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In the desolate wastes of his flat, Digby Ponder embarks on his new novel

Saturday 11 May 1996 02.45.03

Dear Rudy. I am writing this in the wee hours, a little bit drunk and a little bit sad. Last week Nadine and I split up. It was a mutual decision - except she got there first. In a long and difficult conversation it emerged she too had been feeling restless for ages. And there was someone she was interested in, but had never done anything about.

So now the flat is a bit empty. Out of bad, however, comes good. I have finally got started on my book. Somehow the long, lonely hours are conducive to the business of putting cursor to screen.

With trepidation I attach my first page. Tell me bluntly what you think. God bless. Dig

Attachment 1: Pack Ice. A novel of the wild, by Digby Ponder

From a few yards away one could hardly have told that the shambling figure, making slow progress across the icy tundra of northern Baffin Island on this bleak Friday in 1942, was actually a man. His beard, eye- brows and lashes were rimmed with ice, his breath emerging in hot snorts of steam from nostril and mouth. His body, swathed in the furs of bear and mousse (or is that moose? Check) could have been that of any large mammal, were it not for the fact that he walked upright on two legs.

What little of the eyes showed through lids half-shut against the driving, icy wind were bloodshot - showing few traces of the pure blue that had captured the hearts of many a young girl oh, so long ago, as it now seemed.

But not any more. There were no beautiful women here in the Wild. No parties, no laughing embraces, no clinking of glasses, no touch of soft, warm flesh. All left behind when He, the Man, had volunteered - had demanded - to be sent on the longest, loneliest mission his country could find for him.

Not that he was a stranger to solitary activities. Far from it. The Man had been raised in the harshest and most unforgiving outpost of the declining British Empire - the sparsely inhabited Orcadian island of Nodday, fifty miles from Scotland - a million miles from civilisation. On its cliffs he had learned the rudiments of rock climbing without ropes. In the North Atlantic swells that lay off Nodday's cold beaches he had become an immensely powerful swimmer. His footprints in the windswept sands attested to his athleticism and fleetness of foot. Sitting with only two other children in his stern father's tiny tin schoolhouse he had acquired the virtues of self-reliance and discipline, a deep knowledge of the classics and a far from rudimentary understanding of applied physics. The ways of the wild birds, the tracks of small mammals, the tales that nature tells - if only you know how to listen - all these were part of The Man's birthright.

And what was he thinking of as he trudged through the snow? His mind was still, after nine months, roiling with the betrayal that had brought him to this country of ice and desolation. Betrayal by a woman. By Natasha.

Natasha! The one word engendered a torrent of memories and recollections. Of the moment that they had first seen each other, eyes meeting from neighbouring punts on that balmy summer's afternoon on the Cam. Of tea taken together in his rooms at Trinity. Natasha, her brow furrowed as she conjured the marvellous deep notes from her cello. Natasha weeping gently with joy at the miracle of their first lovemaking.

And then that other moment, when - with clouded face - she had told him the dreadful truth about her and Monty Arbuthnot, the young heir to the Dukedom of Richmond and the vast palace of Windsey. Told him she was no longer his. Then turned her back on him, in the lobby of that small Parisian hotel and went out of his life for ever.

All gone now. All left behind. Ashes in the mouth. But the betrayals had not ended there, he thought wryly. What about that other betrayal, only this morning, when his faithful huskies - sensing his predicament - had deserted him, slinking away while he was occupied in skinning a mink. Or the sled carrying his warm sleeping bag and provisions, which he could no longer pull. Had not the sled too, in a sense, betrayed him?

Thus it was, lost in reveries, that The Man failed from the corner of his eye to see the great dark shape of The Bear.

To be continued ...