Coppermine Read Online Free PDF Page B

left?” Creed was in a hurry.
    “We saved you some.”
    Creed was headed for the showers, checking his watch and taking it off.
    “You know, Creed,” Dewey said, examining his panatela, “you’ll almost be up to where the Franklin expedition was lost.”
    Creed hesitated in the doorway. “I’ll give your regards to his ghost.”
    “He’s probably found the Passage by now,” Svenson speculated.
    “You know, they were eating each other at the end,” Dewey said, looking to get a reaction out of Cowperthwaite.
    “Oh, shut up, Dewey. It’s never been proven. I can’t believe Englishmen would eat one another.”
    “I don’t know, but if that’s the local cuisine, Creed, better pack a bottle of Worcestershire.”
    Creed smiled as they laughed. Dewey slowly, carefully, blew another ring. Creed could hear their talk in the mess as he turned on the shower and waited for it to warm up.
    “Eating human flesh. It’s unthinkable!”
    “You know, Cowperthwaite, I’ve often thought, with some carrots and onions, you’d make a nice little stew.”
    The laughter rose again. Creed smiled, then he turned and stepped into the luxury of almost-instant hot water.
    AS CREED LEFT THE BARRACKS and walked quickly down Jasper past Wellington Terrace and into the market district, he was shocked by the city noise and congestion. Horse-drawn wagons vied with muffler-less motor cars, honking trucks, and pedestrians. So many people, heading intently in all directions, like a disturbed school of trout. He made hesitant progress through them toward his rendezvous.
    She was waiting at the corner of 103rd Street and smiled broadly when she saw him. Nicole Harvey was the most beautiful woman Creed had ever seen—curly golden-blond hair cropped in a modern style, a healthy blush to her flawless skin, inquiring hazel eyes, a perpetual smile on her full, responsive lips, and beneath the stylish cotton dress the generous curves of a woman. When she spoke, his words dried up. When she took his hand, his strength left him. When she laughed, his knees weakened. What Nicole Harvey saw in Creed, he had no idea. But here she was.
    She had come west from Toronto to live with and care for her favourite uncle, Horace Harvey, a respected magistrate whose beloved wife had died of diphtheria two years before. Nicole loved and confidently embraced the West, though she maintained an eastern sophistication. After only a few weeks of seeing each other they had, surprisingly, made love, once, in the library when the magistrate and the servants were out and they had had more than one glass of sherry. They had been a little awkward in a pleasant way, but quite successful, and neither regretted it. Nicole had been excited and pleased by it all. A second opportunity had not arisen, and to invite her to a hotel room seemed sordid.
    She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek, then saw the bruising on the side of his face. “Oh, darling, what did they do to you, poor thing? Does it hurt?”
    “No.”
    He was relieved she did not ask for the details of the killings. It was another world and he was happy to be in the comfort of this one, with her, enjoying the waft of her perfume, the closeness of her body, the music of her voice, if only for a short while. As they walked west on the new cement sidewalks of Jasper Avenue, gazing in the shops, she held on to his arm and talked away about fashions, and news that Creed had missed: the discovery of a fresh oil field northwest of the city, the capture of the German-held town of St-Eloi by a Canadian regiment, discussions with the Americans about them joining the war, a woman who had killed her husband with an axe while he slept.
    “But my question is,” Nicole teased, “did she use the blunt end or the blade end? It didn’t explain that in the papers. The blunt end is less messy.”
    “Guess it depends on how she felt about him.”
    She released her sparkling laugh that made men on the street turn and look.