‘Isn’t it lovely?’ Jill whispered. But I knew she wasn’t thinking about the wild beauty of the place. She was gazing for’ard across the bows to where the snow-field of the Jostedal glittered like a fairy carpet in the sun and remembering Farnell.
She didn’t speak for some time after that. She just sat there, thinking about him. I could feel her thoughts inside me and in some strange way they hurt. Her left hand was flung out along the edge of the cockpit. It was a slender, almost ivory hand, with slender wrist and little blue veins. It was very close to mine where it lay against the warm brown of the varnished mahogany. Without thinking — conscious only of the reflection of her emotion in me — I stretched out my hand to hers. The fingers were cool and smooth, and the instant I touched her I felt close to her — closer than I’d been to anyone before. I started to withdraw my hand. But her fingers closed suddenly on mine. And then she looked at me. Her grey eyes were wide and misty. She clung to my hand as though it were something she feared to lose. ‘Thank you, Bill,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve been a dear.’
‘He meant so much to you?’ I asked, and my voice came strangely to my lips.
She nodded. ‘So much,’ she said. Then she looked away to the mountains again. ‘So much — so long ago.’ She was silent for a moment, her hand still holding mine. ‘Six weeks,’ she whispered, as though to herself. ‘That’s all we had. Then he was gone.’
‘But you saw him later — after the war?’ I said ‘Yes. For a week. That was all.’ She turned to me. ‘Bill. What makes a man throw love away for — for something a woman can’t understand? You, for instance. Have you ever been in love?’
‘Many times,’ I answered.
‘But not really. Not so that it was more important than anything else?’
‘No,’ I said.
Her hand suddenly tightened on mine so that I could feel her nails biting into my palm. ‘Why?’ she cried softly. ‘Why? Tell me why? What was there more important?’
I didn’t know how to answer her. ‘Excitement,’ I said. ‘The excitement of living, of pitting one’s wits against everyone else.’
‘Meaning a wife is an encumbrance?’
I nodded. ‘For some men — yes.’
‘And George was one of them?’
‘Perhaps.’ I hesitated. How could I tell her what made a man like George Farnell love metals more than he loved himself. ‘Jill,’ I said, ‘Farnell was an artist. He knew more about metals than any man I know. And the driving force in his life was the belief that he could open up these mountains here and let them pour out their store of mineral treasure. To the average person he is a cheat, a swindler, an escaped convict, a deserter. But in his own mind that was all justified. It was the means to an end. His art was everything. And he staked his whole self on me belief that there was metal up here under the ice that you see now. If he hurt you in the process — well, that was no more than the hurt he had done himself.’
She seemed to understand, for she nodded slowly. ‘Everything had to be subordinated to that.’ She sighed. ‘Yes. You’re right. But if only I’d known. Then I-’ She stopped. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing would have made any difference. It was that singleness of purpose, that inward fire that attracted me.’ She sat for some time with her eyes closed. Her hand was relaxed and soft in mine. ‘What about you, Bill?’ she asked at length. ‘You say you’ve been in love — many times. What was it drove you on?’
I hesitated. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Excitement, I think. The excitement of running things, of always being faced with problems that were too big for me until I beat them. I’m a climber — in the industrial sense. I always had to get to the top of the next peak.’
‘And now?’ she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Now I have had my fill — for the moment,’ I answered. ‘During the war I reached the top. I exhausted myself, satiated my urge for power. Now I’m content to lie and bask in the sunshine — or was.’
‘Or was?’ The slender line of her brows rose.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘All the time we have been sailing towards these mountains, that old sense of excitement has been rising inside me. If I can find out what Farnell discovered-’ I stopped then. It sounded ghoulish this search for a dead man’s plunder.
‘I see,’ she said and looked away to the mountains. And then suddenly with a violence I had not expected she said, ‘God! Why was I born a woman?’
She got up then and went below, and I sat on feeling suddenly alone. The mountains were not so bright and the sky seemed less blue. I knew then — and admitted it to myself for the first time — that I’d missed something in life. I had held its hand for a moment. That was all. It didn’t belong to me. I had borrowed from a dead man.
One of the motionless bodies laid out on the deck stirred. It was the diver. ‘Sunde,’ I called.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Then he got to his feet and came aft. ‘Where are we meeting your partner?’ I asked.
‘Fjaerland,’ he answered.
‘He’ll be coming up to Fjaerland in Einar Sandven’s boat?’
‘Ja.’
‘When?’
