Collector of Lost Things (27 page)

We pulled the boats onto the shore and waded through the shallows, skirting the animals at a safe distance with several of the men raising their pikes and gaffs in case of attack.

‘See those,’ Connor Herlihy said, pointing out several carcasses, ‘they’ve been killed by a bear. A polar bear. It’s attacked the colony and killed two of the youngs.’

I examined the bones. Connor was almost certainly right. The carcasses had been picked clean and neatly pulled apart in several places. It was the site of a feast: something large had eaten these animals without hurry, unconcerned about the colony so near by.

Bletchley came to my side. ‘Is it a bear’s kill?’ he asked.

‘So I have been told.’

He looked along the shore, then out to sea, imagining the route of the attack. ‘It ate the pup in full view of the others,’ he said, fascinated. His tone intrigued me. From the look upon his face, it was clear he was searching for some revelatory fact among the bones.

‘It seems, Edward, that the Arctic is always this way,’ I said. ‘Despite all this emptiness and space, there is no room for ceremony or discretion. Animals are killed and disposed of wherever they are.’

‘First the bear, then the birds,’ he replied. ‘They have pecked the carcass clean.’

The party of men stood in a loose group, close by, casually selecting animals from those at hand and deciding on their merits. A tureen of soup was passed around, of meat and potatoes and hard peas with toasted sippet, and several men sat among the stones to have their fill, before lighting their pipes. Talbot, in their centre, was retelling a story—among men and their weapons, ahead of a hunt, it was the only time I ever saw him animated. At all other times he was barely able to say a civil word.

‘You had better stand back,’ he instructed Bletchley and myself in a loud commanding voice. The men put their bowls down and stood alongside him, as he pointed out various positions.

As the men crouched, preparing for the hunt, the walruses turned away. The men advanced, using gaffs to hook an animal and try to drag it from the others. The walruses were a sea of overcoats, like a crowd of large men pushing each other. The chosen one turned several times, lunging angrily at the men with its flared tusks. A great sound resounded from its throat, a gutteral cough and bellow that mixed with the clamour that was rising among the colony as the panic spread.

The colony acting as one was an impressive spectacle. Several large individuals had herded the cubs into a protected corral, while the rest of the walruses massed and rose in height, creating a formidable and impenetrable wall of bodies. But the men worked relentlessly with hooks and lances, trying to gain purchase on their animal. Several times the hooks merely bounced off the thick whorls of blubber, and it was only when two of the gaffs were secured through the tail flippers that this animal decided to turn and fight.

It twisted, a limbless bull, and swung its head at the men, its tusks stabbing and plunging in open air. Behind it, the colony continued to roll back, until the animal was isolated. The men jabbed it from all sides with the points of their lances. It bucked at them, raising and rolling and throwing itself with incredible vigour and weight. Several times the lances were slapped out of the men’s grip. But other lances found their mark, and were driven into the walrus with little discrimination, as if they were attempting to puncture it. The animal roared horribly, the insides of its mouth a wet livid pink.

One by one the men ran at the walrus to club it across the head with hakapiks or rocks. It reacted with surprise, turning towards the spot where the man had attacked, but already someone was coming at it from a different angle. Agility and speed gave the men an advantage, as they effectively hunted in a pack. Still, the animal’s sheer weight made it a contest that could not be called. The thickness of the skin, blubber and skull was immense.

The assault went on for the best part of ten minutes, then without any overt sign of wounding, the walrus lowered its head to the stones in apparent submission. It looked strangely peaceful, as if withdrawing from the violence or falling into a deep sleep. Once or twice it moaned, lifting its head, but gradually its motions lessened.

‘That’ll be it, lads,’ Talbot said. ‘Well done. He was a big ’un.’

The men looked on with a little wonderment at the prey they had slain. They were sweaty and ragged and this had been a tough life to extinguish. Yet the animal was clearly still alive. The seal has no heart, the captain had said to Bletchley during that first meal of the voyage, and perhaps the same was true of the walrus. Despite the invasions of the lances, despite the clubbing from the hakapiks and hammers, that great heart had still not been found.

‘The axe,’ Talbot said.

Now, I thought, they are going to hack the head off this dying animal right in front of my eyes. They will swing an axe as if they are felling a tree trunk, and I will be able to do nothing but wait until the job is completed. I sat on the stones, on the putrid shore, while the axe was raised for the beheading. I wanted no memory of this. But even with my eyes firmly shut I felt each awful blow as the axe was sunk into the flesh, searching for the neck bone. It took the best part of several minutes, the axe being passed from one man to another, for them to share the burden.

When I opened my eyes, the shoreline was slick with the most vivid red blood imaginable, poured thickly over the stones as one might do a sauce or preserve. The men were drenched in this same butchery from their hands to their shoulders. On first impression, it looked as though they had reached into the very body of the walrus in the search for the twist of the bone that would bring it apart, the lock that would unhinge this great animal.

All that was left of the walrus was a folded stump of oak, still bleeding. Headless, but with a force of pressure inside that brought blood to the severed end of the animal with constant welling. I have never seen a creature bleed so much—or be so full of blood—in all my life. And I doubt I ever shall, again, God willing.

And all of this for the two tusks that I could see being held by a couple of the men as they eased the great head, as large as a cannon ball, into a canvas sack. The tusks were very valuable, I had been told, as they could be sold at a high price to dentists in Liverpool for the manufacture of false teeth.

It was only then, with the violence of the hunt receding, that we noticed Edward Bletchley, sitting in the blood, his palms pressed into the stones and tears streaming down his face. He was moaning in apparent grief and, when all the men had stopped to look at him, he raised his hands up, covered in blood, for them to see.

Talbot stood squarely in front of him, a scolding father above an infuriating child.

‘Lift this man from the slick and get him to the boat,’ he said.

Back on the
Amethyst
, Bletchley was taken to his cabin and laid down on his bunk. I tended to him, helped by Simao and a couple of the men. We removed his bloodstained clothes and helped him into his nightshirt. I noticed how pale and thin his legs were, and how surprisingly weak his chest looked. Tremors ran through his forearms and flicked at his fingers. During the return journey he had not spoken, and didn’t speak then, in his cabin. But as I was about to leave, he grabbed hold of my wrist. I bent my ear to his mouth.

‘My flask!’ he whispered, in a hot breath. I gestured for the others to leave. Alone with him, I quickly found his personal hip flask and filled a glass with the odd green liquor. He drank it feverishly, then turned away from me to face the wall of his cabin. He fell into an immediate sleep.

I felt deeply shaken, and kept looking at Bletchley’s flask and its promise of instant relief. I tried to recall its strange taste and the drowsy sensation of swallowing it. Some remained in the glass, left in his haste to consume it. I took a breath, filled the glass to the top, and drank it in one go.

Clara was waiting for me outside his door, upset. ‘You must tell me what happened,’ she insisted. I took hold of her hand and led her directly to my cabin, where I shut the door behind us.

‘I think he will sleep now,’ I said, gesturing for her to sit by me on the bunk. The taste of the drink burnt in my throat. My head felt strange. I told her what had occurred that morning. How Bletchley had been exposed to a sight of slaughter that was too much for him to accept. I described how he had sat, childlike, in the blood of the dead walrus and how he had taken on the responsibility for what had happened. I hoped he was peaceful now. I didn’t describe the delirium tremens that had run through his arms.

Clara sat, deep in thought. Her ringlets hung to the side of her face, so gentle, so feminine, so at odds with all that I had witnessed a few hours earlier.

‘I will go now, Eliot.’

I nodded. Already my vision was beginning to spin.

I’ll never let you go,
I replied. I’m sure I said it, as I lay down on my bunk and turned to face the wall, unable to fight the wave of tiredness. A sense of dread overwhelmed me.

Huntsman appeared, agitated, pacing the cabin back and forth, so tall that he had to angle his neck to one side. I smelt the stink of his clothes and listened to the brush of the rough sealskin along the edge of my bunk. Wringing his hands angrily, he kept stopping, trying to listen, occasionally lifting a finger as if he had heard something and needed to alert me. I lay on the bed, moaning. He refused to look me in the eye, but began to pace once more, touching the walls of the cabin and attempting to peep through the cracks in the wood. His manner was utterly caged, utterly feral; he seemed determined to peer through every wooden plank of the ship if he had to.

I cried out, shielding my eyes and pushing past him to reach the door. I crossed the saloon and went straight to Clara’s cabin.

‘
Clara?
’ I whispered. ‘Open the door.’

Almost immediately she was there, as if she’d been waiting for me.

‘I’m so afraid,’ I said, reaching out to hold her. She put her arms around me and guided my head onto her shoulder.

‘
Shh
,’ she whispered, consoling. ‘I know, Eliot. I know.’

‘I’m so weary, with all the hunting and slaughter.’

‘We try, Eliot, it is all we can do. We try and we believe. I feel it working, don’t you? If we believe in each other we can overcome everything.’ She put a finger to my lips. ‘
Amor vincit omnia,
’ she whispered: ‘love conquers all. See, you must calm.’ After a prolonged moment she placed her hand on my chest, near my heart.

‘Do you feel that?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

She nodded, her lips becoming taut and thin as she smiled. ‘And I feel connected to the bird we have saved, Eliot. If we are strong, it will recover. Do you feel that now?’

‘I think so.’

‘It is,’ she underlined. ‘We are able to save it.’ She nestled against me and brushed a cool cheek against mine.

‘Believe,’ she whispered.

T
HE TOWN WAS DRAUGHTY
and damp, with bitter curls of wood-smoke blowing around the house corners and water running from the eaves and down the walls. A persistent and heavy drizzle fell, filling the few streets with the sound of dripping. I walked with Clara, holding a waxed umbrella above us and supporting her arm as she stepped in and out of the wheel ruts.

‘At least we’re off the ship,’ I said.

She gave me a thin smile.

Godthåb was the country’s largest settlement, but it was a bleak and lonely place. Several houses had been painted a rust red, with white window frames. Built in the Danish manner, they had heavy timber doorways on stone foundations. These buildings were gentle and civilised, reminiscent of fairy tales and warm Scandinavian evenings, a glimpse of the familiar and welcoming. It was in the largest—which acted as a covered market—that French had arranged his trading goods in front of several interested merchants. I had his sales list on a sheet of paper.

‘Listen to this, Clara, it’s as if we’ve brought enough to furnish an entire town: oilskins, sou’westers, undershirts, overshirts, duck coats, blankets, tin pots, tin pans, mittens, stockings, razors and mosquito netting. Then there’s thread, coverlet cloth, combs, towels, some handkerchiefs—that’s kind, given the colds that must be rife in this place—thimbles, sets of dominoes, beads, calico, needles, glover’s needles for the long Arctic winter nights, knives and forks, scissors, chopping trays and chopping knives, axes, snow knives, shingling hatchets, saws, bastard files, gimlets, awls and fish hooks.’ I folded the paper away. ‘Exhausting.’

‘Tell me, Eliot, have you revised your opinion of that man?’

‘French?’ I considered how I felt about him. ‘I believe he has his own interests at heart. But what is actually in his heart is a mystery. Why do you ask?’

She shrugged. ‘He can be charming when he wishes to be.’

‘Charming? Not a word I would associate with him.’

‘Being pleasant seems to take a toll on his energy. Certainly he finds smiling a tiring business—it doesn’t surprise me the crew are not keen on him.’

‘Has he told you this?’

‘A little.’

‘When?’

‘The evening when you dined with the whalers. He showed me a more considerate side to his character.’

I remembered how he had bathed in the stream that day, pouring bucket after bucket of water over his body. That, and his impatience to return to the ship.

‘But where was your cousin that night?’ I asked.

‘Oh, wandering the ship.’

‘So you ate alone with Mr French?’

‘It was peculiar at first. He couldn’t look me in the eye. I wished you had been there—but he relaxed. He told me about his days in the navy, but that he wished to get away from the sea.’

‘He was thrown out of the navy. Did he tell you that?’

She was thoughtful. ‘He pushes people too far. And he likes to play games. I think he is beginning to play a game with us.’

I was alarmed. ‘What form of game?’

‘Does it not seem to you that in the last few days he has been watching us rather too closely?’

I was sure that Clara was not commenting on any specific incident, but was reacting on intuition. Yet her instincts were often correct. I remembered the way she had touched my cheek, telling me how much I tended not to notice what was occurring.