Midnight Sun's Magic. Бетти Нилс

didn’t answer that, for it was very probably true; she said instead: ‘Well, I am looking forward to it. Are you stopping at Walton’s?’

      ‘Only to pick up a few things they’ll have ready for me. Do you really have to go back this evening?’

      ‘Yes, Aunt. The plane goes very early in the morning—I’m spending the night at an hotel close by the airport—my case is there already.’

      Great-Aunt Mary had slowed down as they entered the village, swung round the corner between the two local pubs, and stopped before the grocer’s.

      ‘What clothes are you taking?’ she wanted to know. She was a poor dresser herself; she had a short, plump figure which she declared nothing off the peg fitted, and she was right, but that didn’t stop her loving clothes. They talked about them while the groceries were loaded, and didn’t pause when she drove on presently to stop a few hundred yards further, pull into a side road and stop.

      They walked from the car to the cottage, carrying the groceries between them, down a narrow path running beside a clear stream and crossed at intervals by little bridges leading to the back gardens on the other side.

      Great-Aunt Mary’s cottage had a bridge too, leading to a tiny triangle of grass and flowers which fronted her home: a red brick Victorian cottage, its side wall rising straight out of the stream with windows opening on to it. It was bigger inside than it looked from the lane—true, the hall was narrow but the staircase was nicely placed and the dining room and what its owner called the drawing room were a fair size, and to make up for the Lilliputian kitchen, there were innumerable cupboards, big enough to house a piano if needed. Annis loved it; she had lived there for a few years after her parents died, going as a weekly boarder to Sher-borne School for Girls while Freddy had gone to Bryanston, coming home for school holidays, and she had always returned for holidays all the time she had been at St Anselm’s. She looked around her now, at the white walls hung with a wide variety of pictures, some really good, some framed cards which her aunt had taken a fancy to, at the old-fashioned furniture which fitted so well into the Victorian appearance of the little place and the windows with their pretty chintz curtains. ‘It’s nice to be home,’ she said.

      It was over lunch that Great-Aunt Mary remarked suddenly: ‘Of course, I should very much have preferred it if you had been getting married, though not to Arthur. You’re twenty-seven, aren’t you, Annis?’ she eyed her niece’s splendid figure across the table, ‘and there can’t be all that number of men in the world to match up to you.’

      ‘Match up to me?’ asked Annis faintly.

      ‘Looks, my dear, and height, and come to that, size. You’re hardly petite, are you? Perhaps there’ll be someone suitable among the Norwegians.’

      Annis giggled. ‘I’ll keep an eye open,’ she promised.

      She left early that evening with regret. The little house looked delightful in the late sunshine and the hills around were turning to golden. Snow and ice, she thought—I must be mad!

      But due reflection made it obvious to her that it was rather less mad to go traipsing off to the top of the world than to continue the lukewarm and far too cautious relationship with Arthur. At least Spitzbergen was different, or she hoped it would be; indeed, the more she thought about it the better she liked the idea. She slept soundly on it, ate a good breakfast and arrived, unruffled and very neat, in good time for her flight.

      She had flown before, but only short flights, and she was disappointed to find that the journey was over so quickly. She had expected that the six-hour trip would have given her plenty of time to look at the passing world beneath her, but what with take-off and coffee and then, just as she was picking out the coastline below, lunch, she had very little time to peer out of her porthole. They were landing before she had had more than a glimpse of Tromso, on the islands below her, hugging Norway’s rugged coast.

      Freddy was waiting for her and although she was a girl well able to look after herself, she was more than pleased to see him. There were any number of questions she wanted answered too.

      ‘Not now, Sis, I’ve got a company plane waiting to take off.’

      ‘Oh, don’t we have any time at all here? A cup of tea…?’

      He grinned. ‘They’ll wait that long. Come on, over here, just stand there while I get someone to take your luggage.’

      It wasn’t tea, but coffee, strong and dark, accompanied by large, satisfying buns. ‘How long does it take?’ asked Annis, her mouth full.

      ‘It’s eight hundred miles—about three hours; as it doesn’t get dark at all we don’t have to worry about landing.’

      ‘Oh, but how shall we…?’

      Freddy was on his feet. ‘We’ll have to go—there’ll be plenty of time to talk later.’

      She had expected that they would return to the airfield, but Freddy got into a small Saab with the driver already at the wheel and she got in with him, prudently asking no more questions. There was plenty to keep her occupied. Tromso was delightful with the forest all around it, joined to the mainland by a long bridge, its wooden houses gay with flowers, and having an air of happy bustle. There were ships of all sorts in its harbour, too, and she looked at Freddy, a little puzzled; he had said a plane…

      ‘Out there,’ he said laconically, and nodded towards a seaplane a few hundred yards out. The Saab stopped and Annis found herself being ushered into a small boat, her luggage piled in after her and Freddy beside her while the driver started the outboard motor; she barely had time to take a last lingering look at Tromso before she was clambering on board.

      There was already someone there, a slight young man, who grinned at her with an easy ‘Hullo—so Freddy found you.’ He whistled: ‘And aren’t you a lovely surprise—hefty,’ he added, ‘strong as a horse and never turns a hair.’ He put 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