to Hughie. ‘Say, Morgan – that last message is logged in at ten-oh-two. You want me to say you’d just left for the night, so someone else can deliver it in the morning? That rain’s trying to turn into snow.’

  Hughie looked at the name on the envelope and thought of

  the half-dollar in his trouser pocket. He didn’t care a whole lot about the wet and the cold; he rather enjoyed them: they made him feel unaccountably joyful. But nor did he like to do tricks for money. And he didn’t like fishy business, or being laughed at by rich people.

  ‘I dunno,’ he said slowly. What was so important about this telegram? Once sealed by the clerk, it could only be opened by the recipient. Then he had an idea. ‘Did the message seem urgent to you?’

  There was a rustle on the other side of the partition as the clerk consulted the wet-tissue copy of the message he had typed. ‘Nah. It’s just a greeting. Four words: “Happy birthday Meares. Carpendale”.’ Hughie heard the rustle again. ‘It’s from Nome, in Alaska.’

  There had to be more to this message than that. But if Hughie left it until morning someone else would deliver it. He wouldn’t get the half-dollar. And he would never know any more.

  ‘I’ll take it up there now.’

  The wind was in his face on the stretch to the hotel, lashing him with sleet and the last dead leaves to have clung through the winter. It numbed his face and pinched his hands.

  Meares and his wife were in the lobby with a crowd of merry-makers, dressed for a ball. They laughed and talked in loud foreign voices. The men wore ribbons and medals and the women gleamed with jewels. Every hand held a glass of champagne. Even the women were smoking. Hugh, who liked to think he was a man of the world now, ignored this loose behaviour and, sidling up to Meares, who was listening to an old man tell an old man’s story, slipped him the message. Now, he thought, I’ll see some reaction. I’ll learn something from this. But Meares, not even looking at Hugh, merely glanced at the name on the envelope, smiled to himself, and put it unopened into his pocket. His hand came out with another coin which he held poised between his fingers, keeping Hughie waiting until the old man was done. Then he turned and spoke quietly.

  ‘Good work. Come see me tomorrow. I need a smart chap to run a few errands.’

  Hugh didn’t take the coin. ‘I have school tomorrow. I only work part-time. Do you want to send a reply, sir? The office is closed so it won’t go until morning.’

  ‘No. No reply. It’s not urgent.’ That little smile again. He knows he’s confusing me.

  A band struck up in the ballroom, some old Irish tune. The door was flanked by tables covered in red roses. That’s right: it’s Valentine’s Day. Meares glanced towards the sound of the music. His wife, who looked even prettier by night, was standing at the ballroom door, smiling across at them. Jesus, thought Hugh. Did she just wink at me again?

  ‘Then come and see me the next time you’re free. I asked Captain Rant to find me a bright young man from the telegraph office, and he talked to someone there who recommended you. Mr Morgan – a nice piratical name. And Mrs Meares likes the look of you. She said you seemed clever. Although that might just be your glasses. It’s all the same to me though. I can always find some other lad to help.’

  Hugh took the coin. It was another half-dollar. ‘I can drop by tomorrow evening, sir. I get off school at four.’

  The following morning Hugh left home earlier than usual and stopped by the office on his way to school. Sandy Rees usually came in first thing to get ahead with his paperwork. Hugh found his boss in his little office, a plywood cubby in a corner of the telegraph room.

  ‘It doesn’t add up,’ Hugh told him. ‘One minute this man is an army colonel, the next a commander in the navy. I’m not even sure if he’s really English. His accent isn’t quite right. Too many “R”s. Maybe he’s a fraudster taking advantage of Captain Rant – run up a big bill and then flit to the States.’

  Rees sat back in his swivel-chair and made rapid turns right and left, as if surveying both sides of the problem. A sergeant in the Signals Corps, he had lost an eye in the war and always seemed to be aiming at something. ‘I think Captain Rant knows who this Meares fellow is,’ he said finally. ‘It was Captain Rant who asked me to send my best boy over to do a few jobs for him.’ Having settled the matter to his own satisfaction he stopped swivelling his chair. ‘Don’t worry about it. You’re allowed to run errands in your own time.’

  Hugh picked up his satchel and turned to leave. A bell pinged in the telegraph office. They heard the scrape of a chair and the sc
uffle of feet and then the duty clerk called to the boys in the messenger room.

  ‘Angela Hotel. Some air-force guy. Wing Commander Meares.’

  Sandy Rees got up from his chair and reached for his coat. ‘I’ll take that,’ he called. ‘I’m passing that way in the van.’ Taking Hughie by the elbow he steered him onto the street. ‘While I’m there,’ he said, ‘I’ll have a word with Captain Rant.’

  Hugh was distracted for the rest of the day; he was even told off for not paying attention in physics, his favourite subject. After school he went straight to the office. Rees was back at his desk. He brought Hugh in and sat him down.

  ‘I talked to Captain Rant.’ He kept his voice down. ‘It’s on the level. He says you should do whatever you can for Colonel Meares. He says you should be honoured to work for him.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Meares was a lieutenant-colonel in the army. He was wounded at Ypres. Then he transferred to the Royal Navy Air Service. And when that merged with the Royal Flying Corps he ended up in the RAF. So he’s got three different ranks from three different services, plus a whole bunch of medals as well.’

  ‘Oh . . . But why doesn’t he just stick to using one title?’

  ‘It’s none of my business. As far as I’m concerned he can do whatever he likes. Do you know who he is?’

  ‘A man with three pensions?’

  ‘Don’t be disrespectful, Hughie. He’s Cecil Meares. The polar explorer. He went to the South Pole with Scott.’

  Oh, thought Hugh, deeply impressed. But no. No, he didn’t go to the pole. Cecil Meares: the dog expert. He only went as far as the top of the Beardmore Glacier, then he was sent back to Ross Island with the last of the dogs. The men who went to the South Pole never came back at all. Scott. Oates. Wilson. Taff Evans. Birdie Bowers. Like many another boy in the Empire, Hugh knew the story of the Terra Nova better than he knew himself. It was the grandest thing that had ever happened – along, of course, with Vimy and the Somme.

  Hughie was not in his uniform that evening so he had to go round the back of the hotel. The weather had changed in the night, as it often did in Victoria, and winter had turned into something like spring. The late afternoon sun, almost warm, shone through the jacarandas that grew around the boundary, picking out the winter blooms on Captain Rant’s magnolias. Guests sat in twos and threes around wrought iron tables, grimly taking tea in the brisk evening air: this was Victoria, the Canadian riviera, where – the guidebooks all said it – you could dine outside the whole year around.

  Meares lounged on his own at the corner of the terrace. Like the other guests he wore expensive tweeds. Unlike them, he had wrapped himself in a plaid blanket, and instead of tea or coffee he had a glass with something hot in it steaming at his elbow.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s take a turn in the grounds.’

  Captain Rant was a champion of exotic Alpine plants. Beyond the croquet lawn his garden was planted with rhododendrons and ferns and bamboo, screening a web of gravelled paths.

  Meares walked a couple of paces ahead, hands clasped behind his back and head bowed to the ground as if in contemplation. When he looked up again he was grinning in a way that Hugh would have described, had he been writing an essay for class, as ‘savage’.

  ‘So, young man: I hear you’ve been asking about me.’

  Hugh almost broke step but made himself continue. It was

  his turn to study the gravel. Couldn’t Rees have kept his name out of it?

  ‘I hear,’ went on Meares, ‘that you’ve been voicing concerns about my bona fides.’ Hugh listened to their feet crunching slowly on the pathway. He was aware of the upper windows of the hotel staring down at him. As if this wasn’t bad enough.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir. It’s just I wasn’t sure about your rank. We’re told to get these things right.’

  Their boots crunched on together. It’s funny, thought Hugh, how when you walk with someone else you end up in cadence, if not always in step.

  ‘You thought,’ said Meares, ‘that I might be some kind of confidence man. I expect that one hears of a lot of such people in these parts lately.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Anyone can have a war record these days. Coming up from California or down from Alaska. This whole coast is teeming with impostors, from what I read in the papers. Do you read the papers, Mr Morgan?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good lad. I thought you might. You come recommended.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You were quite right to ask about me.’ He heard Meares’s steps slow and stop. He had no choice but to turn and look at him. Meares was still smiling, but more kindly now. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a little snooping. It’s just better not to get caught.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Come on.’ Meares touched his elbow and they resumed their stroll. They reached the further corner of the garden and turned back towards the house.

  ‘Mrs Meares and I have just been staying in Santa Barbara, which as you may know is in California. It’s full of the most dreadful hucksters and crooks and moving-picture people. We like it very much, and we’re going to spend our winters there. But the summers are hot, so we’re going to keep a second home here in Victoria. You follow me?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good lad. I shall have business to conduct with my various interests abroad, so from time to time I may need someone to run messages for me, particularly telegrams. I’ll need my own fellow on standby to bring messages down to the office, see they’re expedited, then wait for the reply. That sort of thing. That’s not too irregular, is it, if you do it outside of your official hours?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. Not really . . . Especially not if it’s being done for someone who was with Scott in the Antarctic.’

  Meares stopped again. ‘So you know about that? . . . It hasn’t been in the papers here, has it?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. My boss Mr Rees told me. He must have heard from Captain Rant.’

  ‘Oh . . . well, it’s not exactly a secret anyway.’ An elderly couple came past on their evening constitutional. Meares and Hugh moved aside and touched the brims of their caps. When they were gone Meares continued: ‘Do you have any questions?’

  Money. Hours. Terms. Hugh wondered about these. But they had completed their circuit of the garden and reached the stone steps that climbed back to the terrace. ‘Any questions,’ Meares had said to him. He might never say those words again.

  ‘Did you know Captain Oates, sir?’

  Meares, who had paused with one foot on the steps, shook out his shoulders, the stance of a man getting ready to bat. His face became blandly polite. ‘I did.’

  He’s tired of that subject, thought Hugh. Of course he is. That was all years ago. There’s been a war since then. But he would press him anyway.

  ‘He must have been the most amazing fellow, sir.’ ‘Fellow’: who talks like that in goddam Canada?

  ‘Of course. Wonderful man.’ Meares took another step.

  ‘What a thing that was, sir. To walk out of the tent like that and leave so much unsaid. “I’m just going outside now and may be some time.”’

  Meares nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Very stirring last words . . . Of course, we get those words from Scott’s diary, not from Oates himself.’

  ‘There isn’t any doubt, is there?’ Hugh feared his moorings were coming loose. He had no choice but to give them a tug and see if they still held. ‘About what happened in the end, I mean. To Oates and Scott and the others?’

  Meares, seeing his distress, looked unhappy in turn. ‘Of course not . . . I wasn’t there myself when Atkinson’s party went out and found the poor fellows in the tent – I’d gone back with the ship the autumn before. But I’ve no doubt that Scott’s account was true . . . It’s just I’ve alway
s had one or two private doubts about whether those famous last words were strictly . . . verbatim.’

  ‘That a man going to his death would have said so little?’

  ‘Having known poor old Oates, I’m surprised he said even that much.’

  Once or twice a week, when he was not working for the Canadian Pacific, Hugh would nevertheless put on his uniform and wait on Meares at the Angela Hotel.

  For this Meares paid Hugh a dollar a shift, so much that it made Hugh uneasy. His own foster-dad earned only a little more for hours of skilled pruning and planting. Perhaps, he told himself, I’m meant to see these big tips as a sort of retainer. Maybe I’m supposed to earn them by some service yet to come.

  Sometimes, having just received a message or a letter, Meares would write a reply which Hugh would take down to the office. As a mere messenger, Hugh could have learned very little about his patron’s private business: only if a customer chose to dictate a telegram – which Meares never did, preferring to scribble a note and place it in the envelope – would a bicycle boy know its contents. But Hugh was still allowed to take a turn on the Morse key in the office, and it became understood that when Hugh brought in Meares’s telegrams he would send them himself. Hugh was sure that Meares wouldn’t mind him assuming this function. After all, someone had to send and receive Colonel Meares’s tele­grams. Someone had to read them. Why not his own man when he happened to be there?

  In this way Hugh built a picture of the hero’s life and interests. They were startlingly dull. Like many wealthy Britishers who moved to Vancouver Island, Colonel Meares had been bitten by the mania for gardening. Much of his correspondence concerned queries and orders about exotic flowers: one, a Himalayan blue poppy, he presented to Captain Rant as a gift for the Angela’s garden – there was a piece about it in the British Colonist.

  Some of these messages made no sense to Hugh, who knew about gardens from helping old Jim. Why was Meares checking the availability of irises from Nome in Alaska – checking with the same man, Mr Clarendon Carpendale, who had sent Meares that birthday greeting the first night Hugh had met him? Surely nobody was growing or selling flowers north of the Bering Strait? And why did Colonel Meares feel the need, one rainy night just before closing time, to send him rushing down to the telegraph office with an urgent message to a government circuit in London, notifying the recipient about the recent arrival in Japan of irises from Blackburn? The reply came seconds later, suggesting that someone at the other end had been waiting for Meares’s message. But Hugh, who decoded it himself, could see no sign of urgency in the reply: ‘Do nothing for now.’