Minds of Winter

by Ed O’Loughlin

  ‘It’s very good of you to arrange to meet me here,’ Bess began. ‘What a charming place this is. Did you come down from Trondheim?’

  Her guest stifled a yawn. ‘It’s my understanding that the arrangement was yours. I was told I ought to meet you here. I almost didn’t come.’ She had a very proper, English way of speaking. Bess could hear no trace of Norwegian. The yawn suppressed, Mrs Bennett went on: ‘I have the things you want at the station in Hamar. But first we have to talk.’

  ‘By all means,’ said Bess. Her guest’s tone was brisk, not much short of insulting. For Bess this made things easier.

  ‘The furs,’ said Mrs Bennett, ‘and the jewellery – what do you propose to do with them?’

  ‘I’ll sell the furs. Probably the jewellery too, unless there’s something I’d like to remember him by.’

  ‘How sentimental you are.’

  Bess sat forward on the bed, resting her elbows on her knees, her fingers joined primly in front of her lips. ‘Mrs Bennett,’ she said, ‘is this a negotiation?’

  ‘It’s an interview. If you’re successful, you can leave with the things that Amundsen gave me. I don’t want them any more. But don’t try and bargain with me. You may think you have something to sell but you don’t.’

  ‘Sell?’ The woman’s face, Bess saw, was dangerously pale. Without dropping her gaze, Bess mentally rehearsed the layout of the room. She had learned in Alaska, when the miners started drinking, that it was useful to know the best way to the door.

  Mrs Bennett uncrossed her ankles, sat forward. ‘My husband has always known about Amundsen and me. We long ago made our arrangements.’ She spoke in a low, tight voice. ‘And if you think you can go to the newspapers, think again. I doubt if they’d publish details of a dead hero’s private life, and if they did I wouldn’t much care. I’d rather that than give in to blackmail.’

  That’s it, thought Bess, her face impassive. She is Norwegian; not Christine Bennett, but Kristine. Kristine: painted on the side of his Curtiss Oriole as it banked and rolled over Kotzebue Sound.

  ‘I assure you, Mrs Bennett, I never thought I’d any sort of hold over you. Before yesterday, I’d never even heard of you.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Mrs Bennett, ‘you’ve summoned me here with menaces. I only came because I wanted to see who you were. Who, and what. So I can decide whether to give you Amundsen’s things. Or take them back to Trondheim and throw them in the fjord.’

  Gustav Amundsen. He must have thought that this would be a cheap solution. ‘I summoned no one,’ Bess said. ‘I was also told I should come here.’

  Mrs Bennett stared back at her, then yawned again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, from behind her hand. ‘I’ve been having difficulty sleeping.’

  Bess shrugged. She supposed that Mrs Bennett could see from her eyes how things were with herself.

  Mrs Bennett smiled. It seemed to Bess that she smiled apologetically. ‘I expect his brother is behind this,’ said Mrs Bennett. ‘You don’t seem like a blackmailer.’

  ‘Gustav told me you were keeping things for Amundsen that Amundsen wanted me to have. He told me I’d have to meet you here to collect them. He didn’t tell me who you were.’

  ‘I expect he didn’t.’

  ‘I’m not some adventuress, you know. I’ve already signed away my interest in Amundsen’s will. He’d left me his estate at Uranienborg.’

  Mrs Bennett held her smile for a few moments. Not apologetic, Bess realized, but pitying. Then Mrs Bennett surprised her. She put her head back and laughed.

  ‘Uranienborg? He left you the estate, did he? Now that is quite amusing.’ She shook her head. ‘I remember when Uranienborg was supposed to be for me.’

  ‘Kristine. That was the name of one of his planes in Alaska. Where I first met him.’

  Mrs Bennett nodded absently. She sank back in her chair. She seemed to be losing interest.

  ‘His second plane,’ went on Bess, ‘he called Elizabeth. That’s my name.’

  Mrs Bennett shook her head. ‘Elizabeth is my second name. They were both named after me.’

  ‘Then I guess he lied to one of us.’

  ‘Or more likely both.’

  Mrs Bennett had turned in her chair so she could see out the window. The evening light left half her face in shadow, giving her a tragic aspect. Yet Bess, watching from the foot of the bed, saw her smile once or twice at whatever she was seeing. Bess allowed her upper body to sink back on the bed until she was half lying, her feet still on the floor. There was a plaster rosette in the centre of the ceiling from which depended a pretty stained-glass lightshade. The bulb was unlit and the shadows gathered in the corners of the room. Amundsen was in the corners of the room.

  And then it came to her: he had really been here! Kristine Bennett had chosen this hotel and paid for it herself. She had been here with Amundsen. Perhaps this very room. Bess let her eyes widen for a moment, childishly: she knew Kristine couldn’t see her. This very bed. How had it been between them? Perhaps he’d been much younger then. Bess had been surprised at Amundsen’s strength, the hardness of his muscles. She had traced the scars on his back and buttocks, made by an ice bear at Cape Chelyuskin. He had wanted so badly to be young still, and had often almost managed it. But when she first met him he already had the thin lips of an old man. She had never cared much for his kisses. That was one of her secrets from him. It angered her sometimes that he never seemed to guess.

  ‘Do you know if there were others?’

  There was a pause, as if Kristine were thinking. It’s better not to look at each other, thought Bess, pulling the ceiling in and out of focus. We can be honest this way.

  ‘I know of one for certain,’ said Kristine. ‘Another Norwegian woman. He had her after the North West Passage. Then there was me. I was the South Pole. And Gade once told me about another one, much earlier, after Amundsen was accepted as a mate for the Belgica expedition. She was his landlady in Antwerp where he studied navigation. She wanted to elope with him. When he refused, so he could go with the Belgica to Antarctica, she killed herself with carbon monoxide. Her name was Marie. That’s all Gade knew.’

  ‘My God . . . Was she married?’

  ‘We were all married, my dear. I still am.’

  Bess searched her voice for any hint of an insult. She couldn’t find one. She stretched her arms sleepily over her head and waited for Kristine to speak again.

  ‘Three years ago,’ went on Kristine, ‘after he escaped from the pack ice in his Dornier, I finally gave in to him. I wired and told him I’d leave my husband in England and spend the rest of my life with him. Then he suddenly lost interest in me. After thirteen years.’

  ‘I met him six years ago. Three years ago he started begging me to leave Sam. He was suddenly so serious.’

  ‘Well then.’

  What was I to him? thought Bess. She knew she was beautiful and what that was worth to men, particularly older ones. But she was never one to sell herself. She’d married Sam Magids for love. Or so it had seemed at the time. He was still a young man then, back in Winnipeg, the same age she was now. And he’d been fizzing with dreams. He was going to go north and make his fortune in places from Jack London stories and Robert Service poems. And oh, how he’d needed her.

  And now it seemed quite possible that Amundsen, whom she had made herself fall in love with, hadn’t needed her at all. Kristine had been the South Pole. What had he done before he treated himself to Bess Magids? What had Amundsen won, or done, or learned or lost, at Cape Chelyuskin?

  Why, when I telegraphed last month to say that I was coming, did he abandon his retirement and start begging for a plane to go searching for Nobile?

  I would have been his last woman. That would have been the death of him. Instead, he’s up there in the north and always will be. Where will I go now?

  ‘I hope you understand,’ she
told the ceiling, ‘why I need to take those furs. It’s a practical matter. I can’t go back to my husband after this. It wouldn’t be fair on him.’

  ‘Oh, I understand. I do feel sorry for you.’ Bess heard her shift her weight in the chair. ‘There’s something else too,’ said Kiss Bennett. ‘A package.’

  Bess squinted into the light from the window. Kristine was a black shape against the sunset. ‘A package for me?’

  Kiss gave a short laugh. ‘Hardly for you, if it’s in my keeping. He wasn’t that bad . . . He sent it to me with a note asking me to forward it to someone in England. An old friend of his called Meares. He said I should deliver it by hand next time I was in London. But I want no part of it. It’s your job now. You were holding the chair when the music stopped.’

  It seemed to Bess that Kristine was going all-in with this bid. ‘He asked you to do it,’ she countered. ‘He sent the package to you.’

  ‘He also gave me the furs and the jewels which are now at Hamar station. The stuff that you want me to give to you.’

  She has the advantage, Bess thought. She can see my face and I can’t see hers because of the light from the window.

  ‘I suppose that’s fair . . . Do you know what’s in the package?’

  ‘It was sealed. The note said not to open it. But I opened it anyway – why should I trust him? There’s a closed metal tube and an old wooden-cased clock.’

  ‘Where did Amundsen send this package from?’

  ‘From Siberia. He was wintering in the Maud at a place called Cape Chelyuskin. He sent letters home with two of his men.’

  Bess sat up and stared at her. ‘But that was nine years ago! Those two men disappeared.’

  The shape in the window seemed very still. ‘I know.’

  I don’t need to hide my confusion, thought Bess. It would seem very strange if I did. ‘The Russians found one of the bodies a couple of years ago. Tessem. He was within sight of the weather station they’d been trying to reach. His head was bashed in. The other one was never found at all. Why didn’t Amundsen say anything when this package showed up again? It would have been a sensation in the press.’

  Kristine shifted in her chair, abruptly, as if relieving a cramp. ‘Amundsen never knew. I only received the package two days ago. Someone left it at my house in Trondheim.’

  Bess lowered herself back onto the bed. The ceiling was dark but the last of the evening was reflected in the lampshade. Kristine was a heavy, heavy silence between herself and the fading light. She must be very frightened, thought Bess. No wonder that she came to meet me. The shadows overflowed the corners and met in the middle of the room.

  ‘I’ll deliver the package,’ Bess told the shadows. ‘I’d have done it anyway, if you’d asked me. You didn’t have to try to bribe me.’

  ‘Bribe you? I thought I was blackmailing you. I was hoping to do some blackmailing on my own account. There’s such a lot of it about.’

  Bess’s eyes, adjusting to the light, softened the glow behind Kristine. She could see her face again. ‘Do you go back to Trondheim tonight? Must you go to the station soon?’

  ‘There’ll be no more trains tonight. I’ve taken a room here.’

  ‘That’s good, I suppose. I’m sure we’re both tired.’

  Kristine stretched her arms and legs convulsively then rose to her feet. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I’m very hungry,’ said Bess. ‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to buy me a meal.’

  A few days later Bess Magids left Norway for the last time. She travelled to Paris and then, after a brief stop in London, to New York, which she reached at the end of August. Anyone watching her might have said she was full of some urgent new business.

  On her arrival in New York she received a telegram from Gustav Amundsen informing her that a boat fishing off Tromsø had netted a wing-float from Amundsen’s plane. What remained of the search was promptly called off.

  Bess took a train north to Toronto and then west to Vancouver. From there she crossed the Salish Sea to Victoria.

  Six weeks later, also near Tromsø, another boat picked up a petrol tank from the missing aircraft. Someone had attempted to turn it into a makeshift float, hoping to repair the ditched aeroplane or perhaps to build a raft. The French airmen, Bess knew, were young and full of life and scheming. So was Dietrichson, Amundsen’s Norwegian deputy. They would have fought until the end. She wondered if Amundsen had fought alongside them. She did not think that he had. She saw him as he was last photographed at Tromsø, hunched glumly in the nose of his doomed seaplane, already drifting off into the north. She swore that she would never play poker again.

  Inuvik, North West Territories

  The swing door in the corridor opened and shut. Fay recognized the shuffle of his snow-boots. They stopped outside the door. There was a jingle of change. Fay could see his keys on the little table by the door but she waited until he gave up looking for them and knocked.

  ‘Fay? I forgot my keys.’

  She was already back in her chair as he kicked off his snow-boots.

  ‘You learn anything new?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really.’

  He lay down the folder he was carrying to take off his parka, then he picked it up again and went to look out the window. ‘Right . . . Do you want to go to the airport and see if we can get you on a plane?’

  There was something off-hand about his manner that made her uneasy. I should cut my losses and go, she thought. But she wasn’t done yet. ‘The planes are still grounded. I checked the web a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Nelson took out his cigarettes and lit one for himself. It was the first time she’d seen him smoking in the flat. Up until now he’d kept it pure for his brother. ‘Well, that is kind of strange.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I’ve just been to the airport. The planes have been coming and going all day. The highway’s open too.’

  She turned back to the computer, ostentatiously checking the internet. ‘That’s not what it said on the transport department’s web site . . . Here it is . . . Oh. You’re right. The airport and highway are open. They must have been slow updating their site.’

  She folded her arms, her back still turned to him, and waited. It was a while before he spoke. ‘I’m not as dumb as you think I am.’

  Yes, you are. Yes, you are. She hated herself for being caught out. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You’re way too interested in my brother’s business. You’re looking for something and you think I don’t know it. If you weren’t you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Don’t bullshit me. That’s why you came back here last night.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ Or at least, it wasn’t last night.

  He took the landline phone from the coffee table. ‘I’m calling you a taxi. It’ll take you to the airport or wherever you want

  to go.’

  ‘I don’t have anywhere to go.’

  ‘Then that makes two of us. But you’re the one who has to leave.’

  The worst thing was, she thought, this wasn’t even necessary. She could have told him everything before now and he probably wouldn’t have believed her anyway. She could tell him now and it wouldn’t do her any good. But it mightn’t do any harm either.

  ‘You’re right. There’s a couple of things that I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘No! Really?’

  ‘If you don’t want to hear them, just call me a taxi.’

  She watched him thinking it over. In a second, she thought, we could both be done with this.

  ‘Okay, then. Why not?’

  ‘Alright . . . My grandfather, the one who was in the Canadian air force, who’s mentioned in Bert’s papers . . . He went missing up at Tuktoyaktuk. Back in the late fifties. He had something to do with the DEW Line.�
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  ‘So you went to Tuktoyaktuk looking for clues.’

  ‘No. I went there for my mum’s sake. She was born in Canada and always wanted to go back. But she was sick for a long time. I had to mind her. And then she died. So I came instead.’

  ‘Okay . . . Is that all of it?’

  ‘No . . . You know how my grandfather’s name is in your brother’s papers? He helped to retrieve those secret files about that French lieutenant, Bellot?’

  ‘So you say. I don’t know who your grandfather was.’

  ‘I do. Sort of. And that’s definitely him. Well, there’s another connection between him and Bert. Even weirder than the first one. You remember that newspaper article in Bert’s Crozier file, the one about the mystery chronometer? The one that was issued to Franklin’s lost ships, then turned up again a few years ago?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘My grandfather used to own that clock. After he disappeared my granny kept it on her mantelpiece in Ireland. I have a photograph of it in my flat . . . Well, in storage. I gave up our old flat before I left London.’

  ‘Your grandfather had Franklin’s lost clock?’

  ‘Yes. My great-uncles must have sold it after my granny died. That’s probably how it got back to Greenwich.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She was surprised how calmly he was taking this. ‘Don’t you think that’s really weird? All these connections?’

  He surprised her again. ‘Weird is a matter of context. Right now weird seems pretty normal. What else have you got?’

  ‘Nothing. That’s it . . . Oh, wait. There’s one other thing. My bank thinks that I’m dead. There’s been some kind of mix-up between me and my mum. They’ve cut off my credit card. I’m broke until I can prove that I’m alive.’

  She was finished. She straightened her back and put her hands in her lap and waited, like a schoolgirl who’s just delivered a report. He said nothing. And she had the time to think, as she’d always done when she was on the carpet at school, about what she would do when this ordeal was over. She would get a taxi to the chalet, pick up her bag then head to the airport. If she couldn’t get a plane right away she would camp at the airport until she did. Once she reached Whitehorse or Edmonton she would sort things out and decide what came next. She could go back to London. Or she could stay in Canada if she wanted – she was a citizen, thanks to her mother’s birth. She could be a Canadian, for Alice’s sake.