The Navigator of New York

by Wayne Johnston

  When he felt a sharp increase in the slope of the ice, he stopped and removed from his pocket the vials of ether and the cloth and stuffed them into one of his moccasins. He could barely make out Francis Stead, just enough to see that his face and body were covered with snow.

  He pushed Francis a few feet more, until the body slid slowly away from him. He could go no farther. He prayed the body would not bring up short of the crevasse. Then he saw it suddenly somersault.

  Francis Stead neither spoke nor screamed. Dr. Cook heard a series of muffled thumps. The sounds, as if the crevasse was bottomless, did not so much stop as trail off into silence.

  Again using his knife, he inched back up the slope, his gaze fixed on his lantern in the distance and, beyond it, the uplit tolt of rock. Soon he was able to stand safely.

  As he set out towards the lantern, his body shook, his teeth chattering as if he had just stepped straight out of the warmth into the cold. Was it only for the boy? he asked himself.

  He gathered up his lantern, extinguished it, then made his way to the tolt of rock, where he lit the lantern once again and extinguished Francis Stead’s. The other man’s cigar still smouldered in the snow. He ground it out with his foot. The tolt and the ground around it reeked of ether, but he doubted that, with the snow falling so heavily, this would be the case come daylight.

  Putting the cigar butt in his pocket, he proceeded across the scree of snow-covered rocks to the igloos, where he woke some Eskimos, who said they had not seen Dr. Stead since that afternoon. Then he went back to Redcliffe House to announce Francis Stead’s disappearance.

  The others were up and having breakfast. He asked if any of them had seen Dr. Stead.

  “Then you have not found him?” said Peary.

  He shook his head. “I’ve been looking for him since you sent me out,” he said. “I’m not sure what time that was. About four-fifteen, I think.”

  “It was more like four-forty-five,” said Peary. “Where can that fool have gone?”

  Four-forty-five. Barely an hour ago. Not time enough to do what Cook had done. Not long enough ago to make anyone wonder why he had waited so long to come back to the house.

  “Well, he seems to be missing,” said Dr. Cook, at which Peary became enraged, reminding them all that one of the rules of the expedition was that no one venture out from Redcliffe by himself, except at his instructions. When the others assured him that Stead would return when he felt like it, Peary roared and stormed about.

  Francis Stead’s plan had been a good one. It would not have made sense for both Peary and Dr. Cook to follow him outside. If, in spite of the laudanum, one or more of the others had happened to wake up and find all three of them gone, they might have gone out looking for them.

  “These were all I found,” said Dr. Cook. “Out by the tolt of rock. His lantern. And”—he dug in his pocket—”this.” He showed them the cigar butt. “It was cold when I found it,” he said. “He must have left it there hours ago.”

  The search lasted three days and turned up nothing. The Eskimos corroborated Peary’s statement about what time it was when Dr. Cook went outdoors.

  In Redcliffe House, Dr. Cook found the rucksack in which Francis Stead had kept his journals, but it was empty. What Francis had written in them, he had no idea. He prayed that he or Peary would find them first. But like Francis, they were never found. Perhaps Peary had disposed of them. Perhaps Francis Stead had.

  “We shall speak to each other again only when it is absolutely necessary,” Peary said when one day during the return voyage he called Dr. Cook to his cabin. “It will be best if we keep our distance from each other from now on.”

  He believes, Dr. Cook thought, that I have sullied myself, debased myself in a way that he has not; that he has carried himself with as much dignity as possible considering the circumstances.

  “It has been almost intolerable to me,” Dr. Cook said. “All these years, knowing that I conspired with a man like that—that we were, and always would be, partners in the death of Francis Stead, joined for life by something as unspeakable as murder. As for Peary, who knows what memories return to him in dreams?

  “During those strange afternoons we spent together in that tupik on the beach at Etah, we spoke of her when Henson wasn’t there. And of you and Francis Stead. He said that I had killed Francis Stead for the same reason he wanted him dead: to save my reputation, to preserve my good name and secure my future. ‘Why don’t you admit it? You did not even kill him for revenge,’ Peary said. ‘You cared nothing for the woman he killed. If you had, you would not have turned your back on her. As for the boy, you did not even know him. You had never met him or even seen him when you murdered Francis Stead. Did you even know his name?’ ‘When we killed him,’ I kept saying, but Peary would shake his head. He seemed to have almost convinced himself that he had had nothing to do with it, that it had merely been his good fortune that Francis Stead had died before he had a chance to do him harm.

  “Peary sent you to me in the hope that, once you had heard everything, you would turn against me, renounce me, perhaps even admit that we never reached the pole. And it seems that he has won. He has driven us apart. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “You did what you did for me.”

  “If only I was certain that was true,” he said. “I betrayed myself long ago, Devlin. I lose nothing by this hoax I have concocted. But you, if you stay with me, will lose everything. I will not let you be destroyed, by my enemies or by yourself.”

  He put his face in his hands and shook his head.

  “I never dreamed, when I first wrote to you … I cannot bear to think that I have lost you. And yet it seems certain that I have.”

  “You have not lost me,” I said. “I am your son. You are my father. That will never change.”

  With tears running down his face, he hugged me.

  I felt an exhaustion of spirit that I was sure would last forever. “I must go,” I said, but before I could get up, he slowly left the room.

  How strange it was to find out, so many years after it happened, that my life had been saved, let alone how and by whom. And that for years, I had figured in the lives of people I had never met or even heard of.

  In a place far removed from where I lived, at a time when I had no reason to think that Francis Stead was not my father, or that my mother’s death was not a suicide, a man I had never met or even heard of saved my life. And that man was my father.

  • CHAPTER FORTY-THREE •

  DR. COOK WAS AGAIN ABSENT FROM HOME FOR SEVERAL DAYS. I dared not glance at a newspaper, knowing it would be full of news about the polar controversy, about him and Peary and what each was doing to undermine the other’s claim. I slept late every morning, then went to the Dakota, instructing the servants that I was not to be disturbed. I tried to think, and unable to do so, I tried to read, only to find myself stalled for hours in mid-sentence.

  It seemed a deliverance when I received an invitation from Kristine’s mother, Lily, to meet with her in her apartment. There would be no other guests, she said. She was a widow and Kristine was visiting relatives in Philadelphia. If the date mentioned was not convenient, I could suggest another.

  Kristine lived with Lily in an apartment that they had bought following the death of Mr. Sumner some years before. I could see that they were well provided for. An elevator opened directly onto the entrance hall, whose floor was made of lozenges of black marble over which an Oriental rug was laid. Reflected in the marble was an overhanging silver lantern in which burned brightly a single large electric bulb. In the dining room and drawing room, the walls were wainscoted, the panelling made of oak. There was a look of plain elegance about the place. There were no gilded walls, no ostentatious reproductions of Greek and Roman sculpture. Most of the paintings and photographs were of New York—the half-completed Brooklyn Bridge, workmen sitting astride the girders of some building. A painting of Manhattan as it might have looked in 1650. Arti
facts of the New World.

  “Kristine speaks often of you,” she said. “She had all but stopped accepting invitations out by the time she met you. She did not much like the sort of young men and women she was meeting, she said, which did not surprise me, since I knew just who she meant. I know their parents, anyway, and the apple does not fall far from the tree. My late husband came from an old, established family, the kind whose name endures long after its money has run out. Which is why I can decline invitations and let people think I do so out of snobbishness. They think I come by it honestly. But Kristine has become a social gadfly since she met you. She is out of sorts for days if you do not turn up at one of those awful events. She was so unhappy while you were away.”

  I felt myself blushing. “I missed her very much,” I said.

  It was clearly from her that Kristine had inherited her appealing, forthright manner. There was no hint of self-consciousness about her or of any concern about what sort of impression she was making. I could not imagine her spending one moment of her widow’s solitude in brooding self-absorption.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Sumner,” I said.

  “I want you to call me Lily,” she said.

  A woman as old as my mother would be now.

  I was relieved. I could not even think of her as Mrs. Sumner, since I had for so long thought of her, and heard her referred to by Dr. Cook, as Lily. Her eyes darted about as she examined my face.

  “You have your mother’s eyes,” she said. “You have your mother’s kindness in your eyes. Unmistakably.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I looked into her eyes to see if I could tell how much she knew of me and Dr. Cook. She smiled slightly, as if to say she knew precisely what I was looking for.

  “Your mother and I began writing to each other when we were schoolgirls,” she said. “Me telling her about Manhattan, her telling me about St. John’s.” I thought of how it must have been for my mother when she was about to make her own first visit to New York, to meet at last her own long-time correspondent.

  “Devlin, I know that Francis Stead was not your father,” she said. “And I believe that you know about your mother and Dr. Cook. I assume he told you.”

  I nodded.

  “I thought so,” she said. “I could think of no other explanation for your coming to New York. You are not only his son—you are all that remains of Amelia for Dr. Cook.”

  “Yes,” I said. “He has often said so.”

  “I should not have taken her to so many parties when she came to visit me. She had never had a drink before she visited Manhattan. But she was so rarely out of my sight. I have always felt responsible, you see. I think about it often: what might have been if I had been more careful, taken better care of her. How overwhelmed by New York she was.”

  “You are not to blame for anything,” I said.

  “Your mother wrote to me frequently after she went back to St. John’s,” she said, “just as she did before she came to New York. We had an epistolary friendship for years before we met. I loved her letters. She told me that she loved mine. We were already well acquainted by the time we met. Already best friends.”

  “You don’t like Dr. Cook, do you?” I said.

  “I loved your mother,” Lily said. “How, knowing what he did to her, could I go on liking him? Because yes, I did like him once. Perhaps only because Amelia loved him. I’m not sure.”

  “He was really just a boy back then,” I said. “He’s different now. He regrets not answering my mother’s letter to him. He calls it the great mistake of his life.”

  I saw Lily’s face fill with emotion, which at first I thought was anger. Her eyes welled up with tears that might not have spilled out had she not smiled.

  “They were so much in love,” she said. “Perhaps that’s why I can’t forgive him for what he did. I have never been in love like that. It was so strange being with them. Wonderful, in a way. It was as if they spoke different languages and needed me to translate for them. But sometimes they went for hours without speaking, to each other or to me. I did almost all the talking. I talked about people we saw in the park, about my parents, about how fast New York was changing. Small talk. But it was as though I was speaking in code. Telling her what he felt. Telling him what she felt. Helping them conspire. Make plans. He was very soft-spoken. Your mother was shy, with Dr. Cook at least. Perhaps it was guilt more than shyness. We often spoke about her fiancé. As for me … well, I was said to be vivacious. A polite term for a chatterbox, perhaps.

  “I was so drained by the end of every day. Exhausted. The instant he left us, your mother would want to talk. About him. About Francis Stead. Should she break off her engagement with him if Dr. Cook asked her to? Did I think he would ask? All I could bear to do was listen. For three weeks, this went on. I don’t know how he got away from work so often. He said he sold milk. Delivered messages. Worked as a clerk in an office—real estate, I think it was. He seemed to be holding down half a dozen jobs at once. Yet somehow he made time for her. For us. Perhaps, if it had been possible for them to spend some time alone each day, they would have felt, by the end of your mother’s visit, that they were committed to each other, that no … no physical pledge was necessary.”

  Physical pledge. She had all but gestured to me when she said these words. She winced when she saw my reaction.

  “I did not mean to speak with such regret,” she said. “I can assure you that where you were concerned, your mother had none.”

  “What were my mother’s letters like?” I said. “The ones she wrote to you after she was married. After I was born.”

  “They were always about you,” she said. “She wrote very little about Francis. I was not surprised when she told me that he had found some excuse to live away from home and still remain married to her. I never met him. Even before she came to New York, she did not often mention him. I could tell, from what little she did say, that she didn’t love him. But that wasn’t unusual. Women often marry men they do not love. And vice versa, I suppose. Though Francis loved her. At first, at least.

  “But as I was saying, she often wrote of you. How fast you were growing. How the colour of your eyes was changing. You made her happy. She wrote almost every day. I felt guilty for writing her only every other day. She sometimes mentioned Dr. Cook in passing, often by way of comparing you to him. It was sadder than if she had written ten pages telling me how much she missed him.

  “I had to be so careful with her letters. I never spoke of him in mine. But there, in hers, from time to time, would be his name. It was the first thing I noticed when I opened her letters, even before I read them. I would scan each page, looking for that name. Frederick. It stood out like it was written in different-coloured ink than the words around it.

  “She was the sort of person who would not give in to sorrow. That’s why I have never believed the rumours about her death. She would never have done that. I know that is often said of suicides, but I have not the slightest doubt. When your uncle Edward wrote to me to say that Amelia had drowned accidentally, the other possibility never occurred to me.

  “But my mother somehow heard the rumours. I overheard her speaking to my father about Amelia. I rushed into the parlour and asked them how they could repeat such things, believe such things about Amelia. I have never believed it.

  “But I worried about how the rumours might one day affect you. I didn’t want you to think, you see … to feel guilty about what happened to her. I was worried you might someday think she took her life because of you.

  “No one who loved her child as she loved you could have lost hope so completely. She did not think of herself or the man she loved in tragic terms. She planned to go on with her life, as she assumed he would. She still loved him, and she hoped he would be happy. If the thought of him finding happiness without her tormented her, she showed no sign of it.

  “She was a woman of great resilience. One of her few flaws was that she believed others were jus
t as resilient. She had to have thought that Francis was. I doubt that when she decided to break off her engagement with him, she realized how badly, how permanently, that would have wounded him. And when, after she did not hear from Dr. Cook, she changed her mind, she had to have thought that Francis could bear to raise as his own a child his wife had conceived with another man. He could bear it, she believed, because she knew that she could if she had to.

  “I thought of writing to you and assuring you that the rumours were untrue, or of writing to your uncle and asking him to tell you what I said, but then I thought how strange it would be for a child to receive such a letter. A letter denying awful rumours about your mother that you might not even have heard. And I could not bring myself to reassure you about your mother while at the same time withholding so much from you.”

  “I received stranger letters as a child,” I said. “Letters from Dr. Cook in which he told me he was my father.”

  “Your aunt and uncle knew about those letters?”

  I shook my head.

  “I can’t imagine Dr. Cook taking such a risk, writing such letters to a boy. If people had found out that although she was engaged, he asked her to marry him—”

  “You’re right about my mother,” I said.

  “I’m so glad you think so, Devlin.”

  “I have something to tell you, Lily, and it will come as quite a shock to you. My mother, as you say, did not take her life. She was murdered.”

  Lily put her hand on her throat as if I had told her that my mother had been choked to death.

  “Oh no,” she said. “The poor, sweet thing. I hoped that somehow … You see, Devlin, I have often thought it likely that someone did her harm. Because of the circumstances, I mean. I have long thought it could not have been by accident that she wound up in that water so far from where she left her horse and cart, so far down that hill.”

  “Francis Stead killed her,” I said.

  Lily covered her face with her hands, covered everything except her eyes, with which she looked at me as if I was Francis Stead and had just confessed.