Sea of Stone
Authors: Michael Ridpath
SEA OF STONE
Michael Ridpath
spent eight years as a bond trader in the City before giving up his job to write full-time. He lives in north London with his wife and three children. Visit his website at
www.michaelridpath.com
.
Also by Michael Ridpath
Where the Shadows Lie
66° North
Meltwater
First published in trade paperback in 2014 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Michael Ridpath, 2014
The moral right of Michael Ridpath to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 391 7
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 132 6
Printed in Great Britain.
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26–27 Boswell Street, London
WC1N 3JZ
for Hilma
Contents
Gunnar of Bjarnarhöfn
Jóhannes of Hraun
CHAPTER ONE
October 1988
B
LESS
.
Much later, when Óli was an American with an American name, that was the one Icelandic word that he would remember.
Bless
. Goodbye.
Bless, Mamma
.
He followed his mother out of the church by his grandparents’ farm, trying desperately not to cry. Óli was ten and he was terrified. On one side of the tiny churchyard, right next to the turf wall that enclosed it, lurked an open hole. Óli had watched the men digging it two days before, struggling with the stone and the frost-hardened earth. The pallbearers carried his mother towards the hole.
The church was far too small to hold everyone who had come, but the priest’s booming voice had easily carried out to the gathering of the sad, the respectful and the curious who stood outside. The priest had a big beard, a big ruff around his neck, a big belly and a big rich voice of authority. He told everyone what a wonderful, beautiful and good person Óli’s mamma was. Óli knew all that to be true. But he was glad the priest didn’t mention the shouting, the falling, the slurring, the throwing up.
The crowd formed around the hole in the ground, Óli right at the front. He wanted to cry; he wanted so desperately to cry. He also wanted to pee; why hadn’t he gone to the toilet before? How had he been so stupid? He had wet his sheets for the
previous two nights, as he knew he would. He couldn’t pee his pants at his own mother’s funeral, could he?
He reached for his big brother’s hand. Óli was too old to hold hands, but he didn’t care and, if he did it stealthily, Afi wouldn’t notice. Magnús gripped his brother’s fingers in his own. Óli looked up at him. Magnús was two years older and fifteen centimetres taller than Óli. He was standing straight, chin out, mouth firm, eyes dry.
Afi had told them not to cry and snivel. And Óli always,
always
, did what Afi said. Magnús disobeyed him sometimes and got beaten for it. Óli seemed to get beaten anyway.
The pallbearers, including Óli’s three uncles, were lining up his mother above the hole. A puffy black cloud rolled away from the sun, which shot pale beams onto the damp grass. A pair of eider sped low over the gathering, a duck and a drake, swerving and squawking in surprise at encountering so many humans in such an empty land. Óli glanced up at the farm, his home, his prison for the last four years, nestled against a steep snow-capped fell and a waterfall. The tiny wooden church lay between the farm and the sea, Breidafjördur – Broad Fjord – with its countless islands. And to the east lay the lava field, a kilometre wide. The fell, the fjord and the lava were the walls to Óli’s prison.
His mother was steady now, above the hole. The priest intoned some words. Óli glanced across at his
afi
. To Óli his grandfather was old – he was over sixty, after all – and his hair was thin and white. But the farmer stood up straight; he was sturdy and strong, as was his face, etched by the gales flung at him over decades by the Atlantic. The corners of his mouth pointed down and his flinty blue eyes stared at Óli’s mother.
Then Afi blinked, and Óli saw a tear, or half a tear, wriggle its way through the wrinkles on his grandfather’s cheek, and slink beneath his white shirt collar.
That was it; the tears flooded from the little boy’s eyes. But Óli stood straight. He sniffed, suppressed a sob, somehow managed to restrain himself from flinging his body on to the
ground, or at his mother, or into the hole, from screaming,
No, no, no!
Magnús squeezed Óli’s hand.
His
cheeks were still dry.
They lowered the coffin. The family threw handfuls of cold damp earth on top of Óli’s mother. Magnús stepped forward, but thankfully no one thought to force Óli to move. As Magnús returned to his position, Óli reached for his brother’s hand again, damp and gritty with the soil.
Magnús stiffened. He was facing the far side of the churchyard. There a man stood alone: a tall man with a fair beard.
‘It’s Pabbi!’ Magnús whispered.
Óli felt a surge of joy. He had noticed the man earlier, but he hadn’t recognized his own father. Óli hadn’t seen him for four years, since the age of six, when his father had disappeared to America, leaving his wife to the bottle and his sons to their grandparents. But in an instant the joy was replaced by fear. Afi would be cross. Afi would be furious.
‘Come on,’ Magnús said, tugging Óli’s hand.
Óli let Magnús go. He wasn’t that dumb.
Magnús walked over to the man, their father, and hugged him. The man’s face, which had been sombre, broke into a wide grin. The man’s glance turned up from his eldest son and searched out Óli. For a moment their eyes met, and Óli felt a warm feeling seep through him.
Then he turned away. The idiot! Didn’t Pabbi know what he was doing? There was going to be big trouble. Big, big trouble.
Sure enough, there was. Afi noticed Óli’s flinching. He spotted the stranger with his grandson. The lines by the side of Afi’s mouth plunged even further downwards, and his face set into a glare of pure hatred as he strode over to man and boy.
Óli sought out his biggest uncle, Kolbeinn, and stood behind him, watching in dread.
Afi grabbed Magnús and tore him away. He then began haranguing his son-in-law. The crowd fell silent, straining to hear, but the breeze was blowing away from them and they could make out very little. Óli thought he heard the words ‘killed
my daughter’. That wasn’t right, surely? His mother had driven herself into a rock while drunk. Then he heard his own name and that of Magnús.
The man, the stranger, his father, said little. He stood firm, listening, and then shrugged and turned, hopping over the turf wall to avoid pushing his way through the crowd by the white churchyard gate.
Óli watched his father walk away, wondering when, if ever, he would see him again.
As soon as he got back to the farm at Bjarnarhöfn from school the next afternoon, Óli went out to the chickens. They were allowed the run of the farmyard, but they sheltered in an old Eimskip shipping container, around the back of the farmhouse. He liked all the chickens, but his favourite was a small black hen called Indiana. Or at least Óli called her Indiana, after Indiana Jones whom Óli had watched agog on two occasions at the cinema in Stykkishólmur. Amma thought Indiana was a stupid name for a chicken, and called the hen something else, but Óli stuck with Indiana. Óli knew and the chicken knew it was her name.
He was worried about Indiana. She hadn’t laid anything for several weeks now, and Amma had a strict rule: if a hen didn’t lay, it wasn’t worth feeding. Óli had started switching eggs around, but he knew that ploy wouldn’t last for long. His grandmother was sharp-eyed when it came to chickens, even if she didn’t seem to notice what happened to Óli and Magnús in her own house. And once she realized that Óli had been deceiving her, Indiana’s days were over.
Óli had felt lousy at school all day. Not that there was anything wrong with school; he much preferred being there to being home. The other kids occasionally teased him, but Óli could usually deflect their taunts with submissive charm. It was the anti-climax after the funeral. The knowledge that he would never see his mother again. Nor, so he believed, his father.