out a hand. ‘I’m Jeff Blake, I do the book work and sometimes I’m allowed to pilot the plane—this one, that is, not Jake’s.’
Annis laughed at him, told Freddy that he was a wretch and added: ‘But I am as strong as a horse, you know.’
Jeff gave her a wicked look. ‘Never mind the strength, just so long as you can bathe a fevered brow and cook.’ He turned to Freddy. ‘All set? Let’s go, then.’
The two men talked shop, quite unintelligible to Annis, but she didn’t mind. This trip was so much more exciting than the flight from London that morning; the Norwegian coast quickly disappeared and there was nothing but the sea below and the clear sky all around. She sat quietly, mulling over her day. It had all happened too quickly for her; she would have to go back to Tromso and take time to explore—which reminded her about things like days off…
‘Do I get any free time?’ she asked, ruthlessly cutting in on electronic jargon.
‘Lord, yes,’ Freddy assured her. ‘There are only twenty of us, you know, and most of the time we’re fighting fit; all we want are three good meals a day, some help with the books and a soothing hand if we’re ill.’ He turned to pick up a Thermos flask. ‘And Jake sees to it that we never are. He doesn’t mind the odd accident, but he draws the line at headaches and vague disorders.’
‘And who is this Jake?’
‘The doctor—the company needed one while we were at the radio station and he fancied a holiday.’ He grinned at her. ‘Wait till you meet him.’
‘Oh—why?’
But Jeff only laughed, it was Freddy who observed: ‘They’ll make a good pair.’
Annis forgot their remarks soon enough. Her first glimpse of Spitzbergen dispelled every other thought from her head; great grey snow-capped mountains on the horizon, a little frightening because suddenly she realised how far they were from everywhere else. ‘It looks bleak,’ she ventured.
‘It’s beautiful, so quiet you can hear the ice floes cracking on their way through the fjords down to the sea, birds of course and seals, and the odd whale.’
‘People?’
‘The odd thousand or so scattered between the three settlements. And us, of course.’
‘Are we very far from a—a settlement?’
‘An hour’s flight—someone goes once a fortnight to pick up provisions and post; the Coastal Express calls too with the odd crate.’
She had to be content with that. The men fell to talking technicalities once more, leaving her to contemplate the awe-inspiring landscape.
The sun was still shining brilliantly as Jeff brought the seaplane down close to a flat, lichen-covered tongue of rock, the mountains towered all round them with a narrow strip of rock between them and the sea, and scattered along it were wooden huts and what Annis vaguely supposed to be wireless stations; there was a round building too, standing well away from the rest. It looked remarkably lonely even in the late evening sun, but not for long. As they came to rest on the iron grey water she could see men emerging from the huts and running towards them. Two of them got into a small motorboat tied to a rickety pier and started towards the plane.
‘We’re here,’ said Freddy unnecessarily.
There was nothing lacking in her welcome; any doubts Annis might have still been harbouring were drowned in the enthusiastic greeting she got from the men. There were more than a dozen of them, shaking her by the hand the moment she stepped rather gingerly on the rock, telling her their names, declaring that she was the answer to a prayer—just what the doctor had ordered.
‘I wasn’t aware that I had done any such thing,’ drawled a voice behind her, and to the accompaniment of shouts of laughter Annis turned round, bristling a little because the voice had held mockery.
Its owner suited the scenery very well. He was large and rugged, with great shoulders and towering over everyone there. Good-looking too, only his dark eyes were cool and his mouth was a thought too straight for her liking. Not so very young either, she decided; his thick dark hair was grey at the temples.
She held out a hand. ‘How do you do?’ she said in her sweetest voice.
CHAPTER TWO
THE HAND which grasped hers was hard and firm and cool, and when she looked at the doctor’s face she could see no trace of mockery there; she must have imagined it.
He said in a deep slow voice: ‘Hullo, Annis, I’m so glad you have come—we’ve been taking it in turns to cook and we’re all very bad at it.’
She said with a touch of frost because he had called her Annis without even asking: ‘I’m a nurse.’
He said gravely: ‘We have almost no sickness here and—we hope—only occasional accidents, but if there is a mass outbreak of measles I, and I’m sure the rest of the team, won’t grumble.’
There was general laughter at that and she laughed too, not because she found it very amusing but because it was so obviously expected of her. She looked up and saw the gleam in the doctor’s eye; probably he wanted to annoy her. ‘I don’t know your name…’ she reminded him gently.
‘Jake—Jake van Germert. I hope you’ll call me Jake—we’re all on the best of terms; you’ve met most of us, but there are several on duty. You’ll meet them in the morning.’ He looked over the men’s heads to speak to a short, fat man, a good deal older than the rest of them. ‘How about Freddy taking Annis to their hut, Willy, while we dish the supper.’
She vaguely remembered shaking the fat man’s hand. Presumably he was the boss; he looked mild and absent-minded and probably had a remarkable brain. He smiled at her now and came to take her arm. ‘Lead on, Freddy. Annis, you can have ten minutes to make your beautiful self even more beautiful and then you shall have supper, such as it is.’
The hut, which looked bare and unwelcoming from the outside, was a surprise. Its furniture was comfortable and the covers and cushions were brightly coloured. Two rooms led from the small living room, small too, but her bed looked comfortable and there was a good sized cupboard and a dressing table. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but she was agreeably surprised now. It wasn’t for a few days that she discovered that she and Freddy had been moved into the hut shared by the boss and the doctor, who had taken up quarters in one of the other huts, which while comfortable, had no living room and was more cramped. She unpacked a few things, did her hair and her face and with Freddy beside her, crossed the bare rocky ground between them and a larger hut which, he explained, was their communal centre, where they ate and played cards, and played records and spent their leisure. ‘We go climbing too,’ he added, ‘and fishing; it’s pretty quiet in the winter, though.’
The understatement of the year, thought Annis. It seemed pretty quiet now, with nothing but the seabirds calling and the gentle wash of the icy water against the rock. ‘Holidays?’ she asked.
‘Oh, rather, everyone goes to Norway in turn— there’s a plane or they can go by the Coastal Express. I’ll go in a couple of months, though; I’ll be finished by then. Jake’s going too—he’s got a practice in Holland, you know.’
‘No, I didn’t
