Giants of the Frost (2 page)

The back door stood directly in line with the front door at the end of the hall. Outside, two moldy deck chairs sat on the slab.

Then the forest.

Spring rain fell lightly. I still wore my anorak, so I pulled up the hood and headed a little way into the trees. The smell was wonderful after the diesel and fish smells on the boat (just thinking of that brought back an echo of the nausea). I was about a hundred feet in when I realized I was counting footsteps. I stopped myself, took a breath and banished sums from my head. There was something familiar about this place and I wondered why. Had I been somewhere similar? In my head, I tracked back over places I'd visited and couldn't recall. The sense of familiarity was very deep, very strong, like a memory from childhood that won't be pinned down. Mum would know. Had we been on holiday near a forest? Given we were so poor we hardly ever left Lewisham, I couldn't imagine we had.

Two hundred and forty-eight, two hundred and forty-nine…

Damn it, I was still counting. I turned and made my way back to the cabin, subtracting a footstep each time from my total. I used fewer footsteps going back, probably because I was more confident about where I was going. I had eight left over.

Evening shadows crowded in and by the time I had unpacked and eaten the plastic-wrapped sandwich I had bought at Ålesund, I was exhausted: the result of four days of sleep troubled by new-life trepidation. I showered and snuggled under the tie-dyed bedspread.

It was nine o'clock. If I wanted to be at work at 8:00 a.m., I would have to wake up at seven, so I set the alarm on my watch. But maybe I needed to rise earlier, as I had to find the galley. Why hadn't I asked Magnus what time breakfast was available? Was there food in the cupboards in the kitchen here?

Would I have to make my own breakfast? I obsessed about this for a while, realized it was now eleven o'clock and if I wanted eight hours' sleep I'd have to nod off
precisely then
, and of course that chased sleep away. So I calculated some more: most people really only needed seven hours' sleep so I had an hour to nod off, unless I decided to get up earlier. No, I wouldn't get up earlier, the galley couldn't be hard to find. And now it was after midnight, and I was still doing sums and trying to convince myself that six hours' sleep is all one really needs to feel refreshed and finally I gave up and got out of bed. I set up my laptop on the coffee table in the lounge room and worked on writing up my thesis. Inside, the light was yellow and the bar heater warmed my toes. Outside, the forest waited, peaceful and cold in the rain; dense and dark and vaguely, vaguely familiar.

Any insomniac will tell you that they can nearly always sleep between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m., which is a pity as this is when most alarm clocks in the world go off. I'd been sleeping for just over an hour when a knock at the door of my cabin woke me. I resisted coming up; I willed the knock to go away. But my visitor knocked again and, with a groan, I pulled myself all the way to wakefulness. Checked my watch. Five minutes to seven.

Gunnar waited on the other side of the door. "Sorry," he said, when he saw how bleary I looked.

"Magnus sent me. He forgot to tell you about breakfast."

It occurred to me that both my exchanges with Gunnar had commenced with him apologizing to me. "I had some trouble sleeping last night," I explained.

"Ah. Magnus told us you have insomnia."

"Not every night. Just when I'm tense. Would you like to come in?" He slouched in, eyes averted from my blue-hippo pajamas. "Take your time. Get dressed and I'll show you around the station this morning."

I had a quick wash, threw on a skivvy and a pinafore, and applied some mascara and some lipstick. I had a phobia about my very pale hair, skin and eyes making me look washed-out. Silly, really, as Gunnar was by far the most eligible man on the island and he had already seen me in my pajamas after a bad night. My mother's fault: I'd have been far lower maintenance if her most-uttered phrase hadn't been,

"Dress up nice in case there are boys there."

We stopped for breakfast in the galley, which was at the front of the rec hall, across a narrow walkway from the admin building. Toast and tea for me; disgusting pickled fish thingies for Gunnar. I almost couldn't eat watching him wolf them down. Maryanne, the cook-cum-cleaner, was flirting shamelessly with Magnus in an outrageous Manchester accent as they smoked together in the rec hall. We said hello, then Gunnar led me to the front of the admin building.

"Isn't Magnus married?" I said to Gunnar. "I saw a ring on his finger."

"Separated. He's on the prowl."

"Maryanne?"

"Anyone—but Maryanne is easy prey. I don't think he's really interested. I think he just likes to see the naked adoration in her eyes."

"How come your English is so good?"

"My father is English, and I lived with his family in Cambridge for two years." He indicated a large stone set into the ground. "Did you know that 'Kirkja' is Old Norse for church?"

"No."

"This is the foundation stone for an early-eleventh-century church that once stood on this site. It was discovered when the plans were being drawn up for the station. Historians excavated the area while the main building was being constructed behind it. There was a television program about it." I indicated the three-meter-wide satellite dish mounted on the roof. "Tell me about the communications system."

Gunnar was just as happy to talk about technology as he was to talk about history. He took me around the whole station, showing me the water tank and desalination machine, which sat at the back of the station next to the water, and the generator shed and hydrogen chamber on the northern fence. An instrument enclosure, full of pluviographs and anonometers and celometers and a score of other gadgets, lay between the admin building and the cabins.

We entered the admin building via the back door, through a lino-floored storeroom and into a remarkably neat office. Magnus was at his desk, as was Carsten (Danish), the registered nurse who doubled as administration manager. Up a flight of spiraling metal stairs was the control room, where we found Frida, who was a maintenance engineer, and Alex (American) and Josef (Icelandic), who were both meteorologists. The other meteorologist, Gordon (English), had been on the night shift and was wisely in bed. The room was lined on all sides by desks, littered with stained coffee cups and half-finished paperwork, computers and other electronic devices. Both Alex and Josef were glued to a computer screen, complaining about a permanent echo on the radar. Gunnar took me out onto the observation deck. Rainy mist swallowed the forest and the other side of the island.

"There are raincoats in the storeroom," Gunnar said, noting my efforts to shrink back toward shelter.

"It's all right. It's only drizzle."

He raised his arm and I caught a whiff of his musty sweater. "It pays to take a walk out east through the forest. It's very quiet and beautiful and brings you to the beach on the other side in about forty-five minutes. The beach can be really cold if the winds change; sometimes they come straight off the Arctic, but the prevailing winds are westerlies and the cliffs protect us from them. The lake is nice too, though that's where the ghosts live."

"I'm not bothered by ghosts," I said, annoyed that he was continuing with the prank. He smiled at me. "No? You don't believe in ghosts?"

"I don't believe in anything. And I don't scare easy. Save it for the next trainee." The door opened behind us and Magnus stepped out. "Awful weather, isn't it?" he said.

"Sure is," I replied.

"We don't make it, we just forecast it," he said. "It's 8:00 a.m. Time to start work." Gunnar backed away, apologetic hands in the air. "I'll leave you with Magnus. If you need anything, just let me know. I'm in the cabin directly in front of yours."

I spent the day doing little more than filling out forms.

Magnus was obsessive about administration. The last form he gave me was a questionnaire about meteorological instruments… well, he called it a questionnaire. To me it looked like one of those multiple-choice exams I'd left behind in my undergraduate years. It asked me to list the daily jobs in a weather station in their correct order.

"I don't know anything about the daily work," I said. "My degrees are in math and geophysics. I've never used any of the instruments. I have no idea what kind of reporting relationships are set up here." Magnus smiled his charming smile. "Go on, just fill it out. See how you go. You might surprise yourself." I got two items out of ten right. Magnus thought this was funny. I thought it was a unique way to embarrass me. By the end of the day, I'd had enough of him and everybody else. I stopped by the galley and asked Maryanne if I could take dinner back to my cabin, and I holed up there in my pajamas and got really, really homesick.

Someone knocked on the door around seven. I resisted the urge to shout, "Go away." Gunnar again.

"Sorry," he said.

"Stop saying 'sorry' every time you see me."

He held out a bottle of red wine. "I'm really sorry. I need to explain something."

"Come in." I led him into the lounge room, a faded brown-and-grey room where I had the bar heater on high.

He sat in one of the armchairs while I found two glasses that looked like they had been jam jars in a previous life.

"So what do you need to explain?" I asked, sipping the wine.

"I wasn't trying to make fun of you with all the talk about the ghosts."

"No?"

"No. Seriously, no. You thought I was playing a trick on you? Like an initiation?"

"That's what I thought, yes."

"I'm so sorry, Victoria. I want you to feel welcome here. Magnus is the expert on embarrassing people."

"He's very good at it. And you can call me Vicky."

Gunnar laughed. "Really, Vicky, my intention wasn't to make you feel stupid or afraid."

"I'm neither," I said, too tersely.

"I know that."

"Then why mention the ghosts?"

"I'm really interested in history. Othinsey has a fascinating history and the ghosts are part of it. It's part of the story of the island."

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

He shrugged. "Who knows?"

I pulled my legs up onto the couch and made myself comfortable. "Go on, then. Tell me."

"This island was settled by Christians in the eleventh century. They built the church. One day a boatful of new settlers arrived to find everyone on the island dead. Slaughtered. Hanged with the intestines of the calves they'd brought, or burned, or pinned to trees with spears. As there was no sign of anyone having landed or left the island by boat, the story began that they were killed by vengeful spirits, sent by the old gods."

"And nobody tried to settle it again?"

"A few attempts were made. Nothing lasted. It's a long way from the mainland and too small to be self-sufficient. Rumors persist of ghosts—strange noises, sightings down near the lake—which frighten the less rational away. The handful of scientists we have here don't care about those rumors. You don't believe in ghosts."

"I'm about the most skeptical person you'll ever meet. My mother is another story. Every week she visits a new psychic, who tells her she's going to win the lottery. She uses the same numbers every week—I know them by heart—and even though her psychic says they're the right numbers, they never come up. But…"

"She still goes back. I know. People need something to hope for."

"If she'd invested the psychics' fees and lottery ticket money into a mutual fund, she wouldn't be living upstairs at Mrs. Armitage's in Lewisham."

"What does your father think?"

"I don't have one. I mean, I suppose he's out there somewhere. My mum raised me alone, unless you count the three husbands who each left in under a year."

"It must have been very hard for her. No wonder she needs to believe she'll win the lottery." He refilled my glass.

"That's very generous of you." I smiled across at him, then wondered if the reason he was being so nice was because he thought he had a chance with me. I nearly groaned. A girl doesn't make the decision to move to a remote sea-bitten island lightly, and coming to Kirkja had seemed an excellent opportunity to avoid entanglements of the heart.

"Do you have a boyfriend back home?" he asked, confirming my suspicions.

"Um… I just broke off .an engagement. It was messy."

"How messy?"

I sipped my wine: combined with extreme weariness, it was sending my brain in circles. "He got another girl pregnant." Proud of myself for not saying, "He knocked up some tart."

"That's very messy."

"Yes, so I'm going to enjoy a few years of single life. Love is highly overrated."

"Do you think so? I think it's wonderful."

"It looks good in books and movies, I'll grant you that. But in real life it's just…"
Never quite enough,
never really there, never living up to its promise
. "Let's change the topic." Gunnar left at nine. I liked him; it would be good to have someone my own age around. I had the distinct feeling that after the wine and the conversation I would be able to sleep, and I was right I drifted off soon after slipping into bed. Half-sleeping, half-awake, I heard noises outside in the forest. I thought about Gunnar's ghosts and smiled. Some people will believe anything.

Owing to a scheduling problem, I wound up working twelve days in a row. When Magnus realized the error (the vague and bumbling Carsten was at fault), he was both apologetic and full of bluster. "It's a good thing; you've learned so much; few people would get such a comprehensive induction." Then he gave me six days off.

Six days off on a tiny isolated island where I had one friend, and he was about to go on holiday leave. How dull.

Even so, I needed a break from working. Those first twelve days were a walking dream of new tasks, new words, new sounds and smells: the routine drudgery of observations and recordings; the dozens of objects whose names ended in "ometer"; the endless beeping of the computer system; the disinfectant Maryanne used in the staff toilet. All bookended by a confusion of sleepless nights. I had worked with three different meteorologists, and each one of them taught me the same tasks slightly differently, leaning conspiratorially close to say that "Alex does it wrong," or "Gordon always leaves the radar too quickly," or "Josef often forgets this part." If it hadn't been for Gunnar, who sought me out every lunch and dinner and talked to me like a normal human being, I would have lost my mind.