The Last Refuge (8 page)

He held my gaze long enough that I knew he’d made a decision. ‘If they can’t see it then it’s not my place to inform them.’

Barthel raised his glass to me again. ‘Here’s to lives saved.’

Chapter 12

It was a few weeks before I felt the need to seek the haven of Cafe Natur again. I’d settled into a restless routine of minimal sleep then long days at Risen og Kellengin; stacking, cleaning, filleting, rinsing, icing, lifting, shifting. I’d even spent uncomfortable hours out on the skirts of the salmon cages, rising and falling with the irresistible swell, and hanging on for dear life when the waves threw themselves at me, seemingly determined to finish me off.

I lived with the fact that Tummas knew about my past, relaxing a little more with each day that passed without the sanctity of my secret being breached. It wasn’t mentioned the couple of times I saw him on the streets of Torshavn, polite nods being exchanged instead.

In the warehouse, I largely kept to my own company, for fear of too many questions. The one other worker who I could not seem to avoid was my nemesis, the squat and ever-glaring lump of bad temper that was Toki. We seemed to get paired together regularly and never once did he speak to me in English. I’d learned from the others that he knew the language well enough, but he never deigned to use any of it on me. When he spoke at all it was in guttural stabs of Faroese followed by expletives of disgust at my ignorance for not understanding. In my mind, there was a fish hook with Toki’s name on it, with its point and barb driven through his lip and the scruffy moustache that adorned it. In reality I ignored him and didn’t rise to his taunts.

I knew that the lack of sleep was affecting me. I was grouchy, lethargic and lacking in energy. The black circles under my eyes were as much testament to my sleeplessness as the strange, displaced feeling that was becoming familiar to me. The only answer that I was sure I could rely on, other than awaiting the arrival of autumn, was alcohol. I could drink myself into either sleep or oblivion. I wasn’t too fussed which.

The walk down the hill towards town took me about fifteen minutes, time enough to practise my few newly acquired words of Faroese in my head. Time enough to consider the pros and cons of continuing to keep myself separate from the community. Time enough to gather a thirst.

Oli, the barman from my previous visit, was not on duty, but a girl in her early twenties expertly poured me a pint of Gull and equally knowledgably realized that I hadn’t come for a conversation. I poured myself into the same seat I had taken up before, the wall protecting my back from sharpshooters and well-wishers alike.

It was just after nine and the place was busy for a school night. Groups of friends made the pub ring with chatter and laughter, beer flowed freely and the rain washed the windows to make everyone all the more glad that they were inside.

I’d bought a Lee Child thriller from the English section of the bookshop in the SMS shopping centre, just ten minutes’ walk away, and was working my way through it. Reading a book wasn’t the way I’d have spent time in a pub back home, but then I was a long way from there. I read and I refilled my glass. Twice.

Then, from the corner of my consciousness, I heard the chair opposite me scrape back on the floor. I looked up to see a pretty face smiling back at me under a quiff of dark hair and a hat. It was the girl who had slapped her friend.

She let loose a string of melodic Faroese that inevitably meant absolutely nothing to me. Neither
beer
,
please
nor
thank you
seemed to be among the words. If it was one of the handful of phrases I’d learned at the fish farm then the speed of delivery floored me.

When she saw the look of confusion on my face, she slipped effortlessly into English.

‘Hi. If you’re on your own do you want to come and sit with me and my friends?’

I glanced over and saw a table of two other girls, one of them the short girl that had been on the receiving end of the smack, and two guys. All of them were, like her, in their mid to late twenties. On the table in front of them was a tall Perspex funnel containing beer, which descended into a copper bottom with a tap, something like a samovar.

Company wasn’t what I’d come looking for, and although there was certainly something beguiling about the girl, I knew it wasn’t a good idea.

A line came back to me from
The Great Gatsby
, read in a secondary-school classroom, about how bad drivers are only dangerous when two of them meet. The last thing I needed was a head-on collision.

I shook my head at her. ‘No.
Takk
. I’m happy just sitting on my own.’

The girl’s nose wrinkled in confusion and her mouth twisted to one side as she weighed up whether to leave it at that. Decision seemingly made, she broke into a coy smile that nearly destroyed my defences.

‘Oh come on. It will be fun. Even if you don’t like me, my friends are nice people.’

‘It’s not that I don’t like you . . .’

The smile widened and my defences creaked further. I had to be cruel to be kind.

‘No. I’d rather sit alone.’

Her green eyes flamed and her mouth tightened until the enticing smile disappeared and was zipped away. The shrug of her shoulders was like twin stiletto blades being flourished in warning. ‘Fine. Your loss.’

The chair was pushed back and she spun on her heels, retreating to her friends but leaving a simmering trail of rejection behind her. I couldn’t help but notice the skinny jeans that clung to slim legs and showed off a fine rear. I cursed myself silently, but knew it had been the right thing. Even if she wasn’t really that bad a driver, I was bad enough for both of us.

She returned nearly an hour later.

I looked across the room to see her sitting with her elbow on the table, chin on her hand, looking at me through narrowed eyes. She pushed the porkpie hat back on her head a little, then siphoned off a pint of beer from the Perspex-and-copper contraption and got to her feet. Weaving her way through two other tables, she reached mine, turning the chair opposite round so that it faced her and straddling it in interrogation mode. She leaned her head across the table till it was near mine.

‘So. I’m Karis.’

‘Hi.’

She waited in vain for me to offer my name, and when it didn’t come she just shrugged casually, the knife sheathed but ready for use.

‘Do you not like people, or is it just me that you are rude to?’

Her tone was playful but with an edge to it, like a cat flicking a mouse around and not yet resorting to using its claws.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just felt like being alone.’

She tilted her head to one side, making a show of studying me. ‘I do not understand that. You are a good-looking guy. So why are you on your own?’

‘Because I’m not with anyone.’

‘Funny guy, too. So where are you from? Are you English?’

Inside I groaned, as much at the continued conversation as the nationality muddle. ‘No. I’m Scottish.’

A strange look crossed her face, something mischievous, and she ducked her head under the table, looking mock perplexed when she re-emerged. ‘But if you are Scottish, where is your kilt?’

This girl was going to prove difficult to shake off.

‘It’s in the dry cleaners. I got it covered in haggis blood during the last hunt.’

‘That is disgusting. Scotland must be full of strange people.’

‘I can’t argue with that.’

Karis was wearing a sleeveless red tartan shirt open over a black rock-music T-shirt. The black porkpie hat sat back on the lustrous dark hair, the extravagant quiff protruding in front of it. Her face was very pretty but almost boyish; gamine, like a young, dark-haired Twiggy. Like a Faroese Audrey Hepburn.

Her look was topped off by a purple scarf coiled high round her neck, and purple fingernails. A tattoo, something Chinese by the look of it, peeked out beneath the capped sleeves of her T-shirt. Boyish or not, welcome company or otherwise, she was beautiful. That wasn’t what interested me, though; something else about her intrigued me, and I knew I’d been dragged into this conversation whether I liked it or not.

‘So what do you do?’ I tried to sound interested enough to be polite, but not so interested that she’d tell me her life story or ask me mine.

‘Well, I guess I’m an artist.’ She said it shyly, almost dismissively. I couldn’t help but like her.

‘What kind of stuff do you do?’

‘Stuff?’ she laughed. ‘I paint.’

‘People or places?’

‘Whatever interests me. You interest me. So you have come to Faroe Islands for a holiday?’

I felt like I’d answered this question more than once, and my irritation crept into my voice.

‘No. I’ve come here to live.’

‘
Here?
Why?’

I dodged it. ‘Why not? Don’t you like your own country?’

She blew out a sharp breath coated in anger.

‘Yes, I love it. And I hate it. It’s why I came back here to paint.’

‘Back?’

‘From Denmark. I studied in Copenhagen. Most young people who go to Denmark get their eyes opened and don’t come back. Maybe I shouldn’t have but . . .’

‘But . . .’

‘But it’s where I’m from. It’s in my blood. I want to . . .’ She paused. ‘Promise me you will not laugh.’

‘I promise.’

‘Okay. I want to change things. Through my art. Crazy, huh? You think I’m crazy.’

Maybe I did a little. ‘No. Of course not.’

‘Ha. You do! And that’s okay. I don’t mind being a little crazy. It’s good for the soul. Especially if you paint. Maybe I should paint you.’

That wasn’t a good idea at all. ‘But I’m not from the Faroes.’

‘True. But you interest me. You didn’t tell me why you came here.’

I forced a smile. ‘But if I tell you then I might not be interesting any more. I’m going to get another drink. Do you want one?’

Karis looked down at her glass and shrugged. ‘Why not? No more beer, though. Vodka and Coke, please, Mr Scotsman. What’s your name?’

It couldn’t be avoided any longer. ‘It’s John Callum. Just “Callum” would do.’

‘Okay, John. Put some ice in it, will you?’

So we talked. We talked about her art and her time spent in Copenhagen. About her schooling in Torshavn. About how she felt women were given a raw deal on the islands and that this was the reason why so many left and didn’t return. And about how the Church had so much control over what was said and done and how she hated that, saying it wasn’t the way the world should be. A lot was said and I was impressed by my ability to make so little of it about me.

There was some game being played whose rules I didn’t entirely understand. Cat-and-mouse courtship? Maybe, but I was sure enough of my own intention to steer a solo course, and I wasn’t really sure that she was trying to win me over. Despite myself, I was enjoying her company. That was the easy bit. She was passionate when she spoke and I could see the same fire in her eyes that had flamed when she’d had the argument with her friend. It coursed through her when she talked about Torshavn and the islands, and it was almost mesmerizing to watch.

‘It
is
the most beautiful place on the planet.’ The broad smile with which she delivered the statement was utterly convincing. She meant it. ‘And we have to maintain that beauty as we drive the islands into the future. That is our duty, as much as it is our duty to make this place somewhere for all the people of the Faroes to live. Especially the young. Especially women. We must harness everything that we have here and make this somewhere the rest of the world is jealous of.’

‘And you think that can be done?’

‘What? Of course it can. We have every natural asset that we need. Wind, wave, water. We have a youthful populace that we can convince to return with the promise of change. We can be at the forefront of renewable energies and wireless technologies. We maybe have oil out there, too, to fund it. We can be whatever we want to be.’

‘Then you choose carefully. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.’

‘Don’t make fun of me. Are you making fun of me?’

‘Sorry. I think it’s great that you . . .’

As I spoke, I became vaguely aware of the door opening and the chill of the night sneaking in. But it was only when I saw Karis’s eyes open wide and stare in that direction that I became fully conscious of someone else having entered the bar.

I was still talking, but followed her gaze and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man at the door, a blue woollen hat pulled over his dark hair. He must have been about thirty, good-looking in a rough-hewn kind of way. His dark eyes were on Karis, his face expressionless.

She wasn’t hearing a word I was saying, and there was a worry in her eyes that I hadn’t expected. The wild, free spirit that I had been chatting to hadn’t suggested a tendency towards anxiety.

‘You okay?’ I had to repeat myself.

She turned back towards me, as if remembering that I was there. Her hesitancy gave the lie to her sudden smile. ‘Yeah. I’m fine.’

‘Your boyfriend?’ I asked.

Her green eyes were at once hot and cold. ‘I don’t have a boy -friend.’ Her tone could have frozen the ocean. ‘If I had a boyfriend I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. I’m not like that. Anyway, I should get back to my friends. I only came back so that I could say no to you rather than you say it to me. Goodbye.’

Karis pushed her glass away from her, stood up and turned away. She brushed past the big guy without looking at him and sat back down at her own table, her back to me as well as the newcomer.

Any doubts on my part that it was he who had spooked her were dispelled when I watched him stare at her as she went by, then turn his head towards me. If looks could kill, I’d have been pushing up daisies on the turf roof of one of the local houses.

Chapter 13

Karis and her friends left just half an hour later, the beer samovar drained of its last golden drop. As they passed by, I heard one of them mention Sirkús, the funky Seventies bar upstairs on a corner of the western port, across the road from the Hotel Torshavn. Part of me wanted to follow them there. Follow her. But it made no sense to do so.