The Flight of Gemma Hardy (39 page)

After supper we went for a walk. Kristjana, arm in arm with Ulfur, gave directions as we made our way along the hilly, winding, unpaved roads. She pointed out the cottage where she and my father had grown up, the school they had attended, the mooring where their father—he fished for scallops and herring—had kept his boat. As we stood looking at the harbour, two eider ducks swam by. I was about to ask Berglind their Icelandic name when a dark head surfaced.

“Oh, you have seals,” I said.

“We do,” said Berglind. “People are cross—they eat many fish—but I don't care. Your mother used to say if I was a good girl I could ride a seal all the way to Scotland.”

She waved to the seal, just as I had done months ago on the causeway, and, I guessed, translated our exchange for her family. As we started back up the hill a white-haired man carrying a basket came loping towards us. Kristjana stopped and introduced me. I heard the words
Fjola
,
Einar
,
dottir
. The man set down his basket and clasped my hand warmly. Dottir, I thought.

Back at the house we drank a kind of tea made, Berglind said, from stinging plants. Kristjana patted the seat next to hers and I sat down. Berglind pulled up a chair, ready to translate.

“It was a long time ago,” Kristjana said. “You must forgive us if we have forgotten many things about your parents, or if the things we remember are small. But you have found us. You can come back again.”

“Please,” said Berglind.

“Tonight you will tell us what you have done since you left with your uncle. Tomorrow, when I have put my thoughts in order, Berglind will help me tell you what I can about your father and your mother. I think you will like to take notes. Perhaps—who knows?—you will remember something for yourself.”

As best I could, not mentioning either of my fiancés, I described what had happened since I left Iceland. Both Kristjana and Berglind said they were sorry to hear about my uncle's death. “I only met him once,” said Kristjana, “but he was a good man.”

“And you are a wanderer,” said Berglind. “That I cannot imagine. I was born in this house and I know the names of the spiders who make their webs in the windows. I like having adventures—Gisli and I travel every summer—but then we come home.”

“I never meant,” I said, “to be a wanderer.”

T
he stories Kristjana told of my parents were, as she promised, quite ordinary. I had travelled eight hundred miles to learn that my mother liked custard, my father tied better knots than any other fisherman in the village, they had played backgammon and eaten smoked fish, one summer they had gone on an expedition to Blaa Ionid, the Blue Lagoon. “Agnes came back wishing that Stykkisholmur had a hot spring,” said Kristjana.

“I wish that too,” said Berglind.

Of course there were more stories about my father, whom Kristjana had known for so much longer. When he was a boy, she told me, he had a black and white dog called Smoke. He had begun to fish almost as soon as he could walk; like many fishermen, he had never learned to swim. Once he and Kristjana had played truant to climb Mount Helgafell. Ever since the sagas, Berglind explained, it had been a sacred place. If you climbed it from the west, in silence, and then descended to the east, without looking back, you would have three wishes granted. “They must be pure wishes, though,” she said. “Not for yourself.”

“But I tripped on a rock,” said Kristjana, “and broke my silence, and Einar looked back to see what had happened, so neither of us got our wishes.”

During the war Einar had moved to the city and become one of the hundreds of men employed in building the new docks for the British Navy. Then he had met Agnes. She didn't know how: At a dance? In the street? “
Ast
,” she said, spreading her hands.

“
Ast
means
love
,” added Berglind. “It happens at the most inconvenient moments. No wonder people invented Cupid, running around with his bow and arrow.”

“They were soul mates,” I said.

Kristjana pursed her lips in a way that made me wonder if Berglind had translated correctly. When she spoke again it was haltingly, and Berglind's English was slower too. “Maybe,” she said. “Einar told me several times they both wanted to give up. He thought your mother was a coward because she would not leave her parents. And my parents and I were not happy. We thought Agnes would bring heartache to Einar. How could a girl from a city live in our little village? But we were wrong. Everything that was hard—the darkness, no shops, fish, fish, fish—Agnes embraced. Once in winter she came to our house long before it got light. She made scones and eggs. We ate by candlelight, all of us talking and laughing. She told me she had never cared for Edinburgh, so many people pressed together, ignoring each other. Her only doubt was when she was expecting you. She persuaded Einar to return to Scotland for a month so you could be born in a language she understood. She promised to be braver with her second child.”

A ghost sister, or brother, touched my shoulder.

Patiently Kristjana and Berglind answered my questions. My mother had never learned to knit, she liked jokes, she waved her arms when she spoke Icelandic, once when she came across a dead fish she had stopped to draw it, she liked dancing, she played hide-and-seek with Berglind and her brothers, she wasn't shy but she could happily spend entire days alone, she was always interested in the sky.

“Did she believe in God?” I asked.

Kristjana's eyebrows rose. “I am not sure I know the answer. We all pretend to be Christians, go to church, say our prayers. My guess is she believed in some god or goddess who lived in waves and clouds and other people.”

“Do you believe in God?” Berglind asked.

“I used to, until my uncle drowned.”

“But don't you think”—Kristjana touched the table, the wall—“that there has to be a reason why there is something, rather than nothing?”

“No,” I said. “I think some things just are, like puffins and volcanoes, and then humans invent other things.” I told them the story I remembered from long ago about the snow being who visited people's houses when something bad was going to happen.

“So only in winter,” said Kristjana thoughtfully. “I have never heard of that. Perhaps it was a story your father made only for you. Now Berglind will show you the photographs we have of Einar.”

On the table Berglind spread out half-a-dozen photographs: my aunt and my father in my grandfather's boat, both wearing shorts; my grandparents and the two children on a picnic; my father playing with a black and white dog, standing beside a bus, in the prow of a boat; my father and my mother in the doorway of a small, white house, my mother holding an alert baby with wispy dark hair. I stared in wonder at this last, my father's boyish face, his arm around my mother, her arms around me.

As if she could see my expression Kristjana said, “You must have the one of your parents together but I would like to keep the younger ones. I know it's foolish but sometimes I hold them. I am glad to have Einar close at hand.”

I thanked her as best I could. Then I went to my suitcase and took out the photograph I had taken from Archie's bookshelf. Here was its rightful place. Berglind described it to her mother—I heard her say Fjola several times—and they agreed that the Scottish cousin would have a place of honour on the mantelpiece.

W
hen Ulfur came home, Berglind borrowed his van. She drove her mother and me to the outskirts of the village and down a track to the cove where my parents had lived. The sky was overcast, and we parked above the small jetty. Nearby was a beach covered in small black stones. Not far away was another beach pink with scallop shells. This was where my father had kept his boat in bad weather; this was where my parents had walked and I had played. Berglind led the way to a small white house with a red roof. I recognised it but only from the photograph they had shown me. The memory I had had of my uncle rolling balls across the grass must have come not from my own eyes but from his stories. By the front door were a clump of pansies and a tangled wild rose.

“My mother says,” said Berglind, “that it looks much the same as when your parents lived here but sadder.”

How did she know? I wondered. “Who lives here now?” I said.

“A stranger. The uncle of a woman who works at the fish market.”

Remembering Hallie's question, I asked if my parents had owned the house.

“Ah,” said Berglind, “you are thinking about money. Perhaps you are really an heiress.” She smiled at me.

“No,” I said crossly. “I didn't come here for money. My plane ticket cost more than I earn in six months. But I have nothing from my parents. Of course I wonder what became of their things.”

Kristjana tugged her daughter's sleeve. Berglind translated and then turned back to me. “I am sorry. Blame the radio. What I said sounded rude but by mistake.”

Her wide eyes regarded me with such candour that my anger melted. I said her English was excellent and that I forgave her. Then Kristjana said that we must discuss these matters later. For now she wondered if I would like to see inside the house. She knocked and we all three waited. But as the minutes passed, nothing stirred.

“What a pity,” said Kristjana. “When you come back we will make arrangements. Now we will wait for you at the van.”

Alone I circled the house. Then I tiptoed towards it and looked through each window in turn: a bedroom, a small sitting-room, a kitchen. The furniture was plain, like my aunt's. On the walls were several pictures of boats. Nothing was familiar until I looked in the kitchen window. Then I caught sight of the red and brown linoleum. I knew at once I had crawled and walked over it many, many times. Every seam, every spot and scar, was familiar. If I had been able to go inside I would have lain down and kissed that faded floor.

I had no idea how much time passed before I tore myself away. In my notebook I drew a picture of the cottage and a little map of where it stood in relation to the jetty and the two beaches. I scrambled down to each in turn and chose a black stone from one, some pink shells from the other. I might never find the contents of my box, but Mr. Donaldson had mentioned shells.

As we drove back past the harbour Berglind slowed. “See the blue boat,” she said. “She is called after you.”

In bold white letters there was my name,
Fjola
, on the bow of the boat.

A
t supper Berglind told me she had to work the next day. Thinking she meant cleaning the house or making soup, I said I could help. She laughed her boisterous laugh. “Not unless you know how to dry fish. Today I didn't go because of you, but tomorrow I must be there at the big building near the harbour.”

It had not occurred to me that she had a job. Abashed, I thanked her. “I don't think anyone's ever taken a day off work for me before,” I said.

“It's not often I find a lost cousin. What will you do tomorrow?”

“Could you draw me a map of how to get to the mountain that grants wishes?”

“Helgafell? I can. It is about five or six kilometres south. I can lend you a bicycle. Although we call it a mountain it is only a few hundred metres high.”

Gisli began to clear the plates from supper; I rose to help. Last night I had sat shyly while he and Berglind joked over the washing-up, but I knew enough of the household now to fetch and carry. As I scraped the plates into the bucket for the hens, Kristjana said something in which I caught my parents' names. Berglind took the plates out of my hands.

“Mother wonders,” she said, “if you would like to visit the grave of your parents. We could take flowers from the garden. Is something wrong?”

I looked over at my aunt, who was smiling in my direction. “No, I'm just sorry I didn't think to ask. I must seem very thoughtless.”

Berglind shook her head. “We both say you are very thoughtful, and my mother adds the grave is not the important thing but that you live far away and maybe it would be good to see.”

In the garden we picked tall daisies. Berglind found a jam jar and filled it with water. Once again she borrowed the van. I had pictured a little cemetery romantically overlooking the harbour, but she told me no, it was on the outskirts of town; I had passed it, without noticing, on the bus. The cemetery was surrounded by a thick hedge and, as we stepped through the gate, the leaves rustled in the breeze. Small birds flew in and out of the branches. Many of the graves were marked by white wooden crosses, some by stones; they all faced in the same direction. My parents had two stones side by side.

“Here is your name,” said Berglind, pointing to the second line. “ ‘Agnes, beloved wife of Einar, and mother of Fjola.' I used to think they were quite old when they died. Now they seem young.”

The idea that I had all along, without knowing it, been here in this cemetery, in Iceland, took my breath away. I reached out my hand and traced the letters:
F-J-O-L-A
.

T
he next morning I helped my aunt in ways that did not require words. I hung out laundry, I gathered the eggs from the dozen hens, I chopped onions and did the ironing. As we worked, I saw how deftly Kristjana weighed the kettle, how she felt the water to see when the clothes were rinsed, how she wrapped the cheese tightly. When the clock struck eleven she made me a sandwich, filled a bottle with water, and handed me an apple. Then she made a pushing gesture with her hands and opened the door.

I tucked my trouser legs into my socks and retrieved the bicycle. To get to the main road I had to go down to the harbour, then I pedalled back past the church and the scattered houses and the cemetery, out of the village. Last week at this time I had been walking with George and Robin in the garden. Next week . . . but I would not think about that. What I must think about were my three pure wishes. Could I wish for my aunt's eyesight, my uncle's resurrection? But no, I thought; I must wish for something both pure and possible. George's health? Archie's forgiveness? A chance to return to Stykkisholmur?