The Voyage of the Dolphin (19 page)

The room was large, and the whitewashed walls, beneath the high, dark-beamed ceiling, were splashed with sunlight. At floor-level nearby, a fire ticked in an open hearth; beyond it, the door was ajar, admitting a gentle breeze and the murmur of voices. Crozier watched fugitive wisps of woodsmoke writhe in the air above him and sought to triage facts from the fevered jumble of his mind: he had been lost in a snowstorm; he had fallen into a ravine; he had been close to extinction – now he was tucked up in a warm bed in the corner of what appeared to be an Irish country cottage. This dislocation flummoxed him to the point where he began, half seriously, to wonder whether he had passed into some kind of afterlife.

A series of images kept coming to him, in particular a dream-like fragment that was surreal yet charged with a strange clarity: a procession of giant men, a dozen or more, marching along a mountain path above a valley of lush green fields. They wore animal skins and fur hats. His view was from atop the shoulders of one of these men, and further up the line he could see the backs of his friends, each travelling in similar style. Birds wheeled above them in a cloudless blue sky; white peaks glimmered. The only sound was the rhythmic thump of heavy boots and the occasional click of a scuffed pebble.

He sniffed. Cooking smells. His mouth watered. Surely not? Could it be? It
was
. The unmistakable aroma of bacon frying. His stomach writhed. Gingerly, he hoisted himself into a sitting position. His hand went to his head, which was tightly bandaged. There was a beaker of water on the table beside him and he took a sip. It was cold and sweet. He drained it, then swung his legs over the edge of the bed and slid off onto the stone floor. He noticed he was dressed in soft buckskin in the fashion of the Inuit traders. He slipped his feet into a pair of thick woollen pampooties. As he stood upright, dizziness caught him and he had to grip the table. He took a few tentative steps. He had the impression he had shrunk. There were tapestries on the walls, and here and there, large ornaments carved from wood and bone. He stopped by a shelf of leather-bound books, their spines worn smooth, and ran his finger along them:
The Arabian Nights, The Odyssey
,
Gulliver's Travels
,
The Pilgrim's Progress, A Tale of a Tub, The
Tempest
… At the threshold he hesitated. Sounds of talking, laughter. Children playing? He pulled the door open, and blinked as his eyes adjusted to full daylight, then he stared in amazement.

Across a stretch of bare earth, on which chickens strutted and pecked, was a row of out-sized chalk-white cottages, the thatch on their roofs shining gold in the morning sun, smoke trickling from their chimneys. In the foreground, a group of men were talking, as men do anywhere, observing the weather, passing the time of day. Again Crozier struggled for a sense of scale, tried to gauge his own stature within the yawning dimensions of the doorframe. But there was no way around it. It was true. Each of the men stood well over eight feet tall.

To their left, was a long table at which a number of people – some of them infant-sized in comparison — were sitting down to breakfast. He slowly realised that this group included three familiar faces.

‘Come on,' Fitzmaurice called. ‘We've saved you some bacon.'

As if in a dream, Crozier started towards them, hens scattering before him. Some children of about his height raced past, shouting, pursued by another with a stick. An Inuit woman, of normal dimensions, crinkled her eyes at him from a doorway. The air, he noted, was warm, like a morning in late spring. As he arrived at the table he staggered a little and a young giant stood up and, taking him under the arms, lifted him onto the bench between Rafferty and a giantess with plaited hair to her waist.

‘Feeling better?' Rafferty asked. ‘After your eighteen-hour nap?'

Unable to form words, Crozier grunted.

‘You must be hungry,' another giant said. ‘Here.' He began spooning creamy scrambled eggs onto a large plate.

‘Try the bacon,' Fitzmaurice produced his pipe, ‘smoked reindeer. First-rate. And the soda bread. Better than your granny's.'

Crozier regarded the food piling up in front of him.

‘I like your hat,' Phoebe said. He gazed at her vacantly. She leant across and stroked his hand. Her face was pale. The giantess nudged him and beamed, displaying huge, perfect teeth. He looked around the table. Everyone was smiling at him as though he were an ancient relative on the cusp of senility.

‘Tea?' An enormous teapot loomed, blocking out the sun, and pale rose-coloured liquid gurgled into a cup. Crozier noticed that the vessels and utensils on the table came in varying sizes. ‘Milk?'

He began to eat. Questions were still being addressed to him but he wasn't listening. It was the most delicious food he had ever tasted and he went at it with a ravenous, trembling hunger. Bacon, sausages, potato farls, pats of yellow butter… All were passed his way and all went swiftly into his famished interior. After a while conversation resumed, but for Crozier, it was just a faint rumble above the tumult in his mouth. Lastly, he chugged his quarter-gallon of tea, which was fragrant with unfamiliar herbs, and set the cup down. The company turned its attention back to him.

‘Congratulations, Crozier old man, a heroic performance,' Fitzmaurice said. ‘Now, let me introduce you. Sitting on your left, that's Aisling. This is Patrick, that's Niall, further up is Grainne and then Niamh, and beside her is Gobnait – did I get that right? My mistake.
Tara
. This fine fellow is Sean, that's his son Fergal, that lovely lady is Amaruq, and at the end there, is Eamon. Who? I beg your pardon, I mean Finn. Brian was here a minute ago but he went to fetch more milk.'

Crozier managed a weak, all-inclusive benediction. His belly placated, equilibrium was beginning to return. Around him, giants and Inuit were milling in all directions, occasionally stopping to speak to someone or other at the table. Some carried tools – scythes and hoes – others baskets of bread, fruit and vegetables. There was, in the space between the two rows of cottages, a kind of wide, truncated street, the bustling atmosphere of a marketplace.

‘Finn is the eldest son, is that right? And Ossian is the youngest grandson. The children that just ran by are yours Patrick? I thought so, they have your brow. Amaruq is expecting a baby, that's why she's not eating – feeling a bit queasy. Over there on the step, that's Pinga, the lady of the house, the mighty matriarch, maker of the best scrambled eggs in the world.'

Seated in the doorway of the nearest cottage was an elderly woman puffing on a long-stemmed pipe. Beside her a great mound of turf was stacked almost to the eaves, and perched on top – Crozier started when he saw it – was a large snowy owl, white against white, its eyes glinting in the shadow of the thatch. A pet? The thought triggered a flash of memory, and he saw again, in slow-motion, Bunion's aerial farewell. McGregor was going to give them hell for that. For a moment he was back on the
Dolphin
, hearing the thwack of the sails, the scudding ocean. Fitzmaurice was still talking.

‘Ah, now here's someone you
have
to meet…' Crozier turned at the sound of footsteps ‘This, Walter,
this
is the man who saved you from certain death.'

Crozier blinked up at a pair of whiskey-coloured eyes set deep in a finely-lined face framed by a bushy grey beard and a shock of white hair.

‘… the man whose grave you came to rob.'

Crozier's hand was enveloped in a firm dry palm. The giant gazed at him solicitously.

‘Bernard McNeill is my name. A pleasure to meet you. How are you feeling? Did you get your breakfast?'

Crozier nodded. Speech was as yet beyond him.

‘I think breakfast is my favourite meal,' the giant said. He'd retained a soft Tyrone accent. ‘
Bread, milk and butter are of venerable antiquity
—
they taste of the morning of the world
. Leigh Hunt. Do you know his work?'

Crozier shook his head.

‘Listen, if you'll excuse me, we just need to sort out the duty rota,' McNeill said, ‘but when I'm free, why don't I show you around?'

The others, save for the new arrivals, rose from the table. When they had departed, Crozier turned to his companions.

‘These giants. Are they real or am I hallucinating? Is this a dream?'

‘No, you're not dreaming, Walter,' Phoebe replied. ‘They're as real as you or me.'

‘But how did we get here? Where is this place?'

Rafferty related how they became separated in the blizzard, unable to find their way back to the tents, eventually giving up and lying down in the snow, and how the giants appeared out of nowhere just as they were succumbing to final sleep. Having hauled Crozier out of the crevasse, they carried them all, half-dead, over the mountain to safety.

‘This is where they all live. With a colony of Eskimos. Don't ask me why it isn't cold, though. That's just one of many things we don't know yet. It's all very odd.'

Crozier fingered his bandaged head.

‘I don't understand. Why is McNeill..?'

‘Still alive? That we don't know either. But he's promised to explain everything soon. Ah, speak of the devil.'

McNeill had reappeared.

‘Come along, Walter, a stroll and a breath of fresh air will do you good. Your friends have already had a look around so it's just the two of us.'

He helped Crozier to his feet and, putting his hand on his shoulder, led him towards the opening at the end of the yard. As they approached there were sounds of commotion – a panic of beating wings and hysterical clucking — and, as if fired from a cannon, several chickens shot through the gap between the gables, leaving a squall of drifting feathers. A familiar figure shambled into view: pale, wedge head, stubby bowlegs.

‘I believe you know this little fellow? Wandered in a couple of days ago in a very nasty mood.'

‘Bunion?'

‘An unlikely creature to be named after a famous Puritan, if you don't mind me saying.'

‘Bunyan?'

The hound stopped in his tracks and stared, then diverted into the yard and sat down, baring his gnarly little teeth in a panting grin of pleasure.

‘He seems happy to see you. You must have a way with animals. That's a good sign.'

Crozier allowed Bunion (or Bunyan – he was unsure now which) to slobber briefly on his hand as they passed. McNeill was saying something about an incident with the Husky bitches ‘… result in several litters. Lord only knows what the offspring will look like, but it can't be helped.'

A short distance beyond the cottages the plateau they were on fell away into the deep scoop of valley Crozier had glimpsed during his moment of consciousness some days earlier. It was even more beautiful than he remembered, its slopes a patchwork of crops and orchards divided by dry-stone walls into oblongs of varying shades of green. Far below, a glittering blue river meandered west through the centre of the basin, met on either side by fields of wheat and barley. To the east, above a forest of pine trees, a waterfall cascaded, uninterrupted, for thousands of feet down the face of one of the mountains that encircled them. Here and there, people were at work with oxen and ploughs, carts rolling along the narrow tracks between the vegetation. A light haze moistened the air, which was bird-loud, and rich with earth scents. Crozier gulped it down.

‘You probably didn't expect to see a view like that at these latitudes,' the giant said. ‘When I first saw this valley, Walter, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Of course, it was much wilder then, overgrown with brush and brambles, and in terms of food mainly just roots and berries. I brought the cereals, potatoes, appleseed, taught the locals how to cultivate them, irrigate the soil, that kind of thing. That was, it's hard to believe,' he stamped his foot on the ground, ‘fifty-one years ago.'

Crozier found his voice.

‘But aren't you supposed to be, I mean, we thought you were…'

‘Dead?' He smiled. ‘By rights I should be – I'm told my kind don't generally pass the age of thirty – but as you can see I'm in robust health. People tend to live a long time here. Makoktok, for example,' he turned and pointed at a nearby cottage, ‘who lives there, she'll be be one hundred and eighty-five at her next birthday. My wife Pinga, her mother lived well into her second century.'

‘Extraordinary. But…' Crozier trailed off again.

‘All in good time, Walter, I'm sure you have plenty of questions. By the way, here's one for you, I forgot to ask the others, how did you find this place at all?'

Crozier struggled to focus.

‘Your friend, Sir Hamilton,' he said. ‘In his journal he made a sketch of the island and gave approximate coordinates.'

‘Did he indeed?' The giant chuckled. ‘Silly old Coote. Still, you're the first outsiders to make it this far. Apart from me, of course.'

They moved on. To the right, at the top of an incline, set apart, were two larger constructions, one of them a schoolhouse, the other a circular building of varicoloured stone with a flat roof and an elaborate entranceway above a set of steps.

‘Is that the church?'

‘No, it's not a church. There's no religion here. That's where we tell stories and read books to each other. Most evenings, in fact.'

‘No religion?'

The giant made a face.

‘Not as such. Some customs and rituals, mainly to placate the souls of the animals we eat, but it just doesn't seem… relevant. Not when you have imagination.'

‘Some might say you need to put limits on imagination.'

‘I know. And isn't that a terrible thing?'

Crozier fell silent, then, ‘Do you have
many
books?'

‘Only the dozen or so I brought from Coote's ship,' McNeill stroked his beard, ‘but luckily they're good ones and have borne re-reading. We're half way through
Gulliver's Travels
again at the moment. You know, it must be about the fiftieth time, but it still gets a laugh… Come on, let me show you my new wine press, I'm very pleased with it.'

They made their way through a throng of children (of vastly differing statures – ‘but they're all treated equally') across a manicured patch of green and down a slope into a large vineyard laid out in rows from south to north, the bushes heavy with fruit.

‘How on earth did grapes come to be here?' Crozier said. McNeill made a theatrical gesture, raising his hands to the sky.

‘A gift from above.'

‘You mean...?'

‘Yes. The birds have bestowed many little blessings on us. But this is the one for which I thank them most.'

They arrived at a long wooden barn and the giant swung open the door, releasing a waft of fermented sweetness. Inside, moving between broad stripes of sunshine, people were at work, stirring and tamping, rolling barrels around. In the centre of the floor was a huge basket-shaped receptacle made of thick planks. Hanging over it, suspended by ropes and pulleys, was a heavy stone disk.

‘Well, what do you think? Isn't she a beauty?'

‘Certainly is.'

The giant became animated over the technical details.

‘Should speed up production no end. Ah, thank you, Tonraq.' A beaming Inuk had arrived bearing two beakers of golden wine, one of them bowl-sized.

‘Isn't a bit early in the day? Thank you.'

‘Someone has to try the latest vintage. To your health –
this is life eternal
, as the man said.'

The wine was like no other Crozier had ever tasted. It sang in his mouth. It delighted his throat. It warmed him from head to toe. It seemed, instantaneously, to enhance the quality of his vision, making the sunlight and everything touched by it, more vivid.

‘Well, what do you think?'

‘Delicious.'

‘The spirit is strong in those particular vines, but I think perhaps another month. Now, wait till you try this one. Good man, Tonraq…'

*

‘…
But this I conceived
was to be the least of my misfortunes; for, as
human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel
in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but
to be a morsel in the mouth of the first
among these enormous barbarians that should happen to seize me?
'

Grainne, whose eyes were unmistakably of the same cut as her father's, paused while the laughter died away. She continued: ‘
Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right when they tell
us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by
comparison
.'

Applause broke out.

‘And I think we'll leave Mr Gulliver there for this evening,' she said with a smile, closing the book and stepping away from the lectern. The audience rose, still clapping, and began to disperse, some lingering in knots to chat. McNeill, seated at the front with his guests, stifled a yawn and stood up.

‘I've had a long day,' he announced. ‘So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to retire.'

There was some protest.

‘We were rather hoping,' Fitzmaurice said, ‘that you might relate how you came to be here, and answer some of our questions. You said you would.'

‘Did I?' The giant ran an enormous hand over his huge face.

‘You promised,' Phoebe said. ‘After all, we've told
you
a great deal.'

‘Oh well, in that case, let's make ourselves more comfortable.'

He led them to the back of the hall and into a room where an old Inuk sat at a desk reading by lamplight. The man glanced up as they entered but did not speak.

‘That's Injuquaq,' McNeill explained. ‘One of our memorisers. He spends his time learning the books off by heart. Just in case.'

At the far end of the room were a number of chairs of various sizes and designs, and McNeill settled himself in the largest of them. A low fire crackled in the nearby hearth providing the only other source of light, for there were no windows. The walls, below the level at which they disappeared into the darkness of the rafters, were rich with tapestries, the floor thick with rugs. The giant sat in silence for a while.

‘I suppose I may as well begin at the beginning,' he said at last. ‘Most stories do, after all.'

‘Quite so,' Phoebe said.

‘Very well then.'

He leaned back, spreading his knees wide as he gazed into the flames.