It was still a brutal environment but nowhere near as dangerous, and his pay packet weighed double what he earned as a whaler. He was used to hard work and was the first to volunteer for overtime at the weekends. He fell into bed at night exhausted and was happy with his own company, not one to make friends easily.
He sent regular cheques to Sheila – the postmark told Sheila where he was and after the baby was born, she sent him a two-line letter care of the town’s post office: “We’ve had a daughter and she’s called Cara – we’re living with my family in Hrossey. We expect nothing from you but the money.”
The name neither pleased nor offended James. He rarely thought of them both. He wasn’t a man who did much soul-searching and apart from booze-fuelled benders on his weeks off, he had little to spend his cash on.
Sixteen years later in 1961, Sheila wrote him another curt letter telling him that Cara was engaged to a young man called Duncan and they were moving to the Orkney mainland to Duncan’s family farm just outside Kirkwall, and that he should now consider his debt fully paid. Sheila didn’t give him an address for his daughter and he didn’t ask for one.
He supposed he should have sent them a wedding gift, but all contact had been effectively severed. He rarely gave his daughter a thought, only occasionally wondering if he should try and find out what she had made of her life, but he never actually got round to doing anything about it.
James had no idea where the years had gone, but here he was in a dingy bar with a sticky floor, reeking of stale beer and neglect and a worn-out forty-one. In a rare moment of reflection, he asked himself what he had to show for his nearly half-century. Although still in good shape, with only a slight softness to his belly, James had grown weary. His dark hair was shot with grey and his rough hands scarred from working so long in sub-zero conditions.
His eyes had become narrowed from all those years squinting at steely waves on the lookout for whales breaching the surface and now jet-black oil was engrained into every deep line of his face. James found it increasing difficult to keep up withthe younger men on the pipeline and was finding the work utterly exhausting, but he didn’t think he was educated enough to apply for a supervisor’s job.
At heart, he was still a working-class poverty-stricken teenager who didn’t believe he was good enough for a promotion. Anyway, James regarded the white-collar workers as little more than a bunch of pen pushers, looked down upon by the ‘real’ workers. They sat on their fat arses in comfy offices with decent tea and biscuits and a massive salary.
He sat in the gloomy bar nursing his drink, sighed and decided to venture into the cold to clear his head of troublesome thoughts and wondering what would become of him. Just then the door opened letting in the freezing night air. James looked up to see a woman shivering and stamping her feet to get rid of the snow on her boots.
Marge Svenson was thirty-two and had come to Alaska with the sole purpose of finding herself a husband. With one woman to every ten men, she had been repeatedly told the odds were good, but as she had swiftly discovered, the goods were mostly odd.
She had given herself a year working in one of the few stores in town, before giving up and returning home to Minnesota. Her time was almost up and she hadn’t met one single man she would be willing to settle down with. She never thought for a second she’d meet someone she could love. That was never a factor in her plan. She just wanted respectability and a bit of companionship, with enough money to live on without scrimping and saving.
Her wage from the store was more than she would earn back home, but here it was barely enough to live on. Everything was so ridiculously expensive in Alaska that by the time she had paid the rent, heating bills and bought food, there was barelyenough left over to bother her piggy bank. The only thing that stopped her from packing up her few belongings and leaving after a few miserable weeks, was the thought of giving her mother the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.”
It began to snow heavily on the way back to her cheerless lodgings, so for the first time since she arrived, Marge stopped outside the one bar in town that served hot food and decided to treat herself and blow the budget with a meal she wouldn’t have to make herself.
Shaking off the snowflakes from her coat and boots and squinting into the half-darkness, she saw a large man sitting at the bar looking as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but Marge thought he had kind eyes and, surprising herself, she asked him, “Can a person get a bite to eat in here?”
He merely shrugged, but something about him made Marge bold. This would be her last throw of the dice, so she decided to persevere. She had nothing to lose so she added, “Mind if I sit here?”
He looked up at her briefly and his first thought was that she had a warm smile, and it had been a long time since someone had looked at him with interest. He turned back into the bar.
“Please yourself,” he growled, but he took up his seat again and pushed another bar stool towards her. She smiled.
“Let me buy you a drink big fella and you can tell me your sad story.”
Without looking up he replied, “How do you know my story is sad?”
“Well,” she answered. “You’re here all by yourself with a face like a cat’s ass caught out in the rain.” She gave him a slow smile.
Despite himself, he burst out laughing and held out his big rough hand.
“I’m James. Pleased to meet you.”
“Marge. Good to meet you too. You are definitely not from around these parts with a cute accent like that.”
“I’m from Scotland. Aberdeen to be exact. You?”
“I moved up here from Minnesota. At least I’m used to the cold. Been working at the hardware store but I’m thinking of calling it a day.”
James looked at her properly and found he liked the look of Marge. She wasn’t beautiful but she had a pleasant, strong face. Her faded fair hair was cut short in a sensible side-parting and curled around her ears. She had rather small eyes, a large nose and wide mouth, and was dressed in layers of warm, practical clothes.
James found himself saying, “Well, we’re both far from home so maybe we should get to know each other better. Let me buy you a drink.”
Marge didn’t mention that she had planned to spend most of tomorrow packing up and making arrangements to return home.
She simply nodded and asked if they had any pop. James looked bemused.
