failure.”
“Known affectionately in his day as the man who ate his boots,” I said.
Will smiled, recognizing me as a Franklin aficionado. “Did you know that more than twenty expeditions went looking for him?”
“And in the process charted the passage he died looking for,” I added. “Some say it was the largest search-and-rescue operation to this day.”
“History teacher,” he said, his first impressions of me confirmed. “Am I right?”
“Guilty,” I confessed. It wasn’t often that I met someone who could quote Franklin back to me chapter and verse. For most people, he was a footnote in Canadian history, the central figure in a vaguely familiar tragedy that hadn’t been important enough to make its way onto any test they’d taken in high school.
“Did you get Farley to sign that for you yet?” he asked, eyeing the book I’d brought with me.
“Not yet.”
He sensed my hesitation. “He won’t bite,” he assured me. “At least, I haven’t heard of him doing it recently.”
“Thanks,” I said. He was right; I should just get it over with.
“Let me know if you need my help with anything,” he said and moved to another customer, leaving me to get on with it.
There was a lanky red-haired woman talking to Mowat as I approached the special table they’d set up for him. By the way she sat, with one leg swinging idly off the edge of the table as she chatted him up, I could tell she wasn’t a customer. His eyes twinkled the way men’s eyes do when a younger woman flirts with them. I was having second thoughts again, afraid that interrupting them might not put me in Mowat’s favour.
The woman noticed me hovering. She leaned over to Mowat. “A member of your public awaits,” she said, patting him affectionately on the hand. She stood up, making way for me with a polite smile. Now I could see what had made his eyes twinkle. There was something very direct and unapologetic about the way she looked at me, as if for that instant I was the sole focus of her attention, the only man on earth as far as she was concerned. And then, just as quickly, her focus shifted away, and I felt strangely abandoned.
“Hello there,” Mowat said to me, inviting me to come closer.
I felt like a six-year-old who’s too shy to step up and deliver his only line at the Christmas pageant. I shuffled forward and awkwardly extended my hand.
“Mr. Mowat,” I said. “I’m a big fan.” How original of me. I wondered how many times he’d heard that line.
Mowat shook my hand and smiled graciously. “Glad you enjoy my work.”
For all my rehearsing, I couldn’t decide what to say next. We looked at each other like two strangers at a party who’ve run out of small talk. Then he saw the book I was clutching.
“Would you like me to sign that for you?” he asked helpfully.
I handed it to him. “The name’s Irving,” I said.
The cover of the book almost came loose as he opened it. “It’s nice to see one of my books so well used,” he said as he signed.
He handed it back to me, hoping, I’m sure, that I’d thank him and move on. Instead, I kept standing there, looming over him in my overstuffed parka like a dark cloud.
“Was there something else?” he asked, peering at me over the rim of his glasses.
“I’m Irving Cruickshank,” I said. “I wrote you a few weeks ago. Right after I found out you’d be coming to town today.”
“Ah, the schoolteacher,” he said warily. He could see what was coming. He was figuring out how to let me down gently, I could tell.
“We’re doing the search for the Northwest Passage this week in class,” I said. “Ordeal by Ice blows away any of our history texts. As I said in my letter, I was hoping you might find half an hour in your busy schedule to drop by and talk with my class.”
His smile verged on a wince. “Irving,” he said, “I’m flattered you asked, but—”
Before he could finish, I’d fished into my jacket pockets and pulled out my insurance. I laid a dozen crumpled letters on the table in front of him. “These are from my students,” I said. “Addressed to you. I told them I’d deliver them personally. They’re really hoping you will come.”
My appeal had caught the attention of the woman who’d been talking with Mowat. I felt the warmth of her gaze shine back on me as she looked on in amusement from the nearby cash register. Mowat slouched back in his chair, his kilt creeping up, further exposing his knobby knees. I wasn’t making it easy for him. He placed his glasses on the table and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a sigh. He felt ambushed. There was a mixture of regret and irritation in his voice. “I tell you what, though. When I get home, I’ll write your class a reply to their letters.” He shuffled them into a stack and tapped the bottom edge of the pages against the tabletop as if to signify that the matter was resolved. “It was nice to meet you, Irving. I wish more teachers were as dedicated as you.”
I’d been politely dismissed. I didn’t know what I was expecting. He was a busy man. He couldn’t rearrange his entire schedule just to help a crackpot teacher entertain his students. I thanked him and turned for the door. I was like one of those failed Arctic explorers, casting off with grandiose ambitions only to crash into the reality of the polar ice pack.
As I twisted the rickety old doorknob to leave, I heard the woman call after me from the cash. “Wait,” she said. “You forgot to fill out one of our ballots.”
I looked back at her. She sat perched on the tall stool behind the counter, her fingers interlaced across her knee. The sleeves of her Icelandic sweater were pushed up to her elbows. She acted like she owned the place, which I might have thought possible if it weren’t for the fact that she didn’t look any older than me.
“I didn’t buy anything,” I said apologetically.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Maybe you will next time.” She held out a pen.
I had the feeling she was toying with me like a cat does with a wounded mouse. Still, I couldn’t resist the pull of her green eyes. I approached the counter and took the pen from her. I was acutely conscious of the salt stains on the sleeve of my parka. She slid a blank scrap of paper in front of me.
“Just write your name, address, and telephone number,” she told me.
“This doesn’t look like a ballot,” I said.
“We ran out. This will do.”
I carefully wrote out my name and address. For a moment, I couldn’t remember my telephone number.
“What’s the prize?” I asked.
“We haven’t decided yet,” she said with a sly smile.
A few moments later, I found myself out on the sidewalk, as giddy as a wallflower who has just been asked to dance by the prettiest girl at school. The wind chill was minus twenty, but I didn’t feel the cold.
* * *
The way Helen told the story later, it was the look of pure disappointment on my face after I so ineptly blackmailed Mowat with my sheaf of student letters that intrigued her. She could tell how much I’d hung my hopes on his goodwill. It was my lack of guile that charmed her.
She took Mowat across the street to a pub after the book-signing and convinced him to reconsider my request despite his secret fear of speaking in public. Helen had known him since she was a little girl. He and her dad had served in Italy together during the war. Whenever “Uncle” Farley had paid a visit to the house, she’d crawled up on his lap, played with his beard, and asked him to tell her a story. He’d