Meadowland (12 page)
Nothing happened the next day, except that we got a light wind that kept us pottering along, nothing like so fast as we’d been going, but we didn’t mind too much taking it a bit steady because we were a bit concerned about the strain on the mended rudder. About mid-afternoon we saw a whale, but it was too far out to risk launching the boat, and besides, we were well set as far as food was concerned. What got me going wasn’t the whale but a handful of gulls, the first we’d seen since the fog. I heard them first of all, nearly did my neck in trying to catch a glimpse of them. Anyhow, what with one thing and another we were all suddenly feeling bright and cheerful; we started talking to each other again rather than just huddling down against the spray
People kept asking Eyvind and me what the islands were like. Of course, we’d told them over and over again everything we could remember, which wasn’t much, but they were all in the mood to hear it one more time, and naturally we spiced it up a bit, like you do with the salt beef in midwinter. Something seemed to be telling us that we’d sight land the next day It was a sort of everything’s-going-right feeling, and it made a pleasant change.
The rain started around midnight. Now, when you’ve been wet through for days and your feet squelch every time you put your weight on them, and your hair’s flat to your head and caked in salt, you may find yourself thinking that you can’t really get any wetter, not if you were to jump off the ship into the sea. A really good rainstorm sets you right on that score. If you ask me, heavy rain with the wind behind it is wetter than being in the water. It’s like the difference between wearing a mail shirt and carrying it: you don’t really notice the weight when it’s on, but it’s a bloody lumpy thing to carry in a sack over your shoulder all day Same with water. When you’re swimming it sort of shrugs off you. Rain stays with you, works its way down from your head and on down inside your clothes into your boots, where it’s trapped.
That rain was something else. When it hit you in the face it was like being slapped. I’m not sure which was worse, trying to move about in it and get some work done, or sitting all still and huddled and taking the pounding. Not that we got much of a chance to sit, because along with the rain there was one hell of a wind. Leif was still fretting about the mast, so we shortened the sails. The waves were up so high it was like being in a valley, so we were tossed around plenty. The stores broke loose. Barrels and bales and sacks and kegs got bounced right up in the air, came down and split - we lost one of our three water vats, and we weren’t at all happy about that. Two big sacks of flour went straight over the side and the water got into another three where they tore against the sharp edges of smashed barrels. Then the sheep got loose and jumped up on the forward quarterdeck, and we had real fun and games catching them and hobbling them so they’d stay put. Soon as we’d done that, the apple barrel landed on the chicken crate and stove it in. Chickens everywhere under our feet when we were trying to haul on the lines, and every now and then when you stopped to catch your breath a bloody great wave’d sweep in out of nowhere and smack you in the face. It seemed to go on for ever, and as soon as we’d coped with one disaster another one started off. The rudder held, thank God, and so did the mast, but a couple of boards sprang and we shipped an awful lot of water in the hold before we could stop up the leak with the dry clothes we’d been carefully saving for when we finally made land. It was a bloody miracle nobody went over the side. I was sure we were going to capsize at least twice, when big waves got under the keel and lifted us right out of the water, like a salmon jumping a waterfall. It was bloody cold and we were all soaked, but a lot of the time I was sweating.
Rain stopped about midday; wind fell, and we all dropped right where we happened to be standing, completely shattered. On the farm you work hard all day every day and you get to thinking what a soft life it must be to sit in a boat letting the wind carry you along. But real work is when you’re on board ship in a filthy bloody storm like that one. It may not happen all that often, but when it does you find out what it means to be weary right down to your bones. Half a dozen of the men just fell asleep where they’d slumped. I guess the rest of us were too tired to sleep. We sat or sprawled and breathed - it was all we could manage to do. And then someone called out, ‘Land.’
Fuck me. We’d been sitting there becalmed, don’t know how long but quite some time, and nobody had thought to look where we’d ended up. It was a man called Thorgrim Sigurdson, Thorgrim Feet to us, who just chanced to look over his shoulder and suddenly there it was, like it’d snuck up on us while our backs were turned. I was looking the other way and thinking about a whole load of other stuff when he started to holler. I remember thinking, Land? as though I didn’t know what the word meant. Then it dawned on me. Land. Land, for fuck’s sake, we made it, we’re here.
We were too whacked to dance around and yell or anything of that sort. We didn’t even cheer, it was more a general sigh of relief, like the feeling after you’ve just mown five acres and you cut the last clump of grass. Even Leif seemed like he didn’t really care. He turned his head and stared at it, then went back to looking down at his feet; he’d lost a boot scrambling about in the hold, and he didn’t have the energy to go and fetch it. All this way I thought to myself, and now we’re here he spares it a passing glance, like your dad used to do when you were a kid, riding in the hay cart with him and you suddenly pointed and yelled out, ‘Look, Dad, a cow’
Well, I thought, if he can’t be arsed to look happy, neither can I; so I lay down on my back and looked up at the sky for a long time.
It was Leif’s voice that woke me up. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Swimmer and Bare-arse’ - that meant me and Eyvind - ‘on your feet and tell me where the hell we are.
I wanted to tell him to go away and do something or other, but I hauled myself up on the nearest rope and dragged myself over to the rail. Eyvind joined me; he’s got better eyesight than me, and I hear better. He says that’s because I talk so much I haven’t worn my ears out with listening.
‘Well?’ Leif said, and I didn’t answer. My eyes were all red and bleary with salt, for one thing. But Eyvind was peering about, and after a bit he said, ‘That’s the third island Bjarni found. The one with the flat stone beach and the glaciers.’ He paused a moment, then added, ‘The useless one.’
I have a feeling that Eyvind promised his mum when he was young that he wouldn’t tell lies, and somehow he stuck like it. Yes, Bjarni had said it was useless, but that really wasn’t the time to mention it. Straight off the blokes started to mutter, like it was Eyvind’s fault, and probably mine too for being his best mate. Leif sagged just a little bit, round the shoulders; then he seemed to snap out of it, and barked out orders like a small -dog yapping. We raised sails and crept in as close to the shore as we dared. Then Leif had them launch the rowboat, and told Eyvind and me to get in it. Wasn’t thrilled about that. I figure the smaller the boat, the more there is to be scared of. Wouldn’t want to be in that thing if the rain and the big wind came back. I sort of wished I hadn’t been so cocky when I was on Bjarni’s crew; if I hadn’t swum ashore when Bjarni’d told me not to, Leif wouldn’t have been so determined to have me with him, and I’d have been back in Greenland mucking out cows instead of clambering into a little boat on the very edge of the world.
Still, it had to be done. I muttered a prayer to our Heavenly Father and asked him please not to blow up a big wind and take the ship away while I was on the island; and then we were rowing like hell towards the shore. Me, Eyvind, a German called Tyrkir and Leif Eirikson.
It was a miserable rotten place, right enough. The closer we got, the less I liked the look of it. Imagine a flat plain, black and grey shingle with hardly a smudge of green, pitted with big, sharp rocks. Far away where the ground met the sky, a line of triangular white mountains like the teeth of a saw
‘Wonderful,’ Leif said - it was the first thing anybody’d said since we left the ship. ‘Just one great big useless slab of nothing.’
‘That’s what Bjarni said,’ I reminded him. ‘This is where we came last of all. It’s good, it means we know where we are. All we got to do is follow the coastline down and we’ll reach the good bit.’
Leif made a short grunting noise, like a pig.
Don’t know why we bothered, but we beached the boat, got out and walked about a bit. Just so we could say we’d done it, I suppose. Nobody said anything (and that was unusual, because generally the trick was getting Tyrkir the German to shut up: he couldn’t speak Norse worth slit, but not for want of practice) and after a bit Leif picked up a couple of small rocks and walked back to the boat. I was glad to leave that place. It gave me the creeps. There’s places every bit as bad, in Greenland and Iceland too, that seem to go on for ever and ever. But at least you know that if you keep going far enough you’ll eventually see some green grass and a roof or two in the distance. There it was so flat you could see for miles, and it was all the same.
‘Right,’ Leif said, as the German pushed the boat off and scrambled in, and we picked up our oars. ‘Next time, I suppose we’d better build a cairn or something as a seamark, so we’ll know where we are when we come this way’
Eyvind and I made vague what-a-good-idea noises to keep him happy, and we headed back to the ship. I tell you, it was like coming home after a long and horrible journey Never thought Bjarni’s old knoerr could feel so cosy and safe. Getting back on board was like sunrise.
‘So that’s Slabland,’ Leif announced. ‘Anyway, we’ve done better than Bjarni Herjolfson; at least we had the balls to land.’ He turned his head and scowled at the distant mountains, like they were a dog that wouldn’t come when he whistled. ‘Screw it. Let’s go south.’
So we did. Actually, we didn’t have much choice in the matter. We picked up a strong southbound current, combined with a stiff wind that tried to crowd us up against the shore. We didn’t fancy getting dragged along the beaches like a knife being ground on a wheel, so we held out into the open sea rather more than we’d have normally done. We could still see the land as a grey smudge, but that was about it. I was trying to remember how long it’d taken us the last time to get from the third island to the second, but we’d had a gale up our arses then, if you remember, and now we were chugging along rather more sedately, so I wasn’t going to be much help. Eyvind, on the other hand, was pretty sure of himself. At the rate we were going, he said, we needed to hold this course eight days and seven nights, and that ought to bring us out just where we’d been becalmed, and where I’d swum ashore.
Well, either he’d been back there since and hadn’t told me, or he was very observant and a bloody good navigator, or he was making it up so as to be important; but Leif took him at his word and we kept going. Made me wish I hadn’t been so honest. Eight days at sea, when we could’ve gone ashore and at least stretched our legs, even if the scenery turned out to be as miserable as Slabland. Thanks to all that rain we were all right for water, even with one of the casks trashed, and food wasn’t a worry, though about half the hens went off lay for the moult, so Leif told us to eat them instead. We were able to get a fire going some of the time, too. But it was four days before our clothes began to dry out; if we’d gone ashore, we could’ve had a proper fire and been warm and comfortable, at least for a bit. Couldn’t suggest anything like that to Leif, though. He seemed to go a bit funny once he’d set foot on shore that first time; he was impatient, always in a hurry, like a man getting the chores done before setting off for the fair. I don’t suppose he was any less cold and damp and miserable than the rest of us, but he took it a different way It was like all the discomfort was an itch, and only getting to my landing site would scratch it. Strange attitude: we were going past all that coastline without even getting close enough to take a look. For all we knew, the land that we were hurrying past might’ve been just what he was looking for, but he couldn’t be bothered to stop and find out. He’d set his heart on the place I’d described, and he wasn’t interested in anywhere else, even if it was better.
They were eight long days and seven even longer nights. Middle of the eighth afternoon, though, Leif stood up by the prow, highest point on the ship, and peered at the grey smudge for a very long time. Then he called Eyvind and me over.
‘Well?’ he said.
Well the fuck what, I thought, but Eyvind said, ‘It’ll be here or hereabouts,’ so Leif had us bring the ship in tight to shore. Closer in we got, the more I could see; and I couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t much of an improvement on the Slab place. True, there were trees. You never saw the like. I mean, they think they’ve got forests in Norway, but I never saw anything over there to compare with what we saw as we skimmed along, and anybody thinking of felling a load to take back to Greenland would’ve gone mad with delight. One thing I could see, though, was that it wasn’t much like Bjarni’s second place. You had a long, very pale beach, the sand almost white, and the trees crowding down onto it like a whole bunch of families come to see you off on a journey But no grass, except for a few sad tufts here and there. It’d been the broad strip of grassland that’d lodged in my mind, and for sure it wasn’t there. Either we hadn’t reached that place yet, or we’d gone straight past it. Either way I was pretty sure that Leif wasn’t going to be happy, and I was glad I’d kept quiet and told the truth after all.
Even when it was quite clear that we’d come to the wrong place, Leif told us to keep going and make landfall. We put the boat out and the same party of four - me, Eyvind, Leif and the gabby German - rowed across and had a look.
Wasn’t any better close up. The beach sloped gently up to the forest edge and then it was just trees. Eyvind went all quiet, I hung back out of the way, but Tyrkir the German went bounding off like a dog into the forest, leaving the three of us behind.
‘Well,’ Leif said after a while. ‘This isn’t it, is it?’
