The Last Refuge (15 page)

She was hot then cold; she was exciting, irritating. She was so passionate about her home and its people, their rights and its wrongs, that it would burst from her in angry rants that mesmerized and amused me in equal measure.

She was as unpredictable as the Faroese weather. You could never be sure what you would get, but you knew there would be lots of it.

Yes, there was sometimes a sense that not all was right, that something in her was misfiring; but there was so much of it. A life so overflowing that some of it could be spilt without loss. Karis had life to spare, even if she didn’t always seem to know what to do with it.

It was not about how she looked or how her skin felt when I touched her. It was all about what was inside.

Chapter 21

As soon as I walk out the back door, I recognize the smell. November. The aroma is cold and earthy, smoke drifting on the breeze and leaves starting to rot, damp grass turning evening-crisp. The smell of winter is on the wind, too, the sting riding on autumn’s tail.

As I go deeper into the garden I can make out the size and shape of the untidy pyramid that sits where it shouldn’t be. It’s near the far wall where you can catch the last of the day’s sun, where the table and chairs ought to be. But then I remember the smell; recognize the darkness of the hour and the chill in the air. November. The strange intruder is a bonfire.

But I didn’t build it. This is my garden. Who built a bonfire here? I look around again and I’m not in my garden at all. It’s the park and there are people all around, wrapped up in coats, hats and scarves, gloved hands carrying armfuls of fireworks. Bonfire night. That’s why we’re all here.

The bonfire is huge, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. People are arriving all the time and adding ever more wood to it. Sticks and planks and branches. They’re adding whole doors and yards of fencing. The bonfire is growing so that you can barely see the top. I’m adding my own timber to the pyramid: an old dining table that came from my mum and dad’s kitchen; picture frames that once held photographs of people I loved; a wardrobe that held every piece of clothing I’ve ever worn.

You can feel the sense of anticipation in the air. Everyone is desperate to see the first flames steal through the wood, watch it rise stick after branch, listen to it crackle then roar until it bursts into a ball of flame the size of a forest.

There’s something missing though. The effigy. You can’t have Guy Fawkes Night without a Guy. Penny for the Guy. Penny for the Guy.

There he is. Kids pushing him through the crowds in a wheelbarrow, his arms and legs flopped over the side. The crowd peels back, the space forming a guard of honour for four teenagers, big lads, carrying and guiding the wheelbarrow towards the bonfire.

They get to the foot of the huge pile of wood and begin to haul the Guy out and onto the pyre. He’s one of the best effigies I’ve ever seen. So realistic. Almost human. The four of them have got him out of the barrow now, an arm or leg each. As they lift him, the movement makes his head sit up as if he’s alive.

Then his eyes open.

He stares straight at me, pleading for help. I recognize him. It’s Liam Dornan. His mouth is open, too, moving slowly.
Help me. Help me.
Why can no one else see it? It’s not a Guy. It’s a boy. It’s Liam.

I’m screaming out to warn them but no one can hear me. No matter that I roar until my lungs are burning fiercer than any bonfire, they can’t hear a sound. My head whirls round the crowd and every one of them is laughing.

Petrol is poured. A match is struck. The flames lick at the base of the bonfire, they leap up three feet, six feet, up and up. Liam Dornan is at the top of the pile, his head lolling to one side and his eyes on mine. His mouth is open, screaming. The fire is a beast now, a wild animal with a life of its own, unstoppable.

No one will listen so I rush forward. I’ve got to get him off there, because no one else can see that it’s him. I begin pulling at the wood, my hands glowing and my skin almost translucent, so that you can see the blood flowing hot beneath. I throw back a desk, pull away at burning fencing. Looking up, I see that the flames have reached Liam’s legs; his shoes and trousers are on fire. I climb towards him, stepping over blazing chairs, tables, boats and beds, throwing them away as I clamber.

He’s screaming now. I can smell his flesh burning. See the clothes dropping from him as they turn to ash. He’s naked and on fire, engulfed in flame. I can’t get any closer. The wood is a barricade. A gate shut to me. All I can do is grasp the scorching timber bars and shake them helplessly, my own skin burning at the touch.

Liam Dornan is burning at the stake in front of my eyes. I clamp my eyes shut and when I open them again, he is only smoke. Just ashes where once he had been.

When I woke, sitting upright and soaked in sweat, I could still feel the heat of the bonfire on my forehead and my hands were still burning. I could still see a wisp of smoke that used to be the boy, disappearing out of the corner of my eye.

And there sitting up, watching me and listening, was Karis. Her mouth gaped slightly, and I wasn’t sure which of us was more scared. I didn’t dare ask, in case I found out.

Chapter 22

‘Are you sure you are not scared? Not even a little?’

She was teasing me, the laughter in her voice just inches from the surface, and delight in her eyes at the expression I was unable to strip from my face.

‘No. Of course not,’ I lied.

Karis and I were standing on top of Vestmannabjørgini, the Vestmanna bird cliffs on the west of Streymoy, one of the most spectacular spots in the entire archipelago. We were perched on firm ground, lush, green and undulating below our feet. Only a few steps away, the land disappeared and fell to the sea, down vertical cliffs to the rocks 300 metres below. That was where I was going and that was why I was more than a little scared.

‘Good. I am glad you’re not scared. Because if you were, you wouldn’t have to do it.’

The air around us was thick with sea birds and their cries echoed between my ears. They were taunting me every bit as much as Karis was.

‘No, I’ll do it. I’ll go over the edge.’

It was my first trip outside Torshavn with Karis and she was proving to be a different kind of guide from Gotteri. He had at least stopped shy of risking my life when he showed off the Faroe Islands’ beauty.

Karis was here to paint and had dragged me along for company. And, it seemed, for her own amusement. Vestmannabjørgini, spectacularly sheer, faced out into the wild Atlantic and was home to fulmars, kittiwakes, cormorants, and guillemots, many of them perched on ledges hundreds of metres below us. The highest point of the cliff rose some six hundred metres above the sea, but we were positioned just halfway up.

In days past, the young men of the islands would descend on ropes held by their companions, abseiling down the vertical rock face to the ledges where they would collect eggs or capture live birds. Both were vital if a village was to be fed. Most times they would come back with food for the larder; sometimes they didn’t come back at all. Falling rocks, frayed ropes, loose footing or panicked birds could all be the cause of a young man’s death.

Now, enterprising locals offered headlong trips off the cliff edge in the time-honoured manner. In English it was called rappelling. In Faroese,
síging
. In any language, it seemed crazy.

A trio of curious puffins watched as I was kitted out in safety helmet and harness and secured to a rope. The strange little birds gave me a final mildly interested stare before waddling off like three drunken old men, perhaps unable to face seeing another tourist plunge to his death.

Karis kissed me solemnly on the lips. ‘It is tradition that I say goodbye in case I never see you again. But I also wish you good luck.’

‘Thanks. This was your idea, remember.’

‘I know.’ She smiled brightly and retreated to the safety of her easel some distance away, where she could take in the whole scene and sketch it. That was my reason for being there, a stuntman for a painting by Karis Lisberg.

I had come to the edge of the world and now I was going to voluntarily walk off it for this woman.

Standing on the lip of the cliff, I looked down at the vertical drop beneath me, a rock face dotted with undercut rookeries and plunging towards a bed of blackened basalt. Some distance down, the view was lost in mist, becoming an invisible abyss from where bird cries rose like the wailing of lost souls.

Off to my right, maybe some fifty metres away, a huge sea stack rose majestically, teeming with birds such that the entire rock seemed alive. Its top was coated in a sward of green vegetation, its middle ringed with the haunting sea mist.

I turned my back on the sight and faced the four men in whom I was placing my trust and my life. I nodded. They gripped the rope tighter then nodded back at me as one. I swallowed hard and stepped off into oblivion. My feet disappeared and my body quickly followed. In seconds, the cliff top had disappeared and all I could see was the rock face in front of me, heaven above and hell below.

Suspended by a thread, just as my life hung by one, I had ten metres of sheer rock above me and still thirty times as much between me and the sea.

I pushed off, away from the rock wall into mid-air and down, the free swinging exhilaration of it coursing through my veins. Down I dropped, kicked and swung and dropped. I fell into the mist and was wrapped in its coolness, disorientated by the sudden loss of the blue above. I halted just for a moment, taking in the strangeness of my surroundings but aware that if I dwelt on it too much I might be stuck there forever. I planted both feet against the basalt and pushed back.

I dropped another forty metres or so and as suddenly as I’d fallen into the mist, I was out the other side. Looking up, the cliff top was gone, Karis and the men who held me gone with it. Below, still far below, I could see the intricate rock formations that had been carved out by the sea, patchwork steps reminiscent of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Waves assaulted them thunderously and the noise rose up to greet me, like hands being clapped in encouragement. Go on, be stupid, be brave, be foolhardy.

I was descending the side of a skyscraper, every apartment inhabited by guillemots dressed in black and white. Pushing away from the bluff with my feet, I swung out and down, acutely aware that I was going where others had died before me. Some of the rock hadn’t shifted in hundreds of years, but some kicked loose as my feet caught it and tumbled below. If similar rocks were to come at me from above then I’d know all about it.

My heart raced and adrenalin drenched me. This was idiotic. Exhilarating, breathtaking and so enlivening, yet surely crazy.

As I pushed and swung, the sea grew louder as it crashed against the rock, ready to catch me if I fell. The precipice ducked in abruptly, an under-hang catching me unawares. My feet slid into a ledge where a family of guillemots were basking in the sunlight. They were at least as startled as I was and two of them flew into my face in a panic.

My vision was a blur of white and feathers and my ears rang to their frightened squawks. Their wings beat into my face and my mind was instantly filled with memories of the skuas above Torshavn and the damage they had wrought. I kicked out in a fluster of my own, desperate to push away from the winged threats, propelling myself not just out and down but wildly to the side, as I swung haphazardly left and right.

There were shouts from above, worried yells as the men on the cliff top became aware of the irregular movement on the rope. I was swinging out of control and the line above sweeping across ledges as it pleased. I felt a tug as it caught something way above me, then another and a third. Looking up, I saw three dark objects hurtling towards me, big and heavy. I kicked again away from the cliff face and managed to miss the first of them, but the second caught me a glancing blow on the shoulder, a punch hard enough to cause a screeching pain. The third rock clattered full tilt into my helmet and the world crashed through me.

Somehow I managed not to black out, the helmet doing its job, but my hands were shocked loose of the rope and I dangled groggily, suspended by the harness alone. There were more shouts from above and then from far below, too, a futile attempt at conversation against the backdrop of nature’s chorus.

Then I was being lowered, inch by helpless inch, down the rock face, only vaguely aware of sliding past further apartments of amused guillemots, each smiling at my plight. As I got lower on the rock, other birds seemed to glide into view to join in the laughter: cormorants and shags, residents of the cheaper accommodation. Finally, I felt hands grasp me and I was lowered slowly onto the bedrock, where I looked up at three pairs of legs and three worried faces.

‘Are you okay?’; ‘Your head, is it okay?’

The crew of the boat that was to have taken me on a tour round the bottom of the cliffs were clearly worried. But I was more embarrassed than hurt. I’d had worse on a Saturday night in Glasgow. And my head had felt twice as bad on many a Sunday morning.

‘I’m fine. How are the birds?’

Karis was still at her easel when I eventually got back to the top of Vestmannabjørgini via boat, car and hike, all while nursing a throbbing headache. If she was aware of the minor drama then she didn’t show it. She was lost in the piece before her, her hands moving quickly and her concentration complete.

I moved round behind her to see the piece and froze as I saw what she’d sketched. Sure enough, there I was, over the edge of the cliff, a cloud of guillemots a few feet above my head. But I wasn’t dressed in hiking trousers and fleece as I was now. I wore a woollen hat instead of a helmet and was clad in a rough jacket and trousers that seemed to roll into socks just below my knees, like an old golfer’s plus fours. The modern safety harness was just a loop around my waist and I held a long pole in my hand with a net on the end. On the cliff top, four men sat one behind the other as if they were in an invisible rowing boat, bracing themselves against the hill as they held the rope and me beyond it.