‘Another thing, it isn’t as cold as I thought it would be.’
‘It never is in the summer, particularly in the south-west. There’s a lot of sheep farming down there, but things are still pretty primitive north of the Arctic Circle. Up around Disko you’ll find plenty of Eskimos who still live the way they’ve always done.’
‘And that’s where Jack is?’
I nodded. ‘Near the village called Narquassit as I last heard. He’s been looking for polar bear for the past couple of weeks.’
‘That sounds like Jack. How well have you got to know him since he’s been up here?’
‘Well enough.’
She laughed abruptly, that strange harsh laugh of hers. ‘You look like the type he likes to tell his troubles to.’
‘And what type would that be?’
‘What he fondly believes to be the rugged man of action. He’s played bush pilot himself so many times in pictures over the years that he imagines he knows the real thing when he sees it.’
‘And I’m not it?’
‘Nobody’s real – not in Jack’s terms. They couldn’t be. He can never see beyond a neatly packaged hour and a half script.’ She lit a cigarette and leaned back in her seat. ‘I used to love the movies when I was a kid and then something happened. I don’t know what it was, but one night when the hero and the girl got together for the final clinch I suddenly wondered what they were going to do for the next forty-three years. When you begin thinking like that the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.’
‘Not for Jack,’ I said. ‘He’s been living in a fantasy world for so long that reality has ceased to exist.’
She turned, the narrow crease between her eyes a warning sign that I failed to notice. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Considering the way she’d been talking I was more than a little surprised at her reaction. I shrugged. ‘He’s playing a part right now, isn’t he? The rugged adventurer cruising the Greenland coast? He’ll spend the day in a dory helping to bait and hook a three-thousand-foot line or he’ll go seal hunting among the pack ice in a kayak, but there’s always the Stella to return to each night, a hot shower, a six-course dinner and a case of scotch.’
‘A neat strip,’ she said. ‘They could use you at Metro, but what about your own fantasy life?’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘The tough bush pilot act, the flying boots, the fur-lined parka – the whole bit. Just who are you trying to kid? I wouldn’t mind betting you even carry a gun.’
‘A .38 Smith and Wesson,’ I lied. ‘It’s in the map compartment, but I haven’t had time to shoot anyone lately.’
I’d managed a nice bright reply, but she was hitting a bit too close for comfort and I think she knew it. For a little while I busied myself unnecessarily with a chart on my knee checking our course.
About five minutes later we came down through cloud and she gave a sudden exclamation. ‘Look over there.’
A quarter of a mile away half a dozen three-masted schooners played follow-my-leader, sails full, a sight so lovely that it never failed to catch at the back of my throat.
‘Portuguese,’ I said. ‘They’ve been crossing the Atlantic since before Columbus. After fishing the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in May and June they come up here to complete their catch. They still fish for dories with handlines.’
‘It’s like something out of another age,’ she said, and there was genuine wonder in her voice.
Any further conversation was prevented by one of those sudden and startling changes in the weather for which the Greenland coast, even in summer, is so notorious. One moment a cloudless sky and crystal clear visibility and then, with astonishing rapidity, a cold front swept in from the ice-cap in a curtain of stinging rain and heavy mist.
It moved towards us in a grey wall and I eased back on the throttle and took the Otto down fast.
‘Is it as bad as it looks?’ Ilana Eytan asked calmly.
‘It isn’t good if that’s what you mean.’
I didn’t need to look at my chart. In this kind of flying anything can happen and usually does. You only survive by knowing your boltholes and I ran for mine as fast as I could.
We skimmed the shoulder of a mountain and plunged into the fjord beyond as the first grey strands of mist curled along the tips of the wings. A final burst of power to level out in the descent and we dropped into the calm water with a splash. Mist closed in around us and I opened the side window and peered out as we taxied forward.
The tip of an old stone pier suddenly pushed out of the mist and I brought the Otter round, keeping well over to the right. A few moments later we saw the other end of the pier and the shore and I dropped the wheels beneath the floats and taxied up on to a narrow shingle beach. I turned off the mast switch and silence enveloped us.
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘A disused whaling station – Argamash. Like to take a look round?’
‘Why not. How long will we be here?’
‘Depends on the weather. One hour – two at the most. It’ll disappear as unexpectedly as it came.’
When I opened the door and jumped down she followed me so quickly that I didn’t get the chance to offer her a hand down. It was colder than Frederiksborg, but still surprisingly mild considering we were twenty miles inside the Arctic Circle and she looked about her with obvious interest.
‘Can we explore?’
‘If you like.’
We followed the beach and scrambled up an old concrete slipway that brought us to the shore-end of the pier. The mountain lifted above us shrouded in mist and the broken shell of the old whale-oil processing factory and the ruins of forty or fifty cottages crouched together at its foot.
It started to rain slightly as we walked along what had once been the main street and she pushed her hands into her pockets and laughed, a strange excitement in her voice.
‘Now this I like – always have done since I was a kid. Walking in the rain with the mist closing in.’
‘And keeping out the world,’ I said. ‘I know the feeling.’
She turned and looked at me in some surprise, then laughed suddenly, but this time it lacked its usual harsh edge. She had changed. It was difficult to decide exactly how – just a general softening up, I suppose, but for the moment at any rate, she had become a different person.
‘Welcome to the club. You said this was once a whaling station?’
I nodded. ‘Abandoned towards the end of the last century.’
‘What happened?’
‘They simply ran out of whale in commercial quantities.’ I shrugged. ‘Most years there were four or five hundred ships up here. They over-fished, that was the trouble, just like the buffalo – hunted to extinction.’
There was a small ruined church at the end of the street, a cemetery behind it enclosed by a broken wall and we went inside and paused at the first lichen covered headstone.
‘Angus McClaren – died 1830,’ she said aloud. ‘A Scot.’
I nodded. ‘That was a bad year in whaling history. The pack ice didn’t break up as early as usual and nineteen British whalers were caught in it out there. They say there were more than a thousand men on the ice at one time.’
She moved