Once Upon a Time in the North

by Once Upon a Time in the North (epub)

  The rest of the sentence was lost, as he intended it should be, in the clamour, the shouts and the whistles and the stamping that broke over it like a great wave.

  The poet was on his feet, waving his hands above his head with excitement, and shouting, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

  On Lee’s other side, the candidate’s daughter was clapping her hands like a little girl, stiff fingers all pointing in the same direction as she brought her palms together.

  It seemed that the end of the speech had arrived, because Poliakov and his men were leaving the platform, and others were beginning to make their way along the rows of chairs, soliciting donations.

  ‘Don’t give that bastard a cent,’ said Hester.

  ‘Ain’t got a cent to give,’ muttered Lee.

  ‘Wasn’t that magnificent?’ said Sigurdsson.

  ‘Finest piece of oratorical flamboyancy I ever heard,’ said Lee. ‘A lot of it went over my head, on account of I don’t know the local situation, but he knows how to preach, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Come with me, and I shall introduce you. Mr Poliakov will be delighted to make your acquaintance –’

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ said Lee hastily. ‘It wouldn’t be right to waste the man’s time when I ain’t got a vote to give him.’

  ‘Not at all! In fact I know he will be most gratified to meet you,’ said Sigurdsson, lowering his voice confidentially and seizing Lee’s elbow in a tight grip. ‘There is a job he has in mind,’ he murmured.

  At the same moment, Olga clutched Lee’s other sleeve.

  ‘Mr Scoresby, do come and meet Papa!’ she said, and her eyes were so wide and so candid, and her lips were so soft, and what with those eyes and those lips, and the delicate curls of hair, and that sweet heart-shaped face, Lee very nearly lost his presence of mind altogether and kissed her right there. What did it matter if she had the brain of a grape? It wasn’t her brain Lee wanted to hold in his arms. Her body had its own kind of intelligence, just as his did, and their bodies had a great deal to say to each other. His head swam; he was fully persuaded.

  ‘Lead me to him,’ he said.

  In the parlour behind the platform, Poliakov was standing at the centre of a group of men with glasses in their hands and cigars alight, and the little wood-panelled room was filled with laughter and the loud bray of congratulations.

  As soon as Poliakov saw his daughter, he moved away from his companions and swept her into an embrace.

  ‘Did you like your papa’s speech, my little sweetmeat?’ he said.

  ‘It was wonderful, Papa! Everyone was thrilled!’

  Lee looked around. On a table near the fireplace was a model of a strange-looking gun – a sort of mobile cannon on an armoured truck – and Lee was curious to look at it more closely, but the nearest man saw his gaze and swiftly covered the model with a baize cloth. It must be the gun Vassiliev had spoken of, Lee thought, and wished he hadn’t made his interest so plain, for then he could have taken a longer look. But then he felt the poet’s hand on his sleeve again, and turned to hear Sigurdsson’s words to the candidate:

  ‘Ivan Dimitrovich,’ said the poet humbly, ‘I wonder if I might introduce Mr Scoresby, from the nation of Texas?’

  ‘Oh yes, Papa,’ said Olga. ‘Mr Scoresby was telling me about the horrid bears they have in his country …’

  Poliakov patted his daughter’s cheek, removed the cigar from his mouth, and shook Lee’s hand in a bone-cracking grip. Lee saw it coming and responded in kind, and that contest ended even.

  ‘Mr Scoresby,’ said Poliakov, putting his arm around Lee’s shoulder and drawing him aside, ‘glad to meet you, glad indeed. My good friend Sigurdsson has told me all about you. You’re a man who can see an opening – I can tell that. You’re a man of action – I can see that. You’re a shrewd judge – I can sense that. And if I’m not wrong, right now you’re free enough to consider a proposition. Am I right?’

  ‘Right in every detail, sir,’ said Lee. ‘What kind of a proposition might this be?’

  ‘A man such as me,’ the candidate explained, dropping his voice, ‘finds himself placed in considerable danger from time to time. This is an excitable town, Mr Scoresby, a volatile and unpredictable environment for one who inspires the strong passions both of attraction and, I regret to say it, of resentment and dislike. Oh yes – there are some who fear and hate my principled stand on the bear question, for example. I need say no more about that,’ he added, tapping his nose. ‘I’m sure you understand what I mean. I will not be moved, but there are those who would like to move me, by force if necessary. And I am not afraid to meet force with force. You carry a weapon, Mr Scoresby. Are you willing to use it?’

  ‘You mean you want to meet their force with my force?’ said Lee. ‘Glad to know you’re not afraid to do that, Mr Poliakov. What’s the job you have in mind?’

  ‘There is a little situation at the harbour that needs resolving soon, and I think you are the man to do it. You understand, there are things that an official body of men can do, and other things that need specialist work of a less public kind. There is a man who is trying to make away with a … with a piece of disputed property, and I want someone to stand guard over it, and prevent him.’

  ‘Whose property is it?’

  ‘As I say, it’s disputed. That need not concern you. All you need to do is make sure it stays in the warehouse till the lawyers have done their work.’

  ‘I see. And what will you pay?’

  ‘You come straight to the point, my friend. Let me suggest –’

  But before Lee could hear what Poliakov was going to offer, Hester gave a convulsive kick in his breast and said, ‘Lee –’

  Lee knew at once what she meant, and he looked where she was looking: past Poliakov, towards a tall lean man lounging beside the fireplace, arms folded, one leg bent with the foot resting on the wall behind him. He was smoking a corncob pipe, and his dæmon, a rattlesnake, had draped herself around his neck and folded herself into a loose knot. His expression was unreadable, but his black eyes were staring straight at Lee.

  ‘I see you already got yourself a gunfighter,’ Lee said.

  Poliakov threw a glance over his shoulder. ‘You know Mr Morton?’ he said.

  ‘By reputation.’

  ‘Let me introduce you. Mr Morton! Step over here, if you would.’

  The man unfolded his long form from the wall and sauntered across without removing the pipe from his mouth. He was dressed elegantly: black coat, narrow trousers, high boots. Lee could see the outline of the guns at his hips.

  ‘Mr Morton, this is our new associate, Mr Lee Scoresby. Mr Scoresby, Mr Pierre Morton.’

  ‘Well, Mr Poliakov,’ Lee said, ignoring Morton, ‘I think you’re making too much of an assumption. I’ve changed my mind. You couldn’t pay me any money that would make me happy to associate with a man like this.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ said Morton to Lee. ‘I didn’t catch it.’

  His voice was deep and quiet. His snake-dæmon had raised her jewel-like head and was gazing intently at Hester. Lee rubbed Hester’s head with his thumb and stared straight back at Morton.

  ‘Scoresby is my name. Always has been. Last time I saw you, though, you weren’t called Morton. You were using the name McConville.’

  ‘I never seen you before.’

  ‘Then I got keener eyesight than you do. You better not forget that.’

  By this time every voice in the room was stilled, every face turned to watch. The tension between the two men had silenced every other conversation, and Poliakov stood uncertain, his eyes flicking from one to the other, as if he were wondering how to reassert the dominance that had suddenly leaked away from him.

  It was Olga who spoke first. She had been eating a small cake, and she hadn’t noticed anything. She patted her lips and said as loudly as if everyone else was still talking, ‘Do they have bears in your country, Mr Morton?’

  Morton–McConville blinked at last and turned to face her. Hi
s dæmon kept her head fixed on Hester.

  ‘Bears?’ he said. ‘Why, I believe they do, miss.’

  ‘Horrid,’ she said, with that childish shudder. ‘Papa’s going to get rid of all the bears.’

  Poliakov shrugged his shoulders one at a time like a boxer loosening his muscles and moved forward a step to confront Lee directly.

  ‘I think you had better leave, Scoresby,’ he said.

  ‘Just on my way, Senator. Happy to leave.’

  ‘Don’t call me by that title!’

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. When I see a swaggering blowhard, I naturally assume he’s a Senator. Easy mistake to make. Good evening, miss.’

  Olga had by now realised that the atmosphere had changed, and her lovely dim face looked from Lee to her father and then to Morton and back to Lee. No one took any notice except Lee, who smiled with a pang of regret and turned away. But hers wasn’t the last face he saw in the room, and neither was Morton’s. Standing at the edge of the crowd was Oskar Sigurdsson, poet and journalist, and his expression was vivid with excitement and expectation.

  ‘So we’ve decided what side we’re on?’ Hester said, back in the chilly little bedroom at the boarding house.

  ‘Hell, Hester,’ Lee said, flinging his hat into the corner of the room, ‘why can’t I keep my damn mouth shut?’

  ‘No choice. That bastard knew exactly where we’d seen him before.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘No doubt about it.’

  Lee pulled off his boots and took the revolver out of the holster at his belt. He flicked the cylinder, found it too stiff to move, and shook his head in irritation: no oil. Since that soaking they’d had in the rainstorm he hadn’t had occasion to use the weapon, except as a hammer, and the damn thing had seized tight. And here he was on an island that stank of every conceivable kind of oil, and he didn’t have a drop to loosen it with.

  He put the gun beside the bed and lay down to sleep, with Hester crouching restless on the pillow.

  Pierre McConville was a hired killer with at least twenty murders to his name. Lee had come across him in the Dakota country. In the summer before he won his balloon in the poker game, Lee was working for a rancher called Lloyd, and there was a boundary dispute that erupted into a minor war, with half a dozen men killed before it was settled. In the course of it Mr Lloyd’s enemy hired McConville to pick off Lloyd’s men one by one. He had killed three men by the time the Rapid City gendarmes caught up with him. He shot two of the ranch hands from a distance, undetected, and then he made a mistake: he provoked a quarrel with young Jimmy Partlett, Lloyd’s nephew, over cards and drink, and shot him dead in front of witnesses who could be relied on to testify that the dead man had started it. The mistake was that one of the witnesses changed his testimony, and told the truth.

  McConville allowed himself to be arrested with the air of someone fulfilling a minor bureaucratic formality. He was tried for murder in front of a corrupted and terrified jury, and acquitted; following which he promptly shot the truthful witness dead in the street, with no attempt to hide what he was doing, as the gendarmes were riding out of town pleading urgent business in Rapid City. But that was another mistake. With the utmost reluctance the gendarmes turned round and arrested him again, after a brief exchange of lead projectiles, and this time set out to take him to the capital of the province. They never got there. In fact they were never seen again. It was assumed that McConville had somehow killed the officers and made off, and soon afterwards Mr Lloyd, sickened by the whole business, sold his ranch cheaply to the disputatious neighbour, and retired to Chicagoa.

  Lee had appeared in the witness box during the trial, because he had been present when one of the ranch hands was killed, and he was asked to testify to the character of young Jimmy Partlett too. McConville’s bony face and lean frame, his deep-set black eyes and giant hands, were unmistakable, and the way he stared across the court at the witnesses for the prosecution – with a measuring sort of look, a look of cold, slow, brutal calculation with nothing human in it at all – was unforgettable.

  And now here he was on Novy Odense, guarding a politician, and Lee had been damn fool enough to provoke him.

  In the middle of the night, Lee got up to visit the bathroom. As he felt his way down the corridor in the dark, wrapped in his long coat against the cold, Hester whispered, ‘Lee – listen …’

  He stood still. From behind the door on his left there came the sound of muffled, passionate sobbing.

  ‘Miss Lund?’ Lee whispered.

  ‘That’s her,’ Hester said.

  Lee didn’t like to leave anyone in distress, but he considered it might distress her even more to know that her trouble had been overheard. He continued on his way, shivering, and then tiptoed back, hoping the floor wouldn’t creak and disturb her.

  But when he reached his door he heard the sound of a handle turning behind him, and a narrow beam of candlelight shone into the corridor as a door opened.

  He turned to see Miss Lund in a nightgown, her hair unpinned, her eyes red and her cheeks wet. Her expression was inscrutable.

  ‘Apologies if I disturbed you, Miss Lund,’ he said quietly. He looked down so as not to embarrass her.

  ‘Mr Scoresby … Mr Scoresby, I hoped it was you. Forgive me, but may I ask for your advice?’ she said, and then, awkwardly, ‘There is no one else I can … I think you are a gentleman.’

  Her voice was low – he’d forgotten that; and it was steady and sweet.

  ‘Why, of course you may,’ Lee said.

  She bit her lip and looked up and down the empty corridor.

  ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Please could you …?’

  She stood aside, opening her door further.

  They were both speaking very quietly. Lee picked up Hester and entered the narrow bedroom. It was as cold as his, but it smelt of lavender rather than smokeleaf, and her clothes were neatly folded and hung instead of being strewn across the floor.

  ‘How can I help you, miss?’

  She put the candle on the mantelpiece over the empty grate, and closed the journal that lay next to the pen and bottle of ink on the little round table with the lace cloth on it. Then she pulled out the one chair for Lee to sit on.

  He did so, still not wanting to look her in the face in case she was embarrassed by her tears, but then he realised that if she had the courage to initiate this strange encounter, he should honour that by not patronising her. He lifted his head to look at her, tall and slender and still, with the dim light glittering on her cheeks.

  Lee waited for her question. She seemed to be wondering how to frame it. Her hands were clasped in front of her mouth, and she was looking at the floor. Finally she said:

  ‘There is something I have been asked to do, and I am afraid of saying yes in case it would be better to say no. I mean, not better for me, but better for – for the person who asked me. I am not very experienced in such matters, Mr Scoresby. I suppose few people are, before it happens. And I am alone here and there is no one to ask for advice. I am not putting this very well. I am so sorry to trouble you.’

  ‘Don’t apologise, Miss Lund. I don’t know if I can give you advice that would be any good to you, but I’ll sure try. Seems to me that this person who asked you to do something hopes you’ll do it, or they wouldn’t have asked. And … and it seems to me that the best judge of whether it would be good for them is them. I don’t think you should worry yourself about giving a particular answer when that answer might suit your personal preference. It ain’t dishonourable to consider your own interests. It might be more dishonourable to do what you think is the right thing for someone else when it ain’t the right thing for you. This is about honour, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Hard thing to get right.’

  ‘That’s why I asked for your advice.’

  ‘Well, Miss Lund, if this is a thing you want to do …’

  ‘I do very much.’

  ‘And it won�
��t harm anyone –’

  ‘I thought it might harm … the person who asked me.’

  ‘You must let them be the judge of that.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Yes.’

  ‘Then it would be honourable enough to do it.’

  She stood still, this tall bony gawky girl in her white nightgown and her bare feet, her face so unguarded it was almost naked, a face where intelligence and honesty and shyness and courage and hope all blended into an expression that touched Lee’s heart so strongly he all but fell in love with her there and then. He saw her soft hands holding her dæmon to her breast. And he saw her grace, the sweet overcoming of her young body’s clumsiness – for she was young; and he thought how proud she would make any man who gained her approval; and he thought if once he was privileged to hold this treasure of a girl in his arms, he would never again look at a vapid doll like Miss Poliakova.

  Suddenly she held out her hand to shake. He stood up and took it.

  ‘I am most grateful,’ she said.

  ‘Happy to help, miss, and I wish you very well,’ said Lee. ‘I truly hope you can stop worrying about this.’

  A few chilly seconds later he was in his own bed, with Hester beside him on the pillow.

  ‘Well, Hester,’ he said, ‘what was that all about?’

  ‘You don’t know? She had a proposal of marriage, of course, you big fool.’

  ‘She did? No kidding! How about that. And what did I advise her to do?’

  ‘To say yes, of course.’

  ‘Sheesh,’ said Lee. ‘I hope I got that right.’

  Next morning Lee came down to a breakfast of greasy cheese and pickled fish, in the course of which each of the gentleman boarders took great pains to address the young librarian with careless charm, and she responded with silent disdain. Neither she nor Lee made any reference to what had happened in the night.

  ‘A frosty character, our Miss Lund,’ said the photographer when she’d left. ‘She expects high standards of conversation.’

  ‘She has a sweetheart in the Customs Office,’ said Vassiliev. ‘I saw them last night after the meeting. What happened to you, Mr Scoresby? Were you drawn into the maelstrom of politics?’