Cold Earth, page 7
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I think it’s a chess piece. But I doubt you’ll find the set.’
Yianni looked as if I’d said it was a DVD. ‘I doubt they played chess. Other pieces would have been found. You’re right, though, it might be another kind of game. Jim, you remember that article on Norse games? Was it Ben’s guy at Madison?’
‘Vaguely.’ Jim stared at the ground. ‘I’ll keep going. See if there are any more.’
Yianni looked at the midden as if it held the keys to the kingdom, or at least tenure somewhere with ski slopes and undergraduates who know about capital letters. He was almost reaching out for Jim’s trowel. I saw him make an effort.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Of course. You found it. It’s yours, really. Keep on. Just let me know the minute you see anything, OK? Mind if I clean this guy up for you?’
‘Be my guest,’ said Jim.
By late afternoon I had a headache. The sun stayed high and the light was strong, pressing sharp shadows into the grass. I remembered the beach below Yianni’s parents’ house where we could lie and float under the pine trees, and then coming out of the sea to find his mother threatening to take all the food back to the kitchen if Yianni and his dad couldn’t barbecue fish together without the speculative resurrection of the lost Oedipus trilogy. The dust under my nails and inside my ring itched and my hair felt stiff.
‘You know, I think I might try a very quick swim,’ I said. ‘The sea might be warmer than the river.’
Jim sat back on his heels and looked at me.
‘I mean, the river’s glacial, isn’t it?’ I went on. ‘And the sea’s got the Gulf Stream to warm it up.’
‘You’re telling me you’re going to swim in the sea? Here?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve got a headache. I like swimming.’
‘You’re telling me you brought your swimsuit?’
‘I always take my swimming costume. At worst it’s emergency underwear.’
‘If you’re going to swim, I’m going to watch. In fact, I’m going to take pictures. But I should tell you that the Gulf Stream goes down the east side of the Atlantic.’
I remembered swimming on that black sandy beach in Iceland. It was all right, wasn’t it, for a couple of minutes? Refreshing. People are always jumping off docks in the Stockholm archipelago.
Catriona, who swims in Skye every summer, wanted to come too, and she’d brought a swimming costume. Yianni was still exercising the camera.
‘Hey,’ said Jim. ‘The girls are going swimming!’
‘Women!’ I shouted from inside the tent. ‘Why don’t you come too?’
I came out. Catriona stood shivering in the sun with a jumper round her shoulders.
‘Swimming costumes with legs,’ I said. I told you they don’t make them just for me. ‘From Sunshine and Cloud?’
Goose pimples rose on her arms. ‘No idea. Mum bought it for me. School swimming. It’s lasting well.’
Thank God for Catriona. My shoulders clenched against the cold.
‘Towels?’ I said.
‘I’ll bring them,’ said Yianni. ‘I have to see this. I have to photograph this.’
I reached back into my tent for your fleece. Well, I bet when people jump off docks in the Stockholm archipelago they don’t wander about half-naked for hours first.
‘Come too,’ said Catriona.
‘I will,’ said Ben. ‘If only to tell my mates. We did some wild swimming in the quarries this spring.’
‘Crap reason for doing something. Come on. England expects.’
‘Scotland,’ muttered Catriona. ‘Or maybe Yorkshire.’
Catriona and I set off, barefoot and giggling, across the rough grass. There were stones, but even before we got to the beach my feet were slightly anaesthetised by the cold. Most of the pebbles on the beach were smooth and rounded, and we clutched each other’s hands as we wobbled towards the waves. The sea was a dramatic and uninviting black, but at least there were no icebergs in sight. I put my foot into an incoming wave and looked at Catriona. She bit her lip and a gust of wind off the sea mocked our joke. Real cold, not like North Wales or the Hebrides.
‘Defeated?’ asked Yianni.
I put the other foot in and stood there while a larger, icy wave chucked a couple of stones at my ankles. Catriona did the same.
‘Take us a while, at this rate,’ I said, trying to stop my lips shaking.
‘Mmhm,’ she agreed.
I took another step. I couldn’t feel my feet anymore but my legs hurt. Then there was a shout behind us and Ben came running down the beach, wearing what looked like a little pair of shiny red pants. Definitely too small for public appearances.
He yelled and ran into the sea, arms waving. The waves broke around his waist and he threw himself in, swam a proper crawl for about six strokes and ran out again. Yianni handed him my towel and Catriona and I stood and stared at them as the North Atlantic washed around our calves.
‘That’s my towel,’ I said.
‘You’re not using it. His need was greater,’ said Yianni. He looked as if he’d won the Oedipal fish-grilling contest.
I took a deep breath and another step into the water. It didn’t feel much worse. Catriona’s hand in mine was cold and hard. We stepped again. I was dreading the cold water on my breasts, but before I got that far a large wave knocked us both off our feet. I swam while three waves lifted and dropped me and then staggered back to the beach, followed by Catriona. Ben handed me my towel.
‘Sorry it’s wet,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed. Race you back.’
It’s not a good idea to run in a wet swimming costume in mixed company. I walked back, shivering, at a dignified pace, and when we got to the river I forced myself in. I was so cold anyway it didn’t make much difference, and I couldn’t face being all sticky with salt until it wore off. Catriona stood watching and Yianni shrugged his shoulders at Jim.
‘English women,’ he said.
‘What about them?’ I demanded.
‘Mad,’ he said, grinning at Jim.
‘But interesting,’ said Jim. I knew he was looking at my swimming costume. It’s probably a federal offence for a woman to have pubic hair to conceal in America.
Later that day, sitting round the stove that Jim and Ben had persuaded Yianni to take down to the beach because he insisted that we weren’t allowed to light a fire even on the stones, I wondered how the Greenlanders had seen the sea. A highway, a source of food, a thing of beauty. Especially here, where even now it’s hard and unrewarding to go inland over the mountains, the sea brought them everything from plague and terrorists to glass and the latest fashions. Waves rolled pebbles on the shore and a bird piped along the beach. Birds, of course, are here too as well as in Washington. Lots of wild birds.
‘Do you think the Greenlanders went swimming?’ I asked.
‘Do you think they played on the beach?’
Jim and Ruth looked at each other doubtfully.
‘It’s not the kind of question archaeology’s very good at answering,’ said Ruth. ‘I can’t remember much at all about swimming in the sagas.’
‘Heroes sometimes swim in Anglo-Saxon poetry,’ said Catriona. ‘Beowulf.’
I know about Beowulf.
‘But here. Do you think they sat here on this beach and paddled in this sea?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ruth. ‘But I think they probably did nearly all their socialising in and around the farmhouses. Maybe the children played down here.’
‘The problem is that archaeology has to be more interested in establishing customs than instances of spontaneity,’ said Jim. ‘I mean, a particular person going swimming, even every day of every summer, probably wouldn’t leave evidence. It would only be if someone made a carving or left a record of swimming that we’d know, and then we’d probably assume it was because swimming was important to that society. But I have to say there would be a presumption that people in the Arctic probably don’t swim for pleasure.’
‘We’re south of the Arctic Circle,’ I reminded him.
‘But you wouldn’t guess,’ he said. ‘Not from your swimming.’
I threw a small pebble at him and Yianni said it was time to clear up and go to bed. The sea and the turf seemed to glow in the slanting light of the low sun and I stood there absorbing the golden light and the diamond sharpness of the hills against the sky. I was sure I would sleep well.
The house is silent again and I walk across the infield and up to the doorway. The sky is low and tinged with green. Rain falls steadily. The sheep are gone and I am the only moving thing in the valley. The door hangs open, askew on its hinges. I step in. I can hear breathing but the house is dark and I can see nothing but vague shapes, too big to be people. I stand still while my eyes adjust. There are broken dishes on the floor and a big pot lies on its side in a pool of something that was probably food. I move forwards into the dimness. I can still hear the breathing, quick and shallow, and I call out but there is no reply.
They are in the next room. The woman has been tied up. I would like to cover her. Blood is spattered across the room. The breathing is in here and as I pass the mother’s body, my eyes averted from what I can hardly see but cannot bear to imagine, I realize that it must be the baby. Perhaps the baby is all right. Perhaps I can rescue the baby.
The baby is lying on the floor in the anteroom. It is not all right.
It was grey and still. No wind, but the outline of a hand clear on the canvas inches from my face, and the noise of breathing still although I was – was I not? – awake. I froze. The hand slid silently down the tent. Nothing moved away. It was still there, silent, waiting, breathing. I lay quite still, in out, in out, in out. It was still there and I was still there. I was not asleep. I should have called, screamed, but I dared not move. In and out and in and out. I sat up and the hand was back, higher now, the thing kneeling or standing over me, and I found breath and screamed and then again. The hand went, but a guy line pinged as something caught on it, and rustled away.
‘What? What’s wrong?’ Yianni shouted. The zips on his bag and then his tent whistled and he was coming in.
‘Jesus Christ, what happened?’ Ben’s voice.
‘There was something. I woke up and there was a hand. There. It stayed a while, Yianni, it went when I screamed. That way. Towards the house.’
I was shaking, tears came, the big easy breaths that come with crying. Yianni put his arm around me and stroked my hair.
‘It’s OK, Nina. It was a bad dream. It’s all over now, there’s nothing here. Look, just the tents and the river. You had a nightmare, that’s all. Have some water now, go back to sleep.’
He handed me my water bottle and I drank, cold tracing my throat and stomach like barium.
‘Is she OK?’ called Jim.
‘Yeah. Nina had a bad dream, guys. She’s OK. Go back to sleep.’
‘Are you all right, Nina?’ called Catriona. ‘Can I help?’
I swallowed some more water. ‘I’m OK. Sorry I woke everyone.’
Yianni patted my back. ‘Now, can you get back to sleep OK?’
‘Yianni, there was something. Really. I was dreaming but I saw the hand after I woke up. I waited and it didn’t go away. There was something there, and now it’s gone up to the house. I heard it.’
‘There’s nothing there, Nina. Really. Go back to sleep. How could anything come here? We’re miles from anywhere. We’d have heard a boat. And don’t you think the sheep would have made a noise if anyone had come through?’
‘Not if it was something that’s always been here. Something we’ve disturbed.’
He sighed. ‘There’s nothing. Let’s get some more sleep before morning, huh? Good night.’
He went back to his tent and I heard him get into his bag and lie down. He sniffed and fidgeted in a way that must madden his girlfriend, but long after he was quiet I lay there, listening for the stranger.
It was three days before Yianni let us check our e-mail again. He kept stalling, as if he knew something the rest of us didn’t. It didn’t bother me much – having read your mail and knowing that you were OK and missing me and not, I deduced, seeing much of Cassandra, and, best of all, not due to go to the US any time soon, I didn’t really care very much if more people in Washington were too hot and couldn’t breathe. Naturally one would rather people died of something less messy, but as long as it stayed on that side – well, I suppose this side – of the Atlantic I felt no great personal alarm.
Ben went first, being the most worried. I went down to the beach. I’d been collecting shells. There are lots of shells that have a Fibonacci spiral inside but are almost egg-like to hold, as if incubating one of those apparently impossible seventeenth-century staircases. Either the occupant is inedible or they’ve arrived since the end of the Norse colony, as we haven’t found any shells round the house, but they are pleasing if not useful. I was gathering shells broken enough that I could see the spiral but intact enough for it to be complete. I can’t have both, of course – intact is enclosed and exposed is broken – but I like the paradox. There’s a poem Donne didn’t write there. We’re not allowed to take anything away from the beach, but equally there’s no one to move or disturb anything left on the beach, so I keep them behind a smooth, black rock above the place where the river fans out across the stones and trickles into the sea. I’m planning, whatever Yianni says, to bring a few of them home and keep them in that glass bowl on my desk, possibly along with one or two utterly insignificant potsherds. I think I’m too shallow for archaeology.
I found a couple of shells, white against the dark stones, and added them to my pile. Future Greenlandic archaeologists will speculate about the ritual or ludic significance of broken shells. The sky was grey but shiny like the inside of a mussel shell and the sea was quiet, waves lapping like little tongues on the beach and the water out past the rocks moving smoothly as fur. And then I saw that it was broken by a dark head swimming, parallel to the little headland from which you can see into the next valley. I sat still but was, of course, too late. Wearing the red cagoule, I was visible as a marker buoy. The head moved steadily nearer, but there were no boats, and I was on the point of calling out when I recognised it as a seal. It came closer until I could see shiny black eyes and the long whiskered snout. A stone moved behind me and I turned to see Catriona.
‘It’s coming to see us,’ she murmured. ‘Keep still.’ Slowly, she squatted down beside me.
‘Will it come out?’ I whispered. Seals, like horses, are bigger than seems advisable at close range.
She shrugged. ‘They don’t, on Skye. But they’re used to people. Watch.’
The seal dived. ‘Oh. It’s gone.’
‘Not far. Move over.’ I moved and she perched next to me. ‘It’ll come up again.’
We waited, her cagoule rubbing mine, shoulders touching. Her hair has roughened here and no one, except probably Ruth, is washing often enough.
‘There.’ She pointed. The seal was barely a boat’s length from the shore, watching us intently.
‘It feels weird,’ I whispered. ‘Uncanny. As if it’s got something to say.’
‘They are odd. There are lots of stories about them. Selkies, people who turn into seals. And back. It’s just curious.’
It dived.
‘Some early travellers thought the Inuit could turn into seals,’ I told her. ‘They thought the kayaks were part of their bodies.’
‘I know. One or two Inuit got washed up on Scottish beaches, did you know? There are kayaks in some local museums.’
‘Still alive?’
‘Yes. Though I think they mostly died in a few weeks. Flu, or fevers.’
‘There it is.’
The seal was further out now, still looking back at us. If birds and dogs carry the virus, what about seals?
‘Thinking of fevers, what’s the news?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I sort of came down here to postpone finding out.’
‘Are you worried?’
‘No. Not really. Not yet. I still think it’s probably exaggerated to sell news and scare us into accepting more human rights violations. God knows what the US government wants to do next, but I’ve kind of lost all faith anyway.’
‘All faith? In everything?’
‘I try not to think about it. I think we’re probably the last generation. Don’t you?’
The seal dived again.
‘People have always thought that. Wordsworth. Homer, come to that. I still want kids.’
‘Somebody’s going to be right, though, aren’t they? They didn’t have nuclear weapons in Wordsworth’s day.’
‘No. But they had the Industrial Revolution. And we’ve had nuclear weapons for seventy years. Threescore and ten.’
‘Mm. I still wouldn’t have kids.’
We will, won’t we? With starfish hands and heavy heads and snuffly silk faces.
‘I don’t even really want to wait till I’ve got a job,’ I said. ‘I know I should. I don’t want to end up bored and over-qualified making fairy cakes and running the PTA. But I really want babies.’
She shook her head. ‘No. I want to paint much more than I want children. What I’d really like is to live by the sea and grow vegetables and paint.’
The seal reappeared, a dot on the glassy sea, and a breeze skimmed across the water.
‘That ought to be possible. Oughtn’t it? If you don’t want much money?’
‘You need somewhere to live. It’s really hard to live off painting.’
‘I know. But couldn’t you have a croft or something? On Skye?’
‘It’s hard work. It’s not enough to live on and it doesn’t leave time to do enough painting to live on.’
