The Last Refuge (9 page)

I also felt like I was trapped by the hulking, glowering presence of the guy who had scared Karis off. He stood leaning against one of the vertical support beams, beer in hand, daring me to match his stare. If I left it would be as if he had scared me off, too, and I wouldn’t give him that. The only options were to challenge him or to ignore him, but I was angry at being forced into either.

Another man came into the bar and sidled up next to him. A slightly shorter, slightly slimmer version. The same dark hair and eyes. The same sculptured jaw. A brother maybe. Whatever the bigger guy had said, little brother turned and sneered at me. Then a glare of intent. Going out on the street after the girl seemed like a doubly bad idea. I didn’t want to be in the dark winding alleys of Tinganes with these two.

Fight or flight. An old dilemma.

My mind was just about made up when a third figure wheeled unexpectedly into view. A slender, blond-haired man in jeans and a white cotton shirt with a broad grin on his tanned face cut across the other two men and sat himself down next to me. This was becoming a familiar occurrence.

He put a hand across my shoulder in greeting, as if we were long-lost friends, and pressed down harder when I tried to shrug it off. He moved round to sit opposite me, smiling widely, and leaned in close.

‘Hey. You’re the Scotsman, right? I’m here to save your ass.’

‘What? And how did you . . .’

‘It does not matter.’ The accent was French. ‘What matters is that you do not get your ass kicked by that Neanderthal and his brother. You do not want that, do you?’

I glanced over at the pair who were watching me and my would-be saviour. They were whispering conspiratorially and nodding in my direction.

‘You know them?’

‘The one who scared off the beautiful Karis Lisberg, his name is Aron Dam. He’s a hothead. The other one is his brother, Nils. They are trouble. You do not want to know them, believe me.’

‘They seem to want to know me, though.’

He laughed. ‘Sure looks that way. My name is Serge Gotteri. I am your new friend.’

Gotteri offered his hand and I warily reached out to shake it. He laughed again.

‘There are very few foreign nationals in Torshavn,’ he told me. ‘We should stick together. Let me buy you a beer. And I will have a word with the damn Dams.’

‘Look, I can sort this myself. You don’t have to . . .’

Gotteri grinned and looked at me, surprised. ‘You think you could take them? Both of them?’

I didn’t need this.

‘I don’t want to fight them.’

Gotteri gave a Gallic shrug. ‘A wise decision. I will speak to them.’

‘No. Wait . . .’

He was gone, suddenly standing beside the two men, their heads deep in conversation. There was some glancing over and some shaking of heads. I got a final glare from the taller brother, Aron Dam, then both men downed what was left of their pints and pushed their way through the door and onto the street.

Gotteri stood there, his arms wide, as if to say, ‘See. I told you.’ He smiled again and turned to the bar. A couple of minutes later he was back with two beers.

‘So what did you tell them?’ I had to ask.

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Yes I do.’

‘I told them that you were gay.’

‘You did what?’

‘It’s okay, you don’t have to thank me. Now tell me, why have you come to live in this godforsaken place? This is even colder and wetter than Scotland.’

‘Why did you tell them I’m gay?’

‘To save you from a beating, I told you.
Are
you gay? I think not, I saw you looking at Karis. Never mind, why are you here?’

‘Are all Frenchmen as crazy as you?’

‘Yes. I think so. They are not all as handsome as me, though. You must be a little crazy, too. At least I came here to work. I know you only found a job when you got here. You have no excuse.’

Gotteri’s accent was as thick as a pall of Gauloise and as smooth as Camus Cognac. His constant smile was as beguiling as a kitten and equally irritating.

‘What do you do?’ I asked with a deep internal sigh, wondering why I was even in a conversation with this guy.

‘I am a photographer for
National Geographic
. I have been stuck here for five months already and it seems like five years. I can’t wait to get back to New York. No wonder I’m crazy. If you aren’t completely insane by five months then I will be surprised. This place does it to you. Are you sleeping at nights?’

An answer began to form on my lips but my hesitation proved fatal to my intent to give a false answer.

‘No, I didn’t think so. Drives you fucking crazy, huh? The only thing worse than winter here is the summer. If you can tell the difference. It is beautiful, though. No man can deny that. My camera loves it. And the people, they are pretty cool. Well,’ he nodded his head in the direction of the door through which the Dam brothers had departed, ‘most of them.’

‘So you’re on assignment here?’

‘Yeah. Photographing birds. Hey, it’s a job, right? Talking of birds . . . what happened to your face? Looks like claw marks.’

My hand went instinctively to my cheek, feeling the scars where the skuas had attacked. ‘I disturbed a nesting pair in the hills. My own fault.’

Gotteri looked at me inquisitively. ‘Seems you are not very good at defending yourself.’

I took a deep gulp of my beer and shrugged. ‘I wasn’t paying enough attention.’

‘Hm. You need to be more careful. So you go into the hills. You have a car here?’

‘No. I just walk.’

‘Ha. That is no good. The hills round Torshavn are all very well but there is much more to be seen. Let me take you. Show you around the islands. And,’ he pointed at my face, ‘I’ll make sure the little birdies don’t hurt you.’

I laughed despite myself. Maybe I did need someone on my side.

‘Okay. Why not?’

Gotteri’s smile broadened even further. ‘
Bon!
We will go tomorrow. It is Saturday, you will not be working, right? Right. I will pick you up at eight. I am going to the Ambadalur valley on the northern tip of Eysturoy to begin with. You will like it. And it is the Faroes, so dress for all four seasons. Just in case.’

I glanced at my watch. ‘Okay. There’s time for another beer. But . . . maybe you could tell me something. It’s um . . .’

Serge laughed. ‘It’s about Karis, right? Ha. I’m right. She is quite some girl. Very sexy, no? But she is something of a strange one. I don’t know what it is. You like her? Of course you do.’

Was it that obvious? The change of mood and the vanishing act just added to her appeal. I liked her.

‘I guess so.’ I told Gotteri. ‘Do you know if she is seeing someone?’

He grinned. ‘So what if she is? I don’t know, but she was seeing someone. Aron Dam. God knows what she saw in him.’

‘Really? She told me that he was not her boyfriend.’

Gotteri shrugged. ‘They fell out, I think. No matter. He is bad, that one.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘He is a fisherman, like most people on these islands. His brother used to be, too, but now he works for the oil company that is drilling offshore. Most Faroese people are very friendly, you will know this already. They are quiet, they are not ruled by their emotions, and they make an effort to get on with each other. The Dams are different. Aron and Nils are always angry, it seems. The catch is bad, the weather is against them, the government is doing nothing for them. Always someone else’s fault and always they are angry about it. I think all the bad temper in the islands was given to just two people. Anyway, you were going to buy beer, no?’

I bought beer. We drank it then stumbled out into the pale night with loud promises to meet on the quayside near Cafe Natur at eight. Serge wandered his way and I mine up the hill past the Hotel Hafnia and onwards to what passed for home.

Twice I thought I caught sight of someone standing watching me in the shadows of the hotel, but I couldn’t be sure if there was anyone there or if it was simply the alcohol or my paranoia. Both times I stood and looked at the shadows, which never moved. If someone was following me then they did so only when my back was turned.

Chapter 14

The new day dawned surprisingly sunny and unsurprisingly early. I fought it, and lost, before finally catching some sleep just in time to be woken by my alarm. A cold shower shook off the last vestiges of my broken slumber before I walked into town to meet Gotteri.

The Frenchman arrived on time, infuriatingly upbeat in the driver’s seat of a black four-wheel drive Skoda Yeti. He chatted incessantly, pointing out this and that, giving his opinion on all things Faroese and beyond, his hands waving manically in a manner that made me fear for our safety.

We headed north, through the underground tunnels to Eysturoy, past Eidi and the fish farm, east to the picturesque village of Gjógv, where we dumped the car before hiking west again to the Ambadalur valley. It took us three hours in sight of the two highest mountains that the Faroes have to offer, Slættaratindur and Gráfelli. Oystercatchers, snipes and curlews flew above and below as we climbed, unaware of or indifferent to our presence. There were great skuas, too, and my eyes followed them warily in case word had been sent from their cousins in Torshavn.

Finally, the rise disappeared into thin air and we stood on the edge of oblivion, the ocean suddenly stretching away before us framed by a wispy blue. Gotteri had obviously been here before, as he knew exactly what lay over the lip of the hill.

‘This is why we are here.’

In front of us as we peeped over the rise of the cliff was a huge sea stack, an astonishingly tall, rounded thumb of black basalt that rose majestically, if improbably, from the ocean. It was thick at the base where it emerged from the swell, then narrowed as it grew, a striking sheer mass of greys and greens almost as high as the cliff top itself.

‘That is known as Búgvin,’ Gotteri explained. ‘It is 188 metres high, the highest stack in the Faroes, and it is at war with the sea. Every day the ocean comes and hurls itself at that rock. Every day for a million years. All the stack can do is stand there and take it. Waves six, maybe eight metres high – in a storm maybe twenty – crashing against it, the full force of nature unleashed. Over and over again. You could stand on this spot for twenty years and swear that the rock was winning, because it would seem that the sea is unable to land a telling blow. But if you could stand here for a thousand years then you’d see that the ocean will win. Grain by grain, it will wash Búgvin away like a sugar cube dissolving in coffee. And the ocean has boundless patience.’

It struck me that I had a lot in common with that rock. Life hammering at you day after day, chipping away at your resistance and wearing you down bit by bit. Sometimes it was easy to wonder how many more hits you could stand.

We walked further along the cliff path until the giant sea stack was immediately in front of and below us, a sea monster rising from the swell. The stack was home to thousands of nesting seabirds: fulmars, guillemots and puffins. Wherever there was a ledge or a nook or a cranny, however precarious, a bird made its home and reared its young.

Gotteri and I sat in silence, a light breeze and a warming sun making the day almost perfect as we watched the waves attempt their daily destruction of the stack. It was a long war but the battles were mesmerizing. In time, Serge took his camera and stalked the periphery of the bluff, shooting the nesting seabirds with deadly accuracy. One by one, they fell prey to his camera.

Then, out of nowhere, the mist rolled in – but only below our feet. It rose from the ocean and snaked up the sides of Búgvin, encircling it. In just a few minutes, the sea was gone and we were staring into a crater of candyfloss, only the top five metres or so of the
stakkur
protruding through the lather. On the cliff top and all around us, the sun shone from a clear blue sky. Below, a cauldron of cloud brewed up
double, double, toil and trouble
for the unwary and the foolish. At once both enchanted and enchanting. Haunted and haunting.

‘
National Geographic
have done a feature on the Faroes before,’ Serge told me, as we sat and watched the mist at work, his camera rendered redundant by the impenetrable haze. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced folded sheets of paper. ‘I have a photocopy. I like to refer to it and use it as a sort of template. So I can compare then to now. A guy called Leo Hansen wrote it in 1930. He was here for over a year, poor guy.’

Gotteri held it up and I could just about make out the heading, but he read it for me anyway. ‘It is entitled “Viking Life in the Storm-Cursed Faroes”. So true, huh? Listen to this. “Basalt cliffs rise majestically on all the islands. Some tower nearly two thousand feet above the restless sea, and against these black barriers the Atlantic sends her mighty waves, to break with explosive force and burst into probably the most remarkable clouds of spray and surf to be found in all the world.”’

Serge grinned broadly and flourished the photocopies at the stack below us, its top peeping out above the cloud. ‘If Hansen sat here with us today, he would see the same that we see, the same that he saw then. Nothing has changed except that there is some less of Búgvin than there was. You see? It is nature. It always wins. We are insignificant against it.’

A change came over Gotteri’s voice, a bitterness that twisted the seemingly permanent smile. ‘We are supposed to be custodians of this world, but we do not do a good job of that. If there were a God he would sack us. This . . . this is what he gave us to look after. Out here on the edge of the world, it survives as it is meant to do. Only at war with itself, without the interference of man, and therefore it inches to its destruction rather than racing there, as it does in cities polluted by fast-food joints, choked with landfill sites and drowning in their own aspiration. We do not deserve what we have been given.’

The volume had risen with every word of Gotteri’s bluster, until he was almost shouting. However, as soon as he reached the end, it subsided like tidal surge falling back into the sea, and the smile spread across his face again.