The Survivor by Thomas Keneally Page B

wind-drift.”
    Ramsey destroyed himself lightly. “They aren’t wind-drift. I planted these things very deliberately, solidly; a person does in Antarctica. Cairns, markers, mounds, and so on. You make them all to last.”
    He heard Ella utter a wry “Hurrah!” under her breath. He said, less grandly, “They may have been blown away. But the chances were in favour of their lasting.”
    â€œSo you think Leeming is close to where these were found?”
    â€œYes,” Ramsey said, and repeated the word, and nodded in a way almost ceremonial three or four times. This made Ella lose patience, seeing an altogether too reverent and ritual a manner of acknowledging an old corpse.
    â€œAnd there’s no ritual significance in the thing,” she told Ramsey. She sounded patient and minatory; her patience dwelt on each word and seemed to thumb-tack it to the ether. “He hasn’t been in limbo, he’s just been on ice.”
    â€œI assure you, Ella, I don’t see this as a mystery of religion.”
    â€œWhat has us wondering,” Griffith said smoothly, surmounting the family quarrel, “is that there was no trace of the camera and plates. Not that there needs to be, of course.”
    â€œThe ways of glacial ice are no doubt strange,” supposed the poet.
    But Ella could not tolerate this sombre, parsonical axiom. She was up and pacing, but stopped by the window to gather herself. Seeing her, Ramsey wanted to cry out that he was the desperate one, he was the one who should rend garments, that it became her to stand by to soothe. He could have struck her for failing to see his need. “Ella,” he said, “if you would like to go out for a matronly breath of fresh.…”
    â€œMatronly?” She swept around. He could see the green, feline irises start in their peculiar way. “You said matronly? ”
    â€œI said it would be better if you went outside.”
    â€œYou said matronly. ” She was frantic and triumphant; she had a pretext.
    â€œWell, if I did.… Look, Ella, why don’t you go and have some tea?” But he knew he had said one of the forbidden words and could not now avoid being made an even bigger fool of.
    â€œPerhaps your admiring friends would be surprised to find that you mock me with that word. In view of my cancer of the womb.…”
    â€œChrist!” Ramsey called. Both visitors stared. “Take her out,” he told the poet. “For God’s sake take her into the kitchen and hit her with something.”
    â€œYou have rendered assault and battery superfluous, dear Alec.”
    â€œTake her out, will you,” he ordered the poet again.
    The poet made gestures of inadequacy: you might as well have asked the weather bureau to catch Valkyries.
    Blessedly, Ella went herself, in a rush and probably ashamed at letting Griffith know her secret imagery.
    In her electric absence Ramsey told the two men, “You mustn’t take any notice of that cancer-of-the-womb stuff. She only means it symbolically. Childlessness she means.”
    Griffith was blinking, still wondering why the occasion hadn’t been all wistfulness and reminiscence and how many lumps do you take.
    Ramsey said, “Here’s something for your epic, bard. Call it ‘The Afternoon of an Argonaut. Complete with Sibyl.’”
    The poet stared back. There was an air of righteousness about the man. Hadn’t he given up two days’ deferred leave just to expiate previous outrage? Yes, very much at ease he looked now; justified in his own eyes. The muse, Alec decided, provoked, might just as well have bedded down with Griffith as with this small accountant.
    â€œI suppose you came for some such purpose,” Alec surmised. “Or is Mrs T. less Papally aligned this month?”
    The poet excused himself. From the door he asked Griffith, “What plane are you catching back?”
    â€œThis evening,