Authors: John Christopher
The White Voyage (29 page)
He could wake them, and they could put up the tent. In the morning, unless the blizzard returned, they could set out again. In which direction? It was probably safer to go back. If they could get to the hut they would have shelter and warmth and they could try trapping for food. The chances were not good but better, probably, than to continue trekking south now that he had lost his confidence that they were on the right trail.
Olsen felt a deep weariness of spirit. They depended on him, but they meant nothing to him, and there was nothing he could do for them. Between one desperate chance and another, what balance could one hold? More days, perhaps weeks, but in the end there was no difference. He looked at the mound from which he had crawled. It was very like a grave.
He began to walk away, not knowing why he did so, content to stride through the snow under this sky which gleamed in saffron and pink and green. He walked to the south, to the still untrodden land. This was the slope along which they had been advancing when he had seen the storm coming up from behind them. Now he walked alone, untroubled, forgetful of everything but the vast purity of the snow, and the lights which seemed to hang no more than a few hundred feet above his head.
There was a howling in the distance, but of an animal, not of the wind. A wolf, perhaps. The thought gave him no anxiety. Another howled, and another. They were like dogs, he thought, howling at the bright sky as dogs howl at the moonlight.
Like dogs … His stride lengthened. He breasted the ridge and stared. In front of him stretched the broad, ice-bound reaches of a bay. Then to his left …
Here and there brighter, yellower lights were pricked out against the snow. The nearer ones showed the squares of window frames and he could even see the shapes of the houses. That was where the dogs were howling, the huskies sleeping out in the snow. It was the Settlement. Olsen stood staring at it for several moments and then slowly, almost reluctantly, turned back towards the distant mound in the snow.
Cold and numb and tired and hungry as she was, Annabel could still feel the excitement and wonder of it – to be perched on Mouritzen’s broad shoulders as he strode through the snow, the sky overhead lit with all manner of fireworks … a bonfire night, only wider and stranger, and with the snow, to which she had grown accustomed, once more magical. It was like Christmas, and the grown-ups were all happy, and they were going to some place where there would be fires and hot food and beds.
Her mother and Mouritzen dropped behind the rest. She urged him on, pummelling his head with her small fists as she had done before. But he paid no attention. They were talking quietly together, in the way grown-ups did talk, with the words making sense and yet not meaning anything.
Mary said: ‘You don’t have to go through with it, Niels.’
He laughed. ‘Are we talking of torture?’
‘It might turn into that.’
‘I am happy to take the chance.’
‘You’ve seen how I can be – jealous and vindictive and unjust. I gave you no chance to tell me I was wrong. I just believed the worst of you.’
He was silent. Then he said: ‘Not unjust.’
‘What else?’
‘Nothing happened,’ he said. ‘That is quite true. But that was because of Nadya – she did not permit it.’ He paused. ‘I had to tell you this, Mary.’
In a flat voice she said: ‘Yes.’
There was silence. Annabel said:
‘Come on, slowcoach! They’re leaving us behind.’
Mouritzen jerked his shoulders, and she squealed with pleasure.
‘They won’t leave us behind,’ Mouritzen said. ‘We will catch up. You wait and see.’
‘I suppose I ought to be grateful?’ Mary said. ‘To someone like her.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘She said that, didn’t she? She told me she’d brought my man back to me.’
‘She is not bad. You must not judge her hardly.’
‘She loves you. You know that, don’t you? Why don’t you marry Nadya, Niels?’
Annabel said: ‘He can’t, Mamma. He’s going to marry you. He said so.’
Mouritzen jogged her again. ‘That is right.’ To Mary, he said: ‘A man can desire many women. He only loves one. And her he loves truly. Even if she is jealous. Even if she is jealous and scolds him some time when he is not to blame. He still loves her.’
‘But there will be times,’ she said, ‘when he is to blame. Won’t there? Other Nadyas.’
‘I hope not. That does not happen often – a time like that was. And you can keep close watch on me. I will not complain. If you wish, you may set a chain on my neck.’
‘A chain on your neck!’ Annabel echoed. She shouted with laughter. ‘You would look funny!’
‘It wouldn’t do any good,’ Mary said. She paused. ‘It doesn’t matter. What you say about loving is true. Even if he is weak, even if he makes love to other women, she still loves him truly.’
‘He will not,’ Mouritzen said with great firmness. ‘He gains strength from love and will be weak no longer.’
Mary said warningly: ‘And don’t you ever dare quote what I’ve just said against me.’
Mouritzen laughed, and Annabel felt his head vibrate against her. She began to pummel him again.
‘Come on. We aren’t catching up. Do be quick!’
‘Now we make a sprint,’ Mouritzen said. He caught Mary’s hand with his. ‘Come – we will all run together through the snow!’
There would be difficulties, Olsen realized. At close on forty a man could not give up a career and start afresh without difficulties. Hardships, also. He would forfeit the pension. He smiled, thinking of this. And to do what? He did not even know.
But if now, why not twenty years ago? He knew the answer to that: he had been too young, too confident, too deeply buried still in all the illusions of human commerce. The twenty years had not been wasted. A man came to know himself and to know where truth and beauty lay.
The Simanyis were laughing and joking together, their voices harsh against the cold, still air. Josef clapped a hand against his back.
‘You are too silent, Captain. Cheer up! Soon you will be home.’
Olsen looked up at the sky. He said:
‘I am home already.’
Life holds no prospect of luxury or excitement after Sarnia’s beloved mother dies: potential suitors vanish once they realise that marriage to the orphan will never bring a dowry. Yet her post as a lady clerk in a London banking house keeps the wolf from the door, and the admiration of her colleague, the worthy Michael, assures her if not of passion, then at least of affection.
Then the Jelains erupt into her humdrum routine, relatives she did not know she had, and whisk her away to the isle of Guernsey. At first she is enchanted by the exotic beauty of the island, by a life of balls and lavish entertainments where the officers of visiting regiments vie for her attention.
But Sarnia cannot quite feel at ease within this moneyed social hierarchy – especially in the unsettling presence of her cousin Edmund. And before long it becomes apparent that, beneath the glittering surface, lurk dark and menacing forces …
Her mother had scorned those of her sex who tamely submitted to male domination but, as the mystery of her heritage unfolds, Sarnia becomes all too painfully aware that the freedom she took for granted is slipping from her grasp.
‘I cried the day my father died; but from joy.’
Jane’s father had been nothing but a bully. His accidental death at the dockyard where he worked might have left the family in penury but it had also freed them from his drunken rages. He was scarcely cold in his grave, though, when another tyrant entered Jane’s life.
Sir Donald Bedivere’s offer to ease her mother’s financial burden had but one condition: that Jane should leave her beloved home in Portsmouth and move to Cornwall as his adopted daughter.
To Sir Donald, Cornwall was King Arthur’s country, and his magnificent home, Carmaliot, the place where Camelot once had stood. To Jane, for all its luxury it was a purgatory where her only friend was the lumbering Beast, with whom she roamed the moors.
Sir Donald had three sons, and Jane was quick to sum them up: John was pleasant enough, but indifferent to her. The burly, grinning Edgar she found loathsome. And Michael, on whom Sir Donald had pinned all his hopes, she disdained.
Sir Donald had plans for the Bedivere line – Jane wanted no part in them.
Cloud on Silver
A disparate group of Londoners are brought together by Sweeney, a mysteriously charismatic man of wealth, for a luxury cruise in the South Pacific – they know not why. Sailing far from the normal shipping routes, the ship weighs anchor just off an uninhabited tropical island. Whilst its passengers are ashore exploring, the ship catches fire and sinks beneath the waves.
With no means of communication with the outside world and no hope of rescue, passengers and crew must find a way to survive. In the scramble for power that ensues, the distinction between master and servant becomes meaningless as the more ruthless among them clamber to the top.
The inscrutable Sweeney, meanwhile, sits alone on a hillside. Coolly aloof, he watches the veneer of civilization disintegrate as his fellows fall prey to fear, desperation, barbarity …
As for Silver Island itself, with its lush vegetation and exotic fruits, it had seemed like paradise. But as the days pass, a subtle sense of unease gains momentum, and the realisation gradually dawns that all is far from well in this tropical Eden.
Published by The SYLE Press 2015
First published in Great Britain in 1960
by Eyre & Spottiswoode as
The Long Voyage
First published in the USA in 1961
by Simon & Schuster as
The White Voyage
Copyright © John Christopher 1960
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission from the Publisher.
All rights reserved
Cover design by David Drummond
ISBN 978-0-9927686-5-2
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