The Last Refuge (13 page)

The next thing I knew I was being nudged out of my non-sleep by her ass grinding against me as she stretched, catlike, her smooth skin working against me, a distinct purr rumbling in her throat. I was suddenly and noticeably awake.

She turned, a huge triumphant smile on her face, and pushed me away from her until I was flat on my back. I was aware of her crawling on all fours towards me from my feet, stalking her prey with confidence. A hand grabbed me, stroked me, owned me. Her face told me what we both knew; she could do what she wanted. And she did.

She sat above me, positioning herself just where she wanted. I ached for her but she remained on her knees, an agonizing inch or two above me. She looked glorious in the half-light, her hair partly over her face, her skin pale in shadow and her figure lean yet curvy. When she’d satisfied herself that I’d suffered enough, she swooped and engulfed me.

She set the pace and the rhythm, I just did my best to keep up. It was a race, but only Karis knew where the winning post was.

The smile on her face told me that she was in charge, she had me. But the truth was that I couldn’t care less. If this was subservience, I’d take it. In the end, I wasn’t sure if she pushed or dragged me over the finishing line, but we crossed it together.

As she collapsed on top of me and we both drifted off on a sea of satisfaction, I took a brief second to look over her shoulder and see an indefinable light leaking through the window. I couldn’t place the time within a few hours either way and it didn’t matter. This was sleep I could handle.

We were in Etika, the sushi restaurant opposite the Hotel Hafnia on Áarvegur, Karis with her porkpie hat perched cockily on her head. She looked great, in a skin-tight red T-shirt and black skinny jeans, a long hooded red raincoat hung over the back of the chair setting off the urban Little Red Riding Hood look.

We were sitting on the lowest level of the restaurant, next to the floor-to-ceiling windows that held up Etika’s thick turfed roof; she facing down the street and me up. She was picking energetically at a plate of halibut, yet still found time to gesture furiously, and there was no let-up in her arguments.

‘People say things have changed, but we women still aren’t given the chance to express ourselves or to get the best jobs. We’re not given enough respect. My eyes were opened in Copenhagen, like so many others. Once you have seen true equality, you do not settle for less. Other young women stayed away because of it. I came back to fight against it.’

‘Look, I understand that—’

‘No, you
don’t
understand. You don’t live here, so you can’t. Women have never been given a fair chance in the Faroe Islands. It has been the way of the society. We are forty years behind Denmark.
Forty years
, I’m telling you. Oh, and because we now get to hold positions of State we should be grateful? Ha. Men here think they can do what they want and get away with it.’

‘Okay, but . . .’

‘But? It is not okay and no “but” can make it right. How dare you try to justify it? What is this “but”?’

She glared furiously at me, her green eyes blazing, as she shovelled a mouthful of raw fish into her mouth and clamped it shut like a vice. I should have known better than to even try, but I’d already dug the hole for myself.

‘But things have changed some. You had a female Prime—’

Karis thumped the heel of her hand against her forehead. ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I cannot believe that is your argument. We had a female Prime Minister so that makes it all right? That was in 1994. I was five years old. Marita Petersen was a wonderful woman, but she was Prime Minister for one year and since then, no other woman. And where did she go to get educated? Denmark. And where did she begin work as a teacher? Denmark. One female Prime Minister and that makes everything all right? Is that what you are saying?’

I wanted to slump onto the table, head first into my sushi, in submission. ‘No. No, I’m not.’

‘Good!’ The word was spat at me, slapping me across the face. Something lit up inside her when she was as angry as this, or when she enthused about something, or when she passionately wanted something. And usually at least one of those three things was happening. She was so alive, so vibrant, so maddeningly animated.

Another forkful of halibut was washed down with a gulp of beer, and as soon as she’d swallowed it a burst of Faroese followed under her breath. I didn’t want to know what it meant.

She gave me a final glare over the rim of the beer bottle and sat back, satisfied that I had been vanquished, and taking my silence, quite accurately, as capitulation. I’d been slain by her wrath and I’d liked it, so much so that I was fighting a smile that threatened to sneak onto my lips. I knew it would be the end of me.

I let the conversation roll into art and out again, to the sushi and the beer, to where we were staying that night. But before I could start my own argument, we both became aware of someone looking at us from outside the restaurant. I turned and saw a man just inches from the window, staring straight at us from the rain-sodden pavement. He was short and gaunt, a ghost with close-cut dark hair flecked with grey, and piercing blue eyes.

As I looked at him, I caught sight of Karis’s reflection painted over the man’s stare. She was open-mouthed, caught somewhere between surprise and fear, an expression I’d last seen when Aron Dam had made her run out of Cafe Natur that first night.

By the time I turned back to her she had composed herself, her mouth closed and her focus regained.

‘Who the hell is he?’

‘Just ignore him.’ Her attention was back on the food in front of her. ‘He will go away.’

‘Do you want me to get rid of him?’

‘No!’ Her reply was unnecessarily over the top, and I shifted in my seat to get a better look at the wraith on the other side of the window. He was on the move, though, striding up the street and, for a few moments, I thought she’d been right to ignore him, that he was just some local weirdo. I thought that right up until he opened the door to the restaurant and walked inside.

Karis hadn’t been watching him, but there was no doubt she could tell what had happened by the look on my face. She seemed to shrink in her seat, hiding within the folds of her own clothes. The man was in his mid fifties, well-dressed, and walked with the certainty of the supremely confident or the misguided. Whatever it was he wanted, he had no doubt about it.

I pushed myself out of my chair ready to confront him, but Karis hissed at me frantically. ‘Sit down. Oh, my God, sit down. Please.’

Reluctantly, I slid back into my chair just before the man got to our table. His jaw was set firm but his eyes alternated between me and Karis, as if he couldn’t make his mind up who to glare at.

He stopped by her chair and looked down at her, while she stared up almost obediently.

‘Hvør er hesin?’
he asked her, his hand waving at me.

‘Ddma, Pdpi. Ddma . . .’

‘Hvør er hesin?’
he repeated, louder this time. I balled my fists and got ready to get up, but was put back in my place by a wordless plea from Karis, who shot a despairing look in my direction.

‘Vinur,’
she told him.
‘Bert vinur, Pdpi’

Her answer wasn’t enough to satisfy the man and he let loose a string of angry sentences, albeit in more hushed tones than his opening salvo. He was obviously aware of the other diners. She replied, her voice equally low and insistent.

They batted their argument back and forth. At one point, the man grabbed the red raincoat hanging on the back of her chair, half picking it up, as if to say she should put it on and go with him.

‘
Nei, Pápi. Nei. Dáma
.’

Karis continued to talk to him, her voice more relaxed now, soothing and pleading. She was winning. I could hear that in the man’s own voice now, a reluctant concession.

Finally he sighed hard, breath and will leaking from him. ‘
Júst. Júst
.’

He shot out an arm and I flinched, wondering what was happening, but he just ran his hand lightly through her hair. Her own hand came up and caught his, clasping it gently. She released him and the man spun on his heels and trudged back out of the restaurant without a backwards glance.

When he’d left, Karis let her head slump forward into her hands, her face obscured from me, her fingers rubbing at her eyes. Her head moved rhythmically from side to side and I heard what I thought was a single sob escape from her.

She sat back up, eyes red, and took a hefty swig of her beer before attacking her plate with a fork.

‘Why is it,’ I began hesitantly, ‘that men round here are aggressive to me when I’m with you? Is it me?’

Karis gave a small, mirthless laugh. ‘No, it’s not you. It’s me. It’s because you are with me. They all love me and so they all hate you.’ She laughed again, but shrilly this time.

‘That was my father. He wanted to know who you were. He is very . . . protective.’

‘Karis, you’re twenty-four. Surely he—’

Her eyes flared hot. ‘Don’t criticize him. Do not. Don’t say he shouldn’t protect me.’

‘I’m not. I . . . Look, are you okay?’

She sank slightly in her chair, the fire going out of her again. ‘Yes. Sorry. I’m fine. He is a good man. He just forgets how old I am sometimes. And it’s his job.’

‘Being a father?’

‘No. Well, sort of. His actual job. He is a minister in the church. He is the sainted Esmundur Lisberg. The most Lutheran of the Lutherans. The keeper of all our consciences.’

She suddenly looked a little shamefaced. ‘I do not mean it. He is a good man. Since my mother died . . . he has to be everything for me and for his church. Sometimes it is too much for him. He just wants to make sure I am okay. I told him that I am. It is not you, Callum. It is me.’

‘So you
really
don’t approve of the Church.’

She sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘No. Of course I don’t. The churches here, they have too much of a say in people’s lives. And they are too stuck in their ways. They are good people, but I don’t think they have changed their views in a hundred years. Do people listen to the churches in Scotland?’

Too much and not enough, was the answer that sprang to mind. I’d already noticed how busy most of the churches here were on Sundays, the Evangelical Lutherans and the Plymouth Brethren, much busier than they would be in Scotland. There, religious affiliation came too often in the form of supporting football teams rather than any deep-held beliefs.

‘Not so much,’ I told her. ‘Is it wrong that they listen to them here?’

‘Yes! They think women should be in the home, tending to children or the kitchen. They say homosexuality is a sin and show no human kindness for the persecuted. And it is because of them that the state doesn’t help those that are in need. The church says oh the government shouldn’t give money to this or that, even though it is needed. They say God will look after them. Well, I am looking and I can’t see God doing such a good job.’

‘So why don’t people change things?’

She laughed at me. ‘Because nearly everyone is a member of one church or another. All life on the islands is ruled by the church and the sea.’

I took a deep draw on my own beer, letting the cool liquid swill around in my mouth, savouring the taste of it.

‘Tell me about you and Aron Dam.’ It was the first time that I’d let on I knew the name of the thug who had spooked her that first night.

Her lower lip dropped momentarily.

‘No.’

I took another mouthful of beer, letting the moment simmer.

‘Just “no”? That’s it?’

‘Yes. Just “no”. Please, Callum. It is done. Aron is from my past and I want to keep him there.’

There was more. There was so obviously more, but she didn’t want to give it.

‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘But is he someone that I need to worry about?’

‘No. He isn’t.’

I wasn’t sure which of us was the least convinced by her answer.

Chapter 19

A strange thing had happened to me. I was aware of it even though I couldn’t be sure when or how it had taken place. I came to think that I had simply been worn down by these islands, chipped away at by the sea, like the giant basalt stacks.

My initial downbeat impressions of drizzly, uneventful Torshavn had been lost on the wind. I now saw a different town, full of colour, vibrancy and charm. I saw calm, friendly, undemonstrative people who would go out of their way to help you. Not that they would do that or anything else quickly. On the Faroes, they said that people were only ever in a hurry for whaling and that only the church started on time.

I had even grown to love the rain and shrug at the wind, as they did. The weather wasn’t a foe, it was a friend, something that you could always rely on; only the form of its appearance was in doubt. If the rain and the mist weren’t there then you couldn’t truly appreciate the blue of the sky and the views to be seen when the weather cleared.

Gotteri took me to cliff tops, fjords, sea stacks, mountain peaks, uninhabited islands and islands with only one family on them. I saw views that took my breath away and others that reminded me why I ought to be grateful for the chance to breathe.

Martin Hojgaard taught me about the history, culture and traditions of the place. Like most Faroese, he was fiercely patriotic and never tired of telling me about the Faroes’ heritage as we drove to and from the fish farm. It was he who told me that the first people to settle on the islands were thought to be monks from Scotland and Ireland back in the sixth century AD. It was two hundred years later before the Vikings arrived: Norsemen not only from Scandinavia but also from their communities on the Irish Sea and the Western Isles of Scotland. I now understand why the accent reminded me of Galway or Lewis.

‘But now maybe we could find out for sure,’ he was telling me on the drive back to Torshavn. ‘Last year they began a programme to DNA-test everyone in the islands, the entire population. It is very controversial, as you would imagine. They are deciphering the complete DNA sequence for every person and they will use the information for medical treatment. They say the data will be held securely and only the individual will know. Of course people do not believe this. What do you think?’