Degrees of Illusion

By Alastair Scott

'Scott is a clever and accomplished writer who turns his hand neatly to fiction.' The West Highland Free Press

'The author's writing abilities remain unerringly intact ... Mr Scott has style to spare' John MacLeay, The Scots Magazine

'...the work of the born raconteur...' Alan Taylor, Scottish Review of Books

(Reviews of some of the author's other works.)

A car accident, two mysterious deaths - similar yet separated by a century - take Niall Fraser to the far north on a quest for answers...and ultimately to revelations more devastating that he could ever have imagined. Escaping to a new life by returning to a remote northern community he once visited in his youth, he hopes to unlock a secret from his past. He arrives in Greenland at the beginning of winter – the 'long night’, a time of dangerous susceptibility to the northern madness of Cabin Fever – with all his worldly possessions and an obsession with an Arctic explorer who died under strange circumstances a century earlier; and whose life becomes increasingly intertwined with his own. As he pursues his quests he falls for a woman who becomes another enigma he has to solve, along with the death of a young woman and a plot which threatens the survival of the community.
Greenland is a country which has never had political leaders and never known war but is in a state of rapid change. Woven around true events and set against a background of conflicts – unresolved trauma, clashes of cultures, traditional versus modern, rising political activism, exploitation and anachronistic colonialism – this is a book about the arrogance of belief that indigenous knowledge is worthless unless backed by science, that having power is justification for using it, that the Arctic is a wasteland inhabited by an inferior people.
It is a book about love, unrequited fatherhood and rites of passage for those who dare to embrace the unknown.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alastair Scott
• Release date: Apr 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301995509

Book preview

This is a work of fiction but I have incorporated three historical elements whose facts, as far as they are known, have been reproduced faithfully:

1) Charles Francis Hall and his strange life (except for his early childhood) are not my inventions, and I am indebted to Chauncey C Loomis for his fine biography, Weird and Tragic Shores, which has provided most of my information as well as a strand of the plot.

2) Project Chariot - no less incredible - was a genuine act of suppressed history which centred on the community of Point Hope in Northwest Alaska. I have simply transferred the sequence of events to a different location. For these revelations I have depended on Dan O’Neill’s exposé, The Firecracker Boys.

3) Bluie West-One existed, both for the purpose and at the location I have described. It was abandoned in 1959.

The Umanak [pronounced oo-manak] of this story is not the Umanaq (Uummannaq) of northwest Greenland at 70° 40’ N. I just like the name.

For interest I include a glossary of the meanings of Danish and Greenlandic words used in this story but it is never essential to consult it!

The quote, For the triumph of evil it is only necessary that good men do nothing is attributed to Edmund Burke.

Part I

‘I believe that no man can retain the use of his faculties during one long night to such a degree as to be morally responsible...’

Seaman Noah Hayes, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy on the Operations of the Department for the Year 1873 (Washington, 1873)

1

Liberty, Indiana, July 1960

Tyres shriek as the car slews sideways. Noise spirals and grows as he jerks the wheel, waiting for the tread to bite. The steering goes loose. Grass drifts across underneath, and everything slows. A shock. His spine jars. He sees the fence fragment, branches part as the view revolves. Darkness. He must have closed his eyes. His vision is gone and awareness contracts to things battering his body, an explosion, a scream – presumably his – as weight descends and crushes. Panicking in the absence of air, he struggles but each movement brings pain clawing up legs, groin and chest. His face is viscous. Consciousness slips away.

His next recollections are voices and trying to open his eyes. One is glued shut but the other rips open. His focus swims, rests momentarily on a fireman and then slips up to a chink of sky. Against the blue he percieves a speck of black. High, circling.

~~~

‘Howya feeling, Mr Fraser?’

The speaker, a white ghost. On its chest a red scribble resolved itself into Fulton County Hospital.

‘Like buffalo ran over me. What am I like to you?’

‘You’re doing fine, just fine.’ Dr Richards squeezed an uneasy smile which disappeared abruptly. He glanced at his notes and back at Niall. ‘You know you’re very lucky to be alive.'

Niall straightened and winced as agony seared his chest.

'If talking's too hard, just nod your head.'

''It's OK.'

'Good. We got certain details from your passport but we'd like to confirm things and have a little more information. We tried to contact your next of kin but got no reply.'

That would be right, he thought. There hadn't been much of a reply for years. 'What day is it?'

'Tuesday, twentieth July.'

Christ, four days. He should have left last Saturday. 'Corinna's been away. Should be home tomorrow.'

'Excellent. And Mr Fraser ... '

'Just call me Niall, doctor. This formality makes me feel a corpse.'

'Sure. You got health insurance, Niall?'

A nod.

'And you're forty years old and a British citizen?'

'You can't hide much in a passport, can you? Scottish actually. I live in Edinburgh.'

'Your profession's given as a photographer. Are you here on business or vacation?'

'Does it make any difference? Do you patch me up better if I'm a productive addition to your economy?'

'I understand your frustration but I'm just doing my job.'

'Business. I had an assignment for a magazine.' He paused. 'I can remember who it was for, but not what it was about.'

Dr Richards scribbled in his folder.

'Is my camera gear OK?'

He shook his head. 'They were in the trunk. Nothing was recoverable. All they managed to salavage was you and an old book.'

Three Nikon F1 bodies, eight lenses, two flashguns. The tools of his trade, all gone. Suddenly he tried to laugh but pain silenced any sound.

'You find that amusing?'

'Tragic. They were old friends, but I can buy replacements.'

'That's scarcely something to laugh about.' He made more notes. 'If you'd seen the wreck they cut you out of I don't think you'd see much humour there. That car was compacted to a lunch box.'

'It was a feature for Life magagine.'

'Ah, I see.' Dr Richards managed a grin. He lowered his papers, sat down and drew the chair close. 'Niall, I'd like you to take your time and tell me what you remember about the accident.'

Over days fragments were found and pieced together.

~~~

There are no federally-recognised Indians in Ohio today. They were evicted in The Removals of the 1800s. Non-federally-recognised Indians, however, remain, and they were his work. He'd spent three days in a community of the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band on the outskirts of Dayton and shot eighteen films. It was a tonic for suicide, accompanying a journalist on a theme of alcoholism and demoralisation. They came out of it needing a drink themselves. On the morning of his departure, with a day in hand before the flight home, he did what he usually did and hunted out second-hand bookshops. He wasn’t a collector. He just loved the unpredictability of books gathered by chance. By the permanence of dust in the one he found in Liberty, he knew it was just his type.

‘You ain’t from these parts, are ya?’

The owner of the bookshop had a head like an old, partially imploded apple. He chewed gum and periodically ejected a squirt of black from the corner of his mouth where a little stalactite of his failures remained. The tadpole shapes fell wriggling into a spittoon hidden from view.

‘No,’ Niall admitted, ‘I’m from Scotland.’

‘Ya don’t say. Well ain’t that sumin. Say, ma wife’s family come from those parts, oh way back, ah guess. Now was it MacLeod or MacDonald ... Well her ma’s name was, Adie, Adie MacPherson, that was it. You don’t happen to know ...’

Niall smiled. It happened all the time. It wasn’t that surprising considering the great Scottish diasporas of past centuries. He found it both moving and warming when he came across links with his homeland in far-flung places. What was surprising was that he was still expected to know them all personally. He heard the man out, shook his head thoughtfully and politely excused himself to browse.

Half-hidden at the end of a shelf and evidenced only by a gap, was a leather-bound notebook of yellow vellum. It clearly hadn’t been withdrawn for years. Niall prised it out and flicked though the pages, stopping here and there to read. There was something about the hurried style of the hand and a vocabulary of enthusiasm that appealed to him. And the subject. Greenland. Somewhere, he reckoned, way back in his ancestry, he had to have Eskimo genes. ...Say... – he could see a fur-fringed face before him – ... you don’t happen to know any Frasers or MacGillivrays here’bouts, do you? ...

‘How much do you want for this?’

The old man took the book and let pages whirr through his fingers. ‘Hell, yea, foggot ah had this. This is real old. Real old. Look. 1871.’ He thought hard for a moment. ‘Ah well, fer you, two hundred bucks.’

Niall declined. He didn’t feel that drawn to it. He browsed a while longer but didn’t see anything he wanted. He thanked the man and opened the door.

‘OK, young fella. How about a hundred. Worth a damn site more, ah know, but ah’m feelin’ generous today.’

Niall hesitated but it still seemed a lot to pay for someone’s diary even if it was written almost a century ago. There again, just how many original diaries of Greenland at that time could there be? He hesitated, just long enough.

‘Seventy-five, and that’s ma last offer.’

‘Done!’

He drove west. Chosing quiet side roads he idled towards Rochester and the Whitewater River Valley without selecting either as a specific goal. Fields of soyabean lent the land a lush greeness and contrasted patches of sere where hay bailers were already at work. Every so often he had to change down and follow a tractor trailing a blizzard of straw. Then the fields would give way to copses of full-leafed trees where the road sank into a defile. Often there’d be a river and a covered bridge at the bottom. Plunged into darkness he’d grope for the headlights switch and concentrate on the distant rectagle of light as sleepers bucked and rattled underneath.

Warm air funnelled through vents no longer regulated by a broken switch. Even with the windows open he felt drowsy. He thought of Corinna and his skin crystalised to a shell and he sat there waiting to crack. Heat shimmered on the asphalt and glare lacquered the windscreen. He screwed his eyes against it and began looking for a place to pull over and rest. As bend bend unfurled bend he became irritated. He accelerated. He didn't care. What did anything matter? Still the bends continued and still the road remained obtrusely narrow. Then he rounded a corner and found a tractor stalled in the road. He knew he was going too fast but the anasthesia of hopelessness screened him from fear. Warmth flooded his veins as instinctively he wrenched the wheel to the left. On the edge of his vision he saw a man look up and register shock as he dropped a tool and moved back. Yet the face was not his, but Corinna's. He heard tyres shriek as the car slewed sideways.

~~~

'You're really very lucky to be alive.'

'So you've said. If that’s the good news, what’s the bad?’

‘Well, you've got a hairline fracture in your left fibula – the lower leg, that is – which we’ve put in plaster. It’ll mend easily. You’ve three fractured ribs from the impact of the steering wheel, and severe bruising. Again these are not serious and will heal naturally but until they do, breathing and upper body movement will be painful. And you’ve also sufferered extensive lacerations around the face and neck. These are superficial and should mostly disappear but some may leave scars. You weren’t hoping for a Hollywood career, I hope?’

He laughed self-consciously and Niall was aware he was stalling for time. There was something else, then.

‘I’m afraid that’s not all.’ He drew a deep breath and swallowed. ‘The other problem could be more serious.’

‘Could be?’

‘It depends on your situation, your attitude. Niall, may I ask you a personal question?’

To Niall it seemed a curious request from one who had already examined his body minutely from head to toe.

‘Do you have any children?’

Niall shook his head.

‘I was afraid that might be the case.’ He took off his glasses and massaged the welt where they'd been resting. ‘Your body has experienced a condition called torsion. It’s extremely rare. It’s also impossible to diagnose in an unconscious patient. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for four days and heavily sedated. This is normal precedure and essential for a body in a state of shock. Torsion doesn't show up on X-ray. It's only evidenced through pain and it must be rectified extremely quickly, within hours. If this doesn’t happen, it manifests itself through tumesence and discolouration, which is how we discovered it. But by then it's too late.’

Niall remained mute, absorbing the facts in a state of numbness. Where it was leading to was obvious, but how much of him had gone? What was left?

‘Torsion is a twisting of the spermatic cord within the scrotum. As I’ve said it’s extremely rare. It’s like having a touriquet applied and it results in the occlusion of the blood supply to the testes. In effect, Niall, it’s like a vasectomy but one which can't be reversed.'

Niall stared at Richards, his mind reeling. ‘Do you mean I can never ...?'

Dr Richards was anticipating the question. ‘It shouldn’t affect your physical ability to have sex. But you won’t be able to father a child.'

In the silence that followed, Dr Richards rose slowly. He appeared struggling for words. ‘Remember, you are very lucky to be alive.’ He pursed his lips and nodded as if consoling himself. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘I’d like a phone,’ Niall said. ‘I need to speak to my wife.’

He felt the nurses were being especially kind. They wore masks of cheeriness in his presence. Their eyes always sought out his as they passed. The ward ran thick with pity.

Mostly he thought about Corinna and the distance between them.

‘Corinna, it’s me.’

‘Niall, where the hell are you? You said you'd be home days ago. I’ve been worried.’

‘I’m OK but I’m in hospital.’

Her face was framed inside a gilt A with black borders, the first time he saw it. Spirals of yellow tresses around features which dirty window made muzzy. She was smoking, her head cocked, a blue flume running behind the remaining letters - NDY BELL’S - stuck to the glass in the curve of a boomerang. Later he surprised himself that he remembered this because at the time the image had little effect on him. She looked ordinary, and he was going to the pub to meet friends. It was simply the way the head was positioned within the A that caught his eye, an act of contrived theatre, but of course it had been pure chance, a function of coincidences – the table she’d chosen, her height, his position on the pavement – and the effect had only lasted for the fraction of time that all elements held the alignment to make it work. His friends didn’t show. He waited. She waited.

He lent over. ‘Is your evening being ruined too?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Except by you.’

They married six months later. A quiet wedding followed by a riot at Sandy Bell’s.

We were young then, he reflected. At least we felt young because the war had cheated us of much of our youth. She was twenty-two and I was twenty-six. The year after I was demobbed. Love was in plentiful supply then. Yes, he thought, everyone was trying to live life twice as fast to make up for the lost years.

The first time they made love, the week after first meeting, was against the roar of nationalism. Scotland had beaten England 12-3 at rugby that day and the city was on a drunken high. Corinna, who was Irish, had naturally sided with the Scots.

‘Niall,’ she hesitated, ‘I might get pregnant ... ’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘In fact, I believe it’s the only the way you can.’ And they’d laughed and carried on.

And now? Now there was no way she could. At least not by him.

‘Torsion? I’ve never heard of it ... ’

He explained.

‘Oh, well that’s not so bad.’

‘Not so bad? Not so fucking bad … is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘I mean, it won’t really affect us, will it?’

He felt wiped. He struggled for the equivalent for a woman. A hysterectomy, he supposed. And for the first time he wondered how a woman felt being pronounced barren. Did it too cut to the root of womanhood? Did it leave her feeling half a woman as he now felt half a man? No, it was worse than that. He felt neutered. No longer a he. An it. And Corinna had almost sounded relieved. Well, that’s not so bad.

Subsequently in bed Corinna and he had taken precautions. Not scrupulously, but when convenient. They believed they were different, that their’s was a love on a higher plane than everyone else’s. They didn’t want to share it. Not then. They didn’t want children to take over the new freedom and togetherness they’d found.

Edinburgh was rich enough in character and spice to provide them with an extended honeymoon. Two or three years, it lasted. She was a secretary, wanted to be a fashion model, but the closest she got was some low-grade catalogue jobs. As reality slowly snuffed the flame of hope, she started a modelling agency. Niall expected it to fold within a matter of months but it grew into a small dependable business. They worked, played and travelled together when commitments allowed. The idea of having children seemed as claustrophobic as a curfew.

‘No, Corinna, it won’t affect you.’

‘Niall, does it mean that you can’t ... ’

‘And would that affect you either?’

They'd passed the climacteric seven-year benchmark with their love not only intact, but seemingly fortified. When the substance passed into shadow and the shadow began to fade was not discernible at the time but in retrospect could be tracked through a series of minor events, each a weak acid in the process of dissolution. Ultimately, as he spent more time away from home and she threw herself into work for which the maintenance of her beauty became an obsessive ritual, the connection atrophied and broke.

‘Niall, I’m sorry.’

‘Yea. Me too.’

‘When will you be home?’

‘About three weeks.’

‘Look, I’d come out but ...’

There was always a 'but'. They could afford it but she had shows coming up. There were a dozen other reasons why it wasn’t practical. Still, he'd have loved it to have been an option.

‘I’d better go, Corinna. See you soon.’

‘Take care of yourself.’

He tried to speak but choked.

For three weeks he lay there, healing, despairing; his sole possession the diary of a dying man.

2

So my diary has been found again! My quest is reborn! There is much for you to learn but this is the part you'll never know, nor would you understand in the confusion of your own longing.

Rochester, New Hampshire, 1821.

I'm ten. I stop and look in a puddle. The light’s fading but enough remains. By moving my head about I can grow a beard. When I’m older, I swear, I’ll grow a beard of my own. A big one, just like this. I view the cluster of leaves bordering my reflection and forgive their colours. The dying conviviality of aspen and maple are not the stuff of real beards but my fantasy accomodates them. I'm a pirate, or an explorer ... Charles Francis Hall, Famous Explorer ... aarhhh! I wink. The explorer winks back. A wink, a snub nose and a smile. Skin of chalk mud. Hair (my own), a curly black fleece. Beard (my own), lime, red and yellow. aarhhh!

‘Well, hallo Charles.’

I start. See Mr Withers scrutinising me through his pince-nez. He has a neck like a plucked chicken’s, scraggy and with a prominent adam’s apple as if his last meal had stuck. Perhaps his collar is too tight. A high collar with starched lapets. Everything about him is tight and pinched, including his accent. His mutton chops do much to conceal a bird-like face. Mr Wren Withers. The name is English, he is known to boast, after the architect. If he draws ignorance he adds with a patronising air, St Paul’s. This means nothing to me. I don't like Mr Withers. He’s considered a bit odd. A bachelor. No friends. Keeps himself to himself. Private money. He’s tall and carries a stick too small for any practical purpose. Mr Withers is a gentleman. I know that but I'm not sure what a gentleman is, besides someone to be respected. And I respect Mr Withers for another reason; his eyes can see right through people's heads. He knows what I'm thinking. I met him first at church. His eyes seemed to follow me everywhere. If I have a bad thought, he’ll tell my parents. I try to wipe thoughts of Pa from my mind. How that morning he beat me for entering the workshop, and how I wished he were dead. No, don’t think about I it ...

‘Good day, Mr Withers.’ I stiffen, drop my head and look at the ground midway between us. Behind my back, my hands catch and hold. The shame of it. Mr Withers knows.

Shiny black shoes enter my vision. They come closer. I want to step back but I don't move. I can smell tobacco. And the tang of something piquant which takes a moment to register; mothballs. A silver chain is almost touching my nose. I clock my breath and glance up. Mr Withers is smiling. His thin lips, usually down-turned, have straightened. He is not looking down but slowly scanning from one side of the street to the other. There is movement in his trouser pocket.

‘Come with me, Charles. I want to show you something.’ He delivers his words slowly and precisely as if each were a gift, carefully wrapped and fragile. I have no option but to accept.

The air carries the hardness of approaching winter. Trip and you'd cut yourself on it. I shiver. I should be home by now. School ended an hour ago. I can smell factory soot. My boots clatter and spark on the cobbles between sidewalks. Mr Withers slides ahead on silent leather. We stop for a carriage. A bole of steaming excrement is deposited at our feet. We step round it. I should run but I have to banish resistence from my thoughts. A distant bell sounds. Clouds have darkened into bruises. Suddenly Mr Withers has taken my hand. The gesture is invasive. This insistent flesh is warm and moist and grips too hard. This is not courtesy, this is possession.

I don't know where we’re going. We leave the familiar streets of clapperboard houses bunched together, mottled by damp and moss. We enter what I know as ‘rich town’. The houses are well-spaced and of stone. Each is set behind a picket fence through which shrubs and flowers protrude. One has an arched gate set in a tangle of lilac. Another has a hedge so high you can only see chimneys behind it. There are fewer people here. In fact, there appears to be no one at all.

‘Now, Charles, I want you to put this on.’ He stops and draws a red hankerchief from a pocket. ‘I’ll just tie it over your eyes.’

‘But sir. Why?’

‘Because I want it to be a surprise.’

My world turns red, then black. But not quite. As the material tightens round my head, gaps of light appear low down and by squinting I can see out, enough to see gates and their numbers. Then something brushes my head and all light is extinguished as a second band of tightness is applied lower down.

See? He knew. He read my mind.

Walking is hard now. I fear I'm going to collide with something or fall through a hole. My nerves are crying out danger and I want to slow down but the pull on my arm is relentless. We walk for ten minutes. Maybe more. It seems an age. Then I hear the strike of metal and we move though the opening and closing of a gate. Gravel squabbles underfoot.

‘Almost there, Charles.’ His voice has changed. Higher. Taut. He might be about to cry. ‘Mind now, two steps.’

My toes stub stone and I'm hauled upwards. ‘There! Excellent!’

Glee.

A key rattles, a lock yields. The ground gives way to silent softness. A flush of mothballs, so dense it’s hard to breathe. A clock strikes. I count five. My heart's racing. I'm afraid. Imprisoned in darkness I stand motionless while Mr Withers shuffles nearby.

‘This way, Charles.’

Sixteen paces. A fire crackles. I can feel its warmth and make out its glow. Relief! It’s going to be all right! Maybe when I'm allowed to see there’ll be a table of food. Ginger cookies and raisin bread and blueberry jam and pumpkin pie! That would be nice! I'll tell Ma I've been helping an old man. I'll do my chores later, cut the wood, wash up, clean the shoes. Once again I wish I had a brother or sister, someone who’d share the load, who’d help steer me through the strange map of growing up. Yes, I’ll think of all the things I've got to do at home and of how upset Ma and Pa will be at my lateness, and Mr Withers will understand.

More lights flicker around me – lamps, I assume – then the rustle of material. Suddenly a shadow blankets me. The smell of tobacco descends. Heat and breath, close, very close. Something touches my chest and runs up and down. Then the knots are undone and the blindfolds fall.

I jump at the shock of seeing Mr Withers’ face six inches from mine but hands catch me behind my head and hold me firmly.

‘Don’t be afraid, Charles. I like you very much. This’ll be our little secret. Do you understand?’

‘Yes sir. But I’ve got to get home. My ma and pa'll be real worried if I’m late. I got chores to do ...’

‘Yes, it won’t take long, Charles.’

I see now he's removed his hat, coat and collar. His shirt is open revealing a tuft of hair which Mr Withers strokes as if pleased by its resilience. His face is flushed. Pinheads of sweat dot his forehead. A nerve twitches along a furrow. And his eyes look so empty that I could fall into them and disappear forever. Beyond, there is no table of food.

‘You said you had something to show me, sir?’

‘Oh yes.’ His hand abandons the tuft and snakes down his chest to the chair. ‘I’ve several things to show you. But we’ll start with this.’

He rises and goes to a shelf of books. I look about. I've never seen anything so rich. The sort of room a castle or palace would have, I imagine. Much smaller, but so rich. It’s painted dark red. A white band runs round the edge of the ceiling and it’s like the icing on cakes in the baker’s window. Can it be? There are pictures of fierce-looking men and women in gold frames, and heavy curtains patterned with silver horses. And tables with spidery legs and crystal glasses that would break if you breathed on them.

‘Now. Take a look at this, Charles.’ He lays a book on the table and wanders to the door. I lift the book and read the title. Treasures of the Greeks and Romans. I open it at random but am startled to hear a key being turned. Mr Withers is staring at me, chortling, his hands working behind his back.

‘We don’t want to be disturbed now, do we?’ He reaches up and places the key on the highest shelf, then comes and sits down beside me.

‘Now what do you make of this?’ he enquires, turning to the back of the book and placing it open before me.

‘They’re statues, sir.’

‘And what strikes you about them?’

I contemplate the images and blush. ‘Well, they're of men and they don’t have any clothes on, sir.’

‘It’s only natural, you know,’ and he begins unbuttoning his shirt.

I don’t leave my room for a week. Every noise makes me afraid. The opening of the door strikes horror to the depth of my heart. It’s him, coming back for me ... I shrink into the shadows. I try to say my name but I can’t make words. My lips move but my voice is caught and only little bits escape. Mangled, like me. I can’t control them, can’t give them meaning. Soon I give up trying. I fold in on myself. But I think. I can still think. I’ll get away from here. Far, far away from here.

After three months my voice returns, but there are things it will never reveal.

And that’s all I’ve got to say now. There’s more to tell but I’ll leave that to another. I’m watching and waiting. Anersaat and tonrat never die. We’re just out of time, out of place. But our chance to return will come. It always does. You can’t get out of the cycle. After all, the present is nothing but a continuation of the past. I understand that clearly now.

Yes, I will return. I have one remaining score to settle.

~~~

Until his chance purchase of the diary, Niall had never heard of C. F. Hall. What first aroused his curiosity was the entry at the rear of the manuscript. Like the rest of the diary, it was laced with capitals and underlinings. Although written three days before his death, it was not his last act of writing but he had accorded it the final page. It was his Will.

I, CHARLES FRANCIS HALL, being currently - but, alas, temporarily - of Sound Mind, do hereby Testify before Almighty God and the only other Witness I can trust under these Desperate Circumstances, that I do bequeath the sum of $100 (one hundred dollars) to NOAH HAYES in recompense for his loyalty and devotion. ALL Other Monies and Credits accruing to me, and ALL my Worldly Goods and Possessions, I leave to my beloved wife, MARY, of Southside 5th, Cincinnati, Ohio, or, her failing, equally between our children, ANNA and CHARLEY.

I am dying, and yearn for the lost years of a Life cut short. Though I find it hard to ask the Lord’s forgiveness for those who are perpetrating this final Perfidious act against me to bring about my death, I trust that if it is the LORD’s Will then Justice will be done, and if it is not, then Man’s justice will be done. I ask only that I am remembered as a man of Honour. I have tried to do my Duty in faith to Conscience and best ability. May the Lord show Mercy to His humble servant.

On board ‘Polaris’, beset in ice at 82° 03’N, 62° 01’W.

Thank God Harbour, Greenland.

Dated this Third day of November, 1871.

What desperate circumstances? What perfidious act? Niall read the diary and discovered that it only covered the final five months of Hall’s life. One day, he thought, if he had time, he’d look into the life of Charles Francis Hall, and particularly into his mysterious death.

If he had time ...

In retrospect he would wonder if he ever had any choice in the matter. If Hall’s diary didn’t have a talismanic effect on whoever touched it, and their life ceased to be wholly their own.

'Not much longer, Niall,' Dr Richards beamed. ''You're mending well. Another week and we'll let you loose on crutches. And a week after that you should be fit enough to go home.'

Niall nodded, his face a blank.

'Look, I know it can't be easy but you've got to let some light in. Don't let it drag you under. You could be paralysed from the neck down.'

When it had always remained a possiblity, he'd scarcely given fatherhood a thought. Lying in hospital feeling broken, he realised everything had changed, Yes, he should count his blessings but now one particular blessing was denied him, it was all he craved. Sometimes he tortured himself and ran a hand down to his empty sac. He'd asked what they'd done to him.

'If you really want to know, then I'm afraid I can't be too delicate about it,' Dr Richards had replied. 'Your testes became dead organs. Left in the body they would have putresced and gone gangrenous. We had to remove them.'

'Does that mean my voice will change?'

'No. We've put you on medication to restore the balance of hormones. There should be no other side-effects.'

This then would be a secret he could keep. No one else need ever know. If he could only learn to live with it himself.

~~~

He recalled a scene from childhood. He couldn’t swear the images came from memory or that he had lived them at their centre. He might have seen them from an outer circle, witnessed someone else’s past and incorporated the details into his own. Or he might have stolen them from some perfect picture of childhood: an enchanted time of security, wonder and relatively uncomplicated love. His own childhood wasn’t perfect but it was mercifully devoid of neglect or overt abuse. It left scars, as everyone’s did, but ones he considered to have only lightly disfigured personality, and which might yet heal. Therefore what happened that day could have happened to him (and at that particular location), only, with the passing years his perspective on the whole, innocent affair had radically altered.

It is autumn and sunlight emblazons trees on the edge of the haugh. Bracken is turning, green fronds blighted by an infusion of yellow, and below, a quilt of dwarf blaeberry glowing amber and crimson. A sweet musty smell tints the air now that the morning frost has melted and moistened the earth. The curled hands of chestnut trees lie scattered in loose piles and crackle underfoot. Two people. They are walking the banks of the Deveron which meanders in exaggerated bends of lazy black water. Nature is withdrawing into itself for the long slumber. No trout nose the surface, no rings of surprise and mystery which dapple summers. The air is still, with a dignity which decries sounds as acts of trespass.

They are holding hands. The path is too narrow for them both and the man allows the boy to possess it, a gesture that sits comfortably with them for the man’s stride is able to accommodate the awkwardness of gnarled roots which form occasional snares and the boy is too happy to take notice of inconvenience or privilege. Small birds chatter and his attention chases them. His fair hair is a close-cropped mass of curls which will always defy partings and styling. A loose navy blue pullover with torn cuffs covers his frame, and he wears shorts that touch his knees, and sandshoes stained with the tidemarks of puddles. He is six or seven, very thin, and now he’s skipping.

The man is of indeterminate age, perhaps thirty or forty, but no older. His hair also curls but more loosely and is thinning to a pinkish circle on the pate. His gait is determined. He wears strong leather shoes, tweed trousers burnished with use and a khaki jersey with leather elbow pads. That’s all there ever comes to mind. The picture remains incomplete. He’s the sort of figure you can most readily picture from behind, always retreating.

‘Hey! You almost pulled me off balance.’

‘I bet I can pull you over ... ’ He squares to his father and pulls and pulls. The man has casually braced himself without giving any indication of a change in posture. The boy strains to no effect. Then he places a foot against his father’s knee and heaves again but all this achieves is to raise his own sparrow body into the air and suddenly his father is hoisting him up and enveloping him in his arms and they roll over, laughing, making leaves crackle.

‘All right,’ the boy concedes, as he crawls free and picks himself up, ‘You win. But I’ll race you ... to that tree ... readysteadygo ... ’

His stotty legs spin. Five yards short of the tree his father catches up but slows to the youngster’s speed and holds back .

‘I’m the fastest ... ’ his high-pitched voice whoops, and then he’s off, running up the wooden steps of the suspension bridge. He pauses, guarding the entrance against the hostile army his father now represents. I’m the fastest. I’m the highest. I’m the bravest.

An age of superlatives, of unlimited dreams, of ambitions yet to be undermined by those who have lost the power of belief.

His father pretends to be a bear and performs a dance, grunting as he sways and jumps, his arms swinging heavily. The boy imitates him and they dance together, giggling in the intimacy of a shared fantasy. Then they’re both on the bridge, leaning over with a pile of twigs at their feet. They play Pooh-sticks, each dropping a twig into the river at the same time and watching it drift downstream towards an imaginary finishing line. The river has gathered itself into a faster flow here and there are eddies among the rocks where racers get caught, going round and round while the other twig has a free run. Sometimes the race ends like that. Sometimes the trapped twig manages to latch onto the current again and breaks free, while the leader gets side-tracked and loses the race. Like life.

‘What’s that white stuff?’

‘It’s froth. It’s just churned up water, like toothpaste.’

‘Yuch!’

They walk on, luxuriating in the warmth. The boy stoops to pick up something. ‘What’s this?’

‘An acorn. It’s the seed of a tree. Now, which tree ... ? Yes, that one there. An oak. This little seed will grow into that big tree.’

He puts it in his pocket. ‘I’m going to take it home so I can watch it.’

What’s this. And what’s that. His father never tires of answering the questions, of feeding knowledge to this miniature of himself. As if compensating for the deficit of another.

‘Do you know everything?’

‘No! Of course not!’ Suddenly the little body next to him seems weary. He’s flagging. ‘We’d better head back. And I know where we can get an ice cream on the way home.’

A little hand in a big hand. A childhood memory. It keeps recurring and Niall Fraser can’t shake it loose. With time it has become so vivid he can feel that little hand in his.

~~~

'We're discharging you tomorrow. How does that grab you?'

'It's fine. I'd like to thank you for all you've done.'

It was fine now he had a plan. It was over a month since his accident. For most of it he'd wallowed in depresssion. His past stretched behind him, so many chaotic, treacherous stepping stones over a pool of failure. Just when he’d found a firm footing, life’s momentum once again upset his balance and pushed him forwards, or backwards. His marriage was finished. His career was over. Of course he could just buy new gear and carry on as before but his appetitie for photography had gone. Human interest had been his speciality and that meant feeding on the suffering of others. He thought back over the images that had once made him feel proud, creative, and all he could see was human life in ruins. Where was the joy in the world? Why did it never last? Maybe it was wrong to hope that what were just temporary lapses out of sadness or turbulence could ever endure in the crazed lives of humans? Yet an instinct existed that affirmed we had a right to regular doses of goodness, if we behaved properly. That’s what the Calvinist God of his mother had apparently ordained. Well, he'd played the game so where was his pay-off? Slipped. Failed. Drenched. And now he could add one more, the unkindest of all. Neutered.

He could never father a child. This was incontrovertible fact. He looked at it from every angle – organ regeneration? transplant? – trying to find a way round, but there was none. Those organs didn't regenerate and a transplant had never been done, and even if it were possible, any child still wouldn't be his. Then another thought struck him. It was obvious really, but it hadn't occurred to him until recently. What if he already was a father?

He thought back to the women he'd slept with. There weren't many. He got to eight, including Corinna. Then he remembered a ninth. Three had been in Scotland, the rest had been casual encounters on his travels. There'd been a couple in Denmark, one in Brazil and one in France. The absurdity of the thought-process made him sigh. He hadn't the address of a single one of them. He'd slept with them fifteen to twenty years ago and only known their maiden names and the cities they'd been in at the time. They would have married and moved by now. He hadn't a hope in hell of tracking them down in countries whose populations numbered millions.

But one was different, the one to whom he'd lost his virginity. At the age of nineteen he'd worked on a freighter which had cargo for Greenland. He'd spent a week there. Each evening Inuit girls came to the ship for drunken parties, but Navarana had not been among them. They'd met through one of her friends and fallen for each other. They'd sworn undying love and been inseperable. He could still feel the pain of being wrenched apart. Greenland's population was forty-five thousand. They were dispersed across several dozen towns and villages. Few people travelled far from the place they were born. Everyone knew everyone else and cherished lineages that ran back for centuries. In Greenland you could return after twenty-one years and expect to find one person. Maybe she had bourne his child. It was a minute hope but the only one left. He'd go back to Umanak.

3

Umanak, West Greenland, 20 September 1961

Arrivals are climacteric moments on the human journey, rites of passage through gates of uncertainty. Even the humblest can assume the threshold of initiation. Niall felt the grip of this one as a mixture of apprehension and excitement tearing him in different directions. Yet deep down, whatever the outcome, he knew he had made the right decision. His fate was here. Two points in a life like the tumbling flight of a snipe were being connected. The completion of a circle.

The Disko took one day to steam from Nuuk, the capital, to Umanak, frequently having to slow to nudge a passage through floes which had drifted together. This was her last journey of the season before returning to Denmark for winter which she would spend hauling cargo on West African routes. The majority of passengers were young Greenlanders sporting denim jackets with inane Americanisms stitched diagonally across their backs (‘FEEL FREE’, ‘GO CRAZY’, ‘No 1 GANG’). He nodded comprehension: a school exchange returning home neatly packaged and labelled by a superpower as part of Greenland’s recompense for allowing its territory to be used for Distant Early Warning stations.

The other passengers were a medley of mine workers, Danish bureaucrats whose briefcases betrayed their profession or Inuit families. Among them was a young woman in a red anorak unusual for her wavy hair and freckles. Niall stood out among them, a Scotsman gone native, white skin and ruddy cheeks above the bulk of a caribou parka bought a week earlier at an exorbitant price in Alborg. The price seemed worth it as he stood on deck, tingling outwardly and inwardly with warmth, as he watched Greenland’s coastline unfold. His arms rested on a rail whose fresh coat of paint failed to conceal from his eye the deep pitting of rust. He’d been there, done that. The sailors’ life, spending every day of every voyage chipping and painting. A floating painter and decorator, that was the reality of life on the ocean waves. Now there was no ship’s officer to bellow him out of daydreaming. He had bought a ticket, a licence to look.

A vista of mountains stretched before him, a band of bare rock billowing into the distance to the north and south. Pink Julianhab granite formed deep below the seabed 1800 million years ago and folded over in massive upheavals to create this awesome range of peaks. Erosion had left their upper edges frayed and scabrous, and their faces veined by fissures from which the snow never melted. A meanness of earth restricted grass on the higher slopes to a covering so sparse it was invisible from afar, and only in the valley bogs did Greenland truly turn green. The mountains lost much of their height by the time they reached the coast, deflating into rounded hills strewn with boulders or collapsing into cliffs of dark tones. Valleys cradled glaciers which released icebergs into the sea with resounding reports like those of a twenty-five pounder. It was a lean landscape, all bones and gristle and muscle. Ancient. Haughty. Defiant. It took a certain type of person to love it, and Niall Fraser was of that type. He felt he could look it in the eye and hold his stare, even though it frightened him. He had a strange conviction that he would conquer this land, and ultimately it would conquer him and possess him; that he would never leave.

Presently, with a surge of excitement, he recognised the distinctive profile of Usik Mountain which soared above Umanak and was the town’s dominant feature. He laughed at its crude symbolism, never more apt than at this moment. From a battlefield of rubble it rose in a clean sweep to vertical rock and a ridge serrated by deep clefts. The cleft at its northern end separated a tall rounded pinnacle from the summit mass, a remarkable free-standing formation at least eighty feet tall. To this feature the mountain owed its name; usik, the penis bone of a walrus. At least this was what Niall had been told. He had no idea whether the male walrus had such a bone nor how its mechanics might work so as not to interfere with daily walrus routines. Niall suspected his informant might have just been pulling the leg of a white man, a qallunaaq.

Within him, hope and the sensible precaution of stiffling it battled for supremacy. Here he might find his child, his own flesh and blood. Greenland might have given birth to his progeny, and be his rebirth too. He couldn’t think of a fresh start which offered a promise so complete.

‘Excuse me. You are going to stay in Umanak?’

He turned to face the young woman and followed her lead by answering in Danish, his faltering. Javel. Og De? ‘Yes. And you?’

‘I am the teacher there. You are an engineer?’

‘No. If I were, my Danish would probably ... how can I say ... make catastrophe.’

‘Katastrofe. Very good. Would English be easier for you?’

Her skin was florid brown like the colour of lips though a glass of diluted whisky. Her features were typically Greenlandic, an attractively broad nose and a mongoloid slant to the eyes. Her straight black hair, cut short, was given a vital sheen by the angle of the sun. Niall was entranced. She was the essence of her landscape, exuding the same pained beauty and wise-innocence. Then he noticed her earrings. Her politics. A bent arm, with harpoon raised. The emblem of Inuit Ataqatigiit. The Inuit Brotherhood.

‘Why do you come to Umanak?'

He smiled, somewhat excessively, still not comfortable with a response that was partly the truth but carried so little conviction. ‘I’m writing a book.’

Her hazel eyes skipped a blink and hardened. ‘About ... life among the Eskimos?’ She delivered the sarcasm as perfectly as the English.

‘No, I’m not writing about the Inuit.’ He enunciated the word with emphasis, to show credentials. To show he knew. Inuit. ‘The People.’ Their chosen designation. ‘I think that’s been done more than enough in the past.’ He had wrested back the advantage but only just. Her suspicions remained. ‘I’m writing a biography. I’ve got reference books and notes. I just want peace to work.’

He moved quickly to change the subject. ‘Are those some of your pupils?’

She nodded.

‘I take it you’ve just got back from America?’ He’d heard them talking.

She nodded.

‘How was it?’

She allowed the silence between them to solidify into glass. It magnified her, diminished him. She was small and lithe – barely distinguishable from her pupils – but she had assumed a formidable presence. Julianhab granite personified. His discomfort turned to mild panic and he contemplated breaking the deadlock by answering his own question with some innocuous generalisation, but resisted. He knew it was a test. What the hell am I up against, he thought? First they think I’m a Dane, and they hate Danes. Then they think I’m spying on them to write some condescending crap. A Winter Among the Meat-Eaters of the North! He suddenly became aware of the irony. His furs. Her denim (‘STAY COOL’). Transvestites mimicking each other. Emblems of dabbling in another culture and feeling loftily superior, or orphans desperately endeavouring to be assimilated by it. The latter was true of him but not, he suspected, of her. Like the mountains she appeared aloof, prepared to parody and mock all who encroached her shadow and did not belong. She was committing the same offence of which she had tacitly accused him. Her book hadn’t been written, but embroidered. A Brief Sojourn in the Great American Dream! He wanted to protest, affirm. ‘Hey! We’re the same. I also come from an oppressed people.’ But it was futile. He wondered