to enjoy the trip because she had to confess to a secret fear that the small craft might drop like a stone on to the white wastes below them, or lose a wing or a vital bit of its engine, but presently her fears left her, probably because her companion exhibited much the same sort of calm as a bus driver going along a well-remembered country lane.
After a little while he began to point out various landmarks. ‘There’s Magdalena Bay straight ahead, and Konigsfjord is round the corner. The cruisers all go there and then on up to the ice barrier.’
They had been following the coastline for a good deal of the time, now he banked and pointed downwards. ‘There’s Ny Aalesund; we’ll come down by the pier—it’s quite a walk to the shop and the road’s a mixture of coal and lava. We’ll take a taxi if you would rather.’
‘A taxi? Here? Surely they can’t earn their living? Where are the roads?’
‘There are two, and they don’t go far, but all the same a car can be useful to get about. In the winter everyone has snow scooters.’
He came down some way from the shore and taxied slowly up to the pier, where several men appeared to make the plane fast. ‘Out you get,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll go straight to the shop, though I suggest that we stop at the post office and have coffee.’
Annis could see no post office, no houses, for that matter, just a dusty track alongside a bridge being built over a rambling little river hurrying down to the sea. The track opened out on to a road once they had crossed the bridge and she could see it winding uphill, past some wooden houses. The doctor took her arm. ‘It’s much nicer once we get to the top,’ he said reassuringly.
CHAPTER THREE
JAKE WAS RIGHT. They gained the top of the slope and found grass round its curve—rough, tough very short grass, it was true, but a welcome green. The tiny town before them stretched back from the sea, its houses built on either side of the tumbling, untidy little torrent they had already crossed further back, its origins lost in the massive glacier at the head of the valley, some miles away. Mountains towered in a great curve, their sides scarred by mine workings. The houses were wooden, as was the white-painted church, and on the far side of the stream there was a group of new houses, so modern and sedate they might have been in a London suburb instead of at the back of beyond.
The doctor had given Annis time to stand and stare, now he suggested that they should start their walk. ‘Though you can ride if you wish,’ he reminded her, ‘but there’s plenty to see.’
The houses were at first rather old-fashioned and weather-worn, but by the time they had reached the church they looked more modern and well-kept, and the church itself, with its own little house attached to it, was pristine against the dull rock of the mountains behind it. There was lichen beside the cinder road, and tiny flowers and a few patches of the same coarse grass, and there were people too. Annis was surprised to see two young women wheeling babies in prams, and the doctor laughed at her astonished face: ‘People have babies everywhere in the world,’ he observed. ‘The hospital here is more than adequate to deal with any kind of surgery; there are a doctor and a surgeon, midwives, nurses—you name it, they’ve got it.’
They passed a lonely little graveyard half way up the lower slopes of the mountains and Annis said soberly: ‘I suppose they must love being here—I mean, to live here all their lives and die here too.’
‘I think they’re very content and happy, and the children look beautiful—there’s a good school and they go to Norway for their higher education and come home for holidays. There’s a film evening, too, and dancing each week, and a library.’
The road forked presently, the fork crossing the stream and climbing along its other bank. ‘There’s the hospital,’ said Jake, ‘that long building built up from the road. We’ll keep straight on, though. The post office is at the end, you can see it now, then we cross a bridge and the shop’s on the other side.’
‘Where does the road go to?’
‘It doesn’t. There are a few houses beyond the shop, and it stops there; there’s no way through the mountains.’
It was a clear morning now, although every now and then the mountains disappeared in cloud, and it was warm walking. Annis was glad when they stopped presently and had their coffee, but she wasn’t allowed to linger. ‘I’m due at the hospital in half an hour; I’ll take you to the shop and leave you there and pick you up later.’
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