“Homework?” The word fell out of Nick’s slack mouth.
She smiled pityingly at him, put her feet over the side of the bed, and stood. “I’ve got a lot of studying to do if I want to become a Max.”
“What’s a Max?” all four of them asked at once.
“Someone who tames the Wild Things,” she said. “It’s an old story. Come on, Mom. I’m starving. Got anything still hot for dinner?”
Requiem Antarctica
with Robert J. Harris
IN 1912 ROBERT FALCON SCOTT and four companions attempted to become the first men to reach the South Pole. Beaten to the Pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, all of them perished on the return journey. It was eight months before their bodies were found huddled in a tent. The search party buried them there in the ice and the naval surgeon who examined them refused to divulge any medical details of the Polar party's end. It was a secret he carried with him to the grave.
I suppose a clergyman should be accustomed to keeping God’s hours, but I could not help feeling vexed when the doorbell rang that chilly Saturday night. Most of my day had been taken up with a meeting of the deanery, and consequently my sermon for the following morning was still only half-written. If not for my determination to complete my task, I would have been abed some two hours. As it was, my brain was fogged with lack of sleep as I strove to explicate the mysteries of the Resurrection, seeking to do more than simply repeat what I had said the previous year. And—to be truthful—the year before that.
I was sitting in a half-dream when the door chime woke me, ringing like the tolling of a far-away bell. I shook myself out of an unsettling fancy about being summoned to watch spirits rising up from open graves. Pushing myself from my desk, I blinked in the lamplight, and then frowned down at my watch, which I had placed on the desk. Near eleven—and the text of the sermon not yet done.
The bell rang again, more insistently this time. I hurried from my study, barely restraining myself from shouting an irked warning to my visitor to show some patience.
I slid back the bolt and opened the door so abruptly that the woman who stood on the threshold took a timid step backward. At once I felt guilty for my own impatience and mustered what I hoped was a conciliatory smile.
In the gloom into which she had retreated she was well disguised, and it took me a few moments to recognize her. She was tightly wrapped in a thick green coat with a scarf bound over her head, for the weather outside was blustery with snow. Her pleasant, round face looked up at me diffidently. She had been at church sporadically over the past few years, but for the life of me I could not recall her name.
“I’m sorry to bother you at such an hour, vicar,” she apologized, “but Mr. Atkinson was quite frantic that I bring you.”
‘‘It’s perfectly all right, I assure you.” I wracked my brain for her name. “Perfectly all right.” Now it was coming back to me. “God doesn’t keep his eye on the clock, Mrs. Marchant,” I added experimentally.
Her expression brightened only faintly but it was enough to confirm that I had recalled her name correctly. She was employed as a housekeeper by a Mr. Atkinson who had moved into Bay House about six years before but had never attended church. He was—I had been reliably told—a retired naval officer, and I had heard someone speak of him as having been something of an explorer in his youth. These days, by contrast, he was evidently so infirm that he was rarely sighted out of doors. I suppose I should have visited the old man before, offering him the consolation of prayer. But when he had first arrived in our village, I had sent over a welcoming letter. There had been no reply. I did not send another. I am not the proselytizing type. I believe that to force oneself on the unwilling only invites disaster. In God’s own time, is my motto.
“Mr. Atkinson wishes to see me, you say?”
She nodded, her eyes wide. “He told me I had to come in person and fetch you. He was afraid you wouldn’t respond to a phone call.”
“Are you quite certain it cannot wait until morning? I have, er . . . business.” I gestured vaguely toward the interior of the house. “It is very late.” And in the morning I would be in church and unavailable, but I did not mention that. Just as I finished speaking, the clock in the hall began its toll.
“Mr. Atkinson is unwell,” Mrs. Marchant said. There was no mistaking the genuine anxiety in her voice. The emphasis she laid on that last word implied more than the normal ill health of an invalid. I even detected a trace of a tear welling up in her eye. The natural conclusion was that Atkinson might be dead by morning.
I sighed in what I hoped was a good-natured manner, and signaled her in. Of course I would have to relent. The poor woman had just walked a good two miles in this inclement weather to find me.
“Just give me a moment to fetch my coat.”
Relief spread across her face.
As I led her to the back of the parsonage where my car was parked, I had a flickering recollection of the bell in my recent reverie. That sense of being summoned for some extraordinary purpose returned to me with an irrational force that made my hand tremble as I tried to fit the key to the car door. But of course I did not speak of it. The devil is often in dreams. And in loose tongues as well.
Once we were seated and on our way, Mrs. Marchant appeared to relax. She even loosened her head scarf, the way another woman of another time might have loosened her stays. I looked back at the road.
“I assume Dr. Landsdale is in attendance?”
The housekeeper shook her head. I could see it from the corner of my eye. “Mr. Atkinson wouldn’t allow me to call him,” she said, staring off into the night.
“But if he is seriously ill . . . ?” I tried to keep any note of censure out of my voice.
“It was you he wanted, vicar, no one else,” Mrs. Marchant insisted. She folded her arms about herself as though that gesture signaled an end to our conversation, like a full stop at the end of a sentence.
I decided not to press her. Clearly she was not minded to disobey her employer’s instructions, however unreasonable they might seem. But I was determined to assess the situation upon our arrival and take whatever steps I felt necessary to aid the old man, even in the teeth of his own resistance.
Soon a wan yellow light from a pair of tall windows assured me that we were approaching Bay House. The handsome stone building, built around the turn of the century, was situated upon a small rise within sight of the sea whose low tide glimmered dully under the glow of a half moon. I pulled up by the front door, but Mrs. Marchant made no move until I climbed out and opened the passenger door for her. Even so, it was with obvious reluctance that she led me into the house.
In the well-lit vestibule, a ship’s barometer upon the wall bore mute testimony to the unseasonable weather. To one side of a nearby doorway a stuffed gull stood upon a shelf, its wings outstretched, its beak agape as if in warning. On the opposite wall was a skillful watercolor painting of the sun rising over a snow-covered landscape.
Mrs. Marchant took my coat and hung it up, then pointed out the stairway.
“It’s the first door facing you when you reach the top,” she said. “The door’s ajar. Just go right in. He’s waiting for you. Can I bring you a cup of tea?”