Meadowland (7 page)

So that’s Eyvind; and you can guess from what I’ve just told you that when I trod on his hand in the middle of the night, he wasn’t just going to grunt and roll over and go back to sleep. ‘Shut up,’ I hissed at him, but he reached out and grabbed my ankle, and said, ‘Kari, what the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’

Wonderful. Now everybody on the ship’s awake, cussing at me and yelling, shut up, lie down, there’s people trying to sleep here. I muttered something about going to the side for a shit; but that was my chance of getting off the boat gone for the night. See, I was planning on sneaking nice and quiet to the anchor rope, shinning down, swimming to land, scarfing up an armful of firewood and getting back on board before anybody was awake. Sounds like a stupid idea, and I suppose it was. But remember, I’d been on that bloody ship all the way across from Norway to Iceland, then straight back on without hardly any time ashore, and after that lost at sea, in the fog. I had this painful need to get off that crowded deck and be away from everybody else; and if that meant a midnight swim in the cold water, well, small price to pay

I lay awake all that night, fretting and brooding. Dawn came, but no wind. Bjarni was just sitting there, chin on hand, staring at the open sea with his back to the land. I guess somebody got up, lit a fire, cooked breakfast, went round with the pan and the plates handing it out. Nobody else stirred, we all just stayed where we were, like cattle in stalls over winter. I tried not to look at the land in the distance, but I just couldn’t help it. At times I could feel it, firm under my feet, and all that space around me. I thought about running, or lying down with my arms and legs spread wide without five men yelling at me. It was like my brain had turned into rotten planking and shipworms were burrowing into it.

That was a long day

At last it got dark and people slowly dropped off to sleep. By now, I could tell if the others were asleep or not just by listening to how they breathed; I recognised each one’s own special way of snoring, grunting, whuffling, and I counted. Silly thing was, after all that, I could hardly keep my own eyes open. But there: those that know me will tell you that I’ve got a stubborn streak. I don’t think so, but I do know my own mind. I forced myself to stay awake, and when I was the only one left, I got up, tiptoed ever so carefully round Eyvind and the man next to him, and felt for the side of the ship. Soon as I’d got it, I followed it uphill - the decks slanted a little, see - until I felt the anchor rope under my hand. Then it was overboard and into the horrible icy cold water, and a long hard swim to shore.

Even while I was swimming, I was calling myself every bad name I could remember. Crazy fool, I thought; what if a good wind suddenly gets up while I’m fooling about on shore? Bjarni wouldn’t stop to count heads, he’d call up sail and away, and then I’d be stuck here on this island for the rest of my life, not that that’d be a terribly long time. Or suppose I lost my way swimming about in the dark, went straight on past the ship, got frozen through or cramped up in the water and sank? Risks? I’d have been safer hunting bear with a leek-stalk for a spear. And what for? Because I wanted the stupid firewood? I’d burn it all up drying myself out, always assuming I’d dare light it and explain where I got it from. The thrill of being the first man to set foot on the undiscovered island? Who’d risk his life for something like that? No, I told myself, it’s your bloody wilfulness, like when you were a kid. Dad said don’t climb up on the roof or you’ll fall off, so I climbed up and I fell off. Bjarni said no going ashore, and here I am, freezing my nuts off in the sea in the dark. I wish just once someone’d forbid me to do something sensible, and then I’d go and do it.

You can imagine how glad I was when I fetched up on the sand, though of course it was spoiled by knowing how far back again it all was. Still, I’d made it; and the light was coming up, very pale in the east, and I could just make out the trees in the distance, and the faint gleam of the sky reflected in a river snaking lazily away I turned round to look at where I’d come ashore and I couldn’t help but notice what a good convenient harbour the bay made; also, after a few yards of sand I was standing on turf, firm and springy. Hadn’t seen it from the ship, of course, because of the angle and the lie of the ground, but there was actually a wide strip of flat grass between the beach and the tree line. As I walked through it I could feel how lush and thick it was, not like the short, coarse, wiry stuff back home. Good pasture, I thought..

Then I walked along a bit, and next thing I knew I was on my face in the mud. I groped round to see what I’d tripped over, and it felt like a branch. Driftwood, I thought, that’ll do, and I tried to pick it up, but it was heavy; also, it felt odd. I bent my head down so I could see, and I realised it wasn’t just some old bit of tree, it was a proper worked post, all carved up and down with twisted snakes, Norwegian style. That got me going for a moment, and then I figured out what I’d got hold of. It was one of the canopy struts Bjarni had bought as a present for his dad.

That gave me a really funny turn, you can imagine. Well, no, actually you can’t, because you don’t know what I’m on about. See, there’s an old tradition going right back to when Iceland was settled. The original settlers, when they first came in sight of land, used to get their canopy struts and chuck them over the side. Then, when they’d landed, they’d go up and down the beach till they found where the struts had been washed up, and that was where they built their houses. It sounds like a really stupid way of choosing a new home, till you think that even back then there was bugger-all wood in Iceland, apart from driftwood. It made a lot of sense to build at the point where the currents pitched driftwood ashore - and other useful stuff too: you’d be surprised what you can pick up off a beach.

Anyhow, there they were, these canopy struts; and I stood there for a bit like an idiot, wondering how on earth they’d got there. I guess they must’ve been washed overboard at some point while we were bobbing about in the fog, and what with one thing and another we hadn’t noticed they’d gone. It struck me as pretty funny: Bjarni’d been so dead set against landing, but the sea had other ideas and pinched his struts to show him where to build a house; sort of like when the dog really wants to play chasing sticks, and it comes running up with the stick in its mouth so you can’t help but get the message. Of course, there was no way I’d be able to tell Bjarni what’d become of his dad’s present, since I wasn’t meant to be there. Seemed a shame to leave them, but what could I do?

So I left them sticking up out of the sand on the edge of the turf line and went to look for firewood. I had to walk right up to the trees to find even a twig. I’d been counting on scooping up an armful of driftwood off the sand, but I hadn’t reckoned on the belt of grass. The trees were all familiar shapes, masur birch (made me feel a little better about not loading up with the stuff, grows quick, burns quick, rots quick, and the best you can say of it is, it’s better than nothing), and I grabbed a half-armful of fallen stuff and brash and scuttled back to the beach, hoping it was light enough by now to see the ship, rather than try and remember where it was. Of course, trying to swim one-handed with a load of sticks gripped under my arm was a waste of time. I had to dump the whole lot just to keep from going under. But I got back to the ship, and my fingers weren’t quite so frozen that I couldn’t climb the rope. Hauled myself over the side, dragged myself back to my place, slopped down all wringing wet and fell straight to sleep; woke up with Eyvind’s boot in my side, saw from the light it was no more than an hour or so later.

‘Get up, you idle bugger,’ Eyvind was saying. ‘The wind’s up, we’re on our way’ Then he stopped and looked at me. ‘You’re all wet,’ he said.

Luckily, I had my answer ready ‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘Got up in the night for a pee, lost my balance and fell in the water. Had to climb back in up the anchor rope.

Eyvind grunted, which told me that he believed me; and then Bjarni was shouting orders; and I jumped to it along with the rest of them. Nobody else said anything about me being all wet. Fairly soon the whole lot of us were drenched through, all of them as wet as me or wetter, so I guess I was no worse off for my adventure.

It was three days before we saw land again. When eventually it popped its head up out of the water, we could see glaciers plain as anything. The trouble was, there were too many of them. Bjarni was on the lookout for one big blue one, but this place that we’d come to had loads of them, crowning a huge mountain range, and once again Bjarni told us to keep going. We weren’t too badly upset by that. It was a fair way from the sea to the foot of the mountains, and a more desolate landscape you never saw, not even the lava coast of southern Iceland. No good to anybody, Ejari called it, and for once we all agreed with him.

We kept the sail full and followed the coastline for a bit. Turned out that the worthless place was an island, not that that had any bearing on anything. Soon we were sick of the sight of that flat waste of rubble, so we set a course away from it, due east into the open sea. Our luck was in: we picked up a nice brisk wind, which pretty soon thickened up into a regular gale. Shorten the sails, Bjarni said, not that we needed telling; we didn’t want the sail in rags and all the ropes busted.

We hung on for four days, like men breaking a wild pony clinging to the training rein. Nothing we could do except hold on. The wind knew where it wanted to go and the best we could hope for was that it’d take us somewhere, not just drag us out into the middle of open sea and then suddenly die away I’m not sure which was worse, that or the fog. On balance I’d say the fog, but not by much. Cooking was out of the question. Moving about on the ship was just asking to get swept over the side. We were fairly flying along, and I remember Bjarni saying that if we were headed in the right direction, you couldn’t ask for a better wind, since each day we went twice as far, maybe three times, as you’d expect to go under normal conditions. Me, I could’ve put up with taking a bit longer and going a bit more steady Actually, I was in no hurry at all. See, the difference between Bjari and me was that Bjarni really wanted to see his old man and the rest of his family again. Not so in my case. We never got on all that well, my dad and me, and of course he’d gone west with the rest of the Drepstokk household, so I was going home too.

Not sure what this has got to do with anything, but let me tell you a bit about my old man. Mum died when I was quite small, I don’t hardly remember her. I had a sister but she was ten years older than me; she married out of the house when I was five and moved fifteen miles away, so I only saw her once or twice a year, at County Fair and Government Assembly, assuming I got taken with the rest of the family So it was just Dad and me most of the time, and the two of us got along like a fox in a henhouse, each of us taking turns to be the fox, if you get my meaning. If he saw something one way, I’d see it the opposite. Like, he was head stockman; it was an important job and he did it well, all credit to him. He valued those cattle more than old Herjolf himself did. Nobody ever had to tell him what to do, because he’d thought of it already; and he always went the extra mile, made the extra effort, did that little bit more than the boss would’ve asked of him. Me, I could never see the point. Why wear yourself to the bone for another man’s herd, was how I saw it; half the time, old Herjolf wasn’t aware of the pains the old man was going to, so he got no extra thanks. Different if it’s your own stock, that goes without saying, but grinding yourself thin when nobody’s even looking - I couldn’t see the point. My attitude was, do what’s expected of you and no more. That riled Dad no end. What else were you planning on doing with your time, he’d say; you just sit around in the house or in the barn. He couldn’t understand anybody wanting to be idle when there was work he could be doing. He was the kind of man who can’t sit still and just be, with his hands folded across his belly

Truth is (and I can see it now I’ve lived with myself all these years) I’m not so different from him after all, but back then I sort of took pride in making myself the opposite of the old man, just to spite him. He’d call me shiftless and no good, and I’d make like I thought he was stupid, working so hard and getting nothing in return. I was wrong, of course. Maybe Herjolf didn’t notice every single time that Dad put in extra work, but he was no fool, he could see that his cattle were the best in the district and he knew they weren’t that way by chance. In return, he treated Dad as a cut above the rest of the hired men, because he knew he could depend on him; didn’t treat him as a servant, more like a member of the family That way, Dad was really working for himself as much as for Herjolf, and he had the wit to see it. I was just young, though, and never saw it that way As far as I was concerned, there was this line drawn right across the world, farmers on one side, hired men on the other, and never a day but I knew which side I’d been born on; and whose fault was that? Dad’s, of course, for bringing me into the world on the wrong side.

So anyhow, you can understand why he and I never got on when I was a kid, and why I was so keen to get away from the farm when Bjarni came looking for a crew Fool to myself, because it meant I turned into a sailor when the sailing life doesn’t suit me at all. The comedy of it is, deep down I must’ve learned Dad’s lesson without even knowing it, because when we were on a trip I was just like him. Nobody ever had to give me an order, I’d already seen what needed doing and done it. Partly, I guess, that was because I got so bored sitting still that anything was a welcome change, but really I think it was me being like the old man in my chosen path, as you might say No bad thing in some ways, because a man gets a reputation for being a good worker, and then he’ll never be out of a place when they’re hiring for a voyage. On the other hand, there’s this thin line between knowing what to do without needing to be asked, which is good, and thinking you always know what needs to be done better than anybody else, which leads to wilfulness, specially when other folk think otherwise. Like for instance, I thought somebody should go ashore and get firewood when we were sat there becalmed off the sandy beach, so I went and did it, in spite of what I’d been told; and you’ll hear about what came of that.