The Islanders (38 page)

‘Of course it’s me, Marse. Why do you say that?’ She was still smiling with recognition, disregarding his scowling manner.

‘No one was supposed to be here until next week. Have you been to the house?’

‘You sent me the key. Or someone from the Authority did.’ She was not smiling now. ‘I arrived yesterday, a few days earlier than I expected. I managed to get someone to give me a lift.’

‘All right.’ He was backing away from us, seemingly anxious to leave. He had an evasive look – what we could see of his face was raw from the wind, and his hair straggled out from beneath his hood.

‘But what about the job?’ Alvasund said. ‘That’s what I came here for.’

‘I don’t know anything about that. I’ve quit the operational side. I just check the office here, part-time.’

‘So what do I do about the job?’

‘There’s an appointment form. Was it in the house?’

Alvasund glanced at me, querying. I shook my head.

‘No.’

‘Then someone will send it.’

‘I need to know if I can still get the job,’ Alvasund said.

‘I’ll hurry them along a bit, the people in Jethra. But – don’t get involved.’

‘Marse, it’s what we were trained to do. You know that. You kept urging me to apply. We were going to do it together.’

‘That was before.’

‘Before what?’

He took another step back. He was looking at neither of us. ‘I’ll contact the Authority,’ he said. He flashed a furtive look at me. ‘Have you applied too?’

‘No.’

The young man turned and walked quickly away, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his padded cagoule, his shoulders hunched, his chin buried in his scarf.

His last words were more or less the first acknowledgement by him that I was there. I was at Alvasund’s side, shivering in the bitter wind, a bystander, excluded. It made me realize how little I knew of Alvasund, or what her life had been like before we met again.

‘Shall we go to the house?’ she said.

‘I’ll collect my stuff,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll drive back to Goorn Town straight away.’

As soon as we were inside the house I moved quickly, finding my clothes and the other things I had brought, stuffing them into my holdall. I was angry with myself, but also furious with Alvasund. She went to the kitchen, made some tea. She sat at the table, staring down, holding the cup in both hands.

‘What’s the problem, Torm?’ she said, when I went into the kitchen to pick up the coffee I had brought with me.

‘You don’t need me here. I drove you, but you can find your own way back.’

‘What’s brought this on?’

‘Who the hell was that? What was his name – Marse?’

‘Just someone I used to know at university.’

‘A boyfriend?’

‘Just an old friend.’

‘And who the hell am I?’

‘An old friend.’

‘No difference between us then. Except I was the someone you found to drive you here.’

Alvasund blinked and turned away. ‘I’m sorry I said it like that. I knew straight away it was insensitive.’

‘Too bad. Too late.’

‘Torm, you’re jealous!’

I stopped pacing around then and turned back to her. ‘What do I have to be jealous about? What do I lose by you meeting up with an old boyfriend? Not a damned thing. You’ve given me nothing—’

‘I thought we were only just at the beginning.’

She rose from the table and pushed past me, through to the main part of the house. I followed. The stove was still alight, a deep-red glow behind the fireproof glass. The house was warm, rich with the smell of woodsmoke. The windows were translucent with condensation. She sat down on the thick rug in front of the fire doors, leaning towards the heat. I sat in one of the cushioned chairs, half turned away from her.

Alvasund immediately rose to her knees, leaned towards me and kissed me full on the lips. Her hand rested affectionately on my chest. I was too angry for that, and pulled away from her. She persisted.

Finally she said, ‘Torm, I’m sorry.
Really sorry!
Please . . . let’s forget everything that just happened. Marse is an old friend from college – I hadn’t seen him for over a year. But he was acting weird, and I forgot what I was doing.’

In a cupboard she found an unopened bottle of apple brandy, distilled and bottled locally. She broke the seal and poured two glasses.

‘I think you should explain what’s going on,’ I said. I was still residually angry with her, thinking of what had happened in the night. Nothing had happened in the night. The sheet of virtual glass she put up as a barrier remained a barrier. ‘You didn’t bring me here to look at a hole in the ground. What’s the truth about this job?’

‘I’ve never been sure the job is real,’ she said. ‘If it is, it would be ideal for me. The money’s terrific and I’m qualified for it. But I’ve been getting so many mixed messages from Marse – he took a similar job last year. First he’d tell me the job was open, and urge me to apply – then I wouldn’t hear from him for weeks. For a while he was pretending he didn’t know me. Then he changed again. Finally he told me to come here. But you saw what happened, in the street.’

‘What was he when you were at college? A boyfriend?’

‘Ages ago. It’s been over for more than a year.’

‘A one-night stand?’

‘No – more than that.’

‘A long affair, then?’

‘It’s in the past, Torm. It’s not important . . . but no, it wasn’t a long affair.’ She sat up, moved back from me. ‘We were together for about a month. Then he dropped out of the course after only a year and a half. He had been offered this tremendous job in Jethra. He told me about it, then left. I didn’t think I’d see him again because it was on the mainland. That’s when he started sending emails – he wanted me to join him. But Marse is a difficult kind of guy, so I kept saying I wanted to complete my course first. Then the messages became mixed. He seemed to be discouraging me, ignoring me. He had moved to work on an island called Seevl. I discovered that the people who had employed him, an agency called the Intercession Authority, were still hiring. They couldn’t find the right people, but my qualification made me ideal for it. Marse changed again, urging me to apply. For a time it was irrelevant – I hadn’t finished at college. Then I went to work on Muriseay, but after that went wrong I began wondering if I should try it. Anyway, in the end I did apply. I have to run a preliminary test, and then I’ll be told if I’ve got the job.’

‘Which island did you say it was?’

‘Seevl.’

‘I don’t know it. There are so many islands to remember.’

‘It’s one of the Torquis. Like Hetta, it’s close to the Faiand coast, but it’s at the other end of the country. Offshore from Jethra. It’s only a small island. Marse told me once it’s similar to the Tallek: cold climate, short summer, subsistence farming and fishing. Well, the story is that there are some old constructions on Seevl, built hundreds of years ago. No one knows who built them, or what they were for. Most of them are still there but they’re falling into ruin. They want to make them safe.’

‘I don’t see the connection with you.’

‘I’ve been trained in perspective imaging. 3-D visualization. But I couldn’t get much sense out of Marse.’

‘What does 3-D imaging have to do with making a ruin safe?’

‘That’s what the test is for. The reason I’m in Ørsknes is because there’s a similar ruin in the mountains here. What I have to do is go there as a sort of trial run, use my imaging equipment, write some notes and then they’ll have something of mine they can look at. The point is that most of the ruins are only on Seevl, but there’s one other that’s the same. It’s here in the Tallek. It was built at the same time and in the same way. People who apply to work for the Authority usually have to go there first.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I’ve been given directions. On my laptop.’

‘So why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘It didn’t seem important until just now.’

We sipped more of the brandy, stopped arguing and enquiring. Alvasund went to the kitchen, made some food for us and we ate it while we sprawled in front of the stove. It was one of those days shaped by the chilly weather, the memory of having been cold while we were outside. Gradually, I began to relax with her again – maybe the brandy helped with that.

Outside it had started to rain, a heavy, steady downpour. I went to one of the windows, wiped a hole in the condensation with my hand and looked out at the dismal view of the street. We could hear the rain in every part of the house, the drumming on the wooden roof, the sheeting noise on the concrete path, the swirling sound as the water coursed away. A sudden onset of rain was supposed to augur the coming end of the Goornak, said to be the spittle of the curse-witch. At least the wind had died.

After we had eaten we sat together on the rug, my arm loosely around Alvasund, resting on the lower part of her back. When the logs settled suddenly, with a bright uprush of sparks, she snuggled affectionately against me.

But in spite of all that, when it came to bedtime Alvasund again acted as if a sheet of glass stood between us.

This time I let her take the first shower, so she was lying in the bed by the time I clambered up to join her. I stood naked before her, but she was lying so that she faced away and her eyes were already closed. I slipped into the bed and felt the bolster lying alongside. I left the light on, listening to the rain, to the quiet sound of her breathing. Finally, I turned out the light.

Alvasund said in the dark, ‘Would you hold me, Torm?’

‘Is that what you’d like?’

‘Please.’

She turned over suddenly, sat up, pulled on the bolster and tossed it to the side. Then she lay down again and moved so that she was pressing her naked back against me. I tucked my legs against hers, pressed my face into her hair. I reached over, laid my hand on her stomach. She felt warm, relaxed. After a few moments she took my hand and guided it to her breast.

The rain poured down endlessly on the roof just above us, but in the warmth and security of the house it was almost a reassuring sound. Although I was excited and aroused by holding her like that, I soon drifted off to sleep. Her nipple was a stiff little bud tucked into the space between two of my fingers.

In the night, in the dark, she woke me up, kissing me and caressing me. At last we made love, and I happily imagined invisible shards of glass flying away harmlessly in all directions.

Three days later we drove out of Ørsknes, heading northwards through the mountains on the eastern side of the fjord. The rain had ceased before dawn and the streets of the town were for the first time clear of any snow or ice. The sun was shining in the cold air. The wind had died. Leaving Ørsknes and climbing up to the mountainous hinterland meant we soon crossed the snowline. The higher peaks of the Tallek region often stayed snow-covered long into summer. However, the roads had been cleared of all ice and we were rewarded by one vista after another of the great Tallek skyline, the vast range of peaks under an azure sky. Attendant white clouds clung like ethereal banners to the leeward sides.

Alvasund glanced at the view from time to time, but much of her attention was on her laptop. She was running through the program that built 3-D visualizations, then extrapolated and modelled from a library of artefacts. She had already shown me some of the demo routines: for instance, one in which a single fossil bone could be extrapolated into a complete skeleton of some extinct reptile, and another in which pieces of timber, joined using certain vernacular building techniques, could suggest the outlines of long-vanished buildings. Working with a real artefact was something she had not yet had to do, so as we drove through the mountains she was studying the online manuals and further demos.

We were approaching the northern coast of Goorn and already I had several times glimpsed the calm cold blue of the distant sea. The mountains were less rugged here. We soon crossed down through the snowline into a high area of barren rock and clumps of coarse grasses. We stopped to consult the map that had been sent to Alvasund by the Authority: they had finally authorized her to go ahead and complete the test assignment.

In the event the site was not hard to find. The ruined tower stood on a smooth bluff of land, facing towards the sea above a steep decline. We could see it long before we reached it: a tall, narrow construction of dark stone, all alone, no sign of any other buildings or activity around it.

I parked within walking distance of it. Alvasund gathered her laptop and digitizing equipment from the rear seat and then we sat for a few moments in the car, staring across the moor at the old building. There was something about the tower that gave me a feeling of dread – it was imprecise and irrational, so I said nothing to Alvasund about it.

Wearing our thick coats we strode across the uneven ground, beset by a strong breeze from the sea. I felt the sense of inner unease gradually intensify, but again I said nothing to Alvasund. As we drew closer to the ruin we could see how jagged and cracked were the stone walls, with a large gap near the top on one side – there was a glimpse of some kind of wooden floor or joists within, broken and hanging at an angle. Orange lichen spread across much of the south-facing surface. The tower looked solid but decrepit, the stones dark in the bright sunlight.