The Land God Gave to Cain (8 page)

I shook my head. “I don't know.” It was a confession that I'd never bothered to get very close to my father. “My mother might know,” I murmured uncomfortably.

He was puzzled now. “But those questions make sense to you, don't they.”

I didn't know what to say. It came down to this, that Ledder would only be convinced that the message was genuine if I could explain the motive behind my father's questions, and I didn't know the motive. That belonged to the map and the books and the relics of the Canadian North, all the secret world I'd never shared.
It's a long story
. That was the only reference he'd ever made to it. If only I'd persisted then. With a little patience I could have dug it out of him.

Ledder had picked up the report and was staring at it. “I could kick myself,” he said, suddenly tossing it down amongst the litter of papers. “I'd only to look him up in the book. But I'd lent my copy to somebody in the D.O.T. and I just didn't bother to go and find him and get it back.” He had misunderstood my silence. “It never occurred to me,” he added, looking up at me apologetically.

“What never occurred to you?” I asked. There was something here that I didn't understand.

“That his name was important,” he answered.

“Important? How do you mean?”

“Well, if I'd known it was James Finlay Ferguson …” He broke off abruptly, staring at me with a puzzled frown. “He was related, wasn't he?”

“Related?” I didn't know what he was getting at. “Related to whom?”

“Why, to the Ferguson that got killed up in the Attikonak area in 1900.”

I stared at him. So that was it. The expedition of 1900. “Was there a Ferguson on that expedition?” I asked.

“Sure there was. James Finlay Ferguson.” He was looking at me as though he thought it was I who was crazy now. “You mean you don't know about it?”

I shook my head, my mind busy searching back through my childhood to things I'd half forgotten—my mother's fears, my father's obsession with the country. This was the cause of it all then.

“But the name?” He said it almost angrily, as though he were being cheated of something that would add interest to the monotony of life in this distant outpost. “And him asking all those questions? You mean it's just coincidence that the names were the same? Was it just because of that your father was interested?”

“No,” I said. “No, it wasn't that.” And I added hastily, “It's just that my father never talked about it.” I, too, felt cheated—cheated because he hadn't shared the past with me when it belonged to me and was my right.

“Never talked about it? Why ever not?” Ledder was leaning forward. “Let's get this straight. Are they related or not—your father and this Ferguson who went into Labrador?”

“Yes, of course they are,” I answered. “They must be.” There was no other explanation. It explained so much that I'd never understood. It was a pity that my grandmother had died when I was still a child. I would like to have talked to her now.

“What relationship?” Ledder was staring up at me. “Do you know?”

“His father, I think.” It must have been his father for I hadn't any great uncles.

“Your grandfather, in fact.”

I nodded. And it would have been grandmother Alexandra who would have given him the names of James Finlay. I was thinking it was strange that my father had been born in the year 1900.

“But how do you know it's your grandfather?” Ledder asked. “How do you know when you didn't even know there was an expedition back at the beginning of the century?”

I told him about the sextant and the paddle and the other relics hanging on the wall, and about my grandmother and the house in Scotland, and how she'd come to me in the night when I was barely old enough to remember. “I think she must have been going to tell me about that expedition.” Talking to him about it, everything seemed to fall into place—my father's obsession, everything. And then I was asking him about the expedition. “Can you give me the details?” I said. “What happened to Ferguson?”

“I don't know,” he answered. “In fact, I don't know very much about it—only what the Company geologist told me. There were two of them went in, from Davis Inlet. Two white men, no Indians. One was a prospector, the other a trapper, and it ended in tragedy. The trapper only just escaped with his life. The prospector—that was Ferguson—he died. That's all I know.” He turned to the desk and picked up his log, searching quickly through it. “Here you are. Here's the geologist's reply:
Expedition 1900 well known because one of the two men, James Finlay Ferguson, was lost
.”

“And he was a prospector?”

“So Tim Baird said.”

“Was he prospecting for gold?” I was remembering that my mother had once said I wasn't to ask about my grandfather … an old reprobate, she had called him, who had come to a bad end and wasted his life searching for gold.

“I don't know what he was prospecting for. Tim didn't say.”

But it didn't matter. I was quite certain it was gold, just as I was quite certain that this was the past that had bitten so deep into my father in his loneliness. It was just a pity that I'd never bothered to get the story out of him.

“It's odd he never talked to you about it,” Ledder said, and I realised that he was still uncertain about it all.

“I told you, he couldn't talk.” And I added, “It's so long since he was wounded that now I can't even recall the sound of his voice.”

“But he could write.”

“It was an effort,” I said.

“And he left no record?”

“Not that I know of. At least, I didn't find one when I looked through his things. I suppose it was too complicated or something. That's what he said, anyway. What else did the geologist tell you?”

“Just what I've read out to you—nothing else.” He was sitting there, doodling with a pencil on the cover of his log.

“What about this man Tim Baird? Did he tell you anything else—the name of the other man, or where they went or what they were looking for?”

“No. I guess he didn't know much about it. I've told you all I know.” He shook his head, frowning down at the pattern he was tracing. “Dam' queer him not telling you anything about it, and the thing an obsession with him.”

“That was because of my mother,” I said. “I think she must have made him promise. She didn't want me involved. I think she hated Labrador,” I added, remembering the scene on the platform as the train was about to leave. And here I was in Labrador.

My mind switched back to the questions my father had asked and I picked up the report again. I was thinking of the map above the transmitter, the name Lake of the Lion pencilled on it. “Did you ask Laroche about Lake of the Lion?”

“No. I never had the chance.” And then Ledder had stopped doodling and was looking up at me. “You know, it wasn't so much the strangeness of his questions that made me think him crazy. It was this obsession with an old story—”

“My father wasn't crazy,” I said sharply. I was still wondering why he should have been so interested in Laroche's reaction.

“No, I guess he wasn't.” Ledder's voice was slow, almost reluctant. “If I'd known his name was James Finlay Ferguson it would have made some sense.” He was excusing himself again. But then, after a pause, he said, “But even so, if he wasn't crazy …” He left the sentence unfinished, staring down at the desk and fiddling with the morse key. “Did he keep a log?” he asked at length.

“Yes, of course,” I said. And I gave him the sheet of notes, glad that I'd isolated them from the actual books. “Those are all the entries that concern Briffe, right from the time my father first picked up your transmissions until that final message.” I tried to explain to him again that writing had been difficult for him and that my father usually just jotted down a note to remind him of the substance of each transmission, but he didn't seem to be listening. He was going carefully through the notes, sucking at a pencil and occasionally nodding his head as though at some recollection.

Finally he pushed the sheet away and leaned back, tilting his chair against the wall and staring across the room. “Queer,” he murmured. “They make sense, and then again in places they don't make sense.” And after a moment he leaned forward again. “Take this, for instance.” He pulled the sheet towards him again and pointed to the entry for September 18 which read:
LAROCHE. No, it can't be. I must be mad
. “What's he mean—do you know?”

I shook my head.

“And this on the twenty-sixth, the day after Laroche reached Menihek—L-L-L-L-L—IMPOSSIBLE.” He looked up at me as he read it aloud, but there was nothing I could tell him. “Was he much alone?” he asked.

“There was my mother.” I knew what he was getting at.

“But that room you described and the hours he spent there every day with his radio. He was alone there?” And when I nodded, he said, “We get men like that up here. The emptiness and the loneliness—they get obsessions. Bushed we call it.” And then he asked me whether I'd brought the log books with me.

It was a request I had been dreading. One glance at them and he'd begin thinking my father was crazy again. But if I were to get him to help me he'd a right to see them. “They're in my suitcase,” I said.

He nodded. “Could I see them please?” He was reading through the notes again, tapping at the paper with his pencil, his lips pursed, absorbed in his thoughts. He evidently sensed my hesitation for he said, “Do you want a torch?” He reached up to the high top of the desk and handed me one. “Just walk straight out. Ethel won't mind.” And then he was staring down at the notes again.

The two women were still there in the room upstairs. They stopped talking as I came in and Mrs. Ledder said, “Ready for your coffee yet?” The room looked very gay and cheerful after the bare, untidy basement.

“I'm just going across to get something from the hotel,” I explained.

She nodded, smiling at me, and I went out into the night. The stars were misting over and the cold had a harshness in it that I'd never experienced before.

I got the log books out of my suitcase and when I returned to the basement room, Ledder was hunched over the desk, writing. He had the radio on and through the crackle of atmospherics a voice was talking in a foreign language. “Brazil,” he said, looking up at me. “Never have any difficulty getting South America.” He switched the receiver off and I gave him the log books, trying to tell him that the drawings and doodlings were irrelevant. But he waved my explanations aside, and I stood and watched him work steadily back through the pages. “He was alone a lot, that's for sure,” he muttered, and my heart sank.

“He just did it to pass the time,” I said.

He nodded. “Sure. It means nothing.” He reached out to one of the cubbyholes of the desk. “Look at my pad.” And he showed it to me all covered with doodles. “You got to do something whilst you're waiting to pick up a transmission. It's like telephoning.” He smiled at me, and that was when I began to like him.

“What sort of a person is Laroche?” It was the question that had been in my mind ever since Farrow had pointed out to me the implications of that transmission.

“Laroche?” He seemed to have to drag his mind back. “Oh, I don't know. A French Canadian, but a decent guy. Tallish, hair going slightly grey. I've only seen him once. He kept the Beaver down at the sea plane base and our paths didn't cross. It was Tim Baird I kept in touch with. Bill Baird's brother. He was base manager—looked after stores and all their requirements.” He had turned to the page on which the final message had been written and he read it slowly, tapping his teeth with the pencil. “
Search for a narrow lake with a rock shaped like
…” He read it aloud slowly and looked up at me. “A rock shaped like what?”

I didn't say anything. I wanted to see if his mind would follow the track that mine had followed.

He was looking back through that last log book. “All these drawings of lions. I wonder if Laroche knows anything about that Lake of the Lion. Could that message have finished—a rock shaped like a lion? Here's a drawing that shows a lion set into a rock. And another here.” He looked up at me. “You said something about a map of Labrador over his desk. Was Lake of the Lion marked on it?”

“He'd pencilled it in, yes,” I said and explained how it had been enclosed in a rough circle covering the area between the Attikonak and the Hamilton.

He nodded. “And C2 was in that area.” He was toying with the bug key and he suddenly slapped his hand on the desk. “Hell! No harm in telling them. Where's your plane going on to?”

“Montreal.” I waited now, holding my breath.

“Okay. The Company offices are there.” He hesitated a moment longer, frowning and shaking his head. “It's crazy,” he muttered. “But you never know. There's crazy enough things happen all the time up here in the North.” He pulled the paper on which he had been writing closer to the key, read it through and then reached over to the transmitter. The pilot light glowed red and there was a faint hum as the set warmed up. And then he put the earphones on and hitched his chair closer to the desk. A moment later and his thumb was tapping at the key and I heard the buzz of his morse signal as he began to send.

I lit a cigarette. I felt suddenly exhausted. But at the same time I was relaxed. I had achieved something, at any rate. I had persuaded a man who had been hostile at first to take action. But it was all to be done over again at Montreal—the story of how my father had died, the explanations. All to be told again, over and over again perhaps. I wondered whether it was worth it, conscious of the size of the country out there in the darkness beyond the airport—the wildness and the emptiness of it. They'd both be dead by now surely. They couldn't possibly have survived a whole week. But it was a chance, and because of my father and because of something in my blood, I knew I had to go on with it.