Cold Earth, page 19
‘Jim?’ Ben was blowing into his mittened hands. ‘This fog. The plane couldn’t land anyway, could it?’
‘I don’t think so. Can’t see how it would. It’s not as if we’ve got radar or landing lights on that field. It might lift. Well, it will lift. Eventually.’
‘Yeah. That’s what I thought.’
Nina cooked that night. Last night. Catriona, who returned from her afternoon with Nina with a graze on her forehead, found a tube of tomato purée, mis-categorised with the antiseptic creams in the first aid kit. Then she rummaged in her tent and came back with a small tin of anchovies.
‘I’ve been saving them.’ She handed the tin to Nina. ‘The nutritional value’s minimal, we won’t – I mean, if the plane can’t land, we needn’t regret eating them. My mum gave them to me when I was packing. She used to take them when we went camping when I was little.’
Nina, face hollow in the lamplight, looked like someone in a Christmas crib painting beholding the baby Jesus.
‘I can save half. Or more. They’ll keep, in this cold. Thanks, Cat, they’ll make all the difference. I picked some thyme.’
I think it will be years before I want thyme again, and maybe it will always remind me of prickly grass through my jeans and the fleeting warmth of a metal plate in my hand. Hands and face moving through the small circle of yellow light, Nina squashed garlic in a dish with a fork, peeled back the lid on Catriona’s anchovies and forked them dripping onto the garlic. My mouth watered. Steam from the noodles merged with the fog, and already the tin was beaded with damp. I know we are not very hungry, not by historical standards. People work for months and years and raise kids and walk miles with hunger worse than this. I don’t know if you get used to thinking about food all the time or if it stops after a while or if other people are better at lifting their thoughts. All those fasting saints, without noodles and anchovies or even thyme.
‘It’s nearly ready,’ said Nina. ‘Yianni?’
Yianni was in his tent with the phone. Silently.
‘Yeah.’ He sat in the entrance. ‘Sorry. There’s still nothing. No dial tone.’
My boots are worn. I flexed my foot and watched the crack across the toes open and close.
‘I don’t think we thought there would be.’ Catriona’s voice was high, as if from far away.
‘It might be the phone. I never tested it.’
‘We guessed.’
The stove fell silent. Nina took the pan off and, using the lid to hold back the noodles, poured the water unsteadily into a mug. She shook the noodles in the pan. It hissed as she put it down on the grass, and a faint smell of hay rose. Her hands in the lamplight were misshapen by chilblains. She scraped the crushed garlic and anchovies over the noodles, squeezed a worm of tomato purée over them, and stripped thyme stalks of their leaves. It smelt good. It smelt like real food. She stirred it, lifting the noodles through the sauce.
‘There. It’s only flavoured starch, really. Olives would help a lot.’
‘It looks really good,’ said Catriona. ‘Thank you, Nina.’
It was good. It would have been a great entrée, followed by steak and potatoes, a salad, apple pie. Nina had only taken a couple of mouthfuls and mine was nearly gone. I tried to slow down. Fog eddied between the tents and Catriona watched it.
‘It’s just fog,’ I said.
‘I know.’
I could hear Ben chewing. Ruth’s fork clattered on her plate. I remembered again my dream, with the light from the window falling on snow outside and Hannah waving her spoon. Ordinary life, no portents. We were talking, all of us, and I think when I woke up I could still remember what we were saying. It’s fading now. I looked around at the hands and faces glowing out of the dark. I will not miss these people. Would not. Ben caught my eye.
‘OK.’ He put down his fork. ‘So, what do you think happened to the Norse Greenlanders? The whole colony. Why are they lost? I don’t mean what do you say at conferences or to students or whatever, I mean really, what do you see?’
‘I think raiders came,’ said Nina. ‘Like in Ireland. There’s a village I stayed in once, and Barbary pirates came in the sixteenth century and kidnapped everyone. It’s the same landscape. We’re only further up the same coast, geologically. They were here anyway with the cod fisheries. They took the livestock and the young people for slaves and the old ones watched the ships disappearing over the horizon and knew the future was gone.’
‘There are problems with that argument.’ Ruth twirled noodles around her fork and inserted them as if she were wearing lipstick.
‘I know,’ said Ben. ‘There are problems with all the arguments. I just want to know how you imagine it.’
‘You mean you want a story?’ asked Nina. ‘I thought you didn’t like fiction.’
‘Not all stories are fiction. Go on, Ruth.’
‘Climate change,’ she said. She began to wind up another mouthful. ‘Colder and hungrier over a generation or two. Higher mortality, harder lives. If they’d been able to adapt they might have been able to stay but they couldn’t, any more than we can. Going on with saunas and trying to grow grain.’
‘Like the Americans with those enormous cars?’ Nina put her plate down, half-full.
‘And the Brits. I imagine the harvest getting later and less each year, and people talking about what their grandparents had been able to grow and trying to figure out what was different. Thinking the winters seemed worse and the summers shorter and not knowing if that was just how memory works.’
‘They’d have known,’ said Catriona. ‘Wouldn’t they?’
‘Not everyone. The change was slow. Slower than now. And they wouldn’t have known if or when it was going to change back. People are pretty conservative, you know. They don’t change until they don’t have a choice.’
‘So what about the end?’ Ben had finished eating. ‘What about when it came to the crunch?’
Ruth chased the last noodles with her spoon. ‘They went out with a whimper. Back to Iceland. Maybe some outbreaks of plague. A few pirate raids. Malnutrition. There must have been some intermarriage with the Inuit, it’s not credible that there wasn’t.’
‘It hasn’t changed what you think,’ said Nina. ‘This dig hasn’t changed anything.’
Ben put his plate down. ‘It was never going to, Nina. Were you thinking we’d find the answer?’
She shrugged. ‘What do I know, I’m not an archaeologist.’
‘Oh, Nina,’ said Yianni. ‘You wanted an ending. It’s just evidence. More evidence. One way or another.’
I remembered the stories I used to tell the girls in the back of the car. The family of beavers who got swept down the river one day and out to sea and, after adventures that got us across two states, made a new home on an island in Puget Sound. Do you remember how after Hopper got run down, the beaver stories kept Hannah calm enough to go to sleep?
‘I think they sailed away,’ I said. ‘I think they packed what they could take on a ship. Not the big stuff, like looms. Just tools so they could make the other things again. They were sad to leave, when they’d lived in these houses so many generations, and especially to leave their churches. And their dead. But they’d known about Vinland for a century or two, and when the time came they knew where to go. So they slaughtered most of the livestock, as if it was fall, and dried the meat. They took the strongest animals alive, because they didn’t know if they’d find sheep and hens at the other side of the sea. They shut the doors and walked away from their houses, and they sailed away, not much more than one family to a boat. They got really sick on the voyage, and they hit some really bad weather –’
The lamp guttered.
‘Wind,’ said Yianni. ‘The fog’s lifting. Go on.’
‘But nobody drowned, and after a couple of weeks they saw land on the horizon. It was warmer than they were used to, warmer than any of them could remember, and they unwrapped the blankets from the children. As they got closer in, they heard birds again, and soon they could see tall trees. They’d never seen trees so big and green before, and they were so happy to think what they’d be able to build with timber like that. Nearer yet, they could see big breakers on sandy beaches. They had to anchor overnight, and then work their way along the coast looking for somewhere to land, but at last they found a bar and behind it a natural harbour, where the water lay in the sun like – like kitchen foil.’
‘They wouldn’t have known about kitchen foil.’ Nina had clasped her hands round her knees.
‘And it’s too shiny. Never mind. The water lay quietly.’
‘That’s better.’
‘Thank you. They sailed over the bar and into the harbour, worrying a bit about the tides and how to get out, but tired and so eager to set foot on the green land –’
‘They’d have had to row,’ said Catriona. ‘If the water was that flat. No wind.’
‘And as they crossed the bar the wind dropped, but they had the oars ready and, with the little boy taking soundings, they rowed slowly to the bluff and brought the boat alongside, where it bobbed comfortably with five feet of water under the keel.’
‘You said it was flat,’ muttered Nina.
‘And then they climbed ashore. It felt strange to have their feet on the ground after weeks in the boat, and they walked unsteadily. The men told the women to keep the children close to the ship while they, with their battle-axes ready, scouted for wild animals or hostile inhabitants. They knew the stories about encounters between earlier Vinland voyagers and the Skraelings. It was hard for them to check because they were used to the open landscapes of the fjords and the forest unnerved them, but they saw no movements but the flight of birds and heard no voices but their own. The sounds of the forest were strange to them, people who had never heard the wind in the trees or seen sunlight filtering through leaves. They returned to the ships to find the women spreading fishing nets and the children playing under the trees, already making a playhouse of fallen branches –’
‘What?’ said Ben.
My scalp was prickling. Nina gazed intently up the hill.
‘Someone’s listening,’ she said. ‘Not far away.’
Cold crept up my spine. Catriona whimpered, a hurt puppy, and moved suddenly back into her tent.
‘Stop it,’ said Ruth. ‘Go on, Jim.’
I leaned forward and looked round, behind my tent and up the hill. The darkness was absolute. Even here, there’s usually something, starlight or moonlight or some kind of sense of where things are. Humans, after all, have not had electric light long enough to lose whatever instinct we had for avoiding predators in the dark. The lantern flickered again.
‘Maybe we should put it out,’ I said. ‘Save fuel.’
‘They still know where we are,’ said Nina. ‘I’ve got lots of torch batteries. Long life. We won’t be left darkling.’
‘Go on,’ Ruth said again. ‘Finish your story.’
I remembered the beaver family, the way the serial ran all summer until I couldn’t stand it anymore and sent them on a one-way trip to the moon. Let this not be a serial. Let us be home soon, with half a continent and an ocean between me and the blonde seer of ghosts.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I should think they built a house and lived happily ever after.’
‘What, like Roanoke?’ said Nina. ‘Is anyone still looking for the lost Viking Americans? Didn’t someone claim to have found them in Appalachia?’
Ben, who had been leaning back on his elbows, sat up. ‘People find all kinds of weird shit in Appalachia. Nice story, Jim. Thanks. I guess this was what people did before TV.’
Nina grinned. It made the sinews stand out in her neck.
‘We can always read aloud,’ she said. ‘All winter, if needs be. Shame Ruth hasn’t brought her needlework.’
‘I don’t have needlework,’ said Ruth.
Something whistled, up on the hill. Two notes, rising. Some kind of call. My throat burned and my mouth filled with the taste of sour anchovies. Nina was staring at my face.
‘You heard that.’
‘A bird,’ I said.
‘Heard what?’ asked Yianni. I looked round. Catriona in her tent was just a ball of darkness in the uneven glow from the lamp. Ruth was gazing into the lantern and twisting her hair round her finger. Ben looked away.
‘Someone whistling,’ said Nina.
Ben looked up. ‘OK. I heard it too. It wasn’t a bird.’
Nina’s face changed, cleared. ‘Really? You heard it? You really did?’
Ben’s shoulders hunched and he pushed his hands inside the opposite sleeves.
‘I did too,’ I said. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Thank God,’ said Nina. ‘So you don’t think I’m mad?’
‘I don’t know. It seems like there’s – something – in the valley with us. I don’t want to meddle. Maybe Ruth’s right, we’re just scared and a long way from home.’
‘They’re doing the meddling,’ said Nina. ‘Oh, good. So you all believe me now?’
‘I don’t,’ said Ruth. ‘And I don’t believe either of you. I didn’t hear anything. It’s like seances – you get a group hysteria where people convince themselves something’s happening. I don’t want to hear any more about it. Have you thought what these ghost stories are like if you’ve actually lost someone? I’m going to bed.’
She turned round, crawled into her tent and closed the zipper.
‘Hard to storm off into a tent,’ said Nina.
Catriona poked her head out of hers. ‘You should know.’
They began to giggle. It sounded as strange as the computer chime in the darkness and the cold.
‘OK,’ said Yianni. ‘Come on. Let’s all get to bed. I’m setting the alarm for six. So we’ll be ready if they come at first light.’
The giggle died.
‘The thing is,’ said Catriona. ‘I’m scared. I’m so scared of what might happen in the night.’
‘Come in with me,’ said Nina. ‘I mean, if you want to. At least there’d be two of us.’
‘Do you mind?’
Nina looked up. ‘No. I’ve hated being in the dark on my own. Only my books’ll have to sleep in your tent.’
Yianni sighed and stood up. ‘Come on, then. I’ll help you move the books.’
‘What about you?’ I asked Ben. ‘You OK?’
He looked as if I was propositioning him.
‘I’ll cope. Thanks.’
I guess he’d rather face the Texas chainsaw massacre than admit either he’s scared or that two straight guys could comfort each other if they were to be scared.
‘Goodnight, then. Sleep well.’
I lay in my bag again, shaking with cold, my neck muscles twanging when I tried to move. I don’t know about the whistler and the thrown stone. They were there. I wish they weren’t but they were. They are so slight, a stone falling in a stony place, air through something narrow. Nothing you’d notice anywhere busier. But they don’t feel good. I lay there in the cold and dark and tried to pray.
The alarm shrilled, and I tried to reach for it and couldn’t. Sleeping bag. Tent. I should know after all these weeks. Not my lumpy bed and Mom’s quilt, which are cold and dusty at Allen Street. Not my alarm but Yianni’s. The darkness was so dense I hoped for a moment it was still the middle of the night and we could go back to sleep, but a muffled glow like Holly’s nightlight came from the left and Yianni coughed.
‘Morning, everyone. Time to get up! Everyone sleep OK?’
I could hear people stirring.
‘It doesn’t look like morning,’ said Catriona.
‘Just gone six,’ said Yianni. ‘Sunrise in a couple of hours. They might come any time after that.’
Someone yawned.
‘We can’t take the tents down in the dark,’ argued Nina.
‘There’ll be some light. If you can eat dinner in the dark, you can eat breakfast. Come on.’
I sat up. I could almost hear the muscles creaking. I pushed down the hood of my bag and cold bit into my face and ears. I pulled it up and lay down again. Nina’s torch came on and she and Catriona started bickering about which of them was going to dress first. It was like hearing the girls on a school morning; if you dress first I’ll have time to wash my hair, if I have the bathroom now you can get the shirts from the laundry. I hope they’re still doing that. I hope you’re all still there, Mom, still pottering about until seven-thirty and then rushing around till the school bus comes, as if the passage of minutes in the morning were a daily surprise.
‘Jim? You getting up?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘In a minute.’
Just like I used to say to you every morning. I sometimes wonder why you bothered, Mom. Did you never think about leaving me be, just letting me be late and take the consequences? I tucked my hands into the warmth of my armpits and felt the chill through my thermal T-shirt and polo-neck and two sweaters.
‘Minute’s up, Jim.’
I sat up again. I thought about being on the bush plane and watching the valley drop away and vanish, the fall of scree and the river and the beach, the field where we’ve camped and the fallen stones of the chapel and homestead passing in seconds and becoming indistinguishable from all the other fading valleys and freezing inlets out here. I started dressing, thinking about landing at Nuuk. About using the men’s room without howling cold and getting a hot coffee from a machine and maybe even an English-language paper to read while waiting on a real chair for a bigger plane, one with reading lights and flight attendants and passengers I don’t know, to take me to Copenhagen. Where there are cafés at which a person might choose to spend money, even, after so long away, enough money for a Danish coffee, and the New York Times, and you can see trees and sculpture and parking lots and crowds of people. Maybe. If crowds are something people are still prepared to risk. If airports are still open. If there are still enough people to make crowds.
